“Keep your eyes on the ground, Lily,” Omar said.

In low tones, Omar spoke in Spanish to the man in the wheelchair, who responded in kind. “Splitfoot, I am here with my wife, Lily.”

His rheumy eyes rested first on Omar, then me. Fresh sweat beaded out all over my body.

The old man’s Spanish came out slow and stilted, as if he hadn’t spoken it in a while. “My sister is dead?”

“Beya lives.”

“Your father? My old friend?”

Omar said, “He died in Cochabamba.”

“He was a good hunter. But a greedy man. Selfish. Your brothers?”

“Panchito is well. Franz and Anna still mourn Benicio.”

He nodded. “We know this jaguar. We hear her at night, but she’s smart, she knows where the traps are, no matter how many times we move them. We think she’s the spirit of our ancestors, angry at us for how far we have fallen from the people we used to be.”

“What happened to you?” Omar gestured at the wheelchair.

Splitfoot turned away to gaze out at the children playing in the sunshine. “A few years ago, I fell from a tree while gathering honey. Perhaps it was Beya who pushed me, or perhaps the spirits of the bees took their vengeance.” He tossed up his hands. “Either way, now I am half a man.”

“I remember you as a great hunter.”

He shifted in his chair, opened his mouth in a grin, but his eyes stayed hard. Ebony teeth, shaved to points, gleamed in the dim light. “You visit to tell me your childhood memories?”

“We need your help.” Omar touched the small of my back. “Turn around,” he said to me. “Pull your dress down in the back. Show him your shoulder. Show him your skin.”

I shuffled in a slow arc to face a scattering of low-slung hammocks filled with men resting or women breast-feeding their babies, all eyes on us. I focused on the gray earth, my feet in their muddy tapir sandals. Hands shaking, I reached back and loosened the tie at my neck. Fabric sticking here and there to the festering skin, the strap finally dropped from my arm and shoulder, revealing my back to the men in a whoosh of searing air. Clutching the front of my dress tight to my chest, I took short bites of air through my mouth in an effort to not smell myself; to not think about the fact that I was rotting from the inside.

THIRTY-EIGHT

“My wife is dying,” Omar said. “The plant that can cure her is on your land. We need your help.”

Splitfoot jettisoned a stream of brown tobacco juice through his sharpened teeth onto the ground inches from Omar’s bloody foot. “There is no plant for her.”

Pain snapped across my belly. Another “false contraction,” at least that’s what FrannyB had called them a few days ago. I fell forward onto my knees, shuddering to think what the real ones felt like. Brown limbs moved in my peripheral vision; I inhaled the grassy, acrid smell of crowding bodies as the Tatinga stood nearby, curious, close. Will the red-haired gringa give birth here, now, in front of us? Mouth dry as sand, I pushed myself to my feet, whispering to Omar, “I need to walk, or I’m going to faint.”