Jungle of Bones

by Ben Mikaelsen

  The dugout used a forty horsepower outboard engine on the back to plow through the water. They droned along, meandering past small villages or individual homes built along the high banked shore on poles. Most had thatched roofs and walls made of palm branches lashed together. Twisting smoke rose from many of the huts.

  Allen Jackson pointed excitedly to an extra-large structure built high on the shoreline. It towered above the other buildings, with two floors and a thatched roof like some prehistoric church. “That’s a Haus Tambaran, or Spirit House. Only men are allowed inside,” Allen said. “It’s like a church or spiritual place to house the good spirits, but some say they’re haunted. Inside, they make elaborate wood carvings like we saw in the market to ward off bad spirits. It’s where the men meet and socialize. It is also where the boys live for a month during initiation.”

  “How are they initiated?” Dylan asked, not sure he wanted to know.

  Allen explained. “In this region, with razor blades. The crocodile is worshipped as the water spirit. Ornate rows of gashes are cut into their backs to make them look like crocodiles. They pack the gashes with mud to stop infection. Sometimes the boys die from the cuts. You might see some of these men in Swagup, although up there, villagers are known as the Insect People. Many of their rituals, ceremonies, and carvings center around insects.”

  “But why do they cut themselves?” Dylan asked.

  “It’s an initiation into manhood. A symbol of strength and power.”

  “It’s a symbol of being crazy,” Dylan said.

  “That’s what they say about our culture,” Gene said.

  Dylan noticed that Quentin was sitting quietly for the first time. The skinny know-it-all scratched at mosquito bites on his legs and stared nervously at the water. Dylan chuckled. “This is the wrong place to be if you don’t like water,” he said. “I’ll bet they have piranhas.”

  “No, they don’t,” Quentin answered. “But they do have a similar fish with big teeth called a ‘bolkata.’ They call them that because of where they bite boys when they’re swimming.” Quentin kept eyeing the muddy river. “I can’t swim,” he added. “Is there any way to get to Swagup without going by boat?”

  Allen shook his head. “This river is the backbone of the area, like an interstate. All commerce, travel, everything is centered on the river. There are no roads here.”

  “I hear bolkatas are really thick here,” Dylan joked, staring at the water nervously himself.

  The shoreline drifted past as they motored upstream, each curve in the wide river taking them farther into a strange world of thatched huts, women squatting beside the water to wash clothes, and men fishing the shoreline. Naked children swung from trees along the high bank to splash into the river. It puzzled Dylan — why weren’t the children afraid of crocodiles or poisonous snakes? Gene was probably just trying to freak him out.

  They passed other boats on the river. Some owners had no motors. They used only long, sharp paddles, standing up in their dugouts. Gradually, a steady beating of drums echoed above the outboard’s engine. Their driver slowed the big dugout and motored near shore. On the bank, some kind of celebration was taking place. Villagers in costumes gyrated in circles, dancing.

  “Sing sing,” the driver said, pointing.

  Allen explained that in PNG, celebrations were called sing sings.

  The children nearest the shore turned and stared at the passing visitors as if they were aliens from a different universe. Dylan felt like one. “These people are so backward,” he said.

  “Or maybe more advanced,” Gene Cooper commented.

  “What do you mean?” Dylan said.

  The big man scratched at his bald head as he talked. “Einstein once said, ‘I do not know with what weapons World War III will be fought, but World War IV will be fought with sticks and stones.’ If you think of humanity that way, perhaps cavemen were once the most advanced civilization to inhabit the planet. Maybe these people were once advanced millennia ahead of us.”

  Dylan held back a smart-aleck reply. Behind them, the sun fell low in the sky.

  Swagup was a dirty little village with no electricity or running water. The house they slept in that night was a private home up on poles. A thatched roof covered the structure, but it leaked even when a brief shower fell. For the first time, the mosquitoes swarmed thick. Quentin kept spraying mosquito repellent over his body. Dylan refused. He was tougher than some small bug. Quentin was such a wuss.

  The owners served an evening meal of Sepik River catfish, some kind of yam, and funny-tasting rice. They also served thick pancakes of cooked sago starch that tasted gross and crumbled when Dylan tried a bite. Sitting with his back against the palm-bark wall of the hut, Dylan studied the locals. They were nice enough, but because they didn’t speak English, they simply sat in the dim glow of a kerosene lamp and stole curious glances. Dylan felt like a sideshow.

  At least a dozen other family members slept with them in the large single room that night, some of them snoring. Cooking in the kitchen drifted smoke throughout the hut, helping to keep the mosquitoes away until they went to bed. Like some backwoods hotel, the homeowner had six mats set up for visitors with mosquito nets over the top like tents. By the time they went to bed, Dylan itched all over because of all his mosquito bites. He tried not to scratch them except when nobody was looking. He was glad for the net over his sleeping pad. Maybe tomorrow he would put on a little spray when Quentin wasn’t watching.

  As Dylan lay awake in the dark, mosquitoes droned around the net, trying to find any small rip or opening. He wondered what other bugs were out there waiting to suck on his blood. Classmates back home would freak if they knew where he was tonight. This was something they couldn’t even imagine. Was this what it was like in Darfur in Africa where his father had been killed? The thought haunted Dylan as he lay awake in the dark.

  Newborn puppies under the home whimpered each time they wanted to nurse. The floor, made from palm-bark planks, bounced whenever somebody moved in the room. Half the night, Dylan lay wide awake listening to the sharp chorusing of bugs in the jungle. Quentin said they were called cicadas. Dylan didn’t care if they were called “fart bugs” — he wished they would shut up.

  The next morning the team rose early to begin hiking toward the foothills. This, Uncle Todd was convinced, was where they might find the B-17 Second Ace. They hired two men from the village to act as guides and to introduce them if they came to other small villages or camps. “Clans in each region are very territorial and don’t like strangers trespassing,” Allen explained.

  It didn’t make sense to Dylan. “How can you own the jungle?” he asked.

  “In our country, Chief Seattle, a famous Native American leader and speaker, would have asked how anybody could own any part of the Earth,” Allen said. “But just because you can’t see property lines doesn’t mean they’re not there. Legal in any society is what you can enforce. Believe me, even with bows and arrows, these people can enforce plenty.”

  The guides were short wiry men with broad foreheads, big smiles, large wide noses, and black fuzzy hair. Their bare feet looked weathered like shoe leather, but they were agile, walking gingerly with a bit of a hopping motion, each step deliberate and sure. They spoke no English, except for what Allen called “pidgin English.” Allen seemed to understand much of what they said, but Dylan could only understand a few of the words, like humbug man for bad person, sit haus for toilet, sing sing for celebration, nat nat for mosquito, pis pis — that one was obvious, and bolkata — that was obvious, too.

  The trail they followed bordered the jungle to their left and a large swamp area to their right. Within a half hour of walking through the sweltering heat, Dylan was dripping with sweat. Unlike their guides, Dylan found himself tripping and stumbling if he didn’t pay close attention.

  As they walked, Allen lectured the group. “Make sure you keep the laminated picture of Second Ace on you at all times. After half of a century in this hostile envi
ronment, the wreckage could just look like a twisted pile of undergrowth. The picture might be your only way of identifying the bomber. Finding Second Ace is like trying to find a needle in a haystack, but we do know she’s here somewhere.”

  Allen paused, and then continued. “Do not, I repeat, do not eat or drink the water from a coconut you have found on the ground. After four or five hours in the sun, it can spoil and make you very sick. If you get a leech on you, do not pull it off. Wait and pour alcohol over its body — that makes it release. If you don’t have alcohol, just leave them alone. When they fill up with blood, they just drop off. Always keep your compass with you — there is no other easy way of knowing directions in the jungle. Keep your whistle handy — you can be a hundred feet from the group and not know where you are. Use chlorine tablets in the water you drink. Use sunscreen lotion — the sun is deadly. Drink lots of water — sweating leaves you terribly dehydrated. Always use mosquito spray and keep taking your malaria pills — they do have malaria over here. Believe me, you do not want to get malaria. When you first get it, you’re afraid you’re going to die. When it gets worse, you’re afraid you won’t die. This place is beautiful, but it can and will kill you if you don’t afford it respect.”

  This is just another stupid lecture, Dylan thought, like not swimming in the river because there are poisonous snakes and crocodiles. Lots of kids were swimming in the river. There probably wasn’t that much malaria, either. The rules were dumb. It hadn’t been hard keeping direction this morning. Even without guides, they just followed the trail. And what was the big deal with the whistle? Anybody could shout and be heard a long ways away.

  This morning Dylan had put on some mosquito spray, but despite the spray, he found himself scratching at his old bites. He hated the bugs more than anything. They were everywhere, thousands of them: gnats, crickets, leeches, mosquitoes, and a zillion other little crawly things he had never seen before in his life. It did no good to swat or brush them away. It was like trying to wave smoke away. One time Dylan swatted his arm and killed ten mosquitoes with one slap. He kept spitting out bugs that flew into his mouth.

  It was hard to watch where he stepped with so many new things to see. Clouds of waterbirds swarmed overhead. Parrots with green and red wings flashed past in bunches. Huge butterflies of every imaginable color dipped and darted about. Dylan saw several birds with really weird colors and long necks. One bird had a big black body, a white head, and a huge yellow beak. When it took off, its wings thumped loudly, like a chopper taking off.

  “That’s a hornbill,” Quentin announced, pointing. “I was the first one to see it.”

  “Get a life,” Dylan mumbled. Looking up, he noticed a single green parrot. It circled alone, away from the rest. Dylan knew how it felt. It had probably been kicked out of the flock for being different, or for being too green. Or maybe it was just watching the strange white-skinned people wandering through the swamps below. The parrot was probably laughing at them — if a parrot could laugh.

  “Look, Dylan!” Quentin exclaimed, pointing at two colorful birds perched in a nearby tree. “Birds of paradise.”

  “I knew what they were,” Dylan lied, flicking a wormlike insect off his arm. A lizard dashed across the trail, vanishing under a rock.

  All morning they had been walking out in the hot sun. By midday, the swamp felt like a steam bath. Dylan’s clothes dripped with sweat and clung to his body as if he had been swimming. Allen kept pointing out poisonous plants or insects. Soon, Dylan was afraid of what he could touch and not touch, where he should step and not step.

  In some places the trail passed through swampy meadows of tall kunai grass with sharp edges that cut at their arms like little knives. Dylan’s boots grew soggy and filled with ooze. With each step, his feet squished. He wished he had taken Uncle Todd’s suggestion of coating the boots with oil. Sitting in a cozy dry condo in Oregon, he never really thought he would end up in this weird place. Now, Dylan wanted to stop and dry his feet. “How much farther are we going today?” he complained.

  “We have another four hours of hiking to a small village called Balo, where we’ll stay tonight,” Uncle Todd said. “From there we begin asking locals if they know of any wrecks.”

  Dylan was thankful when the trail finally angled into the jungle. The intense sun disappeared, but the foliage became dense and thick. This wasn’t a jungle where Tarzan could swing from tree to tree. If you left the trail some places, you couldn’t crawl on your hands and knees. It was a solid wall of vegetation from the ground up. Ferns and palms grew everywhere in the moist, steamy air. The only way to leave the trail here was with a machete. Decaying moss and rotting foliage left the air ripe and pungent.

  Sago palms had thorns that ripped at Dylan’s arms, but he had to walk with his arms out in front to protect his face from the twisted vines. They curved everywhere, like the intestines of some huge monster that had swallowed him. Now other new things appeared: frogs as big as his boot, little swift birds that darted here and there catching insects, and plenty of slithering salamanders, lizards, and snakes.

  “Be careful,” Allen warned. “The more colorful a critter is, the better chance that it’s poisonous.”

  “Look!” Quentin exclaimed, pointing to where a huge fifteen-foot python lay stretched across a fallen log.

  “We ain’t in Kansas no more, Toto,” Dylan mumbled. That had been his father’s favorite saying.

  When they finally reached the clearing that exposed the small village of Balo, Dylan was spent. “Where’s the Holiday Inn?” he asked.

  “Welcome to the municipality of Balo,” Allen announced, as if he were the head of the Balo Chamber of Commerce.

  “This is going to get old, sleeping in these things,” Dylan said, pointing at the dozen small thatched pole huts standing high off the ground.

  “Would you rather sleep in the jungle?” Uncle Todd said.

  Barking dogs announced their arrival, and quickly villagers peered out from behind trees, huts, and doorways. Smoke from the cooking fires curled upward but hung like a fog around the village in the heavy heat. Under each hut, pigs squealed, chickens clucked, children played, and the women cooked over smoldering fires. The air smelled burnt.

  Villagers turned to watch the visitors walking among the huts. Some of the women had no front teeth. They smiled with big toothless grins, their mouths stained red from chewing betel nuts. Some had necklaces made from dogs’ teeth.

  Dylan’s shoulders felt as if they were floating when he removed his backpack. Exhausted, he slumped to the ground. He didn’t feel very good. His whole body ached, and he was sweating more than the others. The rest of the group, including Quentin, waited eagerly to be shown around the small village. “You coming along, Dylan?” asked Gene. The big bald-headed man spoke the least of anybody in the group.

  Before Dylan could answer, Uncle Todd motioned. “Come along. I want us to stay together.”

  Reluctantly Dylan struggled to his feet. What could there possibly be to see?

  It was obvious the village didn’t get many visitors. A cluster of curious children followed behind the group. All were barefoot. Allen pulled out his picture of the B-17 Second Ace, and tried to explain to the elders that this plane had crashed near here and that they were looking for it. The two elders spoke excitedly between themselves, motioning and gesturing with their arms, but finally shook their heads. They hadn’t seen any plane wreckage.

  Allen explained, “They say they haven’t seen Second Ace, but that may not be true. Sometimes the wreckages have become forbidden places because of the dead. Sometimes local chiefs have performed ceremonies to appease the spirits of the swamps. Once a chief told me he hadn’t seen anything but was actually wearing a GI’s dog tag for a necklace.” Allen shrugged. “We just keep asking. We’ll find something.”

  Because of the jungle, it was hard to tell the sun had gone down, but nightfall came on quickly, leaving them rushing to grab their backpacks. Motioning, an elder led t
hem to their hut for the night. There were no dogs barking under this hut, but Dylan heard pigs squealing, rutting, and grunting. He also heard chickens scratching and clucking, their chicks making peeping squeaks as they scurried about. Under the hut hung the quarters of a pig that had been killed. The smell made Dylan dizzy and sick to his stomach. He fought the urge to throw up.

  “You pay for atmosphere,” Uncle Todd joked, climbing up into the hut. The ladder was no more than a single log leaned at an angle with notches cut for steps. Carefully Dylan followed. He felt faint.

  With no mosquito nettings provided, each of them dug into their backpacks to pull out mosquito tents they had brought along themselves. Dylan struggled to hold the flashlight as he fumbled with the thin netting. He had barely spread it out on the floor when Quentin stood and announced, “Mine’s up!”

  “You probably practiced that at home,” Dylan said sarcastically.

  “Actually, I did,” Quentin said seriously. “In better light, I can do it in less than two minutes.”

  When all of their mosquito nets were up, Allen gathered everybody together. “I want you to each look through your survival kits tonight to remind yourself of what’s in there. Here, it may save your life.” He rubbed his chin. “Don’t go anywhere without your backpack and survival kit. It’s your only defense against a jungle that is profoundly beautiful but can easily kill you. From now on, your survival kit should be part of your body.”

  Obediently, everybody sorted through their kits.

  Dylan rummaged through his pack. He pulled out canned ham and eggs, plus bacon, Spam, hash, and stew. There were several dry powders for making milk and orange juice, and some matches — as if he was going to need them in this heat.

  The candy bars he had smuggled along had melted all over the bottom of the back pack and onto many of his clothes. Already ants had discovered the chocolate. Dylan grunted with frustration and tried to ignore the mess, stuffing everything back on top. Uncle Todd would love to chew him out for doing something else stupid.