Crossing the River by Amy Ragsdale

“for making money. Because the law here in Brazil protects the worker, so if they get money from the company, then I get part of it.” He puffed his chest and did that yo, check me out head bob, grinning and making it sound like he was just in it for the money.
    Over time, we’d learn otherwise. Over time, we’d hear that he hadn’t really wanted to go into law, but now he felt stuck. His unmarried sister had just had a baby boy, whom he adored. “I have to be able to buy him milk.” We urged him to think about pursuing something he really loved. After all, his large extended family was happily helping his sister raise her son.
    That day at the club, he handed me a plastic straw filled with cachaça and honey. “You should try these. They’re really good.”
    By the end of a couple of hours, Molly had sung a solo, “The Girl
    from Ipanema,” which she had learned at home in Portuguese without understanding any of the words; I had sung “Ten Thousand Miles” in English, accompanied by the club president’s wife, who, like Molly, clearly didn’t understand any of the words; Skyler had wowed everyone with some fleet-fingered classical guitar; and Peter had dutifully tossed back several shots of the high-octane cachaça . Life was feeling good, really good.
    The sky was intensely blue, the river sparkled far below, these people seemed so happy, and we were part of the family. Just like that, or so it seemed.
    The next time we would see Zeca was a week later, when he showed up at Molly’s birthday party at the stone-walled restaurant in the Pousada Colonial. In clothes that hung loosely on his taut body, he hovered by the room’s open French doors, downing beers and chain smoking.
    Lots of people smoked in Penedo, both men and women. I’d seen a Health Department sign over a grocery store register telling men, “ Fumando é ruim para sua ereção ”—Smoking is bad for your erection. Talk about targeting your audience. But then Zeca, with his mahogany skin and easy smile under silver-rimmed sunglasses, oozed a playboy’s invincibility.
    Zeca declined the stew: “I don’ actually like it that much,” he said confidentially (echoes of his opinion of the bossa nova). I was beginning to get the impression he was a bit of a maverick.
    Katia appeared out of the kitchen with the giant cake, Molly blew out the candles, and everyone sang, “ Parabéns a você . . .” We gathered it was “Happy Birthday.”
    Like the stew, Zeca refused the cake: “I don’ really eat sweets, but it look good.”
    It would be some time before I’d understand why it felt like we were forcing our guests to eat the cake.
    â€œIt’s weird, or just different,” Skyler would say months later, after he’d attended several birthday parties. “They don’t share the cake. It’s there, but no one eats it.”
    A few hours later, people began to drift away.
    â€œDo you like fishing?” Zeca asked before he left. “Good. I gonna take you fishing. My uncle, he has a fishpond.”
    It seemed we were making a friend; a friend who would become one of our primary guides.

5 5
    A Tenuous Foothold A Tenuous Foothold
    â€œO OOH, THOSE ARE A LITTLE LONG ,” I said, eyeing Molly’s navy-blue polyester pants, the bottom half of her new school uniform. It was six in the morning, the day after her birthday. Up on the third floor of the pousada , we were getting ready for the kids’ first day of school.
    â€œI can hem them, but will they be okay for today?”
    â€œYeah. It’s fine. Skyler!” she shouted across the hall to where her brother was still in bed. “We need to get going!” He pulled the sheet up higher, not at all sure now about this local-school thing.
    â€œPeter, can you go down and see if Antonio’s making breakfast?” I asked as I scrambled to