“And what do you think he stands for?”
“You already know the answer to that.”
“Abstractly.”
“Then Isse Corvus is deaf in one ear.” He swept a hand through the fire, brought it up to his face, seemingly to sniff the singed hair on his arms. “I wonder. Do you hear the words differently when you use just one ear? Isn’t it a simple choice of whether to follow his beliefs? Instead, you struggle with your own self-worth. At what point are you just idly waiting for the future to happen, versus becoming part of its path? This is the question you must ask yourself.”
“So how do you know Seee?” I asked, still pressing the issue, still fighting my inner sense. “You knew him before, didn’t you? You came here knowing him. That is how you got in.”
He smiled slightly, his wormy lips curling over his fractured face. “I got in because I can be of service to the Brotherhood. It is my duty. Do you not see this even as I save you from starvation? Because I know him does not mean I will receive favorable treatment. Quite the contrary.”
“You do not believe you have somehow rooted yourself into his favoritism?”
He ignored the question. “He will deconstruct us all. This is just the beginning. It is the bushido way. Since we do not have the privilege of an ancestry, we in the camp will have to learn from the ground up. The hardness of the American heart has perhaps been forgotten since Gettysburg, when men really knew how to die with honor.”
“You are at an obvious disadvantage.”
“You believe my handicap is ugliness?”
“Sorry,” I said. “I do not mean to be insulting, but your bulbous head is a big target, delicate, and it’s the first thing a serious fighter will angle for.”
“And that is why you must teach me to fight.”
“Me,” I said surprised. “Teach you to fight?”
“Who better? Did you think I would teach you survival for nothing in return?”
Knowing it was a fair exchange, I said, “If we are caught, we will pay a heavy price.”
“From the looks of you, that price is already being paid.”
I agreed, then I held out my hand, and he shook it. My life with Uriah had begun.
At daybreak over the next weeks, we trained in Brazilian ju-jitsu and Muay Thai. Standing attacks with more feet than fists. He needed his hands for face cover, only to be used sparingly with offense. I showed him how to use his hips for punishing kicks, leg sweeps. Every other night, after hunting, we faced the boles of trees and kicked them until our legs bled, creating tiny fissures in the bones so they would heal stronger. He was already a student of yoga, which was a great strength to his movement and agility. Still, I pushed him to improve. I stretched his legs vertically until they nearly snapped, until it was second nature for him to throw kicks at my face. Then we would switch to ground tactics, where he had a better chance. I taught him choke holds and leg locks, arm bars and how to break fingers. I taught him how to use elbows like hammers. At dusk we sparred, him never knowing the word quit, never tapping out. If it weren’t for the regret it would interrupt our training, I could have broken his arm on several occasions, squeezing it between my hips to the point where it could have ripped from the joint, but still he would not submit. I choked him out, him preferring death rather than touch my arms with his fingers. He would wake from passing out asking if he had dishonored himself.
I came to realize he was living the real bushido, a death meant only a reawakening for a new life of service. Soon, his rapid improvement gave a shine on my abilities to teach. I became proud to have him as my pupil and took from him that supreme sacrifice was dedication to a cause. As we practiced yoga in the mornings, the meditative sessions gave light to new radiations of awareness in me.
From him, I learned how to build a fire with sticks and tinder, then with a limestone flint. I learned how to chip a jagged rock into a spearhead, how to find and use hemp for twine, how to fish and hunt.
After a couple of weeks, my strength grew, and I put on pounds. I became more self-sufficient. I was able to hunt on my own, make my own tools, start my own fires, build my own traps. Uriah taught me how to spearfish. With my new spearheads, I found an adequate branch and whittled myself a blowgun. After several failures, finally I made one thin and long, whose spout wasn’t too thick. With it, I killed squirrels, rabbits, and even a monkey.
Then one day during one of our early-evening sparring sessions, Uriah was wrestling to twist out of a poor position where he had given up his back. We grappled on a patch of grass on the river’s edge that seemed to be the only grassy spot on my side of the rocky riverbank shore. As I slipped Uriah into a body triangle, Seee stepped out of the forest with Kumo, both of them armed with machineguns.
“Get up! Both of you!” Seee yelled.
We did as we were told, shaking off the grass. “What are you doing in his area?” Seee said, pointing at Uriah.
“Receiving training, Sifu.”
“It was I who—”
Seee cut me short, saying, “It is he who is in your area.”
“Yes,” I said, “but by my request.”
Seee screwed up his eyes. Kumo reached inside of his backpack and pulled out the bullwhip.
“You’ve fed this man, haven’t you?”
“Yes, Sifu,” Uriah said.
“You must be punished for both trespasses.”
“It is an honor to spill blood for you, Sifu,” Uriah said.
“I do not chastise your intention, Uriah. But you dishonor Nature by not letting her be the decision maker.”
I stood in front of Kumo blocking his passage to Uriah. Kumo tensed, moving his bottom teeth over his lip, unhooking the strap of the machinegun dangling from his shoulder and letting it fall to the ground. But Uriah grabbed my arm and pushed me aside. “I am ready, Isse. And more than that, I am willing.”
Kumo stepped back ten paces and raised the whip. The first blow came down hard, ripping Uriah’s back like an angled spear. It tore the flesh from shoulder to kidney, leaving a bloodstained hypotenuse. Uriah grunted, twisted his lips, saw the pain as pure as water flowing in a stream. The second blow cut him lower, crisscrossed the previous strike, whose mark was now awake, drips of blood streaking from it down his skin. Uriah stood firm, straightened his back, managed to keep his mouth closed, pulled his lips tight and breathed heavy breaths through his nose. Then he glared at me and nodded. The next blow cracked like a razor and tears dripped from his eyes. Still his mouth somehow remained pinned shut. His brow pinched together and finally his back curved away from the strike. He spent a moment straightening his spine out, releasing the tension in his forearms, getting ready for the next strike.
“Don’t you tap out on me, kid,” I yelled out to him. Kumo looked over at me. His eyes showed a man whose heart was no longer in it. Still, he lassoed the whip around his head and let the whip sing in the air.
The blow snapped the air out of Uriah, and his mouth pried open to let the air in. By the next blow, he began to shriek, and I found my own eyes watering. “Ah,” he grunted, “it feels good to scream.”
“There’s no shame in it,” I yelled. “Let the fight come out of you.”
With the seventh blow, the shriek grew, the shrill cry hanging in the air, ubiquitous ears hearing it echoing down the valley. Movement shook the bush around the shores of the river.
I put my hands in the air and waved furiously. The look on my face gave Kumo pause.
“No one comes out,” I yelled. “If anyone shows their face, God help me they will answer for it.” The sound of rustling bush continued. Bodies hidden in the forest edging closer, not heeding the warning, eyes peeking out of the woods. I stared long and hard, up and down the river, daring anyone to show themselves. No one did. Seee stared at Kumo, glowing with rage. He motioned with a hand for him to continue. Kumo delivered the rest of the blows, neither vindictively nor in a menacing manner—a man of duty, a man delivering justice for the crime. Yet, something open
ed in him, a small unspoken rift between his actions and Seee’s commands.
Afterward, still on his knees, Uriah crawled over to Kumo and thanked him for his duty, then thanked Seee for planting new eyes of sight into his head to see the wrong in his action. Later, I would wonder why Seee didn’t deliver the punishment. Uriah would argue that a leader must be loved and would be forgiven with his commands, but it was the administrator who had to absorb the hate. So there in the drowning sun, Kumo sucked his feelings into the vortex where emotions were black-boxed.
After Seee and Kumo left, I took Uriah by the shoulder and moved him to the river. There I cleaned his wounds and helped him cross the river. When we were finally on the other side of the bank, Conroy emerged from the trees and took Uriah’s other shoulder. We led him to his shelter and started a fire. I took Uriah’s spear and went into the jungle. With the spear, I burrowed into a pine, drained some sap onto a flagstone, and returned back to Uriah’s camp. Conroy cooked a meal of leftover fish while I tended Uriah’s wounds.
The next morning, Uriah woke me, jostling me for training, castigating me for my laziness. The new eyes of sight he spoke about to Seee the day before were quickly blinded, while mine grew wide with admiration.
What we would come to learn was Uriah helped all within his circumference, saving the lambs from the slaughter of hunger, and by the time he was caught once more, five others owed their lives to him. When the whip fell into Kumo’s hand again, the obsequious Kumo threw it on the ground, sense of duty dropping like a stone, and left it for Seee to do the task.
Chapter 13
“The object of life is not to be on the side of the majority, but to escape finding oneself in the ranks of the insane.”
-Marcus Aurelius
We finished the test of Nature on New Year’s Eve. Many struggled to gain their strength and stomach back. Casualties included Damien Morton, Thomas Draper, and Josh Winters. Charlie Feller, Mark Jenks, and Balram Kumar were now known as the Cannibal Crew because they had eaten Winters. They kept more to themselves after this, perhaps shamed because of what they had done, or ostracized enough by the others. Seee saw the danger in this segregation, and made it known they were Nature’s true winners. He said they had done what was necessary in order to survive, no matter how vile. He defended them with historical examples—the whale ship Essex, the Donner Party, the Andes survivors of 1972. He told us about cannibals in Fiji who would eat their enemies to prevent their spirits from ascending to the spirit world where they could don their power and wisdom back to the living. Even after all of Seee’s efforts, an air of hesitation surrounded the Cannibal Crew.
We celebrated the New Year. We built a bonfire and spitted a wild hog. Cases of wine and whiskey were brought out. For those not on lookout duty, every man indulged, and the camp came alive with laughter and comradery. A communal sense of accomplishment permeated our attitudes. The fact men had died, only made survival that much sweeter. Those closest to starvation drank and ate until their stomachs heaved with the excess. They would come back to the fire only to start again. Some of us, drunken and with a new sense of courage, began to ask questions about the guerrillas. Who were they? Why did they attack? But any response to such questions was in Yoncalla, and the words were purposely obtuse. No one came away with a clear answer, and the nature of the festivities made it so no one really cared.
The following day, a rumor spread around the camp. Mir had received the invitation to take “the vow” and had accepted. None of us had seen the ceremony, or knew exactly what this meant, what exactly he promised, or what he had done to deserve it. Most thought that any merit should have gone to Atlas, who had stood so valiantly in the face of torture against the guerrillas.
On January 2nd, Brock and I walked through the clearing for breakfast and saw Mir heading out of camp with Kumo. Kumo’s spidery arm led a set of packed-up horses. Mir’s arm was bandaged, wrapped up in white gauze tinted with traces of blood. Brock had told me they burned off his Lisbeth Salander tattoo. The motto was, Wear no mark, honor us with your word. The smile of acceptance lit up Mir’s face. He spoke with Kumo in a spirited fashion. When he looked up at us, he nodded and waved with the hand wrapped in white gauze. We waved back. I asked why the hand was wrapped as well. Brock said he had become a blood brother, a Trusted.
“Does that mean he’s going to replace Ahanu?” I asked.
“I’m not sure what it means,” Brock said.
Merrill crept behind us with Briana at his side. “No one’s replacing Ahanu,” Merrill said. “Ahanu was irreplaceable.”
I turned around. “Why was Mir chosen over Atlas?”
“Mir is now a Minuteman. It isn’t based on courage. It’s based on trust.”
“So why Mir?” I asked.
Merrill ignored the question. “Neither of you should worry. Your courage was duly noted during the battle.”
Briana stood apprehensively, watching us with downcast eyes.
Brock was saying how he would take the vow, but Merrill said they already had their next candidate and would we like to meet her. Brock and I looked at each other wondering if this was another one of Merrill’s jokes, but the look in Briana’s eyes told us Merrill had been serious. As they strode away from us, Briana, with her back toward us, put a hand in the air and waved goodbye.
A few days later, we received orders to line up around the Laddered Pit, called this because there were two ladders, but only one could be seen—the other one, Seee said, led to the paradoxical fruit of the Lushing Tree. We stood around the rim, looking over the edge from the flat world of men. We stared into the sandy chasm whose size dwarfed what would soon happen there.
Merrill and Des led a manacled, black-bearded man out of the depths of the jungle. We wondered where he had come from. As he was forced forward the thirty yards it took for him to get to us, the scene seemed to carry on through permeable time, like a glitch in a video, an unrelenting persistence to the stumbling feet in the grass as he was dragged faster than he could walk. When he arrived, the air reeked with his pungent smell—sweat, blood, tears, urine—yet he wasn’t emaciated. He seemed to be in good health. His movements were fluid, but his outward appearance was appalling. The man was gagged, the cloth inside his mouth wet and bloodstained and wound tightly around his face. He wore threads for clothes—trousers in ribbons and a tattered shirt mottled in blood drips. His face was cut up and bruised. His eyes were bloodshot, pupils wide black pools staring wildly at his surroundings, the scared eyes of an impala chased farther than it could run. Sweat dripped off him and every ropy vein seemed to jump through the skin. We stood there guessing what kind of man we were seeing. He was a slave from 500 AD, a bedraggled body of a captured prisoner from Roman times, a Christian martyr about to be crucified.
Each of us knew that such an event was imminent. Yet, seeing this man’s state of being fell on us with muted surprise. All of us had almost starved to death in the jungle. Four men were dead, and none from starvation. Josh Winters had been eaten by Charlie Feller, Mark Jenks, and Balram Kumar. Others had been attacked and killed, feuds over food and resources. None of us seemed to hold a grudge about how it all went tribal now that it was over. No one dared castigate another’s deed. One did what was necessary and went on living with it. Those of us left lived as if we belonged in the heart of The Abattoir, beating with its rhythm. Until now.
Once the man reached the edge of The Pit, the slow mumbling within the circle silenced. Des grabbed the man’s soiled shirt and simply tore it off. He was wiry but looked as if he had eaten better than us in the last few weeks.
Seee looked at the bare-chested man. “Welcome back from the battle lab.” Turning to us, he pointed at him. “This man is a traitor. Who will step up and fight him?”
The circle of eyes gazed over one another. Split took a step forward as I asked, “What exactly did he do?” Everyone’s eyes turned toward me. From across the Laddered Pit, the prisoner gazed blankly at me, but I tore away from his stare.
Seee smiled lightly, his lips soft with the anticipation of such a question.
“He was caught spying.”
“What were the circumstances?”
“He was brought here and I was told to deal with him as I please.”
“Why not let him speak?”
“If you wish,” Seee said, extending his hand. Des untied the bloody cloth. The man opened his mouth wide so all could see.
“This man has no tongue,” I said, stating the obvious.
“Every bit of useful information was retrieved from him,” Seee said. “After that, we grew weary of his lies.”
Silence. No one spoke-up for, or pitied the prisoner. Perhaps some eyes were in betrayal, hearts in the circle waiting for my voice to counter argue. But I said nothing, Seee’s words from the first day blooming again fresh in my head—In the womb of Nature, mercy is misinterpreted as weakness and weakness is locked in the jaws of death.
Sensing our angst, Seee moved between the ranks. He advanced to Split and Grus, stared at them in the eyes breathing little hot breaths into their faces. “The modern world has softened your hearts. This is why you’re here—to harden them.” Everyone stood at attention, rigid statues in line, arms straight as iron. Seee slipped between Split and Uriah. “I gave the weak-hearted a chance to leave. Did I not?” Split nodded, and Seee grabbed his shoulder gruffly. He paused for a moment gazing into Split’s eyes as if he were kin. He turned to the rest of us. “I feel like I’m swimming in a pool of cowards!”
“I’ll fight,” Split said.
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