Above him rose, as far as he could see, the undersides of the stands. Pieces of skirts, the undersides of thighs, a few dangling feet. A sandwich wrapper floated down and landed near him in the dirt.
The light under the stands was weird. It was midnight. There was no illumination under the stands. The powerful light from the parade route filtered under the stands through the densely packed bodies above. Nodes of light, apparently sourceless, quivered in midair.
Streams of light wavered at odd angles to each other.
His crotch hurt, his stomach hurt, his ribs. His head had been hit from every direction.
Fighting the temptation, his body’s demand to stretch out, to go to sleep, become unconscious, he lifted himself to his feet. It took him three tries to become upright.
He fell foward, and caught himself. A chope can fell from the stands and landed near his foot. He put one foot forward and fell on it. Maintaining upright balance seemed important to him. One hand rubbed an ear; the other tightly held his ribs. He gasped.
Later, he supposed he had moments of unconsciousness as he stood there.
He saw a man walking along under the stands. About to wave to him, make some gesture he needed help, Fletch noticed how oddly the man walked. Fletch looked more closely. The man’s steps were short, high, fast. He landed first on his toes and then his feet rolled forward to his heels.
The man’s feet were backward. His toes were behind his legs.
The hand pressing against his ribs Fletch lowered to press against his stomach.
He blinked blood from his eyes.
A headless mule cantered out of the dark under the stands, slowly turned, and cantered away.
Fletch fell forward on his feet several steps. Now truly he was the walking North American, falling forward. Each step, his feet barely prevented his falling on his face.
Out of the dark at Fletch’s left appeared another man, walking, bouncing slowly. He was to cross in front of Fletch.
As he passed Fletch, the man’s head, backward on his shoulders, turned and smiled. His eyes and teeth shone even in that light.
In an impossible angle from his head, one of his arms raised. He pointed to Fletch’s right.
Standing very close to Fletch was an old man in an oversized coat. The man’s hair was thin and gray. His eyes were sad.
He raised his arms toward Fletch.
Fletch backed away.
Only hair came out of the old man’s sleeves, not hands or wrists.
Again, Fletch’s head snapped.
Someone kicked him hard, on the muscle of the upper left side of his back.
Brushing away the old man with hair for hands, Fletch spun slowly on the hard-packed earth.
He saw the second blow coming at his chest. He did not know how to avoid such a blow from the foot. He could not duck it. Moving sideways, slowly, stupidly, he still caught the full force of the blow.
His feet caught him as he fell backward.
A man, a wiry old man, was kick-dancing in front of him. Groggy, Fletch admired the perfectly executed pirouette.
And as the man’s face turned to him, a beam of light through the stands shone fully on the face of a goat. Through the mask’s eye-holes gleamed steady brown eyes.
The man’s instep hit Fletch hard on the side of the head.
Fletch’s head felt it was traveling through space by itself.
Reeling, Fletch saw the small boy standing not too far away on his wooden leg.
“Janio!” Fletch yelled. Blood bubbled from his throat to his lips.
In all that noise, he could not even hear his own voice.
His shoulders pumping unnaturally, the small boy ran away.
The capoeirista was real. He was in front of Fletch, behind him, all around him. The blows from his feet were real.
The man behind the goat mask was kicking Fletch to death.
Fletch tried to keep his legs together, yet not fall over. He tried to keep his back to the man, which was impossible. Hunkered down, he tried to keep his hands over his head, his elbows protecting his ribs. Falling this way, that, he tried to get away. The capoeirista was on all sides of him at once. Each blow from his feet opened Fletch’s body for another blow.
Fletch received a hard kick in his throat, perhaps a killing kick.
Then one more kick in the back of his head.
He was face down in the dirt.
Consciousness was coming and going like an old song on a high wind. Blood was pouring from his face, particularly his nose again, but he could not get a hand to it.
His legs would not get him up. They would not obey orders, they were well beyond the necessary impulse to get up and run.
The man in the goat’s mask grabbed Fletch’s hair and twisted his head sideways and up. Fletch’s whole body rolled sideways. He was lying on one hip.
A knee either side of him, the man knelt over Fletch.
For a second the man’s hand was flattened on the ground in front of Fletch’s nose. In one of the odd flashes of light, Fletch glimpsed a ring on the man’s finger. A ring with a black center. Intertwined snakes rose from that center.
Farther along the ground, Fletch saw a piece of wood sticking into the ground again and again as it came closer. Paired with the stick of wood was a boy’s leg.
Pulling Fletch’s hair, the man in the goat mask twisted Fletch’s head forward and back.
With his other hand, the man was doing something under Fletch’s chin.
Fletch felt a nice warmth on the side of his neck.
The nice warmth of blood.
The man was slitting Fletch’s throat.
Then, as if hit by a great wind, the man was blown sideways. He sprawled into the dirt beside Fletch.
Above them were many legs, strong men’s legs.
In one incredibly smooth, lithe movement the man was up, on his feet, on one foot. The other foot on a straight leg was whirling through the air. From the ground, Fletch saw all the other legs, the legs of his rescuers, back away.
The toes of the man in the goat mask then dug into the ground with the grip of a sprinter. They were gone in a blur.
Heavily, the other feet went after him.
The wooden leg still stuck in the ground nearby, next to the boy’s bare leg.
“Janio, I need help.” On the ground, Fletch managed to get a hand to his throat. He stuck his finger in the knife hole. “Janio! Socorro!”
Fletch knew he was not being heard. He could not even hear himself.
It was not sleep then, into which Fletch fell.
Thirty
He was conscious when the phone began ringing, but it rang five or six times before he could get rolled over, stretch his arm out to it, and pick up the receiver from the bedside table.
“Bom dia,” Fletch said into the phone, not believing a word of it.
“Fletch! Are you better?”
By now, Fletch knew Toninho’s voice over the telephone.
“Better than what?”
“Better than you were when we found you.”
Fletch’s memory was far from perfect. His brain had begun to clear only shortly before noon. He still tasted blood.
Lying on the ground under the stands at Carnival Parade, he remembered seeing from close-up the creases of Toninho’s or Tito’s belly.
He remembered being carried, it seemed for kilometers, under the stands. The sky was full of human feet and legs pounding in rhythm. The noise was no longer of singing, pounding samba drums. It was all just roar.
Then they were out from under the stands, and still he was carried a long, long way. The sounds abated. The air became clearer. The sky was high and dark.
“We’re getting good at lifting bodies around.” Tito said. Why was he speaking English?