Withering Hope

"Not sure," Tristan says from behind me. "I think this is one of the few areas of the Amazon that doesn't get flooded in the rainy season. This place must look pretty attractive. But we were lucky until now; maybe we'll stay lucky."

His answer doesn't calm me in the slightest. I stop before entering the plane, straining my ears to discern anything that sounds more ominous than usual in the permanent buzz of the rainforest.

Nothing.

Maybe Tr

istan's right. But what if our luck has come to an end?

"Your turn to tell a story," I say as I yawn in my seat, preparing to go to sleep. I am so exhausted, I won't have any trouble falling asleep tonight.

"I told you I don't have any good ones. The Army isn't full of cheerful stories.”

"Is this why all your poems are so dark? Because of the Army?"

"Yes. I wasn't much into reading before I enrolled. During a short break at home, before I left for Afghanistan, I bought a magazine, and it included a small book of poems as a freebie. Anniversary something. It was a collection from various poets—they were all, dark, as you call them. That got me started. It sounds weird, but they were comforting."

"Why?"

"I was surrounded by so much pain and misery that my own thoughts became very dark. So dark that I started to worry. It was comforting to realize that darkness can lead to beauty. Like poems. Why are the ones you quote so cheerful?"

"Those are the only ones I remember." I shrug, feeling ashamed. "No deeper meaning."

"Well, the fact that you only remember those means something."

Maybe he's expecting me to understand what he means, but I don't. And I don't ask.

Instead I say, "You still owe me a story. Tell me a pre-Army story. What made you choose Army? I mean, there must have been a reason. You didn't just wake up on the morning of your seventeenth birthday and decided to do it, did you?"

"I pretty much did. When I was a kid my favorite hero was a character in a comic book who was a commander in the Army, so I wanted to be one too. I guess the idea just stuck as I grew up. I never wanted to be anything else."

"That's sweet; you got to follow your dream."

He hesitates. "Some dreams are better left unfollowed. They can turn into nightmares."

I don't have an answer for that. What can I tell a man who followed his childhood dreams only to have reality beat them out of him?

"I bet you were a little hero even when you were young. Come on… I'm sure you'll come up with something."

"I don't know about being a hero, but I was very daft. I almost drowned once. This girl was crying because her dog fell into a lake, so I jumped in after it."

"Why do you think that was daft?"

"Because dogs can swim better than people. The dog ended up saving me."

"How old were you?"

"Eleven."

I try to wrap my mind around someone doing that at the age of eleven. The most I can remember about that age was throwing a fit if the present my parents sent me every two weeks from wherever they were didn't arrive on time. Yeah, I was spoiled.

Some people are born to see what matters in life. They can sense it. Like my parents. I always admired their ability to put everything aside, including me, in order to concentrate on their work.

"It was foolish," Tristan says, laughing through the darkness.

"Not at all. It was very admirable of you." I bury my head in my pillow. I'm grateful there are people like him whose natural instinct is to do good for others. It's almost a sin that he hasn't received the kindness he deserves in return. My last thought before I fall asleep is that maybe I'll manage to accomplish that, in some limited way, in this wilderness.

I wake up to screams. Cold panic grips me, convinced that the jaguars are upon us. Then I come to my senses. It's just Tristan's nightmares. I approach him cautiously, shaking him awake. He smiles when he sees me, though his eyes still have a haunted look to them.