The Best of Lucius Shepard (17 page)

     
“Black or spotted, it makes no difference. Jaguars are creatures of instinct,
and one is like another when it comes to feeding.”

     
“Well,” she said, “I cannot wish you luck, but neither do I wish you ill.”

     
She came to her feet, brushing the sand from her dress.

     
He wanted to ask her to stay, but pride prevented him, and she laughed as if
she knew his mind.

     
“Perhaps we will talk again, Esteban,” she said. “It would be a pity if we did
not, for more lies between us than we have spoken of this day.”

     
She walked swiftly down the beach, becoming a diminutive black figure that was
rippled away by the heat haze.

* * * *

     
That evening, needing a place from which to keep watch, Esteban pried open the
screen door of one of the houses facing the beach and went onto the porch.
Chameleons skittered into the corners, and an iguana slithered off a rusted
lawn chair sheathed in spiderweb and vanished through a gap in the floor. The
interior of the house was dark and forbidding, except for the bathroom, the
roof of which was missing, webbed over by vines that admitted a gray-green
infusion of twilight. The cracked toilet was full of rainwater and dead
insects. Uneasy, Esteban returned to the porch, cleaned the lawn chair, and
sat.

     
Out on the horizon the sea and sky were blending in a haze of silver and gray;
the wind had died, and the palms were as still as sculpture; a string of
pelicans flying low above the waves seemed to be spelling a sentence of cryptic
black syllables. But the eerie beauty of the scene was lost on him. He could
not stop thinking of the woman. The memory of her hips rolling beneath the
fabric of her dress as she walked away was repeated over and over in his
thoughts, and whenever he tried to turn his attention to the matter at hand,
the memory became more compelling. He imagined her naked, the play of muscles
rippling her haunches, and this so enflamed him that he started to pace,
unmindful of the fact that the creaking boards were signaling his presence. He
could not understand her effect upon him. Perhaps, he thought, it was her
defense of the jaguar, her calling to mind of all he was putting behind him ...
and then a realization settled over him like an icy shroud.

     
It was commonly held among the Patuca that a man about to suffer a solitary and
unexpected death would be visited by an envoy of death, who -- standing in for
family and friends -- would prepare him to face the event; and Esteban was now
very sure that the woman had been such an envoy, that her allure had been
specifically designed to attract his soul to its imminent fate. He sat back
down in the lawn chair, numb with the realization. Her knowledge of his
father’s words, the odd flavor of her conversation, her intimation that more
lay between them: It all accorded perfectly with the traditional wisdom. The
moon rose three-quarters full, silvering the sands of the barrio, and still he
sat there, rooted to the spot by his fear of death.

     
He had been watching the jaguar for several seconds before he registered its
presence. It seemed at first that a scrap of night sky had fallen onto the sand
and was being blown by a fitful breeze; but soon he saw that it was the jaguar,
that it was inching along as if stalking some prey. Then it leaped high into
the air, twisting and turning, and began to race up and down the beach: a
ribbon of black water flowing across the silver sands. He had never before seen
a jaguar at play, and this alone was cause for wonder; but most of all, he
wondered at the fact that here were his childhood dreams come to life. He might
have been peering out onto a silvery meadow of the moon, spying on one of its
magical creatures. His fear was eroded by the sight, and like a child he
pressed his nose to the screen, trying not to blink, anxious that he might miss
a single moment.

     
At length the jaguar left off its play and came prowling up the beach toward
the jungle. By the set of its ears and the purposeful sway of its walk, Esteban
recognized that it was hunting. It stopped beneath a palm about twenty feet
from the house, lifted its head, and tested the air.

     
Moonlight frayed down through the fronds, applying liquid gleams to its
haunches; its eyes, glinting yellow-green, were like peepholes into a lurid
dimension of fire. The jaguar’s beauty was heart-stopping -- the embodiment of
a flawless principle -- and Esteban, contrasting this beauty with the pallid
ugliness of his employer, with the ugly principle that had led to his hiring,
doubted that he could ever bring himself to kill it.

     
All the following day he debated the question. He had hoped the woman would
return, because he had rejected the idea that she was death’s envoy -- that
perception, he thought, must have been induced by the mysterious atmosphere of
the barrio -- and he felt that if she was to argue the jaguar’s cause again, he
would let himself be persuaded. But she did not put in an appearance, and as he
sat upon the beach, watching the evening sun decline through strata of dusky
orange and lavender clouds, casting wild glitters over the sea, he understood
once more that he had no choice.

     
Whether or not the jaguar was beautiful, whether or not the woman had been on a
supernatural errand, he must treat these things as if they had no substance.
The point of the hunt had been to deny mysteries of this sort, and he had lost
sight of it under the influence of old dreams.

     
He waited until moonrise to take the herbs, and then lay down beneath the palm
tree where the jaguar had paused the previous night. Lizards whispered past in
the grasses, sand fleas hopped onto his face; he hardly felt them, sinking
deeper into the languor of the herbs. The fronds overhead showed an ashen green
in the moonlight, lifting, rustling; and the stars between their feathered
edges flickered crazily as if the breeze were fanning their flames. He became
immersed in the landscape, savoring the smells of brine and rotting foliage
that were blowing across the beach, drifting with them; but when he heard the
pad of the jaguar’s step, he came alert. Through narrowed eyes he saw it
sitting a dozen feet away, a bulky shadow craning its neck toward him,
investigating his scent. After a moment it began to circle him, each circle a
bit tighter than the one before, and whenever it passed out of view he had to
repress a trickle of fear. Then, as it passed close on the seaward side, he
caught a whiff of its odor.

     
A sweet, musky odor that reminded him of mangoes left ripening in the sun.

     
Fear welled up in him, and he tried to banish it, to tell himself that the odor
could not possibly be what he thought. The jaguar snarled, a razor stroke of
sound that slit the peaceful mesh of wind and surf, and realizing it had
scented his fear, he sprang to his feet, waving his machete. In a whirl of
vision he saw the jaguar leap back, then he shouted at it, waved the machete
again, and sprinted for the house where he had kept watch. He slipped through
the door and went staggering into the front room. There was a crash behind him,
and turning, he had a glimpse of a huge black shape struggling to extricate
itself from a moonlit tangle of vines and ripped screen. He darted into the
bathroom, sat with his back against the toilet bowl, and braced the door shut
with his feet.

     
The sound of the jaguar’s struggles subsided, and for a moment he thought it
had given up. Sweat left cold trails down his sides, his heart pounded.

     
He held his breath, listening, and it seemed the whole world was holding its
breath as well. The noises of wind and surf and insects were a faint seething;
moonlight shed a sickly white radiance through the enlaced vines overhead, and
a chameleon was frozen among peels of wallpaper beside the door. He let out a
sigh and wiped the sweat from his eyes. He swallowed.

     
Then the top panel of the door exploded, shattered by a black paw.

     
Splinters of rotten wood flew into his face, and he screamed. The sleek wedge
of the jaguar’s head thrust through the hole, roaring. A gateway of gleaming
fangs guarding a plush red throat. Half-paralyzed, Esteban jabbed weakly with
the machete. The jaguar withdrew, reached in with its paw, and clawed at his
leg. More by accident than design, he managed to slice the jaguar, and the paw,
too, was withdrawn. He heard it rumbling in the front room, and then, seconds
later, a heavy thump against the wall behind him.

     
The jaguar’s head appeared above the edge of the wall; it was hanging by its
forepaws, trying to gain a perch from which to leap down into the room. Esteban
scrambled to his feet and slashed wildly, severing vines.

     
The jaguar fell back, yowling. For a while it prowled along the wall, fuming to
itself. Finally there was silence.

     
When sunlight began to filter through the vines, Esteban walked out of the
house and headed down the beach to Puerto Morada. He went with his head
lowered, desolate, thinking of the grim future that awaited him after he
returned the money to Onofrio: a life of trying to please an increasingly
shrewish Encarnación, of killing lesser jaguars for much less money. He was so
mired in depression that he did not notice the woman until she called to him.
She was leaning against a palm about thirty feet away, wearing a filmy white
dress through which he could see the dark jut of her nipples. He drew his
machete and backed off a pace.

     
“Why do you fear me, Esteban?” she called, walking toward him.

     
“You tricked me into revealing my method and tried to kill me,” he said.

     
“Is that not reason for fear?”

     
“I did not know you or your method in that form. I knew only that you were
hunting me. But now the hunt has ended, and we can be as man and woman.”

     
He kept his machete at point. “What are you?” he asked.

     
She smiled. “My name is Miranda. I am Patuca.”

     
“Patucas do not have black fur and fangs.”

     
“I am of the Old Patuca,” she said. “We have this power.”

     
“Keep away!” He lifted the machete as if to strike, and she stopped just beyond
his reach.

     
“You can kill me if that is your wish, Esteban.” She spread her arms, and her
breasts thrust forward against the fabric of her dress. “You are stronger than
I, now. But listen to me first.”

     
He did not lower the machete, but his fear and anger were being overridden by a
sweeter emotion.

     
“Long ago,” she said, “there was a great healer who foresaw that one day the
Patuca would lose their place in the world, and so, with the help of the gods,
he opened a door into another world where the tribe could flourish. But many of
the tribe were afraid and would not follow him. Since then, the door has been
left open for those who would come after.”

     
She waved at the ruined houses. “Barrio Carolina is the site of the door, and
the jaguar is its guardian. But soon the fevers of this world will sweep over
the barrio, and the door will close forever. For though our hunt has ended,
there is no end to hunters or to greed.” She came a step nearer. “If you listen
to the sounding of your heart, you will know this is the truth.”

     
He half-believed her, yet he also believed her words masked a more poignant
truth, one that fitted inside the other the way his machete fitted into its
sheath.

     
“What is it?” she asked. “What troubles you?”

     
“I think you have come to prepare me for death,” he said, “and that your door
leads only to death.”

     
“Then why do you not run from me?” She pointed toward Puerto Morada. “That is
death, Esteban. The cries of the gulls are death, and when the hearts of lovers
stop at the moment of greatest pleasure, that, too, is death. This world is no
more than a thin covering of life drawn over a foundation of death, like a scum
of algae upon a rock. Perhaps you are right, perhaps my world lies beyond
death. The two ideas are not opposed. But if I am death to you, Esteban, then
it is death you love.”

     
He turned his eyes to the sea, not wanting her to see his face. “I do not love
you,” he said.

     
“Love awaits us,” she said. “And someday you will join me in my world.”