Omar moved quickly across the hard-packed earth—barefoot—but with as much confidence as if he were wearing sandals. Shirtless, his muscles rippled in his broad shoulders, which tapered to narrow hips under drawstring shorts; this slip of cloth—almost an afterthought—seemed to be his jungle outfit. He looked younger from behind, like a teenager about to jump into a quarry with a gang of high school friends, someone born to be outside, to frolic in an endless summer.

More stares on our way to the longhouse, but the children followed us, chattering and laughing as before, and that seemed to lighten the mood. We climbed a long set of stairs made from sturdy tree trunks into which treads had been sawn to the main room, which was enormous, maybe fifty feet long and several yards across. One long wall faced the jungle. Except for a series of storerooms at the far end, the structure was open on all sides, from waist-high split-bamboo walls to thatched roof. Along the side that abutted the jungle, banana leaves a dozen feet long, dull and sweating, dozed over the walls. A pig—no doubt the one from the day before—roasted on a spit over a stone oven on a deck that extended the length of the building.

In one corner of the main room, in a pile of sawdust, two chickens snuffled together, picking at stray corn, while several bare-chested men relaxed or slept in hammocks suspended from the ceiling. Sitting cross-legged on a pile of discarded burlap food bags, a young woman nursed a piglet who had contentedly fallen asleep at her nipple. She sang softly to it, rocking, stroking its pink ears, occasionally laughing as if it had delighted her in some way. I learned later that her baby had died in childbirth and she had become unhinged. Only the piglet had quieted her wailing grief.

Omar took my hand and led me to the far west end of the deck. Beneath us, huts dotted the ground all the way to the brown river ruffling the shore. “I’m going to give you a tour,” he said, pointing past all the huts toward where the village ended and the jungle began. “Far down that beach are the giant tortoise nesting grounds, where Benicio was taken.”

I nodded, swearing to myself I would never go there.

“Now, see that long, thin strip of wood and long, skinny roof over it? That’s the Anaconda Bar.”

“A real bar?”

“It’s real when we have booze. The anaconda skin is over ten meters long.”

“From a real anaconda?”

He looked at me like, of course, what a question. “At the beach is our little dock and three of our boats. Our river driver is out with the fourth one, he travels from San Solidad every two weeks with supplies. There are about forty huts, three community ones like this one, but this is the biggest one, where everybody hangs out. That square hut in the middle everyone calls the clinic. For doctors we have FrannyB, one of the missionaries from America, and Beya.”