Estuary 2

A typical sodden weight sat in my belly, and I sat on the floor. People around me in small groups laughed about yesterday's old saws. A few talked about tomorrow. It's what I imagined. I couldn't understand a word. "The calm community feeling," I spoke into the mini-recorder I took from my breast pocket.

"What is it you are here to study?" The man asking, my new interpreter, had a bulldog face and porkchop cheeks. He wore a slate blue shirt unbuttoned to the sternum and cotton slacks with soot cakes clinging on like parasitic fish.

"My grant is on the trajectory of male aggression, from agrarian societies to hip-hop culture today, with an emphasis on the sublimation of violence into creative expression as in MC battles," I said. It was the one passage I'd memorized from a pamphlet stamped Pueblo, Colorado. I changed the subject.

"Will they all retire for bed at the same time?" I asked.

"Nearly all," my interpreter said. "Some of the men go into the jungle."

"At night? Is this common?"

"No. You are interested?"

After my nap in the canoe I couldn't say I was particularly tired. "Very much," I said.