MacCready held up his hand. “Look, I appreciate your concern but what I do need is for you to help me get some stuff together. Can you rustle me up a goat and some rope to tie him up with?”
Thorne knew the argument was over. “Jeez, Mac, really?”
“And I’m gonna need a ladder and blanket as well,” Mac continued. And before Thorne could turn that one around, he held up his hand again. “Don’t make me have to kill you, Bob.”
The botanist gave his friend a “who me?” shrug. “Hey, it’s your party,” he said.
Soon after, MacCready had his supplies, and the two men stood in an orchard on the outskirts of town. The scattering of fruit trees dead-ended at the top of a two-hundred-foot bluff. They were a hundred yards from the nearest farmhouse and, for whatever the reason, the owner of this particular fazenda seemed to have hauled up stakes and gone into hiding.
“This is the spot,” MacCready said, surveying the orchard and the place he had selected, before letting his gaze settle on the spectacular view of the valley below.
For a long time the two men said nothing, but only stood watching the sunset. Then Thorne picked up a piece of rotting fruit and pitched it toward the pile of rocks at the foot of the bluff. “Now, Mac, if it were me wandering off to take a leak tonight, I would watch that first step.”
MacCready acknowledged his friend with a nod.
Behind them, the goat shook its head and tested the strength of the ten-foot rope that had been secured around its neck. Thorne gestured toward the animal. “Are you sure you two don’t want to rent a room?”
MacCready ignored the comment. He was looking at an ancient and gnarled tree that rose above the citrus grove. “What’s that tree, Leaf Boy?”
“Bertholletia excelsa.”
“Show-off.”
“Brazil nut to you zoologist types.”
“Any thorns?”
“Nope.”
“Poisonous sap?”
“Negative.”
“That’ll do.”
Within five minutes, Thorne had used a tent peg to stake out the goat near the base of the great tree. By the time he’d finished, MacCready was settling atop a thick horizontal branch situated a dozen or so feet above the ground. Satisfied that it was sturdy enough to hold him comfortably, he smiled down at his friend, “If I’m not back by zero three hundred, send Yanni with some pinga and a couple of glasses. That ought to perk things up.”
Thorne replied with a new rude hand gesture he’d learned from some Italian guys who had passed through Chapada the year before. “You like that one?”
MacCready waved him off. “Old one. You need to get out more.”
“Yes . . . well, just be careful, huh?”
The two friends exchanged nods, and Thorne headed back toward town, picking up speed as he went. Any guilt he felt about leaving Mac behind was being quickly overridden by a desperate need to outrace the rapidly approaching darkness.
MacCready scooched himself backward until his back rested against the tree trunk. Unfolding the blanket he’d brought, he used it as a cushion. The goat, which had apparently given up on yanking out the tent peg, glanced up with apparent interest at the proceedings. MacCready gave the animal a quick wave, then checked his watch, his flashlight, and the Colt .45 holstered to his side.
There was something theatrical about how night fell in the tropics—the suddenness of it. And now the curtain had fallen.
Mac squinted into the encroaching dark, somewhat surprised at not being able to see the edge of the bluff, though it was less than a hundred feet away. Watch that first step is right, he thought.
Although the zoologist had set up camp in rainforests on many occasions and in many odd places, including tree branches, once he clicked off the flashlight his thoughts turned, as always, to the overwhelming, alien blackness. He was acutely aware that the trees themselves were alive and covered with life, and this awareness brought with it a mild claustrophobia that was impossible to describe and which never entirely went away.
He concentrated on the night sounds: the steady din of cicadas . . . the occasional sharp click of an insect he had yet to identify . . . the sporadic peeping of a male frog. Unlike the incessant chorus of frogs inhabiting more temperate regions, MacCready knew that the song of Physalaemus was subtle, brief, and infrequent. He’s looking for a mate. But he doesn’t want to get eaten.
Another sound came to him, tinny and incongruent but somehow reassuring. In the distance, a gramophone was playing Frank Sinatra’s “Embraceable You.”
The music wafted from the direction of what he’d thought was an abandoned farmhouse, lulling the exhausted scientist, and momentarily—only momentarily, he was certain—he dozed . . .