Borneo Jungle

This is an excerpt from a novel I didn't get around to publishing. It isn't meant to be all true. 

Chapter One

From the frenzied airport the newlyweds hike down the jungle highway in a monsoon deluge. Thick drops ping off the pavement in little explosions, and the light has been so dimmed by rain that it’s hard to see each other’s facial expressions; to know exactly what the other is thinking or the mood they’re in. When drenched to the bone, their t-shirts plastered to their skin like latex, Rebecca stops suddenly, refusing to take another step. “It’s time,” she says.

            “What, seriously,” Donald says, glaring at her through the descending torrent.

            “You know I have to do my practice.” She’s a strong believer in leaving the world a better place.
            “Yes I know Becca, but look around. It’s a freakin hurricane out.” She stands waiting until he gives in. “Okay, if you have to, Jesus, let’s set the tent up back there away from the road so no one will know we’re here.”

            “You’ll have to do it though. You know I’m vulnerable right now.” She says she has an ongoing illness, but her family thinks it might be in her head.

            “Sit tight lovely one. I’ll take care of it.”

            “Thank you Don.” She kisses him in the rain. “What would I do without you?”

            “Probably disintegrate into your couch,” he kids.

            “Ha, ha, not without you.”

            Donald hurries to erect the tent, fumbling with poles and fabric while she sits motionless in the rain chanting and meditating, rivulets of water running off her chin like a river. He calls to her when it’s finished. “Okay my young Buddiss, it’s ready.”

The forest used to stretch inviolable from sea to sea, like the boundless green ocean. Now there are just fragments down here along the coast, remnants of a once great wilderness where everything was in balance. They’re hidden enough so people driving by, sputtering and caged in vibrating steel, can’t see their tent, just a wall of trees shrouded in mist. As the rain lets up they hang their sopping shirts and pants on a vine to drip, drip the water away. They’ll never dry though. Not in the rainforest. Nothing ever does. The wetness is perpetual and penetrating and causes skin to rot. The leeches like it, but probably nothing else does.