by Swigart, Rob
Charlie Song said nothing as the darkness gathered around them. Soon their faces were indistinct, without feature or form. Without identity. Only Charlie Song’s teeth were visible in the gloom. Ari had fallen silent, contemplating the wreckage of his hopes for the Frenchman, Teavai gone into a dark place, the perversity of his revival of the cult of Oro.
“So he did go?” Takamura asked.
“He went on the boat,” Ari said. “I helped him, and he repaid with evil. He was bad in the end, not interested in healing at all. A sick person, I think.”
“He likes islands,” Cobb said softly. “And now he is loose on mine.”
“But there is some good,” Charlie Song said. “From this. Some possible good. A few people do not like the bomb testing here. At first everyone loved it; there were new jobs, lots of money. But now we think it isn’t so good. All the jobs are for the French. There is poison in the earth, in the water. Maybe this will bring more attention. We must be very careful, you see.”
“Careful?” Takamura was growing restless here in the gloom, with the tops of the trees swaying against a violet sunset. The palm trees were rustling. A clutch of birds suddenly clattered up from the fronds, making a strange ratcheting cry, and circled out to sea, where they dipped low over the water to feed. Cobb could see them through the palm trunks across the road. They circled back, circled one another, landed, and took off again, screeching.
Charlie Song followed the vague outline of his look. “Oa,” he said. “You call them brown noddy.”
“Not me,” Cobb Takamura said. “I’ve never seen them before.”
“It is a little bit against the law to complain about atomic testing. A sensitive issue. The French are fussy about New Zealand complaining. Bad publicity. They are… defensive, I think you would say.”
“Yes. I guess we’d better get back.”
“Sure.”
They left Ari sitting in nearly total darkness. He did not move when they said good-bye. His voice was soft, almost inaudible. “Pārabi,” he said. “Good-bye.”
They were almost back to Uturoa before Cobb spoke. “Something’s wrong,” he said.
“Eh?”
“Something’s wrong.”
“Something?” Charlie Song’s broad face turned toward him in the darkness of the car. Approaching lights caught his cheek. He must have caught Takamura’s mood: For the first time, he was not smiling.
Chazz was not at the Hotel Le Motu. No one had seen him since morning. He had not left a message.
“Duvalois. Is he around?”
“Alas, no, Monsieur,” the clerk said. His sandy hair was almost invisible in the strident shadows of the lobby’s bad lighting. “He is gone.”
“Is he? Where’s he gone?” Cobb looked around the lobby. A standing ashtray, an almost archaic touch in this age. Linoleum, peeling at the baseboards, of an indefinite brown, covered by a square of carpet, equally indefinite. There was a vagueness to everything in this lobby.
The clerk shrugged. “Papeete. Noon flight, I think.”
“Call LeBlanc in Papeete. Please.” The clerk shrugged and picked up the telephone.
LeBlanc said he did not know Duvalois. Cobb knew better but said nothing. He asked politely if LeBlanc could check on him, find out where he was? It was important. LeBlanc asked him to hold, and Takamura stared at a calendar behind the reception desk. The illustration showed a ski slope in Switzerland, a few chalets, some people in parkas. Lights in the background bathed a snow-covered street in a yellow glow. The hill was deserted this late in the day.
LeBlanc came back on the line. He thought Duvalois had left for Hawaii. He did not learn this, he said, officially. A bureaucratic rumor, so to speak, that a man named Duvalois had taken the Continental flight to Honolulu. Perhaps Duvalois, whoever he was, had some business in Hawaii.
Cobb Takamura felt a sudden urgency about events. This was the wrong time for Koenig to turn up missing.
Chazz’s room was not helpful. The flight bag sat on a chair. His toothbrush lay on the washbasin. His return ticket sat on the top of the wooden dresser. Their flight back was early tomorrow.
Cobb hoped it was not going to leave without them.
“Come on, Charlie. Let’s ask around.”
They drifted along the street. People greeted Charlie Song and he greeted back. He was a popular figure in Uturoa. A civic leader. “They like me here,” he said. He taught school. He had a small concession in the market, selling ice cream. He made his own, five flavors. “Pineapple, passion fruit, that sort of thing. We do pretty well.”
Someone saw Chazz earlier, walking along the waterfront, the big man from Marite, from America. She remembered because her child stopped to stare at him. But the man was not friendly. He didn’t stop, didn’t seem to see them. He walked on, that way. She pointed south, out of town.
“He would go past Queneau’s house. It’s down that way,” Cobb said.
“Yes.” Charlie was serious now, not smiling. He laid a blunt finger on his enormous mustache, stroked downward. “Tepe would know. He knows everything.”
It took some time to find Tepe. He was at his cousin’s, someone said. But his cousin said he left around sunset. Try his adoptive children’s house.
Tepe was sitting in the yard, swinging a toddler up into the air, then down between his legs. The child squealed with delight. The yard was dark except for a long splash of yellow light from the open front door.
Tepe nodded, smiling. Sure, he saw him. By the house of the judge. He was a nice man, friendly. They talked, had a good talk.
“What did you talk about?” Charlie Song asked him.
“Talk about fish. He call blowfish.” He puffed out his cheeks again. “I find, give to man.”
“Man? You mean Prévert?’’
“Sure. Him. Funny man, not so nice. We talk about that. You from Marite also? My sister been there, to Los Angeles.”
“Marite, yes. Where did Chazz go? The big man?”
“Up hill. What for I don’t know, but other men go that way too.”
“Other men?”
“Sure. Farani, four of them. Not friendly. Don’t even wave at Tepe.”
Charlie said, “What’s up that way, Tepe?”
“Same as before, when I find the judge, you know. Marae.”
“That’s where Queneau was killed,” Charlie told Cobb. “We’d better take a look.”
“I take you,” Tepe said, putting the child down. “Bad road, hard at night.” He went inside and reappeared a few minutes later with an electric lantern.
“Good now,” he smiled.
But it was not good. The mist moved in again, and their shadows leaped and shrank as they walked. Light fractured against dark trees, against gray cloud.
A frozen fist closed around Cobb Takamura’s heart.
NINETEEN
PHOENIX
He was dressed only in shorts, his muscular body so deeply tanned he might have been at least partly Hawaiian. Black hair fell over his brown eyes, clear and level above high broad cheeks.
He had plenty of time, and the day was a fine one, with gentle warm seas and mild, clear air. This would be, he thought, a fine island to settle on some time. Some time soon, perhaps. Under his breath he hummed the melody to an old French drinking song. “Et le bec, oui, oui, oui, et le bec, non, non, non… et le bec sous le robinet.” My beak is under the tap, and I drink…
He kept his eye on the coast, moving slowly to the west. From time to time, a small yacht or fishing boat out of Lihue would pass him, and the people aboard would wave cheerfully. He would let go of the steering arm of the small outboard motor and wave back in a restrained manner, not inviting a closer approach as he idled along. In the distance, he could see the low buildings of Kekaha, where the Kokee Road turned up into the mountains. Around the next point would be Waimea at the mouth of the Waimea River, which flowed out through the deep, red-layered rock of the canyon bearing with it the red silt that gave the river its name
– Red Waters.
From time to time, he would see something of interest on shore and approach cautiously, mindful of the swells curling and crashing against the rocks just head of him. Always he would turn back out to sea again, paralleling the shore thirty meters out.
Just before Waimea came into view, he spotted something. This time as he approached, still humming the relentlessly mindless refrain of the drinking song, he smiled.
The coast was rocky here, jumbled lava standing a couple of meters above the high-tide mark. He cruised slowly about five meters out, the long swells tipping him gently sideways in a motion he found soothing. He turned into a tiny cove with a narrow beach and cut the engine, allowing the last swell to lift him onto the gravel.
He leaped from the boat, pulling the painter with him. The cove was hidden by a tumble of ancient lava that curved in front of it.
He lashed the painter several times around a large stone then reached in the boat and pulled out a small blue nylon bag. The rock wall ended just above his head, so he climbed a little to look inland.
There was only a rocky field for 200 meters to the highway. The field was overgrown with weeds and low brush among the sharp jags of crumbling black lava. He put the bag carefully over the edge, then picked up a large clump of lava and put it in the stern of the boat. Then another, and another. Soon she was riding low enough in back to take on water. He added a few more stones and watched the stern settle to the bottom. Now the boat would show only a low line of dark wood against the water. She was as nearly invisible as possible, her name well below the water line.
Satisfied, he climbed to the field, slipped on a T-shirt and topsiders he took from the bag, and walked slowly across the field.
Here in full sun the ground threw off waves of heat. He continued to hum the song as he walked, skirting the larger brush, stopping from time to time to knock thistles from his legs or shorts or to wipe the sweat from his forehead or upper lip. He was still smiling.
He stopped in the middle of the field to examine an unattractive weedy shrub with irregular leaves, dark green on top and lighter underneath. The ovate leaves were jagged and toothed. A few withered blossoms showed only a ghost of trumpet shape. The dried petals were about four inches long and would have been a couple of inches across when in full bloom. Even then, he knew, they would have been ugly flowers, a sickly whitish-violet, the color of drowning and death.
He lifted one of the blossoms and examined it briefly before dropping it. Spiney seedpods that had formed where the earlier blossoms had fallen. He picked one and opened it. Small seeds spilled into his palm.
From the pocket of his shorts, he pulled a Zip-Lock bag and dumped them inside. He went to work in earnest then, harvesting, distantly aware of the hum of traffic on the highway behind him. He would be just another native out gathering wild edibles.
This, however, was not edible. It was Jimsonweed, called scientifically Datura, after the dhatureas, a league of thieves in ancient India who used it to drug their intended victims, and had a long history based on its capacity to induce stupor or death; it was known in parts of the world as the poisoner’s drug of choice. It contained atropine, hyoscyamine, hyoscine, and nor-hyoscine, four of the most powerful alkaloids known.
He took his time, breaking open the spiny pods and dusting the seeds into the plastic bag. “Et le bee, out, out, oui, et le bee non, non, non. The words buzzed round in his mind as he worked, soothing as the sea.
When the bag was full, he found two flat rocks and ground the seeds, careful not to tear the plastic. Then he slipped the package into his pocket and walked to the highway. He hesitated, then turned west and walked along the edge. When a car came by, he turned around, held out his thumb and smiled at the driver.
She was middle-aged and overweight. Even so, the man felt the cold wires run down the length of his body from the top of his head. The wires hummed with a small vibration, and he held himself very still so she could not hear. He told her to stop at Kekaha. After her car was gone, he crossed the street and held out his thumb again.
The car was new and sleek and so was the driver. He got out in Hanapepe and once again crossed the street. Eventually the right one would come along. It was only a matter of time.
He made four trips back and forth before being picked up by a carpenter who talked nonstop in a rapid rock ‘n roll lingo the man could not follow despite his excellent English. Since the radio was turned up loud while the carpenter talked and snapped the fingers of first one hand then the other, it did not seem to matter.
At the stoplight in Waimea, the driver turned the radio off suddenly and looked at his passenger. The rust-colored Chevy vibrated, front to back, side to side, up and down, apparently at random. In the sudden silence the rattles grew louder. “You don’ say much,” the driver observed. It occurred to him that they might be brothers, he and this silent man in the passenger seat.
“No,” the man said, looking out the window at a white discount grocery store with cheerful red lettering that contrasted almost painfully with the sharp green of the sugar cane behind it.
“Thass okay,” the driver said, switching the radio on again. Music like warm molasses filled the car, and his monologue started up with the radio, apparently where it had left off.
In Kekaha the man asked the driver where he was from.
“Whass ‘at?” He turned the radio down, but not off.
“Where do you live?”
“Okay,” the driver said, snapping his fingers to the muted beat. “Waimea, hey.” He jerked his thumb over his shoulder. “You goin’ to Mana too, man?”
The man didn’t answer the question. He didn’t know where Mana was. “I need your car,” he said.
The driver couldn’t have been listening because he kept snapping his fingers and tapping out the rhythm on the steering wheel, grabbing it to correct when necessary. He headed north out of Kekaha and drove past the Pacific Missile Range Facility.
His passenger turned toward him, twisting into his seat as if seeking a more comfortable position in the sprung and grease-stained upholstery. “What’s your name?” he shouted.
They had turned right on Koa Road and were going down past a blue metal warehouse at Mana. The driver was shouting, “Danny, man,” when his passenger asked him to turn left, down the old Mana Road.
“Dead end, man,” Danny shouted back, still beating the rhythm but dropping beats now the strange requests were getting through. He pressed down on the gas.
“Over there,” the man said, pointing.
“Don’ go nowhere, man. Just a road out to Polihale Heiau. Nice beach.”
The man nodded, still pointing.
Danny shook his head.
The man languidly reached over and took the little finger of Danny’s right hand between his thumb and forefinger. He did something and Danny’s face lost its color.
“Okay, Okay, don’ do that no more, shit.” Left-handed he spun the wheel, and the Chevy fishtailed into a left turn and thudded down the gravel road.
“Don’t worry,” the man said, “It isn’t broken.”
They jolted along for two or three miles. On their left, the sand beach widened and heaped into dunes that hid the sea.
The road dribbled out at a dirt parking lot. It was empty. A trail disappeared into desert scrub. To their right, the mountains climbed steeply into clouds. There was little vegetation higher up. This was the dry side of the island.
A maintenance shed slumped at the end of a stretch of dirt road, surrounded by vacant ground overgrown with dry plants. Beyond it, at the base of the mountain, a tiny creek fed what looked like a small artificial reservoir, long abandoned. The man gestured that way and told Danny to stop behind the building. The car would be hidden from the parking lot. “Here.” He offered the Zip-Lock bag.
“Hey,” Danny said, the pain in his finger apparently forgotten. “Wha’s that you got there, man, a little pakalolo, hunh?” He made smoking gestures, inhaling loudly.
> “Something like that,” the man said. He held out the bag. Danny looked his question at him.
“It’s powder,” the man said.
The light went on. “Oooh. Thass cool, man. Don’ look like coke, though.”
The man smiled. “No. Something else. Better.”
Danny shook his head, dirty rags of hair flapping beside his ears. “Somethin’ else, hah? You are one awesome soul, man.” He leaned down, curious but reluctant.
The man shook the bag. “Go ahead,” he said. “It won’t hurt you.”
Danny looked at him slyly, his nose near the bag. “Won’t hurt? Ha-ha, thass a good one. ‘Course it won’ hurt.” He cupped his hands around the bag and inhaled. The dust in the bag twisted up in a small storm. Danny leaned back with a sigh and wiped his nose.
“Shit,” he said, softly. “So whass it spozed to do, anyway?” He was unconsciously rubbing his little finger, as if his body remembered the pain, too late.
“Give it a minute,” the man said, not smiling. He resealed the bag and slid it into his shorts pocket. They sat together in the car, listening to the heat clicks from the engine. Sunlight glinted off water through a stand of dusty trees.
“I gotta,” Danny said after a time. He was holding his throat now. ‘Thirs’… thirsty.”
His door flew open and he fell sideways out onto the ground. The man watched impassively. Danny’s hand gripped the edge of his seat. He pulled himself up. His eyes were wild, unfocused. “Where…?” He seemed to see his passenger. “Mama? Mama? Where are you?”
The man smiled. “No,” he said softly. “No Mama. You may call me Henri.”
“I gotta go, Mama.” Danny stumbled away. His arms jerked spasmodically as he lurched toward the shed, his thirst forgotten. He stumbled onto the small porch and banged on the door. “Mama,” he shouted. “Lemme in!”
A plank in the door collapsed. Danny stopped suddenly, puzzled. “Damn,” he said. Suddenly he began to cry. “They wanna kill me,” he wailed. “They wanna kill. Kill me.” He looked back at the car. “Thass my car.”