Several of the women murmured in agreement as they collected the bowls and ambled down to the water to rinse them out. The rest of them sprinted off to corral the dogs; many had finished with their meals and had begun to wander off to find a place to shit or sleep off their full bellies. Freed from my duties for the moment, I started up the hill to find Omar. As I threaded among the huts, it hit me who Doña Antonia reminded me of—her behavior, not her appearance. A group-home manager all us kids professed to hate—we saw her as blunt, strict, a total bitch. On the other hand, we were a feral, out-of-control bunch. Maybe, like Doña Antonia hazing me and getting the dogs fed at the same time, all she was trying to do was get through the day without anybody hurt or hungry or in jail; in our beds every night, safe.

FOURTEEN

– JUNE –

Just after sunrise one morning, Omar and I sat high up on the platform that towered over the Anaconda Bar. Sounds were even louder in the matted tangle of the mid-story—the metallic rasp of insects, the screech of spider monkeys, birds whooping. Secured to a thick branch, a rope ladder dangled thirty feet to the ground below, the last rungs obscured by a cloud that dozed on the forest floor. It was thrilling to be able to see the entire village as well as most of the Tortoise Beach laid out before us, but sobering to realize how vulnerable we were. The village was only a tiny slice of cleared land in an unfathomably enormous and complex jungle. Ramshackle huts perched on spindly crane legs. I could barely imagine the rainy season, a few short months away. The river rising thirty feet, erasing the earth beneath us. Hills morphing to islands, clearings to lakes. Villagers traveling only by boat, fishing from their windows while pink dolphins swam among the trees.

“What’s it like to hunt from up here?” I asked, hoping nothing would crawl or jump on the platform.

“It’s really pretty boring,” Omar said, lying down on his stomach and gazing out. “The hardest part about this is staying awake.”

I had to admit, it all sounded so sexy: jaguar hunting, and yet, all we could really do, all any of us could do—at least in the village itself—was jaguar waiting. Anybody who could shoot a gun, blowgun, arrow, or slingshot was to take two-hour turns at dusk and dawn guarding Ayachero from the platform.

“Tell me what it’s like to see a jaguar.”

He smiled, the memory lighting his face. “When they think they’re not being watched, they just stumble around, like they’re drunk. Three-hundred-and-fifty-pound cats. They just go here and there, they stretch and sharpen their claws on a trunk, yawn, sniff around, but the second they get a sense you’re there, even if you make the smallest sound—boom!—it’s electric the way they come to life. There’s so much power in that instant.”