TWENTY.

THE STORM HIT at dusk, as Welly was boiling rice in the kitchen and Jevy was watching the river grow dark. The wind woke Nate, a sudden howling blast that shook the hammock and snapped him to his feet. Thunder and lightning followed. He walked to Jevy's side and looked north into a vast blackness. “A big storm,” Jevy said, seemingly indifferent.

Shouldn't we park this thing? Nate thought. At least find shallow water? Jevy didn't appear concerned; his nonchalance was somewhat comforting. When the rain started, Nate went below for his rice and beans. He ate in silence with Welly in the corner of the cabin. The bulb above them swayed as the wind rocked the boat. Heavy raindrops battered the windows.

On the bridge, Jevy put on a yellow poncho stained with grease and fought the rain hitting him sharply in the face. The tiny wheelhouse had no windows. The two floodlights attempted to show the way through the darkness, but revealed no more than fifty feet of churning water in front of them. Jevy knew the river well, and he'd been through worse storms.

Reading was difficult with the boat swaying and rolling. After a few minutes of it, Nate felt sick. In his bag he found a knee-length poncho with a hood. Josh had thought of everything. Clutching the railings, he slowly made his way up the stairs where Welly sat huddled next to the wheelhouse, drenched.

The river bent to the east, toward the heart of the Pantanal, and when they turned, the wind caught them broadside. The boat rocked and threw Nate and Welly hard into the railings. Jevy braced himself with the door of the wheelhouse, his thick arms holding himself in place and maintaining control.

The gusts became relentless, one after the other, only seconds apart, and the Santa Loura stopped moving upstream. The storm shoved it toward shore. The rain pellets were hard and cold now, and poured down upon them in sheets. Jevy found a long flashlight in a box beside the wheel, and gave it to Welly.

“Find the bank!” he yelled, his voice struggling over the howling wind and heavy rain.

Nate grappled along the railings to a spot next to Welly because he too wanted to see where they might be headed. But the beam caught nothing but rain, rain so thick it looked like fog swirling above the water.

Then lightning came to their aid. A flash, and they saw the dense black growth of the riverbank not far away. The wind was pushing them toward it. Welly shouted and Jevy yelled something back just as another gust slammed into the boat and tipped it violently to its starboard side. The sudden jolt knocked the flashlight out of Welly's hand and they watched it disappear into the water.

Crouched on the walkway, clutching the railing, soaked and shivering, it occurred to Nate that one of two things was about to happen. And neither was within their control. First, the boat was going to capsize. If it didn't, then they were about to be shoved into the side of the river, into the quagmire where the reptiles lived. He was only slightly scared until he thought about the papers.

Under no circumstances could the papers be lost. He suddenly stood, just as the boat tipped again, and he almost went over the rail. “I have to go below!” he yelled to Jevy, who was gripping the wheel. The captain was scared too.

With his back to the wind, Nate crept down the grated steps. The deck was slick with diesel fuel. A drum had tipped over and was leaking. He tried to lift it, but it would take two men. He ducked into the cabin, flung his poncho in a corner, and went for his briefcase under the cot. The wind slammed into the boat. It pitched and caught Nate with his hands free. He landed hard against the wall with his feet above his head.

There were two things he couldn't lose, he decided. First, the papers; second, the SatFone. Both were in the briefcase, which was new and nice but certainly not waterproof. He clutched it across his chest and lay on his bunk while the Santa Loura rode out the storm.

The knocking stopped. He hoped Jevy had killed the engine with a switch. He could hear their footsteps directly above him. We're about to hit the bank, he thought, and it's best for the prop to be disengaged. Surely it wasn't engine trouble.

The lights went out. Complete darkness.

Lying there in the dark, swaying with the pitch and roll, waiting for the Santa Loura to crash into the river-bank, Nate had a horrible thought. If she refused to sign the acknowledgment and/or the waiver, a return trip might be necessary. Months down the road, or maybe years, someone, probably Nate himself, would be forced to trek back up the Paraguay and inform the world's richest missionary that things were finalized and the money was hers.

He'd read that missionaries took furloughs-long breaks in their work when they returned to the States and recharged their batteries. Why couldn't Rachel take a furlough, maybe even fly home with him, and hang around long enough for Daddy's mess to get cleaned up? For eleven billion, that seemed the least she could do. He'd suggest it to her, if he ever got the chance to meet her.

There was a crash, and Nate was tossed to the floor. They were in the brush.

THE SANTA LOURA was flat-bottomed, built, like all the boats in the Pantanal, to scrape across sandbars and take the hits of river debris. After the storm, Jevy started the engine and for half an hour worked the boat back and forth, slowly dislodging it from the sand and mud. When they were free, Welly and Nate cleared the deck of limbs and brush. Their search of the boat found no new passengers, no snakes or jacares. During a quick coffee break, Jevy told the story of an anaconda that had found its way on board, years ago. Attacked a sleeping deckhand.

Nate said he didn't particularly care for snake stories. His search was slow and deliberate.

The clouds went away and a beautiful half-moon appeared above the river. Welly brewed a pot of coffee. After the violence of the storm, the Pantanal seemed determined to be perfectly still. The river was as smooth as glass. The moon guided them, disappearing when they turned with the river, but always there when they headed north again.

Because Nate was half-Brazilian now, he wore no wristwatch. Time mattered little. It was late, probably midnight. The rain had battered them for four hours.

NATE SLEPT a few hours in the hammock, and awakened just after dawn. He found Jevy snoring on his bunk in the tiny cabin behind the wheelhouse. Welly was at the wheel, himself half-asleep. Nate sent him for coffee and took the helm of the Santa Loura.

The clouds were back, but no rain was in sight. The river was littered with limbs and leaves, the rubble and remains from last night's storm. It was wide and there was no traffic, so Nate the skipper sent Welly to the hammock for a nap while he commanded the vessel.

It beat the hell out of a courtroom. Shirtless, shoeless, sipping sweet coffee while leading an expedition into the heart of the world's largest swamp. In the glory days, he would've been racing to a trial somewhere, juggling ten things at once, phones stuck in every pocket. He didn't really miss it; no lawyer in his right mind really missed the courtroom. But he would never admit that.

The boat practically guided itself. With Jevy's binoculars, he watched the shoreline for jacares, snakes, and capivaras. And he counted tuiuius, the tall, white, long-necked bird with a red head that had become the symbol of the Pantanal. There were twelve in one flock on a sandbar. They stood still and watched the boat go by.

The captain and his sleepy crew steamed northward, as the sky turned orange and the day began. Deeper and deeper into the Pantanal, uncertain where their journey would lead them.

Date: 2015-02-03; view: 608