Chapter 7.
George looks terrible. Puffy eye sockets, his eyebrows pulled down like furry window shades. White, dried crust on either side of his mouth. Face full of stubble. And that cough. Sheesh. It racks his lungs and sounds like the mating call of a sick jaguar. The cool morning breeze has dried the mud caked to his pants, his knees, and the front of his shirt. He pulls off his socks, and releases the horrid stench of a day’s trek through a marsh. He smiles. I cringe. Makes me appreciate that I am wearing my underwear on my head.
He stands for a moment, stretches, and the caked on dirt flakes off. He emerges clean and pure, like a phoenix rising from the ashes of marsh mud. He sits slowly, mechanically, and puts on his socks. His bones pop and creak as he stretches and lies lazily on the grass.
Jumpy goes about sniffing at the grass by the fire. She holds her nose close to the ground, stays fixated where the zombie crashed through our camp, tail wagging briskly. She follows the footsteps of the zombie up to his charred corpse. She pauses at the blackened remains, tail stiff for a moment, and continues sniffing the grass in to the bushes beneath the willowy palms. She squats for a moment, and runs off scratching at the grass with her hind legs. George beckons me to follow her with a grunt, miming that he is drinking a cup of coffee. He points dismissively at the thicket of bushes.
I tighten my turban and go in, collect some foamy water, wipe off as many bubbles as I can, and rush out. I start breakfast. Rice, beans, and coffee. I hope I am walking downwind from this guy today. Grubs don't give you gas, make note of that.
George is taking a leak behind the palm with the rope ladder. He raises his head slowly. He looks back towards me, then looks solemnly down again. He dances around in his socks, and grumbles, "Zapatos! Quickly!"
I am really hoping he's not a morning person.
"Hey George, a por favor would be nice," I shoot back.
"Que?" he asks.
He gives me a look, holds his chin high and looks down his nose at me with bushy brows over squinted eyes. I gather up my courage, and stand up from the small tin of boiling water I'm poking at.
"Look,” I say, “I don't mind if you're not a morning person. Really. I'm serious. But I'm not going to be-"
"Que!"
I swallow my pride hard, and sit down. "I'm not going to be ordered around by a jerk," I mutter.
"By a jerk? Zapatos! Quickly! Thief!"
He starts walking towards me. I look down at the boiling water, stir at it with my bamboo leech remover.
"Zapatos," he says flatly.
He kicks me, hard. I sway. My kidney hurts.
"I wasn't stealing, I thought you was dead!"
He grumbles a curse in Spanish, and looks up at the sky. I'm looking at him from the corners of my eyes, the ridges of my eyebrow obscuring his broad, wrinkly, prickly face.
"Dead enough?" He kicks me again, this time sending me into the fire. I knock down the tin of water, burn my forearm. Smoke and steam hiss loudly as I roll away. I can't breathe. I am glad he is not wearing his damn zapatos.
"We’re not starting the day off on a good foot, are we George?"
He stares at me, eyebrows blazing, twitching mustache. He growls. It doesn't last long; he ends with a fit of coughs. I take the opportunity to spit shine his shoes.
I offer his shoes, and give a flamboyant curtsey. He snatches the boots from me, and puts them on with a grunt.
"The body his still warm, and you steal the zapatos."
I reboot breakfast ( I don't brush off the bubbles, and almost spit in his water. But I don't. He might just not be a morning person. I'll give him the benefit of the doubt, and so should you. However, you shouldn't give me the benefit of the doubt, because I do spit in his water...and...when he was busy rolling his cigarette, I spit in his rice and beans. Revenge is a dish best served with spit in it.)
He takes forever fiddling with his dog, catching her lizards. Takes over an hour. I figure: let the dog fend for herself. He's doing her no good traipsing along, bumbling around catching anything. Had he not started the morning so rough, I'd help him catch breakfast for her too. But I'm not inclined. Screw them both. I busy myself packing our kits.
My pigeon flaps back, and roosts on the top of my milk crate, nestling on the nearly empty sack of coffee beans. I grab the note wrapped around her leg. It’s in Spanish. I hand it to George. He mumbles.
“Are you going to tell me where we are going?” I ask.
“His better you don’t know, his not your concern. His my concern. You send message, ‘We on the trail.’ Quickly.”
The sun starts rising, blazing at our faces the whole day as we trek east towards the jungle. It's more of the same. Hills. Ravines. Mud. Muck. Grasslands that stretch forever. We come to a rise, the jungle seems really close. We go down a hill and come up another rise. The jungle seems a thousand miles away. It's all an illusion.
The facade of kindness of my new master has worn thin rather quickly. The colors of abrasiveness and selfishness bleed through with each stop for water. I get water for him, what is left for me barely quenches my thirst. Hey, at least I’m honest about me being a jerk from the get go. I can't stand people who get all bent out of shape out of a simple misunderstanding. What good are boots to a dead man? How does a guy smoke like him and have such white teeth? He's a walking oxymoron. He's the living undead.
"This place," I say at one stop, "would make a great golf course. Just miles and miles of dog legs, rolling hills."
He answers in song about his young Spanish maiden, demurely shunning the advances of the village boys. Any time I speak at a rest, his bull dog face just looks at me. He mocks my high pitched voice, and laughs that sinister laugh. Whenever I move, he makes a show of holding his pack close, acting like I am moving in to steal something. He doesn't let me live down the mistake. We have made judgments, first impressions are: I am a thief, and not to be trusted. His impressions on me: they are on my ribs, in the shape of his foot.
The sun blazes down hard, stabbing needles of heat; the humid air sticks to my skin and parches my mouth. My tongue feels like a thick wad of sticky cotton. I swath on mud at every break, but the breaks are getting shorter, and the time between them longer, and longer. At mid-day we climb a hill that has switchbacks. Switchbacks! My thighs ache as we ascend. We tack up the hill like two sailboats climbing the crest of a tidal wave. As we reach the summit, George is huffing and puffing, as am I. We sit down, real heavy. George becomes the same stone statue when I met him yesterday.
I look out, and the jungle is just as far away as it was this morning.
I catch my breath. The walking has made me weak. My muscles feel like rubber bands. My brain pulls at them, making me stand like a marionette on bungee cords.
"What...(pant)...what the hell...(pant)...is this?"
He rolls a cigarette and looks out towards the jungle, "His far, no?"
"Is far yes...(pant), are we...(pant)...even walking in a straight line?"
"Short cut."
"Short cut? Short cut? Dammit George, I'd hate to see the scenic route. I'm no slouch, you know. They didn't have no bus service when I made it down here fifteen freaking years ago. We've been zigzagging, and I'm not talking about the switchbacks we just came up."
"Que? Zigzag?" he asks innocently, like a schoolboy who forgot his homework.
"Zigzag," I start pacing back and forth, exaggerating my footsteps, marching in place.
"Oh, Si. Si. His short cut." He gets up, dragging on a cigarette. I didn't need to quit, he stopped offering.
I stop my marching as he advances. Kick me once, shame on you. Kick me twice, shame on you again.
"You can't kick me three times, George. I'm a lot faster than you."
He continues walking, his pack swaying behind him, Jumpy peeking out over his Stetson, trying to catch a glimpse of the impending beat down I'm about to receive.
"Fast? Fast? Quickly! Agua!"
I match him step for step, walking backwards. My c
rate is lighter than his. He drank nearly all my coffee this morning. He grabs for me, I duck down, and he snatches my hubcap. Unfortunately, that is all he grabs as I tumble end over end down the other side of the hill. My bird flaps away. This side has no switchbacks, it is nearly vertical.
I land with an unceremonious thud. I get up, more out of instinct then bravado. I move my arms and my legs. Nothing's broke. I look up at George, standing high on the ridge. He is holding my hubcap and turban.
He calls down to me, "Senor! His new short cut, or scenic route? I take scenic route around, we meet up. You get agua, por favor."
He throws down my headgear. Jumpy barks from above. They are both laughing.
I get agua. At the bottom of the ridge is actual running water. The clean stuff. No stagnant algae clinging to rocks. Thick black roots of trees reach into the bubbling stream. Pure drinking water. The rivulet seeps from a sheer edge off the hill. It is not much, but it is the first sign of the jungle.
George takes over two hours to meet up with me. He approaches from the west end of the ravine, through the small grove of dwarf rubber trees and high reeds. Jumpy leads the way. She wags her tail when she first sees me, then looks back at George, and looks at me and growls. I'm chewing on a cat tail stem, sucking on the sweet carbs. It taste like celery, cabbage, and mud. I throw the chewed stem at her.
George is unusually refreshed, whereas the waiting has made me groggy. Either that, or too much carbs. I'm hoping we set up camp next to the ravine. Good shelter from the wind, running water. Plenty of rubber trees mean good grub. I show George the grubs I collected in my hubcap. He's not impressed; he just shrugs and bites on a stalk of grass. He takes off his boots and strips down naked. His wrinkly leathery body, tan and scarred white, glistens in the sun. With his wide mouth and white teeth, he looks like a hippo as he wades into the water.
"His cold!" He chatters his teeth and submerges his large, round head. The rivulet is narrow, but surprisingly deep.
He wades out on the other side of the rivulet and motions for me to throw over his cloths. When he gets out, the humidity keeps him from shivering, and I am thankful. I don't want to have to describe that kind of sight to you.
He makes walking motions with his fingers and gives a curt wave. We are moving again. I am disappointed. I wade over, the water coming up to my neck, holding his pack and mine high over my head. I check to see that my Remington is working. It is. The 't' and 'y' stick. It will dry out.
We walk along the north bank of the rivulet as it meanders along the contours of the rich, red clay earth, heading east. The water has worn many stones round through the years, and makes our journey easy as we meander along with the bubbling brook. It is the first time in two days we have not walked at a break neck pace, and the ground is level and dry on the high banks. I'm feeling good and apologetic.
"I'm sorry, George," I say. "I honestly thought you were dead this morning."
He's quiet, and just waves his hand, either swatting at a horsefly or requesting I shut up.
"My grandfather has a saying. He say, 'No speak apology, make action.' Comprende?"
"Yeah, I comprende, Senor Miyagi-san.”
The brook grows larger as we walk along, until it is flowing strong, then turns a murky light brown of coffee colored, silt saturated river. Trees and vines creep up faster then I imagine. On the south bank, the hill has turned into a mountain. On our left, to the north, the ground has risen as well. We walk for the rest of the day into a canopy of trees, besieged on either side by giant walls of sedimentary rock, worn smooth by the river, then broken, almost sheered, from the wind and weather. Intermixed is hard, veiny black and white basalt, evidence of volcanoes long dead, sheered and sharp as a razor. The river flows quietly, fed from the Andes to our west. It laps at our feet on occasion. It has made a deep, rich ravine that flattens out into a dense jungle. The canopies begin to have canopies.
It is dark, but impossible to see if the sun has set. George stops short. I am tense and stop in my tracks twenty yards behind him. He takes off his pack, and Jumpy begins sniffing the silt near the edge of the river.
George begins looking at the ground. I walk up and stand behind him. He is counting off things he sees on the ground, retracing his steps, inspecting branches and twigs. He waves for me to look closer.
I see now that he is looking at footprints left in the silt. To me, they just look like a bunch of footsteps. He draws two lines, about ten feet apart, cutting off the footprints. Then he starts counting.
"Cinco?" he wonders aloud. He counts again. "Ocho," he remarks with astonishment.
He looks at one set of prints in particular, then measures with his own feet the distance between the prints.
"Quickly!"
I cringe, "Quickly what?"
"They move quickly," he dismisses me with a sideways glance, and holds up eight fingers. Then he makes two of his fingers into little legs, and moves them through the air quickly, points in the direction we have been heading all day.
"Hey,” I say, “maybe it leads to a village. You think they have a barber?"
“You don’t want this barber near your head with a razor, Senor.”
He holds his finger to his lips. Jumpy is sniffing far ahead of us, and we follow her quietly. George makes me uneasy as he scans the trees for movement. It is very slow going.
I'm no slouch, looking at the footsteps back there; you can tell if a zombie's walking through a place. There will be one set of footprints made by the left or right foot, very distinct like, and then a drag mark opposite. There were no drag marks. The footprints also had to be fresh, being so close to the river's edge. There are no dried clumps of leaves up in the roots of any trees along the bank, no broken limbs dipping in the water. This water has been running smooth for weeks, and will continue to run like this until the next rainy season, so no flooding has happened. Why is George so nervous?
He goes about looking at branches and grass as we follow his dog. Now and then he shows me a branch that has a slight bend in it. Means nothing to me. Be like me showing him my sticky ‘y’ key on my old Remington.
It gets so dark that I begin to trip on roots, and slide in silt. Twice I fall into the river, and George looks back at me all irritated. He finally torches up a cat tail, and we walk slowly by flame for a couple of hours.
I hear a growl.