The Bird Skinner by Alice Greenway

Author:Alice Greenway [Greenway, Alice]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Fiction
ISBN: 9780802121042
Google: P1vGAgAAQBAJ
Amazon: 0802121047
Publisher: Atlantic Monthly Press
Published: 2014-01-07T08:00:00+00:00

Iron Bottom Sound, Off Guadalcanal,

En Route to the Solomon Islands, October 1942

The problem was that he saw those islands differently. To the other men, the Solomons were savage and inhospitable. The Cannibal Isles. The land of headhunters. A fetid equatorial swamp. Wet, hot, febrile. A place where dysentery or malaria would get you if the Japs didn’t. Where you might slowly decay if you weren’t shot straight off, from foot rot, skin infections, pustules, and tropical ulcers that could bore right down to the bone. They all suffered in some form and treated themselves with sulfa powder. The islanders fared better going barefoot.

Subhuman, some called it. The uncivilized bowels of the earth. Belowdecks they sounded out the unfamiliar names: Guadalcanal, Tulagi, Savo. The names of rivers they would have to cross once they secured a beachhead: the Ilu, Tenaru, and Alligator Creek. Cursing their friends or brothers, anyone they knew who’d been sent to Italy, France, or even North Africa—anywhere but these godforsaken islands.

The jungle spooked American boys. They didn’t like the thick vines or serpentine woody lianas, the pulpy herbs, the flagrant orchids, the thick sweet smell of ginger. Everything close and cloying. They’d stick to the coast when they could and traverse high ridges of grassland to avoid this jungle, even if the grass was high and razor-edged.

Jim came with different eyes. He’d dreamed of these archipelagoes. He knew their names, their history, their birds. He delighted in the wild tangle and disorder of these forests. The great nutmegs soaring up to 150 feet or more. The banyans with their buttresses smooth and gray like the flanks of elephants. The aerial roots, hairy and twisted, dropping down to suck water right out of the air itself. To him, it was familiar and intriguing, like the landscape of his own mind.

It’s not that he wasn’t scared. Jesus, he was scared as the next guy. He’d heard the stories too from Nanking, Malaya, and Bataan. He’d seen the grisly photos that circulated the ship, of pilots mutilated at Wake. Later, he’d see for himself what could happen. A man’s genitals hacked off and stuffed in his mouth. His corpse lashed to a tree and left as a warning. It made you sick at first, then it made you thirsty for revenge.

You didn’t want to get caught. That was the main thing. There were no prisoner-of-war camps in the Solomons: American or Japanese.

Jim didn’t panic in the jungle. He didn’t fire at the slightest scuffle. He knew how to use noises to hide. It was other men’s fears and their friendly fire that worried him. He volunteered to work alone—to scout. What the others mistook for foolhardy bravado, bravery, or even for his own death wish, Jim knew to be selfish.

No dying for the men beside him. He didn’t want to get blown up because someone pulled the pin but forgot to throw the grenade. Nor did he relish the thought of anyone witnessing his own mistakes, or his own disintegration if it came to that.

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