Chapter Eight: Househunting

Jackson had fed on crabs, and recovered from his migraine. The afternoon sun roasted the white sand of the beach, and he danced down to the fresh water ocean. Cool water soothed singed feet. Knowing it was dangerous, Jackson still took a sip from the ocean.
Montezuma’s Revenge. The thought came a moment too late because his body had acted before his conscious brain could muster its forces to countermand the body’s need. The water rumbled around in his stomach pleasantly.

Last night he had sand crabs, and a tiny coral snake as a visitor. He feared waking to see a scorpion on his chest, a tarantula on his nose, and the coral come back to curl around his ankle. Less creepy, but possibly more dangerous, the whole beach was covered with life. Sea turtles, gulls, oysters, starfish, at least three species of crabs, and a plethora of other minor animal life implied predators to feast on this bounty. Such predators might not be aware that Jackson Wellington was supposed to be on top of the food chain rather than a buffet serving, extra large, of long pork.

Jackson needed a house by tonight. Happily, he had built one with his father. But he had no pine boards, or oak, and no power tools. Instead he had a tropical jungle, a white beach of loose white sand overlooking a small cove which let out into a lagoon rimmed by a coral reef before the really big waves mountained in from off-shore.

This was not Lake Victoria. No lake had waves that huge. And besides, the sky was silvery blue rather than robin’s egg blue. It glistened at times. This implied things he decided not to think about right now because he could feel a faint urge to start screaming. And if he started, he might not stop.

House. Yes. House. Jackson focused on what he could fix. He had a katana, and a gladius. The Roman short sword was better for chopping. He carried it at his waist now just in case something came for him.

The rhymic splash of small waves against the rolled up pants legs soothed him enough that he could think clearly. Hut. Bamboo. Banana leaves…vines…Jackson began to stall out of ideas, and then he shrugged. He had the beginnings of a plan.

He spun about and surveyed the hot sand with displeasure. Jackson took one step out of the water, followed inspiration, and ran. It would help him lose his pot belly, and he got to the shade of the arc fern before his feet dried completely off exposing his skin to the fiery particles.

Once there, he reviewed in his mind from a guide on survival that he had read. Jackson was an extremely eccletic reader, and on this beach he had discovered a talent for a combination of eidetic memory and lucid dreaming. In his dream state, he saw the page and consulted it for advice.

It advocated taking water, blazing his trail, and searching in a box pattern. It also said to move slowly so as to give snakes a chance to get out of the way. That last bit worried him.

He set out, notching tree trunks of coconuts, and persimmons, and a mangrove, and then a megafern as he named them yesterday. Here on Day Two, he saw more varieties of ferns. One, he named a picture fern for its vaguely square leaves. Another Jackson called a rainbow fern because the leaves had separate bands of color, although they did bleed at the edges into each other.

The sound of trickling water, and a sudden slant in the moist dark soil light with bygone ferns and decayed leaves brightened his sweating face. He burst through a stand of bamboo, and paused over a beautiful streamlet two feet wide. A quick finger as he showed restraint, and he tasted it.

Salts. Minerals. Sulphur. The taste assaulted his tongue, and he spat it back out with vigor, and a twisting of his handsome face. What is this place? The oceans are fresh, and the streams are horrid. He shook it off, and turned back to the bamboo.

After he selected a four inch wide pole, he took an experimental whack. It went well, and two more harder strikes brought it down. Now he had fourteen feet of bamboo. Ten minutes later, he had roughly a hundred feet. A quick water break, and then he looked at his stack. He needed more. Another hundred feet took him a few more minutes, and he surprised some rat like creatures from its nest.

He had seen native workers carrying huge bundles of bamboo on their shoulders. But that required rope. So Jackson began to quarter the area this time looking up into the trees. In this region, not far from the shore, he found a double canopy. Threre were short plants like his megafern, and true giants. And hanging from the giants were cane vines.

Just to be safe, he consulted his special memory again, and read off the page the instructions on how to deal with them. A swift slice, and he had cut a loop into two hanging lines. He pulled on both until they came loose enough to give him some play. Another two slices, and he had a vine of twenty feet, and another of thirty feet. With these, he cut down the middle of them, and then used the point of his blade to scoop out the pulp in the center.

Now he had rope.

A grapevine, or fisherman’s knot, tied up the bundle, and the rest of the rope, he left as a big arrow on the jungle floor to point him to his harvesting area. It was then that he tried to lift the bundle. Suddenly he found a lot more respect for the five foot tall native worker. He huffed, and almost got it. But then it fell and he had to jump back unless he wanted it landing on his legs.

One of the primary rules in a survival situation was not to break a leg.

Jac

…more later….