There was a low murmuring on the shore and Anders seemed to be listening to it. aWhat is it?a Anders said.
aRapps. Iave got some peanut butter and some oranges and a very large basket of Rapps.a One of the men raised an arrow towards the boat and Anders walked over and stood in front of him until he lowered it again. He was saying something now, and then he pressed his thumbs into the orange and pulled it in half, taking out a piece for himself and holding it up to them before putting it in his mouth. Then he divided up the fruit into sections and handed it out to the men who were standing around him. aDo not under any circumstances give them the Rapps,a he said calmly.
aItas what Iave got,a she said.
aYouave got peanut butter. If these people find out about the Rapps theyall gut every last Lakashi by sundown and clean them out. How did you find me?a he called to her. One by one they cautiously laid the slices on their tongues and as they bit down they turned to Anders in their startled pleasure.
aIall tell you some other time,a she said. It was all she could do not to jump over the side of the boat, to swim to him.
Anders pointed back at the boat, and after further conference he called to Marina. aThe orange is good. They want to know what you want in return.a She wondered if he was serious, if he really didnat know. aYou,a she said and then added to that the second sentence she knew, Let us have the white man. She wondered if a syllable of it made sense to them. She could feel Easteras breath through the fabric of her dress. His mouth was pressed against her back. She was an idiot to have brought him. She knew enough to leave Thomas and Benoit behind and then took Easter with her without a thought, like he was nothing more than her talisman, her good luck. No mother would have brought her child into this even if he was the one who understood the river and the boat.
On the shore Anders was pointing to his chest, he was pointing to the boat. A single heron skated down the river. After a long discussion he called again to Marina. aThey want you to bring in the boat.a Once again Marina waited for her fear but somehow it held back. aShould I?a aDo it,a Anders said. aThey have you anyway. Just give them a little bit, a jar of peanut butter to start.a Marina nodded and reached for the throttle, and when she did Easter came around from behind her. He put his hands back on the wheel. She put one hand on his head and pointed for him to go into shore and he nodded.
aIs that Easter?a Anders said. aI donat have my glasses anymore.a aI made a mistake,a she said.
It was only fifteen feet and they came in slowly. The men waded out and the women kept to the shore behind them. Anders was very close now and she could see the hollow of his cheeks beneath his beard and she could see his eyes. When the Hummocca came to the boat Marina could see the shape of their heads was in fact slightly different from the Lakashi just as Dr. Swenson had said. They were not as tall as the Lakashi and Anders towered over them. She handed the one who looked like he was in charge the jar of peanut butter and for a moment he struggled with what to do with it, his hands squeezing the jar. He looked up at Marina, maybe he had meant for her to help him or maybe he meant to kill her, but what he saw there on the boat was Easter. The man with the yellow forehead stood there waist deep in the water, his chest against the pontoon, and the look on his face was the same look that had been on her own face a moment before when she first saw Anders, a cross of joy and disbelief, a look that was willing to accept that which was not possible. He turned and called to a woman on the shore who put the child she was holding on the ground and walked out into the water. Once she had seen Easter from a distance, she tried to move faster and the water held her back. She called to him, stretching out her arms, the trembling in her body sending out a ring of small waves into the water. And then she was there, pulling herself onto the boat and Easter shrank back behind Marina, his hands around her waist as tight as a snake.
Anders was out in the water, and then his hands were on the boat. He was calling out to the Hummocca with two sharp syllables. The woman scrambled up on the deck, her short legs muddied and wet. She knelt behind Easter, her wet arms covering his arms, encircling Marinaas waist. She wailed a single word again and again while Easter stayed perfectly still, holding fiercely to Marina. The woman behind him was rocking. The man with the peanut butter jar was saying something to Anders that was not said in rage.
aThey want Easter,a Anders said. He was holding onto the side of the boat now, his hands on the deck. He was nodding at the other men in the water who were talking faster and faster now, one hand holding up an arrow, the other making circles in the air. Anders looked at Marina. For the first time she could see his eyes very plainly. aGive them Easter and we can go.a aNo,a she said. That could not be possible. She had brought gifts. She had come for Anders. She put her hands over the womanas hands, over Easteras hands. Their arms made a structure that held her up. She shook her head. aWeall give them the Rapps.a aThis isnat a choice. They can keep all of us and the boat. Do it now while theyare confused. We have no bargaining power at all here.a Anders helped himself slowly onto the boat and, bending before Marina, he unlocked the layers of hands. Only then did Easter see him clearly and understand why they had come here at all. He reached for Andersa neck and made the sound he made in his sleep, a high trenchant cry that stood in place for the words Not dead. You are not dead. The Hummocca looked up from the water and were amazed to see their boy knew this white man and that clearly he loved him so well.
aNot this,a Marina said. aIf we stay with him weall all be together.a aGo get the oranges and the peanut butter,a he said, one hand on the back of Easteras head, his face in Easteras neck. Anders kissed the boy, his hair and ear and eye. They would have less than a minute together. The woman was standing now, her hands on Easteras back.
Marina got the fruit and the peanut butter and handed it over the edge, filling up every hand that was raised to her. Then Anders held Easter out by the waist. The boyas feet were bare and he was wearing dirty yellow shorts and a blue T-shirt that read aJazzFest 2003.a Marina made a note of all of it, as if there was someone she could describe him to later on, an agency that went to look for missing children. Anders handed Easter to the up-reached hands of the man in the water and the woman slipped over the side of the boat to stand with him. The look on the boyas face as his eyes went from Marina and Anders and back to her again was one of terrified misunderstanding. It was something worse than she had seen when the snake had him because the snake he had understood. He stretched out his hands to her and Marina closed her eyes. She left him there. She let him go.
The boat was turned around now and Anders was driving. In a minute they were full speed down the narrow turns of the river and Marina kept her eyes closed, one hand fixed to the pole that held the ragged cover over the center of the boat. She had accounted for her own death, and certainly she had accounted for Andersa, but she had not been ready for this.
aThey would have taken him,a Anders said. aIf they killed us, if they didnat kill us, Easter would have stayed with them.a He took a turn too fast and the basket of Rapps bounced twice and then sailed off the back of the boat and spread out over the water, an offering of little blue corks. Marina just caught the edge of the nightgown before it flew away and she tied it in a knot around her waist. She wished she had eaten a handful of the mushrooms herself. She would have been glad to have lost her mind. She would have been grateful to see God. There were so many things to say to Anders that she said none of them. She wanted to know what had happened to him all this time, and how he had gotten there, if he was still sick, but Easter stood in front of every question. She had not lost him or killed him. She had taken him into the jungle and given him away and there was nothing that anyone could say in the face of that. Once they were far enough away Marina drove the boat and Anders lay at the front of the deck with his eyes closed and his hands folded across his chest. When she looked at him sleeping she remembered that he had been dead for months now and that in order to bring him back she had given up everything she had known in the world. Anders who she had worked with every day, Anders who she knew very well and not at all, was once again alive. He slept as if he had stayed awake the entire time he had been gone and there were moments she wondered if he were dead again but she wouldnat stop the boat to see. From time to time it rained and when it didnat rain the light thinned in the tops of the trees and the bats began to loop out across the water. It wasnat hard to drive the boat. Why had she ever thought she needed Easter to come with her? Marina wrapped the nightgown around her head and face and squinted through the insects of early evening.
When Anders finally woke up hours later it was from a nightmare. His hands shot up into the air and he gave one short cry and then sat. It was pitch dark by then and Marina drove slowly, shining the light of the boat onto shore. She was worried she would drive past the Lakashi, that she would turn up some tributary and be lost all over again. Anders looked at the river and then the boat, he looked at Marina. From a distance they could just make out some small spots of fire down the river. aI had a lot of time to imagine my rescue,a he said. aArmy Rangers, soldiers of fortune, even the Lakashi. Mostly I thought it would be Karen.a aIt should have been Karen. She wanted to be the one but I told her she had to stay home with the boys.a Anders closed his eyes so that he could see them more clearly. aHow are the boys?a aEveryone is fine.a aIn all the times I dreamed of this, I never once saw you as the one coming to get me.a aI thought you were dead,a she said to him.
aI was dead,a Anders said.
It wasnat long before the voices of the Lakashi spread over the water and pulled them in. Marina was grateful for their fire, their enormous noise. For the first time in weeks she wondered what time it was. There were men swimming out to the boat and then men pulling themselves on board and as soon as they stood on the deck they were silent. Two unimaginable things had happened: Anders was with her and Easter was gone. Marina killed the engine, afraid she would run over someone in the dark, and the swimmers pulled the boat up to the dock. The men leaned in towards Anders, the burning branches high above their heads. They did not slap him but set their branches in the water where the fire hissed out. One by one slipped over the edge. Voice by voice the singing ceased. In the darkness Anders caught hold of Marinaas hand.
Thomas Nkomo was standing on the dock with a flashlight as if he had been waiting there all day for Marina to remember him. Her first thought when she saw him was of the arrows that had fallen on the boat but she did not bother to tell him that she had saved his life as well. Thomas went to Anders and took him in his arms and the two tall thin men held one another. Dr. Budi came up behind him and then the Saturns and each one took their turn.
aEaster?a Nancy Saturn said, looking around her.
aWe left him there,a Marina said. The Lakashi were walking away from them and the lights from all those burning sticks trailed into the jungle in every direction while the doctors walked to the lab.
Marina took the path back to Dr. Swensonas. She didnat have a flashlight but the moon was bright. When she went inside she saw that her cot was gone.
aI had them move it this afternoon. I didnat think you were coming back.a Dr. Swenson was lying in bed, a lantern burning on the table beside her.
aAnders is here,a Marina said, standing by the door.
Dr. Swenson raised up her head. aBarbara Bovender was right?a aHeas in the lab.a aI donat know another story to match this,a Dr. Swenson said, shaking her head. aI will be glad to see Dr. Eckman. Easter must be thrilled. I always thought he blamed himself for letting him get away. Dr. Eckman must have gone down to the river. Iave been thinking about it all day and thatas what I decided. One of the canoes was missing. He must have crawled inside and floated away. Then somewhere out there the Hummocca found him.a aEaster is gone.a aWhat do you mean, gone?a aThe Hummocca took him. Thatas how I got Anders back. A man and a woman took him off the boat. They seemed to think that Easter belonged to them. They were very definite about it.a There came across Dr. Swenson a wild look and she pushed herself up to sitting with her hands. Her nightgown was old and torn at the neck. aYou have to go back there. You have to go and get him.a Marina shook her head. aI canat.a aI wonat accept that you canat. Obviously you can. You got Dr. Eckman and you will get Easter. Heas deaf. He doesnat understand whatas happened. You canat just leave him there.a But Marina had already left him, and she understood that in life a person was only allowed one trip down to hell. There was no going back to that place, not for anyone. aWhere did you get him?a she said.
aI told you.a aTell me again,a Marina said.
Dr. Swenson sank back into the pillows. She waited a long time before she spoke. aI didnat tell you because you wouldnat have liked the story. But that matters less now, doesnat it? No one tells the truth to people they donat actually know, and if they do it is a horrible trait. Everyone wants something smaller, something neater than the truth.a aWhere did you get him?a aThey gave him to me. He came here. In the jungle one tribe knows what another tribe is doing, I told you that, tribes with which they have no obvious means of communication. One day the Hummocca sent for me. This was probably eight years ago, Iam not positive. Two men came in a canoe to get me but I wouldnat go with them. I knew who they were. Dr. Rapp had had some dealings with the Hummocca thirty years ago, nothing that was good. The next day the same two men came back with a child between them in the bottom of the boat. He was fantastically sick. There was pus and blood running out of both of his ears. Children die out here constantly, thatas why so many of them are needed. I can only imagine this child belonged to someone who was very important because they had brought him to me. They got their point across without benefit of a mutual language, they wanted him saved, and after that they left him here. I certainly didnat ask them to. He had a fever of a hundred and six, a bilateral mastoiditis, probably meningitis. He was already deaf, there was nothing I could have done about that. Three days later the same two men were there again, wanting him back. He was on IV penicillin, fifty thousand units Q6H. It wasnat as if I could send him off in the canoe.a aSo you kept him?a aI told them the boy was dead. That would have been the case if it hadnat been for me. The fact of the matter is had they waited a few weeks I would have given him back, but they came too early, and he was too sick to go. I couldnat explain any of that, but I knew enough to tell them he was dead.a aYou could have sent him back later.a aHe was sick for a month, as sick as anything Iave seen. By the time I brought him back they would have forgotten about him. A deaf child? They wouldnat have known what to do with him. Do you think you wouldnat have done the same thing? He was Easter even then, you know. After a month of feeding him and washing him and staying up all night with his fevers you really think you would have taken him back to the cannibals?a aI wouldnat have taken someone elseas child,a Marina said.
aOf course you would,a Dr. Swenson said. aYou would take Easter from me now. You never had any intention of leaving here without him and I never had any intention of letting him go. He was mine. He was my boy and you gave him away.a Were he here she would have put him in a canoe tonight and rowed the boat herself in the dark all the way to the Amazon River. aI would have taken him,a she said. aYouare right. Except that now I donat have the chance. Why did you let me take him back there? Why didnat you tell me it wouldnat be safe?a aHe didnat belong to them,a Dr. Swenson said. aHe was mine.a Marina sat with this but there was nothing to say. She would have sworn that Easter was hers. aAnders and I are leaving in the morning.a aTake Dr. Eckman back to Manaus if you have to, or let someone else take him, but I still need you here.a aIam going with him,a Marina said.
Dr. Swenson shook her head. aIt doesnat work like that. Trust me, you wonat fit in there anymore. Youave changed. Youave betrayed your employer, and youall keep on betraying him, and that wonat sit well with someone like you. I changed myself once, it was a long time ago but I changed. I followed my teacher down here too. I thought I was coming for the summer. I know about this.a aIt isnat the same.a aOf course it isnat the same. Nothing is ever the same. I wasnat like Dr. Rapp, and still I took his place. Youare not like me but you wait, youall go back there and nothing will make sense to you anymore.a Marina came and stood beside the bed. aGood night,a she said.
aYouall come back,a Dr. Swenson said. aBut donat make me wait forever. There isnat an infinite amount of time to get this work done. Easter will come back, you know. He may even be back in the morning. Heall steal a canoe while theyare sleeping. He knows how to get home. He wonat hold it against you, what youave done to him. Heas a child. Heall forgive us.a But Marina had seen the look on his face when Anders handed him over. She wasnat sure Dr. Swenson was right. aGood night,a she said again, and closed the door.
When she went back to the lab to find Anders, Alan Saturn told her he had gone to take a shower. Thomas was off looking for the box where they had put his things, hoping that not all of his clothes had been taken. Nancy and Budi sat staring at the floor in front of them. aHe says he still has intermittent fevers,a Alan said finally. aMake sure he looks good when you get him on the plane. If they think he has malaria they wonat let him back in the country.a aCould he have malaria?a Marina asked.
Dr. Budi looked up but she said nothing.
aItas the tropics,a Nancy said. aAnyone could have malaria.a Dr. Budi shook her head. aAnyone but us,a she said.
Marina went back to the sleeping porch. She washed herself standing in a basin and put on Mrs. Bovenderas nightgown. It was no longer particularly clean but it was a veritable blossom of edelweiss compared to the dress shead been wearing. She felt sick to be in this place without Easter. She opened his strongbox, which had been returned with the cot, and there beneath the feathers and the rock that looked like an eye was the letter from Anders announcing a reward for Easteras safe delivery. In that box she found not only Andersa passport but her own. He had had a picture of both of them. She also found her wallet, her plane ticket, and her phone. She sat with the phone in her hands for a long time before trying to turn it on and when she finally found her nerve to push the button nothing happened. The battery was dead. She put it back in the box.
aThis was my room,a Anders said.
Marina looked up and there he was. His beard was gone and he ran his hand over his face. It was the face she remembered. aSome Lakashi woman shaved it off for me. It seemed to make her inordinately happy. I never had a beard before,a he said. aI hated it.a aYou look like yourself,a she said.
aI slept here.a He pointed to the bed. aEaster was in the hammock.a aI know,a she said. aI figured it out.a She looked at the strongbox. aHe slept with me. He had terrible nightmares after you were gone.a aSo did I,a Anders said. He turned off the two lanterns and put the strongbox on the floor. aMove over,a he said.
Marina stretched out on one side of the cot and Anders lay down beside her. Their noses were touching and he put his arm over her shoulder. aIam sorry,a he said.
aNo,a she said. aItas better this way.a aTomorrow weall go home.a She leaned into him. She nodded into his neck. If they fell asleep they would have to fall asleep at the same minute. They would have to hold each other very close and stay very still until they woke up again. Until this point they had embraced every year when she came to his house for the Christmas party. He would open the door wearing a red sweater and she would be standing out in the snow, holding a bottle of wine, and he would give her a quick hug and then usher her inside.
aHow was it you?a he said.
aI donat know. Karen wanted me to go, and Mr. Fox. I was supposed to find out what had happened to Dr. Swenson and find out how you died. I was so sorry when I heard you had died.a aNo one thought I was missing?a he said. aNo one thought it was strange that my body was gone?a Marina shook her head very slightly against the pillow they shared. aDr. Swenson said theyad buried you. She thought you were dead. She was sure you were dead.a aBut you didnat think I was.a He put his hand on her shoulder.
aI did,a Marina said. aKaren didnat. She held out a lot of hope for you but I didnat believe her. I thought she just couldnat accept it.a aThen why did you come out there to find me?a aBarbara Bovender,a she said, and that was when she kissed him, because their mouths were so close, because he was in fact alive, because she could not explain any of it. She was in the Bovendersa living room and Barbara was asking her, did she love him? She loved him now, but only now. On this one night, after a day of the most extraordinary circumstances that either of them would see for the rest of their lives, she kissed him to prove to herself that all of this had happened, and he kissed her because it was true, he was here. And when they pulled their bodies closer still it felt like a necessity, trying to lie together in such a small space. When she cried it was because she saw the tributary again and she saw again how easy it would have been to miss it. Had she missed it, had Barbara Bovender missed it, Anders would never have been found, and Easter never would have been lost. Anders knew this, he said as much when he held her head in his hands. When they made love it was only to calm the fears they had endured. It was a physical act of kindness, a comfort, a sublime tenderness between friends. She would have made love to Mr. Fox if he had been there, and Anders would have made love to his wife, but for this night what they had was one another, and anyway, after all that had happened between them how could they not press themselves together, press through each other with their bodies to show how deeply, if only until the plane landed in Minneapolis, that they were intertwined. Without the scant weight of what was left of him to pin her down she might have gone to stand in the shallows of the river to see if Dr. Swenson was right about Easter rowing his way home to them in a stolen canoe, maybe the same canoe Anders had floated away in. Without the warmth of her he might not have believed the reversal of his fortunes. This would be the only part of the story that they would never speak of again, the part where he lifted her on top of him, his arms as thin as sapling trees, and she put her face down on his chest and she kissed him and cried.
In the morning, miraculously, they were both still balanced in the bed, two thin plates leaning against one another in a rack, Marina on her side, wearing Anders Eckman over her back like a blanket. She would have thought that she would go to the Martins one last time before leaving but now all she wanted was for this to be over. She was finished with the trees. The fact that she had ever considered bringing back a bag full of branches struck her now as ridiculous and slightly repulsive. The only thing to bring home was Anders. She was naked, in bed with her officemate, and in sliding out from under him she woke him up.
aOh, Marina,a he said, but she shook her head and leaned forward. For the last time in her life, she kissed him.
aLetas go home,a she said.
And so they did, Marina wearing Mrs. Bovenderas nightgown with a pair of her pants underneath it and one of Mr. Foxas shirts over it. She wore Miltonas hat on her head and carried Easteras strongbox like a very small suitcase. The Saturns took them in the pontoon boat to Manaus. They were only an hour away from the Lakashi when an enormous eagle sailed over their heads low enough that they could see the expression on the face of the small monkey that dangled from its curving talons.
aThatas a harpy eagle,a Anders said loudly, tilting himself over the side of the boat to watch it pass. aDid you see that?a aNo one could miss that,a Nancy Saturn said. The jungle was suddenly silent in the birdas wake, as if everything with eyes had the sense to hold its breath.
aThat was the bird I most wanted to see when I came down here. Theyare almost impossible to find.a Andersa body still strained forward in the direction of the raptor. aI canat believe I saw a harpy eagle.a When they arrived in Manaus they called Milton from the pay phone at the dock. Milton, forever resourceful, had a friend at the ticket counter at the airlines who was sympathetic to their case, and while they waited for him to arrange the details of two seats on the last flight out to Miami, connecting to the first flight out to Minneapolis, they went to see Barbara Bovender to tell her that it was not her father she had seen running through the trees and how in making that wrong turn on the river she had saved Andersa life. In telling the story to other people they told it to one another, about how they each had come to find Dr. Swenson, how Anders in his fever had wandered down to the river and gotten into a canoe, about the Hummocca who had found him half dead and floating in the bottom of his little boat though where he was he would never know for sure as all of those memories came from a place that was now fully under water, like a town that had been flooded into a lake, about the poultice they painted on him for weeks that smelled like horseradish and tar and how it blistered the skin on his chest. They became so good at talking that at one point Marina told Milton of her vision of Thomas Nkomo shot through with an arrow and Anders told Barbara about Easter being lifted from his hands though both Barbara and Marina had cried to hear it. By the time they boarded the plane, they had talked about everything except the thing they would never need to talk about. They drank Bloody Marys and watched as the Amazon grew farther and farther away on the in-flight map screen in front of them. In their reclining seats they both fell into a sleep that was deeper and more refreshing than any sleep either had had in months.
There was a good case to be made for calling Karen from the airport in Miami and a good case to be made for waiting, for going right to the house. Marina could see that there were equal parts of love and cruelty either way it was reasoned, and though she voted to go to the house she said the decision was of course unequivocally his to make. Anders stared at the clock and the rare bank of pay phones near the gate until finally the flight was called to board. Anders and Marina both agreed they had lost their skills on the telephone. Every mile they went backwards they felt themselves turning into the people they had been, two doctors who shared an office in a pharmaceutical company outside of Minneapolis.
Minnesota! It smelled like raspberries and sunlight and tender grass. It was summer, and everything was more beautiful than any picture she had carried with her. By the time they were in the taxi they still knew that something extraordinary had happened but they found themselves distracted, first by the tall buildings and then later by the trees that were fully leafed, by the wide stretches of prairie that let the eye sweep so easily in any direction, by the remarkable lightness of the air. Anders leaned over the seat and gave his directions to the Nigerian cab driver one turn at a time while Marina rolled down her window and let the wind press back her fingers and pull at her braided hair. For some reason she thought of driving with Milton and the Bovenders to that beach outside Manaus and the goat that Milton managed not to hit. There had never been a place in the world as beautiful as Minnesota.
When they got to the top of the cul-de-sac they passed a boy on a bicycle but Anders was looking in the other direction. He had by then caught sight of two boys in the front yard, boys who from a distance moved and played like Easter, and his hand was on the Nigerianas shoulder and was calling for him to stop the car, to stop. The door of the taxi opened like the door of a cage and Anders leapt out, calling their names. For a few moments the cab was stopped and Marina watched this world that had nothing to do with her even though she had made it herself. She saw the boy on the bike swing a wide, arcing turn and come careening back down the street towards his father. The front door opened at the sound of so much screaming, the boys were screaming like Lakashi, and the neighbors opened their doors. She didnat see Karen open her door but there she was, flying into his arms, her feet never touching the lawn. She was as small and golden as a child herself. It was as if they had waited for him every day he had been gone, holding their burning sticks above their heads, pouring their souls up to heaven in a single voice of ululation until he came back. And Marina brought him back, and without a thought that anyone should see her, she told the driver to go on.
About the Author.
ANN PATCHETT is the author of five novels: the New York Times bestselling Run; The Patron Saint of Liars, which was a New York Times Notable Book of the Year; Taft, which won the Janet Heidinger Kafka Prize; The Magicianas Assistant; and Bel Canto, which won the PEN/Faulkner Award, the Orange Prize, the BookSense Book of the Year, and was a finalist for the National Book Critics Circle Award. She is also the author of two works of nonfiction: the New York Times bestselling Truth & Beauty and What now? Patchett has written for many publications, including the Atlantic Monthly, Harperas Magazine, Gourmet, the New York Times, Vogue, and the Washington Post. She lives in Nashville, Tennessee.
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Also by Ann Patchett.
What now?
Run Truth & Beauty Bel Canto The Magicianas Assistant Taft The Patron Saint of Liars Credits Cover illustration by Nate Duval Cover design by Archie Ferguson