In the Trees

by Pauline Fisk

  What did Kid think? He looked round to find everybody listening in. ‘You mean … you want … you’re asking me … you’re offering for me to become a proper signed-up volunteer?’ he said, struggling for words like a foreigner who didn’t understand the language.

  Everybody grinned. ‘No pressure – but could you decide in the next five minutes?’ Candy called out.

  Kid burst out laughing. A few days ago he’d have said no way. In fact, even last night he’d have still said no way, not months in the jungle with a gang of gap-year volunteers.

  But now Kid thought why not? What else was he going to do with his time here in Belize? What plan had he made? What itinerary had he drawn up? His search for his father had drawn a blank, and what else had he got?

  By this time the whole group had stopped what they were doing and were waiting for an answer. Everyone was beaming except for Hal, and even he was trying his best. Kid looked round at them all. They were giving him a chance – but it wasn’t only them, was it? The forest was giving him a chance as well. And Belize was giving him a chance. Even the trees were giving him a chance to live the way that Hubert had said last night, where it didn’t matter where you came from, or what had happened in your past. All that mattered was right here and now.

  ‘Why not?’ Kid said at last, knowing he’d be a fool to let this pass him by. ‘What have I got to lose? Okay, everybody. Cheers for that – I’ll stay.’

  15

  WILD PECCARIES

  It went down well, but there was no time for Kid to savour his moment of glory, everybody whooping and whistling their approval, because he had a team to choose – and he had to do it quickly, before the boundary cutters set off.

  Kid tried to focus his mind. One thing was for sure – whichever team he chose, life from now on was going to be challenging. He looked across at the boundary cutters, gathered around their equipment ready for the off. They didn’t include Hal, which had to be a bonus, and they did include Doc Rose, who was a reassuring figure to have around. But the bunkhouse builders had Cassie, who was every bit as experienced at being a medic on jungle expeditions. And Snow was in that team as well – and whatever was good enough for her was good enough for Kid.

  He made his choice. Even though it meant working in the same team as Hal, he chose to spend the next two months of his life in the bunkhouse-building team. It was sad, though, to see the others go. They headed off between the trees, weighed down with equipment, promising to make radio contact when they reached their first night’s destination. After they’d gone, the camp looked empty and sounded strangely flat. Someone said the obvious – that the boundary cutters were going to be missed. But they were missed already and they’d only just left.

  Jez tried to cheer things up, saying that it would only be a couple of weeks before they’d see each other again, and runners would be going back and forth anyway, ferrying provisions. Besides, the two teams would be meeting up for a break in the middle of their projects at the ruined Mayan city of Caracol, deep in the heart of the jungle. It would be their treat for working hard, he said, their chance to have a little holiday. Caracol was amazing. It was something they simply had to see. They’d all have a party there, and if anybody felt they’d chosen the wrong team, that would be their chance to swap projects.

  ‘In the meantime, though,’ Jez said, ‘the chance we’re facing is to prove ourselves. There’s a bunkhouse waiting to be built …’

  The first day was spent doing nothing but hauling equipment. Everybody worked flat out to bring things up from the river where the pony train had left them and deposit them on the hilltop above the camp, where the bunkhouse would be built. Before they started, however, Jez led them up to see for themselves the problems the forest faced.

  They stood on a bare, sun-baked hilltop with miles of green forest rolling away from them and not a road in view, or any sign of habitation. People marvelled that the forest was so vast, and so unbroken too. But then Jez led them to the other side of the hill, where the view was still green, but it was a completely different sort of green.

  Kid was the one who said it. ‘What’s that?’ he said, pointing to an area of low undergrowth on the hill opposite theirs, with not a tree in sight, just scrubby little bushes and patches of dry ground.

  ‘That, as you put it, is the problem,’ Jez replied. ‘That’s why we’re here. Down there in the valley beneath us is the Belizean border and that scrubland is coming its way. In fact it’s already over the border in some places. Like this hilltop where we’re standing now. How do you think it came to be so bare? You see those great old ceiba trees behind us? Well, this time next year, they won’t be here. Unless this border country is guarded, they’ll all be gone.’

  ‘I’m not a man for preaching,’ Jez had said, ‘but this sermon preaches itself. You can see the problem. People talk about the destruction of rain forests. Well, now you’ve seen it with your own eyes. There it is.’

  Kid turned away. He didn’t want to look. People were asking why, and how, and Jez was trying to explain about the scale of poverty that drove people over the border to strip a forest like this. But Kid didn’t want to hear. All around him, the smell of trees rose from the ground, earthy, dank and spicy, just the way he’d smelt it that first day at the airport. He’d heard a voice that day, which he’d thought was calling out a welcome.

  But really it had been calling out for help.

  For the rest of the day, Kid worked like a man possessed. The choice he’d made this morning over breakfast had been to suit himself. He’d been latching on to someone else’s cause – but now, he realised, it was his cause too.

  Only when a downpour put a temporary end to work did Kid stop, huddling with the others under a hastily constructed tarpaulin. The rain was like steel rods, making it physically impossible to carry on working.

  But the sun quickly reappeared afterwards, and a chorus of birds burst into life, accompanied by a rhythm section of raindrops dripping from leaf to leaf. All sorts of insects came out too, as if rejuvenated, and started drying their wings. The rain had certainly flushed them out – bugs of every colour, size and shape, some bright and beautiful and some looking distinctly hostile.

  Stories started doing the rounds about insects that needed to be looked out for. The subject of bot flies came up, and people started examining themselves anxiously for eggs under their skin. No one found any, but the idea of flies hatching out and feeding on their flesh had them all shuddering. This was no garden that they were in, no matter how beautiful it might be. This was no playground. From the mighty jaguar to the tiniest insect they were surrounded by danger if they didn’t take care.

  This message was hammered home forcefully at the end of the day. Work had finished for the night and the team was walking down the trail in single file, heading back to camp. Hal was towards the front of the file, with Kid directly behind him, dreaming of the long cool swim he intended to take in the Rio Blanco. Suddenly a hint of something musky came wafting his way. He looked up, and other people did as well. They took a few more steps only for it to grow more pungent.

  Finally everybody at the front of the file stopped in their tracks. What was that smell? They couldn’t see anything, but the smell was growing stronger all the time and a clicking noise had started up as well.

  At the back of the file, but plain for everyone to hear, Jez said the single word peccary. Immediately, everybody started backing up the track. People wanted to get out of reach, and they wanted to do it quickly. Jez told them to stay calm but they didn’t listen, and the soldiers weren’t much of an example. With their experience of the jungle, Kid would have thought a few wild animals in the undergrowth wouldn’t have bothered them. But the soldiers were backing up as fast as anybody else.

  Kid peered between the trees. The word peccary meant nothing to him and he was curious to see what all the fuss was about. At first he couldn’t see anything, but then – half-camouflaged by dappled sunlight – he became aware of a
face looking back at him. It was solid, snouted, and its tiny piggy eyes fixed on Kid in a way that even he could tell meant trouble.

  Kid started backing away as well, but then the clicking started on the far side of the track and all hell broke out amongst the team. Kid caught a glimpse of a second peccary staring in bewilderment at the first British teenagers it had ever seen, as if trying to make up its mind whether to kill them or not.

  And that was when Hal decided to attack.

  People talked about it afterwards for days. Jez yelled at Hal to get back, but Hal thwacked through the undergrowth with his machete, making weird noises that might startle squirrels back home in Shropshire, but definitely didn’t impress Belizean peccaries. Immediately the peccaries started making noises back. These should have been enough to stop Hal in his tracks, but he upped his own noise and carried on, brandishing his machete.

  After that, everything happened in a matter of seconds. The peccaries moved forward. So did both Jez and Hubert, trying to put themselves between the peccaries and Hal. But they weren’t close enough – and Kid was. Acting on pure instinct, he grabbed Hal, wrested the machete out of his hand and dragged him away. If he hadn’t moved so quickly, Hal could have ended up gored to death.

  Not that Hal saw it like that. He was almost as furious with Kid as Jez was with him.

  ‘You were unbelievable!’ Jez shouted at him when they’d somehow got themselves down the hill in one piece and were back in camp. ‘You could have got someone killed – and I’m not just talking about yourself. And after all that jungle training at Gallon Jug! You know how dangerous peccaries can be, especially when aroused. And yet still you had to act the little hero, didn’t you! What got into you?’

  Hal didn’t have a word to say in his defence. Later, however, he took it all out on Kid.

  ‘You have to stand up to creatures in the wild,’ he said. ‘Show them who’s master. I knew exactly what I was doing. Those peccaries would have fled if you hadn’t snatched my machete. Things went pear-shaped because of you.’

  It was the end of any even mild pretence that Kid and Hal could be friends. Everybody rushed to Kid’s defence, which meant that, on top of everything else, Hal blamed Kid for the team turning against him.

  After that, the atmosphere was as sour as vinegar. Hal’s pride was wounded, but he didn’t see it like that. Kid was a troublemaker, he said. And he was flaky under fire. Right from the moment he’d first set eyes on him, Hal had known he couldn’t be trusted. Nothing Kid could do now would ever change his mind.

  16

  KID’S BIRTHDAY

  Unable to put things right, Kid put all his energy into the project instead, reminding himself that this was why he was here – not to get along with Hal but to do a job that mattered and do it well. Everything he attacked was accomplished with a vigour that would have amazed his teachers back at school in England, and even astonished Burger-Bar Jet.

  After a couple of weeks not even Hal could have taught Kid anything about how to build and which tools to use. But Kid’s body was beginning to pay a high price. His hands were blistered from sawing, hammering, screwing and chiselling from morning to night, and every evening his arms, legs and face were covered with fresh insect bites.

  People started running sweepstakes for who would have the most. Mosquito bites were easy to count, but the tiny, highly itchy blood blisters left behind by the sand flies that everybody called ‘fuck-you flies’ seemed as numerous as the stars in the sky.

  Kid’s legs in particular were covered with them. He’d be down in the river at the end of the day, in the water to stop himself scratching, unwilling to get out, dreaming of hot showers, fluffy towels, ice-cold Belikin beers and legs that didn’t itch. Fritz would be there too, bathing his manky feet which were progressively getting worse because he didn’t dry them properly and his jungle boots didn’t fit.

  Cassie, in her role as medic, would try to offer help, but Fritz wouldn’t let her anywhere near him. He hated fuss, he said. He’d sort it out. His feet were fine and so was he.

  ‘Some people might need pampering, but not a boy like me. I’ve been brought up tough.’

  Cassie would stomp off moaning, ‘Be it on your own head – or, in this case, feet.’ But she wasn’t alone. Everyone, these days, had taken to moaning. The first glow of achievement had worn thin and all over the camp grumbles were springing up and people beginning to fall out. It wasn’t just Kid and Hal who couldn’t get on. It was beginning to feel like all of them.

  One night a particularly nasty row blew up out of Hubert killing a fer-de-lance with his machete. Their numbers were swelled on that occasion by the boundary cutters who’d returned to camp for fresh provisions. The die-hard conservationists amongst them all, including Joanne, Sam and Laydee, were outraged at this loss to the world of an innocent snake. But others agreed with Hubert that there were no such things as innocent snakes, especially when it came to fer-de-lances, that not only were deadly but were famed for their aggressive natures.

  Everybody took sides. One group reckoned that what Hubert had done was inexcusable, flying in the face of everything they were here to achieve. The other group argued that, if the fer-de-lance had had its way, nothing would be achieved because they’d all be dead.

  ‘It’s them or us,’ they said.

  Laydee argued that every creature – every creature – had the right to life. But Hal reckoned that, in the jungle, dog eat dog was the order of the day. And a sizeable number of the team agreed with him.

  Jez, as leader, tried to steer a middle course. The right to life couldn’t be denied, he said, and to kill a creature in the wild was a terrible thing. But the right to self-protection couldn’t be denied either. You couldn’t mess where fer-de-lances were concerned. Of all the snakes you were likely to come across in Belize, they were the only ones who could jump at you from three times their body length and kill you with their venom.

  In the end, the argument turned bitter. People were tired, which was probably why, but they went to bed that night with words ringing in their ears that should never have been said. It was an unhappy end to a day that everyone had looked forward to because the whole group would be together again. To make matters worse, Cassie had finally managed to make a medical examination of Fritz, at Jez’s insistence, and announced him to be on the verge of trench foot.

  ‘It’s three days in camp for you,’ she’d said. ‘Off your feet, if you please, and wearing no shoes or socks. You have to let the air get at your feet, and you’re to stay out of the river. It’s important to keep your feet dry.’

  Gloom hung over the camp that night. Kid lay in his hammock feeling sorry for Fritz, but just as sorry for himself because tomorrow, unbeknown to anybody else, was his birthday and the way things were going, it didn’t look as if it was going to be a particularly good one. Not that his birthdays ever were much good. But at least this one was being spent in a place he liked, amongst people he liked being with, if only they could be persuaded to get on with each other.

  Kid awoke early next morning, determined to make the most of the occasion, no matter how anybody behaved. The boundary cutters went off with their provisions, seemingly unaware that there was anything special about the day, and the bunkhouse builders tramped up the hill to work.

  At lunchtime, Kid pretended that his mess tin was full of birthday cake and his tin mug brimming with Belikin beer. Then, walking back down the hill at the end of the day, he imagined he was heading for his birthday party, all dressed up in brand-new kit.

  When they reached the camp, he headed for his hammock, wanting time alone to savour his new age, which made him feel, for the first time, almost as old as the others. But, when he tried to extract himself from them, they weren’t having it.

  ‘Kid,’ they said. ‘You’re not going anywhere until you’ve had a wash. In that river. Now. You stink. Do us a favour before we all pass out.’

  Taken utterly by surprise, Kid found himself picked up and carrie
d bodily into the Rio Blanco. He shouted and protested but it made no difference. Everybody was there, carrying him past his usual bathing place and round a long bend in the river to where the boundary cutters – the boundary cutters, who were meant to have left this morning – leapt back from something like guilty children.

  What was going on here? Kid was dropped into the river. Shower gel was thrust into his hands by Joanne. The boundary cutters parted to reveal a weird-looking contraption which they had fixed to the overhanging branch of a tree. Kid stared up at one of the water-containers from the kitchen, which had been daubed with soot from the fire to blacken it. A series of tubes, forks and a sieve had been attached to it, and a rustic curtain made out of stitched-together black plastic bin-liners had been strung up in front of it.

  ‘What the hell is that?’ Kid said. ‘I don’t understand.’

  Everybody laughed and said Kid didn’t need to understand. All he needed was to get in.

  ‘Get into what?’ Kid said.

  ‘Your birthday shower!’ they shouted at him. ‘The one you’re always going on about, with proper running water. Remember?’

  Of course Kid remembered. He burst out laughing. ‘How did you know it was my birthday?’ he said.

  No one would own up, but later Kid found out that he’d mentioned it to Jez that first time by the river when he’d told him his life story. ‘You mean I even told you that?’ he said. ‘You told me everything,’ Jez said.

  Everybody shouted at Kid to get his clothes off and get in. And he didn’t need to be told again.