Kanana Read online

  Deciding that the best course of action would be to return to the tree house and wait for Kanana, I started back the way we had come. The jungle trees were alive with life, from buzzing insects to howling monkeys and squawking birds. Either the sights and sounds distracted me, or I just lost my way, but just when I thought I should be arriving at the arboreal dwelling, I stepped out onto the shore of a large river. It was as large as the river I had navigated on my steamer trunk. It could have been the same river for all I knew.

  I didn’t want anything to do with the river, knowing the dangers, especially since I had already washed and drunk from the little stream. As I turned to leave however, a huge form shot out of the water and a great reptilian mouth snapped down. The crocodile’s jaws closed, missing me, and for a split second, I congratulated myself on my luck. Then the beast jerked its head to the left and clamped down on my leg just below my knee. It had me, and it immediately dragged me into the water. I tried to grab at something on shore, but I could no more stop him from taking me than a trout, once hooked on a lure at the end of a rod and reel, could have prevented me from pulling him into a net.

  Suddenly, a form fell from the sky. Kanana had flown from the branches of a nearby tree, dropping right onto the crocodiles back. Before the beast, which had to weigh well over a ton, could move, she jammed her knife through its thickly armored skull and into its brain. The crocodile stopped moving and just floated. The jungle girl grasped its snout and pried the jaws apart, freeing me.

  “River not good!” she growled at me.

  We left the shoreline and she guided me back to the little pool. My heart was still pumping and I felt as though I could have run back to Abbeyport. Such are the effects of discovering one is still alive after having been sure of the reverse. When I sat down though, not only did I feel light-headed, I noticed my trouser leg had a large bloodstain. Kanana lifted it to examine my calf. There were a dozen round tooth marks, all bleeding.

  “Henry Goode not listen,” she said angrily. “Henry stay.”

  She left again, but returned in a few minutes with more mysterious jungle plants. I watched her carefully this time as she doctored me. I thought I might be able to recognize those plants if I saw them again. They had peculiar spade-shaped leaves. She chewed them up to make a paste and stuck it on my wounds, and then made a bandage with the already soiled portion of my trouser leg.

  “I’m going to run out of pants.”

  “Pants?”

  I pointed to indicate the word’s definition. This led to me teaching her the words for shirt, socks, belt, and shoes. Kanana was particularly interested in my footwear and bid me take them off. She smelled the inside and wrinkled her nose.

  “No shoes one day,” she pronounced. “Shoes too water.”

  “Too wet,” I corrected, and then lifted the shoe to my nose.

  The odor was indicative of the first stages of foot rot, a malady that I had faced while trudging through the swamps of Cuba. It would indeed be a good idea to spend a day barefoot, allowing my shoes and socks to dry out completely. Once I had removed the shoes, she cut slits in the sides with her knife to allow for drainage.

  Kanana guided me back to the tree house, where I sat back and relaxed as she started a roaring fire. She had been back there already, apparently while I was blundering around the jungle, and had a small, butchered animal ready for the fire. She guided me back to the sleeping area, as the aroma of cooking meat filled the air. As I lay down, she straddled my chest and leaned down to kiss me on the lips. For having only learned how to perform the activity the day before, she was remarkably accomplished.

  “Henry trouble,” said Kanana.

  I had to admit that it did often seem to be the case.

  The animal that Kanana had killed and cooked turned out to be a small tapir, and it tasted enough like pork that I could convince myself I was enjoying a roast at home. Alas, there were no potatoes, there was no gravy, and there were no Brussels sprouts. Still, having been living on relatively sparse rations my entire time in Elizagaea, it was a welcome feast. Afterwards I climbed into bed and drifted off to sleep with no dream whatever, for which I was grateful.

  * * * * *

  “You’ve made quite an impression on Trudy,” said Preston Quincy as he handed me a cigar.

  “She’s made quite an impression on me.”

  He handed me the clipper and after inhaling the tobacco aroma, I used it to clip the end. As I stuck the belvedere in my mouth, I reached for my lighter, but he raised his hand.

  “Only wooden matches, my boy.”

  He pulled a match from a holder on his desk and held it up for me after striking it on a brass bust of John Adams. I pushed the fine tobacco to the flame, taking half a dozen quick puffs.

  “When are you planning on making her an honest woman?”

  “Sir?”

  “Oh, I know you’ve only been courting her a short time, but this is the twentieth century. People don’t wait that long anymore. Besides, I’m anxious for an heir.”

  “We haven’t really discussed it,” I said.

  “Well, I want you to know that you have my blessing. I couldn’t imagine her finding a better man among the privileged young fools in our usual circle.”

  “Thank you, sir.”

  “Take your time. Wait for the right moment to ask her. Just don’t wait too long.”

  Chapter Eight: The Sloth

  We stayed in the tree house for three more days. I spent most of that time up in the tree, but wasn’t completely the pampered pet I often felt myself to be. When Kanana brought home food, I sometimes prepared it, and since I knew much more about the art of cooking than she did, I at least found my own cooking more palatable. I spent more than a few hours teaching words to Kanana, and she was an attentive and energetic pupil. She also took to kissing me often. I don’t know how often she thought of her mating idea, but for me, with her running around unclothed; it was hard to think of anything else. She was no longer covered with a thick layer of mud, but had dusted herself with reddish tan dirt. The effect was to make her look even more naked than she was, as impossible as that sounds. And I began to realize just how strong Kanana was. She would run and jump and lift things that would have been a challenge for a strong man, let alone a woman. She was slender, but beneath her skin were muscles like steel coils. Still, every part of her seemed to fit so well together that I couldn’t imagine her being anything but what she was. Every once in a while, she would ask me a question.

  “Where Henry Goode’s home?”

  “It was in Boston… America. I suppose I don’t really have a home now.”

  “There Giwa… el-eph-ants in Boston?”

  “No, no elephants in Boston. Neither are there any lions or crocodiles. No hippopotamuses either.”

  “Hippo-po-po?”

  I cupped my hands by my ears and flipped them around to imitate the ears of a hippo.

  “Dornar,” she said, nodding. “Dornar danger.”

  On the fourth day after the crocodile attack, Kanana examined my leg and pronounced me on the way to recovery. I had been watching the teeth wounds fairly closely myself and was both pleased and surprised that there seemed to be no sign of infection. I knew from firsthand experience that infection could kill a man deader than a bullet or a knife.

  We climbed down the tree and walked through the forest, back to the edge of the grassland. Skirting along the edge of the trees, we traveled in what I calculated to be a roughly southeast direction. The elephants that I had seen here previously were gone, but there were plenty of other animals.

  Near noon, we found a large log lying across our path. Turning it over, Kanana stabbed around in the rotting wood with her knife, and then reached down to pull out a large scorpion. She held it out toward me.

  “Henry eat.”

  “Eat? Eat that? I cannot imagine any circumstance in which I would put that in my mouth. It would sting me.”

  “Kanana cut harbi.” She held it closer
to my face. It’s tiny pincers snapped. “See? No sting.”

  “I shall not eat that,” I said.

  She shrugged and popped it into her mouth. She chomped down on the arachnid and a bit of its insides squirted out from between her lips. She scooped them back into her mouth with a finger, chewed several times, and then swallowed.

  “Does it taste good?” I asked.

  “No,” she replied simply, and turning, continued onward.

  An hour later, we stopped to rest beneath a small tree that sat out on the grass away from the rest of the forest. The sun was warm, but the little tree provided enough shade. I was just starting to feel drowsy, when Kanana got up and stepped over to a small green plant growing amid the brown grass. Kneeling down, she dug into the ground with her knife. I stepped over to watch her. About twelve inches below the surface, she uncovered two large tubers. Cutting them away from their roots, she pulled the vegetables out and peeled them.

  “Henry eat,” she said, handing me one.

  I took a bite to find something very much like a mild radish, but with a much greater water content.

  “This is good,” I said, feeling my thirst quenched more than my hunger abated. “I’m getting hungry.”

  “Kanana say eat harbi-togo. Henry not eat.”

  “We don’t eat bugs where I come from.”

  “Not in Boston,” said the jungle girl. “In Boston we eat what Henry say. In Kanana’s land we eat what Kanana say.”

  A loud bellow a short distance away brought all conversation to a halt. We looked up to see a great shaggy form lumbering toward us. It looked like a frightening cross between a bear and a horse, and though it wasn’t quite as big as Giwa, it was fully as large as the bull elephants of Africa. Though I had never seen one alive, I knew from my visits to the Boston Society of Natural History what it was. It was a megatherium or giant sloth. I also knew that it was a plant eater.

  As I watched, it stood up on its hind legs, stretching to a height of twenty feet, and bellowed again. Kanana grabbed me by the sleeve and jerked me almost off my feet.

  “Run,” she hissed.

  “It’s a sloth.”

  The gigantic monster shifted from its slow walk to a sort of jog. Still holding onto my sleeve, she turned and ran toward the trees, pulling me along with her. I stumbled a few steps, but regained my footing and ran along with her. Looking over my shoulder, I could see that we were easily outdistancing the megatherium, and I wasn’t running as fast as I was able, so I knew that Kanana wasn’t.

  “It’s big and all, but it’s a herbivore, isn’t it?”

  “Utuga bad all the time. Utuga kill lion. Utuga kill Giwa. Utuga eat plants, trees. Sometimes eat meat.” She slowed to a brisk walk as we reached the tree line. “Henry eat what Kanana say. Henry run when Kanana say.”

  Peering out from between the trees revealed that the giant sloth had lost interest in us, and was wandering toward another part of the forest. I watched as it found its intended target, reached up, and with tremendously long claws, stripped a large branch of its leaves. I had to admit that those claws would have made short work of a man, if they were able to get hold of him.

  We stayed closer to the woods the rest of the day, and just before sunset, Kanana called a halt to our journey. She ordered me to build a fire while she procured dinner, and she returned carrying one of the small Elizagaean deer just as I was breathing life to a spark. By the time I had a roaring fire, our meat was spitted and placed above it. The jungle girl then constructed a hammock from small trees, stripped of their leaves and slung between two larger ones.

  She sliced long well cooked strips of meat from the carcass.

  “Henry… eat,” she said with emphasis.

  “Yes ma’am,” I replied, though I really needed no encouragement at that point.

  As we ate, I mused on my memories of the Boston Society of Natural History. The encounter with the sloth had brought it all back to me, and now I thought about the wildlife that I had seen in a different context. The museum had featured the remains of sloths and many saber tooth cats, huge ones as well as the leopard-sized ones I had seen on the plains. The great lion Kawunsa would have been about the same proportion as the cave lion, whose remains had been carefully preserved by the paleontologists. And finally Giwa, the great elephant, so much larger than his African cousin, was of the exact same proportions and dimensions of the Columbian Mammoth. He was not covered with thick hair, but then we no longer lived in an ice age.

  The hammock was small, and when we climbed in, after we had finished eating, it formed around us, pushing us together. Kanana wrapped her arm across my chest and pressed her face against my neck. When she was up and moving around, she seemed larger—larger than life, really. But that night, she seemed so much smaller than me. I felt protective of her, as ridiculous as that might be given our experiences up to that point. Wrapping my arm around her shoulders, I fell asleep.

  It was well into the night when suddenly, I found myself falling and then landing hard on my back. I sat up and looked around, realizing only then that my pistol was in my hand. Something had alerted me, even as I slept, that something was not as it should be. All was darkness except for the bright embers of the fire pit and an occasional tiny flame whipped to life by the gentle breeze. The hammock had broken and I had fallen out. But where was Kanana? I looked around, but the jungle girl was nowhere to be seen.

  * * * * *

  I gazed across the table at Trudy. The light from the candles on the table flickered in her eyes. The waiter set her plate in front of her, then removed the stainless steel dome revealing the pork roast, potatoes, and buttered brussels sprouts. He poured gravy from a boat over her potatoes, and then went through the same procedure with my meal.

  “You should have ordered something different,” she said.

  “I always plan to, but then I hear you order, and it always sounds so good.”

  “You should be more independent.”

  “Is that what you want in a man?” I asked. “Is that what your old beaus were like?”

  “I don’t want to talk about the past,” she replied with a wave. “I’m all about the future.”

  “So am I. I’m going to go out and buy an automobile tomorrow.”

  “Wonderful!” Her eyes lit up and she leaned forward so much I was afraid her hair would catch fire on a candle. “What kind?”

  “A Parry, of course.”

  We spent most of the dinner talking about motorcars. It seemed one of the few passions we shared, not that I was worried about common interests. Men and women had their own circles of endeavor in Boston. Finally the waiter cleared away the dishes and brought out the bombe. As he sliced it, and placed a portion before each of us, I watched Trudy examine the layers of strawberries, ice cream, and cookies. She stabbed her fork down through the top of it, and brought a large bite to her brightly painted lips. She enjoyed sweets more than most other women, and she quickly finished her dessert. I barely touched mine.

  As soon as the waiter had cleared the dishes and uneaten dessert away, I slid out from my chair and knelt down beside her. Pulling the small ring box from my breast pocket, I opened it and held it out toward her.

  “Trudy, will you do me the honor of becoming my wife?”

  “Yes,” she said, smiling delightedly.

  Chapter Nine: Captive

  I had a terrible time getting any sleep the remainder of the night, but by morning I had convinced myself that there was nothing to worry about. The jungle girl had left me before, I reminded myself, and she had always returned. She was probably hunting another meal for us. When the sun came up, I busied myself with my morning rituals and then sat down to wait.

  When she had not returned by what I judged to be eleven in the morning, I decided that I could make myself useful. Kanana had fed me fruits back at her fortress. Therefore, there must be fruit available for the picking in the jungle. I would search the immediate area and see what I could add to our shared meals
. I searched for about two hours, but found no fruit, no mushrooms, no vegetables. The only thing I found to eat was a scorpion and I was no more inclined to put it in my mouth than I had been the day before, when Kanana had found its twin.

  After mashing the urine-colored creature beneath my boot, I looked around and realized that I had no idea where I was. I had wandered out of sight of the fire pit and the broken hammock, and I could no longer see through the trees to the savannah beyond. We had set up just inside the boundary of the trees, so it should have been an easy proposition to find the boundary between forest and grassland, if not my campsite. This was assuming of course that I knew which direction either of them lay.

  I thought that the grassland was south of the forest. Had Christopher Columbus been correct and the world round, it would have been easy enough to navigate by using the sun, but as the sun is always directly overhead, it was no help at all. I had heard that moss grew on the north sides of trees, but for the life of me, I could find no moss. Therefore I made my best guess and started through the trees. After walking for an hour, I decided that I was walking in a circle. This was the fate of one moving through a forest or swamp without a fixed point of destination. Everyone has a dominant foot and they, usually without realizing it, tend toward that direction. I had learned a remedy for such a situation when I was in the jungles of Cuba.

  I cut a tall but narrow sapling and stripped it of leaves and branches. Then laying it down, I followed it as though I was following a compass needle. Then I reached the end, I picked it up and laid it down again. I was creating a path for myself and this kept me from turning one way or the other. It did slow me down quite a bit though, and it was late afternoon when I finally saw the savannah through the trees.