Michael Gruber: Night of the Jaguar

“I would like to go back home,” he says after a long silence.

“When you’re better, Moie,” says the jampiri.

“I will not be better. What I mean is, when I am dead and you have burned my body, I would like to have my ash put into our river. We burn witches, but we don’t put their ash in the river, of course. Perhaps, if you do this, I will still rise to the moon to be with my ancestors.”

“She says she will do this for you,” says the jampiri. “She promises.”

“And take my bag of dreams and my medicine bag back there, too. Perhaps Jaguar will send another to be jampiri to the Runiya.”

“She will do that as well,” says the jampiri.

Moie says to the woman, “You should be careful where your tears fall. An enemy can use them against you.”

Jenny Simpson and Jimmy Paz stood in the parking lot of the funeral home in which Moie has just been reduced to a can of ashes. Jenny had secured this can inside her backpack, which also contained some changes of clothing,The Wind in the Willows, Hogue’sLatin American Insects and Entomology, Moie’s sorcerous gear, an ultralight tent, a sleeping bag and pad, and twelve hundred dollars of the surprisingly large amount of money left to her by Nigel Cooksey. She was dressed for travel in denim cutoffs, a yellow tube top, and a Dolphins ball cap.

“You’re really going to hitch down to Colombia?” said Paz.

“Yep.”

“You could fly. You have money now.”

“I could, but I guess I want to take a long trip alone, think all this shit through. And I want to save his money, in case I want to get an education. He would’ve liked that.”

“There’s a lot of rough country between here and there. A lot of bad guys.”

“I’ll be fine.” She laughed. “All my life nobody ever gave a shit about me, and all of a sudden everyone’s looking out for my welfare-Cooksey, you, Lola, Moie.”

“Maybe no one saw your virtues before.”

She shrugged. “Last night…that was real nice, Lola throwing me a going-away party. She thinks I’m crazy to be doing this, doesn’t she?”

“Lola thinks a good deal of what people do is crazy. It’s her profession.”

“Word. And she doesn’t buy any of this, does she? What all happened, with Jaguar and stuff.”

“No, she’s on a different channel.”

“How will you, like, handle that?”

“With care. Love makes a lot of allowances. And Amelia knows. That’ll help. And my mom.”

“God, it’s so totally weird all this, all the deaths and how it all worked out. You know, you have a life, and even if it sucks, you think, that’s your life and it’s not going to change and then, bang! You’re a different person with a different life. What’s up with that?”

“What’s up with that is a ten-hour discussion and a lifetime of contemplation. Meanwhile, if you want to get on the road today, we better get started. I’ll drop you at the Bird Road exit on the turnpike. That’s probably your best bet going north.”

They got in the Volvo and drove west in companionable silence. Paz reflected that both of them were different from what they had been when they first met, both kicked into change by the gods rather more directly than God typically kicked humans into change. He was glad that it had happened, and he prayed fervently that it never had to happen again. Fat chance, he thought, and laughed to himself.

Paz parked near the freeway ramp. She kissed him on the cheek, promised postcards, and left. He waited while she thumbed. Long-legged redheads with knockout bodies do not typically have to wait long for rides, and before too many minutes had passed, an eighteen-wheeler hit its brakes with a great sigh, and she climbed into its cab. Whatever else he now was, Paz was still a dad and a cop, and so he wrote down its license number before it drove away.

Jenny settled herself in the passenger seat and smiled at the driver. He was a fortyish man with long hair, a bad shave, and deeply set, bright blue eyes sporting very small pupils. As he cranked up through his gears he asked, “Where’re you going, honey?” He had a Texas accent.

“Colombia.”

“In Carolina?”

“No, the country. In South America.”

“No lie? Hell, that’s a long way for a little girl to go all by her lonesome.”

She made no comment on that, so he continued the chatter. She answered when it would have been rude not to, and in response to his probings invented a set of plausible lies. They exchanged names: his was Randy Frye. Randy Frye the Good-Time Guy, as he announced. He liked to talk about himself, and he had lots of stories. By West Palm he was confident enough to make the stories a little raunchy; by Yeehaw Junction, he was probing her sexual history (unsuccessfully) and accentuating his remarks with little touches on her shoulder and arm. By Kissimmee, they were such good pals that he laid his big red hand on her inner thigh, pat pat pat, squeeze.

She turned in her seat and looked him in the face. Randy Frye noticed that her eyes, which had been pale blue, were now lambent yellow with vertical pupils. Out of her throat came a sound that should not have had a home in such a throat.

Ararah. Arararararh.

The semi swerved momentarily out of lane, engendering angry honks from a nearly sideswiped van. By the Orlando interchange, Frye had just about managed to forget what he had seen and heard and had invented a story about a cold little bitch, probably a lesbo, wouldn’t fuck her with your dick…After that, without exchanging more than a dozen or so words, he took her all the way to Corpus Christi.