She cupped her hands to her mouth to be heard
over the crashing surf. “Manu wants you to come right
now.”
The blowhole sent a ten-foot geyser that was
caught by the wind and turned into rain.
Dash tiptoed across lava, leaving behind a
bounty of polished flat stones that would make great hoppers. They
were everywhere now that he had other business. He was up to nine
skips over the chop, his right throwing arm stronger every day. The
pursuit took him to a peaceful place where his useless body parts
didn’t matter. Now that he’d gotten the angle and timing near
perfection, he was being summoned to an impossible task that would
lead to his death.
He glanced at the volcano and whispered. “I
hope you choke on me.”
The wind lifted the girl’s hair, teased it in
all directions, the last of the sun tinting her skin a rich copper
as she stood waiting. She would become a beautiful woman, which was
probably why her mother had been chosen as the chief’s wife. Dash
conjured a picture to save his life. He imagined her mother’s long
bare legs and high full breasts, hands held lightly over angular
hips. Her lips parted in a smile to greet the expert rock skipper
back from a new record toss. He paused next to the blowhole, waited
for any sign of an impending erection. But the image changed as
another burst of water erupted, showering his back and shoulders,
plugging his left ear. The ghost’s face became something else,
graceful jaw line rearranging into a jigsaw puzzle with missing
pieces, a hole littered with broken teeth and splintered bone,
flesh singed from the soldier’s bullet. Dash also saw in that
instant that her pride had not weakened—her life was taken without
her showing fear.
“
God bless us all,” the good captain
had said.
Tiki was alone again, hopping foot to foot as
the sun touched the sea, another nearly endless day relinquishing
its heat and light. “Hurry. It’s getting late.”
He put one hand on her bare shoulder as she led
them into the noisy tunnel behind a single tiny flame. The
mosquitoes fell on them, Dash swatting at his shoulders and head,
digging at his ears and spitting.
“
Careful you don’t blow on the
candle,” she said, holding it out in front. “The jungle is
different tonight. It’s not good to be in the dark when it is so
upset.”
Night came quickly on the island. It wasn’t a
place to be caught hiking a jungle path or up the coast without a
candle or the torches he’d seen villagers use. Sunsets lasted a few
minutes, no hour-long dusk where the sun slipped behind New England
mountains. Night was a cellar door closing on rusty hinges. It had
twice left him groping with an armload of firewood after becoming
preoccupied by washed up junk.
He slapped at his face, stumbled into
her.
“
Wave, don’t squish,” she reminded,
using two hands to steady the flame as they came to the end of the
path. “Blood makes more come.”
The hazy dome was higher, less smothering, and
the new cool air changed his spirits. He was a castaway on an
exotic island, complete with an active volcano, surrounded by
strange gods and people from the pages of a colorful travel
magazine. The sweat dripping off him was filled with drowned
mosquitoes, but that suddenly didn’t matter. And neither did
beautiful stoic ghosts or his defunct libido. He raised a
mosquito-ravaged chin and headed for the circle of men passing the
diesel-flavored booze.
The drinking circle had moved to the mats where
communal meals were served, as it had for the pageant of beauty
ceremony. Dash was instantly aware of a different mood among the
men.
“
Come, Cracker, this is a special
night.” Manu made room, patted the ground. From the tame voices,
Dash guessed the cup hadn’t been passed for long. When he dropped
to his butt, the circle changed shape. Those with backs to the
stage turned and became the first row of the audience, dusting
their hands and getting comfortable behind a row of flickering
shell candles. A full cup was pressed into his hand.
“
Cheers,” said Manu, his face in a
smile so wide his eyes disappeared.
“
Eat,” said the man on his other
side, offering a bowl of blackened wings and legs.
Dash passed the bowl on, then took a sip to
prime his body. His second drink was longer, two gulps of the
hellish liquid before spitting into the cup and holding out to the
chief. “Smooth like silk,” he said, gasping.
Manu drank and then clapped his hands, barking
orders that brought the rest of the villagers from their huts or
whatever tasks they’d been doing to complete the day. Drummers
rolled out their instruments and made a few thumps.
Sound
checks
, Dash thought, then checked to see how far the cup had
traveled. He searched for Tiki’s face in the crowd gathered at each
end of the mat but didn’t find her in the dim light. He saw no
children.
The cup returned, and he drank and spit. “Like
silk,” he repeated, then hiccupped. Manu clapped him hard and took
the cup.
The drums banged for real when six fully naked
women slipped out through the frond curtain onto the dusty stage.
They formed a row behind the candles, oiled and glistening, brown
skin a landscape of dangerous places Dash couldn’t help but explore
with wide eyes. The women swayed in unison, hips tilting, sweeping
hands reaching to tell a story. All but one appeared to be in some
stage of pregnancy.
Manu jabbed a bony elbow. “Better than
America.” He pointed a crooked finger, clucked his
tongue.
Each was lovely in her own way. Two were tall
and thin, while the women on the ends were short and thick, with
large breasts jutting into the night. All twelve nipples had been
stained bright red, perhaps to honor the volcano.
The cup returned, and the drumming went fast
and then slowed, dancers matching the pace. Their arms were snakes,
sometimes lifting high to represent the sun or moon, he guessed. He
compared their areolas, picking the roundest pair that held the
tiniest bulls-eye bumps. He wondered how the red nubs would feel
between his thumb and index finger, and if the oil coating the
silky mounds would taste like coconut or some tangy
fruit.
The women turned their backs, a dozen cheeks
jiggling in a frantic drum solo. Maybe it was the clap-clap, but
Dash saw the lovely rumps blur together, become a single wave of
flesh, and was reminded of the chocolate fountain Sarah had picked
out for their wedding reception for an extra three hundred bucks.
The salesman switched it on and handed them each a pineapple slice
they dipped into the cascading chocolate. Sarah grabbed his wrist
before he could take a bite, looked into his eyes, hers big and
bluish green, and brought his hand to her mouth. She licked the
pineapple and then sucked each of his fingers clean while the
salesman stood there making asthmatic breathing sounds.
The drumming slowed and hips became butter
churns, the women still displaying their rear ends. The hula-style
dance morphed into something completely different when the women
covered their shining butt cheeks with both hands and bent at the
waist to display all sorts of new dark niches. Dash thought of the
spiders’ hiding spots in his lava cave and shivered.
Manu elbowed him again as the women lifted back
up and turned to face the audience. The drumming halted and the
dancers huddled close, suddenly shy, crossing their legs to hide
their lower parts. The villagers at each end of the mats clapped.
The tall dancer with the small nipples Dash had admired left the
group, stepping between the candles and up to where he sat, trying
not to look at her triangle of sparkling pubic hair. Sarah had
always waxed everything away, only once missing a single hair that
had managed to grow more than an inch. During an especially
intimate moment, he had unfurled it from its home above and to the
right of where he was supposed to be paying attention. He’d felt
bad for the hair, knew it was doomed, was even tempted to pluck it
out of its misery and let it revel in the brief pain its removal
would cause its harsh owner.
“
What are you doing?” Sarah had
asked.
He had let the hair live one more day. “Sorry,”
he’d whispered, ever the coward.
“
Come.”
Dash was startled, for an instant believing the
mass of looming pubic hair had spoken. He accepted the young
woman’s slick hand and stood, woozy from alcohol and the heady
smell of coconut oil. He followed her away from men speaking in
low, conspiratorial voices and women giggling, down a strip of bare
earth covered in white flower petals. The woman’s undulating rear
end led the way, its surface picking up the light of the candles,
abandoned cooking fires, and maybe even a few rays from the newly
risen moon.
She herded him up three stone steps and into a
grass hut and made him lie face down onto a thick sleeping mat in
the center of the room. Small candles were already lit, and more
petals competed with her floral-scented flesh. He lifted his hips
when she leaned down to tug away his underpants. She lowered
herself onto his naked butt, pinning him, her flesh warm and slick.
He felt her reaching, and then a liquid trickle between his
shoulder blades that ran down the middle of his back. He could also
feel the crinkle of her pubic hair, and he had the urge to roll
over, but her strong thighs were clamped tight, had him trapped.
His face still tingled from the clap-clap as he tried to relax. Her
fingers began kneading muscles, made designs over his skin. Her
hands pushed up from his lower back, then out and down his arms,
squeezing and twisting his fingers before repeating the heavenly
maneuvers.
He nearly fell asleep twice, jerking back
awake, and she tugged under his right armpit when she finally
wanted him to roll onto his back. He kept his eyes shut, breathing
in the heavenly smells, hardly caring there was no door on this or
any of the huts. He might even have heard voices, more giggles, but
oil was dripped in the sign of the cross and firm fingers made
tantalizing shapes around his own hard nipples. He heard the
distant drumbeat over low whispers as if he were a champion golfer
lining up a putt on the eighteenth green.
The hips over his waist shifted and the crinkly
hair found a different spot. There was wetness in a new place and
the sensation was beyond glorious. He took a deep, even breath, as
any golfer would when the trophy was on the line. Even the crowd
went perfectly silent, drummers paused in mid-beat, everyone
waiting to explode at the sound of the ball dropping into the cup,
to see the victor raise a pumping fist.
“
What’s the matter with you,
Cracker?”
The silence was broken, his concentration lost
mid-golf stroke. He opened his eyes to the sight of the exotic
young woman straddling him, her eyebrows furrowed, her lips pursed.
Her perfect nipples cast sideways shadows across chocolate breasts.
From a million miles away he could feel pressure on his penis,
prodding fingers that were surely warm, wonderful, and full of
knowledge.
“
Your battle knife feels like dead
lizard,” said the woman, and he could hear the words repeated by
the nearby gallery.
He closed his eyes again, imagined falling
backward from the edge of the hungry volcano, failed putter in one
hand, a single curling pubic hair from his cheating fiancée pinched
between two fingers of the other.
T
iki knelt over Dash’s
bedroll, gently tapping a finger on his pounding forehead, while a
single flame did a slow dance at the bottom of a coconut shell. He
could still taste the vomit, and nearly retched again. His body was
oily and coated in a dusty film and bits of grass. He smelled like
suntan lotion after a long day at the beach.
He reached a greasy hand and touched her elbow.
“I didn’t do so good.”
“
I don’t want you to die,” she said
in a whisper.
He couldn’t see her face in the shadows, but
felt the tears on his chest. “Manu might change his mind,” he
said.
“
It’s not Manu’s choice. The Volcano
will drown our village with her blood if we do not please her.”
Tiki’s head shook side to side, hair brushing across his face.
“He’s afraid for our people. Only your god can change her
mind.”
“
I don’t have a god,” he said. “Not
anymore. I gave up when my dad died, but never really believed. It
wasn’t part of my life.”
“
Then you have to come right now.”
She tugged at his arm, but her hands slid free in the gritty
leftover oil, and she fell back on her rump. Now he could see she
was crying. “I heard them talk. It will happen in the next balance,
when the moon’s face is half black and half bright. Your god has to
come convince the Volcano.”
* * *
There was no path where Tiki ducked into the
thick vegetation, only a vertical black slit she crawled through
like a reverse birth. It was Alice’s plunge down the rabbit hole,
only one filled with snakes and spiders that attacked birds, and
giant prehistoric lizards with foot-long tongues. The most
dangerous animal he’d encountered in Vermont was a black bear
struck dead by a propane delivery truck. He’d been sent by his
editor to get a quote from the driver and game warden.
Are there
more bears than years past? Can residents expect a rash of such
unfortunate accidents? Is this the first bear you’ve crashed
into?