Worms

“The Hoose Eye” The rasta guy repeated with some irritation for the third time. Still unable to interpret, Kim comes to the rescue. “Horse fly?”
“Jay ya .. Hoose Fry”. His dark and bony hand slowly creeps up on the yellow and green insect patrolling his leg, seeking a place to sink it’s proboscis. The hand approaches the emerald eyes of the bug, not an intuitive choice for a sneak attack. The fly cannot see it for some reason. At about 4 inches out, he snaps his palm onto it in a flash. Now, with pride, he holds the mildly thrashing fly by the wings and gloats over it’s distress.
“Dis-a right ear” pointing to the flys 5 millimeter nose “gots de worm” Caint see de worm, but puts ia der right inna de skin. Gotts-a dake iddy-bida tatcco ands stuff id in de ole.” Loosing interest in the mangled fly, he drops it and demonstrates shredding a tiny fragment of cigarette tobacco and pantomime packing it into a tiny hole in the skin. “de tatacco kill de worm.” Because the communication is so difficult, I don’t bother to question what becomes of the dead grub buried in ones flesh. It can’t be good. In fact, I can hardly believe a shred of this story. After tales of hurricanes that level the town shanties, snow an inch deep on Christmas, snakes that jump 6 feet to sink their fangs in your neck, and Malaria in every mosquito bite, I’m a little numbed to these jungle legends of environmental horror. The stories seem a bit contrived to terrorize the plump white skin of the First World invaders. If you were to believe every one, a body would have to keep themselves sealed in a concrete tank. What kind of tropical paradise experience is that? But then there are the scorpions. Wouldn’t want to forget about them crawling the walls.

Thirty years ago, I heard about the worm. A confederate of our adolescent associates, fed up as we all were in the Nixon era, disgusted with our fathers working for Boeing, craving the frontier experience leading to manhood, Thorr Jensonal traveled to the Yucatan. Here he dressed as a peasant, in white slacks and shirt, his Nordic blond hair flowing long over his shoulders. Blistering and peeling, the melanin deficient skin traveled on foot between unknown Mexican villages, a tall red and white stranger in the short brown peoples. The locals insisted that he wear a hat. But a hat is hot and concealed his beautiful flowing locks which the children all ran to touch and fondle. So he did not. The angst of conforming to northern protestant morays still tortured Thorr, even though immersed in a world so different and alien. He decided to cross the Yucatan peninsula on foot, a spirit journey, transcending from the commercial comforts of his youth to a jungle hardened, accomplished man. With minimal knowledge and a poor sense of direction, he set out.

The jungle is a labyrinth in which to be lost. And lost he became, wandering for days, through twisted thickets, ever the oppressive green crushing in on him, crossing streams which appear and disappear in the ground like spider webs in the wind. At time he would swim lakes of quick sand to reach some further distance in the green hell. His clothes soon became filth rags, torn to tatters, the insects feasting on his exposed flesh. Ants of a dozen kinds rained from the trees on him, every one a biter, mosquitoes swarmed in a frenzy, ticks attached, and fly’s of every type swarmed his face and golden hair The flies crawled through the yellow locks, caught a drink from his eye, insanely crawled in his ears. How long he thrashed about out there is not known. A few week? A month? Eventually he stumbled out of the green maze into a clearing of some thatched huts. Tall and skinny to begin with, now bones covered with thousands of raw sores. He was delirious. Raving about the “brain eaters”. The locals washed him, watered him, and put the feverish youth to bed.

In a few days, he had recovered enough to travel back to the cities of civilization. His head was covered with lumps. He could feel the insects eating his brain. His eyes were sunk in blackened sockets, the brilliant blue of the Norseman blazing out in frenetic panic. Thorr finally got to Mexico City, to a doctors office, where his condition was quickly appraised. He has worms in the head. Seven worms. Because he wore no hat, the flies landed on his fair noggin and bored their worms into his scalp. Now a few weeks later, the worms have grown to the size of peanuts, each packed tight under the roots of the fair hair, each an abscess an inch high. With care, and in Spanish, the doctor sliced open the festerings and squeezed two inch worms off his skull. The seven of these grubs lay in the dish beside Thorr, the indelible image adding to his horror driven madness.

Returning to the Safety of the USA, to the TV’s and stereos and drug obsessed friends, to the relived but aloof Scandinavian parents, Thorr was not the man he had wished to become. He was haggard. Fearful. Emaciated. Obsessed. He was convinced that the Mexican doctor had not removed all the worms. That there was still one worm which had bored through his skill and was laying a billion eggs on his brain. Madness and death was the only option. No surgery could extract the creature, no doctor could find the malignant marauder. He was convinced he would soon die. With grim countenance, he gathered his boyhood friends to his postered room in the suburb house. “You must take this” he says, handing his stereo to a closest friend. Then his stamp collection to another, his radio to a third. “I am going to die soon, you must take this.”
“No,, no” the assembled cry “ you are not going to die. You are fine. You are well. We won’t take this stuff.”
Angered in a Viking manner, his tallness towers over them, insistent, intense, wild eyed. “I’m going to die ... can’t you see that? The worm has bored into my brain and I’m Insane”. The friends, nodding in agreement, looks of pity on their face, one by one get up and leave without the commodities of the American endowed teenager. Undying, Thorr eventually recuperated and drifted off to Texas to sell home owners insurance.

On weekends we prospect for gold, here in this forgotten central American country. I have come across a collection of old British military topographic maps along with assorted “geologic reports” which are little more than speculation as to what lays under the inpenatratable jungle mat … 100 meters thick. I pour through all this information, trying to find a more passable way to points interior than hacking with a machete at a mile a day. Points are picked off the maps where rivers converge, their co-ordinates entered into my GPS, these aquatic nodes for sampling and determining which branch to follow. There is a really big river, the Sittee, which snakes west deep into the Maya Mountains, 30 miles to the crest with 30 tributaries. Having hiked miserable muddy trails on previous weekends, penetrating a maximum of 4 miles to where the green walls consume even the creeks, I devise a new tack. The interior will be assaulted through the unused aqua highway of the mighty Sittee, using the hovercraft.

A day of preparation. Gas and more gas, peanut butter sandwiches, tools, three kinds of knives, cigarettes, lighters, flashlight, and a roll of mosquito netting should we have to bivouac for the night. The camp will be in the soggy boat bottom, wrecked as we may be, it would be suicide to sleep on the swarming ground. The launch site a twisted dirt road down to a river bar under the highway. The highway bridge is a temporary construct of jungle logs and boards, the former bridge swept away 2 years ago in an apoplectic 3 day downpour. A new bridge is being built by dreadlock workers, who stop every thing to line the high banks and watch the launch. The river is 100 feet wide here, promising an easy run up it’s current. Everything loaded including Kim in her designer life jacket, we roar up stream to their collective amazement. This includes a throng of Maya women pounding laundry on the rocks, their children standing in the water, frozen in gape jawed awe like so many tiny brown gargoyles. In a half mile, the river narrows to little more than boat width, great ramparts of rock rising vertically out of emerald pools. Rapids on either end, choked with boulders to be maneuvered frantically around. Up and through the hovercraft goes, climbing the turbulent water stairs to the next pool. Fish dart beneath us, birds of all sorts dash between the canopy wall above, brilliant white egrets herd ahead, to stupid to leave the surface of the river.

We stop at a great outcrop on a little beach and jewel pool to pan a little. Now three miles out, there is not a trace of human imprint. Only the rustling jungle crowding into the rivers gap. No small towns with auto parts stores, no bordering fields, no roads or trails, only the buzzing billions of bugs. The bugs descend on us like rain. Tiny ones crawling through my hairy arms, mosquito clouds feasting where they can, and innumerable flies of unknown sort zeroing for an unseen snack on the flesh. Panning for gold is interrupted to swat at the chomping larger ones. It would be preferable if I could do this underwater, completely submerged. The pan contents disappointing. No black sand, no garnet, no gold.

On we go deeper into the interior, the river winding and climbing small rapids regularly. We come to a junction of two same sized rivers, a 200 foot sand bar below their union. Here I fiddle with the GPS, determining which branch to take, how far in we have penetrated. We are at the start of the Coco branch, the one with reports of gold. Up this aquatic avenue we proceed, at first deep pools hemmed in by vertical rock, then opening to stair stepped riffles. The river is now a creek. Huge trees overhang the way, lianas hanging down to the water which must be avoided by the propeller, not with entire success as the chopping of the blades attest. In about two miles a huge log 4 feet in diameter blocks the whole span of the creek. We are stopped. I check the bashed propeller, which is unraveling, separating layers like a phone book thrown on the floor. The tip I wrap in electrical tape, trying to prevent further disassembly. For an hour we wander about the area, finding pools full of tadpoles, dodging figs hurled by iguanas in a tree above. Good bedrock outcrops are here, with fossil gravels of fine color mud. A half a dozen pans are washed, but none with the tiniest point of gold. Some hematite’s, abundant quartz, but none of the yellow metal we seek. A steady battle with biting flies continues, mixed with mashing of blood gorged mosquitoes. It is now 2:30. Time to turn around rather than risk being in the dark, on the river, in the wilderness. No goddamned gold anyway, what the hell would be the point of going further?

The hover is running badly on the way out. No thrust with the damaged propeller. Only the downhill slope of the rapids allow us to make headway. Vibration shakes the entire stern of the flying boat. Half way out of our journey, the thrust stops. The belt has jumped off the pullies. We are in the rapids where the current twists us and jams us into the rocks. I try to pull us to the streams edge, but before I can, the still running motor grabs the flailing belt, wrapping and shredding it, jamming it against the engine, stalling the motor dead. The damage assessment shows that the fan and prop have not been destroyed. I have a spare belt. There is hope. But the bolt holding it all together is gone. Rattled loose. Disappeared. The tool box is rummaged extensively for a replacement, but no luck. I contrive a twisted wire contraption that may work to hold the tension. As I go to monkey wrench the thing together, I see the bolt down underwater, under the boat. With much gyration and Kim’s narrow arms, we retrieve it. The hover reassembled, it fires up and lifts out of the rocks, limping drunkenly to the streams edge, to the sanctuary of a sand bank. The skirt is drained. I feel a bit drained, the fear of maroonment, the quart that has become airborne by the local insectivore residents. In another hour, the launch site is reached. The Mayans continue their gape in piling position as we pass, the construction workers all stop what they are doing to watch us with intent. We have gone 12 miles into the interior and back in 9 hours, the first to do so in this land with a hovercraft. In this country, a mile a day is the norm for travel without a helicopter, of which only the military has but never strays from the coast. My arms are peppered with red spots, a proboscis pox.

Life too rapidly returns to normal in our village world. The Guatemalan employed day after day as we hammer together the great form of our house foundation. Bureaucratic paperwork still hangs in the ether as always, waiting for an approval from some lackluster petty official for some annoying permission. The most of the jungle bug bites vanish into my immune system, a few festering to a zit from the poison, which is dispatched between finger and thumbnail. But a couple itch like hell. I scratch them when I’m thinking or not. When I’m sleeping. When my nails are full of jungle dirt. In a few days they are finely infected. One on my wrist and another on the forearm. They are so accessible. I can’t stop fucking with them. Sometimes I get out my pocketknife and dig and scrape with that .. after I have cleaned my nails. Kim is horrified. “Stop that! Stop squeezing and digging on that. Let it heal!” I am making it heal, me thinks. I can now squeeze a fair gob of pus out of the things every time, surely that can’t be left in there. I have to squeeze them. In a week the sores are as big around as a half dollar, the skin red and hard as walnut shell. A tiny Mt. Fiji stands up a ½ inch from each, easy to get a grip on for more investigative squeezing. “Stop that, goddamn it” says Kim.

“What the hell are those?” the neighbor asks, turning his head in disgust but keeping his eyes riveted to the now mountainous miasmas. “Just some bug bites” I say “There’re getting better.” I want to believe that. The landlord Chet see’s them. “WORMS! ..You got the worms. You need to pull them out. I had seven of them in my head back when I was the platoon commander of the British Jungle survival course back in … etc, etc.”
“Well how the hell can you tell?”
“Don’t you see that little hole in the middle? That’s where they put out their breathing tube. Never heals. Never get’s better. Can’t you feel them chewing in there?”
“And you know how to make it better?
“Of course. I know everything.” This is so conversationally apparent I’m under whelmed by the humility. “You have to get the worm drunk by pouring British tea in the hole. When the worm puts his head out to get a breath of air, you grab it. They don’t struggle so much when they’re drunk.”
“Yeah, right.” This conversation is over. What a bullshitter. He continues ..
“your neighbor had 27 in his head .. the asshole” he adds “made a tea of Juaca root and soaked his head in a towel for 3 days. Whole top of his head swole up like a hydropsallic and the drunken worms fell out on his ears and shoulders.” This is enough for me. No worms will rain into my ears. I have infected bugg bites. Nothing more.
“Got to squeeze them out.” He adds. I have to squeeze this guy out of my life. He’s annoying at best.

Kim bandages the sores that evening, applying antibiotic cream, our last few American Band-Aids, some tender care with a slather of athletes fungicide for good measure.
“No more squeezing. Let them heal. I’ll kick your ass if I see you squeezing them again.” As if her 100 pound frame could …on a good day. In the morning the Band-aids are rubbed off. The sores look no different. Is that chewing I feel? I want to squeeze the volcano’s, but fear the wrath of Kim. She is giving me an evil scolding stare, scrutinizing my intent. Off to work with the Guatemalan, Louise. As we load tools in the truck, he sees the festers.
“Ahh, animalioto’s! Esa Animalito’s” He grabs my arm in a backwards wrestlers grip and mashes the mounds with his work hardened steel fingers. The usual pus and gore. I let him. It is what I wanted to do anyway. “Squeeze it for check it” he says. “Mi haber siete en mi cabeza una vez. Mi check it” Some more mashing. No worms come out. There are no worms. Why are there always seven worms in the head, or some multiple of seven? I take my sore arm to the job site.

Still bad in the evening. Now apply more household medicines of dubious quality after I swab everything with mouthwash it being the closest thing to alcohol without sacrificing any Belizean rum. Need to drink that for courage. The sores are wrapped in masking tape. This will slow down my manipulations. Two days later the skin is dying under the tape. Itches like a son-of-a-bitch. I work my pocket knife under the tape for a little relief, trying to be good and not gore the bulging bumps. The evening inspection looks no better. A rum wash, mostly down my throat but some on the festers. Maybe there is something to what they say? I dismember a cigarette butt and try to pack a little tobacco in the hole. Not really possible. The hole is tiny. Piling a small mound on top, I re-wrap in the masking tape. The next day they are burning, heated up. Something is happening anyway. The arm is almost too sore to work with. Tiny sensations analogous to a rock being rubbed on a file are deep under the skin. The affixation of the epidermis is driving me mad with itching, sharp pains, discomfort of the 9th degree. I rip off the tape, enjoying the agony of the hair removal over the nagging of the problem points.

In the afternoon the hotel owner James comes by seeking drugs or amusement of which I have none. I have to show him the arm, now, not excluding the worm theory.
“Ahh !! Beef Worms! Have to suffocate them. Poison them. Squeeze them out. My dog had 14 of them on his balls.” Thank whatever gods there be that this is not on my balls. John is the local self appointed medicine man, another know-it-all in the herbal department. “Make a mixture of garlic and soft wax and cover the sores. The garlic will poison them and the wax suffocate them. Have to plug up their blowhole so they Can’t breath. Kills them. Then you can pull them out with needle nose pliers.”
“Thanks John, I’ll try that.” Not really thankful for the information, but give this guy a little more credibility than the rest. Sounding more and more like it’s real, but still can’t imaging a worm lunching under my skin.
“Beef worms!” he says with pride and a huge smile “Fucking beef worms in there.”

That night I mash a pile of garlic, try to mix it with candle shavings. The shavings are stiff and crumbly, so I mix a little gasoline in with it. That makes a soft paste now. Pack and slather the stinking goo. Wrap with the masking tape again. No pain. All the nerves are dead in these areas. I vow to leave it alone for 2 days. Day one … the garlic has gone into my bloodstream. I reek of it. I taste it in my mouth. I hate garlic. Some kind of Germanic genetic necessity to ward off vampires, the ancestral necessity I had hoped to evolve from. There are different sorts of pains in there now. Needle stabbings, imagined thrashings. Somehow I leave it alone. Day two. Mostly quiet on the arm-bone front. The tape is driving me wild, as usual, things itchy, but normal in a way. In the evening I can’t stand it anymore. I have to look.

Under the tape with the last of the hair on it, the mounds are white and soft, slightly stinking. Squeeze I must. I do. Squeeze the easiest most accessible Vesuvius on the forearm. A small white rod appears out of the hole, about the diameter of a pin. Not zit goo, as it is not soft. “My god! My god! Kim .. get the tweezers. Quick!” Whatever it is, I don’t want it disappearing back down the hole. “See that! Grab that damn thing.”
“I can’t see it very well.” Fine time for myopia.
“Give me the tweezers. You Squeeze.” She squeezes. I clamp the white thing. Pull. It get’s longer. Then longer. I get a new grip, careful not to crush it and cut it off. Pull. Now out about a half inch. A flexible white rod. It stops coming out. Pull steady and insistently. A sharp stinging. Then an emerging of a body through the tortured hole. A body as big around as a pencil, a grub attached to the tube. Black and white striped with some kind of earwig type clampers on the back end, still clutching some gore. Almost a half inch long fly thorax of undescribed uglyness.
The animalito is dropped on a piece of table paper.
“Holy SHIT! What the fuck is that?”
“Oh my GOD!”
“That is a horror. A horror is what it is. Guess there really was a worm. Unbelievable. Do you agree to squeezing now?”
“Yes.” Is all Kim answers.
We sit in repulsed amazement for a long time before I get the camera out. The stories are true. I am reluctantly living the story.

The second worm is more hesitant to give up it’s post. I drip liquid wax directly on the hole, feeling no pain. The next evening the dead creature is extracted with the same practice, a little less panicky. This one comes out of a different hole, the creature having drilled 4 breathing passages to escape suffocation. Over the next week a hundred zits surround the area, the worm poisons and defecations working their way to the surface. Never thought it could happen to me, a civilized man of shopping malls, video stores and Chevron stations. Stories don’t really happen.

When I go back into the jungle, and I will go back, I think I’ll wear a hat and a long sleeved shirt, even if it’s 120 degrees out.