TWENTY-THREE

– AUGUST –

The morning Omar and Franz and the others left to hunt, just three weeks later, the heat came early, at sunrise, weighing down over the village like a sodden blanket. Rain leadened the air, but never arrived. The jungle drooped over the village like a thousand giants leaning over, their tangled green hair hanging down, heavy with secrets and sorrows. Overnight, the jungle felt closer. Ferns covered a path cleared just days before, plants sprouted around the huts. Only the daily clearing of new growth kept the area we called the village a village—a crescent of beaten earth that allowed the longhouse and the huts, the manioc fields, the lone barn, with our lone cow, to exist. At night I lay listening to the jungle advance: a squeaking sound, as green burst from more green.

As a surprise, Omar built me a little bookshelf made of chonta wood, a hard, durable palm with a beautiful gold-and-molasses-colored grain. It was there I kept my tiny collection of novels, dictionaries, and National Geographics. His small gift, and those from the Frannies, gave me more comfort than I thought possible; they were the tiny glimmerings of a home of my own creation. As mosquitos buzzed around my head, I drank down the warm, sweet glass of papaya juice he had made especially for me, thinking, How is it possible for a place to be both heaven and hell?

As he sorted supplies for his hunt into a string bag, I sat cross-legged on our thin mattress, flipping through his latest English assignment. “Come on. I want to hear you read this.”

He fished out his glasses from a straw basket, got comfortable across from me, and read in English.

“ ‘The Grove. I am twelve years old. For God’s Sake leaves the Tatinga and lives now in Ayachero with us. He is sixteen. Very sad, very angry. Nobody wants him here. As you say, the Tatinga push out the ones with deformity, just like Ayachero people. But I like him and want to learn from him. He says, if you take care of me, you bring me food, let me live with you, I show you a secret. Such a big secret, that if you know it, people respect you, they think you are some sort of God. We are young, and that is how we believe. That information is always good to have.

“ ‘Then, Beya goes on all the hunts with the Tatinga. She can find game very fast, she can call the game sometimes. She says to us, she wants to teach us a lesson. Like I say, we are only young boys. She is showing us a magic place, but it is created from greed and pain.

“ ‘For three days and nights we travel. Four other young Tatinga men, Beya, For God’s Sake, sometimes on a donkey because of his leg, and me. She wants to show us how men become monsters. She wants to warn us. On the morning of day number four we come to a row of rubber trees. We see them before, but never in a row. They are planted. All of their bark is cut in the V shape. That means rubber tappers are there, many years ago, that tribes are made slaves to tap the rubber. Murder and torture and enslave to gather rubber for the barons. A hundred years ago. But the rubber trees still have scars. They remember the torture. The trees bleed out all of their white tears and they are empty. The rubber tappers say no one is allowed to speak your tribe’s language, your tribe’s language is against the law. This is when people begin to shine to each other, to speak in the old language, the language Beya uses with you.