Roosevelt's Beast: A Novel (25 page)

Except these weren’t Mayflower names. Noara … Takakrorok … Teptykti … Kentyxti …

As Kermit stood listening, the chief lingered on one name, waited for an answering call, said the name again. When no one answered to it, this was the name that was passed from tongue to tongue.

“Anhanga …
Anhanga…”

Luz’s eyes met his.

“I must go to Thiago,” she said.

“Must you?” A strange half smile crawled through Kermit’s lips. “I mean, why worry the boy unless you need to? Anhanga may have—I suspect he’s just wandered off. I’ve done much the same thing myself at night.”

Only not in the jungle. Only a fool would go walking at night there. And the Cinta Larga were no fools. Even now they forbore to launch a search party until the sun rose. There was nothing to do, it seemed, but wait. Since Luz showed no inclination for company, Kermit went back to his hut. But the Colonel was still snoring away—he had managed to sleep through the whole alarum—so, rather than return to his hammock, Kermit seated himself against an acai palm and waited. From time to time he fell into a doze, thin and dreamless, but, each time, his head snapped him back.

Through heavy lids, he caught the first glimmers of light. First a pale aureole around the moon and then, from behind the forest, a swell of orange, turning the shadows into a tracery of fronds and boles. Somewhere, a vanilla vine was blooming.

The Cinta Larga rose without a word. Within minutes, the village was as empty as an old flask. Kermit took up his rifle and, with no clear intent or plan, began to wander through the clearing, circling hut after hut, waiting for something to snag his eye. At length, for want of an anchor, he settled on a path he had never noticed before: a wide, well-hewn gap in the jungle front. The villagers had done a fine job of keeping the jungle from reclaiming it: Even a man as tall as Kermit could travel down it without a care. The path kept its course—and concluded after ten or twelve yards in a plot of scorched, stamped earth pocked with holes and ligatured with roots. The Cinta Larga garden.

On any other morning, the village women would have been here, dragging the manioc and yams from the earth and stacking them in baskets. Today, it was only Kermit, swatting gnats and bees and spiderwebs and staring at the point just beyond the garden where a thin, tiny, jagged figure crouched in the early-morning shadows.

At the sound of Kermit’s boots, the figure swung toward him. A pair of marbled eyes swam out of the darkness. A small haggard face, a toothless mouth.

Bokra.

He had fallen to his knees in an attitude of pilgrim piety. It was only when Kermit drew nearer that he noticed the pomegranate-like stains on Bokra’s hands. Noticed, too, the trembling in his limbs and shoulders.

Something’s wrong.…

Then his eyes traveled to the region just below Bokra. Something human lay there. A hand. A foot. An elbow, a knee, the remains of a shoulder. With strange stubbornness, his mind resisted the idea that these things might once have been parts of a whole. It took seeing the look on Bokra’s face to make the connection.

“Oh,” Kermit whispered. “Oh, God.”

He grabbed for his rifle. But there was nothing left to fire at, was there? Only an accounting to be made. So he pointed the barrel to the sky and squeezed off a round.

Bokra shrieked and fell backward and lay cringing in the mud, muttering the same untranslatable word again and again. Around him, the forest swarmed into life. Flies went diving and wheeling, monkeys screamed, birds washed out of the trees in waves. The ground actually shook—human
feet
converging—and no tread was more familiar to Kermit’s ear than the one closest to him. That quick, delicate, light-footed gait that had led him through the jungle and back.

Thiago.

For the first time, Kermit recognized the disemboweled man on the ground, recognized the crop of black hair, the still-intact eyes—and, over the right eye, a white scar where the eyebrow should be. Kermit had seen an eye just like that on one of the village braves. The brave who had dragged his son away from the white men. The brave who would have done anything to keep his son from leaving.…

In that exact moment, Thiago came bursting through the trees, and Kermit caught him in his arms and angled him away from the body.

“Não importa,”
he whispered.
“Não faz mal.”

Never mind. It’s all right. But from every quarter, the Cinta Larga were emerging, bows drawn, torsos tensed, and, unlike Kermit, they needed only a second to determine what had happened and who had done it.

“Bokra!” they shouted. “Anhanga!”

Kermit looked down at Thiago. The boy’s face was slack and rubbery, and his eyes had turned to the basest metal, but the reassurances kept flowing from Kermit’s mouth.

“It’s all right.… Never fear.…”

19

Bokra looked nearly dead himself by the time they dragged him back to the village. His face was drawn and gray, and his arms hung uselessly by his side as the braves threw him into the center of the plaza and kicked him about the ribs and thighs.

Luz came forward now to claim her son. She lowered her forehead to his and gazed straight into his eyes. Then she kissed him, once, on the tip of his nose and led him away.

“Muito triste,”
Kermit called after them.

Very sorry. But they kept walking.

From the chief’s hut, a single bark rang out. The braves stepped back, and a silence fell over the village as the chief, wiry and coiled, advanced on the condemned man. He muttered as he walked, and with each step the mutters grew in volume and coherence, until they assumed the shape of a chant or recitation.
A bill of attainder,
thought Kermit, enumerating every last crime.

“Good God!” The Colonel came stumbling out of their hut, twining his spectacle stems around his ear. “What’s all the hubbub?”

“It’s Bokra, Father.”

“That crazy old bugger? What’s he gone and done?”

Kermit paused. “Murdered someone.”

“Who?”

“Anhanga.”

The old man gave his head a shake. “You mean to tell me that little blind spaniel over there overpowered Thiago’s father? Impossible.”

“They caught him in the act,” said Kermit. “Red-handed. Red-
everythinged.
”

He stopped and slowly shifted his gaze toward the jungle.

“You don’t seem persuaded,” said the Colonel.

“Father, how would you like to view another crime scene?”

“Before breakfast? Very well, I’m your man.”

*   *   *

I
N KEEPING WITH TRIBAL
practice, the body of Anhanga was left exactly where it was. Indeed, no Cinta Larga would ever again lay eyes on it. The garden would be relocated; the trail would grow over; the jungle would gather the corpse back to its bosom; children would be warned never to wander there for fear of waking Anhanga’s shadow.

The two white men, however, had no such inhibition, and since no one stopped or even noticed them ducking down the garden path, they were able to find the body in a matter of seconds. They had only to follow the hivelike hum of insects whirling around Anhanga’s ravaged face and strafing the walls of his abdominal cavity.

“Remind you of anything?” asked Kermit.

The old man came to an abrupt halt. Then, in a soft and wondering gait, he began to circumnavigate the body.

“This can’t…” He lifted his voice to a more urgent frequency.
“This won’t do!”

“It’s been done.”

“We killed the Beast. We saw it die.”

“I know.”

“We saw it crackling in the damned fire!”

“I know.”

The old man leaned back against a trammel of epiphytes. “I can only think this is some—some gruesome sort of
prank.
It’s the only possible explanation.”

Kermit studied the tatters of his boot. “How would Bokra have carried out such a prank?”

“I dunno, ask
him.
Perhaps he poisoned Anhanga first. Disabled in him in some way, then … dragged his body here and set about…”

“But the blood, Father.”

“What of it?”

Kermit squinted up at the canvas of sky. “I beg you to recall that howler. Recall how it looked in the moment of its death. It was filthy, yes? Drenched. Fairly
robed
in blood. I was there, Father; I saw it
plunging
its head into its prey’s cavity.”

“And your point, Kermit?”

“My point is that disemboweling something—some
one
—emptying them out like that is not a clean business. It stains; it contaminates.”

“You said yourself Bokra had blood on his hands.”

“
Only
his hands.”

“Oh, bother, Kermit. He might have …
washed
himself, I don’t know.”

“Washed himself with what? His hands? Father, imagine you’ve stumbled across some body in the jungle. You don’t know whether it’s alive or not, so what do you do? If you have any sort of human feeling or curiosity, you kneel down. If you’re not too faint of heart, you
touch
the thing. All you need do is touch it once or twice, and you’ll have as much blood on your hands as Macbeth.”

The Colonel vised his hands around his skull. “That still doesn’t explain why Bokra was here in the first place. You’re telling me he just happened to find a body that everyone else missed?”

“I just happened to find it, too, Father. And Bokra had more reason than I.”

“What reason?”

“Ecce avis,”
said Kermit.

The morning shadows still lay thickly enough on the ground that the old man had to stare for several seconds before he discerned the corpse that lay next to Anhanga’s. A half-plucked harpy eagle, bundled into itself like a dead pharaoh.

“Bokra came here to bury his friend,” said Kermit. “Only he never finished the job.”

The Colonel stood for some time, scratching his whiskers.

“Well, you’ve still one problem, my boy. If Bokra didn’t kill Anhanga, who did?”

“The Beast.”

The old man closed his eyes. Tilted his head forward.

“Dear God, Kermit.”

“Father, please hear me out.”

“I have
heard
you out. There is no point in—”

“No, you must listen. What if we
didn’t
kill the Beast? What if we only killed the thing that harbored it? What if the Beast is something … separate? Something that
survives
the death of its host?”

“So we’re back to spirits, are we?”

“Not spirits. Not necessarily.”

“Then what?”

“I don’t know! Perhaps it’s some kind of
virus
that infects a particular creature, drives it to commit terrible savagery.”

“And when the host dies?”

“It moves to another. All it requires is some … some living creature to sustain it. It doesn’t matter what.”

“Then where is it now?”

“I don’t know. If I
knew,
I would—” Kermit stared at his empty hands. “It’s
somewhere,
Father. That much I believe. It’s biding its time, it’s…”

It’s in one of us.

The thought flashed on him with such force that he nearly buckled. His mind flew back to yesterday’s tableau: Four hunters standing over their quarry. Kermit bruised and Thiago battered. The old man punctured and leaking from the brow. Luz, painted head to toe in blood and viscera. Surely any of them could have been infected. Any of them might be walking around—at this very moment—with that seed inside.

And yet how monstrous to even imagine such a thing!

“Tell me something, Kermit. If you hadn’t seen Anhanga’s body, would you still believe the Beast was alive?”

“Yes.”

“Why?”

Kermit paused. “Intuition.”

“Can you kindly be more concrete?”

“I
can’t.
I can only tell you I
felt
it, Father. Last night. And down in that cave. And standing over the howler…”

“That chill of yours.”

“No, it’s more than that. This
creature,
Father, this Beast, it seems to speak to me—or else I’m able to
hear
it in some fashion. It’s as if—I don’t know, as if we’re eavesdropping on each other.”

“Eavesdropping.” With a grim smile, the old man joined his hands behind his back. “Why should you, Kermit—alone among mortals—be so magically attuned to this Beast? Is there some manual you’ve been studying? Some spiritual
medium,
perhaps, has been blessing you with the fruits of her instruction?”

“I appear to have a certain…”

“What?”

“Quality.”

“Which is?”

“Receptivity.”

“Well, that’s vague enough. To
what
exactly are you so receptive? I myself am most curious.”

Would it have ended differently if Father had imparted a different emphasis to the word
curious
? If he hadn’t lashed it with that whip of scorn? Perhaps then Kermit wouldn’t have felt such a sting. Perhaps he wouldn’t have hurried onward the way he did—past any hope of returning.

“I see Elliott.”

The old man took a step to the side. “You—”

“I know it beggars the imagination, Father. I know we’re not supposed to know of him or speak of him, but I’ve—I’ve
seen
him! Dear God, a good dozen times. Starting when I was thirteen. I’ve seen him at school, at home, in the woods. I saw him when we first started down the river; I saw him in the
cave
. For the longest time he’s been trying to tell me something or else warn me—
prepare
me. Now I think maybe it has something to do with this Beast, only I don’t know what. I don’t—I don’t know
anything.
”

As he spoke, he never once looked at his father. There was no need. Everything he needed to know could be heard in the old man’s tremulous voice.

“I cannot conceive of a more obscene joke than this.”

“It’s not a joke.”

“You have transgressed every boundary of decency.”

“Transgressed, yes, but not decency.”