Free Love and Hydrogen by Jim Shepard Page B

wondered.
    The Doctor took pictures, his flash redundant in the sunlight. He said he thought it was. Very important. He set the camera aside and pickaxed the fossil arm right out of the rock. So much for the preciousness of the find.
    He announced he was going to take it to the Institute. Luis and his friend were to wait here for his return.
    First, he said, he had to make some Measurements. Then he fussed about for days.
    There were four men: a figure with a hat who remained on the boat, and Luis, Andujar, and the Doctor on the shore, their sagging tent beside that still water cul-de-sac with the swarm of parasitic worms.
    The foreclaw that they kept in the center of the tent in a box had some sentimental value for me. In the middle of the night at times I stood beside the open tent flaps, dripping, ruminating on whether or not to go in for it. The Doctor’s breathing was clogged and he sounded like a marine toad.
    In the morning they made their waste down the end of a trail leading to a stand of young palms that turned from orange to green as they matured.
    One day the foreclaw was gone; I could feel it. The Doctor was gone with it. The boat was gone.
    LUIS AND ANDUJAR SANG as they worked. They didn’t work often. They played a game with a sharp knife they used to hack down plants.
    I watched them and learned their idiosyncrasies. I learned about camp stools and toilet paper. I learned about rifles. They enjoyed disassembling and oiling rifles. The procedure for loading rifles and killing animals with rifles was patiently walked through every morning, as though for the benefit of those creatures like myself watching interestedly from the bush. I was impressed with the rifles.
    THAT NIGHT BESIDE THEIR CAMP I rose so slowly from the water that the surface meniscus distended before giving way. With my mouth still submerged, my eyes negotiated the glow of their lanterns. The tent canvas blocking the light was the color of embers. On a nearby hibiscus, the light refracted through an insect disguised as a water droplet.
    I stood beside their tent in the darkness. One of them looked out and then withdrew his head.
    Even with my scales glimmering moonlight and water seeping from my algae, I had a talent for invisibility, for sudden disappearance, the way blue butterflies in the canopy vanished when entering shade.
    On the other side of the canvas Luis and Andujar nattered and thumped about. I waited as quietly as an upright bone. My chest was stirred by an obscurely homicidal restlessness.
    They fell silent. This was more annoying than their noise. I stood before the closed flaps of the tent’s entrance, spread a taloned claw, and extended it slowly into the light. No response.
    I pulled the flap aside. Luis gaped, goggled, brandished one of the lanterns; threw it. Andujar sprang from his cot swinging the big sharp knife. They weren’t as much exercise as the tapir.
    I ENJOYED THROWING THEM about. I raked meat off the bone, lathed, splintered, and shredded; wrung, wrenched, rooted, and uprooted. I noted my lack of restraint. I opened them to the jungles. I unearthed their wet centers.
    I sat outside the tent, not ready to return to the water. I held my claws away from my body. Space in the upper canopy turned blue and paled. Two tiny scarlet frogs wrestled beside me. Leaf-litter beneath them slipped and scattered. Along the water, one set of noisemakers retired and the next took its place.
    I swam off my murderousness. I floated on my back in the center of the lagoon. Fish nipped at my feet. I had even less appetite than usual.
    Days passed. Luis and Andujar, slung across shredded cots and canvas, became festive gathering places. In the evenings, even a jaguarundi stopped by. In the opened chest cavities, beetles swarmed and tumbled over one another. Compact clouds of emerald-eyed flies lifted off and resettled.
    The big boat came chug-chugging back into the lagoon.
    I watched it come from out of the east. My head