Red Jungle

A novel by

Kent Harrington

Diversion Books

A Division of Diversion Publishing Corp.

80 Fifth Avenue, Suite 1101

New York, New York 10011

www.DiversionBooks.com

Copyright © 2011 by Kent Harrington

All rights reserved, including the right to reproduce this book or portions thereof in any form whatsoever.

For more information, email [email protected].

First Diversion Books edition June 2011.

ISBN: 978-0-9833371-1-9 (ebook)

1 3 5 7 9 10 8 6 4 2

Also by Kent Harrington

Dark Ride (1996)

Dia de los Muertos (1997)

The American Boys (2000)

The Good Physician (2008)

www.kentharrington.com

Epigraph

“Swing me way down south,

Sing me something brave from your mouth.”

–The Dixie Chicks

Table of Contents

EPIGRAPH

PROLOGUE

ONE

TWO

THREE

FOUR

FIVE

SIX

SEVEN

EIGHT

NINE

TEN

ELEVEN

TWELVE

THIRTEEN

FOURTEEN

FIFTEEN

SIXTEEN

SEVENTEEN

EIGHTEEN

NINETEEN

TWENTY

TWENTY-ONE

TWENTY-TWO

TWENTY-THREE

TWENTY-FOUR

TWENTY-FIVE

TWENTY-SIX

TWENTY-SEVEN

TWENTY-EIGHT

TWENTY-NINE

THIRTY

THIRTY-ONE

THIRTY-TWO

THIRTY-THREE

THIRTY-FOUR

PROLOGUE

It all started with the sky, which was immense, devoid of feeling except for a few flat pink clouds that were fierce and pagan looking, the way they can seem in Central America. It started too with a Fado song on the jukebox, the melancholy music playing over the afternoon voices of a jungle barroom that was little more than a shack.

“Only the dead are really satisfied,” the bartender said to Russell.

Across the road, a small group of Indian men worked under a ceiba tree, the tree’s hulking great canopy lording it over them. The men intended to plant a cross where their loved ones had died. A young priest had come with them to bless the spot.

Russell watched as a shirtless, muscular Indian hit the top of the painted white cross with the flat of his shovel. He hit it hard several times; they heard the metal, clang-blong, clang-blong. Like a bell rung for the dead.

The third-class bus on its way to market had crashed into that ceiba tree the week before, on a perfectly sunny day. Five people had been killed on the spot. The bus had been opened like a soda can and the poor people on their way to market had died, gripping their vegetables and chickens. Even the chickens in their cages had been killed.

The bartender told him the story of the crash. How it had happened about that time of day. How everyone in the bar had run out to help. They had saved many people. The bar girls had held the dead in their arms.

The ceiba tree, the bartender told Russell, was hard as a soldier’s heart. He’d been a soldier during the war, he said, and knew something about hard hearts. “You see things. Then you never forget them,” he said. “Things that change you.”

The Indian stood back from the cross and signaled to the kid priest to go ahead and get on with it. The Indians all doffed their worn straw hats and knelt down in the clearing under the tree. The kid priest in his black cassock stepped in front of the cross and spread his arms out. He started praying to his God.

Through the ceiba tree’s lacy canopy, Russell noticed the clouds gathering above the men. He saw the new, raw-looking white cross standing now, saying what it said, marking where the people had died. The clouds didn’t seem to care. They were sweeping in anyway. It was going to rain hard soon. They’d had a lot of rain that winter. Too much here on the Pacific coast, but nothing in the Peten. Even the weather seemed to be conspiring against coffee prices.

Russell Cruz-Price planned to buy a coffee plantation that afternoon from a Frenchman who’d gone bust. He knew it was a foolish act, but he didn’t care. He’d gotten to that place in life where you just stop caring very much. You just try to satisfy yourself, and that’s good enough. You believe what you want to believe about how it will all turn out.

He’d been playing with a double-0 shotgun shell, rolling it back and forth on the bar in front of him. The bartender took his empty beer away. It was hot in the bar and the air smelled of cigarettes and decaying jungle and the perfume the bar girls wore.

After they planted their cross and said their prayers, the men came across the empty road and into the thatched roof barroom for a cold beer. Even the priest came in. This bar was not used to seeing priests pass through its doors; a lot of people came to La Ultima bar, but not many priests. Sudden outbreaks of violence were very common in La Ultima. Men from all classes got drunk together here, then shot each other for petty reasons — usually over the young bar girl’s affections. Couples danced night and day to the juke box on the polished concrete floor. La Ultima never closed its doors. It was a church, someone told Russell once, but for sinners.