“No.”

FrannyB turned her head, adjusting her neck with a dull snap. She puffed herself out, then sighed mightily, touching the cigars in her shirt pocket as if counting the few pleasures that awaited her. “Well then, we have work to do, which is okay, it’s just fine,” she said, adding a Bible to my stack. “For God’s Sake was lost, too, when I first met him, an unbeliever for sure, but he’s come around to be my right-hand man, going on eleven years now, isn’t that right, my friend?” she called through the open window.

He didn’t answer, though he must have heard her; he stood with Omar at the edge of the camp near the gift rack, smoking and talking. All manner of trinkets: spoons, hand mirrors, a pair of sunglasses, an empty plastic water bottle, and cigarette lighters dangled from a fifteen-foot-long liana strung waist-high between two trees like a clothesline.

“Of course his name is unfortunate—forces me and everybody else to take the name of the Lord in vain every time it’s said—and believe me, I’ve tried talking him out of using it, but you know . . .” Here, she let her hand rest on the radio dial; it spun uselessly. “None of these people—in any of the tribes around here—will tell you their real name. It’s a quirk of theirs we just have to live with.” For God’s Sake remained mum, stringing up a few small flashlights before pausing to take a swig of rum from a flask in his pocket. “But For God’s Sake loves Jesus, don’t you?” she called out to him.

“I love Jesus, over,” he said, facing the tangled mask of forest.

“See that? It took a while, but now—well, I don’t know what I’d do without him. He’s my mouthpiece to his people, even though we haven’t quite broken through yet. But that’s our work.” I followed her out of the house. She fingered the hanging gifts strung out along the line, squinting into the malingering green. “That’s why we get up in the morning, and it’s a blessing to have a reason, so who are we to complain, right, A?”

FrannyA laid down a capybara, a jungle rodent as big as a small dog, on the beaten earth, its face in a death rictus, distended belly about to pop. She took a step back from it. The smell was overpowering. “Don’t know how we missed this, B. Looks like it’s been here a while.”

Suddenly my head swam with bright, sick color. I stumbled to the boundary of the compound near the gift rack, just before falling to my knees and throwing up. In a moment, Omar’s hand rested on my back, but I pushed him away. My ears buzzed; the heat of the afternoon threatened to shut me down completely. All I wanted was to curl up in my hideaway in the storeroom away from everyone.

“Let’s get the sewing machine loaded up,” Omar said, helping me to my feet. “We have to get moving. We can’t lose the light.”