The Cuckoo Colloquium

46 - Dim

The boat, a six-seater, was a loaner from his cousin, and it didn't have life preservers, which wasn't safe-not for tourists, anyway. And it was going way too fast ... But Dim liked fast boats.

He had a new pack of Gudang Garam clove cigarettes in his I-Got-Laid-In-Thailand T-shirt pocket. And with one of the clove cigarettes burning in his hand, Dim kept the other hand on the wheel (which was at the bow, not at the stern) and called back to his passengers, "We go to Cuckoo Camp, have farewell party!"

He had the Canadian girl, Nini and the English boy, Puso, both with their faces in plates of fried spring rolls and the Nasi Lemak (rice cooked in coconut milk), and he drove the vessel at its top speed-which was the fastest he'd ever taken a boat.

"Bario rice makes best rice in Malaysia," he crowed over the sound of the motor, "very sweet!"

"I was the chief of a forgotten tribe," Puso hooted as he ate.

"I think they remember okay," Dim called back, though he didn't want to sound dismissive.

The tribe had dropped Puso off at a copper mine, and someone there had sent the word out on a missing tourist from Cuckoo Camp.

"Everybody receive Certificate Of Completion!"

At Dim's cousin's house, they had also received word from the airfield about Nini's location-both places easily accessed by the waterways he had grown up navigating, as the density of the forest always made rivers the key conduits of travel.

Dim picked Puso up first. Then, together, the two teens parked the boat and tramped over to the airfield by the falls.

But Nini wouldn't come out of the little hut.

"The ants ate my clothes!" she wailed from behind the door.

So Puso passed over his ratty shirt, and Dim gave up his jeans-though he wasn't thrilled about motoring around in only his underpants and T-shirt

"You receives welcome drink, enjoys farewell party!"

He listened, pants-less, to the two teens compete with each other to tell their stories. Nini shouted about some French tourists, and about getting drunk on their wine. But the amazing part of her tale involved a little English-speaking bird she swore cured her of the ugly parasite in her eye.

"I've decided not to sue the rain forest," she announced, "I feel everyone's done a decent job of preserving the natural habitat-considering the pressures, the pesticides, the poaching, the greed..."

Was that a compliment? Dim squirmed, restless with no trousers.

"Everybody at Cuckoo Camp, everybody fine. Doctor there, everybody there; Moonch sleeping like she never gonna wake up. But everybody good."

The small lies were necessary. He still had to find three more colloquium members, and wondered if it was possible to do.

"They need a chieftess, not a chief," Nini said, cutting into Puso's tale of the competition for tribe leadership, "somebody not terrified by a few flying bugs."

"You just want me to stop, so you can continue your story," Puso shot back, "which you think is better-because it involves you!"

Dim sighed at the wheel. The kids were arguing again. How they still had the vigor to spar he didn't know. Their rain forest experience was supposed to-how did it go? - Provide authentic challenges for troubled teens - They were supposed to come away with new perspectives. But whatever these kids were learning, Dim just couldn't say.

But wait! - That assumption was wrong, because Puso then started talking oddly: "I've never been near Cambridge, and I've certainly never been to Africa," he hollered, "I'm a pathological cheater and liar-but I'm working on it!"

Puso nodded pensively, like this was a good thing, and Dim nodded, too, as if he understood the importance of the admission (though it sounded to Dim that the teens were still vying with each other, even in their confessions).

Dim turned his attention to the river ... Because the two kids in back then huddled, and giggled, and touched each other with love-love gestures, lacking the tenseness that usually ran between them like taut piano wires.

"You get nice Christmas gifts!" Dim shouted over the motor, just for something to say, because such overt affection was embarrassing him ...

The 'nice Christmas gifts' - Well, that was another small lie: He knew the gifts were just worthless tourist trinkets.

But as far as the real gifts were concerned, the life-altering ones, Dim sensed these two colloquium members (now kissing in the back of the boat!) had already received them.