Dinosaur Summer (13 page)

The day passed slowly, and by late afternoon, still without word from the officer in charge, Shellabarger was fit to be tied. He stormed back and forth on the deck. Ippolito watched him stoically, arms folded, nodding now and then whether or not the trainer said anything.

The presence of the soldiers seemed to have aroused dark and unpleasant memories in Anthony. He sat in their cabin on his bunk, arms wrapped around one drawn-up knee, smoking a cigarette he had borrowed from Shellabarger. The air in the cabin was hot and close and the smoke did not make things any better. Anthony rarely smoked. "If we get stopped here and they send us back, it's all over," he said. "We'll lose everything." He looked at Peter, face drawn, white lines around his lips. "Your ma will have me pegged exactly right."

"We'll be fine," Peter said. Anthony smirked. For a moment, his face seemed to show that he had forgotten they were father and son, with any special bond; Peter was just another guy in the cabin. "That sounds so damn optimistic," Anthony said bitterly. "How in hell do you know?"

Peter was taken aback. "I'm just hoping," he said.

Anthony took a deep drag on his cigarette. "Hope away."

Peter went topside, angry and confused. No word had come by the time dark fell, and Anthony came thumping up a ship's ladder to the port wing of the bridge, where Peter leaned on the rail, breathing the cooling air off the river. "Vince and I are going into town. Ray and OBie are cleaning their cameras. You want to come?"

Peter looked at his father's tense features and wondered if he would ever know this man. "Sure," he said. In truth, Peter was bored out of his head.

"We're going to get drunk," Anthony said as they joined the trainer on the dock. "You can have one or two beers, but I'll rely on you to guide us back to the ship if we're completely blotto."

Peter remembered the trainer throwing the bottle overboard on theLibertad. He also remembered Shellabarger taking another bottle from Keller (according to OBie) and going to his room to drink it alone. Alcohol was a puzzle. "All right," he said.

"Have you ever been drunk?" Shellabarger asked Peter.

"No," Peter said.

"Good," Shellabarger said. "Don't start. It's a bad habit, but we sorely need to blow off steam."

"All right," Peter said in what he hoped was a worldly tone, and followed them into town.

A light drizzle fogged the air and softened the few red and white lights from cantina windows on the muddy main street. Anthony and the trainer strolled from one run-down bar to another, looking for the perfect combination of qualities necessary to a "one hundred percent rivertown dive."

Peter tried not to stare at the rough, ragged men who sat at worn wooden and metal tables, bleary exhaustion in their eyes and dull determination in the set of their faces. They cradled their glasses in callused thick-fingered hands, their nails black with dirt, dirt up to their elbows and caked around their rolled-up sleeves. In most of the bars, one or two tired-looking women in lacy black dresses sat with mannish postures on stools or near tables, soft eyes turning from man to man like moths searching for a flame.

The rain drummed heavily and they settled on a cantina near the old arena. It resembled all the others except for fly-specked pictures of matadors and horned dinosaurs that covered one wall. Anthony and Shellabarger ordered whiskey and Peter took a glass of watery beer and they sat at a small wooden table, crowded together in the damp air, surrounded by the odors of rank cigars and sweet whiskey, mildew and unwashed men.

The first few drinks, Anthony and Shellabarger said little. On the third round, Anthony asked Shellabarger if he had ever served in the U.S. Army.

"Never," Shellabarger said. "Too young for the first war, too old for the second."

"Orders and uniforms," Anthony said. His father was not good at holding his liquor, Peter knew; if he did not get fractious, he became sleepy. So far, his eyes burned intensely. "You feel like a part of something. Very secure. Then somebody above you screws up and friends die. It's all a sham. Everybody's in it for themselves. You do your best to get out alive."

Shellabarger drained his glass. They called for a bottle. It was not cheap.

"Don't flash your money," the trainer warned Anthony. "We don't need trouble."

"Right," Anthony said thickly, and studiously concealed the few bills in his thin wallet.

"I like working with animals," Shellabarger said. "You always know where you stand. Like 'em or don't, you can never trust 'em. Black jaguars are the meanest things on Earth. Worse than old Dagger. I trained them for a few years before I signed on with Lotto." He gave Peter a slow, confidential wink. "Damnedest thing, a dinosaur eye. Older and better than ours. Cats can't see in color. Lots of mammals gave up color for black and white back when we were all skulking around in the bushes at night. Dinosaurs see very well in color. Never needed to give it up. Birds, too. Masters of day and night." He raised his hand off the table a few inches. "Our great-great-umpty-ump-great-grand-daddies were little shrew things no bigger than possums. The dinosaurs hunted us down and munched us." He tapped his white-haired temple. "Back in our little shrew brains, we dream about scampering through the brush, hiding in holes or in trees, waiting for the sharp-eyed eaters to grab us. Seeing dinos makes us want to run and hide."

"Whole life you've been with dinosaurs," Anthony said. "Better than people."

"Sometimes," Shellabarger agreed. "But people . . ." He leaned over the table. "People don't try to bite you in half." He nodded decisively and leaned back.

"Sometimes they do," Anthony said.

"With guns?"

"With divorce," Anthony said, and Shellabarger laughed.

"I've been married twice," the trainer said. "Circus women both times. Both jealous of my animals."

"I was a real problem for Peter's mother after the war," Anthony said.

For a moment, the beer had made Peter feel pleasantly in tune with his father and the trainer, but mention of his mother brought on a cold clarity. "Father," Peter said, rolling his eyes.

"It's the truth," Anthony said, working on his fifth drink. "I wanted to be a writer and a photographer. Peter's mother didn't approve. We married young and Peter came along. I trained to be a geologist and make lots of money working for the oil companies. Security. She gave me a lot, so I gave up my dreams. But after the war . . . seeing men die. Really rubs it in. You got to do it before you're dirt."

Peter stared down at the table.

"When I came home, I took up photography again," Anthony concluded. "Money became a problem."

Shellabarger belched into his fist and apologized.

"We're disgusting," Anthony said. "Let's go before we embarrass ourselves. But first--let's hear your story."

"My story," Shellabarger said, spreading his hands on the table. "Okay, let's hear your story," Anthony repeated.

"Nah," Shellabarger said. He glared at the dinosaurs and matadors lined up on the wall. "Maybe I'll save it for a book."

***

Peter walked between Shellabarger and his father on the way back to the ship. They paused before the staring half circle of centrosaur skulls in front of the arena. Shellabarger swayed as he contemplated their eyeless sockets.

"That's my story," he said quietly, pointing at the skulls.

Anthony bit his lower lip and shook his head. "Damned shame," he said.

"Yeah," Shellabarger said. "I hope we can make up for it."

On the road to the dock, Shellabarger and Anthony found a large horned beetle crawling through oil-smirched grass. They got down on their hands and knees to see it up close. Peter stood with his hands in his pockets, looking nervously around in the dark. They could all be robbed and he did not think Anthony and the trainer were in any shape to defend themselves.

"How does he move all those legs?" Anthony asked Shellabarger.

"Concentration," Shellabarger said. "All the time. It's all a bug can do. That's why they're not very smart."

"You ever train a bug?" Anthony asked.

"Nope," Shellabarger said.

"Start with this one."

"I don't have anything he wants," Shellabarger said.

"Train him with kindness."

"All right. He does a trick, I won't step on him. He'll learn fast."

Anthony cackled and got to his feet.

"We're embarrassing the boy," he whispered to Shellabarger.

"He understands," Shellabarger said. Both men put their arms around Peter's shoulders and leaned on him. His knees almost buckled under the weight. "Don't you?"

"Sure," Peter said, helping them up the gangway to the ship.

From the bridge, a sailor shouted something in hoarse Portuguese. Anthony looked up, squinting at the bright lights shining on the forecastle. More men lined the decks, pointing toward town. Peter turned and saw a large fire burning to the south, thick billows of smoke with orange bellies rising and twisting toward the dark overcast. "It's the boatyard," OBie shouted on the main deck. "That's our boats!"

Anthony shook his head and made a growling noise, trying to shake off the effects of the booze. Shellabarger turned without hesitation and lurched down the gangway, but slumped at the end as he stumbled. Hanging from the rail, he righted himself. Peter and Anthony joined him on the dock, and Ray, OBie, Keller, and Shawmut pounded down the gangway after them.

***

The boatyard was in chaos. Men from all around the town hauled hoses from old trucks and attached them to water pumps on the backs of other old trucks. A single dilapidated red fire engine, its paint peeling and faded by the tropical sun, stood by the gate to the boatyard, surrounded by hapless firemen who were doing nothing to help.

Peter and Ray helped pull hoses from the pumping trucks near the river to the fire. Four of the big sheds were ablaze and the roofs had collapsed. The plump boatyard owner, Jim�z, stood in a puddle of water from the leaking hoses, mopping his forehead with a broad, twisted handkerchief, hands wringing the cloth into tighter twists and knots. He shouted at the volunteers in Spanish, then saw Shellabarger walking along the perimeter of the fire and ran to walk beside him. Shellabarger stared at the blazing outlines of boats under the collapsed roofs, eyes wide with drunken shock and disbelief.

"The boats,se�" Jim�z called.

"How many are in there?" Shellabarger demanded.

"I saw some men in dark clothes,se� Four or five men with cans of petrol. My guards, I do not know where they went--I was about to go to my house to sleep--"

"Are those all our boats?" Shellabarger shouted.

Jim�z flung his hands in the air. "You are not to be worried,se� Your boats, I put them in the river yesterday. They are a kilometer from here,se� You are very lucky. These are boats belonging to Creole Oil. I hauled them up for repair this afternoon."

Shellabarger's legs folded until he squatted on the dirt, a slow, almost studied collapse. "My God," he said softly. Anthony stood beside him, hand on Peter's arm, his grip tight. Then Shellabarger rose and they set to work again.

The fire burned bright even in the drizzle. All the sheds had collapsed and the hoses were leaking more water than they shot from their nozzles, arcs of fine mist soaking Anthony and Peter and Ray as they tried to help maneuver them. The spray from the hose nozzles was as ineffectual against the blazing sheds as the sputtering drizzle.

After an hour, they all gathered by the gate. Jim�z paced and gestured helplessly around them. The boatyard owner seemed alternately half crazy with grief and jubilant. "Your boats, they were brand new, my prizes, with beautiful engines," he said to OBie and Shellabarger. "These are old boats. But what will I tell the oilmen? Who would want to burn boats? Where will my men work now? My father owned this yard. I have inherited it from him! Who will work for me now?"

The crew crept back to theLibertad as dawn broke in the east. Anthony and Shellabarger still had a hard time walking straight. Peter could tell the trainer was furious with himself. With each lurch and stumble, Shellabarger barked, "Goddamn me. Never again. I swear, never again."

Anthony was equally but quietly contrite.

"We were lucky this time," he muttered to Peter. "But what about tomorrow?"

***

The next morning, two officers in crisp khakis with broad black belts and shiny black helmets came to the Libertad and conferred with an exhausted, hungover Shellabarger and crisp, proper Captain Ippolito. The permits had checked out in Caracas, they said; the expedition had permission to proceed upriver to El Grande.

Shellabarger huddled with Anthony, OBie, and Ray in his cabin. His face was red and puffy and his eyes seemed ready to start out of their sockets. "Jim�z says he thinks some soldiers burned his sheds," the trainer said. "The local troops don't want the Indians in an uproar about El Grande, and they really don't care what Caracas thinks." He lifted one corner of his mouth in a half smirk and shook his head. "We need to make a decision now. Creole Oil takes care of both sides here, the Army and the Betancourt government, so nobody would want to burntheir boats. That was a bad mistake. But somebody is willing to do some pretty desperate things to stop us. Do we give up and go back, or do we go on?"

"Will Ippolito take us back?" OBie asked.

"I haven't asked. I don't know if this should make up our minds one way or the other, but . . . if we go back, the animals will die. They need to get out of the ship."

OBie glanced apprehensively at Ray and Anthony. Clearly, for him, physical danger was not the most important factor here. Peter saw that OBie, too, regarded this expedition as his last chance. "Then we have to go on," OBie said.

"No other way," Ray agreed softly.

Anthony stared down at the floor, then lifted his gaze to meet Peter's.

"We have to go on," Peter agreed. He could not bear the thought of all the animals ending up like Sheila. Besides, the fire in the boatyard had been kind of exciting--terrifying and beautiful all at once. And other than a few blisters on his hands from the rough hoses, he had come out of it unhurt.