Prologue
“You have to understand. We didn’t
mean to kill him. We just didn’t know any better . . . back then.”
Nathan Jones felt himself tense up
in the cozy microfiber embrace of his favorite recliner and pinched the sting
out of his eyes. Was he talking to himself? He dabbed his budding tears away
with a tissue, then looked up, a little startled, as the doorway facing him
filled with a familiar form.
“Hey, Pops. You ready?”
At forty-two, his son Martin’s tight
afro was as dark as ever—unlike his own still-thick hair, which was grey on the
sides and speckled on top. With a melancholy pang, Nathan remembered that
Martin’s soft, kind eyes were a tribute to his mother. May she rest in
peace.
Martin leaned down smoothly and made
an adjustment on the tripod that supported the camera pointed at his dad.
His athletic build, Nathan thought proudly—that’s all mine.
“You sure you’re up for this, Pops?”
Martin asked, gently.
“Ready as I’ll ever be,” Nathan
said. It took an effort to hide his welling emotion.
“It’s recording to hard drive, Pops.
I’ll edit it later. You can talk all day if you want.”
Nathan nodded, and then collapsed
the recliner’s footrest as he swung himself forward and leaned toward the
camera.
“You want me to stay while you tell
it?” Martin asked.
“That would be nice, thanks.”
“Okay, Pops. Don’t worry. I think
you need to get this out once and for all. It’ll be good for you.”
Nathan sighed heavily and rubbed the
side of his face. “Okay, then . . . once more, from the beginning. . .”
The
Amazon, 1965
“Hey, Nate. Remind me why I
volunteered for this trip.”
“I dunno. ‘Cause you’re dumb?”
“That must be it.” Mark Jones
slapped his hand to the back of his neck. Sweat splashed from between his
fingers and a well-fed mosquito flew off to a safe distance. “Why aren’t they
biting you?” He inspected his empty hand for casualties, and then wiped
the sheen of sweat onto his pant leg.
Despite being fraternal twins, Nate
and Mark were about as different as two young men could be. Nate glanced at
Mark’s auburn-grey skin, and held up the back of one of his own hands by way of
comparison. Nate was tall, thin—and as their Aunt Clara always said—”nearly as
black as a Negro could be.” Mark was short and husky with auburn-tinted hair, a
“red Negro” on Auntie’s color scale.
“Maybe they don’t bite me because
they like lighter meat,” Nate said. “Maybe I’m too spicy for them.”
Nate’s strong, angular features
contrasted sharply with Mark’s round, less defined face. Mark’s dull, faraway
eyes and slow words hinted at dimwittedness. But Mark wasn’t dumb. Mostly,
Nathan mused, he was just a big goof-off.
“Oh yeah?” Mark thumbed at the
expedition leader, who stood to one side, directing the packing of the group’s
equipment onto the backs of their five mules. “Then why don’t they bite him?”
Nate smiled at Professor Gwyn
Wogan’s unusually pale complexion and wavy red hair—a source of quiet jokes
among their native Indian guides. They had taken to calling him “the ghost”
behind his back.
“Skeeters like it less spicy,
not totally bland. Ask ‘em if you don’t believe me.” Nate winked at his
brother and got a smirk and lowered headshake in reply. “You using the bug
spray?”
“Naw. Makes me itch.”
“And those mosquito bites don’t?”
“Naw, those itch, too.”
Nate looked at his brother and shook
his head. He scanned the remnants of their camp. Clingy tan soil was exposed
beneath the cleared undergrowth. Well-spaced tree trunks disappeared into the
misty ceiling of the tropical rainforest. A muddy path led down to one of the
myriad tributaries that coursed through the Amazon.
Mostly, Nate eyed the seven
Americans and three Indians that completed their motley group of twelve. Except
for the professor, his long-haired assistant Scott Campbell, and Charles
Hawley, who represented the company that sponsored the expedition, the
Americans were all student volunteers. Nathan and Mark were the only blacks and
the only undergrads—two social stigmas that ranked them only slightly above
their native Indian helpers in the team pecking order.
Four of the Americans—Arthur, Duke,
Frankie and Hugh—were grad students hoping this trip would pad their resumes
and improve their career prospects. Hawley was tagging along in case they
discovered anything of value. If they did, ADR Chemical wanted immediate
closure, meaning containment and perpetual mining rights.
Nate watched Professor Wogan work.
At 5’8”, the professor was trim, energetic, and corded with muscles. Nathan
squeezed one of his own rock-hard biceps and wondered if he would be in as good
shape when he reached his mid-fifties.
His gaze swung skyward, but his mind
drifted back to Wogan’s sophomore class in Geochemistry at Cornell. They
quickly found the professor’s generous grading scale to be only one of the
course’s attractions. Not only did he create interest in the subject, but he
also shared alluring tales of previous students who had achieved wealth and
success through modern-day prospecting, or by selling their skills to the
petroleum industry.
If Nate had known then what he was
just beginning to understand—that the vast majority of prospectors returned
home frustrated and penniless—he would have prospected a summer job at the
university library. Instead, he was serving as an unpaid pack-bearer for a
professor whose only real, measurable success was in the classroom. How had
Wogan persuaded an industrial giant to sponsor a grant for him to prospect in
the Amazon, anyway?
Raised voices and another neck-slap
from his brother jerked Nathan out of his reverie. He stood up from the stump
he sat upon, grabbed his pack from the ground by one shoulder-strap, and
motioned his brother to follow him to the source of the noise.
It was nothing new. For the last two
weeks, the guides had argued for better wages on a daily basis. The farther
they led the group from civilization, the more their demands increased.
The Indians, dressed in ragged
shorts—their only concession to civilization—gesticulated threateningly in
Wogan’s direction as the professor shouted back at them, red-faced with anger
and frustration. The native translator stood between the two factions with
outspread arms as if to part the waters of the Red Sea, his head jerking back
and forth as he struggled to keep up with both sides of the verbal battle.
Other team members ringed the foursome in a loose circle. Everybody was aware
that the guides were bargaining with the lives of the expedition. Paying them
too early or promising too little could threaten their willingness to lead the
group home. For the guides, the forest was their home; they could slip
off into it at any time. Only the promise of payment kept them from doing so.
As the two brothers drew closer, the
translator threw up his arms, turned his back and stomped off to the edge of
the clearing. He sat on the tree stump Nathan just vacated, concern etched in
the furrow between his wide-set brown eyes. With their translator gone, both
sides launched a few more shouts and gestures but then recognized the futility
of any further effort. The two guides turned and stormed off, casting malignant
glances over their shoulders, hissing warnings like snakes.
Another step would have taken Nathan
into the loose circle of observers, but Charles Hawley glanced over his
shoulder and saw him coming. He sidestepped directly into his path, blocking
him from the group. Nathan almost stumbled into the man’s back, and briefly
considered slamming into him, as if by accident.
Instead, he brought himself up short
and turned to roll his eyes at his brother, who now stood behind him. Scott
Campbell glanced in their direction. He flung a beaded, blond hair-braid over
one shoulder with a flick of his head and said to Hawley, “Be cool, man.” Then
he stepped aside to make space, reached out to take Nathan by his elbow, drew
him alongside and collegially draped one arm over his shoulders. Mark stepped
to Campbell’s other side.
Hawley just shrugged and edged away
from him without so much as a glance in his direction.
The quiet ones are always the most
dangerous, Nathan thought to himself. Not
like that bigoted graduate student in their group, Duke, who can’t stop talking
about Malcolm X’s murder, and how some “righteous Son of the South” is going to
“do the same for Martin Luther King, Jr. someday.”
“You know, Campbell, you’re all
right,” Nathan said, “For a white guy, that is. When we wean your Scottish ass
off of that shortbread and butterscotch, who knows? You might even darken up a
bit.”
“When we get back home, swing by for
supper,” Campbell said, smiling. He dropped his arm from Nathan’s shoulders.
“When you taste my fried chicken, you’ll know we’re members of the same club.”
Campbell got both the inflection and
timing just right. If he had flubbed either, his taunt wouldn’t have come off
as a joke. It might even have backfired. As it was, they just glanced at one
another and laughed.
“I hired two guides in hopes of
avoiding this,” Wogan said, his eyes never leaving the guides, who now sat
huddled together at the base of a tree.
“Think they’ll desert us?” one of
the graduate students asked.
“Not a chance. I’m paying them six
months’ salary for two months’ work.”
“It’s still peanuts,” Nathan said.
The professor tore his eyes from the
pair and turned to face him. “Maybe to you. To them, a hundred dollars a month
is a fortune. I really can’t understand their problem. Twenty years ago, at the
end of the war, they’d have made fifty cents a day.” Turning to the group, he
said, “Just in case, we’ll post a guard at night. To keep an eye on our gear,
and to make sure nobody tries to sneak away.”
A couple team members groaned, but
most nodded soberly with understanding.
“Okay,” Wogan said, turning a circle
among them, “one more week and three more sites, then we’re all going home.
Sort out your packs, load the animals and let’s get going.”
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