State of Wonder - Ann Patchett [137]
Marina considered her Lariam, long gone. She considered her father. She looked inside the cup and shook her head. “I think I’ll wait.”
“Research doesn’t happen in a Petri dish, you know, and mice only go so far. It’s the human trials that make the difference. Sometimes you have to be the one to roll up your sleeve.”
But Marina didn’t stay. She wanted more bark before she became part of the experiment.
Dear Jim,
I see how this could take years, how no amount of time would ever be enough to figure out everything that’s going on here, but I’m going to begin the business of trying to get home. The first thing I’ll have to figure out is the boat. Given Dr. Swenson’s investment in keeping me I doubt she’ll be quick to offer hers. But boats do go by and I know the direction of Manaus. Some days I think I’ll see one and swim out to it, and if Easter swims with me then who would stop us?
Marina wrote more letters now. She wrote them every day. Dr. Budi left her pack of stationery open on her desk and Nancy Saturn was generous with her stamps. She would take Easter with her to the river and they would skip rocks from the shore or go for a swim. Boats did go by—a child in a canoe, a rare river taxi on its way to the Jinta—but then two or three days would pass with nothing. She made Easter keep watch when she was working, leaving him alone with the letters. It would never have occurred to her that it was possible for the system to work, except that it had worked, Anders had mailed letters, who knew how many letters, and some of them found their way to Karen. Yet as often as she wrote to Mr. Fox she hadn’t really told him anything. She hadn’t told him about the malaria or Dr. Swenson’s pregnancy or Anders’ burial. Those things she needed to say to him herself.
Easter and Marina liked the river best at six o’clock when the sun was spreading out long across the water and the birds had just begun to make their way home for the night. They sat on the damp banks, as far away as they could from the heat of the Lakashi’s fire. It was too early to eat and still she wanted to leave the lab for a while, stretch her legs and roll her neck. Sometimes she would sit for twenty minutes, thirty minutes, and other nights she would stay until it was dark. She had never seen a boat go by once it was dark but it was such a pleasure to sit and watch the hot red ball of the sun sink fully down into the jungle that she made the excuse that one might come. Easter pointed out every fish that broke the river’s surface and she pointed out the bats swimming through the purple evening sky. She had gotten very used to spending her time with someone who said nothing at all. She found that watching the coming on of night without feeling any need to comment on it brought about a sense of tranquility that she had rarely known.
It was in that tranquility a boat was spotted in the distance.
She heard it before she saw it, the sound of a well-maintained engine pushing effortlessly ahead. That was in itself worthy of notice as the boats she was familiar with here came in two varieties: the completely silent canoe/raft/floating bundle of logs, and anything with a grinding motor. She got to her feet with four letters in her hand, one for her mother and one for Karen and two for Mr. Fox. The boat was coming on fast, a small round dot of light fixed to the front that was pointing up river, and Easter, ever the thinker, jumped up and grabbed two long branches from the edge of the fire, one for Marina and one for himself, and they stepped into the water until it was up to their knees and they