Agapito reached into the shallow pool quivering beneath his feet, cupping his hands around the brown-flecked water that lapped at his toes from the canoe’s bottom. He tossed the water behind him and reached again. The dead ship lay ahead, rusted husk tilted on some unseen sandbar. It was close now.
“Ignacio, row.”
Ignacio, in front, dipped his paddle into the water and pulled back. His thin arms and shoulders bent awkwardly towards the green river and he arched his back, as if the water resisted him with some petulant animosity. Three strokes and Ignacio tired. He shrugged and dropped the paddle in the bottom of the canoe.
Agapito bailed more water.
As long as the back doesn’t tip we’ll be okay, he thought. Clear, frightening droplets leapt through the bullethole in the canoe’s side just right of his foot every time the boat wobbled.
There had been three men — or four, circled on shore around a weak fire. One had pointed, said something, the men had laughed and he had aimed his rifle at them. Carelessly, it seemed, as if shooting birds for sport. He fired. One in the water before them, two behind, and the fourth which pierced the canoe. The men had laughed again. Agapito had looked back, awaiting more shots, but the men already had their backs to him. They wore camouflaged pants and t-shirts — whether they were rebels or out-of-uniform soldiers Agapito couldn’t tell.
“Ignacio. Keep rowing, little brother.” It had been twenty minutes—probably—and they wouldn’t float much longer. Agapito was tired and the river still pumped water through the hole.
How long to the ship? Five minutes? Seven? Enough time, he thought. Keep bailing, keep rowing. He could see a lifeboat sitting intact at the ship’s stern. They would sleep in the ship that night, let the canoe finally sink and set out safe in the lifeboat in the morning.
When the soldiers came to burn their home, grandmother had sent them to find uncle Fidel and his truck in Dingras. They would reach his home tomorrow, drive back up to the village with Fidel and pick her up. All four of them would leave the smoldering village behind. Return to Dingras, live safe again.
“Row, Ignacio.”
Ignacio grasped his paddle like a dagger and stabbed the river, tearing at its belly as he squinted ahead. Green water stretched into forest, green on green, ancient trees exhaling mist that commingled with drooping gray clouds. A sudden flash of red amid the trees, then silence.
“Agapito, did you see that?” The child pointed at the woods but his older brother said nothing.
Two flashes, three — yellow and green and purple, harsh flitting of some animal dodging behind trees in the woods. Ignacio watched, transfixed, the trees seeming to glow orange as the colors raged behind and among them.
“Agapito, do you see it?”
Ignacio saw a bird emerge from the treeline. Its orange beak glowed and yellow crown feathers trailed regally behind, undulating like ribbons along its blue back and purple tail. The air around it crackled like static—bright firecracker pops, smell of sulfur.
“Agapito. Look.”
“I see nothing. Enough with your visions. You see too many things. Keep rowing.”
They rowed in silence until they reached the ship. Agapito stood in the middle of the canoe and lifted his pointy-boned brother onto the ship’s ledge, hopping up after him. The canoe turned over on its side and sank. The river gurgled once and the small boat was gone.
***
Ignacio sat on the ship’s upper deck, near the smokestack, grabbing his knees. A small fire sputtered on the deck before them. Agapito had rekindled the still-warm embers of recent visitors to the decrepit vessel, adding half-dry wood and matches he had found in a storage chamber.
“Ignacio.” The young boy looked up at his brother. “Do you still see things?”
“Yes.”
“What do you see?’
Ignacio gazed past their tiny fire. In the dusk the trees and river seemed to melt together, no demarcation between rippling water and swaying branches. One deep green, one vast ancient swell—river and forest, blurred, indistinguishable.
“Fire. I see fire — orange and red, smoke. Smoke everywhere. It smells like the village, everything is burning. But no one screams here, just fire. And there’s a bird.”
“A bird?”
“He’s huge — bigger than a truck, and he flies. He’s all colors, yellow and orange and green. But there are pops and bangs all around him. Little explosions. I think the men are trying to shoot him.”
“What men?”
Ignacio was silent. Agapito looked up. The treeline was dark, an enveloping green-brown — no colors, no fires, no bird. He watched the boy sadly.
“I need to go check out our lifeboat.”
“No. Stay here.”
Agapito knelt and squeezed Ignacio’s shoulder. “We need to get off this ship tomorrow. Uncle Fidel is close now. I need to look at our lifeboat or else we can’t leave.”
“What if the fires come back?”
“Then you tell me.” Agapito stood and began walking away from his brother, towards the lifeboat.
“What if they shoot the bird?”
Agapito stopped. “They won’t.”
“How do you know?”
“Try to go to sleep. We’ll leave in the morning.”
Agapito turned and headed back towards the stern. He descended a rough iron staircase that led to the ship’s lowest, back-most edge. The boat was upside-down, covered with a plastic tarp. He threw back the tarp, scattering the skeletal rats hiding beneath. It was sturdier than he had feared: thick, strong wood, held together with stout iron bolts.
Grunting, he turned the boat right-side-up. Tomorrow they would just have to push it into the water and they would be on their way again. Now time for sleep, he thought. Agapito laid the tarp over the boat again and was about to head back up the steps when he saw vague shapes approaching on the water.
Orange, with small dark forms on top. A raft. Agapito froze. Soldiers, making their way to the ship from shore. Through the dimness he could make out the inhuman points of their rifles.
He was up the stairs and at Ignacio’s side in a moment.
“Get up, we have to go now.”
Agapito hefted Ignacio to his feet and they ran toward the stern and down the iron steps. Agapito threw off the tarp and they pushed the boat into the water. The elder brother climbed in and lowered Ignacio down second.
Agapito cursed. “The oars. We don’t have our oars.”
He climbed onto the ship and sprinted back to their fire, up the stairs again and across the top deck. He could see the orange raft no longer, but he heard the soldiers talking in the fore. They were on the ship. The oars lay near the fire. He grabbed them, turned, ran back down the steps two at a time. He heard gunshots behind him.The boat had already begun to drift away. He leapt into the river, kicking in the dark water, flailing, arms weighed down by the oars.
He reached the boat and climbed inside, shivering and wet. Ignacio did not move.
“Are you okay?” Agapito asked.
The boy stared into the woods, hands clasping his knees, white-knuckled. He did not respond.
“Are the trees still on fire?”
“Yes.”
“Did they shoot the bird?”
Ignacio shook his head.
“Where is he?”
Ignacio pointed downriver. “He’s above us, down there. Look how bright his feathers are! He’s making sure there’s no danger up ahead. ”
Agapito did not respond for some time. The night was colorless, clouded. He could see no birds.
“Good,” he finally said.
The boys picked up their oars and rowed, dragging the boat through the misty verdure, woods and water and sky the sickly hue of smoke. Their small fire may have burned still near the ship’s smokestacks, but they dared not look back. They glided into the dark, no sound but the gurgle of the river, no smell but the dank sweat of forest.