Here She Found Juvenile Red Jays Living Together in Another Bird’S Abandoned Nest

ANAMNESIS ê a novel ê ê WILLIAM KEEFER Copyright © 2016 William Keefer All rights reserved Illustrations by Alyssa Dennis ISBN-10: 0692763538 ISBN-13: 978-0692763537 Published by Jupiter Publications First Edition williamkeefer.com anamnesis noun an-am-NEE-sis - Loss of forgetfulness. - Medicine. A case history obtained by asking questions of a patient. - Platonism. Recollection of knowledge gained by the soul in other incarnations. - Christianity. Liturgical statements memorializing the Last Supper, Passion, Resurrection and Ascension. - Immunology. A rapid and effective immune response to a known antigen. Part One ê THE NARROW PATH 1 Jungle vines encircled Bonnie’s heart and tree branches lifted her into the sky. - Logan Wheeler, La Cana Anomaly IT WAS A rainy day in La Cana National Park, and Bonnie Delamarca stood on a forest trail in a green plastic poncho. Drops of water ran down the side of her face and off of her chin. She was lean and tan from her months in the Colombian rainforest. Her people in Winnipeg would marvel at her appearance, if she sent them back a photo. Bonnie felt disengaged living in Canada, but in the Amazon, she existed fully in the present. It was not a matter of choice. Working in the rainforest was dangerous, and she needed to stay aware. Her instincts kept her safe as she climbed trees searching for Red Jay nests. Her inner voice spoke clearly, but lately it frightened her with some of the things it said. She stood frozen on the trail, lost in an internal debate about which way to go. To the east was the route back to her camp. She was done with her fieldwork for the day and due back. To the west lay the corner of the park where she found juvenile Red Jays living together in another bird’s abandoned nest. Luis, the head of the field study, was ecstatic when she discovered the juvenile band. The Red Jay is a close relative of the American crow, whose young live together until they find mates and claim territory. Five Red Jay young living together was a sign of health for the species. But then Luis spotted loggers working at the western border of the park—less than a kilometer from the nest—and he forbade her from going near the area. “And so it begins,” he said. “¿Que?” Bonnie asked. “The end of the Red Jay,” he said. Bonnie faced west and thought of the rosewood tree that was home to the birds. She wondered if they were ok. She knew she should head back to camp, but stood unmoving on the trail. Her body refused to let her go. She felt a sensation of being physically drawn to the west. It was like a thirst. There was an emotional draw as well. When she thought about walking back to camp, a black cloud descended on her, but the thought of finding the young Red Jays again filled her with peace. She shook her head and took a step back to camp. A wave of sadness rolled over her and her throat went dry. She then took a step back west and felt a bit better. But the relief quickly faded. The depression and thirst rose again, and she continued to stumble toward the Red Jay. She tried to hold her ground, but it was like standing against an ocean tide. The bad feeling grew again, and she recoiled west. Her mind battled her instinct to run to the birds. Luis told her to stay away from the loggers. A confrontation would jeopardize the study. She fell to her knees and crawled a few steps to the east. Her stomach contracted into a painful knot, and she retreated back to the west and felt the pain diminish. She looked up at canopy trees swaying in the wind. Something extraordinary was happening, and she was open-minded enough to consider a strange possibility. Was the rainforest itself telling her to go to the juveniles? “You are the forest,” her inner voice said. It spoke with wisdom and authority greater than her conscious mind. Her resistance broke and she ran west down the trail. With each step, a feeling of euphoria grew. The rain lessened and a ray of sunlight burst through the forest canopy, forming a rainbow in the mist. It was a sign. This is what she was meant to do. Without her, the juveniles might die, and with them could die the hope of their species as well. She would keep herself safe somehow. ê WHEN SHE WAS a teenager in the Canadian prairies, Bonnie tamed robins in her backyard. Her technique was to remain utterly still for an hour while holding breadcrumbs on her outstretched palm. The birds sensed no threat from her and eventually hopped onto her hand. There was something hidden behind their little black eyes that she wished to discover. She became an ornithologist—a scientist who studied birds. In the rainforest of southern Colombia there was a bird called Cyanocorax cruentus—the Red Jay to the wider world, and the “Heart Bird” to the local Indians. Hunted for its glimmering red feathers and intricate nests, it was once thought to be extinct. On a visit to La Cana National Park in southern Colombia, Luis became the first ornithologist in three decades to see a living Red Jay. He secured funding for a field study, and Bonnie responded to his job listing for a one-year research position. She was writing her PhD thesis on avian behavior, and the Red Jay was of the Corvid family, among the most intelligent of the birds. Luis warned her that La Cana was a dangerous place. It was still haunted by remnants of FARC—the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia. Loggers and paramilitaries were a new threat. But blood rushed to Bonnie’s face when she looked at photographs of the Red Jay online. She knew she was going to La Cana even before Luis wrote her back. ê SHE JUMPED PUDDLES and dodged branches as she ran down a forest path carved over the eons. She startled a howler monkey that jumped away from her approach. Another kilometer down the trail, the jungle thinned out into a marshy plain. She crossed it quickly, jumping from mound to mound of grass across pools of water. She rejoined the trail and continued for half a kilometer before emerging onto a new dirt road along La Cana’s border. Splintered trees lay on the road’s edge, as if a freight train had burst through the forest. She heard the grind of chainsaws in the distance. She left the road and continued along a creek bed, scrambling across rocks on the shore until the rosewood tree that held the nest came into sight. She pulled out her binoculars and spotted a flutter of scarlet wings high in the tree. She heard a man call out and the sound of a tree falling down. The juveniles were agitated by the sound and lifted into the air as one. They ascended a thermal in a semicircle across the sky, and then spiraled down toward the Earth again and dove toward Bonnie. The scarlet birds flew in a figure eight around her, calling out a song in unison. The Red Jay was known for its chorus-like singing, and Bonnie had not heard this song before. It was repetitive, like a mantra. The figure eight loops got tighter and tighter until she felt the flutter of wings against her skin. The birds were interacting with her, but she had no explanation for the behavior. After thirty seconds of aerobatics they flew off, darting east away from the sound of the loggers. Bonnie watched the place in the trees where the birds disappeared, hoping to see them return. The creek bed, covered by the jungle canopy, was like a black tunnel. Ten minutes passed and they did not come back. She heard the sound of another tree falling. The loggers were getting closer. The rising voice of her unconscious convinced her to climb the bank toward the dirt road, and walk through the forest toward the dangerous men. She moved through the heavy under- growth quickly and silently, as if she had walked in the rainforest all of her life. She reached a clearing where a big swath of trees had recently been cut. In the clearing’s center, workers were securing a twenty-meter-tall oil derrick tower. These were not loggers. They were after the wealth that lay below the ground. An armed guard sleepily watched the construction. The sun came out and warmed the skin on Bonnie’s arms. She wished for bad luck for the oilmen. Like finding lucidity in a dream, what she asked for came to pass. On the wood scaffolding around the drilling rig, a worker accidentally shot himself in the leg with a nail gun when a finger spasm compressed the trigger. The nail lodged near his knee and he screamed savagely. A moment later, one of the front-loaders rolled over into a pit near the tower, spewing dirt into the air and landing on its side with a crunch. Bonnie stepped into the open. She did not wish for anyone to be hurt. Another worker climbed onto the scaffolding to help the injured man, but every step he took was the wrong one. One end of the steel derrick tower slipped into the marshy ground, and the platform teetered. The man tried to backtrack, but his movements only un- balanced it more.

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