The Turtle-Girl from East Pukapuka
Page 23
“I missed you, too.” Clarence paused to reposition his knees on softer bedding.
Anonymous closed her eyes, wiggled her brown bum. “I’m starting to get close again.”
* * * *
Outside the love hut sat Happa Now’s two newest residents, backs propped against low-growing coconut palms, facing each other in the pleasant, partly cloudy, eighty-two degree afternoon. Jesus Dobby was rubbing his scalp, which had itched for as long as he could remember from a chronic case of head lice. But here in this shady spot, it just tingled slightly. The nasty little bumps were now smooth and cool to the touch.
“Do I know you?” Dobby asked.
The man sitting across from him was wearing full-body war paint, with big pointy white teeth drawn on his cheeks. His necklace appeared to be made out of fragile bones, almost like fingers.
“Oh, yeah, no, I get that all the time.” He was rubbing his stomach, a puzzled expression on his face, as though trying to decide if he was hungry. Now, a thin coat of nervous sweat broke out all over his painted body, turning his black skin shiny.
“Nah, I’m pretty sure we’ve met.” Dobby squinted his eyes while absently pulling at the curls of the mat of gray chest hairs under his crucifix made of buttons. He remembered grabbing at the little savage girl’s gift just before colliding with the black speed boat. The last thing Dobby remembered was thick black smoke swirling upward, all around him. He’d had the feeling of riding a bucking bronco, then of getting sucked inside a giant vacuum cleaner. “I’m sure I know you from somewhere.”
“Yeah, well, I got one of those faces,” the man said, rubbing and smearing a few giant white teeth. Then, as if to change the subject, “Those two sure are goin’ at it, huh?”
From inside the love hut there came a guttural moan from the man, followed by the frantic, out of breath voice of the female who was reaching her third orgasm in the last half hour. To the two suspicious former acquaintances, it sounded like a cat was in mortal distress, but everyone knew animals weren’t allowed on Happa Now.
“Olly, olly, oxen free!” screeched the climaxing woman. Neither Jesus Dobby nor the painted man could suppress childish grins. The cannibal put his palm in the air and the cranky old captain leaned forward and high-fived it.
Drawing by Alyssa DeKenipp
Drawing by Allie Poltanis
Cole Alpaugh began his newspaper career in the early ’80s at a daily paper on Maryland’s Eastern Shore, where he covered everything from bake sales to KKK meetings. He moved on to a paper in Massachusetts, specializing in feature essays. His stories on a Hispanic youth gang and the life of a Golden Gloves boxer won national awards. At his most recent newspaper job, a large daily in Central New Jersey, he was given the freedom to pursue more “true life” essays, including award-winning pieces on a traveling rodeo and an in-depth story on an emergency room doctor. The doctor’s story ended when the physician brought back to life an elderly woman who’d once been his children’s babysitter. The essay was nominated by Gannett News Service for a 1991 Pulitzer Prize. Cole also did work for two Manhattan-based news agencies, covering conflicts in Haiti, Panama, Nicaragua, El Salvador, and guerrilla raids conducted out of the refugee camps along the Thai/Cambodia boarder. His work has appeared in dozens of magazines, as well as most newspapers in America. Cole’s first novel, The Bear in a Muddy Tutu, was published by Camel Press, an imprint of Coffeetown Press, in 2011. Coming Soon from Coffeetown: Cole’s third novel, The Spy’s Little Zonbi. Cole is currently a freelance photographer and writer living in Northeast Pennsylvania, where he also coaches his daughter’s soccer team.
You can find him online at www.colealpaugh.com.
Discussion Questions
for Book Clubs
The Turtle-Girl from East Pukapuka touches upon a wide range of topics both serious and absurd, realistic and surreal. Its characters are the products of American and native cultures. The following questions are intended to help your group begin the conversation.
1. The birds were drawn to Bigness and were the first to see the wave coming in the opening chapter. What drew the birds back to East Pukapuka? Was it Albino Paul’s presence? He saw their arrival as a positive sign, but would the birds have attacked him if the shark-god hadn’t given the order? Or were they only present to witness his form of Bigness?
2. There are quite a few competing religions in the book. Did you find any of them offensive? The gods in this book are all imperfect. How do they compare to the gods that you have read about throughout history? What about our mainstream religions? Was the Shark God meant to be real?
3. Did you feel sympathy for the people of East Pukapuka as the wave approached, or did you see their deaths as another step in their journey? Had your attitude changed by the end of the book?
4. Happa Now is the afterlife that awaits anyone who dies in East Pukapuka. Does it compare favorably with the Christian notion of heaven? Butter was told people can communicate from Happa Now; did you see evidence of that in the book?
5. The gods attempted to create a perfect afterlife on Happa Now but were too far removed from the human experience and missed the importance of domestic pets. Do other religions believe there are pets in heaven? As a child, did you believe your pet would go to heaven? How do you feel about pets and the afterlife now?
6. Butter loses a great deal of her trust in adults when she discovers the Tooth Devil is only a parent and not a creature from the ocean depths leaving black pearls in wooden spoons. Does the Tooth Fairy leave money or other prizes under your child’s pillow? Do you recall your own reaction when you discovered that these mythical creatures of childhood—the tooth Fairy, Santa Claus, the Easter Bunny—did not exist? Was your faith in all things unseen affected?
7. Ratu and Jope deal drugs, shoplift, steal a boat, take advantage of innocent tourists, become pirates, yet are sympathetic characters. What characteristics make them likeable? Or not?
8. Dante’s family doesn’t visit him in the rehab center, and his teammates only make a token appearance at his bedside. His family ties are broken. Why? Is his transformation and quest real, or were they planted in his brain by the travel channel?
9. How does the portrayal of women in this book affect your reading of the story? Butter is a girl, not a woman, but is she already aware of the disadvantages of her gender?
10. Does racism play a role in Albino Paul’s motivation to resurrect his people’s history of cannibalism? Albino Paul is a character who does some very bad things, but do you view his character as entirely evil?