Insects: A Novel (9 page)

34

The camp buzzed
with mosquitoes and gossip when Maggie Cross crawled into Howard Duncan’s tent as dark descended. Duncan finished attaching the tent’s rainfly and followed her inside, zipping the screen entry behind him. The tent was a tight fit for two people and their gear. They brought their packs inside because Duncan said it might rain.

“Hell, if it rains we might have to evacuate to higher ground,” he mused.

Under the light of a headlamp that he attached to a cord at the top of the tent, Duncan spread his sleeping bag over their air mattresses and Cross laid hers on top.

Slipping out of their outerwear, they stretched out on the sleeping bags.

“This isn’t bad,” Cross said. “It’s almost comfortable.”

“Not too loud,” Duncan whispered.

Cross gave him a peck on the cheek.

“It’s not like nobody knows,” she said giddily.

Single and looking at his forty-fifth birthday, Duncan was like many men of his generation, who struggled to separate intimacy from sex. Cross, four years his senior, had, on the other hand, no such issues. Once she determined what she liked about a man, she became determined to see where the relationship went. Usually, through little if any fault of her own, relationships ended abruptly after only a few months. Some were too intense; others were simply mistakes.

This one, she thought, had promise, but she was not yet at the point of trusting him. She liked his looks, the way he wore his hair in a short ponytail, the light brown color of his eyes, his overall fitness, and the fact he was taller than she. She had always been tall for her age, towering over her classmates until reaching high school where many caught up. At five-feet-ten, she preferred a man who was at least six feet, which Duncan was. Looking down at a man, especially in a relationship, never appealed to her. It made her self-conscious, and she hated it.

Additionally, mentally ticking off what she liked about Duncan, were his intelligence, his drive, his lack of vanity and his evenhandedness. Her friend George Hamel could tell she was infatuated with Duncan from the start. He was barely five-foot-six, and when he first met her, he thought of a possible fling but realized quickly that he wasn’t her type. Though clever and quick on the uptake, he lacked any attributes that she required in a relationship. Plus, he was dependent on her goodwill for his livelihood, such as it was. Her manservant. Hamel felt they had a good relationship, one without pressure from either side though he also felt she would miss him should he leave, or so he told himself and her, occasionally. Looking around his tent, lit by a flashlight, he wondered whether coming on the trip was a good idea. He hated being a fifth wheel and yet that’s exactly what he was. But he didn’t dwell on it since he had to make room for his tent mate, Professor Azevedo.

Cody Boyd and Carlos Johnson pitched their tent next to the tent shared by Stephanie Rankin and Allison Peeples. Both were within thirty feet of Duncan’s tent, and it wasn’t long before the two women could be heard stifling giggles.

“What do you suppose they’re laughing about?” Boyd wondered.

“What do you think?”

“Howard and his girlfriend?”

“Lucky guess. I just hope if they get it on, they don’t make a lot of noise.”

“If?”

Johnson smiled and nodded.

“It makes me horny thinking about it,” Johnson said.

“You bring earplugs?”

“Yeah.”

“Put ‘em on and read your Kindle.”

“I don’t think I’m tired enough. Just because it’s dark, you know, I’ve never been in a rainforest at night. Have you?” Johnson asked.

“Yeah, a coupla times. Why?”

“Well, I wonder what it’s like, you know, the sounds, the night sky.”

“Like my dad used to say, ‘nothing good happens after dark.’”

“I’m sure he was referring to a different context.”

“Mosquitoes.”

“Mosquitoes? What about mosquitoes?”

“There’s millions of ‘em.”

“So, we got Deet. And we got headlamps. You’re just being a pussy.”

“Am not. Besides, there’s predators out there. Jaguars.”

“I’m not talking about hiking out into the wilderness. Just a little look see, you know, just follow the trail back the way we came. Don’t you have any sense of adventure?”

Boyd stopped himself from protesting Johnson’s characterization of him. He’d had adventures, climbing in Colorado, traveling in Europe. But he understood Johnson’s point. What if this was his first and only week-long trip into the rainforest? Wouldn’t he regret not having experienced it fully rather than curling up at night in a tent? He thought that way at times, not so much about the here and now, but what he would think of it later. He didn’t like the idea of regret. Sometimes you get only one chance to do something and if you don’t take it, well, that’s where regrets come from.

“I’ll think about it,” he said, finally. “There they go again with the giggling.”

35

Johnson and Boyd
emerged from their tent near midnight, the darkness enveloping them. The glow from their headlamps, set to the lowest illumination, cast a dim semicircle on the ground as they moved uncertainly toward the path that they’d come in on. Roots crossed it, and the surface in places was made uneven by floodwater.

Switching their headlamps to a greater illumination, they made their way down the path and away from the river, quickly becoming aware of how different the forest sounded at night. Rising above the constant buzzing of insects were howls of monkeys, screeches and the low bellowing of peccaries. Although they couldn’t hear them, they sensed the huge vampire bats flying about. They heard the crunching of dried leaves and twigs made by foraging animals. Given the site’s proximity to a river, anacondas might be tasting the air with their tongues for prey. The farther they walked, the more sensitive to the noise they became, unlike in the daytime when the noise was so constant that their brains filtered it out. As if by instinct, they simultaneously put their headlamps onto full brightness. They’d traveled less than two hundred feet from camp, and already they felt a creeping fear of what they couldn’t see.

“I’m not sure this is such a good idea,” Johnson whispered.

“What? I couldn’t hear you. Why are you whispering?” Boyd sounded angry, but he was just anxious.

“Think we should head back?”

“What are you afraid of?”

“Well, lots of stuff. I hate it when I can’t see anything. There’s so much noise, I can’t tell where anything is coming from. Hell, far as I can tell, there’s a jaguar three feet away.”

“Don’t be silly,” Boyd said, “We’d see its eyes. Besides they’re rare. I’d be more worried about peccaries. You know, they travel in groups, and they’re like badgers. You don’t want to get in their way.”

“I thought they were like javelinas.”

“Javelinas are peccaries,” Boyd said. “And they’re supposed to be dangerous.”

“I don’t know. I was in Texas once, and there was a group of javelinas crossing a road, and I got out to take pictures and they just ignored me. They saw me for sure, but they didn’t attack or anything,” Johnson said.

“Well, I’ve never been to Texas. Maybe the peccaries in Brazil are different. Anyways, they got tusks, and I don’t mess with anything that’s got tusks.”

They walked a little further and stopped, using their headlamps to scan the area around them. They could hear movement in the underbrush nearby and Johnson, who had kept one hand in his pants pocket wrapped around his folding knife, pulled it out and flipped open the thick blade.

“What did you just do?” Boyd asked quickly.

“I just opened my knife.”

“You’re kidding,” Boyd said, turning his headlamp to get a view of Johnson’s knife.

“Nice knife,” he said. “What are you gonna do with it?”

“I don’t know. It just makes me feel safer. Do you mind?”

“No, not at all,” Boyd said. “But, you know, man, it’s just way different from the day time.”

“And scarier. Now that you know, why don’t we head back?”

“Let’s go a little further.”

Johnson’s discomfort level was nearing its limit. But he told himself that his fear was irrational and that Boyd would lose respect for him if he chickened out, especially since they were going to go only another hundred feet to a towering Brazil nut tree.

“Just look at this thing,” Boyd said, his head turned toward the sky, the light of his headlamp disappearing in the darkness.

“Jesus,” Johnson gushed. “I can’t see the top, can you?”

“It’s like it’s swallowed by the darkness.”

Suddenly, there came a whooshing sound and a loud thud as something heavy crashed to the ground between them.

“What the hell was that?” Johnson said loudly, jumping backward.

Boyd surveyed the ground where the sound had originated. Lying embedded in the soil was a coconut looking thing about a half-foot in diameter. He picked it up while Johnson watched, moving closer now that the mystery had been removed.

“It’s heavy,” Boyd said, handing it to Johnson. “Lucky it didn’t hit you on the head.”

“This is a Brazil nut tree, right?” Johnson said tentatively.

“Not sure. That doesn’t look like any Brazil nut I’ve seen.”

“Yeah, but a pecan doesn’t look like a pecan shell either.”

“We should take it back with us,” Boyd said.

“Works for me,” Johnson said, who wheeled on one foot and started a brisk walk back to the camp.

“Slow down,” Boyd said as he caught up with him. And with the next step came a peal of thunder that seemed to shake the ground, and rain started to fall in a torrent. By the time they’d retraced their steps, they were soaked and struggled to undress in the cramped tent while rain bounced off the rainfly like BBs. Though the air temperature was in the low eighties Fahrenheit, they shivered as they wrapped themselves in their sleeping bags.

36

Rankin shared her
gin with Peeples after settling in for the night. They heard Johnson and Boyd as they left their tent.

“Where do you suppose they’re going?” Peeples asked.

“I don’t know, maybe they’re going to pee.”

“Guys don’t do that.”

“They don’t pee?”

“No, they don’t go to the bathroom together. Haven’t you noticed?”

“Of course, I’ve noticed,” Rankin protested.

Rankin sipped and passed the flask to Peeples. They laid on their sleeping bags and listened to the forest for a moment. Rankin grew pensive.

“I think one of the guards was trying to watch me go to the bathroom this afternoon.”

“What? Really? Did you tell Duncan?”

“No,” Rankin said sheepishly.

“Why not? You should have. Are you sure about it?”

“I’m pretty sure he was trying to watch me. I made eye contact with him, and he turned away.”

Peeples handed the flask to Rankin.

“Have another. I wonder if they watch me? I mean, it never occurred to me someone might be watching me.”

“The only reason I noticed,” Rankin said, taking a sip and handing the flask back, “was because I heard a crack like a branch breaking or something behind me.”

“And then what?”

“Well, I shouted ‘who’s there?’ and then ‘
quien esta ahí?
’ and then I remembered they don’t speak Spanish, but the guard pretended to be tying his shoe and left. But I’m pretty sure he was watching me. So you better watch out.”

Peeples rubbed her chin and wondered whether they should warn Cross. She didn’t want to jump to conclusions.

“Maybe we should wait and see if it happens again.”

“You don’t believe me? I mean, why does it have to happen twice? This isn’t an experiment.”

“Sorry, you’re right. Let’s tell her in the morning. I doubt it will happen again tonight.”

Rankin agreed and started feeling the gin take over her body. She laughed to herself.

“What’s so funny?” Peeples asked.

“Oh, nothing. Okay, I wonder what Cody and Carlos are doing about now?”

“Which way did they go?”

“I think down the trail. Trail? What a joke. It’s nothing but some stomped down grass and dirt,” Rankin complained.

“I don’t know. It got us to this place, a pretty good place to camp. Not under a big tree. Level, soft ground. You do enough camping, and you learn to appreciate simple comforts.”

“I suppose. Were you a Girl Scout? ‘cause I never was. The only camping I did before coming here was with my parents on summer vacations. I love nature, but I’d just as soon stay in hotels.”

“I was a serious Girl Scout. I loved hiking and camping. I still do, and maybe someday I’ll do it again, but now everything is about finishing my doctorate,” Peeples said.

“That’s what it’s all about, isn’t it? Does it ever end?”

“Not that I can see. You just have to be sure you really want it because if you don’t you’re going to be miserable for a long time.”

“Oh, fuck,” Rankin exclaimed loud enough that Peeples held her index finger to her lips.

“What?”

“I just thought of something funny,” Rankin said, slurring slightly.

“What?”

“What if they’re going out to masturbate?” Rankin said, grinning.

“What? What are you talking about?” Peeples said, exasperated.

“Oh, c’mon. Guys can’t go for long without relieving their tension. It’s normal. Natural.”

“Why would you think that’s what they’re doing? I don’t get it.”

“I’ve got two older brothers. I know.”

Rankin raised her head, glanced at the low ceiling and then slumped. She sighed deeply.

“On one of our summer vacations, we had a campsite—we had one of those folding tent trailers—and I followed my brother who was thirteen at the time—I was eleven and a half—when he went down this trail—we were in Minnesota—and I followed him, and wouldn’t you know he was standing alongside a tree with his thing out and pumping away.”

Rankin grinned broadly, showing no teeth. Peeples gave her a puzzled look.

“You really are a different person when you’re drunk.”

“Tipsy,” Rankin volunteered. “But they’re probably just out for a walk in the woods.”

Rankin loosely covered herself with the top of the sleeping bag and fell asleep quickly. Peeples looked at her as if she were a stranger.

“I had no idea,” she whispered under her breath. “Wow.”