Savage (Daughters of the Jaguar) (10 page)

If it was the jaguar that found us because it caught our scent or us that found it, we didn’t know. But suddenly it was there in front of us as we turned a corner. It was snarling while crouching low like it was cornered and ready to jump with the full power of its hind legs. I had read about jaguars in my books and knew exactly how it would act and how it would devour every part of us after killing us with its fierce bite. I had spent hour after hour researching it and imagining the things it could have done to me that night if it had wanted to. If it hadn’t backed out for whatever reason it did.

 Startled by its sudden appearance Jim pointed his rifle in its direction, but he made the mistake not to shoot right away. He froze, maybe from the shock of finally standing face to face with the animal he had looked for for so long, maybe because he got scared.

Once again I was facing the fear of being killed by this beast. It was powerful, this wild creature, and its splendor completely paralyzed me. It was perhaps a hundred and twenty pounds on long and slim but forcefully muscular legs. It let out a huge roar maybe to give us a warning or maybe just because it was afraid of us. It didn’t look scared though. It seemed fiercely ready to fight for its life. All three of us knew that it had only one way of surviving this encounter and that was to attack.

So it did.

It leaped into the air and jumped Jim in one quick movement leaving us no chance to react and causing him to fall to the ground while the rifle went off into the air and was then thrown out of Jim’s hands. Never had I seen a creature this powerful, this big, this filled with the enormous will to survive. It made a frenzy of snarling sounds as it stood over Jim. He shouted and screamed at me in a voice filled with fear. The deepest fear of them all, the fear for his life.

“Shoot! God damn it. Shoot. Kill it!”

The rifle was shaking in my hands. I couldn’t keep it still no matter how hard I tried. I couldn’t aim properly like Jim had shown me in the parking lot just before we went into the swamp. What if I missed? I risked killing Jim.

Jim was fighting the animal with all his strength but was no match for the wild beast. His shoulders were pressed against the ground with its forceful paws as he was scrambling on the ground, struggling to get it off, trying to push it away. Again and again the animal growled and snarled as if threatening to hurt him.

“Shoot it, Chris!” Jim screamed at me.

But I couldn’t. Lord knows I tried all I could. My finger was shaking, hesitating to do the pull. The jaguar was no longer looking at Jim struggling beneath it. It was staring at me. Staring me right into my eyes. And there it was again. This time even stronger than the first time. The feeling that this creature, this predator understood my every thoughts and emotions. That we were somehow connected. I recognized it and knew it was the same animal that had saved me on that night of the attacks. There was no doubt in my mind. And there was no doubt it had saved me on purpose, either. I could tell by looking into its eyes again. There was something there that told me this was no ordinary animal. This creature had known exactly what it did when it attacked those alligators in the water. I thought for a second I was crazy but I felt like it recognized me. Like it knew who I was and remembered having saved me.

In that second I just knew that it wasn’t going to harm Jim either. Not as long as he wouldn’t try and kill it. It was only acting in self-defense.  Slowly and careful not to scare it I lowered the rifle and heard Jim yell at me as I did.

“What are you doing, you moron? Kill it before it kills me!” He was overtaken with fear and anger, I could tell, and I couldn't blame him, but I didn’t care. I put down the rifle slowly to the ground and kneeled on the moist soil to show myself humbled and inferior to the animal. I was trying to speak its language and show it that it had nothing to fear from me.

To the very day today Jim will still claim that he was the one who scared it away, that it had nothing to do with my gesture, but I know better. It didn’t take many seconds before it climbed down from Jim who was panting and moaning with fear. It backed slowly up still while staring into my eyes with its yellow glowing glance that had completely disempowered me and left me breathless. I owed that cat everything. I owed it my life. And there was now a connection between the two of us that I could never get any human being to understand. I didn’t even understand it myself. All I knew was I had to spare this creatures life as it had spared mine.

As it backed up Jim tried to crawl for his rifle and as soon as the jaguar saw that it turned around and ran like the wind. Less than a second later it was gone.

“What the hell were you doing?” Jim panted as he got back on his legs. “It could have killed me. Why didn’t you shoot?”

“I am so sorry, Jim. I just couldn’t. I guess I froze.”

Jim picked up his rifle from the ground with a snort. Then he grabbed my rifle and took it out of my hands while mumbling, “It’s no use in your hands anyway.”

“I really am sorry, I repeated. “At least nothing happened.” But Jim wasn’t listening to my excuses. All he saw was a hunting buddy who didn’t live up to his responsibilities. He saw a boy who wasn’t man enough to shoot when it was required.

“I knew I shouldn’t have brought a pretty city boy out here. What a wimp,” he growled as we started to walk back towards the car. Jim had hurt his leg in the fall and was limping slightly. As we left the riverbank I turned and took another glimpse in the direction where I had seen the jaguar disappear. I knew then that I wanted desperately to see it again. This time for a completely different reason. I felt a deep and strange feeling of delirium, and a sort of love for this creature settled over me as we drove back towards St. Augustine under the starry night that had driven the clouds away and let the moon take over. A flame had been lit inside of me, a flame that is still burning in my inner soul even today.

Chapter 12

I went back to look for the jaguar the following night. Of course I did. This time I went on my own. And this time I wasn’t armed with a rifle but brought raw meat stolen from the Kirk’s freezer. I searched for the jaguar all night avoiding the hunters that did the same, but just like them I found nothing. Not a trace, not even a dead animal that the creature could have feasted upon.

When the sun started rising like an orange ball in the horizon I had to give up and go back to the house. I was disappointed, naturally. I had hoped to see this magnificent animal once again and this time maybe even get to study it up close. But the jaguar apparently had different plans. The swamps did cover a huge area. As I looked at the map of it when I got back and lay in my bed, I decided the jaguar naturally had other hunting areas in there that needed to be explored. But I had to be very careful. The hunters were also out there during the night. I had become anxious about them, afraid they would kill the jaguar. Then again, I thought, it had survived for so long while they had been looking for it, maybe it was smarter than I had given it credit for? Maybe it was smarter than them? I could only hope. I wanted to face it again. I wanted desperately to see it and this time without any weapons between us. Don’t ask me why I was so drawn to it. I like to think that it was because it saved my life. I know it is a cliché, but I felt somehow that our lives were connected after that night it pulled me out of the water. That since our paths had crossed in this very special way, our destinies had to be somehow tied to one another. I had no idea how to protect it from the huntsmen chasing it relentlessly, but I was going to try.

I went out there in the swamps several nights in a row and every time came back more disappointed than the first. It was like the creature didn’t want to be found, like it was deliberately hiding from me. I slept most of the day since I was out all night and soon my host family grew concerned about my behavior. Mrs. Kirk started coming to my room and waking me up before noon by removing the curtains and letting the bright sunlight in so it would hit my face. But as soon as she left I would turn over to the other side and keep sleeping. While Dr. Kirk was never home and therefore never participated in the family’s growing concern, Heather somehow took it upon herself to try and rescue me from my depression as she relentlessly called it. She came to my room one afternoon when she was back from her college classes and sat at the end of my bed.

“I am worried about you,” she said. “It has been almost three weeks now and you don’t seem to be snapping out of this depression. Maybe you should see the doctor again?”

“I am fine,” I answered, still with my head in my pillow.

“You are not out with friends yet you leave the house every night. What is going on? Have you met some other friends that I don’t know of? ‘Cause it is perfectly okay, I just need to make sure that you haven’t fallen into bad company.”

I laughed softly. “I can assure you I haven’t fallen into any bad company,” I said. “I just have my own way of dealing with this. Just give me some time.” I lifted my head and gave her my most charming smile I knew of and that seemed to calm her down a little. Her face seemed to relax. She leaned over and kissed my cheek. It left me numb.

“You know I care about you, right?” she said with her head slightly tilted.

“I know. It is very sweet of you, but I am all right,” I assured her. I wanted her desperately to leave me alone. She made me feel bad about myself. Here she was caring so much for me, and I was just not interested in her. I felt like the worst person in the world. The intimacy we had shared on that night before the attack had been nice and really special, but I was another person now. I had changed a lot during the last couple of weeks.

Then the strangest thing happened. Suddenly it was like she was speaking to me, I heard her voice loud and clear among the other voices constantly speaking in my head. I looked up at her but her lips didn’t move.

You are so spoiled and lazy. You need to get up, take a bath and get some work done. Nothing good ever came from lying in bed all day. Instead of reading all these books about people who have tried to be dead you should start opening a book about medicine. You’ll never become doctor. Probably throw it all away. Lazy boy.

“What was that?” I asked.

She turned her head and looked at me while stroking my cheek gently. “I didn’t say anything,” she said. She got up from the bed. “You really should open a window and get some fresh air in here. Do you want me to do it?”

“Okay,” I said, a little confused.

She went to the window and opened it. On her way she kicked some of my clothes on the floor to the side. Maybe you should clean up this mess, lazy boy. There it was again. What was that? Was it coming from her?

“Excuse me?” I asked.

She turned and looked at me with a smile that all of a sudden seemed incredibly spurious. “Nothing. I was just opening the window. Are you all right? You seem a little off.”

I shook my head. “I am fine, I guess.” Just hearing strange voices that’s all, I thought. Was I going mad or had I just heard her thoughts? Was that how she really felt about me?

She walked towards the doorway. “I have to study,” she said and turned to look at me. “Promise me you are being careful, okay?”

I couldn’t promise her that. Instead I gave her one of her own phony smiles that she liked so much. I hoped it would make her leave me alone.

It worked. As she closed the door behind her I wondered why she was so nice to me if that was how she really felt. Why didn’t she just say so? I knew I was a mess and I knew how it looked from the outside, so it was no surprise to me that her and her mother would think that way. I didn’t get offended. I just didn’t care.

That same night I returned to the swamps armed with the map and my two steaks in my backpack.  The hunters were already there and I recognized Jim’s car among them. That meant he was in there, too, searching for the jaguar. It made my heart beat a little faster. He had been able to find it once before. Would he be able to track it down again?

I had decided to explore a whole new area south of the place where we had been the night of the attacks, even further south down the river than where we had found the jaguar the last time. It was an area that was considered to be rough and completely impassable to humans. The perfect spot for an animal to hide, I thought. It took about two hours to get there, and I had to walk in the dark water most of the way since the tracks almost disappeared the farther I got. Walking in the water was frightening since even the sound of it and the feeling of it touching my leg brought back horrible memories of being pulled under and facing death. But at the same time, I think it was the best thing I could do. Somehow searching for this jaguar made me face my fears. Since there was no other way to get to where I wanted, I had to get into the water once again, and little by little I started to trust that I could do this without facing another attack and without being afraid. What had happened that night was something that almost never happened, and if I looked at it statistically there was no chance it was going to happen to me twice. Still, I kept my eyes wide open for anything moving on the surface and I never let my guard down. I was constantly alert, not distracted, as I had been the last time. This time it was only the wild swampy forest and me. As I managed to get myself further down the river than any man seemed to have ever been, I came to a small clearing. I climbed the riverbank and got back on the ground. My legs were shivering a little I noticed but I felt happy that I had done this and survived it. I went into the clearing and found a perfect spot. Then I put down one of the steaks on the ground and backed away from it. I sat a few feet away and began my wait while hoping my new approach would pay off. Chasing it seemed to make it vanish so instead I was going to let the creature come to me. In this secluded spot we would never be found by the hunters. If this animal was as smart as I suspected it to be, it would know that.