by Jack Handey
She approached us confidently. The sound of her flip-flops was like music. She sat down and dished herself some breakfast. No one said a word. Finally she turned to Don. “I guide you upriver. Fifty paleekas.”
“Fifty paleekas?! That’s fine!” I said.
The price went up to two hundred paleekas when she found out I was going, too. Was that good or bad? I still can’t figure it out.
As Leilani and Don packed up the boat, I splashed on some aftershave, a musky fragrance called Midnight in Diarroa.
I tied Leilani’s outrigger canoe to the back of our boat, and we set off upriver. Then we came back for the canoe and retied it.
Leilani knew every bend in the river. And soon, I hoped, I would know every bend on Leilani. I kept giving her come-on looks, but she gave me looks that could kill. In fact, two or three times she said, “Me kill you.”
I tried to break the ice by asking her what the drums had been saying the night before. But she wouldn’t answer. Maybe, Leilani, you should have paid more attention during drum class.
Mars
THAT EVENING, I decided to make my move. Don was off gathering firewood or acorns or whatever it is he gathers.
I sat down on the log next to Leilani. She eyed me suspiciously. I used my standard opening line: “What’s your religion?” She said she was a Christian. I said I worshipped the Pelican God. There was a long silence.
I hit her with my second-best line: “What’s your favorite episode of the Two Stupid Idiots?” What I saw next was unbelievable. It was like looking into the face of a dog. She had absolutely no idea who the Two Stupid Idiots were. It was scary.
I showed her my medallion and told her I’d won it in a disco-dancing contest.
“You lie,” she said. “That not yours.”
Boy, things weren’t starting off too well.
I pointed to a star in the sky. “There’s Mars,” I said. She shook her head and pointed to a different star. I continued: “Every time I see Mars, it makes me think of the first Martian to invent the flying saucer. The other Martians probably made fun of his invention. They called it the Blind Man’s Flapjack and the Moron’s Merry-Go-Round. They didn’t think anything could replace their precious rocket ship. But when the king of Mars decided to invade Earth, he went with the flying saucer. And the rest is history.”
I had her in the right mood. As the full moon was peeking up over the palm trees, I stole a peek at her moon and slipped my palm around her.
“No touch coconuts,” she said, pulling out her knife. I was nowhere near her coconuts!
Don came stumbling out of the trees. Thanks, Don, just when I was getting somewhere.
The Red Boat
I DECIDED to change tactics with Leilani. Let the honey come to the bee. Let the cheese ball come to the toothpick. Let the triangle come to the triangle clanger.
As we chugged upriver, I stared off into space, like I was thinking of something. Leilani seemed to notice. But the boat hit a rough patch of rapids. It’s hard to pretend you’re thinking deeply when you’re bouncing up and down, trying to hold on to the railing, your head jerking back and forth.
Don kept looking behind us. “I’m afraid I’ve got some bad news,” he said. Surprise, surprise. “The boat that was following us is back.”
There it was, bright red and belching smoke everywhere, just like Uncle Lou. It was gaining on us.
“They catch us,” said Leilani. She pulled out her knife. Man, that’s her answer for everything.
I got an idea. It’s the same idea I’ve used a lot in my life. “Let’s hide in the bushes.” We could snuggle the boat into the bushes along the bank. Then wait until the red boat passed.
“Too dangerous go in bushes,” said Leilani.
Don couldn’t decide. When people can’t decide, it’s usually best to taunt them.
“What’s the matter, Don?” I said. “Scared there might be some itty-bitty spiders in the bushes?”
“Let’s outrun them,” he said. He gunned the engine, but we started sputtering and slowed to a crawl, also like Uncle Lou.
“Countersink valve stuck!” said Leilani.
The pointy part of the red boat appeared around the bend. We had to do something, fast. Don backed us into the bushes and cut the engine.
I checked around for spiders.
Gloating
WE SQUATTED down. No one made a sound, except for the accidental sound I made when I squatted.
The red boat approached. The man driving it looked vaguely familiar. I reached for the binoculars. How do these stupid focus deals work, anyway?!
The red boat chugged past us upriver. My plan had worked. I turned to Leilani. I wanted to gloat, but as a man I had other desires. I wanted to tell her how I had been right and she had been wrong. Wait, I guess that’s gloating.
But before I could say anything, part of the bank across from us began to move. It was another boat, covered with bushes. They must have gotten stuck, and now the bushes were stuck to their boat. I shook my head and snickered. I got to gloat after all.
It looked like a boatload of tourists to me. They were all badly dressed and covered with hideous scars.
“Ahoy!” yelled the captain, waving with both hands. Now that’s a wave.
“Ahoy!” I yelled, waving back. “Are you lost?”
“Yes, we’re lost. Do you have a map we could look at?”
The boat slowly came toward us.
“Not a regular map, just a treasure map,” I said, hoping that would be okay. I got the feeling it was.
“Maybe the girl can help us,” said the captain. “Maybe she can help all of us.” He grinned at the others.
Don got out a flare gun. We have flare guns? Why didn’t anyone tell me?
“Stay back!” Don shouted at the boat.
I tried to make conversation, to make up for Don’s rudeness. “Say, I like your vest. What’s it made of?”
“Human skin,” said the captain. They were tourists all right. One of them even had one of those hook-hands that tourists like to get.
“They’re tourists,” I said.
“They pirates,” said Leilani.
A Pirate’s Laugh
THE BOAT inched closer. The captain started laughing. I guess he was thinking of a joke. Then he started gagging up blood. It must have been a really good joke.
I saw Leilani’s knife sticking in his belly. The captain fell to the deck. The pirates let out a roar of murderous rage.
In a show of defiance, I wet my pants.
Don fired his flare gun. It skittered across the deck and caught the captain’s beard on fire.
One pirate aimed a shotgun at us. An arrow came from out of nowhere and went through his neck. He staggered, then fired his shotgun into the back of the captain, who groaned. Another pirate brandished a pistol, but an arrow knocked it from his hand. A hatchet flew through the air right at us, only to be deflected by yet another arrow. The angry pirate made an obscene gesture at us. An arrow went through his middle finger. He screamed.
The captain rose up, his beard smoldering. He held a bundle of dynamite sticks. He lit the fuse with his beard, then leaned back to heave it at us. An arrow went through his head, like that comedian, what’s-his-name.
The pirates all scrambled to pick up the dynamite, but it was too late. The boat blew apart.
Pirates and boat pieces were blasted sky-high. A few pirates were able to maintain their dignity in midair, but most were flipping and flailing out of control. After they hit the water, the alligators that had been following us made short work of them. It was a horrible sight. And after a while, to be honest, it got kind of monotonous. Chomp-chomp-scream, chomp-chomp-scream. We get it.
A few pirates managed to crawl onto shore but were eaten by Komodo dragons.
The captain was carried off by a giant eagle. His dangling hand seemed to be waving.
One pirate almost made it into our boat. Don was even helping him aboard when an alligator reached up
and pulled him back in. The alligator let the pirate climb out again before pulling him back in. He did that three times. I guess alligators have a sense of humor.
We heard the low, bubbly rumble of an engine. Through the smoke and still-falling shreds of pirate pants, something was moving toward us. That’s when I saw a sight that made me wish I’d never been born, or that I’d been born as a fly. It was the red boat. And it was coming back.
At the wheel was a giant of a man, holding a loaded crossbow.
“It Bizzy!” said Leilani.
Bizzy, it turns out, had been following us all this time, to make sure we were okay. As a member of the Tourist Board, he was authorized to shoot and kill anyone bothering tourists. He made Don and me sign a paper saying we’d had a good time in Hawaii.
“Pirates bad for tourism,” said Bizzy. “Give impression tourists come Hawaii, get robbed.”
Bizzy could protect us no longer. He had to get back for a meeting of the Tourist Board. The board was divided over what type of tourist to attract. Bizzy did not favor the average tourist. They didn’t spend enough money. Instead he favored the big-spending “prostitute tourist” like me. It was nice to know I was in the elite.
Bizzy asked Leilani how business was at Leilani’s Leaves ’N Things. Leilani said things were slow now that the plague was back. The plague was back?!
“Say hi Bob Chapman for me,” said Leilani.
“I do that,” said Bizzy. He turned his boat downstream before tossing me a small box. Inside were my nose plugs. They fit perfectly.
Bizzy started to pull away. “Wait!” I yelled nasally. This was my chance to head back to Honolulu, and I wasn’t going to miss it. I looked to Don and Leilani. They seemed to be saying, Go back with Bizzy. In fact, they did say that. They didn’t want to endanger me any longer. But I couldn’t do it. Leilani had specks of blood spattered across her face, like freckles. She was adorable. If I left, she would be totally bored by Don. No, I would have to stay. Besides, now that the pirates were dead, what danger could there be?
I turned to tell Bizzy to go on, but he had already left.
Radio Shack
SEEING PEOPLE get eaten by alligators makes you think. Your first thought is, Boy, what a waste of pirates. Then you think, I’m glad that’s not me. Then you think, I should take a video of this. Then you think, Damn, I left my camera at home. Then you think, Oh, yeah, it’s broken anyway. Then you think, I wonder where I can get it fixed. Then you think, Radio Shack?
You can’t help thinking about the families of the pirates. Every night a pirate’s “old lady” would be patiently waiting for him at the back door. But never again would she hear the gentle tap of his peg leg on the porch, or hear him blaspheme when he saw the dog chewing on his spare peg.
She would gather her children round and try to explain, as gently as she could, that their father wouldn’t be coming home, that he was stabbed in the belly, then he was shotgunned in the back, then an arrow went through his head, then he was blown up, then he was grabbed by an alligator and shaken back and forth like a rag doll before a giant eagle stole him from the alligator and carried him off to her nest, where he was pulled apart and fed to the eagle babies. Who excreted him.
She would go to the hutch and take down the pirate’s favorite goblet, made out of a missionary’s skull, and present it to her little boy. “I think he would want you to have this,” she would say.
I did something I hadn’t done in a long time: I broke down and cried like a baby. I hugged Don. He patted me on the back. I burped up some food on his shoulder.
Fishing
DON AND Leilani didn’t seem to share my emotional turmoil. They were more concerned with fixing the engine and moving cargo around so we could break free of the riverbank. I wish I could be that way.
I had to do something to get Leilani’s attention. What does a woman love to see flopped down on the table in front of her? A fish, right? A fish that she could clean and season and cook and set before you, and hope more than anything that you liked.
I made a fishing pole out of an antenna thing from the boat. For fishing line, I used some wire connected to the antenna. For a hook, I used some gizmo from the radio.
Right away I hooked something big. It took me forever to pull it in. I finally got it to the surface so I could get a look at it. It was a dead pirate. A good-sized one, too. I released him. He drifted away, to fight another day.
Drums
DON AND Leilani finally got the engine fixed. But when they started it up, I smelled smoke. “Get out, she’s going to blow!” I yelled. We scrambled out of the boat and plunged headlong into the bushes. But the boat didn’t blow up. We got up, dusted ourselves off, and cautiously approached the boat. That’s when I got a weird feeling. “Get away!” I shouted. “She’s going to blow again!” We flung ourselves behind rocks and trees. But she didn’t blow that time, either. We were lucky.
Lured on by the Golden Monkey, and the chance that Leilani might take another outdoor shower, we sailed on. Deeper and deeper into the bowels of Hawaii. Would we ever come out of the bowels, and if so, would we be in one piece?
My mood brightened when a rainbow appeared over the river. What is it about a rainbow that enchants us and yet frightens us? If I knew that, I’d be a rich man. The rainbow turned into a double rainbow. Would it turn into a triple rainbow? I crossed my fingers. No, just a double rainbow. I hung my head in disappointment.
That night we heard drums. They were louder this time, which Don said was because we were closer and not because they were using bigger drums.
But couldn’t it be that we were closer and they were using bigger drums? Don admitted it could.
Maybe we weren’t any closer, but the drummers were hitting the drums harder. Don said that was unlikely.
Maybe our eardrums were getting better.
Turtle Man
I WAS awakened by a blood-curdling screaming. At first I thought it was me, because I was having pelican nightmares. But it was Don, up in a tree, screaming his head off. I started to turn back to sleep.
That’s when I spied the most horrible creature I’d ever seen (after Don’s mother). It was standing right below Don, trying to stab him with a long, sharpened stick. It was roaring and snapping its slobbering jaws. It was a turtle man.
Leilani rushed forward with her knife. The turtle man knocked her backwards with one flip of its mighty flipper.
“Try to distract it!” yelled Don. I started making out with Leilani, but she pushed me away. As I looked on helpfully, she picked up a frying pan, and sneaked up and banged the huge, vicious thing over the head. Bong! It stood there for a second, then fell dead.
“Leilani, you saved my life,” said Don, alighting from the tree where he had clung like a frightened baboon.
“Yes, but at what cost?” I said, indicating the dead turtle man.
“I suppose we should report this to a park ranger,” said Don. “Or bury him.”
I had a better idea.
The great thing about turtle man is he cooks in his own shell. You basically use the shell as a big pot, pull him onto a fire, and he simmers in his own juices. Of course you have to pry off the under shell and scoop out the guts, but that just takes a crowbar, a good knife, and a bucket. Then when the flippers and the head fall off, you put them in the shell with the rest of the meat. Like a stew.
“Umm, it’s good,” I said as I chewed on one of the handlike flippers. I think the flippers were the best part. I crunched down on something hard. It turned out to be a ring. It was pretty crude, so I threw it away.
Don and Leilani didn’t want any turtle man. Leilani said it was taboo. I let it go. Once you start asking a woman what’s taboo, you’ve got a long night ahead of you.
“Why would the turtle man attack us?” Don wondered.
I shrugged, in a way that said Don was stupid.
Just as I was cracking the turtle man’s wishbone, and making a wish, I saw two pairs of eyes staring at me
from inside a bush. I froze. Leilani noticed and stood up. Two little turtle men jumped out in a panic and ran off into the darkness.
“They babies,” said Leilani.
They looked delicious.
Leftovers
THE NEXT morning I was troubled. What were we going to do with all those leftovers? The problem with turtle man is there’s so much of him. I could make a casserole, if I knew how to make a casserole. Or a sandwich, if I knew that.
As I wolfed down some cold turtle man, I tossed some scraps to the blue jays, who gobbled them. I gave Don a look that said, “So who’s right, you or the blue jays? I’d say the blue jays.”
As we headed upriver, Don got quiet. Whenever someone’s quiet I like to ask him questions, to fill in the silence.
“Don, do you believe in God?”
“Yes, I do.”
“Do you think the turtle man had a soul?”
“I’m not sure.”
“If he had a soul, would he go to Heaven?”
“He probably would.”
I burst out laughing. Turtle man in Heaven. It just made me laugh.
That’s when it hit me: laughs. Women love a man who makes them laugh! And what’s the one thing that makes women laugh? Puppets.
Puppets and Pulp
LATER THAT day, as we sailed through a narrow stretch of river, I made a puppet out of a sock. It was actually just a sock, but if you make a funny high voice, it “becomes” a puppet.
“Hey, where’s Leilani?” I said in the high voice. I made the sock turn from side to side, like he was looking around for something. Leilani pulled the puppet off my hand and threw it overboard.