what a prep school was, exactly, although she knew you had to pay money to go, probably a lot more than the $16.83 per month that the state of Iowa had paid her foster parents for her upkeep in the year before she split, and also she had the adjective “preppy,” which meant expensive clothes from Abercrombie’s in the mall, and she imagined a place with lots of grass and white people in baggy clothes playing around and looking cool. He had been to college, too, but dropped out because of all the bullshit you had to take from the teachers, and how bourgeois it was, and it was better to be a revolutionary, which he was. Being a revolutionary was all about smoking a lot of dope and spray-painting walls and keying expensive cars, or so she imagined from observing Kevin, and this would eventually bring down the capitalist infrastructure that was destroying the planet, although she was not nearly smart enough to see how this would happen.
She was relieved to find that Kevin was not going to get on her today just yet, but was venting his rage about the fucking Forest Planet Ass-holes who didn’t know how to do anything but bullshit all day, focusing particularly on Luna the stuck-up bitch, who didn’t know half the stuff he did and was a complete phony poseur bourgeois besides. Kevin was smoking a fat number right now, which Jenny didn’t like much, not that she had any objection to it as such, but not while driving down Main Highway in the van. She was afraid of getting pulled over, although the one time she’d mentioned this Kevin had come down hard on her for being a totally useless scaredy-cat piece of shit, although as far as she knew he had never been inside a jail, while she had (for possession of a controlled substance) in Cedar Rapids and did not want to repeat the experience. He offered the dope to her but she declined, although she was getting quite the buzz from just being in the van.
At least he stashed it when they got to the commercial part of the Grove. Kevin backed the VW into the delivery slot in front of the library, and Jenny saw that Evangelina Vargos was waiting on the library steps reading a book. She was a small, lightly built woman, with a charming mop of blond-streaked brown hair, green eyes, skin smooth as ivory and just that color. She wore white jeans, complicated and expensive-looking white sandals, a FPA T-shirt, and a good deal of glittery gold jewelry. Jenny felt a little lift in her heart when she saw her. Geli Vargos was sort of her best friend at this point, she thought, although having moved around a lot as a child and being a foster kid, she did not have much experience with the actuality of best-friendness. Geli listened sympathetically to her hard-luck stories, and she listened to Geli’s, which were all about rich Cubans in her family being mean to one another and to Geli for not getting married to this bozo they wanted her to marry.
Geli saw them, stood up and waved, and then descended to help them unload the display. Greetings: a kiss on the cheek for Jenny, a slightly mocking hail for Kevin, returned with a sarcastic grin. Kevin and Geli did not get along, a phenomenon Jenny had observed in countless television sitcoms (the best friend and the boyfriend trading barbs) and considered normal; in fact, considered it a proof that she was at last living a version of real life. She rejected all advice to stop hanging out with that Cuban bourgeois bitch or dump that phony ass-hole for a decent guy, and was secretly delighted that someone thought enough of her to try to change her life.
They unloaded a long folding table, three folding chairs, and a large four-panel display frame, together with boxes of Forest Planet literature and a miniature stereo-component sound system. Kevin set up the sound system and started a tape of Andean music, breathy bone flutes, ocarinas, and two-headed drums. The women erected the display frame and hung its panels: SAVE THE RAIN FOREST; the FPA logo, a blue-green ball with trees sticking out from its circumference like cloves in a pomander; and large laminated photographs of rain forest plants and creatures and some indigenes in feathered headdresses. Nigel Cooksey had taken these photos during his many trips to the region. The remainder of the display comprised a group of brief text panels describing the flora and fauna, and telling how endangered the region was. There were also smaller photos of a despoiled area, bulldozers knocking over trees, and maps and charts showing the accelerating rate of forest loss.
Luna had made the display herself, occasionally under Jenny’s wondering eye. This was the first time Jenny had ever seen anyone make something original out of nothing before-anything, that is, more complex than fixing a meal, sewing a dress, or pasting pictures in a scrapbook. Luna had thought it up and got the stuff together and used the computer and printer and a laminating machine and ordered the display frame off the Internet and…bang! There it was in real life! How did people just know stuff like that? Geli knew stuff, too, she was a grad student at the marine lab, was going to be a marine biologist, and knew lots of stories about what fish got up to when they were alone. She was always encouraging Jenny to go back to school and make something of herself, just as if Jenny was as smart as her, which she wasn’t, but it was nice to have someone who thought so. You’re a good observer, she said, you have a feeling for animals. Jenny was not exactly sure what this meant.
The tables and chairs arranged, the display displayed, the two women sat on the chairs and awaited the suckers, as Kevin called them. It was a fine October morning in Miami, and the center of Coconut Grove was filling up with tourists and young people there to hang out. Geli and Jenny talked to some tourists, with Jenny focusing on the kids. She had always been good with kids, Kevin often observing it was her childlike mind in play. She talked enthusiastically about the various depicted creatures and their interesting lives. Kevin grew bored, as usual, and said he was going to see what was going on in the park. Several police cars and a brown animal-control van from the county were parked at the edge of the grassy area that led down to the bay, and a small crowd had gathered.
Jenny watched him cross the street and disappear into the crowd, feeling faintly sad and worried that Geli would use this opportunity to run Kevin down again. When she looked up again there was the Indian. He was standing in front of the display staring at the charmingly dim face of a sloth. Dressed in a shabby black suit and a white shirt buttoned up to the neck, he had a small string bag slung over his shoulder and a stained and worn cloth suitcase at his feet. He touched the photograph lightly and then brought his fingertip to his nose.
“That’s a sloth,” Jenny said. “They live in the trees.”
At her words, he turned his head and regarded her. She saw the tattoos on his face, three lines on each cheek and two short vertical marks on his forehead, and their eyes met. Involuntarily, her glance moved to a large photograph of some Yanomami tribesmen, and then back to the Indian. He was still staring at her. A small thrill traveled through her body and she felt the hair stand up on her arms, and she had to drop her eyes. She watched the man move down the display, looking at each photograph in turn. He spent a long time in front of each one, and longest before the picture of a jaguar.
“Geli,” she said in a hushed voice, “check out that guy in the black outfit. He’s just like those guys in our picture.”
Geli glanced up from the petition she had just got some tourists to sign. She looked the man over. “God, I think you’re right. What the hell’s he doing in Miami?”
“You could ask him. I don’t think he speaks any English.”
But the man had left the display and now approached the two women. He said something to them, and it was a moment before Geli understood that the language he was speaking was her cradle tongue. In Spanish she replied, “Forgive me, sir, I didn’t understand you.”
The man said, “I have go to Consuela Holdings. To talk to men. I have say, not…not…” A look of frustration crossed his face, and he went to the display and tapped on the photograph of the logging operation. “Not this in Puxto Reserve.”
“You’re from thePuxto?”
His face brightened and he showed filed teeth. “Yes, Puxto! Consuela not…is siwix to do like this. Forbid.”
“What’s he saying?” asked Jenny.
“I’m not sure. He says he’s from the Puxto Reserve. It’s in Colombia. God, how in hell did he get here? He sounds like he wants us to stop someone logging the Puxto.”
“Well, then he sure came to the right people,” said Jenny confidently.
“Yeah, but, God, this is so weird.” In halting Spanish then she interrogated the man. He said his name was Juan Bautista and he lived in a village near a river Geli had never heard of. They had killed Father Perrin but after he was dead Father Perrin had told him that Consuela Holdings was going to cut all the forest on the Puxto so the dead people could buy many machetes and bottles of pisco. So Jaguar said he must go, and he came down the river to a bigger river in his canoe and thence to the sea, where Guyana Castle had carried him and Jaguar to Miami America and now the woman must take him to Consuela Holdings because he had the men to talk to tied in a string and would talk and then go back to the Runiya, because being in the land of the dead people was very hard on his something.
“I don’t understand that word,” she said.
“Ryuxit,”the Indian repeated. He gestured to the sky, to the earth, and dashed over and tapped on all the
