by Ann Kelley
We’ve made Jody’s shirtsleeves into socks to protect her legs.
“Oh, look, it’s so pretty.” Jody goes to touch a blue lizard on a rock.
Jas grabs her hand away. “No, don’t touch. Its skin might excrete deadly chemicals.”
“What’s excrete?”
“Just don’t touch anything, okay?” I explode.
She goes quiet after that and I feel guilty for shouting. Poor kid; she’s only ten or something, and her sister’s just died.
“You know, we were very lucky that king cobra didn’t chase us.” Jas is trying to lure me back into a better mood.
“Chase us?” I play along.
“Yeah, they are really aggressive snakes. They’ll run after people for miles to bite them.”
“You’re kidding me.”
“Nope, they really do.”
Jody’s eyes are like saucers. There’s no way she’ll risk touching anything or being left behind now.
Jas knows all sorts of stuff about animals. Sometimes it’s better not to know.
Lianas tangle everything, and we have to decide every time whether to climb over or under them. Every small peak reveals many more, each covered in forest undergrowth and tall trees, displaying every green I’ve ever seen and a few more besides. Leaves are of every shape possible for a leaf to be: round, heart shaped, long and thin, spearlike, hairy, prickly. I’d love to collect samples, but there isn’t time.
We must pass a dozen or so different sorts of bamboo. Thin black-stemmed, thick brown-stemmed, thorny.
Flies settle on our sweaty faces and arms. They bite.
“Ouch!” Jody slaps at herself and laughs. On we march, slithering downhill and scrambling uphill, pulling ourselves up by hanging on to stems and trunks. There’s no way we could camp here. Jas keeps up a commentary on the wildlife we hear—squabbling squirrels, croaking frogs, drilling cicadas. We pass jungle trees strangled by figs and ferns and orchids growing on every available tree bark, as well as spaghetti junctions of lianas, pushing their way up toward the light. Some palms have nasty spikes. Too late, Jas warns me that some of the leaves sting if you touch them.
“This is not a friendly forest,” she says, as she helps tie another ribbon to a tree.
We come at last to a natural clearing, surrounded by thick trees, with several large, flattish rocks, and we’re blinded by the light after the gloom of jungle. Sunshine, no wind.
“Here’s good for a camp,” says Jas.
“Okay, it’ll do,” I agree. I wish we’d gone farther but have to admit that Jody hasn’t held us back. I don’t know how far we’ve traveled, but we’re hot and thirsty and we need food. We share the coconut and the water.
Jas knows I’m disappointed. “It’s still a while until sunset, but this is such a good place, and we might not find anything better farther on.” She puts a hand on my shoulder. “Should we try to light a fire?”
“Is there any point?”
“Well, to keep wild animals away. And we’ll be more comfortable.”
“Okay.”
I’m in charge of fire-making. I place some of my precious supply of tinder—lichens and coconut hair—in a small heap on a rock. I hold the remaining lens of Hope’s broken glasses close to the kindling and angle it to catch the sun’s low rays. There is a slight acrid smell and my tinder sparks.
“Yes, fire! We have fire!”
Jas and Jody peer closely. “Where? I can’t see it,” Jas says.
“Go find more twigs,” I tell her.
“Okay, keep your hair on.”
Slightly larger twigs go on next, then larger ones, then dried leaves and bark. But it’s all too damp and the fire smolders briefly before fading to nothing. I blow gently on it but there’s nothing… no smoke, no fire.
“Never mind. It’s good practice,” says Jas briskly.
“But what about wild animals?” whines Jody.
“Shh, now, get in my sleeping bag and don’t worry. We’ll keep watch. Nothing’s going to hurt you. I promise.”
“Will you promise nothing’s going to hurt me, please, Mommy?” I whisper and Jas slaps me and giggles.
At dusk come the fruit bats, first one or two, then a dozen or more, then hundreds. They flock to roost upside down in the dark trees. The rustling of bat wings surrounds us.
“Hope probably had forty fits worrying about where Jody is.”
“Jas, stop. There’s nothing we can do about it. You should have let me send Jody back when we first found her.”
Her silence is loud.
As night falls, fireflies come—thousands of them above our heads, all flashing together in a constant rhythm, like a nightclub light show. Later there are green glowworms, and a marvelous glowing fungus that grows on logs, creating the most exotic connect-the-dots puzzle.
At one point I hear the rustle of leaves behind us. I shine the flashlight on a little deer, which staggers off in terror.
The idea was for Jas to take first watch while Jody and I slept. Then I would take the second watch at midnight while Jas slept in my sleeping bag. But in the end I can’t sleep and Jas and I keep watch together.
“Do you think there might be tigers here, Jas?”
“Well, it’s a largish island, and there are plenty of small animals—dhole, you know, a sort of wild dog—and mouse deer….”
“We haven’t seen those, have we?”
“No. They look like rabbits on stilts—they’re bound to be here. And pheasants, I think, and jacanas. Wild boars, of course, and loads of monkeys and gibbons, and rats—they have from four to seven litters a year. And barking deer—that’s what we saw earlier, and I think they’re a Thai tiger’s main prey. So enough available for a big cat, I suppose. So yes, I suppose there could be a tiger.”
“And if there’s one, there’s bound to be more.”
There’s a silence, and I’m suddenly aware of the pressure that Jas puts herself under to remain cheerful at all times.
“Oh, Bonnie, perhaps we should have stayed on the beach. What if we can’t even get the fire lit?”
“Too late to think of that now. We’ll just have to hope for the best.”
Are we going to die? How will it feel to be attacked by a wild beast, torn apart, to bleed to death? No one will ever find our remains here. Our dismembered parts will be dined on by ants; our bones will bleach and crumble over the years. An archaeologist of the future will find a broken toe bone and wonder what happened to the rest of the body.
My schoolteachers often tell me I have an overactive imagination. I wonder if they’d say so now.
I shine the flashlight all around us but we see nothing. Just trees and leaves and bushes. No glinting eyes. Jody sleeps. I turn off the light reluctantly.
“Jas, talk to me. Talk to me.”
“What about?”
“Uh, tell me what you did before you came to Thailand.”
“Before? Well, Dad was at a pilot-training camp in Nevada. Mom and I were miles away. Mom had a psychology practice in the city. My baby brother wasn’t born then. Uh, I went to junior high, had a crush on my biology teacher, wore braces, the usual stuff. You?”
“Borneo before here. I loved it, except it rained a lot, and we didn’t see much of Dad. But before that we lived in Scotland, which is where I was born, and that’s almost as wet. But I was just a little kid then.”
“What’s it like, Scotland? It sounds so romantic and exotic.”
“I remember snow and icy roads, and going to school on a bus, and my white breath. Icicles on the windows. Building a snowman in the garden.”
We sit quietly listening to the night. Jody stirs, cries out “No!” but she’s still asleep. Jas strokes her head.
Then Jas says, “Mom and Dad were much happier then, when she was working. They came with me to spelling bees, and we’d go to baseball games together. We don’t seem to do anything as a family anymore.”
“Were you always good at spelling?”
“Yeah,
I won the Nevada state championship twice.”
“Wow!” We are both quiet for a moment, then I ask, “You don’t think they are happy now?”
“No, not really. It’s the war, you know? Who can be happy when there’s the constant threat of death?”
“Yeah, I suppose.” I think how lucky I am that my parents are still happy together—as far as I know. They cuddle a lot, embarrassingly so, and talk to each other. They dance together at base parties. I don’t know what I’d do if they ever wanted to separate. I couldn’t possibly choose who I’d live with, even though I’m not getting along with Dad at the moment.
“Will you go back to Scotland when the war is over?” Jas asks.
“When the war is over… and if we get off this island… when we get off this island—yeah, I suppose so. That’s the plan. Depends on where Dad is sent. Mom likes to go where he goes if it’s longer than six months. But my grandparents, Dad’s parents, live in Sutherland—that’s in the north of Scotland. They used to live in Caithness and I lived with them for a while—went to my first school there—and we often stay with them for the holidays. We stay in their guest cottage, which used to be stables, and they have a little rowing boat, and highland cattle with shaggy brown coats and tall horns. You’d love it. There are eagles and ospreys, and a loch.” We laugh together at my Scottish pronunciation. “Perhaps you could come and stay?”
Just thinking about my grandparents makes me want to cry.
It’s 1964. My parents are away somewhere, probably in a war zone. I am four years old and living with Grandma and Grandpa, and in this memory I’m walking with them across the purple-brown moor of Dunnet Head in Caithness, farther north than John o’Groats, but a few miles to the east.
I follow in Grandpa’s footsteps, and Grandma treads in mine. If I don’t exactly tread in his footprints, she warns, I might disappear forever into a bottomless bog. Grandma’s full of horror stories. Just before my arrival a young man died gathering seagull eggs from the cliff face. The fall is three hundred feet into a churning sea.
“He never stood a chance,” she says gleefully.
We are coming back from the little kirk in the hamlet of Brough, Grandpa in his black serge coast-guard uniform with gold braid on his cap and Grandma dressed in black. I am all wrapped up in my tweed coat, woolen scarf, and Fair Isle tam’, my feet tingling from the cold in knitted socks that have slipped under my heels in my black Wellington boots. Ice sits like hand mirrors on puddles in the blackened heather. There’s a mossy patch that Grandpa skirts, but I decide to take a more direct route. I start to walk across the bright green stuff, feeling the sponge, crunchy from frost, give under my feet.
“No, lassie.” Grandpa grabs me and I think he is saving me from a bottomless bog. But he’s not. “Never walk on the moss,” he says. “It’s very fragile, you see. The first time it will survive; the second it doesn’t spring back up; if someone walks on it a third time, the moss will die. And you wouldn’t want that, would you now?”
No, I wouldn’t want that.
I wipe my damp eyes with my arm. “It’s a lovely place, Jas, no trees, just lakes and cliffs, the empty moor, and seabird cries.”
“It sounds so foreign, Bonnie.”
“It’s home, sort of, or was, when I was little.”
We sit quietly for a while, deep in our own thoughts.
“What do you think went wrong with Mrs. Campbell?” I ask.
“What I said before, Bonz. She’s given up trying to be in control because she’s in shock. Everything’s out of control. The storm; Sandy; the boatman; Natalie—three deaths. She doesn’t know what’s hit her. And she’s supposed to be in charge. She just isn’t up to it.”
“You’re being too kind, Jas. She’s not in shock—no more than we are, anyway. And she’s a liar. What survival skills has she shown? None. And she drank the whiskey, nearly two bottles, instead of using it to clean Natalie’s leg. And she’s encouraging Arlene and May to smoke marijuana and eat druggy leaves. That’s corruption of minors.” I read that phrase in a newspaper.
“I suppose you’re right,” Jas answers, and then we say nothing.
I am filled again with the fury I can’t express. Every time I think of Layla Campbell I want to be sick.
Jody sleeps the sleep of the innocent, as does Mikey, presumably.
We see our first army of termites. The winged insects cover the forest floor as far as we can see. I wonder if they’re attracted by the light? Dad says you can eat termites, but you have to pull off the wings first. Then you can eat them raw or cook them. They’re full of protein, apparently.
What sounds like hundreds of tree frogs have settled on tree trunks around us and make a noise like a spoon on a teacup—chink… pause… chink, chink… pause… chink, chink, chink. They’re very clever. They count to five then start all over again. I listen carefully to see if they ever count higher than five, but they don’t. I am in danger of falling asleep counting not sheep but frog chirps.
Eventually Jas wriggles down, trying to make herself as comfy a bed as she can. “I have to sleep, Bonz. Sorry.” Her breathing steadies almost immediately.
I don’t know how long it is before I hear a strange new sound, a cross between a loud sigh and a sort of roar. My blood goes cold. I’ve always wondered what that expression meant, and now I know. That wasn’t a wild boar. I turn the flashlight on and wave it around but can see nothing but red eyes high in the trees—monkeys or gibbons. I edge my journal out from beneath Jas’s sleeping body.
I really liked Mrs. Campbell when we first met her. I feel like I’ve been fooled, cheated, let down. I feel ashamed of her because she’s from Scotland and she’s so immoral. And what if I’m right about that day in the car? Maybe Mom’s friends are right not to trust her.
This isn’t turning out to be the journal I had imagined taking home with me.
fifteen
DAY 14
Still alive. Not eaten in the night.
I wake the others.
“This isn’t much of a hotel,” I joke as the others come to their senses. “No barbecue or campfire, no bacon roll or waffles with maple syrup, no fresh orange juice, no smell of freshly brewed coffee, no hot shower, no room service.”
“It’s a disgrace,” agrees Jas. “We won’t be back.”
Jody smiles shyly, happy to be with us.
“It’s the mundane things I miss the most,” says Jas. “What I’d give for a good night’s sleep, toilet tissue, clean underwear…”
“The inside of my mouth tastes like a cave full of bat crap,” I say.
“Mine tastes like a garbage bin,” complains Jas.
“Mine’s worse. It tastes like dog poo!” Jody is delighted with herself, and we all laugh—the first laugh any of us has had for a long time.
We are on our way at dawn. No point in hanging around.
“Look at the ants, Jody,” I say.
“What are they carrying?”
“Leaves. Bigger than they are.”
Jody screams. “A snake!” Her scream sets off the gibbons, whose yells and whoops fill the forest. “No it isn’t, sorry, it’s a tree root.”
If we stop for a rest or a drink any exposed flesh gets stung by ants so small we can hardly see them, so we try to keep moving, climbing. It’s not actually raining. Instead, a low mist clings to the trees, and a thick whiteness dampens our hair and skin. Everything is clammy. But gradually, as the sun rises, the mist breaks into tatters and thin streaks thread their way into the coral-red morning sky.
Jody’s a gutsy little thing. She seems to think this is a great adventure. She’s tanned and dirty all over and her face is covered in mud, her hair tangled and stuck with leaves. She doesn’t notice the thorns. Her teddy is in my bag. She hasn’t once mentioned her sister, but maybe that’s not a good thing.
Going to the bathroom in the jungle isn’t easy. We can’t go off into the forest for privacy for fear of losing one another or coming across another snake. S
o we dig a shallow bowl with our hands in the leafy, muddy earth. We take turns crouching, then use big leaves to clean ourselves, and then cover our waste with leaves and earth. The other two keep watch from nearby.
Jody holds her nose and says, “Disgusting, ugh, yuck!” And I have to agree.
“Look, a pill bug!” Jas gives us little zoology and biology lectures. This particular tanklike bug trundles around on the forest floor, and when disturbed curls up into a perfect little ball. You can’t see where the segments of its armor begin and end, it is so beautifully engineered.
We gather fruit whenever we can. There’s a banana grove at one point, so we have bananas for breakfast and carry as many as we can to eat later.
“I wonder what’s happening back at the beach?” Jas says as she munches her way through one of the remaining bananas.
“Yeah, have the Glossies scratched each other’s eyes out yet?” I say. “Is Hope hanging in there, looking after Carly? Has Loopy Layla pulled herself together?”
“Who’s Loopy Layla?” Jody asks, wiping a sticky spiderweb from her face.
We are gradually getting higher and the path is all rocky now, no leaf floor, no actual track to follow anymore. It’s a matter of climbing upward until we reach the top.
We’ve eaten all the bananas. They don’t travel well. And we’ve seen no other fruit for ages, though we can hear gibbons nearby, so there must be something for them to eat.
There are so many different fruits in the market at home—durian, custard apple, jackfruit, papaya, pineapple, pomelo, rambutan, breadfruit, mangosteen, and watermelon. I’ll never take them for granted again.
But we still have plenty of water, even with an extra stomach to fill.
It’s getting hotter. I’m sweating like mad and finding it difficult to breathe. The air is like cotton wool.
A large male gibbon stoops from his branch to stare at us, and not believing his big eyes, he shrieks at us.
