The Trouble with the Truth

I slipped the skull back under my shirt and shook my head. "You can't have it," I told the honey hunters.

Nanda didn't hesitate. The Gurkha flashed silver in the sunlight. I clung to the cliff face like an insect, my fingers and toes wedged into the cracks I'd sought out while we were talking. My safety line tumbled down and past me, dangling at the end of my harness, its end still twenty feet short of the ground. Nanda seemed shocked that I hadn't fallen. In truth, so was I. His shock lasted only a second, though, before he started descending his own rope toward me. Sri Mani took the opposite tact, climbing up his ladder. The musket, of course, had been left at the top of the cliff.

It's amazing what you can do when your life is threatened. Though it felt as if razor blades had been embedded in my rib cage, I scrambled down the cliff face, managing to make it halfway to the ground before I slipped and fell. The slip saved my life, because just as I came away from the wall, a musket ball - first of several shots Sri Mani would take - skipped off the rock in front of my face and passed between my legs into the vegetation below. The echo of the musket followed me down.

I landed in a patch of brush, just missing a massive boulder. Fighting the pain of a twisted ankle, I scrambled through the ravine and began my ascent up the other side, while Nanda yelled for me to stop. I looked back only once. Sri Mani was reloading the musket. That was all I needed to convince me not to stop.

#

"Sri Mani asks if you have any children, Bahktur."

I looked across the melting pot at the two of them and said nothing. Nanda was straining beeswax through a fine mesh of grass fibers. It was my job to take the hot, filtered wax as it cooled and shape it into cubes which would be sold in Kathmandu.

Sri Mani rattled off something else.

"He say is not good to leave this world without someone to carry on in your place."

"No," I agreed, "it's not."

"So, do you have children?"

"Just a son," I said softly.

Nanda relayed the information to Sri Mani. "How old?" he asked.

"Five," I replied. He'll forever be five.

#

Somehow, Nanda circled around and cut me off. He was strong and fast. He probably knew an easier route up from the ravine. I don't know how I had expected to escape him. This was his home, his forest. And Pholo had been with him since long before I'd come here. What made me think the Gurung's god cared whether I lived or died?

"Give to me," he said, brandishing the Gurkha.

"Which one of you killed him?" I asked, showing him the skull. "Why did you kill him?"

"He fell."

"And for that, you want to kill me?"

He smiled, but it was a transparent expression. The knife was still in his hand. "No, no, Bahktur. You misunderstand. No one want to kill you. We just want skull. Skull is ours."

You're wrong, I thought. The skull is mine. This isn't Sri Mani's son. This is mine. Because of my coming here, because of my praying to Pholo, Kyle sleeps beside me each night. There on the ground, so carefully arranged, so quiet and peaceful and ... forgiving.

Some element of the old Baxter Lewis, some remnant of civilization and rational thought, peeked out from the dark corners of my mind and laughed at what I was thinking. The word schizophrenia surfaced, but it was a word beyond Bahktur's comprehension.

"You lied to me," I told Nanda. "You told me the boy was sick and died. That's the same thing you told the village, isn't it?"

He said nothing.

"That's why you don't want me taking this skull back to Bahadur. The Gurung will know that you lied. The Gurung will know the truth. You killed the boy. Why?"

He let the knife fall to his side. He relaxed. His shoulders slumped, and he looked defeated. "All right, Bahktur. You win. Yes, Sri Mani kill boy. Sri Mani want to end the cycle."

"End the cycle?"

"Is no life for boy, hunting honey. Is no life for boy's son when boy grow up, or grandson, or ... You see? Pholo will never let Sri Mani and his family go. Sri Mani's family serve bees forever."

For as long as the bees desire to be hunted...

"Sri Mani make them strong. Bees know this."

Suddenly, he lunged, the Gurkha slashing at my gut. I stumbled back, away from the wicked slice of the knife, and struck him across the temple with the skull. As he stumbled, blood spilling down his face, I caught the wrist that held the knife. We went crashing through the underbrush like that, a deadly dance for possession of the blade. I was bigger and stronger than the little Nepalese. The years of abuse I'd inflicted on myself had been sweated from my pores hunting at his side, hiking and climbing through the forests and the thin air. Despite my bad ankle and tortured rib cage, I managed to overpower him. I slammed him against a tree trunk. The knife flew off into the leaves.

It was then that I heard the bees. I looked up, and there they were, a dense cloud coming through the forest. Framed within their dark, shifting mass stood Sri Mani, the stock of the musket against his shoulder. As he fired, I spun Nanda in front of me. The ball caught him in the throat, splattering his blood across my face. I fell to the ground with him, his life pumping hot across my forearms. He made gurgling noises. Rolled his eyes back to beseech me for help I didn't know how to give.