"Get into the dugout, Ma. Please, hurry!"
There was a gunshot, not loud, but it had the malice of a poison dart and made a watery wobble and plop into the trees just behind us on the near bank.
"Where's Dad?"
"He's not coming."
Another gunshot, and more Indian squawks from Spellgood.
"Allie!" Mother called to him as she put April and Clover into the dugout. They covered their faces. They were so frightened they had no breath left to scream with. Jerry got in next, then Mother, who was still calling "Allie! Allie!"
I hopped in and shoved us away from the boat. We were only twenty feet from the bank opposite Guampu, but before we had gone halfway — one paddle stroke — a light settled on the cabin of the boat and lit it from behind. We were hidden by the boat, in its shadow, looking up.
Father stood and faced the light, and when he tried to cover his face, I saw that his hands were still tied.
"Communistas," Spellgood screamed. "Satanas!"
Mother said, "Allie — here! What's wrong with him?"
Father thrashed his tied hands against the cabin roof, beating the knots against the wood.
"Satanas! Diabolos!"
"Give me a hand here," Father said in a plain calm voice.
As he spoke, there was another gunshot. A moment before the far-off crack, there was a smaller sound, almost innocent, like a ripe plum dropping with a mush on the floor.
And Father went down on his knees saying, "I'm all right! It's okay! I'm alive!"
We had reached the bank. The kids jumped out, but Mother remained in the bow.
"Allie!"
"Don't leave me," he said. He lifted his tied hands. "I'm bleeding, Mother."
Mother snatched the paddle from me and in the same movement dug it into the river and shoveled us to the boat, while I held on.
"Who's there?" Spellgood said through his megaphone from across the river. He tried to find us with his light. "Who said that?"
Father groaned, and groaned again. "I can't move."
By standing up in the dugout on this safe side of the boat, we were able to roll Father over and topple him off the deck into the dugout. He gave an almighty yell, as if we'd broken his back, but we didn't hesitate. With one of his legs dragging in the river, and water spilling over the gunwales, we made it back to the bank, where the kids were waiting.
"Hurry," Mother said.
"I'm coming after you!" Spellgood cried.
Father said, "I can't get out of this thing."
Mother dragged him onto the bank and, still hidden from the Guampu shore by the shadow of our hut-boat, we untied Father's knots. But even with his arms and legs free, he could not move. He lifted his head, but the rest of his body lay heavily against the ground.
"Help me, Charlie," Mother said. "All of you — grab hold!" She yanked him through the bushes while we shoved at his legs.
There were more people on the far shore now. They must have heard the shouts. There seemed dozens of voices. They were calling out to us, and once or twice I thought I heard Emily saying my name. But the river was wide here, the Guampu shore fifty yards away. We moved along, not saying a word until we found the jeep. The voices continued from the other shore. It was as if they were lost and wounded and calling out for help in the darkness — not us.
30
DOWN THE DARK, leafy sleeve of road, with night pressing on our roof, the twenty-eight miles on the rutted track to Awawas seemed more like a hundred. Mother drove as fast as she could, slewing the jeep, grinding the gears. The rest of us sat in silence. We watched the birds roosting on the road and the kinkajou furballs with light-bulb eyes that froze in our headlong clatter. When Mother spoke, it was always to Father. "You'll be all right," she said. "I won't leave you, Allie."
Father did not reply. He was on the rear seat with his eyes half-open. The skid of mud on him from the riverbank gave off a stink like death.
Then, still dark, there was no road. We were thrown into a dead end of trees, ferns, bush tips against the headlights, the loud stomach of jungle. Mother shut off the jeep and cranked the brake. She climbed over her seat and made Father comfortable, talking to him softly, as if he was sleeping. She said, "You'll live, Allie."
With the headlights off we could see stars, the moonhole in the sky's blanket. The moon went down and branches laid cracks across it. There was no sun for a while, only a gray light that lifted and penetrated the trees like rising water, and waxed them with a blur of mist which, as dawn broke, was cut by straws of sun that thickened and blinded us. The surrounding jungle had changed each second, dark to watery, to misty, to waxy, to gray, thinly stripping the shadows from the jungle — a rising tide of light with a mirror behind it. It was as if, that whole time, we had been riding from darkness into light, slipping forward like scared people in a silent canoe, into this brighter place.
All the darkness had been bleeding out of the morning trees, becoming mud and water.
And dawn showed us that we were alone. The jungle at night was tall, and its cool gloom dripped darkness. But daylight here was pale yellow, broken by starved trees, with hot spots. This was a riverbank, and night foliage had become frail and top-heavy weeds. Ahead, where we had expected more jungle, was water, the Wonks, where all the darkness had been bleeding.
"Mother." His voice was like this fragile light.
I could not bear to see his goat-white face, the blood under his beard, the gluey crescents in his eyeslits. I walked to the river with Jerry, stepping over roots. There was a bullfrog at my feet. I wanted to jerk it on a spear. But after seeing Father, I couldn't do it. I looked for yautia and guavas instead.
Jerry said, "I don't want him to die."
We heard voices and looked back at the jeep. Two Indian men stood at the windows. They must have recognized it as Spellgood's jeep, because they were smiling and talking to Mother. We walked over as Mother got out.
"Find me a boat," she said. "And water. And food. Make it snappy!"
Only Father's head was alive. We knew that when we laid him on the ground. It was clear when Mother washed his wound. His head was alive, but his body was like a bag of sticks and seeds. The bullet had entered the side of his neck and burst out the back. His neck bone was not broken, but there were red strings and fat in the clawed-open wound, and a black bruise around it, like a large whelk of meat. Mother plugged it with cotton the Indians boiled for her, and then they put him on a plank and brought him to the river. They carried him feet first, like pallbearers, because they thought he was dead.
Mother propped him at the bow of the boat, which was a flatboat with a long-handled rudder. By this time, the twins' crying had attracted other Indians, and these people stood on the gravel bank, watching us and not asking any questions. Some of them ran back for more pots of beans and rice — English food, they called it — and wabool and jugs of coffee. One of the Indians told Mother that it was neither good nor bad if Father was dead — everyone died, it was the world's way, nothing you can do about it, so be happy, he said.
"You believe that," Mother said. "But I don't, so don't ask me to. Just get me out of here and give the preacher his car keys."
It was what Father would have said. She had taken on his determination in a kind of panicky way. She got us hopping for paddles and poles, and gave the Indians orders. She did not have Father's flair for gadgets, but she knew how to make these Indians rig up an awning for Father's head. And when an Indian tried to insist on coming with us, she told him firmly that she appreciated the offer but she didn't want his help. "And I'm not staying here another minute." One, more boastful than pious, had mentioned a church service. They were the sort of people Father had once called "Praying Indians."