Children of Paradise: A Novel (44 page)

The slope down to the wharf is easiest of all, and here the children break formation and race to see who will be first to reach the dock. Some drop deliberately to the ground and roll, others tumble, and this creates a competition among the children to see who can make the descent fastest in unorthodox fashion, either a mix of run and roll, or tumble and run, or cartwheel and run, or hop, skip, and jump. The boy in the wheelchair balances on two wheels by leaning back on the move downhill, which affords him a giddy view of the sky. The blind girl takes her cue from the change in the gradient and shakes her hands free of her guides and falls into a vibrant roll and cartwheel. The only rule Joyce insists upon is silence. Adam has the greatest difficulty with this rule, even with inducements of fresh fruit. He drums his chest, throws his teeth to the sky, and cackles. He loses his crown as he puts together the most impressive sequence of cartwheels and somersaults.

At the landing pier, Joyce, Trina, Ryan, and Rose look in both directions of the river, and Adam glances around, too. Joyce seems most anxious of all:

—Come on, Captain, where are you?

Trina scratches Adam’s back, and Ryan and Rose inch nearer and add their hands to Adam’s back, arched in bliss. Trina says the captain and his first mate will turn up as sure as salvation. They hear engines and search the river but look up just in time to see the sky empty of birds except for one airplane, which crawls past on its way to the nearby airport. A few minutes of palpable quiet pass before the first bird chirps and others pick up and the usual volume of birds resumes, augmented by frogs, cicadas, and monkeys.

A single shot makes them all jump, and Adam becomes agitated. They look in the direction of the trees, and Kevin emerges from a thicket with his hand over his face and his rifle slung crosswise on his midriff. Instead of walking to meet them, Kevin heads up the slope.

—Kevin! Kevin!

But he ignores Joyce and walks faster away from them. The children look at Joyce, and she tells Adam and the children that everything is fine, help will arrive soon and take them all to safety. Trina repeats this to Adam and to the children around her as she continues to scratch his back and he stays calm. Joyce shouts for Kevin and he stops, turns, and waves before disappearing on the trail that leads toward the compound.

—What is he doing?

She does not expect an answer. She wants to go and look in among the trees to see what has become of Eric, but Trina begs her not to leave them and says there is nothing anyone could do now. They turn their attention back to the river. Trina, Ryan, and Rose think of their flung stones skipping on the water and how good it would be to have the properties of a flat stone right at this moment to simply up and cross the river with quick little steps, like so many stones, all the way to the other shore.

They expect the guards at any moment. But looking at the water, how its muscles ripple and make things seem soft and slow, affects the passage of time itself, slowing it to an undulation that might without notice head into reverse and take away from the time they lose standing on the wharf. This trick with chronology means the captain and the first mate could appear at any time, and that would be the right time for them to climb aboard and head out into the river where time stands still.

Three or four shots echo from the area around the trail between the pig farm and the compound. Birds spill from the trees. A volley of gunfire replies to the single shots. Pigs squeal. Joyce thinks it sounds like an exchange from one person to a group and back, Kevin meeting other guards on the trail. The children turn from the water and look up the slope and wait for the guards to appear near the farm and begin the descent to the pier. They look at Joyce for some clue about what they should do other than simply wait to be returned to the compound at gunpoint.

Joyce glances up- and downriver, and seeing nothing but coins in the water and a neat picket fence of green on either side, she turns to her last option for buying time. She walks to Adam, takes his face in her hands, and begs him to do something, anything, to delay the guards and save the children from lining up to drink from the vat. Adam nods. She picks up his scepter and hands it to him. Adam bows his head as he takes the decorated stick and bounds away from the landing, not directly up the slope but adjacent to it, into the trees, to reach the trail between the farm and the compound by the most direct route.

Trina covers her face and sobs, but Joyce asks her to be strong for Adam, and Trina stops and looks at her mother, whose eyes take in the gathering of children, and Trina knows she has to keep calm, not only for Adam. She places her flute to her lips and begins to play one of her spontaneous tunes, and the rest of the band listens and cannot help but improvise with her. Ryan appoints himself conductor, and the musicians look at him periodically as they play. The children hold each other and sway to the music.

Adam drops from a tree in front of the guards. The front few members of the group of fifteen or so backpedal and bump into those following. A couple of guards run from the front toward the back to get away from Adam. A handful of the senior guards aim their rifles at Adam and encourage the other guards to do the same. Adam raises his scepter with both arms over his head. The guards take their eyes off their aim toward Adam and stare at the raised scepter. They appear puzzled by the clarity of the signal for them to pay close attention to him. They glance around and at each other to make sure they are all witnessing the same scene: Adam the commune gorilla in his parade regalia, holding his scepter over his head as if to alter the guards’ course of action.

—Stop.

The men hear and do not hear. They register the word, and because it defies logic, many refuse to believe their ears. The bass of the voice, close to a roar, and a growl stretch the word and snap its clarity beyond comprehension. Several of them drop to their knees and begin to pray. They stare at each other and back at Adam. They look into the trees, half expecting the vegetation to spring into action against them. A senior guard tells the others to hold their fire and addresses Adam:

—What did you say?

The senior guard hushes the men, who pray and cry to be spared, from what, they cannot be sure. Guards pull the ones on their knees to their feet. They huddle and begin to organize into a group of armed men. The senior guard speaks to Adam a second time:

—What did you say?

The group waits to hear from Adam. If he remains silent, the first sound will be consigned to chance, a fluke, some trick of the senses. But he dug a hole and escaped from his cage and rescued a girl from jumping into the well and ran from the compound with her. They wait because a part of them is already convinced that Adam really said what they thought they heard him say, and given time, he will oblige them with a repeat. Adam brings the scepter straight down in front of him and pounds the ground.

—Stop.

The repetition, though half expected, brings many more guards to their knees than the first time. They pray and beg for mercy. The senior guards shout at their distressed juniors to stop and stand like men. But many say God is speaking to them through Adam. This is a sign sent by Him to them, and it is plain as day. The senior guard ignores the protest and the prayers and shouts at his men to take aim as he lifts his rifle and points it at Adam. Adam pounds his stick on the ground once more.

—God.

This definitive speech from Adam being coterminous with the thinking of many of the guards seals the disarray among them. Some pray. Others aim their guns at the few among them, who side with the senior guard and take aim at Adam. Adam advances and pounds his stick with each step and the guards begin to retreat from him, some guards still on their knees scramble to keep their distance.

—God.

The first senior guard to throw away his gun and drop to his knees creates a domino effect of surrender among the rest of the guards. They drop their guns and fall to their knees and clasp their hands and pray, asking for forgiveness and guidance. They cry. Adam stands and watches them, and they alternate between keeping an eye on Adam and imploring the heavens. Adam walks up to the guards in a slow rolling gait, his staff hitting the ground with each step, and though they shrink from him, he reaches out and touches them and passes between them as he walks toward the compound. The guards understand they must abandon their pursuit of the children and follow Adam.

A second contingent of guards comes upon the scene. They puzzle over what they see—their colleagues in the middle of prayer, apparently to a gorilla carrying a colorful stick and wearing a regal cape. But Adam stands in the path of the second group of guards and advances toward them, and they do not wait for an explanation of the puzzle. The senior guard aims at Adam and fires. Adam falls and pushes himself upright, compensating for his wounded left shoulder. The guards in the middle of supplication shout at their colleagues to stop shooting, but the senior guard fires again and someone in the prayer group grabs a rifle and shoots the senior guard and a firefight breaks out between the two groups with the shouting of God and murder.

Adam crawls into the trees. At some point, reason prevails among the guards and the two groups cease their fire and talk with a degree of urgency about Adam and the children and the delegation and God. They count their dead and injured. They split into two smaller groups, one to raise the alarm at the commune, the second to continue to the dock and collect the missing children. The group returning to the commune gathers the injured and leaves the dead for later. The guards heading for the dock redouble their efforts to get there. They blame the whole incident on Joyce and Trina. Only Adam has paid; so, too, will that woman and her witch of a daughter pay for sowing chaos.

At the pier, a shadow appears on the water. Instead of silver in a treasure chest on the water, a dark line takes over. The line breaks into smaller shadows, and the pieces crawl toward the jetty and grow in stature with each moment of looking at them. Trina points and the children begin to ask what the mass might be, not a boat, but yes, there is a boat in front, and all the smaller things are river creatures, or what, or yes, canoes, dozens of canoes surround the disguised
Coffee
, and the captain lifts his cap and waves it twice, then puts it back on, and the children wave and jump up and down and hug each other. The canoes vary in size from long, with two paddlers, to small, with a single paddler. The indigenous Indians who steer them work very fast to keep up with the
Coffee
. The strong swimmers among the children move along to the end of the pier and wade out to meet the canoes. The younger children and those who need assistance wait on the
Coffee
to dock. They discuss if they should leave without their parents or return to the compound, and they wonder what will become of them.

Adam cuts through the forest and reappears at the top of the slope, cutting off the guards and watching the children board the boats from where he sits on the path that leads to the compound. The guards stop at the sight of Adam, who is between them and the escaping children, and a guard asks him to let them pass and do their work for the commune and save the children led astray by the devil. Adam shakes his head. This confirms his language capability for the guards who heard him earlier, but for those who did not hear him, it is a revelation. They react with disbelief and seek reassurance from one another and look at Adam as if he might be an apparition whose original incarnation as a man could be restored at any moment.

Blood trickles from Adam’s left shoulder and from his stomach. He sits in the middle of the path and faces the guards. His stick keeps him upright. He decides not to let them pass. They will have to shoot him again. The guards plead with Adam to move aside, to join them, to bring the children back, to speak again, to tell them what they should do, to come back to the commune and show the reverend the miracle of a beast’s tongue moved by divine will.

—Stop.

Adam shakes his head slowly. His lips move again, but no sound emerges. The guards debate whether there is another way to get to the dock or if they should just wait for more help to arrive or simply shoot Adam and put him out of his stubbornness and wounded misery. They decide to shoot him and cook up a story that the shots were fired by the dead guards and they happened upon Adam’s body. They lift their rifles and steady them at Adam and pray for forgiveness for what they are about to do. Adam closes his eyes. His body leans on his stick, but his mind propels him from a sprint along a forest floor to a miracle of legs running on air up among the trees, a headlong sprint, a blur of speed, a figure in the distance waiting to greet him whose open arms will be his finish line.

G
reen. Masses of open umbrellas vying for elbow room. Numberless heads of broccoli that cover the ground in every direction as far as the curved horizon. All green. Except for the occasional hairline fracture, drawn higgledy-piggledy, of a resplendent brown river. The twin-propeller cruises over the rain forest of the Amazon Basin and cuts a ribbon of dense moisture between blue sky and green earth. The shadow of the plane ripples across the forest in a close race. The monocot trees stand tall, with wide-rimmed sombreros for canopies. Clumped together in this thick jungle setting, the majesty of each tree is eclipsed by a jam-packed show of open umbrellas.

The fear is if the plane crashes here, it will disappear forever. Imagine a farmer in the Middle West of America who climbs a silo’s ninety-foot ladder and accidentally drops the cross from a broken necklace into a large space full of grain, and you get the picture of our plane over the Amazon. That farmer simply gives up on ever being able to recover his cross. If they crash now, the trees may open a small incision for them to enter and close back around them.

On the surface of it, the inquiry sounds straightforward. The government-sanctioned committee must ascertain that all the thousand-odd U.S. citizens who are members of the religious commune belong to it of their own free will. The journalists among the travelers, unlike the others, perform double duty as reporters and as members of the committee. Three women are among the group. All worry that the children at this remote retreat may be suffering at the hands of grown-up religious zealots. All think a child who suffers alone and abandoned remains a bad omen for any society intent on calling itself adult and civilized.