From Kumo: “You’re making a mistake. You should kill him now before this gets any more out of hand.”
Then Seee, switching to Yoncalla, which I was now beginning to understand, said something to the effect of: “Nothing is certain. We must be patient. We need him. He’s the only one that can do this.”
Kumo spoke again in Yoncalla: “It’s not in your nature to take risks. So why now?”
Silence followed. I heard the map crinkle and flip, then Seee’s fists slammed down on the table. A moment of silence passed and then Seee said in English, “With a failure from The Anthill what I need now is your trust. This cannot stand! We lost a good man last night, and I know you are all upset, but it hasn’t clouded my judgment. With some men, you must roll the dice and see where they land.”
No more words came, so I crept away. After they reemerged, Seee asked us to gather in the clearing. Then we moved into the forest receiving few other directions.
The horses stayed behind, spare one with empty baskets dangling over its side. We hiked northwest where the woods thickened. We plodded through an initial cluster of thanaka trees mashed compactly together. Here the green plant matter and shadowed undergrowth were the most dense. The bush became as solid as a holly hedge. We swam through vines and thicket. We hacked through walls of vegetation with glittering machetes, their blades sticky with gummy residue of roots and branches. Each of us took a rotation, two at a time up front clearing a path with machetes large enough for the trailing horse. We inched forward until we heard the gushing sounds of distant rivers.
On the way up a peak, I caught up to Briana. “I heard you did pretty well out there.”
She looked at me cautiously, as if I were playing an angle. “Thanks,” she said. “I guess.”
“Seriously. I’m not messing with you. I heard you were tough.”
“You’re not trying to be a smart ass are you, Corvus?”
“Not at all. I can switch back if you like.”
She smiled at me and gave me a wink. “Please do. I don’t think I recognize you.”
“I heard you got your cherry popped. Or rather, you popped a cherry in one of the enemy.”
“That’s the Corvus I know. But it’s true, and nothing really to be bragging about.”
We climbed over the last of the hill and hit a flat stretch of land. “I’ll be damned,” I said with a quick laugh. “Should I put you on the couch so you can tell me your feelings?”
“There’s only one thing you want to put me on the couch for, Corvus.”
I laughed. “Well played.”
Ascending another stony hill, we reached scarred cliffs ripping the landscape into veiny ravines where river water flowed into the heart of yet another wall of endless jungle. We climbed down a gentle decline toward a part of the river smothered in woods. There, Seee ordered us to drop the machetes and gear and gather around while Kumo laid out a map on the rocks of the riverbank. Seee spoke, lifting the map high so all could see. Written on the map were names, each shaded within a geography, dark lines enclosing each person’s name. “Everyone will have a zone you will call home. You are not to wander into another person’s zone. Each zone has been marked with paint on tree trunks to mark each boundary.”
All of us looked confused, as if Seee spoke unlearnt words in Yoncalla.
“Here you will live and survive,” Seee continued.
Kumo watched our reactions while Merrill picked up our belongings and put them into the horse’s baskets.
Each of us squinted toward the map glancing at whom would be close. Across the river from me would be Uriah. On his right and left—Mir and Grus. Split was north of them, almost landlocked. Upriver from Grus was Shankar, Conroy, Brock. On my side, Burns and Eaton were upriver. Downriver were Drake, and Orland. I couldn’t even see where Briana was. No one I really knew was on my side of the river.
“We are currently in Grus’s zone,” Seee said. “Kumo and Merrill will escort you to your zones momentarily. Anyone caught in another man’s zone will be punished with the whip.” Seee fished through his backpack and threw a black bullwhip out onto the river rocks. Bundled up in a coil, it was made of black leather. It had a silver handle, gold coupling, and an ivory pummel with two holes cut into it where red leather bands slithered out like baby snakes. The cracker had small jagged pieces of metal woven into it. Seee marked the reactions of the men as we stared down at it. “You are free to defend your own zone from others who might try to steal your resources.”
For a moment no one said a word. Finally, Shankar asked, “What about the guerillas?”
“They won’t find you here,” Seee said.
“Surely you will leave us with something,” Shankar said.
Seee gave us a polished smile. “They didn’t teach you how to survive without tools at The Farm, did they? As you’ll soon find out, it’s a different game when you’ve got nothing.” He drew a box of matches from his backpack and threw them in the air. They landed closest to Orland’s feet. A melee started in the dirt, hands from everywhere trying to grab them. I dove into the pile and quickly found Orland’s arm with the matches. With my feet, I kicked away others and screamed out, “We will share! Everyone shall have one.” Yet the struggle ensued. Finally, I saw Split and Brock clawing men off the dog pile until it was just me and Orland. Orland struggled, kneeing me in my newly healed ribs. I let out a groan. Shankar tried to pile in again, but I booted him in the face. Blood streamed from his nose as he stepped back and cupped his hands around his face. I twisted around and wedged Orland’s arm into an arm bar. Orland punched me in the ribs again with his free hand, sensing the weak spot. I lifted my hips abruptly. As the matches dropped from his clenched fist, I continued the relentless pressure until I heard a snap. Orland screamed in agony.
“See how quickly they turn?” Seee scoffed to Kumo. “Earlier they were acting as if one battle makes the war.”
Kumo nodded. “Nature is quick to change the minds of men. Where is honor amongst the animals?” He pointed at me. “It seems Angry Dog is the fastest learner.”
“Indeed,” Seee said, gazing down at Orland’s broken arm. “Merrill, bring a med kit.”
I raised myself from the ground with the matches.
“Sometimes order must be paid for with a price,” I said angrily.
Merrill came over with his rucksack, and overhearing what I said, smiled and guffawed, “Angry Dog says he who makes the order makes the rules.”
Kumo snorted, and Seee said, “The Buck in him is beginning to wake. But here, Nature is the club.”
Were my actions simply a maneuver for positioning, letting the men know the pecking order? Everyone stared at me, waiting for a response. Briana glared down at the ground, avoiding my eyes. Was it respect or fear I saw? I didn’t care which. I stood there, silent. My position on the river had improved and I had the matches. Mashed and crumpled, I tore open the box and began doling them out one-by-one to each man in the circle. The men took them greedily, but lowered their eyes when they took one.
“We will at least start this game from on equal ground,” I said, directing my remark to Seee.
“You will see that nothing is equal out here,” Merrill said, pulling a first-aid kit from his rucksack. A pack of cigarettes bulged in the arm of his white T-shirt. The shirt was streaked with sap and mud, and his arms were red with scratches. Leaning down to tend to Orland, he added, “You could be handing away your life right there.”
“Yes,” Kumo said, “but it was a deed with honor all the same.” This unexpected ray of sunshine from Kumo caused me to turn my gaze at him. He caught my eye and looked over to Merrill. Merrill was busy making a sling and splint. A small smile brushed over Seee’s lips, yet he remained silent. More begging hands held themselves up for a match, wiggling fingers frantically outstretched, as if Merrill’s words would make me reconsider.
Seee concluded by saying, “Welcome to Nature. Your humble beginnings.”
From there, each of us split
up and was shown our marked boundary, claiming two square miles of land, all with access to the river. No man’s land separated regional boundaries where one had to shout to be heard by someone else adjacent. Fear of being whipped would keep communication minimal, as blood loss and festering wounds from a lashing would surely be a death sentence. Orland would spend ten days in the infirmary set up in the Tree House before he would have to rejoin the rest of us.
Chapter 11
“Sometimes even to live is an act of courage.”
-Seneca
After the last match had been struck, I cursed myself for having given them away. A dilemma arose between keeping the fire alive and finding enough time to feed it with something to eat. The second rain in a week had doused a previous fire, which I had managed to keep alive for two days before the relentless downpour. Now the mission of keeping the fire breathing grew urgent, as I had not been able to start one by rubbing sticks together or using flat river rocks as flint.
Over the last days, I had fed on green snakes, whose heads I bashed with stones. Impaling their bodies with two sticks, they roasted well over the orange coals of a fire. The oil in their skins would drip and make the smoky flames crackle. I found frogs and managed to catch enough of them for a meal. Hoping none were poisonous, I ate one and judged its effect on me. Only after enough hours passed did I eat the others. I saw squirrels, field mice, rats, tree monkeys and wild hares, but didn’t have the experience to catch any. I fed mostly on the spiky green fruit of the durian tree. Other fruits I would boil, chew a bit to taste test for bitterness. If the taste passed, I would swallow and wait for a few hours to see if it would bring on nausea.
The fire’s hunger grew more important than my own. I raced through the woods gathering dead branches and kindling. The task consumed most of the day. Finding dry wood was a quest unto itself with the jungle wet half the time. Finally I managed to build a small cache, a one-day supply of dry wood.
After the twentieth day in our campaign, the sky foreboded heavy rain as a wave of dark clouds crept eerily from the east. I built a small backup fire under my bivouac, opening a hole within the palm-branched roof to air the smoke. After fortifying the roof, I plunged back into the forest in a quest for something to shelter the main fire. I found a large flagstone that had ample width for a shield. With great effort, I carried it back to my camp. When I arrived, the fire inside my bivouac had died and the main fire was smoldering from my neglect. Frantically, I ran to it, blowing gently at its roots, feeding it with small branches and needles from Khasi pines until finally it bloomed into a knee-high flame. Then I rebuilt the fire in my bivouac and gathered enough dry refuse and branches to replenish my cache.
I went searching for planks to mount my slab of rock, hunger now crying deep in the pit of my stomach. At last I came upon a rotted-out stump that I smashed into two ample pieces of wood capable of taking the weight of the stone. Rushing back to camp, I found my fires on their last breaths. When I went to fetch wood from my cache to feed it, all of the dead branches and kindling were gone. My heart sunk, and I rushed to the river. There I searched for the thief. Uriah’s fire smoked from the opposite side of the river, but his fire always seemed well-tended. Downriver, I spotted the smoke coming from a fire in Mir’s area. Upriver curled the light smoke from Conroy’s fire. On my side of the river, smoke rose from Burns’s area. Only a light haze came from Drake’s vicinity, and I guessed he was in the same dilemma.
I pushed the remaining scraps of kindling into the fires, and once again raced through the woods gathering burnable refuse and dead tree limbs. When I appeared back in camp, I felt the first drops of rain pelt me on the head. I fed the fire frantically, but the sky opened up and drenched everything, and despite all of my effort, both fires were lost.
The next day, a slight fever greeted me, and the worm of weariness burrowed deeper inside. Hunger bit my stomach, and my body shivered. I crawled out of my palm-frond bed, weak and disoriented. With the fire smothered, so went hope. For breakfast, I resorted to the insect world for nutrition, overturning rocks and scooping up the earth to pick out crawling beetles, slugs, and earthworms, forcing them in my mouth, swallowing them whole. I vomited once, but soon my mouth learned to accept the squirming feeling one sometimes sensed, the crunch of crispy wings, the bodily squirts of those consumed. In the afternoon, I stood over ant nests with a stick, licking larvae off the stripped branch like my simian ancestors. I peeled the bark off trees to find termites or grubs and ate them greedily. My fever broke out to a new level of anguish, and I became more delirious. I picked unknown berries from plants, not knowing if they were poisonous, too weary to voyage further into the jungle, scarcely caring if I perished. My mouth now played with death, chewing with the simple rule that bitterness be rejected, my stomach now malleable to new risks.
I wandered to the river and saw the curl of rising smoke from only two fires, one smoking across the river from Uriah’s territory, the other coming from Mir’s plot. As I connived how to steal a flame, Uriah emerged from the woods from across the river, armed with a makeshift wooden spear and fishing line made of twine. He waved as if the day were any other, ordinary and blasé. At first I thought it a taunt, but seeing the genuine expression on his face, I raised a quivering arm and waved back, smiling feebly. Upon seeing his shaken, near-worried expression, I retreated back into the woods and hid. With tears in my eyes, I watched him fish the river until he emerged triumphant with a flapping trout.
In the late afternoon, my energy returned a bit, and I constructed a feeble trap out of sticks and twine. Any animal could have gnawed their way out of it given enough time, but I thought it would suit my purposes. I baited it with a dead frog, stuck a rock under it, and attached a piece of twine to it. I chained more twine together and hid behind a tree. In a state of complete hysteria, I laughed at the thought of what I would do if I actually caught anything. Would I eat it alive? Fire was crucial, and I told myself I had to have it.
After hours of waiting behind the tree for an animal that would never come, I walked back to camp thinking about the looter who had raided my cache. If his fire had gone out, would he be daring enough to come back if he still had matches? Perhaps he had already started another fire and needed wood. As I pondered these questions walking loudly through the jungle, suddenly I glanced to my left and saw a figure staring at me. Conroy stood next to a white-striped tree, inside Burns’s boundary. Besides his tangly black hair blowing in the wind, there seemed to be little trace of the former man. At least fifteen pounds thinner, most of the weight had come off his midsection and arms. His lips bled, and his pupils danced wildly inside his black eyes.
“You’re a long way from home,” I said.
“Aren’t we all?” He coughed, choking on his words. He smiled grimly, and I saw his thinning gums. The skin covering his wan face was almost translucent, as thin as a bed sheet covering his bones.
I stared at the painted lines at the bottom of the tree on my side of no man’s land. Three stripes looking like the hash marks on my police uniform from long ago.
“What are you doing out here, Conroy?” He didn’t answer. I waited a bit, but he remained in a stupor. “They probably have cameras out here. You wouldn’t survive a whipping. You’re taking a risk.”
“The risk is not eating,” he said. “I’ve got to find some food, something more than insects.”
I nodded in agreement. “Where is Burns?”
His gaze drifted upwards. I glanced up to see where he was looking at, but his eyes were adrift, staring into the blue nothingness of sky.
“Conroy,” I repeated. “Where is Burns?”
He shrugged his shoulders. His lips quivered. A slow tear dropped from his eye.
“Conroy,” I said snapping my fingers trying to draw his focus. “Where is he?”
“Ran off, I think.”
“Why would he do that?”
“Might have deserted, I don’t know.”
“Deserted?” I asked
.
“I hear other guys have been turning tail out of here.”
“For what purpose? To starve to death in another part of the jungle?”
“I don’t know, man. I don’t know what’s going through people’s heads.” He paused a moment, thinking. “There might be coconut trees out there. You notice there aren’t any here?” He pointed and said, “Those stumps you see. That was a coconut tree. They didn’t want it to be too easy.”
He scanned the treetops. Then he craned his neck and glanced backwards. “Briana is stealing people’s shit. She’s faster and can get away.”
I looked at him skeptically. “What did she steal from you?”
“Nothing, but it looks like she raided Burns’s camp.” He stood there shaking his head, playing with his hands as if somehow he might find some food in them. Then he produced an eerie smile, grabbed the beard on his chin and gave it a tug. “We’ll get through this thing, brother, won’t we?”
I nodded.
“You don’t got anything to eat, do you?”
“Man, I don’t got jack, and my fire’s out too.”
“You shouldn’t have given up those matches,” he said.
I stood silent for a moment, then nodded in agreement.
“I thought you might be better at this than me,” he said.
“No,” I said. “I’m not.”
“Well, I’m off, Isse. Best of luck to you.”
As he turned, I said, “I wouldn’t linger if I were you, but since you’re in a daring mood, go see Uriah. He’s doing this thing as if he’s on a camping trip.”
“Thanks for the tip,” he called out, wobbling on his feet a bit as he moved away.
I went back alone to the riverbank to look for fires. Mir’s and Uriah’s billowed gray smoke, both on the opposite side of the river, and another, far upriver, in what could have been Briana’s area. A few moments later, I saw Conroy wading across the river on Burns’s side. I wondered if he was the only man blatantly disregarding the rules. I hid myself and watched Conroy move into Uriah’s camp. Conroy waved at him as he approached, walked up to his fire and began speaking. Uriah nodded at him. His lips moved, but I couldn’t understand what was said. A minute later, he put another trout in the fire. Conroy shook his hand and sat down.
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