“Okay, Chuba. But first off—cut out that sahib stuff. To you, I’m just plain Biff.”
CHAPTER VIII
Still Missing
The friendship between Biff and Chuba developed rapidly. Chuba was an odd boy, with his mixed-up jive talk, his quick Oriental mind, and his desperate anxiety to be “like American kid.” He was half a head shorter than Biff. He had long, black, wiry hair, usually plastered down with smelly hair tonics. These he got from Muscles. The burly mechanic tried every new hair conditioner that came along, in an attempt to control his unruly light brown hair. Chuba’s skin was dark, so deeply tanned that its yellowish tinge from his Chinese blood hardly showed. He looked more Burmese than Chinese.
His daily clothes were a pair of hand-me-down brown shorts and hand-made sandals, ideal for the heavy, humid weather which turned the jungle-enclosed camp into a smoking oven. The shorts Chuba got from the Americans in the camp. Chuba did his own alterations on the shorts to cut them down to his size. He was far from an expert tailor. One pair had the left leg six inches longer than the right. Another pair, handed down from a man with a forty-four-inch waist, gave Chuba a laughable balloon effect in the rear, particularly when he ran.
Biff’s second day at the camp in Unhao began with a visit to the communications room. Mike Dawson, the radio operator, merely shook his head at the question written on Biff’s face.
No word from Uncle Charlie.
Biff hurried through breakfast. He left Headquarters House, stepping into a blazing sun already sending heat waves up from the brown dirt surface of the camp.
Chuba was waiting just outside the entrance to headquarters.
“I hurry up this morning. Help my father. Now I can show you rest of camp.” Chuba’s father was in charge of the servants in the camp. “My father Number One Boss here,” Chuba told Biff proudly.
The boys roamed around for more than an hour. Chuba chattered on as fast as any of the monkeys scampering about the trees which fringed the camp.