Severna Park - The Cure for Everything

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2024-11-23 0 0 28.17KB 10 页 5.9玖币

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THE CURE FOR EVERYTHING

by SEVERNA PARK

Maria was smoking damp cigarettes with Horace, taking a break in the humid evening, when the truck

full of wild jungle Indians arrived from Ipiranga. She heard the truck before she saw it, laboring through

the Xingu Forest Preserve.

"Are we expecting someone?" she said to Horace.

Horace shook his head, scratched his thin beard, and squinted into the forest. Diesel fumes drifted with

the scent of churned earth and cigarette smoke. The truck revved higher and lumbered through the Xingu

Indian Assimilation Center's main gates.

Except for the details of their face paint, the Indians behind the flatbed's fenced sides looked the same

as all the other new arrivals; tired and scared in their own stoic way, packed together on narrow

benches, everyone holding something -- a baby, a drum, a cooking pot. Horace waved the driver to the

right, down the hill toward Intake. Maria stared at the Indians and they stared back like she was a

three-armed sideshow freak.

"Now you've scared the crap out of them," said Horace, who was the director of the Projeto

Brasileiro Nacional de Assimilação do Índio. "They'll think this place is haunted."

"They should have called ahead," said Maria. "I'd be out of sight, like a good little ghost."

Horace ground his cigarette into the thin rainforest soil. "Go on down to the A/V trailer." he said. "I'll

give you a call in a couple of minutes." He made an attempt to smooth his rough hair, and started after the

truck.

Maria took a last drag on the cigarette and started in the opposite direction, toward the Audio/Visual

trailer, where she could monitor what was going on in Intake without being seen. Horace was fluent in the

major Amazonian dialects of Tupi-Guaraní, Arawak, and Ge, but Maria had a gut-level understanding

that he didn't. She was the distant voice in his ear, mumbling advice into a microphone as he interviewed

tribe after refugee tribe. She was the one picking out the nuances in language, guiding him as he spoke,

like a conscience.

Or like a ghost. She glanced over her shoulder, but the truck and the Indians were out of sight. No

matter where they were from, the Indians had some idea of how white people and black people looked,

but you'd think they'd never seen an albino in their lives. Her strange eyes, her pale, translucent skin over

African features. To most of them, she was an unknown and sometimes terrifying magical entity. To her...

well... most of them were no more or less polite than anyone she'd ever met stateside.

She stopped to grind her cigarette into the dirt, leaned over to pick up the butt, and listened. Another

engine. Not the heavy grind of a truck this time.

She started back toward the gate. In the treetops beyond Xingu's chain-link fence and scattered

asphalt roofs, monkeys screamed and rushed through the branches like a visible wind. Headlights

flickered between tree trunks and dense undergrowth and a Jeep lurched out of the forest. Bright red

letters were stenciled over its hood: Hiller Project.

Maria waved the driver to a stop. He and his passenger were both wearing bright red jackets, with

Hiller Project embroidered over the front pocket. The driver had a broad, almost Mexican face. The

passenger was a black guy, deeply blue-black, like he was fresh off the boat from Nigeria. He gave

Maria a funny look, but she knew what it was. He'd never seen an albino either.

"We're following the truck from Ipiranga," the black man said in Portuguese. His name was stenciled

over his heart. N'Lykli.

She pointed down the dirt road where the overhead floodlights cut the descending dusk. "Intake's over

there," she said in the same language. "You should have called ahead. You're lucky we've got space for

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