It suddenly dawned on Dash how often those
movies where the villagers greeted explorers with open arms had
turned tragic. Brave adventurers burned at the stake or chopped
into bait for crimes far pettier than decimating the fish
population.
Out by the soccer field, the warrior lifted the
stone above his head, sweat cascading from brawny shoulders and
raining down on his cowering charge. The boy made no sound when the
stone fell.
An elbow stabbed Dash’s ribs. The man on his
left held out the cup as the teenage boy slid to the dirt. Dash
could feel his heart pounding, could see the boy’s blood pouring
from a flattened hand that seemed to be missing fingers.
Unimaginable beauty, he’d thought. A tropical
paradise.
The chief spoke slowly in his sing-song
language, and even the men who could barely sit upright nodded
their heads. Dash was certain he was telling them how they’d lash
the cracker to a bamboo cross, march him up the volcano’s brown
slope, snap Roman-style whips across his body for encouragement,
and finally boot his pale ass down into the molten lava. The old
chief paused and the faces turned to Dash.
“
My legs are getting too old for
climbing her back.” Manu used his leathery chin to indicate the
volcano. “Dreams will show me what is best. We won’t feed you to
the Volcano yet.”
S
moke amassed in a hazy dome
over the village, trapping and mixing peculiar food smells with the
sickly sweetness of decomposing flowers. The sun was somewhere low
over the treetops when a woman came to kneel behind the chief and
speak into his gnarled ear. Manu nodded and she reached under his
armpits to hoist him to his feet. The other men also rose, although
two stumbled forward, pitching onto their foreheads and flopping to
their backs. There was laughter, and nobody came to their aid. Both
resembled upside down turtles, were left behind drunk and helpless,
pushing dirt into a dusty cloud.
The drinking circle formed an uneven line that
weaved across the mashed up shells. They reconvened on a long strip
of woven mats near the fires, where a dozen women were busy with
food. Manu’s bony fingers jabbed Dash’s shoulder, pointed for him
to sit among the scrum of children at the far end. But then the old
man put his weathered face close, noxious breath whistling in and
out, chest so frail and malnourished that he reminded Dash of the
neglected animals in fundraising commercials.
“
Better you eat away from the
warriors,” Manu said. “I don’t want you killed before the Volcano
speaks to me.”
Dash began forming a protest, or some kind of
apology that would make a difference, but his tongue was too clumsy
from the alcohol, and the woman who’d lifted the chief was now
settling the old man between two warriors. Better to take his
chances with the boy who kicked him than draw further ire from
hand-smashing lunatics who considered him a fish killer.
Dash headed toward the shrieks and youthful
bickering, as they took their places facing what appeared to be a
stage and a gigantic palm frond curtain suspended from a bamboo
frame. They sat with their backs to the jungle’s low hum, men
speaking in slurred but hushed voices, sipping from coconut shell
cups. The children around Dash fiddled and played hand slapping
games under the stern gaze of one old woman who kept the noise down
with slaps of her own.
The dirt stage was about a third the length of
the mat, black lava rocks delineating the rectangular area in front
of the curtain. Smoldering metal pots were at both front corners,
either for effect or maybe to ward off mosquitoes.
The women in charge of the food filed back and
forth from the hut nearest the cooking fires. All had round
bellies, in some phase of pregnancy, hefting enormous turtle shells
piled with steaming fare. The shells were deposited up and down the
mat and set off a flurry of bare hands that filled wooden plates in
a mad rush. The boy who’d assaulted Dash wrestled a whole fish from
another, clumps of rice and other bits of food flying. There were
platters of what appeared to be barbecued bats and long-legged
frogs, and plates stacked high with charred rodent-shaped
creatures. It was hard to be sure what things were because the
pieces were burned to a crisp, but the food smells were good and
the clap-clap had left him prepared to devour anything.
Squeals and pig snorts came from a bamboo
corral on the far side of what were probably outhouses, where an
alcove had been hacked into the thick jungle.
Tiki squeezed next him and sat. “Boys and pigs
are the same,” she said, and scooped colorful fruit onto his plate.
Banana slices were the only items he recognized for sure. She added
a handful of thick fish stew from another bowl, meaty gray chunks
that bristled with hair-like bones.
“
Tastes better than it looks,” she
said.
“
It all looks good.” Dash arranged
his food, keeping the fruit separate from the stew as the jostling
continued on his other side. He took a bite of fish, and fine bones
immediately caught in his throat. He gagged and forced a hard
cough, tears streaming, much to the amusement of the boys. He tried
massaging his throat with one hand and fumbled for a cup with the
other.
“
Here.” Tiki scooped fingers into a
bowl heaped with something like mashed potatoes, then grabbed a
handful of his hair to steady him. “Makes the bones go down
easy.”
He allowed her to scrape the bitter paste on
the back of his lower teeth, then managed to hold his gorge and
swallow. The bones seemed to dissolve, the paste leaving an odd
tingling sensation behind his Adam’s apple.
She patted his head and began stacking food on
her own plate. “Maybe just eat the fruit.”
The sky was nearly dark when the clap-clap jugs
were fetched. Manu took the first drink and passed the cup. He gave
a command that sent three young men to their places behind wood
drums and a fifty gallon metal container lying on its side. A boy
hopped to his feet, darting to each of the smoldering stage pots to
deposit palm-sized leafy bundles that sizzled and caught fire. They
caused a loud hiss and eruptions of smoky white plumes. The
drummers went to work.
Dash leaned toward Tiki. “What is
this?”
“
A story,” she said, shifting onto
her knees. “The pageant of beauty.”
“
Nice.” His head was heavy from the
booze and food. “It’s like dinner theater.”
She frowned and put a finger to her
lips.
“
Those are the white soldiers from a
faraway land. They come to our island once a year, unless the Storm
God steers them away.” She pointed to a line of six villagers
coated in what looked like gray ash from head to toe. They held
paddles and stroked imaginary water, taking short, shuffling steps
along the stage perimeter. They stopped with their backs to the
audience, a bamboo rifle hanging from thin vines over each man’s
right shoulder. The smoke from the pots lifted into the overhead
haze.
“
Those are guns,” said Tiki. “White
men use guns and crosses for weapons.” She held her index fingers
in the sign of a cross in front of her nose, and turned to show
him.
“
I don’t,” he said, and she put one
of her fingers back to her lips.
“
Those are the first contestants.”
She nodded toward five of the fattest village men who had stepped
through the curtain. Wild grass wigs were perched cockeyed on each
head, lips painted bright red, diva-like. Their sports bras were
comically stuffed, and grass skirts that came to their feet dragged
along the dirt stage, pudgy knees exposed. Those still eating began
to heckle in their sing-song language. A few blew raspberries and
booed.
The line of white men lifted the rifles from
their shoulders to brandish at the men in drag, the drummers
doubling their efforts. The soldier farthest from Dash disappeared
behind the curtain then returned with a cowering herd of little
boys he ordered to sit between the ridiculous contestants and armed
men. The drums cut off and the middle soldier turned to face Manu,
who had just taken a drink and was spitting into the cup. The chief
raised an arm and wiggled his fingers for them to
continue.
“
This is the punishment for offering
girls not pretty enough,” said Tiki. “Boys are killed.”
The soldiers opened fire on the boys, who
jerked from the gunshots, flopping on the ground and groaning from
pretend mortal wounds. Some died five or six times, coming to a
final rest in chalky piles. The drummers resumed their beat when
the last victim was still.
“
That’s not how boys really die when
they are shot,” she added, and Dash wondered how she
knew.
Hysterical women scampered on stage with
flailing arms and hands. They cried to the heavens before kneeling
to scoop up a murdered child to show the audience the depth of
their loss. Giggling faces were smothered in kisses before the
women retreated behind the curtain.
“
Those are the mamas.”
The men in drag slunk backward into the curtain
and also disappeared. The drums slowed to a steady pace.
“
Now come the pretty girls.” She
pointed to the parting curtain as five girls, all younger looking
than Tiki, took the places of the fat men in wigs. They touched
their own faces, preened their hair, and struck poses for the
soldiers, who shouldered their weapons. The men in the audience
cheered the girls, whistled between fingers. Boys jumped up and
down, clapping and stumbling across the remaining dirty
plates.
“
Now they take the winners away,”
Tiki said, as the girls stepped forward into the imaginary boat.
The soldiers paddled to the drum beat, made a slow lap in the
opposite direction from which they’d come, and then disappeared
behind the curtain with their new cargo.
“
Where do they go?” Dash felt a
sudden need to know, but Tiki only shrugged and pushed her plate to
the center of the mat. “What happens to them?”
“
It’s the pageant of beauty,” she
said, as women began clearing the mess and the male actors returned
for more clap-clap. “Girls who are ten years old are taken from our
island by the soldiers. But only if they are pretty enough to be
chosen.”
He looked at the girl, examining her more
closely. Her skin was flawless—no scars or marks. Her eyes were as
bright as any, but her lashes were long and curled. Something about
her was different from the other children, the other girls. Her
hair was full and gleaming even under the cruddy haze, as if it had
been combed longer, readied for some place other than an island
jungle. He wasn’t much of a beauty pageant judge, but she was
surely the prettiest girl he’d seen.
He knew the answer before asking. “How old are
you?”
“
I’m ten.” She smiled, again showing
her perfect teeth. “I’m the next to go.”
T
iki led them back toward the
ocean by the light of a honey-colored candle. Dash was banished to
his cave until the old chief sorted out his dreams. He hoped it
wouldn’t take long, and he also hoped it would take forever.
“
Manu says you’re safer away from
the village,” she said, body tilted from a bucket of fresh water
she shifted from hand to hand every few yards. “The young warriors
don’t listen when they drink. They hate your skin.”
Dash was trying to balance his load while
slapping at cobwebs and floating booby-traps of mosquito
clouds.
He understood the fear of outsiders, had grown
up with bigotry aplenty. Change was something to hate in his corner
of New England. Entrepreneurs considering shops catering to
tourists faced insurmountable town meeting battles, stone-faced
selectmen convinced of the type of people a fancy bookshop would
draw. Candles and maple syrup were barely acceptable, but crafts
and pottery would bring the hippies and pedophiles, heathens from
the Internets who were thieves of souls and worse. The town hall
regularly erupted into shouting matches.
“
Photography? Them rag-head bahstads
will be makin’ phony IDs. They’ll have cousins of cousins showin’
up at all our gawdamn front doors with cah-sized bombs ’fore ya
know it. Why bring ’em here? Plenty utha places in the world for
them ta be. ”
The middle-aged woman who wanted to renovate
her garage and take baby pictures was a Boston transplant from some
thirty years earlier. She was still an outsider to most.
Dash’s father—who sat at the fringe of these
meetings, bringing his son along for civic lessons—never spoke up.
Dash was glad to be near an exit, one foot in the aisle, ready to
run, not trusting his father’s silence. His father was a man who
would emerge from a closet with an obscure nineteenth-century hand
tool, challenging his son’s friends to identify the item. And the
object would invariably have some bizarre purpose, engineered to
remove chicken beaks—“slices like warm cheese”—or it might be
monstrous tongs for castrating hogs, “comes off clean as a
whistle.” His father would hold up a set of imaginary pig testicles
then work the medieval-looking contraption with lusty exuberance.
The stories circulated, but the antique shop wasn’t meant for
locals anyway. No dairy farmer or auto mechanic ever stepped inside
his father’s shop. These people had their own antiques, which were
mostly still being used. Dash’s father’s crime was to put a
ridiculous price tag on junk. Twenty dollar canning jars? Being an
outcast suited his father just fine because the customers rolled
into town in freshly waxed foreign ‘cahs.’