Mean high tide, page 36
And a tomboy she remained, with more or less that same Prince Valiant cut, hair the color of late summer wheat. Gray-blue eyes. A spray of freckles across her forehead. Harry’s looks, Allison’s spunk.
Always a wisecrack bubbling on her lips. Her eyes flitting from one thing to the next as if she was searching out the target for her next quip. A college athlete, Sean was a specialist in the hundred-meter breast-stroke, fourth on the tennis team, point guard in intramural basketball. Sean the irreverent, never seemed to brood or fret. Didn’t have the haunted shadows that sometimes darkened Winslow’s eyes. Yet, it was Sean who Allison worried more about. Sean who she suspected would take the news harder. The disclosure that Allison had brought them to the other side of the world to make.
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‘*Chalk up another one,’ Sean said, touching one of the leech halves with the toe of her hiking shoe. *Ms. Allison Farleigh has stretched her leech lead out even further. It now stands at an insurmountable four leeches, while her daughters, bless their hearts, are not even on the scoreboard yet. So, tell us, Ms. Farleigh, how do you do it^ What exactly is your secret for leech enticement?”
**It’s my animal magnetism,” Allison said. ‘*Has them falling out of the trees.”
Sean smiled and kicked the leech off into the underbrush.
**So what do you think, do the Dayak natives eat these things? I inean, they eat everything else in the jungle, right?”
Winslow made a disgusted noise, sat down on a fallen log, and watched her sister.
Sean said, ‘*Yeah, I can see it. Your hardworking Dayak wife is sitting in her hut holding the bag of leeches she’s pulled off her kids today, she’s paging through her Joy of Cooking, Borneo edition. Tired of the same old recipes. Let’s see, how about some leech chowder tonight? No, that was last night. Maybe barbecued leech on yellow rice. Then, of course, there’s always the old standby, leech frangais.”
Winslow shrugged off her knapsack.
*‘Here we go again,” said Winslow. *‘Off to the races.”
“Romantic Borneo,” said Sean, intoning it in the hokey travelogue voice she’d been using all week. **Come with us for a visit to the home of the Ibans and the Dayaks, those romantic headhunters. Experience every colorful lower bowel disease known to modern man. Only sevent)^-two vaccinations stand between you and alluring, rain-drenched Borneo, vacation capital of the Far East. You can leave your American Express at home, but don’t forget your malaria tablets.”
Allison smiled as she reached back to rub at the welt on her neck. Above them, from the high branches of a
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ficus, a gibbon sang out, and in the distance a hornbill seemed to reply, its scream sounding like some child’s gruesome tantrum.
Winslow took the waxed paper off her sandwich and began to eat. Sean popped open her Tupperware jug and drank half her iced tea in one long guzzle, then sat down on the log beside Winslow.
*‘Does this mean we’re doing lunch?”
“Well, I am,’* Winslow said. “Fm starved.”
“Lunch it is then.”
Through the thick undergrowth twenty yards away, Allison caught a flit of movement. She peered past Winslow at a stand of tree ferns and bamboo, but whatever she’d seen had vanished back into the blur of greenery. Another bird perhaps, or one of the heavy durian fruits falling from a limb. That sharpspiked gourd weighed three or four pounds, could knock you unconscious if you took a direct hit. Just one more of the jungle’s surprises.
They were working a quadrant of the Semonggoh rain forest two hours up the Lupar River by speedboat from Kuching. Every morning for the last week they’d left the Holiday Inn in the dark, and arrived by seven-thirty at the base camp in Serasam. Then each group of volunteers was given a rough map of the area they were responsible for that day and dispatched in different directions for the day’s count. Sweeping her binoculars across the treetops, Sean was their spotter, while Winslow handled the photographic work. Bringing up the rear, Allison was the tabulator, carefully filling out the forms. Time, date, place of sighting, size, approximate age, weight, sex. Notable behaviors.
It was Allison’s fifth orangutan count, her daughters’ first. Once again Dr. Sidra Tindusiri, who headed the Semonggoh orangutan sanctuary, had courted and bribed the necessary Malay officials to secure the permits the volunteers needed to be able to assist in the annual tally. Dr. Tindusiri knew within a few square miles where each of her rehabilitated orangutans was
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supposed to be, but it was the volunteers’ job to confirm that each of those apes was still alive. A task it would have taken Sidra months to accomplish with her limited staff.
This year there was a sense of dread among the volunteers, because for the last few months there had been steady reports that a band of poachers had been working this part of the jungle. The bastards used high-powered rifles to blast mother apes out of the trees so they could steal their newborns and sell them as pets or to unscrupulous zoos. As the orangutan population declined, its price soared. Forty thousand dollars a head was this season’s rate for wild-born babies. A reward so high, apparently the poachers had grown brazen enough to hunt in even that well-patrolled national preserve.
Poaching orangutans anywhere was bad enough, but hunting down the rehabilitated animals that roamed this preserve was particularly horrific. Years of work went into reestablishing each ape into the wild. Most of the adult apes in this part of the jungle had once been domesticated pets. Abandoned on the streets of Taipei when they’d grown too large and threatening, or voluntarily handed over to the Malaysian government’s rehab program, these apes were getting a second chance. But in their years as household pets or as nightclub entertainment, they’d lost their natural fear of humans, and often made easy prey.
One of Allison’s goals this year was to take home a stack of photographs of this section of the jungle; the apes at play, at rest, mothers and their babies. She was hoping Winslow’s shots would be strong enough to help sell an article to Nature or National Geographic, a passionate piece that would detail the orangutan’s plight, plug Sidra’s work and Allison’s organization on a huge scale. Get more money flowing in this direction.
While Allison’s watchdog league was devoted to shutting down the buying, selling, and smuggling of all endangered wildlife, Allison specialized in orangutans.
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Pongo pygmaeus. People of the forest, the orange apes, wild men of Borneo. Their long, reddish hair standing out from their bodies as if it were charged with static electricity. Bulging stomachs and eyes full of melancholy wisdom. They spent their lives in the forest canopy, dangling from limber branches hundreds of feet up, or bending saplings like pole vaulters to reach down for pieces of fruit, jambu-air, longsat, nangka.
Same number of teeth as man; blood pressure, body temperature the same. Ninety-eight percent of their genetic material identical to humans. And as far as she was concerned, whatever comprised the other two percent was pretty damned wonderful. The orangutans Allison had spent time with were a hell of a lot more intelligent and certainly more trustworthy than most of the humans she’d run into.
Seven years ago it had begun for her. Returning from Harry’s consulate job in Brunei, Allison had gone with Harry and her daughters into a back room at customs at the Singapore airport to check on their Labrador before their long flight home. It was a muggy afternoon, everyone cranky.
The Lab was fine, thumping its tail against the wire mesh as they approached. But in a far corner of the room, Allison noticed a stack of cages filled with primates. Chimps, macaques, gibbons, orangutans.
As she veered toward them, gooseflesh broke out on her arms and neck. While she stood before the cages, some of the animals gibbered and peeped, but most were silent, staring at her with the look she came to recognize as forlorn and confused.
At that moment, gazing into their baffled eyes, Allison felt a deep ache growing inside her. Spellbound, she watched as the apes shifted in their cages, as one grabbed the bars and rattled, and from inside another cage a hairy hand reached out through the bars toward her, then suddenly drew back.
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‘You going to eat, Mother?’
Allison said yes, took off her backpack, found a dry spot at the base of a neram tree and sat. She opened her canteen and took a long sip.
**So, Winslow,” Sean said. **You read about the palangs yet? The penis ornaments?’*
*Tenis ornaments?” Winslow eyed her sister suspiciously. *‘Get out of here, Sean.”
**No, it’s real, I swear. Isn’t it, Mother?”
Allison nodded that it was.
Tt’s true,” Sean said. They stand in the cold river, get all shriveled and numb, then they drill holes in the tips of their penises. And later when they’re healed, they pull out the retainer plug and insert colorful, interesting thingamajigs in the holes. Feathers, small bones, wood carvings. Something pretty. Part decoration, partly to please their women. Like a French tickler or something.”
**You read this?”
”Yeah, in one of the books Mother brought. Palangs.”
“And their women are supposed to like that? A bone through the penis? Jesus.”
Sean took a bite of her sandwich. A slug of iced tea.
“Maybe what it is, it’s a trick the Dayak women play on their guys,” Winslow said. “They tell them what they want, so the men go off, drill holes in their wieners. Their women are sitting around laughing about it: Those idiots, they fell for it again.’ “
Allison chuckled.
“What I was thinking,” Sean said, “maybe we could open a shop back home. Be the first to introduce palangs to America. A little stall at the mall like the Piercing Pagoda.”
Winslow let out a whoop. The two of them matched laughs for a few moments, then Winslow folded up her waxed paper, slipped it back into her pack, the chuckles fading.
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‘No, no,* Winslow said, *4t would never fly. American men are too spineless.”
*‘I don’t know,” Sean said. ‘*You present it the right way, put the proper spin on it. Get some celebrity spokesman, Stallone, Schwarzenegger, one of those guys: ‘My woman can’t get enough of my new palang. Are you man enough?’ “
Winslow chuckled.
*‘Never work. The only guys who’d do palangs would be ones you wouldn’t want to be around anyway. Motorcycle guys, tattoo geeks, like that. The nose ring crowd.”
“What do you think, Mother? Is this an idea or what? Maybe a whole new career path. Forget law school. Open a litde kiosk at Dadeland Mall. Drill and Fill. Introduce palangs to Middle America. We wouldn’t have to pay the staff. I know a dozen girls who’d do that work for nothing.”
Allison felt her smile drifting away.
Sean swung back to Winslow and said, “Okay, here it is. I got it now. So, yeah, maybe some American men don’t have the guts for something like this. Then we’d offer a whole different product line. Fake palangs.”
“Fake palangs?”
“Yeah, yeah, like that arrow-through-the-head thing by that comedian, Steve Martin. You know, a flesh-colored spring that fits around their penis, looks like they drilled a hole, but they didn’t really. An optical illusion palang. We could have bones, arrows, maybe some yuppie stuff, miniature golf clubs, htde tennis rackets. Customize your own palang. Go home, pull down your shorts, it’s ‘Honey, look what I did for you.’ “
Winslow was laughing now. Sean on a roll.
“I mean, it’s all in how we market it. We could provide both services, fake or real. Make it like a test: ‘If you really love her, you’ll have your penis drilled. But then again, if you’re not ready to commit, we’ve got just the thing for you.’ “
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**Kurt would never do it.”
*Teah, that’s true, not Kurt. But I bet Patrick Sagawan would.”
**Knock it off, Sean.”
**He could be one of our poster guys. Patrick Bendari Sagawan, the Malaysian hunk, nephew of the richest man in the world. He palanged himself for his sweetheart. Will you?”
All week Sean had been kidding Winslow about Patrick, the sultan’s nephew. Seven years ago in Brunei, Winslow had nursed a fierce crush for him. The boy was two years older. Back then, at seventeen, he was already a lady’s man with silky, cosmopolitan manners. Allison suspected, but never heard for sure, that Winslow had lost her virginity that year.
When the orangutan count was done, the three of them were planning to spend a few days in Brunei, an hour’s plane ride east. Visit old friends. Probably the only reason the girls came along on the trip at all was because of the Brunei part. They had romantic memories of the place, very different memories from Allison’s. Harry had told the girls that Patrick was still a bachelor. Winslow had blushed, looking at her lap. Ohmygod, ohmygod, Sean said. Think of it, Winslow. Still mooning for you.
‘Kurt would never do it,” Winslow said. *He gets a paper cut on his finger, he passes out. My big, brave boyfiiend. You’d think a vet would be tougher.”
*‘But Patrick Sagawan would do it,” Sean said. “And Thorn would too. Old Nature Boy. Now, there’s a guy we can always count on.”
‘*Yeah,” Winslow said. * Thorn would do it if we asked him. And I bet if Mother asked Dad, we could sign him up too.”
They both looked at Allison with teasing smiles. She moved her eyes to the trees.
*‘Yeah, how about Dad?” Sean said. “Think he’d be willing? I mean, just as a promotional thing? Harry
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Farleigh, famous ex-diplomat, had himself fitted for one. How about you?”
Allison brought her eyes back to them. They were both watching her. Sean grinning, Winslow’s smile losing a litde of its energy as she saw her mother’s expression. Allison feeling her own face collapse. Her blood hardening.
**What do you think, Mother? Dad go for this?”
**rm leaving him,” Allison said. Lowering her eyes.
Something howled in the trees nearby. Neither of her daughters spoke. By slow degrees Sean’s grin sank away.
**rm leaving Harry.” Allison screwed the cap back on her canteen, set it aside. She took a breath, looked at each of them, and said, **I wanted to tell you over here, let you have time to get used to the idea before we get back home. Give us a chance to talk it over.”
Sean stood up. She dropped the Tupperware jug of tea.
**You’re kidding.”
Allison shook her head, watching Sean’s eyes darken, her mouth twisdng into a bitter grin.
* Jesus Christ! Jesus H. Mother of Christ.”
**Sean,” Winslow said. ‘*Come on. Cool it.”
Sean took a step toward Allison, made fists. Veins rising.
**So that’s what this trip was all about? Not coundng apes, not shooting photos. You had this on your mind the whole time. That’s why you made such a big deal— the Farleigh women get to spend some time together, female bonding. But no. All along it was to spring this bullshit on us.”
*T dwiwant to spend time with you. I wanted us to be able to confront this, talk it all through.”
Sean kicked the Tupperware into the bushes. Turned and stood staring at the lush greenery, her back to Allison.
**Goddamn it,” she said, and swung around. * Twenty years, all of a sudden, out of the blue, you
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dump him. What? Is there somebody else? That’s it, isn’t it? You’re having an affair.”
Allison looked into Sean’s eyes and slowly told her no, there was nobody else, nobody.
*‘Come on, Sean,” Winslow said. *‘Back off.”
”Hey, she wanted to talk about it. We’re talking about it.”
“It’s been twenty-^Ar^^ years,” Allison said. **And things haven’t been right for a while, not since we came back from Brunei.”
Sean’s face was red, mouth quivering. Not used to suppressing anything. Eyes growing damp, her mouth moving as if she were chewing a wad of gum.
**Why now?” Winslow said quietly.
“It’s time. I’ve waited too long as it is.”
Winslow said, “Have you already told him?”
“No, I wanted to tell you first. I wanted to talk with you.”
“It’s your life,” Winslow said. “You don’t need our approval.”
“When we get back,” Allison said, “I’m moving out. I’m going to live at the Shack.”
“The Shack!”
“I’ll be fine out there. It’s where I want to be.”
Still silent, Sean shifted her glare back and forth between Allison and Winslow. Then she shook her head savagely, turned her back on them, and stalked down the trail in the direction they’d come.
“She’ll be all right,” Winslow said. “You know how she is about Dad.”
“I know.”
“I’ll go get her.”
Winslow took her baseball hat off, dropped it with her pack. She looped the Nikons around her neck and headed off down the trail after her sister.
The male orangutan sat in his mother’s nest high in an ironwood tree playing with a rambutan that she’d
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given him earlier in the day. The fruit was rare in this part of the jungle. A delicacy.
The young orangutan was tearing free the meat of the rambutan and pitching the excellent food out of the nest onto the ground a hundred feet below, leaning out from a branch, watching it fall into the bushes near where the three humans sat. The mother did not try to restrain him. She simply let him play.
The male orangutan was four years old. For the next two or three years he would live alongside her every moment of the day just as he had done since birth. His mother would protect him from the dangers of the jungle, but never once would she discipline him.
Orangutans lived solitary lives, mainly because their food sources were spaced too widely for them to live successfully in groups. But living alone was not easy. The loneliness, the quiet. A thousand acres of dense forest were necessary to support just one adult male. Very likely the only contact her son would ever have with other orangutans would be on those rare occasions when he grew lustful and sought out a female.
