FORTY-THREE

I held him—purple umbilical cord still joining us—just above the flooded canoe. Rudderless, we drifted from the main current to the shallows, where the canoe beached sideways, gently, onto a narrow strip of hard mud, feet from an edifice of jungle that rose up thickly, shadowing us. Still the rain came down.

I rocked him in my arms as he cried, stuck to each other by our secretions, mud, and filth. After working my quaking hand down to the knife tied into my string bag, I doubled the warm fleshy cord and sliced it through, tying it in a big ugly knot, terrified that he would bleed to death. The placenta gushed out of me like some wanton sea creature, a bruise-colored slab of meat, the final statement of my helpless, terrifying biology. Baby Omar in my arms, I scrabbled away from it, kicking it into the river where it sank down into the harrowing depths, no doubt to be devoured.

I carried him to the shallowest section and dipped him in, pouring handfuls of river water over his head. Though his eyes were squeezed shut, his father was written across his face—Omar in miniature—in the shape of his mouth and eyes, his olive skin, the little whorls of hair at the crown of his head; the slightest wave in the wisps at his neck the only trace of me I could find. I cupped his head to my breast and—after a bit—he settled there.

A whiff of sage woke me from my trance. I stiffened. How do I know that smell? I knew it had to do with wonder, but how? Beya’s camp. She burned sage constantly. I had to be close by, which meant Ayachero was just upriver, or a few minutes’ walk through the jungle.

That’s when I heard the screaming. Thin sounds of terror from the direction of the village, then nothing, until the tinny, familiar, distant sounds of Bolivian pop music started up. I got to my feet, dizzy with pain as blood dripped down the insides of my legs.

Holding baby Omar to me, I gathered with one hand everything of use from the canoe: my string bag, the blowgun, and the quiver of darts. The little bamboo tube of curare had washed away entirely. I stepped into the forest, following the scent of sage as the heat of the day began to build.

I crouched behind a scrim of leaves at the perimeter of Beya’s camp. Signs of a quick departure were everywhere. Her metal tub of water boiled over into the flames of her open pit fire; next to it, a freshly killed paca lay belly up on a flat piece of slate, ready to be disemboweled. Beya’s donkey stood attached by her pole to the grindstone, motionless except for her tail swishing across shuddering flanks.

“Beya,” I whispered. “Beya.”

A distant howl and whoop from the direction of Ayachero. I held little Omar tighter; he squirmed and let out a plaintive whimper.