Blinding Light by Paul Theroux

riverbank and, placing their feet apart, straddling the gunwale and the dock, began hoisting the bags and passing them to the boys on the bank. Standing at the side of a plank, a man helped the passengers ashore.
    â€œThose bowl-shaped haircuts make them look like retards,” Hack said.
    Janey said, “Their hair looks frightfully nagged at.”
    Their mouths hung open, their teeth were small and worn flat, they were listening as much as watching. A naked child-mother clutched a naked baby to her breasts, and the baby, with dangling legs, looked limp and lifeless.
    â€œComo está?
How are you doing?” Sabra asked, and when she got no reply, she said, “Why are they looking at us like we’re monkeys?”
    Seeing that the boat was tipping in the wash of the river’s eddy, one of the Secoya men, wearing tattered shorts with a Polo Sport label, scuttled down the mud bank and seized the noose of the stern line.
    I have never seen a human being move like that, Steadman thought. The man had a skipping bandy-legged stoop-shouldered roll that made him almost invisible for the seconds that he was in motion. He snatched the rope and in the same gesture looped it round a protruding tree root.
    â€œThis man is Don Pablo,” Nestor said.
    Hearing his name, the man hesitated and looked at the passengers in the boat. He gabbled a little over his shoulder to the others crouching and staring on the bank. Some Secoya men murmured softly, their hands out. Hernán handed one of them a blue plastic cooler with a padlocked lid. The women and children said nothing.
    â€œThey sort of hate us, I can tell by their squiffy eyes,” Janey said, fingering her cell phone. “And why do they look so stroppy?”
    â€œWhich one?” Wood asked.
    â€œAll of them. Him—he looks like a wet weekend.” Janey called out to the man, “Oh, do cheer up. It may never happen!”
    â€œBut we’re giving them business, right, Nestor?” Hack called, and turned to help Sabra out of the boat while Wood zipped his duffel.
    On shore, the Secoya women gathered around Sabra, touching the stamp-sized butterfly tattoo on her shoulder, but Sabra hardly noticed.
    â€œThere’s flies all over that kid,” Sabra said.
    â€œHe’s got a discharge, some eye thing, maybe conjunctivitis,” Ava said. “I’ve got some cream for that.” She took a tube from her waist pouch and said,
“Medicina. Crema para los ojos de su niño
"
    â€œLet’s go!” Hack said.
    But the word
medicina
had excited the watching people and they clamored around Ava, plucking at her clothes, until Nestor shouted. At his shouts they stepped back and made room for the visitors.
    Without a word, Don Pablo turned and moved in his peculiar skittering way down the path. The others followed—Manfred up front, kicking leaves and striding to be first, but keeping one finger to hold his place in his big plant guide. Then Wood and Sabra, Hack and laney, Steadman and Ava, and behind them on the forest path the Secoya boys carrying their bags.
    Hack said to Ava, “I saw that medicine stuff back there. Are you in the virtue business? I hate people in the virtue business. Know what I think?”
    â€œWho gives a flying fuck what you think?” Ava said with a smile.
    From behind it seemed that Hack’s ears were reddening. Janey turned, her thumb pressed into her cell phone, searching for a signal, and said, “You can’t save everybody!”
    â€œKnow what, sister? You got vomit on your lips,” Ava said.
    Steadman enjoyed seeing Ava sticking up for herself. She was above all else a doctor, and in a place like this he knew her reasoning, the doctor’s conceit:
In the end you will need me. I have the medicine.
Following them in single file, he wondered whether it was impatience or courage that was driving the others onward. In spite of the chattering in the boat when they had