Karen Joy Fowler - What I Didn't See

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What I Didn't See

by Karen Joy Fowler

I saw Archibald Murray's obituary in the Tribune a couple of days ago. It was a long notice, because of all

those furbelows he had after his name, and dredged up that old business of ours, which can't have pleased

his children. I, myself, have never spoken up before, as I've always felt that nothing I saw sheds any light, but

now I'm the last of us. Even Wilmet is gone, though I always picture him such a boy. And there is something

to be said for having the last word, which I am surely having.

I still go to the jungle sometimes when I sleep. The sound of the clock turns to a million insects all chewing

at once, water dripping onto leaves, the hum inside your head when you run a fever. Sooner or later Eddie

comes, in his silly hat and boots up to his knees. He puts his arms around me in the way he did when he

meant business and I wake up too hot, too old, and all alone.

You're never alone in the jungle. You can't see through the twist of roots and leaves and vines, the streakish,

tricky light, but you've always got a sense of being seen. You make too much noise when you walk.

At the same time, you understand that you don't matter. You're small and stuck on the ground. The ghosts of

paths weren't made for you. If you get bitten by a snake, it's your own damn fault, not the snake's, and if

someone doesn't drag you out you'll turn to mulch just like anything else would and show up next as mold or

moss, ferns, leeches, ants, millipedes, butterflies, beetles. The jungle is a jammed-alive place, which means

that something is always dying there.

Eddie had this idea once that defects of character could be treated with doses of landscape: the ocean for

the histrionic, mountains for the domineering, and so forth. I forget the desert, but the jungle was the place to

send the self-centered.

We seven went into the jungle with guns in our hands and love in our hearts. I say so now when there is no

one left to contradict me.

· · · · ·

Archer organized us. He was working at the time for the Louisville Museum of Natural History and he had a

stipend from Collections for skins and bones. The rest of us were amateur enthusiasts and paid our own way

just for the adventure. Archer asked Eddie (arachnids) to go along and Russell MacNamara (chimps), and

Trenton Cox (butterflies), who couldn't or wouldn't, and Wilmet Siebert (big game), and Merion Cowper

(tropical medicine), and also Merion's wife, only he turned out to be between wives by the time we left, so he

was the one who brought Beverly Kriss.

I came with Eddie to help with his nets, pooters, and kill jars. I was never the sort to scream over bugs, but if

I had been, twenty-eight years of marriage to Eddie would have cured me. The more legs a creature had, the

better Eddie thought of it. Up to point. Up to eight.

In fact Archer was anxious there be some women and had specially invited me, though Eddie didn't tell me

so. This was smart; I would have suspected I was along to do the dishes (though of course there were the

natives for this) and for nursing the sick, which we did end up at a bit, Beverly and I, when the matter was too

small or too nasty for Merion. I might not have come at all if I'd known I was wanted. As it was, I learned to

bake a passable bread on campfire coals with a native beer for yeast, but it was my own choice to do so and

I ate as much of the bread myself as I wished.

I pass over the various boats on which we sailed, though these trips were not without incident. Wilmet turned

out to have a nervous stomach; it started to trouble him on the ocean and then stuck around when we hit dry

land again. Russell was a drinker, and not the good sort, unlucky and suspicious, a man who thought he

loved a game of cards, but should have never been allowed to play. Beverly was a modern girl in 1928 and

could chew gum, smoke, and wipe the lipstick off her mouth and onto yours all at the same time. She and

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