Uncle James was a missionary in the late 1960's, helping spread the word of his God to the "underdeveloped and pagan" people of South East Asia. He said it was a beautiful place -- it sounded like to hell to me. Stagnant water and the lush climate was the perfect breeding ground for mosquitos. Big fuckers, from what he told me. Big, mean, and infected. (Not unlike my last wife.)
In typical arrogant white man fashion, Uncle James preached to the “poor brown people”. He did good, when he wasn't doing bad. When not drinking and whoring, He helped establish a school, clothe the naked savages, and give them the white man’s law and language. For his “kindness” they gave him the Dengue Fever, the Bone Break Fever, a distant cousin of Malaria.
They say the Dengue Fever can rot your mind, and his it did. He suffered on that island for months, barely able to sit up or feed himself. Covered in red welts from hemorrhaging blood vessels, his extremities swollen, he prayed night and day. In most cases of the Dengue the patient is lost. Once the vessels begin to hemorrhage, the orifices follow. Blood transfusions are needed.
"Simple," you say as you sit there reading in the comfort of your home, sipping coffee, your TV mumbling in the background, warm and fed. In the 1960’s you might as well have been in the stone age.
Uncle James had type O Positive blood, as 75% of the world does. . . The white-world. Most Orientals are AB type. No transfusions for James. How he survived was a miracle. But he did survive and he told me this tale and passed to me the one true passion that has stayed with me the longest.
Uncle James left his God on the sandy beach of that south east Asian island. God had not helped him in his time of need. All the bibles, all the rosaries, the baptism, the wasted incense floating up to heaven like opium smoke from a fool's pipe, all of it for nothing. He was pulled from the depths of his fever by a famed local witch doctor, Watango. While the exact incantations spells, offerings, and mojo are lost to time, history and translation, his recovery was a miracle.
After his return to the civilized world, from what I understand, he was a changed man. When he was home from business travel, he was reclusive, medicated. . .Strange. I only remember him as the guy who would sporadically show up at weddings, funerals, and baptisms in the same old suit -- you know the one, pale blue with the 70’s butterfly collar. I remember those dead eyes and the sickly sweet miasma of booze, after-shave, and cigars.
I didn't know him well, but I flew from Seattle to Baltimore for his funeral out of a sense of duty to my remaining family. At the reading of his will, I was surprised the old bastard had left me anything at all.
In the basement of his home, tucked away under a hoard of dusty old magazines, newspaper clippings of strange murders and medical curiosities, I found it.
His old toy chest.
His skin collection.
