Monkeyshines

It’s dusk, the waves splash on outcrops of volcanic rock, and Kate is buried up to her neck in the beach. She started by laying on the sand and I excavated underneath her until she fell, piecemeal, into an ever-widening hole. But for her left leg, which was scraped on the rocks, she has become one with the sand. Black sand. Volcano dust.

I’ve heaped the sand on her good and proper. There’s a pretty thick layer on the chest, to the point where any more would restrict her breathing. But the mound shifts. Her exposed face reveals strain. The sand mountain shows fault lines. A hand emerges, followed by a slender forearm. The sand beast writhes in her confines, straining. With a terrific push and a zombie moan Kate sloughs off the sand.

We wash off in the Pacific – the furthest west we’ve been since we came to Nicaragua. A Coca Cola Lite washes the taste of brine from our mouths. We’re a crowd today so when we leave the beach I huddle in the bed of the truck, snuggling the cooler. Night has fallen and all I can see are stars and headlights, careening bats, elderly women selling corn paste in banana husks, midnight bicyclists dressed in suicidal black.

We’re staying with friends and seeing Nicaraguan hospitality first hand. Based on breakfast the next morning, this means feeding us ‘til our sides split open. Gallo pinto, tostones, slices of salty cheese, eggs scrambled with sausage, and coffee. After the meal I notice the possessed doll, scrawled on by generations of young girls in demonic script. Its soulless eyes flicker with the madness of the void. Notice how, in the picture below, I nimbly disarm the creature.

After breakfast we set out for Granada and haggle a wizened old man into taking us for a boat tour of the Granada island chains on the cheap. Life jackets not required, he tells me, the lake is tranquil. The shore is lined with fishing shacks and vines dangle from the trees. I scan the water for alligators, but don’t find any. At the top of a colonial-era fort I work the skeletal jaws of a freshwater shark.

Onwards to monkey island, but the monkeys are coy and won’t take the pretzels I offer. They leap from branch to branch taunting us with their bare asses. But our man the captain’s business is monkey business; he swings the boat around for a second pass. I climb onto the bow, sacrificial pretzels held aloft for a monkey on a low-lying branch. She hops on board. Sniffs my pretzels but throws the bag on the ground, then pats my shoulder. Strong and gentle. Our guide mentions her name is Lucy – the matriarch of monkey island – well advanced in another pregnancy. She climbs the rails of the vessel, tail clinging to the bars more surely than an arm. Kate flees to the other side of the boat when she gets close, but Lucy takes a liking to me and perches on my back as we float towards her branches. She braces to leap and I hold up the scorned pretzel bag – she snags it mid-air without looking back.

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