Holidays in Eden, Chapter 11, pt 1

Title: Holidays in Eden
Author: yeahlev
Beta: weaselett

CHAPTER 11, Part 1

Guaviare Department, Colombia

October 2004

Day 5

Using the Xs drawn in the dirt and the two buttons for themselves, Nate and Eliot were able to show the tribesmen that the FARC were coming for them and that they needed to get away.

The tribesmen didn’t need to draw anything after that - the looks on their faces told Nate and Eliot that they were not interested in being in the middle of that.  Two FARC guys in their territory was one thing.  Twenty on the rampage was quite another.

Eliot was just starting to think about how much they could hike in the remaining daylight when Ford stood up and motioned towards the water’s edge, where a half dozen long, wooden canoes rested half in and  half out of the water.

He smiled and looked at one of the tribesmen.  “How much for a canoe?”

The man looked at the canoes.  Then he looked at Nate.  Then a slow, crafty smile came over his face as he looked down at the platinum watch on Nate’s wrist.

*

“Do you have any idea how much that watch cost?” Ford grumbled as they got back into their wet clothes.

“If this canoe gets us to San Jose del Guaviare in one piece, not nearly enough.”

They had shrugged back into their wet hiking clothes, and the tribe saw them off.  The canoe had been packed with their bags and Eliot’s machete while they dressed, and Eliot was touched to see that they’d also loaded it with a woven basket packed with fruit and more of the taro root paste wrapped in palm leaf bundles.

The women and children came to see them off, too, and the shy girl from the bathing hole smiled at Eliot.

“Too bad,” Eliot said in a low voice, filled with exaggerated wistfulness.  “We could have been great together.”

“Yeah, you and her and her dad and a poisoned dart.  The perfect combination.”

Eliot chuckled, and stepped into the water, getting ready to push off in the canoe,  directing Nate to sit in the front.

As Eliot kocked off and hopped in, Nate took the crocodile from his cargo pocket to re-adjust its position, and one of the tribesmen saw it.  His eyes widened in alarm, and he yelled, pointing at it.

Eliot and Nate looked at each other, confused, and then the other men saw it, and they started yelling too.  One of them waved his hand at them, angry, urging them to go.

“Put that thing away,” Eliot said, paddling hard, all the while nodding and smiling at the men.

One of the men threw a rock that bounced off the hull of the canoe.

“Shit!”  Ford said, grabbing a paddle himself.

They paddled hard as the tribesmen stood on the bank waving them away, yelling and screaming, throwing the occasional rock.  Then one shot an arrow towards them.  It was tipless - a warning - but it landed right between them, thumping into the middle of their basket of fruit.  They paddled harder.

When they were at least a half mile away, Ford pulled his paddle out of the water and turned to look back at Eliot.  They took a deep breath together.

“What was that all about?”  Nate asked.

“Beats the hell out of me.”

*

After about an hour of paddling, the tributary flowed into the river.  The murky brown water gradually turned to something that seemed cleaner but darker, too.  It was wide and smooth and almost black, but they were moving with the current, and if they could stay on the river, they had a chance to make it to San Jose del Guaviare before nightfall.

Ford dozed in the hull of the boat while Eliot paddled.  After the exertion of heavy paddling to escape the tribe, he’d gotten pale again, little tremors jerking through his body at random intervals, and Eliot had ordered him to take a break.  He still wasn’t recovered from his spider bite flu, and between that and the exhaustion of the last few days, Eliot knew he could use the extra rest.

Still, the Insurance Terminator had lived up to his name.  He was more physically and mentally tough than Eliot ever would have imagined.  He found himself admitting that he'd actually come to respect the man.

He thought about Nate and his family by their pool, under the California sky, and for the first time, that image in his head brought no bitterness, no anger, no shame, and Eliot realized something.

If he’d hated Nate in the beginning, if that snapshot of Nate’s life had filled him with rage, it was only because it put a mirror to his own failings, to the things he could have become if he’d taken a different path at any number of crossroads in his life.   

It was a hard thing to take so many wrong paths.  It was an even harder thing to get back on the right one.

Eliot took a deep breath and stared at the jungle going by on either side of them.  The endless canopy that blocked light and air; that embraced the world underneath it in decay and rot.  He couldn’t articulate how happy - how relieved - he would be if they never had to set another foot in that place.

*

He was brought out of his reverie by the sensation of increased speed.  His brow creased as he strained his ears, listening.

“What?”

Nate’s voice surprised him.

The insurance man was awake, although it seemed like a near thing.  He was laying as he had been in sleep - one arm flung over his forehead, his chin tucked in, feet up.  His voice was rough, and his eyes were open only a sliver, but he was looking over his toes right at Eliot, and somehow there was a piercing alertness about him, all appearances to the contrary.

Eliot wondered how long Ford had been watching him, and in the back of his mind, that panic was there - that Ford had seen something revealing, that Ford knew something about him he didn't want anyone to know.

He pushed it away and looked upriver as he spoke.  “Rough water coming.”

*

The river - which had run for miles at fifty feet wide - was narrowing.  The current was pulling them towards a faint rushing-water sound in the distance.  The shore was rocky now, and large boulders began appearing in the water.

They could just bank it, Eliot knew, give up on river travel altogether, but then they’d be walking again in that godawful jungle with Ventura and his men in close pursuit.  They could bank it, and he could scout the white water, but that would add hours.  Or . . . they could try to shoot it.

(Which a voice in his head may or may not have been screaming was suicide.)

It would be dangerous going into rapids blind, but what the hell about this trip wasn't dangerous?   And if they made it.  If . . . the thought of boarding the last flight out of San Jose to Bogota as the sun was setting was very appealing indeed.

“What do you think, Nate?  High risk, high reward?  Or play it safe . . ish . . .and get to walking.”

Nate looked at choppiness that was just starting to come up in the water.

“I’ll take the risk.”

(Out of which Eliot learned a lesson that would repeat itself often in his life.  If you want a reasonable answer to the question of whether to take the riskiest, craziest, most we’re-all-gonna-die-soon approach to a problem?  Don't ask Nate Ford.)

*

They were being pulled straight into a bottleneck, and the only way through was by  a fifteen foot opening between two boulders.  The water on the other side was roaring, so loud Eliot and Nate could barely hear each other yelling - and Eliot didn’t want to think of what kind of white water monster it must take to make that sound.

They paddled hard and fast into the bottleneck, and for a brief moment, it felt like they were suspended in air, no water splashing over them, no crashing waves.  Then Eliot’s stomach flip-flopped as they fell, pitching into a churning, foaming whirlpool at the bottom of the small waterfall they’d just descended.

They went under and popped up like a cork - Nate, Eliot, canoe and all.  But any relief was short lived.  The waves and currents started whipping them back and forth, violently, like a dog shaking a chew toy.  The back end of the canoe swung around, and both canoe and Eliot’s head cracked against a boulder, and there was a loud cracking sound, like a quick clap of thunder, and for a few bleary seconds Eliot wondered Did my head just make that noise?

Then they were both in the water.

Eliot reached for where he thought Nate would be, but there were only a million tiny bubbles swirling around his open hand.  It was like being stuck in a washing machine, jerked back and forth, pressed down towards the bottom.  His eyes were open, but he could only see white, churning water.  There was water in his nose, water in his eyes, and his lungs were growing tight, but no matter how hard he tried, he could not break himself free of the swirl.

He kicked and waved his arms, and when his foot caught on something, excitement surged through him. Finally, something he could use for some leverage.  He pressed down, but instead of meeting solid rock and kicking himself upward, his foot sank between two rocks and held him there.

His lungs were straining, and the current suddenly seemed to shift, pushing him forward and down, so that his knee was being pressed backward, and a long burning feeling shot through his leg, like something tearing.  He instinctively opened his mouth to curse, and water surged in, and even while he instructed himself to be calm, his heart was racing.

He couldn’t get the foot free, and the water was thrashing him around too much; he wanted to bend at the waist and use his hands to help free his foot, but he couldn’t do it.

It occurred to him that he might actually drown.

He was quite certain of it before he felt something solid and rough against his chest.   One of the long oars from the canoe.  He grabbed it, and it starting pulling away, trying to pull him out.  He kicked furiously with his free foot, wiggling his trapped foot, yanking on it.

Then, there was a terrible pain in his knee, and raw burning in his ankle, and he was free.

He broke the surface gasping for air, and he found himself right in front of a flat topped boulder.  Nate was lying on his belly on top of it, and even as Eliot held one end of the oar tight, both of Ford’s arms were outstretched, holding fast to the other.

*

They spent some time walking the shore, but they found nothing.  They’d lost everything in the water - the food, the machete, both of their packs.  The only thing they had were the clothes on their backs and that goddamn crocodile.

And they still had around fifteen miles to go, which was more than they could hike in the daylight they had left.   

And as the reality of the set in, they stood in silence, soaking wet.  Stunned.

Ford seemed to have escaped their swim in the washing machine without any serious injuries, but he’d tweaked his bad arm pulling Eliot from the water, and now he could barely lift it.  Eliot’s ankle bled where the rocks had gouged it, and his head hurt, but his knee was the worst.  He told himself it was just a sprain, but it was stiffening up on him, and it was wobbly, like the joint was going to slide apart at any moment.

They needed to stop.  Part of Eliot was so desperate to stop, in fact, that it started negotiating with the rational part of him. We could camp here and just get up earlier, the desperation said. We made up time on the water. You don’t know that they’re gaining on us.  You don’t know.    

It was only out of sheer force of will that he started walking towards the underbrush.

“Standing around ain’t going to get us any closer to San Jose,” he said, a declaration made as much to himself as to Nate.

Eliot took the lead, pushing the brush now since he had no machete, and the branches and leaves slapped and nicked at him as he went.  They walked in silence, each of them struggling.

Near nightfall, they came across a large, tunnel-like cave that cut a straight path through a large cluster of rock.

Eliot limped in and looked around, making sure it was clear of anything that might pose a threat.  All he wanted to do was collapse on the ground and lay there and sleep.  He was tired, he was physically and mentally tired, and he’d been plagued with doubts during the entire last leg.

He had a concussion - he was sure of that from the dizzying pain in his head - and he probably had a torn ACL.  He estimated that they’d made five miles before nightfall . . . and that took them over four hours.  How were either of them going to make it another ten?

“You okay?”  Nate asked.

Eliot looked over at him.  His eyes were glassy, and his whole body seemed slumped forward with exhaustion, but his brow was creased with a genuine concern, and Eliot suddenly felt guilty for letting himself despair.

They were close, too close to hang it up, and neither one of them could let themselves get down if they were going to make it.  They had to be bigger than Ventura, bigger than the jungle.

(Maybe bigger than themselves.)

*

That night, Eliot chanced a fire.  They were downwind of Ventura, and the light and the smell would be contained mostly within the cave.  And they needed it.  There was something primal about the comfort a fire could give after a long, hard day (after a few of them).

Nate gathered anything they could use as kindling and firewood, and Eliot limp-walked into the jungle and gathered fruit and killed the only thing slow enough that he could get a handle on it - a python.  He killed it and skinned it with carefully selected stones, and then he threaded the meat with a thin tree limb, like a shish kabob.  Before he put it over the fire, he squeezed juice from one of the little citrus fruits all over it..

“What are you, some kind of mercenary chef?”  Ford asked.  He was leaning against a large rock, legs stretched near the fire, watching Eliot work.

Eliot grinned, maneuvering himself into an awkward sitting position and stretching his swollen knee.  “I do a little cooking.  Helps relax me.”

“Hmm,”  Ford said.  “Maybe you should do more.”

Eliot chuckled, but there was a rote quality to the joke.  Nate was staring into the fire, the warm light dancing with the shadows across his face.  Now that they had settled in, there was nothing to keep his mind occupied, nothing to keep him distracted.  It was just him and his thoughts.

And he clearly needed to be distracted.

“So . .  what are you getting the kid for his birthday?”  Eliot asked.

Eliot half thought the subject might get a prickly response, but at the mention of his son, Nate’s eyes went soft.   

“Sam likes to build,” he smiled.  “From the minute he could lift a block he was stacking it on another one, you know?  And his focus is just . . . off the charts.  He’d spend an hour building these huge lego structures when he was two.  So we build a lot of things together.  Model airplanes, model ships, that kind of thing.

“So, uh, he’s had his eye on this model tree house that you make out of popsicle sticks.  And it actually comes with the tree, too, this, uh . . . branch I guess, a piece of a real tree . .  and it’s mounted on a flat platform and cut to look like a tree.”

Eliot could see Nate and his kid at a kitchen table in the evening, lit only by an overhead light, laying out all their supplies, all their materials, the blueprint unfolded before them.

“Sounds like a good gift.”

“Oh yeah, but that’s only part of it.  He’s gonna open that, and he’s gonna be all excited, but then I’m gonna show him what I’ve got in the garage.”

“And what’s that?”

“A pallet of two-by-fours and shingles,” Nate grinned.  “We’re gonna make a model.  Then we’re gonna make the real thing.”

“Huh,” Eliot said, genuinely impressed.  That was a very cool gift.

He and his father had never built a treehouse together, but they had done a few projects - just the two of them - and those were some of his fondest memories of his dad.

Nate sighed, his eyes going distant, and Eliot could see him imagining Sam’s reaction.

"He’s going to be so excited," Nate said

Eliot felt something twist painfully in him at the wistfulness in Nate’s voice, like he was already preparing himself to miss it.

“He’s gonna be even more excited when he sees you there,” Eliot said.

“That’s right,” Nate smiled, but he didn’t seem entirely convinced.  Then he took a deep breath and stared at the fire again.  “Look, I have to tell you.  Thanks for everything.”

Eliot scowled.  “You’re paying me, Ford.  And you ain’t home, yet.”

Nate shrugged.  Something inscrutable flickered in his eyes, along with the firelight.  “You know, you were the sixth guy I looked at for this job.”

Eliot narrowed his eyes at Ford.  “Oh yeah?”  He pursed his lips and nodded thoughtfully, trying to play it cool.  Which lasted about ten seconds.  “Who else?”  He asked.

“Guy named Pratt?”

“Don’t know him."

Nate ticked off a few other names, ones that Eliot had heard but didn’t have any experience with.  Then he arrived on the last two.

"Quinn."

“Ugh, Quinn.  That guy is such an ass.  I hate that guy.”

Nate smiled.  He went on.  “Roper."

"Roper!?  Ugh, seriously?  Roper?  That guy’s an Oompa Loompa."

Nate laughed, as big of a laugh as he’d had since Eliot had known him.  “You’re not exactly Wilt Chamberlain yourself you know.”

Eliot chuckled.  He had to admit that one.

“You were the last guy,” Nate said, the laughter fading from his voice as he grew thoughtful.  But the more I looked at you, the more I knew you were the one.”

“Oh yeah?  And how exactly did you know that?”

“Because you have a code.”

Eliot was so stunned by that, he couldn’t form a response.  Then he got angry, his face burning.   “You don’t know what you’re talking about.”

“Yeah I do.”

Eliot laughed, a vicious, acrimonious laugh.  “And here I thought you were good at reading people.”

“I am very good at reading people,” Ford said, the slightest smile curling at the corner of his lips.

Eliot shook his head.  “I don’t have any fucking code, I’ll tell you that.”

Nate readjusted himself, pulling away from the rock he was leaning against and laying flat beside the fire, one arm tucked under his head.  “I know you’re the only guy who didn’t leave a body count in every place on the map he’s visited.

“I know you could have killed Sato and a bunch of other guys in a cargo hold in Japan and you walked away.  Even though it wasn’t your easiest play.”

“You talked to Sato, huh?”

“I talked to a lot of people.”

“Yeah?  Well you shoulda done a little more research, because you got this one wrong Ford.  You know that?  Huh?  You got a misfire right there.”

Nate smiled over at him and then he turned his face towards the arc of the cave roof and closed his eyes.  “Goodnight, Eliot.”