School accessories
I stood up. My knees were wet from the foliage and my fingers were covered in the soft soil but I didn't care. Juanes stood beside me with a wide smile spread across his face. It was ready. There was a roof and the walls and we even made a door but the thing I was the most proud of was the floor. A nice hard surface, something sturdy. Nothing had been sturdy for the last two weeks.
Juanes had taught me about the jungle in the evenings when we were waiting for the baboons. He's told me about the way you can tell which plants are poisonous and which are not and how you could find your way back if you get lost. You have to pay attention to the small branches and broken leaves. As a westerner I was bound to leave lots of those. I would have been so lost without Juanes.
The baboons came every day in the evening when it stopped raining. That's when they were hungry. They'd smelled the meat we cooked and even if we didn't cook anything on the fire they came. They were very aggressive but we managed to drive them away, first with the flares from the plane and when they ran out we just had to count on throwing sticks and being very loud. I just copied what Juanes did. He seemed to have some idea of how to deal with them.
Eerie noises rang in the jungle at night. It never actually got quiet and at night the noise just got louder. Some of the crickets were bad but I was alright with them. It was the occasional screeches of birds in the distance that got to me. At first I thought they were people screaming but Juanes calmed me down. He said that the things I should really be scared of are the ones that make little or no noise at all.
I had grown a great respect towards Juanes during the two weeks we'd been there. I had met him as a superior. He was there to do the work and I was making sure he didn't go doing anything stupid. If he would have done something stupid I had the power to kill him. Probably some of the other workers on the plantation would have gotten to him before I would've. I wonder if he had a choice or was his family at gunpoint like so many others. I didn't even know if he had a family. I didn't know much about him at all.
From that day on life got a bit easier. In the hut we stayed reasonably dry and it was easier to sleep to the sound of rain on the leafcovered wooden roof than on the metallic side of a plane. We carried the equipment from the plane into the hut and as it was much cosier there, it also was as if we'd given up hope of getting home, in a way. Neither of us never spoke of it but we both knew it was true.
Then one day Juanes came back from fishing and he seemed very excited. He told me he'd found a boat upriver from out camp. We started running and as we ran he told me how he'd found it. He'd been fishing and a peculiar metallic glow in the shrubbery had caught his eye. Suddenly the both of us were filled with hope.
The boat was filled with dark brown water that smelled like sewer. There was a piece of fabric hanging from the front of the boat. Judging by the state of the fabric it had been there for some time now. Juanes said that if we started working we'd get the boat ready by evening.
The boat was big enough for two people. It was a small metal boat with a beaten rusty motor barely hanging on in the back. I started thinking about transporting the drugs. The boat couldn't carry the both of us and the drugs. Juanes could see what I was thinking. He told me we should get away from here first. Maybe later we could return for the drugs.
I was the boss here. This was real world again now. I told him I'd get the drugs out of here first and send somebody back for him later. There was bound to be villages along the river. There always were. Juanes didn't think I was serious but I was. I told him that if he tried to stop me I'd kill him. There was no room for error. He had a gun. Suddenly he was holding it in between us and I backed away. The desert eagle was a very convincing handgun. It certainly made things a lot harder for me.
He was trying to convince me to leave the drugs behind. His voice had a certain sound to it. That sound told me "I will shoot you unless you obey". I'd heard that sound before a few times. It still managed to have the same effect though. I was trying to make him calm but he knew I had been serious and I knew that there wasn't gonna be two men leaving on that boat. Because the other had a hole where their face used to be. I kicked him on the side of his knee and ducked into the bushes behind me. The gun went off but only hit the treetops above us.
The wet branches were slapping against my face as I rushed away from the boat. I could taste iron like I always did when guns were fired. I could hear him behind me. My foot got caught in some roots and I fell down on my face. Adrenaline and Blood were racing each other in my head. Just like when I was a kid, running away from the opposing gang. Running away from the gunfire.
My mouth was full of warm dirt as I stood up. I was holding a piece of root I had randomly grabbed as I fell. I heard sounds coming from my right and I leaned behind a tree to hide. Calming my loud breath seemed impossible. The only way I could stay quiet was by not breathing at all. The jungle seemed so quiet right when I needed the noise.
And there he was. I could hear his careful steps as he tried to stay quiet. He knew I wasn't far. He stood still to catch his breath. I could hear him speaking portuguese very quietly to himself. Then he was moving again. I had no idea which side of the tree he was going to pass me. I held my breath and my heart pounded in my ears. I could see him go past me on the right side of the tree. I held on to the root tighter and tighter.
He heard me as I stepped closer. He spun but stumbled and the gun sipped from his sweaty hand. 4 kilograms of strong mosscovered wood was being hauled into his face with a very high velocity. I could see how surprised he was of the strength. I think I might have broken his jaw. I grabbed the gun as he was falling and shot him in the chest. He spun around and landed in the foliage. I had never shot a desert eagle before and the blow shocked me. The hole in Juanes' shoulder was massive.
The birds were screaming like crazy but I didn't hear anything. It wasn't the gun but the adrenaline rushing in me. I didn't regret. Juanes was just some nameless worker. I was here to make sure the merchandise got delivered and he got in my way. I did exactly what I was supposed to do. I did the right thing.
A broken piece of wood in my right hand and a desert eagle in the other I finally found my way back to the camp. The plane was right next to the hut. The fuselage was badly damaged and bent. The left wing had been torn off in the impact. We had never found it. I went inside and opened the crates. They were full of schoolbags stuffed full of paper. The trick was to find the ones filled with the drugs. I went through all four boxes and manage to find all seven bags. They were dry and unharmed but unfortunately they were really heavy too.
It took me three trips to the boat to get all the bags carried over. It started raining while I was carrying the second load. My ankle was hurting from tripping on the roots before. The boat needed to be emptied. I grabbed the side and tried to lift it. It didn't seem to move at all. I bit my teeth together and tried again. My feet sunk into the soft mud around the boat but I wasn't gonna give up. I let go of the boat and relaxed. I wasn't in a hurry. I could do this.
I gripped the edge of the boat and gave it my best shot. The top of the boat came off and the bottom sunk into the mud. The inside of the boat was badly rusted. The boat was completely unusable. I fell in my knees into the warm mud and tears were running down my cheeks.
I grabbed one of the bags and heaved it into the river. I stood up and kicked one of the bags. My ankle hurt even more but the bag opened and the white bags scattered into the shrubbery. One of the packages was left hanging on a branch slowly pouring out its contents.
That powder was my life. All I'd done in the last ten years of my life was somehow related to that white substance. And there it was. Pouring down and mixing with the mud and the rain. I could hear the baboons in the distance.