The Codex

27

The storm reached a climax of fury as their dugout reached the channel to the Black Place. Flashes of lightning and bursts of thunder echoed through the forest, sometimes coming only seconds apart, like an artillery barrage. The tops of the trees, two hundred feet above their heads, shook and thrashed.

The channel soon divided into a maze of shallow waterways winding amid shivery expanses of stinking mud. Don Alfonso stopped from time to time to check for pole marks in the shallow bottom. The drenching rain never let up, and night came so imperceptibly that Tom was startled when Don Alfonso called a halt.

“We will sleep in the dugout like savages,” Don Alfonso said. “Here is a good place to stop as there are no thick branches above us. I do not want to wake up to the rotten smell of jaguar breath. We must take care not to die here, Tomasito, for our souls would never find their way out.”

“I’ll do my best.”

Tom bundled himself in his mosquito netting, found a place in their heap of gear, and tried to go to sleep. The rain finally ceased, but he was still soaked to the skin. The jungle was filled with the sound of dripping water, punctuated with the cries and moans and gasping shrieks of animals, some of which seemed almost human. Maybe they were human, the lost souls Don Alfonso had talked about. Tom thought of his brother Vernon, lost in this swamp, sick perhaps, maybe even dying. He remembered him as a boy who always had a hopeful, friendly, and perpetually lost look on his face. He subsided into a troubled night of dreams.

They found the dead body the next day. It was floating in the water, a hump with red and white stripes. Chori poled toward it. The hump turned out to be a wet shirt inflated with the gases of decomposition. As the dugout approached, a cloud of angry flies rose up.

Carefully, Chori brought the dugout alongside. A dozen dead piranhas floated around the corpse, their goggle eyes filmed over, their mouths open. The rain drizzled down.

The hair was short and black. It was not Vernon.

Don Afonso said something, and Chori prodded the body with a pole. The gas escaped from under the wet shirt with a blabbering sound, and there was a foul smell. Chori placed the pole under the corpse and, using the bottom as a fulcrum point, heaved it over. The flies roared up. The water boiled and flashed with silver as the fish that had been feasting underneath the body darted away in fright.

Tom stared with shock at the body, now face up in the water, if “face up” could even describe it. Piranhas had eaten the face off along with the entire ventral side of the body, leaving only the bones. The nose had been chewed down to a withered piece of cartilage; the lips and tongue were gone, the mouth a hole. A minnow, trapped in an eye socket, thrashed about, trying to escape. The smell of decomposition hit him like a wet rag. The water began to swirl as the fish began to work on the fresh side. Bits of cloth from the shirt floated to the surface.

“It is one of those boys from Puerto Lempira,” said Don Alfonso. “He was bitten by a poisonous snake while clearing this brush. They left him here.”

“How do you know he was killed by a snake?” Tom asked.

“You see the dead piranhas? Those are the ones who ate the flesh in the area of the snakebite. They were poisoned, and the animals that eat them will also be poisoned.”

Chori pushed the body away with the pole, and they paddled on.

“This is not a good place to die. We must get out of here before nightfall. I do not want to meet that Lempira man’s ghost in a dream tonight, asking me for directions.”

Tom did not answer. The sight of the corpse had left him shaken. He tried to fight down a sense of foreboding. Vernon, who was panicky and disorganized to begin with, would be a basket case. God knows, he might even be dead, too.

“Why they do not turn around and leave this place, I cannot say. Perhaps a demon has gotten in the dugout with them and is whispering lies into their ears.”

They continued on, making slow work of it. The swamp was endless, the boat grazing the muddy bottom and frequently getting stuck, forcing them to get out and push. Often they had to double back again and again, following tortuous channels. Toward midafternoon, Don Alfonso held up his hand, Chori stopped paddling, and they listened. Tom could hear a distant voice, distraught — someone crying hysterically for help.

Tom leapt to his feet and cupped his hands. “Vernon!”

There was a sudden silence.

“Vernon! It’s me, Tom!”

There was a burst of desperate shouting that echoed through the trees, distorted and unintelligible.

“It’s him,” said Tom. “Hurry.”

Chori paddled forward, and soon Tom could see the vague outlines of a dugout canoe in twilight of the swamp. A person was in the bow, screaming and gesturing. It was Vernon. He was hysterical, but at least he was standing.

“Faster!” Tom cried.

Chori pushed ahead. They reached the boat, and Tom pulled Vernon into their own.

Vernon collapsed into his brother’s arms. “Tell me I’m not dead,” he cried.

“You’re okay, you’re not dead. We’re here now.”

Vernon broke down sobbing. Tom, clasping his brother, had a sudden sense of déjà vu, the memory of a time when Vernon came home one day after school, having been chased by a gang of bullies. He threw himself into Tom’s arms the same way, clutching and sobbing hysterically, his skinny body shaking. Tom had had to go out there and fight them himself — Tom, the younger brother, fighting his older brother’s fights.

“It’s okay,” said Tom. “It’s okay. We’re here. You’re safe.”

“Thank God. Thank God. I was sure the end had come…” His voice trailed away into a choke.

Tom helped Vernon sit. He was shocked at his brother’s appearance. His face and neck were swollen with bites and stings and smeared with blood from scratching. His clothes were indescribably filthy, his hair was tangled and foul, and he was even skinnier than usual.

“Are you okay?” Tom asked.

Vernon nodded. “Aside from being eaten alive I’m all right. Just scared.” Vernon wiped his face with a filthy sleeve that left more dirt than it removed and choked another sob.

Tom took a moment to look at his brother. His mental state worried him even more than his physical state. As soon as they got back to camp, he would send Vernon back to civilization with Pingo.

“Don Alfonso,” Tom said, “let’s turn the boat around and get out of here.”

“But the Teacher,” Vernon said.

Tom stopped. “The Teacher?”

Vernon nodded toward the dugout. “Sick.”

Tom leaned over and peered down. There, lying in a sodden sleeping bag in the bottom of the canoe, almost hidden among the mess of equipment and soggy supplies, was the swollen face of a man, with a wild head of white hair and a beard. He was fully conscious and stared back up at Tom with baleful blue eyes, saying nothing.

“Who’s this?”

“My Teacher from the Ashram.”

“What the hell is he doing here?”

“We’re together.”

The man stared up at Tom fixedly.

“What’s wrong with him?”

“He’s got a fever. He stopped speaking two days ago.”

Tom pulled the medicine chest out of their supplies and stepped into the other dugout. The Teacher followed his every movement with his eyes. Tom bent over and felt the man’s forehead. It was burning hot; a temperature of at least 104 degrees. The pulse was thready and fast. He listened with a stethoscope: The lungs sounded clear, the heart was beating normally, albeit very fast. Tom injected him with a broad-spectrum antibiotic and an antimalarial. Without access to any kind of diagnostic tests, it was the best he could do.

“What kind of fever does he have?” Vernon asked.

“Impossible to know without a blood test.”

“Is he going to die?”

“I don’t know.” Tom switched into Spanish. “Don Alfonso, do you have any idea what disease this man has?”

Don Alfonso climbed into the boat and bent over the man. He tapped his chest, looked into his eyes, felt his pulse, examined his hands, then looked up. “Yes, I know well this disease.”

“What is it?”

“It’s called death.”

“No,” said Vernon, agitated. “Don’t say that. He’s not dying.”

Tom was sorry he had asked for Don Alfonso’s opinion. “We’ll bring him back to camp in the dugout. Chori can pole that dugout, and I’ll pole ours.” Tom turned to Vernon. “We found one dead guide back there. Where’s the other?”

“A jaguar dropped down on him at night and dragged him up into a tree.” Vernon shuddered. “We could hear his screams and the crunching of his bones. It was…” The sentence finished in a choking sound. “Tom, get me out of here.”

“I will,” Tom said. “We’ll send you and your Teacher back down to Brus with Pingo.”

They arrived back at the camp just after nightfall. Vernon put up one of their tents, and they carried the Teacher up from the boat and put him inside. He refused all food and remained silent, staring at them in the most unsettling way. Tom wondered if the man was still sane.

Vernon insisted on spending the night with him in the tent. The next morning, as the sun was just catching the treetops, Vernon roused them all with a call for help. Tom was the first to arrive. The Teacher was sitting up in his sleeping bag, highly agitated. His face was pale and dry, and his eyes glittered like chips of blue porcelain, darting about wildly, focusing on nothing. His hands were grasping at the air.

All at once he spoke. “Vernon!” he cried, groping about with his hands. “Oh my God, where are you, Vernon? Where am I?”

With a shock Tom realized he must have gone blind.

Vernon grasped his hand and knelt. “I’m here, Teacher. We’re in the tent. We’re taking you back to America. You’re going to be fine.”

“What a goddamn fool I was!” the Teacher shouted, his mouth twisting with the effort to speak, causing spittle to fly.

“Teacher, please. Please don’t excite yourself. We’re going home, back to Big Sur, back to the Ashram…”

“I had everything!” the Teacher roared. “I had money. I had teenage girls to fuck. I had a house by the sea. I was surrounded by people who revered me. I had everything.” The veins were popping out on his forehead. Drool ran down and dangled from his chin. His whole frame trembled so violently that Tom fancied he could hear his bones rattling. The blind eyes roved madly in his head, like whirling pinballs.

“We’re going to get you to a hospital, Teacher. Don’t talk, everything’s going to be all right, all right…”

“So what did I do? Ha! It wasn’t enough! Like a fool I wanted more! I wanted a hundred million dollars more! And look what happened to me!” He roared out these last words and, having uttered them, fell back heavily, his body making the sound of a dead fish hitting the floor. He lay there, his eyes staring wide open, but the glitter was gone.

He was dead.

Vernon stared in horror, unable to speak. Tom put his hand on his brother’s shoulder and found him shaking. It had been an ugly death.

Don Alfonso was badly shaken as well. “We must leave,” he said. “A bad spirit came and took that man away, and he did not want to go.”

“Prepare one of the boats to return,” Tom said to Don Alfonso. “Pingo can take Vernon back to Brus while we go on — if you don’t have any objections.”

Don Alfonso nodded. “It is better this way. The swamp is no place for your brother.” He began shouting orders to Chori and Pingo, who rushed about, equally terrified, only too happy to be leaving.

“I can’t understand it,” Vernon said. “He was such a good man. How could he die like that?”

Vernon was always being taken in by swindlers, Tom thought — financial, emotional, and spiritual. But now wasn’t the time to point it out. He said, “Sometimes we think we know someone, and we don’t.”

“I spent three years with him. I knew him. It must have been the fever. He was delirious, out of his mind. He didn’t know what he was saying.”

“Let’s bury him and move on.”

Vernon went to work on digging a grave, and Tom and Sally joined in. They cleared out a small spot behind the camp, chopping through roots with Chori’s axe and digging down into the soil underneath. In twenty minutes a shallow grave had been hollowed out of the hard-clay soil. They dragged the Teacher’s body to the hole, laid him in, packed a layer of clay on top of him, then filled the grave with smooth boulders from the riverbank. Don Alfonso, Chori, and Pingo were already in the boats, fretting, waiting to go.

“Are you all right?” Tom asked, putting his arm around his brother.

“I’ve made a decision,” Vernon said. “I’m not going back. I’m going on with you.”

“Vernon, it’s all arranged.”

“What have I got to go back to? I’m dead broke, and I don’t even have a car. I certainly can’t go back to the Ashram.”

“You’ll figure out something.”

“I’ve already figured out something. I’m coming with you.”

“You’re in no condition to come with us. You almost died back there.”

“This is something I have to do,” said Vernon. “I’m all right now.”

Tom hesitated, wondering if Vernon really was all right.

“Please, Tom.”

There was such a depth of pleading in Vernon’s voice that Tom was surprised — and, despite himself, a little glad. He grasped Vernon’s shoulder. “All right. We’ll do this together, just as Father wanted.”

Don Alfonso clapped his hands. “Enough talking? We go now?”

Tom nodded, and Don Alfonso gave the order to push off.

“Now that we have two boats,” Sally said, “I’ll do my share of the poling.”

“Puah! Poling is a man’s job.”

“Don Alfonso, you are a sexist pig.”

Don Alfonso crinkled his brow. “Sexist pig? What kind of animal is this? Have I been insulted?”

“You certainly have,” said Sally.

Don Alfonso gave his boat a good pole, and it glided forward. He grinned. “Then I am happy. To be insulted by a beautiful woman is always an honor.”