The Skeletons of Indonesia
By James Norton

"Yellow bone, scattered bone, cracked bone, burnt bone." I say it aloud.

My voice goes out, high and clear. It mingles with the vines and tattered tree trunks, and it doesn't return. Instead I'm left with a mixture of insectoid chirps and the whirring of strange birds.

Some of the birds have names I might recognize, were they only polite enough to land and announce themselves. For example: a peppy little grey guy might touch down, and announce "I am a bearded bee-eater!" I'd smile, and remember the name, which had already become familiar to me through a reading of "The Birds of Indonesia."

"I am a typical roller!" another might announce. I'd nod and smile, and then 88 birds would touch down like a falling curtain of feathers. "We are the 88 old world flycatchers and allies!" they would announce, in shrill, piping unison. "Pleased to meet you," I might say.

But the birds aren't the point right now. Time and distance are certainly part of it, though they're not the entire equation. Time and distance are just part of the recipe.

I look around, and it hits me over the head that I am a long way from the "Bali on Intimacy" tour that my boyfriend had booked for us. We arrived at Waka Maya in Sanur - names that meant little to me at the time, and mean less to me now. Now, it's 21 days, three charter flights, a dozen bribes and a hellish ferry-ride later. Eric is gone, back to Minnesota, back to the corporate headquarters, taking downtime after a six-month posting in Jakarta rounded out by my visit, and our schism. I am no longer at Waka Maya, in Sanur. I am no longer enjoying the faux-thatched individual dwelling provided for my comfort, or the Sanka coffee and native-style potato chips inevitably served at every meal. I am in West Timor, on my knees, looking at bones.

The whole island of Timor has been beaten upon. The jungle persists.

The poor crumbly earth slips through my hands as I flirt with the bones. I want to touch one - I want to wrap my fingers around one, to feel what a bone is like. It used to be human. That bothers me. I nurse my strange feelings silently, and keep my hands in the dirt.

The brochure said: "Just take time to be still, let nature make its own song, song of the glorious and precious gift from God."

The brochure was talking about Waka Maya, in Sanur, where Eric decided to tell me about his newest proposed acquisition.

"Marriage?" I asked. I was shocked by my own lack of affect, but part of me was already here in West Timor. A small, determined bit of me had already slipped out of the cottage and made the trip, curious to see what dad was talking about those few times he obliquely mentioned his days in the field.

"Marriage, sure," said Eric. "I guess that's it." He smiled at me, and more bits of me strolled out the door, headed north and east toward terror.

As I kneel, bits of me are already headed back there. I smirk to myself. They'll be completely cheesed off when they arrive. They'll get there, find Eric gone, and remember: I told him "no." They'll remember visions of Eric with his cell phone, strolling through the streets of Jakarta, on his way to a French restaurant to meet with someone from the Ministry of the Interior. They'll remember visions of Eric grinning his way through business school, and then boldly striking out into the country my father almost called "home."

Idly, I touch my hand to my left eye, and it stings a bit. Something about the dirt, I think, focusing my attention first on the sky, and then on a skull sunk down to its forehead in the dirt.

"Just take time to be still," I say, trying to replicate what I think might be an Indonesian accent. Except for the words, I am taking the time to be still. I am looking at the burnt jungle clearing that I found, and wondering about the people who became bones.

It hurts. I stop.

I let myself fade away into the past for awhile, walking with my father down the streets of St. Paul.

"Dad," I ask, "what exactly do you do?"

He looks down at me, and gives me his trademark grin. "Not a whole lot, and that's the way I like it."

I smile back, but persist. "No, for your job."

I am in 6th grade.

"Well, I work for the government. I do research on things."

We're walking in the snow, heading back toward the car. I think we're heading for a parking garage. We just saw a movie: I can't remember it exactly, but I think it had pirates, and was set in Chicago.

"Like reports? Like book reports or current event newspaper... projects?"

Dad grins again. "A lot like that. I figure stuff out. Back before you were born, I used to even travel places to work on my reports. I went all over the world."

This sounds cool. St. Paul sucks. I am curious about this whole "world" thing, and have been for years.

"Like where? Did you ever go to England?"

I am, at the tender age of 11, convinced England is the birthplace, nursery and permanent residence of anything even vaguely cool. I remain convinced of this today.

"I never went to England, no. But I went to Indonesia, once. For a long time."

I know Indonesia. I collect coins. Indonesian coins are often scalloped, and sometimes made from aluminium.

"Where rupees are from!" I say, with some excitement in my voice. "Those are some of my favorite coins, I'd have to say."

Dad chuckled. "Rupees won't get you much on Timor," he says. "Hey, we're at the car."

Later, I would find out that my father worked for the State Department. A friend of mine in college laughed quietly over a mug of beer and told me my father was probably dealing with communist insurgents. "At that point, Asia was nothing but communist insurgencies, malaria and the skeleton of empires," he said. He was doing his thesis on Ho Chi Minh. Rupees. Timor. Indonesia. Dad died three weeks later, in a car accident. So I remember the words: Rupees. Timor. Indonesia. I was called out of class, and told my mom had come to school to get me. I was excited, at first - it seemed like a holiday, until I saw her face. Things blur from there on in, until the coffin, the polished recipient of raining clods of dirt.

Right now, Indonesia is my dirt. When I return to it, I am standing up in the clearing, hugging myself tight, and shaking back and forth a little. It suddenly dawns on me that there are armed patrols traveling up and down the island, that I have a camera, that I have money, that I can be robbed, that I can be killed, that I can be raped, that I can be raped and killed, killed and raped, robbed, raped, killed, burned and rendered across the jungle floor as fatty acids, torn clothing and a scattered, blackened, burnt archipelago of bones.

I pause, prepared to run, but there's nothing to run from. If there's any danger, I remind myself, it'll probably come up the path from the main road - back the way I came. I kneel again, fascinated by the bones. Each one is its own country.

"Let nature make its own song," I say to the bones. It occurs to me that they're not in any position to stop nature from making its own song. It occurs to me they are a part of nature, becoming food and fertilizer, becoming part of the earth beneath them.

It's pretty, and then I remember: it was metal that brought them to their knees, and put them into the dirt, face first. I wonder if I can find some bullets, and I look, and I do.

"Will X-rays find these?" I ask, looking at the two crumpled bullets in my hand. It doesn't matter - they go into my pocket. While looking for more bullets, I find a beetle, and watch with fascination as it draws itself across the dirt. It lumbers, its massive two-inch frame towering over smaller forms of life. I can almost hear it breathing, and then it spreads some bluish wings, and flies away.

I am startled by a skull, and yelp, and jump back, my hands touching dirt and plants.

"The glorious and precious gift from God," I say, breathing quickly. I assimilate my surroundings completely. The bones start working their way loose from the soil. A pile of knuckles and fingers snaps itself onto a femur, thinks better of it, detaches itself, and finds an arm.

A skull snaps itself onto a neck. Ribs regroup. Skeletons - at least a dozen - writhe in the soil, recomposing themselves, waking themselves from their slumber. As they stand up, I realize they are confused. Why this patch of jungle? Who is this woman? Where are the soldiers, the soldiers who forced us into rumbling diesel-powered trucks and pushed us down the leafy green path?

I look at the milling skeletons, and stare into their sockets, wondering about my father. "Did he know you?" I ask.

The skeletons ignore me. One of them bends down, and picks up something small.

I realize it's a baby. It take me a little while to figure this out - you don't think of babies as having skeletons, do you? I think to myself: "an owl? a puppy? a lemur? what's being cradled?"

It's a baby. It is perfectly formed, made of bones, and dead. I almost scream, but I wind up coughing instead, trying to vomit onto the dirt. I lift my eyes up from the ground and see that the bones are back at home, and that my pants are filthy from their contact with the forest floor. A heavy shadow has fallen over the jungle, and a wave of birds detaches itself from the foliage, arcing its way upward with a quiet fluttering of wings.

The wings distract me - the sun is dipping, and the jungle's tender details are fading away. I stand up, and realize that I've spent the day on my knees, surrounded by bones.