Christopher Moore - Island of the Sequined Love Nun

didn’t want to swim half a mile to shore, wasn’t sure he could.

“Shark People no have boat. They no leave island.”

“No boats?” Pardee was amazed. Living in these islands without a boat was akin to living in Los Angeles without a car. It wasn’t done; it couldn’t be done.

The mate patted Pardee’s big shoulder. “You be fine. I have mask and fins for you.”

“What about sharks?”

“Sharks afraid around there. On most island people afraid of shark. On Alualu shark afraid of people.”

“You’re sure about that?”

“No.”

“Oh, good. Do you have another beer?”

Three hours later the rising sun lay like a silver tray on the horizon and Jefferson Pardee was having swim fins duct-taped to his feet by the first mate. The deck bustled with excited natives eating rice balls and taro paste, smoking cigarettes, shitting over the railings, and milling around the ship’s store, trying to buy Cokes and Planter’s cheese balls, Australian corned beef, and, of course, Spam. A small crowd had gathered around to watch the white man prepare for his swim. Pardee stood in his boxer shorts, maggot white except for his forearms and face, which looked like they’d been dipped in red barn paint. The mate stuffed Pardee’s clothes and notebook into a garbage bag and handed it to him, then slathered the journalist with waterproof sunscreen, a task on par with basting a hippo. Pardee snarled at a group of giggling children and they ran off down the deck screaming.

Pardee heard the ship’s big screws grind to a halt and the mate unhooked a chain gate set in the railing. “Jump,” he said.

Pardee looked at the crystal water forty feet below. “You’re out of your fucking mind. Don’t you have a ladder?”

“You can’t climb ladder with fins.”

“I’ll take the fins off until I get in the water.”

“No. Straps broken. You have to jump.”

Pardee shook his head and the flesh on his shoulders and back followed suit. “It’s not gonna happen.”

Suddenly the children Pardee had frightened came running around the bridge like a squealing pack of piglets. Two little boys broke formation and ran toward the journalist, who looked around just as he felt four tiny brown hands impact with his back.

Pardee saw sky, then water, then sky, then the island of Alualu laying on the sea like a bad green toupee, then the impact with the water took his breath, ripped the mask from his face, and forced streams of brine into his sinuses strong enough to bring blood.

Before he could even find the surface, he heard the ship’s screws begin to grind as the Micro Spirit steamed away.

Two excited boys shook Malink awake. “The ship is here and the Sorcerer is coming!” The old chief sat up on his grass sleeping mat and wiped the sleep from his eyes. He slept on the porch of his house, part of the stone foundation that had been there for eight hundred years. He stood on creaking morning legs and went to the bunch of red bananas that hung from the porch roof. He tore off two bananas and gave them to the boys.

“Where did you see the Sorcerer?”

“He comes across Vincent’s airstrip.”

“Good boys. You go eat breakfast now.”

Malink went to a stand of ferns behind his house, pulled aside his thu , and waited to relieve himself. This took longer every day it seemed. The Sorcerer had told Malink that he had angered the prostate monster and the only way to appease him was to quit drinking coffee and tuba and to eat the bitter root of the saw palmetto. Malink had tried these things for almost two full days before giving up, but it was too hard to wake up without coffee, too hard to go to sleep without tuba , saw palmetto made his stomach hurt, and he seemed to have a headache all the time. The prostate monster would just have to remain angry. Sometimes the Sorcerer was wrong.

He finished and straightened his thu , passed a thundering cannonade of gas, then went back to the sitting spot on the porch to get his cigarettes. The women had made a fire to boil water for coffee; the smoke from the burning coconut husks wafted out of the corrugated tin cookhouse and hung like blue fog under the canopy of breadfruit, mahogany, and palm trees.

Malink lit a cigarette and looked up to see the Sorcerer coming down the coral path, his white lab coat stark against the browns and greens of the village.

“ Saswitch ” (good morning), Malink said. The Sorcerer spoke their lan-guage.

“ Saswitch , Malink,” the Sorcerer said. At the sound of his voice Malink’s wife and daughters ran out of the cookhouse and disappeared

down the paths of the village.

“Coffee?” Malink asked in English.

“No, Malink, there is no time today.”

Malink frowned. It was rude for anyone to turn down an offer of food or drink, even the Sorcerer. “We have little Tang. You want Tang? Spacemen drink it.”

The Sorcerer shook his head. “Malink, there was another man here with the pilot you found. I need to find him.”

Malink looked at the ground. “I no see any other man.” The Sorcerer didn’t seem angry, but just the same, Malink didn’t like lying to him. He didn’t want to anger Vincent.

“I won’t punish anyone if something happened to him, if he was hurt or drowned, but I need to know where he is. Vincent has asked me to find him, Malink.”

Malink could feel the Sorcerer staring a hole in the top of his head. “Maybe I see another man. I will ask at the men’s house today. What he look like?”

“You know what he looks like. I need to find him now. The Sky Priestess will give back the coffee and sugar if we can find him today.”

Malink stood. “Come, we find him.” He led the Sorcerer through the village, which appeared deserted except for a few chickens and dogs, but Malink could see eyes peeking out from the doorways. How would he ex-plain this when they asked why the Sorcerer had come? They passed out of the village, went past the abandoned church, the graveyard, where great slabs of coral rock kept the bodies from floating up through the soil during the rainy season, and down the overgrown path to Sarapul’s little house.

The old cannibal was sitting in his doorway sharpening his machete.

Malink turned to the Sorcerer and whispered, “He rude sometime. He very old. Don’t be mad.”

The Sorcerer nodded.

“ Saswitch , Sarapul. The Sorcerer has come to see you.”

Sarapul looked up and glared at them. He had red chicken feathers stuck in his hair, two severed chicken feet hung from a cord above his head. “All the sorcerers are dead,” Sarapul said. “He is just a white doctor.”

Malink looked at the Sorcerer apologetically, then turned back to Sarapul. “He wants to see the man you found with the pilot.”

Sarapul ran his thumb over the edge of his machete. “I don’t know what happened to him. Maybe he went swimming and a shark got him. Maybe someone eat him.”

Sebastian Curtis stepped forward. “He won’t be hurt,” he said. “We are going to send him out on the ship.”

“I want to go to the ship,” Sarapul said. “I want to buy things. Why can’t we go to the ship?”

“That’s not the issue here, old man. Vincent wants this man found. If he’s dead, I need to know.”

“Vincent is dead.”

The Sorcerer crouched down until he was eye-to-eye with the old cannibal. “You’ve seen the guards at the compound, Sarapul. If the man isn’t at the gate in an hour, I’m going to have the guards tear the island apart until they find him.”

Sarapul grinned. “The Japanese? Good. You send them here.” He swung his machete in front of the sorcerer’s face. “I have a present for them.”