Dr. Petersen's eyebrows were wispy and thin yet; the hair on his head Ashton knew to be tufting and short, though Petersen now wore his typical black cowboy hat with the single pheasant plume. He sat with large knuckles folded on a journal, and beside him a small, art-nouveau desk lamp left an incandescent orb in the room made dim by a guard of Venetian vigilance, a willing blindness to the blinding sun outside. He did not look up until Dr. Ashton had peeked his way entirely around the threshold to the office and past the shelves of specimens in wide-mouthed jars. The lab directly outside was similarly lined with jars containing fifty juvenile garter snakes here, two de-shelled snappers there, mudpuppies and skinks and swifts and efts and newts, all eternally suspended mid-swim. But Petersen reserved the inner sanctum for the oddities, the true finds. Ashton's saccade skirted a tumbled assemblage of six-legged frogs, tadpoles hatched with external viscera, and a murky paste from which an eye or horny beak emerged here and there against the glass, "Terrapene carolina carolina, hepatitis," scrawled on the jar's label.

"Michael," the seated man addressed Dr. Ashton through bifocals with the tone of a man confident in identification and denomination.

"Hello, Don, it's good to have you back." Ashton adjusted his own glasses up higher on the bridge of his nose, then scooted them lower again.

"Yes, it's been quite a while, hasn't it?" came a languid, droning reply that Petersen assumed came off as regal. "My wife and I got the flowers that you and Vivian sent --surprised it wasn't a just bunch of mushroom caps, knowing you -- but I guess I was so eager to get back on campus once I had the energy again, and now being mired in work, I entirely forgot about formal 'thank-you's."

"Oh, that's fine. We're surprised to see you back at it so soon." Feeling he had hurt Petersen's gruff pride, he added, "It's really an impressive recovery."

"Surprised, yes. Not everyone seems too pleased, though. I walked up on Stacey Purle -- you've had her in class, right? -- and that scruffy kid she's always around. She was griping about the C- she got from 'Dr. Death'."

"Jesus, Don, it doesn't mean anything. They don't even know what they're saying half the time." Petersen wasn't supposed to bring up 'what the kids say'. It belonged to the back-handed chiding between professors -- noone was supposed to drag everyone down by admitting he cared about the often anti-intellectual favoritism of the students. "You know how it goes -- mine always talk about how I couldn't possibly keep Viv happy." So did the other professors.

"They're whining about collecting specimens, too. They say I owe my health to the vitality I steal from all the 'poor animals'."

"It's a different breed coming through now. They don't understand the need to document." Though Ashton believed what he said, he longed to be back in the dry, cedar freshness of his own lab instead of amidst the submarine, olive phosphorescence of Petersen's vaguely sentient bottles.

"I ever tell you about the Podocnemis expansa trip?" asked Petersen, his dark pupils fading behind the glinting lenses.

"With the Smithsonian," Ashton offered as affirmation. Petersen had, of course, mentioned it at every opportunity in conversation for the long time they'd known each other, and Ashton loathed it. It had been a foray into the Amazon when such expeditions still smacked of yellowing, tattered maps and conquest, when muscle and dead-aim were prerequisites for the journey. At an age at which Ashton whiled away his last year on his parents farm in Nebraska reading Natural History, strolling in the woods and enrolling at Creighton, Petersen had elbowed his way into a job mopping the floors of the Smithsonian archives. When a senior naturalist didn't return in time from the Belgian Congo, Petersen, a museum favorite, took his place on a surveying trip from Santarém to a spot near the headwaters of the Rio Negro. The main objective was to sight the Arrau, or Giant Amazonian river turtle, for the first time in decades by the scientific community, and hopefully map its southeastern range.

"Oh, I know I've told you about spearing fish and bromeliad studies and everything, but I haven't told you," Petersen removed the hat from his head, downy and grey like an owlet. Ashton tried to avoid the earnestness in those sunken eyes. He felt even in the handful of years between them a significant gap -- why did the old guy have to be so dramatic? "Things were different back then. I'm not sure if you altogether remember what it was like -- you would've been just a boy. I was just a boy for chrissakes. Growing up outside Charleston was one thing, too, but with six tough men and hundreds of miles from anything you could call civilization. . . . Well, it was different than it is now. A guy -- a kid, really -- had to turn his back sometimes."

"Listen, Don, whatever happened, uh, was such a long time ago and all. I really don't think this--" Before Ashton's glazing eyes passed sordid suggestions of a steaming river at dawn, men's bodies moving in tandem, barely discernible in the fog. . . .

"Well dammit, it's just that we were among animals," continued Petersen. "That's the one thing that river makes clear -- that we're all just grunting, breathing, bleeding beasts, and there's no nobility in any of it." Petersen rested his forehand on a hand, thus relieving his colleague from the hollow, dead-pan stare and leaving only innocent fuzziness to confront him. With the relent of Petersen's assault on their professional distance, Ashton again felt a mobility of thought. He began mentally amassing the stockpile of reassurances the situation seemed now to require. "There, there, we all have our skeletons. Chin up, you know? You'll push through somehow -- stiff upper lip and all." Despite his inner rehearsal, Ashton had neither skeletons of his own nor a colonial British accent.

However, Petersen's sternness had not relaxed when he again lifted his head and, before the mycologist could speak, continued headlong into his story. "From the time we landed in Santarém, it was obvious the crew had agendas other than the stated goal of the mission. Häuser, this damned, brilliant Kraut -- a brute, too -- he'd muscled an interpreter, Gabriel, from the Indian quarter into coming along for little more than the ride. Loaded our boats, too, while we stood on the landing, just packing heat and eating papaya. Hunched under bags of grain and gear as big as himself, probably as heavy, too, he ran the planks on those lean, brown legs. . . . Häuser was the one to pick him out, that's for sure. He waited until a couple, three, days up the river. That first time we could hear Gabriel from our separate tents, but his fight left with the sinking moon and never returned to him. He was only four years younger than me; we had talked on those first days in the boats. There were a few others along the way, too, usually young girls with us for less than fifty miles, then traded to whatever tribe controlled the next area. Gabriel would close the deal, and we'd usually get more than we originally gave. A couple of times, in dry spells when reserves were getting low, they'd just be missing one morning.

"I was still awed by the men and bound to the work. We had identified the first Arrau before a week was out and were busy enough cataloguing our finds -- five new species to track in the river and forest, and not even as part of our objective -- that the rest seemed extraneous, a specter that took over when we collapsed from heat and exertion at the end of each day. And it wasn't everyone. There was Häuser, of course; Tanner, Bly and Jacobs kept to the girls. But Christ, I mean these people sold their daughters, threw them in our boats practically, when we'd land. Once I saw a mother swing her baby against a tree like she was beating out a blanket, that little, soft head not even. . . . And Pensfield, Bradford and I kept our hands clean. We waited out the bad nights until the next bright, busy day, when the nocturnal shades dissipated with the early morning haze.

"But after the fevers started passing around, and after so many leeches and bird-sized moths, the days became more and more like the dreams. The fog never lifted once we were further up the Amazon and in the Negro, and we would drift for days, sitting on the gunwales and waiting to have enough visibility to navigate. I started to lose sleep, or slept even while awake, I'm not sure. I began using one of the Indian girls, and often. Too often -- I'm only telling you this because I need you to understand where my mind was. I'm a scientific man, Michael, I know this will sound absurd. I know I was not completely sane, but I partly believe it anyway.

"We were on the Negro, passing a vast rubber plantation with no workers in sight. The undergrowth had been mostly slashed away between the trees, and compared to the writhing wall of organism we'd been corralled between for the past weeks, it looked like a metropolis. Though Gabriel was reluctant to let us set up camp there and insisted we move on, he had been broken to such petty faggotry by then that we paid no attention. While we pitched tents, Pensfield checked the collecting buckets for anything we could trade later. There was nothing. He made a fresh incision, but the trees were dying. The spiraling taps were cut too wide and deep. Most likely, the plantation had been too remote to be profitable, despite the abundance of trees, and the owners had taken their quick profits and abandoned the area. But the land still suited us, and we immediately laid transects in the forest proper, the plantation and their interface, and monitored the waters with our boats' engines cut.

"That night, the team was quiet. Häuser and Gabriel's moans rose at a distance, and i again couldn't sleep. A few feet from me, the Indian girl nestled soundly next to Bradford, who had still kept a higher ground somehow (though not a religious man), so I untied the tent and left to sit by the water. The Negro was low -- it was the dry season, hot and enervating, and every ripple by the tambaqui, the red-headed turtles, the silvery, lanceolate arawana and gently plodding green ibis reached me as if through gauze. A human footfall sounded behind me in that particular distinctness of, having imagined voices in your head, hearing a real voice break through what had actually been silence. Expecting one of the others, I turned with an affected languor -- jumping at inappropriate times was grounds for severe ridicule in the group -- and caught just a pale hand holding up the hem of a skirt as the figure owning them slipped past. I rose and stumbled a few steps to see between the trees, but could see no one. When I paused, though, I could hear quick steps moving away through the gutted forest, and before thinking, like a dog, I gave chase, though my thoughts cleared in stages with every step. Plainly, I had seen the hand lighter in the moonlight, the skirt airy instead of coarse and woven like the natives' cloth. Our girl had taken flight. Panting, I plodded to a stop -- let her go. Her escape proved that someone could escape it all. Anyway, it was probably safer for her among the beasts in the forest than the ones in camp. I felt pure and merciful, accomplice to a divine jailbreak. It seemed as if the razor of sanity had finally cleaved through the choking, eutrophic bloom of our passage.

"I walked back toward camp to rest the few hours left until sunrise. My ankles tossed me lightly with every step. The walls of sleep finally showed themselves as permeable, even welcoming -- I felt I was almost already there. I ran my fingers through the deep grooves of the dead trees all around, childlike, nearly skipping for chrissakes, so when she was before me again it seemed instantaneous. One moment the way was clear, the next I was skidding into that woman. She was almost white as you or me, though obviously native. Her dress was a smoky grey and of some light, stiff fabric, her hair blonde. Her face was so convoluted and wrinkled it looked like something you would study, Michael, but her arms and her legs beneath the skirt hem were beautifully smooth and delicate. But Michael, those arms and legs, they were gashed all the way down, big herring-bone slashes, open and pulsing this dehydrated, molasses blood. I choked on my breath and reached out toward her, doubly horrified by the mortal wounds and her hideousness, and i fell, fell through her, and out of my senses.

"I woke with Gabriel's face peering at me above the hemisphere of dirt in my vision. I pushed up on my hands, stiff and a little bruised, but no more than could be expected. I chastised myself for running around like a madman after the girl during the night; I figured I must have tripped and given myself a concussion. Thank God nothing worse. I felt my head for lumps but felt none. Gabriel couldn't claim as much, unfortunately. 'Mister Petersen, what has happened?' he lisped over a lip deformed by swelling. His eye was also bruised -- genuinely black, like none I'd seen before -- and the line of his nose was bent slightly to the right.

"'I could ask you the same,' I said, rubbing my stiff jaw. He lowered his eyes. 'A matintaperera flew over last night. I promised it tobacco to make it go, and Mister Hoy-ser thought I spoke to him. Then he did not believe that I did not have tobacco.' He spat a thin stream from the good side of his mouth. 'And now I find you here and wonder what has happened.'

"'The girl ran away last night, so I chased her. I must've tripped,' I said.

"'But the girl is in camp! She cooks breakfast now.' Gabriel gasped, his eyes comically wide, 'You chased the matin! The mae de seringa is in this forest, and she must be angry for all her dead daughters.' Grinning but a bit unnerved, I pointed to one of the scarred trees -- 'seringa?' I asked. 'Yes, you must be careful, Mister Petersen.' He gravely nodded and hobbled back to camp, keeping his legs rigid and moving just his feet. 'Damned Kraut,' I cursed and followed him.

"Gabriel was frantic to leave that day, but we had to continue our edge transects. Häuser was fed up with Gabriel, so the caboclo and I were paired. We didn't speak as we wandered the light of the forest, patchy like the sun between buildings in a tall city, and each tag we pounded into the trees along our line resounded with finality. Every time I glanced to my side at Gabriel, the gaping terror in his timid, agouti steps seeped into me, so eventually I stopped looking at anything but the compass in my hand.

"Though I could hardly register what was wrong, for an instant the ground swept sideways under my weightless feet, and I found myself pinned at the diaphragm to one of the giant trees. It was a squat log that held me there, hanging by ropes and covered on one side by punji sticks -- the kind natives used to snare tapir and brocket deer. I felt no pain, and Gabriel was still next to me, breathing in fearful little whimpers at my neck. I dropped my compass, which was still firmly in my hand, its needle still pointing due northeast, managed to eke in a half-breath, and pushed hard on the suspended log to dislodge the spikes from the tree. It was much heavier than I expected, and I could barely push it far enough to slip underneath and roll away. But Gabriel was still there, hunched over and gently swinging.

"I pulled him down, tempting the gore out along the thick stakes, and carried him to camp, but his rib cage had been decimated and one lung was pierced through. At camp, the Indian girl sat beside him and dressed him, though it seemed more a feeble attempt to keep away animals than to heal. We left him when we broke camp the following morning. The girl had taken that night to actually run away, correctly sensing that her chances with the group were only worsening.

"Without a translator to help us trade with the sometimes defensive natives, we knew we couldn't last much longer, so the next week found us in Manaus. After selling off the boats and equipment, I went to charter a plane out, while over cachaça the others celebrated a largely successful, though truncated, trip. As I walked the streets, I couldn't help but imagine I was watched. The lounging villagers left their canopied front porches and wandered inside with sidelong glances as i passed. In a bar near the docks I found a pilot -- an Australian with bleached hair wisping out under his leather cap. He was leaning over the bar and talking to the caboclo serving drinks. The tender glimpsed me as I approached, then tugged on his companion's sleeve and said, "No assombrar," before moving to the other end of the bar.

"'Assombrar?' I asked the Aussie. He laughed and slapped my shoulder like we were old wing mates and said, "Shadow. Our friend here thinks someone stole your soul."

"But you're casting a clear shadow now! Look at your hand on the desk!" Ashton interrupted angrily, though rebelling more against the oppressiveness of the story than its ridiculousness. He felt himself slipping beneath the weight of its progression, not so much listening as actually absorbed by the narrative.

"I don't think it's meant literally. It's just a feeling they must've had, and I felt it, too, over these past few months, like the sickness was only an inconvenience to wait through, like nothing was at stake. I'm a reasonable man, Michael, you know that. I'm methodical and exact in a field where everything wants to overflow its bounds."

"The best in the department," Ashton agreed.

"But the thing is, Mike, the thing is -- when I was pulling Gabriel off that log, i saw -- there was no room for a man to fit between those spikes. They were about a hand's-width apart in each row, with the rows alternating, and somehow I wasn't caught. That should've pierced me straight through, Mike!"

The two professors faced one another, the glare on their spectacles like four moons in different phases around the desk lamp. After waiting long enough to be respectful, Ashton soothed, "It was a long time ago. I'm sure you were under a lot of stress, and anyone might've, i mean, everything you've said is understandable. . . " He shifted off his right leg, raising its sandy weight slightly above the ground to revive the flow of blood. ". . . explainable," he added limply.

Unnoticed by Ashton, Petersen had replaced the hat on his head at some point during his story. "I know, I know," he muttered and made as if to stare through the blinded window at the early afternoon. "Are you a christian, Michael?"

Ashton waned, then waxed his moons, but said nothing.

"I was raised baptist; I'm not anymore, but I still pray. As a child I prayed to the God of infinite mercy that I heard about on Sundays, the God that will forgive any repentant sinner. But now, I think that maybe some things not even God will forgive, and once we do those things, everything else we do and think from that point on is just empty whispering, awaiting a death without rest." Dr. Ashton was aware that his light cashmere was much too warm for indoors, that the air was being slowly choked out by alcohol fumes, that the top of his head was being pulled upward; the skin twisted sharply at his temples.

"At any rate, jolly good to have you back," chirped Ashton with his rehearsed British cheer. Before Petersen could deliver the quizzical look building on his sparse brow (or the look of hurt to follow), Ashton shuffled out on his pincushion leg, past the grotesque, arrested menagerie and the pungent nausea of ethanol-soaked tissue in the lab. Pushing open the great, air-tight doors that led out into April, Ashton calculated that there was still enough time to go to the coffee shop before his next class. He would get a green tea, and maybe a muffin. Maybe he should watch his weight. A muffin -- apple-cinnamon, or carrot-bran with icing -- sounded very good, though.