The young boy works the dugout’s rudder, minds the tiny motor’s hushed staccato. Nina, his only passenger, still doesn’t know his name. But this her third day in the rainforest, she is convinced the motor came from a lawn mower, though lawns are not to be found anywhere.
Nina jumped at the idea of fishing for piranha, leaving the others in her small tour group back at the lodge, likely resting in hammocks. Only a dugout can access this portion of the rainforest. The unpredictable ebb and flow of the Amazon tributaries make mapping impossible. There’s no suggestion of solid ground. (How did that motor get here?) The towering trees, their bark thick and black, moss clinging like clusters of emeralds, crowd around the dugout. The trees all look the same to Nina, but the boy recognizes them as he might old friends.
Water lilies as large as tractor tires barely yield. But it is the water lettuce that is more intriguing: bundles of fat leaves several inches long, congested and bobbing on the water like too many rubber toys in a child’s bathtub. They are substantial in their small way.
Nina’s acquired a whole new set of references for dimensions. She always imagined piranha a sizeable fish. Stories document cattle caught by slow moving floods, isolated on high ground as the river reinvents itself, surrounding the hapless creature. Piranha wait, work in gangs, ripping with razor-like teeth, devour. Still, how can something as small and flat as a bread plate—that’s how piranha are described when she found them on a restaurant’s menu—pose such a threat to a cow? How is it that something as lovely as water lettuce provides a haven for predators?
She absently allows the tips of her fingers to comb through the field of water lettuce before refocusing on piranha, pulling her hand back.
They finally stop in an area with nothing to differentiate it from the rest of the rainforest. The boy turns off the clapping motor and quiet nests around them. A sheltering canopy of broad leaves towers 100 feet above their heads. The sun glistens and creeps through; the water lettuce knuckles the dugout. The young boy hands Nina a pole, the hook festooned with something she would sooner not contemplate. She turns sideways, slips off the bench and settles onto the floor. A tarp is wedged behind her back; her legs splay over the opposite edge, feet in the air, her pole resting between her knees. The pole wags, but each time she reels in an empty hook. The boy shows her how to bait the hook. She drops the line again. He turns and busies himself with his motor and a can of oil that burps when he works his thumb.
Another dugout silently approaches, propelled by a young girl with her single oar. She expertly sides up to Nina’s. The boy smiles at the girl, his cheeks folding into dimples.
He stands, looks at Nina as he points to himself and nods towards the girl.
“You can’t leave!” Nina’s voice rises against the towering trees.
He shrugs and looks at the young girl who has stopped looking at him.
“What if I drift? What about an anchor?” Nina asks. She worries he doesn’t sufficiently understand English, but he produces from beneath a tight bundle of clothes a rusted pipe attached to fraying rope. He laughs, as does the girl. It is obvious there’s no perceptible current. Dense trees, mostly impassable, negate any possibility of drifting. Still, he drops the pipe into the water. The water lettuce nod and immediately encircle the rope. Nina finds no comfort from something that disappears quickly, evidence of its existence swallowed whole by innocent water lettuce.
He taps on his bare wrist. “Hour. Back. Okay.” Okay is not a question.
He joins the girl in her dugout, his movements practiced, but doesn’t take the oar. She deftly dips it back and forth. They disappear between the trunks like children vanishing in a fun house.
Nina’s afraid to stand and risk inviting water into the shallow dugout. If necessary, she could paddle; there’s a small oar. She doesn’t trust that tiny motor which is certainly, as initially suspected, from an ancient mower. But which way would she go?
Even with these thoughts, she settles in, accepting her aloneness knowing they will return, continues to fish, grows drowsy from the lazy rocking of the boat and the filtered sun and silence. Unseen insects broadcast an electric whir. She inhales the Deet she applied earlier, mingling with the sticky, decaying odor of rotting leaves and roots, the pungent stench of the mysterious bait, her own slightly sour tang. The boat rocks, pushes the buzz of the insects into the background.
Her pole pinned between her knees, Nina nods off only to be awakened by a distant chattering and thrumming, like a congress of voices calling from an apartment at the far end of a hall. Voices shifting, a blend of noise escaping through the walls. The fussing grows.
Nina remains on the dugout floor, frozen briefly before turning in the direction of the commotion. Initially there’s nothing to see; soon enough the texture of the canopy alters, shimmies, comes alive with monkeys swinging from limb to limb. The turmoil escalates, scores and scores of monkeys swinging and running along the branches, leaping between the trees, catching and releasing sinuous vines. Once directly above, shadows deepen, the screeching peaks, but the monkeys stay the course, oddly synchronized, moving through the canopy as if on a familiar highway built exclusively for their pleasure.
Nina twists to track their route. The clamor ebbs, just as the chatter of a wind-up toy inevitably wanes. The canopy shimmies one last time, and the rainforest is silent.
She looks around. The boy and his friend are nowhere. She alone witnessed this event, acknowledged it in full, while the rest of the world went about its business. She whispers. “No one knows I am here.”