Night of the Jaguar (44 page)

“They’re shipping dope in hollowed-out logs!”

“
Huge
fucking amounts of dope, with next to no danger that anyone is going to check a warehouse full of logs. I guarantee you that if you go to Ibanez’s yard down by the docks with dope-sniffing dogs and some simple tools, you’re going to hit the jackpot. I know you’re beat, but you should get on this right away. You’ll sleep a lot better knowing.
Oh, right, I almost forgot the bonus for making the right choice.” And he told Morales about Kearney the ecoterrorist, too.

In his hospital bed Moie speaks quietly in Spanish to the Firehair Woman. The
jampiri,
Paz, translates for them. They have come every day, and this is the last day, Moie thinks. He sees his death clearly now and the bright cords that tie it to his dying body. His wound is healing, yes, but all the
aryu’t
has run out of him, and he is hollow, like a fig drilled out by wasps.

He can also see the deaths of the woman and the
jampiri,
so they are not really
wai’ichuranan
any longer, and this is something he had not expected to see. They are marvelous deaths, clearly of great power. Moie did not know that the
wai’ichuranan
could change themselves in this way, or that they had such
jampiri,
which is why he was defeated. Jaguar has left him for that reason, and this is also why he is dying. He tries to tell the woman how to use what she has been given, but the language is too clumsy, and there are words and ideas that can’t be expressed in Spanish. He wishes that there was time for her to learn the holy speech. The greatest sadness is that his body will not be handled in the proper way and given to the river. Here in the land of the dead, he has been told, they bury the body under the earth, like a yam, which is disgusting, or else they burn it, as the Runiya do to a witch. The good thing is that the Firehair Woman says that the
chinitxi
are all dead and that the Puxto will survive.

“I would like to go back home,” he says after a long silence.

“When you’re better, Moie,” says the
jampiri
.

“I will not be better. What I mean is, when I am dead and you have burned my body, I would like to have my ash put into our river. We burn witches, but we don’t put their ash in the river, of course. Perhaps, if you do this, I will still rise to the moon to be with my ancestors.”

“She says she will do this for you,” says the
jampiri
. “She promises.”

“And take my bag of dreams and my medicine bag back there, too. Perhaps Jaguar will send another to be
jampiri
to the Runiya.”

“She will do that as well,” says the
jampiri.

Moie says to the woman, “You should be careful where your tears fall. An enemy can use them against you.”

Jenny Simpson and Jimmy Paz stood in the parking lot of the funeral home in which Moie has just been reduced to a can of ashes. Jenny had secured this can inside her backpack, which also contained some changes of clothing,
The Wind in the Willows,
Hogue’s
Latin American Insects and Entomology,
Moie’s sorcerous gear, an ultralight tent, a sleeping bag and pad, and twelve hundred dollars of the surprisingly large amount of money left to her by Nigel Cooksey. She was dressed for travel in denim cutoffs, a yellow tube top, and a Dolphins ball cap.

“You’re really going to hitch down to Colombia?” said Paz.

“Yep.”

“You could fly. You have money now.”

“I could, but I guess I want to take a long trip alone, think all this shit through. And I want to save his money, in case I want to get an education. He would’ve liked that.”

“There’s a lot of rough country between here and there. A lot of bad guys.”

“I’ll be fine.” She laughed. “All my life nobody ever gave a shit about me, and all of a sudden everyone’s looking out for my welfare—Cooksey, you, Lola, Moie.”

“Maybe no one saw your virtues before.”

She shrugged. “Last night…that was real nice, Lola throwing me a going-away party. She thinks I’m crazy to be doing this, doesn’t she?”

“Lola thinks a good deal of what people do is crazy. It’s her profession.”

“Word. And she doesn’t buy any of this, does she? What all happened, with Jaguar and stuff.”

“No, she’s on a different channel.”

“How will you, like, handle that?”

“With care. Love makes a lot of allowances. And Amelia knows. That’ll help. And my mom.”

“God, it’s so totally weird all this, all the deaths and how it all worked out. You know, you have a life, and even if it sucks, you think, that’s your life and it’s not going to change and then, bang! You’re a different person with a different life. What’s up with that?”

“What’s up with that is a ten-hour discussion and a lifetime of contemplation. Meanwhile, if you want to get on the road today, we better get started. I’ll drop you at the Bird Road exit on the turnpike. That’s probably your best bet going north.”

They got in the Volvo and drove west in companionable silence. Paz reflected that both of them were different from what they had been when they first met, both kicked into change by the gods rather more directly than God typically kicked humans into change. He was glad that it had happened, and he prayed fervently that it never had to happen again. Fat chance, he thought, and laughed to himself.

Paz parked near the freeway ramp. She kissed him on the cheek, promised postcards, and left. He waited while she thumbed. Long-legged redheads with knockout bodies do not typically have to wait long for rides, and before too many minutes had passed, an eighteen-wheeler hit its brakes with a great sigh, and she climbed into its cab. Whatever else he now was, Paz was still a dad and a cop, and so he wrote down its license number before it drove away.

Jenny settled herself in the passenger seat and smiled at the driver. He was a fortyish man with long hair, a bad shave, and deeply set, bright blue eyes sporting very small pupils. As he cranked up through his gears he asked, “Where’re you going, honey?” He had a Texas accent.

“Colombia.”

“In Carolina?”

“No, the country. In South America.”

“No lie? Hell, that’s a long way for a little girl to go all by her lonesome.”

She made no comment on that, so he continued the chatter. She answered when it would have been rude not to, and in response to his probings invented a set of plausible lies. They exchanged names: his was Randy Frye. Randy Frye the Good-Time Guy, as he announced. He liked to talk about himself, and he had lots of stories. By West Palm he
was confident enough to make the stories a little raunchy; by Yeehaw Junction, he was probing her sexual history (unsuccessfully) and accentuating his remarks with little touches on her shoulder and arm. By Kissimmee, they were such good pals that he laid his big red hand on her inner thigh, pat pat pat, squeeze.

She turned in her seat and looked him in the face. Randy Frye noticed that her eyes, which had been pale blue, were now lambent yellow with vertical pupils. Out of her throat came a sound that should not have had a home in such a throat.

Ararah. Arararararh.

The semi swerved momentarily out of lane, engendering angry honks from a nearly sideswiped van. By the Orlando interchange, Frye had just about managed to forget what he had seen and heard and had invented a story about a cold little bitch, probably a lesbo, wouldn’t fuck her with
your
dick…After that, without exchanging more than a dozen or so words, he took her all the way to Corpus Christi.

achaurit—
lit. “the death,” but also the visible spirits seen accompanying the living

ajampik—
the spirit world

aryu’t—
spiritual wholeness, the quality of a real human being

assua—Paullinia sp
.; a stimulant used in rituals

aysiri—
a witch

chaikora—Cannabis sp.
; a hypnotic

chinitxi—
demons

hninxa—
a sacrifice of a female child

iwai’chinix—
lit. “calling spirits into life”; a kind of dream “therapy” of the Runiya

jampiri—
animal spirit doctor; pl.
jampirinan

Jan’ichupitaolik
—
Jesus Christ, lit. “he is dead and alive at the same time”

layqua—
a spirit-catching box

mikur-ka’a—Petiveria sp
.; guinea hen leaf, a plant used in medicine and magic

pa’hnixan—
a sacrificial victim

pacu—
a giant bluegill

pisco—cane liquor

Puxto—the region, the native reserve

Runiya—Moie’s people, lit. “speakers of language”

ry’uulu—
mahogany

ryuxit—
harmony; the life force

siwix—
disharmonious, taboo

t’naicu—
amulet

tayit—
honorific title

tichiri—
a guardian spirit inhabiting the dream world

tucunaré—
the peacock bass

uassinai—
a plant substance of unknown origin used with other hypnotics in ritual

unancha—
a totem or clan symbol

unquayuvmaikat—
lit. “the falling-down gift”; epilepsy

wai’ichuranan—
the dead people, whites;
wai’ichura
(singular)

yana—
hallucinatory snuff used in ceremonies

Jacket design by Eric Fuentecilla

Jacket photograph collage by Ervin Serrano:

leaves © by David Noton / Masterfile,

jaguar by Renee Lynn/Getty Images