The Philosopher's Apprentice by James Morrow Page A

rain forest, we headed south along the wall, the ground beneath our feet dissolving in muck and marsh, the air thickening with bird cries, primate calls, and peppery swarms of gnats. The farther inland we ventured, the more Isla de Sangre revealed itself as a world of great beauty and abiding strangeness. We gobbled trail mix under the watchful eyes of an alligator clan whose title to the surrounding swamp we were not about to dispute, drank cranberry juice by an amber waterfall cascading down a series of ridges like ale spilling from an ogre’s keg, and consumed our lunch near a quicksand bog ringed by astonishing conical blossoms as large and golden as French horns.
    â€œDo you always let Donya cheat at croquet?” I asked, eating the last red grape.
    â€œThe first time we played, she lost and became instantly hysterical,” Henry replied. “She ran into the kitchen screaming, ‘I’m no good! I’m no good!’ If Chen hadn’t intervened, she would’ve cut off her little finger with a bread knife.”
    â€œJesus.”
    â€œShe’s a far more troubled child than she appears. For the immediate future, we’re wiring the game in her favor.”
    â€œOn the day I first met Londa, she tried to kill a carp,” I said in a commiserating tone. I approached the nearest blossom and inhaled its perfume, a heady scent suggesting pumpkin pie topped with mumquat nectar. “We’ve spent the past week acting out ethical dilemmas. I think it’s helping.”
    Henry joined me by the flower, savoring its fragrance. “Oddly enough, the therapy that seems to work for Donya is DVDs of moralistic TV programs.”
    â€œYou mean like Professor Oolong’s Oompah-pah Zoo ?”
    â€œProfessor Oolong rarely addressed matters of right and wrong. We started her out on Mister Rogers’ Neighborhood, and we’ve just added that family-values superhero thing from the Jubilation Channel, The Kindness Crusaders. Sure, they’re grinding the usual salvation ax, but the ratio of ethical signal to evangelical noise is much better than you’d expect. Be gentle, be generous, think of someone besides yourself—who can argue with that?”
    â€œAnd you’ve seen progress?”
    Henry raised his eyebrows and dipped his head. “Before the month is out, I believe that Donya will come to us and say, ‘I know you’ve been letting me win at croquet, and I want you to stop it.’”
    We resumed our trek, eventually reaching the island’s ragged, craggy spine. Here the wall met a second such concrete barrier, angling off abruptly to the right, the juncture reinforced by a sandstone pillar as white and coarse as the saline remains of Lot’s wife. Henry suggested that we had “nothing to gain by staying inside the box,” and I agreed. It took us only a minute to locate an overhanging kapok limb. We availed ourselves of this natural bridge—despite his bulk, my companion was quite agile—crossing over the rampart without mishap and dropping safely to the ground.
    The pillar, we now saw, lay at the hub of three discrete walls. Supplementing the familiar north-to-south barrier were two others, one running southwest along the ridge, its twin coursing southeast into the forest, both stretching past the limits of our vision but seemingly destined for the sea, an arrangement that evidently divided Isla de Sangre into three equal regions. From a frigate bird’s perspective, Henry and I were standing in the cusp of an immense slingshot. We proceeded due south, along the trajectory of an imaginary flung stone, improvising a downward path through a dense and fecund wedge of jungle.
    By midafternoon the forest had turned to scrub, and then a ribbon of gravel appeared, perpendicular to our path. To be sure, we were inclined to follow this unexpected road—it might teach us something important about the island, and its pursuit was