The Economy of Light. Jack Dann

appetite, except for ice cream. I began staying in my room more often, as the pain in my stomach became harder to muffle.

      And then it stopped raining.

      Days on end without even a drizzle, an eerie phenomenon in a rain-forest. Genaro told me that he had known of this happening before; once, when he had been a macheteiro in the Araguaia Valley, it did not rain for two hundred days. If this occurred here, we would be out of business. Although I knew it was wrong thinking, for I had responsibilities to the others on the ranch, I could not help but think that it would be a fitting end to it all. It was as if nature was in league with my death to have my world fall with me. I remembered a quote from the Talmud, something to the effect that every man is a whole universe to himself, which is irrevocably lost when he dies. This seemed like an omen, a physical extension of my death.

      But although there was no rain, dry storms occurred several times a day. The sky would turn black, clouds would boil, thunder would crash like cars on a freeway after explosions of lightning, yet no rain. It was disconcerting. I would pace the room during the storms, agitated, listening to the wind breathing around the house, until finally I would have to go outside, for I felt trapped, as if the thick stucco walls were imperceptibly getting closer, as if the electricity of the storm was depleting my room of oxygen and leaving only a hint of ozone to burn in my nose.

      It was an odd sensation walking through the fields in the stormy darkness, in the chill of imminent downpour; and yet during those times the air would be as dry as a fall day in upstate New York. The storms seemed to bring out the insects, clouds of them buzzing around my face, a constant annoyance. In a grove of huge Brazil nut trees a green parrot screamed, as if frightened. I could smell the moulds and sweet damp aroma of decay that I associated with forest floor as I passed the grove. But my mind was still blank, emptied, and I seemed to float above the jagged teeth of reflection and memory.

      And then I found one of Genaro’s macheteiros dead in the south pasture. Thirty head of steer had fallen around him, their tongues black and hanging out of their mouths, their eyes bulging. I stopped and stood there, realizing an instant later that I had been holding my breath. I could hear the roll of thunder and the buzzing of hundreds of flies.

      The ranch hand had fallen face down on the ground. I pulled him over, grasping his arm, and shuddered when I discovered that he was covered with maggots. They were crawling all over his face, in and out of his mouth, and over his eyes, which were wide open, as if he were surprised to find himself in such a state.

      It looked as if someone had tossed a grenade into the area. The macheteiro and the cattle he was tending must have been hit by lightning.