Jaguars

Teishua had long dark hair and green eyes, variegated and fractal-like. Like any traditional Hualco, he wore no shoes; just a white, hemp tunic, fastened to his waist with a rope. Chosen at birth to be a devo, his ears were pierced with small pieces of bark from the acacia tree. He was to wear them until his Journey at thirteen or fourteen when he would “make payment” by drinking a brew of acacia bark and venturing into the jungle to survive on his own for seven days. Many boys didn’t last, retreating back to their village before the end of the week. Worse, an ancient myth told of a neophyte who’d cheated on fasting days and had offered the heart of a bird instead of the heart of a deer when it was his turn to offer tribute to Ochué.  Because of the boy’s trespasses, his spirit died in the wilderness and his body came back deaf and mute. As a result, he was never able to wear the red, burgundy, and yellow striped shawls conferred upon a devo upon completion of their twelve-year training.

Ordained devos were the protectors of the Mamus, guardians who made payments to the energetic nodes that connected the mountains to the sea, the Earth to the Heavens. These men were seasonal leaders, appointed to take charge of the tribe during the rainy season when the highlands were prone to landslides and the hunting was difficult. They fasted, chanted, and took part in yearly camata ceremonies just like the female Mamus but also had to spend days hunting in torrential rain, weeks taking care of children while the Mamus went on retreat, and sometimes months carrying gifts to sacred yetamas. According to the Hualcos, men without training tended to be both arrogant and fragile, making the model of the devo a necessary paradigm to keep the tribe strong, even though only a few boys were chosen for training each year. Had the rest of the tribe known that Teishua’s father was an outsider—un colón—they would have stripped him of his tuition, but that was a secret only Rayen and Melimi shared. Not even Teishua himself knew.

The only scandal at large was Melimi’s choice of paste over child and the resulting absence from her people. Rayen wouldn’t let Teishua stay with his mother until Melimi had proven herself to the tribe and had been re-initiated with paste and blood. As happy as it’d made Melimi that her only son stayed with her several nights a week, Teishua resisted sharing space with a stranger; he much preferred life with the other devos—the family he had known since birth.

On the last hill before the Reservation’s border, Teishua stood holding a gold amulet with a rectangular emerald fixed in the middle of an odd-shaped creature. The figure held two large, curved horns on the top of its head, with smaller straight horns on the side of its cranium. It had a human-esque face with nose, eyes, and mouth, but its arms were wings, and from its torso protruded the same straight horns, though the gold wasn’t as smooth as the ones on the sides of its head; it was rougher and pulpier. In the center of the amulet shone a perfectly square emerald, glistening in the morning sun. At the other extreme of the peculiar piece was a semicircle, yet its ends were curved inwards towards its torso, giving the impression of inverted feet.

            It was morning, the summer sun mitigated by thin, humid clouds from the coast. Teishua, his mother, and Niuwizhi had risen early to make the two-hour hike down from their village. Melimi stood beside him holding a shovel, looking down at Niuwizhi carving the edges from the bottom of the excavation.

            “You want Teishua to dig out the rest?” asked Melimi.

            Niuwizhi hit his shovel against a rock and stood straight. “I think it’s”—a rumble downhill shook the trees and rattled the ground beneath them—“good enough.”

            Making haste, Niuwizhi then jumped out of the hole, put a hand on Teishua’s shoulder, and said, “Your turn.”

            Teishua looked at his mother squinting, hesitating.

            Melimi nodded back, and Teishua, without letting either hand go of the amulet, sat at the edge of the pit. Niuwizhi began a one-two-three beat with his palms. He looked at Melimi, and after another measure, they sang: “Chuyu wey, chuyu wah. Chuyu wey, chuyu wah.”

            Teishua jumped down into the pit and joined in the song. The rumbling of the machines below was growing louder, deeper. Birds squawked in flight from the canopy.

            “Chuyu wey, chuyu wah”—their voices powerful now. “Chuyu wey, chuyu wah.”

            The devo-in-training climbed out of the hole and stood beside his mother, stripes of dirt on his white tunic. The three of them stared into the hole at the amulet lying belly up. They sang as the sun rose higher, their anthem prodding the light to move into place. In the valley below, thick metal clanged against thick metal. The sun beat away the tenuous clouds. Just as the golden orb neared the edge of the hole, a hummingbird hovered over it for several measures as they chanted: “Chuyu wey, chuyu wah. Chuyu wey chuyu wah.”

“Chitza wah chuya chahey ruk patza, ruk jahey jah,” they shouted as the sunlight hit the emerald in the amulet’s center. The hummingbird flew between Melimi and Niuwizhi and was gone.

When Melimi opened her eyes, Teishua wasn’t beside her. She looked left, looked right. Panic rattled the consciousness under her skin but briefly. “Melimi,” he chuckled, but she couldn’t find him. Leaves jangles above her. “Up here.”

Teishua, grinning from ear to ear, sat on a thick branch of a sprawling samán on the northern slope. Melimi and Niuwizhi walked to the base of the tree, and though lower than Teishua, still they could discern a bulky, double-cab, four-wheel-drive truck jouncing up and down the steep dirt road. Behind it trundled two bulldozers, their crawler tracks so wide that they crushed the ferns and small trees growing at the edge. No machinery had ever come this far into the highlands. The road they trekked was only for lightweight trucks and agile dirt bikes used by Tribal Police and the occasional government official. 

“Son,” called Melimi, “get down from there.”

“I’m not your son,” he snapped.

“Teishua!” exclaimed Niuwizhi, “get down.”

“They can’t see through the canopy,” said Teishua from above.

The full ton truck came to a stop at the edge of the road, the vibrations of the diesel engine reverberating through the trees as it idled.

Niuwizhi pick up a rotten nut pod with the membrane still wrapped around the fruit and threw it up at Teishua. The tree so tall and their shots wide of the mark, the boy just laughed as the pods flew through the leaves of other branches.

Down below, a man in a collared shirt and khakis got out of the passenger side of the truck, briefly held up a pair of binoculars, then directed the bulldozers towards the area of trees for clearing. Another man dressed the same got out of the driver’s side and propped his hands on his hips.

            Melimi tried to shake the trunk of the tree but to no avail. Angry now, Niuwizhi threw up another pod and finally bopped the boy in the back of the head.

            “Ok, ok,” mouthed the boy from above. He stepped to a lower branch, then another, but before Teishua left the canopy, he motioned to the two below to look towards the road.

            By sound alone, they knew that another vehicle was coming towards the drillsite. Teishua quickly descended, and each of the three hid behind a tree as the two men in khakis waited for the black Humvee to arrive.

            Out of the Humvee exited two men dressed in tight-fitting black t-shirts and black cargo pants. They carried pistols on their waist and pain on their face. The driver lit up a cigarette as he shut the door to the jeep.

            Niuwizhi nodded to Melimi, and as the three of them tiptoed through the bush, Teishua grabbed his mother’s hand and led her back towards the hole where they’d buried the amulet. For a brief eternity, despite the perils and intrusion behind her, Melimi reveled in cosmic joy, as if all processes were perfect, aligned, and whole; as if there were meaning to the pain she’d endured throughout her fragile existence as human.

            Then, suddenly, they arrived at the hole. Teishua smiled as he looked back at her and let go of her hand. 

            As they covered it with the earth they’d excavated, they listened to the cracking of the trunks of the rain trees, carobs, palms, mangoes, papayas, and cacaos. A white-throated toucan flew out to the samán that Teishua had climbed. A flock of wrens squawked and scattered from the treetops. Howler monkeys screeched as they scurried. A spectacled bear bucked and groaned as it scampered.

Silent were the voices of the sloths, the cottontails, the armadillos, the titi monkeys, the dart and leaf frogs, the aspers and boas, the butterflies, ants, moths, worms. At times there is weakness in silence, and sometimes there is power.

***

They carried no flashlights, and the moon had waned to new. In the dark of the humid, breezeless jungle, Melimi followed Niuwizhi only by the sound of his feet and the unconscious memories of having walked these paths as a girl. As did her forebears—the whispers of their footsteps trailing, their cries for help now failing.

            There, the crossroads where they stopped was marked by a yolomo tree, bifurcated intentionally to guide highlanders in their travels. The golden amulet that Melimi and Niuwihi buried earlier in the day was just across the bridge. Beyond that, the two bulldozers, the felled trees, the drillsite, and Hightower mercenaries. This first operation was the farthest departure from everything the Hualcos had tried in protecting themselves from what they called ‘the foreign disease.’ It was a grievance five hundred years old, and they’d chosen a recovering paste addict to lead the way.

Melimi was breathing hard. She placed her hands on her thighs and bent over.

“Hey,” said Niuwizhi, putting his hand on her back.

“Niu,” panted Melimi. She blew out in full force several times, but the calming techniques she’d learned in las Fuerzas Guerrilleras weren’t working. “Niu,” she said in whispers, “what if they come for us? And Teishua, what if…?”

“Meli,” he interrupted in a stern whisper, “they are coming for us. We’re just choosing to speed up the process. If they choose genocide, we choose dignity.”

“What about—whew, whew—the UN or, like, an NGO or something?”

“What are you talking about?” Impatience and insolence climbed up his voice and out of his mouth. “They have no power. Not over Lusix at least. Multinationals, tech monopolies—everyone’s on their payroll. And the constitution, the courts, congress—they’re are all just fronts.”  The time was thin, dawn only a few hours away. “Melimi, we Hualcos are just barefoot idiots to these people. To them, we don’t know how to handle guns and cameras, and the Hualco Nation was neutral in the War. Our plan is solid.”

“What if they link me with the tribe?” asked Melimi still hyperventilating.

Niuwizhi scoffed. “I’m sorry to bust your bubble,” he whispered, “but you were already a colón when you joined the rebels, and no one remembers you and the Commander.”

“Fuck,” said Melimi, trying to stand upright and holding her head. “Ok, ok.” After a pause, she said, “What if they brought in more sentries? More than two?”

“Melimi, you led the assault on Cayman Company.”

 “With 170 troops.” She stood up straight. Whew, whew, she exhaled.

“And,” added Niuwizhi, “surprise is as good as another soldier.” A faint breeze hiss in the tall grass beside the path. He looked away and said, “For the tribe, remember?”

Melimi’s panting slowed. The chirping of crickets in the distance slowly filled the space.  Niuwizhi turned in the direction of the bridge but stopped mid-turn, almost losing his balance. He tapped Melimi who was wandering the world of her mind, and when she turned, Niuwizhi pointed with his chin into the dark.

Peering down from a long-reaching branch just inside the forest, two big eyes watched the figures dressed in black.  There was only one creature in the jungle with those eyes, that could rest on a tree branch in total stealth.

The two of them stood in complete stillness, their eyes locked on the jaguar. It breathed in and let out a low roar on the exhale. Over and again, it repeated this pattern, huffing and puffing as it delivered its heated screed.

When it finished, Jaguar rose up, slunk down the trunk of the tree, trotted a few paces, and gave Melimi and Niuwizhi a final roar—spine-tingling and primal—as it went on traipsing through the jungle.

“Let’s go,” Melimi replied, hurrying headlong towards the bridge.

They traversed the nearby ravine on a v-shaped bridge made from a long tree trunk as its base with sections of hemp rope looped beneath it that tied into intersecting lines of rope running parallel to the trunk. About half a kilometer after the bridge, Melimi and Niuwizhi took the slope downwards towards the drillsite which they made out by the absence of its trees, the smell of disrupted earth, and a lamp that illuminated the outlines of two figures and a truck. Drawing closer, they detected the sound of a radio and the ding-ding-ding of an open car door. The two Hightower guards made snorting sounds, then yipped and cackled after each had taken a hit. The men stood by their Humvee, parked some ten meters away from the two bulldozers that had been clearing trees all afternoon.

            Melimi and Niuwizhi crouched at the base of the tree that Teishua had climbed that morning. Spanish was their battle language, the tongue of intrigues and deceit. Hualcua had few words for weapons and tactics—none beyond the needs of hunting or fishing.

            “Just two?” asked Melimi.

            Niuwizhi nodded. “Damsel in distress?” he asked, whispering Castilian her ear.

            “Nah, pasters,” said Melimi behind the backside of her hand.

            “You or me?”

            “Gotta be me.”

            “So it is damsel in distress,” joked Niu.

            Melimi cocked her head to the side, repulsed at his backtalk in the most delicate of moments. “Don’t let them get too close to see my face. I’ll mask up as soon as you fire.”

            “Scream?” asked Niu.

            “Nah.”

            “I’ll flank by the dozers. You come out by the bend.”

            Melimi offered her forearm in solidarity. Niuwizhi offered his in return.

            As Melimi hurried into the darkness, Niuwizhi watched one of the Hightower guards take a pull of liquor from its bottle. “I love her fucking tropes,” he said to himself in Spanish.

Coming up the dirt road from Payzandú, the glare of a flashlight flickered in the darkness. A figure with a backpack ran frantically towards the guards. “Hey!” called the traveler with deep panic in her tone. “Hey!”

The guards turned down the radio and walked away from their Humvee.

      “Are you military?” she asked from the road. The backpacker was wearing a thick Abyalian accent, and her hair hung down over her shoulders.

         One of the guards snorted and said from afar, “Something like that.” With their rifles slung across their chest, the two of them stepped onto the road and waited for Melimi to approach.

       “Fucking pasteheads robbed me and my boyfriend,” she said hyperventilating. “They…

they handcuffed him to a tree and held and gun to my head and… and they said if I didn’t come back with 10 million pesos in two days, they would hang him.”

      “Pasted up fucking Indians,” said the shorter guard as an unlit cigarette bounced up and down between his lips. He looked at the lighter in his hand, held still, and as if there were no emergency at all, he lit up the cig. The firelight shone upon his shaven face, pug nose, and bloodshot eyes. “What the fuck are you and your dumbass boyfriend doing near the Rez anyway?”

     She panted in and out. “We were on vacation in Payzandú, and we’d heard about Ciudad Perdida.”

     “So you went backpacking out here by yourselves? No guide?” said the tall, slender one.

      The backpacker sighed. “I mean… we thought… I don’t know, man. Fuck.”

      "Sounds sketchy,” said the short one to the tall one.

       The tall one nodded.

      “Ma’am,” said the short one, “I know this ain’t what you’re looking for, but we’re gonna have to cuff you for security reasons.” He reached for his cuffs. “We’ll get you straightened out in the morning.”

        The guard reached for her hands.

      “You’re gonna rape me, you fucking bastards,” screamed the backpacker as she ran down the dirt road.

       Just as the sentries started their mad dash after her—plau plau—two shots fire from the clearing.

        “That’s them,” screamed the backpacker still running.

      “The fuck?” said the taller guard, turning and raising his rifle. The shorter one followed, the glowing cigarette still between his lips.

        Their backs turned, Melimi stepped just inside the bush as she quickly pulled down the rolled-up facemask from the crown of her head. From the back of her waist, she pulled two handguns and held one in each hand as she took the road back up towards the dozers, light-footed and nimble.

        Plau—another shot from the clearing, this time in the direction of the sentries.

        “By the dozers,” cried the tall one.

       “Alright fuckers,” said a disguised voice from behind. “Don’t move a fucking a muscle.” Cold, blinding light block the sentries’ peripheral. They stood stark still. “Drop the rifles.”

        “You fucking bitch,” said the short one, spitting out his cigarette.

        “Drop ’em.”

        But as she gave the order, the tall one turned, rifle in hand.

Piu, shot to the right leg, from somewhere near the Humvee. The long body writhed on the ground with the rifle still slung over his shoulder. Blood expansive, a growing puddle on the dirt road, plastic-looking under fluorescent light.

“Drop it,” Melimi repeated.

        The short one threw his rifle on the ground and held up his hands.

       Melimi placed the barrel of the gun on his sacrum as she searched the standing sentry’s legs. She pulled a knife from his ankle. As she worked her way up, she pulled a handgun from his waist.

“Now take off his rifle,” she ordered still disguising her voice. 

        As the short sentry bent down, Niuwizhi emerged from behind the Humvee, pointing a rifle at them both. The short one looked up at him, then removed the strap from his partner and threw the rifle aside.

        "Stand aside,” ordered Melimi. When he did, she cuffed his hands behind his back, and Niuwizhi drew closer to cuff the hands of the sentry he had shot.

        With the short one cuffed, she shimmied off her backpack, opened it, tossed Niu a rope, and grabbed the gauze from inside. As Niuwizhi tied the shorter sentry’s feet up, Melimi unraveled the gauze and wrapped the first layer around his thigh. “Ya no nos joderán,” said Melimi mid-wrap. “Ya no.”

         She tied up the gauze, and as she stood, she pulled out a phone from her back pocket. A few seconds later, Melimi held up the phone, blinding the sentries with its flash. A timer ticked in red at the top of the screen, and through the camera lens, she focused first on the taller one, making sure to capture his bound hands and feet, then the gunshot wound she had treated. Panning to the shorter one, she also recorded his body intact and extremities restricted.

  “When your C-O asks you,” she said aloud, voiced disguised and filming still, “tell him it was the Jaguars. ’Cause guerrillas never the jungle, motherfucker.”

         “Eh! Rosita! Let’s go!” shouted Niuwizhi, running back towards the dozers.           

       Melimi slipped her phone in her back pocket and ran past the Humvee to the two bulldozers parked towards the edge of the forest. Niuwizhi was crouched down fingering the soil. “Damp enough,” he said. “But if we could get them…”

         "They left the keys,” Melimi interrupted, standing on the running board of the dozer.

The tremendous machine then clonked to life. Melimi held a flashlight in her mouth as she scrambled to decipher the controls in the cockpit. Niuwizhi watched her push the joystick forward which moved the tracks, but with the boom lowered, the back of the dozer lifted up and plopped back down.

          “Just leave it!” shouted Niuwizhi from below.

         She pushed another lever, sending the boom down some more, jerking the backend up again. Immediately, she pulled back on that lever, raising the boom, then pushed the joystick forward. The dozer crawled and clonked, and as the machine shook, the wounded sentry shouted from the road, “The wrath of Hightower will reign down on you fuckers.”

         When the first dozer was in the center of the clearing, Melimi hopped out and rushed for the other. As she mounted the cockpit, Niuwizhi ran to the first dozer, unscrewed the gas cap, and started stuffing a long white rag into the tank. The second dozer crawled up beside the first, and before Melimi could even dismount, Niuwizhi had stuff another rag into its gas tank. Niu handed Melimi another piece of cloth, and each of them tied the additional piece to the rag sticking out of the tank. Melimi fetched lighter fluid from her backpack, carefully squirting it on the tip of the rag. She then handed Niu a long lighter, and with fire in hand, she nodded to Niu. 

“Ya,” he confirmed.

Each of them approached the nearest gas tank. Flick, flick. When the rag was lit, they ran for dear life out to the road and started up the hill from where they’d come. As she ran, Melimi pulled out her phone again, opened the camera back up, and pressed record as she scurried.

“We’ll cut your titties off, you bitch,” shouted the short sentry flat on his back, unable to stand.

whu-um 

Metal crashed into metal. The flames lit up the night. An orange glow shimmered against the varied canopy of trees everywhere. In the distance, monkeys screeched at the menacing pyre. Birds squawked in flight.

While Melimi filmed, Niuwizhi stood motionless, petrified, watching the blaze of their destruction—the crimson puddles of blood now stagnant on hard earth, the prostrate bodies of their enemies, the flames that rushed out from their source and died against the dark, the trembling bones of their guilty fingers, the beating of their faithful hearts, and the incandescence of their fight for a simple message.

Niuwizhi looked at this watch. The numbers behind its blue glow read 04:08 AM. Melimi had stopped recording. Still staring at the blaze from the top of the hill, he recited under his breath, “Chitza wah chuya chahey ruk patza, ruk jahey jah.”

“Chitza wah chuya chahey ruk patza, ruk jahey jah,” repeated Melimi in whispering prayer.

“Cabronesssssss!” shouted one of the sentries from below.

“Jaguars,” said Melimi to the night, matter-of-fact and calm in tone.

“Jaguars,” confirmed Niu.

“Yeah,” said Melimi, and the two of them took off sprinting past the amulet and back into Gonawi.