Factory controller, p.9
Factory Controller, page 9
“Heather!” Trent crashes through the brush to my side. “Heather, why didn’t you stop?”
“Because of the night wasps, you jerk,” I snap back at him. “I walked right into a nest of them.”
“Oh.” Trent’s face twitches, then turns red, then splits open wide as guffaws spew out into the air. Tears stream from his eyes, so great is his mirth.
“What’s so funny?”
“Those were—” he struggles to catch his breath enough to speak amid his nigh hysterical laughter. “Those weren’t night wasps. They were angel bees.”
“Angel bees?”
“Stingless bees. They don’t even bite like their nastier cousins. They’re harmless, which is why they have the name angel bee. Or maybe it’s because they look like angels, I forget which.”
“Oh God,” I hide my face in my hands. “I must look like such an idiot right now.”
“Not really. I feel bad about hyping you up about the night wasps anyway. If anything, it’s my fault.”
We resume our journey, though I’m more cautious than before. But since I need a distraction, something to keep me from freaking out, I try to analyze my attraction to Trent. Could we really work? Is he planning on staying in the rainforest forever? There’s only one way to find out, if I dare ask what his future plans might be.
“So, how long have you been in the Amazon?”
Trent grunts before answering. “Ten years, I guess.”
“Ten years?” I shake my head in awe. “You’ve never even thought about going back to civilization in that time?”
“Not really, no.” Trent shrugs his massive shoulders. “I’ve got most of what I need right there in the forest, and, whatever the forest doesn’t provide, the river takes care of. I can trade for whatever else I might need, like medicine, or do a cargo run.”
He laughs. “For the most part, the way I spend my days doesn’t change much. I wake up when I want to, eat when I’m hungry, and lounge around in my hammock as much as possible, drinking native beverages.”
Trent looks back at me and grins as he steps along the trail. “That cell phone you were so proud of, all it did was chop up your day into little pieces, make you have to be in certain places at specific times. I’m not wrong.”
I open my mouth for a rebuttal, but it dies on my lips. He’s not wrong. I think about my so-called civilized life: meetings with clients both current and prospective, deadlines on my accounting projects, never a free moment to spare for myself.
Worse, when I was with Rick-the-Prick, he absconded with every second I could spare, stealing from me my very will to exist. Yes, I could see how being down in the rainforest without any responsibilities or cares might feel good.
“Do you ever get lonely, Trent?”
Trent stiffens, pausing for a moment before returning to his march. “Yeah, sometimes. I mean, I’ve got friends with a lot of the local tribes, but I’m not really part of their community, and never can be. In a lot of ways, I’m alone.”
“Me, too.”
“Shut up,” Trent says, a grin stretching across his handsome face. “A gorgeous woman like you doesn’t have to be lonely—unless that’s what she wants, of course.”
“I guess maybe I just got tired of disappointment and gave up on relationships, romantic or otherwise. I know I’m too eager to please, afraid of being rejected. Just like my parents rejected me…”
“Hey, for all you know, your parents were making the best possible decision for your future,” Trent frowns back at me. “You don’t know, so why assume the worst?”
We return to marching silently through the forest. I have to face the facts. Can Trent and I ever really work? I doubt it. We’re just too different to ever be compatible. Aren’t we?
The Amazon gives no answer as we plunge through its dark, verdant breast.
TRENT
The sun heats up the dense foliage, creating a suffocating invisible fog of stench. Like the dumpster behind a vegan restaurant in mid-July. We’re in forest so thick no one, I fear not even the native tribes, has traversed it since the dawn of time.
Heather pads on silently behind me as I blaze the trail. Her questions still echo in my mind. Would I ever consider returning to the United States? Or even just civilization in general?
For ten years I’d have easily answered that question. Not. A. Chance. Why would I return to a world of alerts and messages and bills and taxes?
Truth be told, Heather has shown me my last decade of life has been a lie. I’m not down here in the Amazon hiding from a world I never made. I’m down here in the Amazon so I don’t have to get close to—and therefore risk losing—anyone else.
They say time heals all wounds. I won’t say that losing my parents still doesn’t hurt, from time to time, but it’s not the soul-crushing wave of existential misery it used to be. I guess I could say I’ve gotten over their deaths, but that always sounded disrespectful to me. How do you get over someone’s death? You can’t get over it.
You can make peace with it, though. Maybe that’s what I’ve done, reached a kind of peace. But peace can still be lonely, and I can’t deny I’ve been feeling that.
Sure, I don’t miss all of the gadgets, the fast cars and crummy superhero movies and latest smartphones, but maybe I miss having other people around. Especially people like Heather…
“You’re pretty quiet,” Heather says, her face red from the heat.
“Just thinking.” I sniff the air and frown. “I think I smell smoke. We could be getting close to a village, or at least a fisherman’s hut.”
“What good would a fisherman’s hut do us?”
“They could at least point us in the right direction,” I reply.
“Oh, that’s right. You’re a rare mutant breed of man who asks directions.” She licks her lips and smiles. “Is there any water left?”
I lift the canteen from my belt and give it a swirl. A tinny, minuscule trickle responds to my efforts. “A little bit. Smoke means a fire, though, and that means we can make some more drinkable water if nothing else.”
I forge on and come across a place with a rocky beach. Grinding to a halt, I turn to Heather and place a finger over my lips, then motion for her to come forward.
“Is that a kid?” she asks.
“Uh huh.”
The beach is an ideal fisherman’s camp, and a boy of about ten takes full advantage of it. He stands on a rock in the water, wooden spear cocked over his shoulder, ready to strike. Despite his youth, he seems every bit the predator.
Behind him, a lean-to shelter sits a stone’s toss from a rack of fish smoking over wide, low embers. I see other spears leaning against a palm tree and know there must be other fishermen about.
“Is he from a tribe you recognize?” Heather asks.
I squint at the boy and shake my head. “I don’t think so. It’s hard to tell, since he hasn’t earned manhood yet. That’s when they don most of their distinctive markings.”
“What should we do? Should we go and talk to him?”
I suck in air through my teeth and shake my head. “I don’t know about that. He could be from one of the uncontacted tribes in the area. They’re known to be pretty hostile to whites.”
“Do we have much choice, though? We have to take the risk. Otherwise, we’re going to die of thirst, or dysentery if we give in to the thirst and drink river water.”
“Fair enough. Let’s go say hello.”
We come out of the brush and approach the boy. I make sure to hold my hands out to my sides, palms open so he knows I’m not bearing a weapon. The boy takes note of us immediately. He shifts his stance on the rock so he can toss the spear through my gut instead of the white belly of a fish.
I try a greeting in the most common tongue among the indigenous tribes, Arawak. His face scrunches up in confusion. So, not Arawak. At least he didn’t try to skewer me. I next utilize Panoan, another common dialect, to no avail.
I’ve worked most of the way through my list of tongues when Heather tugs on my arm.
“Trent? Trent, I think someone’s coming.”
I turn about and see a man with half his face painted red emerge from the forest, and he’s not alone. A half dozen leanly muscled, half-naked men surround us with spears, eyes hard as black diamonds.
On a whim I try Chapacuran, an obscure dialect I only know in passing. The men lower their spears and regard me with suspicion, but much less hostility than before.
“Thank God you speak their language.”
“Enough to keep us from getting killed,” I reply nervously, watching the men consider our fate. “I hope.”
“How do you know so many languages, anyway?”
“For a while, before I settled down in my little riverside castle, I spent a lot of time embedded with native tribes. I knew I’d have to learn how to survive down here if I were to stay. After a while I guess I pick them up a lot more easily.”
“Huh. You’re a linguist, natural born.”
“I’m a cunning linguist, you mean.”
Heather rolls her eyes. “You know, for a while there, I was really starting to like you.”
The tribesmen decide not to kill us. We’re escorted to to their village, where we speak with their chief Upuna. Thankfully, the man speaks Arawak.
When I explain the situation, he nods gravely. Their tribe, too, has felt the sting of the human traffickers. He also explains where we are. We’re not as far off course as I had thought we were, less than ten miles from the nearest village where we can secure transportation to Macapá.
His people are accommodating in the extreme, allowing us to bathe and providing refreshments. A lot of the village children cluster around us as we bathe, which upsets Heather a lot until I tell her these people don’t have a nudity taboo.
“Then why are they staring so hard?”
“Because you’re so white. You’re exotic, like an animal in the zoo.”
“What happens after our bath?”
“I’m not sure. We could continue on our way, but it’s starting to get dark. The chief has invited us to remain for the night. Apparently, his daughter is getting…married, I guess. And the more guests there are the luckier the union will be. Or something. My Arawak’s a bit rusty.”
Heather’s eyes narrow. “Then why in the hell are you not accepting?”
“Well, I guess I don’t want to put these people in danger. If we found this village, it’s quite likely that the mercenaries pursuing us can do so as well. Spears don’t mean much against guns.”
Heather scoffs. “My friend’s grandfather fought in Vietnam. He was a helicopter pilot who lost his leg when his craft went down. Would you like to know why?”
“Why?”
“Because someone shot the rear propeller assembly with a bow and arrow. A bow and arrow took down a multi-million-dollar aircraft armed to the teeth. Disease and destruction of their environment conquered the natives, not better tech or tactics.”
“I stand corrected. Still, it’s our problem and I’d hate to bring trouble to them.”
“True enough, but…I really don’t want to spend another night in the jungle. I’m exhausted.”
“I guess it would be rude to leave before the wedding…speaking of which, I think that’s the happy couple now.”
She follows my gaze to a hut near the pond’s edge. A young man stands under an opening, wearing ceremonial bangles and an elaborate headdress. I can just see a very young woman within, smiling broadly as she speaks to the groom.
Their happiness is so strong, it’s palpable. Damn near knocks me over. I look over at Heather and think about the future. What if after all this is over she returns to her hometown, and leaves me forever?
That mere thought makes me sad.
HEATHER
The village women were kind enough to wash our clothing and hang it to dry, though I’m pretty sure there are stains that are never coming out. We’ve been provided with clothing to wear in the interim, if you can call it that.
Trent looks good in a loincloth. Really good. It’s hard to appreciate how muscular his legs are until they’re exposed in all their glory. Magnificent. Of course, it’s easy to look good half naked when you’re built like a professional bodybuilder.
Me, on the other hand? I’m a six-foot clumsy giraffe. I don’t feel anything but horribly exposed in a cloth skirt that bares my hips and the flimsiest of cloth across my breasts. Most of the women don’t bother wearing a top in this village, so I assume it was included as a courtesy.
“Come on, Heather,” Trent says, motioning for me to come out of the hut. “The ceremony is about to start.”
“You go on without me.”
“What? Why?”
“I’ll just wait until my real clothes dry.”
“Oh come on, I bet you look amazing.”
“You would, because you’re a dirty-minded male. I just feel like you’re going to be disappointed.”
“I doubt that. C’mon, Heather. Once you drink enough happy juice, you won’t even care that you’re mostly naked.”
I sigh and push the reed curtain aside. Trent’s eyes go wide, and he can’t resist running his gaze up and down my exposed body.
“Wow. You look incredible.”
“Thank you.” I can’t quite meet his gaze. “So where do we sit for the wedding?”
“Sit?” Trent laughs. “This is one of those active participation type deals. Follow me and we’ll get you a torch.”
“Torch? What kind of wedding is this?”
We step out under a starry sky, the moon a bare sliver amid the celestial tapestry. The villagers have gathered outside of a hut. As far as I can tell, there’s nothing to distinguish it from the others. It’s not larger like the chief’s hut or the shaman’s.
Trent leads me to a fire pit, where a number of torches formed from fallen limbs lie soaking in a tub. He takes one of the upthrust handles and lifts the torch from the tub, shaking off the excess of syrupy fluid.
He then lights the torch from the ceremonial flame, lighting up his handsome features with an amber sheen.
I follow suit, finding the torch to be lighter than I’d been expecting. We join the villagers outside of the hut while a thin, reedy-voiced shaman speaks some kind of ceremony.
“What is he saying?”
Trent squints his eyes at the shaman, tilting his head to the side. “Uh…that’s the bride’s hut. He’s asking if she’s ready to accept the matchmaker.”
“Matchmaker?”
“A sort of priestess who arranges the marriage through the gods.”
The chief winds down. A girl, barely a teenager, appears, naked as the day she was born. I blush a little at the sight of her. She’s been adorned with paint that seems to accentuate rather than conceal her womanly curves.
A middle-aged woman, the matchmaker I presume, steps up and anoints the bride with incense. She then bends her knees, and the bride climbs onto her back, to my amazement.
The villagers spring into action, forming a dual line and holding their torches aloft. Trent and I hastily joined them, squeezing in near the end. We watched the naked bride on the matchmaker’s back as she passed through the line of torches until the matchmaker deposited her on the ground outside the groom’s hut.
Again, the chieftain utters a ritual chant. Trent translates as best he can.
“Kind of the same speech as the woman, just with more emphasis on hunting and providing. You get the gist.”
The groom pushes past his reed curtain and stands in view, naked as the bride. They share a smile of uncontained pleasure; a private moment had when exposed to the entire village—and two strangers.
They’re so very young. At home they would be going to school and dreaming of their first kisses. Here they’re treated as adults. I’m not sure what to think except that they seem so happy together. I wonder if the matchmaker’s interference was even unwelcome in this case. The villagers part, which means Trent and I have to fall in line. We follow the bride and groom to the center of the village, where a large pot of incense burbles and smokes on a roaring fire.
The cloying smell of the incense stings my nostrils as we approach. The chief makes an offering to the gods, the incense meant to convey more than just scent into the heavens.
“What’s the matchmaker lady doing?”
“I’m not sure.”
The matchmaker steps forward and affixes a sleeveless red blouse on the bride, but lays her grass skirt on the ground before her. She then turns to the groom and puts on a tunic, laying his loincloth on the ground before him.
The chieftain utters a final word, and the bride and groom nervously finish dressing each other.
“This allows them to inspect each other’s peerless parts, and make sure there’s no venereal disease,” Trent says.
“I could have gone on fine not knowing that,” I whisper back.
The matchmaker ties the bride’s blouse to the groom’s tunic, and then says a word. As one the entire village launches into song, including the bride and groom. Trent and I stand there awkwardly for a moment until it becomes obvious no one expects us to join in.
“Have you ever thought about getting married?” I ask.
Trent’s brow furrows. “Not really, but you know, maybe I had yet to met the right woman.”
He turns his gaze on me, and it’s molten. Trent’s eyes openly undress me, not that I’m wearing much. Suddenly I move forward, wrapping my hands around his head and kiss him.
It’s a sweet sensation of relief. At last, I’m no longer fighting myself. I’m giving in to my desires. For a few seconds there’s no one else on earth but me and Trent.
I become acutely aware of the eerie silence. The singing has ceased. I pull away from Trent and find that the entire village is staring at us. My skin burns red hot as I move several steps away from Trent.
Fortunately, our faux pas proves to be of little trouble. The wedding ceremony turns into a feast, complete with dancing and happy faces all around.
