In the morning, miraculously, they were both still balanced in the bed, two thin plates leaning against one another in a rack, Marina on her side, wearing Anders Eckman over her back like a blanket. She would have thought that she would go to the Martins one last time before leaving but now all she wanted was for this to be over. She was finished with the trees. The fact that she had ever considered bringing back a bag full of branches struck her now as ridiculous and slightly repulsive. The only thing to bring home was Anders. She was naked, in bed with her officemate, and in sliding out from under him she woke him up.
“Oh, Marina,” he said, but she shook her head and leaned forward. For the last time in her life, she kissed him.
“Let’s go home,” she said.
And so they did, Marina wearing Mrs. Bovender’s nightgown with a pair of her pants underneath it and one of Mr. Fox’s shirts over it. She wore Milton’s hat on her head and carried Easter’s strongbox like a very small suitcase. The Saturns took them in the pontoon boat to Manaus. They were only an hour away from the Lakashi when an enormous eagle sailed over their heads low enough that they could see the expression on the face of the small monkey that dangled from its curving talons.
“That’s a harpy eagle,” Anders said loudly, tilting himself over the side of the boat to watch it pass. “Did you see that?”
“No one could miss that,” Nancy Saturn said. The jungle was suddenly silent in the bird’s wake, as if everything with eyes had the sense to hold its breath.
“That was the bird I most wanted to see when I came down here. They’re almost impossible to find.” Anders’ body still strained forward in the direction of the raptor. “I can’t believe I saw a harpy eagle.”
When they arrived in Manaus they called Milton from the pay phone at the dock. Milton, forever resourceful, had a friend at the ticket counter at the airlines who was sympathetic to their case, and while they waited for him to arrange the details of two seats on the last flight out to Miami, connecting to the first flight out to Minneapolis, they went to see Barbara Bovender to tell her that it was not her father she had seen running through the trees and how in making that wrong turn on the river she had saved Anders’ life. In telling the story to other people they told it to one another, about how they each had come to find Dr. Swenson, how Anders in his fever had wandered down to the river and gotten into a canoe, about the Hummocca who had found him half dead and floating in the bottom of his little boat though where he was he would never know for sure as all of those memories came from a place that was now fully under water, like a town that had been flooded into a lake, about the poultice they painted on him for weeks that smelled like horseradish and tar and how it blistered the skin on his chest. They became so good at talking that at one point Marina told Milton of her vision of Thomas Nkomo shot through with an arrow and Anders told Barbara about Easter being lifted from his hands though both Barbara and Marina had cried to hear it. By the time they boarded the plane, they had talked about everything except the thing they would never need to talk about. They drank Bloody Marys and watched as the Amazon grew farther and farther away on the in-flight map screen in front of them. In their reclining seats they both fell into a sleep that was deeper and more refreshing than any sleep either had had in months.
There was a good case to be made for calling Karen from the airport in Miami and a good case to be made for waiting, for going right to the house. Marina could see that there were equal parts of love and cruelty either way it was reasoned, and though she voted to go to the house she said the decision was of course unequivocally his to make. Anders stared at the clock and the rare bank of pay phones near the gate until finally the flight was called to board. Anders and Marina both agreed they had lost their skills on the telephone. Every mile they went backwards they felt themselves turning into the people they had been, two doctors who shared an office in a pharmaceutical company outside of Minneapolis.
Minnesota! It smelled like raspberries and sunlight and tender grass. It was summer, and everything was more beautiful than any picture she had carried with her. By the time they were in the taxi they still knew that something extraordinary had happened but they found themselves distracted, first by the tall buildings and then later by the trees that were fully leafed, by the wide stretches of prairie that let the eye sweep so easily in any direction, by the remarkable lightness of the air. Anders leaned over the seat and gave his directions to the Nigerian cab driver one turn at a time while Marina rolled down her window and let the wind press back her fingers and pull at her braided hair. For some reason she thought of driving with Milton and the Bovenders to that beach outside Manaus and the goat that Milton managed not to hit. There had never been a place in the world as beautiful as Minnesota.
When they got to the top of the cul-de-sac they passed a boy on a bicycle but Anders was looking in the other direction. He had by then caught sight of two boys in the front yard, boys who from a distance moved and played like Easter, and his hand was on the Nigerian’s shoulder and was calling for him to stop the car, to stop. The door of the taxi opened like the door of a cage and Anders leapt out, calling their names. For a few moments the cab was stopped and Marina watched this world that had nothing to do with her even though she had made it herself. She saw the boy on the bike swing a wide, arcing turn and come careening back down the street towards his father. The front door opened at the sound of so much screaming, the boys were screaming like Lakashi, and the neighbors opened their doors. She didn’t see Karen open her door but there she was, flying into his arms, her feet never touching the lawn. She was as small and golden as a child herself. It was as if they had waited for him every day he had been gone, holding their burning sticks above their heads, pouring their souls up to heaven in a single voice of ululation until he came back. And Marina brought him back, and without a thought that anyone should see her, she told the driver to go on.