Nights from This Galaxy by Wil Weitzel

Author:Wil Weitzel
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Sarabande Books

ONE ROAD

It was late and he’d had a few beers when the truck rolled on him, and he ended up nearly upside down with the wheels hung in the air. It was a big rig for such a road. And he was a little drunk. The truth was he’d been making up time after the river crossing and the long dinner he’d had at the rest house on the north bank of the Essequibo River, and now he’d come around a bend too quickly. For a long while, uninjured, Michael lay in the cab across the backrest of the passenger seat, his feet drawn forward to lie poised upon the windshield. His lights were still on. In fact, the vehicle was still engaged in gear. But he was going nowhere.

The forest loomed closely on both sides. His engine had caught and shut off as the truck bellied over, and now the noise of the forest grew loud and insistent. The cry of the screaming piha, high in the overhanging canopy, began as a low whistle that got louder until it came in bursts at the end of each call. It was an astounding sound, one they tried to imitate in the mines. Some of the miners, from Brazil, from Boa Vista and farther to the south, had perfected it. They could arouse an entire tract of forest. Even so, the bauxite mines, having begun in the northeast corner of Guyana, along the Berbice River, had spread their operations. Now small-time gold mining had proliferated. In places along riverbanks where land dredges and mechanized sluices had been set up, first the animals then even the birds had fled. The men, hungry and bored, would hunt out the capybara and the peccary and even shoot at harpy eagles if they found their roosts. Soon, after only two weeks on-site, in many places you could make your call and nothing would answer.

But not here. Along the road you could still see anything, at any time, and the screaming pihas, though nearly invisible, were loud and abundant in the canopy. Michael rose and felt his back which seemed fine, surprisingly intact. He climbed out of the passenger-side window, the plexiglass long gone after so many years, up onto the side of the truck that now faced upper branches and the sky. He climbed out onto the tire then hung down and dropped. He was strong and athletic. While the other men were often fighters at the mines, he was not. He could take punishment though. He prided himself on that. He had never started a fight in his life. But he’d lived through many.

The last pontoon ferry at Kurupukari had been at six p.m. He’d made it north in time for that, coming up from Lethem with full cargo, and then, after the fish and beers, there were several hours of driving in the dark without another vehicle the whole stretch. Then this. The bend in the dirt track had come just after a rise and he’d accelerated to make the grade.

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