State of Wonder - Ann Patchett [154]
Easter stayed with her though he had never followed her out to the Martins before. The sun was high and hot though it was not yet nine in the morning. She carried a very large basket that she had found in the storage room, something the Lakashi had woven out of heavy grass. She had never come so late. In the two hours since she had last taken this trail the jungle had installed an entirely different set of birds screeching out an entirely different hue and cry. The mid-morning shift of insects replaced their early-morning brethren and clicked and vibrated a new and distinct set of messages. Marina kept her mind on the snakes that wrapped around trees and tangled themselves into vines and she placed her feet down carefully. She could not afford to make a mistake now. She stopped for a minute at the edge of the Martins, leaning forward to wipe the sweat off her face with the hem of her dress. The way the bright sunlight came into the field now turned the bark a softer yellow and she stood there, making a point to notice everything. She picked a Rapp and held it up to Easter, then she put it in the basket. She picked another and another and he followed her, going to other trees, taking just a few from every individual community of mushrooms, thinning them out while the basket rounded into a pile of pale blue jewels. No matter how many they picked the plants did not appear to be diminished. Maybe that was part of their secret. She had never realized how many of them there were. Protecting the Rapps meant protecting the Lakashi, and the Martins, and the fertility drug, and the malaria vaccine. No one could ever know where the Rapps had come from. But who had thought to protect Anders? If this is what was available to her then this is what she would use. When she picked up the basket it was scarcely heavier than it had been empty, and she covered the whole thing up with the nightgown and made her way back.
The mushrooms she knew were her best chance but she had Easter carry the peanut butter and the oranges just in case. She loaded all of it onto the boat. Thomas met her on the dock, Benoit was beside him. “I cannot believe what Dr. Swenson has told me,” Thomas said, the panic rising in his voice, “What must Anders have thought, that in all this time we never came to look for him?”
Marina shook her head. “We didn’t know.”
Thomas took her hand. “I am going with you to find him.” The Lakashi were there now, waiting to leap aboard.
It was all a set-up. Dr. Swenson would have called out for Thomas as soon as she was gone, telling him everything, telling him he had to go with Marina, and Thomas, guilt stricken in his ignorance, played right along. But it was not his destiny to see this thing through. “Anders was my friend,” Marina said, and squeezed his thin fingers. “He’s the reason I came here. I think I should be the one to go.”
“I understand that,” Thomas said. “But he was my friend as well and so it is equally my right. And you have no language with which to ask for him back.”
“You don’t speak Hummocca,” Marina said.
“What Benoit and I have between us will be closer to Hummocca than your English. I will not wait on this dock and wonder what’s become of you. I will not wait to see if Anders is alive.” His face shone with such bright earnestness it was nearly unbearable. “I have already made a promise to Dr. Swenson. We are going along.” Benoit nodded his head without understanding exactly what was being promised. Marina thought it was a nod of considerably less conviction.
“If you wait much longer to decide, Alan Saturn will hear about this,” Thomas said. “He will insist on going. He has always been interested in the Hummocca. And Nancy would never let him go without her, you know this, so factor her in as well. I do not imagine Dr. Budi would