One Grave Less

with feathers, why we paint our bodies, what our dances mean—stupid things even our children know.”
    She stopped and took several breaths. Maria could see this had been building for a while.
    “We hoped you came here to take him back. Then he calls the bad men—here to our homes. We have to move now. They come soon.”
    “How soon?” asked Maria. Rosetta translated for her.
    “He called yesterday, soon after we got here,” said Rosetta.
    So they’d had all night to travel, thought Maria. She and Rosetta had to move fast.
    “Ask her if we can have the far-talk box,” said Maria.
    Rosetta asked and Maria didn’t need a translation to understand. The young woman used her hands as if holding the phone and beat it against the ground.
    “She said it calls the bad men so they killed it,” said Rosetta. The little girl sounded as disappointed as Maria felt.
    Maria wondered how much time they had. All the gains they had made were wiped out by the phone call of a wimpy self-centered little bastard. Maria felt like kicking him one time for good measure herself—and she had her boots on.
    “Tell her we have to go,” said Maria. “Before the bad men get here.”
    The Yawanawan woman had apparently gotten all her frustrations out—for herself and her tribe. She nodded at the two of them and turned and left in the company of the man with the blowgun and rifle, without a backward glance at Kyle. Maria would like to have had the rifle.
    She checked the gas in the last of the spare containers. Not much, just a few gallons. They would be on foot before long, but she intended to take the truck as far as it would carry them. She siphoned the gas into the truck’s gas tank, got in the cab, and turned the key in the ignition. It took several scary moments for the engine to finally crank. She tried to think how far the men could have come if they had been traveling all night. She and Rosetta still had a significant head start, but whoever Kyle called may have an encampment closer than the one they escaped from. They may have better, faster vehicles. Hell, they may have a helicopter.
    Maria put the truck in gear and headed out of the village. Glad to be going, hating that they hadn’t gotten away clean, hating they had run across Kyle, hating that they were almost out of gas.
    Maria wondered if any of her friends were looking for her.The people at the site she was visiting just before she was kidnapped wouldn’t know she was even missing. The man driving her to Cuzco—the only witness to her abduction—turned out to be one of the kidnappers. He wouldn’t tell. But she hadn’t shown up for her lectures. The people there would be in touch with her department to find out why—wouldn’t they? Surely John, her boyfriend, would be on the phone to somebody by now, since he hadn’t heard from her in almost a week. Surely by now someone knew she was missing—didn’t they?
    But if her friends were looking for her, where would they look? Not here. Brazil is not where she disappeared. She disappeared in Peru. On the other hand, perhaps, if nothing else, they could follow the trail of dead and dying bodies she had left behind her. Surely someone besides the bad guys had noticed.
    One good thing, she thought, as she left the clearing and drove into the jungle, again looking for something she could pretend was a road, was that the closer they got to Benjamin Constant, the more villages they would run across where they could perhaps find help, perhaps get gas, maybe some good directions. Maybe they would stumble upon a tourist boat on one of the rivers. Something.
    “You doing okay, Rosetta?” asked Maria.
    Rosetta nodded. “That was close,” she said.
    “Yes, it was, but we have been pretty lucky for most of our trip,” said Maria.
    Rosetta looked over at her. “What would you call unlucky?”
    Maria smiled. “How about we eat something? Do we have any bars left, or do we need to find a fruit tree?”
    “We have some bars left,” said Rosetta. She dug down in her backpack and came up with a bar. “Maybe we should split what’s left,” she said. “Just eat a little. I have some fruit too. I took it at dinner last night.”
    “That’s a good plan,” said Maria.
    Rosetta broke the bar so Maria had the larger piece.
    “You take more,” said Maria.
    “But you’re bigger,” said Rosetta.
    “Right now it’s one for all and all for one,” said Maria. “You need to eat too. You’re the thinker.”
    Rosetta