The Grasshopper Trap (18 page)

Read The Grasshopper Trap Online

Authors: Patrick F. McManus

He was an old man who fished alone in a skiff in the Gulf Stream and he had gone eighty-four days now without taking a fish.
—Ernest Hemingway,
The Old Man and the Sea
E
ver since the distant time of my youth and early manhood, Hemingway has been my hero, as a writer and as a hunter and fisherman. I particularly envied Hem's capacity for finding far-off and exotic places to fish, and I have tried to emulate him. For example, when Delroy Heap offered to let me fish the beaver ponds on his farm, I jumped at the chance. An opportunity like that may come only once in a lifetime, particularly when Delroy Heap happens to own the farm. If you knew Heap, you would understand, but you probably don't know him, which is no reason to think your life is a failure, believe me. Anyway, fishing Delroy Heap's beaver ponds was about as close as I've come to exotic fishing, let alone far-off, until one day last September.
The voice on the phone claimed to be that of the editor of
Outdoor Life,
Clare Conley. “Pack your bags,” the voice said. “I'm sending you to Brazil.”
“Who is this really?” I said, chuckling. “Jim Zumbo? Ha, you can't fool me, Zumbo! I'd recognize your voice anywhere.”
“This is not Zumbo, this is
Conley!
Now shut up and listen. I want you to accompany some pro football players and travel agents into the wilds of Brazil on a fishing trip.”
Football players? Travel agents? Fishing in the wilds of Brazil? “You sure this isn't Zumbo?”
But it was actually Clare Conley and he was actually assigning me to do a story on fishing in Brazil. I dropped the phone and ran to tell my wife. “Bun! Bun!” I shouted. “I'm going to Brazil! Clare just assigned me to do a fishing story in Brazil!”
Bun gave me an astonished look. “Didn't I just wash and iron that shirt this morning? Now you've dribbled your pipe ashes all down the front!”
“Listen to what I'm saying! Clare just assigned me to do a fishing story in Brazil! I get to fish in a far-off, exotic place, just like Hemingway!”
“Quick!” she shouted. “Start growing your beard!”
“I'm trying,” I said. “But I leave in three days. That's just enough time to learn to write like Hemingway!”
 
 
The six Americans hid out in a dark corner of the hotel bar, tossing back double shots of Alka-Seltzer. The Old Man ordered another round for everyone and after that there was only the sound of the Alka-Seltzer going
plop-plop, fizz-fizz
and occasionally a groan or a muffled burp. They were too tired to run anymore or even to shuffle along slowly. Their eyes were red and puffy with large dark bags under them and in some cases satchels and valises. The Americans had been in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, for eighty-four days
without taking any sleep and they now believed that the man known only as Carlos was trying to kill them.
“But why us?” Mac Beatty said. “All we want to do is catch a few fish.” Mac was the owner and president of Trav-elwise, a travel agency in Portland, Oregon. He had fished all over the known world and a good deal of the unknown world but he had never come up against anything like Rio, where the only fish he had seen were on plates in restaurants, which is not the same as catching your own. “This is supposed to be a fishing trip, is it not?”
The Old Man laughed sardonically, which was not easy while gulping Alka-Seltzer. He explained the probable scenario that had set in motion the threat to their lives.
Carlos's boss in the Brazilian Tourism Authority, Em-bratur, had ordered the six Americans to be “taken care of” while they were in Rio.
Carlos nodded. “How do you want it done?”
“The usual Brazilian way,” his boss said. “Party them to death.”
The Americans knew if Carlos took them to one more party they were finished and all the Alka-Seltzer in the world would not save them. Their only hope was to get out of Rio fast and start the fishing before someone asked for whom the bell tolls and nobody could come up with a good answer except to look at the Americans and smile sadly.
The two quarterbacks looked as if they were done for anyway, and the Old Man wondered aloud if he shouldn't give them the last of his Rolaids and leave them behind while he and the travel agents escaped to the fishing camp.
“No way,” said Cliff Stoudt, who was the great quarterback of the Birmingham Stallions. “You're not leaving Brian and me behind, although I wouldn't mind having the last of your Rolaids in any case.”
“Yeah, we can make it,” said Brian Sipe, who was the great quarterback of the New Jersey Generals. “You're not done for until you're done for.”
After that the Old Man could see that Sipe was even worse than he had first thought and decided to finish off both quarterbacks quickly by doing his impersonation of Howard Cosell. They both cringed when he squeezed his nostrils together but said later they didn't realize he was getting ready to do his Cosell. His Cosell usually resulted in a clean kill but not always and sometimes he had to track the wounded into the bush and they would charge him, coming very fast and mean, and he would have to drop them with his Johnny Carson at close range.
But then Carlos came into the bar and saw the Americans slugging down double Alka-Seltzers. He complimented them for having eaten and drunk well and endlessly and for still showing some faint signs of life. “Tomorrow you can go fishing,” he said. “Usually Americans do not survive nine Brazilian parties in a row, but you have. You have beaten me fairly and honorably and tomorrow you can go fishing.”
“Good,” the Old Man said. “I have been in Brazil eighty-four days now without catching either a wink or a fish.”
“You have been in Brazil only three days,” Carlos corrected him. “But tomorrow you will catch many fish in the Pantanal.”
At the mention of Pantanal, the Old Man's spirits rose. He had read much literature about the Pantanal and knew that it was a paradise for zoologists and botanists and ecologists and, of course, fishermen. A great unspoiled wild place the size of Montana, the Pantanal teemed with strange and beautiful animals and with so many plants and flowers
some of them had never even been named. Although the Old Man liked to think of it as a lovely, endless marsh, experts in such matters said the Pantanal was actually a lowland plain whose many broad, placid rivers gently flooded it during the rainy seasons. In other words, a marsh, thought the Old Man, who never really liked experts anyway.
“What time do we leave?” Ron Hart asked Carlos. Ron was an old South America hand, and president of Sportsman's Safaris out of Reno, Nevada. He and his partner Ted Kaphan were in Brazil setting up fishing and nature safaris on the Pantanal rivers for next summer, when they joined up with Mac, Cliff, Brian, and the Old Man.
“You leave for the fishing camp at dawn tomorrow,” Carlos said. “Right after tonight's send-off party.”
The Old Man was pronounced dead twice during the send-off party but revived both times asking, “Do we fish now?”
The next morning the Americans were flown a thousand miles inland to Cuiabá, the capital of the Brazilian state of Mato Grosso. From there, they were to be taken by bus into the Pantanal but were first rushed off to a welcoming party, where they were mistaken for zombies. After the party, they were allowed to sleep for three hours and then rousted out for a breakfast feast.
“Maybe they will let us rest for a day before going to the fishing camp,” Brian said.
A tall young man appeared in the doorway. He wore the attire of a guide, including a large, wide-brimmed hat. The Americans stared sullenly at him.
“Excuse me,” the guide said. “Let's go.”
His name was Paulo and henceforth he would oversee the Americans' every waking moment during their expedition
into the Pantanal. Eventually they would come to look upon him as a friend and one of the great guides of the world and a wonderful human being, but not until after making several unsuccessful attempts on his life.
On the long, dusty ride into the Pantanal, the Old Man was amazed at the lavish spectacle of nature stretching out as far as the sleep-sodden eye could see on both sides of the narrow, dike-like road. Ron Hart identified many of the birds for Brian and Cliff: garcas (herons), emas (small ostriches), siriema (large nonflying birds), jabiru (large storks), toucans, macaws, and so on. Where Ron left off, the Old Man took over.
“There's a duck,” he said. “Some kind of weird duck.” He hoped he wasn't being too technical.
Every few miles, Paulo would stop the bus. “Excuse me, let's go.” Then the Americans would get off the bus and take pictures of alligators. They took 4,784 pictures of alligators.
Once, the Old Man made a serious mistake. He said to Paulo by way of idle conversation, “I wish I could get a good tight close-up of one of those 'gators.”
“You want close-up of alligator?” Paulo cried. “Wait here!” Charging into the murky water, he began herding the alligators toward the Americans, and then there was much yelling and rushing about, although mostly by the Old Man, who was allergic to alligator breath.
A few miles down the road the bus stopped again. “Excuse me, let's go. Take pictures of dead alligator.”
The alligator was very dead and had been that way a long time and was dried up and cracked and coming apart at the seams. Nobody wanted to take pictures of the dead alligator, since it already had enough problems.
“Yuck,” Ted Kaphan said. “That's really awful.”
“I've seen worse,” Cliff Stoudt, the quarterback, said. “Tape him up and send him in for the second half.”
The bus was hot and humid and the Old Man began to feel like the Gremlin that got cooked in the microwave. He stared out the window. Thousands of egrets blanketed the landscape like restless snow. Off in the distance, near the treeline, a small red deer with huge antlers browsed among wandering families of capybara, the world's largest rodent. The knobby eyes of alligators stared back at the Old Man from every pond of water. “The Pantanal is a very birdy and alligatory place,” he thought. He wondered if it was also a very snakey place.
“Excuse me, let's go. Take pictures of anaconda.”
The huge snake, disturbed from its nap in the middle of the road, did not want to have its picture taken. Before everyone had grabbed a camera and leaped off the bus, the anaconda had slithered off the road and down into a thick, boggy patch of brush. The Old Man thought his one chance to photograph an anaconda had vanished forever, but he did not yet know Paulo well.
The guide held up his hands to silence the cries of the disappointed. “Wait here. I be right back.” Then he charged down into the brush after the anaconda.
Horrible sounds came from the brush: grunts, crashes, snarls, snaps, thumps, and thuds. The men on the road listened for sounds of severe squeezing. “Well,” the Old Man thought, “no more ‘Excuse me, let's go.'” And then Paulo lunged out of the brush, dragging the anaconda over his shoulder like a hawser. He threw the snake down in the middle of the astonished photographers, who leaped into the air and made ineffectual running motions. The snake,
however, lay placidly on the road, too tired to squeeze anybody. It knew when it had met its match.
Late in the afternoon, the bus stopped abruptly at the Cuiaba River, which was a good thing because the road ended there and the river was full of piranha. At the fishing camp the men were given cabins with live frogs on the walls of the bathrooms. Later, Mac Beatty would step on a frog with his bare foot on the way to the bathroom in the dark and would wake the whole camp.
The men dropped their gear on the floor and fell into their beds and made deep rattling sounds with their throats. Finally, they would get some sleep.
“Excuse me, let's go.” Paulo herded the Americans out to an all-night welcoming party thrown by the manager of the fishing camp, where they were once again mistaken for zombies. Brazilians love a good party.

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