DAY 12—LATER
It’s been raining for hours. The usual tropical downpour, except that it usually stops after half an hour or so.
All we do is try to keep dry, and not go hungry. We’re not successful at either.
I’ve decided to attempt to fix the outboard motor.
The first thing we do is dig a small freshwater pool downstream of where we gather our drinking water. It’s vital that we don’t contaminate our lifesaving water source.
That done, with Hope’s formidable strength we shift the outboard motor from the sand up to the pool. She thinks she’s fixed it by drying it out by the fire, but I’m hoping that by dunking it in freshwater we will rinse out all the corrosive salt water.
“Let’s s-s-see if there’s any f-f-fuel left first.” Hope angles a plastic water can underneath, then unscrews the fuel tank and tips up the machine. A trickle of gas slips out and into the empty water can. There’s about half a gallon.
“Good,” I tell her. “Now let’s lift it into the pool.” Exhausted from the effort, we leave it for a few hours before hoisting it out and placing it on a workbench made from three palm trunks shoved close together. That was another of Hope’s ideas.
“What would we do without you, Hope?” says Jas breathlessly.
“N-n-now what?” Hope looks at me.
“Now I take the motor apart and clean the components and put them together again.”
“What g-g-good will that d-do?”
“What do you mean?”
Jas sits on the sand looking exhausted.
“When I strip it down I’ll discover what’s wrong and put it right.”
Somewhere a gibbon laughs derisively, and his entire family joins in.
My Swiss Army knife has thirteen features:
Large blade
Small blade
Can opener
Small screwdriver
Bottle opener
Large screwdriver
Wire stripper
Reamer/punch—I’ve no idea what it’s for.
Wood saw
Corkscrew
Tweezers
Toothpick
Key ring
I haven’t used any of the components before apart from the wood saw, can opener, toothpick, tweezers (I have a problem with my eyebrows—they nearly meet in the middle, or would if they had their own way), and large blade.
The big screwdriver is ideal for the main screws on the motor. Well, not ideal, but it’ll do. My fingers become sore very quickly.
“Sure, let me at it.”
She has a good strong grip, and she definitely has more patience than I do. I note the parts in my journal in the order we dismantle them. I’m methodical. I write numbers on scraps of my notepaper and label each motor part, just the way Phaedrus would have done.
“This is a lot of effort—for what?” Jas asks.
“Jas, don’t be dense. For our survival. For our escape, for goodness’ sake.”
“Yes, but we’ll never build anything strong enough to take the weight of the motor.”
“If you don’t want to help, fine. Leave me to do it alone.” They watch me without comment as I struggle to undo one small screw. I have ruined the thread of it now; the notch is ragged and too big for the little screwdriver.
Hope suggests a nail file. May has one.
“Go and ask her for it, then.”
“N-n-no, I c-c-can’t, you go.”
“You go,” I insist. My voice is savage.
“I’ll go,” says Jas. She gives me a look. She does this, Jas. She never says anything, but you know when she disapproves of something you’ve said or done. Hope and I sit and look at the waves rolling in, the huge surf breaking on the reef, saying nothing. I’m so tired and hungry. I feel like crying.
“Madam isn’t happy,” Jas says as she hands me the metal file.
“Is she ever?”
It snaps as soon as I try to twist it in the groove of the screw.
“It’s useless. Shit, shit, shit!” I lose it completely, kicking the motor and throwing the nail file into the sand. I think I might have broken my stupid toe!
DAY 13
We made a decision in the night—Jas, Hope, and I. At first light Jas and I are going inland. We think that if we get to the highest peak in the west and can make a fire there, build a bonfire, the smoke will be seen from farther away. We’ll get rescued.
My toe still hurts, but it’s not broken, thank goodness. I’m determined to make this trip.
I feel so much better now that we’ve decided to take matters into our own hands. Hope will stay behind and keep watch over Carly and Jody. I don’t trust the others to look after themselves, let alone the juniors. So I am happy when she offers to stay. It makes sense, as she can’t see to climb very well. Also I think she is becoming fond of the juniors and enjoys the way they look up to her.
I wake Jody.
“We’re going to get help for us all,” I tell her. “Be good, now. Stay in the shade and drink lots of water. There’s plenty of coconut milk and nut, already cut up. Eat it.”
She looks at me sleepily.
“Is Jas going? Don’t go, don’t leave me.” She begins to whimper.
I hug her. “We won’t be long. Hope will look after you.” We leave at dawn, a cloudy cool dawn with storm clouds piling up, all angry orange-brown and purple. The sea is roiling from the incessant wind, even in the lagoon. On the reef, waves crash and tumble in a wide white frill. I would hate to be in a boat on that.
Maybe a helicopter will come for us, if they can spare a helicopter. Maybe they can’t spare military personnel to come looking for a group of overdue girl cadets.
It’s good to walk in the cool of the morning. We take my bag containing salt, coconut, Hope’s broken glasses, and a towel, as well as my journal and pencil, book and flashlight. The rolled-up sleeping bags are slung over our shoulders and the water bottles shared between us.
For kindling we have gathered some of the hairy stuff that grows at the top of the coconut palm. There are plenty of fallen palms. We’ll find twigs and fire material when we get there. We have my Swiss Army knife, and we each have spears.
Once we’re in the jungle it’s dark and damply sticky, and we keep tripping over tree roots. My toe still hurts but I am not admitting it. We strip off our sweatshirt sleeves and wrap the material over and around our exposed ankles.
We pass through a plantation of thick bamboos, clanking and clinking loudly in the wind.
“They’re like enormous wind chimes,” says Jas. Then we reach the evergreen forest, strewn with trees felled in the storm.
“Look, gibbon!” Jas points to the little face watching from a high branch. He leaps away, whooping and screeching. Branches bend and swoosh and wave. Other gibbons take up the call and we hear them screaming at one another. It must be the gibbons we’ve been hearing in the night. They’re renowned for their songs. Sometimes the loudest noise in the forest is the song of gibbons. Families usually sing together, Jas tells me, but then one will sing a solo and the others will listen. Or we’ll hear a duet—love songs, maybe. We stand and watch for a little while.
“They are amazingly agile even though they have no tails. And their arms are twice the length of their bodies,” Jas tells me.
We follow a narrow trail.
“I suppose so. It must be quite large.” I’d rather not think about it, remembering Dad’s experience. “Let’s hope we don’t meet one coming our way.”
The path is about two feet wide and although we have to bend and stoop to get under branches, it isn’t too difficult. Yet. Where we try to get off the track we find the forest impenetrable. I have unraveled part of the towel and made ribbons to tie on bushes every so often so we can find our way back. Like Hansel and Gretel and the crumbs.
Resting for a moment on a rock, I am suddenly covered in red ants.
“Help! I’m being bitten to death.”
Jas helps me brush them off. “Better the red ones than the black,” she says. “They really hurt.”
I get out the map I made on our first trip into the interior.
“Look, Jas, the highest point in the western mountain is about five miles away. We should do that in a day easily.”
“Five miles!”
We have a swig of water. Strange bird calls, high branches creaking in the wind, insects squeaking and tapping and scratching, monkeys hoo-hooing and coughing. It’s never quiet in the forest. In the distance the sea rolls past the island, a sea that breathes and is totally alien: It doesn’t care about anything, but exists, as we do.
“What’s that?” A scratching and swishing of branches behind us—a wild boar? My heart is in my mouth.
Then comes a sharp yelp.
“What are you doing? Jody! I told you to stay in camp.” She gets up from where she has tripped and emerges from the bushes, her thin legs scratched and bleeding, her T-shirt with its orange smiley face covered in mud.
She goes to Jas and hugs her.
“Mikey said we had to come with you.”
“Mikey is a damned nuisance,” I say, and she starts crying.
“Oh, come on, now. We’ll put up with Mikey and you,” Jas says gently and offers her a drink of water.
I’m outraged. “Be serious, Jas. We can’t take her with us. It might be dangerous.”
“She’s here now. We can’t send her back.”
Jody drinks greedily. “I’ve brought Teddy,” she says. “I couldn’t leave him behind.”
That’s all we need: a little kid, a teddy bear, and a bossy invisible friend.
Suddenly, out of nowhere a king cobra appears, about ten feet long, its head raised to the height of Jody’s face, not six feet away from her. We freeze. Silently, the huge creature, its hood spread in a death threat, strikes. A smaller brown-black snake, which we hadn’t noticed on the leafy track before us, is paralyzed almost immediately and we watch, fascinated, as the huge snake slowly swallows it before slithering away and disappearing into the thick undergrowth.
“Did that really happen, or did I imagine it?” I am shaking.
“Mikey doesn’t like snakes,” Jody whispers, clinging to her teddy.
“I don’t blame him.” Jas hugs her and then goes into fascinating-fact mode. “They have neurotoxins in their venom; that’s what paralyzes the prey. A king cobra delivers more venom per bite than any other kind of cobra—enough to kill twenty people.”
“Yeah, thanks for the chemistry lesson, Jas. I feel much better now.” I’m still annoyed that we have Jody slowing us down. “Come on. We need to keep going.”
“Did you notice its eyes?” Jas asks.
“What?”
“Cobras have round pupils, not vertical.”
I set off, refusing to be drawn into a discussion about snake eyes.
We hack our way through the difficult bits, where whatever it was that made the path has tunneled under rather than through the bush.
“We can’t crawl across the island, for goodness’ sake,” I complain.
Jas gives Jody a piggyback ride where the path widens and clears, but then she has to manage on her own as we climb gradually. The limestone rocks are rounded, and it’s fairly easy to clamber over them. When Jody can’t make it I climb first and Jas pushes her up to me.
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.