Lucius Shepard - The Jaguar Hunter

THE JAGUAR HUNTER

by LUCIUS SHEPARD (1987)

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ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

Asimov’s Science Fiction Magazine, January 1985.

Asimov’s Science Fiction Magazine, April 1985.

Science Fiction, May 1985.

Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction, December 1984.

Fantasy and Science Fiction, October 1984.

Magazine, April 1986.

Fiction, April 1984.

Science Fiction, December 1985.

Fiction Magazine, July 1984.

-=*=-

For Gullivar

-=*=-

Foreword

Seldom do new writers arrive on the scene -- whether amid the Scotch and evening-wear ads in The

New Yorker or in the grainy double columns of Fantasy and Science Fiction -- with a convincing

command of language, a deft display of storytelling techniques, and an authoritative auctorial presence.

Attention-grabbing newcomers may write like seraphs in disguise. Or they may expertly set you up for

stinger endings that you never expect. Or (the least likely of these three scenarios) they may show you a

hard-won compassion or a with-it worldliness narrowly compensating for their deficiencies as either

stylists or spellbinders.

Rarely, though, will you find yourself reading a newcomer whose work manages to combine all three

of these virtues. The reason is simple: Except for a few literary prodigies who take to it like termites to

timber, writing requires blood, sweat, and tears. It wants not only a developable talent but also a

fingers-to-the-nub apprenticeship that may occasionally prove more humbling than uplifting. Because

most writers begin to sell their work in their late teens or early twenties, they do part of their

apprenticeship in public, keyboarding marginally salable work while struggling to improve their craft and

to grow as persons. Little wonder, then, that neophyte writers produce a catch-as-catch-can commodity,

now singing exquisite arias, now crudely caterwauling -- but even in moments of full-throated triumph

betraying more tonsil than tone, more raw power than rigor.

All of which I note by way of introducing, roundabout, Lucius Shepard -- who, like Athena stepping

magnificently entire from the forehead of Zeus, arrived on the fantasy and science-fiction scene a fully

formed talent. (On the other hand, how long did Athena gestate before inflicting her daddy’s migraine?)

His first stories -- “The Taylorsville Reconstruction” from Terry Carr’s Universe 13 and “Solitario’s

Eyes” from Fantasy and Science Fiction -- appeared in 1983; they showed him to be both an

accomplished and versatile storyteller. In 1984, at least seven more tales (short stories, novelettes,

novellas) bearing the Shepard byline cropped up in the field’s best magazines and anthologies. These

tales displayed a range of experience, and a mature insight into the complexities of human behavior,

astonishing in a “beginner.” In May 1984, his novel Green Eyes appeared as the second title in the

revived Ace Science Fiction Special series; and in 1985, at the World Science Fiction Convention in

Melbourne, Australia, the John W. Campbell Award for Best New Writer went to Lucius Shepard --

with total and therefore gratifying justice.

Okay. Who is this guy? I’ve never met him, but I have read nearly everything he has published to

date. Moreover, letters have been exchanged. (I wrote him one, and he wrote me back.) Beyond these

glancing run-ins, I’ve talked to Lucius Shepard twice, long distance, on the telephone; and all my

not-quite-close encounters with the man have probably given me the mistaken impression that I know

something vital about the person behind the name, when what I chiefly know is really only what you are

going to discover when you begin reading this collection of stories -- namely, that Lucius Shepard

field-marshals the language with the best of them, that he knows not just the tricks but also some of the

deeper mysteries of the trade, and that he has lived long enough and intensely enough to have acquired a

gut feel for the best ways to use his knowledge of both people and craft to transfigure honest

entertainment into unpretentious art. All the stories in The Jaguar Hunter are fun to read, but several of

them -- maybe as many as half -- rise toward the Keatsian beauty and truth of the long-enduring.

How so? Well, Shepard came somewhat tardily to writing (i.e., in his mid- to late-thirties), after a

worldly apprenticeship that included an enforced introduction to the English classics at the hands of his

father; a teenage rebellion against institutionalized learning; expatriate sojourns in Europe, the Middle

East, India, and Afghanistan, among other exotic places; an intermittent but serious commitment to rock

’n’ roll with bands such as The Monsters, Mister Right, Cult Heroes, The Average Joes, Alpha Ratz, and

Villain (“We Have Ways of Making You Rock”); occasional trips to Latin America, where he has

granted Most Favored Hideaway status to an island off the coast of Honduras; marriage, fatherhood, and

divorce; and some stints both employed and unemployed that he may one day decide to narrate in his

autobiography but that I know too little about even to mention in passing. Total immersion in the Clarion

workshop for budding fantasy and science-fiction writers in the summer of ’80 led him to begin testing his

talents, and not too long thereafter his first stories achieved print. In short, Lucius Shepard is so far from

a novice -- although he may yet qualify as a Young Turk -- that even middle-aged professionals with

more than a book or two behind them have to acknowledge him as a peer. Indeed, he has already shown

signs of outright mastery that both humble and enormously cheer all of us who believe in the power of

imaginative fiction to speak to the human heart.

Haunting echoes of the Vietnam conflict reverberate through the distinctive stories “Salvador,”

“Mengele,” and “R&R.” Meanwhile, “Black Coral,” “The End of Life As We Know It,” “A Traveler’s

Tale,” and “The Jaguar Hunter” illuminate this same lush Latin American landscape in a fashion vaguely

suggestive of Graham Greene, Paul Theroux, and Gabriel García Márquez. Nevertheless, Shepard’s

voice remains determinedly his own. In both “The Night of White Bhairab” and “How the Wind Spoke at

Madaket,” he plays unusual variations on the contemporary horror story. In the latter tale, for instance,

he says of the wind, “It was of nature, not of some netherworld. It was ego without thought, power

without morality.” And in the novelette “A Spanish Lesson,” Shepard dares to conclude his baroque

narrative with a practical moral that “makes the story resonate beyond the measure of the page.” My

own favorite in this collection, by the way, is “The Man Who Painted the Dragon Griaule” -- a tale that,

in the indirect way of a parable, implies a great deal about both love and creativity. Seldom, though, do

you find a parable so vivid or so involvingly sustained.

So pick a story at random, read it, and go helplessly on to all the others at hand. Lucius Shepard has

arrived. The Jaguar Hunter beautifully announces this fact.

--Michael Bishop

-=*=-

The Jaguar Hunter

First published in The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction, May 1985.

It was his wife’s debt to Onofrio Esteves, the appliance dealer, that brought Esteban Caax to town

for the first time in almost a year. By nature he was a man who enjoyed the sweetness of the countryside

above all else; the placid measures of a farmer’s day invigorated him, and he took great pleasure in nights

spent joking and telling stories around a fire, or lying beside his wife, Encarnación. Puerto Morada, with

its fruit-company imperatives and sullen dogs and cantinas that blared American music, was a place he

avoided like the plague: indeed, from his home atop the mountain whose slopes formed the northernmost

enclosure of Bahía Onda, the rusted tin roofs ringing the bay resembled a dried crust of blood such as

might appear upon the lips of a dying man.

On this particular morning, however, he had no choice but to visit the town. Encarnación had --

without his knowledge -- purchased a battery-operated television set on credit from Onofrio, and he was

threatening to seize Esteban’s three milk cows in lieu of the eight hundred lempira that was owed; he

refused to accept the return of the television, but had sent word that he was willing to discuss an alternate

method of payment. Should Esteban lose the cows, his income would drop below a subsistence level and

he would be forced to take up his old occupation, an occupation far more onerous than farming.

As he walked down the mountain, past huts of thatch and brushwood poles identical to his own,

following a trail that wound through sun-browned thickets lorded over by banana trees, he was not

thinking of Onofrio but of Encarnación. It was in her nature to be frivolous, and he had known this when

he had married her; yet the television was emblematic of the differences that had developed between

them since their children had reached maturity. She had begun to put on sophisticated airs, to laugh at

Esteban’s country ways, and she had become the doyenne of a group of older women, mostly widows,

all of whom aspired to sophistication. Each night they would huddle around the television and strive to

outdo one another in making sagacious comments about the American detective shows they watched;

and each night Esteban would sit outside the hut and gloomily ponder the state of his marriage. He

believed Encarnación’s association with the widows was her manner of telling him that she looked

forward to adopting the black skirt and shawl, that -- having served his purpose as a father -- he was

now an impediment to her. Though she was only forty-one, younger by three years than Esteban, she

was withdrawing from the life of the senses; they rarely made love anymore, and he was certain that this

partially embodied her resentment to the fact that the years had been kind to him. He had the look of one

of the Old Patuca -- tall, with chiseled features and wide-set eyes; his coppery skin was relatively unlined

and his hair jet black. Encarnación’s hair was streaked with gray, and the clean beauty of her limbs had

dissolved beneath layers of fat. He had not expected her to remain beautiful, and he had tried to assure

her that he loved the woman she was and not merely the girl she had been. But that woman was dying,

infected by the same disease that had infected Puerto Morada, and perhaps his love for her was dying,

too.

The dusty street on which the appliance store was situated ran in back of the movie theater and the

Hotel Circo del Mar, and from the inland side of the street Esteban could see the bell towers of Santa

María del Onda rising above the hotel roof like the horns of a great stone snail. As a young man, obeying

his mother’s wish that he become a priest, he had spent three years cloistered beneath those towers,

preparing for the seminary under the tutelage of old Father Gonsalvo. It was the part of his life he most

regretted, because the academic disciplines he had mastered seemed to have stranded him between the

world of the Indian and that of contemporary society; in his heart he held to his father’s teachings -- the

principles of magic, the history of the tribe, the lore of nature -- and yet he could never escape the feeling

that such wisdom was either superstitious or simply unimportant. The shadows of the towers lay upon his

soul as surely as they did upon the cobbled square in front of the church, and the sight of them caused

him to pick up his pace and lower his eyes.

Farther along the street was the Cantina Atómica, a gathering place for the well-to-do youth of the

town, and across from it was the appliance store, a one-story building of yellow stucco with corrugated

metal doors that were lowered at night. Its façade was decorated by a mural that supposedly represented

the merchandise within: sparkling refrigerators and televisions and washing machines, all given the

impression of enormity by the tiny men and women painted below them, their hands upflung in awe. The

actual merchandise was much less imposing, consisting mainly of radios and used kitchen equipment.

Few people in Puerto Morada could afford more, and those who could generally bought elsewhere. The

majority of Onofrio’s clientele were poor, hard-pressed to meet his schedule of payments, and to a large

degree his wealth derived from selling repossessed appliances over and over.

Raimundo Esteves, a pale young man with puffy cheeks and heavily lidded eyes and a petulant mouth,

was leaning against the counter when Esteban entered; Raimundo smirked and let out a piercing whistle,

and a few seconds later his father emerged from the back room: a huge slug of a man, even paler than

Raimundo. Filaments of gray hair were slicked down across his mottled scalp, and his belly stretched the

front of a starched guayabera. He beamed and extended a hand.

“How good to see you,” he said. “Raimundo! Bring us coffee and two chairs.”

Much as he disliked Onofrio, Esteban was in no position to be uncivil: He accepted the handshake.

Raimundo spilled coffee in the saucers and clattered the chairs and glowered, angry at being forced to

serve an Indian.

“Why will you not let me return the television?” asked Esteban after taking a seat; and then, unable to

bite back the words, he added, “Is it no longer your policy to swindle my people?”

Onofrio sighed, as if it were exhausting to explain things to a fool such as Esteban. “I do not swindle

your people. I go beyond the letter of the contracts in allowing them to make returns rather than pursuing

matters through the courts. In your case, however, I have devised a way whereby you can keep the

television without any further payments and yet settle the account. Is this a swindle?”

It was pointless to argue with a man whose logic was as facile and self-serving as Onofrio’s. “Tell me

what you want,” said Esteban.

Onofrio wetted his lips, which were the color of raw sausage. “I want you to kill the jaguar of Barrio

Carolina.”

“I no longer hunt,” said Esteban.

“The Indian is afraid,” said Raimundo, moving up behind Onofrio’s shoulder. “I told you.”

Onofrio waved him away and said to Esteban, “That is unreasonable. If I take the cows, you will

once again be hunting jaguars. But if you do this, you will have to hunt only one jaguar.”

“One that has killed eight hunters.” Esteban set down his coffee cup and stood. “It is no ordinary

jaguar.”

Raimundo laughed disparagingly, and Esteban skewered him with a stare.

“Ah!” said Onofrio, smiling a flatterer’s smile. “But none of the eight used your method.”

“Your pardon, Don Onofrio,” said Esteban with mock formality. “I have other business to attend.”

“I will pay you five hundred lempira in addition to erasing the debt,” said Onofrio.

“Why?” asked Esteban. “Forgive me, but I cannot believe it is due to a concern for the public

welfare.”

Onofrio’s fat throat pulsed, his face darkened.

“Never mind,” said Esteban. “It is not enough.”

“Very well. A thousand.” Onofrio’s casual manner could not conceal the anxiety in his voice.

Intrigued, curious to learn the extent of Onofrio’s anxiety, Esteban plucked a figure from the air. “Ten

thousand,” he said. “And in advance.”

“Ridiculous! I could hire ten hunters for this much! Twenty!”

Esteban shrugged. “But none with my method.”

For a moment Onofrio sat with hands enlaced, twisting them, as if struggling with some pious

conception. “All right,” he said, the words squeezed out of him. “Ten thousand!”

The reason for Onofrio’s interest in Barrio Carolina suddenly dawned on Esteban, and he understood

that the profits involved would make his fee seem pitifully small. But he was possessed by the thought of

what ten thousand lempira could mean: a herd of cows, a small truck to haul produce, or -- and as he

thought it, he realized this was the happiest possibility -- the little stucco house in Barrio Clarín that

Encarnación had set her heart on. Perhaps owning it would soften her toward him. He noticed Raimundo

staring at him, his expression a knowing smirk; and even Onofrio, though still outraged by the fee, was

beginning to show signs of satisfaction, adjusting the fit of his guayabera, slicking down his

already-slicked-down hair. Esteban felt debased by their capacity to buy him, and to preserve a last

shred of dignity, he turned and walked to the door.

“I will consider it,” he tossed back over his shoulder. “And I will give you my answer in the morning.”

-=*=-

“Murder Squad of New York,” starring a bald American actor, was the featured attraction on

Encarnación’s television that night, and the widows sat cross-legged on the floor, filling the hut so

completely that the charcoal stove and the sleeping hammock had been moved outside in order to

provide good viewing angles for the latecomers. To Esteban, standing in the doorway, it seemed his

home had been invaded by a covey of large black birds with cowled heads, who were receiving evil

instruction from the core of a flickering gray jewel. Reluctantly, he pushed between them and made his

way to the shelves mounted on the wall behind the set; he reached up to the top shelf and pulled down a

long bundle wrapped in oil-stained newspapers. Out of the corner of his eye, he saw Encarnación

watching him, her lips thinned, curved in a smile, and that cicatrix of a smile branded its mark on

Esteban’s heart. She knew what he was about, and she was delighted! Not in the least worried! Perhaps

she had known of Onofrio’s plan to kill the jaguar, perhaps she had schemed with Onofrio to entrap him.

Infuriated, he barged through the widows, setting them to gabbling, and walked out into his banana grove

and sat on a stone amidst it. The night was cloudy, and only a handful of stars showed between the

tattered dark shapes of the leaves; the wind sent the leaves slithering together, and he heard one of his

cows snorting and smelled the ripe odor of the corral. It was as if the solidity of his life had been reduced

to this isolated perspective, and he bitterly felt the isolation. Though he would admit to fault in the

marriage, he could think of nothing he had done that could have bred Encarnación’s hateful smile.

After a while, he unwrapped the bundle of newspapers and drew out a thin-bladed machete of the

sort used to chop banana stalks, but which he used to kill jaguars. Just holding it renewed his confidence

and gave him a feeling of strength. It had been four years since he had hunted, yet he knew he had not

lost the skill. Once he had been proclaimed the greatest hunter in the province of Nueva Esperanza, as

had his father before him, and he had not retired from hunting because of age or infirmity, but because the

jaguars were beautiful, and their beauty had begun to outweigh the reasons he had for killing them. He

had no better reason to kill the jaguar of Barrio Carolina. It menaced no one other than those who hunted

it, who sought to invade its territory, and its death would profit only a dishonorable man and a shrewish

wife, and would spread the contamination of Puerto Morada. And besides, it was a black jaguar.

“Black jaguars,” his father had told him, “are creatures of the moon. They have other forms and

magical purposes with which we must not interfere. Never hunt them!”

His father had not said that the black jaguars lived on the moon, simply that they utilized its power; but

as a child, Esteban had dreamed about a moon of ivory forests and silver meadows through which the

jaguars flowed as swiftly as black water; and when he had told his father of the dreams, his father had

said that such dreams were representations of a truth, and that sooner or later he would discover the truth

underlying them. Esteban had never stopped believing in the dreams, not even in face of the rocky, airless

place depicted by the science programs on Encarnación’s television: That moon, its mystery explained,

was merely a less enlightening kind of dream, a statement of fact that reduced reality to the knowable.

But as he thought this, Esteban suddenly realized that killing the jaguar might be the solution to his

problems, that by going against his father’s teaching, that by killing his dreams, his Indian conception of

the world, he might be able to find accord with his wife’s; he had been standing halfway between the two

conceptions for too long, and it was time for him to choose. And there was no real choice. It was this

world he inhabited, not that of the jaguars; if it took the death of a magical creature to permit him to

embrace as joys the television and trips to the movies and a stucco house in Barrio Clarín, well, he had

faith in this method. He swung the machete, slicing the dark air, and laughed. Encarnación’s frivolousness,

his skill at hunting, Onofrio’s greed, the jaguar, the television... all these things were neatly woven

together like the elements of a spell, one whose products would be a denial of magic and a furthering of

the unmagical doctrines that had corrupted Puerto Morada. He laughed again, but a second later he

chided himself: It was exactly this sort of thinking he was preparing to root out.

-=*=-

Esteban waked Encarnación early the next morning and forced her to accompany him to the

appliance store. His machete swung by his side in a leather sheath, and he carried a burlap sack

containing food and the herbs he would need for the hunt. Encarnación trotted along beside him, silent,

her face hidden by a shawl. When they reached the store, Esteban had Onofrio stamp the bill PAID IN

FULL, then he handed the bill and the money to Encarnación.

“If I kill the jaguar or if it kills me,” he said harshly, “this will be yours. Should I fail to return within a

week, you may assume that I will never return.”

She retreated a step, her face registering alarm, as if she had seen him in a new light and understood

the consequences of her actions; but she made no move to stop him as he walked out the door.

Across the street, Raimundo Esteves was leaning against the wall of the Cantina Atómica, talking to

two girls wearing jeans and frilly blouses; the girls were fluttering their hands and dancing to the music that

issued from the cantina, and to Esteban they seemed more alien than the creature he was to hunt.

Raimundo spotted him and whispered to the girls; they peeked over their shoulders and laughed. Already

angry at Encarnación, Esteban was washed over by a cold fury. He crossed the street to them, rested his

hand on the hilt of the machete, and stared at Raimundo; he had never before noticed how soft he was,

how empty of presence. A crop of pimples straggled along his jaw, the flesh beneath his eyes was

pocked by tiny indentations like those made by a silversmith’s hammer, and, unequal to the stare, his

eyes darted back and forth between the two girls.

Esteban’s anger dissolved into revulsion. “I am Esteban Caax,” he said. “I have built my own house,

tilled my soil, and brought four children into the world. This day I am going to hunt the jaguar of Barrio

Carolina in order to make you and your father even fatter than you are.” He ran his gaze up and down

Raimundo’s body, and, letting his voice fill with disgust, he asked, “Who are you?”

Raimundo’s puffy face cinched in a knot of hatred, but he offered no response. The girls tittered and

skipped through the door of the cantina; Esteban could hear them describing the incident, laughter, and

he continued to stare at Raimundo. Several other girls poked their heads out the door, giggling and

whispering. After a moment Esteban spun on his heel and walked away. Behind him there was a chorus

of unrestrained laughter, and a girl’s voice called mockingly, “Raimundo! Who are you?” Other voices

joined in, and it soon became a chant.

-=*=-

Barrio Carolina was not truly a barrio of Puerto Morada; it lay beyond Punta Manabique, the

southernmost enclosure of the bay, and was fronted by a palm hammock and the loveliest stretch of

beach in all the province, a curving slice of white sand giving way to jade-green shallows. Forty years

before, it had been the headquarters of the fruit company’s experimental farm, a project of such vast

scope that a small town had been built on the site: rows of white frame houses with shingle roofs and

screen porches, the kind you might see in a magazine illustration of rural America. The company had

touted the project as being the keystone of the country’s future and had promised to develop high-yield

crops that would banish starvation; but in 1947 a cholera epidemic had ravaged the coast, and the town

had been abandoned. By the time the cholera scare had died down, the company had become well

entrenched in national politics and no longer needed to maintain a benevolent image; the project had been

dropped and the property abandoned until -- in the same year that Esteban had retired from hunting --

developers had bought it, planning to build a major resort. It was then the jaguar had appeared. Though it

had not killed any of the workmen, it had terrorized them to the point that they had refused to begin the

job. Hunters had been sent, and these the jaguar had killed. The last party of hunters had been equipped

with automatic rifles, all manner of technological aids; but the jaguar had picked them off one by one, and

this project, too, had been abandoned. Rumor had it that the land had recently been resold (now Esteban

knew to whom), and that the idea of a resort was once more under consideration.

The walk from Puerto Morada was hot and tiring, and upon arrival Esteban sat beneath a palm and

ate a lunch of cold banana fritters. Combers as white as toothpaste broke on the shore, and there was no

human litter, just dead fronds and driftwood and coconuts. All but four of the houses had been

swallowed by the jungle, and only sections of those four remained visible, embedded like moldering gates

in a blackish green wall of vegetation. Even under the bright sunlight, they were haunted looking: their

screens ripped, boards weathered gray, vines cascading over their façades. A mango tree had sprouted

from one of the porches, and wild parrots were eating its fruit. He had not visited the barrio since

childhood: The ruins had frightened him then, but now he found them appealing, testifying to the dominion

of natural law. It distressed him that he would help transform it all into a place where the parrots would

be chained to perches and the jaguars would be designs on tablecloths, a place of swimming pools and

tourists sipping from coconut shells. Nonetheless, after he had finished lunch, he set out to explore the

jungle and soon discovered a trail used by the jaguar: a narrow path that wound between the vine-matted

shells of the houses for about a half mile and ended at the Río Dulce. The river was a murkier green than

the sea, curving away through the jungle walls; the jaguar’s tracks were everywhere along the bank,

especially thick upon a tussocky rise some five or six feet above the water. This baffled Esteban. The

jaguar could not drink from the rise, and it certainly would not sleep there. He puzzled over it awhile, but

eventually shrugged it off, returned to the beach, and, because he planned to keep watch that night, took

a nap beneath the palms.

Some hours later, around midafternoon, he was started from his nap by a voice hailing him. A tall,

slim, copper-skinned woman was walking toward him, wearing a dress of dark green -- almost the exact

color of the jungle walls -- that exposed the swell of her breasts. As she drew near, he saw that though

her features had a Patucan cast, they were of a lapidary fineness uncommon to the tribe; it was as if they

had been refined into a lovely mask: cheeks planed into subtle hollows, lips sculpted full, stylized feathers

of ebony inlaid for eyebrows, eyes of jet and white onyx, and all this given a human gloss. A sheen of

sweat covered her breasts, and a single curl of black hair lay over her collarbone, so artful-seeming it

appeared to have been placed there by design. She knelt beside him, gazing at him impassively, and

Esteban was flustered by her heated air of sensuality. The sea breeze bore her scent to him, a sweet

musk that reminded him of mangoes left ripening in the sun.

“My name is Esteban Caax,” he said, painfully aware of his own sweaty odor.

“I have heard of you,” she said. “The jaguar hunter. Have you come to kill the jaguar of the barrio?”

“Yes,” he said, and felt shame at admitting it.

She picked up a handful of sand and watched it sift through her fingers.

“What is your name?” he asked.

“If we become friends, I will tell you my name,” she said. “Why must you kill the jaguar?”

He told her about the television set, and then, to his surprise, he found himself describing his problems

with Encarnación, explaining how he intended to adapt to her ways. These were not proper subjects to

discuss with a stranger, yet he was lured to intimacy; he thought he sensed an affinity between them, and

that prompted him to portray his marriage as more dismal than it was, for though he had never once been

unfaithful to Encarnación, he would have welcomed the chance to do so now.

“This is a black jaguar,” she said. “Surely you know they are not ordinary animals, that they have

purposes with which we must not interfere?”

Esteban was startled to hear his father’s words from her mouth, but he dismissed it as coincidence

and replied, “Perhaps. But they are not mine.”

“Truly, they are,” she said. “You have simply chosen to ignore them.” She scooped up another

handful of sand. “How will you do it? You have no gun. Only a machete.”

“I have this as well,” he said, and from his sack he pulled out a small parcel of herbs and handed it to

her.

She opened it and sniffed the contents. “Herbs? Ah! You plan to drug the jaguar.”

“Not the jaguar. Myself.” He took back the parcel. “The herbs slow the heart and give the body a

semblance of death. They induce a trance, but one that can be thrown off at a moment’s notice. After I

chew them, I will lie down in a place that the jaguar must pass on its nightly hunt. It will think I am dead,

but it will not feed unless it is sure that the spirit has left the flesh, and to determine this, it will sit on the

body so it can feel the spirit rise up. As soon as it starts to settle, I will throw off the trance and stab it

between the ribs. If my hand is steady, it will die instantly.”

“And if your hand is unsteady?”

“I have killed nearly fifty jaguars,” he said. “I no longer fear unsteadiness. The method comes down

through my family from the Old Patuca, and it has never failed, to my knowledge.”

“But a black jaguar...”

“Black or spotted, it makes no difference. Jaguars are creatures of instinct, and one is like another

when it comes to feeding.”

“Well,” she said, “I cannot wish you luck, but neither do I wish you ill.” She came to her feet, brushing

the sand from her dress.

He wanted to ask her to stay, but pride prevented him, and she laughed as if she knew his mind.

“Perhaps we will talk again, Esteban,” she said. “It would be a pity if we did not, for more lies

between us than we have spoken of this day.”

She walked swiftly down the beach, becoming a diminutive black figure that was rippled away by the

heat haze.

-=*=-

That evening, needing a place from which to keep watch, Esteban pried open the screen door of one

of the houses facing the beach and went onto the porch. Chameleons skittered into the corners, and an

iguana slithered off a rusted lawn chair sheathed in spiderweb and vanished through a gap in the floor.

The interior of the house was dark and forbidding, except for the bathroom, the roof of which was

missing, webbed over by vines that admitted a gray-green infusion of twilight. The cracked toilet was full

of rainwater and dead insects. Uneasy, Esteban returned to the porch, cleaned the lawn chair, and sat.

Out on the horizon the sea and sky were blending in a haze of silver and gray; the wind had died, and

the palms were as still as sculpture; a string of pelicans flying low above the waves seemed to be spelling

a sentence of cryptic black syllables. But the eerie beauty of the scene was lost on him. He could not

stop thinking of the woman. The memory of her hips rolling beneath the fabric of her dress as she walked

away was repeated over and over in his thoughts, and whenever he tried to turn his attention to the

matter at hand, the memory became more compelling. He imagined her naked, the play of muscles

rippling her haunches, and this so enflamed him that he started to pace, unmindful of the fact that the

creaking boards were signaling his presence. He could not understand her effect upon him. Perhaps, he

thought, it was her defense of the jaguar, her calling to mind of all he was putting behind him... and then a

realization settled over him like an icy shroud.

It was commonly held among the Patuca that a man about to suffer a solitary and unexpected death

would be visited by an envoy of death, who -- standing in for family and friends -- would prepare him to

face the event; and Esteban was now very sure that the woman had been such an envoy, that her allure

had been specifically designed to attract his soul to its imminent fate. He sat back down in the lawn chair,

numb with the realization. Her knowledge of his father’s words, the odd flavor of her conversation, her

intimation that more lay between them: It all accorded perfectly with the traditional wisdom. The moon

rose three-quarters full, silvering the sands of the barrio, and still he sat there, rooted to the spot by his

fear of death.

He had been watching the jaguar for several seconds before he registered its presence. It seemed at

first that a scrap of night sky had fallen onto the sand and was being blown by a fitful breeze; but soon he

saw that it was the jaguar, that it was inching along as if stalking some prey. Then it leaped high into the

air, twisting and turning, and began to race up and down the beach: a ribbon of black water flowing

across the silver sands. He had never before seen a jaguar at play, and this alone was cause for wonder;

but most of all, he wondered at the fact that here were his childhood dreams come to life. He might have

been peering out onto a silvery meadow of the moon, spying on one of its magical creatures. His fear was

eroded by the sight, and like a child he pressed his nose to the screen, trying not to blink, anxious that he

might miss a single moment.

At length the jaguar left off its play and came prowling up the beach toward the jungle. By the set of

its ears and the purposeful sway of its walk, Esteban recognized that it was hunting. It stopped beneath a

palm about twenty feet from the house, lifted its head, and tested the air. Moonlight frayed down through

the fronds, applying liquid gleams to its haunches; its eyes, glinting yellow-green, were like peepholes into

a lurid dimension of fire. The jaguar’s beauty was heart-stopping -- the embodiment of a flawless

principle -- and Esteban, contrasting this beauty with the pallid ugliness of his employer, with the ugly

principle that had led to his hiring, doubted that he could ever bring himself to kill it.

All the following day he debated the question. He had hoped the woman would return, because he

had rejected the idea that she was death’s envoy -- that perception, he thought, must have been induced

by the mysterious atmosphere of the barrio -- and he felt that if she was to argue the jaguar’s cause

again, he would let himself be persuaded. But she did not put in an appearance, and as he sat upon the

beach, watching the evening sun decline through strata of dusky orange and lavender clouds, casting wild

glitters over the sea, he understood once more that he had no choice. Whether or not the jaguar was

beautiful, whether or not the woman had been on a supernatural errand, he must treat these things as if

they had no substance. The point of the hunt had been to deny mysteries of this sort, and he had lost sight

of it under the influence of old dreams.

He waited until moonrise to take the herbs, and then lay down beneath the palm tree where the jaguar

had paused the previous night. Lizards whispered past in the grasses, sand fleas hopped onto his face; he

hardly felt them, sinking deeper into the languor of the herbs. The fronds overhead showed an ashen

green in the moonlight, lifting, rustling; and the stars between their feathered edges flickered crazily as if

the breeze were fanning their flames. He became immersed in the landscape, savoring the smells of brine

and rotting foliage that were blowing across the beach, drifting with them; but when he heard the pad of

the jaguar’s step, he came alert. Through narrowed eyes he saw it sitting a dozen feet away, a bulky

shadow craning its neck toward him, investigating his scent. After a moment it began to circle him, each

circle a bit tighter than the one before, and whenever it passed out of view he had to repress a trickle of

fear. Then, as it passed close on the seaward side, he caught a whiff of its odor.

A sweet, musky odor that reminded him of mangoes left ripening in the sun.

Fear welled up in him, and he tried to banish it, to tell himself that the odor could not possibly be what

he thought. The jaguar snarled, a razor stroke of sound that slit the peaceful mesh of wind and surf, and

realizing it had scented his fear, he sprang to his feet, waving his machete. In a whirl of vision he saw the

jaguar leap back, then he shouted at it, waved the machete again, and sprinted for the house where he

had kept watch. He slipped through the door and went staggering into the front room. There was a crash

behind him, and turning, he had a glimpse of a huge black shape struggling to extricate itself from a

moonlit tangle of vines and ripped screen. He darted into the bathroom, sat with his back against the

toilet bowl, and braced the door shut with his feet.

The sound of the jaguar’s struggles subsided, and for a moment he thought it had given up. Sweat left

cold trails down his sides, his heart pounded. He held his breath, listening, and it seemed the whole world

was holding its breath as well. The noises of wind and surf and insects were a faint seething; moonlight

shed a sickly white radiance through the enlaced vines overhead, and a chameleon was frozen among

peels of wallpaper beside the door. He let out a sigh and wiped the sweat from his eyes. He swallowed.

Then the top panel of the door exploded, shattered by a black paw. Splinters of rotten wood flew

into his face, and he screamed. The sleek wedge of the jaguar’s head thrust through the hole, roaring. A

gateway of gleaming fangs guarding a plush red throat. Half-paralyzed, Esteban jabbed weakly with the

machete. The jaguar withdrew, reached in with its paw, and clawed at his leg. More by accident than

design, he managed to slice the jaguar, and the paw, too, was withdrawn. He heard it rumbling in the

front room, and then, seconds later, a heavy thump against the wall behind him. The jaguar’s head

appeared above the edge of the wall; it was hanging by its forepaws, trying to gain a perch from which to

leap down into the room. Esteban scrambled to his feet and slashed wildly, severing vines. The jaguar fell

back, yowling. For a while it prowled along the wall, fuming to itself. Finally there was silence.

When sunlight began to filter through the vines, Esteban walked out of the house and headed down

the beach to Puerto Morada. He went with his head lowered, desolate, thinking of the grim future that

awaited him after he returned the money to Onofrio: a life of trying to please an increasingly shrewish

Encarnación, of killing lesser jaguars for much less money. He was so mired in depression that he did not

notice the woman until she called to him. She was leaning against a palm about thirty feet away, wearing a

filmy white dress through which he could see the dark jut of her nipples. He drew his machete and

backed off a pace.

“Why do you fear me, Esteban?” she called, walking toward him.

Lucius Shepard - The Jaguar Hunter

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