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The mixto stopped in the village square, in front of the door of a small cantina, and I stepped down to the hot, dusty road. A man on top pulled my oversized suitcase from beneath several crates of chickens, and pushed it to where I could reach it. The bus then pulled away and disappeared back into the rain forest. The village was small, with buildings visible through the trees and along the street. I saw a girl of about twelve dancing in the sunlight, twirling her brightly colored skirt while holding aloft, on a string attached to a stick, a balloon shaped like a shark. I nodded to her, but she was too engrossed in her dance to notice.

The bus driver said I should wait inside the cantina for the bus to Riobamba, so I struggled my heavy suitcase to the door. The building was made from palm logs chinked with clay, long and narrow with a palm-thatched roof, and painted white against the heat of the Ecuadorian sun. The front entrance had swinging-doors, like in the old West, and they squeaked as I entered.

Inside, the room was long and dark, with candles glowing on bamboo tables, where people were sitting in the dark talking low in Spanish. At the far end was the bar, made from two doors laid across barrel-tops, and behind that a mirror the size of the wall, making the room seem even longer. Somewhere in back a radio was playing soft Spanish music. An old man and a woman sat on stools in front of the bar; they were arguing when I entered, but stopped and looked around when they heard the squeak of the swinging doors.
A teenage boy washed glasses in a tub behind the bar.
“Cevasa,” I said, shoving my suitcase beneath a stool. I took a seat, and the bartender placed the cold beer in front of me.

The old couple resumed their argument. The woman was saying, “Yeah, you go ahead and talk to your dead brother in that mirror; tell him you can’t wait to go join him.” She looked to be in her fifties, slightly overweight, but she must have been a beauty in her time. Most noticeable, however, she was dressed in a red ballroom gown with high heels.
The old man looked to be in his seventies, wearing Spanish style pants and pull-over shirt, straw shoes, with a straw hat hanging down his back, and over one shoulder a straw bag, the pouch of which lay on the bar before him. He spoke to my reflection in the mirror, “Don’t mind her,” he said. “I know plenty.”
The woman chuckled at this and turned to me. “My husband’s crazy. And I’m crazy for putting up with him.” She put out her hand. “I’m Audrey.”
“My name’s Stanley,” I said, taking her hand. “I just got back from the deep dark.”
“Got back?” she laughed. “Hell, Stanley, you’ll be in the rain forest for another thousand miles.”
“I’m waiting for the bus to Riobamba.”

She pointed past me down the bar. “Pass me that ashtray, will you?” I slid the Sardine can around to where she could reach it with her cigarette. “That’s a mighty big suitcase,” she noticed. “Wouldn’t it be easier to carry two small ones?”
“My laboratory equipment is in there. I’ve been on the Pastaza River, looking for frogs.”
“Frogs? We got frogs. Wait till it rains; you’ll have frogs up your ass.”
“Yes, well, these frogs are used by the Indians to make poison for their darts and arrows. I developed a snakebite antidote from it. I might get the Nobel Prize for medicine when I get back to the States.”
Audrey changed the subject. “I should have married his brother when I had the chance,” she said, making no reference to whom she was talking. “We’d be dancing from one end of this bar to the other, all over the ceiling and out into the street. But Tyrone flew away one day and I never saw him again. I’m sure he flew right into hell. You get what you pay for in this life, and Tyrone had run up quite a tab.”

The old man never stopped mumbling to himself in the mirror behind the bar. “I know plenty,” he would say now and then, “I know what happened.”
Audrey told her husband, “This man doesn’t want to hear your stupid story.” She took a sip of her drink; then spoke to me in a whisper. “His name is Willie. He’s got money, to be sure. I hope you don’t think an attractive lady like myself couldn’t do better than this. But, oh, if you had known Tyrone, you would have known a real man.”
From the darkness behind me a man in grimy overalls stepped to the bar. He was about thirty, American, brown from the sun, with greasy black hair and a week’s worth of whiskers on his face. Over his right eye he wore a black eye-patch, and on his head an old leather aviator cap. “Excuse me, Señor,” he said. “Did I hear you to say you were waiting for the mixto to Riobamba?”
“Yes, I am,” I replied.

“My name is Flyaway Wilson, the hardest working bush pilot in South America. Maybe you’ll let me fly you to the coast.”
“Well, I appreciate the offer,” I told him. “But on the other side of the mountains a plane will be waiting for me.”
“Other side of the mountain? That should take about six weeks on the bus. Villages between here and there know more about shrinking heads than they do a bus schedule.”
“I know South America pretty well,” I informed him. “You are exaggerating a little. You see; I have to get back to the university and submit my research findings. This time next year, I could be famous.”
“This time next year you still be waiting on the bus to Riobamba. You do better to let me fly you out.”
“You have a plane?”

He unfolded a large paper on the bar in front of me. “There she is,” he smiled broadly. “She’s a beauty, no?”
The picture was of a very old and dilapidated bi-plane, the kind you saw in old World War I movies. This plane’s struts and covering were visibly patched together with tape, wire and string. The wheels were replaced with pontoons.
He said, “I can take you over mountains for five hundred dollars.”
“Your plane looks like it’s got a lot of patches.”

“Well, of course. That what makes her so strong.”
“Your offer sounds tempting, but the university has already made my travel arrangements; I think I’ll wait for the bus.”
“I’ll be sleeping in back,” Flyaway Wilson told me, folding his picture and tucking it inside his overalls. “Wake me up if you change your mind.” He stepped through a curtain and was gone.
I looked to Audrey and found myself asking her advice. “What do you think I should do?”
“I gotta use the bathroom,” she responded.. “Watch my drink, will you?”
As soon as she was gone, the man she referred to as Willie slipped onto her stool next to me and asked, “Have I told you about my brother?”

“I just met you,” I replied.
The bartender came to refresh the drinks, but he stepped back suddenly as if from a snake bite. The old man had pulled a shrunken head, a tsantsa, from the straw bag laying on the bar, and was holding it cupped in his hands, looking sadly into the stitched eyes. The head was about the size of a man’s fist, gruesome, blackened with smoke and charcoal. Willie said, “Never would have happened it he’d stayed away from smuggling.”
I had to catch my breath. “T-that’s your brother?”
Willy nodded.
“How can you be sure?”
“A missionary was with him at the last. Not that it mattered; Tyrone was never one to pray, but my brother was allowed a few last words with this priest before he died. The priest brought me the story and the head.”
“My God; your brother?”

“Tyrone was a pilot,” the old man reminisced. “It was back in the sixties, back when smuggling dope was a lot easier than it is today.” With little encouragement, the old man went into his story. I was interested, and I had time to kill. “It began in Key West in ’’65,” he said, “when our uncle taught Tyrone how to fly, and, after that, there was no keeping him out of the sky. Everyone on the islands knew Tyrone, and they would come out on their lawns to watch him doing flips in the sky.
But then one day my brother took off for South America, where a friend had arranged for him to pick up a plane-full of Marijuana.
“He landed on a narrow clay road outside a Colombian village, and spent the night in the plane. The next morning the villagers arrived in trucks loaded down with bales of pot, which they loaded into the plane. Somebody gassed her up, and by sunrise Tyrone was back in the sky, headed for home.

“A hundred miles out from the coast, flying low over the Gulf, he held a compass heading for Key West and began to relax. He had made it. He was flying the Cessna low, beneath the radar, but also riding very heavy with the weight of the load. From beneath the seat he took a pint of Jack, and spit the cork out the window. It was definitely time to celebrate.

“The first time the engine cut off was only for a second, and it started right up again. Still, it brought Tyrone straight up in his seat. Then the engine cut off again, and this time did not start back up. There was only the lonesome sound of the wind whistling through the engine, and the plane floated like some sad cartoon until the weight overcame the inertia, and they began to plummet like concrete. Of course, Tyrone wasn’t ready for any of this. His life jacket was back in Uncle’s garage, and a life raft was something he had admired once in a catalog. Tyrone’s scream was lost in that of the propeller, as the plane barreled toward the ocean.
“Fifty feet above the surface, the wind through the propeller caused the engine to start, but just for a moment, just long enough so Tyrone could pull the plane out of its steep decent. The airplane pancaked onto the ocean, skipped across a couple waves, then plowed into the water with Tyrone trapped inside the cockpit.

“But the air inside pulled the plane back to the surface, and it erupted through the bubbles like an out-of-breath swimmer. It soon leveled off and drifted in a vertical position, wings out, tail down. The tail was weighted down by the bales of pot stuffed in the back, now wet from the water that had spilled in when they the plane was submerged. The weight seemed to keep the plane in perfect balance.”
The woman, Audrey, returned from the restroom, picked up her drink, and moved to a stool at the end of the bar. She had obviously heard her husbnd’s story before, and, disinterested, lit a cigarette and sipped her drink in silence.
With the bringing out of the shrunken head the room took on some excitement, as people in back moved closer to listen. Someone would lift a hand whenever the old man needed another drink.
Willie continued, “Half the windshield was broken away, and Tyrone was able to pull himself through it and out onto the nose of the plane. He pulled himself up on top of the propeller, where he sat about six feet off the water. All around in every direction was the wide, vacant ocean. Among the debris from the plane, Tyrone noticed four bales of pot that had popped out through the same window, and they floated around the plane like small islands.
“The heat was unrelenting, and by noon Tyrone was ready to confess to any crime. He’d rather do time in jail than burn to ashes out there. But he held on. Surely a passing plane would notice him. And what about the shipping lanes; wasn’t everything shipping lanes in these days?

“It wasn’t until Tyrone chanced to look below the propeller that he realized he had cut his arm, the blood from which had been pooling on the nose of the plane and dripping into the ocean below. He quickly tore away a strip from his shirt and tied off the bleeding. Tyrone was fully aware of what blood on the water could mean on the open ocean, and he hoped the rolling waves would dissipate it.
“The first two sharks to come around were small, with stripes like tigers. Looking no more threatening than a couple large catfish, Tyrone threw a shoe at them and they went away.
“All he had to do was hang on. If he must sleep, he would have to arrange his body somehow so he could tie himself to the propeller with his belt. Under no circumstances could he slip off. Once off the nose of the plane, there would be no way to get back on.”

The old man had begun his story slow and sedate, as if savoring the memory of his brother, but now he was quite into it. “The wind picked up and the plane rode the waves in a lazy pitch and roll, adrift like a cork on the endless sea. Soon the small sharks returned, swimming playfully around the plane, until Tyrone noticed them suddenly stop, as if in suspended animation, then vanish. Looking around for what had frightened them, Tyrone saw on the side of a wave the fin of a very large shark, gliding smooth and dangerous through the foam toward the plane, and he held tight to the propeller.

“The shark cut the top of the hot water like some evil periscope, between the bales floating near the plane, leaving a frothy wake behind. Skimming within inches of the wing, Tyrone could see from his elevated position that the shark was longer than the plane. On the backside of the shark’s dorsal fin a jagged piece was missing, like a barracuda-size bite had been taken out.
“Tyrone had felt like vomiting after surviving the crash, but now with the shark and all, getting sick seemed the least of his problems. Suddenly, out of nowhere, the plane leaped into the air as if hit from below by a freight train, throwing Tyrone several feet above his perch. Clawing the air and running in place on his way back down, Tyrone caught the edge of the propeller with his fingertips and pulled himself back up.
“But now Tyrone could feel the plane sinking. The shark’s impact must have broken a back window, and the water was pouring in, soaking the bales. The weighted pot would soon pull the plane beneath the surface.
“Ragged Fin, the evil surfer, cut the water out through the floating bales and debris, then, as if by design, came circling back around for its final attack.

“Tyrone was crying real tears, whispering a dead man’s prayer into the wind, and soon he was standing on the tip of a submerged propeller, the water splashing cold and wet about his ankles. He saw one bale floating nearby that looked large enough it might could hold him. Well, there certainly weren’t a whole lot of options to consider, not but one hard choice to make. He would have to swim for the bale. He looked around at one last view of beautiful earth, and then, with one great splashing leap, he was flailing his arms and legs upon the water, his pants and shirt floating in the bubbles of the vanished plane behind him.

“Goddamn! Goddamn! Goddamn!” he cried, as salt water sloshed into his nose and ears, filling them with a gurgling chill. The shark’s fin looked like an ocean liner bearing down from behind, and Tyrone pulled at the water with a strength brought on by the madness of fear. Reaching and pulling, clawing himself closer and closer to the bale, he could sense the gaping jaws beneath his legs as his fingers touched plastic, then a strip of duct tape, and he pulled with all his strength. His body rolled sloppy and wet on top of the bale, as the shark swept by so close its skin scraped hard and raspy against the plastic.
“The bale rocked on the water, but Tyrone held on, flopped out on his back like a fish he held onto both sides of the bale. The plastic was fiercely hot, and the water on Tyrone’s back hissed off into steam that drifted away with the wind, out over the shadow of the passing shark.

Tyrone opened his eyes; he was alive!
“The hours drifted by like slow-burning fire. Tyrone was exhausted and weak from his experience, but so far the bale had shown no signs of leaking. If the shark’s skin had done any damage, it had not yet shown itself. Hold on, help would come; burn to a crisp if you have to, blow away in the wind; just don’t touch the water.
“Throughout the day the shark was tireless in its circling, and even after the moon was up and hovering round and yellow in the night sky, at almost perfectly timed intervals Tyrone could detect the darkness of the fin cutting across the river of moonlight, and it helped him stay awake.

“In the morning the heat returned, and the pain brought Tyrone slowly back to reality. As he remembered where he was and why he should be careful, he noticed that, for an undetermined amount of time, his foot had been dragging in the water. He snatched his foot from the ocean, causing salt water to splash into his face and burn his eyes and skin. He stared in horror at the place where his foot had been. The shark, alerted by the splash, began circling closer.
“ ‘Got to stay awake,’ Tyrone whispered. ‘That was close!’

“The huge shark closed its circling to a few feet from the bale, and Tyrone could hear the wash of the water each time it glided by. But without the blood on the water, the shark did not attack.
Another day passed and with only his shorts to protect him from the elements, the sun took its toll. Tyrone became lobster-red and delirious from the heat. The bale had begun to sink a little, since the plastic was not air tight, but for the moment Tyrone was still safely above the water. He discovered a way he could lay on his side, shifting positions now and then to maintain his balance and stay comfortable. But the warm wind made him sleepy, and again he woke up with his foot dragging in the water. This time he removed it slowly and quietly, as if from experience, and once again the shark missed its chance.

“As darkness approached, Tyrone knew that he would not be able to make it through another night. He carefully raised himself onto his hands and knees and looked across the thousands of miles of ocean around him. But then he noticed something. He was exhausted and very thirsty, and in his stupor could have been seeing anything, but up ahead he thought he saw an island. As the waves carried him closer, he saw that it was indeed an island, green with vegetation, with a white beach down to the water. In a few seconds the current would push him to within sprinting distance of that beach, and if he could make it to solid ground the shark would never get him. The ants and birds, maybe, but not the shark.
“Tyrone also noticed that if he drifted past the beach he would again be in open-ocean. No one would ever find him then, and there was no way he could stay awake another night.

“Tyrone could hear a sound above the waves and the wind; drums! There must be natives on the island! Was he going to escape the shark only to be eaten by cannibals? On the beach he saw movement, and as he drifted closer he saw a white man in a white tropical suit standing near the water, with several natives on the beach behind him. The white man stood out like a ghost against the brown of the Indians, but his presence was a comfort to Tyrone. They were all watching him ride the tiny raft, and they had also noticed the shark following him.”
The silence in the bar was like a tomb. The swinging doors squeaked as a man stepped through and announced that the bus to Riobamba had arrived.
“Will you ask them to wait?” I called to him.
“I ask,” the man replied, and left.

I turned back to Willie. “The man in the white suit, was he the missionary?”
“Yes. He had come from London to study this unusual tribe.”
Drinks were again refreshed, and another bottle of beer was set in front of me. The old man went on with his story,“Tyrone was drifting on a bale of pot not a stone’s throw from land and safety, with the shark circling close. He looked at the people on the beach, and this time he saw the beautiful figure of a woman running down from the dunes to join the others. She was dark and she was naked, but for a brightly colored cloth tied about her hips, and white flowers flew like tiny parachutes from the ringlets in her long, black hair. She waved to Tyrone and he wanted to wave back, but the bale had entered the choppy water of an ebb tide just off the beach. He knew it was now or never! In seconds the bale would drift past the beach and into the ocean beyond.
Tyrone prudently waited for the shark to make its outward turn, then eased himself into the water and began to swim in desperation. As if in a horrible dream, he was again looking over his shoulder at the ragged fin coming after him. Once again, he was in the shark’s environment, and it would take yet another miracle to save him.

“Tyrone fought the water with all his strength, his body so weak it seemed to move by its own accord. But when he heard the wash of the huge body coming through the water behind him, he stopped swimming and turned to face his miserable end. But, as he turned, his foot touched sand.
“Sand! Tyrone was standing on the bottom! A shelf evidently extended out from the beach. The water became shallower as he ran through the surf, his hands paddling madly on both sides, and, lifting his knees high and taking long steps, Tyrone struggled to reach the shore.
“You could easily imagine that this was a shark that was accustomed to getting its way. But during its encounter with this helpless human, and its failure to obtain a meal, the attitude of the shark had transcended millions of years of evolution. The impersonal demeanor of a world-class hunter was now out for revenge; Ragged Fin was pissed!

“Adding to this, the shark had not eaten during all the time it had been stalking Tyrone. Realizing it was once again about to lose its meal, the shark made one, last, desperate lunge, using all its massive strength, causing the monster to ground itself on the sand where Tyrone had just been standing. Caught like a beached whale, the shark flipped and rolled, but could not wriggle itself free.
“Tyrone was jumping and yelling, picking up shells, rocks, anything he could find to throw at the shark’s head in an attempt to destroy it. Behind him the voices of the Indians cried out as they ran madly back and forth along the water’s edge, until suddenly the Indian girl stepped through the others with a spear in her hand.

“ ‘Quick, throw it to me!’ Tyrone called out to her. ‘Throw me the spear!’
“The girl tossed the spear and Tyrone grabbed it out of the air like an old swashbuckler movie, and in the same motion, swung around and drove its needle-point through the brain of the shark, pinning Ragged Fin’s head to the sand.
“The Indians were mute and seemed to be in shock. Tyrone smiled at the girl as she stepped to where he stood above the shark. She was crying. He told her, “ ‘It’s all right, pretty girl. He can’t hurt anyone now.”
Again, the silence inside the bar was surreal. A glass clinked here and there, a foot shuffled, and the bartender poured another drink into the old man’s glass. Someone had long ago turned down the radio in back.
I asked Willie, “What happened then? Why is your brother’s head shrunken like that, if he killed the shark and got the girl and all was saved?”

Willie did not reply right away, but sat staring at the shrunken head. He lifted his drink and sipped, then looked at my reflection in the mirror. “Everything was as Tyrone believed," he continued, "up until the shark got itself stuck on the sand. Until then the maiden was probably his, and a life in paradise could have been his for the taking. Tyrone had made it from where his plane went down, drifted two days on a leaky bale of pot, until finally he he was safely on the island. And the shark, well, the shark that would have killed him was dead.”
“Why didn’t the natives come after him with their canoes?” I asked. “Why didn’t they try to help?”

“There were no canoes on this island,” Willie explained, “because to go onto the water was taboo. There were waterfalls and pools of water inland, but the Indians never went onto the ocean. It was also against their better judgment to let the sudden romantic notion of one of their loveliest maidens override a tribal custom they had been part of their heritage for centuries. Against their better judgment, they stood back and watched as the princess ran into the water, probably wetting her feet in ocean water for the first time in her life. Once it was revealed that Tyrone intended to do harm to the shark, especially after escaping its danger, everything changed. You see, the Indian girl wasn’t throwing the spear to Tyrone; she was throwing it at him, trying to stop the heathen invader trying to destroy their shark-god.
“These Islanders were a unique tribe of shark-worshippers, and their rage was monumental. Such was their wrath that even the Missionary could not save Tyrone. The Missionary spent the last night with the prisoner, during which Tyrone told him his story. My brother’s was the first head-shrinking ceremony these Indians had held in over a hundred years.”
Outside, the sun was rolling into afternoon, and the bus to Riobamba had left without me. I took a seat on the edge of the fountain, as Willie’s story consumed my thoughts. I was almost relieved to see Flyaway Wilson come from the bar. Behind him, two men carried my heavy suitcase.
“Ah, Señor,” he smiled, “the bus, she leave you. You ready to fly?”
“Yes, I guess so,” I answered, without emotion. “Five hundred dollars?”

“That was morning special; it’s afternoon now. You pay me eight-hundred dollar, I’ll take you all way to the coast.”
Too tired to argue, and still very much mesmerized by the old man’s shark story, I simply nodded, and fell in behind Flyaway and his helpers. We crossed the road and took a path leading into the jungle. The dancing girl followed at a short distance, and when I stopped, she came and handed me her shark balloon on a stick. The gesture was ominous. She did not smile, but looked close to tears.
Following the path, we came to the river where Flyway’s plane was tied, drifting on pontoons at the end of a dock. The men tied my suitcase into the back of the bi-plane and left, and I climbed into the back seat.
“We’ll be on the coast in no time, Señor,” Flyaway assured me, pulling himself into the pilot’s seat. He inserted a key and pushed a button, but the engine did not start. Again he pushed the button and again the engine did not catch.
“It sounds like your plane’s not going to start,” I mentioned. “Maybe I should go back and wait for the next bus.”
Flyaway lifted his foot and stomped the dashboard hard, causing a mirror to fall off and a can of nuts and bolts to spill to the floor. Immediately the engine started. “Airplane like a woman,” he smiled. “You just have to know how to talk to them. Two hundred thousand miles on a set of spark plugs; they don’t make them like this any more.”

I held the shark balloon stick in my hand, and by the time the plane was skimming over the water I was clutching it like a magic charm. With the engine skipping and screeching, piston rods knocking, the airplane lifted off the water and barely cleared the trees lining the river.
And then something occurred to me. “Flyway,” I yelled over the noise. “Are there headhunter islands in the Gulf of Mexico?”
He began laughing so uncontrollably the steering stick came off in his hands. He replaced it quickly, with no pause in his hilarity, and the plane lumbered on, sputtering and coughing toward the black clouds billowing on the horizon, as lightning flickered across the sky.

The End

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