Insects: A Novel (8 page)

31

Antonio Suarez left
the expedition behind as he explored the forest in search of fishing holes. He’d come across a meandering trail that was easy to follow and, he assumed, would be just as easy to follow on the return trip. About fifteen minutes after he’d started his hike, he found that his heavy pack was slowing him down and left it alongside the trail, propped up against a rubber tree where it would be easy to find on his way back. Traveling light with only his fishing rod, several lures, water bottle, machete, lighter and several snack bars, he covered more ground quickly.

Ten minutes later, less than a mile from where he’d left his pack, he came upon the carcass of a giant anteater about fifty feet off the trail. It was hard to miss. It looked to be about six feet long. It was a monster, but as he probed it with a stick, the hide was hollow. Inside, the skeleton was stripped. He’d never seen an anteater’s skeleton. It reminded him of a dinosaur’s skeleton he’d seen in a magazine. The skull was long and out of proportion with the torso. The neck seemed too skinny to support the huge skull. Perhaps that’s why the anteater always had its nose to the ground, he thought, to keep the neck from breaking.

Then it occurred to him that someone might pay for the skeleton of a giant anteater, and he pulled out his folding knife to cut the hide away. It was a difficult task since the hide was tough, and his blade wasn’t sharp, but he was able to do it without damaging the skeleton which, when he finally lifted it out of the hide, was fully articulated. The scavengers that ate the beast had done a good job, he thought. It was almost as if the skeleton had been dropped into a vat of boiling water and pulled out stripped of flesh. Problem was, he had no way of carrying it. He didn’t want to risk having it fall apart on the trail by carrying it in his arms. He knew that whatever value it had would depend entirely on its completeness.

Recovering the skeleton was now more important than finding a fishing hole. He carried several nylon ditty sacks in his backpack, including one that may have been large enough to hold the skeleton if he had been able to fold it. The long tail would fold easily, but he couldn’t get the torso to cooperate without severing the spine. However, even if he could fit the skeleton into the sack, he wondered how he could carry it while carrying a fully loaded backpack. This would be something he’d have to come back for.

Because he didn’t know the worth of the skeleton, he began to imagine that it held great value, and that it would be worth one thousand reals or more. As a guide, he knew that giant anteaters were becoming rare and that it was illegal to kill one intentionally, which made it easy to believe there was great value in what he had found. The thing to do, he thought, was to put it somewhere out of sight where he could retrieve it. From the looks of the trail, few if any people used it. He had seen nothing since leaving the cabin that would even suggest the presence of humans. So why did he suddenly feel that someone might find it and take it?

Not wasting another moment, he gently lifted the skeleton and slowly moved away from the hide to a nearby palm that stood out from the surrounding trees. He laid it at the base of the tree and covered it with fallen fronds. Stepping back, he told himself the skeleton wouldn’t have to remain hidden for long and decided to retrace his steps when he nearly stumbled over another carcass. Suarez kneeled close to it. Was it another anteater? No, not even close. It was a tapir. Using a stick, he pressed against the hide, and it gave way as if it were hollow.

“Jesus,” he mumbled. He couldn’t tell how large it had been, but it was definitely an adult. But that thought was replaced by the recognition that this was just like the anteater. Again, he used his pocket knife to slice up the hide, and there was the skeleton, all neat and articulated. He’d seen tapirs before, including one that weighed more than five hundred pounds, but he understood they were being hunted out of existence, like anteaters. The entrepreneur in him took over, and he hid the skeleton under the palm leaves next to the anteater. This was a good trip, he thought. He’d be able to sell both skeletons for a big profit, maybe enough to pay for the boat he wanted. Maybe it was a business in itself. He had to look into this, see what the market was. But now there was nothing left to do but head back and rejoin the group. He’d keep this to himself. He feared his boss would claim his share if he knew about it.

32

Carlos Johnson was
the first to notice the backpack. It was mid-afternoon, and the group had discovered several carcasses of small mammals since finding the armadillo, including an opossum, a couple of tuco-tucos and several squirrels. Duncan was satisfied with the thoroughness of the search but not the speed. They had barely covered a mile all morning. They needed to cover more ground or the
blaberus
colony would be long gone, which it could have been anyway, since they didn’t start until more than a week after the discovery of Raul Barbosa’s body.

After a brief respite, Johnson and Allison Peeples walked ahead of the group and found the trail that Suarez had followed. They’d gone only several hundred yards when Johnson pointed to the pack, resting alongside the trail. They were unaware that the assistant guide had gone off on his own and didn’t connect the pack to him. Curious about its contents, they inspected it closely and wondered who the owner was. It looked as if it hadn’t been there for long, so they scanned the area as Johnson mused why someone would leave a fully loaded pack in the open. They returned to the group and told Duncan what they had found. Duncan didn’t make the connection either and followed them to the trail, with the guide Javier Costa bringing up the rear. As soon as they got to the pack, the guide said, in English, “That Antonio’s.”

“Who’s Antonio?” Peeples asked.

“The assistant guide,” Duncan said.

Costa, Suarez’ boss, smiled with understanding. “Yes,” he said. “He didn’t have anything to do so he went on ahead.”

“Why would he leave his pack here, in the middle of nowhere?” Johnson asked.

Looking at the pack, Duncan said, “Maybe it was slowing him down. I’m sure he’s up ahead somewhere. Let’s go back and keep looking for carcasses.”

Duncan’s new instruction to the group was to be less thorough if it meant they could cover more ground. As a result, it took everyone about an hour to reach the trail and from there they spread out evenly along either side and got to within a hundred yards of Suarez’ skeleton stash when he showed up, trotting down the trail with a fishing pole in one hand and a machete in the other. He was walking when he first saw them and picked up the pace to intercept them before they reached the skeletons.

He didn’t want anyone horning in on his opportunity and was afraid the professor would claim his find without compensation. Of course, he didn’t know what they were looking for. He’d only been told that his boss wanted him to translate and represent them for several days with Americans. And since he was preoccupied with starting his own business, he didn’t care. He was doing it strictly for the money. One day in the near future, he was going to work with wealthy sports fishermen from America and make a ton of money. That was his plan.

His boss’s plan was to expand his business. And he sometimes took on jobs like this for less money because the job would last a week, and payment would be a certainty since he’d gotten half up front. It helped to pay for the loan on his boat and put food on the table for his family.

Duncan asked Suarez whether he’d seen anything unusual during his hike. The assistant guide was puzzled.

“Anything unusual?” he said, as if not understanding the question.

“Yes, dead animals. You understand what we’re trying to do, right?”

“Not really,” he said. “My boss said we’d be guiding you in the forest, but he didn’t say why.”

“We’re looking for a particular insect that we think scavenges the bodies of dead animals.”

“Like flies and ants?”

“More like cockroaches,” Duncan said. He held his thumb and forefinger apart to indicate the length of
blaberus
. “They’re about this diameter,” he added, using his forefinger to form a small circle.

Suarez immediately grasped what this meant. The carcasses he found were what Duncan and his group were looking for.

“Those must be big
baratas
,” he said. “I’ve never seen any that big, just the regular kind.”

Duncan asked how far Suarez had gone and what he could tell him about the terrain. Suarez said it was more of the same but that he hadn’t gone very far.

In
Portuguese
, Costa whispered, “You were gone all morning, and you didn’t go very far?”

Suarez shrugged and tried to retrieve his backpack, but Costa stepped in front of him. He gave him a critical eye and asked why he’d left his backpack if he didn’t go very far. Duncan, who spoke Spanish fairly well but not Portuguese, wasn’t certain what was being said because the two spoke barely above a whisper, and their words flowed quickly, but he could tell the boss wasn’t happy with what his employee was saying. When the conversation was over, Costa spoke to Azevedo. He told him in
Portuguese
that his assistant had found several carcasses and hid the skeletons. When Azevedo told this to Duncan, Duncan took Suarez aside and asked him to show him the carcasses.

“You haven’t done anything wrong,” he said. “You didn’t know what we’re looking for. But I need to see these carcasses. Did you notice any cockroaches on the ground or anything?”

“No, I didn’t notice anything like that. But I wasn’t looking for them either. I was mostly working on the carcass to get the skeletons out. I put them under a tree and covered them with palm leaves.”

Suarez led Duncan, Azevedo and Costa to where he’d found the carcasses while the group continued to forage through the underbrush. Scattered on the ground were handfuls of dead blaberii. Costa picked one up and, after examining it closely, announced “
barata grande
.” Azevedo shook his head and, speaking Portuguese, explained that the insects were not big cockroaches but a new species. When Azevedo mentioned that the insects had devoured the animals’ flesh, Costa threw the insect on the ground with disgust.

“You’re kidding?” Suarez asked.

“Not at all,” Azevedo said. “We think they are scavengers, but we’re not certain. We don’t know much about them. We used to think there were only a few of them, but as you can see, if they’re capable of scavenging mammals of this size, the colony must be large.”

Duncan returned to the group, which was now within two hundred feet of the carcasses, and was met by Maggie Cross, who waved at him wildly.

“You have to see this,” she said, breathlessly. “We’ve found several carcasses, all of them on this side of the path.”

Nearby, Cody Boyd had stripped the hide from a juvenile peccary and was examining the skeleton with a small magnifying glass. Duncan approached him as Cross and Hamel gathered around them.

“Look at this,” Boyd said, handing the magnifier to Duncan. “It looks like tiny tooth marks or something like it on the bones.”

Duncan squinted through the glass and handed it to Cross, who squeamishly peered through the glass while Boyd held the skeleton. Hamel gave it a casual look and returned the magnifier to Boyd.

“I’m not sure how those marks got there,” Duncan said. “I’m not sure their mandibles could have done that. You know, they’re not teeth marks.”

“I was thinking it could be from their forelegs with those wedges or whatever you call them on the tips. They’re a cutting instrument,” Boyd said. “Professor Azevedo said they’re like little axes. Maybe that’s what caused the marks.”

Duncan nodded in agreement. He asked Cross how many other carcasses the group found.

“Six, at least,” Boyd said. “All of them skeletons inside hides that were largely untouched.”

“Yeah,” Duncan said, absently. “Maybe they consume the flesh from the inside out, you know, they crawl in through the mouth, anus, ears, nose, any orifice.”

“And they must work quickly because I could find no evidence of beetles, much less maggots. And I looked,” Boyd said. “Steph did, too.”

“If they work that fast, then there must be a lot of them, don’t you think?” Rankin said.

“Makes sense,” Boyd said.

“I wouldn’t be jumping to conclusions yet, but we have to include it as part of our hypothesis. I think the big question remains, though.”

“Whether they killed the animals, too?” Boyd said.

“Exactly. These skeletons we’ve found basically show no trauma, so it’s not as if they were killed by predators. If they were, their hides would be all torn up and their bones would be scattered, not intact,” Duncan said.

“Wouldn’t that make the insects predators?” Rankin asked.

“It would,” Duncan said quickly, noticing that Cross was growing anxious about the conversation. “But we’re not there yet.”

Seeing that everyone had gathered around him, Duncan instructed them to join Azevedo and the guides, forgoing the search. He was convinced they were moving in the right direction.

33

Suarez watched nervously
as Duncan and Azevedo cleared the palm leaves concealing his skeletons and handled them. He was afraid the perfect specimens would fall apart, and he’d be left with nothing but a pile of bones. While Boyd filmed, Duncan and Azevedo separated the skeletons and examined the tapir with the magnifier. Suarez nervously turned away as they dangled it by its tail. To make things worse, after they concluded their examination, others in the group lined up to get their look. Suarez thought of interceding but was uncertain about his role and was afraid of angering his employer. So he remained in the background while the others pawed the skeleton.

By the time everyone finished looking, Suarez had calmed himself. They had treated the skeletons with scientific respect and left them none the worse for wear. However, he could not resist examining the tapir himself and was amazed to see the bones covered with thousands of tiny indentations. Now that he knew what he was looking for, he could make out the indentations without the magnifier and was gripped by the fear that this would make the skeletons worthless. Returning the magnifier to Azevedo, he frowned.

“Ahh,” Azevedo said, “you thought you’d be able to sell the specimens to a collector. Am I right?”

“Yes, I thought they were perfect,” Suarez confided.

“Well, I don’t know what to say since I’m not a collector, are you?”

“No. I just found them and thought they might have value. Now I’m not so sure.”

“Whether they do or not, we’re sure to find more of them. I wouldn’t worry about it now. You can’t take them with you, not with that pack you’re carrying. You can pick them up when we come back.”

“I suppose,” Suarez said, dejectedly. “It’s just that I thought I’d found a pot of gold, and now, it’s nothing.”

“You’ll get over it,” Azevedo said good-naturedly. “Anyway, there’s nothing you can do about it. Look at it this way, if the bones didn’t have those markings, you wouldn’t have the bones.”

Suarez smiled and covered the skeletons with palm leaves. His boss, however, wasn’t smiling, having overheard his conversation with Azevedo, which was conducted in Portuguese.

“Are you working for yourself or me?” Javier Costa demanded after Azevedo had moved away. “Because, if you’re working for yourself, you can forget about getting paid by me.”

Suarez straightened after replacing the last palm branch, smiling.

“I’m working for you,” he said sharply. “Besides, you need me. Who’s going to translate for you if not me?”

This brought a grin to Costa’s face.

“The old man, the professor. He speaks Portuguese and English. He’ll translate.”

This humbled Suarez, who apologized and told his boss he was done collecting skeletons.

“They’re probably worthless,” Suarez said dismissively. He made more money working for Costa than he would probably get for the skeletons. He needed to refocus on scouting for fishing holes, he thought.

While this conversation was going on, Duncan announced that they would converge on the side of the path where Suarez had found the tapir and peccary and try to cover several miles in time to make camp at a clearing that, according to his map, lay on this side of a tributary of undetermined size. It was depicted as a stream, but it could turn into a raging river during the rainy season, so he could not be certain.

“It looks like we’ll be getting our feet wet tomorrow morning.”