“Fine,” he said petulantly, turning in a slow circle as he gazed up at the answerless sky. “Fine. Then we need that lame Tatinga river driver. For Shit’s Sake. For Fuck’s Sake. Whatever he’s called. When’s he coming?”

Our shoulders sagged.

“You just missed him,” Doña Antonia said. “We won’t see him for weeks now.”

“I see. Well, that leaves that witch, I’m afraid. Now where does Beya keep herself?”

Doña Antonia glanced at me; I looked away, my mind buzzing.

He wiped his brow with a filthy rag, then pointed his gun first at young Alberto. “You know, I’m in no mood. So someone”—then at Doña Antonia—“someone is going to tell me.” He swung the gun toward me. “In fact, someone’s going to escort me there. Now.”

He shot at the dirt at Alberto’s feet. A crater bloomed in the bank. Like a spring, the young boy leapt in the air and tore up the hillside.

“Anybody?” he said. Seconds passed; nobody moved. “No? Then this won’t end well.” He trained his gun on Anna’s mother halfway up the hill, who, mostly deaf, bent over her oven tending her vegetables, oblivious. The oven exploded in a cloud of red clay. One of the shards impaled her calf, she limped up the hill, screaming.

“I’ll take you there,” I said.

Carlos glared at me with red-rimmed eyes. “So the gringa and the shaman are besties, huh? I bet that’s not going over very well here.” Not waiting for a word from me, he whistled to his men. Ragged, shuffling limbs gone clumsy with booze, they made their way toward us.

His face gone sour, Dutchie turned with a huff and climbed up the ladder to the boat. He planted himself back down in his lawn chair, dropping his mirror shades down over his eyes.

Carlos took a slow turn toward him. “What’s the matter, Dutch, forget your tampons?”

The blond man folded thin arms over his birdcage of a chest. “Fuck you. I don’t play with no witches.”

“Get down here.”

“You got enough guys. You don’t need me.”

“We’re a team. Get your fuckin’ ass—”

“No way. No way!” He got up and paced the tiny bow of the boat. “I do everything. I cook. I clean. I handle the men when they get fucked-up. All the shit work. Since the beginning I been with you, Carlos, since Panama, man. Twenty years! Never mind all the times I saved your skin. Never mind you pay me the same as every other asshole, even if they been with you five minutes. All I’ve ever asked for is one thing. No witches No shamans.”

The entire crew held its breath, waiting for the fallout. Carlos took stock of his gathered men, red eyed, raw skinned, waiting. “Get your wimpy white ass off the boat.”

Dutchie looked near tears. His voice thickened. “It’s like this, I don’t know. What am I to you, man? Friend, business partner, both, neither, what?” He turned in a tense arc, hands on narrow hips. “Fuck, I could never be like you; you’re this poet. The way you talk. People are like, drugged when they listen to you, they do whatever you say. Any crazy, mean, piece-of-shit thing you ask them to do, they don’t think twice, they just do it—”