One Grave Less

“Você fala Inglês?”
    “Yes, I speak English,” he said. “Do you need help?” His Swedish accent was more evident in English, or at least, Maria thought it was. Of course, her Portuguese was nonexistent, so she couldn’t really judge.
    When she was over being shocked, Maria wanted to run up and hug him. She was never so glad to hear those four words. She was never so glad to see someone who not only spoke her language, but who possibly didn’t want to kill her.
    “Yes, we do. I’m Maria . . . Maria West,” she supplied, sticking with a plan she had made of how she was going to get the two of them home across several borders. “This is my daughter, Rosetta West. Can you help us get to Benjamin Constant?”
    “ Ja ,” he said. “We’re going to Benjamin Constant.”
    The “we” was a tourist boat like the one she’d seen at a distance on the river. This close to a large town, river and land traffic were bound to increase. She had been counting on running across someone with faster means of transport than feet. She was afraid it might be a logging truck. She was overjoyed it was a boat, not a canoe, but a large boat with many people, having a good time without guns.
    She related the story that she and Rosetta had worked out as they trekked through the forest. Maria was a doctoral student in archaeology. Rosetta was her daughter. They were visiting archaeology sites, having fun, when someone tried to kidnap them. They got away but became lost in the jungle. However, they were experienced hikers and had a map, and they were on their way to Benjamin Constant.
    “Of course we didn’t have that far to go,” she told Patrik Tillstrom and his fellow student, Hanna Vik. The two Swedish students had talked the boat pilot into stopping along the way so they could take some jungle pictures. That was why the two were in the forest. They were meeting up with friends in Benjamin Constant and taking a longer trip through the Amazon on foot. They were very excited. Maria would have been too, had she not already taken a trip through the Amazon.
    Patrik and Hanna introduced them to some of the other people on the tour boat. It felt so normal. Maria felt safe for the first time in a long time. Still, she kept Rosetta close to her.
    Maria told Rosetta she should speak English most of the time, as if it were her first language. She taught her several American idioms and common popular speech inflections. “It’s all in giving people an impression. You talk like an American kid, they are less likely to think I’m stealing you from the country.” Rosetta understood, being a master plotter herself.
    “But I don’t really look like you,” she said, worried.
    “We are in luck there,” Maria told her. “John West, my boyfriend, is an American Indian.”
    “Really? He’s a real live Indian?” said Rosetta, wide-eyed.
    “So are you,” said Maria.
    “Pretend, I know, but . . . ,” said Rosetta.
    “Not pretend. You are a real Indian. You are a South American Indian. You can trust me on this. I’m an anthropologist,” she said, and Rosetta grinned.
    They stood on the top deck of the tour boat and looked at Benjamin Constant. It was a rough, ragged-looking town. Maria imagined it was hard to keep things sparkling on the edge of the rain forest. They had to wait to dock; the pier was crowded with boats. When they disembarked, they walked down a street that looked like a normal beach tourist strip that hadn’t been kept up for about a hundred years. The street was filled with potholes; the asphalt was worn or nonexistent, with motor bikes and old VW buses and similar beat-up cars traveling along the streets at a slow pace. Leaning telephone poles lined the sides of the street. Also lining the sides were open-front shops constructed of wood and tin, carrying T-shirts, blue jeans, magazines, sunglasses, tobacco, toiletries, all the things you would expect from a touristy logging community.
    With much deliberation and mental hand wringing, Maria ditched all but one of the guns in the river. The gun she kept was the one she took from the woman. She hadn’t shot anyone with it. It seemed safer. She would ditch it soon too, when they were safely on their way home. She had transferred some of their acquired money from the lining of her clothes to her bra. Now it was time to shop. The idea was to buy a few items and go to a hotel recommended by some of the people she met on the boat.
    She bought a new shirt and