No one said a word.

“Pretty well, pretty well, thanks for asking,” Fat Carlos said, leaning forward in his creaking chair. “But I have to tell you, since you’re so curious, that today, well, today I woke up tired. You see, I spent the night dreaming of mahogany trees. Acres and acres of them. And in my dream, I laughed!—did you know you can laugh in a dream? I can. I was laughing because I was wandering around in pure cash. I could smell it. I could taste it. But the bummer was, I didn’t know where the fuck I was, so I woke up just plain tuckered out, and frankly, a little frustrated.”

He paused to puff on his cigar, popping out a few smoke rings in the still air. “Ever feel that way, like maybe you’re just working, working, all the time working, never getting ahead? Just treading water to pay the bills?”

Doña Antonia shifted slightly, her hand gravitating toward the flensing knife she wore tucked in the folds of her skirt.

“Maybe it’s just me, but I’m tired of working so hard just to keep these men fed, their families fed, tromping around in these godforsaken forests killing anything we can get our hands on, getting bitten and dirty and sick, when just the simplest little bit of information would set us all straight. We’d never have to hunt again, isn’t that right, Dutch?”

The skinny man howled and stomped his foot and cried, “No-wheeeee!!! We’d be all set, right, Carlos? All done with this place.”

His friend smiled. “We could just sit around and drink all day. Someplace posh, like New York or Paris. Dutchie here could get fat, I could get even fatter. Buy us summa the finest poon-tang on God’s green earth.”

“Dis-ease free!”

“You’re readin’ me, Dutch.” He stubbed out his cigar under a rubber boot. “You are reading me. Now, young miss Lily, why don’t you tell me where your husband’s hiding, so we can settle this?”

“All the men are hunting,” Doña Antonia said. “There’s nothing for you here.”

“Been gone awhile, have they? Tough stuff. Maybe that’s why you’re cooking up all that trash fish, is that right?” He levered his girth off the sagging seat and climbed down the rusty ladder to the bank, canteen, sunglasses, bullet pouch, and hunting knife swinging and clanking from the loops on his belt. Dutchie followed, cinching his own belt tighter on his emaciated frame.

The big poacher peered in all directions, his bushy mustache twitching, then fired his gun into the trees. A family of vultures burst like demons into the sultry blue sky.

“Where is Omar!” he shouted to the shuddering forest. He whipped around to face us. “You know, I’ve known him since he was a boy. I’m not going to hurt him if I don’t have to. I’m not like that.”

“You can see the boats are gone,” I said.

“Indeed they are.” The men’s boots clomped up the stairs of the longhouse. Doors banged open; rifle butts pounded on wood. The men leaned over the railing on the deck, shook their heads.