by Dean Ing
Lovett studied the target, which seemed to have had the living hell poked out of it. "I'm with the lady," he said. "But better this than the real thing."
"Holdover from a warrior culture," Benteen said, her gaze following the.
flight of another cane spear. "Or new beginnings."
"My thought exactly," he said. "I'm gonna grab some of that fish; want some?"
"I'll get my own," she said quickly. "You don't want to get Myles to thinking, do you?"
I 'That'll be the day," he said with a wry smile and was soon slurping lukewarm coconut milk with Coop Gunther. As a final cheer went up, the winning boy was hoisted to the shoulders of his competitors for a tour of the prize ring. As Jean-Claude bestowed a garland around the lad's neck, Lovett scanned the crowd but failed to see what he was looking for. "Coop, you see that grandson of mine anywhere?"
"Nope. But we both know how to find him."
"Say again?" 'You want me to spell it out? Look for Twinkletoes," said the old fellow.
Galling, but true. Two hundred yards from the crowd, Lovett found the youths together, separating one of the log rafts from the linked series moored with ropes across from the wharf on the village side of the lagoon. Lovett counted eight rafts, each with its cargo of fireworks: rockets with guide sticks, what looked like Roman candies, and an array of cardboard mortar tubes, all fed with thick, old-fashioned dynamite fuse. As Chip returned Lovett's approaching, wave, Keikano thrust the chosen raft into the languid current, holding its moorage rope as he walked downstream. Lovett said, "Time for the finale, is it?"
"After the swimming and canoe races," Keikano called. "It will be near dark then. I will release the raft and the winning child will swim out with his torch to start the fuse."
Hearing more cheers, Lovett turned to see a dozen boys pelting around the plaza in a footrace that looked from a distance like a ghetto rumble. Tripping was okay, elbows were fine, and tackling was "in." The winning kid was the best hurdler, leaping over sprawled bodies to pull up before Jeanclaude, bleeding from scratches as he krielt for his garland of pale blossoms. Lovett shook his head. "Are the adult games pretty much like these, Keikano?,,
"Men's games are rough," said Keikano, binding the moorage rope "If they're much rougher than that," said Lovett jerking a thumb over his shoulder, "you must get some casualties."
"You mean injury? Always," said Keikano, with a vexed glare toward the throng that was pure elitism. "or worse.,, Lovett only nodded, thinking about sour grapes. If the men's races were rougher than what he had just witnessed, a little sprite like Keikano would've wound up getting rendered for tallow.
"I was going to see if I could enter the men's swim meet," Chip said ruefully, "but according to Kei, I'm not eligible." Peering past Lovett's shoulder, he added, "Hey, here they come. What happens now?"
An excited babble began to grow from the near distance, villagers trooping toward the lagoon, boys sprinting in pairs for small canoes with single outriggers that lay overturned at the waterside. Most of the kids were antic with haste, flopping their scaled-down 109 canoes over, outriggers slapping heads and shoulders'with abandon. Only two of the pairs seemed casual, last to thrust their mounts into the water. "Where are they racing to," Lovett asked.
"They will begin at Rongi's order," said Keikano, pointing far downstream, "and will race to Jean-Claude." Motionless on stones, far away near the breakwater, standing tall in the late sun, was a solitary figure and, from the broad shoulders and slender waist, Lovett knew it was Rongi. Jean-Claude had taken his position at the terminal curve where the creek fed into the lagoon. Nearer, the paired teams were spurring one another on with urgent little cadenced cries as they paddled frantically toward the distant figure of Rongi. All except those last two pairs, who took their time getting underway.
"So they're not racing yet," Lovett said, smiling.
"No. They are boys," Keikano replied,'smiling back as if to say that explained everything.
Chip was half amused, half disgusted. "Don't they know they're wearing themselves out before they start, Kei?"
"They are boys," said the, schoolteacher again. "All spirit, no brain.
Some learn sooner than others. My-part cousin? Tanil is in the last canoe. He listens," said the schoolteacher.
"To you," Chip persisted.
"To me," said Keikano with quiet pride.
"What tricks did you teach him?" The last of the little dugout canoes had now diminished to toys in the distance, with tiny manikins flailing graceful paddles in fading sunlight.
"Those my father knew," said Keikano. "Paddle as one. Note the water's motion. Do not spend yourselves too soon. Keep your balance float out of harm's way. Be wary of other paddles on your near side."
Lovett said, "You mean those kids will be fighting each other Re in the footrace?"
"You will see," Keikano said, as though Lovett's question were the height of naivete.
The tiny outrigger canoes were still jockeying for position when Rongi apparently gave some signal. Three of the seven little dugouts shot forward, two others veered sharply together as if choreographed so that one outrigger flew up and over in a capsizing, and the final two began to skim along the edge of the lagoon just off the pace. Keikano scurried to stand atop a boulder, shading his eyes.
The short paddles, their blades shaped like flat exaggerated spearheads, flashed in the sun at a startling rate, at least one stroke per second for those in front. Lovett laughed as he sa, Rongi make a flat expert dive toward the two entangled cral The hapless boys were now swimmers, still using their pa dles, but now for combat. Whether Rongi intended to bring up the fight or serve as referee seemed moot.
Villagers were cheering, some trotting along the water edge toward the oncon-dng speedsters, and at midpoint or canoe had forged a half-length ahead. Now approaching the-, enough for Lovett to make out details, the canoes were moi ing at the pace of a long-distance runner. At that moment, d forward paddler of the second-place canoe swung his paddl wide, so that it caught the aft outrigger brace of the leadin craft. And again. Each time that happened, the second cra narrowed its deficit by an arm span. And now the lead canoe' aft oarsman made a wide sweep of his own, sending a perfectly directed gout of lagoon water into the face of his corr petitor and, not incidentally, fetching his opponent's paddle solid whack. The third pair of canoeists steered wide of thi foolishness and, as the leaders became spearmen instead ( oarsmen, nosed ahead. No wonder the tips of those paddle are pointy, Lovett decided.
The istander blade design mayn( have matched the curved blades of a Brit collegiate champio for sheer efficiency, but as a weapon the damned thing could poke your lights out. Maybe that had been the original ide in the islands... And now, as the early leaders became brawlers egged o by hundreds of yelling spectators, the new leader swept we past; but Keikano's gaze was still fixed on one of the laggar craft that sped along in the shallows on the near side. It wasn lagging so much anymore, and Lovett could see that whil others were beginning to flag, this pair was one of those th, had saved all that boyish energy for the time when it counte( They actually picked up their cadence a bit, pulling abreaof the leader as both craft passed by, drawing a glare of helf less fury.
And a desperation tactic that would've had the tiring pa drawn and quartered in any Western contest. Because the Iz goon was a hundred yards wide and the shore-hugging cano well beyond paddle-reach, it seemed the winner was a foregone conclusion-until the glaring oarsman of the fading pair kly made a sleight re one-handed, and a quic -of-hand gestu slender cord unfurled in midair. It was a fishing line complete with hooks, in an unerring toss that covered the ten yards that separated the canoes and caught the outrigger of young Tanil's craft. Tanil, kneeling forward in the bow with his paddle, lost his balance and cannonballed into the shallo w@i. A great shout went up from the crowd and Lovett watched in slack-jawed amazement. This was legal?
Then Tanil's partner veered his little craft into a deliberate collision, riding his pr
ow over the opponent's outrigger, and Lovett found himself laughing helplessly at this donnybrook by children, only a few hundred feet from the shore where Jean-Claude Pelele stood to greet the winner.
So why, Lovett wondered, was Keikano's distant cousin scrabbling so hard to the shore with his paddle still in hand? The boy came out of the water like a beaching porpoise and began to sprint, scant yards from the yelling throng that lined the shore. He reached Pelele as another oarsman was leaping from his craft; knelt, paddle erect like a pole, before the big man; and received die garland to renewed cheering. The other boy, foiled by one second, looked at his paddle as if it had betrayed him.
Tanil and his partner'were taking their ride around the official circle, the crowd filtering back to the plaza, before Lovett could make himself heard to the srfiiling Keikano. "If he could just run to the finish line Re that, why not come ashore earlier," Lovett asked.
"Someone would have tripped him," Keikano replied. "Running is not fair unless you have been held in some way."
"So why didn't those other kids do it, at the first?"
"They tried," Kaikano explained patiently. "Why did you think they were holding on to each other?"
Lovett shook his head, hands up in mock despair.
Damnedest rules I ever heard of. At least your cousin won."
"Only because he kept his weapon. His paddle. And of course, he stayed the ar shore where the water flows more slowly."
Chip, who had been listening to this interchange:
"Don't the other boys know all that, too9l,
"They do, when they are thinking. They are-"
"Boys, yeah, I hear you," said Chip, with a rueful grin. The three of them strolled-back to the plaza where six finalists, including Tanil, stood inside the prize ring awaiting another signal from their hulking President. Log drums beat, the crowd began to chant, and at Jean-Claude's gesture boys began to grapple as the chant became white noise.
Tanil and one other lad were flung beyond the ring of Stones almost immediately because each was attacked by at least two others. Keikano writhed in disappointment at this but, "All's fair in love and war,"
Chip called to his little pal.
"This is not love," Keikano called back. The wrestling contest ended only when the pair that had almost won the canoe race ganged up on the third remaining lad and bodily dragged him to the edge of the ring. As the lone boy struggled, one of his attackers disengaged himself and then delivered a brisk kick to his own pal's backside. His pal and the third boy both fell across the stones, leaving little Master Betrayal alone in the ring.
The crowd roared its approval and Keikano turned his back On the spectacle, hurrying off toward the lagoon.
Lovett heard a gruff familiar voice in his ear above the cheers.
"Fuckyerbuddy week," was Coop's laconic view.
"Makes you wonder about the contracts they sign," Lovett replied, watching the flower of Fundaboran boyhood as he was carried about on willing shoulders.
Then, with dusk hanging heavy as incense in the air, Jeanclaude handed the boy a small lighted torch. With blood still clotting on his scratches, the boy trotted away a bit unsteadily toward the lagoon where a barefoot Keikano was pushing one of the rafts into the current, following it out with powerful leg kicks.
The boy eased into the water, holding his torch aloft easily in one hand. By the time Keikano had emerged ashore, dripping, the boy had reached his goal and the villagers had taken up some new chant in unison, sounding more like a benediction than an exhortation. Lovett thought it was just as well, because that kid was just about all used up for one day. Served him right, Lovett decided.
The torch flickered at the raft's edge, the crowd fell silent, and moments later a hard little blue flame with pinkish edges stabbed out.
The boy' began to swim back, and it was that precise instant when the air became filled with a shattering roar. Directly overhead, something passed down the length of the lagoon toward the breakwater carrying a familiar thousand-horsepower snarl with it, disappearing as it banked away. From every villager with a voice: white noise again.
For a few frozen heartbeats, Lovett was as stunned as any of them.
He stood still for only a few seconds, patting his pockets. He yelled toward Chip: "Got a radio?"
A headshake and, "Myles has one," and then they were both ducking through the crowd that had fallen silent again, caught between anticipation and awe as every eye followed the small lights that winked like eyes from wingtips that were turning lazily.
Then, far out beyond the breakwater, brighter eyes flicked on, settling lower, turning until staring toward them. "Myles, Myles," Lovett screamed. "Use your radio! He's about to land on those fireworks!"
Lovett had noted the blunt shape of the fuselage that passed no more than three hundred feet above the lagoon, and knew it was an amphibian.
It could land directly on the lagoon. Crispin Reventlo had made a perfect choice for a landing-at almost any other time' Vic Myles did not hear Lovett but some things, he would say later, even a Texan can figure out for himself. Lovett snatched up a torch from its socket and raced toward the lagoon, trying to estimate the raft's location through the murk. Chip copied him, perhaps without knowing why, and stood by as Lovett threw his torch overhand as hard as he could. It made a flaming arc that extinguished in the lagoon ten yards behind the raft. The blocky amphibian, its landing lights now distinctly separate points, was very low near the breakwater and still boring in. Chip made his own toss, a far better one, that flamed out bare yards beyond the raft. And then a flare erupted from the raft Re a distress signal, a crimson ball the size of a bushel basket, rising up and up, flaming out while still rising. And a green flare, two seconds later, like some demonic antiaircraft battery wamiing up to intercept the plane.
Lovett began to leap and wave, arms crossing back and forth. Chip Mason did something more risky but also more likely to save one life while taking his own: he dived into the lagoon, hard overhand strokes knifing him toward the raft which now emitted sparks every time it belched. Now it was firing something nastier than simple flares.
The sound of twin engines suddenly fire walled came to Lovett as Chip reached the raft. High above the lagoon, . with a soft pooom, a great spherical burst of blue points spread across the sky as another hollow belch and its shower of sparks trailed a second mortar shell in its vertical rise. The amphibian twin came so near touching the lagoon that it left a furrow of roiled water, then steadied with its lights sweeping over that raft, a lethal obstacle if they touched, Chip kicking hard in his effort to tow the whole thing to the shallows where Keikano was now plunging in to help, calling for others.
And then the big twin roared past in its cataclysmic rush, louder than before as it strained to rise, another colorburst rending the sky directly above it so near that the lowest of the fireballs shattered into roiling tubes of green fire in the prop wash, the plane now with enough speed that its pull-up and shallow bank toward the sea cleared the tallest palms by a good three feet.
And those god damned mortar salutes just kept coming, now a twinned red-and-green combination with one vast white wink that brought a thunderous concussion a second later. Lovett lost his footing on his way to aid Chip, hit and rolled to the water's-edge. He sat up groggily and shook his head. Surely to God, after flying directly through one airburst of fireworks display, Reventlo wouldn't make another such pass anytime soon.
Sitting on a stone beside him, tinted from time to time by bursts of star shells in red, white, blue, yellow, Vic Myles was cmiwy talking on his handheld radio. "Naw, those suckers are patched together, Cris. You gotta wait 'em out." An evil chuckle followed this. It made Lovett want to kick him.
A thin voice, muffled because Myles held the set to his ear, said something Lovett couldn't hear. "Current's only a couple of knots and they've pulled the raft ashore," Myles reported. "You'll be clear." At that point, Lovett saw two figures kneeling on the raft, one frantically pulling 'un
spent mortar tubes from their powder train, dumping them into the lagoon; the other-Chip-pulling off his T-shirt.
Lovett and Myles both saw what happened next, Chip stuffing his cotton shirt into the open mouth of that remaining mortar, and Myles was first to react. He bellowed, "Mason, jump, you fucking idiot!"
Chip, still kneeling, turned toward Myles. A muffled thump beside him trailed sparks and carried his T-shirt twenty feet up. Chip followed it with his eyes-but as he did, Keikano grabbed him by that mop of long hair, peeling off into the channel side of the raft carrying Chip with him.
The T-shirt, with a two-pound star shell inside it, flopped back onto the raft. And disappeared in a blinding flash that spewed lavender points of light the full width of the lagoon, villagers ducking for cover. Another five seconds passed before Chip's head bobbed to the surface with Keikano following. Safely beyond the danger radius, Jean-Claude Pelele was roaring with laughter and Lovett, luckily, could find nothing handy to throw at him.
27:
Reventio's landing, like most water landings, wasn't a thing of beauty; it was the sort of controlled, wounded-goose flop the old Grumman amphibian had been built to take, straight up the lagoon with room to spare. With a blunt fat body and pair of small, noisy radial engines perched high on its short wing, the Grumman boasted all the charm of a snarling hunchback and had been saddled with its name, Goose, from those plunging water landings.
Coop Gunther literally rubbed his hands in glee to see it; the tough, reliable little Grumman Goose had once been a mainstay in Coop's Coast Guard squadron. It was half the size of a C-47, just as slow and five times as ugly, but amphibian meant that when you dropped it into the water it didn't sink. In a pinch it might carry eight or ten people.
With natives bearing torches and Reventlo's friends streaming onto the dock weak with relief, his greeting committee soon dissolved into a series of hugs and questions. Cris Revendo, with an armful of presents and his white hair sweat plastered to his forehead, didn't look like a man who had taken off fresh from Yap two hours before. From his last second radio contact with Myles, he knew that the aerial blitz had been purest accident. "I've heard of a flaming welcome, mates-but really," he said, eyebrows knitted, spotting the head of Jean-Claude above all the others. Raising his voice: "Since Fundabora's juvenile delinquents failed to shoot me down, I bear gifts as promised. Keikano, I feel curses con-ting on, so I leave it to you to massage that into a proper greeting." Whiskey in one hand, a pair of videocassettes in. the other, he handed them over to Jean-Claude.