CHAPTER THIRTEEN #2
“It is more primitive than I’m used to, I will admit.” We fell into silence for a while, but it ate at me—no pun intended. I wanted to build a bridge to him, somehow.
“Sali told me of your father and wife…” I said when I couldn’t take the silence any longer. “I’m sorry for your loss.” Maybe I could soften him by speaking of his life story.
Jahnu was quiet for a long time. I wasn’t sure he’d heard me, but then he said, “The jungle gives what we need. The jungle takes, as well. What else did Sali tell you?”
He held branches back from the path in order for me to pass. Now I was in front of him. “That you are young for a chief, first of your family to attend school. What was that like?”
“School? It was hard at first. I did not like being away from home. I was only eighteen wet seasons and spent four years with fifty other young men. But I come to enjoy the learning. Built many good relationships with those men as well.” He was quiet for a while, and then, “So you think you know me well, now you know my story?”
“Maybe not well, but better than I did.” Soften him up, Sidney. “I at least know you’re educated and not a dangerous savage like I first thought…”
“Now I am not dangerous?” he said amused. “You do not know me well at all.”
I stopped and turned to look at him, a chill running down my spine despite the growing humidity.
I felt like he could see my cards, knew what I was trying to do with him, and that angered me most of all.
He kept defying the odds. Kept exceeding the expectations and assumptions I had placed on him early on.
He was intelligent and sharp, and I felt he possessed an eye that could see past all the bullshit by which most people were blinded, and I wasn’t sure how to play him.
He passed me, taking the lead without looking at me.
We came to a clearing with a small waterfall and creek bed.
It was a beautiful sight, and if I wasn’t trapped here in the jungle, having been kidnapped and held against my will, it would’ve made for the perfect post-card picture.
Vines hung from the palms and lush vegetation surrounded the small reservoir as the slow moving waterfall trickled sparkling water into the pool.
Jahnu squatted, cupping the water to drink with both hands. I tried to squat but opted to kneel, drinking deeply and feeling the cool sweetness bring energy back to my depleted body. I dipped my sandaled feet into the running water, relishing the relief I felt.
Jahnu disappeared without explanation for five minutes, but returned with a few pieces of wild fruit. He picked up a rock from the stream and slit the thick skin, tossing it to me. It was a short, fat banana, like I had never seen.
“Thank you.” I peeled off the fibrous skin, revealing the white flesh, and bit into the creamy fruit, mouth full of seeds.
I watched Jahnu spit them out with expert speed as he ate the banana, and then another.
I slowly, delicately spit out the seeds, marveling at how many I’d gotten in just one bite.
I’d never eaten a banana with seeds before.
I ate slowly around the seeds but it was a futile task.
We ate in silence. Jahnu used the sharp river rocks to peel a mango. He gave me a few pieces but they were unripe and crunchy. Still, I was grateful for the energy the food gave me.
“Where are we going?” I asked with a mouthful.
“There is something I want to show you.”
“You said that…what is it?” I was being forward, I knew.
There was something about him that both riled and endeared him to me, like a poisonous snake I couldn’t keep from poking.
Maybe it was the silence that chipped away at my carefully constructed walls, like a snail on a leaf.
Being around him made me feel off-kilter, and poking at him was the only way to distract me from the contradictory thoughts I didn’t want to admit I was having.
Jahnu was thoughtful for a moment. “My grandfather told me a story when he was a boy, he saw giant birds fly in the sky. They make noise like no other bird he ever heard. Soon, they drop their big eggs, but the eggs explode and bring fire and death. The birds fight one another until one fell in the forest, one in the ocean. My grandfather run to see where the bird fell, but it wasn’t a bird, it was a machine.
Then when Robert and other men came for mission many, many year later, my father showed him the machine and he tell us it was a fighting bird…
an airplane in a great war fought all over the world. You know this war?”
I quickly thought through what I knew about World War II. I remembered the South Pacific was invaded and used as a Japanese military base, but couldn’t say where, with any assurance. I nodded. “World War II…there is an airplane in the jungle? From World War II?”
“Robert, too, was excited. When I was ten wet seasons, many men from America came to see it and study it, but it stayed in the jungle.”
“I would very much like to see it.”
“And so…that is where I take you, but first…”
He pulled me up to stand, bent down and swiped some mud on his fingers.
He stepped closer until our faces were inches apart.
I caught my breath and allowed my eyes to roam his thick, dark lips framed by deep smile lines.
His nose, large and wide, I decided, was what distinguished him as a leader.
Gentle crows feet indented the corners of his wild, black eyes.
His face was kind, but something else hid behind its features.
Was it pain, or a fierceness born of necessity?
It rode behind the kindness of his eyes, like a stalker waiting to strike.
It stabbed at my heart in a way I’d never felt before and made me want to reach up and place a hand on his cheek and tell him everything would be ok, but what did I know of his life?
He swiped his fingers across my cheek smearing the clay, first one and then the other and then he ran his thumb down the bridge of my nose.
I felt confused at the rapid beat of my heart and the way his hand cupped my jaw as he spread the clay on my face, his expression tight with concentration.
He kept his hand on my cheek and met my gaze.
“Now, you are ready,” he said softly.
I swallowed. “Am I now half-buried like the warriors of clay?” I whispered, searching his face.
He smiled, amusement lighting his eyes, and let his hand drop.
“No, protected…from the sun,” he explained and winked at me.
I blushed and only hoped the clay, which I could already feel drying on my skin, hid the rosy sign of my embarrassment.