The Jaguar and the Cacao Tree

When the jaguar roars, sacred trees listen...

“The Jaguar and the Cacao Tree” cover

“I can’t find my socks!”

“Which ones, sweetie?”

“The dark green ones. The ones I always wear on the plane.”

Jane Hammond blinked at the ceiling. Dr. Robert Hammond had a habit of packing frantically just hours before a trip, the rest of the family ready and waiting. The taxi was due to arrive in a few minutes—and airport cabs were always on time. They had to be. Dr. Hammond wouldn’t have it any other way.

“We’ll buy new socks at the airport. The car’ll be here soon.”

“No no no, I need my dark green socks. Sorry honey, I know you think I’m a little off with this but you know how important this trip is.”

She did. Jane Hammond did know. The bee colonies were dying all over the United States and Europe, and she wasn’t about to stand in the way of her husband finding a way to stabilize them.

Their bags were stacked by the front door, zipped up, locked and labeled, all except her husband’s dark green suitcase that still lay thrown wide open, waiting for its matching socks.

If only Boer knew, she thought, resigning herself. Boer, the Val Boer, was the man funding her husband’s research at the university. An extraordinarily gifted businessman as successful as he was serious, Val Boer never went by his first name and never cracked a smile. But he cared more than anyone she or her husband knew about the health of the bees. He cared because he knew what crop failure does to communities—and what it did to his own family’s fortune decades prior.

Jane glanced over at Max, their eleven-year-old son. Oblivious to the usual frenzy over green socks, he was thoroughly absorbed in his iPad.

“Oh, Max,” she said, putting her hands on his shoulders. “This is hardly the time for games. We need to find your Dad’s socks and get going.”

“No Mom, it’s not what you think,” the boy protested without looking up. “It’s Spanish!”

“Oh?”

Mrs. Hammond took a better look at the screen of the iPad, an impressionist tableau in oils of the remnants of Max’s past three meals.

“Good heavens, Max. You’ve got to keep this thing clean…” Wiping the screen with a tissue, Jane Hammond sighed and put her hands on her hips. It was Spanish. But it wasn’t pictures with words—it was a passage of text that struck Jane as considerably more advanced than she’d have thought her son could read, just a few months into his Spanish lessons. Some of the words Max had digitally highlighted: abeja sin aguijón for “stingless bee.” Leyendas de los Maya for “legends of the Maya.” Chocolate for “chocolate.”

“Look! They have the same word we do for ‘chocolate’!” Max was ecstatic. Now he could really communicate with the locals.

“…otherwise you’ll end up looking for your green socks seconds before you have to leave for the airport,” his mother went on, shooting a playful wink at her husband still rummaging about the house in search of the elusive pair.

“Yeah, okay, but they have the same word for choc—”

“I found one!” Dr. Hammond emerged victorious from the bathroom, a hapless dark green sock dangling from his hand, raised to the sky. Dark green with a thin orange stripe, to be precise. It looked positively dejected for having been found out.

The horn of a car sounded outside.

“Time’s up! We fly with one sock!” Jane Hammond flipped the iPad shut and hurried Max off the sofa.

“The cab will need to wait,” insisted Dr. Hammond. Before Jane could react, he was out the door. He was back in an instant, triumphant. “He’ll wait five minutes. I can find it in five minutes.”

“Max! What is this?” Jane couldn’t believe her eyes. A dark green sock with a thin orange stripe lay crumpled where Max had been sitting. Max giggled.

“Hee hee! Took you guys long enough! How do you say ‘sock’ in Spanish? ¡Media! That’s like ‘media’! Like, a reality show about socks!” Max whipped the unsuspecting sock off the sofa, dancing a victory lap around the living room and swinging it above his head. Dr. Hammond plucked it out of his son’s hand the second he got close.

“How can I tell you’ve been sitting on it?” he said, sniffing the sock and making a face.

Max laughed. “I just wanted it to smell like the other one!”

“You’re a reality show all on your own, Max,” retorted Dr. Hammond.

Max slipped his travel pack onto his shoulders, and paused confidently on the doorstep. “Come on you slow pokes, we have a plane to catch!” He was out the door.

Dr. Hammond and his wife looked at each other. Jane shrugged and flashed a grin.

“He’s got your genes.”

The rest of the story awaits… right here