Night Of The Jaguar

Six

Jenny tossed a broken banana into the blender to keep company with the celery, the beets, the spirulina protein powder, and the psyllium husk extract and goosed the HI button. Through the glass top she watched the smoothie come into being, a pinkish gray vortex. Making the midmorning smoothie for Rupert was one of Jenny’s tasks, along with feeding the birds, the cats, the boyfriend, and recently Moie, the Indian; or the Runiya, as she had to remember to call him. But Moie didn’t eat, which worried her, although she herself did not think much of the cuisine at FPA. Rupert thought that it was wrong to consume animals raised for food, and thought that they should set a good diet-for-a-small-planet example, and also establish solidarity with the indigenous people of the rain forests. Rupert got Professor Cooksey to question Moie about his diet, and how to prepare it, but Moie didn’t know about any foodstuffs but meat (in which he included fish, which in turn included turtles, reptiles, and waterfowl) and seemed somewhat affronted to be asked about “women’s things.” Meat and women’s things were how he divided edible substances.

She was supposed to watch him as well, which was not difficult, much easier than minding a kid, for he was in general docile and gentle. In the mornings, when she did her chores, and during the times, as now, when she had to prep and serve food, she parked him in front of the big TV in the living room. They had cable, and she usually punched up a nature program for him. He seemed to like these, and he would also sit solemnly with her while she took inOne Life to Live, her favorite show, although here she had to explain what was going on, because it was kind of hard to get into the plot if you hadn’t been watching for a long time.

She poured the smoothie into the special smoky green glass that Rupert liked to drink it from, placed it on a serving tray, added Luna’s herbal tea and Geli’s coffee and Professor Cooksey’s regular tea, extra-strong with milk, a plate of chocolate chip cookies and a Sprite for herself, and brought it into the office. They were all talking about Moie and what to do about him now that there was this murder of the old Cuban guy, and she was sort of interested in that, so after she’d placed the tray on the table and everybody had their stuff, she sat down in a chair away from the meeting table and listened. That was cool according to Rupert because she wasn’t to think of herself as anything but a full member of the community and not just, like, a maid or anything. Which she mostly thought. She had been an actual maid at one time and so she knew the difference.

Jenny thought that coming into a meeting in the middle of it was a little like coming into the middle ofOne Life to Live, it took a while to figure out what was going on, but you knew the characters, so in a little bit it made sense. Luna was all about using Moie to make a big stink about the people trying to cut down his forest. She had a friend who was a TV producer on Channel Four, and she thought she could get a feature made, and also some of the national enviro groups might pick it up. It was a great story, how this little guy had traveled all that way from South America in a canoe. Geli said, unfortunately he’s not a Cuban, and when Luna asked what that meant, Geli said, he’s illegal, he’s in the country illegally, and if he comes out in public the INS will arrest him and he’ll be stuck in Crome Avenue behind a wire with all the Haitians, and then Luna said, oh, shit, I didn’t think of that, and then added, Rupert, you should talk to your congressman, because Rupert gave a lot of money to this congressman, Jenny always forgot his name, something like Woolite, and he sometimes got him to do stuff, like make a speech about something the FPA was hot on, in the Congress. But Rupert said, maybe that’s not such a good idea at this point until we have clarified about this murder. And he asked Professor Cooksey what he thought, was Moie capable of killing someone that way?

“Well, he says no and I believe him, up to a point,” Cooksey answered, after a considered moment. “He says Jaguar killed the man, which gives me pause.”

“What do you mean?” asked Luna.

“I mean it sounds like this ‘jaguar’ is a kind of god to him, so it might be a figure of speech, as we would say when someone of whom we disapproved met with a bad end, ‘God punished him.’ On the other hand, it could be a case of shape-shifting.”

“Which is…?” said Luna.

“It’s a form of ritual. I’ve observed it any number of times in the field. A shaman takes some drug, usually a form ofayahuasca, which is an extract of theBanisteria vine together with other plant materials, and goes into a trance, during which his animal tutelary spirit takes possession of him and confers special powers. These can be things like superhuman strength, the ability to see in the dark, the ability to travel in spirit form, and so on. It’s no longer him, d’you see, but the animal spirit. And in that case, our Moie could possibly have committed a murder and have no real knowledge of the crime.”

Jenny noticed that Rupert’s face had assumed the dreamy half smile that it wore when he had heard something he didn’t want to hear and wished that someone would do something to make it go away. “That’s unfortunate, then,” he said. “Obviously, that greatly reduces, or rather eliminates, the possibility of him being of any value to us as an organization. In fact, I’m not sure it wouldn’t be the best thing, all things considered, for us to inform the police.”

Luna’s face had become pale under her tan, and her eyes had become all pinched looking, which Jenny knew was a signal that something bad was going to happen, and so it did.

“Thepolice! Rupert, what thefuck are you talking about? What the hell have we been fighting against besides the kind of shit that’s going down in the Puxto, of which Moie is living evidence?Living evidence! And you want to lock him up because some Cuban scumbag got himself killed?”

In his most maddeningly reasonable voice, Rupert replied, “Of course I don’twant to lock him up, but giving, ah, refuge, to someone who may be a serious felon would compromise the principles of our organization and open us to, ah, the possibilities of criminal prosecution. You can see that, surely?”

That was a big mistake, Jenny thought: when Luna got that pinched look what you wanted to do was either agree with her or get the fuck out of town for, like, three days.

“No,” said Luna, “what I see is that, in fact, this organization has no principles at all, except making some rich people feel good about their money. Oh,I don’t buy tropical hardwoods andI use shade-grown fair trade coffee in my three-thousand-dollar espresso machine, give me a fucking good citizen medal! And so let me make it really, really clear. If anyone calls the cops on that man, I personally am off the reservation on it. I will blow the whistle. I will let every enviro in the world know what went down, who he is, and what’s happening. I will call every TV station in town. There’ll be TV crews in permanent residence outside that gate, and you can explain why the preservation of the rain forest is important but not quite important enough for Rupert Zenger to take any risk at all of even being suspected of doing an illegal act. I don’t care if you kick us out, I don’t care if me and Scotty have to sleep in our fucking van and live on rice and beans-”

“We could make a tape,” said Geli Vargos into the angry speech; Luna stopped her rant, and they all stared at Geli. “We could tape his story, just him talking into the camera, with a voice-over, and then we could add subtitles translating what he said. And send out copies to the media. That would expose the Consuela company and put pressure on the Colombians to stop them from destroying a national park, especially since the Puxto got set up by contributions from enviro organizations in the first place.”

Rupert said, “I don’t see how that solves our problem. A tape like that is meaningless to the media unless they have confirmation that the man is what and who he says he is. A little brown man with a bowl haircut and tattoos could be anyone. So we would have to identify ourselves in any case, present him for interviews…”

“No, it’s a good idea,” said Luna. “If we do it right, it’ll cause a sen sation. He’ll be a public figure, and it won’t matter if he’s an illegal immigrant.”

“Why won’t it, Luna?” Rupert asked.

“Because if we do it right, a mass mailing of tapes, by the time the INS gets around to it, it’ll already have happened. We’ll have the interviews already. I could offer Sunny Riddle an exclusive on it, the epic voyage from the Orinoco. And after that, hell, let them take him and stick him in the jail. Let them repatriate him. He doesn’twant asylum, for God’s sake. He just wants his forest intact. And we could get a book out of it, too, we could get a grant, send a team back to Colombia, Moie in his natural habitat. Jesus, it would put this organization on the map!”

“I see we’re no longer concerned,” offered Professor Cooksey in a dry tone, “that this fellow might be in the habit of carving people up while in a drug-induced trance?”

“Actually,” said Rupert, “we have no real evidence of that, do we? It’s just, ah, speculation, as you admit yourself. And Geli’s right. And Luna. It could be a big breakthrough for us.” He turned away from Cooksey and regarded the two women with his benign brown eyes. “Now, how shall we arrange this taping? Perhaps a more anonymous location would be best, away from the property.” He took a large bite of chocolate chip cookie and awaited their response. Professor Cooksey turned his head and looked Jenny full in the face, as if he knew just what she was thinking.

Jenny got up and walked out, not bothering to collect the snack tray or ask if anyone wanted anything, as she usually did. She rarely felt anger, because what was the use of getting angry, anyway? But she had not liked what she’d heard. She thought Professor Cooksey could have made an objection, or she could have herself, although she never spoke up when organization business was discussed. The conversation had reminded her unpleasantly of other conversations she had heard, between social workers and foster parents, about her. They always spoke over her head, as if she wasn’t there, deciding what to do about herproblem. Of course, Moie wasn’t actually there, but they were treating him the same way, as a hassle and not as a real person who might have something to say about what was going to happen to him. Professor Cooksey was the one who spoke most often to Moie, knowing the language and all, but he mostly talked about plants and the kind of weird stuff he did in his home in the rain forest, and about gods and spirits.

She walked through the courtyard and down a garden path to the pool. There, as she had expected, was Moie, gazing morosely at the waterfall and humming to himself. She squatted down next to him and asked him how he was doing.

He said in Runiya, “When I first came to the land of the dead, I thought youwai’ichuranan could move the stars in the sky and I was very afraid. Cooksey says that isn’t so. But this is nearly as bad. You make a little world here, as in this pond, as in your garden, but it is all wrong, allsiwix, and it hurts my belly to see it. The creatures are alive, but the thing is dead. Have you never once listened to what a plant or animal has to say?”

She nodded and smiled. “Yeah. It’s pretty cool. See, it’s like all natural. The pump runs off solar. The sun, see”-she pointed to the sky-“it makes the water go around. Sun, waterfall, see?”

“You are a most strange being,” said Moie. “If I could speak to you properly, I would examine you and find out why you are barren, even though the Monkey Boy drags you into his hammock very often. I should ask Cooksey about this, although perhaps it is part of being dead that you make few children. Also I wonder where your elders are. I have heard some tribes eat their elders and so perhaps you do this as well. Again, I will ask Cooksey.”

“Cooksey’s having a meeting in the office,” she said, recognizing the spoken name. “We can go see him later. You want to come watch my program with me?One Life to Live? Jessica and John? And Starr?” She mimed turning on a TV and sketched a screen in the air. She backed away from him making come-hither gestures. A few minutes later they were settled in front of the screen, she in a worn but cozy rattan armchair, he on his haunches leaning against the sofa.

Moie watches the stolen ghosts of the dead people in the spirit box. They seem to be living the ordinary lives of dead people, although it is clear to him that the box is ruled by demons. Sometimes the dead people disappear and a demon appears and shouts and makes noises. As now, he sees a demon come out of a bottle and shout at a dead woman, who smiles at it. The demon flies around her hut making everything into metal, like an axe blade, with sun shining from the furnishings, although they are inside the hut and there is no sun. Then the demon returns to the bottle and the woman speaks of how she loves the demon. Her daughters will never have children, Moie knows. Now a dead person tries to poison a demon dog, but it doesn’t work. The dead person places poison in two bowls, but the demon dog picks the wrong one, and eats, and doesn’t die but instead talks to the man and tells him how foolish he has been-he should have put the poison in both bowls! It’s clear that thewai’ichuranan are not as clever as the Runiya when it comes to killing demons. Now some flashing that he can’t understand, one scene after another so fast he doesn’t know what’s happening, then come the humming, squeaking sounds that always presage the return of the spirits.

The Firehair Woman is talking, as she always does when the spirits are showing in the box. Moie thinks this is part of her worship. He himself can catch spirits in a box, if they are causing trouble in the village, for example, or if there is a bad person around, like a witch or murderer, then he would steal the man’s spirit and lock it away, so his body could more easily be burnt up. But no Runiya would think of talking to them. Only really stupid or bad people leave their spirits behind when they go above the moon, and what can be learned from talking to these? He wonders if these spirits are her ancestors. That would at least make sense, for the Runiya speak to their ancestors all the time, and for this purpose they keep their ancestors’ dried hearts in beautifully decorated pouches hung from the rafters of their longhouses. He wonders if there are dried hearts in this spirit box. Once, the first time she showed him the spirit box, he tried to pry the back of it off with his knife, but she became excited and pulled at his arm. He understood that looking into the spirit box wassiwix for her, and so he didn’t do it.

She is smiling and pointing to the box and talking. She wants him to see something. He looks. In a room of one of thewai’ichura longhouses, two spiritwai’ichuranan are preparing to dopuwis. (There is a louder humming, which always comes when something important is going to happen; he has learned that much.) But he has seen this many times before. The dead spirits are always, always, preparing to dopuwis: they kiss, they rub each other, they take off their stupid clothing, or most of it, and yet they never do anypuwis. Of course, everyone knows that the spirits cannot dopuwis, it is only for the living.

So these dead people spirits are lying down on the platform where they sleep, covered with a blanket, and the dead woman spirit is making noises, similar to what this kind of woman would make in life; he has heard this many times now from the Firehair Woman and Monkey Boy when they dopuwis in their hut. Also Angry Woman and Hairy Face Man do it, but she makes a different sound. Moie knows that the spirits are not doingpuwis, for the woman is not on her knees showing the man the dark folds of heraka to excite him.

In any case, he is no longer able to see them. He can only see a hole in the wall of the longhouse. Awindow is their word for this hole. The humming increases. Now he sees the man and woman again, and it is as if he has passed through this hole. Moie can do this, too, going through the walls, and so he knows that anaysiri, a sorcerer, is somewhere around. Yes, now he sees theaysiri, who has made himself small to go into the spirit box. The Firehair Woman is talking, talking, and Moie wishes she would stop, because this is interesting, for a change. Theaysiri has a pouch in his hands, and Moie knows just what it is, alayqua, a spirit catcher, for he has one himself, although he did not bring it with him to the land of the dead. His is smaller and has bright feathers on it.

Now theaysiri ’s head grows large, showing that he is very powerful, and Moie can see his spirit catcher more closely. He sees that there is a little spirit box attached to thislayqua, in which the sorcerer can see the spirits being captured. He shakes his head, and thinks that thewai’ichura sorcerers must be stupid to need such a thing, since Moie or any decent Runiya sorcerer would of coursefeel when the spirit he was aiming for was captured. But he has to admit it is clever and interesting for theaysiri to come right into his spirit box and show all those watching how he captured the spirits and demons in it. Moie thinks that it is because there are so manywai’ichuranan, no one can tell who is anaysiri, so he shows his power to those who watch the spirit box, in case they have troubling spirits they wish to capture, or if they have an enemy whose spirit they wish to steal and bind in the box, then they would know whom to consult. He is pleased with himself for having understood this; he understands so little of the dead people and their ways. Now there are demons dancing again, and loud unpleasant sounds, and he turns away.

“Do you understand?” Jenny asked again. “They’re going to make a tape of you. Like that private detective was taping Daniel and Lindsay?” She pointed to the TV screen and then mimed a video camera pointing at Moie. “They’re going to make a tape of you, so you can tell your story on TV. Maybe you’ll get famous and be onLetterman! OrOprah!” He looked at her blankly, as he usually did when she had to describe something complicated.

“Oh, God, just wait here a second, okay? I’ll show you.”

She dashed out of the living room and down the hallway to Professor Cooksey’s rooms. To her surprise she found Kevin poking around the office.

“What’re you doing?” she asked.

“Looking for you. Want to go out somewhere?”

“Sure, where?” she said, a little startled. In her experience, Kevin was not one to propose amusing trips.

“Oh, I don’t know. We could go to the zoo. Hang out with Bill Kearney. Play with the animals.” When she hesitated, he added, “We could take the little guy along. He’s probably never been to a zoo.”

Jenny felt a wave of gratitude. That wasso Kevin, she thought. Just when you were going to give up on him he’d do something real nice. She gave him a hug and said, “Sure, I just have to show him something.” With that, she grabbed Cooksey’s Panasonic camcorder from its shelf and checked the tape and battery.

“That’s a fancy unit,” Kevin said. “You sure you know what you’re doing with it?”

“Oh, yeah,” said Jenny. “I lived with this foster family once, this guy, Harold Logan, was like totally obsessed with that programAmerica’s Funniest Home Videos? He would, like, make the kids do stuff, like crash their bikes and fall into pies, dumb shit like that. He was dying to win the grand prize, it was, like, thousands of dollars, and he kept sending tapes to them and never got on the show. Personally I thought it was fixed. Anyway, I was the oldest kid, so he taught me how to use one of these because he thought it would be funnier if he was in the tape. Okay, so he set up this shot with a trampoline they had? He was a big fat dude. The kids were jumping off the porch roof onto the trampoline, climbing out the bedroom window and bouncing off it. That was the setup. Then he comes out of the window and jumps, and the deal was he rigged the trampoline to, like, collapse when he hit it. That was the stupid joke, right? But it didn’t collapse, and he comes off of it, boing, and flies through the air and crashes into the barbecue, which he had going for hot dogs and shit, and it goes over with the table he had the charcoal lighter on, and it spills and it catches him on fire. I mean, fuck, his hair and everything and his wife comes running out and tries to put him out with a pitcher of lemonade that she’s carrying, but he’s still burning, yelling curse words and everything, and finally she put him out with the hose. I got the whole thing on tape.”

“Did he win?”

“No, man, he was like all burned up, really ugly, and they would’ve had to, I don’t know, bleep out all the holy shit motherfuckers and all, so it could be on the show. And after that they took all the kids out of there for endangering.”

“Yeah, well, that’s show business.”

“I guess,” she said and carried the camcorder back to the living room, Kevin tagging along behind her.

She showed the camcorder to Moie. “See. This is like the one on the TV, except I think this one is better. What I was saying is they’re going to make a tape ofyou so you can tell your story on the TV.” With that, she pointed the camera at Moie. To her immense surprise, he let out a scream of horror and ran out of the room. Jenny stared after him in dismay.

“What’d I do?”

Kevin laughed and said, “Maybe he has stage fright. What’s this about making a tape?” Jenny explained what she’d heard at the meeting.

“Yeah, it figures,” said Kevin dismissively. “More public relations shit.”

“Well, do you have any better ideas?”

“Who me? Nah, I’m just a worker bee. So, do you want to go?”

“Sure. Let me put this back.”

She had just replaced the machine when Cooksey came into the room and looked at her inquiringly.

“I was just showing Moie what a camcorder was,” she explained. “We were watching the TV, and I said he was going to be on TV and I wasn’t getting through to him, so I brought it out, and you know what? He looked like I was trying to shoot him or something and he ran away. Shit, maybe he thought it was a gun.”

“Oh, I doubt that. I’m sure he knows what a gun is.”

“You think? Anyway, me and Kev want to take Moie to the zoo with us. Would that be okay?”

She asked hesitantly because of what had happened the last time Kevin and Moie were out together, but Cooksey seemed delighted with the notion. “What a splendid idea!” he said, smiling. “I’m sure that will be an interesting experience for all.”

She found the Indian in the old shed where he had chosen to sling his hammock, crouched on the ground, mumbling to himself and looking unhealthy in the light that streamed through the dirty green corrugated fiberglass roof. It took her a while to convince him to go and to explain what a zoo was. She mimed several types of animals-the monkey, the parrot, the tiger-while he stared. At last he collected the bits of bone and feather he had been fiddling with and replaced them in the woven bag he always carried. She had given him a FPA T-shirt and a pair of old Bermuda shorts she’d found in the house and she made him put these on, and a pair of rubber flip-flops, and then they joined Kevin in the VW van.

The drive to the zoo down in the south county was forty minutes, during which Kevin played a Metallica tape at top volume, while Jenny spoke to Moie. The Indian sat between them on the bench seat like a good child, looking straight ahead. He seemed to be in a trance, although Jenny was sure he was picking up on what she was saying. She kept hoping that somehow, if she talked to him long enough, even chatter, he would somehow acquire the ability to speak English. She had once shared a home with a kid who didn’t speak at all and she had done that and after a while he extruded a word or two, and she recalled how good that had made her feel.

Rupert was a big shot at the Zoological Society of Florida, so they had cards that got them in free, and once past the gate, Kevin headed straight for the Metrozoo office, where he found out where his pal Kearney was working.

“He’s fixing some pipe near the petting zoo,” Kevin reported, and they walked down the path in that direction. It was a fine fall day, sunny with small clouds, and the zoo was pleasantly uncrowded. Jenny explained the concept of a petting zoo to Moie.

“It’s where kids get to touch the animals. Pet them.” She petted his arm to demonstrate. They passed a food concession and she bought a soda and a corn dog, offering Moie a bite and asking him if he wanted anything to eat. He put his finger on his mouth, which she had learned was the sign for not wanting to eat. She wondered what the opposite sign was. “Jeez, man, you never eat anything,” she said. “What’s up with that?” Then Kevin spotted Kearney kneeling over a valve box set into the pavement.

Jenny watched the men greet each other and submitted to the usual hug and the usual little grope. She didn’t care for Kearney, a small guy with smudged black plastic glasses, pale eyes, and a weaselly look. He had many ornaments pierced through his face and his arms were heavily tattooed, giving him the appearance of a malevolent Christmas tree. Kevin told her to take the little guy to see the animals, him and Kearney were going to talk some business for a minute, which Jenny thought was just a way of going off and getting stoned. She said nothing but felt a little blue because this was not going to be a fun trip after all but probably another of Kevin’s stupid deals. She started feeling annoyed at Moie, too, she always had tomind stuff, kids and animals and now this dumb Indian who you couldn’t even talk to…

She grabbed his arm and led him through the little gate into the petting zoo. There they met a white goat on the path. The goat stopped, stared, did a 180 in the air, and raced away at top speed, scattering families and knocking over a toddler. The herd of sheep raced in a tight mob to the farthest corner of their enclosure, where they packed into a tight pile bleating, their stupid faces occasionally popping up to stare before vanishing in a mate’s wool. The rabbits scrabbled and squealed their high-pitched cries; the two burros tried vainly to leap their fence. A zoo employee who had been showing a few children how to feed a calf from a bottle was staggered when the calf tore away and went dashing back to its mother, bawling.

Jenny led Moie through the area, growing increasingly nervous, as it was clear that something was wrong. Every animal was going nuts, and the people were picking up screaming kids in their arms and running out of the place. Jenny saw fancy pigeons battering themselves bloody on the mesh of their cage. A pair of peafowl struggled clumsily into the air and alighted on a low limb of a live oak, the male filling the air with its demonic screams. As they walked, it dawned at last on Jenny that they were the locus of the worst of this animal pandemonium. She looked closely at Moie, but his deep black eyes revealed nothing but mild alertness.

“Okay, so this is a little boring, let’s go somewhere else,” she said, and then she spotted a sign directing them to Dr. Wilde’s World-Wonders of Tropical America exhibit. She read it aloud and exclaimed, “Hey, that’s where you’re from, Moie. Come on, it’ll be like a trip home.”

Dr. Wilde’s World was housed in a new buff- and aqua-painted building and was extremely high-tech, with voices in the air from the various exhibits and a giant TV screen showing the wonders of the neotropics. They were watching this show when Moie suddenly stiffened, rose from his seat, and walked out. She followed him, a little annoyed because the show was kind of interesting, and she preferred exploring the rain forest in the air-conditioned dimness rather than in the actual sticky-hot thing itself. They passed a restroom sign. Jenny made clear by signs and motions, as to an untalented dog, that she wanted Moie to stay put in this very spot and not move an inch. He was not there when she emerged. Fighting panic, she dashed past the huge tank of Amazonian fishes, past the poison frog display, past the toucans and parrots, and the coatis, and javelinas, until, with a rush of relief, she found him standing rapt in front of a larger glassed-in cage.

“That’s a jaguar,” she said. “It says here her name’s Anita.” She read haltingly from the card in front of the cage, but she could tell that the Indian was not listening, and so she stopped and stood silently by Moie, looking.

The animal was stretched out on a broad wooden shelf, seemingly asleep, but as Jenny watched, its nose twitched, its ears sprang erect, and it opened its golden eyes. In an instant it leaped down from its perch and pressed its nose against the thick glass, staring at Moie. It panted; from its open mouth came a low, loud growl. Moie was making noise, too, a rhythmic chant, the same phrase repeated over and over again.

“What’re you doing?” she said, and it felt like her ears were stuffed, the sound of the words seemed stuck in her head. Her stomach felt tense, as with fear, but it might have just been the corn dog, she thought that Rupert was right, she shouldn’t eat crap like that, and there was something wrong with her eyes, too, a kind of flickering of the light, and she looked up at the ceiling fixture to see if maybe it was that. She had to be careful of flickering lights because bad fluorescents sometimes set off a fit, but these were concealed spots casting a dim rain-forest type of glow against the ceiling, and she realized that it wasn’t the lights but reallyeverything that was flickering, and the angles of the walls seemed a little off and the glass of the cage was sort of bending like the surface of wind-blown water. She took a deep breath now because she found that she had forgotten to breathe.

She tried to blink away the distortions, but they got worse and there was a low hum that was coming in a weird way from the words that Moie was chanting, and the hum got lower and lower until it was almost a scraping sound. She looked around to see if there was anyone she could ask what was going on, but the lights had somehow dimmed way down, and it was as if she and Moie and the cage were the only things left in the world, the corridors leading out in either direction were full of gray nothing.

When she looked at the cage again, Moie was inside it, squatting on his haunches. The animal was sitting, too, with its face six inches from his. They were motionless in profile, as if carved on the wall of a jungle temple. She touched the glass, and it was just glass, slick and slightly warm. She tapped on it twice with her knuckles, softly, to check if it was still really solid. Slowly, Moie turned his head to face her. She saw that his eyes were no longer their former deep and mild brown but green-gold, with vertical slit pupils. She let out a little cry and then a cool breeze seemed to flow upward through her body, and she tasted the familiar tang of something like sweet ashes, and felt the dread of the epileptic aura.

When she came to, a middle-aged woman with a kind, competent face was wiping her mouth. Jenny was on her side on the hard floor, with something soft stuffed under her head, which throbbed painfully. The good news was that nothing had been jammed into her mouth, and since she’d just gone to the toilet, she hadn’t pissed herself. Her vision cleared, and she saw Moie standing with Kevin and a cop, who was talking into his radio and some zookeepers and people cruising by, with the moms telling the kids not to stare while staring themselves. The kind woman helped her to her feet and asked her if she needed anything. Jenny said she was fine, and she said the same to the policeman, to the worried representative of the zoo, and to the paramedics who came dashing up as she was leaving the building, although she was not at all fine. She ached in all her limbs and wanted to go to sleep and not wake up.

In the truck, Kevin said, “I thought you were taking those pills.”

“I stopped. They made me sleepy and nauseous.”

“Sleepy is better than throwing fits.”

“Seizures. They don’t call them fits anymore. I don’t know, I guess I was hoping I was cured. Sometimes it goes away when you get older. I only had that one since we hooked up.”

“One is too many. Jesus, man, you looked all gray. I thought you were going to croak on me. Why did it happen? You said there had to be strobes to make it start.”

“Yeah, but other stuff does it, too.”

“Like what?”

“You’ll laugh.”

“No, I won’t. Tell me.”

“Moie did…something, some kind of chant and everything got crazy and, um, he walked through the glass. He was in the cage with the jaguar.”

“In it? How the fuck’d he do that. The access doors are locked.”

“I don’t know, man, he justwas. It was like he was talking to the jaguar, and when I tapped on the glass, he turned around and he had, like, jaguar eyes.”

Kevin laughed. “Oh, shit, man, are you fucked up!”

“You said you wouldn’t laugh. I’m telling you what I saw.”

“Oh, fuck, you didn’t see shit. You had a fit and then you imagined it.”

“I did not,” she said uncertainly.

“Yeah, you did,” said Kevin, “because stuff like that only happens in horror flicks, or when you’re taking acid and shit. You imagined it. Hey, ask him! Moie,mi hermano, did you change into a jaguar back there? No? See, you made it up.”

This exchange made her even more tired than she usually was after such an episode, and she drifted into sleep, from which she was awakened by a change in the motion of the truck.

She looked out the window. They were driving slowly down a street of luxurious houses in the Spanish style, set deeply in yards full of lush tropical plantings. The street signs were white-painted concrete markers set upon the sidewalks.

“Why are we in the Gables?” she asked.

“Just checking something out. That big job coming up on our right is where Juan Xavier Calderón lives.”

“What is he, in a band?”

“No, dummy, he’s one of the three Consuela Holdings guys your little man here told us about. There used to be four, ha-ha.”

“So why do you want to see his house?”

Kevin ignored the question. “Be nice to live like that, wouldn’t it? That’s what you get for fucking up the world. I bet he’s got a pool back there, and a tennis court and shit.”

“Okay, you saw it,” she said nervously. “Could we go home now? I got a bad headache.”

“There’s always some goddamn thing wrong with you, you know that?” said Kevin. He punched up the radio volume and threw the van roughly into gear. They drove away in a cloud of exhaust and heavy metal.

Moie wonders why Monkey Boy always makes the car shout at him when he drives. He has noticed that when Firehair Woman drives, the car speaks more softly, with a gentler humming. Perhaps it is to keep him awake, as Monkey Boy’saryu’t is so shrunken that he is barely human anymore. Firehair Woman is trying to make him human but does not know how. If Moie could speak her language, he could give her some advice on these matters. And there are powders he has that could help. The woman’saryu’t is rich and thick, but uncultivated, like a yam plant in an abandoned garden. Although he does not speak their language, Moie has the keen ears of a hunter and has heard the name Calderón, which he knows. He will be able to find this house again, and the man who lives in it.

Professor Cooksey went for a walk after supper when the weather suited, as now. In the tropical evenings he would wander through the little streets in back of Ingraham Highway, and along the Coral Gables Waterway, inhaling the balmy blossom-scented air and the dank odor of that broad canal, and wondering whether this would be the evening he would throw himself into it and die. A sense of propriety more than the scraps of religious faith he retained kept him always just at the brink of action, although he had many a night stared for a long time past the toes of his sandals down at the slick black skin of the water. He did not think that he was actually depressed, a word that in any case he despised, as he despised the grotesque self-involvement of most Americans, because he did his work, he was alert, he tried to be kind, he took an interest in the world of nature around him. He thought of it as sadness, or melancholy, and it had a reason.

Despite the suicidal thoughts, these late jaunts almost always produced some animal delight: a little parade of raccoons, a night heron fishing under the canal bank, an opossum in a tree, a roosting macaw, a giant African toad; and often the trilling of a mockingbird overhead. At such moments he would occasionally exclaim and call out to his wife, to share the joy, and recall that she was dead. Sometimes he did not recall this quickly enough and heard her voice in his ear. On those evenings he would scuttle home and drink whiskey, courting oblivion.

No such event occurred on this particular evening, which was only memorable for the observation of a green monkey high up in a palm tree, an escapee from some domestic or commercial zoo. He entered his room in a lighter mood than was normal therefore and was not entirely surprised to find Moie waiting there, squatting in a corner, contemplating the skull of just such a monkey.

“Remarkable,” Cooksey said in Quechua, “I just saw one of those out on the street.”

“Only one?”

“Yes.”

“A lonely thing, then.”

“Yes. It must have escaped from its cage. Or from a large zoo full of monkeys that used to exist some small distance from here; a hurricane blew the place apart and many escaped. The city is full of them.”

Moie placed the skull carefully back in the case from which he had taken it.

“I went to such a place today.”

“So I understand. And how did you like it?”

“I didn’t like it. It was a dead place, even though the animals seemed to be alive. They moved and ate and drank, but they were not all there…it is hard to say what I mean, even in Quechua. It is acosmological difficulty. So Father Tim Perrin always called it.”

He had used the English word and Cooksey smiled. “Yes,cosmological difficulties are the worst.”

“Yes. There was a jaguar they had in a glass box. I spoke with her. She had been born in a box and had never killed, and she didn’t even know who she was. It was like a child who has been dropped on its head and afterward can’t speak or see. It was very sad. Then I felt Jaguar stirring in me, and he let me…the word in Runisi isjana’tsit. Do you know this word?”

“I do not.”

“No, I’ve seen that you don’t do this. It is a way of going to another place without going on the path that leads to it through this world. In this way I was led to this animal and I spoke to her and told her who she was. But as I was speaking to her, a holy person climbed into the Firehair Woman, and she fell down and shook and white waters flowed from her mouth.”

“You mean Jenny?”

“Yes, Jenny. I didn’t know thatwai’ichuranan could carry holy ones in this way, but I knew there was something about her that was not dead, and this shows it well.”

Cooksey thought for a moment. “Among us, we say that is a sickness.”

“Of course, but you think you are alive as you are, so that means nothing. But she didn’t know how to welcome the holy one, so she suffered. Or so it seemed. Did you know there is a plan to steal my spirit and place it with the others, and all the demons, in the spirit box?”

Cooksey suppressed a smile. “Yes, but this is another cosmological difficulty. I will explain. You wish to stop this company from logging your forest, and among thewai’ichuranan, who are very many and live in many villages and towns far from Miami, this is how it is done. We have a machine that is like a mirror, but where a mirror holds your reflection only while you are standing in front of it, this machine saves the reflection and can send it through the air to all the spirit boxes, which we call televisions. And it can also remember your speech and say it in your own words to all thewai’ichuranan. So you will appear in everyone’s television, and the people, or some people, will be angry at what is being done, and perhaps this will make the company stop what it’s doing. It has nothing to do with your spirit. The television is not a spirit box at all, but only a machine, like this lamp on my desk. There are no witches involved. What you call demons are pictures made by machines. The people you see behind the glass are real people in faraway places, and not stolen spirits.”

“I hear what you say, but it’s hard for me to believe it.”

“Why is it hard?”

“Because the faces of the people in the spirit box, thetelevision, are different from the faces of real people, and even different from the faces of manywai’ichuranan. They have no…I must use my own language…noaryu’t. Having a real spirit inside you. You have it and Jenny has it, and the Hairy Face Man, too, and even the others a little, but not these behind the glass. We say that when a spirit is torn from a human through sorcery it becomes separated from the world, and because of this it is very hungry all the time. It wishes to fill itself up and suck the spirit from living things. It thinks only of itself, how it can grow greater, until it fills the whole world. And when we see such a spirit in the forest, we know it is one and not a real person because this hunger shows on its face. They can’t disguise it, although they can talk in soothing ways. We are not often fooled. And I see the same kinds of faces on the people behind the glass of thetelevision, and therefore I say that they are all dead spirits, whatever you say about machines. Tell me, haven’t you ever observed this difference yourself?”

“I have,” Cooksey admitted. “But, with us it is a kind of mask. Don’t you put on masks and paint your faces when you talk to your gods?”

“We do, certainly. But now you say that the television dead people are worshipping gods, where before you said that they were speaking to people far away, as a deer might smear musk on a tree to give a message to other deer. What gods are worshipped in this way?”

“Wealth and fame,” said Cooksey. “Our chief gods, and also sometimes the god of fornication.”

“Of course; you are dead, so you worship the gods of death. I understand. Nevertheless, I can’t go into the spirit box. It would be death for me, and then I would be not Moie, and become happy to live in a zoo, like that poor animal I saw today. I will have to find another way to make the company stop, or, I should say, I will have to wait for Jaguar to find another way.”

“What would that be?”

“How should I know? Am I Jaguar? In any case, I might not be allowed to tell anyone. Jaguar doesn’t want everyone to know his business.”

“I thought you considered us your allies.”

“Yes, I do. I think you want to help, but often magical allies are stupid, especially when they are humans, and even more so when they are dead people. I will have to…there is no word in this language for it; we say,iwai’chinix, to make them live in a different way before they can help, and I’m not even sure I can do it, since I am very weak here. But for now, I believe I must leave this place.”

“Yes, I can see where you might wish to. But where will you go? And how will you live?”

“I will find a large tree to live in. I’ve noticed that thewai’ichuranan walk the paths without ever looking up, so no one will disturb me in my tree. As for living, there is water all around, and Jaguar will feed me. What more do I need? Now, if you would like to help me, you must show me a large tree.”

“I believe I know just the tree you require,” said Cooksey. They spoke for some minutes longer, Cooksey answering Moie’s questions, and asking a few of his own, and then they both slipped out into the night.