The mission was, as Gordon had warned her, all but unreachable by land. Their only contact with the outside world was the toy-like plane that dropped out of the heavens twice a week onto a patch of cleared mountaintop with necessities (rice and tinned beef) and luxuries (soap, weeks-old newspapers, toilet paper—of coffee they had plenty, it and peanuts being the two cash crops that would grow here). In addition to Linda, who was a combination full-time schoolteacher and part-time nurse, the station consisted of five people. Albert Haines, known throughout the highlands by the deceptively Roman nickname of “Father Albion,” was a lively Chicagoan who admitted to sixty-five but was probably much older; he had been in the country since before Linda was born. His devoted assistants, Alice and Tom Overhampton, had come for a six-month stay three and a half years ago. The other two places were filled by a series of short-term missionaries, male and female: all of them young, all of them terrified, none of whom remained long enough for her to learn more than their names.
Unlike Linda. Within a couple of weeks, her life in Indiana seemed like a distant dream. Her Pidgin grew more fluent. She laughed easily, not only with her co-workers, but with the locals. She had never been happier.
Still, happy or not, a person could only stay so long in the bush before the hills started to press in. Only Father Albion seemed impervious to the claustrophobia of having one’s every move an endless source of scrutiny and amusement to the locals, of being followed to the outdoor privy and back, of having any conversation punctuated by the giggles of children beneath the floors. So every few weeks, one or another of the staff would hitch a ride on the supply plane back to Mt. Hagen, the metropolis of fourteen thousand souls that boasted such cultural riches as videotape movies, cold Cokes, and hot showers. The fleshpots were restorative, necessary even to those doing God’s work.
Linda had been in the highlands for two months when her turn came. On the second of her seven allotted days in Mrs. Carver’s boarding house, spent reading novels, drinking two cold beers each evening, and taking two hot showers a day, another guest brought news of a sing-sing being held thirty miles away.
Sing-sings were Papua New Guinea’s ultimate spectacle of male vanity, a Stone Age version of NFL football or Brooklyn bar mitzvah. They were also celebrations: of marriage, or a son’s return from the university at Moresby, or an unexpected (i.e., sorcery-assisted) recovery from an illness. The men painted themselves all over, primped like Miss America contestants, stripped the forests of Bird of Paradise plumage, and generally made any woman in sight seem a dull sparrow indeed.
This sing-sing, according to Beth (Vreiland, a schoolteacher from Perth) would include a pig kill. Pigs were the traditional measure of wealth here in the highlands, nurtured and sheltered and made more of than a family’s child. Men might own them, but women raised them, sleeping with them, coddling them, even (rumor had it) nursing piglets at their breasts. And although protein was scarce here, a boar was valued as much for its tusks as for the meat itself.
Beth was nervous, but Linda leapt at the chance. She went to consult with Mrs. Carver, font of all Hagen knowledge, and came away with the keys to the local schoolteacher’s ancient four-wheel-drive Subaru, a box of provisions, and a hand-drawn map. Early the next morning she and Beth drove off into the bush.
Where they got lost. Easy enough to do, with no signposts and little paving. Still, as she assured Beth, it was only thirty miles, and they both spoke enough Pidgin to get by.
But the third time they got lost, the car sputtered and died, in the least populous bit of track they’d struggled through since leaving Hagen.
The starter whined, and they sat, debating options—rather, Beth debated options with herself while Linda kept her mouth firmly shut lest an un-Christian sentiment escape. She knew more or less where she was: they just had to finish sliding down the hillside into the river and grind their way up the other side, and she told her passenger this. Beth unhelpfully pointed out that, while sliding down to the river was certainly an option, the only thing grinding up the other side would be their teeth.
“Help you ladies?”
They both yelped at the plummy English voice at their backs, and whirled to peer into the gathering gloom, where Linda saw, with a sensation of inevitability, Gordon Hugh-Kendrick, dressed as before except for proper shoes on his feet and a lightly laden bilum over his shoulder.
She found her voice first. “We were headed for the sing-sing, but the car seems to have other ideas. I think something’s broken.”
He nodded at the hood. “Pop the bonnet.” Linda searched around for the latch and pulled it, and he disappeared into the engine, which succumbed to his charm within moments—even internal combustion could not resist this man for long. What did take her aback was finding that her ill-tempered companion had submitted as easily as the Subaru. When he let the hood drop on the sweetly humming engine, Beth all but batted her eyelashes at him.
He gave her a distracted smile and turned to Linda. “Do you know where you’re going, then?”
“I thought we did, but the instructions for Holyoke must have been wrong.”
“You’re only one turn off the mark. Shall I show you?”
“Where were you heading?”
“That’s as good as any. I’ll catch a ride back to Hagen from there.”
“But where’s your car?”
“Oh, I’m on foot.”
Linda glanced at his shoes, which were rimed with a grayish mud and spattered with betel, and wondered how long he’d been on wokabaut.
“Would you like to drive?” She threw open her door before he could refuse. Gordon dropped his bilum through the rear window—it seemed to hold nothing but an orange, a handful of peanuts, and a change of shirt—and slid behind the wheel, turning the Subaru around in a space Linda would have sworn was too small. Half a mile back up the track he launched the car at a sparsely grown patch between two enormous trees—and there was the road to Holyoke.
Linda let out the breath she’d been holding for the last half hour. Spending a night in a car with the jungle pressing in, even with a resourceful Brit on hand to conjure up fire and food, was not an enticing sleeping arrangement. She was grateful for the simple meal that followed, and for the unoccupied corner of a mission bedroom.
She didn’t hear where Gordon planned to sleep—in the car, for all she knew. The missionaries had greeted him as a long-lost rogue of a son, but when they asked if he wanted a bed for the night, he shook his head and said he’d got some friends to stay with, then slipped away before they could press him further.
Beth snored.
Life stirred outside the mission houses long before dawn, a growing ripple of noises and movement. When the sun rose, Linda joined it, following voices to the kitchen. There she found her hosts with an enormous pot of tea on the table and Gordon Hugh-Kendrick in a chair, exchanging local news. He was clean-shaven and his thin hair had been combed, but his eyes were bloodshot and he gave off a powerful aroma of hut-smoke: his friends had been locals.
Breakfast was reconstituted eggs and some of the rock-like but highly nutritious biscuits that the mission wives were experimenting with, an attempt to make something tasty out of the peanut. Gordon shot her a look of commiseration as she accepted one.
Mrs. Wilson pronounced judgment. “They need salt. Don’t you agree?”
Gordon nodded, his mouth somewhat preoccupied with inadequately ground peanuts.
“Now, as you know, Gordon,” the missionary went on, “we’re trying to come up with nutrition that doesn’t have to be brought in. The women here can grind the nuts with a mortar and pestle, even cook it on a heated rock if they haven’t a pan, but I can hardly ask them to use half a teaspoon of Morton’s iodized.”
Gordon washed the mouthful down with a manly swallow of the excellent local coffee, and managed speech. “Well, it is edible without salt.”
“So I was wondering if you could get me some from a salt pond?”
His face wen
t wary. “Why? I mean, why me?”
“I keep asking our people about pond salt, but no one has any.”
“I imagine they have it, it’s just so laborious to produce. It’s also pretty nasty stuff. Mostly ashes. It won’t improve your biscuits any.”
But Mrs. Wilson was determined, so Gordon said he’d try to come up with some. Personally, Linda thought that even with Morton’s, the biscuits would be better fed to the pigs and turned into pork roast.
The sing-sing began as soon as Reverend Wilson finished his Sunday morning service—forty minutes, start to finish; in Linda’s experience, a record from an evangelical. The congregation spilled out of the open-sided church, the men making for their outdoor dressing rooms, the drums summoning the crowd, the doomed pigs squealing from their stakes along the side of the rough football field.
Down in Moresby, Linda had been told, sing-sings were put on for the tourists, with clans of men in similar costumes—Goroka mudmen in one place, others festooned with shells from near the sea, highland clans sporting variations on the same brilliant feathers and rich furs. Here, it was every man for himself. Strings of shells or huge shell breastplates covered every chest. Pig tusks were given pride of place. Feathers from emu to Bird of Paradise bristled out of every headdress; every man’s septum was pierced by tusk, shell, or feather; every solemn face was covered by paint of every pigment under the heavens. There were even design iconoclasts, such as the man with half a dozen Bic pens arrayed in his headdress, or the man with dozens of tiny plastic baby dolls around his neck. Ironically, this evocation of the goddess Kali was one of the few costumes that didn’t carry with it a trace of threat: those painted and bewigged figures were gorgeous, sure, but they were also really spooky.
Beth had brought her camera, with enough film to stock a convenience store. Gordon was there for a while, standing among the missionaries and chatting politely, or squatting on his heels with the locals. Linda soon lost sight of him, but he was back again in the evening, when the smoke of the cook-fires gave an air of the netherworld to the slaughtering of pigs. The sounds were appalling, shrill squeals followed by the meaty thuds of killing clubs, but in the end the hunks and quarters were ceremonially distributed, clan by clan. Lengthy speeches were made, and the dancing picked up again. Drums and shouts continued through the night, with the vibration of dancing feet rising through Linda’s thin mattress.
The next morning, everything started anew—if anything, the energy was building, and apparently would for days. Linda had regretted promising to get back for the Wednesday plane, but by Tuesday morning, after two days of sensory overload and three ill-slept nights, she did not regret having to leave. Unfortunately, Beth was not interested.
Linda stared at her. “What do you mean, you’re not going back?” Would she have to make that drive through the bush all by herself?
“Not for a day or two. I, er, I heard there’s a new group coming in tomorrow. I thought I’d photograph them.”
Linda narrowed her gritty eyes at Beth, who had spent much of the previous day with a good-looking young pastor. “You mean you don’t want to leave Father Harmon yet.”
“Yeah, okay, I’m interested in seeing more of him. What of it?”
Only someone like Beth, Linda reflected, would come to highland PNG in search of a mate. She shook her head. “Okay, I’ll ask around and see if there’s anyone interested in a ride to Hagen.”
“Gordon’s probably ready to leave.” Beth all but waggled her eyebrows at the suggestion.
“I doubt it,” Linda said repressively. She was not in the market for a husband.
However, Gordon was indeed ready to go, or would be at noon. By which time Linda was more than happy to hand him the Subaru keys, letting the drums, whistles, bells, songs, and squeals fade behind them.
Linda dozed, head thumping against the door frame as they climbed and descended a series of hills. It wasn’t until they forded a stream that she woke.
“This isn’t the way we came.” Oh, Linda, nagged her mother’s voice in her head. What have you done, setting off into the back of beyond with a strange man?
“No, but it’s not much further, and I thought you might like to see a salt pond. Since I promised Mrs. Wilson.”
“The substitute for Morton’s? What are they, anyway?”
“Patches of salty mud, basically.”
“Attractive.”
“The body requires sodium. And although one would think that trade with the coast would be a simple matter, it being less than a hundred miles away, as I’m sure you’ve seen the highlands are like a thousand tiny nations. What is it—a tenth of a percent of the world’s land, with more than twelve percent of its total languages? This country’s most basic characteristic is xenophobia. Trade with the coast is hard. Thus, one takes salt in whatever form one can find it.”
“I saw a lot of sea-shells back there.”
“Some of which represent a family’s yearly income.”
Surely, she thought, if this Englishman intended to leave my ravaged body under a tree, he wouldn’t have begun by driving off in full view of twenty missionaries and some four hundred locals? “So why do they do it?”
“Wear shells?”
“The sing-sing. It seems an expensive sort of party. Like the families who go into debt for a wedding.”
“It’s less a party than a military campaign.” Gordon had stretched forward to peer over the wheel as their route climbed sharply up from the stream-bed, and now settled back as they successfully emerged from the jungle onto what looked like a mountain-goat track beaten into the side of a cliff.
“Sorry?” Linda was somewhat preoccupied by needing to hold the car to the track by fervent prayer and willpower.
“A sing-sing is sublimated warfare. Highland society is built on war—raids, alliances, stealing women, killing the men—probably eating them, at least in part—and raising the children as their own. Then the waitpela came and said, No, you can’t do that any longer. So now the clans wage economic war instead. Like the potlatch of your Pacific Northwest: throw a huge feast for your neighbors—your primary rivals—and you’re not only one up on them, they’re forced to stage an even greater feast, which if you’re lucky will force them to borrow and go into debt for the next generation or two. Fifty years ago, the big men might have had a collection of human skulls in their homes. Today they all wear the omak—you saw those? That bib made from pitpit cane? Each length of pitpit represents participation in a pig kill. Ten lengths would be the sign of a wealthy man.”
The bib worn by the head man of the pig kill—a man with six inches of pig tusk through his nose—had stretched down to his leaf-apron. Linda thought about it, then chuckled aloud.
Gordon glanced at her. “It’s true!”
“No doubt. I was just thinking, what if the US and Russia adopted potlatch warfare?”
His face wore a smile as he turned back to the goat-track. “Aerial bombardment of canned hams and television sets.”
“And for a really big strike, they’d drop an entire school or hospital: Take that, Commie scum!”
“Might have made quite a difference in Vietnam.”
At last—the chance to learn something about Gordon Hugh-Kendrick that was not rumor. “Were you there? In Vietnam?”
“I was, yes.” It was either a reluctant admission, or Gordon was uncertain about the Y-junction ahead. He chose the right-hand track. “Three years as a military—”
But she was not to hear what his role in that bloody conflict had been, because with an exclamation she hadn’t heard for months, Gordon slammed his foot onto the brake and fought the little car to a standstill between the Charybdis of the river below and Scylla in the form of a four-foot-tall, leaf-clad individual with a spear in his hand, who materialized on their left. They missed hitting him, and missed becoming airborne; after a while, her heart settled back into place.
The local had not moved a hair; the front bumper had stopped two inches from t
he planted spear.
With admirable English aplomb, Gordon cleared his throat. “Gudai, yupela.”
The small black figure replied, not with a “Good day” of his own, but with a statement. “Mipela painim onepela waitpela long raunwara bilong sol. Em i dai.”
“I dai?” Linda repeated in disbelief. The man was informing them—informing Gordon—that a dead white man had been found in a salt pond. However, i dai, which literally meant he’s dead, could also simply indicate that someone was sick or injured.
But the local continued, “Em I dai pinis.”
To “die finish” meant at the very least that the white man was mightily ill.
Gordon’s face was a study in…actually, Linda couldn’t tell what he was thinking. It looked almost like chagrin—but perhaps he was just wrestling with how to protect her sensibilities. He stretched an arm over the seat to grab his bilum. “You go on without me. If you head straight for a half mile, the track gets—”
“Oh, no. I’ll go with you. I’m a trained nurse—I might be able to help.”
He protested, but Linda already had the car’s first-aid kit in her hand and the door open. She had no intention of driving ten feet down that slick path, much less half a mile—although Gordon, having watched her inch her way around the car to solid ground, appeared to credit her more with fearlessness than its opposite.
Without a word, the local settled his stone axe more firmly into his vine belt and set off down the left-hand side of the Y. Gordon threw up his hands, then took the first-aid kit from Linda and followed on his heels, leaving Linda to keep up with them. Half a mile along, they left the track to climb a trail as slippery as greased glass, then pushed through impenetrable bush to the accompaniment of cries from unseen birds and the buzz of a thousand varieties of insect. Twenty minutes later the bush opened up and the unlikely trio stood looking at an expanse of swampy gray water with a lot of dead tree-trunks in it, some lying flat, others hammered upright to fence off squares of various sizes. Three sulky little fires smoldered on the opposite bank, the smoke drifting around Gordon and half a dozen locals who were looking down at something in the water. Linda joined them, then wished she hadn’t.
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