Jungle of Bones

by Ben Mikaelsen

  Dylan felt dizzy. “You’re crazy!” he challenged again. “That’s my foot. You were trying to eat me.”

  The girl held a bag in her left hand made of bark strips. She edged toward his foot, and Dylan pulled back. “I said, stay away from me!” he shouted.

  The girl cocked her head sideways, as if trying to figure out a puzzle. She motioned again at his ankle. “You’re talking stupid. You have a snake bite,” she said in plain English.

  Dylan stared at the young native girl. “You speak English?”

  “So do you,” she quipped back.

  Dylan grimaced. The girl’s English sounded nothing like the awkward broken sentences he’d heard other natives use. She pulled a paste from her bag. “This might help,” she said, smearing the greenish paste on Dylan’s ankle.

  It hurt, but Dylan was too weak to argue. Still he didn’t trust this girl — her English was too perfect. Where had she come from? “What’s your name?” Dylan asked.

  “Kanzi,” she said. “And what’s yours?”

  “Dylan.”

  “Deeeeloooon,” she said, playing with his name.

  Dylan looked at his ankle and at the mangled skin. “How come you were chewing on my ankle?” he demanded.

  “I had to make the skin bleed. A snake with poison bit you.”

  “I knew that,” Dylan said.

  “Then why didn’t you make the bite bleed?” Her tone of voice was slow and deliberate, as if she were talking to a child.

  Even as she spoke, Dylan clenched his teeth and grimaced to ward off the waves of chills that coursed through his body. He examined the small girl skeptically. “Where do you live?”

  Kanzi motioned over her shoulder with her chin. “In Maswa — far away.” Then she pointed at Dylan. “Where do you live?”

  “In Wisconsin — far away, too,” Dylan said. “What are you doing here?”

  The impish girl lowered her head in shame. “This place and this tree, it’s one of my secret places.” She looked at him, her brow wrinkled with concern. “You’re sick. Why are you here?”

  Dylan lay back on the ground. “Because I was stupid and because I walked in circles.”

  The air had warmed, and the mosquitoes and flies swarmed thick around them. Kanzi reached down and pulled on Dylan’s hand. “Get up,” she said, motioning to the shade across the clearing. “Don’t sit in the sun.”

  Kanzi held Dylan’s elbow as he stood. It took all of his strength to hobble into the shade, where he collapsed again to the ground. The shade felt better, but the insects still attacked him. “I wish we had a fire,” he stammered, shivering in spite of the heat.

  Kanzi reached into her bag and pulled out a stick, a small block of wood and some dry wood shavings. Her fingers moved swiftly as she bent over and braced the block of wood against her chest and rolled the stick back and forth between her palms.

  Dylan grimaced. No way would she start a fire by just twirling a stick back and forth between her palms.

  Still Kanzi kept rolling the stick with quick, sharp movements. She stopped once to gather the shavings closer, and then kept working, determination bunching her lips.

  “That won’t start a fire,” Dylan mumbled at almost the same instant that a wisp of smoke curled upward.

  Kanzi bent forward and blew gently until a faint glow appeared. Carefully she added more bark shavings and blew again. Soon smoke billowed upward, and in seconds the whole pile of shavings burst into flames.

  Dylan watched with amazement as the young girl coaxed the flames higher by adding more shavings. Soon a crackling flame warmed the air. Kanzi gathered damp moss to feed the fire so the smoke would keep insects away. She smiled, then pointed at the smoke and announced, “No more nat nats!”

  Dylan felt embarrassed for having doubted the young girl. He wanted to hug her. “No more nat nats!” he allowed. Dylan looked at the girl, so alone but so confident. Who was she really? “My mom would freak if she knew I was out here alone,” he said.

  A sad look crossed Kanzi’s face. “You’re very lucky if you have a mother — that must make you happy. I have only parents who are not parents.”

  “What do you mean?” Dylan asked.

  “My parents died in a flood when I was young. In Maswa, relatives take care of children who lose their parents. My grandmother took care of me but she has grown very old. My uncle who takes care of me now is a humbug man and does bad things. That’s why I have special places where I go by myself. Everyone else is scared of the special places.” She puffed up her chest. “Kanzi isn’t scared.”

  With the fire going, Kanzi reached into her bark bag and pulled out chunks of dried fish and pads of cooked sago starch wrapped in banana leaves. She also had some kind of bird meat that definitely was not chicken. Three days ago, this food would have grossed Dylan out. Now, he ate it eagerly. He had little appetite, but this food meant life.

  Kanzi pointed at him. “You’re sick — go home.”

  Dylan shook his head. “I live too far away to go home.”

  She gave him a puzzled look. “Nobody is ever too far away to go home. The place you said, Wisconsin . . . is it near Ambunti or Wewak?”

  Dylan shook his head. “Wisconsin.” He spread his arms like an airplane. “I came from the other side of the world.”

  “Alone?”

  “I was with four other people but I walked away from them, and it started raining. Now I’m lost.”

  Kanzi stared in disbelief. “You don’t know where you are right now?”

  “Everything looks the same,” Dylan argued.

  Kanzi shook her head. “No, every place is very different. The jungles and swamps always tell me where I am by how they look.” She frowned. “You walked away from friends in a place where you could get lost? Why did you do that? That was stupid.”

  Dylan frowned at Kanzi. “Why don’t you just say what you think?”

  “Here in the jungle, many white people die because they’re stupid,” Kanzi said. She paused. “Stay here so you don’t get lost again. I’ll bring more food for the little lost white boy.”

  Dylan didn’t argue but he didn’t like how she treated him like a child. She was even younger than he was.

  It seemed only minutes before Kanzi returned with a possum and some kind of tree rat, both freshly killed. Dylan was too weak and tired to care how she killed them. Hearing her talk and watching the young girl in her grass skirt, moving deliberately about, deft and light on her feet, he remembered an episode of Star Trek, that old TV show his mom loved. The crew of the starship Enterprise returned in a time warp to Earth and remembered their primitive beginnings when humans still used money and had to earn their livings and pay taxes.

  Maybe there was nothing dumb or simple about Kanzi. Maybe she knew more about how to survive in the world than every kid in Dylan’s school combined. Maybe the latest clothes he wore from the mall, his smartphone and computer games, maybe those weren’t the right measure of how intelligent and educated people were. Around this young, mouthy native girl, he felt really stupid.

  Suddenly, Dylan had a thought. It took all his strength, but he reached into his back pocket and removed the laminated picture of the bomber Second Ace. “Have you ever seen this?” he asked, handing the picture to Kanzi.

  She took the photograph and glanced at it with idle curiosity, but then her eyes grew big and she brought the picture closer to her face as if she were looking at a ghost.

  “Have you ever seen that plane?” Dylan asked again.

  She looked at Dylan and nodded, her eyes still wide. “It’s one of my secret places.” She studied Dylan. “Why did you come to my country?”

  Dylan felt weak, but he began at the beginning and told everything, even how he was arrested at the junkyard and about not taking his malaria pills.

  Kanzi listened carefully and watched him, like a judge preparing a verdict. At first her stare was almost fierce. As Dylan told his story, her gaze softened, becoming concerned.


  “Now we want to find Second Ace and return the remains of the crew to their families so they can be buried,” Dylan concluded.

  Kanzi shook her head. “Stay away from Second Ace,” she said.

  “Why?” Dylan asked.

  She lowered her voice as if telling Dylan a secret. “It has bad spirits. There are bones,” she said. “Many bones.”

  Dylan considered his situation as he struggled to think straight. This girl, Kanzi, knew where Second Ace was. Physically, he had neared the end of his rope. Kanzi said her village, Maswa, wasn’t near. He was still separated from Uncle Todd, Quentin, Gene, and Allen — it was anybody’s guess where they were now. So, how could he survive and try to find them?

  “How far is your village from here?” Dylan asked.

  “You’re sick — Maswa is too far for you,” she said.

  “How far away is the bomber?”

  She looked over her shoulder and shrugged. “Not far. For me, only a little ways. For you —” She shrugged again.

  “It’s too far to go to your village. I can’t stay here. You have to take me to the bomber and let me stay there while you find my group.”

  Kanzi shook her head. “Kanzi doesn’t have to do anything!” she said resolutely.

  Politely, Dylan asked, “Will you please take me to the bomber and help me find my group?”

  “There’s bad spirits. Already white people have died trying to find that plane.”

  “I don’t believe in bad spirits,” Dylan said.

  Kanzi smirked. “There are many things that white people don’t believe. And what they do believe makes them fat and sick and weak. They always think they’re smart, but when they come to our village, they have to be led around like pet monkeys. They must be told everything: not to stand in the sun, not to eat bad fruit, not to touch snakes. Even a frog knows these things. Many white people won’t carry the heavy bags they bring. Do they have broken arms? Are they too weak? They know only their language, not ours. They talk as if we’re dumb, and they come here to my country to steal from us. They burn our forests. They dig mines and make our rivers dirty.”

  “Do they know that you speak English?”

  Kanzi shook her head. “No, and they don’t ask. I never say anything because I like to hear the stupid things they say when they think we don’t understand.”

  Dylan spoke carefully — he didn’t want to make this girl mad. She was his only chance of getting out of here. But she was also being a jerk. “I didn’t come to hurt your country,” he said. “If you go and find help, where can I stay that’s safe?”

  Kanzi wrinkled her forehead in thought. “I can find your friends, but we’re too far from my village to take you there. You can’t stay here alone — it’s lucky you didn’t die yesterday.” Now Kanzi ballooned her cheeks and stuck her bottom lip out in thought. Then, with a simple shrug, she said, “Yes, the big airplane is best. I hope you like bad spirits.”

  Dylan grimaced. He wished he didn’t have to walk — every movement hurt.

  Kanzi motioned for him to stand. “Let’s go. You need medicine, and staying here doesn’t make you stronger.”

  Painfully, Dylan stood and followed Kanzi away from the clearing. Trying not to stumble as he walked, he watched the odd little girl ahead of him. She was like a graceful cat, not tripping or touching branches, passing like a shadow through the undergrowth. The nimble, barefooted girl hopped from stump to stump, scampering across fallen logs wet with moss, dodging around ferns and vines and undergrowth, and finding trails where Dylan saw none.

  Dylan kept falling behind. “What’s the hurry?” he called.

  Kanzi turned. “The sun and the moon don’t wait for Deeeeloooon.”

  “No, but I need to catch my breath,” Dylan complained.

  “Does that make the darkness come later?” she asked.

  Dylan pushed ahead through a thorny stand of palms, slipping on a muddy log. “This place sucks!” he said.

  Kanzi ignored him, continuing down the root-tangled path, moving effortlessly and with confidence. Every few minutes she stopped and waited for Dylan to catch up, her dark hooded eyes showing impatience.

  “I’m glad a crocodile isn’t chasing us,” Dylan commented, breathing hard to catch his breath.

  Kanzi shrugged. “It would be okay, because he would catch you first.”

  “Real funny,” Dylan said, gasping for air, his mouth dry as dirt. Hot spells and chills kept sweeping through his body in waves. A blade of tall grass sliced open his left hand like a knife, and the air reeked of the rotting undergrowth. His diarrhea had ended, but the bad rash left him limping.

  Suffocating heat rose like steam in the jungle. Kanzi angled to the left of the faint path, hiking out of the trees into waist-deep swamp. “This way is shorter,” she said, refusing to slow down.

  “Why do you even live in a place like this?”

  “Why does a fish live in water? Why does a bird fly in the air? Kanzi lives here!” she said, swinging a hand that purposely splashed Dylan with swamp muck.

  When they finally waded up out of the deep black soup, Dylan collapsed beside the trail. “This place sucks!”

  Kanzi turned and walked back to where he rested beside the trail. She stared at him with her big curious eyes. “Why are you this way?” she asked.

  “What way?” Dylan muttered.

  She shrugged. “You’re not part of the world. You don’t think. You don’t listen to the sounds that come to your ears. You don’t take time to look at the world. You are never thankful. You don’t respect the world. You don’t feel when the world touches you, or smile when it’s funny. You don’t cry when the world is sad. All you do is complain. You think the world was made only for Deeeeloooon.”

  “Whatever,” Dylan grumped. “How much farther do we have to go?”

  Kanzi looked down the trail as if calculating, then shrugged. “Maybe we’ll get there when we get there.” She laughed aloud at her own wit. “Or maybe you think we’ll get there before we get there.”

  “You’re not funny,” Dylan snapped, struggling to his feet. He kept following Kanzi along the side of a huge swamp.

  It was late afternoon before Kanzi pointed to a stand of trees nearby. “There’s the airplane that’s in your picture.”

  At first, Dylan saw nothing except dense vegetation. Had Kanzi not pointed, he would have noticed nothing.

  But then he spotted the wreckage.

  It looked like the huge bomber had tried to land in the marsh, but overshot and collided with the trees. Only the side of the fuselage was visible until they walked closer. One wing had been torn off, but the tail section remained intact. Trees must have been mowed down like grass when the bomber crashed, but now new trees had grown back around the wreck, making it look as if the plane had been set in place with a crane. Two of the engines had ripped off and rested like moss-covered boulders in the marsh grass. From the twisted wreckage, it was hard to believe that anyone had lived through such a crash.

  As they approached the wreckage, Kanzi motioned. “Come over here.”

  Dylan walked around the front of the mangled fuselage. One side of the nose was totally destroyed, but on the other side somebody, probably Kanzi, had rubbed away the dirt. Faintly, but without any question, was painted a large red ace of hearts. Arched over the top, big letters read SECOND ACE. Dylan pulled the laminated photograph from his pocket and stared in stunned silence. This was it. After sixty years, it was like looking at a ghost. “I thought Uncle Todd was just dreaming,” he whispered.

  “Come.” Kanzi motioned. “I’ll show you how to get inside.” She led Dylan around through the tall grass. At one point they had to crawl on their hands and knees on spongy moss until they were almost under the tail, where Kanzi had found a ragged hole big enough to squeeze through. “The edges are sharp,” she warned, pulling herself through the twisted opening. “And don’t touch the bones. That is wrong.”

  Dylan squirmed up through the opening. “I wo
n’t touch the bones ’cause it gives me the creeps,” he said, stopping to let his eyes adjust to the dim light. Every movement had to be careful because of the ragged metal edges left from the crash.

  Kanzi crawled forward in the plane, swinging her small bag back and forth to knock down the spiderwebs that crisscrossed the open spaces.

  Dylan stared quietly at the inside of the giant bomber. He could only imagine what it must have been like the day this mammoth machine went down, the injured crew yelling and screaming for help, the massive radial engines roaring and then suddenly going quiet, hissing and steaming in the swamp. How did his grandfather ever live through this wreck? For the first time it all became real to Dylan. These were real people, real planes, real crashes, and real war.

  As his eyes adjusted to the darkness, Dylan stood upright, mouth open, stunned. There were bones, dozens of them, some chewed on, strewn around as if somebody had tossed them there. Probably rats and other animals had eaten all the flesh. Rodent droppings covered the muddy floor. But there was also a pair of glasses, boots, and a flak helmet with a human skull inside. A ring still hung from one skeleton’s hand.

  Over the years, storms and winds had washed mud through every opening. But some things looked untouched. Carefully, Dylan worked his way forward in the fuselage, climbing over the ball turret and stopping at the waist gunner’s position. The two old fifty-caliber machine guns still rested in their cradles. Except for all the cobwebs, they might still work.

  Continuing forward, Dylan crouched as he balanced on the narrow walkway that crossed the bomb bays. Somehow the top of the fuselage had been compressed downward and the top ball turret position had been totally wiped out. Maybe the plane had cartwheeled during the wreck. The cockpit looked like something out of a time warp, with all of its old controls and instruments. Dylan spit on his finger and rubbed one of the gauges. The dust and mud smeared off the glass to show numbers and calibration.

  Kanzi refused to follow Dylan forward. She pulled the last of the food she had from her bag. “Come,” she called. “I’ll show you what you need to know if you’re going to stay here tonight.”