Couch by Benjamin Parzybok

Author:Benjamin Parzybok
Language: eng
Format: epub, mobi
Publisher: Small Beer Press

III. Axis Mundi

Being among the banana trees was like stepping into a steamy and heavily oxygenated greenhouse. Tree and Thom could barely keep their footing among the sinkholes, losing their shoes in the muck, slipping and falling, covered in it up to their knees, the couch changing color in the stew. Erik, cursing, led the way, trying to find drier ground, and then fell back to cover their tracks by laying down banana leaves. They pushed on for hours through the endless plantation, their arms aching, the couch light but ungainly, their optimism draining away. Erik took Tree's end of the couch so Tree could slap at insects. Tree's body was a map of red across his arms and neck.

"Aren't you using that insect repellent?” Erik dug his Ecuadorian loafer out of several feet of mud with a schlock! sound.

"Shh,” Tree said. “Whisper."

"They must really like you."

"Listen.” Thom fanned his jumpsuit and took a bite of a mostly ripe banana he'd found on the ground. “There's got to be a service road. Else how do they pick all these bananas?"

"Huh.” Erik beat his shoe against a tree, dislodging chunks of mud. “I suppose. This is miserable. What have we come, a half mile?” He looked back in the direction of the sea and saw only endless trees. Was that the way they'd come? “I hope we're not going in circles,” he said.

"I hope it's not fifty miles of this until some kind of road,” Thom said.

"We have to stay off the road."

"Tree, we also have to be reasonable, practical. There's no fucking way we're going to get anywhere if we just keep going on like this,” Erik said.

"I think we're walking parallel to a service road,” Thom said. “Just let me scout a bit.” Before they could argue, he set off at a right angle, pushing through the giant leaves, watching warily for any lurking swamp animals. There had to be a road. Or did they just plow these trees down when they harvested? He heard a whop whop whop in the air, a helicopter. Please let it not be insecticide, he prayed and then wondered if it was looking for them. He pulled a shield of banana leaves in front of him. The helicopter hovered close and loud and then was gone. Plantation owner checking his crop, Thom thought. He hoped Erik and Tree had hidden.

He trudged on and found a skinny dirt road running between the trees. It went one or two hundred yards and curved out of sight.

Thom shouted back to Erik and Tree. Had he gone out of shouting range? He'd lost track. He walked back in the direction he'd come. “Hello?” He heard only condensation dripping from the banana leaves. “Hello?” Everything looked the same, trees and mud. Footprints, he thought, but couldn't find any. He'd stepped at the base of the trees to avoid mud and left no prints, or perhaps he'd lost his own trail already. “Hello?” Silence but for the whine of a mosquito.

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