The Galapagos Story (part 2)

George jolted awake, hearing sounds at the side of the boat, not Clare this time, though the sound was the same, but the girl Jones. He rushed to the side of the boat, barefooted, in pajama bottoms, though he never used them. No one was there. No one was in the water. It was a dream, he realized, and he knew he loved Jones, feared loving her at the same time. 

REM came and he dreamed hyper-vivid dreams. He and Clare were aboard their yacht, the 39 -foot cruiser they had sailed all over the world, he as captain, she as first mate. Adjusting the sails, checking the instruments, they called out to each other, laughing, feeling the freedom of their lives, he a nature journalist, she an artist and social worker. Her head was thrown back in joy; she was pregnant. She wanted the baby to be born at sea, an amphibious baby, she joked. She’d arranged for a midwife to join them when the time grew near. Meanwhile, he had an assignment, a story about the endangered birds of Fiji, the orange dove, the red shining parrot. Usually Clare did the art and photography, though now, in the late stages of pregnancy, given her history of miscarriages and the perils of getting quaint photographs of wild birds, they decided she would stay aboard, let him do the shooting. He envisioned her walking to the starboard side of the boat, running her hand along the railing as she roamed fore and aft, picking a spot, tying her scarf around it. It was the silk one, imprinted with Cartier-Bresson photographs, he’d bought for her in Paris

The face on her changed. It was no longer his wife, but the girl Jones. She lifted off her face, skin, features and all and threw it overboard. It splashed into the water like a flying fish and the sharks gathered. Under it was a happier face. “It detaches too,” she said. The next one was a bloated face, one that had been in the water too long. 

 

 The only breeding ground in the world for waved albatross was the island of Española. Between March and December, these marvelous, rare birds flocked to the island, performed their elaborate mating dances and paired into couples. The female soon laid her solitary egg on the bare hard ground. The couple took turns incubating it, folding it under their big warm bodies, sometimes rolling it around from place to place. The other parent flew off to find food and bring it home. Butch radiated enthusiasm as he described all this. It was December now and the hatchlings were nearly fledglings, ready to attempt their first flight. One of his goals in coming here, he confided, his growly voice trembling, was to get a video of the first flight of a waved albatross fledgling. 

Butch and George were hiking up to the lava fields at the southern heights of the island to look for albatross and peer over the edge of the sheer escarpments. Big men, they kept a big distance between them, allowing each other enough space to relax, companionable without talking. The challenge between them was implicit, as was the depth of their friendship.

 Scanning the brush, George spotted an albatross, signaled Butch to stop. Stooping to look, Butch muttered, “God, it’s tempting to just swoop that sucker up and put him in a pose.” He was referring to the way the bird just stood there, still as a sculpture. Like bad art, its parts were out of balance. Black rounded eyeballs protruded from the sides of a flat little head, like frog eyes. A long yellow bill extended straight as a board from the squashed white face, hooking down at the tip. The body was rotund, heavy-looking like a duck or goose body. Yet its wingspan could reach eight feet, the widest in the Galapagos. In flight, a waved albatross looked swift and beautiful. 

“Or swoop him up and take him home,” Butch repeated. “Man, could I shoot some incredible videos there.”

“A lot of people do just that,” George said. 

“I know.” A wistful note stole into Butch’s voice. “It’s such a shame.”

Hoisting the camera, Butch peered through the lens he’d just attached. The camera clicked its false shutter as it took a rapid series of shots. Butch shook his head ruefully. “Not quite.” He unscrewed the lens. “I’ll have to go in there.” He gestured behind a clump of dense brush where more than one bird was standing or resting on the ground. 

They circled the thicket until they found an opening to crawl through. Inside, the field was larger than it looked and housed a dozen or more albatross families. One of the chicks looked ready to fly. Butch pointed his video camera. George took out what looked like a tourist camera. They waited. 

The chick flapped its wings. Butch drew a sharp breath. 

The chick started to run, its legs oddly splayed as it lifted one awkward foot after another. Butch followed each movement with his camera. The fledgling had not developed adult skills. An ungainly adolescent, its big feet flailed outwards, its wings flapped out of sync. 

The fledgling ran and flapped, ran and flapped. It started to tuck its feet back, but the runway wasn’t long enough and it didn’t make it. Never quite lifting off, it toppled to the ground. 

In the colony, two other fledglings were flapping their wings and leaping into the air. Butch trained his video on them. The struggle for the chick on the runway to lift even a few feet made the effort of flying look obvious to George and away slid the myth of the ease of birds’ flight. More like running, George thought

The fallen chick rose, its awkward webbed feet tripping over each other. In the second start, lift he did and soon he was at least a yard above the ground. He flew a short straight distance and then landed, running. Again the runway was too short and he collided with a bush, this time remaining upright. Circling around, he moved to a path cut lengthwise across the clearing, so narrow it had been hidden by the grass. There the fledgling idled, as if an inner control tower had issued a wait order. Wings fluttering, he looked as if he were practicing like the other chicks, but slowly he started to run. Like a plane gathering speed on a long runway, he ran and flapped until his fledgling wings had enough air under them to rise from the ground. And then he rose, higher and higher until he was really flying. Two other birds joined him, his parents George assumed. Together they flew until they were specks that vanished into the air.

“Imagine snatching one of those little chicks,” Butch whispered, as they crawled out some thirty minutes later. Anger crept into his jovial voice. “And they’re endangered too.”

“Not to mention they only have one chick per couple when they breed at all,” George said. Swooshing and sadness roiled through him. That’s what he and Clare were going to have, just one. 

“A China policy. Instituted when Deng heard kids pass wind in unison — one big flatulent chorus — and leapt to take cover from the gunshots. It was the one little fart rule.” Butch pulled his face into a straight man expression. 

George couldn’t laugh and the joke fell flat.

“It kinda makes you want to go after the people involved. You know, cage them.” Butch honked out a laugh, but his usual humor wasn’t in it.

“Yeah,” George said. “It’s what I do.”

 Giving him a sideways look, Butch asked what that was.

 George described his job, his purpose for being on this trip. 

Butch listened closely. “So there’s some serious smuggling happening on our cruise?”

“Nastiness anyway.”

“Right under our noses,” Butch bristled. “Do you know who’s involved?”

George balked at finger pointing. Secrets didn’t seem to be Butch’s long suit.

“Trouble coming?”

George nodded and stopped to think. The setup worried him. He hadn’t prepared for an active operation: he had no backup; the company’s resources were stretched; they’d sent him to scout. His boss had ordered him to let it go if he had to. But George didn’t want to let it go. George trusted Butch and his instincts had never let him down. “Will you help, if I need it?”

“Just give the word, bro.”

 

It was three in the morning. George was prowling. He loved this time of night, the quiet, the water, the boat, the stars, the scattered passengers, a skeleton crew and himself. And the secrets that revealed themselves. Tonight the youth brigade sprawled around the sauna, laughing, drinking, playing games later than usual. Callie Mae sat with them, flirting as though she were their age. 

He approached the lounge. Low lights were still on. Butch usually worked late, his gear spread around him while he edited the day’s photos and videos. The psychiatrist’s husband often lay on a bench, book in hand, until the wee hours. Peering through a slit in the curtains, George spotted Butch and Jones in a corner, leaning towards each other in a posture of intense concentration. George’s heart beat a reaction like he hadn’t had since the night he lost Her.

He had too much control to burst in. He paced around the boat to give himself time to cool down and think. Twenty minutes it took for adrenaline to leave the system. He didn’t make it. 

Into the lounge he stalked, his steps instinctively quiet. They didn’t hear him. They weren’t on their guard. A sign of innocence, he thought, though he didn’t know what he suspected: That they were involved and he the outsider? That she was fleeing him for someone less complicated? That she liked her meat larded? Their voices were low but he could make out some of the words. Home: his voice. Why now: hers. Up he strode. 

Jones sensed his presence and looked up. Their conversation died. Butch pasted a hearty smile on his not-glad face. He invited George to sit. Jones got up, frowning. This was not for her, this nonsense. 

 

  More than the thefts and intrigues, George worried about the excursion they were about to take to see the raison d’être for his job, the legendary giant tortoise. 

Recent scientific tests had discovered something extraordinary about her: she carried DNA from every tortoise species that had ever lived on the islands, even that of Lonesome George. He mentioned this to Jones, when he found her reading about the tortoise. 

“Wow. That makes everything I’ve read about her possible.” Jones sounded breathy. She seemed to have forgotten about the incident in the lounge the night before. 

“It might all be verified,” George said. “Her cures already have been.”

“Just a piece of her shell is supposed to be curative.” Jones tapped a finger on the book she was reading. “See, here’s the passage.”

George skimmed through it. “Incredible! But only when she’s alive, it says.”

“They don’t know. Her shell disappears when she does. Though once a piece of it remained. It broke off from the rest. It’s in the Darwin Center on Santa Cruz and they say it still glows like an emerald.”

Knuckles to his forehead, George strove to compare the two lines of evidence. He was starting to credit the hypothesis that the legends about her might actually be true. “She’s often appeared at a pivotal time in history. They think she can birthe herself.”

“I believe it, “ Jones said, pausing as if hesitant to piece together disparate thoughts. “They knew she was some kind of numen back when they named her. The goddess who lived in an emerald,” she murmured, awe in her voice.

“Some experts think the emerald might have been the shell of a tortoise. The first of the emerald shell series,” he said, the whole topsy-turvy theory taking hold. 

“I’ve been reading descriptions from different eras,” she said. “Her shells always sparkled with this uncanny brightness. They awed everyone. The ancient jewelers said there wasn’t a gem that could compare.”

“Has anyone tried to cut jewels from them?” The enormity of their value on the gem market rocketed his suspicions to the stratosphere. 

No shell had ever survived long enough, she told him. She figured that might be deliberate for a tortoise that could birthe herself.

Jones seemed to have a foundation for her thinking that George didn’t have yet. He needed time to look at it from every angle, but she was reasoning from the legends as if they were true. He asked if she believed all she’d read.

“I’ll know when I talk to her,” she replied. “I want to go early before everyone else. I think Pedro will take me.”

“And me. I’ll come with you.” 

“No you won’t.”

“I have to.”

She shook her head, stubbornness tightening her big, beautiful features.

“It’s too dangerous. The riskiest point of the tour. ”

The fight went on: new words; same substance. George wondered if the night before were playing into it. Finally, he asked what he could do to change her mind.

“Tell me the truth. I’m in love with you and I know you’re in love with me. But you don’t trust me.”

“I’ll tell Umina,” he said.

“Start with me. You need to open up a little more. A little, just a little.”

His body tightened until every muscle ached. In his head, self-loathing and sadness brawled with desire and yearning. Could he tell her? Would he? She was right about the love between them. And he wanted that love, yearned to live again. The swooshing sound grew louder. Images of Her drowning rolled through his head.

“She went over the side of the boat. Climbed onto the railing and just stood there.” He couldn’t speak above a mumble.

“With you watching?”

He’d imagined it so often, he didn’t really know anymore, though in physical time he couldn’t have. He just knew she’d left her scarf tied there for him to find. This is the spot, it blared. 

It was where they’d had their last conversation. A stillborn, she told him. Already dead inside her, the cord wrapped around her throat. In his memory, her face was stillborn too, stiffened by emotion too strong to feel. He said, as he always did, “It doesn’t matter. We have each other. That’s enough for me.” And she replied, “It matters to me. I want it so bad. I can’t imagine going on without it.” 

How could he have been so dense, he asked Jones. He thought these were ordinary sentiments. Things people say to express their feelings: I could kill him. I can’t imagine life without this. 

“And that last night? What happened that was different?”

He couldn’t answer. The burn of his failure to protect her made him want to go over the side himself. The burn of his failure as a man and a husband. 

He looked up at the girl to see if she saw the warp inside him. In her eyes, he saw only acceptance, caring. Tears slopped down his face, salty as the drowning sea. Poison from his gut rose like puke from a binge. “I fucking hate myself,” he told her.

“No,” she said. “That’s what you do instead of remembering.”

“You know.” 

“I’ve been there.”

“If I’d understood what she was saying, I would never have left to do that stupid job. I would have stayed with her. Saved her.”

Again the light in her eye. Again the touch of her hand. 

“It would have happened anyway,” she said.

 

The next day, they took the pangas to the isle of the giant domed tortoises. At the dock waited two fancy air-conditioned, sparkling clean minibuses, excursion vehicles designed to take rich tourists to the tortoise farm. Nothing local about these babies, George murmured to Jones when she took the seat next to him. 

A moist pungent odor of waste, vegetation and rot greeted them at the farm. The fields were slimy with wet greenery and muck, slippery on foot even in the high rubber boots provided. The physicist Jane lost her balance and took a mighty tumble flat onto the muck. Up she staggered, unhurt but covered by slime. “You look beautiful, Jane,” her husband called, weaving through safe spots to be by her side. “Nice perfume.” He let out a belch of laughter and she joined him. Darting over, Jones used her pretty scarf to wipe the sludge from Jane’s face. 

In the fields, tortoises lolled in the muck, sucking in as much vegetation as they could, gigantic domed shapes scattered like boulders. They were the ancestral kind of tortoises, their domed shells brownish, their fat necks unable to extend upwards, larger and weightier than their saddleback cousins, requiring up to sixteen hours of rest or sleep per day. The guides motioned the group toward one lying near a tree not far from the path. He must have weighed close to five hundred pounds, his dome reached so high. Four and a half feet at least, George figured, comparing him to the guide Angela who, at 5’4”, looked just shy of a foot taller. So still did the enormous tortoise lay that everyone but the physicists wallowed through the muck behind him to snap shots of themselves with this being from the late Triassic Period of the Mesozoic Era, the first period of the dinosaurs, about 220 million years ago. 

Eyeing Jones, George saw her slip away. Her perfect balance made it seem as if walking on muck were second nature to her. Through his binoculars, he watched her squatting or kneeling in the goop, talking, communing, linking to the tortoises. They responded to her, inching their necks towards her or ambulating slowly across their circle of muck. He wanted to go to her, but had surveillance and scouting tasks to do. 

  Umina had her own compound, remote from the public fields. A narrow trail through the dense forest guided him to a pedestrian suspension bridge strung high above the river. The thing swayed precariously when George stepped onto it and he gazed down at the steep banks, which looked much more dangerous than when the tour group had viewed them earlier. Good thing Clare hadn’t seen this, he thought, imagining her body smashed on the rocks, wondering if it was worse than the bloated grey shark-eaten remains he pictured now. On the other side, a cobblestone path led directly to the compound. A six-foot wall, capped by barbed wire, surrounded it, gated and guarded by day, locked by night. George didn’t aim to get in; he didn’t want to go when people who had planned their trip for months, maybe years, had their few minutes of time with her. He waved at the guard, took covert photos of the locks and the gate. 

According to the collector, there were no guards inside. “There should be,” he’d said, rather violently for a quiet man, but there was a limit to how much Galapagos officials were willing to adapt their island sanctuary to accommodate any human specimen, even a rich one. The compound already transgressed. 

Beyond the gate, the walk led directly to Umina, allowing people who’d been granted permits the same access to her healing powers they’d had for centuries. Logs from the research station showed she’d been mated and given birth, but since tortoises took forty years to develop, the herpetologists had to wait a few decades to find out if they’d inherited her carapace or capacities. But it had never happened before.

 

It was nearly two a.m. The stars were out, lighting the sky with fire. Briny water and moist earth scented the breeze. Sharks surrounded the boat, dozens of them, darting at the flying fish that leapt from the water in silvery arcs. Everything was beautiful here, a primordial beauty made of nature, love, birth and death. A sense of stepping out of time gave George a moment of rare peace.

George and Jones had arranged to go back to the tortoise fields together late that night. Pedro awaited them in the panga. 

He didn’t fit here, George thought, as he listened for stray footsteps to clear. He tread too heavily on journeys meant for light patter, left imprints where none should go. A friend had once told him, tread like laughter, George. Seeing Jones slanting toward the centerline to keep the boat balanced, enlivening him with the radiance of her smile, his feet lifted like feathers as he vaulted towards her.

The dinghy rolled gently over the waves. The motor was off, the oars dipping soundlessly. He glanced at Jones. Her dark-adjusted eyes were riveted outside and her lips were moving. He followed the trajectory of her gaze. A bull sea lion glided along near the boat. “Every living being has intelligence,” she murmured, noticing he was watching her. “I make friends.” 

He knew that loneliness. Deep as the soul. “We need our own species,” he whispered. “Just one. That’s enough.”

She took his hand. The squeeze sent his mood skyward, but he quickly sucked it back to earth. 

A car with local plates waited by the curb near the dock. An island car, small and old, the dark windshield pitted and cracked, it fit the place like a night animal. The driver was someone George didn’t know. “Only for drive,” he told George, switching to Spanish when George asked for his bona fides. His Spanish was local which said everything: this was a stringer, someone the firm used for low-priority operations. Fluently, George grilled him. The man knew nothing except where to take them. He didn’t carry firearms. They hadn’t supplied him with emergency numbers. George hoped he really was from the firm. Thank God he’d mentioned the expedition to Butch. 

George liked working solo, tended to underinform the company about his missions. But this time, he needed backup. He didn’t know the background or connections of the traffickers, wasn’t sure if they were doing recon or trafficking. Their actions were so erratic, he couldn’t gauge how dangerous they were. He didn’t even know if they were after Umina. 

He had been preoccupied though he couldn’t have said by what. Somewhere unrestrained by his conscious mind, he yearned to be alone with Umina so she could cure him and he could be with Jones. He would never have allowed the girl to come, had he been thinking clearly. 

What the driver did know was an easy path to Umina’s compound. And a safe place near the gate to bide, if they needed him. George unfastened the locks slowly, giving Jones the chance she wanted to see how he did it. Inside, the silhouette of an unexpected structure loomed into sight. Obscured by shadows, its function wasn’t clear – a night security post? a research station? No, it was a cage! They had installed a second layer of protection around Umina. Some really nasty threats must have occurred to make them do that, George reasoned. Then an inference coalesced:  his collector would have known about the threats; they had inflamed the urgency of this mission. 

When they reached the cage, the others were already there. Three of them: Zeke, Callie Mae, someone else in the shadows. Zeke and the concealed one were speaking in Spanish.

Butch! 

Jaysus, he’d confided in Butch. Asked him to lend a hand if he needed it. An uneasy feel slid around George’s gut. Big, jovial Butch who played with the Chilean kids and made a heart-tweaking comedy out of pouring water or clearing dishes with the waiters and busboys. Likeable criminals George had known, but never big-hearted ones; heart was the mask that slipped and exposed bad nature. Not with Butch. He’d completely evaded suspicion. 

 More likely, this was Butch’s jokey way of coming to help, he decided. A big charade fit the Butch he knew. The Butch he trusted. His friend.

 His friend hunkered behind a coil of trees and tall bushes, cloaking himself in shadows. He spoke in a voice too soft to hear or record. George couldn’t get audio or video on him. 

George motioned to Jones, hidden by a straggle of trees a few yards behind him, signaling her to stay put. He stole closer, his footsteps softer than a breath of wind. Lighter than laughter, it dawned, but his whole being was focused on the moment. Butch murmured something and George pushed his camera toward the sound. In that second, he missed sidestepping a dry leaf and from it came a faint crackle. About as loud as a bird closing its beak. But Butch hushed and leaned forward to look, a full visual George captured in high speed multishots. 

Butch gave a brief two-note whistle as he ducked back. It was the whistle he used when they hiked together and he spotted a rare creature. A signal? To show whose side he was on? Or so George would reveal himself? 

Speaking in normal voices, Zeke and Callie Mae asked Butch what to do. Like George, they had not expected the enclosures, the locks, the security measures. 

“Let’s do recon,” Zeke said. “And get outa here.” He began to unpack his video gear. 

Callie Mae agreed with her husband. That told George she was scared.

 Callie Mae never agreed with her husband. 

Mumbling slithered from behind the trees.

“Can’t,” Zeke replied. “We don’t have the gear.”

“Or the time,” Callie Mae snapped. “It takes a forever to cut a turtle from its shell.” 

They’d have to turn her over, George knew, a Herculean task with a tortoise the size of a packing trunk. 

The two poachers advanced to Umina’s enclosure. Dexterous as potatoes, they fooled and fiddled with the barriers, trying to find a way through. Fucking amateurs, George stewed; he could get those locks open in minutes. With every ignorant touch of a lock or a chain, noise jangled through the still island night. Though she couldn’t hear it, the bizarre vibrations would terrify Umina, George thought, exasperated at the unnecessary suffering the blundering fools were inflicting. They had no idea what they were doing. As the racket heightened, Butch edged his big body away from the felonious activity, the sway of the bushes revealing his progress. 

From the corner of his eye, George noticed a flutter of motion. Jones! She was hotfooting after Butch, caring little about the stir she was making. Did she think Butch was one of George’s men? Tortoise; girl; tortoise; girl. His words to her echoed, “We need our own species.” Whirling, he went after Jones.

He heard her chatting to Butch. Her voice carried throaty promise and he felt blood rush to his groin. He’d forgotten how danger triggered sexual arousal, detached the mind from the task. Butch would lose brain juice too; he carried a torch for Jones. Smart as a whip, George thought, hearing her spice intimacy with fear. No man could resist that mixture. Warmth rose from the fire in his belly, unleashing his heart and fueling his erection so much, he had to tweak himself skyward. Amazing, his Jones: gutsy, able to think in a crisis. He had fallen for another woman of monumental substance. Happiness spurted though him.

“Don’t leave me behind.” Light as a hint, Jones’ plea. 

“Why shouldn’t I,” the Butch George didn’t know retorted. His volume was louder, crazier, vibrating with contempt. George switched on the recorder. 

“You know why.” The coziness in her voice turned intimate. “You don’t want to see me broken. Or dead.” 

“I don’t care what happens to you. Not any more.” 

“Oh yes you do. I’m the person you can’t fool, remember? I know that big heart of yours isn’t an act. But this cold desperation, that isn’t you.”

“It is now. I’ve switched sides since you left. I’m rich. I’m a community figure. A city counselor. ” His laugh was bitter. 

“And you’d trade it all to go back to me and our shack in the mountains.” Her tone held a remote echo, as though she were sliding backwards in time to an old frame of reference. “And your vehemence about being an outlaw on the side of righting wrongs.”

A pained grunt broke from Butch.

“Come back with me,” she invited. Her plush voice was shod of its fear. 

 The fear shot through George as if she’d projectiled it. 

 “Show them you trust me.” 

  George’s heart closed, his gut iced, his brain sharpened. She must have known Butch was a danger. Clearly they were the love of each other’s lives, much like he and Clare. Maybe that explained the sorrow he sometimes saw in her eyes. Yet she had confided none of this. Why so secretive about Butch? Had they planned all this together? 

When they spoke of leaving, George slipped away, stationed himself in an auspicious hiding place near the tortoise enclosure. He couldn’t afford uncertainty now.

Jones arrived back with Butch, her arm tucked through his, chatting away in that casual, sexy voice of hers, the one that promised bliss. But the promise was going to Butch and George no longer knew if it was false or real.

He did know he had to save her. He couldn’t let another woman he loved die. Just then Butch switched languages and Jones’ didn’t ratchet up her attention. She doesn’t get it, George thought; she has no idea the lethality of Butch in his new guise. Too much of the old Butch, the one that had humanity beating in his chest, blocks her vision. In the exploit preceding this one, a trained park guard on security detail had been killed. “A big man,” the dying guard croaked into his cell phone. They’d all assumed he meant tall, like Zeke, 6’4” or 6”. But he meant fat, like Butch.

Zeke and Callie Mae were inside Umina’s enclosure. The opening they’d slashed to enter was lopsided and jagged, too small to drag the tortoise through. George focused his video camera on them. A series of knives from Zeke’s tool pack lay spread on the ground. They looked like ordinary combat and tactical knives, mostly fixed metal blades with serrated edges and strong tips along with a curved karambit, arranged simply by size. Or savagery: set further back were nastier ones: a couple of tantos thick enough to pierce armor and a specimen with a blade that looked like an elongated screw. George squinted at it to make sure his eyes weren’t lying. But there it was. A Jagdkommando Integral Tri-Dagger Fixed Blade Knife: three sharp blades corkscrewing around each other, designed to stab and twist as one, causing your victim to bleed out. They were vicious, illegal, banned in combat. No one George knew carried one. It’s only use was to kill. 

Now the whole array looked menacing. Each blade gleamed meaner than the last. Umina was upright, her vulnerable throat withdrawn into her glowing emerald shell. Like that, she had to weigh a good five hundred pounds in pure inert bulk. To flip her over and get to her soft underbelly was impossible. Zeke turned to Callie Mae to confer. George seized the moment to train his second camera on Butch and the girl.

The girl’s eye sought Butch’s. Her face was soft, her eyes like fledging eyes, scanning a parent’s beak for food. 

Suddenly they iced. An angry shell crusted over her glowing face. Her neck swiveled and she stared until her obdurate eyes hooked George’s confused ones and flashed hard, soft, hard, soft, three times. Swift as a frigate bird, she turned away, gazed up at Butch, changed her face back to radiant.

Then he knew. She’d brought Butch back on purpose. She didn’t want George to split his attention, didn’t want him to focus on anything but the turtle. Her actions were intended to diminish Butch’s suspicion, but George doubted Butch would be fooled. Often, during the cimmerian hours of vampires and villains, Jones had slipped out in the panga, the oars softly dipping in the water. Sometimes she returned to an island, sometimes cruised around the sea with her driver. The nights were beautiful, dark as pitch, stars reflecting like halos in the charcoal black sea. And Zeke watched her; his panga driver watched her. 

Zeke examined each knife blade, as though trying to gauge what it could do in this situation. Callie urged him to get on with it. “Give me some leeway, goddamn it,” Zeke snarled. No deference lurked in his undertone; here he was boss man. Callie lurched back, put on her beauty queen-cheerleader mien. 

George glanced over at Butch and Jones. Arms wrapped around each other, they shared a long kiss. Fury reared up in him like a beast: How dare his girl betray him? How dare his friend betray him? How dare his wife betray him? How dare she think so little of his love – their love-- that she jumped from the railing into the sea and let herself drown? Left him behind carrying a shitpile of emptiness and loneliness and guilt and self-hatred? What the fuck was she doing? Did she love him so little? Love herself so little? Or so much that as she ghosted away, she wanted to score her imprint on him forever? Planned it so carefully that she tied a scarf that he had given her around the spot beforehand, made sure he knew exactly how she’d executed every move? How dare she kill herself like that? Treat him like he meant nothing to her? Like their whole shared world was nothing but dreck to be tossed in the sea. He’d tried so hard to be a nice guy, kind and constructive; he’d put her first, always. He didn’t want a child; she did; he wanted to adventure; she wanted to nest. It was NEVER his fault. He just thought that to keep his rage at bay. She was the piece of shit. She was the guilty one. The heavy carapace of guilt slid off him. And there he stood, naked in his own truth. His rage blazed on, burning through his regret, his shame, his remorse, his mourning, his depression, his shock, his gloom, his self-loathing, turning his misery to ashes. 

With ironic pleasure, he noticed that all the kissing kept Butch from urging Zeke and Callie Mae on with the job. Helluva fuckin’ way to help me out, darlin’, George thought. He focused his attention on Umina and her plight.

Zeke remained frozen, mired in a problem too shaded for his coarse, black and white brain to figure out. Finally, he picked up a knife, held it up to the light. Silvery sparkles gleamed from the honed metal. He ran the blade along the back corner of Umina’s shell. Bending over her to stare, he cursed, vicious but muted. “Nothing,” he muttered, “not even a scratch.” He picked up a second knife and slid it along her shell. The result was the same.

Two knives later, George understood. The stupid ignorant bastards were trying to cut Umina’s shell off her while she was still alive. It was an impossible task. Shells were fusions of the once-interior bone structure into a thick, tough mass, protected by material hard as horns, patterned like patchwork on top of it. A skilled tortoise hunter slit the reptile’s throat, let the life bleed out, then turned the carcass over to allow the insides to rot in the sun. Only then did the hunter scrape it all out to sell the beautiful shell. Turtle meat was a delicacy in some regions, a medicine in others, but often the shell was worth more than the meat.

 Zeke didn’t know any of this. Using knife after knife, he tried to slice or saw into the shell. The only thing that stopped George from shooting him was Jones and hoping that, in spite of the evidence, her true feelings were really for him. 

A whoop of triumph ravaged the silence. Clutching his knife, Zeke punched the air. It was cutting; it was cutting! Umina’s treasured shell would soon be his! Her powers of healing, the myth of her invulnerability, her gift of life to desperate people from all over the world, her transcendent, immutable grace, would soon be lost.

 In Spanish, Butch shouted words of encouragement. In English, Jones shouted with him. Whose side she was really on clarified like hot butter. The hard-eyed look she’d thrown at him wasn’t to say, see how much I hate him, see what I’m doing for you. No. It was to say, I’m hard as nails, as tough as Butch: I fooled you but good. The fury in George grew feverish. He felt like a man with a belt of explosives strapped to his waist, the detonator a button in his brain. He didn’t care about his own life. He wanted to die. Without a woman to cherish, without flesh sweeter than his own to ignite, without the privilege of loving, life wasn’t worth living. Now he understood why Clare had drowned herself; she had the same feelings about her unborn baby. Life was worth nothing to her without children.

Calm dropped over him, cool and attentive. The detachment of not caring released him into a state of unconditional perception. 

“I’ve cut through,” Zeke crowed. 

Callie clapped, cheered, pecked him on the cheek. Or almost on the cheek. She left a small margin of air between her lips and his skin, a shiver passing through her shoulders and neck. 

  Inward caved Butch’s fat cheeks, a puzzle until George realized, shuddering in spite of his dispassion, that Butch had thrust his tongue into Jones’ mouth. Only he thought forced, not thrust. He couldn’t sense anything from Jones, though. Tighter and harder Butch clutched Jones, hanging onto her as if she were trying to get away. The Jones George knew would be desperate to save Umina, no matter what harm she incurred or who she implicated. But the Jones he watched now let her big fit body sag against Butch’s broad, beefy one. Undulating her hips against his, she contorted her torso to peek inside Umina’s cage. 

  A giant tremor shook her whole body. “No,” she shrieked, the word loud as a church bell. With a violent yank, she wrenched herself out of Butch’s grip. She scrambled through the opening into Umina’s cage. “Don’t touch that tortoise!” Balling something into her fist, she banged out a cacophony of sounds close to the tortoise. Zeke stopped cutting, staring in blank incomprehension. Umina’s domed form twitched into tortoise-paced action. She drew all her vulnerable parts further inside her thick shell. It was agonizingly slow. The hairs on George’s arm stood up one at a time. 

Zeke wielded his knife at the girl. “Get out,” he shouted. “Or I’ll use this.”

Talking softly, the girl knelt down in front of the tortoise, just where the great head had disappeared into its home. “Don’t come out,” she said. “It’s not safe for you here.” She blocked the opening with her body, squatting there.

The wife pulled out a syringe and looked askance at her husband. Zeke threw the decision to Butch who barked a sharp no. “Bring the girl to me.” His voice was tense but commanding. “You look after the tortoise.”

“And save the fucking needle for when you need it,” he snapped. 

George already knew Butch was gone on the girl, but the scene told him one thing he wanted to know. Butch was the force behind it all, a pro; he’d never been on George’s side. Maybe Zeke and Callie Mae were amateurs, borrowed from another racket, but Butch knew the game. Animal traffickers didn’t like to mess with people. Butch knew the boundaries. Killing a tortoise meant a prison sentence, a short one at that. Killing a person was a different story, a border Butch didn’t want anyone to cross, at least not when he was present.

Callie Mae grabbed one of the discarded knives, drew it along the back Jones arched over the turtle, rested the tip between her shoulder blades. “I don’t take orders from you,” she sneered, her real voice twangy and nasal. “Zeke?”

“Get her out of here,” Zeke said. 

 Callie Mae poked at Jones. “You know, this cutting you is a lot of fun. Way better than cutting myself.” Pressing down, she pierced a hole in Jones’ shirt. Blood trickled through it. 

Jones stayed put, chatting to the turtle, telling her she was safe now, stroking her hard emerald shell. “Umina, Umina,” she crooned. “You rhyme with arena, cantina, Athena, Sena.” What the turtle got out of it, George had no idea, but she poked her head out and touched the girl’s hand with her parted mouth in a turtle kiss. Jones patted her big head, leaned over and gave her a human kiss. Meanwhile, Zeke worked his blade at the tail end of the carapace, using it like a saw to carve his way through.

Callie Mae lifted the knife from Jones’ back and scrambled toward Umina’s neck. Apologizing to the big reptile, Jones shoved the turtle’s head back into her shell. 

Callie Mae went stupid with rage. “You bitch,” she shrieked. “You fucking full-of-yourself, high-and-mighty, fat bitch!” She leapt at Jones and stabbed her full force in the back. Jones, already kneeling, curled forward and dropped in slow, wobbly motion onto her hands.

 No matter which way Callie Mae tugged the hilt, she couldn’t dislodge the knife. It was as stuck as it would be in a horny green carapace.

George stepped into view. “Drop the knife,” he commanded. “Both of you.” His voice rang with authority.

Callie let go of the hilt, but Zeke continued to cut, shaking his head. He was counting on Butch to take George out. No movement stirred. The knife faltered.

“Drop it or I’ll shoot.” Moral courage made the warning reverberate with meaning.

Neither Zeke nor Callie Mae could discern the sound of honor. Butch could or maybe it was the effect of Jones; she crawled through the hole in the cage, knife still in her back. Butch hoisted her like a sack of diamonds and retreated softly into the thicket. Zeke dropped the faltering knife and picked up another. 

Umina uttered a cry of pain. It stabbed through George, registering as a wound. Jesus Christ, Zeke had used the killer knife, the Jagdkommando, gored right through the carapace. George felt like his soul was bleeding out: they were killing a sacred spirit, a goddess, a being who had chosen to help others over her own peaceful existence. As if in a trance, he shot Zeke. The bullet’s trajectory pushed Zeke’s oafish body away from the tortoise. Callie Mae scooted over, plucked the knife from her dying husband’s hand and tried to continue his work. Desire for wealth made her insane on top of stupid, George thought, wondering if it could de-brain an entire civilization. Umina uttered another cry of pain. Hearing it inflamed every nerve in George’s body. It was as if he experienced from her cry all the pain and suffering she’d absorbed from the infinite individual people she had healed. 

He shot Callie in the head and she toppled backwards, landing across her husband’s prone body. Together their bodies looked like a twisted cross.

 George keeled over, all his strength spent. He lay on the ground immobile, weak in every limb, his mind empty.

A beautiful lilting voice spoke to him, opening his mind to hear grasses rustling, wind whispering, water lapping, insects humming, paws pattering, creatures prowling, mating, breathing: the medley of the night. The harmony astonished him; it was as if he was listening to music of the universe through grace and compassion, the way the gods heard it. “Thank you,” the lilting voice frolicked right into him. Like honey and caramel, the rich, gentle sound infused his being; it was nothing like his own interior voice. “Yes, it’s me,” Umina said. “I will heal you now. Lie still. Nothing can hurt you. You are ensconced in the immortal, cradled in a web spun of the eternal and the moment.

“And you don’t need that any more.” She plucked the rage right out of him, leaving behind the energy of it.

Suddenly he experienced more than her omni-melodic voice, more than the harmony of sound. The whole universe held harmony, unity. Everything was beautiful. The thicket, the guns, the cage, the sea, the arachnids, the iguanas, the stenches, the stars. Everything was alive; spoke to him, sang to him, sang to each other. Loving was the essence, big love like the universe, active love like the kindness of Umina. It was spirit, it was peace, it was truth; it was wisdom, it was art, it was science; it was Omni, it was om. Deities flew around like butterflies; they lived inside trees, rocks, reptiles, raindrops, everywhere. He lay there for an eternity. Or minutes. It didn’t matter. They were the same. Time was gone, a construct of the distorted world of human egos.

 “You will always be able to find me,” said Umina, evanescing. “Just think of me and our link will be present.”

George awoke in the dirt, his head pillowed on a patch of soft grasses. He could still hear the sounds of the winds and the earth. The perfume of soil and leaves, like creature fur, and a coppery, sweet smell, like the end of a good hunt, scented the air. Midway between his eyes, a kiss of pure light entered him, a radiant blue followed by a lustrous white and a happy cherry red, as though a river of brilliance and vitality flowed from the kiss point through him, tip to toe and beyond. 

“Hello, George.” 

Jones! She was the one cradling him, kissing him on the forehead. The knife was gone and her wound healed, though the coppery smell of dried blood still drifted from her shirt. It wasn’t as bad as it looked, she whispered, filling him in on how Butch had swabbed it clean, smeared antiseptic gel all over it, covered it carefully with strips torn from his shirt.

It was from Jones, the rainbow of radiance pouring through him, the light of love. He could receive it now. She had never intended to betray him. Only to help him. Knowing Butch had been her ace in the hole; she knew how to manage him, knew George could not. 

“He’s gone,” she said. “I went to put balm on Umina, and he took off. You should have seen her, all fiery green glow like some celestial being. The closest I’ve seen are the Northern lights, like a shimmering emerald sea of luminescence when they flow across the sky. Of course she had already healed herself.”

Later, she would admit she thought Umina had healed her. And given her a clear and peaceful state of mind, he would add, for he’d already come to a similar conclusion. But they would never know for certain; all they could do was choose to believe or disbelieve. Or simply to wonder. 

Slanting over George, Jones kissed him and he could feel the eternal in her, the presence of Umina and of connection to the universe. 

 

Jones and George rode back together in the panga. She leaned into him and he curled his arm around her. They didn’t need to talk. They just knew.