The Shark God by Charles Montgomery Page A

can’t tell you that, it’s the source of my power.’ Well, that pretty much shut down my psychological assessment. But he didn’t seem overtly psychotic.”
    Fockler figured that the police were looking for an excuse to lock Fred up, but he decided it was not his job to do their dirty work. He announced to Fred’s followers—there were hundreds—that he would let them keep their prophet. They cheered. The doctor returned to the hospital in Lenakel, and Fred remained on the mountain with his visions.
    I followed a track into the forest and down along a ravine. The slopes on either side of the ravine had been scoured right down to bare rock. That puzzled me: the creek that trickled through the gorge could never have done such damage. The devastationwidened to several hundred yards as I neared the sea. Then the track veered away from the creek and ended in a wide field surrounded by huts. This was Sulphur Bay, but the village was empty and the field had been thoroughly excavated by pigs, two of which watched me silently from their craters. There was an old cement cistern. Its tap yielded only dust.
    I heard the sound of voices coming from the creek. I followed them and found dozens of women bathing, singing, and slapping their laundry, which steamed in the afternoon heat. Some of them were topless, which was not exactly in keeping with the teachings of the Presbyterians who first evangelized the island. I walked on to talk to their husbands, who were bathing upstream.
    I had scarcely mentioned the name Isaac One when a young man leaped forward, grabbed my hand, and tugged me away from the creek.
    â€œNot here,” he said adamantly. “Not Sulphur Bay.”
    He pulled my pack from my back and strode off with it, heading farther upstream. I had little choice but to follow him. After a few minutes, we entered a clearing much like the ones I had seen on my walks with Kelsen: an oval of earth pounded hard by bare feet, this one shaded by a grove of breadfruit trees. Spiny fruit hung from the branches like green piñatas. The clearing was full of people: old men in filthy lavalavas and ski jackets, young men in surf shorts. Boys and mongrels lurked shyly around their heels. The men were tending little fires and puttering with great dirty clumps of roots. They turned to gaze at me silently.
    â€œIsaac One,” I said. An old man stepped forward.
    I pulled a bag of rice and three tins of tuna from my pack, intending to hand them to the chief, but thought better of it when he scowled and turned away. I placed them on a grass mat instead. The chief did not acknowledge my gifts. He murmured something to my guide, who took my pack and disappeared into the forest. I was nervous. The sky turned purple over the volcano.Dusk settled on the nakamal —for that is where I had arrived: the traditional kava-drinking ground beside almost every village on Tanna.
    â€œThe chief is very drunk,” said the man who brought me. “Kava.”
    Isag Wan (as I learned his name was really spelled) was beguiling. He was as thin and bent as the smoldering twig he clutched in one hand, at the ready to relight the cigarette that never left his mouth. He had the bloodshot eyes of a kava addict. But those eyes were still quick. His beard was peppered gray, and he wore a khaki jacket with “U.S. Army” stamped on the chest. He was forever kicking the mongrels that followed him around the nakamal .
    I tried to introduce myself, to explain why I had come, but the chief just waved me silent with a bony hand, then proceeded to fuss over a grass mat, which he spread on the dirt for me.
    â€œ Long moning yu kam long ofis blong mi, ” he said, then turned away.
    Come to his office in the morning? An office, here? I hadn’t seen so much as a tin roof in a week.
    The night’s kava session had already begun, and the chief would not be distracted. The scene was familiar—I had read accounts of