© Copyright Cupideros, Tuesday, February 4, 2016

BOOK 4, CHAPTER 3

She stopped and glanced at the neatly stacked souls. At least these native people of Makta Island never ate Cook’s men. They killed them, sure; they gave them quick deaths, too. But the cannibals’ food lifestyle matched the English one, basically; they ate animals, vegetables, and fruits–not people.

If the healer woman indicated anything, the Patlkiq People sought out and succored a sumptuous range of foods. Muriel’s mouth practically watered as she moved toward the first spear, just thinking about what they potentially had for food tonight.

No, there were no cannibals on Makta Island. Makta Island contained a great “Do Not Enter” advertisement. Suppose the Native Americans of North America used such tactics. In that case, a place called Sacramento, California, and New York never exist today. At some point, she planned to tell Glen this fact because he probably forgot about his injured condition. Right now, just the feeling of relief surging through her Aussie veins provided courage for her to continue gathering their new supplies.

God said, be careful how you handle that first spear. It is not a violin, my daughter.

Muriel picked up the first spear. She hefted it in her hand awkwardly, tilting the tip dangerously toward herself at one point. Alarmed, she dropped the spear and jumped back before it circled around and hit her pretty oval face. That’s all she needed was to mar her beauty, ruin her plans to marry Glen. Not that Glen would suffer much with her disfigurement; she was the only woman on Makta Island, not including Makta Island herself.

Then Muriel picked it up with a good lead of wood behind her. She stared at it. If we are to survive, I must subjugate this wood, as I have my violin wood. Instruments that is all they were.

Like a cannibal, I, too, can handle this spear like an expert. Muriel walked further, jabbing the pointed end down into the sand as if hunting for fish or stabbing a chicken or pig. “One thrust, and it kills. No time for the animal to suffer.”

The second spear she picked up at its midsection and noticed very little difference between them. She pulled from her purse a small case of rouge. She dabbed her finger in the peach substance and smudged it on the first spear. This is my spear. The woman’s spear. She held it up higher into the air. “God Bless this spear to make the kill in the hunt; so we can survive on Makta Island.”

God said, Good, daughter. That is the spirit. Do not be afraid of violence. Fighting and defending are the way of life. So you start defending, daughter, enter the fight, and I will protect you on your behalf.

Glen will be stunned. I marked my spear. Next, he will try to make my spear the weaker one. Muriel laughed. She held one spear in each hand, the first in her left and the second, Glen’s spear, in her right. “They are equals. The same.”

***

In a much better mood, Glen surprised himself thinking about Muriel. He was piss-proud today. He swore under his breath. “That healer woman, half-dress, that grass skirt was showing off every bit of her cock lane. Now my arborvitae wanted to see the harbor between Muriel’s shapely legs. Her prancing around in her bloomers summons up my needs.” Conscious that he was alone, Glen continued letting his thoughts drift. I would love to be tipping the velvet of Muriel. Unrigging her from those white bloomers falling in a nice crease around her sex certainly delighted my senses. If she invites me for a game at love tongue again, I am accepting.” He chuckled loudly. “There is no worrying if she’s got a buttered bun. I am the only man on the island. If she buttered her muffin herself, my hornpipe is ready for oiling.

God said, absence does make the heart grow fonder, son, does it not? You and Muriel will be getting together soon. It is your choice, though. I can only provide the opportunity. You must enter the door yourself, son.

Glen reached down, he tried to touch himself, but the incapacitating pain in his hand brought him to another sense of awareness. When he recovered from the ache, he was piss-proud again. “Best for a preacher to be sober. I do apologize, God, for lusting after one of your daughters. Muriel has a good heart. Her mouth has wicked smarts, too. Being hammered for life is no easy thing, but it is a good thing, too. With Ms. Lennox, I can resist as my wife as a pleasant distraction from all those women in different congregations; I’d make a good preacher, God. I bet she warms a bed, right? Good. I know she is single. What am I waiting for?”

Glen, fighting his erotic mood, stared at the sky. If he focused on the sky enough, the pain stayed away. Almost like listening to Muriel’s violin, sky gazing was. Where was she, anyway?

“Hush, hush, hush, hush,” footsteps of Muriel finally reached up over the boat’s edges and into Glen’s ears. He perked up, raising himself on one elbow, and stared. Muriel carried both spears horizontally, points facing any onlooker. She looked like a wild child raised by fairies, a plucky dame who made her own success. Did he want to marry such an unpredictable, blowsabella, her hair all disheveled, curly-red tendrils hanging about her face? He started laughing and found stopping impossible.

Muriel stopped focusing on the edges of the two spears and locked her eyes on Glen, peering over the dingy boat’s edge.

“And just what’s so funny, Glen,” Muriel said, stopping and sticking the blunt end of both spears carefully into the white sand.

Glen laughed and fell back into the boat, disappearing from view. His laughter flowed up like carnival music from the small light-brown boat. Occasionally, his injured-wrapped hands rose up out of the small craft and disappeared back into the dingy boat, accompanied by more course-voice raucous laughter.

Muriel marched forward and soon appeared standing above Glen’s grinning face. With his head, right shoulder, and hand bandage, his rapscallion nature went well in a comedy act on vaudeville. Only Glen had already said the clever lines, and Muriel missed them, or he had yet to tell his waggery lines, in which case Muriel waited to hear them.

“Go on, Mr. Vaudeville. I’m waiting?” Glen’s eyes opened as he gained control over his laughter.

“Waiting?” Then his cavalier attitude began anew as he pointed his right injured hand at Muriel and started laughing. “You—You. Muriel, if I had my watch or a mirror and you saw—” he burst out laughing again. “You, oh, you’d be laughing, too.”

During one of his bouts of squinting-eyes laughter, he opened his eyes to see Muriel’s big blue eyes and long black lashes fixed hard on his small blue eyes as she pointed her pink-rouged spear directly at his face.

Glen immediately stopped laughing, jerked back, and sat upright. “Muriel! What in God’s name are you doing?” Muriel gritted her teeth.

“This is no time to take the Lord’s name in vain,” she snarled.

Glen’s mouth shut. His ripped shirt showed Glen’s modest black-chest-hair, from when the healer woman had to bandage his right shoulder with the green cloth and did not know how to remove the garment. He was not, too, hairy for Muriel’s romantic notions.

Only her emotions lacked a romantic mood now. “What’s funny?”

Glen sobered up. “Please, put the spear down. You are changing. What did those cannibals do to you back there?”

“They were gone,” Muriel said, still pointing her spear at his chest. “Now, what is so funny?”

Glen cleared his throat. “Maybe, I’m drunk and tired, but you transformed yourself into a white English female cannibal. Your wild red hair, straggly hanging all over your face. And those spears. That dirty-white blouse and dusty black dress and your sugar-sprinkled feet.”

“Go on? I go off for one minute by myself, risking my life to bring back the spear that you nearly got yourself killed over, and I am the funny one. You should see yourself in that lake or pond water hole you found,” Muriel’s anger began to boil to a higher temperature,

“That you failed to show me so far, by the way.”

“I told you, didn’t I?” Glen realized Muriel, if she wanted to run him through, had him at the very meaning of a helpless victim.

“Muriel. We are together in this. Remember?”

“To think, I thought my absence made your heart grow fonder. All you were thinking is, did I brush my hair one hundred times before I went to bed. I cannot look any more disrespectful than you look right now, Glen Norman. How about I do not make fun of your disheveled, boorish, trashy appearance if you do not make fun of mine? Agreed!”

“Sure, Muriel. Sure.”

Muriel slammed Glen’s spear down on the dingy boat’s wide edges, and the spear bounced up dangerously, but Glen deftly caught in on the second bounce. “Owwww!”

Muriel turned and walked away back to the fire. “I’m going to sit down here and make a fire. I don’t want you leering at my dairy dugs while I make it!”

God said, Muriel, I would have preferred you used the upper-class words white meat to indicate your breasts, but you are from descendants of a penal colony, alas.

Muriel continued in a contemptible tone. “Men!” For once, she was glad he lay injured, unable to come to her and make up for his false moral attitude. She did everything last night to save him, risked catching a cold herself, being eaten by cannibals, not knowing if he were dead or alive out there in the Pacific. Not one real thanks for my music. Not one. God, why are we together on this island?

God said, I know, I know, my daughter. He’s going to change soon. Have patience. God went to talk to Glen.

Muriel got the fire plow out and the spare kindling. This was their fourth day, she thought and turned to the dingy boat. All she saw was the spear magically standing upright and spinning itself in the air. Muriel turned back and stared at her fire implements. She flipped and wiped several of the red-curly tendrils from her face. She put down the fire plow and gathered all her hair from hanging down over her face into a neat ponytail again, out of the way of the coming fire. Her going up in a ball of yellow and red flames served neither she nor Glen nor God’s true purpose.

In four minutes, Muriel blew the kindling into a roaring blaze and wasted no time dropping it on the ground on thin and thick firesticks, waiting. “One thing down,” she muttered. Without warning Glen, she marched off into the forest to Camp Two.

Minutes later, Glen heard the “hush, hush, hush, hush” female footsteps of the warrior-queen Muriel as he started calling her in his mind. His head popped up, his spear pointing out of the boat at her. All he saw was something black and square flying into the boat, as Muriel, still disgusted, stayed far from Glen Norman as possible.

“There is your Bible!” Glen raised his arms, and the Bible hit his forearms and landed into the dingy boat. He puzzled at her. We’ve been here almost a week. One week, not counting the weekends of Saturday and Sunday. I don’t know what hour of the day it is. God, our situation is getting worse as it gets better. I just do not understand the paradoxical ways in which you work!

God said I work! The paradoxical ways I work! It is so simple being you, Glen, selfish, callous, prudish, and insensitive to the female nature. Why do you think I made men different from women—so you can all get along without effort? No, you must make an effort, Glen, my son. I made it so you would need one another and learn from one another. And all you can do is scorn the woman, helpmate I am trying to give you. You’re no better than Adam was. Try relating to Muriel, my boy, spend some time with her, and talk to her.

Glen, still cranky and discontented, struggled to open his Bible, which ironically fell open on the very section where Eve tried to give Adam the apple. “Great. Just great, remind me of my confusion.” Glen stared at the passage, and a thought occurred to him, where was Adam all that time Eve talked to the snake? Why wasn’t Adam around? Of all the balmy things, Adam! Wait. Maybe I am behaving like Adam, too? Glen tried to rub his stubble chin, pretty much gone, and now a full neckbeard grew in its place.

Glen muttered in a low tone, “I need to be more attentive to Muriel. She is the female sex, after all. I cannot expect her to be like me, callused, super independent, needing only the affection of sex. I am sorry, God. From now on, I am going to change. Even if it means Ms. Lennox and me– might-become something more than two strangers. I cannot be at war on this island with her. She is all I have, God, honest.

God did not say anything. How many times had Glen proposed to change before?