In Flames (14 page)

The tree appeared quite broad, although nothing like the cathedral-wide giant back in the camp grove. I pictured my captors sleeping around that great tree, oblivious to my absence. My tree was about four or five arm-spreads in girth, but I couldn't tell for sure. My fingers found another bump above my head, and I grasped for it with my right hand, the spear gripped in my left. The tree wasn't as straight up and down as I feared. Instead of a sheer drop, it slanted away, letting me shift more of my weight from my feet onto the trunk. If I slipped, I might have a flesh-tearing slide down, but not a precipitous spine-snapping fall. This reassured me, though not by much. My leg and side still ached, and I could picture a slide far longer from higher up, a slide that, while not breaking bones, would rip me open. I groped along the bulge in the tree, which seemed to extend around the trunk like a swollen welt, a ledge of sorts. Running my hand along the underside, I measured it to be about a foot and a half in width, enough to stand on, if I lifted myself off the root and scrambled up over the lip.

I shifted the blade tip above the edge, and slid up a couple of feet of shaft, before giving it a hard shove.
Too hard
…The blade struck the trunk, bouncing off smooth bark and falling back, pointed directly at my upturned face. Throwing myself into the tree, I felt the breeze of the spear rush past. A foot from the base of the root, the blade pierced soft earth, the other end of the shaft swaying below my eyes.

I clambered off the root, and pulled the blade from the sump, and this movement gave me surprising pleasure, a reassuring feeling I accepted as sanity. I thought at last I was in control. With the shaft again as support, I remounted the tree root. A second try, this time giving the shaft a more deliberate, more directed push up onto the ledge, letting the weapon slide over. And I waited, face to the bark, for it to roll off and swipe by again.

Nothing
…

I was jubilant. I breathed deeply, stroking the tree, as if comforting it into cooperation. And I spotted my next move. A chin-up on the ledge, my body suspended out from the trunk. I reached up toward the protruding bump, flexed my knees, and jumped. My fingers secured a quick hold, but my feet swung wildly, slapping into the bark for a grip. The tree resisted, and I was flailing, searching, finding only smooth bark, no purchase, my hands shaking dangerously. Urine in my bladder swelled hard as stone and exploded, running hot over my crotch. I was falling, slipping, only rage held my fingers. I saw Delgado Vinny's corpse again, his head a twisted mass of tissue and shattered bone, and from this nightmare I drew strength. Abomination drove me. With the power left in my hands and arms, more might than I'd ever summoned, I pulled myself chest-level to the ledge. Energy from the tree seemed to flow into my shoulders and arms, and I lifted waist-high, knee-high, doubling my knees, slipping up and over smoothly as a snake. I flattened my cheek against the bark, shifting weight from arms to knees, my fingers feeling for the shaft of the weapon. I touched it, and my confidence soared like a column of cold steel. A painstaking labor, turning to a sitting position, letting my legs dangle over the edge about four body lengths above ground, more than twenty feet up. High enough to break my neck, if I fell the wrong way, but no hope of a clear throw from this perch. Too little room for maneuvering, if discovered.

No choice, go higher. And I groped overhead for a large branch, ignoring the advice given climbers,
Don't look back, don't look down.
If I found what I was looking for, a firm killing perch, I'd have to spend all my time looking back and down, putting every measure of concentration I could squeeze from my brain and body into exactly that. All my hard tennis playing, the endless pool laps, I counted on these to save me. I became aware of the sound of my own breath whistling into bark. My arms itched, burning with insect bites. Sweat and urine mixed with the odor of dried blood, giving off a powerful stink, announcing my presence to every hungry bug in the forest. I pushed my back into the trunk, taking weight and tension off my muscles. Shifting around, I tested the width and length of the ledge. A good place to rest maybe, but not for long. Lunatic logic insisted I couldn't kill from this spot. Too little room to move with deadly force. I shifted into a crouch before rising cautiously, stretching my hands up over bark. A couple of feet above, small branches blocked my view of the rest of the tree, limited enough in darkness. I extended my arms to embrace the trunk, pressing my mouth to bark, sensing from fingertips to toes how much I possessed this tree wherever my body touched it. Shifting along the ledge, careful to avoid the spear, I searched for an opening in the branches above, a space for the perfect killing spot, should it ever come to that. And as I did…
nothing.
My right foot dropped into empty space. The ledge narrowed, rose slightly, and my aim missed. I hugged the tree, foot swaying, feeling for a hold in thin air, and slapped my leg into bark, resting my foot on the rise.

Go back down, find another tree
…test tree after tree for a prime killing perch. But something was up there in my tree, a glimmer to my right. From within the forest canopy, a hole, more like a wide crack, released a spray of pale white rays.

Moonlight…My eyes adjusted, searching the faint glow overhead for a sweet spot. More than a body length above, a dark heavy presence loomed, pregnant with a promise of salvation and a pursuer's death. The base of a branch so thick, it was almost a second tree, a Siamese twin growing out of the side of my tree, stretching over the clearing below. A platform for survival, that branch, if I reached it armed.
Gracias a Dios
, I whispered into bark. Above me, parallel with that final perch, a clutch of small branches where with luck I could hook the spear blade, leaving it hanging while I ascended. I lowered myself slowly, grasping the shaft, before rising full height, edging to a point under the branches, extending the spear tip up into the clump of vegetation. I poked around, pulling and tugging, entangling the blade, then releasing my fingers from the shaft, letting it swing free within the circle of my hand. The blade held. Above me was the dark platform from which I was certain I could kill if I had to. Room enough for deadly force. Between that shape and me were enough small branches to pull and push my way up. I grabbed for the first bunch, and moved quickly, like climbing a ladder. In seconds, my arm and leg were over the branch. I rolled onto it, stretching out, and reached across for the spear, disentangling the blade. With the weapon securely alongside, the blade a few inches from my face, I lay on the wide thick branch and peered down.

Bats crisscrossed pale moonlight rays. Tree frogs and night birds clicked and whistled in the jungle dark. A scent of night blossoms grew viscous in my nose and throat. And now all I had to do was wait. And watch…and if undiscovered by first light, slither back down, head for the river and follow it to the coast road.
Gracias, Dr. Sánchez
.

An endless wait, lying like a snake alert for prey.

My body stayed in night, but beyond dark forest walls, up a moonlit river, high above sleeping ancient volcanoes, my spirit soared, unfettered. Stretched out on the branch, I teetered at desperation's edge, and my mind took wing.
I could fly
, I grew so exhilarated. But imagined flight had a price. Half dreaming, savoring escape too soon, a victory unearned and uncertain, this reverie surrendered whatever small claim I had left to sanity, guaranteeing disaster. So I fought to freeze my fevered heart, redirect my fractured mind, returning thoughts to earth through dark tangles of forest floor, and back to my captors.

How much noise will a pursuer make, when he comes by
…To be silent on the jungle floor, no one slashes his way through, he'd have to crawl or slither. Or fly above it, like a bat. Blood-drinking bats hunted in the forest, and despite the heat this thought made me freeze. The forest talked, shouted, screamed, the nightly din in full concert. But there was no echo in the forest, as soft leaves absorb sound. I heard only what was close, and it sounded as though every night hunter in creation surrounded me.

I gripped the spear with one hand, and bracing with the other, stood up slowly, lifting the weapon, holding it aloft, rehearsing, poised as if to throw. A position, I was delighted to realize, not unlike a tennis serve. I imagined a target down in the dark, a shadowy quarry outlined in thin moonlight, a body emerging from trees as if through an imaginary door. Standing upright gave me at least four feet clear behind. Nothing appeared in my way below. I felt along the branch with my feet. Strong, solid, unmoving. I rose on my toes, calves tensed in iron-hard balls as if positioning for the most powerful tennis slam, and then I dropped, heels down hard on the branch.
Moment of death
…In my shattered mind, I was a killer, strangely wonderful, teetering on the brink of derangement. High up on my perch, I sensed a near-perfect symbiosis with the tree, a point where standing on the branch was so natural, that toppling headlong into the earth below appeared impossible, my broken brain wouldn't allow it. This fever gripped me, and I sensed I was being watched. Not more than fifteen feet away, two enormous yellow eyes stared. A titi fruit monkey, that rarest of island creatures? The unlikely character in Delgado Vinny's last comedy routine. Eyes unblinking now, unmoving, not imaginary, and not a monkey. I saw a form taking shape around the eyes, self-contained, a black mask of feathers, a beak below. A night bird the size of a vulture. The creature blinked once, slow reptilian lids, and moved its pale clawed feet.
A test
…I raised my arm, drawing back the spear, not to throw, but to try my nerve, prove my poise. My opponent's eyes moved, its head turned, the shape shifting as if every movement was an effort for it too, and with a mighty flapping of wings the bird slipped off, another hunter in the dark.

Moisture covered my cheeks, not sweat, but tears of joy that I'd passed a test. I blinked to clear my eyes, and sat back down on the branch, swinging my legs like a kid on a summertime dock, and I peered down into the dark killing pit. Empty, still. Confident, I stretched out full length, head cradled in my arms, drifting into half dream, gazing into the highest spire of a vast cathedral, and through its leaf-thin walls I saw a heaven of stars. A shooting star, a meteor, a comet struck, hitting the spire's peak, and as the cathedral burst into brilliant light, I awoke, blinking at the forest canopy. It was different. The number of holes and cracks in the roof had shifted. The light changed subtly, a first few rays of dawn visible. I'd stayed too long in one position. My limbs were asleep, feeling in my legs lost except for a pins-and-needles tingling. If my legs stayed numb, and a pursuer appeared below, I was finished. This terrible thought opened my bowels, ooze running down my buttocks. I should have felt humiliated, but I felt nothing. Shit was natural. My mind focused on threat. Screwing up would kill me, not shit.
Can I stand again
…
Will I hear him
…
Will he smell me, my own wastes betray me
.

I worked at reversing what I taught my limbs to do on saner, safer nights when trying to sleep, I grasped for the opposite of desensitization, wiggling my toes, flexing calves, bending knees, pumping life back into nerves and sinews, as if preparing for a tennis match. I saw morning light falling on my hands, and I cursed myself, nearly weeping in frustration. The coming of daylight, however faint, acted like a radio dial, fading out forest noises, diminishing the din by degrees, leaving only early-morning birdsong. A green-fingered dawn stretched down from the forest canopy, surrounding me, turning the space below verdant with a morning glow, and the new light lent me a new being. My senses remembered movement, real and imaginary. I stood high above the forest floor, resting the base of my weapon on the tree branch. I scrutinized the space below, memorized shapes coalescing again in the new day's life, the world around me turning viridescent.

A movement
…

And I heard, not a bird's wings, not a monkey's scamper, but different sounds directly below in the green. My ears twitched, a mad pulse racing in my throat. My nostrils flared like a killer cat's, and the metronomic beat of my heart went wild, fighting like a tiny jungle creature trying to break free of my chest. A vine moved, pulled back, and a man's head and shoulders came out from the green. He stopped at the edge of the clearing. He wore a wide-brimmed, stained canvas hat. I was absolutely sure of this inevitability, of green walls climbing to a morning sky, birdsong, a chaos of colors in flowers opening to new light. Fear, heat, rage intensified everything. As far as I could see, he wasn't holding a gun, only a machete. I felt a strange elation mixed with fear. The thug had no sense of my presence above him. My excitement over this made me so short-winded, I cautioned myself against any stupid act of glee. I was swaying on the branch, the weapon's blade level with my eyes. I began praying…
Don't linger down there, keep moving, go
.
And don't look up, whatever you do, you son of a bitch
…Please, God, keep his eyes occupied below, in front of him, to the sides, all around, but not above. Quivering I squeezed the spear shaft, and it felt huge, an immense swelling in my hand. This revived confidence. Practiced motions returned to steady me. I had faith in what I had to do, in this dance of death above the forest floor. The thug had a potbelly, as hard and round as if he'd swallowed a soccer ball. The molester. I wanted to vomit on him. If he took a few more steps into the space, I'd see his back. Have his body perfectly outlined, exactly as in my imaginings, his shoulder blades at the end of my line of sight, pinpointing the spot where I'd send the spear blade driving through his chest cavity.

He moved, directly into line.

I aimed a few inches below the target spot, to compensate for the slight arc of my serve, if I had to throw, if he didn't keep moving on, if he turned and looked up. The canvas hat revolved slowly, he was looking around the space. His hand reached across his middle, but nothing happened, no gun appeared. He could be scratching his big belly, there was something almost absurdly relaxed in his attitude, as if he found himself alone in his own home. I couldn't imagine a more accommodating frame of mind. I prayed for the bastard to take a few casual steps closer to death or, better yet, move out farther into the forest, leave me and disappear. But he simply stood there, scratching himself, as though an insect had done an especially mean job on his gut. In my mind, I screamed, Walk,
walk!
My ears filled with a surflike roaring. The target didn't budge, not, it seemed, for any deliberate reason, but only because he found it comfortable standing there, a natural thing to do. I flexed my serving arm muscles to keep them from cramping. The spear blade took on a life of its own, hovering like a butterfly next to my face. He shifted his legs, spreading his feet slightly apart, otherwise nothing, as a new struggle erupted in my mind, fighting panic, battling loss of control, the strain of staying fully poised on the brink of launching the most explosive serve my body could summon. I ran through the drill, the entire repetition of movements, knowing if I shifted my weight a fraction too much in any direction, I'd miss, probably fall to my death. He'd only have to fire a coup de grâce into my skull, or remain still, leaving me to writhe until my broken neck, a crushed spine, killed me.