I guess you don’t have to be a rocket scientist to figure out which voice I listened to.
Somehow I had the foresight to make a call to my crew at the hotel. I told them I was going south for a day, and they should enjoy themselves until I got back. If anybody asked about my whereabouts, I told them, they should say that I had met an old sailing buddy in the Coolidge Bar and that I went off with him to dive on some old war-relic wrecks up in the Torres Islands. I would be back in a couple of days. That was my last lucid thought for a very long time.
Joe told me we needed to see a man about a freighter, and off we went down the backstreets of Santo to his neighborhood kava bar.
How I got from the kava bar to one of the most remote islands in one of the most remote countries in the South Pacific on a tramp steamer is just one of those events you chalk up to the roller-coaster theory of life: You buy a ticket willingly and let yourself be strapped into a seat. The ride starts out slow, like the little train being pulled to the top of the roller-coaster track, and that’s when gravity takes over. After that, you hang on for dear life.
This was not my first experience with strange brews. About fifteen years ago, I took off on a wild hair for Rio at the urging of a friend who was there. Somewhere in the middle of the Rio Carnival, I was taken by a drummer friend of mine from Brazil to the rehearsal of one of the main dance groups. They were named Beja Flora. Though the women and their costumes—or lack of them—were enough to hold my attention, I was also intrigued by the drummers, who sat in a tight circle behind the dancers and pounded out rhythms all night. I started to fade at about four in the morning, and the drummers were still going strong. I asked my friend what they were on, assuming it was cocaine, speed, or some other stimulant, and he handed me a cup. “It’s called hoodlum drink, and it’s only given to the drummers.”
“What’s in it?” I asked.
“Nobody really knows. It’s a mystery.”
That was good enough for me. I guzzled my hoodlum drink, danced until dawn, and the last thing I remember was serenading a couple of Brazilian models as we stretched on a launchpad in the mountains above Rio while hang gliders leaped into the morning sky.
After that, you would think I would have steered clear of any similar situations. But I didn’t.
Above the kava bar was a sign that read THE BLACK HOLE. That should have been a warning, but through the doors I went. I followed Jetfuel Joe down the rabbit hole, continuing to listen to the more adventurous voice of my inner child.
As I walked through the door of the Black Hole, music was blaring from the jukebox. Joe told me the singer was Don Tiki. The song was called “The Natives Are Restless.” I immediately noticed the lack of haoles in the joint, but the owner acted as if I were some kind of long-lost relative. The next thing I knew, a big bowl of muddy-looking liquid was carried out to a table in the corner, and the owner escorted me there. Joe told me it was kava.
After those beers back at the Coolidge, I was game for anything, and it was important for me to be the not-so-ugly American. Joe told me that being asked to drink kava with the owner was an honor. To refuse it would be to refuse friendship. I wasn’t there to make enemies.
Joe said the small coconut-shell cup was called a low tide and the big cassava bowl next to it was called a high tide. Either was fine. I watched the owner gulp his down, lick his lips, and smile. He clearly enjoyed the experience.
As a sailor, I had learned that the more water under you, the better—so I downed the high tide. Unlike the fufu cocktails that you might see on a brightly colored plastic drink menu in a tiki bar on Waikiki Beach, with cute names like Kava Kocktails or Krakatau Killers, real kava tastes like shit—a mixture of mud-puddle water and diesel fuel.
The good news is this: after gulping it down, I didn’t throw up like you do if you eat a peyote button or two. But kava, I can now tell you, will make you see God with one eye and those flying monkeys from The Wizard of Oz with the other.
My lips immediately went numb, and my speech sounded like a record on a turntable being played at the wrong speed. Let’s just say, for comparison’s sake, that if the Brazilian hoodlum drink was a hang glider, then a bowl of kava was like being launched from the deck of a carrier in an F-14.
Joe showed me a picture of an old tramp steamer, and I remember some vague reference to me being on it. The only thing was, when I went to look at the picture, I saw two boats. A few minutes later, my legs quit working, and then I felt as if I were trying to watch a 3-D movie without glasses. I had hazy recollections of being carried, of pointing out the Southern Cross in the sky, and of ascending a gangplank of some sort as if I were making an assault on the final steps to the summit of Mount Everest without oxygen. When I woke up the next morning—don’t ask me how—something told me I was on the deck of a rolling ship.
I had memories of singing and dancing, meteor showers, and the sky lit up with orange streaks of fire, but when my brain returned to this dimension and this planet, I was informed by Jetfuel Joe that seventeen of the nineteen hours required to reach Dalvalo had gone by. Somehow I had wound up in a hammock strung from the cargo crane, and I had wrapped myself up in my own little cocoon.
The strangest thing was that when I pulled myself up to the smell of coffee brewing and bread baking, I felt as if I had spent a week at a five-star spa. I can’t tell you why, but I felt no residual effect from the kava—no headache, no flashback. The numbness had left my body, and my eyes were clear. I felt as if my batteries were fully charged for the first time in years. When I thought back on it, I realized that before my first bowl of kava in Santo, what little sleep I had been getting was in the form of combat naps on the planes or pit stops in bad hotel beds. There’s a favorite song of mine with a line that says, “I must confess, I could use some rest.” Well, I got it. And since I had missed the first seventeen of the nineteen hours of the trip, I was in the perfect frame of mind to enjoy the last two hours as the world went by at eight knots.
The ship was a very old island trader that reminded me of those boats you see up the Miami River. She was called the Copra Queen. Her rusty decks were crowded with an assortment of humans, animals, fruits, vegetables, and a variety of transportation vehicles that ranged from skateboards to mopeds to a large diesel generator that was lashed to the superstructure and bound for one of the southern islands of Vanuatu.
Joe seemed to know most of the passengers and made sure I did too. “Dees all Keedos,” he said.
“What are Keedos?” I asked.
“We believe in Captain Keed’s return. Dat whay we all going to Dalvalo for da big day, and we here to protect da messenger.”
“And that would be who?” I asked.
“Dat would be you,” Joe said.
Somehow I had become an important piece of some bizarre puzzle created by a cargo cult in the South Pacific. I didn’t think that the deck of the ship that morning was the place to explain to Joe, once and for all, that I came with no message from a long-dead Navy pilot from Pensacola. I didn’t want to disappoint them, but I was thinking that history as a whole hadn’t been too kind to messengers. Also that lingering cannibal thing was running through my kava-sharpened brain.
As the sun peeked above the gray horizon, the Keedos were gathered around a little portable barbecue grill where an old man was opening cans of Spam and dropping the thick slices onto the hot fire. I had sworn off Spam since my cafeteria days in high school, but the hunger from no dinner the previous evening, the salt air of the morning, and the smell of sizzling meat made my stomach start growling.
Jetfuel Joe handed me a cup of coffee and motioned for me to sit at the fire. Then he encouraged me to attempt a few basic phrases in Bislama, the local pidgin dialect. The crowd seemed very pleased with my efforts and began patting me on the back and calling out my name. I figured that because I was the only white man on the boat, it was just natural curiosity that made both the people and the animals stare at me with such intensity.
&nbs
p; The old man at the grill shouted something in Bislama, and everybody around the fire got excited as he began to remove the charred Spam from the grill and distribute it to outreached hands. The old man pointed a piece of the meat at me, and I grabbed it and began to chew.
“Tastes a lot better than I remember it,” I said.
Joe chomped on a slice of Spam and licked the hot grease from his fingers. “Da old fellas say Spam taste lots like long pie, and dat why it so popular.”
“What’s long pie?” I asked.
“Roast leg of missionary,” he said without skipping a beat, and he kept smiling as the gathering of Keedos feasted and laughed in the morning light.
I had no choice but to swallow the Spam. An old lady nearby sensed my reaction to the story and offered me half a sliced mango, which I gulped down.
The Copra Queen pushed on through fairly calm seas and light wind. After breakfast, I picked up a little more information about my “high tide” passage on the ship. I was told that I had indeed seen the sky on fire. It was the volcano on Tanna Island named Mount Yasur, and it had been going off as we passed. The boat was still covered with fine volcanic ash, which the crew was busy washing away. Jetfuel Joe told me that the English explorer Captain James Cook had called Mount Yasur the largest lighthouse in the Pacific because it was constantly erupting and could be seen from a distance of fifty miles. As for the dancing ocean, Joe explained that during the night, the boat was surrounded by a large school of playful dolphins that put on an acrobatic demonstration. Everyone, except me, had leaned over the port rail to get a closer look.
Shortly after breakfast, we rounded the southern point of Atofrum Island, and there, directly ahead, was what I somehow knew to be the island of Dalvalo. Immediately, the picture of the mythical Bali Hai, home of Bloody Mary, came to mind.
At first I thought I was still feeling the effect of the kava, but soon I realized that I wasn’t seeing double. Dalvalo rose up out of the sea as a pair of perfectly shaped volcanic cones with a low, flat land bridge between them. A long black plume of smoke rose up into the pastel dawn sky from the easternmost summit.
“Da shortest, dat be Kami, and da big one be Poodi,” Jetfuel Joe said. “Dat where we all come from, and dat be where we all go.”
“So heaven is a pair of volcanoes?” I asked.
“No, no, no,” Joe said. “It go like dis. Keedos believe dat at one time Dalvalo was da onliest land in da universe, and dat volcano der, Poodi, was and still is da originator of all tings.
“According to legend, in dat time der were many wild animals on Dalvalo—lions, tigers, elephants, and sharks as big as dis boat. Deez were very dangerous creatures, and human people are what dey had for breakfast, lunch, and suppa. Well, da first chief of Dalvalo, named Huakelle, come up wif a plan to distribute some of dis danger elsewhere in da universe. So he took fiery lava dat squirt off da volcano, and he trows it in all directions and creates Europe, Asia, Africa, Australia, and America. Some of da small drops of hot lava got caught and was scatted by da wind, and dis what made da rest of da islands of Vanuatu and all Melanesia.
“Da chief den ordered giant canoes to be built. Not only was der too many dangerous animals on Dalvalo, der was too many people, so he sent a bunch of animals and people off in da giant canoe to da new land. Most a da canoes went to Africa, but some got caught up in storms and wrecked on da reef. People was tossed into da sea, and when dey finally got to land again, dey noticed dat da salt wattah had bleached dem white. Dat is how you got here.
“After dat, da people of Dalvalo lived to demselves and to der customs till da Protestants show up and say, ‘No more kava drinking, no more magic, no more wife swapping, no more, read dis Bible.’ It was den dat Captain Keed show up and make everyting all right.”
Standing on the deck of that freighter, staring at the volcano, I realized that Joe’s description of the creation of the world made perfect sense to me.
Thirty minutes later, the distant, almost miragelike image of the island dissolved into a shoreline, a river mouth, and a small village. Jetfuel Joe said it was called Huakelle, just like the first chief, and it was the village where he was born and raised. I asked if this was where we would find Waltham, and he just smiled. “You no need to go looking for Waltam. He find you.”
A fleet of primitive outrigger canoes lined the black-sand beach in the distance, and what looked to be an old Navy landing craft was anchored offshore. A flurry of activity commenced the moment we dropped anchor inside the reef. Drums were played, children poured out of the grass huts and lined the shore waving, and near-naked men dragged the outriggers into the ocean, climbed aboard, and began racing toward us. But the most bizarre greeting came from what appeared to be a group of men dressed like American soldiers, who rolled a 40mm howitzer out to the beach and fired several salutes, which were answered from the bridge of the freighter with the air horn.
As I watched all this, I thought to myself, “Where in the hell am I?”
As if answering my silent question, Jetfuel Joe said, “We home now, Willie. Time to practice your pidgin. It a very big time now on Dalvalo, and you bring de good luck to da peoples. Wait and see.”
As the first canoe reached our ship, the people on the boat waved and shouted, and the paddlers of the canoes returned the greeting. Some on the ship dove into the water and swam toward the approaching canoes.
The landing craft followed the small armada and came alongside, and a large cargo net was draped down the hull. The crew busied themselves with loading and unloading cargo, unaffected by the party going on around them. The ship itself instantly became a high-diving platform for the barely dressed young men and a few women in the canoes. Music played on deck, flower leis were exchanged, and the sky was filled with an aerial bombardment of flips, somersaults, and swan dives into the crystal clear waters of the protected lagoon.
I watched Jetfuel Joe climb a ladder up to the top of the ship, and I followed his trail. How many times in your life do you get to experience being welcomed as a messenger from the gods on a small ship on the shores of a remote South Pacific island? When in Polynesia, do as the Polynesians. So off the boat I leaped.
Maybe it was the remnants of the kava, or a flashback to my high-school diving days, but I executed a front flip and plunged deep into the water. When I surfaced, the paddlers in the canoes were clapping wildly and chanting, “Keed bok, Keed bok, Keed bok.” It would take a couple of days to figure out what they were so happy about.
As I swam to a nearby canoe, a beautiful young girl in the bow of the boat took a flowered lei from around her neck, revealing a pair of perfect breasts that mirrored the twin volcanic peaks of Dalvalo. She dropped the lei around my neck as I was hoisted aboard.
I was welcomed ashore with more hugs and flowers, and then Jetfuel Joe spoke in pidgin to the crowd. When he was finished, they all cheered and guided me through the village to one of the Quonset huts. Joe and I were followed by a big man carrying a bamboo copy of an M1 rifle. He wore nothing but a pair of ammo belts across his chest and a piece of decorated fabric wrapped around his penis. He and Joe led me into the hut.
Inside, it looked like a time capsule from 1942: a gray-painted concrete floor, government-issue desks, bunk beds, and ceiling fans. On the wall hung an assortment of old black-and-white photos of U.S. Navy sailors, airplanes, and local warriors. In the center of the wall was an enlarged photo that showed an old Catalina PBY flying boat on a beach. Stretched across the wing was a long line of natives, and in the middle one lone white man stood in a Navy uniform.
I pointed to the photo. “Captain Keed?” I asked Joe.
With great solemnity, he stared at the picture and smiled. “Dat Captain Keed,” he said. “Dat is why we are here.” Joe stood for a moment like a pilgrim at Lourdes, and then he clapped his hands together. “Dis Berkeley. He speak good English. He your man till I come back.” Joe then said something to Berkeley in pidgin.
“Me you man,” Berkeley said with
a smile.
“Deez you quatahs,” Joe told me. “Rest up. Big day tomorrow. I go see family. Check you lattah. You need someting, tell Berkeley.” With that, Jetfuel Joe saluted and disappeared out the door into the bright sunlight.
I took a walk around the village with Berkeley. It was immediately apparent that Huakelle bore the visible signs of several cultural clashes. Quonset huts and thatched-roof huts sat side by side, and an American flag flew on a tall bamboo pole next to the artillery that had been dragged down to the beach for our arrival.
Back when we were en route to Espíritu Santo in the Pearl, I had read a few chapters about these islands, briefly preparing for my voyage. I knew that in the heyday of whaling in the Pacific, there had been a settlement of whalers and loggers on Dalvalo. As usual, the sailors brought along the diseases of the times and had infected the island. The locals did the logical thing in those days and wiped out the settlement.
Across the river from Huakelle, the charred remnants of those times still stood—the decaying wooden pilings of the pier, several burned-out stone buildings, and a tombstone on a hill. I crossed the shallow river for a closer look and found a collection of whale bones on the beach that had been assembled into a makeshift monument.
As I wandered through the graveyard, I spotted several English surnames with military titles and the letters USN carved on a row of bamboo crosses. The graves were lined with pink conch shells and covered with fresh flowers. I asked Berkeley about this, but he didn’t answer my question. “Wal-tam explain it all,” he told me.