The Last Grain of Rice

(In the Garden of Eden)

A Novel

By

Marty Rempel

The Last Grain of Rice

in the Garden of Eden

From the depths of the equatorial rain forest

The long call full of power, majesty, 

confidence,

mastery,

crickets sound in all direction,

the rasp of earth on the jungle floor

feet firmly anchored

looking up at obscene angles to

verdun canopy

lush, thick, infinite,

a clatter of a diesel from a distant klotok

on a winding muddy river

passing Nipa Palms in the humid

thick air,

the endless cicada buzz long buried,

swarm of endless weaver ants

like termites, a delicacy.

the pensive eyes stare into the night,

the texture of a singular leaf,

folding delicately into a nest,

the sound of a song bird,

the hidden treasure of the neesia,

a small leathery finger coyly extends,

a message of friendship,

high and safe from boar and snake,

impish brown eyes have seen 

the poacher’s evil

as habitat destroyed daily,

vocalizations:

the kiss squeak, grump and lark,

of the lone male orangutan,

sunlight falls with a gentle touch, 

life abundant

the pagan shaman’s soul

the sodden passion

of the monsoon’s insanity.

The last "grain of rice" in the Garden of Eden

Excerpt from anthropologist Mark Penner’s field notes

Dedicated to the memory of Bruno Manser, Swiss environmentalist and human rights activist.

Born1954, presumed dead May, 2000. 

Declared dead March 10, 2005, 

likely at the hands of lumber company mercenaries.

Prologue (1990)

    The Indigenous Penan living in the immediate area of the isolated mountain of the Batu Simon in Northern Kalimantan, had filed several police reports regarding what they considered to be the illegal logging of their sacred lands.  Their pleas to officials at the government level as far up as the governor had been completely ignored on many occasions.  

    There was a pervasive feeling of desperation and hopelessness explaining today’s protest at the flimsy and likely temporary logging road barrier located at the tiny village of Long Ajeng. Situated on a dirt road that would eventually allow access to the heavy logging equipment and trucks from the Samlong Lumber Company.  Similar barriers had gone up at about the same time in two near by villages in order to keep the lumber men and their insatiable chain saws away from the stately rainforests home to their centuries old nomadic life style.

    The incessant chant of “Stop the Chop” could be heard both in English and in their native dialects.  Families with children guarded the wooden barricades hastily erected as word reached the village through village and jungle grapevine that the lumber trucks were on the move.  Village men, Elders, and their families had been manning their posts since near dawn in anxious anticipation of the arrival of the first sign of the lumberman and therefore trouble. They knew their fragile gated fence could not stop the inevitable forward movement of even one bulldozer or truck, but they stood their ground, resolve, steadfast nervously waiting the inevitable yet noble defeat.  

    The low bass rumble of the approaching convoy overpowered the crescendo of the ever present cicadas that gave a constant background track to life in the rain forest.  Their practice chanting from earlier of “Stop the Chop” was interspersed with nods of encouragement as the first company vehicle with the characteristic green logo of Samlong Lumbering, one of the many subsidiaries of the colossal Tan Group, pulled to a dusty hissing stop on the incline on the rough lumber road outside the tiny village.  The side door of the truck facing the small crowd displayed a company graphic of a stylized forest with the logo below, “Green Progress.”  

    A father nudged his young daughter, “See what it says on the side of that truck.  Remember it to be a lie. Company men never tell the truth.”

    The two sides formed their lines as if in battle formation waiting for one side or the other to make the first move, to fire the first shot after seeing the “Whites of their Eyes.”  There was dead silence, even the jungle seemed to take a breath at this moment in time as each side stared down the other. 

    To break the pause a field manager from the company stepped out of his dirty, white Toyota pick-up truck, one of the many Tan Group vehicles in the area, again flashing the company logo and slogan to the agitated crowd as he slowly walked toward the barrier, stopping about fifty feet from the demonstrators.  Quietly, calmly with little distraction he switched on the bullhorn he carried and raised it to his mouth in order to make an announcement to the Penan gathered in protest before him and his lumberman cohort, standing restless and agitated behind him. Without formal introduction he simply began by reading, in a dreary monotone, from a sheet of weary company letterhead paper, in his left hand while holding the bullhorn in his right.

    “By authority of concession law, this blockade is illegal.  Disband immediately, or force will be used. According to the section six survey codes this demonstration is in violation of the law and the legal rights of Samlong Lumbering, a division of the Tan Group of companies, to fell trees in this section as defined by the current Conservation Act and the rights granted to us under current legislation as approved by the Governor.  We are a Green Company that perpetually cares for the environment and operates under every stricture of the law.  We do not ignore nor do we trample over any rights of forest communities as we are here today with the full blessing of your government and many members of your own community.”

    “Too much talking! It’s time for you to leave,” yelled out one of the protesters. ”Stop the chop…stop the chop.” chatted the many in unison.  Interrupting the efforts of the manager on his puny bullhorn.  Undeterred the manager forged on with his written company message.

    “Samlong Lumber legally requests that you remove all barriers to traffic now and in the future and allow our workers and equipment to enter.  Signalling a beginning of a period of co-operation from which we all grow and prosper together. This matter is now an issue that has arisen among the villagers and needs to be resolved between the villagers themselves.”  With a brief pause he added, “You have fifteen minutes to respond.”

    On the surface, it was a superficially peaceful message with strong aggressive under tones.  More silence followed.

    With that and without another word of a more inviting or personal nature, the Samlong manager switched off his bullhorn and walked directly back down the rough road to his truck, opened the cab door ironically labelled “Green Progress” and sat resolutely behind the wheel of his truck waiting for the clock to tick.  “Fucking Penan” he muttered under his breath for no one in particular to hear.  “Always causing trouble, never knowing what’s good for them.”

     The manager, calm on the outside for the Penan to see and fuming on the inside knew the history and just how the day would likely play out.  He smiled as he looked through the dirty cracked windshield of his pick-up out on the rag-tag crowd of protesters.  He knew their chief and his council along with that crazy foreign agitator, Ernest Masters, who had grievances filed at every level of government, eventually to the highest level of Kalimantan government and had got a temporary injunction on saving their so called ancestral lands.  As if these God damn forests were sacred.  All he knew for sure was that he was here today, with his men and equipment, to do some serious clear-cutting by expanding the lumber roads right through this decrepit village, or get tough if he had too.  He looked at his watch, thinking I’ll give these little assholes five more minutes, five…

    After the fifteen minutes expired, the tribal leader shouted his response from the limited protection of the wooden barriers.

    “We have a government guaranteed document signed by the courts protecting our lands.  Today, “Mr Green Progress,” you do not pass our line.” The protest remains and the trucks would not pass into Penan sacred lands. He added, “It is time for you to turn your trucks around and go back to where ever you came from.”

    It was just moments after that announcement as agitation collectively gripped the Samlong manager and his crew several tear gas canisters were launched in a blind panic out of nervous reaction, or out of anger and frustration, how ever it started the outcome was the same. 

    The first canister followed a long lazy arc toward the flimsy barriers as the crowd watched as if paralyzed, not moving, not saying a word. Frozen in time.  Approaching the crowd the compounds within began to disperse before the canister exploded on the head of an eight year old girl splitting her forehead, sending her down hard to the dirt and killing her instantly not from any gas.  The shear force of impact was more than sufficient to do the job. 

    The impact was sudden and violent, as the child collapsed.  By the time her mother pulled her into her arms, her small body had gone still.  A keen cry of primal pain and despair ripped through the crowd from the terrified mother.  It was raw and shattering. 

   

The dead child was motionless in the clutching arms of her mother paralyzed with horror with the crowd now frantic as the dense cloud of gas began to disperse. 

  

  In the mass confusion that ensued the Penan, those situated somewhere along  the sidelines of the crowd of demonstrators, surged stealthily forward slipping between the trees towards the lumbermen. Their blowpipes lifted in unison, cheeks puffed with breath.  A hiss of darts through the air releasing one particular lethal feathered poisonous dart in the direction of the lumber man who had thrown that fateful and lethal canister just moments earlier, the one that had fatally struck the child.

   

The force of the single feathered blow dart pierced the lumberman’s neck with precision hammer force accuracy instantly injecting a lethal poison created and brewed by the local Penan tribe. Poison used to kill forest animals over centuries.The lumbermen instantly, but too late, clasped his sweaty neck in the realization that he faced a fearful, painful, and inevitable end.  As a jungle citizen he immediately knew his fate, his eyes were wide, his mouth opened, no sound came forth as he choked on fear. The entry point of the dart now swollen spoke only of death. The poison was the Penan tradition and legacy, the lumberman’s certain death.