The Best of Lucius Shepard (15 page)

When
the tragedies of others become for us diversions, sad stories with which to
enthrall our friends, interesting bits of data to toss out at cocktail parties,
a means of presenting a pose of political concern, or whatever.. .when this
happens we commit the gravest of sins, condemn ourselves to ignominy, and
consign the world to a dangerous course. We begin to justify our casual
overview of pain and suffering by portraying ourselves as do-gooders
incapacitated by the inexorable forces of poverty, famine, and war. “What can I
do?” we say. “I’m only one person, and these things are beyond my control. I
care about the world’s trouble, but there are no solutions.”

Yet
no matter how accurate this assessment, most of us are relying on it to be
true, using it to mask our indulgence, our deep-seated lack of concern, our
pathological self-involvement. In adopting this attitude we delimit the
possibilities for action by letting events progress to a point at which,
indeed, action becomes impossible, at which we can righteously say that nothing
can be done. And so we are born, we breed, we are happy, we are sad, we deal
with consequential problems of our own, we have cancer or a car crash, and in
the end our actions prove insignificant. Some will tell you that to feel guilt
or remorse over the vast inaction of our society is utter foolishness; life,
they insist, is patently unfair, and all anyone can do is to look out for his
own interest. Perhaps they are right; perhaps we are so mired in our
self-conceptions that we can change nothing. Perhaps this is the way of the
world. But, for the sake of my soul and because I no longer wish to hide my
sins behind a guise of mortal incapacity, I tell you it is not.

<>

*
* * *

The
Jaguar Hunter

It was his wife’s debt to Onofrio Esteves, the
appliance dealer, that brought Esteban Caax to town for the first time in
almost a year. By nature he was a man who enjoyed the sweetness of the
countryside above all else; the placid measures of a farmer’s day invigorated him,
and he took great pleasure in nights spent joking and telling stories around a
fire, or lying beside his wife, Encarnación. Puerto Morada, with its
fruit-company imperatives and sullen dogs and cantinas that blared American
music, was a place he avoided like the plague: indeed, from his home atop the
mountain whose slopes formed the northernmost enclosure of Bahía Onda, the
rusted tin roofs ringing the bay resembled a dried crust of blood such as might
appear upon the lips of a dying man.

  
   On this particular morning, however, he had no choice but to
visit the town. Encarnación had -- without his knowledge -- purchased a
battery-operated television set on credit from Onofrio, and he was threatening
to seize Esteban’s three milk cows in lieu of the eight hundred lempira that
was owed; he refused to accept the return of the television, but had sent word
that he was willing to discuss an alternate method of payment. Should Esteban
lose the cows, his income would drop below a subsistence level and he would be
forced to take up his old occupation, an occupation far more onerous than
farming.

     
As he walked down the mountain, past huts of thatch and brushwood poles
identical to his own, following a trail that wound through sun-browned thickets
lorded over by banana trees, he was not thinking of Onofrio but of Encarnación.
It was in her nature to be frivolous, and he had known this when he had married
her; yet the television was emblematic of the differences that had developed
between them since their children had reached maturity. She had begun to put on
sophisticated airs, to laugh at Esteban’s country ways, and she had become the
doyenne of a group of older women, mostly widows, all of whom aspired to
sophistication. Each night they would huddle around the television and strive
to outdo one another in making sagacious comments about the American detective
shows they watched; and each night Esteban would sit outside the hut and
gloomily ponder the state of his marriage. He believed Encarnación’s association
with the widows was her manner of telling him that she looked forward to
adopting the black skirt and shawl, that -- having served his purpose as a
father -- he was now an impediment to her. Though she was only forty-one,
younger by three years than Esteban, she was withdrawing from the life of the
senses; they rarely made love anymore, and he was certain that this partially
embodied her resentment to the fact that the years had been kind to him. He had
the look of one of the Old Patuca -- tall, with chiseled features and wide-set
eyes; his coppery skin was relatively unlined and his hair jet black.
Encarnación’s hair was streaked with gray, and the clean beauty of her limbs
had dissolved beneath layers of fat. He had not expected her to remain beautiful,
and he had tried to assure her that he loved the woman she was and not merely
the girl she had been. But that woman was dying, infected by the same disease
that had infected Puerto Morada, and perhaps his love for her was dying, too.

     
The dusty street on which the appliance store was situated ran in back of the
movie theater and the Hotel Circo del Mar, and from the inland side of the
street Esteban could see the bell towers of Santa María del Onda rising above
the hotel roof like the horns of a great stone snail. As a young man, obeying
his mother’s wish that he become a priest, he had spent three years cloistered
beneath those towers, preparing for the seminary under the tutelage of old
Father Gonsalvo. It was the part of his life he most regretted, because the
academic disciplines he had mastered seemed to have stranded him between the
world of the Indian and that of contemporary society; in his heart he held to
his father’s teachings -- the principles of magic, the history of the tribe,
the lore of nature -- and yet he could never escape the feeling that such
wisdom was either superstitious or simply unimportant. The shadows of the
towers lay upon his soul as surely as they did upon the cobbled square in front
of the church, and the sight of them caused him to pick up his pace and lower
his eyes.

     
Farther along the street was the Cantina Atómica, a gathering place for the
well-to-do youth of the town, and across from it was the appliance store, a
one-story building of yellow stucco with corrugated metal doors that were
lowered at night. Its façade was decorated by a mural that supposedly
represented the merchandise within: sparkling refrigerators and televisions and
washing machines, all given the impression of enormity by the tiny men and
women painted below them, their hands upflung in awe. The actual merchandise
was much less imposing, consisting mainly of radios and used kitchen equipment.
Few people in Puerto Morada could afford more, and those who could generally
bought elsewhere. The majority of Onofrio’s clientele were poor, hard-pressed
to meet his schedule of payments, and to a large degree his wealth derived from
selling repossessed appliances over and over.

     
Raimundo Esteves, a pale young man with puffy cheeks and heavily lidded eyes
and a petulant mouth, was leaning against the counter when Esteban entered;
Raimundo smirked and let out a piercing whistle, and a few seconds later his
father emerged from the back room: a huge slug of a man, even paler than
Raimundo. Filaments of gray hair were slicked down across his mottled scalp,
and his belly stretched the front of a starched guayabera. He beamed and
extended a hand.

     
“How good to see you,” he said. “Raimundo! Bring us coffee and two chairs.”

     
Much as he disliked Onofrio, Esteban was in no position to be uncivil: He
accepted the handshake. Raimundo spilled coffee in the saucers and clattered
the chairs and glowered, angry at being forced to serve an Indian.

     
“Why will you not let me return the television?” asked Esteban after taking a
seat; and then, unable to bite back the words, he added, “Is it no longer your
policy to swindle my people?”

     
Onofrio sighed, as if it were exhausting to explain things to a fool such as
Esteban. “I do not swindle your people. I go beyond the letter of the contracts
in allowing them to make returns rather than pursuing matters through the
courts. In your case, however, I have devised a way whereby you can keep the
television without any further payments and yet settle the account. Is this a
swindle?”

     
It was pointless to argue with a man whose logic was as facile and self-serving
as Onofrio’s. “Tell me what you want,” said Esteban.

     
Onofrio wetted his lips, which were the color of raw sausage. “I want you to
kill the jaguar of Barrio Carolina.”

     
“I no longer hunt,” said Esteban.

     
“The Indian is afraid,” said Raimundo, moving up behind Onofrio’s shoulder. “I
told you.”

     
Onofrio waved him away and said to Esteban, “That is unreasonable. If I take
the cows, you will once again be hunting jaguars. But if you do this, you will
have to hunt only one jaguar.”

     
“One that has killed eight hunters.” Esteban set down his coffee cup and stood.
“It is no ordinary jaguar.”

     
Raimundo laughed disparagingly, and Esteban skewered him with a stare.

     
“Ah!” said Onofrio, smiling a flatterer’s smile. “But none of the eight used
your method.”

     
“Your pardon, Don Onofrio,” said Esteban with mock formality. “I have other
business to attend.”

     
“I will pay you five hundred lempira in addition to erasing the debt,” said
Onofrio.

     
“Why?” asked Esteban. “Forgive me, but I cannot believe it is due to a concern
for the public welfare.”

     
Onofrio’s fat throat pulsed, his face darkened.

     
“Never mind,” said Esteban. “It is not enough.”

     
“Very well. A thousand.” Onofrio’s casual manner could not conceal the anxiety
in his voice.

     
Intrigued, curious to learn the extent of Onofrio’s anxiety, Esteban plucked a
figure from the air. “Ten thousand,” he said. “And in advance.”

     
“Ridiculous! I could hire ten hunters for this much! Twenty!”

     
Esteban shrugged. “But none with my method.”

     
For a moment Onofrio sat with hands enlaced, twisting them, as if struggling
with some pious conception. “All right,” he said, the words squeezed out of
him. “Ten thousand!”

     
The reason for Onofrio’s interest in Barrio Carolina suddenly dawned on
Esteban, and he understood that the profits involved would make his fee seem
pitifully small. But he was possessed by the thought of what ten thousand
lempira could mean: a herd of cows, a small truck to haul produce, or -- and as
he thought it, he realized this was the happiest possibility -- the little
stucco house in Barrio Clarín that Encarnación had set her heart on. Perhaps
owning it would soften her toward him. He noticed Raimundo staring at him, his
expression a knowing smirk; and even Onofrio, though still outraged by the fee,
was beginning to show signs of satisfaction, adjusting the fit of his
guayabera, slicking down his already-slicked-down hair. Esteban felt debased by
their capacity to buy him, and to preserve a last shred of dignity, he turned
and walked to the door.

     
“I will consider it,” he tossed back over his shoulder. “And I will give you my
answer in the morning.”

* * * *

     
“Murder Squad of New York,” starring a bald American actor, was the featured
attraction on Encarnación’s television that night, and the widows sat
cross-legged on the floor, filling the hut so completely that the charcoal
stove and the sleeping hammock had been moved outside in order to provide good
viewing angles for the latecomers. To Esteban, standing in the doorway, it seemed
his home had been invaded by a covey of large black birds with cowled heads,
who were receiving evil instruction from the core of a flickering gray jewel.
Reluctantly, he pushed between them and made his way to the shelves mounted on
the wall behind the set; he reached up to the top shelf and pulled down a long
bundle wrapped in oil-stained newspapers. Out of the corner of his eye, he saw
Encarnación watching him, her lips thinned, curved in a smile, and that
cicatrix of a smile branded its mark on Esteban’s heart. She knew what he was
about, and she was delighted! Not in the least worried! Perhaps she had known
of Onofrio’s plan to kill the jaguar, perhaps she had schemed with Onofrio to
entrap him. Infuriated, he barged through the widows, setting them to gabbling,
and walked out into his banana grove and sat on a stone amidst it. The night
was cloudy, and only a handful of stars showed between the tattered dark shapes
of the leaves; the wind sent the leaves slithering together, and he heard one
of his cows snorting and smelled the ripe odor of the corral. It was as if the
solidity of his life had been reduced to this isolated perspective, and he
bitterly felt the isolation. Though he would admit to fault in the marriage, he
could think of nothing he had done that could have bred Encarnación’s hateful
smile.