Gideon disagreed with both of them. “Uh-uh. If he did that, everybody would see right through it, and he couldn’t live with that. My guess is, upset as he is, he’ll just laugh it off and go right on with the cruise. Too much pride to do anything else.”
As they approached their chairs, they were greeted first by trailing smoke that smelled a lot worse than marijuana, and then by a welcome of sorts.
“ Hola, the three musketeers return,” called Cisco, laughing away.
“The three mouse keteers,” chortled Tim. They were both pretty much pie-eyed.
“The three mosquitoes,” amended Cisco, engendering even greater hilarity.
“These guys are a laugh riot,” John growled as he sank into his chair and put his feet up on the railing again. John had a hard time disguising his aversion to drugs and drug-takers, not that he generally made any attempt to do so; no surprise, considering that hard-drug trafficking was one of his areas of expertise and he was familiar with both ends of the long, wretched chain and all the sorry creatures in between. “For Christ’s sake, that stuff really stinks,” he called. “It smells like a rainy day at the lion house. Go back to your Mary Jane, will you? For our sake, anyway.”
“No, come on, man,” Tim said amicably, “don’t be like that. This is really good stuff here.”
“High-quality chacruna,” said Cisco. “Gift of the gods.”
“ Psychotria viridis,” Tim explained, a professor in the making. “Mixed with tobacco and wrapped in a banana leaf. It’s not illegal, not even in the States, if that’s what’s bothering you, not that you can get any up there. Hey, pull your chairs over, why don’t you try some? It’ll mellow you out. Cisco’s got a ton of it.”
“Sure, come on over,” Cisco said, not quite as welcomingly.
“No thanks, fellas,” Gideon said for the three of them. He wasn’t quite as straight-arrow as John, but not very far behind. From the expression on Phil’s face, however, he could see that Phil was more than ready to try it just to see what it was like – there were few new experiences that Phil wasn’t open to – but decided to go along with his friends, at least for the moment.
“Suit yourself,” Tim said.
John, Phil, and Gideon retrieved their glasses from where they’d left them on the deck, and settled back, but John was unable to let things lie.
“Hey, Tim, you really ought to know better,” he said, not unkindly. “That stuff’s terrible for your health. Believe me, I know about these things. It’ll rot your brain.” His unspoken subtext was crystal-clear: Take a good look at your buddy there. Is that the way you want to wind up?
“Yeah, like that crap you guys are drinking is good for your health?”
“It may not be good for your health,” John called back, “but it doesn’t turn you into a zombie.”
Getting no reply, the three of them returned to their stargazing. Gideon decided on another aguardiente after all and poured himself a dollop. After being away from it for twenty minutes, he found that it stung his throat more than before, and he unscrewed the top of his water bottle to dilute it a bit.
Tim saw or heard him do it. “Hey, you want to talk about something that’s bad for your health, what about that stuff? Don’t you know that water’ll kill you? Every glass is like a nail in your coffin.”
“That’s true,” Cisco chimed in, “did you know that, like, every single person that ever drank it has died? Every single one! That’s why I never touch it.”
“That’s right,” agreed Tim. “And the bad part is, it’s one of the most addictive substances in the world, worse than crack. What happens is that once you try it even once – even a tiny sip – you’re hooked, and you have to have more. And then more. And more. You steal for it or kill for it; you can’t help yourself. And if you can’t get any more you go into withdrawal and you actually die.”
They were both cackling so uproariously they could barely get the words out, but that didn’t stop them. “And even if you do get more,” Cisco managed, “it don’t make any difference. You die in the end anyway.”
They were both collapsed with laughter now, unable to carry on, but Phil picked up the baton. “Never mind the biological aspects,” he said to John. “You know what water’s composed of, don’t you? Hydrogen and oxygen. And what do they make rocket fuel out of? Hydrogen and oxygen. I’m telling you, the stuff is too volatile to go anywhere near it, let alone drink it.”
Gideon smiled but John, pained, bared his teeth. “Phil, I wish, I wish you wouldn’t do that. What do you want to say things like that for?”
“Hard to say, exactly,” Phil said. “It might be because I love to see the veins stand out in your neck like that.”
TWELVE
As it turned out, none of them were right about how Scofield would behave the next day, although Gideon came closest. Scofield didn’t merely laugh off the incident of the lance, he acted as if nothing at all had happened. Appearing in the morning looking ruddy, bright, and well rested, he greeted everyone cordially and went enthusiastically at the buffet of cheese omelets, fried bananas, rice, salsa, and toast. When Maggie mentioned that they thought that it was a good idea to move their excursions that day to the north side of the river, he merely said, quite mildly, as if it were no concern of his, that that was just fine. It was obvious that he didn’t want to talk about the previous day, and his wishes were observed.
After breakfast, the Adelita moored at a narrow beach topped by a thirty-foot bluff. Cisco scrambled up it and went to see about arranging a meeting with the shaman of an Ocaona settlement about two miles to the northwest, on the banks of the Punte, another of the Amazon’s hundreds of tributaries. He returned two hours later with the news that the celebrated curandero Yaminahua would be pleased to grant them an audience. He – Cisco – suggested that they each bring along at least a liter of water. For people who weren’t used to it, a four-mile round-trip jungle hike in the midday heat was going to make for a long, exhausting day.
And don’t forget insect repellent, he added.
Say Amazon jungle to the average person, and a picture pops into the mind of intrepid nineteenth-century explorers in pith helmets, of giant leaves, thick, tangled vines, and hostile underbrush that has to be hacked through with a machete at every step. But except for the giant leaves, most of the virgin rain forest is far different. There are thick liana vines that hang from the tree limbs, yes – some sturdy enough to swing on, Tarzan-like – but they aren’t very tangled or really very prolific, and while a machete is sometimes useful, it’s hardly a necessity, because the canopy high overhead shuts out so much sun that there isn’t much undergrowth to contend with.
This is also the reason that what little is there is so huge-leaved; it’s their way of sucking in every possible mote of sunlight that does manage to filter through. Even the water lilies are as big as wagon wheels, five feet in diameter and able to support a small child, or more likely, a capybara or a python. The canopy effectively shuts out wind too, and the birds and insects are quiet during the day, so that there is a prickly sense of hushed expectancy, of something terribly important about to happen, although of course nothing does, aside from when a howler monkey occasionally lets loose one of its deafening hoots and every previously invisible bird within range flutters and screams in response before settling down again. Ninety-five percent of the time, though, walking in such a forest is like traveling through some surreal, silent, dimly remembered dreamscape.
“These big leaves and stuff,” Phil said, as the group made its way toward the Ocaona village, “and how still it is – it reminds me of this painter, what’s his name…”
“Henri Rousseau,” said Gideon, to whom the same thought had occurred. Still figures, giant, meticulously detailed jungle foliage, unseen mystery.