Pray for Darkness: Terror in the Green Inferno by James Michael Rice Page A

“What’re you waiting for? Let’s go exploring.”

Twelve
    The man with the pinched brown face and missing front teeth collected his cards from the wooden table and began to arrange them in his callused hands. Sunlight slanted in through the open doorway of the two-storey bungalow, illuminating the flies that spun dizzying circles in its amber beams. The men were playing Golpeado , a local version of rummy. Stumpy fingers shifted the cards back and forth and two bushy eyebrows knitted with the effort of trying to read the cards in the ruddy light. At last, the man’s black eyes sparkled as the meld began to reveal itself, and he knew that he was “going rummy.” He was fifty-three years old and his mop of hair was thick and black, with not a hint of silver. This was Felix, the oldest of the river boat guides.
    Grinning at last, he laid the rummy meld down on the table for the others to see. With a collective groan, the other two men tossed their cards down in disgust. Like Ernesto, Felix was a born member of the Ese Eja tribe and had grown up on the banks of the Amazon. Though the other guides sometimes teased him about his advanced age, they also respected him, and his word was gospel among the young men who sought a better life through the tourist trade. Felix’s fellow players, Felipe and Oscar, were brothers. The man with the toffee-colored complexion, Felipe, was the elder at twenty-five and already had a wife and two children. At just over six feet tall and rippling with lean muscle, he seemed, at first, an imposing figure, though those close to him knew him as an affable person with a penchant for playing practical jokes. Three years his junior, Oscar shared neither his brother’s physique nor his good looks. He was a squat, apelike man with a lazy eye and a large mole on his right cheek, from which sprouted several wiry hairs. Neighborhood bullies had flattened his nose when he was just a boy, and in the onset of adulthood, it gave him the appearance of a brawler. Oscar seldom spoke, and everyone, including his own brother, suspected that he had been born a bit slow.
    Felix laughed and collected his winnings: a pack of cigarettes and a little more than twelve Peruvian nuevos soles . Looking across the table, Felix opened the new pack of cigarettes, making a point to sniff the fresh tobacco just to rub it in. The younger men watched with sad, brown eyes; grumpy with indignation. Felipe muttered something obscene, and Felix laughed. He pulled a few cigarettes from the pack, holding them up as a kind of peace offering, and then pushed them across the table. Felipe and Oscar’s faces broke into sudden joyful smiles. “Gracias, gracias!”
    Felix nodded, getting up from the table. “I’m going for a walk,” he told them. “I will see if I can be equally lucky with a fishing pole. Would anyone like to come?” The two boys looked at him through a cloud of smoke and shook their heads in unison. Felix shrugged. He left the soles on the table; they were good boys, and he trusted that the money would still be there upon his return. Grabbing a beer from a cooler and stuffing it into his pocket, he walked outside into the sunset and headed down the rutted path to the water.
    By the river was a small dock with two canoes and a peki-peki . Off to one side was a small storage shed. Felix lifted the latch and removed his favorite fishing pole, a simple affair he’d fashioned himself, which consisted of little more than a bamboo rod, a rusted reel, and some string. Next, he lifted out a plastic tackle box. After many years beneath the glare of the equatorial sun, the once-vibrant aquamarine had long since dulled to gray. He supposed, in a strange way, the tackle box reminded him of himself: old and worn, yet fully able to serve its function.
    Felix opened the tackle box and hunched over to inspect its contents, eyes straining in the twilight. Inside were all the various tools of his favorite pastime: a variety of