TWENTY-SEVEN

Nobody talked much on the way back. Though the men seemed grateful to go home with any game at all rather than an empty boat, they were sobered by the loss of four of five hunting dogs—the husky especially; clearly she was Franz’s favorite, though he would have never admitted it. Omar assured me that sometimes trips went bad like this, that losing dogs was terrible, but everyone was alive, not even injured. The husky dog breaking free from the others caused the whole plan to go out of control. The men had only been able to cut another dog free; the rest were corralled together and attacked, helpless. All I felt was lucky to have survived.

The evening sky over the river was streaked purple as we rounded the bend to Ayachero, lulled by the rhythmic splash of the paddles in the chocolate-brown water. The canoes nudged into the soft mud, and we gathered ourselves to empty the boats. I couldn’t understand why no one had come down to greet us, until we saw the torches burning in the clinic.

Doña Antonia came running down the hill, her face in the throes of the closest thing to joy I’d ever seen. “Franz, my son! Come and see. You’re a father again.” Franz tossed aside the paddles he was unloading and raced up the hill.

After Franz and Omar had their turn, Anna let me hold her. There was nothing like it for me before, a baby just hours old in my arms, purplish and not totally cleaned up, but perfect in every detail, her head resting in my palm, all trust, the tiny fingernails, perfect lips in a sweet pucker, eyelashes like insect wings. Women crammed the small space, cleaning up, talking, laughing, their warmth to me now doing wonderful things for my heart.

I knelt down next to Anna and gave her back her little girl. “How was it?” I said, not sure how to phrase the question.

She sat up a little. “It started at dinner last night. FrannyB said it was a breeze. I don’t know if it was that,” she said with a laugh. “But it’s my third, so maybe easier, a little. She says I’m a natural mother.”

I passed my hand over my bulging belly and thought, Am I a natural mother? Not very likely. The hut we called a clinic—meaning the usual one-room dwelling, this one featuring a lone shelf with bandages, splints, iodine, aspirin—was hot and smelled like blood and vaguely of shit. Doña Antonia gathered a pile of bloody cloths and assigned the washing to Marietta and some of the younger girls, who dutifully left with armfuls of it.

“Where’s FrannyB?”

“Napping in the longhouse. She’ll go back to her camp in the morning.”

The other women took turns holding the baby, each of them seemingly overjoyed about the new addition to Ayachero. All I could do was wonder, Would it be like this for me? Would people here greet our child like this? And what if something happened during childbirth that FrannyB or Beya couldn’t handle?