by Bill Myers
“SQUEAL!”
Sorry. (Guess he still understands English.)
“Not only that,” Material Man interrupts, “but a pig?”
“What’s wrong with a pig?” I asked.
“Isn’t that a little too close to real life?”
“What do you mean?”
“I mean, didn’t you just escape from a real live warthog?”
“That was a crocodile.”
“No, in the chapter before that.”
“Oinky,
Oink-oink.
Oink!”
Apparently, our hog hero agreed.
“So what do you suggest?” I asked.
“Squealy,
Squeal, squeal.”
Material Man nods. “Perfect.”
“What did he say?”
“It’s your imagination, don’t you know?”
“It’s been a long day.”
“He said it would make more sense if he became mixed up with his big-screen TV.”
“Big-screen TV?”
“Yeah, the one I was beaming over at the very beginning of the story.”
“Oh, right, of course.” (It has been a long day.)
“Well?”
“Well, what?”
“Can we get back to our story?”
“Oh, right. Sorry.”
In a flash, Material Man reverses the Give-Me-It-All Beam
BOP BEEP
and our hero returns with his body stuck inside a giant-screen TV. Which isn’t bad, except every time he talks he sounds like one of those used-car commercials....
“Come on down
To Rhyming Dude’s car lot.
Buy my junky cars,
Which keep falling apart a lot!”
Fortunately, rhyming superheroes can’t lie.
Unfortunately, being on TV doesn’t improve their rhyming.
“Hey, I heard that!”
“Sorry.”
“Now, get me out of this TV,
Let’s get on with the show.
If you won’t buy a used car,
Then help me vanquish my foe.”
I nodded and thought harder, until I was back into the story:
Once again, our vicious villain re-beams Rhyming Dude until he appears in the Hollyweird hideout exactly like he’s supposed to (except for the 120 channels he can get for just $29.95 a month by plugging a cable into the back of his——)
“Ahem.” Rhyming Dude “Ahem”ed.
I frowned and thought harder:
At last, our hero arrives in Material Man’s lair. The showdown is just about to begin, when suddenly——
“Shhh—”
What is it now?
But this time it wasn’t Rhyming Dude or Material Man interrupting my story. It was the little kid.
I opened my eyes to see that he had quit paddling. He was looking over his shoulder and staring inside the canoe next to my leg. I looked down to see that a snake had crawled out of the river and joined me. I opened my mouth, preparing to scream my lungs out, when the kid shook his head. He raised his fingers to his lips and motioned for me to be perfectly still.
Of course, this was the last thing I wanted to do, but he seemed pretty serious so I stayed frozen (except for the part where my whole body shook in terror).
I watched as the snake raised its head onto my lap, its tongue flickering back and forth. Slowly, it slithered over me.
Now, the way I looked at it, I figured I had four choices:
1. Pass out in fear.
2. Wet my pants.
3. Run to Mommy.
4. All of the above.
Fortunately, the kid didn’t give me time to do any of them. Instead, he took his paddle in both hands and slowly turned around in the canoe.
I looked on, my heart pounding faster than a jackhammer on too much caffeine.
The snake had stretched across one of my legs, then down into the canoe between them, and was slithering over my other leg.
The kid slowly raised the paddle over his head.
I looked up, wondering which would hurt worse . . . being clobbered by a paddle or swallowed by a snake.
Then in one swift
WHISSHHHH
K-Thud!
the kid slammed the paddle down between my legs. He cut the snake completely in half, but that didn’t stop it from screaming:
“AUGHHHHH!”
And screaming some more:
“AUGH! AUGH! AUGH! AUGH!”
For a moment, I didn’t think it would ever stop . . . until I realized it wasn’t the snake screaming, but me. (Some habits really are hard to break.) I immediately closed my mouth, and immediately the screaming ended. (What a coincidence.)
I leaped to my feet, trying to brush the snake parts off me. It wasn’t a bad idea, except for the part of standing up in a canoe. Actually, it wasn’t the standing that was bad, it was the
“Whoa, Waa, Wooo . . .”
part of me trying to keep my balance and, of course, losing it with an
“AUGH!”
K-Splash!
dip into the murky water.
Actually, the dip was kind of refreshing. It was the embarrassment that happened when I came up for air. The embarrassment of a dozen old people standing on the riverbank laughing at, who else but . . .
Me.
Chapter 6
A Not-So-Super
Supper
After a few minutes of splashing around, doing my usual drowning routine, one of the old-timers on the riverbank waded in and pulled me out. Of course, I dropped to my knees and coughed up a couple of gallons of water (not to mention a lung or two).
When I finally staggered to my feet, I saw about a dozen people standing around me. They were mostly old men and women with a few children. Their skinny bodies were a lot like the kids’, and their ragged clothing made it clear they all shopped at the same store (or waste disposal site).
Once they saw I was all right, everyone began grinning, slapping me on the back, and teasing me. (I guess if they were going to eat me, they wanted to make sure I’d be a “Happy Meal.”)
The little kid pulled the canoe up on the beach and we all started toward a small group of huts. They weren’t much to look at, just round buildings with mud walls and straw roofs. As far as I could tell, there was no electricity; no running water; and, horror of horrors, no Internet.
But if they were suffering you couldn’t tell it, not by their beaming faces. I don’t want to say they were happy, but if they shone any brighter you’d need sunglasses to look at them.
As we approached the village, an old-timer limped out of a hut to greet me. He had the same tattered clothes as everyone else, but he wore a golfer’s hat. The best I figured, he was like the chief or something. So, putting on my best manners, I slowed to a stop and spoke:
“ME . . . WALLY!” I pounded my chest. “ME VERY HAPPY TO MEET YOU!” (Why do we think yelling helps people understand us?)
He looked at me quizzically. It was obvious I wasn’t getting through, so I tried again:
“ME TASTY TASTE VERY BAD!” I pretended to bite my arm and spit. “ICKY, ICKY! ME NO GOOD FOR DINNER!”
He flashed a grin that was missing more than a few teeth and answered, “That’s cool, dude. I don’t like white meat anyway.”
If my jaw had dropped any lower, it would have been dragging on the ground.
“You speak . . . English?” I asked.
“So do you.”
“But . . . where . . . how?”
“It’s kinda necessary in order to graduate from college.”
“You went to college?”
“Bible college, yeah. A long time ago.”
“But how—”
“A mission group paid for it,” he said. “What about you?”
“I’m not old enough for college.”
He chuckled. “No, I mean, how’d you get here?” He motioned to the kid who’d canoed me. “Tomba says you dropped out of the sky.”
>
Catching on, I nodded. “Oh yeah. Kinda. We were having some airplane trouble, and I kinda accidentally hit the wrong lever and kinda accidentally parachuted out of the plane.”
“Those are some incredible accidents.”
“Not if you know my incredible world.”
“What about the others? Is everybody else all right?”
I shrugged. “Now that I’ve left them, I’m sure they’re a lot safer.”
“We better get on the shortwave radio and let your parents know you’re okay. By the way,” he said, reaching out his hand, “I’m Benbawozonbwa.”
“Ben-who-whaza?”
He laughed. “No, Benbawozonbwa.”
I was about to try again. But realizing I’d probably sprain my mouth, he chuckled. “Just call me Ben. And you are?”
“Wally. Wally McDoogle.”
An old village woman rushed toward us, all excited. She was jabbering a mile a minute and getting the other folks all worked up.
“What is it?” I asked. “What’s going on?”
“Sounds like we’ve found some dinner.”
“What?”
“Come on.”
We followed the group past the huts and along a red clay path that led deeper and deeper into the jungle.
“They’re this excited about dinner?” I asked.
He nodded. “We haven’t eaten since yesterday.”
“You’re kidding!”
He shook his head. “The government has taken all our young men. The rest of us are either too old or too feeble to hunt.”
I looked around. “But everybody is so . . . so . . .”
“So what?”
“So happy.”
“Why shouldn’t we be?”
“A day without eating,” I said. “I get cranky missing one meal.”
He gave a toothless grin. “These people have something more than food to make them happy.”
I was about to ask him what, when we turned off the path and made our way through thicker brush. Well, everybody else made their way through thicker brush. I was a little too busy
“AUGH!”
falling into a hidden hole.
The good news was, I only broke a minimal amount of bones. The bad news was, everybody crowded around the hole and looked down at me like I was the village idiot . . . (which is okay ’cause everybody needs to be known for something).
Ben stooped and groaned as his old joints cracked and popped. He dropped onto his stomach and reached down to help me out.
“Sorry about that,” he said. “It’s an old trap we set when there were lions in the area.”
I grabbed his hand and he started to pull me up, until I slipped and fell.
Not once, not twice, but the usual McDoogle dozens of times.
When I finally got out and we’d started through the brush again, I said, “You said these people had something more than food to make them happy.”
“That’s right.”
“Like what?”
“Like God.”
“What does that mean?”
“It means their friendship with God is where they get their joy—not in what they eat or drink.” With a twinkle in his eyes, he added, “Or who is trying to drown themselves in our river or fall into our lion traps.”
I nodded. “That’s pretty cool. I believe in God, too.”
“Then you know what I’m talking about.”
I started to answer, but realized I couldn’t. I mean, just a day ago I was grumbling ’cause there weren’t any presents under the tree. But these people, I mean—they had nothing, and they were still happy. I glanced down at my fancy cargo pants and my $150 tennis shoes, suddenly feeling a bit uncomfortable.
A few moments later we came into an open field where there were a dozen mounds of red dirt piled six to eight feet high. The villagers cried out in excitement and raced to the mounds. Then, ever so carefully, they started digging away at them.
“What are those?” I asked.
“Termite hills,” Ben explained. “We’re digging into them to find the termites, especially the queens.”
“Why?”
“That’s what we came for.” He motioned to one of the men who had just pulled something out and was carefully laying it on a large leaf. Ben called for him to approach. As he did, I saw it was a giant insect. It had a tiny head and tiny feet. But the bottom half of its body was almost half a foot long and two, maybe three inches wide. Talk about freaky looking.
“What is that?” I asked.
“A queen termite.” He glanced at the other hills. “By the looks of things, we’ll be able to get quite a few of them before dinner.”
I frowned. “What do termites have to do with dinner?”
He looked at me and grinned. “They are dinner.”
The night’s feast was not exactly the type of Christmas meal I’d dreamed of having.
The good news was, there was no wild dancing, crazy jumping, or spear throwing. (It’s hard to have wild dancing, crazy jumping, and spear throwing when everyone’s a thousand years old and weak from hunger.) The bad news was, there were plenty of termites to go around.
And since I was the special guest of honor . . .
“Please,” Ben said. He offered me the fat, squishy critter still bubbling in its juices from the fire he’d just taken it out of.
“No, that’s okay,” I said, swallowing back my queasy stomach that had its own bubbling juices.
“No,” he insisted, “you must go first. Please, take as much as you want.”
I didn’t have the heart to tell him I was already taking as much as I wanted (zero). I glanced up at the villagers. Their old wrinkled faces were staring at me, grinning, happy to share.
“You’re the guest,” Ben explained. “They won’t start until you do.”
Great. If I didn’t eat, they wouldn’t eat. And by the looks of their skinny bodies, the quicker they started, the better.
Ben tried to encourage me. “If you like crunchy, go for the head and feet—just don’t let the little antennas get caught between your teeth. But if you like chewy, you’ll really enjoy the belly with all the eggs.”
Somehow, my appetite didn’t improve. I looked up at him, hopelessly.
He nodded at me, encouragingly.
I looked at my dinner hosts, helplessly.
They nodded at me, eagerly.
There was no way out. So,
There was no way out. So, with nothing to lose except whatever was left in my stomach, I pointed to the head.
In one swift move, Ben cut it off, scraped it onto my leaf plate, and motioned for me to eat.
In one shaky move, I raised it to my lips.
Suddenly, I remembered to say grace. I closed my eyes and silently prayed, Dear Lord, please don’t let this kill me. Then, opening one eye and peering down at the delicacy, I added, And if You want me to die beforehand, that would be okay, too—with or without the clean clothes.
I opened my eyes, took a deep breath, and popped it into my mouth.
Everybody grinned and dug in.
I was happy to see them eating. (I would have been happier if I could eat, too.) Actually, I did manage to keep down the head, and even tried the feet. I’d like to say it tasted just like chicken. (I’d like to say that, but I can’t.) Instead it tasted and crunched more like . . . well, more like roasted termite head and feet (except for the antennas, which got caught between my teeth).
But the taste and crunch were nothing compared to the swallowing. I’m not positive, but I thought for sure that I felt a foot or two trying to crawl back up my throat.
Then came the entertainment . . . (as if trying to swallow wasn’t entertainment enough). It really wasn’t much, just the old people quietly humming and singing different songs as they ate. But it really sounded cool.
I leaned over to Ben and asked, “What are they singing? What are the words?”
He smiled. “Hymns.”
“Hymns?” I frowned.
>
He nodded. “They’re thanking God.”
“For this?”
“Of course.”
My frown grew deeper.
“What’s wrong?”
“It’s just . . . I mean, if this is the best God has to offer, I wouldn’t exactly be thanking Him.”
“Why not?”
I paused to swallow back another escaping leg. When I finished, I explained. “Why would they thank God for putting them in the middle of a famine where this is all they get to eat?”
It was Ben’s turn to look puzzled.
I continued. “I was talking to this guy on our flight over here. He said that a thousand people die in our world from hunger every hour.”
Ben nodded. “That sounds about right.”
“So how can they thank a God who is causing that to happen?” I could feel myself getting a little hot under the collar. “How can they tell God, ‘Thank You for—’”
“Whoa, whoa, whoa.” Ben held up his hands. “You think all those starving people are God’s fault?”
“Who else’s fault could it be?”
“Man’s.”
“What?”
“It’s not God’s fault they’re starving. It’s man’s fault.”
I shook my head. “It’s not man’s fault there isn’t enough food in the world to eat.”
“Who said anything about there not being enough food?”
I frowned even harder. “Why else would a thousand people die every hour?”