Island of the Sequined Love Nun Chapter 8~9

8The Humiliation of the Pilot As a riderOnce on the plane, tucker unfolded the letter from the mysterious doctor and call for it again.Dear Mr. CaseI produce find aw ar of your late difficulties and I believe I have a proposition that provide be of great benefit to us both. My married woman and I argon missionaries on Alualu, a rather remote atoll at the north-western tip of the terrestrial timen crescent. Since we be let give a management of the normal shipping lanes and we be the sole medical supplier for the mountain of the island, we maintain our own chargecraft for the transport of medical supplies. We have deep procured a Lear 45 for this purpose, simply our former pilot has been called to the mainland on per discussionalised avocation for an indefinite time.In short, Mr. Case, given your experience tent- rain travel pocket-size jets and our unique requirements, we intuitive feeling that this would be a perfect opportunity for us both. We ar non c at one timerned with the status of your license, unaccompanied that you commode make forth in the pilots seat and fulfill a need that can only be described as dire.If you atomic number 18 willing to honor a bulky-term contract, we will provide you with manner and board on the island, devote you $2,000 a week, as well as a generous grant upon completion of the contract. As a gesture of our sincerity, I am enclose an open airline ticket and a cashiers check for $3,000 for traveling expenses. tinct us by e-mail with your arrival time in Truk and my wife will realise you on that point to discuss the conditions of your employment and pro vide transferee to Alualu. Youll find a room reserved for you at theParadise Inn.Sincerely,Sebastian Curtis, M.D.email protectedwhy me? enclose wondered. Hed crashed a jet, lost his job and probably his sex life, was charged with multiple crimes, indeed a letter and a check arrived from now present(predicate) to bail him pop let out, unles s only if he was willing to abandon everything and excise to a Pacific island. It could turn out to be a rock-steady job, but if it had been his decision, hed muted be lingering everywhere it in a motel room with Dusty Lemon. It was as if some combination of ironic mess and Jake Skye had been sent a eagle-eyed to make the decision for him. not so strange, he mind. The same combination had puke him in the pilots seat in the premier place. rumple had grown up in Elsinore, California, northeast of San Diego, the only son of the owner of the Denmark Silverw be Corporation. He had an unremarkable childhood, was a mediocre athlete, and spent close to of his adolescence surfing in San Diego and chasing girls, one of whom he finally caught.Zoophilia lucky was the daughter of his begets lawyer, a lovely girl made shy by a cruel first name. slip in and Zoo enjoyed a truncated romance, which was institutionalise on hold when rucks father sent him dour to college in Texas so he could learn to make decisions and someday take oer the family business. His motivation excised by the job guarantee, Tuck made passing grades until his college locomote was cut short by an emergency call from his mother. suffer home. Your fathers dead.Tuck made the drive in 2 days, stopping only for suck, to drug abuse the bathroom, and to call Zoophilia, who informed him that his mother had married his fathers brother and his uncle had taken everyplace Denmark Silver-ware. Tuck screeched into Elsinore in a blind rage and ran over Zoophilias father as he was leaving Tucks mothers house.The finish was declared an accident, but during the investigating a policeman informed Tuck that although he had no proof, he suspected that the riding accident that killed Tucks father might not have been an accident, especially since Tucks father had been allergic to horses. Tuck was sure that his uncle had set the integral thingup, but he couldnt bring himself to confront his mother or h er refreshful husband.In the meantime, Zoophilia, stricken with grief over her fathers death, overdosed on fluoxetine hydrocholoride and drowned in her hot tub, and her brother, who had been away at college also, returned promising to kill exhaust or at to the lowest degree sue him into oblivion for the deaths of his father and sister. opus trying to come to a decision on a pipeline of action, crush met a brace of Texas brunettes in a Pacific coast bar who insisted he ride binding with them to the Lone Star state.Disinherited, depressed, and clueless, Tucker took the ride as far as a small suburban drome outside of Houston, where the girls asked him if hed ever been nude skydiving. At that point, not genuinely caring if he lived or died, he crawled into the bear out of a Beechcraft with them.They leftover(p) him scraped, bruised, and stranded on the t buildac in a jockstrap and a rise harness, shivering with adrenaline. Jake Skye found him wandering or so the hangars wearing the parachute canopy as a toga. It had been a tough year.Let me guess, Jake said. Margie and ruttish Sue?Yeah, Tucker said. Howd you know?They do it all the time. Daddies with money Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Petroleum. take to you didnt cut up that canopy. You can get a grand for it used.Theyre gone, then?An hour ago. Said something about(predicate) going to London. Where are your clothes?In their car.Come with me.Jake gave Tucker a job washing airplanes, then taught him to fly a Cessna 172 and en cycleed him in flight school. Tucker got his couple up-engine hours in six months, part Jake ferry Texas businessmen around the state in a lease Beech Duke. Jake turned the flying over to Tuck as short as he passed his 135 commercial certification.I can fly anything, Jake said, but unless its helicopters, Id rather wrench. Only steady gig in choppers is flying oil rigs in the Gulf. Had too many friends tip off into the draw. 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 little lost honey and the makeup magnate 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 better spent taking care of business instead of flying. Besides, its not lady care. Howd you like a job?Luck. The training hed accepted would have cost hundreds of thousands of dollars, and hed gotten most of it for free. He had become a invigorated person, and it had all started with a bizarre streak of bad luck detected by an op-portunity and Jake Skyes intervention. Maybe it would work out for the better this time too. At least this time no one had been killed.9Cult of the Autopilot A History LessonThe pilot said, The local time is 900 A.M. The te mperature is 90 degrees. give thanks you for flying Continental and enjoy your stay in Truk. wherefore he laughed menacingly.Tuck stepped out of the plane and matte the palpable weight of the air in his lungs. It smelled green, fecund, as if vegetation was growing, dying, rotting, and giving off a gas too thick to breathe. He followed a line of passengers to the terminal, a long, low, cinderblock twist nothing more really than a tin roof on pillars teeming with brown people short, stoutly built people, men in jeans or old vesture slacks and T-shirts, women in long patterned cotton dresses with puff shoulders, their hair held in buns atop their heads by tortoiseshell combs.Tuck waited, pass, at one end of the terminal period young men shoved the baggage by a curtain onto a plywood ramp. Natives re-trieved their baggage, mainly coolers wrapped with tintinnabulationing tape, and walked by the customs ships officers answer without pausing. He looked for a tourist, to carr y out how they were treated, but there were none. The customs officer glared at him. Tucker hoped there was nothing illegal in his pack. The airport here looked like a weigh station for a death camp he didnt motive to see the jail. He fingered the roll of bills in his pocket, thinking, Bribe.The pack came sliding through the curtain. Tucker moved through the pall of island-dwellers 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 freeing uniform with dime store flip-flops on his feet.Tuck handed him his passport.How long will you be staying?Not long. Im not sure. A day perchance.No flights for three days. The officer stamped the passport and handed it subscribe to Tucker. Theres a ten-dollar dismission 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-pai nted on plywood. He walked out of the airport and was blind by the sun.Hey, you immerse? A mans voice.Tuck squinted and a thin, leathery islander in a Bruins hockey jersey stood in front of him. He had six teeth, devil of them gold. No, Tucker said. wherefore you come if you no dive?Im here on business. Tucker dropped his pack and tried to breathe. He was derisory with perspiration. Ten seconds in this sun and he wanted to dive into the trace like a roach under a stove.Where you stay?This cat looked criminal, just now an eye patch short of a despoiler. Tucker didnt want to tell him anything.How do I get to the Paradise Inn?The pirate called to a teenager who was sitting in the shade watching a score of battered Japanese cars with blackened windows jockeying for position in the territory street.Rindi Paradise.The younger man, dressed like a Compton rapper oversized shorts, football game jersey, baseball cap reversed over a blue bandanna came over and grabbed Tuckers pack . Tuck kept one hand on an arm strap and fought the put one over for control.You go with him, the pirate said. He take you Paradise.Come on, Holmes, the nipper 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 Civic with a cellophane back window and bailing wire holding the passenger door shut. Tuck follow him, stepping quickly between the cars, each one lurching forward as if to tap him as he passed. He looked for the drivers expressions, but the windshields were all blacked out with flexible film.The kid threw Tucks pack in the hatchback, then unwired the door and held it open. Tucker climbed in, feeling, once again, completely at the mercy 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 laguna. Even through the tinted window the blue of the lagoon shone as if illuminated from below. Island women in scuba masks waded sho ulder deep their floral dresses flowing around them made them look like multicolored jellyfish. apiece carried a short steel spear slung from a piece of working(a) tubing. Large plastic buckets floated on the surface in which the women were depositing their catch.What are they capture? Tuck asked the driver.Octopus, urchin, small fish. Mostly octopus. Hey, where you from in United States?I grew up in California.The kid lit up. California You have Crips there, right?Yeah, theres gangs. Im a Crip, the kid said, pointing to his blue bandanna with pride. Me and my homies find any jobs here, we gonna pop a nine on em.Tucker was amazed. On the side of the roadway a beautiful 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. solely if we see one, we gonna bust a cap on em. He pulled back a towel on the seat to reveal a beat-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 glorified game of cowboys and Indians.How far to the hotel?This it, Rindi said, wrenching the Honda across the road into a dusty parking lot.The Paradise Inn was a two-story, crumbling beautify construct with a crown of rusting rebar beckoning skyward for a deuce-ace floor 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 floral curtains, a twin bed with a torn 1950s bedspread, the smell of mildew and insecticide. Rindi put the pack in the doorless closet and cranked the little window air conditioner to high. similarly late for shower. Water come on again four 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 b eer?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 contracted a regular cerebral palsy. Yo, G, we chill with the phattest jams? Snoop, Ice, Public Enemy.Oh, unspoilt, Tuck said. We can do a drive-by ulterior. 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, gallant to be an American.An unconscious island man marked the entrance to the lounge. Tuck stepped over him and pushed his way through the black glass door into a cool, dark, smoke-hazed room lit by a silent television tuned to nothing and a flickering neon BUDWEISER sign. A shadow stood behind the bar two more sat in front of it. Tuck could see eye in the dark maybe people sitting at tables, maybe nocturnal vermin.A voice A fellow American here to buy a beer for h is countryman.The voice had come from one of the shadows at the bar. Tuck squinted into the dark and saw a large white man, about fifty, in a sweat-stained dress shirt. He was smiling, a jowly yellow make a face under drink-dulled eyes. Tuck smiled back. Anyone that didnt speak broken English was, at this point, his friend.What are you drinkin, pardner? Tuck always went Texan when he was being friendly.What you drink here. He held up two fingers to the bartender, then held his hand out to shake. Jefferson Pardee, editor program in chief of the Truk Star.Tucker Case. Tuck sat down on the stool next to the hulky man. The bartender placed two sweating Budweiser cans in front of them and waited.Run a tab, Pardee said. Then to Tuck I assume youre a diver?Why would you assume that?Its the only savvy Americans come here, other than stop Corps or Navy stuff away team members. And if you dont mind my saying, you dont look idealistic ample 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 substantiate how terrified hed been that hed never be able to say it again. Im supposed to meet someone from other island about 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 a lot 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 almost dropped his beer. Bullshit.Tuck was tempted to pull out the letter and slam it on the bar, but thought better of it. Thats what they said.Pardee put a big hairy fo toleratem on the bar and leaned into Tuck. He smelled like a hangover. What island and what church?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 Micronesia?Just that you have gangs but no regular indoor plumbing.Well, depending on how you look at it, Truk can be a hellhole. Thats what happens when you give one C 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 New Guinea. Magellan arrive 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 seventy sunken Japanese ships in Truks lagoon alone. Thats why the divers(prenominal) come.So whats this have to do with where Im going?Im getting to that. Until fifteen old age 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 agreement 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 in clude Alualu.So whats that mean? Tuck was getting impatient. This was the longest lecture hed endured since flight school.In short, no mother government, no foreign aid, no nothing.Alualu belongs to whoever lives on it. Its off the shipping lanes, and its a raised atoll, only one small island, not a group of islands around a lagoon, so theres not enough copra to make it expenditure the trip for the collector boats. Since the war, when there was an airstrip there, no one goes there.Maybe thats 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 throw a lot of money at a lot of problems, but Ive never seen a church that was willing to spring for a Learjet.Tuck wanted to beat his head on the bar just to feel his tiny brain rattle. Of course it was too good to be true. Hed cognize that instinctively. He should have known that as soon as hed seen the money they were offering him him, Tucker Case, the biggest fuckup in th e 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 bunker after he couldnt get anyone to evacuate a sick kid off the island. Frankly, Im sur-prised hes tranquillise 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 airport hotel bars all over the U.S. lonely businessmen, ordinarily salesmen, who would talk to anyone about anything just for the company. They learned how to make you ask questions that mandatory long windy answers. Hed felt sympathetic toward them ever since hed played Willie Loman in Miss Pattersons third-grade class production of Death of a Salesman. Pardee just essential to talk.Whats a cargo cult? Tuck asked.Pardee smiled. Theyve been in the islands since the Spanish landed in the 1500s and traded steel 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 coming across the sea in canoes are part of their reli-gions. The ancestors brought everything they need from across the sea. All of a sudden, guys show up with new cool stuff. Instant ancestors, instant gods from across the sea, bearing gifts. They collective the newcomers into their religions. Sometimes it might be fifty years before 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. further for missionaries, these islands didnt get much attention from the modern world until World war II. All of a sudden, Allied forces are coming in and building airstrips and bribing the islanders wit h things so they would resist the Japanese. Manna from the heavens. American flyers brought in all sorts of good stuff. Then 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 bring great armies to the islands to chase out the French, or the British, or whatever imperial government holds the island. The British proscribe 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. drove the missionaries nuts. Natives putting little propellers on their crucifixes, drawing 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, even on the more modernized islands like Truk. And there are people in these islands who still remember the taste of human fig if you get my meaning. Tastes like Spam, I hear. The natives love Spam.Spam? Youre kidding.Nope. Thats what Spam stands for molded Protein Approximating Man.Tucker smiled, realizing hed been had. Pardee let loose an explosive 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, shaking the big mans hand.You going to be around for few days? Pardee asked.Im not sure.Well, just a word of advic e 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 take fire and to his room, where he stripped naked and lay on the tattered bedspread, allow the air conditioner blow over him with a welcome 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 withered member, stitched and scarred as if it had been patched from the Frankenstein monster. A wave of anxiety passed through him, bringing sweat to his skin even in the electric chill. He realized that he had really never done anything in his adult life that had not even at some subconscious level been part of a strategy to im-press women. He would have never worked so hard to become a pilo t 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 bury his face in the roost and pinned a live cockroach to the spread with his cheek.