Ann Patchett - State of Wonder

“I don’t know where you’ll be sleeping,” Dr. Swenson said, making no concessions to civility. “We are working here, not running a Hyatt.”

The Lakashi, sensing there was no further call for celebration, began stacking their burning sticks into a single raging bonfire that threatened to spread to the dock they were standing on. Thomas Nkomo stepped forward, waving his hand and bowing quickly to the guests. “Let us work this out away from the fire,” he said calmly. “We will make sure everyone is accommodated.” Once he had herded them gently to shore he told Barbara Bovender that she would follow Marina, and Mr. Fox would bunk with him, and Milton—

“I can sleep in the boat,” Milton said.

Thomas shook his head. “There is a cot in the lab near Dr. Swenson’s station. She will be happy to have you sleep there for tonight.”

“Let’s leave your assumptions of my happiness out of this,” Dr. Swenson said. As she turned and walked back up the dock, Marina could see that Dr. Swenson was limping badly and wanted to go to her and lend her an arm, and she wanted to go with Mr. Fox because Thomas of all people would give them a moment together without asking questions, but instead she took Barbara Bovender’s hand and led her through the jungle towards the storage shed.

“Do you know where we’re going?” Barbara asked.

“I do,” Marina said.

Jackie had left for Lima five days before, this being the season when the surf rose along the Peruvian coast with such ferocity that it cleared the lesser surfers from the beaches and brought forth the greater ones from other continents. The Bovenders had talked it over at length and decided this would be a good time for both of them. Barbara could work on her novel and he could spend a couple of weeks curled in the lip of a giant wave. “We went over everything that could possibly happen and decided there was nothing that I couldn’t handle myself.” She was sitting in the chair on top of Marina’s extra dress. She closed her eyes and shook her head. “We didn’t take Mr. Fox into account. I told him I didn’t know where Annick was. That lasted about three minutes.”

“He’s better at it than I was.”

Mrs. Bovender’s blue eyes went round at the thought of it. “He’s better at it than anyone. Vogel holds the lease on the apartment. He said I would be on the curb in an hour. He got Milton, Milton got the boat. I said, fine, good luck, and then he said I was coming with them. Milton’s never been out here before and I’d only come with Jackie. Half the time I came with him I was asleep. Jackie gets seasick unless he’s the one driving the boat. I was supposed to tell them how to get here? Oh God, it was awful, we’d pass one river and then I’d start to think a half an hour later that that was the river we were supposed to turn on.”

“But you got them here,” Marina said. She wasn’t sure she could have done it.

“Marina, we left two days ago. All those rivers, all those trees. I get turned around in Manaus.” Her hands were shaking and so she sat on them. “Do you have a cigarette? I would really love a cigarette.”

“I’m sorry,” Marina said.

“Thank God Milton was there. At first Mr. Fox asked me a lot of questions, mostly questions about you, but once he was convinced I really hadn’t heard from you he stopped talking to me altogether.” There was something about Barbara’s hair, the two yellow braids hanging over her shoulders, that had robbed her of her considerable sophistication and left behind a fourteen year old girl. “I was staring out at the river bank every second. I felt like I was trying to intuit where you were, like it was my responsibility to know, and I didn’t know. Mr. Fox wouldn’t believe me when I told him I didn’t remember. He thought I was still trying to throw him off Annick’s trail, like it would be great fun for me to take us all out on the river and get us lost. And then I saw another river, a small one, and all of the sudden I was sure it was the right one. The opening would have been so easy to miss. If I had been looking on the other side of the boat for just a minute we would have kept going. Mr. Fox and Milton didn’t see it at first, and they both perked up then because I was so sure. We went up that river for half the day and everything was quiet. Most of the time I was still thinking I’d gotten it right, and then I started to think we had gotten it wrong, and I was just about to say that, I was getting up my nerve, when we came around a bend and there were all these people on the shore in loincloths with their foreheads painted yellow. It was like they’d been standing there forever, waiting for us, and I didn’t remember exactly what the Lakashi looked like. I was so tired by then and I was so confused by all the wrong choices I’d already made that I honestly didn’t remember.”

Marina leaned forward from the bed where she was sitting. She put her hands on Barbara Bovender’s knees. All of the rivers in the Amazon and she knew which one this story had taken.

“So I said, ‘There they are!’ and Milton was slowing down the boat and he was whispering to me, ‘Are you sure, are you sure?’ He’s met the Lakashi before. They come down to Manaus selling timber, sometimes they’ve come with Annick. He knows this isn’t right, and then I know it isn’t right, and the river is narrow there and they all raise up these bows and arrows and they’re huge.” She is crying now, and she takes her trembling hands out from beneath her legs and begins to wipe her eyes.

“You’re okay,” Marina said. “You found me. Milton got you out.”

She nodded but her fingers could not get far enough ahead of the tears to wipe them all away, there were simply too many of them. “He did. He was so fast. Milton deserves some sort of medal. He’d never driven that boat before and he slammed it around so fast we nearly went over. When I looked back the air was full of arrows. Arrows! How can that be possible? And then I saw something. I thought I saw something.”

“What?” Marina said.

She shook her head. “It was worse than anything, worse than Mr. Fox or us getting lost or those people shooting at us.” She looked up at Marina and blinked her eyes and for a moment the crying stopped and a look of utter seriousness crossed her pretty face. She took Marina’s hands. “I saw my father running through the trees,” she whispered. “I don’t know what you’d call it, a vision, a visitation? He was coming straight towards me, coming down to the water, and I threw myself on the bottom of the boat. There were arrows in the boat and Milton said not to touch them. I tried to look back for him but Milton said to keep down. Marina, my father is dead. He died in Australia when I was ten years old. I think about him all the time, I dream about him, but I’ve never seen him. He came there for me because he knew I was going to die.”

“Did Milton see him, or Mr. Fox?”

She shook her head. “Mr. Fox was on the deck and Milton was driving. I don’t think they would have been able to see him anyway. I think he was only there for me.”

“Who would have known you were missing?” Dr. Swenson was saying to Mr. Fox when Barbara and Marina walked into the lab. Dr. Budi could not stop shaking her head and the two Drs. Saturn stayed very close together. The misery that comes from having a good imagination was writ large on Thomas Nkomo. “I suppose the Inca Cola man would have wanted his boat back at some point. When Jackie Bovender came home from his surfing expedition in two or three weeks they would have come here together. Don’t you think so, Barbara? He would have come looking for you then.”

Barbara Bovender, now the center of everyone’s nervous attention, made the slightest gesture towards a nod.