III
Bill asked Eke if he wanted to set a tarp up over his tent, but
Eke was feeling lazy and besides, he said, he wouldnt need it
tonight. It wasnt going to rain. So Bill set up two tarps, one for his
tent and one for their supply tent. Ekes tent, the third tent, was
tarpless. It wasnt going to rain.
When the rain started, Eke was in a deep sore-muscle sleep and
didnt notice the sound. But when the water started falling on his face,
he noticed. He rolled over and hoped it would stop. It didnt stop. It
just got wetter faster.
Tarp.
He thought about why he is such an idiot. He was so tired. How
much effort would have it taken to be smart and put a tarp over his tent? How much? Less than it would take to deal with this. Shit. He
could hear Bill snoring.
Eke grabbed a flashlight just inside the door of his tent and turned
it on, waiting for his vision to return to normal. He could hear Bill, in
his mind, telling him to put a tarp over his head. He could hear his
father too, telling him, “No tent is totally waterproof. You still need a
tarp.” Shit. Eke hated being wrong- he was wrong so often it just
started feeling right.
The water was coming into the tent faster now. Middle of the
night. Eke needed sleep in the worst way and he couldnt even get
the worst sleep in this tent. Drip, drip.
What to do?
The plane! He would go sleep in the plane. Bad things happen to
people all the time. The results all depended on how you approached
the situation. This was no poor-me situation. Well, maybe it was. But
so what? He took action. Walking downhill to the plane made him
totally soaked. Drenched. He reached in his pocket and found the
key. Unlocking the plane he climbed inside and looked around with
the flashlight. Finding what he was looking for, a blanket that they
used to wrap the rifles and fishing poles, Eke stripped to nothing. He wondered while laughing at himself, who could possibly be watching,
before finally falling into a slumber.
And as he drifted down into a nether world, it all swirled inside
him– the heat, the work, the scenery, and the dream. He was so tired
it felt like his skeleton was falling through his skin and as he began
the rhythmic breathing his mind flew to a place where he met every
challenge. He saw armies against him and he kept battling and
winning. He slept and slept.
By the time he awoke with the near-equatorial sun shooting
through the windshield of the plane, Eke had dreamt some exciting
dreams but he couldnt recall details. Just being challenged and
meeting the challenge. He opened the door to the plane and saw the
path and the clearing that they had opened yesterday. And he saw
Bill up by the campsite with a fire going.
As Eke walked up the path with the blanket wrapped around his
naked body, carrying his wet clothes, Bill smiled.
“Not a word,” said Eke. He knew. And he knew that Bill knew he
knew. Stupid, sometimes, is obvious.
Bill was kind, for now. “Coffees ready.” “Thanks,” said Eke. He grabbed a cup, went to the supply tent
and dug out some clothes. He sipped the coffee. Caffeine was his
last drug of choice, and it was wonderful. He felt it hit his taste buds,
his stomach, and then his heart rate. He downed the cup and went
back for more. “Good coffee,” he said, looking out at the forest. “I
needed it.”
“So, youd get wet?” asked Bill. Of course, he couldnt resist.
“Should have used a tarp.”
“Im going to have more coffee,” said Eke. Complimenting Bills
coffee seemed his best defense right now. He was just too tired to
deal with the competitive shit right now.
Not Bill. “So whered you sleep? Under a tree?”
“In the plane.”
“Oh, of course. Of course.”
Eke smiled. What could he say? He slept in the plane because he
didnt put a tarp over his tent as Bill suggested. He poured himself
another cup.
As the second cup took hold, it came back to him again. The
dream. The cabin. That and more. What funny thoughts the first rush of caffeine gives. He stood and looked at all the greenery left to clear.
“Well, Bill, what do you say?”
“I say Im cooking up some fried Spam,” said Bill.
And at that, the oddest phrase in the world made Ekes mouth
water. Fried Spam. It had only been a day since theyd left civilization,
but the hung over feeling he had from all the work and wet was
enough to make the sound of anything frying like heaven. Mmm–
fried Spam!
By the time they finished eating, the sun was burning and Eke,
dream refueled, was ready for the day. The plan was to cut a path up
from the river to the L-shaped pasture where they would build the
cabin, and then another “driveway” down from the pasture to the lone
road that went by here a quarter mile away. Cutting all that timber
should be enough to actually build a cabin. That was the plan.
He picked up the chainsaw but Bill reminded him that he had to
siphon gas again from the plane.
“Im so glad siphons have bellows,” said Eke. I hated sucking gas
up with your mouth.” He thought about all times of getting a mouthful
of gas back when they were kids and even a few years ago– stupidly
needing to get gas from a car to a … whatever. He did it a lot of times. Never seemed to carry a gas can with him. And now? He
walked to the plane.
Walking down, he realized again where exactly he was and what
he was doing here. He looked at the plane. He could, of course, just
fly back. Just like that. Pretend all this never happened. Instead, he
siphoned gas.
And he thought. He looked around again. Bill came down the hill now
carrying the other chainsaw.
When Bill arrived, Eke confessed, “Im already feeling guilty about
cutting the trees down. Theyve lived here a long time.”
“Im not,” said Bill. “That tree will be great for our cabin, helping us
live here.”
“Good-for-nothing consciencealways getting me in trouble” Eke
said.
“Serves no purpose,” said Bill. He smiled.
Eke handed Bill the siphon and said, “Its a brand new day.”
Vrroooom.
Eke reminisced as he started cutting the tree. Hed been working
with wood for a long time. One of his first jobs when he was 17 was in
a wood mill in an old abandoned chicken coop. He planed the faces of rough lumber and then jointed the planks to get one straight edge.
The idea is to be able to rip it on a table saw. That was the idea back
then when he was inhaling oily dust that created brown liquid snot.
The worst kind, worse even than the suffocating drywall dust he
played with for a couple of years. Carpentry was better than drywall
or lumber. Pounding nails helped vent frustration.
But this cutting, even with the sawdust flying, was better even
than carpentry. This wasnt a factory after all or someone elses crew
on someone elses house.
He was the boss.
“Come on, hurry up,” yelled Bill.
Well, he was one of the bosses. Eke smiled at Bill, who was going
faster than Eke even though Eke started first. Size is an advantage
and Bill reminds Eke of this all the time. Even though they were
competing, as they were always competing, they were also working
together. They used a system of notching two trees and then falling
them one at a time. And then after they fell, they would slice the bark
lengthwise with a chainsaw.
Of course, before they did that, they had to trim the trees of the
branches and that took time. For a while, even as the competition heated up, it seemed like they were making no progress. Finally
when they started making the trees fall, they were happier, high-fiving
each other and even breaking into a spontaneous Stones song –
singing to the jungle their joy at progress.
And so they broke for lunch, boiling water and stirring in rice. Bill
was making more Spam. The Spam master. Lunch in Honduras.
“You know,” said Eke, afraid to say it but feeling he had to, “it
would work a lot better if…”
“Its working fine the way it is. Just stop it, okay, Eke. Geez.
Always something, some idea with you. This isnt rocket science,
were just cutting logs, dude. Okay?”
Eke hated when Bill got this way. But thats how it is, how it has
always been between these two. Friends who compete are friends
who fight. And Bill, being bigger, stronger, better with woman was
always riding Eke. And Eke, who never met a challenge he wouldnt
take, especially from Bill, was the perfect foil.
And they sure had themselves some fun along the way.
Sometimes it was too much fun. And sometimes, it was just enough.
How do you end up in Honduras? Eke finished his feast of Spam
and rice and packed a corncob pipe with loose tobacco. Bill, on the other side of the fire, lit a Marlboro. To each his own. Thats how you
end up in Honduras. Eke lit his pipe. He thought about all the
diseases they might catch here. He had studied for it before the trip–
cures and preventions. He thought of other things. He looked over at
Bill, smoking a cigarette and engrossed in his own thoughts, and Eke
remembered. He remembered the dream. He remembered how it
used to be. It used to be a game.
They used to blow things up. It started with firecrackers stuffed in
things. There was something about explosions and destruction. So
fast. So awesome. Yeah, the real meaning of the word kaboom! It
was just so cool. They were vicious too. Horrible to think about now.
But it happened and Eke, sitting in the jungle listening to, well, frogs,
thought of the frog. “Remember the frog?” he asked.
“The frog?”
“The frog and the firecracker?”
“Oh shit, yeah, that was funny,” said Bill.
“No,” said Eke. “I always felt bad about that.”
Pick on someone your own size, he thought to himself. He was a
pretty small guy to feel like a bully but he thought of the frog and he felt exactly like that. He yearned for something more. A fair fight. Test
myself. Thats always been the thing. Test myself.
And somehow Bill has almost always been there for the testing. It
was dirt bikes. It was blowing things up. It was getting wasted. It was
wasting a life. And now. Eke smiled. This was life. The ultimate test. And it was going to get better, more interesting.
