Deep In The Jungle Page 4

  Ben continued by saying, “The men practice certain rituals to make them great hunters. I have to warn you, they won’t be pleasant. Still think you’re up to it?”

  “Sure,” Ryan replied, knowing it was too late to back out even if he wanted to.

  ***

  The village was made up of a circle of ten large thatch-roof huts suspended about eight feet off the ground in the event floodwaters were to overflow the riverbanks during the rainy season. In the center was the longhouse, the focal place for gatherings and conducting ceremonies, and where everyone ate.

  Ben had arranged for Ryan to participate in the Ceremony of Mariwin, a ritual where men who looked like shamans with red masks and black-painted bodies went around the longhouse filled with people and whipped the women and children. Even though the children would run out crying, the lashings were never spiteful.

  The men also participated in the ritual but did so outside and were generally flogged by other hunters. Ryan had already taken off his shirt and was standing in front of a five-foot post, his hands resting on the top.

  Ben explained the purpose of the ritual was to transfer the energy of the spirits into the recipient’s body.

  The man standing behind Ryan had three four-foot long reeds in his left hand. He grabbed a single reed in his right hand and whipped Ryan across the back. The end of the switch wrapped around to sting Ryan’s stomach and left a bright red welt on his fair skin.

  Ryan winced but kept a brave face.

  The flogger dropped the switch he had just used, selected a second one, and struck Ryan again. This time it stung even more and he had to grit his teeth.

  Dropping the lash on the ground, the man administering pain took the last reed and slapped it across Ryan’s back, this time leaving a third slash across his belly

  “So, how do you feel?” Ben asked, standing beside the onlookers, who were all grinning, some even laughing out loud.

  “Like my stomach’s one big paper cut.” Ryan knew it’d be a while before he could put his shirt back on.

  “Well, you got off easy. Now it’s my turn.” Ben removed his shirt but instead of stepping up to the post, he walked over to the longhouse where an elderly woman was waiting.

  Jackie joined Ryan, and together they walked over to watch along with the other villagers.

  “What’s this ritual called?” Ryan asked.

  “It’s the Poison Frog Ceremony,” Jackie replied. “From what I’ve heard, it’s pretty brutal.”

  Ben stood in front of the woman, who was holding a burning stick. She placed the smoldering end onto Ben’s flesh a few inches below his right nipple.

  “That must hurt like hell,” Ryan whispered to Jackie.

  “That’s not the half of it, just wait.”

  The hot ember left a charred piece of flesh in its wake, which the woman picked away with her fingernails. Ben’s face tightened as he took in a deep breath.

  The woman took another tiny stick and dabbed the tip into a substance smeared on a piece of bark that she was holding in her other hand. She took the end and held it on Ben’s wound for a moment, then removed the applicator.

  One of the men motioned for Ben to sit down on a cut piece of tree stump, which he did.

  In a few short minutes, Ben began to sweat and grew pale.

  “That’s the frog poison taking over his body,” Jackie said.

  “Won’t that kill him?” Ryan asked, finding it hard to believe she could be so calm when her friend had just been purposely poisoned. Shouldn’t they be calling someone?

  Ben looked deathly ill. He dropped to his hands and knees and vomited forcefully onto the dirt. Ryan thought it was humanly impossible to be able to heave that much puke. It was like watching Linda Blair auditioning for The Exorcist.

  Ben struggled to his feet and looked over at Ryan and Jackie. “You guys will have to excuse me, but I’m going to have the shits.” He stumbled across the clearing and headed for the nearest bushes and disappeared into the jungle.

  The villagers were smiling and laughing. Watching Ben suffer the way he did seemed like a cruel hazing to Ryan. There was no telling how many times the Matis men indulged in their rituals, enduring pain and anguish in hopes of becoming better providers for their families.

  It wasn’t long before Ben finally came back. He looked much better and the color was back in his face. He looked at Ryan and smiled. “Can’t say that was much fun but once it’s all over, it gives you one hell of a high. You should give it a try.”

  “That’s okay, Ben,” Ryan said. “I think I’ll give this one a pass.”

  12

  Once back at the resort, everyone congregated in the lodge’s small lobby to get the current news on the earthquake. Frank and Wanda stood at the counter conferring with Ignacio, while Ally and Dillon sat on a rattan settee across from Macky, James and Kathy, who were scrolling through their cell phones for the latest updates.

  Ally had left her phone in her room to charge. Lately she’d had to charge it everyday and feared the battery needed replacing.

  “Manaus was hit pretty bad,” James said, reading from his phone. “They’re estimating a magnitude of six point five.”

  “Here’s some pictures,” Kathy said.

  Ally got up and stepped around the coffee table. She sat next to Kathy so she could get a good look at the small screen on Kathy’s phone.

  “Oh my,” Ally said as Kathy flipped through the images: a hillside of collapsed stilt houses piled near the waterfront; a colonial church in ruin; beached and capsized boats in the marina; cars buried under rubble; ash-covered people running down the streets; a frightened woman holding her baby, their faces covered in blood.

  Wanda was viewing her phone as well, checking her messages. “Here’s a text from Ryan.”

  “Does he know anything about the quake?” Frank asked.

  “I’m not sure. All he says is they arrived at the village.”

  “That’s it?”

  “Yeah. You want to see where they are?”

  “Don’t tell me you have tracking apps on your kids,” Frank said.

  “Not so loud or Ally might hear. Hey, what kind of a mother would I be if I didn’t know where my children were 24/7?”

  “I guess you have a point.” Frank looked down at Wanda’s phone. He saw a tiny red dot in a large mass of green. “Not many street addresses in the middle of the Amazon.”

  “I know, but it does give his GPS location.”

  Ignacio had stepped into the back office for moment but now was back. “I just watched a report. There’s been much damage to the city. They’ve even had to close the airport. Which means we will not be getting any more guests, I am afraid to say.”

  “Also means we’re stranded here until it reopens,” Wanda said.

  “It’s not that bad, is it?” Frank said. “Remember, we’re still on our honeymoon.”

  “I know, but it’s going to be hard enjoying ourselves, knowing there are people out there suffering.”

  13

  Ryan, Ben, and Jackie watched as a Matis hunter showed them how to fabricate a blow dart out of a thin stick. Near the center he formed a cottony-looking ball that would enable the dart to be propelled with a single puff of air once placed in the long tube. Each dart was tipped with curate, which poisoned only the blood and did not contaminate the eatable meat of the kill.

  The blowgun was twelve feet in length and looked too cumbersome to be effective, not to mention the strength required to hold it out straight seemed impractical.

  But when Ryan was handed a blowgun, he found it lighter than first believed, though he knew it would take considerable practice to master.

  Ryan was definitely impressed when one of the Indians demonstrated the accuracy of his blowgun by hitting his intended target—a circle the size of a silver dollar coin carved on a post—from twenty yards away.

  As the hunters started to band together in preparation for a hunt, Ryan thought it would be a good opportu
nity to talk with Jackie as Ben was conversing with a couple of the villagers.

  “What do they usually hunt?” Ryan asked. At home, he liked to go fishing for steelhead and rainbow trout but never had reason to hunt. Sneaking up to kill an unsuspecting, defenseless creature just minding its own business in its natural habitat just seemed wrong—evenly cowardly.

  For some unexplainable reason, catching a fish with a sharp barbed hook and watching it thrash around on the shore as it slowly suffocated to death never seemed to really bother him. If it were a mortally wounded deer lying on the ground and he had to watch the animal die—well, that would be inhumane. What was he doing going out on this hunt?

  “Peccary,” Jackie said.

  “They’re pigs, right?”

  “Sort of.”

  Ever since they had arrived at the village, Ryan had a burning question he wanted to ask Jackie, her being the zoologist major.

  “I’ve been noticing a lot of monkeys playing with the kids and hanging around the village for scraps. Don’t they ever worry about disease, keeping them as pets?”

  Jackie gave Ryan a strange look. She placed her hand on his arm and was about to say something, when Ben called out, “Come on, you two, we’re leaving.”

  Six hunters took the lead and walked along separate paths, stopping every so often to gaze up into the trees. One of the men carried two blowguns, one of which was for either Ben or Ryan’s use. Ryan hoped when it came time for him to bow out, he could do it in way so as not to offend the tribesmen.

  That time came all too soon.

  One of the hunters was pointing up into a tall tree.

  Ryan looked up but he wasn’t sure what the man was showing the others; it was so dark up in the tightly clustered leaves.

  The man carrying the two blowguns came up to Ryan. He placed the weapons on the ground, picked one up, and inserted a dart. He handed the blowgun to Ryan and pointed up at the tree.

  Again, Ryan stared up. “I’m sorry, but I don’t think I can do this.”

  “Ryan, just give it a go,” Ben said.

  “I don’t know what he wants me to shoot.”

  “Just do it,” Ben said firmly.

  Ryan saw a shape moving in the dark shadows. He could hear birds high up in the branches, squawking and fluttering their wings. He raised the long blowgun, tilted his head back, and blew as hard as he could.

  A second later, something fell through the branches.

  “Talk about a lucky shot,” Ben said, clapping Ryan on the back.

  Ryan stepped back as a small body hit the ground.

  “It’s a spider monkey,” Jackie said.

  Lying there in the dirt, it looked human-like with its gangly arms and legs and long tail. Its fur was so black Ryan hadn’t noticed the other creature attached until Jackie said, “And it has a baby.”

  Ryan put the blowgun down, feeling sick to his stomach by what he had just done.

  One of the Indians squatted next to the dead monkey and pulled off the infant still clutching on to its mother’s fur. He took a poison dart and stuck the tip into the baby, killing it instantly.

  “My God, why’d he do that?” Ryan said, totally shocked.

  “It was still nursing and too young to survive without its mother and would have died anyway,” Jackie explained.

  “Did he really have to kill it?”

  “You have to understand, Ryan, this is how these people live,” Ben said.

  Ryan felt so ashamed. Not only had he killed the mother, he was also responsible for the infant having to be put down. He felt like a monster and knew if his sister and his little brother were here, they too would be sickened by what he had done.

  “I guess I’m confused,” Ryan said. “What about those monkeys back at the village?”

  “A lot of the time when they kill a monkey, it’s a female with a youngster,” Jackie said. “If it can fend for itself, the hunter will bring it back to the village.”

  “To keep as a pet? That seems a little cold,” Ryan said, unable to mask the disgust in his voice.

  “No, Ryan,” Jackie said. “Because monkey is their staple diet.”

  14

  After returning from the hunt, Ryan had walked off to spend some time alone, as he was still upset about unintentionally killing the mother monkey and even more distraught about her infant’s fate.

  It wasn’t long before Jackie tracked him down.

  “There you are,” she said. “Thought I’d lost you.”

  “No, I’m right here.”

  “I’m sorry about what happened out there. Life in the Amazon can be pretty harsh.”

  “You’re telling me. How do you cope with it?”

  Jackie let out a little laugh. “Believe me, there’re things I’ve seen that have brought me to tears.”

  “Like what?”

  “I don’t think you really want to know.”

  “Yeah, you’re probably right,” Ryan said. “Talk about a culture shock.”

  “Back home we’re spoiled,” Jackie said. “You want anything; you just go to the supermarket. Everything is neat and nicely packaged and no one has to get their hands dirty. Out here, these people have to hunt, harvest their own crops, and survive in the jungle.”

  “I’m not being judgmental.”

  “I know you’re not. It’s a just big contrast from what we’re used to.”

  “I hope I haven’t let you guys down.”

  “Ryan, if you had acted any different, I would have been disappointed.”

  “Well, I’ll try and keep it together.”

  “Anyway, they wanted me to fetch you as some of the villagers are going down to the river to do some fishing.”

  “Then we better not keep them waiting.”

  By the time Ryan and Jackie got to the shore, there was a small congregation of women standing at the mouth of a cove about as large as a backyard swimming pool.

  Each woman was carrying a cloth sack. They spread out along the perimeter of the murky body of water.

  “I don’t see anyone with a fishing pole, or a net,” Ryan said.

  “That’s because here they don’t need them,” Jackie replied.

  Ryan watched as the women lobbed their sacks into the water.

  “Why’d they do that?”

  “Wait and you’ll see.”

  A single fish rose to the surface, then another, and more still, until there were over a hundred fish floating on their sides. The women waded into the shallow water and began scooping up the fish.

  “Did they just poison the water?” Ryan asked, astonished they would go to such an extreme instead of a more traditional method.

  “Not exactly. It’s the affects of the huaca plant. That’s what was in those sacks the women were throwing. It depletes the oxygen in the water.”

  “Like tossing in a stick of dynamite.”

  “The same effect.”

  It was dusk when they returned to the village. Ben and a few other men were standing around a large fire pit with a built-up grate. The flames were heavily stoked, licking almost three feet high up through the metal slats.

  Ryan couldn’t quite make out what they were cooking. He felt Jackie tug at his arm.

  “I don’t think you want to go over there.”

  “That bad, eh?”

  “After what you’ve seen today, yes. I have an idea. Let’s sneak away and go check on Miles.”

  “The pilot? I thought he left.”

  “No, he’s tied up a little ways downstream. I’m sure he’d be happy to see us.”

  “Lead the way.”

  Ben and the villagers were already gathering in the longhouse for their evening feast. Doing their best so as not to be seen, Ryan and Jackie snuck into a hut and retrieved their daypacks. They waited until they were far enough away before turning on their flashlights. Jackie took the lead as they headed down a sandy path.

  The moon was almost full, casting a shimmer over the tranquil river.

  Af
ter rounding a bend, Ryan spotted the pilot’s campfire and the floatplane moored up to the shore.

  “Mind if we join you?” Jackie asked, walking into the camp.

  Miles looked up and gave the young woman a smile. “Well, hi there. Wasn’t expecting visitors.”

  “Thought you might like the company,” Jackie said, taking a seat by the fire.

  “How come you didn’t come into the village?” Ryan asked. He sat down on the sand next to Jackie.

  “It’s better I don’t,” Miles said. His face was sweaty and he looked a little tired as he picked up a whisky bottle and offered it to Jackie.

  “Thanks.” Jackie twisted off the cap and, like the hard-drinking love interest of Indiana Jones, Marion Ravenwood, she took a long pull on the bottle. She blew out a breath and handed the bottle to Ryan, who was duly impressed.

  He raised the bottle and took a swig. The whisky burned down his gullet like Drano cleaning out a drainpipe. He tried not to show a reaction but coughed anyway.

  Miles threw another piece of wood on the fire.

  They passed the bottle around for the best part of an hour. Ryan was already feeling a buzz. He was surprised Jackie could hold her liquor so well; or would it catch up to her later? Ryan listened while Jackie shared a couple stories of her experiences in the jungle. Miles also had a few tales.

  Not wanting to overstay their welcome—and gluttonously polish off the rest of Miles’ whiskey—Jackie suggested they should get back to the village.

  Once Ryan and Jackie were out of earshot, Ryan said, “Did he seem all right to you?”

  “What d’you mean?” Jackie slurred.

  “I don’t know. He didn’t look well.”

  “He was probably just a little drunk.”

  Ryan caught Jackie as she stumbled.

  “Whoa, are you okay?”

  “Be a pal and hold back my hair.”

  “What?” Ryan caught on pretty quick when Jackie bent over and hurled on her boots. He did his best to keep her hair out of her face as she vomited a second time. In a strange way, it made him feel better about himself knowing she wasn’t so tough after all.