Getting Stoned With Savages - J. Maarten Troost [15]
We spent a long, silent moment absorbing the situation. This was the most remote corner of Efate. We were miles and miles of hard trekking from the nearest village. We had not seen another vehicle all day, and it being Sunday, we were unlikely to encounter one until the following day. We had, very possibly, damaged someone else’s truck. We were stuck in mud.
“Don’t you just hate it when good days go bad,” I said.
With sighs of resignation, we opened the doors and plopped down into the mud, a viscous, gooey mass of brown slime that embraced us up to our shins. The back wheels were deeply implanted, and even more worrying was the ridge of thick mud and rock upon which the truck’s frame rested, with the front wheels only lightly grazing the ground. It was eerily quiet, even the birds and bugs choosing to remain silent in the midafternoon heat. We suddenly felt very much alone, far removed from everything except our problem.
There was nothing else to do but to start digging. From either side of the truck, we attacked the berm with our hands, scraping aside the mire, flinging most of it upon ourselves.
“You look like the Creature from the Black Lagoon,” Sylvia commented a short while later as we took a short break from our excavations.
“You should talk.”
Soon, we were both encrusted in thick layers of primeval muck that oozed as it mixed with rivulets of sweat. As we drained the contents of our last remaining water bottle, flies appeared, seemingly out of nowhere, and soon they began to pester us with shocking rapacity. We returned to our digging, periodically pausing to slap ourselves senseless in a futile effort at murdering these swarms of misery. I resolved that if we ever had children, I would show them how amusing it is to pluck the wings off flies.
After much effort, the rear wheels were cleared of about as much mud and debris as we could manage, and I set about foraging for fallen coconut fronds, hoping that they could provide sufficient traction for us to extract the truck. Stepping into the crunchy detritus of fallen leaves and branches, I noticed an assortment of small lizards scattering hither and thither, and it was only with determined effort that I managed to refrain from hightailing it up a tree. What a pansy-ass city boy I had become in Washington, I thought. I wondered if there might be a large boa constrictor lurking underfoot, just waiting for a serendipitous encounter, and shuddered grimly at the thought. Soon, however, as I pulled a few long fronds toward the truck, it was the mosquitoes that were driving me toward the brink. The buzz in my ears was followed by the ringing of my ears as I battered myself in a hopeless quest to stem my blood loss. With each puncture, a dozen flies would feed on the welt, leaving me stewing and foaming, quietly muttering, fucking tropics.
“Are you being attacked by mosquitoes?” I asked Sylvia.
“Yes,” she said, “which is why I’m going to sit inside the truck now.”
“Ah…perhaps you’d like to turn on the air conditioner too, maybe find something pleasant to listen to on the radio, perhaps read a magazine.”
“My thinking exactly.”
“Just one question before you retire. Is there malaria on Efate?”
“Only on north Efate.”
“I see…But we’re on north Efate.”
“Which is why I’m going to sit inside the truck now.”
Sylvia closed the door with a satisfied thud. Then she rolled down the window. “I’ve decided that getting a truck out of the mud is man’s work.”
“Have you now?”
“Yes. And see, you’re a man, so I think it’s very simple.” And with that she rolled up the window.
Why was it, I wondered, that this was always a one-way conversation. How come You’re the woman. Now go get me a beer never worked. But You’re the man. It’s your job to fix the faucet, mow the lawn, get the truck out of the mud, and so on was always