Vice(37)

Fernando’s men disperse; five separate groups head in five different directions, and for the next hour and a half Fernando and I stealthily move through the forest, not speaking, not breathing a word to one another. He uses a total of five rudimentary hand signals, which I pick up very quickly: slow, stop, listen, look, and fire.

I snap off four shots, making all four kills. Fernando seems impressed each time I take an animal down, patting me on the arm, nodding encouragingly, as a father might to his son. The entire time we’re stalking through the trees, I’m thinking about what it will feel like to end his life. My mouth is filled with the taste of copper. It’s only when I catch myself literally biting my tongue that I realize where the blood in my mouth is coming from.

Finally, Fernando raises his rifle to his shoulder, and squeezes the trigger, the first time since we started the hunt. The way he handles his weapon, and the way he aims, takes sight, and shoots all in one smooth, fluid moment, defines him as an expert marksman, and yet he only clips the deer in the shoulder.

Strange.

I’m on the verge of asking him what went wrong, when Fernando hands me his rifle and starts rooting through his pack for something.

“I find these kills with guns so impersonal, don’t you? I’m the kind of man who likes to get his hands dirty.” From the bag, he produces something that surprises me—a f*cking ball hammer. It’s old, or at least it looks like it is. He spins it around in his hand, and then jerks his head in the direction of the fallen deer. “Come. Best not to keep her waiting.”

Twenty feet away, through the dense vegetation, the deer he’s shot is lying on its side, writhing and groaning, its eyes rolling with wild panic in its head, and frothing at the mouth.

“There she is,” Fernando says. He stands for a second in front of the injured animal, hands on his hips, still gripping hold of the hammer, admiring the poor creature at his feet. “I always feel so guilty afterwards,” he says. “But not in this moment. When I’m holding the hammer, ready to bring it down, I feel nothing but anticipation. You understand this, I think, Kechu.”

“I think you’re probably right.”

Fernando hums softly under his breath while the animal thrashes and moans. He moves very slowly as he bends down on both knees and strokes a hand down the side of the deer’s face. “There, there, beautiful girl,” he murmurs. “There, there.” And then, with the speed of someone half his age, he hefts the hammer over his head and brings the weighty metal end down on the side of the deer’s head. Not once. Not twice. Not three times. I lose count of how many times he raises and brings down the hammer. The deer is dead after the first couple of blows. Fernando doesn’t seem to care, though. He doesn’t stop until the animal’s head is caved in, shards of broken bone all over his arms, all over the ground, pulped brains and blood clumped together on the backs of his hands. His shoulders are rapidly hitching up and down, his breath labored when he finally stops.

“Quite a rush,” he says, panting. Using the sleeve of his shirt, he wipes at his forehead, streaking even more blood over his face. “Next time, you should use this,” he tells me, holding out the hammer. I take it, my expression flat and even. If he expects me to react or shy away from his violence, then he has another thing coming. He’s showing his true colors for the first time, though, and they truly are forming a sinister, foreboding palette, all blacks and reds and violent oranges. He’s a soulless man. I can see that now, as I look into his eyes.

He’s on his knees, covered in pieces of the deer, out of breath, and I am holding his hammer; it occurs to me that this could possibly be the perfect moment I’ve been waiting for. How easy would it be to bring this thing down on his head? We’re alone out here, with no witnesses, and no one to stop me. And yet, now doesn’t feel like the right time.

The small walkie-talkie Fernando’s carrying clipped to his belt blasts static at us out of nowhere, splitting apart the silence, and the moment is gone, disappeared in a puff of smoke. Loud voices stream out of the walkie’s speakers, and then Fernando is getting to his feet and responding, speaking into the receiver.

One of his teams has shot and killed a cougar. They’re excited about the kill, and from the looks of things, so is Fernando. “Do not move it,” he orders. “I want to be the one to skin it.”

He doesn’t strike me as the sort of man to ever break a sweat, and yet he takes off running, ducking around trees and jumping fallen logs in his hurry to reach the kill. I run after him, easily keeping up; my fists pump the air, and with every step I take I see the hammer in my hand, and I think about smashing him over the head with it. Before I know it, he’s found his men and the dead cougar, though, and I return his hammer.

Natalia’s leaning against a tree, arms folded across her chest, rifle propped up beside her; when she sees me, she shifts—probably a subconscious action, but it makes her look guilty of something. Fernando doesn’t see, too busy with the impressive looking cougar, but Ocho does. He frowns, shooting a suspicious glance between me and Natalia, then he backs off into the forest, his head bent low, eyes on the ground, as if he’s looking for something. I suspect he’s thinking about Natalia’s strange reaction to me, though. That shit’s probably going to be back to bite me in the ass sooner rather than later.

Fernando poses with the dead cougar for twenty minutes, while men take shots of him with their cell phones. Anyone would think he’d caught the thing himself. Once he’s satisfied that the moment has been documented well enough, he orders his men back out in their teams.