Manglar
Adventure
Jairo Armendáriz lies on his hammock, comfortably hung between two sturdy mangroves and surrounded by water. This is his hiding spot, the tiny islet that he likes to retreat to when he's feeling overwhelmed. It's just a few feet in diameter, barely big enough for him to rest on, and not nearly big enough for him to take more than five steps around. He wouldn't want to, anyway. Only the centre of the islet is made of solid sand and dirt, while the rest is mostly sludge.
His eyes are closed, but he's not sleeping. He's only recharging, lulled by the song of the cicadas and the sound of the water splashing against the roots of the trees. Sheltered by the shade of the young coconut palm standing above him, enclosed by all the trees around him. The only way into his islet is a one-way corridor of water, which you can only find by navigating through the maze of the mangrove swamp. Only he knows how to get there.
“Jairo,” he hears over his walkie-talkie, which he always keeps attached to his belt. “Jairo, pick up,” the voice says in Spanish.
Jairo grabs the walkie-talkie without opening his eyes. “I'm here,” he says.
“We've got a tour group here, gringos. Where are you?”
Slowly, Jairo gets up from his hammock, resting his feet on the ground before standing up. “I'll be there in ten, just keep them entertained.”
“I don't speak English, culero.”
“Just take pictures or something.”
Jairo takes two steps toward the muddy shore of his islet and hops onto his boat. He walks past five rows of seats and sits down at the very back, turning on the outboard engine. The plastic awning only covers the tourists' seats, not giving him any shade. At this point, his dark-brown skin is so tan that he barely recognizes his old skin tone when he looks at pictures of himself while he was still living in the U.S. He was thirteen when his dad got deported and he and his mom had to move back to Chiapas with him. Twenty years later, he still never talks about it.
Jairo knows the waters of this swamp better than anyone. His dad was quick to find a job with the tour boat agency soon after they came back, giving Americans tours of the forest. Right after he passed away when Jairo was right on the verge of adulthood, the boy had to take his dad's role and become “the man of the house.” For a good few years, he hated it. He felt subservient to the tourists, and they often treated him that way. To them, he was little more than a fixture of the boat, oblivious to the fact that, not too long ago, they could have been neighbours. But after a while, Jairo stopped thinking about it. And so, he stopped caring. Instead, he became transfixed by the mangrove system. In his free time, he started taking the boat and exploring off the beaten path. Finding the forest's secrets, uncovering its labyrinthine mystique.
He drives back to the thin wooden dock as if on autopilot, extending his hand every time he wants to caress a branch as he passes by it. Once the boat is docked, he gets off and is quickly greeted by Ernesto, the voice on the other side of the walkie-talkie.
“No problems?” Jairo asks.
“Nah, they're happy,” Ernesto says, quickly pointing back at the group of tourists behind him. “They have their life vests on and they've paid, so they should be ready to go.”
Jairo nods and pats Ernest on the shoulder. “Thank you,” he tells him, looking over at the tourists. “Are we ready to go?” he asks, switching to English.
“Let's go!” the little kid lets go of his parents' hands and starts running toward the boat. He can't be older than seven, and he's the spitting image of his father: Long, bleached hair down to their shoulders, both wearing Hawaiian shirts and red-tinted sunglasses resting atop their heads. His bright, electric-blue eyes, though, are entirely his mother's.
The parents start excitedly walking behind the boy, followed closely by another two men. One of them is on the shorter side, with hair so intensely blond it's almost white. The other is much taller and more muscular, with dark brown hair of almost equal intensity. They're both wearing oversized Star Wars t-shirts and carrying large backpacks, and there's something about them that Jairo doesn't entirely trust.
Quick introductions are made as everyone hops onto the boat. The boy is called Hunter, and he's the most excited to get on the boat that any tourist Jairo has served has ever been. His parents are Maria and Jerry, who shake his hand with a smile.
The young men are Max, the short blond man, and Jonas, the muscular brown-haired man, neither of whom shake Jairo's hand nor accept his help to get on board. After they're seated, he jumps onto the back of the boat, sitting down and grabbing a hold of the engine's tiller handle.
“Are we all set?” he asks. After receiving five yeses, they set off into the forest. Once he's set the course, Jairo reaches down into a small cooler by the side of his feet and takes out a cheap speaker. He turns it on, places it atop the closed cooler, and plays some Mexican tunes at the moderate volume he's learned that American tourists tend to enjoy.
Once again, Jairo goes on autopilot as he navigates the narrow passages between the mangroves. The deeper into the swamp's heart they go, the more the leaves of the trees cover the sky, yet even with the reduced sunlight illuminating the swamp, Jairo loves looking around in search of animals. That day, he sees a couple of turtles standing on a hollowed-out log sticking out from the water. When he sees them, it looks as though they make eye contact with him, and right after they do, they drop into the water and swim away.
Jairo notices Max and Jonas, who are sitting at the very front of the boat, taking out a map that they seem to examine closely. That's new, he thinks to himself. But he decides to make nothing of it. Conversely, Maria and Jerry are sitting at the very back, trying to strike a conversation with Jairo. He's happy to reciprocate.
“And have you tried any local fud?” He clenches his left fist and quickly lets go. “Food?”
He's always been very proud of what tourists like to call his “very good English,” his identity's last tie to the place he used to call home. But the longer he's spent in Mexico, the more it's started to feel like his English is slowly drifting away. His vowels have started to flatten. “Food” has become “fud,” “coat” has become “cot,” and he's had to switch away from saying “son of a bitch” when he stubs his toe, because he's starting to say “son of a beach” instead, which only makes him laugh. No one likes laughing after stubbing one's toe.
“We tried some tlayudas yesterday,” Maria says in a surprisingly decent Spanish accent, ignoring—or perhaps not even noticing—Jairo's little slip-up. “They were so good! Any spots you'd recommend?”
Suddenly, Max takes a quick glare over his shoulder back at Jairo. He pretends not to notice.
“I can give you a list when we go back to the dock, how's that?” he offers. Maria is delighted.
As they approach the centre of the swamp, close to where Jairo's little hiding spot lies, Max and Jonas stand up and start walking back toward him. He tries to keep it polite. “It's a nice view, huh?” he says as the pair stop right in front of him, covering the view. “Guys, I can't see…”
Jonas shows him the map and points to a small dot near the centre of it. Jairo recognizes it immediately. It's a map of the mangrove forest, and that spot? He'd be able to point to it in the map even with his eyes closed. It's his little islet.
“Would you be able to get here?” Jonas asks sternly.
Despite the two men blocking his line of sight, Jairo doesn't need to slow down the boat. He'd be able to navigate these waters in his sleep. “I could, but that's not actually part of the tour route, guys…”
By the time Jairo blinks, Jonas is already pointing a gun at his head, while Max takes an identical weapon from his hip and points it at Jerry. Maria springs forward to snatch her son and hold him as close to her chest as she can.
“Let me rephrase,” Jonas says. “Make it part of the tour route.”
Now, Jairo stops the boat. He's frozen in place, his hand clenched around the tiller. He takes what feels to him like an eternity to gather his composure and take a shallow breath, but it can't have been that long; these men don't seem like the patient kind, and they're not currently screaming at him.
“Let me take this family back to the dock,” Jairo says, “then I'll take you there.”
“No fucking way,” Max says, waving his gun. Jerry, who has gone as pale as a ghost, seems even more petrified than Jairo is. “Consider it motivation. Just get us there.”
Jairo, panting, shakes his head. “Please, let me…”
Jonas comes closer to him, so he shuts up. “You have no leverage here, amigo.”
He's right. And so, struggling to breathe, Jairo looks at the diverging path in front of him and veers the boat to the right instead of the left. He navigates the swamp's veins with the same dexterity that he always has, staring at Maria, Jerry, and Hunter. The mother is hugging her trembling son tight, her cheek buried on the top of his head. The father, though still frozen, seems to be gaining back some colour on his face.
The waters of this forest belong to Jairo. He knows them better than anyone, loves them as much as one can love home. So, it doesn't take him more than a couple of minutes to navigate the hidden passages all the way to the narrow corridor leading up to his islet. Max and Jonas instruct Jairo to stop the boat right outside the corridor. If he takes off, they tell him, they will swim back to the dock and kill everyone in their path until they find him. He believes them. The pair grab their backpacks, put them on, and jump off the boat.
My water is cool to the touch as they jump into me. They're covered all the way up to just above their waist as they walk toward the islet, shaking up my fragile soil, which hadn't been bothered by boots in years. I feel a pressure lifted off of me when they emerge into the small islet.
Jairo watches Max and Jonas tear down his hammock and throw it on the ground, too worried to care. His mind is racing. What could they possibly want with his hiding spot? Would they really be able to find their way back to the dock if he sped off? Did he really want to risk it?
Max reaches into his backpack and pulls out a retractable shovel, extending it into position and then digging into the ground. This, too, is a new sensation for me. I feel every stab, every thrust, every bunch of soil that's dug up and thrown into my shaken waters.
My trees rustle in the wind, impotent, only watching these two strangers desecrate my womb. It goes on. And on. And on. So long that the pain starts travelling all the way down to the roots of my trees, yet not nearly long enough for Jairo to figure out an action plan.
Suddenly, the digging stops. Max and Jonas, giggling, reach down into the hole they've dug and pull out a small wooden chest. Jairo watches a golden light wash over Max's awestruck face as he opens the chest, and with the same speed, the young man closes the chest and puts it into his backpack. They walk into my waters and start making their way back toward the boat.
The speaker hasn't been turned off. And so, as Juan Gabriel's “Así Fue” starts playing, the scene unfolding in front of him bursts open the floodgates of Jairo's mind. These two strangers walking through the water with a grin on their faces; the islet behind them suddenly seems smaller than ever before; the hammock, spilled across the ground, its further end touching my waters; the shovel that was used to take a chest that Jairo unknowingly slept above for years, lying inside the hole that's been dug in my skin.
Suddenly, all the thoughts that Jairo has been pushing to the back of his mind for so long deluge in like a torrent. Thoughts of his father. It wasn't being kicked out of his home that led him to suicide. It was the tortuous thought that he'd gotten his wife and son kicked out, too. Thoughts of his own hatred for this job, working for the fleeting entertainment of people who will look at the cool trees and the cute turtles for a couple of hours and then go back to their homes and forget all about it. His own feelings of insignificance, everyday feeling like little more than an extension of the boat's tiller handle—not because of any tourists, but because he has never given himself the chance to do anything meaningful.
As Max and Jonas take their last few steps toward the boat, Jairo lets in a deep breath of my air. Max, pointing his gun at Jerry, forces him and Jairo to help them both up. Jonas comes first, and once he's on the boat, he points his gun at Jerry until Max is back on board.
“Now,” Max says, pointing his weapon at Jairo. “Back to the dock.”
Jairo nods, grabs the tiller handle, and starts making his way back out of the shallow maze of my passages and corridors. As always, he knows precisely where he's going and what he's doing. Once he makes it back out into deeper waters, he takes a quick glance over at Jerry, who Jonas is pointing his gun at, and he knows that he's thinking the exact same thing he is.
(Play the clip above now).
And so, as the trumpet begins to weep through the speaker, Jairo jumps up and tackles Max with such force that the young man clumsily drops his weapon into my waters. At the exact same time, Jerry springs up out of his seat and wrestles with Jonas. A gunshot is heard, but it goes through the awning. After Jairo pushes Max into me, Jerry overpowers Jonas. Jairo quickly turns over to them and runs toward the brown-haired man. With Jerry's help, he's unarmed and submerged in me on the other side of the boat.
I feel both men struggle, desperately clawing for the surface. I swallow their struggle. I swallow their backpacks, taking the treasure back into my depths, where it belongs. I swallow them. I let them sink deeper and deeper into my waters, touching the ground, pushing through the soil. Deeper and deeper into the soil, covered by it, buried by it. The clawing stops.
As the boat heads back toward the dock, Jerry hugs Maria and Hunter, holding them tight and close to his chest. The parents comfort their boy, and the boy allows himself to be engulfed by his parents' tender hug.
Lulled by the song of the cicadas and the sound of the water splashing against the boat, finding a moment of respite in the song's explosion as it comes to an end and the speaker goes quiet, Jairo closes his eyes. He doesn't open them again until they're back at the dock.
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