Efrain pulled off his boots and pants and waded into the river. With one hand he held the clothes above water. In the other he carried his old rifle and machete. The plantains were slung on his back in the large bag that Catalino the Indian had woven for him.
The crossing was easy today, the clear water only thigh-deep. On the other side Efrain dressed and continued along the faint trail through the rain forest.
He paused to study the turkeylike tracks of a pavón. On his way back from the store this afternoon he would hunt around for the bird and take it home for Sulema to stew. Should he leave his rifle here by the trail so as not to have to carry it all the way?
Efrain thought of the time a few months ago when the peccaries had treed him. He hadn’t had the gun with him then. He’d been in this same area, going to see how his new neighbor Olmedo was getting along. With his eyes fixed on his feet to avoid stepping on a fer-de-lance, Efrain had come face to face with a white-lipped peccary. He had leaped for the nearest tree, a flimsy sapling, and shinnied up as fast as he could. Forty peccaries had encircled him, snorting and clacking their tusks. The sapling was so weak that Efrain had been afraid to climb higher where its branches would give him a better perch. For hours he clung with arms and legs wrapped tight around the narrow trunk, wishing he had the sharp digging-in claws of a tree sloth. Finally he saw a flash of yellow dress through the trees.
Sulema, worried by his long absence on a short errand, had come to look for him. She carried the rifle. He wanted to scream to her to stop, but fear had choked him, fear that the peccaries would turn and see this new, easy target. He took all his weight on his legs, let go with his arms, and waved them wildly to keep the peccaries’ attention on him.
But Sulema had already seen them. She stepped behind a big tree and fired the rifle into the air. The peccaries had squealed and run.
Yes, he’d better keep the gun with him, though he had only one shell for it. At the store he would trade the plantains for a few more shells as well as salt and sugar. They wouldn’t bring enough to pay for all that, but the storekeeper would give him credit against his next harvest. Efrain would fill the extra space in his woven bag with coconuts from the beach. At home Sulema would squeeze cooking fat from the coconut meat and make candy with milk from their cow, sugar, and the remaining coconut.
The most important reason he was going to the store, however, was to find out what year this was. Efrain was fairly certain it was still the old year. New Year’s Day was about now, though, and might already have passed. Being sure of the year had never mattered much before, but the baby had been born eight days ago and Sulema said it was important to know the exact year of his birth.
Olmedo had brought his stolid wife Nydia over the night the baby was born. Nydia delivered the baby while Efrain and Olmedo stood outside. Efrain had shivered when a jaguar split the night with its cry, like the sobs of a great bull.
Sulema was so happy that another woman lived in the area now. “Just knowing she’s there makes all the difference,” Sulema had told Efrain. The two women didn’t see much of each other. Olmedo made Sulema feel unwelcome the day she went over to visit Nydia. Sulema had then invited Nydia to come and visit her, but Olmedo had said, “If she goes visiting all day, what about my lunch? The girl will have to stay to cook for me.” Efrain didn’t even know the name of their daughter; she must be eleven or twelve, but he’d never heard her speak a word. Nydia had come over a few times when Olmedo sent her to borrow a spade from Efrain, but she’d always been in a hurry and could chat only a few minutes with Sulema.
The bellow of a cow brought Efrain back to the present. Her desperate voice told him that she was in trouble. He quickened his step.
It would have to be Olmedo’s cow. She was due to calve any time now, Efrain recalled. He hoped nothing had gone wrong with the delivery. Losing the calf would be a harsh blow to Olmedo in the first year of his homestead.
Olmedo was a hard worker, Efrain had to admit that. In the short time since he had begun the homestead, besides making the pasture he had planted a field with beans and com that would soon be ready for harvest. They’d bring a good price at the store. Recently Olmedo’s brother had arrived from the city, ostensibly to help Olmedo, but whenever Efrain passed the farm, Olmedo was out working while the brother lay in the hammock whittling and watching Nydia cook or sweep the dirt yard.
The cow lowed again. From the sound she was a little ahead and a few hundred yards off the trail. Why was she here in the forest and not in the pasture that Olmedo had cleared by his house? Every night Efrain brought their cow into the lean-to he’d built at one side of the house. During the day Sulema kept an eye on her to see that she didn’t stray while Efrain was out in the field.
Efrain turned to the right, following the sound. He jumped across a small brook and halted abruptly. In the damp clay was the mark of the creature he feared more than any other.
The print of a jaguar.
Efrain began to run up the hill toward the cow, then slowed as he read more of the story written on the ground and realized he was too late to save the calf.
Here were a man’s bootprints. They ran up the hill and walked back. That would be Olmedo, speeding to the cow’s rescue, then trudging home when he found he was too late. The cow must have come into the forest last night to calve, and the jaguar had taken her calf as soon as it was born. The drag marks were plain in the fallen leaves: the cat hauling its prey deeper into the forest.
Efrain continued up the hill. Here were a woman’s broad, barefoot prints — Nydia, coming with Olmedo to try to save the calf. Why hadn’t they taken the cow back to her pasture?
Now Efrain saw the cow. She was frantic, head high, breath whooshing, pacing back and forth through the trees.
Her calf lay bloody and dead on the ground.
Efrain stopped. The drag marks had been clear. Perhaps the cow had had twins and the jaguar had killed both but dragged only one away.
He walked closer.
The mangled pile wasn’t a calf.
It was Olmedo.
Efrain crossed himself.
Olmedo’s axe lay beside him. He had foolishly tried to chase away the jaguar, and it had killed him. Efrain had better check on Nydia.
He hurried down the hill to get back on the trail. This time as he jumped the brook he saw a glint of metal in its bed. A machete. Yes, that made sense. When the cow awoke them with her bellows, Olmedo would have snatched up the axe, Nydia the machete, and run to the sound. Then Nydia, panicked after seeing her husband slaughtered, fled toward the house and dropped the machete as she jumped the stream.
Efrain rounded the last bend in the trail before Olmedo’s little house made of palm fronds and saplings. Nydia was just walking out the door. She clutched a sack half full of dry beans. Her cooking pot protruded from the top. The silent girl was behind her.
Nydia stopped when she saw him.
“I found Olmedo,” he said. “What happened?”
“The jaguar killed him. We heard the cow in the night. He went to check and didn’t come back. After sunrise I looked for him and found him dead.”
“You’re leaving?”
“Going to my mother’s, in town.”
“We should bury him.”
“No shovel.”
Efrain didn’t want to go back to his house for the spade. That would delay him so that he wouldn’t be able to reach the store and still get home before dark, and he didn’t want Sulema to be alone at night. “We’ll put him in the house and burn it,” he told Nydia. “You’re not coming back?”
“No.”
“Throw some brush inside so it’ll burn well. I’ll bring him.”
Efrain returned to where Olmedo’s body lay. As he dragged it down the slope, he looked at the tangled tracks. Bare feet running uphill, bare feet walking down. Boots going up, boots coming down.
How could that be? Olmedo hadn’t walked down the hill.
Maybe he had run up, seen the jaguar, walked down to the stream, then gathered his courage and charged uphill at the cat?
Efrain couldn’t stop now to read the story better. He wanted to get Olmedo’s body out of his arms. It was heavy and slick with blood from the deep slashes the jaguar’s claws had made. He tried not to look.
Nydia stood by the shack, matches ready in her hand. She and the girl had collected dry brush and wood and piled it inside. Efrain laid the body in the center and backed out. Nydia touched a match to the kindling. It caught at once.
“Do you want to wait a while?” he asked her.
“No.”
They walked in silence down the trail that led to the store.
Efrain thought about the tracks and the machete washed clean in the stream.
When they reached the store, Nydia was in luck. A party of Indians was just leaving for town. They had found a gold nugget in the river and offered it to the storekeeper but hadn’t liked the price he set. They were going to walk to town in hopes of getting a higher price there. Nydia could go with them.
“Give Sulema the cow,” Nydia said before they started out.
Efrain had forgotten about the cow. His mind was filled with a picture that blotted out everything else: Olmedo running to save the calf, Nydia behind him with the machete, both arriving after the jaguar had dragged it away. The two of them walking back toward their house. Olmedo in front, naturally. Perhaps he slipped and fell. Nydia, in a split second, realized that no one was likely to notice the difference between jaguar claws and machete cuts. A few quick blows, then she’d dragged him uphill to the already bloody spot where the jaguar had killed the calf.
Nydia was staring at him. Efrain found his voice. “Sulema will miss you.” He thought of something. “What happened to Olmedo’s brother?”
“He left yesterday. Said he was tired of country life.”
Nydia, the girl, and the Indians set off for town. Efrain finished his trading, collected coconuts, shucking them with his machete, and hurried toward home.
Embers still smoldered as he passed Olmedo’s house at dusk. Efrain started when he realized a person was standing by the ruins.
“Efrain! What happened here?” It was Olmedo’s brother. He looked upset.
“A jaguar killed Olmedo. We put him in the house and burned it because we didn’t have a shovel here to bury him.”
“Where’s the woman?”
“She left.”
“Oh.”
“I thought you went away.”
“Well, I got halfway to town, and then I started thinking it wasn’t right to leave Olmedo with so much work. I should come back and give him a hand. Now it’s too late to help him, but my duty is to take care of his farm. That’s what he would want.”
If you had been on the trail today, I would have seen you, Efrain thought.
The light was fading. “I need to go,” Efrain said.
As he walked away, the brother called after him, “I guess tomorrow I’ll build a shelter.” He obviously hoped for an offer of help. Efrain pretended not to hear.
When he was out of the brother’s sight, Efrain broke into a run. He jumped the stream. With his machete he cut a branch from an ollita sapling. He reached in his pocket for the matches he’d gotten at the store, struck one, and fit the branch to use as a torch — ollita would burn when green. He squatted by the footprints.
Boots up, boots down. A jaguar print here, there, and there. Efrain concentrated on the cat tracks. It was hard to follow the complete trail because the prints only showed well in the clay near the stream. The rest of the ground was covered with fallen leaves.
He pictured the cat smelling newborn calf on the breeze, then slinking up on the cow. He compared the prints to his visualization. They did not mesh. The prints weren’t spaced the way a jaguar would walk. In fact, the cat tracks only appeared in a couple of clear clay patches, as though the animal had purposely left its marks where a passerby couldn’t miss them.
Efrain studied the bootprints. One pair of boots with fairly good soles. But here was a boot with a chip out of the left heel. He held the smoky torch lower. Two pairs of boots had been here. The good boots went uphill and came back. The scarred boots had left only uphill tracks.
Efrain cut another branch to use as a staff. Swinging the staff through the leaves in front of him as a snake guard, he followed the drag marks farther into the forest.
In a few hundred yards he found the calf. Its throat had been slit with one long clean cut. There were no other marks on it, no slashes or rips, no deep killing bite at the neck. No jaguar had killed this calf.
An odd-shaped piece of wood in the leaves caught Efrain’s eye. He picked it up.
It was a jaguar’s paw whittled from balsa wood.
Efrain looked at its base. The cat pads were carefully carved.
A different picture grew in his mind: the brother pretending to leave yesterday but instead hiding in the forest. Killing the newborn calf in the night and dragging it out of sight. The cow’s enraged bellows leading Olmedo into the ambush. Jaguar tracks carefully placed for whoever discovered the body.
He went home and told Sulema what had happened. They took turns staying up all night and watching, just in case. At dawn he went to get Catalino the Indian. Then with his old rifle in hand, he and Sulema — the baby dozing on her back — and Catalino hurried along the trail in the direction of the store.
When they passed Olmedo’s farm, the brother was looking over the bean field. Fortunately he was too far away to ask where they were going.
They explained everything to the storekeeper. He came out and shut the unpainted wooden door to show the store was closed. Then they all walked back up the trail to Olmedo’s farm.
The brother had collected a few palm fronds to start his shelter. He looked surprised to see them.
“You can’t stay,” Efrain told him.
“What do you mean?”
Efrain held out the wooden jaguar foot. The brother stepped back.
“You have to go,” the storekeeper said.
The brother stared at them for a long moment. Then he turned and walked down the trail that would take him past the store, to town, and eventually to the city.
The storekeeper waited a few minutes so as not to have to walk near the brother. Then he set off for his store. Catalino went with him in case the brother stopped at the store to make trouble. Catalino had to buy coffee anyway.
Efrain and Sulema walked the other way on the trail. They found Olmedo’s cow standing exhausted in the stream. She needed to be milked. Efrain pulled off his rope belt and put it around her neck. He tugged gently and she followed.
As they walked toward their house, he said, “Oh, Sulema, the storekeeper said this is still the old year. New Year’s Day is tomorrow.”
He had almost forgotten why he’d gone to the store.