For Unto Us is Born
The Labuk is an opaque yellow river in Sabah, swift and dangerous at some points, slow and sluggish at others. In the 1960s, as the race to denude Borneo’s forests of their valuable mahogany and teak began, huge booms of logs were floated down the Labuk from the virgin jungle to its mouth in the Sulu Sea. The native treachery of the river was worsened by the booms and the numerous logs that had sunk on their seaward voyage.
Here we see Christopher, a middle-aged man with a balding pate, husband to Margaret, father to seven children, pioneer medical missionary to the people living along the banks of the Labuk. A missionary without regular outside support, making a living by providing medical services to paying customers in the port town of Sandakan.
Christopher had grown up rowing on Lake Joseph, Muskoka, in northern Ontario, in wide, flat bottomed row boats. Here he is with most of his children and his wife in just such a familiar boat, but in a river, a snaking water road, unlike anything he had navigated before. The trip is a maiden voyage — an untried aluminum boat made for Canadian waters, a green captain, with a maudlin crew of children and a woman who cannot swim.
The aluminum boat moves down the twisting river, low in the water with the weight of the family. Jungle foliage reaches out from the muddy shores. It is all Christopher can do to keep the boat under control and in mid-stream. Margaret glances nervously at the tell-tale signs in his set jaw. The children perceive their fear and hold their breath.
Suddenly there is a splash as the tail of a crocodile slashes the water, its head surfacing with a fish hanging from its jaws. The reptile stares, then, just as suddenly, it disappears. Margaret grips the side of the boat.
Shouts from the children, “A crocodile, Mum! Did you see it?” heralding a strange relief as the family breathes again.
“Let’s sing a carol,” suggests Jane, the eldest of the children. “How about Once in Royal David’s City?”
Margaret smiles, relaxing. Her favourite carol. They sing together against the heat, the jungle, the treachery of the river, “Once in Royal David’s City, stood a lowly cattle shed, where a mother laid her baby…” And there was a baby in the boat, a girl of two, blond and chubby.
Christopher shifts in his seat, his eyes fixed on the river, on an approaching s-bend in the river. Around the bend, uneasiness hardens into a knot as he dials back the throttle of the outboard motor and digs his feet against the boat’s aluminum bottom, as if stepping on invisible brakes. In front of them is a boom of massive timbers wedged between a sunken log and a jut in the land, blocking passage except for a narrow gap near the far shore.
The propeller pin shears on the outboard as the river suddenly becomes shallow. Christopher calmly removes the outboard motor to replace the pin with one he keeps on hand. He realizes his mistake too late.
Without the motor the boat is pushed by the current directly into the boom of logs and the nose of the boat begins to slip up and over the logs. The stern begins to sink and water rushes in.
Immediately Christopher recognizes the danger. Before long the boat will flip, a sort of backwards somersault. He moves quickly.
“Everyone, climb onto the boom of logs and sit down. Now!”
Quickly, the older children clamour onto the slippery, wet boom. Christopher, moves to the bow to act as ballast, speaks with deadly calm, “Hurry, Margaret, or it will be too late.”
Margaret passes her blond, chubby baby up to the waiting arms of her eldest son, a slip of a dark-haired boy. In the briefest moment, as the child is passed from mother to son, the boat shudders. Into the crack as wide as the universe between the two sets of hands, the baby slips and the Labuk River folds her into its murky waters.
Instantaneously there are two more splashes. Splash of an older sister jumping in to save the baby. And a second splash. Christopher slices the yellow water with his lean body.
He can see nothing, and nothing in his lifeguard training has prepared him for this. The current drags him like a leaf under the boom of logs. There is no escape upwards. Darkness is total. The best he can do is grope, blind, feeling for the familiar object.
And there it is, softness against his arm. He grabs it, pulling it towards himself — little hands, fat thighs, hair plastered to a small head. Father and daughter, twins in the river’s womb.
The same current that had pulled them in, births them quickly on the downstream side. Christopher pushes to the surface, his lungs grabbing for air and pushing the baby out of the water before him. As she breaches, she fills her lungs and howls.
Adrenalin fuels his strokes back to the boom where he hangs on, depositing the crying child on the logs. He allows himself a moment to imbibe how large her loss would have been.
Then, as Christopher turns his head to heave himself up onto the boom, out of the corner of his eye, he sees a $100 bill that had been in his shirt pocket float by him within arm’s reach. That’s my money, he thinks, all I have. He watches it go, seaward. He bows his head. For unto us is born this day a child.