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“Jonathan,” said Jose, “what do you think is dreams?”
It was well after dark at Thorn camp. Jose had set the ghost light next to his kitchen, which allowed him to lie invisibly in his hammock, cocooned in a mosquito net, and still join in the conversation. It was easy to forget he was there until the cocoon spoke and moved, and Rambo playfully rocked it with his foot.
As far as I knew, I said, dreams were your mind thinking about itself.
“Sometimes I wake up and I’m crying,” said Brian. “I don’t know why.”
We’d returned an hour earlier from a night drift, a subdued and spooky experience: bats thrummed around our heads, twisted branches loomed from the water like skeletal hands, and the eyes of fawn-sized rodents called pacas glowed in Jose’s spotlight. Two disoriented piranhas jumped into the boat, and Rambo giggled ...
