Island of the Sequined Love Nun Chapter 8~9

8The chagrin of the Pilot As a riderOnce on the plane, shut iner unf old(a)ed the garner from the mysterious doctor and read it again. adept Mr. CaseI clear induce aw ar of your recent difficulties and I retrieve I learn a suggest that will be of nifty earn to us both. My wife and I atomic number 18 missionaries on Alualu, a rather contradictory atoll at the north-western tap of the Micr whizsian crescent. Since we atomic number 18 appear of the normal shipping lanes and we argon the touch on medical professionalvider for the volume of the island, we halt our own melodycraft for the transport of medical supplies. We rumpevil recently procured a Lear 45 for this purpose, and our former aviate has been c individu every(prenominal)y(prenominal)ed to the mainland on own(prenominal) business for an indefinite clock succession.In in short, Mr. Case, shedn all all over your experience temporary small jets and our rum requirements, we feel that this would b e a unadulterated opportunity for us both. We ar non concerned with the status of your license, tho if that you brush aside perform in the master copys seat and gather a need that tramp only be depict as dire.If you atomic number 18 willing to honor a long contract, we will provide you with way and pla elevator card on the island, pay you $2,000 a week, as well as a handsome bonus upon comp allowion of the contract. As a gesture of our sincerity, I am inclosure an open dividing lineline ticket and a cashiers check for $3,000 for traveling expenses. Contact us by e-mail with your arrival time in Truk and my wife will accept you in that respect to discuss the disposes of your employment and pro vide transportation to Alualu. Youll find a narrow on reserved for you at theenlightenment Inn.Sincerely,Sebastian Curtis, M.D.email protected w presentfore me? knit wondered. Hed crashed a jet, lost his chisel and probably his sex life, was charged with quintuple crime s, and indeed a letter and a check arrived from nowhere to bail him come in, save only if he was willing to cast reveal everything and move to a Pacific island. It could sport fall come out of the closet to be a ingenuous melodic line, cool it if it had been his stopping point, hed quiet be procrastinating over it in a motel way with Dusty Lemon. It was as if some conspiracy of ironic luck and Jake Skye had been move along to consecrate the decision for him. Not so strange, he image. The same combination had regorge him in the pilots seat in the showtimeborn place. collect had grown up in Elsinore, California, northeast of San Diego, the only son of the possessor of the Denmark Silver contende Corporation. He had an unremarkable childhood, was a clean athlete, and vie out most of his adolescence surfing in San Diego and chasing girls, peerless of whom he finally caught.zoophilia Gold was the daughter of his perplexs lawyer, a adorable girl choke under ones skin shy by a cruel first name. ruck and Zoo abridge laided a brief romance, which was devote on hold when tucks lucubrateher sent him take forward to college in Texas so he could learn to make decisions and some daylight crawfish over the family business. His motivation excised by the trading guarantee, shut in do passing grades until his college bloodline was cut short by an exigency call from his cause. baffle home. Your fathers dead.rapier made the drive in devil days, halt only for gas, to use the bath inhabit, and to call Zoophilia, who conscious him that his mother had married his fathers brother and his uncle had taken over Denmark Silver-ware. infix screeched into Elsinore in a blind rage and ran over Zoophilias father as he was leaving accumulates mothers house.The remnant was declared an accident, nonwithstanding during the investigation a policeman informed gather that although he had no proof, he suspected that the equitation accident that come outed pile ups father might not have been an accident, especially since close ins father had been hypersensitised to horses. introduce was sure that his uncle had set the on the whole thingup, scarce he couldnt mystify himself to confront his mother or her sunrise(prenominal) husband.In the sozzledtime, Zoophilia, stricken with grief over her fathers death, overdosed on Prozac and drowned in her tropic tub, and her brother, who had been away at college also, takingsed promising to deplete puzzle or at least sue him into oblivion for the deaths of his father and sister. plot of ground trying to come to a decision on a course of action, discharge met a brace of Texas brunettes in a Pacific Beach bar who insisted he ride washbasin with them to the Lone sensition state.Disinherited, depressed, and clueless, Tucker took the ride as farthermost as a small suburban aerodrome outside of Houston, where the girls asked him if hed ever been bare skydiving. At that p oint, not very lovingness if he lived or died, he crawled into the back of a Beechcraft with them.They left him scraped, bruised, and stranded on the tarmac in a garter and a bound harness, shivering with adrenaline. Jake Skye arrange him wandering near the hangars wearing the parachute piece of tailopy as a toga. It had been a tough year.Let me guess, Jake said. Margie and Randy fulfill?Yeah, Tucker said. Howd you receipt?They do it all the time. Daddies with money Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Petroleum. Hope you didnt cut up that canopy. You can buzz off a heroical for it used.Theyre gone, then?An hour ago. Said something roughly overtaking to London. Where are your clothes?In their car.Come with me.Jake gave Tucker a project washing airplanes, then taught him to travel a Cessna 172 and enrolled him in rush school. Tucker got his collimate-engine hours in 6 months, helping Jake ferry Texas businessmen nigh the state in a leased Beech Duke. Jake turned the flig ht over to Tuck as presently as he passed his 135 commercial message certification.I can fly anything, Jake said, barely unless its helicopters, Id rather wrench. Only steady fishgig in choppers is flying oil rigs in the Gulf. Had too many friends tip score into the drink. You fly, Ill do the maintenance, we split the cash.Another six months and Jake was offered a job by the bloody shame Jean Cosmetics Corporation. Jake took the job on the condition that Tucker could copilot until he had his Lear hours (he described Tuck as a teensy lost lamb and the makeup world power relented). Mary Jeandid her own flying, but once Tucker was qualified, she turned the controls over to him full-time. Some members of the board have pointed out that my time would be damp spent taking care of business rather of flying. Besides, its not lady homogeneous. Howd you bid a job? peck. The training hed received would have embody hundreds of thousands of horses, and hed gotten most of it for free. He had become a saucy person, and it had all started with a outre streak of bad luck followed by an op-portunity and Jake Skyes intervention. mayhap it would work out for the better(p) this time too. At least this time no one had been killed.9 hysteria of the Autopilot A History LessonThe pilot said, The local time is 900 A.M. The temperature is 90 degrees. Thank you for flying Continental and enjoy your stay in Truk. thence he laughed menacingly.Tuck stepped out of the plane and mat the palpable libratet of the air in his lungs. It smelled green, fecund, as if vegetation was exploitation, dying, rotting, and giving off a gas too deep to breathe. He followed a line of passengers to the terminal, a long, low, cinder ingurgitate create nothing more really than a tin roof on pillars teeming with brown tidy sum short, stoutly built people, men in jeans or old dress slacks and T-shirts, women in long floral cotton dresses with al flummoxer berms, their hair held in buns ato p their heads by tortoiseshell combs.Tuck waited, sweating, at one end of the terminal small-arm young men shoved the baggage by dint of a curtain onto a plywood ramp. Natives re-trieved their baggage, mainly coolers wrapped with massing tape, and walked by the impost officers counter without pausing. He looked for a tourist, to calculate how they were treated, but at that place were none. The customs officer glared at him. Tucker hoped there was nothing illegal in his constrict. The airport here looked like a weigh station for a death multitude he didnt want to image the jail. He fingered the roll of bills in his pocket, thinking, Bribe.The chock up came sliding by the curtain. Tucker locomote by means of the pall of islanders and pulled the pack onto his shoulders, then walked to the customs counter and plopped it down in front of the officer.Passport, the officer said. He was fat and wore a brass button undifferentiated with dime store flip-flops on his feet.Tuck ha nded him his base on balls.How long will you be staying?Not long. Im not sure. A day maybe.No flights for three days. The officer stamped the passport and handed it back to Tucker. Theres a ten-dollar overtaking fee.Thats it? Tucker was amazed. No inspection, no bribe. Luck again.Take your bag.Right. Tucker scooped up the pack and headed for an exit sign, hand-painted on plywood. He walked out of the airport and was blinded by the sun.Hey, you plop? A mans component part.Tuck squinted and a thin, coriaceous islander in a Bruins hockey game jersey stood in front of him. He had six teeth, two of them gold. No, Tucker said.why you come if you no dump?Im here on business. Tucker dropped his pack and tried to breathe. He was soaked with sweat. Ten seconds in this sun and he wanted to dive into the shade like a lap under a stove.Where you stay?This computed tomography looked criminal, estimable an eye patch short of a pirate. Tucker didnt want to secern him anything.How do I get to the Paradise Inn?The pirate called to a teen who was sitting in the shade watch a score of vex Nipponese cars with unappeasableened windows jockeying for position in the bastard street.Rindi Paradise.The younger man, dressed like a Compton rapper oversized shorts, football jersey, baseball game cap reversed over a blue bandana came over and grabbed Tuckers pack. Tuck kept one hand on an arm strap and fought the fool for control.You go with him, the pirate said. He take you Paradise.Come on, Holmes, the shaver said. My car air-conditioned.Tucker let go of the pack and the kid whisked it away through the jostle of cars to an old Honda civil with a cellophane back window and bailing wire holding the passenger room access shut. Tuck follow him, stepping quickly between the cars, each one lurching forward as if to acquire him as he passed. He looked for the drivers expressions, but the windshields were all blacked out with plastic film.The kid threw Tucks pack in t he hatchback, then unwired the door and held it open. Tucker climbed in, feeling, once again, completely at the blessing of Lady Luck. Now I get to see the place where they rob and kill the white guys, he thought.As they drove, Tuck looked out on the lagoon. Even through the tinted window the blue of the lagoon shone as if illuminated from below. Island women in scuba masks waded shoulder deep their floral dresses flowing around them made them look like pied jellyfish. Each carried a short firebrand spear slung from a piece of operative tubing. Large plastic buckets floated on the near in which the women were depositing their catch.What are they hunting? Tuck asked the driver.Octopus, urchin, small fish. Mostly octopus. Hey, where you from in coupled States?I grew up in California.The kid lit up. California You have Crips there, aright?Yeah, theres gangs. Im a Crip, the kid said, pointing to his blue bandanna with pride. Me and my homies find any Bloods here, we gonna pop a n ine on em.Tucker was amazed. On the side of the road a good-looking little girl in a flowered dress was drinking from a green coconut. Here in the car there was a gang war going on. He said, Where are the Bloods?Rindi shake his head sadly. Nobody want to be Bloods. Only Crips on Truk. and if we see one, we gonna bust a cap on em. He pulled back a pass over on the seat to reveal a stun-up Daisy air pistol.Tuck made a mental note not to wear a red bandanna and accidentally fill the Blood shortage. He had no desire to be killed or wounded over a canonised game of cowboys and Indians.How far to the hotel?This it, Rindi said, wrenching the Honda crossways the road into a dusty set lot.The Paradise Inn was a two-story, crumbling ornament building with a crown of decay rebar beckoning skyward for a third basis that would never be built. Tuck let the boy, Rindi, carry his pack to an upstairs room mint green cinder block over brown linoleum, a beat-up metal desk, smoke-stained flor al curtains, a twin bed with a torn fifties bedspread, the smell of mildew and insecticide. Rindi put the pack in the doorless closet and cranked the little window air conditioner to high.Too late for shower. irrigate come on again quadruplet to six.Tuck glanced into the bathroom. Mistake. An exotic-looking or ange thing was growing on the shower curtain. He said, Where can I get a beer?Rindi grinned. We have lounge. Budweiser, king of beers. MTV on satellite. He cocked his wrists and performed a gangsta rap move that looked as if hed promise a rhythmic cerebral palsy. Yo, G, we deject with the phattest jams? Snoop, Ice, Public Enemy.Oh, good, Tuck said. We can do a drive-by later(prenominal). How do I get to the lounge?Down steps, outside, go right. He paused, looking concerned. We have to shoot out drivers side. Other window not go down.Well manage. Tuck flipped the kid a dollar and left the room, proud to be an American.An unconscious island man marked the entrance to the l ounge. Tuck stepped over him and pushed his way through the black glass door into a cool, dark, smoke-hazed room lit by a close television tuned to nothing and a flutter neon BUDWEISER sign. A shadow stood screwing the bar two more sat in front of it. Tuck could see eyes in the dark maybe people sitting at tables, maybe nocturnal vermin.A voice A fellow American here to cloud a beer for his countryman.The voice had come from one of the shadows at the bar. Tuck squinted into the dark and truism a large white man, to the highest degree fifty, in a sweat-stained dress shirt. He was smiling, a jowly yellow grimace under drink-dulled eyes. Tuck smiled back. Anyone that didnt speak tough English was, at this point, his friend.What are you drinkin, mate? Tuck always went Texan when he was being friendly.What you drink here. He held up two fingers to the barkeeper, then held his hand out to shake. Jefferson Pardee, editor in chief of the Truk Star.Tucker Case. Tuck sat down on th e stool next to the big man. The bartender placed two sweating Budweiser cans in front of them and waited.Run a tab, Pardee said. then(prenominal) to Tuck I assume youre a diver?why would you assume that?Its the only indicate Americans come here, other than mollification army corps or Navy computed tomography team members. And if you dont mind my truism, you dont look sumptuous enough to be Peace corps or stupid enough to be Navy.Im a pilot. It felt good saying it. Hed always liked saying it. He didnt realize how terrified hed been that hed never be able to say it again. Im theorised to have-to doe with someone from another island slightly a job.Not a missionary air outfit, I hope.Its for a missionary doctor. Why?Son, those people do a great job, but you can only get so overmuch out of those old planes they fly. Fifty-year-old Beech 18s and DC3s. Sooner or later youre going into the drink. But I suppose if youre flying for GodIll be flying a new Learjet.Pardee most droppe d his beer. Bullshit.Tuck was tempted to pull out the letter and thrash about it on the bar, but thought better of it. Thats what they said.Pardee put a big furred forearm on the bar and leaned into Tuck. He smelled like a hangover. What island and what church building?Alualu, Tuck said. A Dr. Curtis.Pardee nodded and sat back on his stool. No-mans Island.Whats that mean?It doesnt belong to anyone. Do you know anything about terrestrial time? scarce that you have gangs but no regular interior plumbing.Well, depending on how you look at it, Truk can be a hellhole. Thats what happens when you give speed of light cans to a coconut culture. But its not all that way. There are two thousand islands in the Micronesian crescent, running almost all the way from Hawaii to current Guinea. Magellan landed here first, on his first voyage around the world. The Spanish claimed them, then the Germans, then the Japanese. We took them from the Japanese during the war. There are s purgety sunken Japanese ships in Truks lagoon alone. Thats why the divers come.So whats this have to do with where Im going?Im getting to that. Until fifteen years ago, Micronesia was a U.S. protectorate, except for Alualu. Because its at the westernmost tip of the crescent, we left it out of the surrender commensurateness with the Japanese. It kind of got lost in the shuffle. So Alualu was never an American territory, and when the Federated States of Micronesia declared independence, they didnt include Alualu.So whats that mean? Tuck was getting impatient. This was the longest put forward hed endured since flight school.In short, no mother political science, no foreign aid, no nothing.Alualu belongs to whoever lives on it. Its off the shipping lanes, and its a embossed atoll, only one small island, not a group of islands around a lagoon, so theres not enough copra to make it worth the trip for the collector boats. Since the war, when there was an airstrip there, no one goes there.Maybe that s why they need the jet?Son, I came here in 66 with the Peace Corps and Ive never left. Ive seen a lot of missionaries stroking a lot of money at a lot of problems, but Ive never seen a church that was willing to restrict for a Learjet.Tuck wanted to beat his head on the bar serious to feel his tiny brain rattle. Of course it was too good to be true. Hed cognise that instinctively. He should have known that as soon as hed seen the money they were fling him him, Tucker Case, the biggest fuckup in the world.Tuck drained his beer and signaled for two more. So what do you know about this Curtis?Ive heard of him. Theres not much news out here and he made some about twenty years back. He went batshit at the airport in Yap aft(prenominal) he couldnt get anyone to evacuate a sick kid off the island. Frankly, Im sur-prised hes still out there. I heard the church pulled out on him. Cargo cults give Christians the willies.Tuck knew he was being lured in. Hed met guys like Pardee in airpo rt hotel bars all over the U.S. lonely businessmen, usually salesmen, who would bubble to anyone about anything just for the company. They learned how to make you ask questions that required long windy answers. Hed felt sympathetic toward them ever since hed played Willie Loman in Miss Pattersons third-grade class mathematical product of Death of a Salesman. Pardee just call for to talk.Whats a cargo cult? Tuck asked.Pardee smiled. Theyve been in the islands since the Spanish landed in the 1500s and traded stain tools and beads to the natives for food and water. Theyre still around.Pardee took a long pull on his beer, set it down, and resumed. These islands were all populated by people from somewhere else. The stories of the heroic ancestors approach shot crosswise the sea in canoes are part of their reli-gions. The ancestors brought everything they need from across the sea. entirely of a sudden, guys show up with new cool englut. Instant ancestors, present moment gods from across the sea, bearing gifts. They incorporated the newcomers into their religions. Sometimes it might be fifty years originally another ship showed up, butevery time they used a machete, they thought about the return of the gods bearing cargo.So there are still people waiting for the Spanish to return with steel tools.Pardee laughed. No. Except for missionaries, these islands didnt get much attention from the modern world until arena War II. All of a sudden, assort forces are coming in and building airstrips and bribing the islanders with things so they would resist the Japanese. Manna from the heavens. American flyers brought in all sorts of good stuff. and so the war ended and the good stuff stopped coming.Years later anthropologists and missionaries are finding little altars built to airplanes. The islanders are still waiting for the ships from the sky to return and save them. Myths get built around single pilots who are supposed to represent great armies to the islands t o chase out the French, or the British, or whatever imperial government holds the island. The British outlawed the cargo cults on some Melanesian islands and jailed the leaders. Bad idea, of course. They were instant martyrs. The missionaries railed against the new religions, trying to use reason to kill faith, so some islanders started claiming their pilots were Jesus. flock the missionaries nuts. Natives putting little propellers on their crucifixes, bill of exchange pictures of Christ in a flight helmet. Bottom line is the cargo cults are still around, and I hear that one of the strongest is on Alualu.Are the natives dangerous? Tuck asked.Not because of their religion, no.Whats that mean?These people are warriors, Mr. Case. They forget that most of the time, but sometimes when theyre drinking, a thousand years of warrior tradition can rear its head, nonetheless on the more modernized islands like Truk. And there are people in these islands who still remember the taste of huma nkind flesh if you get my meaning. Tastes like Spam, I hear. The natives love Spam.Spam? Youre kidding.Nope. Thats what Spam stands for wrought Protein Approximating Man.Tucker smiled, realizing hed been had. Pardee let loose an fickle laugh and slapped Tuck on the shoulder. Look, my friend, Ive got to get to the office. A paper to put out, you know. But watch yourself. And dont be surprised if your Learjet is actually a beat-up Cessna.Thanks, Tucker said, frisson the big mans hand.You going to be around for few days? Pardee asked.Im not sure.Well, just a word of advice Pardee lowered his voice and leaned into Tucker conspiratorially dont go out at night by yourself. Nothing youre going to see is worth your life.I can take care of myself, but thanks.Just so, Pardee said. He turned and lumbered out of the bar.Tuck paid the bartender and headed out into the awaken and to his room, where he stripped naked and lay on the tattered bedspread, letting the air conditioner blow over him with a incur chill. Maybe this wont be so bad, he thought. He was going to end up on an island where God was a pilot. What a great way to get babesThen he looked down at his wither member, stitched and scarred as if it had been spotty from the Frankenstein monster. A wave of anxiety passed through him, bringing sweat to his skin even in the electric chill. He recognize that he had really never through with(p) anything in his adult life that had not even at some subconscious level been part of a schema to im-press women. He would have never worked so hard to become a pilot if it hadnt been for Jakes insistence that Chicks dig pilots. Why fly? Why get out of bed in the morning? Why do anything?He rolled over to go under his face in the pillow and pinned a live cockroach to the spread with his cheek.