that story

for those of you who heard it, and knew i was going to write about it, i finished that story. it put me in a bad mood because it brought all those memories back, but at least it's done. i think it will be a good story. half of it came out really well, and the other half still needs work. i think i'll look at it again in march or something like that.

The Game

The last of the box wine was gone, box wine with sediment in it not like a good old wine but an old not so good wine that leaves your teeth grimy but was all I had, and every muscle in my body ached, but it had been a good Sunday. I thought about the game as I lit another cigarette. We had almost won, gone into penalty kicks even, but they had an unfair advantage, and some on our side, if not more, blamed our goalie threatening to make him swim back.
Before the season we only worked half-days on Sundays, and on most Sundays there was a soccer tournament. This time we were to go to them instead of them coming to us, and we came in large numbers taking 3 boats: the people carrier/cargo mover with 18 people riding low in the water, an aluminum canoe with 10 also riding low in the water, and I was in one of the new bass boats with 7 other people, and we got there first.
The village was Cumarú, and we were to play their first team, and their second team was to play São Louis. Our team was better, and we always won, but this time it was different. They had brought in a professional player from Barcelos to play on their team, and it was he who scored the first goal, but we scored the second. I’ve never seen out team play better, and it would have been terrible if we hadn’t. The ref was one of my guides from São Louis named Guilherme, and when he called time, we were tied.
They were first to shoot, and of course they chose the professional to go first who made it effortlessly in the top left corner. Wilson, our best shooter, aimed for the bottom right, but hit the post. Their second also made his. Our next 2 made theirs with their 3rd having his shot blocked, so we were still in the game. Their 4th shooter, one of their worst, made his, and our fourth hit the top of the goal bouncing out.
We should have won, but we didn’t, and they played a good game even apart from the professional. It just wasn’t our day, and we left before the second match because we needed to get back for dinner. Our boat ran out of gas on the way home because it was new, and we didn’t know its limitations, so the people mover towed us in, and we ate dinner as soon as we got back.
Finally after 7, the generator was turned on for the night, and the tanks were filled, so I could finally take a shower, and a shower has never felt so good.

As Promised: The Ungraceful Money and the one that Purrs

Some of you have pictures in your heads of monkeys swinging gracefully through the trees, a perfection of balance, but that’s most monkeys, and then there’s Konge (pronounced: congee). Konge is a monkey of action, a monkey a few words, and fewer thoughts. Konge jumps first and thinks later, if at all. Konge, a wooly monkey, is the only monkey I’ve ever seen jump for a branch, and miss. Konge has electrocuted himself 3 times because he forgets he can’t swing on the power lines when the generator is on, though every other monkey in camp seems to have figured this out. Konge is definitely a male, you could tell even if you couldn’t see his fairly large monkey balls dangling as he swings furiously from tree to tree. He’s always hanging around the mess hall at meal times, except for breakfast because he doesn’t like to get up early, looking for someone to play fight with. He’ll have his tail wrapped around a branch, hang down, and take a swing at you waiting for you to swing back sometimes grabbing your hand pretending to bite it. He’s a bit of a bully too. He knows the women in camp are afraid of him, so he likes to chase them, though the men he only tries to play fight with. He also likes to pick on Nicolau. He’ll chase him through a tree until he catches him, and they dangle in the air wrestling only attached to the tree by their tails. Konge is twice Nicolau’s size, but in another year or two, Nicolau will be bigger than Konge. I’d like to see how the tables turn then. Konge likes to dangle Nicolau, so he can’t get away while they’re wrestling. Now I would intervene, but most of the time Nicolau isn’t that innocent. To get back at Konge, he sneaks up behind him, and pulls his tail, and of course Konge chases him half of the time catching him.
Like all bullies, Konge is not as brave as he would have you think. While he’ll taunt you from a tree trying to get you to fight, if you catch him by surprise taking a run at him, he lets out a loud monkey wail like you were trying to kill him. It’s really quite funny because he acts so fearless the rest of the time, and even right after an episode like that.
Back to Nicolau, I found out something the other day I had forgotten. He’s the only monkey I’ve known to do this, which is purr. The other day I was sitting at my desk and I thought I heard one of the waiters come into the outer office as they were cleaning the main lodge before the fishermen arrive next week, but the noise stopped and I thought nothing of it until 30 seconds later I heard that familiar cry as Nicolau crawled under my desk and up my chair. I was surprised because he had remembered where to find me. It was quite a trek for him to have come from my father’s house where he sleeps, and to the main lodge into my office. He’s never done that before on his own.
He crawled into my lap and I scratched him, and after a while, he started purring. I had to laugh because it’s funny to think of a monkey purring, and he only does this when he’s sitting in my lap and no one else is around. Well I think that’s enough for now. Back to work again.

The Village Kids

Why they decided this I don’t know, but yesterday all the kids from the employee village took to following me around as I was moving fishing equipment. Maybe it was the combination of a shirtless man who is whiter than anyone else there (I’m still working on my tan) with many tattoos, maybe it was that I was using the Kawasaki mule (the only one at the lodge), maybe they find me curious because I run every evening, which no one else does, or maybe they wanted to ask about my ex-girlfriend who used to run the daycare. Whatever I was, it made me feel uneasy to have 18 little eyes watching whatever I did. One of the little girls rode her bicycle after me as I drove along, and one of the older boys ran after me even following me into the tackle shed as I was stacking rods. Now I have nothing against kids, but I’d rather them not surround me in large numbers, 2 is about my limit, and also, since I didn’t have any of them, I don’t feel like I should have to deal with them or entertain them in any fashion. If by some chance adventure, I do have kids, I will take care of them, but don’t ask me to take care of yours. Sorry about the rant. Tomorrow I will tell more monkey stories. I promise.

The Idiot (quite possibly me)

If you ever pick up The Idiot, don’t do it when your heart is in turmoil. It’s not a good recovery book. No one recovers in that book. Don’t get me wrong, it’s a damn good book, but I have to wonder, was that man, ever happy? Was his Russian sadness so deep that he almost drowned each night to get up each morning to write not quite recovered?
I made that mistake, but now I’m as far from Dostoyevsky as one can get. I brought down The Trial, but I think I’ll pass for now. Kafka’s another one of those you only read a certain times.
Right now I’m reading a fluff book for the first time in years, one that I picked up off the take a book leave a book wall, and I’m getting lost in simple violence and intrigue, nothing complex at all, at least not for a few days. Maybe I’ll read Behan or Forster next, and leave the Russians off for a month.

The Marriage of the Fox

That’s what they call it here when it’s raining and the sun is shining like it was today. It makes me laugh because Raposa, which means fox in Portuguese, is the last name of the mayor up for re-election in Barcelos, the town closest to me where I pick up the fishermen when they start coming in. with a last name like that, you’d expect him to be cunning and sly, a perfect name for a politician, but from what I know of him and my own dealings with him, the name doesn’t quite suit him because he seems to be a fairly honest man, as honest as a man can be in his position, though his son is quite a different matter.
If anyone in town can be considered my rival, it would be he, though I spend more time in his father’s town than he does. He spends a good deal of his time in the city where he can spend a good portion of his father’s money more freely. Only on two occasions have I made his acquaintance, and instinctively I had a dislike for him. I year after our first meeting, I was to know why.
Many would have thought us quite similar, but only in costume are we alike, that and our fathers are both well known in the area. He is of the privileged sort that have never worked a real job, and once he is out of school, his father’s influence will find him a good position that would be hard to fuck up. For this I have no reason to dislike him, but the ground on which my instinctual dislike turned into hate, are too much. If ever I make his acquaintance for a third time, I may have to flee town for I doubt the mayor, if he still is the mayor at such a time, would take kindly to me laying his son out on the sidewalk. Even knowing the consequence would not be enough to keep myself in check.
But why such violence? Well, it happened while I was away for Christmas. The mayor’s son was back in town visiting his father, and became reacquainted with the girl I was with at the time, and had been with for a year and a half, and of course he fucked her. If he had been a serious rival, I wouldn’t have minded as much, but rather it was a caprice. He had a girlfriend at the time, one he is still with, so of course it meant nothing to him.
On the second time of our acquaintance, six months from the first, had I known this, I would have done more than just knock him down, as my tempered desire for satisfaction now requires. No, I only found out several months ago from a friend I thoroughly trust.
And the girl? I do not hate her, as some think I should, for her weakness. She’s still a child at twenty, though she imagines herself more mature. No, I don’t hate her, but am indifferent to her. She closed that door, that will never be opened again.
I saw her last weekend briefly. She found me because I sure as hell wasn’t going after her, and it’s easy to tell when I’m in town, everyone seems to know within half an hour. She held my hand with a certain tenderness like there was still something between us and maybe…
And I? Hardly looked at her, and didn’t say goodbye when she left twenty seconds later. As I write this, a box of her stuff, that she left in my room when we were still making plans together over 6 months ago, lies across the room, the things I packed up yesterday to send to her. That’s it. The end. I’ll have someone drop off the box, and let it end at that.

A Monkey Story (9/18/08-9/19/08)

Nicolau climbed through the hyacinth bushes by the bench outside the employee mess hall, and I wanted to know, did he remember? I called him, and he kept climbing. I went towards him, and he climbed away. Sitting on the bench by the bushes drinking my after dinner coffee some of the guides asked me if he remembered, and I said that I thought not. As I sat listening to how the guides had passed the off-season, he climbed closer. I stuck out my hand, and he grabbed it playfully then retreated. I watched him continue to climb eating flowers and leaves as he went. Then he climbed on the bench, and gave a little monkey squawk. I scratched his head, and he sprawled out on the bench. I scratched his belly, and he put his head in my lap.
Quite different from 6 months ago when he had ridden on my shoulders behind my neck like I was some sort of parent, but now it seemed we were just friends, and I was fine with that. I didn’t need a monkey to raise, but I was glad he hadn’t forgotten.
Today as I was putting my office in order, I heard the caretaker with his leaf blower, and I knew Nico would be following him. At first I couldn’t see him, but then I heard the tree to my left rustle, and I saw him. I called to him, and he looked at me both curious and shy, and finally climbing closer out of the tree, he let out a cry. I stuck out my hand to him, and he climbed on my shoulder, though now he was twice the size of the last time he had been on my shoulders.
I walked inside, and he didn’t run off, so I continued to put my office in order with him on my back until I heard the leaf blower move farther off. Knowing I couldn’t keep him on my back all day and get my work done, I took him out to where the caretaker was blowing cut grass off the walkway. He resisted as I pulled him off my shoulders, but did not bite me as he had used to. He cried like a little baby does imploring its mother to pick it up, but he did not run after me as I walked away like he used to. I turned around to see if I was being followed expecting him to be running on all fours in my shadow hoping I wouldn’t see him, but he was gone somewhere into a tree where I couldn’t see him.
I saw him again after lunch in the bushed by the bench, and he came and sat in my lap as I scratched him. This time he did not cry as I walked away.