Dead Sea

Gradually, the talk turned away from general insults and the sexual habits of the crew’s mothers and onto French Guiana in general. Saks had a few things to say on the subject. He told them about the notorious penal colonies the French government had run there, the most celebrated being Devil’s Island. How escaped prisoners would swim from there, most either drowning or getting devoured by sharks. The few survivors that made shore would have to hack their way through hundreds of miles of primordial jungle to the Maroni River, which separated French Guiana from Dutch Guiana, now Surinam. And crossing that dirty, brown river was no easy bit.

“Infested with piranhas,” Saks said. “Dutch soldiers stationed on the river would watch convicts get boiled down to skeletons right before their eyes.”

“Remind me to stay dry,” George murmured.

“You ever been out where we’re going?” Menhaus asked him.

Saks pulled off his cigar, studied the burning end. “Once. Ten years ago. We laid a bridge over the Mara River. That’s west of where we’re going.”

“How was it?” Fabrini asked.

“It was hell, that’s what it was. We were deep in the jungle. Swamps everywhere. Mosquitoes and flies laid on you like blankets. They laughed at the bug juice we’d brought along. After awhile, we were so bitten up we started spreading mud on our faces and arms like the local boys we’d hired. But that didn’t keep the leeches off you or the goddamn snakes.”

“Snakes?” Soltz gasped. “I don’t like snakes.”

“He don’t like long, hanging things,” Fabrini said. “Reminds him of what he don’t have.”

“I’m more sensitive to certain things than you are,” Soltz explained, to which Fabrini rolled his eyes.

Saks ignored them. “Third day out we lost a kid to snakebite. He was a local. He was cutting some wood in the jungle for struts. A bushmaster got him. A big bastard. Ten feet, maybe. Came out of a hole in the mud, sank its fangs in the kid’s ankle. We shot him up with antivenin. Didn’t matter. He was dead twenty minutes later.”

“Fuck this,” Fabrini said. “You didn’t say nothing about shit like that.”

The others looked as pale as Soltz, who had now gone one shade darker than fresh cream.

“You can always swim back,” George told Fabrini.

“There were water snakes on the river. Couple of guys got bit by them. Made ‘em sick, but it passed. We were real careful after the kid died. At least we thought so until Tommy Johansen bought it,” Saks said slowly and for the first time there seemed to be something akin to real emotion on his face.

“What happened?” Menhaus inquired. “Another snake?”

“Crocodile. I’ll never forget it.” Saks exhaled a cloud of smoke. The only sounds were the wind outside, the waves crashing into the bow, and the hum of the turbines below. “I’ve seen all kinds of shit in my life. We had a pet snake in ‘Nam. A fifteen-foot python. Gentle as a baby. Used to keep the rats out of camp. Then it helped itself to some hooker’s baby she’d left alone so she could suck some dick. I seen a VC get taken down by a tiger over there. We just watched that sucker get shredded and we cheered when it dragged the little zipperhead off into the jungle. That tiger was on our side. I saw a guy get slashed by a Jaguar in Paraguay. It blinded him. I saw a guy’s pet pit bull fall into the Amazon and get turned into hamburger by piranhas. I even once saw some Mex get stung to death by bees in Bolivia. But I hadn’t seen nothing until Tommy Johansen bought it.

“Tommy and me were close. We built docks in Rio and Salvador for years. We were tight. One day, on that goddamn bridge job, one of the locals let a float drift away downriver. Tommy went nuts. Made the guy wade down there after it, Tommy leading him by the ear. I saw what happened next. Croc must’ve been a twenty-footer, maybe twenty-five. Bigger around than a goddamn refrigerator. Vicious bastard. Teeth like railroad spikes. It came up out of the water, that filthy shit-brown water, out of the weeds…” Saks had to stop here a moment, his voice was beginning to waver. His eyes were moist. He breathed in and out very slowly. “Rotten fucking lizard grabbed Tommy around the waist and we all saw it. We heard his bones shatter like twigs. Blood everywhere. Tommy was screaming and screaming. The locals were screaming. I think I was screaming, too.” He licked his lips. “Tommy was a big boy. Six-foot-five, three hundred pounds. All muscle. But to that fucking croc he was a ragdoll. He shook Tommy back and forth until there was no fight left in him. By the time we got down there, the croc had dragged Tommy downriver. I saw it drag him under. I saw one of Tommy’s arms flapping before it went under like he was saying goodbye.”

After a moment of silence, George said, “Did you find him?”

“No. Never found so much as his hat. The croc never came back.”

“I didn’t come down here to be eaten,” Menhaus pouted.

“Me either,” Fabrini said. “Fuck that.”

“A caiman,” Cushing said. “It was probably a caiman. A big one. A Black Caiman.”