The boatman is surely a Dayak, a fact that is cinched by his dangling stretched earlobes resembling a chinstrap attached to his red plastic hard hat. The weights are long gone but the triton tattoos on his cheeks and his chest means he comes from a seafaring lineage, according to Gilbert M. Grosvenor. My wish list is way too ambitious— to spot an orang or a hornbill still living as nature intended in canopies shading the forest. The dugout canoe chuffles onward against the brown effluent, passing alluvial fans and arroyos— the colors of Texas in summer. A cluster or two of sick mangroves survives here and there as if planted to screen out a strip mining venture too ugly to meet regulations. I paid the man twenty-five ringgits to take me as far as the closest authentic old longhouse. His palm now demands that I give him more money. The journey I’d promised myself since I first saw the pictures of naked survivors who hid from the anschluss, escaping the pilgrims forever. At last I see trees, little patches of forest, in thickets and hammocks where logging is difficult. Skinny men down on their haunches and babbling, enjoying my presence by laughing and spitting out betel nut slobber through teeth that are stained a beet purple and staring through beady black eye-slits. Old woman. Aggressive expression. So what in the world are you doing? At least that is what I imagine she’s saying. I shrug back politely. by Thomas Rodes

art by Donald Zirilli