Isle of Man (The Park Service Trilogy #2) (11 page)

The girls fall to the stage behind him and writhe on the ground, as if being ravaged by imaginary adversaries from above. The old man waves his fat, knobby finger in the air and speaks now in a hushed voice:

“But the story does not end there. No, no, no. God, uh, took mercy on the few worthy men who remained. Gradually, he slowed the rains. He called the machines away. And peace fell again on the tiny patch of land. That’s when our forefathers gathered here, possibly in these very caves, and renewed their commitment to the decrees of God. Gone are the days of corn and streams of buttermilk. But they will come again. Gone are the days of honey trees filled with sweet meat. But they will come again. Uh. I tell you. They will come again!”

The crowd chants it back: “They will come again!”

“They will come again!” the old man says.

“They will come again!” responds the crowd.

Someone nudges me, breaking my trance, and the strange surroundings fade back into view. William slurps milk from a coconut shell and passes it to me. I hold the shell in my hand and look at his milky slobber coating its rim. I want to pass it on without drinking, but William is watching me with his beady eyes. I raise the shell to my lips and sip the milk, trying not to vomit as I pass it on to Jimmy.

The old man holds his arms up.

“They will come again!”

“They will come again!” comes the response.

“We must only be patient, and never forget our history,” he says, his stutter disappearing as his voice rises like someone giving a sermon. “And the good times will indeed come again. The dreaded waters will lower. Our promised land will be uncovered. The ships and dragons will disappear for good, and we will once again be free to leave these caves and rebuild the great nation of ’Merica!”

“Rebuild ’Merica!” the crowd chants.

“I said: rebuild ’Merica!”

“Rebuild ’Merica! ’Merica! ’Merica!”

The drummer boy beats his drum as the old man shambles off stage, appearing to move with considerable pain. The girls fall in line behind, shaking their grass skirts and waving their fronds, and the odd procession heads back the way it came.

I turn to William beside me.

“Did I understand that right? Do you think this island you live on is America?”

“Think?” he grunts. “Where else would it be? Come now, it’s time to eat.”

He leads us through the noisy crowd to the other end of the cavern, where a long buffet is set up on the floor. Coconut shells filled with food line the center, and each seat is marked by a personal trough carved into the stone. Jimmy and I sit where we’re told. William slumps down next to us.

“That’s my wife, Annie,” he says, pointing to an enormous woman lying across the way. She has a baby in her arms, and the baby is clamped onto her nipple, feeding. Because of the way she’s slouched, her other breast hangs nearly to the floor and a piglet stands on its hind legs suckling, too. I watch as it loses its balance and falls, only to get up and stretch to the dangling nipple again. Even if it weren’t for the piglet, I’d probably be creeped out, because babies are formula-fed down in Holocene II. Jimmy, on the other hand, doesn’t even seem to notice.

The food bowls are passed around, and everyone reaches in and scoops out portions and slops them together in the troughs in front of them. They eat with their fingers, slurping so loudly that the entire cavern echoes with the sound. Trying not to be rude, I pick out tiny pieces of the least repulsive foods and set them in my trough. Everything seems to be made from two ingredients only: coconut and pork. Bowls of boiled pig feet pass by, followed by bowls of blood pudding. Then a strange gelatinous substance riddled with tiny piglet snouts. Something that looks like liver, something else that looks like tongue. Most of these I let pass without touching.

Then comes cooked meats that actually smell pretty good. Chops and bacon, sausages and ham. The meat is followed by bowls of shaved coconut, and others filled with coconut oil or coconut cream. They pass community drinks down the long, floor-laid buffet. I avoid the milky drinks, and wipe the ones filled with coconut water with my sleeve before raising them to my lips. Jimmy seems to be enjoying himself. He sits beside me and eats without reservation, even making conversation with one of the portly dancing girls on his other side.

“Whatcha celebratin’?” Jimmy asks, leaning across me and addressing William.

“Come again?” William grunts, his mouth filled with food.

“The feast,” Jimmy says. “What are ya celebratin’?”

William looks confused. He slurps up a piece of pale flesh dangling from his lips and leans closer to Jimmy, crowding me. “Nothing special,” he says, his stinky breath wafting over me. “We do this every night ’cept Sundays.”

When William turns away, I lean into Jimmy and speak in a low voice: “We’ve got to get out of here.”

“Why?” Jimmy asks. “Let’s jus’ go with the flow.”

“But don’t you see what this is?”

“What what is?”

“These people. That whole skit back there.”

“Seemed like some kinda show to me,” Jimmy says.

“Remember that ship we saw? The one in the reef?”

“Yeah.”

“Well these must be the descendants of the cruise ship passengers. It’s all pretty clear, isn’t it? Some of them must have survived the Park Service drones by imitating pigs. Now they’ve evolved to look like them.”

“Yeah,” Jimmy says. “So what if?”

“Well, they’ve got it all wrong. There wasn’t any flood. And this sure isn’t America.”

“Well, how do we know it ain’t?” Jimmy asks.

“How do we know? Don’t be stupid. This isn’t all the land that’s left. You know that much. And we just came ourselves from North America.”

“Maybe,” Jimmy says. “But didn’t you grow up bein’ told none of this was up here period? And that sure ain’t true. How do we know how anythin’ really happened, ’cept by what we’s told?” He pauses to drink from a bowl passed by the girl on his other side. “And besides,” he continues, wiping his mouth with the back of his hand and passing the bowl to me, “no one likes a know-it-all.”

William whistles to quiet the crowd.

Hands freeze, suspended halfway between troughs and mouths. Bowls clatter as they’re set down. A baby cries, but is quickly hushed by its mother.

“It’s time to give thanks,” William says, nodding to the old man, now seated at the other end of the floor-table.

The old man reaches over and seizes up a baby by the legs and lifts it flailing above the table and holds a knife to its neck. Before I can even open my mouth, a woman screams—

“No!” She leaps from her seat and pulls the baby away from the knife. “You old blind bastard!” she shouts, cradling the baby in her arms. “That’s my baby, not a piglet.”

The old man mumbles an apology and turns and reaches into the wallow beside the table and, with some labor and much squealing, manages to snatch a piglet and lift it up to the blade. He leans in close and inspects the piglet with one milky eye, as if performing a public display of due diligence. Then he slashes its throat and catches the gushing blood in a bowl.

I feel my stomach retch, but I hold down my vomit. Even Jimmy looks a little pale. When the flow of blood slows to a trickle, the old man hurls the dead piglet into the wallow where it is immediately set upon by other hungry pigs. Then he sips from the bowl, wipes the blood from his chin with a gouty knuckle, and passes the bowl of blood. I begin to panic as it makes its way toward Jimmy and me.

I elbow Jimmy.

“I’m not drinking that.”

“We better jus’ do it,” Jimmy says. “Seems like it’s custom or somethin’.”

When the bowl of blood reaches Jimmy, he holds it in both hands, pausing to scan the crowd. All eyes are on him. He glances at me and shrugs, then lifts the bowl to his mouth and drinks. He passes the bowl to me with a look of silent apology. I immediately pass it on to William.

William hands it back.

“You must drink,” he grunts.

I shake my head.

“I’m not drinking this.”

An even deeper hush falls over the group. I feel everyone’s eyes on me as I hold the offering out, my hands trembling, the thick red blood sloshing around in the bowl. William won’t take it, so I set it down in front of him. He slides it back toward me.

“You drink,” he says. “Otherwise God will punish us.”

I push it back.

“I’m not drinking that poor pig’s blood.” The defiance in my voice surprises me. “And besides, there is no God. At least no God that would flood any place. So you don’t need to worry about being punished for anything.”

William takes a long, stilted inhale through his quivering nostrils, then stretches open his mouth and lets it out in what might be a silent roar, or maybe just a yawn. He turns his beady eyes on me.

“You tire me with these childish antics,” he says. “Just drink so we can move on to the entertainment.”

“I won’t drink that blood.”

“Eh then!” someone calls. “Let’s drink his blood.”

“Pigs’ feet and human snouts!” the squeaky one shouts. “Let’s cut the spies and bleed them out.”

William reaches into his trough, grabs a fistful of slop, and hurls it down at Squeaky, silencing the racket.

“Enough!” he bellows, his lips pulled back and his incisors showing. “You act like children. Show some consideration to our guests.”

“But what if they’s spies?” squeaks the sheepish reply.

William turns back to me. “Are you spies?”

“We already told you we’re not,” I say.

“They’re not spies!”

“If they was, they wouldn’t say it.”

William shakes his head.

“Tell me where you’re from?”

I’m relieved to finally be asked one civilized question.

“We came on a boat, well, a submarine, really. From the west coast of North America. And there was no flood. There are all kinds of other lands out there. This just happens to be an island.”

William looks confused.

“The stories tell of no other lands. And none are visible from the hill. But if there are other lands, there is certainly no other ’Merica.”

“With all due respect, sir, this is not America.”

“Lies!” someone screams.

“Blasphemy!” another shouts.

“I told you they was spies, Chief,” the squeaky one says.

The old man snatches up his knife and crawls down the floor-table toward Jimmy and me. I’m frozen with disbelief. Is he really going to cut us? William pushes us back and meets the old man with balled fists. Then Squeaky leaps onto William’s back. William’s wife casts her baby aside and seizes Squeaky’s dangling leg and sinks her teeth into his calf. Someone pounces on Jimmy. I’m hit on the head. Arms grab me from behind.

It’s all gnashing teeth and swinging fists and kicking feet. Then, suddenly, the entire mad brawl comes to an immediate halt, and all heads turn to stare behind Jimmy and me.

Their faces are frozen with horror.

Their beady eyes bulge.

My captor releases me.

As my senses return to my swirling head, I slowly crane my neck to see what it is they’re looking at. Junior crouches on the path behind us, his hackles up, and his canines exposed. He’s growling, bless his little heart. And his effect on the pig people is astonishing. They back away, coming together and crouching against the wall in a mass of pale flesh and pigskin.

Jimmy picks himself up. We walk backwards toward Junior and the path. We’re almost to Junior’s side when one of the pig people lets out a hair-raising scream. The crowd parts, and I see Squeaky has caught his clothes on fire with a candle. He dances in circles, the fire getting worse as he does, and the others chase after him swatting at the flames.

We turn and run.

Junior races ahead of us, and we follow him up the path and into the tiny passageway, crawling on our hands and knees until it widens, then clambering to our feet and rushing through the pitch-black cave, following the sound of Junior’s yapping. Soon, we’re on an incline that steepens with every step until we’re climbing with our feet and our hands. I feel a cool breeze on my face. Then Jimmy reaches me a hand, and I scramble to my feet, above ground and free.

As we rush in the direction of the beach, we nearly trip over our felled coconut tree. Without a word, Jimmy grabs an end, I grab the other, and we run with it toward the hill. Maybe it’s just the adrenaline pumping through my system, but this time the tree seems to weigh nothing at all. We carry it down the hill until we stride onto the warm sand and plunge with it into the cold water. We each wrap an arm around the tree and swim it in the direction of the submarine. Junior treads water beside us, taking turns going ahead to check on Jimmy and coming back to check on me. Then Junior climbs onto the floating tree and hitches a ride. He deserves it.

We seem to be swimming forever, the tree moving slow in the dark water. I work my way up the trunk toward Jimmy so he can hear me.

“Are we headed in the right direction?”

“I think so,” he replies, sounding as breathless as I am.

“But are we making any progress?”

“I dunno,” he says.

We swim for another twenty or thirty minutes, and I’m about to suggest we dump the tree and try to make it alone when I hear the professor shout from the deck of the stranded submarine.

“Boys! Is that you?”

We call back and adjust our course and five minutes later, we’re climbing aboard.

Junior shakes himself dry next to us. Jimmy and I fall to our knees and hug his neck and kiss his wet face. He wags his tail with pride.

“What on Earth happened to you?” the professor asks.

“We’ll fill you in later,” I say. “Let’s hoist this submarine off the reef and hurry up and get out of here.”

“The tide’s dropping,” he says, “but we can give it a go.”

It takes all three of us and a rope from below to drag the coconut tree around to the front of the submarine. Once there, we hold the tree steady with the rope while Jimmy jumps in and helps lower the cut end down onto the reef, beneath the angled nose of the submarine. Thankfully, there’s plenty of tree above water to keep it weighted down. Once it’s wedged there good, Jimmy climbs back on deck, and we remove the rope.