Christopher Moore - Island of the Sequined Love Nun

Forty minutes later he took his place in the circle of the Shark men. Chief Malink stood and greeted Tuck with a jarring backslap. “Good to see you, my friend. How’s it hanging?”

“It hangs with magnificent splendor,” Tuck said, his programmed response to the truck drivers and cowboys who used that expression, although he wondered where Malink had heard it. “But I’m a little parched,” he said.

A fat young man named Vincent was pouring tonight and he handed Tucker the coconut cup with a smile. Tuck sipped at first, fighting that first gag, then gulped down the coconut liquor and gritted his teeth to keep it from coming back up.

The older men in the group seemed festive and yattered back and forth in their native language, but Tuck noticed that the younger men were sulking, digging their toes into the sand like pouting little boys.

“Why so glum, guys? Someone kill you dog?”

“No,” Malink said, not quite understanding the question. “We eat a turtle today.”

Having your dog killed must mean something different here than it means back in Texas, Tuck realized.

Malink sensed Tuck’s confusion. “They are sad because the Sky Priestess has chosen the mispel from their house and she will be gone many days now.”

“Mispel?”

“The girl you followed last night is mispel of the bachelors’ house.”

“Sorry to hear that, guys,” Tuck said, acting as if he had the slightest idea what a mispel or being chosen was. He figured that maybe it had something to do with PMS. Maybe when the women started getting cranky with the old Sky Priestess cramps, they just checked her into a special “chosen” hut until she mellowed out. He waited until the cup came around the circle before he brought it up again. “So she was chosen by the old Sky Priestess, huh? Tough luck there. Did you try giving her chocolate? That takes the edge off sometimes.”

“We give her special tuba when she comes,” Malink said.

“Tastes like shit!” several of the men chanted.

Abo, the fierce one, said, “I am chosen and now Sepie is chosen. I will marry her.”

Several of the other young men seemed less than pleased at Abo’s announcement.

“Come on, man,” Tuck said. “You might need a little attitude adjustment, but you’re not chosen.”

“I am,” Abo insisted. “Look.” He turned his back to the group and ran his finger across a long pink scar that ran diagonally across his ribs. “The Sky Priestess chose me for Vincent in the time of the ripe breadfruit.”

Tuck stared at the scar, stunned, hoping that what he was thinking was as far off as his PMS theory had been. “The Sky Priestess? That was the music last night, all the noise?”

“Yes,” Malink said, “Vincent brings her in his airplane. We never see it, but we hear it.”

“And when someone is chosen, then does the jet always fly the next day?”

Malink nodded. “No one was chosen for a long time until Vin cent sent you to fly the white airplane. We thought Vincent was angry with us.”

Tuck looked to Abo, who seemed satisfied that the chief was backing him up. “Where do you go when you are chosen?”

“You go to the white house where the Sorcerer lives. There are many machine.”

“And then what? What happens in the white house?”

“It is secret.”

Tuck was across the circle in Abo’s face. “What happens there?”

Abo seemed frightened and turned away. Tuck looked around at the other men. “Who else here has been chosen?”

The fat kid who had been pouring twisted so Tuck could see the scar on his back.

“What’s your name, kid?”

“Vincent.”

“I should have known. Vincent, what happens in the white house?”

Young Vincent shook his head. Tuck turned to Malink. “What happens?”

Malink shook his head. “I don’t know. I have not been chosen.”

A familiar voice called out of the dark, “They make them sleep.”

Everyone turned to see Kimi coming down the path from the village. The old cannibal creaked along behind him.

Abo barked a reproach to Kimi in his native tongue. Kimi barked back something in the same language. Tuck didn’t have to know the language to know that Kimi had told the fierce one to fuck off.

“Kimi, are you okay?” Tuck barely recognized the navigator. He was wearing the blue loincloth of the Shark men and he seemed to have put on some muscle. Tuck was genuinely delighted to see him. The navigator ran to him and threw his arms around the pilot. Tuck found himself returning the embrace.

Several of the young men had stood and were glaring at Kimi. One of the jugs of tuba had been kicked over, but no one seemed to notice the liquor running out on the sand.

“Kimi, do you know what’s going on here?”

“A pretty white woman with yellow hair. She come out of the fence and take the girl away. They will put her to sleep and when she wakes up she will have a cut here.” He drew his finger across the back of his ribs.

“No!” Abo screamed. He leaped over the crouching Malink to get to Kimi. Without thinking, Tuck swung around and caught Abo

under the jaw with a roundhouse punch. Abo’s feet flew out from under him and he landed on his back. Tuck rubbed his hand. Abo tried to struggle to his feet and Malink barked an order to two of the young Vincents. Re-luctantly, they restrained their friend. “Vincent has sent the pilot,” Malink reminded them.

Tuck turned back to Kimi. “What happens then?”

“You owe me five hundred dollars.”

“You’ll get it. What happens then?”

“The chosen has to stay in bed for many days. There are tube stuck in them and they are in much pain. Then they come back.”

“That’s it?”

“Yes,” Kimi said.

Malink stood now and addressed Kimi. “How do you know this?”

Kimi shrugged. “Sepie tells me.”

Malink turned to Abo, who had stopped struggling and now looked terrified. “She said she would not tell. The girl-man put a spell on her.”

Tuck stood rubbing his knuckles, watching this little tropical opera and feeling like someone had snapped on a light and found him french-kissing a maggoty corpse. The cooler, the surgical garb, the flights on short notice, the second jet waiting on the tarmac in Japan, the guards, the secrecy, the money. How had he been so fucking stupid?

Malink was hurling a string of native curses at Abo, who looked as if he would burst into tears any second.

“You dumb motherfuckers!” Tuck shouted.

Malink stopped talking.

“She’s selling your kidneys. The doc is taking out your kidneys and selling them in Japan.”

This revelation didn’t have quite the effect that Tuck thought it would. In fact, he seemed to be the only one concerned about it at all.

“Did you hear me?”

Malink looked a little embarrassed. “What is a kidney?”

Just before dawn, Tuck crawled through the bottom of the shower like a homesick cockroach, scuttled out of the bathroom under the mosquito netting and into bed. There were things to do, big things, important things, maybe even dangerous things, but he had no idea what they were and he was too tired and too drunk to figure them out now. He had tried, he had really tried to convince the Shark men that the doctor and his wife were doing horrible things to them, but the islanders always came back with the same answer: “It is what Vincent wants. Vincent will take care of us.”

To hell with them, Tuck thought. Dumb bastards deserve what happens to them.

He rolled over and pushed the coconut-headed dummy aside. The dummy pushed back.

Tuck leaped out of bed, tripped in the mosquito netting, and scooted on his butt like a man backing away from a snake.