Beautiful Blood (17 page)

“I realize that is what you wish me to think,” Rosacher said. “But I would not be the man you judge me to be if I accepted your statement as fact.”

Breque threw up his hands. “Think what you want! I’m done with this discussion.”

“We’ll talk further upon my return,” said Rosacher—despite himself, he felt badly for Breque.

“I’m certain you will return,” Breque said. “Griaule is clearly your protector. But is he mine? That remains to be seen.”

Though they began their journey at night, Cerruti and Rosacher thereafter traveled by day, leaving Frederick to follow their scent. The days passed without significant event. At night, Rosacher could hear Frederick moving out in the brush, beyond the light of their campfire, and on those nights when he did not hear the beast, to ease his mind Cerruti would summon him and Frederick would materialize as a puddle of shadow or a heap of blackness, staying in sight just long enough to fray Rosacher’s nerves.

The hours that proved the most onerous for Rosacher were those between dusk, when they pitched camp, and when they went to sleep. Simply put, Cerruti was a bore. He regaled Rosacher with stories about minor wounds he had suffered, tooth problems, illnesses he had endured, encounters with poisonous plants and pests such as fleas and lice, as well as afflictions of unknown origin. As he told it, his life had been spent in a condition of mild constant pain, and this was the only subject about which he was at all voluble. In opposition to his usual taciturn manner, he related his experiences with a kind of crude eloquence, describing his various injuries and symptoms in detail. He seemed to have relished each abrasion and cut, each festering sore and fever and runny nose. Everything they saw reminded him of some incidence of sickness or impairment, and whenever Rosacher tried to turn their campfire chats to a subject more to his pleasure, Cerruti would answer in a terse fashion and then go on with his litany of medical woes. Not even Frederick, a topic about which Rosacher thought that Cerruti would wish to display his expertise, warranted a detailed response. When asked to expound on Frederick’s method of communication, the shape he preferred to assume, or any other facet of its behavior, Cerruti would provide an answer both brief and uninformative, leading Rosacher to suspect that he knew considerably less than he pretended and was glossing over his ignorance. He wondered, too, if Cerruti had as much control over Frederick as he claimed and whether or not, when the time came to unleash his pet, Cerruti would be able to reel it in.

They crossed over the Temalaguan border on the sixth day, passing into a region of dense jungle that impeded their progress and brought to Cerruti’s narratives of illness a new level of intensity. They camped that evening near a bend in the Rio Coco beneath a canopy of aguacaste trees, on a patch of packed earth that had been cleared of vegetation by the passage of tapirs and various other animals—it had rained earlier in the day and their tracks pockmarked the moist clay. Ordinarily Rosacher would have chosen a different place in which to camp. It was obviously part of a trail leading to a watering hole and as such was sure to attract predators; but with Frederick lurking nearby and his rifle to hand, he felt secure. As dusk blended into full dark and the vine-hung canopy vanished from sight, he would have expected to hear the droning of insects and the liquid repetitions of frogs, but the only sounds he heard before falling asleep that night were those of Frederick’s predation—a high, thin squeal cut short—and the crackling of their fire and the whining constancy of Cerruti’s voice celebrating each new mosquito bite with a narrative of past travails.

“I was up on the coast a’ways once, not far from Buttermilk Key, traveling in a caravan,” he said, slathering his arms with a pale yellow ointment that, he claimed, would drive off any six-legged creature. “That was the worst place I ever saw for bugs. When the wind off the water died, you could stick your arm out the window of the wagon and it’d turn black with mosquitoes in a second or two.”

Rosacher was busy rubbing his exposed skin with water in which he had dissolved a number of small, black cigars. His method of repelling mosquitoes. “I wouldn’t have stuck my arm out, then,” he said.

“Had to, it was so damn hot. Not like here. Here, the heat’s uncomfortable, but up on the coast the heat’s pestilential.” He repeated the word, as if enunciating it gave him satisfaction. “Anyhow, my bites got infected and my arm swole up the size of a hawser. They were draining pus from it for a week.”

Rosacher lit one of the cigars and puffed out a cloud of smoke and said without the least emotional inflection, “That’s awful.”

“Too right it was! They must have took a gallon out of me.”

“Speaking of bodily fluids and the like,” said Rosacher. “Have you ever noticed whether Frederick defecates after eating?”

Cerruti, likely irritated by Rosacher’s lack of interest in his arm, said, “Hell, no.”

“We’ve been traveling with Frederick for a week and I haven’t seen any sign of his spoor. Don’t you find that odd, considering the fact that he’s consumed half-a-dozen large animals…and that’s only the ones we’ve run across?”

“Frederick’s a fastidious type,” Cerruti said. “He does his business in private.”

Recalling the condition of the animal cadavers, Rosacher did not think the word “fastidious” would apply to any of Frederick’s behaviors; but he let it pass. “I’d be interested in examining one of his stools. It might prove instructive in determining the workings of his digestive system.”

Cerruti rubbed ointment into his neck. “Got better things to do than look for Frederick’s shit.”

“Could you ask him or me? I’m very interested in his physiological characteristics.”

“You want to rile up Frederick, that’s a good way to do it—asking about his private business. He don’t like talking about it.”

“What does he like talking about? I’m assuming that you and Frederick have had occasion to chat from time to time.”

“He don’t usually have much to say,” said Cerruti. He stopped applying ointment and his body language displayed, Rosacher thought, a degree of wariness. “He tells me what’s been hunting, for one thing. His conversation don’t run too deep, if you catch my meaning.”

“You’re saying that you don’t engage in philosophical speculations, that sort of thing?”

Cerruti peered across the fire at Rosacher, as if trying to read his face.

“Do you ever speak about old wounds and illnesses, as you do with me?” asked Rosacher.

“Oh, aye!” Cerruti brightened. “We swap stories all the time.”

“I wouldn’t think Frederick would be vulnerable to much.”

 Cerruti sat up straighter, eager to talk now that the subject was more to his liking. “Most of the time he’s not, but there’s times when he’s prone to injury as you or me.”

A night bird passed overhead, giving an ululating cry; the wind shifted, bringing a sweetish odor off the river to mix in with the dark green scents of the foliage.

“Really?” said Rosacher, not wishing to appear overly inquisitive, but thinking this might be an opportunity to learn something salient about Frederick.

“He’s often injured when he’s feeding. He gets so damn hungry, sometimes he fails to finish an animal off before he starts in and whatever it is he takes a bite of is liable to mark him with a claw or a tooth.”

“Do they leave a scar?”

“Naw, you seen him. Whatever damage is done gets healed up when he pulls back from eating.”

A host of questions occurred to Rosacher, but he left them unspoken for fear of making Cerruti uneasy.

“Pity we can’t do the same,” he said.

Cerruti looked perplexed, but then he grinned. “If we had a body for feeding and another for healing like Frederick, the law couldn’t never touch us.”

“I don’t suppose it could.”

Cerruti relaunched his tale of mosquitoes and pus, and Rosacher did not attempt to dissuade him. He lay back, responding to Cerruti’s recitation of his maladies with grunts and other affirmations, trying to piece together the few things he knew about Frederick into a coherent picture, and soon drifted off to sleep.

In the morning, they followed the river course through a dense whitish mist that made every feathery frond, every loop of vine, into an article of menace. A pack of howler monkeys trailed them for a while, their cries seeming to issue from the throats of enormous beasts whose heads were thirty feet above the jungle floor. Sunlight thinned the mist and the poisonous greens and yellow-greens of the foliage emerged. Swarms of flies came to plague them, rising from mattes of vines beneath the hooves of their horses. Serpents could be seen swimming in the murky green water. The heat merged the dank scent of the river and that of a trillion tiny deaths with the great vegetable odor of the jungle, combining them into a cloying reek that so clotted Rosacher’s nostrils, he did not think he ever again would be able to smell the slight fragrance of a flower or a woman’s perfume.

In late afternoon they arrived at the village of Becan, on the edge of the king’s hunting ground amidst banana trees and one towering mago tree whose ripening fruit hung from structures that looked as ornate as candlelabras—it was a dismal collection of huts constructed of sapling poles and thatch, its muddy streets dappled with puddles. At the center of the village was a longhouse where travelers were permitted to sleep in hammocks for the night, and close by the longhouse was a largish hut, overhung by the leaves of a banana tree, wherein a wizened, white-haired old man, dressed in clothes made from flour sacking, with perhaps a dozen teeth left in his head, sat behind an empty crate and dispensed cups of unrefined rum. The late sun shining through the poles striped the dirt floor. Four wooden tables were arranged about the interior, but only six chairs, one toppled on its side and another occupied by a young woman who might have been pretty had she run a brush through her tangled hair and washed away the grime from her face and worn something more appealing than loose canvas trousers and a blouse that was mostly rips and stains. She affected what Rosacher judged to be a seductive pose and smiled at the two men as they entered, thus advertising her function. With a palsied hand, the old man began to pour from a bottle half-full of yellowish liquid. Rosacher laid a hand over the cup the old man had provided, but Cerruti gulped down his measure and gave a satisfied sigh.

“Another?” the old man asked.

Cerruti looked to Rosacher, who nodded, and the old man proceeded to pour.

“Do you have anything else to drink?” Rosacher asked.

“Yes, but it’s very expensive. Twelve quetzales for a small measure.”

“Let’s see it.”

Cerruti pulled up a chair next to the woman and they spoke together in muted tones.

From the rear of the packing crate, the old man withdrew a bottle wrapped in a red cloth and displayed it: Scotch whiskey, a decent brand. Rosacher signaled him to pour and leaned against the crate, gazing through the door of the cantina. A rooster hurried past, clucking, pursued in short order by a naked toddler. At the rear of one of the huts, a matronly woman in a striped dress was taking down her wash. The old man made a production out of cleaning Rosacher’s cup with a filthy rag and poured. As Rosacher drank, he asked if they had come from Teocinte.

“From Mospiel.” Rosacher pushed his cup toward the old man, asking for a refill, and handed him a fifty quetzal note.

“I have no change,” the old man said.

“I’ll drink it up,” said Rosacher, and the old man beamed.

Cerruti stood, linked arms with the woman and, with a salute to Rosacher, the two of them headed toward a hut on the far side of the longhouse.

“And what are you doing in Temalagua?” asked the old man.

“I am a trader in exotic birds. I’m going to the market in Alta Miron to buy stock.” Rosacher sipped the whiskey. “Truly, I did not think I would ever come to Alta Miron. Last night we were attacked in our camp by a beast. We were lucky to survive.”

“What manner of beast?”

“I did not get a good look at it. But it was black and very large. It trampled the jungle flat around our campsite. We eluded it by diving into the river. It killed one of our horses.”

The old man attempted a whistle in appreciation of Rosacher’s story, but due to his lack of teeth all that emerged was a breathy sound. “I have heard of this beast,” he said. “It’s said it killed a mother and her daughter in Dulce Nombre.”

“What a pity!” Rosacher said, chalking up the story to the rumors started by the riders he had sent on ahead and the typical hyperbole of Temalaguan storytellers.

“Indeed! But there is good news. It is said King Carlos will hunt the beast. Some of the men from our village have gone to the capital to volunteer their services.”

“Why would Carlos look to Becan for help? I’m certain his guards can ably assist him.”

“The men of Becan are accomplished trackers,” said the old man pridefully. “We have assisted the king on other hunts. And Carlos is a friend to the village. In fact it was he who presented me with this bottle”—he indicated the whiskey—“so he might have something suitable to drink when he stops by.”