Night of the Jaguar (13 page)

She is smiling and pointing to the box and talking. She wants him to see something. He looks. In a room of one of the
wai’ichura
longhouses, two spirit
wai’ichuranan
are preparing to do
puwis
. (There is a louder humming, which always comes when something important is going to happen; he has learned that much.) But he has seen this
many times before. The dead spirits are always, always, preparing to do
puwis:
they kiss, they rub each other, they take off their stupid clothing, or most of it, and yet they never do any
puwis
. Of course, everyone knows that the spirits cannot do
puwis,
it is only for the living.

So these dead people spirits are lying down on the platform where they sleep, covered with a blanket, and the dead woman spirit is making noises, similar to what this kind of woman would make in life; he has heard this many times now from the Firehair Woman and Monkey Boy when they do
puwis
in their hut. Also Angry Woman and Hairy Face Man do it, but she makes a different sound. Moie knows that the spirits are not doing
puwis,
for the woman is not on her knees showing the man the dark folds of her
aka
to excite him.

In any case, he is no longer able to see them. He can only see a hole in the wall of the longhouse. A
window
is their word for this hole. The humming increases. Now he sees the man and woman again, and it is as if he has passed through this hole. Moie can do this, too, going through the walls, and so he knows that an
aysiri,
a sorcerer, is somewhere around. Yes, now he sees the
aysiri,
who has made himself small to go into the spirit box. The Firehair Woman is talking, talking, and Moie wishes she would stop, because this is interesting, for a change. The
aysiri
has a pouch in his hands, and Moie knows just what it is, a
layqua,
a spirit catcher, for he has one himself, although he did not bring it with him to the land of the dead. His is smaller and has bright feathers on it.

Now the
aysiri
’s head grows large, showing that he is very powerful, and Moie can see his spirit catcher more closely. He sees that there is a little spirit box attached to this
layqua,
in which the sorcerer can see the spirits being captured. He shakes his head, and thinks that the
wai’ichura
sorcerers must be stupid to need such a thing, since Moie or any decent Runiya sorcerer would of course
feel
when the spirit he was aiming for was captured. But he has to admit it is clever and interesting for the
aysiri
to come right into his spirit box and show all those watching how he captured the spirits and demons in it. Moie thinks that it is because there are so many
wai’ichuranan,
no one can tell who is an
aysiri,
so he shows his power to those who watch the spirit box, in case they have troubling spirits they wish to capture, or if they have an enemy whose spirit they wish to steal and bind in the box, then they would know whom to
consult. He is pleased with himself for having understood this; he understands so little of the dead people and their ways. Now there are demons dancing again, and loud unpleasant sounds, and he turns away.

“Do you understand?” Jenny asked again. “They’re going to make a tape of you. Like that private detective was taping Daniel and Lindsay?” She pointed to the TV screen and then mimed a video camera pointing at Moie. “They’re going to make a tape of you, so you can tell your story on TV. Maybe you’ll get famous and be on
Letterman
! Or
Oprah
!” He looked at her blankly, as he usually did when she had to describe something complicated.

“Oh, God, just wait here a second, okay? I’ll show you.”

She dashed out of the living room and down the hallway to Professor Cooksey’s rooms. To her surprise she found Kevin poking around the office.

“What’re you doing?” she asked.

“Looking for you. Want to go out somewhere?”

“Sure, where?” she said, a little startled. In her experience, Kevin was not one to propose amusing trips.

“Oh, I don’t know. We could go to the zoo. Hang out with Bill Kearney. Play with the animals.” When she hesitated, he added, “We could take the little guy along. He’s probably never been to a zoo.”

Jenny felt a wave of gratitude. That was
so
Kevin, she thought. Just when you were going to give up on him he’d do something real nice. She gave him a hug and said, “Sure, I just have to show him something.” With that, she grabbed Cooksey’s Panasonic camcorder from its shelf and checked the tape and battery.

“That’s a fancy unit,” Kevin said. “You sure you know what you’re doing with it?”

“Oh, yeah,” said Jenny. “I lived with this foster family once, this guy, Harold Logan, was like totally obsessed with that program
America’s Funniest Home Videos
? He would, like, make the kids do stuff, like crash their bikes and fall into pies, dumb shit like that. He was dying to win the grand prize, it was, like, thousands of dollars, and he kept
sending tapes to them and never got on the show. Personally I thought it was fixed. Anyway, I was the oldest kid, so he taught me how to use one of these because he thought it would be funnier if he was in the tape. Okay, so he set up this shot with a trampoline they had? He was a big fat dude. The kids were jumping off the porch roof onto the trampoline, climbing out the bedroom window and bouncing off it. That was the setup. Then he comes out of the window and jumps, and the deal was he rigged the trampoline to, like, collapse when he hit it. That was the stupid joke, right? But it didn’t collapse, and he comes off of it, boing, and flies through the air and crashes into the barbecue, which he had going for hot dogs and shit, and it goes over with the table he had the charcoal lighter on, and it spills and it catches him on fire. I mean, fuck, his hair and everything and his wife comes running out and tries to put him out with a pitcher of lemonade that she’s carrying, but he’s still burning, yelling curse words and everything, and finally she put him out with the hose. I got the whole thing on tape.”

“Did he win?”

“No, man, he was like all burned up, really ugly, and they would’ve had to, I don’t know, bleep out all the holy shit motherfuckers and all, so it could be on the show. And after that they took all the kids out of there for endangering.”

“Yeah, well, that’s show business.”

“I guess,” she said and carried the camcorder back to the living room, Kevin tagging along behind her.

She showed the camcorder to Moie. “See. This is like the one on the TV, except I think this one is better. What I was saying is they’re going to make a tape of
you
so you can tell your story on the TV.” With that, she pointed the camera at Moie. To her immense surprise, he let out a scream of horror and ran out of the room. Jenny stared after him in dismay.

“What’d I do?”

Kevin laughed and said, “Maybe he has stage fright. What’s this about making a tape?” Jenny explained what she’d heard at the meeting.

“Yeah, it figures,” said Kevin dismissively. “More public relations shit.”

“Well, do you have any better ideas?”

“Who me? Nah, I’m just a worker bee. So, do you want to go?”

“Sure. Let me put this back.”

She had just replaced the machine when Cooksey came into the room and looked at her inquiringly.

“I was just showing Moie what a camcorder was,” she explained. “We were watching the TV, and I said he was going to be on TV and I wasn’t getting through to him, so I brought it out, and you know what? He looked like I was trying to shoot him or something and he ran away. Shit, maybe he thought it was a gun.”

“Oh, I doubt that. I’m sure he knows what a gun is.”

“You think? Anyway, me and Kev want to take Moie to the zoo with us. Would that be okay?”

She asked hesitantly because of what had happened the last time Kevin and Moie were out together, but Cooksey seemed delighted with the notion. “What a splendid idea!” he said, smiling. “I’m sure that will be an interesting experience for all.”

She found the Indian in the old shed where he had chosen to sling his hammock, crouched on the ground, mumbling to himself and looking unhealthy in the light that streamed through the dirty green corrugated fiberglass roof. It took her a while to convince him to go and to explain what a zoo was. She mimed several types of animals—the monkey, the parrot, the tiger—while he stared. At last he collected the bits of bone and feather he had been fiddling with and replaced them in the woven bag he always carried. She had given him a FPA T-shirt and a pair of old Bermuda shorts she’d found in the house and she made him put these on, and a pair of rubber flip-flops, and then they joined Kevin in the VW van.

The drive to the zoo down in the south county was forty minutes, during which Kevin played a Metallica tape at top volume, while Jenny spoke to Moie. The Indian sat between them on the bench seat like a good child, looking straight ahead. He seemed to be in a trance, although Jenny was sure he was picking up on what she was saying. She kept hoping that somehow, if she talked to him long enough, even chatter, he would somehow acquire the ability to speak English. She had once shared a home with a kid who didn’t speak at all and she had done that and after a while he extruded a word or two, and she recalled how good that had made her feel.

Rupert was a big shot at the Zoological Society of Florida, so they
had cards that got them in free, and once past the gate, Kevin headed straight for the Metrozoo office, where he found out where his pal Kearney was working.

“He’s fixing some pipe near the petting zoo,” Kevin reported, and they walked down the path in that direction. It was a fine fall day, sunny with small clouds, and the zoo was pleasantly uncrowded. Jenny explained the concept of a petting zoo to Moie.

“It’s where kids get to touch the animals. Pet them.” She petted his arm to demonstrate. They passed a food concession and she bought a soda and a corn dog, offering Moie a bite and asking him if he wanted anything to eat. He put his finger on his mouth, which she had learned was the sign for not wanting to eat. She wondered what the opposite sign was. “Jeez, man, you never eat anything,” she said. “What’s up with that?” Then Kevin spotted Kearney kneeling over a valve box set into the pavement.

Jenny watched the men greet each other and submitted to the usual hug and the usual little grope. She didn’t care for Kearney, a small guy with smudged black plastic glasses, pale eyes, and a weaselly look. He had many ornaments pierced through his face and his arms were heavily tattooed, giving him the appearance of a malevolent Christmas tree. Kevin told her to take the little guy to see the animals, him and Kearney were going to talk some business for a minute, which Jenny thought was just a way of going off and getting stoned. She said nothing but felt a little blue because this was not going to be a fun trip after all but probably another of Kevin’s stupid deals. She started feeling annoyed at Moie, too, she always had to
mind
stuff, kids and animals and now this dumb Indian who you couldn’t even talk to….

She grabbed his arm and led him through the little gate into the petting zoo. There they met a white goat on the path. The goat stopped, stared, did a 180 in the air, and raced away at top speed, scattering families and knocking over a toddler. The herd of sheep raced in a tight mob to the farthest corner of their enclosure, where they packed into a tight pile bleating, their stupid faces occasionally popping up to stare before vanishing in a mate’s wool. The rabbits scrabbled and squealed their high-pitched cries; the two burros tried vainly to leap their fence. A zoo employee who had been showing a few children how to feed a calf from
a bottle was staggered when the calf tore away and went dashing back to its mother, bawling.

Jenny led Moie through the area, growing increasingly nervous, as it was clear that something was wrong. Every animal was going nuts, and the people were picking up screaming kids in their arms and running out of the place. Jenny saw fancy pigeons battering themselves bloody on the mesh of their cage. A pair of peafowl struggled clumsily into the air and alighted on a low limb of a live oak, the male filling the air with its demonic screams. As they walked, it dawned at last on Jenny that they were the locus of the worst of this animal pandemonium. She looked closely at Moie, but his deep black eyes revealed nothing but mild alertness.

“Okay, so this is a little boring, let’s go somewhere else,” she said, and then she spotted a sign directing them to Dr. Wilde’s World—Wonders of Tropical America exhibit. She read it aloud and exclaimed, “Hey, that’s where you’re from, Moie. Come on, it’ll be like a trip home.”

Dr. Wilde’s World was housed in a new buff- and aqua-painted building and was extremely high-tech, with voices in the air from the various exhibits and a giant TV screen showing the wonders of the neotropics. They were watching this show when Moie suddenly stiffened, rose from his seat, and walked out. She followed him, a little annoyed because the show was kind of interesting, and she preferred exploring the rain forest in the air-conditioned dimness rather than in the actual sticky-hot thing itself. They passed a restroom sign. Jenny made clear by signs and motions, as to an untalented dog, that she wanted Moie to stay put in this very spot and not move an inch. He was not there when she emerged. Fighting panic, she dashed past the huge tank of Amazonian fishes, past the poison frog display, past the toucans and parrots, and the coatis, and javelinas, until, with a rush of relief, she found him standing rapt in front of a larger glassed-in cage.

“That’s a jaguar,” she said. “It says here her name’s Anita.” She read haltingly from the card in front of the cage, but she could tell that the Indian was not listening, and so she stopped and stood silently by Moie, looking.

The animal was stretched out on a broad wooden shelf, seemingly asleep, but as Jenny watched, its nose twitched, its ears sprang erect, and it opened its golden eyes. In an instant it leaped down from its perch and
pressed its nose against the thick glass, staring at Moie. It panted; from its open mouth came a low, loud growl. Moie was making noise, too, a rhythmic chant, the same phrase repeated over and over again.