Jungle of Bones

by Ben Mikaelsen

  They drove several miles to town in a white minibus, then wound their way through the streets of Port Moresby. Many of the intersections had roundabouts, which the driver treated like a race course. Dylan braced himself, staring in disbelief at the world he had entered. One beach they passed was covered with so much litter it lay vacant. Before leaving the bay, Dylan spotted a small village built on stilts out on the water. All of the nice homes or buildings were surrounded with razor wire like prisons.

  By the time they reached the far edge of the city, the neighborhoods had turned into little more than shantytowns with run-down structures and tin-covered homes. The women wore simple handmade skirts and bright blouses; the men, dirty pants and shirts. The heavy smell of garbage hung in the air. In some places, garbage had been stacked for so long that weeds grew up around the piles. In many yards, smoky fires burned, bringing a sharp smell to the air. Almost every backyard had clothes hanging on lines. The hot choking smell of diesel and dust hung heavy, like a cloud. And there was another smell. Sewage.

  Low dirt hills surrounded Port Moresby, covered with scrub brush. Even with the van’s air conditioner, it was like being in an oven. The driver kept turning and explaining different things, taking his eyes off the road and then swerving whenever he looked forward again. His teeth and lips were red. From the back seat, Dylan could smell the strong body odor of the man — like he hadn’t showered since he was born.

  “How much farther to the hotel?” Dylan asked.

  In reply, the driver swerved into the parking lot of a large pink building surrounded by tall razor fencing. “We are here,” he announced.

  Uncle Todd pointed at the stained red pavement as they crawled from the van. “That’s from the betel nuts that everybody chews and spits. It’s why the driver’s teeth are red. Bad habit.”

  “We should have let the Japanese keep this place,” Dylan said.

  Uncle Todd gave Dylan a withering glance.

  That night they met with the other members of the team: Allen Jackson, a thin man who had a tan but looked like a professor; Gene Cooper, a big man with a bald head who sweated even when they were sitting in the air-conditioned lobby of the hotel having dinner; and Gene Cooper’s son, Quentin, a boy Dylan’s age, but taller and skinnier. He wore large plastic-rimmed glasses that made him look nerdy. Definitely someone Dylan would have teased back home if they were classmates.

  After introductions, they sat around eating and discussing the upcoming trip. “Did everybody take their malaria pills and get all their shots?” Gene Cooper asked.

  Everybody nodded, including Dylan. Uncle Todd turned to Dylan. “I’m the organizer of this trip, but Gene is the military expert on planes. He’s also our best medic and resident philosopher. Allen is our survival expert. He’s been over here before and knows a lot about PNG and the jungles.” Uncle Todd pointed. “Quentin is very analytical, and a walking encyclopedia. He’s our go-to man for facts and history.”

  Dylan kicked the leg of the table. “And what am I?” he whispered. “The group’s loser?”

  Uncle Todd winked and whispered back, “That’s totally up to you. I’m not sure you know who you are yet.”

  Quentin turned to Dylan. “Hey, did you know that the B-17 has a max speed of 207 miles per hour and a cruise speed of 182 miles per hour? Its range is over 2,000 miles depending on how heavy you load it. It has a service ceiling of over 35,000 feet. Its length is —”

  “Quentin, give Dylan a break,” Quentin’s father, Gene, interrupted. “I’m sure Dylan already knows all that.”

  “I’ll bet he doesn’t,” Quentin said.

  Dylan glared at the skinny boy, but Quentin didn’t even notice.

  Allen Jackson handed each of them a manila envelope. “I’ve made a laminated map, a list of the survival gear you’ll need if you get lost in the jungle, and a small laminated picture of the B-17 we’re looking for. Her name is Second Ace. The wreckage probably won’t be obvious after this long. She’ll be grown over with vegetation. There may or may not be any nose art left to identify her. Carry that picture with you.”

  Everybody, including Dylan, tucked the picture into their pockets.

  “Okay, let’s all get a good night’s sleep,” Allen Jackson announced. “Tomorrow we fly to Wewak and then on to Ambunti. From there we’ll be taking a dugout canoe five hours upstream to Swagup, and then we head in on foot. By then you’ll all know why people call Papua New Guinea ‘the land that time forgot.’”

  As they stood from the table, Quentin turned to Dylan. “Did you know that after World War I, New Guinea’s eastern half was controlled by Britain and Australia? The island’s western half was controlled by the Netherlands — known as Dutch New Guinea. Hollandia was the capital then. But in World War II, because the island of New Guinea was in the center of the Pacific war zone, Japan invaded —”

  “Quentin, stop! You’re talking Dylan’s ears off,” Gene interrupted. “You’ll have plenty of time to visit during the trip.”

  “We’re not talking,” Dylan snapped. “He’s showing off!”

  Reluctantly, Quentin shrugged, but then turned and blurted, “Did you know that New Guinea is barely a hundred miles away from Australia at the closest point?”

  “Yes, I did know that,” Dylan answered sharply, taking a deep breath, then adding, “Did you know I can drift a Corvette at forty miles per hour?” Not waiting for an answer, he followed his uncle from the restaurant. Already the trip was getting long.

  Before going to their room, Uncle Todd and Dylan walked outside to the fenced-in entrance to see what the weather was like. Dylan brushed away a mosquito. He remembered the journal Uncle Todd had given him describing PNG as “mosquito-ridden.” They had mosquitoes a lot worse than this back in Wisconsin.

  An armed guard with a rifle met them. Speaking in broken English, he said, “Do not go outside the fence. Even if you go around the building, I walk with you.”

  “We were just seeing what the weather was like,” Uncle Todd said.

  The man laughed. “We only have two weathers here. Hot and raining, or hot and not raining.” He held his hand up as if to feel the air. “Now . . . it is hot and not raining.” The man with the rifle was still laughing at his wit when Dylan and Uncle Todd returned inside.

  Dylan stared in disbelief when they entered their room. It was plain and bare, except for two beds, a table, and some chairs. With a bug screen on the open window and no air conditioner, the room was hot and muggy. Roaches scrambled across the floor when the lights turned on. Dylan undressed and plopped himself on top of the sheets. When Uncle Todd turned off the light, Dylan lay sweating in the dark. “This room is worse than the holding cell at the detention center,” he complained.

  “This is a presidential palace compared to where we’re going. Get used to it,” Uncle Todd said. “Welcome to Papua New Guinea.”

  “Welcome to Timbuktu,” Dylan muttered back.

  Any illusion Dylan had of the summer being easy or comfortable disappeared in the next two days. The small jet to Wewak had only about twenty people aboard, with cramped seats. Everything smelled rotted, moldy, or sweaty. Rough air kept the small plane bouncing and lurching all the way across the island. Dylan stared down at the miles and miles of jungle passing under the wings. How could there possibly be this much jungle anywhere on the planet? Suddenly the notion of finding a crashed bomber seemed absolutely ridiculous.

  A lady two seats in front of Dylan kept puking her guts out into a barf bag. By the time they landed, Dylan was glad to get on the ground, feeling queasy himself. He looked to see if Quentin was sick, but the thin boy was laughing with his father.

  The guard in Port Moresby was right. If the sun wasn’t burning like a searing heat lamp in the sky, it rained. And not just a little. When they landed in Wewak, the rain came down hard in sheets, as if an ocean had spilled over. Passengers dashed from the plane to the terminal building holding plastic bags, newspapers, or anything they could over their heads. Th
e hot humid air made it hard for Dylan to tell which had drenched him more: rain or sweat.

  If Dylan had thought Port Moresby was remote, it was Disney World compared to Wewak. The terminal was a simple building with an overhang for passengers to stand out of the rain while a tractor and a flat trailer brought them their luggage. Instead of suitcases and backpacks, most of the luggage was carried in gunnysacks, plastic buckets, or any other container that could be used. The search team’s backpacks were the fanciest luggage on the flight.

  Most passengers picked up their luggage and then stood around waiting for the rain to stop so they could walk the several miles into town. Dylan waited with his group until the rain let up a little, then they hiked with their backpacks across the tarmac to a hangar, where they waited for their next flight.

  “We’ll be taking a private charter flight to Ambunti,” Allen announced.

  Dylan imagined a small exclusive Learjet picking them up.

  He stared with his mouth open when, after they’d been waiting for almost two hours, a small high-winged Cessna landed. The frail craft looked like it was from an airplane junkyard, if there were such a thing. The faded paint looked like rust. The tires were bald, and the engine coughed and sputtered as it taxied up. The plane swung a sharp circle to stop next to the hangar.

  “This was the only plane I could hire today,” Allen Jackson explained as the pilot crawled out.

  “Well, how are we all today?” asked the British pilot jovially, jumping to the tarmac. Holding his hand up to the downpour, he laughed. “This is just a drizzle. Wait until you see real rain. We should be able to get you to Ambunti today if we’re lucky.”

  “And what if we aren’t lucky?” Dylan grumped.

  The pilot laughed. “Then welcome to life.”

  Gene Cooper nodded his agreement and added, “Sometimes you just have to go for it. Life doesn’t provide guarantees.”

  “Now everybody’s a philosopher,” Dylan said.

  Soon they were loaded. The plane’s engine cranked over again and again before finally coughing to life. The pilot gunned the motor to keep it going, then taxied out and raced down the runway. Not until they reached the very end did the pilot finally pull back and coax the small overloaded craft into the sky.

  Quentin hollered over at Dylan, “Did you know the air cools four degrees for every thousand feet we go up?”

  Dylan frowned and yelled back, “That’s why if you go to the moon, you freeze your butt off.”

  “No,” Quentin shouted. “On the moon it’s because there’s no atmosphere. When bombers climb through the atmosphere to 35,000 feet, the actual air temperature is 140 degrees colder than on the ground. Even here it could be 40 degrees below zero.”

  Dylan tried to ignore Quentin, but that still didn’t stop the tall, lanky boy.

  “That’s why B-17 crews were issued winterized fleece-lined flying suits even here in the hot jungle,” Quentin hollered.

  Dylan wished he had a coconut to stuff in Quentin’s mouth. He would have given a million dollars to have his headphones on to tune Quentin out. They were in his backpack only feet away in the baggage area, but they might just as well have been on a different planet.

  The whole flight to Ambunti followed the Sepik River upstream. The river looked like a brown coiling snake under their wings — a boat would have had to travel three times the distance because of how the river twisted and turned. After barely a half hour, they banked sharply to land at a small, short strip on the edge of the Sepik River. For now, the rain had stopped.

  As they taxied up, a rusted Toyota pickup pulled alongside the plane. The driver jumped out and shouted in broken English, “Welcome to Ambunti. Before we go to boat, I take you to market.”

  Soon they found themselves sitting sideways on planked bench seats in the back of the pickup with no seat belts, bouncing down a rough road beside the mighty Sepik River. On the way, Quentin pointed out every plant, tree, bird, or insect he recognized. He absolutely would not shut up. “Look, there’s a yoli myrtle tree. Look, there’s a tropical chestnut. Look, it’s a rosewood. And there’s a pencil pine and a kauri pine.”

  “Who cares?” Dylan said.

  Quentin ignored the comment and pointed again. “Oh, look, there’s a banyan tree.”

  “I knew that,” Dylan interrupted forcefully. Wasn’t there any way to shut Quentin’s mouth? He looked desperately to Uncle Todd, who sat watching the countryside pass by. He caught Dylan’s look of desperation and winked with a smile.

  Suddenly Quentin changed subjects. “Hey, Dylan, did you know that crew members were issued whistles, and even winter boots with electric heated socks that could be plugged into the bomber’s power? They also all got medical kits and gas masks. Some even got forty-five-caliber pistols.” When Dylan didn’t answer, Quentin changed subjects again. “Did you know that the first aerial bombing took place in 1849 over Venice, Italy, when the Austrian army dropped bombs from a hot air balloon?”

  “I already knew that,” Dylan said loudly, lying. He would do anything to shut this walking encyclopedia up.

  “No, you didn’t,” Quentin challenged.

  Dylan shrugged. “Whatever!” he said.

  Uncle Todd glanced over and surprised Dylan with a smile.

  Quentin continued. “If you know everything, what’s the name of the trail used by the Japanese when they invaded from the north?”

  “I don’t care about any dumb trail,” Dylan snapped. “I don’t care if aliens used the trail to invade the planet Earth.”

  Allen Jackson interrupted the conversation. “Dylan, you need to know this. When the Allies arrived, we were losing the war here. If the Japanese weren’t stopped, all of New Guinea and a lot of Australia would have been lost. To win the war, the Japanese had to come from Buna to the north and overrun Port Moresby to the south. But between these two points was the Owen Stanley mountain range, with some of the most rugged terrain on the planet Earth: ragged mountain peaks, raging rivers, cliffs, gorges, and thick jungles. Only one trail connected the two places, the Kokoda trail. But it was a primitive trail with slippery mud and rock. Troops sometimes crawled single file on their hands and knees, clinging to vines to keep from falling to their deaths. If the Japanese hadn’t been stopped on the Kokoda trail you might not be sitting here talking as a free person.”

  “I wouldn’t be sitting here talking if Uncle Todd hadn’t brought me here,” Dylan snapped. Ignoring his uncle’s disapproving glance, Dylan turned away and stared at the endless greenery until they pulled to a stop at the marketplace.

  For a half hour they explored local wares being sold beside the river. Instead of using stands, things were spread out on the ground on pieces of torn plastic sheets and woven rice bags that had been cut open. Again, Quentin acted like the tour guide. “Those are bilum bags full of betel nuts.” He pointed out everything he could see, from dried fish to taro roots, shields and spears, sago starch and sweet potatoes.

  Dylan picked up a banana. “This is a ba-na-na,” he exclaimed.

  Quentin picked up a papaya. “Do you know what this is?” he asked.

  “Looks like your head,” Dylan quipped.

  Quentin ignored him and pointed excitedly at some fierce-looking masks. “Oh, look! Those are spirit masks.”

  Dylan looked around at all the plants and fruit he didn’t recognize. “How do they know these things aren’t poisonous?” Instantly he regretted his question.

  “It’s similar to our country,” Quentin said. “All trial and error. With time, people have discovered the hard way what’s good and what’s bad. And if you —”

  “Thank you, Quentin,” Dylan said loudly, turning his back and walking away.

  Women kept trying to hand Dylan items, repeating the memorized words, “Special price for you! Special price for you!” Several handed out sample slices of papaya and mango. Dylan refused to sample any fruits he didn’t recognize. How did he know they weren’t poisonous?

  As they s
hopped, a small army of children followed them with curious stares. Most wore only dirty pants. Their little bellies stuck out like brown melons. As they had in Port Moresby, the women in the market wore colorful blouses and skirts. The men wore dusty pants and T-shirts. One had an LA Lakers shirt. One shirt said BOB MARLEY. Another advertised Tide laundry soap. Dylan guessed the people didn’t even know what their shirts said.

  Most adults had mouths and teeth stained from chewing the betel nuts. “Why do they chew those things?” Dylan asked, being careful to direct the question to Allen Jackson.

  “It’s a socially ingrained habit. It’s a sign of friendship to give or exchange betel nuts. The habit is an addiction but also part of their culture, the same as smoking, drinking, and drug use in our country. Maybe it’s their way of escaping hunger and poverty. Who knows the whole reason?”

  “He knows,” Dylan whispered, pointing at Quentin. “He knows everything.”

  Allen smiled. “Let’s get on the river. We want to be in the village of Swagup before dark.”

  Dylan stared in disbelief as they loaded their backpacks into a large dugout canoe almost forty feet long. The boat had been hollowed out of a single tree by hand. It had the carving of a crocodile on the front. “I feel like a cave man,” Dylan said, settling into his spot for the five-hour ride. Every time someone moved, the dugout tipped dangerously.

  Three local men, barefoot and wearing only blue jeans and T-shirts, accompanied them. “This certainly isn’t Coast Guard–approved,” Quentin’s father, Gene, joked. “Riding eight people without life vests in a hollowed-out tree, up a river thick with poisonous snakes and crocodiles.”

  Dylan allowed a shallow laugh, swallowed hard, and looked into the water. This really was a stupid trip.

  Uncle Todd cleared his throat. “From here on in, there are no more credit cards, banks, stores, electricity, nothing,” he announced. “We’re off the grid. Welcome to Papua New Guinea.”