The Atua Man

by John Stephenson

  “So why even pray?”

  “You’re right. Praying to a god out there to change a human condition is useless. If God is one, and God is omnipotent, there can’t be anything but God. The moment you have God and a storm and people who want the storm to stop, you fail. To succeed you can only have God.”

  “But isn’t that the way you pray?” David said.

  “Yes, but I’m not doing a very good job of it. Maybe subconsciously I’m looking for results just like every other human being. I know that won’t bring about a spiritual change. I don’t care about the weather. It’s not like we’re a cruise ship with a schedule to keep. The first principle in spiritual healing is to stop judging—good weather, bad weather—what does that have to do with Spirit? So, either I’m no good at this or there is some other reason for all this suffering.”

  “Perhaps one of the reasons is that Larry is an asshole.”

  “What’s that statement about God’s rain falling on the just and the unjust?”

  “Are we just victims of fate, then, in a godless world?” David asked.

  “The block is obviously in me,” Jason said. “Larry hasn’t a clue. He thinks I’m some sort of magician who can miraculously make the crooked places straight. But I don’t see that as the point of spiritual illumination. There’s got to be more to that than just creating a harmonious human condition.”

  Monday, June 5, 1989

  The next morning the sky was brighter, and the winds had dialed down a couple of notches. They were still blowing from the wrong direction, though. Larry wouldn’t say where he and his daughter had been the night before. Melanie just said they’d been to a settlement across the lagoon to visit some of her dad’s old friends.

  That afternoon two more yachts limped into the pass and tied up along the quay. One, a state-of-the-art maxi yacht sailed by a group of teenagers, flew the flag of the British Virgin Islands, a well-known tax haven. Larry was convinced they were drug smugglers even though they claimed they were delivering the Dutch-built ketch to her owner in Sydney. The other yacht looked barely seaworthy. She flew an American flag and was sailed by a young hippy-looking couple with two small children. Larry was equally mad at them for risking the lives of their children, and he didn’t like that the quay had filled up. The next yacht fleeing the storm would have to anchor in the lagoon.

  That evening the visitors joined the islanders in the community hall to watch the village dance troupe practice for the Bastille Day fête on July 14th. They practiced an upa‘upa called the ‘ote‘a, a line dance with girls on one side and boys on the other. The islanders played a collection of drums. Some were five-gallon Wesson Oil tins, others conventional snare drums, but the main rhythm came from the to‘ere, the small hollowed out log played with short sticks. The noise that reverberated off the concrete walls of the hall was deafening.

  In Tahitian dancing, the hands tell the story. The men’s hands invited the girls to have sex, and the girls’ hands teased and rebuffed. That night, the visitors joined the natives in their dance which began with two lines of dancers, men in one line and woman in the other, all facing in the same direction. As the rhythms changed, the lines turned so that the girls and boys faced each other. At that moment everyone chose a partner and began courting with their hands. The girls rapidly moved their hips, causing their grass skirts to ripple in waves from the waist to the ground. The guys moved around the girls, flashing their knees in and out, inviting the girls closer.

  Melanie attracted the best-looking guy in the line. His smile could have been on a poster enticing Western women to lose it all on his island. He moved around Melanie like a bee to honeysuckle. He came in very close and when Melanie grew hesitant, he took her hips in his hands and got them moving with the beat.

  Jason drew the prettiest girl, as he always did, and David attracted the oldest woman dancing. Jason tried to get into the soul of the dance, but the girl was a tease, giving just so much to the foreigner and then withdrawing, leaving Jason frustrated. David’s partner, on the other hand, was the kumu; the master and she guided David into feeling the deeper meaning of the dance, which was not just sexual but also spiritual.

  When the tease was at its height, the drummers changed the beat to one that was slow and sexy. Then everybody moved closer—the girls with their arms overhead enticing the boys to come near as the guys extended their arms around the girls, as if hugging them but not touching. Every movement was a pantomime of seduction.

  Just when things got really hot, the drummers would change the rhythm again and everyone would move apart and return to their respective lines. Then one couple would come out into the center and show off their moves.

  When the ‘ote‘a practice ended and the dancers had a few minutes to cool off, the musicians traded their drums for stringed instruments—banjos, ukuleles and guitars, and began playing Western music. They loved to waltz, and soon all the island couples were spinning formally around the room like they were at Belvedere Palace in Vienna.

  The kumu invited David outside. Jason and Melanie were both dancing, so David followed the older woman out into the cool night. She took him to a patch of mangrove near the lagoon, her arm around his waist so that they bumped hips as they walked. They stopped by a picnic table and the woman kneeled in front of David, taking hold of his hips and swinging them in the figure eight movement of the ‘ote‘a. She had him continue the hip movement and then took hold of his knees and moved them from side to side instructing him to keep his hips moving at the same time and pretend like he was climbing steps.

  “She’s teaching you the proper way to do it,” came a voice from the beach. Two island men, David’s age, walked up smoking cigarettes.

  “She’s the best teacher anywhere. Takaroa always wins the fête,” the other man said.

  The woman looked up at David and smiled. She was missing half of her teeth. She moved her hands back up to David’s hips and started undoing his pants.

  “She also teaches men how to pleasure a woman,” the first man said as the woman unzipped David’s fly.

  “She taught both of us,” the other man said proudly.

  David pushed the woman away and zipped his fly. “Fuck,” he said as he walked back to the Mata‘i.

  Tuesday, June 6, 1989

  On the ninth day out of Papeete, Larry organized an excursion to a famous shipwreck on the northern end of Takaroa. He hired an outboard motorboat to take him and his crew there, and when they returned that evening, tired and exhausted, they found another boat rafted to Mata‘i. Larry was furious. That skipper should have anchored in the lagoon. The idea of people tromping over Larry’s deck to get ashore was an unforgivable insult. Larry boarded the offending boat and pounded on the cabin hatch. Nobody was there and it was locked up tight.

  David checked the name on the transom. “She’s Cozy Cup from Liverpool.”

  “Well, she can’t raft to us!” Larry said.

  He returned to the Mata‘i and stepped ashore, walking down the quay looking for the owners of Cozy Cup. His crew followed him. They didn’t like the idea of people tramping over their boat to get to get ashore any more than Larry did. Larry found a crewman from the French boat on deck and said in French, “Do you know anything about the boat that’s rafted to mine?”

  “Not a thing,” the Frenchman replied.

  “Where’s the rest of your crew?”

  “They’re off with one of the natives to see a pearl farm. The ladies think they can make a deal.”

  “Who let them raft to my boat?” Larry said.

  “The mayor came down to the dock when he saw them sail into the passage. You were off to see the wreck, so he tied them to your boat and then they all took off across the lagoon in the mayor’s skiff.”

  That sounded strange.

  “We’ll have to move them,” Larry said.

  “I don’t think they’re from England,” the Frenchman said. “And they off-loaded some crates into the mayor’s skiff before they left.”


  That did it. “We’re leaving,” Larry told his crew. “Get the boat ready.” He turned to the Frenchman and asked if he’d help move the English boat into Mata‘i’s place at the wharf. The Frenchman cautioned that the storm was still raging, but Larry didn’t care. He told the Frenchman to beware of the island chief.

  Jason looked at David questioningly.

  But Larry pushed them to get the Mata‘i ready to leave. They hadn’t much time. The tide was slack so there was very little current in the passage. David took off all the sail covers and reassembled the self-steering gear. Melanie combined the jerry cans of water and took the empties ashore to fill at the community cistern. Jason lashed the cans of extra diesel to the racks that had been installed in Papeete. He attached the staysail stay to the deck and bent on the sail and ran the sheets but left the sail in the bag. If Larry wanted to use that sail all he’d need to do was attach the halyard and hoist it.

  When Mata‘i was ready to leave, David boarded the English boat and Jason untied her from Mata‘i. Larry, at the helm, had the Volvo idling. Jason tossed the mooring line to the Frenchman on his boat and the guys pulled Cozy Cup forward until she could be temporarily rafted to the French boat. Then Larry showed why he was considered one of the best sailors in Honolulu. With Melanie onshore handling the spring line, Larry powered forward against that line, which swung the stern away from the dock. When he had cleared the boat behind him, he told Melanie to get onboard and then neatly backed away into the channel.

  With the help of the Frenchman, David and Jason hauled the English boat into the space left by Mata‘i and secured her to the quay. Larry then pulled alongside, and the boys jumped aboard their boat as Larry accelerated toward the open sea. The Frenchman shouted at Larry to reconsider, given the storm, but Larry ignored him.

  “I want the main up now with a double reef, and then unfurl twenty percent of the jenny,” Larry ordered as he opened up the throttle.

  David and Jason went to work and Mata‘i left the safety of the channel and sailed into the raging ocean. It was dusk. Melanie stood by her father as they beat their way into fifteen-foot swells. Larry was unusually quiet as he gaged the wind and found his course. He told Jason to take the helm, hinting that he was responsible for their situation. He kissed Melanie on her forehead and went below. Those on deck were surprised by his sudden departure.

  “He was too angry to curse,” David said.

  “That wasn’t anger,” Jason said. “It was fear.”

  “I don’t understand what’s going on,” Melanie said.

  Chapter 27

  South Pacific

  Wednesday June 7, 1989

  Morning dawned grey and blustery. Squalls, heavy with rain, and strong wind gusts assaulted the boat. The weather wasn’t behaving as Larry had planned. The wind kept pushing them further and further south, but they needed to be going north. By that afternoon, Larry was so frustrated sailing in the wrong direction that he decided to tack to another wrong direction. Larry calculated the new tack could bring them closer to where they wanted to go if the wind shifted. David was at the helm when Larry ordered him to tack. Jason went forward to help the jib around the staysail. Melanie handled the sheets.

  As the yacht came into the wind, a massive wave slammed into Mata‘i’s bow. The boat dove into a deep trough. The deck dropped out from under Jason, leaving him dangling in the air. Jason kicked and searched for something to hang onto. Just as he was coming down, the deck came up, buckling Jason’s knees. A jerry can tore loose and hit him in the side. Jason stumbled backward, to the leeward rail, hit the lifelines with the back of his legs, and cartwheeled into the sea.

  Melanie screamed.

  What happened next was a blur. David didn’t complete the tack. He kept the yacht into the wind, common procedure for a man overboard. He ordered Melanie to slack the sails. Throughout all of this, David kept his eye on Jason and was relieved to see him wave, knowing that Jason was okay.

  Jason lost sight of the boat when he dropped into a trough but found it again when he rose to the crest of a wave. The wind blew flurries of froth across the warm water, and panic hadn’t hit him yet.

  Larry ordered David to fall off.

  “Do that and you’ll kill Jason,” David yelled back to him. Larry pulled him from the wheel. Melanie watched in horror, not knowing what to do. She had the slack mainsheet in her hand. The steep swell had Mata‘i bucking like a hobbyhorse.

  “If we stay heaved-to we’ll drift down on Jason!” David shouted, struggling to get back to the wheel. “Melanie, throw over the pole and life ring!”

  “No! We’ll be dismasted!” Larry shoved David aside and completed the tack.

  David jumped onto the aft cabin, grabbed the lifesaving gear, and leapt overboard with it. “Don’t sheet in!” he yelled back to Melanie.

  Melanie struggled with her father, trying to pull him off the wheel. In doing so the boat jibed and the mainsail shifted violently from one side to the other with a deadly crack. The jib caught in the staysail stay and suddenly the yacht was on her side.

  Jason watched David jump into the sea with the man-overboard pole and tried to keep his eyes on that. He saw Mata‘i knocked down in the violent jibe. This was it, Jason thought. This was his initiation, to die at sea. He wasn’t in a panic and he had no anger. Life, he realized, was eternal. Nothing would change. He wouldn’t have this body, but he’d still be who he was.

  On the Mata‘i Larry was almost crying. “I’m going to lose my boat.” He struggled to stay on his feet as the deck reached an eighty-degree angle. He cursed everyone and everything. Melanie stood frozen in fear, hanging on to the mainsheet to keep from sliding into the sea.

  “Sheet in the fucking main!” Larry shouted at Melanie as he swung Mata‘i back through the wind in another jibe. The boat popped back up and Melanie pulled in the sail as fast as she could.

  David blindly swam to where he thought Jason was. He kept his eyes focused on where he thought his buddy would be and paid no attention to the yacht. If Mata‘i was still afloat when he found Jason, so much the better.

  On the next crest, Jason saw the Mata‘i right herself and saw Larry at the helm. Melanie was handling the sheets and as a result, the boat was recovering. The main went in tight as Larry swung into the wind and when the jib began flapping free, Melanie rolled it up with the roller-furling gear.

  Jason dropped back into a trough and when he came back up he saw David on the crest of the next wave. Shouting would be useless; voices couldn’t be heard for more than a few feet. Jason could see the flag on top of the overboard pole and swam toward that. The boys met when the next large swell lifted them both up, Jason from one side and David from the other. They grabbed hold of each other at the crest. Jason was exhausted and David gave him the life ring.

  “Are you okay?” David shouted at his friend.

  “Yes,” Jason shouted back.

  “Now what are we going to do?”

  “Wait for the boat to come around.”

  “You think that’s going to happen?”

  “There’s a fifty-fifty chance.” They both laughed, and then coughed when they were hit in the face with a breaking wave.

  Larry maneuvered Mata‘i through the gale and put his boat perfectly upwind from the guys. Again, his seamanship came to the fore. Melanie obeyed every order with the sheets, and the positioning of the boat relative to the boys in the water was textbook. Larry used the flag on top of the overboard pole as his mark, and even with the high seas and having only the mainsail for power, he brought his boat next to the boys and they scrambled on board with the next swell.

  Jason collapsed in the cockpit. “I owe all of you my life. Thank you.”

  Dave pulled the emergency gear onboard and Melanie gave him a hug. “Thank God for you!”

  “I’m glad you two are okay,” Larry said. “Let’s get back to sailing. Next stop the Bay of Virgins.”

  Larry brought Mata‘i back to the course he wanted
and reset the sails. He seemed very pleased that the wind had shifted to give them a decent sailing angle to the Marquesas. Melanie had noticed something change in her father in the midst of the crises and felt that perhaps now she could get to know him.

  David looked at Jason and wondered if he should tell him what an asshole Larry had been or let it go. Judging by Jason’s response to being rescued, David saw how grateful he was and that he’d apparently chosen to forgive Larry. David wondered if he could do the same.

  Chapter 28

  Chester, England

  Thursday Afternoon, November 2004

  Lillian and Alex sat at the small game table in the parlor staring at her parents, Lloyd and Nancy Harvey, who seemed to be in deep thought. Lloyd, a thin ascetic type, was a law professor at Chester University, and an honored solicitor. Nancy, always the good wife and a beauty like her daughter, was there to support her husband.

  Finally, Lloyd broke the silence, “So Jason allegedly does what? Astral travel, or something like that?” He was also a deacon in the Anglican Church, and had always been very conservative.,

  “He just meditates and disappears,” Alex told his grandfather. Lloyd gave him a look as if to say children, even thirteen-year-olds, should be seen and not heard. “It’s true. I’ve seen…” Alex stopped—not because of his grandfather’s glare—but because he thought this should be kept secret from his grandparents, too.

  “Even in your church, Dad, you accept a spiritual realm,” Lillian said. “Even if you personally don’t believe it, your church accepts miracles and angels and a transcendent reality that alters the commonsense notion of existence.”

  “Are you putting Jason on the level of Jesus Christ, or are you saying that he’s an angel?” Lloyd said. “Give me a break…”

  “Do you think he’s a fake, Dad? He’s sitting in your den.”

  “He’s like all those other evangelicals who are in it for the money.” Lloyd never approved of Jason. He opposed Lillian marrying him, he had always rejected New Age thinking, and was appalled that Jason was in his house at this moment.