The Testament Read online

  He was having coffee with his wife, making plans for last-minute shopping, and Nate was again grateful that he was out of the country, away from the holiday frenzy. It was cold and sleeting along the mid-Atlantic. Nate assured him he was still together; no problems.

  He had stopped the slide, he thought. He had awakened with fresh resolve and strength; it had only been a passing moment of weakness. So he didn’t mention it to Sergio. He should have, but why worry him now?

  As they talked, the sun slipped behind a dark cloud, and a few scattered raindrops fell around Nate. He hardly noticed. He hung up after the standard “Merry Christmas.”

  The pilot announced he was ready. “Do you feel safe?” Nate asked Jevy as they loaded the briefcase and a backpack.

  Jevy laughed, and said, “No problem. This man has four small children, and a pretty wife, so he says. Why would he risk his life?”

  Jevy wanted to take flying lessons, so he volunteered to take the right seat, next to Milton. It was fine with Nate. He sat behind them in a small cramped seat, his belt and shoulder straps fastened as snug as possible. The engine started with some reluctance, too much in Nate’s opinion, and the small cabin was an oven until Milton opened his window. The backdraft from the propeller helped them breathe. They taxied and bounced across the tarmac to the end of the runway. Clearance was not a problem because there was no other traffic. When they lifted off, Nate’s shirt was stuck to his chest and sweat ran down his neck.

  Corumbá was instantly beneath them. It looked prettier from the air, with its neat rows of small houses on streets that all appeared to be smooth and orderly. Downtown was busy now, with cars waiting in traffic and pedestrians darting across the streets. The city was on a bluff with the river below it. They followed the river north, climbing slowly as Corumbá faded behind. There were scattered clouds and light turbulence.

  At four thousand feet, the majesty of the Pantanal suddenly appeared as they passed through a large, ominous cloud. To the east and north, a dozen small rivers spun circles around and through each other, going nowhere, linking each marsh to a hundred others. Because of the floods, the rivers were full and in many places ran together. The water had differing shades. The stagnant marshes were dark blue, almost black in some places where the weeds were thick. The deeper ponds were green. The smaller tributaries carried a reddish dirt, and the great Paraguay was full and as brown as malted chocolate. On the horizon, as far as the eye could see, all water was blue and all earth was green.

  While Nate looked to the east and north, his two companions were looking to the west, to the distant mountains of Bolivia. Jevy pointed, catching Nate’s attention. The sky was darker beyond the mountains.

  Fifteen minutes into the flight, Nate saw the first dwelling of any type. It was a farm on the banks of the Paraguay. The house was small and neat, with the mandatory red-tiled roof. White cows grazed in a pasture and drank at the edge of the river. The daily wash hung from a clothesline near the house. No sign of human activity—no vehicles, no TV antenna, no electrical lines. A small square garden with a fence around it was a short walk from the house, down a dirt path. The plane passed through a cloud, and the farm disappeared.

  More clouds. They thickened, and Milton dropped to three thousand feet to stay below them. Jevy told him that it was a sightseeing mission, so stay as low as possible. The first Guató settlement was about an hour from Corumbá.

  They veered away from the river for a few minutes, and in doing so flew over a fazenda. Jevy folded his map, drew a circle around something, and thrust it back to Nate. “Fazenda da Prata,” he said, then pointed below. On the map, the fazendas were all named, as if they were grand estates. On the ground, Fazenda da Prata was not much bigger than the first farm Nate had seen. There were more cows, a couple of small outbuildings, a slightly larger house, and a long straight belt of land that Nate finally realized was the airstrip. There was no river close by, and certainly no roads. Access was only by air.

  Milton was increasingly worried about the dark sky to the west. It was moving east, they were moving north; a meeting seemed inevitable. Jevy leaned back and shouted, “He doesn’t like that sky over there.”

  Nor did Nate, but he wasn’t the pilot. He shrugged because he could think of no other response.

  “We’ll watch it for a few minutes,” Jevy said. Milton wanted to go home. Nate wanted to at least see the Indian villages. He still held the faint hope that he could somehow fly in to meet Rachel, and perhaps whisk her away to Corumbá, where they could have lunch in a nice café and discuss her father’s estate. Faint hopes, and rapidly fading.

  A helicopter was not out of the question. The estate could certainly afford it. If Jevy could find the right village, and the right spot to make a landing, Nate would rent a chopper in an instant.

  He was dreaming.

  Another small fazenda, this one a short distance from the Paraguay River. Raindrops began hitting the windows of the plane, and Milton dropped to two thousand feet. An impressive row of mountains was to the left, much nearer, with the river snaking its way through the dense forests at their base.

  From over the mountaintops, the storm rushed at them with a fury. The sky was suddenly much darker; the winds jolted the Cessna. It dipped sharply, causing Nate’s head to hit the top of the cabin. He was instantly terrified.

  “We’re turning around,” Jevy shouted back. His voice lacked the calmness Nate would’ve preferred. Milton was stonefaced, but the cool aviator’s sunshades were gone, and sweat covered his forehead. The plane veered hard to the right, east then southeast, and as it completed its southward turn, a sickening sight awaited them. The sky toward Corumbá was black.

  Milton wanted no part of it. He quickly turned east, and said something to Jevy.

  “We can’t go to Corumbá,” Jevy yelled to the rear seat. “He wants to look for a fazenda. We’ll land and wait for the storm to pass.” His voice was high and anxious, his accent much thicker.

  Nate nodded as best he could. His head was bobbing and bouncing, and aching from the first crack into the ceiling. And his stomach was beginning to rumble.

  For a few minutes it seemed as though the race would be won by the Cessna. Surely, Nate thought, an airplane of any size can outrun a storm. He rubbed the crown of his head, and decided against looking behind them. But the dark clouds were coming from the sides now.

  What kind of backward, half-ass pilot takes off without checking the radar? On the other hand, the radar, if they even had it, was probably twenty years old and unplugged for the holidays.

  The rain peppered the aircraft. The winds howled around it. The clouds boiled past it. The storm caught and overtook them, and the small plane was yanked and thrust up and down and pushed from side to side. For a very long two minutes Milton was unable to fly it because of the turbulence. He was riding a bronco, not flying an airplane.

  Nate was looking out his window, and seeing nothing, no water or marshes or nice little fazendas with long airstrips. He slumped even lower. He locked his teeth and vowed that he would not vomit.

  An air pocket dropped the plane a hundred feet in less than two seconds, and all three men yelled something. Nate’s was a very loud “Oh shit!” His Brazilian buddies cursed in Portuguese. The exclamations were wrapped in heavy layers of fear.

  There was a break, a very quick one in which the air was still. Milton pushed the control yoke forward and began a nosedive. Nate braced himself with both hands on the back of Milton’s seat, and for the first and hopefully only time in his life he felt like a kamikaze pilot. His heart was racing and his stomach was in his throat. He closed his eyes and thought of Sergio, and of the yoga instructor at Walnut Hill who’d taught him prayer and meditation. He tried to meditate and he tried to pray, but it was impossible trapped in a falling airplane. Death was only seconds away.

  A thunderclap just above the Cessna stunned them, like a shotgun in a dark room, and it shook them to their bones. Nate’s eardrums practically bur
st.

  The dive ended at five hundred feet as Milton fought the winds and leveled off. “Look for a fazenda!” Jevy yelled from the front, and Nate, reluctantly, peeked out the window. The earth below was being pelted by rain and wind. The trees swayed and the small ponds had whitecaps. Jevy scanned a map, but they were hopelessly lost.

  The rain came in white sheets that cut visibility to only a few hundred feet. At times, Nate could barely see the ground. They were surrounded by torrents of rain, all being blown sideways by a brutal wind. Their little plane was being tossed about like a kite. Milton fought the controls while Jevy looked desperately in all directions. They were not going down without a fight.

  But Nate gave up. If they couldn’t see the ground, how could they expect to land safely? The worst of the storm had yet to catch them. It was over.

  He would not plea bargain with God. This was what he deserved for the life he had led. Hundreds of people die in plane crashes every year; he was no better.

  He caught a glimpse of a river, just under them, and he suddenly remembered the alligators and anacondas. He was horrified by the thought of crash landing in a swamp. He saw himself badly injured but not dead, clinging to life, fighting for survival, trying to get the damned satellite phone to work while at the same time fending off hungry reptiles.

  Another thunderclap shook the cabin, and Nate decided to fight after all. He searched the ground in a vain attempt to find a fazenda. A flash of lightning blinded them for a second. The engine sputtered and almost stalled, then caught itself and rattled away. Milton dropped to four hundred feet, a safe altitude under normal circumstances. At least there were no hills or mountains to worry about in the Pantanal.

  Nate pulled his shoulder harness even tighter, then vomited between his legs. He felt no disgrace in doing so. He felt nothing but utter terror.

  Darkness engulfed them. Milton and Jevy yelled back and forth as they bounced and fought to control the airplane. Their shoulders hit and rubbed together. The map was stuck between Jevy’s legs, totally useless.

  The storm moved under them. Milton descended to two hundred feet, where the ground could be seen in patches. A gust blew them sideways, literally yanking the Cessna to one side, and Nate realized how helpless they were. He saw a white object below, and yelled and pointed, “A cow! A cow!” Jevy screamed the translation to Milton.

  They dropped through the clouds at eighty feet, in a blinding rain, and flew directly over the red roof of a house. Jevy yelled again, and pointed to something on his side of the plane. The airstrip looked to be the length of a nice suburban driveway, dangerous even in good weather. It didn’t matter. They had no choice. If they crashed, at least there were people nearby.

  They had spotted the strip too late to land with the wind, so Milton muscled the plane around for a landing into the face of the storm. The wind slapped the Cessna around and practically stalled it. The rain reduced visibility to almost nothing. Nate leaned over for a look at the runway, and saw only the water drenching the windshield.

  At fifty feet, the Cessna was blown sideways. Milton fought it back into position. Jevy yelled, “Vaca! Vaca!” Nate immediately understood that vaca meant cow. Nate saw it too. They missed the first one.

  In the flash of images before they hit, Nate saw a boy with a stick running through tall grass, soaking wet and frightened. And he saw a cow running away from the airstrip. He saw Jevy brace himself while staring through the windshield, eyes wild, mouth open but no words coming out.

  They slammed into the grass, but kept moving forward. It was a landing, not a crash, and in that split second Nate hoped they would not die. Another gust lifted them ten feet into the air, then they hit again.

  “Vaca! Vaca!”

  The propeller ripped into a large, curious, stationary cow. The plane flipped violently, all windows bursting outward, all three men screaming their last words.

  ________

  NATE WOKE up sideways, covered in blood, scared beyond words, but very much alive and suddenly aware that it was still raining. The wind howled through the plane. Milton and Jevy were tangled on top of each other, but moving too and trying to get themselves unbuckled.

  Nate found a window and stuck his head out. The Cessna was on its side, with a wing cracked and folded under the cabin. Blood was everywhere, but it was from the cow, not the passengers. The rain, still coming down in sheets, was quickly washing it away.

  The boy with the stick led them to a small stable near the airstrip. Out of the storm, Milton dropped to his knees and mumbled an earnest little prayer to the Virgin Mary. Nate watched, and sort of prayed along with him.

  There were no serious injuries. Milton had a slight cut on his forehead. Jevy’s right wrist was swelling. More soreness would come later.

  They sat in the dirt for a long time, watching the rain, hearing the wind, thinking of what could’ve been, saying nothing.

  THIRTEEN

  _____________

  THE OWNER of the cow appeared an hour or so later, as the storm began to subside and the rain stopped for a moment. He was barefoot, clad in faded denim shorts and a threadbare Chicago Bulls tee shirt. Marco was his name, and Marco was not filled with holiday cheer.

  He sent the boy away, then began a heated discussion with Jevy and Milton about the value of the cow. Milton was more concerned about his airplane, Jevy with his swollen wrist. Nate stood by the window and wondered exactly how it came to be that he was presently in the middle of the Brazilian outback on Christmas Eve in a smelly manger, sore and bruised, covered with the blood of a cow, listening to three men argue in a foreign tongue, and lucky to be alive. There were no clear answers.

  Judging by the other cows grazing nearby, they couldn’t be worth much. “I’ll pay for the damned thing,” Nate said to Jevy.

  Jevy asked the man how much, then said, “A hundred reais.”

  “Does he take American Express?” Nate asked, but the humor missed its mark. “I’ll pay it.” A hundred bucks. He’d pay that much just for Marco to stop griping.

  The deal was sealed, and the man became their host. He led them to his house, where lunch was being prepared by a short barefoot woman who smiled and welcomed them profusely. For obvious reasons, guests were unheard of in the Pantanal, and when they realized Nate was from the States they sent for the kids. The boy with the stick had two brothers, and their mother told them to examine Nate because he was an American.

  She took the men’s shirts and soaked them in a basin filled with soap and rainwater. They ate rice and black beans around a small table, bare-chested and unconcerned about it. Nate was proud of his toned biceps and flat stomach. Jevy had the cut look of a serious weightlifter. Poor Milton showed the signs of rapidly approaching middle age, but clearly didn’t care.

  The three said little over lunch. The horror of the crash was still fresh. The children sat on the floor beside the table, eating flat bread and rice, watching every move Nate made.

  There was a small river a quarter of a mile down the trail, and Marco had a boat with a motor. The Paraguay River was five hours away. Maybe he had enough gasoline, maybe he didn’t. But it would be impossible with all three men in the boat.

  When the sky cleared, Nate and the children walked to the wrecked plane and removed his briefcase. Along the way he taught them to count to ten in English. And they taught him in Portuguese. They were sweet boys, terribly shy at first but warming to Nate by the minute. It was Christmas Eve, he reminded himself. Did Santa visit the Pantanal? No one seemed to be expecting him.

  On a smooth flat stump in the front yard, Nate carefully unpacked and arranged the satellite phone. The receiving dish was a square foot in size, and the phone itself was no larger than a compact laptop. A cord connected the two. Nate turned on the power, punched in his ID and PIN numbers, then slowly turned the dish until it picked up the signal from the Astar-East Satellite, a hundred miles above the Atlantic, hovering somewhere near the equator. The signal was strong, a steady beep confirm
ed it, and Marco and the rest of his family huddled even closer around Nate. He wondered if they’d ever seen a phone.

  Jevy called out the numbers to Milton’s home in Corumbá. Nate pressed them slowly, then held his breath and waited. If the call did not work, they were simply stuck with Marco and family for Christmas. The house was small; Nate was assuming he’d sleep in the stable. Perfect.

  Plan B was to send Jevy and Marco in the boat. It was almost 1 P.M. Five hours to the Paraguay would put them there just before dark, assuming there was enough gas. Once on the big river, they would then be faced with the task of finding help, and this could take hours. If there wasn’t enough gas, they would be stranded deep in the Pantanal. Jevy had not vetoed this plan outright, but no one was pushing it.

  There were other factors. Marco was reluctant to leave this late in the day. Normally, when he went to the Paraguay to trade, he left at sunrise. And while there was a chance he could find extra gas from a neighbor an hour away, this was far from certain.

  “Oi,” came a female voice over the speaker, and everyone smiled. Nate handed the phone to Milton, who said hello to his wife, then slid into a sad narrative about their plight. Jevy whispered a translation to Nate. The children marveled at the English.

  The conversation grew tense, then suddenly stopped. “She’s looking for a phone number,” Jevy explained. The number came across, that of a pilot Milton knew. He promised to be home for dinner and hung up.

  The pilot wasn’t home. His wife said he was in Campo Grande on business, and should return by dark. Milton explained where he was, and she found more phone numbers where her husband might be reached.

  “Ask him to talk fast,” Nate said as he punched in another number. “This battery doesn’t last forever.”

  No answer to the next number. To the next, the pilot came to the phone and was explaining that his airplane was being repaired when the signal was interrupted.

  The clouds were back.

  Nate looked at the darkening sky in disbelief. Milton was on the verge of tears.

  ________

  IT WAS a quick shower, a cool rain the children played in while the adults sat on the porch and watched them in silence.

  Jevy had another plan. There was an army base on the edge of Corumbá. He had not been stationed there, but he lifted weights with several of the officers. When the sky was clear again, they returned to the stump and huddled around the phone. Jevy called a friend who found phone numbers.

  The army had helicopters. It was, after all, a plane crash. When the second officer answered the phone, Jevy rapidly explained what had happened and asked for help.

  Watching Jevy’s end of the conversation was torture for Nate. He understood not a word, but the body language told the story. Smiles and frowns, urgings and pleas, frustrating pauses, then the repetition of things already said.

  When Jevy finished, he said to Nate, “He will call his commandant. He wants me to call back in an hour.”

  An hour seemed like a week. The sun returned and baked the wet grass. The humidity was thick. Still shirtless, Nate began to feel the stinging of a sunburn.

  They retired to the shade of a tree to escape the sun. The madam checked on their shirts, which had been left hanging during the last shower and were still wet.

  Jevy and Milton had skin several shades darker than Nate’s, and they were unconcerned about the sun. It didn’t bother Marco either, and the three of them walked to the airplane to inspect the damage. Nate stayed behind, under the tree, where it was safe. The heat of the afternoon was stifling. His chest and shoulders were beginning to stiffen, and the idea of a nap crossed his mind. But the boys had other plans. He finally got their names—Luis was the oldest, the one who’d chased a cow from the airstrip seconds before they landed, Oli was the middle one, and the smallest was Tomas. Using the phrase book he kept in his briefcase, Nate slowly broke the language barrier. Hello. How are you? What is your name? How old are you? Good afternoon. The boys repeated the phrases in Portuguese so Nate could learn the pronunciation, then he made them do it in English.

  Jevy returned with maps, and they made the phone call. There appeared to be some interest on the part of the army. Milton pointed to a map and said, “Fazenda Esperança,” which Jevy repeated with great enthusiasm. It waned, though, seconds later, then he hung up. “He can’t find the commandant,” he said in English, trying to appear hopeful. “It is, you know, Christmas.”

  Christmas in the Pantanal. Ninety-five degrees with humidity even higher. A scorching sun with no sunblock. Bugs and insects with no repellent. Cheerful little kids with no hope of getting toys. No music because there was no electricity. No Christmas tree. No Christmas food, or wine, or champagne.

  This is an adventure, he kept telling himself. Where’s your sense of humor?

  Nate returned the phone to its case and clamped it shut. Milton and Jevy walked to the airplane. Madam went into the house. Marco had something to do in the backyard. Nate went for the shade again, thinking how nice it would be to hear just one verse of “White Christmas” while sipping a glass of bubbly.

  Luis appeared with three of the scrawniest horses Nate had ever seen. One had a saddle, a cruel-looking device made of leather and wood and resting on a bright orange pad, which appeared to be old shag carpet. The saddle was for Nate. Luis and Oli hopped on their bareback horses without the slightest effort; just a skip and a jump and they were mounted, perfectly balanced.

  Nate studied his horse. “Onde?” he asked. Where?

  Luis pointed to a trail. Nate knew from the pointing over lunch and afterward that the trail led to the river where Marco kept his boat.

  Why not? It was an adventure. What else was there to do as the hours dragged on? He retrieved his shirt from the clothesline, then managed to mount the poor horse without falling off or hurting himself.

  In late October, Nate and some of the other addicts at Walnut Hill had spent a pleasant Sunday on horseback, trailing through the Blue Ridge, taking in the glories of fall. His butt and thighs had ached for a week, but his fear of the beasts had been overcome. Somewhat.

  He fought the stirrups until his feet were stuck through them, then clutched the bridle so tight the animal wouldn’t move. The boys watched with great amusement, then began trotting away. Nate’s horse finally trotted too, a slow rough trot that slapped him in the crotch and bounced him from side to side. Preferring to simply walk, he yanked the bridle and the horse slowed. The boys circled back and walked beside him.

  The trail led through a small pasture and around a bend, so the house was soon out of sight. There was water ahead—a swamp, just like the countless ones Nate had seen from the air. It did not deter the boys, because the trail ran through the middle of it and the horses had crossed it many times before. They never slowed. The water was at first only inches deep, then a foot, then it touched the stirrups. Of course, the boys were barefoot and leather-skinned and completely unconcerned about the water or what might be in it. Nate was wearing his favorite pair of Nikes, which were soon wet.