The Shark God by Charles Montgomery

chief.
    We retreated through the forest, me feeling like a tourist, knowing the chief and his boys would be climbing back into their regular clothes as soon as we disappeared.
    â€œFive hundred vatu: a very good deal,” Kelsen explained. “That’s how much they charge tourists over in Yakel village. And those heathens wear grass skirts, not nambas . Sometimes you can even see they have shorts on under their skirts. More naked should mean more money, yes?”
    Kelsen was skipping now.
    â€œYou see,” he said, “I know the heathens. I am your best guide. You are very lucky to have found me.”
    Kelsen was a tragic case. He ridiculed pagan kastom , but he clearly suffered without it. For one thing, he was fighting with hisbrother over the money that guests paid to stay in their village. They couldn’t hold a kastom pig-killing ceremony to settle the dispute, since pork was tabu for Adventists. The brothers could not rely on their ancestors or island myths to guide them. They would be parted like Cain and Abel, Kelsen had told me—though he would be the one to keep the money. He quivered with an obsessive, greedy longing. It was my first taste of the spiritual confusion that had metastasized into an all-out civil war up in the Solomon Islands.
    Kelsen begged me not to go to Sulphur Bay. There was nowhere to stay, he said. John Frum’s followers had left the stronghold of their faith and run off into the hills where I would never find them. He assured me that if I stayed with him just one more night, he would tell me his volcano story. But he had been promising that for three days.
    I followed the cart track back toward Yasur, this time on foot. At midday, I reached the ash plain, where I spotted a trio of Mormon missionaries. Their white shirts blazed in the sunlight. Their ties flapped in the wind. We shook hands. I told them I thought they deserved great credit for keeping their shirts clean no matter how rough the mission field might be. They told me I shouldn’t be so cheery, especially if I was going to hike down to Sulphur Bay.
    â€œThere is a false prophet on this end of the island,” one said gravely. “He has led hundreds of people astray.”
    â€œJohn Frum,” I said.
    â€œNo. The false prophet’s name is Fred. He is very dangerous. He has been throwing babies into the volcano.”
    They gave me directions to Sulphur Bay anyway. I crossed the ash plain, mesmerized by the black mushroom clouds that periodically issued from the summit of Yasur. There was a single set of footprints in the ash, zigzagging up a spur to the summit ridge.
    Babies in the volcano. Honestly.
    But Fred…that name was familiar. Then I remembered.Back in Port Vila I had met a Canadian man who had just served a six-month stint as Tanna’s only doctor. Fockler was his name. He told me that the island had intrigued and baffled him. Like the time the national police had summoned him to Sulphur Bay to check on a man who had established a new village on a shoulder of the volcano.
    â€œRumor had it that this guy had gone off the deep end,” the doctor said. “He was having all kinds of visions and he had been accused of all sorts of crimes—you know, ritual child abuse, or something like that. Oh, they also said that he had leprosy.”
    Fockler had dutifully trucked across the island with his rubber gloves and a bag full of antipsychotic drugs. He had barely begun to hike up the mountain when he came face-to-face with the infamous Fred, who was a big man with messy hair. It was clear that Fred had indeed suffered from leprosy. His eyebrows and hands were slightly misshapen. But it was also clear to the doctor that the condition was inactive and not contagious. Fockler pretended to examine the prophet’s skin while actually conducting a quick mental status assessment.
    â€œI asked him if he saw visions, you know, or heard any messages, and he said, ‘I