T. Boyle - T.C. Boyle Stories II - Volume II

So I said, “Yeah, I’m here,” expecting Poonam, expecting gin, religion, and a sweet little roll of belly flesh I could almost taste with the tip of a stiff tongue going south, and who should part the flaps but Candi Berkee, my co-worker from New Jersey whose presence there, in my tent in the West Garo Hills, was a real testimony to Verizon’s commitment to equal-opportunity employment.

“Hi,” she said.

“’S up?” I said.

She gave a sort of full-body shrug, her lips crushed together under the weight of her nose and the Matrix- style shades that never left her face, then ducked through the flaps and flopped down in my camp chair. Which was piled high with six or seven sedimentary layers of used socks, underwear, and T-shirts I refrained from tossing on the floor for fear of what might end up living inside them. “I don’t know,” she said, dropping her face as if she were emptying a pan of dishwater, “I’m just bored. This is a boring place. The most boring place in the world. Number one. Know what I mean?”

It wasn’t that she was unattractive — bodywise, she was off the charts — but there was something about her that irritated me, and it went beyond her unrelenting whining about the heat, the mosquitoes, the food, the tedium, and anything else she could think of. For one thing, she was a militant vegetarian who regarded anyone who even thought of hunting as the lowest of the low, a step below the average Al Qaeda terrorist (“At least they believe in something”). For another, her taste in music — Britney, Whitney, and Mariah — was as pathetic as you could get. The fact that she was in my tent was a strong indicator that everybody else must have gone into Tura, the nearest excuse for a city. Either that or committed suicide.

I didn’t respond. The cot cupped my bones. She was wearing shorts and a bikini top, and there was a bright sheen of sweat on her exposed flesh that made her look as if she’d been greased for the flagpole event at the county fair. The birds started in again: screech, screech, screech.

“You want to smoke out?”

She knew I had pot. I knew she had pot. Everybody had pot. The whole country was made out of it. I was about to beg off on the grounds that I had to keep my senses sharp for putting bullets into whatever might be creeping down to the river to sneak a drink, be it muntjac or macaque, but thought better of it — I was in no mood for a lecture. “Nah,” I said finally, sucking all the enthusiasm out of my voice. “I don’t think so. Not today.”

“Why not?” She shoved her sweat-limp hair out of her eyes and gave me an accusatory look. “Come on, don’t be a pussy. Help me out here. I’m bored. Did I tell you that? Bored with a capital B. ”

I don’t know whether the birds cut off before or after the sound of a second pair of flip-flops came to me, but there it was — the slap, the shuffle, and then the give of the bamboo floor. “Hello?” Poonam’s voice. “Hello, Randall?”

Poonam wasn’t exactly overjoyed to see Candi there, and for her part, Candi wasn’t too thrilled either. I’d been up front with both of them about Jenny, but when you’re away from home and affection long enough, strange things begin to happen, and I suppose hunting can only take you so far. As a distraction, that is.

“Oh… hi,” Poonam murmured, shifting her eyes from me to Candi and back again. “I was just—” She looked down at the floor. “I was just coming for Randall, because the Wangala celebration is about to begin, or the drumming anyway — we won’t see the dancing till tomorrow, officially — and I wondered if, well” (up came the eyes, full and bright, like high beams on a dark country road), “if you wanted to come with me to the village and see what they’re doing — the ritual, I mean. Because it’s, well, I find it stimulating. And I think you would too, Randall.” She turned to Candi then, because Poonam was graceful and pretty and she had manners to spare. “And you too, Candi. You’re welcome too.”

—

I’m no expert, but from what Poonam told me, the Garos have a number of celebrations during the year, no different from the puffed-up Christians of Ottumwa and environs, and this one — Wangala — was a harvest festival. Think Thanksgiving, but a whole lot more primitive. Or maybe “rootsier” is a better word. Who are we thanking? God, supposedly, but in Ottumwa, it’s more like Walmart or Hy-Vee. The Garos, on the other hand, are doing obeisance to Saljong, god of fertility, who provides nature’s bounty in the forms of crops and fish and game. Of course, Poonam never did tell me what they expected to happen if they didn’t give their abundant thanks to this particular god, but I could guess.

Anyway, the three of us went down the hill to the village amidst the bird-screech and the smell of dung and cook-fires, and Candi fired up a bowl and passed it round and Poonam and I took our turns, because I figured, why not? The muntjacs could wait till tomorrow, and this, whatever it might turn out to be, was something different at least, not to mention the fact that Poonam was there at my side with her slim, smooth limbs and the revelation of flesh that defined her hipbones and navel. “Do you feel anything?” Candi kept saying. “You want to do another hit? Randall? Poonam?” Half a dozen chickens fanned out across the path and vanished in the undergrowth. The sun inflamed the trees.

In the village itself — foot-tamped dirt, cane and thatch huts on raised platforms of bamboo, lurking rack-ribbed dogs, more bird-screech — people were preparing the evening meal in their courtyards. The smoke was fragrant with curry and vindaloo, triggering my salivary glands to clench and clench again. A pig gave us a malicious look from beneath one of the huts and I couldn’t help laughing — the thing wouldn’t have even come up to the hocks of one of our Iowa hogs. “What are you talking, drums ?” Candi said. “I don’t hear any drums.”

Overhead, the high-voltage wires bellied between the electric poles, at least half of which we’d had to replace with the new high-resin-compound model that resists rot and termite damage, and you wouldn’t believe what the climate here can do to a piece of creosote-soaked wood stuck in the ground — but don’t get me started. Just looking at the things made my back ache. Poonam was about to say something in response, something cutting or at least impatient — I could tell from the way she bit her underlip — when all at once the drums started up from the rear of the village, where the bachelors had their quarters. There was a hollow booming and then a deeper thump that seemed to ignite a furious, palm-driven rhythm pulsing beneath it. Children began to sprint past us.

Instantly I was caught up in the excitement. I felt like a kid at the start of the Memorial Day parade, with the high school band warming up the snare drums, the horses beating at the pavement in impatience, and the mayor goosing his white Cadillac convertible with the beauty queen arrayed in back. I’d heard some of the local music before — my best bud in the village, Dakgipa, played a thing like an oversized recorder, and he could really do on it too, knocking out the melodies to “Smells Like Teen Spirit” and “Paranoid Android” as if he’d written them himself — but it was nothing like the ferment of those drums. I glanced at Poonam and she gave me a smile so muscular it showed all her bright, perfect teeth and lifted her right nostril so that her nose ring caught the light and winked at me. “All right,” I said. “Party time!”

And that was how it went. Everybody knew us — the Garos are not in the least bit standoffish or uptight or whatever you want to call it — and before long we were sitting cross-legged in the courtyard with plates of food in our laps and jars of rice beer in hand while the bachelors went at it on every sort of drum imaginable — the Ambengdama, the Chisakdama, Atong dama, Ruga and Chibok dama, the Nagra and Kram. And gongs. They were big on gongs too. Candi wouldn’t touch the food — she’d been down with one stomach ailment after another, right from orientation on — but she drained that beer as if she were at a kegger on Long Beach Island, while Poonam sat beside me on a clump of grass with her flawless posture and sweet, compressed smile.