Chapter One
Going to the jungle wasn’t my idea. Had the thought actually crossed my
mind, I would have immediately relegated it to that crowded portion of my
brain where things I should do someday but thankfully never will are
safely locked away to languish and die.
The idea was my daughter McKenna’s. Three months before she graduated from
high school, her sociology teacher, a graying, long-haired Haight-Ashbury
throwback who had traded in his tie-dye T-shirts for tweed jackets with
leather elbow patches presented to his class the opportunity to go to
South America on a humanitarian mission. McKenna became obsessed with the
idea and asked if I would accompany her on such an excursion – kind of a
daddy-daughter date in the Amazon.
I agreed. Not that I had any real desire or intention of going. I figured
that she would soon graduate and her mind would be occupied with other
concerns. I never believed it would really come about.
I should have known my daughter better. Four months later I found myself
standing with her and a dozen of her former classmates in the Salt Lake
City airport boarding a plane for Lima, Peru.
Unbeknownst to our little group, we had entrusted our lives to novices. We
were the first group our expeditionary guides had actually led into the
Amazon – a fact we discovered twenty-four hours later deep in a jungle
teeming with anacondas, jaguars and hand-sized spiders. Several times in
the course of our expedition, our guide, an elderly Peruvian man, would
suddenly stop, lay his machete at the foot of a tree, then climb above the
jungle canopy for a look, each time descending with a somewhat perplexed
expression.
After our third complete change of course I asked our guide (as tactfully
as one being led through a jungle must) if he knew where he was going. In
broken English the old man replied, “Yes, I have been here before …” then
added, “when I was six.”
During our hike we came upon the village of an Amazonian tribe, the Los
Palmos. Overjoyed to learn that they were neither cannibals nor
headhunters, we soon noticed that the population of the village included
no young men, only women and the elderly. Our guide asked one of the
natives where all the young men had gone.
“They have gone to town to kill the mayor,” she replied.
“Why?” our guide asked.
“The mayor has said we can no longer cut the rainforest trees. We cannot
live without the wood from the trees. So our men have gone to kill him.”
“Do you think that’s a good idea?” our guide asked.
The woman shrugged. “Probably not, but it’s how things are done in the
jungle.”
There was something refreshing about her logic. I’ve never been overly
fond of politics, and the image of painted tribesmen carrying spears and
bows into town hall delighted me – certainly something we don’t see
enough of in Salt Lake City. I still wonder how that all turned out.
Two days into our journey we ran out of food. For several days we lived on
jungle fruit and the piranhas we caught in the river. (Piranha doesn’t
taste that bad – kind of like chicken.)
I remember, as a boy, sitting spellbound through a Saturday afternoon
matinee about a school of piranhas that terrorized a small jungle village.
These Hollywood piranhas swam in conveniently slow-moving schools that
cinematically frothed and bubbled on the surface, allowing the hero a
chance to swim across the river and rescue a woman just inches ahead of
the churning piranha death.
The piranhas we encountered in the jungle were nothing like that. First,
Amazon piranhas are nearly as ubiquitous in the jungle as vegetation. Drop
a fishing line in any jungle river and within seconds it will be bitten.
Usually in half. Second, there are no warning bubbles.
Adding crocodiles, electric eels and leeches to the mix, we decided it
best to just keep out of the water.
After several days of traveling we reached our destination, a small
village where we established our clinic. The Quechuan natives were waiting
for us.
The goal of our humanitarian mission was threefold: teach basic hygiene,
fix teeth and correct vision. I was assigned to the latter. The
optometrist who hiked in with us would conduct an eye examination, then
hand me a written prescription for eyeglasses that I would attempt to fill
from the bags of used eyewear we had packed into the jungle.
I remember one patient in particular. He was an elderly man, small
featured and sun-baked, his skin as leathery as a baseball glove. And he
had just one eye. As he was led from his exam to my station, the doctor
handed me a blank prescription.
“What do I do with this?” I asked.
“Find the thickest lens you can find,” he replied. “He’s all but blind.”
I knew the pair. Earlier, as I was organizing the glasses, I had come
across a pair of lenses so thick I was certain they were bulletproof. I
retrieved them and placed them on the little man’s face. I soon learned
that he had not just one eye, but also just one tooth as a broad smile
blanketed his face. “!Puedo ver!” he exclaimed. I can see!
It was my daughter’s job to tend the children as the doctors treated their
parents. Indelibly etched in my mind is a sweet mental picture of my
daughter as I looked out to see her running and screaming in mock terror
from a throng of bare-chested little boys, who were laughing so hard they
would occasionally fall to the ground holding their stomachs.
As we left the village, the children gathered around her and she hugged
each of them. We sat together in the back of the bus, and she grew very
quiet. After a few minutes I asked her what she had learned from this
experience. She thought about it a moment, then said, “We love those whom
we serve.”
We moved on by boat up the muddy Rio Madre de Dios past the camps of the
illicit gold miners scarring the forest with their bulldozers and sluices,
eventually coming to a small clearing in the jungle. An airfield. Boarding
a cargo plane, we flew south to Cuzco, where we took buses up into the
Andes Mountains to a rundown hacienda.
The hacienda had been magnificent once, with elaborate tiles and intricate
woodwork. It had a stone courtyard, a balcony and a bell tower. But the
opulence of centuries ago was gone now, and what remained, rotting and
looted, provided barely adequate shelter for the orphan boys it now
housed. The place was called El Girasol – the Sunflower – and it was in
the business of saving street children.
Among all the people we encountered in this mystical land, it was here
that we met the most memorable: an American by the name of Paul Cook.
I was told by one of our guides that Paul Cook had once been a successful
emergency room physician. Up until one Christmas Day when everything
changed.
One night, after we had completed our day’s tasks, we sat around a fire
recounting the day’s events as darkness closed in around us. Gradually our
group retired to their sleeping quarters and I found myself alone with
this quiet, intriguing man. We talked mostly about America; about the NBA,
current movies, the Oscars and whom I thought would win the next
presidential election. When I had satisfied his curiosity about current
events, I asked him what prompted him to come to Peru. He just stared into
the fire. Then he said, without looking at me, “That’s a long story.”
“No clocks in the jungle,” I said.
Still gazing into the fire, he smiled at the use of one of his own
favorite phrases. After a moment he said, “I’ll show you.”
He led me through the labyrinth of the hacienda to a small windowless cell
with a wooden floor and a high ceiling. The room was as austere as any I
had seen in the orphanage and was lit by a single lightbulb hanging from a
cord from the exposed rafters. There were a few simple pieces of
furniture: a small tin washbasin, a crate for a desk with a wooden chair
and a bed that was just a mattress on box springs set on wooden blocks.
And there were books. Lots of books, visibly well-read and stacked in
sloppy piles against the wall. I scanned the titles. Classics and
bestsellers, Reader’s Digest compilations, medical journals and crossword
puzzles, biographies and thrillers. Books in Spanish as well as English.
There were a few love stories.
On the wall above the books were two framed photographs: one of an elderly
couple I guessed to be his parents, the other of a beautiful young woman
whom I was to learn was named Christine. The most peculiar adornment to
the room was a movie poster: a moody, black and indigo poster of a man
kissing a woman beneath a title written in Italian: Cinema Paradiso.
Paul let me take in the surroundings for a moment before motioning for me
to sit on the bed. I noticed that he had something in his hand – a
hand-sewn leather pouch. He untied its drawstrings and took from it a
small toy soldier and handed it to me. Then he sat down next to me and
commenced his tale. An hour or so later, when he was done, he looked weary
and spent and I could sense the walls rising again in his demeanor, as if
maybe he feared that he had shared too much. He restored the soldier to
its pouch, hanging it by its drawstrings to a nail on the wall.
I asked if I could share his story. He showed little interest in my
request but said he would sleep on it, a reply I also understood as my
dismissal. Three days later, just a few hours before we were to fly back
to Lima, he agreed.
It’s been said, Seek not your destiny for it is seeking you. Paul Cook’s
story reveals, as well as any I suppose, that this is true. It was equally
true for a young woman named Christine, who went to the jungle looking for
anything but love.
This is their story.
(Continues…)
Simon & Schuster
Copyright © 2005
Richard Paul Evans
All right reserved.
ISBN: 0-7432-8701-0
Excerpted from The Sunflower
by Richard Paul Evans
Copyright © 2005 by Richard Paul Evans.
Excerpted by permission.
All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.
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