Jaguar emerged soundlessly from the darkness and now stood full on the paved patio that surrounded the pool. He was a lot bigger than Paz had imagined, nearly the size of an African lion, but leaner and longer, much larger than a real jaguar. It shone as if illuminated from within, like a jack-o’-lantern, its black rosettes seeming to vibrate against their golden ground. Cooksey was now speechless, frozen, his mouth still open holding the shape of his last words. Paz wanted to yell at Lola to take the child and run, but his voice was somehow missing. He felt his hands withdraw an arrow from the quiver and nock it on the bowstring. The arrows were long and fletched with bright green parrot feathers, and tipped with points of milky stone, very sharp.
Jaguar glided across the pool patio to where Lola and Amelia lay. The child’s head was bent across her mother’s knees. Lola had been untangling Amelia’s wet hair with her fingers. Paz could see his daughter look into the topaz lanterns of the god’s eyes. She had a soft smile on her face. Lola was looking at the beast with what seemed to Paz to be casual polite interest, as if the girl were about to introduce a new and suitable playmate. Everyone else seemed to be fixed solidly in place, like the background figures in a classical painting, an effect augmented by their draped towels, their languid postures.
Paz decided that he had been wrong and that this was, in fact, a particularly vivid dream, and really, just like the ones he’d had so often in the recent past. There was his girl and there was the jaguar and it would take her as a sacrifice and everything would be better for everyone, the world would be made whole again by it, and he felt an odd stirring of pride that his daughter should be so honored. And here he contemplated the being of the girl herself, the lines of inheritance combined in her, the generations of Jews back to Jerusalem, and Africans back to Ife, and Spaniards back to wherever, Rome, Greece, the Gothic lands, Arabia, all the ancestors, studying in synagogues, serving the gods of Yoruba, serving the masters in the cane fields, conquering the infidels, worshipping Allah, all to produce the particularity of this gleaming child…
But now these portentous musings were interrupted by a swift movement near the pool. Jenny Simpson had dashed out of her place in the frieze and was hanging on Jaguar’s neck, tugging at the golden head, shouting “No, no. Stop it, leave her alone,” which Paz thought was absurd, she was treating him like a naughty puppy, and he felt vaguely annoyed at her for disturbing the stately aesthetics of the scene. Jaguar shuddered like a dog, flinging the young woman aside, casting her down on the paving with an audible thud. Paz heard a sound, a deep growl so low he thought it might be imaginary, like one of the false sounds one hears upon just falling into sleep.
Ararah. Arararararh.
As if it were a signal, Paz felt something move inside his head at the sound, felt his limbs moving to the urging of the Other within, felt the tension of the bow in his hands, the feather against his cheek, felt the twang of the release in his shoulder and his spine.
Jaguar opened his jaws above the child just before the arrow struck him behind his foreleg.
Paz tried to keep his eyes open, but an agency deep in his midbrain forced them shut to avoid registering events that evolution did not permit his brain to process. He recorded a wind and an unidentifiable noise, though, and when he could see again, he saw chaos on the pool deck. A small brown man with a bowl haircut was lying in a pool of blood, coughing blood, with Paz’s long arrow stuck in his side. Zwick was kneeling by his side, rallying long-dormant medical instincts. He took a moment to yell, “Jesus, Paz, why the hell did you do that!”
Lola meanwhile was attending Jenny, who had seized dramatically just as the arrow struck. She frothed at the mouth, her naked body bent into a paraboloid, with only the crown of her head and her heels touching the ground. Paz found himself with an armful of Amelia, who was shrieking and shaking as if she had absolutely rolled in sand spurs. The others were standing around the stricken pair, trying to make themselves useful. Paz carried his girl away to the patio, where he sat down in a chair and held the small body to him, kissing her damp hair and murmuring reassurances. The cries eventually subsided to whooping gasps and then one last sigh, and she said, sobbing still, “I was scared, Daddy.”
“Of course you were. It was very scary. I was scared, too.”
“It was going to eat me up, for real!”
“Yes, it was.”
“Part of me wanted to get eated up and part of me was so scared.”
“Yes, that was your bad dream, wasn’t it? But now it’s over. It can’t hurt you anymore.”
“And it turned into Moie,” she said. “I saw it! Everything in the air was allghizzhy.” She waved her fingers and twisted them around themselves to illustrate just howghizzhy. “And Moie got shot with a arrow.”
“That’s right,” said Paz.
“But he won’t die because he’s good, like Frodo. He gotwounded, didn’t he?”
“Yes. I hope he’ll be all right.”
“And Jenny was being weird and shaking. That was really scary, too. Why was she doing that?”
“She has a sickness that makes her do that. But don’t worry, your mom will take good care of her.”
They sat for a while, Paz’s mind a perfect blank. Then Amelia said, “Could we look at the parrot? And I want a Coke.”
They looked at the parrot. A Coke was found. After some period of innocent fun, which Paz was content to let last for a week, they found a lounger and lay down upon it. All his bones ached. Then Dr. Wise arrived to check on her family. After determining that her daughter was fine, she stood over her husband and said, “You want to tell me what the hell that was all about? Why did you shoot that poor little man?”
“Because what I saw was a very large jaguar just about to bite our daughter’s head off. What did you see?”
“What did I…? Jimmy, I saw what wasthere. We were all sitting around, relaxed after swimming, and this guy strolls out from the dark and Jenny goes over and talks to him like she knew him and the next thing I know, I heard the bow and the guy was lying down with an arrow through him.”
“How is he, by the way?”
“Oh, he’ll probably survive-you seem to have missed the heart. He’s got a sucking chest wound. We clipped the arrow, but they’ll have to extract it in an OR. The ambulance is on the way. Christ, how the hell are we going to explain what happened?”
“Asshole fooling with bow and arrow accidentally shoots friendly visitor from foreign land,” said Paz. “The Miami cops deal with shit like that all the time. I’ll plead guilty, suspended sentence. How’s the redhead?”
“She’s out of seizure and in her bed in the house. I had some Soma in my bag and fed her a couple of caps, and some Xanax. She’ll be down for hours.”
“Good,” said Paz, “and so once again pharmaceuticals solve the problem. You know, Amelia saw the jaguar, too.”
She didn’t quite roll her eyes. “Jimmy, she’s achild. What I don’t like is that you had a hallucination so strong that you nearly killed a human being. Can you understand that? It means you’re notsafe. ”
“Sit down, Lola,” said Paz gently, and she found herself complying. She placed herself at the foot end of the lounger, not touching him. There was something in his eyes, a kind of presence, that she did not recall seeing there before.
He said, “I’ve been racking my brains on this. Why did he want Amelia? Why was she the sacrifice? And why did he think a sacrifice was necessary? And what was the meaning of what he did and what I did?”
“Shooting the Indian?”
“No, I mean my whole involvement in this, becoming made to the orishas, the whole string of events and coincidences that put me in a particular place at a particular time. And, once again, it wasn’t an Indian. It was Jaguar. It was a god or a demigod-a spirit inside an impossible animal. And I see from the look on your face that you’ve completely forgotten the dreams, how you were weeping like a baby because you couldn’t sleep, because Jaguar was in your head telling you stories about howright it was to give your daughter to him, and your whole shelf of drugs couldn’t help you, but a little bag of magic made by an old Cuban lady fixed you up just fine.”
She felt sweat pop out on her forehead and the hair stood stiff on the backs of her arms and on her neck.
“Yeah,” he said, searching her eyes, “nowyou remember. If you want, I’ll take you into the bushes around the pool and you can see the tracks of a huge cat, fresh tracks, and you’ll have to cook up a reasonable explanation forthat, too.”
She said, “So what’syour explanation? Assuming I buy the story.”
“I don’t have one. That’s mypoint. Look, the difference between us is that you think that at the fucking absolute innermost heart of the universe there’s an explanation, a calculation, a formula. I don’t. I think that at the fucking absolute innermost heart of the universe there’s a mystery. And we just saw, at the pool just now, and in this whole thing with Moie, an edge of it we don’t usually see, the stuff we’re not usuallyallowed to see. You’re going to rationalize it away, which is fine, it’s who you are, but I can’t do that. I have to treat it with reverence and look at it with awe. All I can say is, it was a good day. The maiden was saved, and the beast was defeated. Another time it might go the wrong way and I’ll treat that with reverence and awe, too. So are you sorry you married me now? Speaking of the inexplicable.”
“No,” she said, “I’m not. But could you be likein charge of all that stuff? So I don’t have to ever, ever think about it?”
He laughed. “Like taking out the garbage.”
“In a manner of speaking.”
Sirens ensued then, succeeded by paramedics. They whisked Moie off, attended by Lola. After that, the rest of the party, save Cooksey, who had elected to sit with Jenny, drifted back to the patio, where they all had a round of stiff drinks.
“Well, Paz,” said Zwick, “you really know how to throw a party.”
Paz looked around the group. “No one noticed anything strange?” he asked. “Everyone just saw me shoot a harmless Indian?”
“What else were we supposed to see?” asked Beth Morgensen.
Paz ignored her. He was looking at Scotty, who had the appearance of a man recently kicked in the groin. He wouldn’t meet Paz’s gaze. Another one who saw the impossible and wanted to forget it as soon as he could. The other adults had all been scientifically trained to observe only objectively verifiable phenomena.
“Come with me, I want to check on something.” He took a four-cell flashlight from the glove compartment of the Volvo and strode rapidly to the path where the being had emerged from the dark. The path was made of coarse oolitic sand, and it did not take long to find a huge paw mark and then another.
“What do you say to that, Doctors?” he asked.
“Oh, for God’s sake!” said Zwick. “Tell me you didn’t set this all up and shoot that guy with an arrow just to make some stupid point about mystical jaguars!”
Paz looked around the circle of faces, dim in the side glow of the flashlight, and found no support.
“Okay, fine,” he said. “I’ll take you guys home.”
When she opened her eyes, there was Cooksey, and she was glad. She was on her pallet in her old alcove in Cooksey’s quarters, dressed in one of his worn khaki shirts. Cooksey was wearing a dark tracksuit. His face was smeared with black smudges.
“I seized,” she observed.
“You did indeed. How do you feel?”
“Okay. A little sore. Something happened before I went out.”
“Yes. Jaguar showed up in his glory and pride. He was going to take that little girl, and you very heroically threw yourself in his way. The sacrifice was not made. God alone knows what it all means. Then Mr. Paz shot it with an arrow, and it turned back into our Moie.”
“Is he dead?”
“It appears not. Our party coincidentally included two doctors, or perhaps coincidence is no longer the operative word. In any case, he survived. Do you recall any of that?”
“Sort of. It’s kind of like when you remember a dream. And it wasn’t really Jimmy. I saw…kind of tangled up in him something else, something bigger, a glowing thing, I don’t know what it was. But it was good. And…but Moie is good, too, isn’t he? And Jaguar. He killed those bad guys, and he was only trying to protect his country.” She sighed. “I don’t understand any of this, Cooksey.”
“No, and I’m not sure whether the kinds of good and bad we see in the cinema are useful concepts here. We are in deep waters, my girl, and we poor scientists are out of our depth. And I’m afraid it’s not over. Issues less cosmic but just as deadly remain for us to resolve.”
“What do you mean?”
“I mean that I expect a visit shortly from the gang that kidnapped you and killed Kevin.”
“They’re coming here? Because of me?”
“No, because of Geli. They need her to put pressure on her grandfather, because he’s crucial to some criminal scheme of theirs.”
“But how do they know she’s here? She told me she didn’t tell anyone where she was, not even her mom.”
“Actually, they know because I called her grandfather’s house and informed the servant who answered the phone. Of course, all the servants have been suborned or threatened, and so I expect the gang leader knew within minutes. They’ve been waiting for us to be alone.”
“Jesus, Cooksey! Why the hell did you do that?”
“Because I want to kill them, my dear. All of them. That’s why you see me in my commando togs and face. I’m afraid I’m rather more like Moie than I revealed. These people are the same people involved in the forest cutting that killed my wife.”
“I thought that was a snake.”
“Yes, well, I’m sorry to have had to dissimulate there, but a certain security was necessary, and I didn’t want to burden you with the truth. In fact, the timber companies hire thugs to clear the people from the forest before they cut, and in our case it was the Hurtado organization that was responsible. Portia had hired a village to catch specimens for her, and while she was there the place was raided by these people, or those hired by them. Everyone was killed. So, only figuratively was she killed by a snake. I’ve been working toward this evening for a number of years. I hope you’ll forgive me.”
“Cooksey, this is crazy, just you and Scotty against all those guys…”
“Scotty will not be involved. He’s been told to look after Geli. They’re in his cottage with the doors and windows locked and barred, with instructions to call the police if it goes wrong. And he has his shotgun. Meanwhile, we have to keep you safe during the coming fracas. I can shove my big cabinet in front of the entrance to this alcove. It’s not obvious that there’s another room within my office, and I doubt that anyone will come searching for you in any case. It’s Geli they want. As for your door outside-we’ll just have to rely on the lock. It’s going to be dark, of course-I intend to pull the fuses from the mains. This will favor the defender, you see.”
He rose then and left the little room, returning a moment later brandishing a large black revolver. “My trusty sidearm,” he said, showing his long teeth. “Are you comfortable? Is there anything I can get you?”
“No, I’m fine.”
He sat on the edge of the pallet. “Then I’m off. In case of the worst, there’s a packet with your name on it in the right-hand drawer of my desk. It has some letters of introduction should you wish to pursue a career in wasp entomology. You should work on your reading, of course, but there are a number of people I know who would be happy to have you in their labs. I’ve made some financial arrangements as well, so you won’t be absolutely destitute, I hope you don’t mind…”
“Cooksey…”
“No, no weepies, dear, we haven’t the time for it. And may I say what a pleasure it’s been knowing you these last months, quite the nicest thing that happened to me in a very bleak time. Oh, and you can have myWind in the Willows. ”
Before she could say a word to him he was out of the room and pushing the high cabinet into place. She lay back on her pillow, cried briefly, and then exhaustion carried her back into sleep.
El Silencio had prepared for the night’s work as best he could, given the short notice. He had located a contact of Hurtado’s, a small-time dealer who operated out of a derelict trailer park in the south county, and he had taken his men there to run through the operation. The problem was that although he knew the approximate layout of the property, he had no idea where the woman might be when they arrived. He had decided, therefore, to send teams of two to each of the two small cottages, while he and Ochoa waited at the main house. If the woman was in one of the cottages, they’d bring her out; if she was in the house, then the whole group would surround and assault it from several directions. They rehearsed these evolutions in the trailer park until El Silencio was satisfied that his people would not actually trip all over themselves during the real thing. He was not really confident, but he had little choice. Besides, he didn’t think that a woman and a couple of civilians would give them much trouble.
They arrived at two in the morning, pulling right into the driveway of the property. The gate was not locked, and the place was completely dark and quiet, the only sound being the wind in the foliage and splashing water. El Silencio recalled that there was some kind of pool. The night was clear, with a crescent moon, and with these and the sky glow from the city, there was enough light to walk without stumbling out here, although it would be quite dark on the paths.
He and Ochoa went through the archway that led to the patio and stood in the shadows while their teams set out on the paths leading to the two cottages. From here they could keep watch on the front door of the main house and also keep the exit from the property under watch. They waited without talking.
Then an orange flash lit the undersides of the palm fronds above them and then came the BANG, far louder than a gunshot. They saw the glow of a bright fire. Ochoa cursed and ran out. El Silencio heard a high-pitched shrieking, like that of a pig being stuck, mixed with curses and calls for Momma. In a moment, there was another, louder blast, which rattled the palm tops and the windows.
He heard Ochoa shouting and the sound of footsteps going away. The shrieks died away. Now three loud gunshots, which sounded to El Silencio like.45s. Then silence.
The gangster moved farther into the dark corner of the patio, sinking down behind a large, covered propane grill cart. It was his principle that when things went to shit, the best thing to do was not to race off as Ochoa had just done, but to remain calm and quiet, to see what would develop. He took out his nine-millimeter pistol and listened. Obviously, someone had planted bombs on the paths, and these had taken out his four men. He hadn’t thought that these people had the skills to do that, but he had been wrong and that was that. Ochoa had just as obviously stumbled into an ambush, yet another argument for staying calm and quiet. He could probably escape himself, but he was reluctant to do this. He had never failed before, and he thought he could still shoot all the people opposing him and take the Vargos woman. He actually preferred to work alone.
He heard a woman’s voice calling out, and then a man speaking. A door slammed shut. He waited for over forty minutes and was about to stand up and change position when he heard footsteps on a sandy path, then the sound of steps on paving. A thin man of around fifty dressed in black clothes walked past into the patio. El Silencio rose from behind the grill and shot him three times in the back.
The bombs had awakened Jenny, and she was looking out the window of the door that led from her alcove to the patio, so she saw Cooksey fall. Without thinking she opened the door and darted out. The man was standing over Cooksey’s body. She saw the blood pooling beneath him and let out a cry. The man heard it and turned around, raising his gun. He said something in Spanish and pointed the gun at her. She spun on her heel and ran from the patio.
El Silencio almost shot the girl but checked himself at the last instant. This was clearly the redhead who had escaped from the garage, and he was intensely curious to find out how she had done that. Also, once he had her, he could make her tell him where La Vargos was. He sped off in pursuit.
They were on a dark path. She and El Silencio hurdled the slumped and smoking forms of two of his men and then she cut sharply to the left, down a narrower path that rose slightly and changed from coarse sand to rough stone. The sound of rushing water grew progressively louder. He put on more speed. The girl was not more than three feet from him. Suddenly they burst into the open. His shoes clattered on rock. He reached out to grab at her flowing red hair and then he saw her leap into the air and sink out of sight. His feet splashed through water, he tried to slow down, but his thin city shoes slipped on the slick stones and he felt himself falling through the dark.
It was a fifteen-foot drop to the bottom of the waterfall, and El Silencio fell badly, suffering a compound fracture of his left arm and numerous deep scrapes on his legs and back from the rough coral rock. The force of the falls sent him deep under the water, but he was a competent swimmer and was able to struggle one-armed to the surface. There he rolled onto his back, and keeping his left arm pressed to his chest, he began kicking to move himself to the edge of the pond. He was thinking about what he would do to this girl when he had her.
The first piranha hit at his thigh where it bled from its scrape, ripping out a chunk of meat the size of a shot glass. El Silencio made a sound that would have been a scream in a person with normal vocal machinery but emerged as a long rasping yawp. He flapped both arms and sank, and then the whole school was upon him.
Jenny sat at the shallow end and watched the water churn and churn and grow reddish and then become quiet again. She ran back to the patio. Cooksey was not quite dead yet, but unlike the dying men she had seen in the movies, he did not have any choked last words. She called the police and then sat by him and held his hand while he died. Her tears fell on his face, making clear tracks through the commando paint.
Jimmy Paz slept fitfully that night, although he observed that his wife was perfectly at rest, and after popping in and out of sleep, he decided to get up and start his new life as a maybe demigod with a cup of coffee. He made a pint of Bustelo in the stove-top hourglass pot and warmed an equal amount of milk in a pan, and when thecafé con leche was ready he took it out to the back patio with a plate of Cuban bread toast, butter, and guava jam. He watched the sky go from pink to cerulean blue, dotted with tiny specks of fleece, and then, to his surprise, the front doorbell rang, and it was Tito Morales.
“We need to talk,” said the cop. He looked rumpled and frowsy.
“Want some coffee?” Paz asked amiably.
Morales did. They sat at the counter in the kitchen while Paz fixed him the same kind of breakfast he had just enjoyed.
“This is about the Indian, right?” asked Paz as Morales took his first grateful sip.
“What Indian is that?”
“Our Indian. He showed up at Zenger’s estate last night and I shot him with my Oshosi bow and arrow.”
“Your Oshosi bow and arrow,” said Morales in a flat tone. “And why would you do that, Jimmy?”
“Because he was in the form of a giant jaguar and he was about to eat Amelia. Luckily it was a magic arrow and it knocked him out and turned him back into our Indian. He’s in South Miami Hospital. I thought that’s why you came over.”
“No, and I’m going to temporarily forget what you just said, because they dragged me into this out of a sound sleep and I might be hallucinating. What I got is a-what is it, septuple? A septuple homicide situation at the Zenger place. I got four of what look like Colombianchuteros blown up by bombs, another one shot dead, and another I don’t know what it is, a piece of meat chewed up by those fucking piranhas in that fishpond. No face, no fingers. It could be Jimmy Hoffa.”
“That’s only six.”
“Cooksey’s dead, too. Someone shot him, unclear who. The Simpson girl called it in. She told me an interesting story. That’s why I’m here, see if you can cast some light.”
“What’s her story?”
“Well, she says that Cooksey was the mastermind behind it all. These Colombians apparently killed his wife years ago down there in jungle-land, and he set the whole thing up. He knew all about this Consuela deal from Geli Vargos, old Ibanez’s granddaughter, and he somehow imported this Indian from South America to do the murders of your dad and Fuentes, which brought Hurtado and his merry band to Miami. The Indian whacked a few of his people and-okay, here’s the part she wasn’t too clear about-Hurtado had some kind of deal with Ibanez, and Ibanez was getting cold feet on it, so Hurtado wanted to snatch Geli to pressure the old guy. Cooksey set all this up, and he made bombs to take out the bad guys, and he shot one, and pushed the last guy into the pool, but not before getting shot himself. Which is bullshit, but I can’t prove it. The girl was wringing wet when we got there, so she was obviously playing in the pool with Señor No-face, who’s probably the one who shot Cooksey. I got no idea exactly how it went down, however, not that it matters. We picked up Hurtado, too, by the way.”
“Really? I thought he was in the breeze.”
“He was, but the girl said Cooksey had tipped off the Ibanez house where Geli was, and that the maid or someone there had tipped Hurtado. We rousted the house, and the maid gave up the number she called him at and we found him in a fleabag in North Miami Beach. I don’t know what we’ll hold him on. Getting a phone call is no crime, and we have no direct connection between him and the dead people at Zenger’s. Now, tell me about this Indian.”
Paz smiled. “The Indian’s going to walk.”
“Fuck he is! He killed four people that we know for sure about. I guarantee you that the naked footprints in that garage and the prints on the gate near your dad’s house are both going to match up with him.”
“You’re probably right. In which case you have two choices. Let me lay them out for you. Plan A is you book the Indian-his name’s Moie, incidentally-and you explain to Major Oliphant and the state’s attorney all about how a little Indian who can’t weigh one-thirty managed to carry off all by himself four murders, including one against a heavily guarded victim and two against armed desperadoes, while leaving jaguar footprints made by something weighing in at nearly five hundred pounds, said murders requiring superhuman strength and agility and leaving the corpses torn by what forensics will tell you could only be the teeth of a large cat. Should you choose Plan A, they will smile sadly and put you on the rubber gun squad for the duration of your career. Plan B is you got a bunch of dead Colombians from a gang noted for its ferocious murders, its gruesome revenges against traitors, a gang that was heavily involved in illegal business deals with said dead Cubans. Obviously, the dead guys did all the killings. Case closed. Oh, and as a bonus, if you pick Plan B, I will give you Hurtado, and you will have the collar of the decade and be the golden boy of the Miami PD and a hero in the Cuban community forever after. And the envelope, please…”
Morales stared angrily at Paz for a good thirty seconds and then seemed to deflate. “Ah, fuck this, Jimmy! He killed your father, man! How the hell can you just let him walk?”
“He had nothing to do with killing my father. My father was killed by a supernatural creature as a result of his own crimes, whether you believe it or not. Arresting Moie would be like arresting a Buick for a hit-and-run.”
“Okay, man, if that’s the way we’re going to play it, I give up. I know when I’m over my head. Tell me about Hurtado.”
“Good decision, Tito. Okay, Hurtado is a dope lord. He had a nice little laundry set up here with Consuela, but he’s still a dope lord, and what I couldn’t figure out was what was so important tohim about cutting down some damn forest in the ass end of Colombia. And just this morning when I was waking up it came to me, something my sister told me about Consuela buying wood-boring equipment down there. And I called her and she described the machinery, what it was for. So I ask you, why would they need a huge wood-boring machine in a timber operation? Now you know that there’s a smuggling environment nowadays where the borders are tightening up because of terrorism, they’re shooting down planes, they’re paying mules to swallow balloons with tiny little amounts of dope. And Hurtado has access to a scheme to import thousands of mahogany logs via a perfectly legitimate and well-established import operation.”
“They’re shipping dope in hollowed-out logs!”
“Hugefucking amounts of dope, with next to no danger that anyone is going to check a warehouse full of logs. I guarantee you that if you go to Ibanez’s yard down by the docks with dope-sniffing dogs and some simple tools, you’re going to hit the jackpot. I know you’re beat, but you should get on this right away. You’ll sleep a lot better knowing. Oh, right, I almost forgot the bonus for making the right choice.” And he told Morales about Kearney the ecoterrorist, too.
In his hospital bed Moie speaks quietly in Spanish to the Firehair Woman. Thejampiri, Paz, translates for them. They have come every day, and this is the last day, Moie thinks. He sees his death clearly now and the bright cords that tie it to his dying body. His wound is healing, yes, but all thearyu’t has run out of him, and he is hollow, like a fig drilled out by wasps.
He can also see the deaths of the woman and thejampiri, so they are not reallywai’ichuranan any longer, and this is something he had not expected to see. They are marvelous deaths, clearly of great power. Moie did not know that thewai’ichuranan could change themselves in this way, or that they had suchjampiri, which is why he was defeated. Jaguar has left him for that reason, and this is also why he is dying. He tries to tell the woman how to use what she has been given, but the language is too clumsy, and there are words and ideas that can’t be expressed in Spanish. He wishes that there was time for her to learn the holy speech. The greatest sadness is that his body will not be handled in the proper way and given to the river. Here in the land of the dead, he has been told, they bury the body under the earth, like a yam, which is disgusting, or else they burn it, as the Runiya do to a witch. The good thing is that the Firehair Woman says that thechinitxi are all dead and that the Puxto will survive.
“I would like to go back home,” he says after a long silence.
“When you’re better, Moie,” says thejampiri.
“I will not be better. What I mean is, when I am dead and you have burned my body, I would like to have my ash put into our river. We burn witches, but we don’t put their ash in the river, of course. Perhaps, if you do this, I will still rise to the moon to be with my ancestors.”
“She says she will do this for you,” says thejampiri. “She promises.”
“And take my bag of dreams and my medicine bag back there, too. Perhaps Jaguar will send another to bejampiri to the Runiya.”
“She will do that as well,” says thejampiri.
Moie says to the woman, “You should be careful where your tears fall. An enemy can use them against you.”
Jenny Simpson and Jimmy Paz stood in the parking lot of the funeral home in which Moie has just been reduced to a can of ashes. Jenny had secured this can inside her backpack, which also contained some changes of clothing,The Wind in the Willows, Hogue’sLatin American Insects and Entomology, Moie’s sorcerous gear, an ultralight tent, a sleeping bag and pad, and twelve hundred dollars of the surprisingly large amount of money left to her by Nigel Cooksey. She was dressed for travel in denim cutoffs, a yellow tube top, and a Dolphins ball cap.
“You’re really going to hitch down to Colombia?” said Paz.
“Yep.”
“You could fly. You have money now.”
“I could, but I guess I want to take a long trip alone, think all this shit through. And I want to save his money, in case I want to get an education. He would’ve liked that.”
“There’s a lot of rough country between here and there. A lot of bad guys.”
“I’ll be fine.” She laughed. “All my life nobody ever gave a shit about me, and all of a sudden everyone’s looking out for my welfare-Cooksey, you, Lola, Moie.”
“Maybe no one saw your virtues before.”
She shrugged. “Last night…that was real nice, Lola throwing me a going-away party. She thinks I’m crazy to be doing this, doesn’t she?”
“Lola thinks a good deal of what people do is crazy. It’s her profession.”
“Word. And she doesn’t buy any of this, does she? What all happened, with Jaguar and stuff.”
“No, she’s on a different channel.”
“How will you, like, handle that?”
“With care. Love makes a lot of allowances. And Amelia knows. That’ll help. And my mom.”
“God, it’s so totally weird all this, all the deaths and how it all worked out. You know, you have a life, and even if it sucks, you think, that’s your life and it’s not going to change and then, bang! You’re a different person with a different life. What’s up with that?”
“What’s up with that is a ten-hour discussion and a lifetime of contemplation. Meanwhile, if you want to get on the road today, we better get started. I’ll drop you at the Bird Road exit on the turnpike. That’s probably your best bet going north.”
They got in the Volvo and drove west in companionable silence. Paz reflected that both of them were different from what they had been when they first met, both kicked into change by the gods rather more directly than God typically kicked humans into change. He was glad that it had happened, and he prayed fervently that it never had to happen again. Fat chance, he thought, and laughed to himself.
Paz parked near the freeway ramp. She kissed him on the cheek, promised postcards, and left. He waited while she thumbed. Long-legged redheads with knockout bodies do not typically have to wait long for rides, and before too many minutes had passed, an eighteen-wheeler hit its brakes with a great sigh, and she climbed into its cab. Whatever else he now was, Paz was still a dad and a cop, and so he wrote down its license number before it drove away.
Jenny settled herself in the passenger seat and smiled at the driver. He was a fortyish man with long hair, a bad shave, and deeply set, bright blue eyes sporting very small pupils. As he cranked up through his gears he asked, “Where’re you going, honey?” He had a Texas accent.
“ Colombia.”
“In Carolina?”
“No, the country. In South America.”
“No lie? Hell, that’s a long way for a little girl to go all by her lonesome.”
She made no comment on that, so he continued the chatter. She answered when it would have been rude not to, and in response to his probings invented a set of plausible lies. They exchanged names: his was Randy Frye. Randy Frye the Good-Time Guy, as he announced. He liked to talk about himself, and he had lots of stories. By West Palm he was confident enough to make the stories a little raunchy; by Yeehaw Junction, he was probing her sexual history (unsuccessfully) and accentuating his remarks with little touches on her shoulder and arm. By Kissimmee, they were such good pals that he laid his big red hand on her inner thigh, pat pat pat, squeeze.
She turned in her seat and looked him in the face. Randy Frye noticed that her eyes, which had been pale blue, were now lambent yellow with vertical pupils. Out of her throat came a sound that should not have had a home in such a throat.
Ararah. Arararararh.
The semi swerved momentarily out of lane, engendering angry honks from a nearly sideswiped van. By the Orlando interchange, Frye had just about managed to forget what he had seen and heard and had invented a story about a cold little bitch, probably a lesbo, wouldn’t fuck her withyour dick…After that, without exchanging more than a dozen or so words, he took her all the way to Corpus Christi.