Lost in the Jungle (13 page)

Karl was a genius with the machete. He rapidly cut the split logs into the shape of oars and then carved them to the desired width and length. He formed concavities in the lower section of each one and whittled out comfortable grips for our hands. Kevin and I worked on the other pieces, cutting them down to the basic shape, and Karl finished them. Now we had to let them get thoroughly dry so that they would be light and resilient.

I proposed spreading them around the fire. ‘Otherwise we’ll be stuck here for eight days waiting like we did with the raft.’

‘It’s not good to dry them by the fire,’ Karl said, ‘but we don’t really have any other choice, short of time as we are. We’ll sleep here today and go on tomorrow.’

Since it was still early, Karl decided to go hunting.

‘What do you think, Karl?’ Kevin asked before he could go. ‘Maybe we should move the raft down a little closer to the Eslabon Pass, so that tomorrow we’ll have an earlier start, pass it by, and be on our way.’

‘Good idea,’ Karl conceded. ‘Maybe I’d better forget about hunting.’

‘No, that isn’t necessary,’ Kevin said. ‘Yossi and I will just pull it along by the rope.’

‘OK, if you think you can manage without me.’

Karl took up the shotgun and a few shells and marched off into the jungle.

Marcus insisted on accompanying us, though he was suffering again from the painful rash on his feet.

‘I think I just have to keep my feet dry,’ he said. ‘They hurt like hell.’

‘So maybe you should wait here,’ Kevin said.

‘Oh, no, that wasn’t what I meant at all. I’m coming to help you.’

We untied the raft and started dragging it by a rope fastened to its bow. The closer we got to the pass, the rockier the riverbank became and the harder it was to haul the raft.

‘We’d better get aboard and take it down out to the middle of the river,’ Kevin proposed. ‘You don’t intend to try going through the pass on your own?’ Marcus exclaimed in fright.

‘And why not?’ Kevin demanded. ‘It looks to me like it would be easy. We’ll stay in the middle and let the current carry us right between the rocks. We might take a few knocks, but that’s nothing to get excited about.’

‘We can’t do it without Karl,’ Marcus protested. ‘It wouldn’t be right. We promised that we were only taking the raft up to the pass. Anyway, Karl knows what he’s doing. He could show us the best – ’

Kevin interrupted him impatiently. ‘Karl doesn’t know the first thing about rafts.’

‘Well, four is still better than three. Please, Kevin, let’s wait for Karl.’

‘All right, Marcus, if you want, you can go back. Yossi and I can do it ourselves.’

Marcus was terrified, but he joined us. He and I boarded the raft, while Kevin remained in the water, gently pushing the raft toward the centre of the river. The water was already up to his neck before he hiked himself aboard. From there the current had its way. We started gaining speed. The centre of the river was far less rocky than it had been close to the bank, but Kevin had been wrong. We took more than a few knocks. We crashed into one rock after another, the raft tilting on its side. Both Marcus and I fell into the water and clutched the raft, afraid of being swept away. Somehow we managed to pull ourselves back aboard. Marcus was beside himself, pale, too rattled to speak. The original raft stood up well to the beating it was taking, but the logs we had added, using ropes instead of pegs, were beginning to come loose.

We made it safely across the Eslabon Pass, but we were without poles or oars and couldn’t row for shore. Kevin jumped into the water again, holding on to the rope that was tied to the bow. He managed to brace himself against a boulder and from there used all of his strength to pull the raft toward the shore. Together we hauled it up on a tiny beachhead and secured it.

Kevin regarded me smugly. ‘You see? A bad pass isn’t such a big deal.’

‘We did it!’ Marcus was exultant. ‘We made it on our own! Way to go, Kevin! You, too, Yossi!’

We walked back toward camp through the jungle. We were soaking wet. Marcus found walking difficult and complained of pain in his feet, which had gotten wet again. Suddenly a shot rang out. Karl must have bagged something. I raced forward, in the direction of the sounding. There was no trail, and I broke off branches, jumped over fallen logs, and crawled under lowhanging boughs. I was making a terrible commotion, when a horrible thought struck me: Karl was likely to think that I was some kind of wild animal charging through the brush.

‘Karl, Karl,’ I called out, ‘where are you?’

‘Here, Yossi, I’m over here,’ he roared.

I found him carefully studying a wide tree. ‘What were you shooting at?’ I asked. ‘Did you get anything?’

‘Ah, that was a mountain lion. It was too high up a tree. I missed it. But, look, Yossi, a rubber tree.’

Karl struck the tree with the machete, and thick white drops, like glue, came oozing out of the gash. ‘I can use it to fix my boots.’

The nylon thread with which he had sewn his boots together had already frayed.

We went back to the tent and got an empty tin can for the glue. We met up with Kevin and Marcus on our way back to the tree.

‘We bypassed the Eslabon,’ Marcus informed him excitedly.

‘Hey, that’s terrific, really. Was it hard?’ he asked nonchalantly.

‘Piece of cake,’ Kevin replied.

‘Terrific,’ Karl said, without the slightest trace of spite in his tone, ‘we’ll get an early start tomorrow.’

Within half an hour Karl had enough glue to fix his boots, and we went back to camp.

Marcus was lying in the tent. Kevin was turning the oars over to dry on the back side. Karl set the tin of glue down near the fire.

‘It has to harden a bit before I can use it,’ he explained.

Restless as always, he got out the fishing line and hooks. He rooted around in the loose earth of the jungle with the machete until he found what he was looking for, a nice fat worm. He baited a small hook with half of it and started fishing.

‘They’re nibbling, the little bastards, they’re nibbling,’ he said to me happily, and in a short while he had hooked a minnow. He cut the minnow in two and baited a large hook with half of it, using thick fishing line.

‘Yossi, have a go,’ he urged, and went back to his cobbling.

I swung the baited hook over my head and cast the line into the river. I hadn’t even had the time to roll in the line when it went taut and straight. I had a large fish on the line; I could feel how hard it was pulling.

Take it easy, pal
, I thought,
you’re not going anywhere
.

I gently drew the fish toward me. From time to time I let out a little slack and then drew it in again. After a few minutes the fish tired and was easier to pull in. It was a catfish that weighed about ten pounds.

Karl was stooped over the fire and turned around to look at me.

‘Oh, ho,’ he called out, ‘what a beaut! You’re really something,
pescador valiente
[gallant fisherman].’

‘Don’t get so excited,’ I boasted. ‘I just started out with the small fry, now I’ll go catch a real fish.’

I removed the hook from the fish’s mouth and baited it with the remaining half of the minnow. Marcus went down to the riverbank with me to watch me fish.

The line was thick, but too short, only about thirty yards long. I tied one end to a tree branch. Again I swung the baited hook over my head, cast it into the water, and waited. The line was taut in my hand, and I could feel the steady tug of the current. Then something pulled hard. In an instant the line was pulled tight, humming like a guitar string. I had it wrapped around my finger, and it sliced through the flesh. Luckily I managed to free my hand. The branch was quivering, shaking, and then suddenly the line snapped and went slack. The fish got away with the bait and the hook.

I was stunned. I had done a lot of fishing in my time, but I had never felt that kind of pull on the end of a line. The fish must have weighed at least seventy pounds.

Marcus, too, was awed. ‘God, what a fish that must have been!’ he cried out.

I showed him my injured finger, and he hobbled over to the first-aid kit and carefully bandaged it.

Karl laughed when we told him about the big one that got away. ‘Just wait,’ he reassured us, ‘you’ll catch one of those yet.’

‘Yeah, and how will we go about that, Karl?’ I asked, ‘with twenty yards of line and two hooks? How could you have given and traded away all our fishing gear without leaving enough for us?’

‘Don’t worry, we’ll have enough,’ Karl waved me off.

I cleaned the fish I’d caught, and when it was ready, Karl skewered it on a green stalk of bamboo and tied it in place. He arranged two forked branches over the fire and hung the stalk between them. We slowly turned the fish, its fat dripping down and crackling in the flames. The flesh was tender and delicious. We could barely stand to leave a little for the next day.

Then Karl repaired the soles of his boots with the glue he had collected from the tree. When he finished, he lay down by the fire and fell asleep. From inside the tent I stared out at him: Karl, the jungle dweller, so at home in the wilderness.

In the morning Karl decreed the oars ‘ready to go,’ and we carried our provisions on our backs to the place where the raft was tied.

Rafting was heavenly. The Tuichi was placid, the day was lovely and warm, and the raft was easily controlled with the oars. We could manoeuvre it any way we wanted with little difficulty. After a while Karl pointed over at the left bank.

‘This was Don Matías’s property, but he doesn’t live here anymore,’ he said.

We went on. I called Karl’s attention to the fact that the
panchos
were very loose, and we were liable to lose the additional logs.

‘We’ll stop to look for another balsa tree and make some more
panchos
,’ he agreed.

We soon came upon a wide beach where it was easy to secure the raft. Kevin and I went with Karl. Marcus stayed aboard the raft. Karl strode into the jungle, looked up at the treetops, and picked out the distinctive large, clover-shaped green and yellow leaves of a balsa tree. He cut it down with two swift chops of the machete, but the tree was too young, its trunk too narrow. We wouldn’t get many
panchos
from its bark.

‘Take it to the raft and then come back,’ he instructed us. ‘I’ll look for another tree in the meantime.’

Kevin and I each picked up an end of the log but quickly threw it down as if it were a viper. It was covered with fire ants. We tried to shake them off the tree, but there were too many of them.

‘Make for the water!’ Kevin shouted. ‘Fast! Run! The sons of bitches!’

We ran, carrying the log, screaming and cursing, straight into the river. Marcus watched in bewilderment as we ran past him.

‘Fire ants!’ I called out to him by way of explanation.

The ants were still biting, even in the water, as we picked them off each other’s bodies. The swift current washed the rest of them from the log. Once we were rid of the ants, we laid the log down next to the raft.

‘You might as well go back alone,’ I said to Kevin. ‘I’ll stay here with Marcus and make
panchos
from this log until you come back with another.’

Kevin headed back, and Marcus and I set to work. With two sharp knives we peeled the bark away in strips, carefully removing the fibres that lay beneath.

‘I’ve been waiting for a chance to talk to you alone, Yossi,’ Marcus suddenly said. ‘Yesterday Karl told me he’s thinking of calling off the rafting and turning back. He claims that it’s too dangerous and that Kevin doesn’t know anything about rivers. He said that he’ll wait and see how it goes today and then decide whether to turn back or go on.’

‘In that case there’s no problem. We did beautifully with the oars today,’ I said.

‘Yes, that’s true,’ Marcus agreed, ‘but if Karl should decide to go back’ – he paused for a moment before going on – ‘let’s the three of us go on by ourselves. We can do it without him. If he wants to go back, I won’t be able to go with him because I can’t walk. My feet are getting worse every day. We’re wet all the time, my feet never dry off, and the rash has already spread all over them. We have to go on whether he’s with us or not.’

What Marcus said took me by surprise.

‘Don’t let it worry you, Marcus. We’ll all go on together one way or another. I don’t think Karl will call it off, but if he does decide to go back, we’ll have to go along with him. He’s the one with the most experience, and we would have a hard time getting along without him.’

Just then Kevin came out of the jungle by himself. ‘I can’t find him,’ he said.

‘So wait here with us,’ I said.

‘No!’ Marcus burst out. ‘One or the other of you has to go and help him. He’s not our servant. You have to help him. If my feet weren’t in such bad shape, I would be more than willing to go look.’

‘OK, OK, don’t get yourself all worked up,’ I said. ‘I’ll go.’ I found Karl dragging a young balsa log through the sand. Marcus was right; Karl was ticked off.

‘Why the hell didn’t you come back? Am I your slave? I’m always willing to do everything, but I can’t do it without help.’