it’s been weird to follow in my father’s footsteps, like he’s watching over me. Though I can’t tell if he’s proud or if he’s angry that I might accomplish the thing he never got to.
I pause at the end of the runway, looking out at the dark green shock of jungle that starts fewer than a hundred meters away. It’s a common misconception, that the jungle is green. Maybe from up top . . . but at ground level, the jungle is dark, a forbidding, steamy dragon with wisps of smoke drifting up from its skin.
I hear softly crunching footsteps behind me, and I look over my shoulder to see my conversation partner approaching, his darkly-tanned skin already glistening in the morning heat.
“Flavio sent me to say get ready. Your guide’s going to be here soon.”
I nod and turn back to look at the jungle, wondering. I’ve faced harsh climates before. I’ve stood in sandstorms so fierce that they would strip the paint off cars, leaving them gleaming in the sun afterward, and I’ve hurtled down mountains in the face of a blizzard so cold your piss would freeze before it hits the ground.
I’ve faced many things, but am I still strong enough after my time in a suit to face the Amazon and walk out alive?
“You know, I met your father,” my friend says, offering me a bottle of Guarana Antarctica, the local soft drink possibly more popular than Coke. “Here, you’ll need it.”
“You drink a lot of soda,” I note, and the man laughs, nodding. “How’d you know my father?”
“Oh, I worked at a cafe then. I was just a boy. But this norte would come in, he looked like you. Many of us know of the old ways, the people who lived in the rainforest, but their ways have watered down and are lost to time.”
“It’s the way of the world, unfortunately,” I reply, and my friend nods.
“But the norte, he talked like no time had passed, like the history played out before him like a movie only he could see. In some ways, it was inspiring.”
It sounded like Dad, always the storyteller. The one thing he was good at. Although hearing this slightly positive interaction, it’s like a warm twist in the gut. My father could contribute to the world . . . he just never contributed to mine.
My friend and I start walking back, sipping our bottles of Guarana as we do. “So, what do you do when you’re not working here?”
“I have a family in Maraba,” he says, smiling. “I will go back, make sure my son hasn’t driven my wife crazy, and see what the world brings me. You?”
“I have a business in America,” I reply, and the man chuckles. “What?”
“Nothing,” the man says, looking at me with dark eyes. “I feel sorry for you, though. A man’s business cannot be there when he faces The Creator. His family can. Ah . . . your escorts.”
We reach the warehouse where a jeep sits, my bag already waiting in the back. Flavio’s with them, his face amused. “You took your time.”
“Wanted to enjoy my drink,” I reply, lifting my mostly empty bottle. I finish it off and hand it to my friend, who takes it before walking off toward the warehouse while I look at my bag. “You realize I’m going to check it myself?”
“Your choice. The longer you take here, the less time you have out there,” one of my guards says, leaning against the side of the jeep. “You die of heat stroke, not my problem.”
I’ve packed light, and I’m mostly worried about my sat phone, but it looks untouched. Five minutes later, I’m in the back of the jeep, Flavio giving the four of us a goodbye wave as we leave the fenced-in perimeter of the airport.
For the next ten minutes, we make our way down a rutted, rough dirt road that looks like it’s been hacked out of the jungle that presses in on both sides until we come to a tiny village. Everything’s old-fashioned and poverty-strewn, wooden huts with corrugated plastic roofs built on wooden stilts, most of the people shoeless and wearing tank tops or less.
“What do people do here?” I ask, and one of my escorts laughs.
One of the men with me shrugs. “Farmhands, grunt work, whores. The cartel finds quite a few who sell themselves to get out of here.”
The idea of girls selling their bodies to get out of this devastating poverty twists my stomach,