Savage (Daughters of the Jaguar) (11 page)

I waited for hours before I heard a rattling sound from one of the bushes. I looked in the direction of the sound and out on its belly came a big black snake. I shivered with fear. I had never stood face-to-face with that kind of animal before and I went into some state of shock. Was it going to bite me? Would it attack me? I had no idea what kind of snake it was or if its bite would be dangerous. I started sweating, thinking about how far I was from everything, how I wouldn’t be able to run for help, that I might die trying to. I almost panicked when the snake stopped and stared at me with its head lifted. Then I heard another sound and my heart stopped. At first I saw the eyes. Like glowing yellow beads in the dark. Then a face grew out of the darkness and then its entire tawny body with the black rosettes. With a low, soft growling the jaguar ran towards the snake. The snake tried to get away on its belly but with a quick paw the jaguar hit it like a punching ball and killed it with one stroke. I held my breath as this spectacle of nature was displayed in front of me. The jaguar didn’t even bother to eat it but dusted it aside with the paw like it was nothing but the dirt of the forest.  Then it turned and looked at me. Everything inside of me froze. I had no idea what to do next. Was I going to scream? Was I going to try and run from it, which I knew was impossible, since it could catch me in a heartbeat if it wanted to?

Instead of giving into my fear I did what I had done the last time. I humbled myself. I kneeled on the ground and waited for it to make the next move. My hope was that it would see the steak first and eat it so it wouldn’t be hungry to feast on me afterwards.

And I was right to hope so. The royal creature walked slowly and fiercely towards me while the steak was waiting halfway. In my heart I knew it wasn’t going to hurt me, but my brain kept telling me to be afraid, to find a way to run. Maybe if I rolled into the water and started swimming? But I had read that jaguars were great swimmers. They would often dive into water to catch anacondas and fish. I had absolutely no way of defending myself, I realized. No weapon, no escape. All I had left was trust.

I felt a huge relief as the jaguar stopped halfway and smelled the steak. “Come on, it is yours,” I whispered. “I brought it here for you.”

It licked the steak a couple of times while staring at me a little suspiciously, probably wondering what I was doing there. Then it opened its mouth and revealed its huge teeth before it sank them into the raw meat. In a few quick bites it swallowed the big piece of steak. Then it looked at me with eyes that seemed hungry for more. That was when I really showed bravery, I think. I took out the next steak and while shaking and shivering in my whole body, I handed it out in front of me still holding it in my hand. I saw the jaguar consider taking it for quite awhile. It went back and forth, to the sides, then came a little closer, and then it backed up again. It stared at me with disbelief in its eyes before it decided to move a little closer. Then it seemed to regret it again and walked sideways a couple of times.

“Come on. It’s okay,” I said. “I won’t harm you.”

The tawny creature seemed to have a battle going on inside of it, and I let it take its time. Slowly I felt more and more comfortable being in its presence. It seemed to be as afraid of me as I was of it. That was very comforting. Calmly it moved a couple of steps closer waiting for me to throw the meat, but I didn’t. I held on to it, and as the animal slowly realized that I wasn’t going to make this easy it crouched down on its hind legs and crawled carefully towards me using its claws to pull itself across the ground while stretching its neck out as far as possible and snapping after the meat. I turned my head as the jaguar slowly came closer, still growling still crouching like it had to be ready to leap towards me if I turned out to be not trustworthy. The excitement made me close my eyes as if I thought it would hurt less if the animal attacked me when I had my eyes closed. When I felt the meat being ripped from my hand I opened them and looked at the stunning animal, looked it straight into its glowing eyes. You could say that was a defining moment for me in my life. I felt a victory inside of me. I had conquered the beast. I had used no weapons but love and patience. As it swallowed the last steak turning a little away from me, I looked at it with pride. I had made it eat out of my hand. I had tamed the savage.

The next days I kept returning to the same spot every night with my steaks in the bag and every night the jaguar returned, as well, and ate from my hand or from where I had put it on the ground. You could say that we became a sort of friends. I started talking to it, telling it how happy I was that it had saved me and that it had to be careful because there were so many people searching the swamps all over for it and who wanted to harm it. Every night I came a step closer to it, and as time went by and the animal became more comfortable with me I was even allowed to touch it. I reached my hand out as it ate and at first it froze and growled, but I talked calmly to it with my reassuring voice, and then I gently put my hand on it. The fur felt amazing. Like the softest thing I had ever touched. It was a lot deeper than I had expected. My hand sank into it until it was covered. I touched it gently on the top of its head and stroke it across the long lines of its back. It was the most beautiful moment of my life, and I never wanted it to stop. I never wanted to let go of it again.

When I was back in the house I called Jim up and tried to persuade him to stop the hunting. I wanted him to have them stop the chase, but he would hear of no such thing. He wanted to kill the beast himself if he had to devote the rest of his life to find it. It had become personal for him now since their last encounter. It wasn’t only about his father anymore. Or me. It was about his own pride. The jaguar was his to kill.

Then I tried to call the people in charge of the swamps, but they wanted the jaguar dead, too, they said. People used to come there to watch nature in peace and quiet, no wild animal was going to ruin that. I pleaded with Jim and everyone I was in contact with to call off the hunt. But I had no luck.

Then something truly amazing happened to me. One day the phone rang and Maria called for me. It was the St. Augustine Record’s editor.

“I have a proposition for you,” he said, and I could hear him smoking a cigarette in the other end of the line.

“What is that?” I asked a little startled. What could they possibly want with me?

“I want you to write a series of articles about your experience. I want you to write about how it felt to be attacked and how it felt to be saved by a wild animal that almost killed you.”

“But I thought you already covered that part in my interview.”

The editor coughed in the other end. “Yeah, well. Julie Goldman never did finish that story, you see. She found out she was pregnant later on the same day she had done the interview and since then she has been home with morning sickness that apparently lasts all day. Last time I spoke with her she said she wanted to keep the kid because she apparently thinks it will be her last chance to have one or something.”

My heart stopped. “She is pregnant?” I asked. I thought about my inappropriate outburst during our meeting in the garden. Had I been right after all? Was it true? How could I have known that she was pregnant before she did herself? It was those voices! They had told me somehow! It was both thrilling and scary at the same time. Thrilling to know that the voices maybe meant something, after all, that I wasn't going mad, but scary because it felt like I had lost control over myself completely. Like something or someone had taken over my thought-life. I was hearing things and saying things I had no control over.

The editor laughed loudly. “Yeah. Who would have believed it, huh? Couldn’t tell by looking at her figure, that’s for sure. As slim as a tree she has always been. And now she is going to be a single mother, too. That girl has guts if you ask me. So, what do you say kid? Wanna do it? Wanna write for the paper?”

“I certainly do.”

I had a bunch of different thoughts lined up inside of my head as I put the phone down. This could be my chance to tell the world that the jaguar was actually a savior and not something to be afraid of. I would begin by writing about my experience that night and then about what I was experiencing right now. About my newfound friendship with the creature that they all thought was so dangerous it had to be hunted down and killed. Now I could provide a new perspective for the community. I was going to get them to like it, to care for this majestic creature like I did.

This was perfect.

Chapter 13

I wrote all day. Mrs. Kirk went out and bought me a brand new typewriter and put it in my room. It didn’t take me many seconds to get started and soon the words flew out of me. I wrote and revised then wrote some more and revised again. Mrs. Kirk was almost as excited as I was for this new project, mainly because it got me out of bed, I think. She seemed pleased to see me this enthusiastic about something for the first time in weeks, so she did all she could to help me out and make sure I was comfortable. She had Maria bring me iced tea and biscuits and when it was time for dinner and I was still going at it, she had Maria bring me my food to my room. The editor had told me I had two days to write the first piece so I wasn’t in a big hurry. But I felt so inspired that I wanted to write it right away and be sure not to forget anything. I wanted this to be the best I could do. I wanted this to be so good that people would read it and want to read the rest of my articles as well. I wanted to make them enjoy it so much they just had to read everything I wrote. I wanted people to spring for the paper with great anticipation. I wanted them to tell their friends, neighbors and co-workers about the articles that they just had to read. I needed for it to be the talk of the town.

The newspaper wanted one article a week, the editor had said. And they would, of course, pay me for every one of them. I was looking forward to have some money of my own since I was now living off the Kirk’s sense of charity towards me and the little I had managed to save when I was still in Denmark. 

As it came along I thought my article became quite good. I wanted it to be better though, so I revised it and wrote some more even though the sun was now about to set and I had to get ready for going to the swamps. Mrs. Kirk had begun talking about me starting school soon, and I wanted to enjoy being able to still visit it. As soon as I started school I wouldn't be able to go anymore. Well maybe on weekends.

Giving the wild animal food was a slippery slope, I knew that. I had read about it in my books. Eventually it would stop hunting on its own and only rely on the food I was providing. In the end, it would have a hard time getting by in the wild. On the other hand, it didn’t need to hunt all over the swamps for food any longer, this way it could stay in the area where the hunters never went because they thought it was impassable. This way I was keeping it safe until I could persuade them to stop hunting for it.

That night, I was a little late when I finally arrived at the swamps. I saw Jim’s car as I walked through the parking area. I parked my car far away from theirs and walked the rest of the way so Jim wouldn’t recognize my Corvette if he got out of there before I did. Jim was on the hunting team every third day. Those were the days when I was extra careful not to be seen. I was late because of the article and entered the swamps with an anxious feeling inside of me. I started running towards the spot where I usually met with my jaguar. I walked in the water, grabbing onto branches in order not to fall and climbing the bank to get back on the ground. I was almost all the way there when I heard noises. It was coming from the small clearing. It wasn’t the noises that I would usually hear on my trip out there. It wasn’t noises like the ones my jaguar or other animals would make. They weren’t natural.

It had to be humans.

My heart was pounding in my chest as I came closer to the clearing. I was walking slowly, careful not to make a sound. Had they found the place? Had they found my jaguar? Had they already killed it? I felt myself hyperventilating. I heard nothing for a while and thought I had just been imagining things again, when I arrived in the clearing and saw Jim standing with another man in green hunting outfit both of them pointing their rifles at the jaguar. My jaguar. But this time, it wasn’t alone. It was accompanied by another creature very much like itself, but who was completely black all over its body. The black cat, a Black Panther or black jaguar, seemed to be protecting the tawny jaguar by putting itself in front of the rifles blocking the way so they couldn’t shoot the tawny jaguar. It was roaring preparing to attack, but for some reason it seemed to be hesitating, like it didn’t want to hurt Jim. But this time, Jim didn’t waste one second. Wiser from earlier mistakes, he knew he had to shoot right away. So he did. He took one quick shot at them, hitting the tawny jaguar right in the heart, causing it to fall to the ground without a sound. Everything inside of me was silently screaming. I felt like I could hear the blood running through my veins, like a river that flows through in a waterfall. There was no other sound than that and my heavy breathing. With a scream that would have shattered glass and pierced through bones I jumped forward into the clearing not caring about what was going to happen next. Overwhelmed with a combination of sorrow and panic I ran towards Jim and his friend screaming like a savage for them to stop. And then all went dark. I threw myself on my knees and cried, when I realized that they were all gone. Jim, his friend and the two jaguars. They were no longer there. Nothing was there but completely darkness. I breathed heavily and searched for anything I could find that would tell me what had happened. If they had been there or not. I found nothing. Had it all been a dream? Would I wake up in my bed in a few minutes bathed in my own sweat? I touched the ground, it felt real enough. I took in a deep breath, the air felt real enough, as well, and hot and humid as always. Had it been…could it just have been my imagination? I was beginning to think so as my heart slowed down and soon reached a normal beat.