Life had teeth, all right-Marilyn Moonch could feel them in her scalp at that very moment.
A python was trying to eat her, to digest her whole, and she could feel the deepening gashes on her scalp from the serpent's gripping teeth. The blood in her eyes told her that whatever was happening up on her head, the snake was winning...
It was a worthy opponent. They were of equal weight, and the reptile had her on height, stealth, speed; pretty much every category except one-a determination to stay alive.
Its tactics were also pissing her off-the snake had the nerve to try immobilizing Moonch by wrapping her up into some kind of Indian death lock. It was clear her opponent lacked experience in genuine wrestling maneuvers.
Zip! - That was the sound of Moonch using a quick leg to block the python's attempt to scissor her.
Then, while fighting the pressing weight of the creature, she managed to get to her knees. That was an important step, because then she could commence a rolling fireman's carry slam (also known as the Green Bay plunge)-if she could get to her feet...
More than anything, it was the insult that fueled her rage-No jungle beast was going to out-maneuver Moonch on the wrestling mat, so she became a one-hundred-and-seventy pound machine with serious attitude.
"Ugh!" - That was the sound of Moonch springing to her feet, more on instinct than on any real thought process. And as the snake adjusted to the situation, and then went for some jungle version of the double chicken wing, Moonch took a few steps and then...
Oomph! - She slammed her opponent's body to the jungle floor, landing on top of the python with all her weight.
"Uuuuu!" - She heard the beast grunt, or moan, as its mouth receded on her skull.
This was just what Moonch waited for-As the python's head withdrew from her own head, she grabbed it with her free arms and commenced a Tongan death grip on the stunned reptile.
Bam, Bam, Bam, Bam! - All the while she jumped on the thing with solid knee springs.
The python flicked its besieged body, then scrambled into some weak version of a guillotine choke hold. But it was too little, too late-the bell had tolled for this snake. It had never tangoed with a Tustin Tiller before.
As the serpent pounded the mat in its submission, Moonch felt kind of sorry for it. She released it, watching the python slither back into the night, no doubt to lick its wounds, and maybe, if it could learn, to reconsider attack maneuvers.
"Whatev," she called after it. Moonch would be ready.
She washed the lacerations on her head in the little river. They were deep and would no doubt scar. But that was pretty cool-Seriously, who else in school, who else in America, would be able to boast of python puncture wounds on their scalp?
***
She didn't sleep that night, and by mid-morning of December 30th Moonch felt like a gory agent of the undead, staggering along a ridge that would not stop. Uphill, then downhill, then up another accursed hill again. Her arms and legs were bloodied and bloated, and now she had a reddish ring of matching lesions on her head.
She thought back to how the jungle looked the previous week from the airplane- a flat, green blanket. It was green all right, greener than the greenest tones of green she had ever known. But the rises were treacherous-not what anyone would call flat terrain.
"I'd rather be blindfolded in the Badlands!" she hollered. (Her Dad had taken her to the Dakota Badlands one summer to see the Crazy Horse memorial.)
When she looked down, the bootless right foot began to look like sliced-up tripe. At one point she tried switching the left boot over to the right foot, but she couldn't walk at all that way and quit the idea. She did, however, keep the left sock on the suffering right foot, and that helped.
Her direction was mulishly west. She followed the sun for no other reason than she felt compelled to stay on one sure course, or risk floundering in ridiculous, suicidal circles that would never reach the coast.
"This is an island!" she shouted out, hobbling along. If she kept walking, she'd bump into a coastline; at least a village, a shack, a hunter-something, anything would present itself eventually, because it just had to.
At the base of another harsh hill, she found a large, muddy stream, and decided to follow it. The foliage along the bank of the water was generous and allowed her to walk next to the rushing, gurgling flow as a wave of dizzying exhaustion came over her.
She dropped and slept by the stream for a while, waking with a bit more energy as the afternoon sun sank in front of her.
Moonch had water, but she needed to eat. She took the old plastic bag out of her backpack and slowly shred it lengthwise, because she knew that was how plastic bags usually ripped. Then she tied the strips together and made a kind of line, tying one end of the plastic around the eyehole in the steel hook that she brought out from her pocket. It was easy to find a hard stick and wrap one end of the plastic around it, making a dandy fishing pole.
She saw the bugs congregating, and she waved her empty container of sliced pears through the swarm, trying to catch insects for bait. The larger the insect she could stick onto the hook, the better her chances of catching a fish. It wasn't easy-jungle bugs were fast- but there were so many insects that it never took her too long to get something wiggling on the hook.
She looked for deeper water, and then she plopped down on the root-strewn bank and dropped her line...
"We buy your food and put clothes on your back," Moonch grumbled, parroting Aunt Lorraine, waiting for a soft tug from the stream. She hadn't chose her aunt and uncle to take care of her-they had just volunteered to do it for the twelve months her mom would be up river in the Santa Ana facility.
...Come to think of it, Uncle Stan had been the insistent one. Why would that be? ... Dear and loving 'Just-touch-Mr. Willy-he-won't-bite' Uncle Stan... Moonch was forming an illuminating new perspective on her uncle, one that, for some dense reason, she'd never seen before-or never wanted to see...
It didn't take long until she felt a tug, and again the silvery fish danced on the hook. She sliced the fish into a couple of coarse chunks (she preferred to think of them as filets) with the hook, and the small fire was easy with the lighter, because there was always something dead and easy to burn.
The pear can got a lot of use, too-for the cooking and the boiling of the river water, which, for some reason, always had something suspicious swirling around in it, even after she strained it through the brassiere.
She was getting to know the taste (or non-taste) of the fish well, and she longed for something different, something with texture, with zest. But it was sustenance, and her stomach always screamed for more, no matter what she had just swallowed. Even if it meant the same picket fence of sad little bones in her hand, Moonch's stomach always wanted an encore.
Once again, sitting on the bank of the lazy stream with her line, she heard a snap from somewhere above. She looked up and studied the mantle of greenery. Would the python came back for another round of eat the sleeping tourist? Or could it be her other snake-her lovely Paradise tree snake?
Moonch's father used to tell her about them out in his garage workshop. "Whoosh! - It propels itself through the air by sucking in its belly and flaring out its ribs..." His eyes lit up when he talked about reptiles, and he always accompanied the explanation with a passionate impression of the snake in flight.
"...Then it turns itself into a sort of winged concave, gliding like a ribbon through the jungle from tree to tree."
He was a smallish, wiry man, too, so if Moonch squinted there in the garage, she could imagine Dad flying in the air like the Paradise tree snake, undulating there between the power tools and the bench vise.
"It's called a lateral undulation," the thing in the canopy above her said, as if reading her mind.
Moonch flinched, then scanned the endless green again. But it was like looking for water in a big cloud.
"Are you going to fly for me or not, Doreen?"
But it answered her with only a protracted silence.
Moonch was more lost than ever, and her feet hurt her terribly. Might she be in the throes of some hallucination? - Because beasts of the forest don't talk, not the last time she had had a good look at one.
"Everything flies if it tries." Then the thing tee-heed again like Moonch was just some twirp, a twinky, that needed motivating.
She stood up to get a better angle on the Doreen-thing, whatever it was. But then she tripped on a root and slid to her knees with dramatic flair as if finishing some intricate dance step. Moonch stayed like that, feeling the new pain in her legs, frowning at the devious root...
Then she saw a small head about a foot off the ground, swiveling on a tiny, brown body. The creature studied Moonch with its enormous eyes like oatmeal cookies, and roundish ears that poked out like wind flaps.
She knew just what the adorable little thing was-A tarsier monkey! It recoiled as if surprised at such an intruder in its neighborhood, but then it hopped off the branch onto the ground, its curiosity bringing it closer.
Moonch couldn't help it-she held out her hand, palm outward, imagining the little primate jumping up into her hand like a kitten, or a guinea pig.
It hopped closer, unafraid, expectant, its endearing head swiveling left and right, and Moonch stretched her arm so that her hand was merely inches away. "I'm so sorry, I have no food for you, little guy."
It looked up at her as if processing her words...
"Owww!" In a blur, the tiny animal took a small chunk of Moonch's forefinger, and then disappeared back into the forest.
The finger sprayed Moonch blood as she stared at it, stupefied-How could something so profoundly cute be so despicable?
"Tee-hee!"
Moonch understood then: The dead, avenging Doreen Zitney wanted payback-first with the python sneak attack, now with the tarsier ambush.
Squeezing the bleeding finger with the orange scarf, Moonch sneered up at the trees ... It was war, all right, and her mind slipped into animosity mode-those black thoughts that occasionally came her way; they slithered into her like the green bio-dome all around had ripped open at a seam somewhere, and some sadistic, new world had marched through the rip with its tentacles waving like black leeches.
The dark thoughts were not good; Moonch hurt people sometimes when they came. But she stood there, weaving, giving into them, like receiving a transfusion of bad blood...
Blood.... blood... she had to think! It was all in the blood!
Suddenly, she attuned herself to the infection, to the coursing virus in her veins, growing, evolving...
Oh, life had teeth, all right.
She dropped to the ground. Might as well just wait for it, wait for the bubbles to froth from her mouth...
Doreen, by way of the creepy little critter, had given her a gift ... Moonch had a full-blown case of rabies-she just knew it.
The fast-acting kind.
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