Dinosaur Summer Page 15

  The venator now crouched in his cage on barge number two. His eyes grew wide and his throat pulsed and blushed.

  A constant downdraft from the plateau dropped the temperature by ten degrees, to around eighty. The night before, OBie had said that up on El Grande itself the temperature at this time of year would be about sixty, no more than sixty-five.

  The animals smelled home, a place they had not seen in decades and almost certainly could not remember, except in their flesh and blood: smells and sounds.

  The barges motored slowly around the last bend at twilight. The half-mile-wide pool at the base of Jorge Washington Falls stretched before them, water almost black in the shadows. Peter stared up and up, from the bottom of the falls, lost in billows of gray mist, up until his neck bones popped, to the top of the sky: a cataract of moonbright white water, gleaming against the wet lacquered blackness of the cliffside, falling forever as if in slow motion, breaking, misting, and finally smacking into the pool with a sound like all the world's hurricanes, a howling roaring hissing blowing noise full of immense power and peace.

  Peter thought Forever might sound like Jorge Washington Falls.

  No human could survive the force of water at the base of the falls, OBie said, and no dinosaur either. Thousands of tons struck the pool every minute at over a hundred miles an hour. "We'd be mush in an instant," he said, voice full of awe and admiration.

  Ray and Peter sat on the bow of the third barge, which had pulled ahead of the others under Billie's direction. Ray had put away his sketch pad; the light was too dim for good camera shots, and he now sat with arms across his drawn-up knees, brows pulled together, contemplating the wonder.

  Peter surveyed the shores of the pool. He spotted a light in the gloom. "There!" he shouted to Ray. Ray squinted and nodded.

  "Must be the camp," he said. Wetherford came forward on barge four with a flashlight and waved it. Billie turned their boat toward the lights, about a quarter mile from the falls, and the others followed.

  The single light that had greeted them was held by a compact, wrinkled old Indian named Jose Esteban Miguel. He had come down to the shore to await their arrival and had pitched a single tent under a stunted tree. As they stepped off the boats and tied them to rocks on the shore, Jose Esteban Miguel greeted them individually with a hearty handshake and words of Spanish or broken English. To Peter he said: "Muy bien, pleased to have you, bienvenido, is well-come!"

  The shore campsite was a wet mess, inundated by spray, slick with moss and algae and covered with a variety of wet, creeping bugs that Peter stepped over carefully, more for his sake than theirs.

  Jose Esteban Miguel was a So'oto Indian from the west. He never told them his Indian name, never used less than all three of his first names, and never revealed a last name. He informed them gleefully that the trucks and the rest of the workers were at a site about a mile away, where it was drier and less plagued by insects. "El Colonel is here," he added, and nodded up the road to Pico Poco, now obscured by night.

  Shellabarger and the roustabouts slipped tarps over the cages to keep mist off the animals. Only the avisaurs seemed to enjoy the moisture, spreading their wings, fanning their tails and preening as the drifts of spray drooped down around them.

  Anthony and Ray examined the bugs. Anthony showed Peter a fierce-looking six-legged creature about five inches long, with powerful legs, a thick, black abdomen, and large shining yellow and black eyes. "I think it's a kind of cricket," he said. "Biggest I've ever seen."

  "Bigger than the wetas in New Zealand," Wetherford marveled.

  Shellabarger collected as many of the aquatic crickets as he could in an empty tin and offered them to the struthios, the avisaurs, and the Aepyornis. They found them very acceptable and ate all the trainer had gathered. Peter reluctantly acquiesced to Shellabarger's order to pick up more of the fat insects. He did not like the way they squirmed and prickled in his hands.

  Dark turned the shore camp into a noisy, wet black void, relieved only by glimpses of stars through the drifting vaults of spray and the flash of lights on and around the boats. The air smelled of jungle—thick and green and damp, with the heavy, musty wet-basement odor of soil and jungle rot. Some of the odors reminded Peter of the piss-wet hallways in the brownstone in New York.

  Jose Esteban Miguel volunteered to walk to the second camp and bring a truck, but Shellabarger and OBie agreed that was probably not a good idea. "We'll wait until morning," they said.

  Peter regretted that. Jose Esteban Miguel showed them how to arrange their tents so that the insects would not bother them— the crickets avoided higher ground, frequenting the low sandy spots near the pool—but the night was still wet and miserable, and in the morning, for the first time in weeks, Peter felt chilly. J.E.M. (as Keller began calling him) tended a fitful fire and served them passable coffee, but soon ran out of dry wood.

  Without breakfast, Anthony, Peter, Billie, Ray, and J.E.M. walked up the steeply inclined gravel road to the second camp. There, four big trucks were parked beside five tents, and a few yards away, an Army jeep and two more small tents. Smoke rose from four fires.

  Two soldiers carrying rifles were the first to greet them. They emerged from their tents and jogged down to the banks of the pond. There, Shellabarger and Anthony spoke with them briefly. The soldiers seemed concerned; by their gestures, Peter understood they were talking about not being able to communicate by radio. Anthony, using Billie as an interpreter, told them all was going smoothly and that their papers and permissions were in order as of a few days ago. That seemed to mollify them, but again Peter heard the words el Colonel, uttered reverently or fearfully.

  Peter was a little surprised to see Jorge and his workers cooking over the largest of the fires. Jorge offered them cassava cakes and fried crocodile tail.

  "Try it!" Billie suggested, seeing Peter's expression. "It is very good."

  Peter took the tin plate of cake and crocodile and sat beside the fire to eat and dry out. Anthony sat beside him, carrying his own plate. Ray took the cake but declined the crocodile. Billie ate and spoke with the men around the second fire.

  "It's pretty tasty," Anthony said, lifting a bite of crocodile meat.

  "I hear the real delicacy around here is tapir," Ray said. "Best cooked the native way." He shuddered. "Makes me long for a hamburger and a Coke."

  Billie joined them a few minutes later. "Trucks all ready. The men walked here from the other camp. Walk faster than we boated, obviously. They like your pay, Senor Belzoni."

  "Glad to have them," Anthony said. "Tell them we need to move the animals up to Pico Poco by nightfall, if possible."

  "Some good late afternoon shots would be nice," Ray said.

  Billie doubted they would be on the top of Pico Poco before dark. "It is eight miles to the top and the bridge. Jorge says the roads are good after all these years, except for jungle growth, and he sent word to workers on this side of El Grande, friends from other tribes. They met us on the river . . . in their curiaras. They have cleared enough of the thick growth for the trucks to pass."

  "There must be lots of Indians here now," Anthony said.

  "A great many," Billie agreed.

  "How long will the trucks take to get from here to the bridge?" Anthony asked.

  Billie asked Jorge, and the Indian shrugged his shoulders and replied. "Three, four hours," Billie translated. "If you are cautious."

  OBie and Wetherford came up the trail. "Film is still good, miraculously," OBie told Ray. "But I'm not going to load our cameras anywhere near those falls. Shellabarger wants us to get the trucks down there and start hauling animals and equipment now. Still have film in the mini?"

  Ray said he did.

  "Use it sparingly and shoot the falls and the first camp."

  "Right," Ray said.

  "Jorge says nothing about how the bridge is," Billie said. "He has not been up there yet. Too close to el Colonel for him. The men from this side of the mountain say the bridge is stil
l there, but they do not understand machinery."

  OBie mulled that over, then smirked mischievously.

  "Don't say it!" Ray warned.

  "Say what?" OBie asked.

  "Not a word about crossing that bridge when we come to it."

  OBie feigned complete innocence. "Let's shoot what we can, but conserve stock. I'm sure Vince is going to take his own sweet time carrying his babies."

  The loading actually went fairly quickly. By the pool, they fed the animals what was left of the food stored in the drums. Four trucks grumbled down the road to the pond. For a few minutes, Peter watched the roustabouts confer with Jorge and Billie about how to transfer the cages to the back of the trucks. Sammy and the venator would each ride on one truck; the other cages would be divided between two trucks.

  "There's going to be some overhang," Shellabarger said, measuring the truck beds with his eye. "But it'll work if we don't jostle them too much."

  Ray and Anthony shot footage and pictures of the discussions, and Shellabarger obliged them by waving his hands and grinning broadly. When he turned away, though, his grin faded. He poked his fingers into his empty pockets for cigarettes. Peter thought Shellabarger seemed more nervous than he had been at any point on the trip, and he could guess why: so close, and still so many things that could go wrong.

  Shellabarger asked Peter to stay beside Sammy. "He likes you. You seem to keep him calm." Shawmut and Osborne carried the black boxes of equipment from the first barge through the shallows on their backs, with help from a few of J.E.M.'s workers.

  The shore of the pool was sand spread thin over solid rock, and could easily stand the weight of the trucks. Peter wondered how the cages were going to be transferred, then saw the large ramps on the back of the first truck. All of the trucks had winches mounted behind the front bumpers.

  The barge carrying Sammy was brought up to the center of the beach and moored securely to trees, rocks, and the nearest truck. Ten men rolled and carried the ramps one at a time across to the boat and locked them down side by side. The ramps had big steel wheels along their lengths.

  Shellabarger, Kasem, and Keller waded around the boat in the shallows to see how far it would dip on one side when the weight was shifted. "Two feet, then she'll hit bottom," Keller said.

  Anthony eyed the ramps, the truck, the boat, and shook his head. "It might work," he said.

  "Why won't it work?" Shellabarger asked grumpily. He turned on Anthony, hands on hips, clearly agitated by Anthony's doubts.

  "All right," Anthony gave in. "It'll work." Then, to Peter, standing beside Sammy on the boat, he said in an undertone, "It'll have to."

  Sammy knew something was up and nosed the cage until Peter turned and reached between the bars to pat the centrosaur's beak. He couldn't see how Sammy could feel anything there, since it was nothing but horny material, but the big animal seemed to like his touch anyway.

  Ropes were tied to the forward and side rings on the cage, then men scrambled past Peter and applied pry bars, first to one side, and then to the other. The bars dug into the boat's deck and there was much swearing and grunting, but eventually they managed to place wedges and chocks and blocks under the cage and lift it eight inches off the deck. Then the ramps were unfastened and extended under it.

  "This isn't going to work," Shellabarger murmured, standing in the water beside the ramp. "Rob, bring out the logs." Keller unpacked foot-thick logs of varying lengths from barge number two and the roustabouts propped them in place under the big steel ramps, making a kind of bridge.

  Ray filmed this in brief economic clips. He even lifted the camera to bring Peter into frame. Peter felt acutely embarrassed but tried to act naturally. He got out of the way as the blocks under Sammy's cage were knocked aside. It settled onto its bottom steel plate, jerking Sammy a little and making him grunt forlornly. He lifted his beak and let out a series of bellows that rose above the thunder of the falls. Then the winch on the second truck began to reel in the cable attached to the ropes, and the cage—all four tons of it, including Sammy—rolled down the ramps, shuddering and jerking, onto the bed of the truck. The boat hardly dipped, so stable were the logs, but Shellabarger had all the workmen brace the sides of the ramps with poles, in case the logs decided to lean or sway, or worst of all, split.

  By noon all the cages had been loaded—even the venator's. The big carnivore endured the transfer stoically, crouched on his stomach, eyes half closed like a cat trying to nap.

  Peter let out a big sigh when the cages were all locked down and the trucks were ready to roll. He walked past the caged animals and talked to them soothingly. Even the venator received a visit. "That was pretty brave," Peter said, unsure how to speak to this monster. Dagger stared at him with both eyes forward, unblinking, then lifted his upper lip in a fair imitation of a sneer and stretched wide his mouth, as if yawning. His teeth gleamed like old ivory and his breath smelled of rotten meat.

  Peter's stomach twitched. He backed away and fetched up against his father. Anthony took his shoulders and gripped them. That grip felt familiar, as if his father were going to lecture him about something. Instead, Anthony looked down at his son with a peculiar, tight expression, nostrils flared, and lifted his eyes to the beast.

  "He should never have been brought down," Anthony said.

  Wetherford, a few yards away, said, "Amen to that."

  Anthony and Peter rode in the cab of the first truck with the driver, a large, solemn Carib named Julio, from the Karina tribe in the north. The other Indians held Julio in great regard. They claimed his forefathers had eaten their forefathers, or so Billie said. "Many of our fathers ate each other, once," he added. " Some still eat men of other tribes, deep in the forest." To Peter, the Carib seemed nice enough, though quiet. Julio waited for instructions from Shellabarger, who rode with Sammy on the back of the first truck.

  "It is tough road," Julio said. "But we do it."

  Shellabarger swung his arm and the big diesels roared to life, coughing black smoke from vertical exhaust pipes.

  "Just a few more hours," Anthony said.

  Peter's heart felt like a nervous pigeon. The trucks lurched up the rugged machete-cut path, their fat, alligator-tread tires digging into the loose branches, stumps and roots, rocks and gravel.

  The old road up Pico Poco followed green-walled ridges or cut-in switchbacks. It rose on a steep but constant grade, one mile up in eight miles of driving. At first they managed about a mile and a half each hour, stopping twice to water the animals and once to remove a fallen tree. The heat for most of the journey was still tropically intense. Only in the last couple of miles did they come under the cooling umbrella of clouds embracing the shoulders of El Grande.

  By the time they reached an ant-chewed wooden marker that read 11 KM, dusk was falling rapidly. Shellabarger walked along the convoy, spoke with the drivers using Billie as interpreter, and returned to the first truck, face grim. "Push on," he ordered.

  The trucks switched on their lights in the gloom. Rain began to fall and they rode the last half mile over rivulets that gathered to form creeks, and past mossy falls of water that spilled on the road and cut muddy ruts. Their truck got stuck in mud in the last quarter mile and had to be pulled out using its winch to reel in a steel cable attached to the truck ahead. Julio arranged the cables and switched on the winch from within the cab, leaning out of the door in the pouring rain to judge the progress. The windshield wipers cleared small arcs and only intermittently at that. They could barely see. The winch snarled and the cable twanged taut like a giant's guitar string. The truck rolled forward a foot. Peter wiped fog from inside the window. The truck rolled back, pulling the truck ahead with it, slamming him against the hard rear of the seat.

  Julio grimly released the winch clutch and glanced at Peter, then let it out again. The winch motor groaned under the load and their truck rolled forward a foot, then another foot. Without warning, the truck fishtailed, its end swerving down a muddy incline toward the edge of
the road. Peter grabbed the door handle, ready to jump if Julio did, but the Carib stared fixedly ahead, tongue poked between tense lips, nursing the winch clutch, pulling them steadily forward. Still, the truck continued to slide sideways, and from the rear, Peter heard Sammy honking and bawling. He opened the door and jumped out, almost over the edge. Shellabarger caught his arm and they trudged through the hacked brush and mud to examine the right rear tires, now just inches from the steep slide to complete destruction. They shinnied around the truck bed and stood behind.

  "What can we do?" Peter shouted over the rain's hiss.

  "His cage has too much weight on the wood blocks this side," Shellabarger said. Keller and Kasem joined them behind the truck. "If that Carib—"

  "Julio!" Peter said.

  "If Julio doesn't pull 'er out soon, we'll have to rig more rope on the opposite side."

  The main blocks on the right ground against the truck bed. Sammy's cage was slipping sideways, only a few inches, but the blocks were under tremendous pressure. Peter turned and saw Ray and OBie, hats pulled low against the downpour. "Anything we can do?" Ray asked.

  Shellabarger shook his head helplessly. "We're losing him!"

  Peter ran around to the driver's side. Anthony was already there, holding the door open as Julio craned to look around the fogged and useless windshield.

  "We have to hurry!" Peter shouted. Julio grinned and shook his head, but caught Peter's tone. Working both the winch and the main motor alternately, he stopped the slide and pulled them forward another foot.

  The roustabouts cut long, woody branches on the left side of the road and Ray, Obie, and Shellabarger slipped them under the rear tires.

  "Go!" Peter yelled, wiping his eyes. "Go!"

  Julio fed power to the truck's rear wheels. The branches were pulled into the mud by the tread. Several pulverized sticks shot out behind the truck, one taking OBie across the face, knocking him backward and bloodying his chin. Ray helped him to his feet.