T. Parker - The Jaguar

An hour later they were back on the road. Bradley looked out the window for new danger. The Love 32, butt retracted for storage and transport, was under his thigh again. He was suddenly spent, every bit of energy gone. Luck and hope were gone, too, two coins lost somewhere back along this road he had taken. He listened to the hum of the engine and the rasp of the tires on the highway. In the cab was only silence and the stink of mud and human fear.

Erin sat in the leather chair facing the window. The post-storm evening was gray and cool and the tattered fronds hissed on the breeze. She wore the white nightgown buttoned to her neck and a pair of heavy white socks that Atlas had smuggled in for her and an embroidered Nahuatl blanket around her shoulders.

Nearly three days had passed since Saturnino’s attack and she still could not get warm or comfortable, or more than a few hours of nightmare-curdled sleep. Her rump was bruised and her back was scraped and she was torn and burning with pain where he had pulled out her hair. Since walking back here that night, wobbling and nearly senseless, supported on either side by Father Ciel and Benjamin Armenta, she had kept rolled-up tissue in her ear canals, hoping to stem the aural memories of the awful event. It worked only partially.

For almost three days she slept and roamed the room, the eyes looking back at her from the mirrors dull with fear. The life growing inside her was plainly afraid too-thrashing and kicking violently for minutes, then utterly still and possibly lifeless for hours. She kept waiting for the catastrophic evidence to appear, for that feeling of intimate death to come over her, as it had come before. Then she slept and slept more.

Erin looked at her body in profile several times a day and she could see it clearly now, and she knew they must see it too, and she didn’t know why it seemed so important that they not know. Would they not skin a pregnant woman? What would that matter? Maybe Saturnino would delight in it more. Did he have special skinning tools? Did they soak you in brine like a turkey? Would he rape her first? Of course he would. That was what savages did. She pulled the blanket tighter. She adjusted the earplugs. Please don’t let go, little man, she thought. I’ll take care of you. Her hands trembled and her feet were cold as a statue’s and when the tears started up she slapped her face hard to make them stop but they did not.

When she couldn’t sleep she picked up the Garcia Marquez book and continued where she had left off. Anything to escape those thoughts. The book was perfect for that, as intoxicating as anything she had ever experienced. She lost herself in the story of Sierva Maria de Todos los Angeles, bitten by the dog and waiting for the symptoms of rabies to strike her. But Erin couldn’t see how the story could end happily, because rabies was always fatal back in the strange and superstitious Caribbean world of the eighteenth century. She liked the crazy colonial viceroys and Inquisitors and the decaying nobility and pirates, but the canopy of viral doom overhanging the tale wouldn’t allow her to truly enjoy it. The priest was going to be disgraced by his love for her and Servia Maria was going to die. Horribly. In her dreams Erin grew the same hair that Servia Maria grew after her death-sixty feet of splendid copper-colored waves. Had Armenta left the book here as a message? Then why this book, of the hundreds of thousands of them on Earth? And what was the damned message, anyway?

Later Atlas set the serving tray on the table and put out a glass of red wine and a plate of cheeses and fruit. He set a small package beside the food. He looked at her gravely as he worked the plastic wrap off the plate.

“Were you here when I performed?” she asked.

“Was I where?”

“Here. In my room.”

“No. I was there when you sang. You were fabulous.”

“When I got back I thought someone had been in here.”

“Maybe you were mistaked. You must have been extremely… infeliz .”

“Unhappy? Yes, I was.”

“Benjamin will be here in one hour for you,” he said in his sweet high voice. “He would like you to be nicely dressed for dinner and have the Hummingbird in its case.”

“I’ll dress how I want to dress.”

“Yes.”

“Where are we going?”

“I don’t know, Mrs. McKenna.”

“I hate this fucking place.”

“You will be free in three days. It is planned. The money will arrive and you will be released. I’m not supposed to know this but I do. The servants all know, but some don’t believe. They are betting on what will be the outcome. And Benjamin has ordered that the tigers not be fed. It is not difficult to add together what this means.”

Erin eyed him over the blanket. “If you know so much, then where is Charlie Bravo? Is he close to us? Did he make it through the hurricane?”

“This I do not know. Charlie Bravo brings the money?”

“He’d better bring the money or Saturnino will skin me alive.”

“Saturnino will burn in hell.”

“He looked pretty bad off the other night.”

Atlas didn’t answer for a long moment. “Saturnino does not recognize his father. Or others. He has not spoken one word of Spanish but he now speaks some language no one knows but him. He sleeps greatly. He wakes up for a few minutes and he stares at people without comprehension and he eats. They say he eats gigantic amounts. Then he prays in the language that no one knows. Then he falls back asleep for hours and hours more.”

“Something tells me he’ll steer out of it. Has he skinned many people?”

Atlas did not look up to face her.

“Oh, God,” she said.

“Would you like a Bible to read?”

“What kind of question is that?”

“It is a dependable comfort.”

“A friend of mine had a seizure at the Guadalajara airport. She was coming home from a vacation in Zihuatanejo. In the hospital they did a scan and when the doctor came in to tell her the results he said he was not sure how to interpret the scan. He told my friend to have a more advanced test when she got home to the United States. And he gave her a Bible in English, with a page marked and a passage underlined about how you can face death with God and He will be your comfort. And this terrified her worse than anything she had ever read. I do not want a Bible.”

“But the Bible also says you can face life with God and He will be your guide. And I thought you might do this because…”

“Because what?”

She caught him looking at her reflection in the full-length mirror.

“Because you have two lives that need to be guided.”

She looked away from the mirror to the mournful gray sky outside. She wanted to cry and she wanted to kill Saturnino. Maybe Armenta too. It feels like my skin is off already, she thought. They can all get to me but I can’t get away. They all know me but I don’t know them. They all see the baby growing inside me but I see nothing in them but this hell on Earth.

“I don’t want a Bible.”

“I brought you one anyway.”

“What’s in that package you put on the table?”

“A gift from Owens. I deliver it only. I don’t know what it is.”

Atlas popped the cotton napkin and folded it into his trademark scallop before setting it at her place. From the serving tray he took the Bible and set this beside the napkin. Then he took the tray in one hand and walked over to Erin. He held out his other hand in a fist and she put down the book and held out her open hand.

He dropped something small and light into her palm, then he bowed slightly, smiled shyly and left the room.

She knew what it was without looking. She could feel the encapsulated drama of it, right there in the palm of her hand: the winds of Ivana and her pestilential rains, the softness of the bird’s feathers as he labored through the heavens on nothing but his own slight wings, the movement of Bradley’s pen across the fabric.