written guarantee that all illegal operations on the Puxto would cease as of this moment, at which point one of the guards grabbed his right elbow and wrist and did something that caused Kevin so much pain that he sank to his knees and had to concentrate to keep from wetting himself. None of the guards touched the Indian, who meekly allowed himself to be led away, while just in front of him, Kevin howled and threatened a host of violent retributions, all of which were beyond his power to accomplish.
He drove back to Coconut Grove in a good deal of pain. His wrist ached, and one of the guards had given him a couple of shots to the kidney in the elevator. Still, he felt good in a way he hadn’t in a long while. The fascists had shown their true colors at last, he had been met with the violence and brutality he had expected, justifying his own fantasies of violence. He observed his wrist on the steering wheel and was gratified to see it red and swelling slightly; he only regretted that no blood had been shed, as he thought there was nothing like a bashed face to elicit the sympathy he considered the key to real political action. As he drove, his clever mind reassembled the events of the recent past into a pattern more favorable to him. He summoned up fear in the face of Fuentes where there had been only contemptuous boredom. In his mind’s ear he heard the man trying to justify his crimes in a whining voice. These Kevin had destroyed in a series of brilliant retorts, which he now composed and polished. The guards had tried to subdue him, but he had used martial arts to send them sprawling; oh, yeah, and the Indian, they had tried to mess with the Indian and he had avoided their fascistic grasp by means of strange jungle moves, and they had strolled out of there heads high, like a couple of action heroes. He glanced over at the small man sitting silent next to him. That was a problem, if he brought him back to the property they would talk to him, Luna knew Spanish and so did the Professor, which might screw things up. But why bring him back? Who knew what an Indian would do?
Kevin turned off Bayshore onto McFarlane, and almost as soon as he did so, he saw that the display and the rest of the FPA stuff was gone from in front of the library. Clearly the girls had called Scotty, and he’d come by with the truck. He parked anyway and got out of the van. To the Indian he said, “Vamanos, tenemos buscar las mujeres.” He went around and opened the passenger door.
“Come on, man,vamos, you go around that side. Busca alli. ” He gestured so the stupid Indian would know to go around the east side of the library. When he was gone, Kevin went inside the building and looked around for about thirty seconds. Then he got back in the van. Shit, I don’t know where he is, he explained to the people in his head, I went back to the library and you guys were gone and we looked and looked and then he was nowhere, man. He just disappeared. Kevin started the truck and drove off.
They all came running out to meet him when he pulled into the property, although his reception was considerably dampened when they discovered he had lost the Indian. Nor were they much impressed by his story. Luna was especially furious, and she had a mouth on her, too, to which she did not ordinarily give full vent when Rupert was around, but now let fly. He was an irresponsible moron, a lazy, lying, hopeless, sub-asshole piece of shit, who had just wasted practically the best piece of luck they had ever had, an actual witness from the rain forest, someone they could have written articles about, someone who could have appeared with them on television, for God’s sake, a man travels three thousand miles, most of it in a canoe, to save his forest and his people, avoiding untold dangers and who should he run into but the fuckup of the Western world! Thus it went on for what seemed like a long time, with Rupert trying to get a word in edgewise, and Kevin screaming back mindless obscenities, and Scotty looking contemptuous and self-satisfied, and the Professor looking stunned, and the tears running slowly down Jenny’s face until he couldn’t stand it anymore and threw a flowerpot against the wall. In the stunned silence following this act he stomped back to their cottage cursing. Then the sound of the slammed door.
“He has to go, Rupert,” said Luna in the echo of that sound. “I mean it. He’s a lazy son of a bitch, he does nothing but lay around and smoke dope, he’s a disaster politically, and this last stunt is completely unforgivable. Jesus! We could have learned so much from him, we could have given him shelter….” She raised her eyes to heaven and clenched her fists in frustration, not a pretty sight. To Rupert she said, “So? Can we please get rid of him?”
“What about Jen?” This from Scotty, earning a sharp look from Luna, who said quickly, “Oh, Jenny’s fine. No one has anything against Jenny.”
Jenny snuffled and said sulkily, “I’m not staying here without Kevin.”
“Whatever was meant to happen will happen, Luna,” said Rupert in his calm, maddening way. “And if the few of us can’t live here together peacefully, what hope is there for the world at large? Isn’t that right, Nigel?”
After a brief pause, Professor Cooksey said, “Quite,” excused himself, and went back to his workroom.
“Well,” said Rupert, “let’s all take some time to calm down, shall we? Jenny, could you…ah…deal with that plant?” And they all disappeared to their various lairs, leaving Jenny alone on the patio, staring at the shattered pot and the smear of earth on the blood red tiles.
Night. Moie lies in his hammock high up in a great fig tree in Peacock Park in Coconut Grove. He watches the moon come up from the sea. He sees that Jaguar has nearly returned from his mother, and by this sign he calculates how long it has been since he left Home. He recalls the word lonely, feels the feeling it represents, wonders if he will return there, and also wonders a little about the Firehair Woman, and if he will see her again. He has her smell in his nose and can easily find her, he thinks, even in this place of unbearable stench. If it is necessary.
But now he tests the air for another scent, one he acquired earlier in this strange day, that of the man Fuentes. He had not understood what the Monkey Boy had said to Fuentes, but the meaning was perfectly clear, as was the response of Fuentes. He feels Jaguar’s anger building in him and feels a faint sadness for the man, as he sometimes did when they gave a little girl to the god. Some things are necessary, however. It is not for him to judge. He chews some more of the paste he has prepared; after a few minutes he feels the god start to take hold of his body. Moie has never discussed this event with anyone. He has never known anyone who carried Jaguar except for his old teacher, who has been dead for years, and even when he was alive it was not something they discussed, any more than they concerned themselves with the circulation of their blood.
Moie feels numbness begin in his hands, his feet; the waves of numbness flow toward his center and meet in a certain spot in his belly. Sounds and smells fade; his vision grows dim, contracts, goes to black. Now he is out of his body and can see again, if dimly. He sees his body there on the tree limb, perfectly inert, its arms and legs hanging down. He regards it with only mild interest, no different from the interest he takes in the bark of the tree, its leaves, the little insects of the night crawling among them, the motion of the moon through the clouds. He is free in nature, indifferent to and perfectly accepting of its benevolence, its horrors. In this state of profound detachment he observes Jaguar unmake nature. First there is a man in a tree, and then there is some kind of event (not really, because event implies duration, and this occurs outside of normal time), and then the same place is occupied by a golden cat spotted with black rosettes, a creature with about four times the mass of the man. Inside this being is Moie, held like a memory in the consciousness of the god. He will recall what is about to happen as we recall dreams.
With the waxing moon high in the clear heavens, Jaguar descends from the fig tree. Like a slice of solid moonlight he flows out of the park and goes south, slipping through the sleeping yards, over walls and fences, to a chorus of frantic dog-barks. He encounters finger canals, and either works around them to the west or swims across. He is a good swimmer. There are few people out in these neighborhoods this late at night; they sleep secure behind their alarms and guard services. Jaguar stops at a canal bank and sniffs the air.
Antonio Fuentes is restless in his bed, in his fine house on the canal at Leucedendra. He can’t get theIndio out of his mind. The screaming American was nothing, but the Indio wasnot nothing, should not have been there at all, and the American should not have known about the Puxto cut, and should not have known that Consuela Holdings was behind the Colombian timber operation doing the cutting. There were several dummy corporations designed specifically to cloud that connection, so how could an ignorant Indio and a tree-hugging pendejo have worked it out? Answer: they could not, and therefore someone was trying to fuck them over, someone with connections down there in Colombia. That was the problem when you dealt with Colombians: there was no law at all, not even corrupt law; you never knew if you had paid off everyone who could screw up your deal, which is why they had a man like Hurtado involved.
He slips out of bed and into a robe and walks to the French windows of his bedroom. His wife stirs but does not wake. They both take sleeping pills, and he hopes he will not need another one tonight. It would make him groggy all morning, which he cannot really afford. He has called a meeting of the other principals of Consuela to discuss the threat represented by the incident in his office. He hopes they can resolve it without bringing the
