The Stench of Honolulu: A Tropical Adventure

by Jack Handey

  As we turned to leave, I was hit in the buttock by a blow dart. I playfully pointed You got me at the offender. It’s fun to leave on a joke.

  Walking back to the boat, I got the feeling that Leilani was mad at me for something. I got that feeling because she kept shouting, “You let them kill us!” Also, she kept punching me on the back of the head and kicking me as I tried to crawl away. But the joke was on Leilani. As I wormed my way into the bushes, guess what I found? An arrowhead!

  Dump Leilani

  BACK AT the boat, I changed out of my dirty clothes. I put on my tight, skimpy swimsuit and a clean T-shirt, the one that says I’m With Stupid. Also, a fresh underpants beret. I lit up a cigar from the severed head of the comedian. It felt good to be civilized again.

  But something was gnawing at my brain. Something was probably gnawing at the comedian’s brain, too, but this was different. It occurred to me that I was not making much headway with Leilani. She had not given me pakakka, or even oral pakakka. All of which brought up the question: Let’s dump her. Put her in her canoe and tell her to hit the road.

  As Leilani loaded the boat, I took Don into the cabin. Leilani could see us through the window, so I turned my head away as I spoke, in case she could read lips like that computer in that outer-space movie.

  “Dump Leilani?” said Don. “But she saved both our lives.”

  “Once,” I pointed out.

  “And she fixed the engine.”

  I rolled my eyes. “Don, let’s be honest, anyone with a lot of mechanical knowledge could have done that.”

  “I know where is Gold Monkey,” Leilani called out.

  “So, you can read lips,” I said.

  “No read lips. You talk too loud.”

  “By the way,” I corrected, “It’s the Golden Monkey. Golden.” She glared at me. “Anyway,” I said, “what makes you think we’re looking for the Golden Monkey?”

  “All white men seek gold. That all they want. Their heart sick with greed.”

  Yes, we want gold, but come on, that’s not all we want. Our hearts are sick with other things, too.

  Don blurted out, “It’s true. We came here to steal the Golden Monkey.”

  And I was the one who had to swear on the Bible?!

  Leilani said, “I lead you to Gold Monkey. But cannot take. It forbidden take Gold Monkey. Yes, unnerstand?”

  Don and I nodded agreement. Is it wrong to lie because you’re planning to steal something? That’s a question probably only the philosophers can answer.

  One thing I knew for sure: The Golden Monkey did not want to be gawked at. He wanted to be melted down into smooth little ingots and smuggled to America inside someone’s rectum.

  A Distant Crash

  WE SHOWED Leilani our treasure map. “This map very old,” she said. “Not even show Highway 14.”

  Highway 14? What the heck was Highway 14?!

  That’s when we heard a huge, roaring crash coming from the direction of the Patangi village. Up on the hillside, all the huts were collapsing, one after another. Patangis were running everywhere, yelling and screaming. The village wall crumpled and fell. Even the giant wooden slingshot, used to fling gripers into the treetops, disintegrated before our eyes.

  It was unbelievable! What could have caused it? I felt that, in a way, I was to blame. If I had let the natives sacrifice Leilani, maybe the gods would have been pleased and this wouldn’t have happened.

  Don said we should go help them, but Leilani said no, they would kill us.

  Maybe just Don could go.

  Devil in a Grass Skirt

  WE SAILED on, trying to ignore the big cloud of dust that rose from the native village and the fading screams.

  Leilani took the wheel, her grass skirt swaying as she steered this way and that, her coconuts pointing straight ahead, proud and confident.

  What was she up to? Was she leading us into a trap? Did she really know the way to the Golden Monkey, or was she just whistling “Dixie”? Would we wake up in a land of cotton, with bumps on the head not soon forgotten? She was so gorgeous, but I told myself, Look away, look away.

  The river narrowed and sped up. The engine was straining to move us upstream, as if someone had not fixed it very well. We struggled against the raging foam like a cigarette in a latrine. At last we eased into a rippling pool, fed by a thundering waterfall.

  “Looks like a great place to take a shower,” I said to Leilani.

  “Anyone shower under that, he very stupid,” said Leilani.

  Man, lighten up, Leilani.

  We tied the boat to a crude dock that looked like it had been built by ancient, primitive people, or by the Hawaiian Park Service. Above us loomed Mount Regina, named after Queen Victoria, who was one of England’s greatest Reginas.

  Leilani pointed up at the rounded, cleft peak, protruding through the sheer white clouds that stretched over it like panties. “Golden Monkey up there,” she said.

  From here we would go on by foot, or, I was hoping, by piggyback.

  Red Hot Chili Gum

  I TRIED to take a shower under the waterfall, hoping Leilani would join me, but I was knocked unconscious by the force of the falling water. As I floated facedown, I was awakened by nipping piranhas.

  That night I thought about taking off in the boat, leaving Don and Leilani stranded. But I couldn’t do it. I didn’t know how to drive the boat. Besides, I deserved the Golden Monkey. I had worked too hard for it.

  In the morning we packed up the bare essentials and prepared to “hike” up the path. I don’t know if you’ve ever been on a hike before, but it is pure hell. It’s mostly walking uphill while you carry things.

  I paused to look around. I would miss the old boat. Normally I would laugh at people who became attached to a boat. But now who was laughing? The boat.

  Up and up we went. My lungs burned. My legs burned. My mouth burned. I looked at the label on my chewing gum. Red Hot Chili Gum?! When did I buy that?!

  I clawed my way through the muck and the mud, on my hands and knees. I was attacked by biting ants. Here’s my question: Why are there so many ants, but not that many anteaters? Nice job, Evolution.

  I crawled past a lizard. Then the lizard went past me. Then I realized the lizard was just sitting there and I had been sliding downhill.

  It felt like I was lying on a giant anvil, being pounded by a giant hammer. I wanted to shout, “I’m flat enough!”

  Every cell in my body cried out, and every cell in my brain hollered back, Whoa, there, little pardners, let’s take ’er easy. My brain had become a cowboy!

  Don took me aside. He said maybe I should get rid of the bottles of scotch in my backpack. I shook my head in disbelief, so hard that my neck burned. “There’s no way I’m getting rid of this Glenriddance, Glen,” I said, calling Don by his middle name, which he hates. “These scotch bottles are like my children, and I would never abandon my children.”

  “But you did abandon your children,” said Don.

  “They weren’t my children! They were my niece and nephew! I was only babysitting! And I only left them for a little while! Why did they call the police? Why! Why! Why!”

  Against everything that’s holy, I took the last four bottles of Glenriddance from my pack. I kissed each one good-bye and I tossed them down onto the rocks. When I heard them shatter, I let out a scream of pain and anger and grief. When Don said we could have stashed them somewhere and picked them up on the way back down, I let out an even bigger scream.

  What Kind of World

  WHAT KIND of a world was this, where people won’t help you carry expensive scotch but, oh, they don’t mind carrying water?

  Where a monkey pretends to eat something foul, just to trick you into eating it?

  Where heads are shrunken and feet are stunken?

  Where even after you explain to people that what you’re doing is yodeling, they still want you to stop?

  Where a mad scientist can apparently rent a helicopter, no questions as
ked?

  Where plants eat men, and men eat men, but a Patangi won’t let you play his drum because you “might hurt it”?

  Where you smell a flower and it smells you back?

  Where you look and look for your other shoe, and when you finally find it no one seems that happy?

  Where people don’t mind if you call mosquitoes “skeeters,” but they get annoyed if you call them “skits”?

  Where you would kill for a hot bath and slaughter everyone in sight for a bubble bath?

  Where a raccoon can hypnotize you just by washing his hands?

  Where a man weeping in the night is told to “stop cry”?

  What a Fool I’d Been

  UP AND up we went, into the clouds. Everything was foggy and slippery and wet, like some kind of dream.

  “Mount Regina, she very wet. She always wet,” said Leilani. She put her hand on Don’s waist.

  I had an orgasm in my pants.

  Also, I had a realization that made me shudder. How could I have been so stupid? Something was going on between Don and Leilani. Of course! That’s why they kept looking at each other when they pitched the tent and cooked the meals and cleaned up afterward. And all the time I had just been sitting there, clueless.

  That’s why they would go off in the jungle together, and when they came back Leilani would have flowers in her hair and Don would have scrapes on his knees. They seemed to have a certain glow about them—the glow that comes from porking.

  Tadpoles of suspicion had been growing in my mind. And now they were full-grown frogs.

  That evening Don and Leilani announced they were going off to get some “roughage.” They didn’t even bother to hide it anymore.

  I followed them. I’m good at sneaking up on people if they’re having sex. Don laid out a blanket, walking around on his knees to straighten it. Leilani put an orchid behind her ear. They sat down next to each other. Not touching, but close. Every once in a while they would point to a sunlit cloud, or a pair of doves flitting by. Or Leilani would take a leaf from her basket for Don to smell. But mostly they were just talking. And laughing. What in the name of the Pelican God was going on here?

  If Don and Leilani weren’t having sex, what were they up to? There was only one answer: they were planning to kill me. It all made sense now. It was like looking through out-of-focus binoculars, then throwing the binoculars away and seeing clearly. That way they could cut the Golden Monkey into two pieces instead of three. It would be a lot less work, for one thing.

  I knew what I had to do: kill Don. Then, as the victorious bull ape, I would claim Leilani as my mate, if she would be okay with that. Then we would go get the Golden Monkey. After that we would move to Las Vegas.

  Killing Don

  IT WOULDN’T be easy to kill Don. I had tried in the past. I would have to come up with the perfect plan. If my plan failed, something told me I would probably never reach the top of Mount Regina. I would meet with some sort of bizarre accident—falling off a cliff or being crushed by a landslide. Or, more likely, Don and Leilani would kill me.

  Here are some of the ideas I came up with to do away with Don:

  Find an old hand grenade from the war. Then pull the pin, toss it to Don, and say, “Hey, Don, Merry Christmas.” But if it didn’t blow up, Don might say, “Thanks, but it’s not Christmas.” So then what would I get him for Christmas?

  Put poison mushrooms into Don’s meals. (Note: Do not eat the meals yourself even if they smell delicious.)

  Find some phosphorus; rub in Don’s hair. Find some sulfur; rub into Don’s hair. Get Don to strike his head across a rough surface.

  Find a human skeleton someplace. Tie strings to the bones. Then practice using it as a marionette. Practice and practice, until you can make it tiptoe up behind Don and say, “Oh, Don, it’s me, a SKELETON!” Oh, yeah, also learn ventriloquism.

  Somehow turn Don into a human magnet. (That’s as far as I got on that one.)

  Find a big rock stuck in the ground. Convince Don we need to move it. Don wrenches his back trying to lift it. We go back home, where he gets hooked on pain pills. He robs a drugstore to get more pain pills, and during the robbery shoots himself in the foot and needs even more pain pills. He overdoses and is rushed to the hospital. On the way, the ambulance is involved in a wreck, and Don wrenches his back even worse. He is able to flag down a cab. The cab driver has back problems, and when he sees Don he thinks Don is making fun of him, and shoots him.

  Tell Don, “Hey, Don, how ’bout a glass of orange juice?” But guess what, it’s not orange juice. I don’t know what it is, but it’s not orange juice.

  Find a cobra and put it down next to Don. If I can’t find a cobra, find a rattlesnake. If no rattlesnake, what about a jack-in-the-box?

  Steal a baby gorilla from a gorilla family while wearing a Don mask.

  Get Don to eat a big jar of popcorn seeds. Then roast him over a fire.

  Find some fireworks that somebody left. Then say, “Hey, Don, let’s go shoot off some fireworks.” Then go shoot the fireworks. This doesn’t really kill Don, but it would be fun.

  The Plan

  THE PLAN I finally decided on was complex. But also, in a way, it was simple: I would hit Don over the head with a frying pan.

  Some people might say I got this idea from Leilani hitting the turtle man with a frying pan. Listen, Leilani did not invent the idea of hitting someone with a frying pan. That idea has been around a long time. Plus, mine was different—I would hit Don while he was asleep.

  I awoke at dawn. That’s what no scotch will do for you. I made my way through the dim light to the cooking gear. I couldn’t find a frying pan, just one of those whisk things that you stir things with. It would have to do. My plan had come too far.

  I tiptoed up to the snoozing Don and raised my weapon. But I noticed something. It was a dimple on his neck, from when I shot him with a BB gun when we were kids. I raised the whisk again, but something else caught my eye. Between his fingers was the old cigarette burn, from when we were teenagers and I taught Don how to smoke.

  I rolled him over so I wouldn’t have to look at him when I hit him. That’s when I saw the surgical scar on his back, from when he gave me one of his kidneys.

  I couldn’t do it. We’d had too many fun times together. Also, what if I ever needed his other kidney?

  I tossed the whisk to the ground. It bounced over and hit Don on the head. He woke up, looked at me then at the whisk, and said, “Hey! You were trying to kill me! Again!”

  I turned and started to run, but Don caught me and tripped me. I fell to the ground, hard. I got up and tripped him. Then he tripped me back. “I give up, I give up!” I said, lying there. I tried to yank him off his feet, but he blocked my hand with his tripping foot.

  “Stop!” yelled Leilani.

  While he was distracted, I tied Don’s shoelaces together. I got up and motioned him toward me. “Come on, let’s see what you got.” He fell flat on his face. I started laughing, until I felt a tap on my shoulder. It was Don. He double-tripped me.

  “Stop fight!” said Leilani. “There is Golden Monkey!”

  We looked up. The clouds had parted. There before us, in the gathering light, was the Cave of the Golden Monkey.

  The Cave of the Golden Monkey

  WE SPRINTED up the ancient path. Finally, Don and I would get what we so richly deserved.

  “No need run!” Leilani called after us.

  We entered the yawning mouth of the cave. A bat fluttered overhead. And there before us, illuminated by some mysterious force, was the object of our quest. “There it is, the Golden Monkey!” I gasped. I had the urge to throw myself down and worship it, but I resisted. Instead I yelled, “We found it! We found it!” I jumped up and down and hugged Don and Leilani. I wanted that monkey so bad I was drooling, even more than normal.

  The Golden Monkey was sitting cross-legged on a rough stone altar. It wasn’t as big as I thought it would be. Still, it was all ours.

&nbs
p; Don didn’t seem that happy. He was rubbing his face and whimpering. But I was already trying to figure out how we could get the thing down the mountain. I whispered to Don, “Let’s make Leilani carry it.”

  Something was wrong. Don had a sick look on his face. I heard voices. I noticed a young couple with a stroller off to one side. They were taking a photo. I saw an older woman listening to an audio guide. Just coming into the cave was a tour group. I picked up a rock to throw at them. Don stopped me. “We screwed up,” he said. “The Golden Monkey was found long ago. It’s a… tourist attraction.”

  “Huh?”

  “That’s why the old crone gave us the map. She just thought we’d enjoy seeing it.”

  “Huh?! Huh?! Huh?!” I couldn’t believe it. I turned to Leilani. “Why didn’t you tell us this?!”

  “I say to you, ‘Cannot take Gold Monkey.’ ”

  “Yeah, but you weren’t very clear as to why!”

  For once she softened. “I not want Don leave me.”

  Don and Leilani gazed into each other’s eyes, and kissed. “Maybe it worked out for the best,” said Don, looking at the Golden Monkey and smiling a stupid, self-satisfied smile.

  Don and Leilani held hands and walked out of the cave together. God, love is sickening.

  You’d Do the Same

  I NOTICED it wasn’t a bat flying around but a boomerang some kid was throwing. It almost hit me in the head.

  I moved closer to the Golden Monkey to get a better look. The mysterious force illuminating it turned out to be spotlights.