so like i said, canary lived near ten years with these heathen killers an grew to be well loved and proved himself useful, an always said them indians proved themselves peaceable and family orientated when you got to know them unless you trespassed on their land or you were a soldier or a prospector, once they got over his skin being white that is.. not so much because of any inborn racism on their part you understand but white and mesitzo prospectors, scouts and soldiers coming in all the time shooting up, digging up, burning and all those good civilizing things

he was only eight when he boated in with his dad, mom already dead from venezuala malarial infection drove her crazy on a hot tropical night screaming the name of jesus, dad hat in hand watching the doctor applyign a sedative, she dead by morning. they had to pry the sweat soaked bible from between her fingers. hardly missed, and by chance found again by a posse of soldiers bent hell for leather on picking the amacau out their paradisal hell for the oldest reasons of all, filthy lucre and fun with the birdlike delicately tattooed amacau women who aint so fun with a knife balled up in their fist so mostly in the end they shot em too but more of that later... i want to paint you a picture of the boy and the man, canary evans

he grew up canny with the plants and herbs and made something of a name for himself growing up early like most macua and became a little medicine man and famous talking to spirits.  forgot all about his life but thrilled the boys with his tales of city streets who laughed and slapped his chest when he spoke of iron condors winging their way across the sky until ten years later when they saw their first aircraft as men trying to shoot it down with the long reed arrows tipped red with poison and they rememberd his stories with chargrin

he touched his tongue to that same poison frog burning on the leaf like a hot coal, saw visions of the stirring jungle on fire the undergrowth littered with the dead and they say it was canary who drove them deeper into the jungle, deeper into macau sacred land where anaconda spoke from the water to the first man and woman blinking in the buzzing, stifling jungle hell. land to which they had not returned fearing old taboos, terrified of disturbing sleeping gods violently from the undergrowth which they parted gingerly, and single file the children told to hush for the mouth of the asp an arrow length from their hearts

 

the macua now, they were more afraid of soldiers than the spirits but only by a hair, and a few of the eldest, no older than fourty, they refused to leave and joined their cousins in the pecua tribe, vanishing overnight bowed under by their parcels of leaves and meat, blowpipes and sacred herbs, rather than face the unknown terrors of primeval jungle

 

you'll forgive my distraction, it being hard in this life to stay on one trail with all the criss crossing time affords, and back to young canary urging the amacau onwards

 

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sure i knew him, he was another bald head among the bald heads of the sao paulo penitentionary, a mesitzo indian as mule headed as the rest, the self same evil minded son of a whore that cut off the finger of paulo cesar and made a whistle of it. tell you the truth by god, not many indians live in prison. they sicken and die. or the soldiers beat them to death. or an inmate puts a knife in them.
Canary was rare in that sense, and a real pain in the ass to the warden. not violent exactly, no more than a snake unless you are drunk or stupid or both and happen to stand on its tail. he was strong, determined and more than that, he carried the green hell of the jungle with him in his heart like a poison.

 

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i am mochito, and i too knew this indian you call canary. he was protected by many powerful dreams. he was of the amacau, who drove the portugese soldiers into feverish sweats with their sorcery,

was strong when he was brought here, and when he left he was stronger. neither the warden, nor all the portugese devils in his service could weaken him.