The Cuckoo Colloquium

6 - Dim

Dim liked his tourists.

He liked picking them up at Rain Forest Chalet, and then transporting them in the mini-van to Cuckoo Camp. Sometimes he drove them back to the Chalet after their forest adventures-that seemed mostly positive for everyone, but, on occasion, not so positive. Sometimes the tourists made it all the way back to Cuckoo Camp by their own devices. Once, however, he had to drive a hysterical Australian girl directly to the clinic in Bario; he guessed her experience was not such a positive one.

Dim never questioned why the little dirt path swerved back, away from the dock and wrapped around the stink-hole before continuing to the water, and it perplexed him when the tourists fell into bandy-legged paroxysms of disgust. To him, that was an unenlightened response; the stink-hole, like everything in nature, had its obvious purpose of convenience.

"My wedding was on that boat," Fat Hus beamed from the dock as the group clustered on the nodding logs, gawping at their transport-a square-shaped barge-like craft with a large canvas tarpaulin that spanned the back half of the boat. Yellow and purple trim stretched around the outside of the boat, and even the tarpaulin over their heads had festive yellow with purple stripes.

With one leg on the tiny dock and another leg in the bobbling boat, Dim, with sure arms, ushered the six colloquium members into their seats.

"What's that mean?" asked Puso, the Mediterranean boy, pointing at the stenciled phrase on the stern of the boat, which said: Positive New Attitudes!

"I name it myself last year," Fat Hus bragged, shooing the last of them into the colorful boat. "You see wildlife, have nice picnic, you VIP!"

Dim wanted to do an especially good job as the group's boat driver, because Fat Hus still didn't trust him. Dim was only half-Malay, and Fat Hus, no doubt, figured Dim's indigenous half would run off like a child if he got spooked by the stories of spirits in the surrounding forest.

Also, there was the scandal of Dim's father ... The man had run out on the family-on Dim, his mother, and his two sisters, and taken up with a woman of ill-repute in Kuching. This was an unutterable family shame, and suspicious eyes were always on him, the only son: would Dim shirk his responsibilities, too, and run off like his no-good father?

But this was the first time Fat Hus entrusted Dim with driving the boat. This was good news; it surely meant that Dim was scaling the hierarchy of Cuckoo Camp, that he was earning trust. Maybe Dim could start doing more important things like the shopping; he liked the idea of that a lot.

"Nothing more up river than Cuckoo Camp, you VIP!" Fat Hus hooted from the dock as Dim started the motor and putted the boat away. "And this cruise very cheap, no worry, you get big discount!"

"YOU should pay US!" the Nini girl hollered.

But Hus was already stepping back onto hard earth and waving both arms in a grand farewell, as if he would never see them again.

Dim agreed with his boss, Fat Hus-These kids were indeed special; the VIP got the best accommodations, certainly better than the hammocks, anyway. And Fat Hus had really married his second wife on this very boat a couple of years ago-though that woman had run back to her Uruk longhouse shortly after the wedding; marriage didn't seem to agree with her, and her brothers threatened Fat Hus with dismemberment if he tried to get her back.

Dim didn't understand why Fat Hus called them "troubled" teens; they weren't antisocial, or violent, or crazy-not to Dim. But he had never been off the island, so he was no expert on the behavior of Westerners. He'd seen lots of TV shows, though, and these tourists in the boat reminded him of the characters on the Disney Channel shows he sometimes got to watch at places that had satellite TV. These kids were funny-even when they were complaining, they made Dim laugh. It was just like a TV show.

His tourists needed him-that was for sure. They weren't babies, just pampered foreigners that wouldn't last long out here in the forest without his assistance. No doubt about it-if something bad was to happen, they'd be corpses within a week's time. But he didn't dwell on those dark thoughts-they were scary, like one of those horror programs he watched on late-night TV.

Dim then thought about the datuk. A couple of years ago, according to the stories, a datuk, or spirit, came and chose to reside in the trees. As far as Dim knew, the spirit made no trouble for anyone, or anything. Whether it was one entity or several, no one was sure; it only seemed that in their area of the forest, they seemed to have a good one. The tribes even claimed that the datuk was a misunderstood, rather benign spirit-helpful, actually; it changed things, changed people, changed their life perspectives...

And word had spread. Soon they were coming-the troubled teens, so people called them. Officially, the kids were coming to see the wildlife. But that was the problem, because the datuk made the natural creatures that inhabited the forest uneasy, and most had bolted to areas that were spirit-free.

"Put up the orangutan," Fat Hus had ordered, when Dim had just started working at Cuckoo Camp a few months ago. The orangutan came complete with batteries that moved the animal's limbs.

Dim climbed all the way up a tall tree with the stuffed creature on his back. And Fat Hus was right-it did look good, waving in the high, wind-swept branches, welcoming the new colloquium. But the batteries died quickly, and then the thing slumped like it was in some coma, secured to the branch by twine. Then the wind had knocked the orangutan out of its fastening and off the branch, and it dangled there like some wretched suicide until spotted by one of the guests, a distraught young Swiss girl.

Fat Hus blamed Dim for that; he hadn't fastened the creature properly. So for now, the orangutan stayed in storage.

"When you return from boat cruise, you get nice Christmas presents," he yelled over the motor.

"Whatever!" somebody barked back.

That word confused him-'whatever'- was it a good word or a bad word?

He didn't tell them that the colloquium seldom came straight back; they were usually subjected to some kind of adventuring, some important life lessons, and they seemed different every time.

Nobody ever told Dim exactly how the adventuring all worked; it was supposed to be the tourists' adventures, not his, but how was that possible if he was always with them as their guide? These things he was quite curious to find out. Perhaps they would go for a walk at the waterfall, or something like that, and then have their adventure. ...... but Dim really had no idea what it might entail.

The kids were ignorant of their future, of the severity, and of the wonders that awaited them in the jungle, unaware of the transforming sessions, the personal growth, the important life lessons-all the silly things they cared so much about in other countries-that were coming for the Cuckoo Colloquium.

... But, if something were to happen to the kids, a casualty (after all, it was virgin forest-inhabited with an occasional roving, wild creature)-if the teens, or the old Australian, suffered some accident during the adventure they were about to experience, he felt Fat Hus could probably shift the culpability to the datuk, which the elders told him lingered on the branches of the trees, usually in the form of that dreary-looking bird, dull-gray in color, inconspicuous-a cuckoo shrike.

Dim had seen plenty of those birds, but they were just ordinary in every way, nothing unworldly about them at all. Did such a thing really exist? Dim began to feel it was like looking for dragons, or floating temples; these things only existed in the magazines for the tourists.

He couldn't help snickering at the colloquium members under his breath, though, because they looked like cartoon characters, or some puffy, colorful snacks as they bobbed there in the boat in their life-vests. It was funny.

But being on the river pleased Dim greatly.

This gave him confidence, and he buried those nagging accusations by Fat Hus and the others that Dim scared easily. They just weren't true. Dim was not like his father. He wouldn't run away. Dim would show them all.

Dim wasn't afraid of any silly bird-ghost.