The Long Coast
Steven Bird
Packard awoke. A wrinkled white blanket covered his body leaving only his head exposed and visible. He slowly rolled his head to the side and then back to face the patches of impossible blue quilted into the treetops. He considered the blue sky until losing consciousness again. And as he slipped from the waking world he received a dream of Provincetown and the Cape. In the dream he hovered in the crisp light of his vision of home, like a ghost unable to fully coalesce and doomed to eternity sitting on one rock or flitting unseen across a particular room or space; and the dream was filled with loss and longing, and a deep sadness; and throughout the dream a sense that if he would let the images go, surrender them away, he would sink through the solid world and there would be no more longing or sadness, and there would be no pain.
The mountain spine of Costa Rica rises like the dark green ramparts of a long coast, an unbroken headland separating two oceans. There are clouds that the mountains gather to themselves, and sometimes the mountains are as a line of gods, shoulders risen above the lush, sweating earth, faces veiled with opulent cloud and hidden from the eyes of men.
But not all men.
The banks of the Rio Savegre were long protected by the steep flanks of the Talamanca Mountains. The altitude is too high for growing coffee. Xocho grew cubano beans and tended his small herd of goats on the western slope of Cerro de la Muerte, above the river. He gathered yerbas to sell at the market in San Gerardo. He knew the secret bowers deep in the high cloud forest where the useful plants grow. Places, he knew, where it is easy to enter the province of dreams. Dreams, Xocho believed, create the reality of the world; the dream of solidity; the dream of oceans; all sentient beings, the forests and prairies, the rocky shield and molten iron heart of the planet itself, dreaming the dream of creation all together, connected and knowing.
It was close to dark when Packard opened his eyes again. Had it been the call of a bird?... At the moment his eyes opened, as if startled by the movement of his eyelids, a long streak of color fled from a treetop at the periphery of his vision. A quetzal?... He wondered. He’d been hoping to see a quetzal. And the wild avocado trees... might be good to eat an avocado, he thought. The evening was warm. Packard watched the stars appear through the branches. Animal sounds rustled, creaked and whistled from the shadows, monkey shrieks erupted from the black trees.
Xocho prayed. As always, he prayed for the soul of his wife that she might find favor with the Virgin in heaven. The rest of the prayer was his thanksgiving, and he asked nothing for himself, only asking a blessing on the world, that it might not pass from grace. He doused the lantern wick. He would rise early and go into the mountains to gather yerba buena for the market. Yes, and at the market he would buy a candle for his dear Maria Paz and take it to the church.
Xocho slept, and in his sleep he dreamed. The old man dreamed in the cloud forest. He stood in his bean field, facing the higher mountains, the white clouds placed upon their heads like a crown, a tall crown reaching to the low heavens. A jaguar crept from the forest and appeared to him at the edge of the field. When his gaze fell upon the jaguar, it stood on its hind legs and walked toward him like a man. A tiny white bird suddenly appeared over the jaguar’s head – and the cat leaped for it, playful, like a kitten rearing up to swat a moth –
Then the jaguar was gone.
But the bird remained in the sky, far off, gliding on a perfectly straight trajectory toward the mountain. Xocho watched the white speck disappear into the pearly crown of clouds, like a thought.
Packard became aware of a sensation in the dark. A rope was being drawn slowly over his throat. It felt like the rope was moving of its own accord, with a life of its own, smooth-textured, pulsing a continuous machinelike energy against his skin. He held his breath. He felt cold. The cries of a trillion insects rattled the night. The rope, heavy, slid over his neck, alongside his shoulder, down the length of his right arm, against his thigh – then he didn’t feel it anymore. He did not open his eyes.
In the dark pre-dawn the horse and burro vacuumed the last of the oats from the feedbox in the corral. Xocho saddled the horse and fastened the mantillas behind the cantle. He put a length of yellow nylon rope and some other things into the bags, then fastened a short length of braided horsehair rope to the burro’s halter and knotted the other end to the horse’s tail.
There was pain now. Packard tried to make an assessment of the damage. Something inside of him was broken. Ribs? Legs too... must be broken. He ran his tongue over his lips. They felt like reptile skin. He coughed. It hurt. The inside of his mouth and throat were sand. He needed water. He tried to move. Couldn’t. A grinding red pain lit up his shoulder when he tried to move his right arm. The shoulder was dislocated. His body would not allow him to exert the slightest pressure against the white metal holding him fast against the ground. He rolled his head to the left and focused his eyes on the Cessna’s clean white tail section hoisted at a despairing angle above the foliage. Two fluorescent blue butterflies hovered behind the rudder performing a circular, interweaving dance, like comical propulsion, as if caught in the cartoon slipstream of the recently crashed plane, the funny-ironic punch line. There were some broken trees beyond the plane, and beyond them, only the close sky with bits of cloud. He felt the exhilaration of high altitude and steepness. He rolled his head to the right. The metal covering him obstructed his view of the cockpit. He was pretty sure it was the wing, or a piece of it. He pushed against it with his left hand, to no effect. He was able to swing his arm out from under it and push against the front edge, but the effort nearly made him black out with pain. He felt as weak as a baby. He couldn’t budge the wing and gave up trying. He wondered if the pilot was still alive. “... Alfredo?... Alfredo?...” he thought he shouted, but the sound was only a whispered croak.
The forest exhaled, branch tips caressing the silent sky. He hoped Alfredo was alive. Maybe he’d gone for help.
Packard thought about his mother, stoic, sad, attending her lonely gallery in the austere salt light of P-Town. His sister. His brother... The obedient go to Harvard. The wayward, fish. His mother knew early – when he took the skiff at the age of eight, by himself, out beyond the bar, beyond the bay, and returned with the two cow stripers – she knew the way he would go. Ironic, he thought, that he should die here on a tropical mountain – his mother had always been certain he would meet his early demise at sea. The Vineyard. Hawaii. Perth. South Africa. California... Why here? He didn’t want to die here, or anywhere, yet. He wanted to be where the drama raged unchecked. Where there are women waking, smiling from rumpled sheets. He wanted to be drinking coffee and eating an order of fried clams at the Wellfleet Diner. Let somebody else pilot the Bertram for Jackman. He didn’t need it. Plenty of boats wanting a skipper. He’d just go home to Massachusetts and die where the trees are familiar, thank you.
...Couldn’t he just quiet this clamorous stream of thoughts and memories and learn to die with dignity? How long will it take? How long had it been? Yesterday? that he’d chartered the plane and Alfredo at Quepos to take him to San Gerardo, to the Rio Savegre where the local farmers had introduced trout into the river – he’d wanted to cast a fly for trout on a cloud-forest river in Costa Rica, where exotic quetzal birds break glorious from the wild avocado trees and there are monkeys. Packard thought: He’d made good tip money on the Costa tournaments, why not go on a busman’s holiday?... Monkeys and trout...
Why not just quiet down, die, and end this pathetic charter? –
In a cloud he saw the image of a girl he used to know, a Cape Cod girl, he could see her tear streaked face, beautiful, tragic... Forgive me... Forgive me my black stubbornness; my stupid vanity; my walled silences... Foolish show. Foolish, empty show.
He closed his eyes. Flies explored Packard’s lips and face. He did not move.
The gods rose abruptly before him, proud feather capes of green jungle drawn about their shoulders, at the end of the arroyo. Too steep for the horse. Almost dark. The horse could go no farther. Xocho transferred the saddle and mantillas to the burro. He slapped the sweaty grulla’s rump and it started for home. He pulled the machete from the saddle scabbard. He would lead the burro. He prayed to the Virgin that a snake would not bite him. He prayed to the Old Ones for eyes to see in the dark.
The jungle screamed and chirped, deep into the long, long night.
Packard streamed in and out of consciousness throughout the night. With each awakening he found himself closer to surrender, strangely calm, like the time he put his skiff onto an offshore boiler rock, and the rock punched a splintered hole in the bottom of the boat, and he was sinking, there was nothing he could do about it, a warm calm enfolded him, and he watched the event go down like a scene from somebody else’s life while he went through the motions of survival without thinking. He felt no fear, no regrets now, no pain, and a resigned acceptance that the prevailing condition of the universe is serene melancholy.
In the dream the world was light, the forest glistening, fresh with moisture. The feet and legs of a bird sprouted from Packard’s nostrils – then feathered wings burst from the eyeholes of his skull – the flight-quills of a tail protruded then fanned from his mouth – and he became a bird. And he flew high up into the blue sky above the mountains until the wrecked plane was only a fading pinpoint of white, so high that he could see both oceans, East and West, and he glided there long enough to see the world duality, then he spiraled back down to the wrecked clearing near the top of a mountain and was a man again laying on the ground pinned under the broken wing of a plane crash
–The leaves rustled, parted, and a jaguar poured into the clearing –
Packard thought: Yes. This must be death.
And the jaguar stood up on its hind legs and walked toward him like a man, until it stood over him.
He gazed into the fierce yellow eyes. The eyes held no judgment, no malice – the pupils of the golden eyes expanded into shining obsidian pools, infinitely deep, black as the darkness preceding the light upon the world, black as eternity, staring from the passive face of a compact brown man holding a white plastic bottle.
The man let a few drops of water drip from the bottle onto his mouth and over Packard’s forehead.
Xocho found a young tree stout enough for a pole, cut it down and limbed it with the machete. The pilot was dead. He had died on impact when the front of the plane crumpled against the trees. Xocho would tell the federales where to find him and the wreckage. He placed an end of the pole under a wing section and carefully pried the broken wing away from Packard’s body. On the last pry, as the metal swung away from Packard’s feet, he noticed the brown snake, a spiral of perfect continuity coiled snugly beside the tourista’s thigh –
The exposed snake instantly uncoiled –
“... Dios!” ...Before Xocho could respond, the snake rasped straightaway into the brush. A poisonous one. If it had struck, the tourista would already be dead. Xocho listened to make sure the snake continued away. He cut some more poles and fashioned them into a travois and covered the lashed poles with the horse blanket. He used the yellow rope to fasten the injured man firmly to the travois. Packard reminded Xocho of a baby fastened to a cradleboard, the way the Old Ones carried their babies. In Spanish he said, “My friend, you are lucky today. Today you are born.”
Slowly, cautious, Xocho dragged and lowered Packard down the slope leading toward the burro tethered on the bench below. They were very high up on the mountain and the clouds churning like white water far beneath them. The sky vaulted clean, almost purple close to the edge of space. Lashed like Ulysses to the mast, Packard rode the litter, his eyes fixed on the serene line of mountains trailing away into the distance like a long coast. The risen godheads of mountains silently conferred above the furious white illusion of sea. Waves of the ocean, dreaming. The brown shepherd inched him down toward the sea of clouds, and Packard wept.
Steven Bird is the author of Upper Columbia Flyfisher - Notes, Stories and Secrets from the Shining Reach, forthcoming from Amato Books.