TEETH - The Epic Novel With Bite (The South Pacific Trilogy)

by Timothy James Dean

  The Flying Boat thundered over, then the pilot banked it over the ocean and came back for a closer look. From a hundred feet up, the aviators saw two men waving, one at the fire and another near the palms.

  Again they went by. A flash of green, then muddy water, and they turned. This time they came at treetop level and were treated to a startling sight. An enormous skeleton stretched along a road in the jungle. It reminded the pilot at once of a dinosaur he’d seen in a museum. The co-pilot could look below and saw crocodiles scattering from the carcass.

  The plane shot through the plume of smoke and they saw the men. One bare-chested bloke stood by the fire, furiously waving. The other lad was beside the canvas roof in the trees, shaking a stick. Looks like the poor bugger has only one leg.

  At the sound of engines, Johnny had dropped his fishing pole and rushed to light the signal fire. Footy was napping at camp and struggled up. Both men were frantic to be seen.

  Soon it was clear they had been spotted. The plane made several passes, then roared over the ocean, banked, and came back. The waves were still huge, but had settled somewhat in the last week. The aircraft came skimming at them and then it fell in. There was a great splash and Johnny and Footy lost sight of it. But here it rose, engines roaring.

  They went down to meet it. The Aussie was better on his crutch now, and the two arrived together and stood, grinning broadly.

  The pilot slowed near the beach, waited for the next wave and rode it in. Two crewmen in white shirts and shorts jumped barefoot out a door and pushed on a pontoon. The engines died and four propellers stopped turning. The pilots sat in the doorway to pull off socks and shoes, let down a set of stairs and climbed out. The flyers came to greet the castaways.

  “You’re a sight for sore eyes!” the tall one said.

  “About time!” the one-legged man beamed. “What the hell took you so long?”

  “G’day mate,” the pilot said, offering his hand to Johnny and then Footy. They shook enthusiastically. “We heard you might be looking for a lift. But aren’t there three of you? We were told to expect a prisoner.”

  “He didn’t make it,” Johnny said shortly. The pilot nodded and introduced the crew.

  “You blokes have a lovely spot here and I hate to rush you, but with this sea we can’t stay,” he said. “You better shake a leg. May we help with your things?”

  “I spotted an enormous carcass by the river,” the co-pilot put in as they walked to the camp. “Know anything about that?”

  “That’s what I want to talk to you about,” the dark haired man said. “We do have some luggage, and we need your help.”

  “No worries, mate,” a muscular crewman said as he slapped him on the shoulder.

  “We’ve got heaps of room. How many bags can you possibly have?” All of them laughed.

  The Flying Boat’s engines labored as the aircraft lumbered over the Owen Stanley Range, on course for Port Moresby. On the far side of the mountains, it tilted into the long descent. The pilot turned the controls over to his colleague and walked back from the flying deck to stretch his legs. He came down the steps to the lower area, passed the crewmen playing cribbage, and stood studying his passengers.

  The Yank and his one-legged mate were sprawled across the seats, asleep. Both had wild hair and stubble on their chins and looked about as sun-cooked as two men could be.

  The Yank wore ragged shorts and an unbuttoned shirt with the sleeves missing. Around his neck was a chain with his metal tags, and an enormous crocodile tooth. Across his lap was a rifle with a scope on it, and he wore two knives in his belt, one a long cane cutter.

  The Aussie, too, was bare-chested. He had a brimmed hat hanging back on the string, and he wore faded shorts, a huge knife through his belt as well. The stump of his leg, covered in a sock, was propped on the cushions. His homemade crutch rested on the floor beside two packs.

  The wood-framed one had a Japanese sword, of all things, sticking out the top.

  They look like bloody pirates, the aviator thought. My word, I’d hate to run into them on a dark street late at night.

  Coiled behind them, nearly filling the compartment, was the skin. What did the Yank—Johnny, it was—call the croc? The Father! Beside it was an even more macabre item, the enormous skull of the brute itself, all bones and long teeth. The two men had told a wild tale of the croc chasing them down the river. It killed their prisoner, they said, and took Footy’s leg off. After that, Johnny said, the brute had come after him one last time. He’d managed to lead it into a pit full of spears.

  It had taken a week to skin the beast, and another to partially cure the hide in saltwater and sun.

  The head, Johnny said he’d chopped off with the samurai sword. With some help from Footy, he’d somehow rolled it on palm rounds to the ocean. He’d tied ropes on it and sunk it there. The fish and crabs had done the rest.

  The things smelled worse than low tide and the pilot had been reluctant to take them aboard. The stink would linger, and he’d get an earful back in Aus. But what was he going to do? The blokes wouldn’t come without their treasures. It was the strangest load the pilot had carried, but he was a boy from the outback, and such interesting items did not put him off.

  The aviator smiled, gave his head a shake, and returned to the business of flying his aircraft.

  As the light played through the cabin, Footy drifted in and out of awareness. He’d been dreaming of the gorgeous bird he knew in Moresby, the one he’d been after these two years.

  A bloke couldn’t help but fall for a beauty like Gwyn!

  In the last months, even though she hadn’t come out and said it, he’d gathered she was going to stay on in New Guinea. The nurse had made it clear to him early on that she would not have a military man. Since he’d become a regular bloke again, he reckoned he had a better chance with her. Just before this buggered mission, he’d put his case before her once more—and she’d shot him down.

  Of course, he hadn’t said a word about her to Johnny, and that was why. But as he’d recovered from his injury, he’d had plenty of time to consider his options. Now he was convinced he had another chance with her.

  Gwyn is a nurse, and I am a bloke in need of care. Instead of a handicap, this bloody leg may just be your ticket to her heart, mate.

  There on the beach, Footy had renewed his determination to build his air cargo business. And while he had enjoyed his bachelor years, hanging about and drinking with his mates, eventually a bloke had to do the right thing.

  He would make his home in the Territory of Papua, on the ocean outside of Port Moresby. With the war over, the capital would revive a lively social life. There’d be ever more people, more stores, more of the comforts of home. Some of his mates, old Dingo included, had jawed about getting a horse track going. That’d be beaut!

  All of it meant there would be increasing demand for goods to fly up from Aus, and plantation produce to fly back. For Footy, that indicated it was time to set up house and take a wife.

  I need someone who can get along in this place, different as it is from life in Aus. And who better than a Sheila who’s already here, someone who knows the ins and outs? Someone who’s got her own friends, and enough to keep her busy. Being a pilot, he’d be away from home half the time. He couldn’t have a woman always at him for not being there.

  Gwyn is the ideal choice—if only she’ll have me!

  Talk to Doc Mac, he counseled himself. The medical man was a mate Footy respected. Better yet, he was friends with Gwyn.

  Listen now, he advised himself. Don’t be too proud to play the sympathy card. Do whatever it takes! Gwyn is worth every bit.

  The engines droned on. Johnny dozed and sometimes came to, still having to pinch himself to believe they had really been rescued. Operation Teeth was over, and much more importantly, so was World War Two.

  Continually now, his thoughts were on Gwyn. He couldn’t wait to see her, but now they were actually on their way, he was nervous. The truth wa
s, he was unsure how things stood between them. Everything had been left up in the air.

  We were supposed to be gone three days. Instead, it’s been what—more than two months! She asked me to look for my heart. What can I tell her?

  I know this. My war is over. A Jap, my sworn enemy, became Cat, my friend.

  What will peace bring? Do I have any hope of a normal life? What is that, anyway?

  When he was a boy, Johnny’s future looked straight ahead. He’d grow up to be a Navy career officer, like his forbearers. As they had, he would fall in love and take a wife. He would do what his country commanded. And where he was, there would his family be also.

  But on the beach, Johnny had learned that path was not for him. He would be the first in generations to choose a different course, but he was done with war.

  The question remained. As a civilian in peacetime, what would he do? Johnny had tried to part the veil of the future, peering at a score of possibilities. But he found now that every path he looked at had Gwyndolyn on it. When he tried to imagine any one of them without her, it turned into a long, bleak haul with no joy in it.

  Or love.

  He formed the word gingerly. For the first time since Pearl Harbor—or maybe it was the first time—he let the idea of real love, deep love, bloom as a possibility for his own life.

  “Love.” He said it deliberately in his mind. Could a man who had done what his country had required him to do, who had taken the lives of so many other men—could he claim love for himself?

  The pilot adjusted course and Johnny felt it through the fuselage.

  It struck him again that he was flying to Gwyn. He felt a flutter in his gut. The soldier told him to smarten up. He could not let go like that! But now Johnny ordered the warrior to stand down.

  The nascent feeling in him had the thrill of surfing, but this sea was his life itself. Knowledge grew in him. He did want love, he wanted it with Gwyn, and he wanted it more than anything else.

  Johnny’s eyes were closed, but he was alert. How blind I’ve been! How could he not have seen this desire growing?

  And then he grasped it. It was because of the solemn promise his sixteen-year-old self had sworn. In the dark shadow of Pearl, and the deaths of his parents, he had vowed to avenge their murder, and the betrayal of his country.

  I swore I would kill every Jap I could, and not stop until they were dead, or I was, or they gave up.

  That promise had left no room for Gwyn. But now he had fulfilled his promise. And that allowed new possibilities to take shape.

  The Flying Boat creaked in the winds over the savage island. Johnny’s ears popped as the aircraft went into its final descent. Again, he felt that flutter. And now Johnny made another promise, formed as intensely as the first.

  I am not sure who I am anymore. But I will find out who Gwyn thinks I can be, and I will become that man.

  A crewman came back to see if the passengers needed anything. He saw two men at rest, a smile touching each set of lips.

  A long sweep of empty beach. Faded canvas between trees. Blankets half buried, sand sifting over charcoal.

  On the point where the Raub River flowed into the South Pacific stood a stately tree. In the dappled light beneath it was a mound strewn with leaves. Beside this was the eroded indent of a massive clawed foot, half full of water.

  At the head of the grave was a cross made of sticks. On it hung a crushed soldier’s helmet, netting torn, paint scored in rusted ridges.

  Behind this, of all things, stood a hand-carved surfboard. The splintered end was buried in the earth. The nose pointed skyward.

  On it was carved, letter by laborious letter:

  Katsu

  Samurai and Soldier of Japan

  Died Sept 2, 1945

  And below this:

  Since my country burned down

  How clearly

  I see the moon

  AFTERWORD

  And there, Dear Reader, you have it, as Colonel Chambers might say.

  TEETH will be followed by SKINS, the sequel, and then one more book to complete the New Guinea trilogy. The next two books exist in draft, although they are rough blocks in need of sculpting.

  My first thanks go to you, oh Faithful Reader! Without you, this novel would be no more than a response to the Zen koan, “what is the sound of one hand clapping?”

  The book you hold began at least two years ago when, with the encouragement and support of my wife, Deborah, I gave up all else, and began to write full time. All thanks to you, Deborah, for your unflagging support and assistance! Who else would have read the manuscript, word for word, so many times? Who else would have been so complimentary of the good bits, and so kindly and constructively critical of the rest? And who else would have experienced with me, every pang and ecstasy of the birth?

  But hold the presses! Maybe this book truly began in the 1990s when, on one of my return visits to Papua New Guinea (PNG), I found the picture of “the Father.” I was busy filling journals with notes and buying locally produced books. One was a photographic record by Mike Coutts of South Pacific Magazine. It was called “Invasion,” a pictorial record of the war, but on the penultimate page, I encountered a photo that would change my life. It was the gigantic Saltwater Crocodile pictured at the beginning of TEETH.

  From that moment, “the Father” began to swim through the murky recesses of my mind. Imagine, I thought, men confronting the world’s largest reptile on its own turf! And what if they were stripped of their firearms, so they must face this force of nature with nothing but hand weapons and wits?

  We know that neither whales nor sharks hunt individual humans for weeks on end. But, Dear Reader, crocodiles do. They are intelligent predators that choose their victims and plot their attacks. So, lost on its river, how would our heroes escape a great hunter of the Father’s magnitude? And what if these modern men must also confront the headhunters and cannibals of New Guinea?

  What of tribal wars, the coming of Christianity and materialism (the “Cargo Cult”), and the people’s introduction to “civilization” in the form of world war? What of first contact between pristine tribal culture and the outside world? What about tribal clashes on a global scale—the hatred and enmity between America and Japan, from Pearl Harbor, to the only use in history of atomic weapons? And if the world could find peace at last, how about Johnny and Katsu?

  Back when I first ran across the Father, I was on one of my world “walkabouts.” It had taken me once more through Hong Kong, to Japan, Australia, and then PNG. I knocked about the island, going where I would, moving on when I wanted.

  I visited my hometown and found to my surprise, many expat childhood friends. Ukarumpa is in the Eastern Highlands, where my parents founded the Wycliffe Mission in the 1950s. Most missionary kids, of course, had “gone-finish.” But who remained in force were the natives. These are my “one-talks,” the Gadsup people of the river. My boyhood playmates were now the leaders of the village. What hugs and tears! What a reunion and feast!

  (I would return a year later with a television crew to film an international documentary—see my website).

  I spent a few weeks that time exploring the Sepik River. I traveled primarily by dugout canoe (see author cover photo, with a tagline ubiquitous during the war: “Somewhere in New Guinea”).

  The Sepik is the inspiration for the “Raub River,” but I did not want to give offense to the real inhabitants of the Big River by ascribing to them behavior and a history not theirs. So I created the Raub, a mythic river.

  You people of the Sepik River, I hope you enjoy this story, and get a good laugh at the pikinini from Ukarumpa!

  To return to my quest for origins: it is possible this book began in the 1980’s when I was Head Writer and Literary Producer of the Vancouver Show. This was a live, primetime two-hour television magazine I would ultimately Executive Produce. I recognized a cannibal when I saw one! That TV monster chewed up bright young people by the dozen, sucked them to the rind, an
d spat them out. Somehow, I lasted five years.

  It was during my sojourn in Vanity Fair that I met renowned author and movie producer, James Clavell (“King Rat,” “Shogun,” “Tai Pan,” “Gai Jin,” and many more). I produced an interview about his latest, “Noble House,” and James and I hit it off. He was kind enough to mentor me. We shared a fascination with Asia and the South Pacific. He read pieces I had written on places I lived, including New Guinea and the Philippines, told me I had talent and to keep on and never quit—and perdition on the naysayers!

  “A writer writes,” he said. “You can’t call yourself a writer if you are not writing.” James, from wherever you look down, domo arigato, sensei. I owe you much. And thanks for the stories, and the advice about women.

  But maybe it truly began when I was a boy growing up in New Guinea. From a young age, I camped in the wild, cooked my kaukau in the fire, stripped sugar cane with my teeth, and loved sleeping in jungle hammocks. I learned to swim in her rivers and hike her jungles and kunai fields.

  I grew up on stories. My father read C.S. Lewis’s “Narnia” books aloud to the five Dean children (something I enjoyed doing myself years later for my own daughter, Tara. And thank you, kiddo, for encouraging your dad to keep spinning his yarns).

  As a boy, I was a voracious reader of everything I could get my hands on. I recall a much-thumbed set of Dickens novels. In addition I read the books attributed to Johnny’s father, including the works of Conrad and Kipling. Now, I know these two giants have fallen somewhat out of favor due to their “colonial views.” However, I say that a novelist is in many ways the true journalist of his times, and we ought not to shoot the messenger. If we toss out all those whose views are not in lockstep with the “politically correct” opinions of our own era, we will have no history from which to learn.

  I had to wrestle with the issues of tribalism and racism in order to write TEETH. I grew up in a world where white men were called “Master,” and I also had the pleasure of seeing the practice disappear. Native women did display their breasts, and it was foreigners who taught them this was wrong, or at least, unseemly. (Even anthropologists bring their cultural bias and alien influence).