The Atua Man: A Novel

Everybody was tired and Larry put off reporting his arrival at Takaroa until the morning. He was in no mood to cook dinner and he retired early to his cabin. David threw together some pasta and he, Melanie, and Jason ate in the salon at the settee as the wind picked up to gale force.

“Larry made the right decision,” David shouted over the wind singing in the rigging. Mata‘i struggled to be free of the wharf, and even with doubled up lines and large fenders she banged and rubbed along the quay.

“Dad’s not going to sleep tonight with all this going on. He’s so attached to this boat that every time it groans, he feels pain.”

“Let’s make sure we’re well moored and everything is battened down. I don’t want anything to come apart or break,” Jason told them.

He and David went topside and put the sail covers on the main and mizzen sails. They checked the sheets of the roller-furling jenny, turned the air funnels away from the wind-driven rain, and made sure that nothing loose was left on deck. Jason strapped an extra line over and around the dinghy cover and took off the wooden sail from the Aires wind vane. David pulled the servo rudder out of the water and strapped it up. When they finished, they sat down at their favorite spot on the fore cabin roof and watched the storm build.

You guys are going to get wet.” Melanie said, but she sat down next to the boys. “Wow, Dad has a nasty temper, doesn’t he?”

“He can be unreasonable at times,” Jason said.

“You know, when shit happens, I don’t want to have to choose between you two and Dad. In fact, you guys probably know him better than I do. Coming on this trip was a hard decision. My mom was totally against it. But I thought, if I’m going to be a journalist and all, it might provide some good material. I guess I’ll have to figure out how to deal with adversity.”

David guffawed. “You might get to learn how to do that!”

“More like practicing forgiveness,” Jason said.

“I never understood how important that was until I took your mom’s class,” David said.

“I’m not into that spiritual stuff. When I think about it, I’m stunned Dad ever got into it. It’s so unlike him,” Melanie said. “Hope it’s not like all his other passions: Once he knows all there is about it, he moves on. If it doesn’t benefit him, he’ll drop it.”

“You can’t fault him for trying. Something in his consciousness drew him to find a deeper meaning to life,” Jason said.

A gale blew through the night, and the next morning dawned gray and stormy. It was the seventh day out of Papeete, and Larry wanted to move on, but because of the storm, he couldn’t. Two more yachts limped in to Takaroa that morning. The crews told of towering seas and winds that tested their sanity. Larry didn’t like hearing this and believed their stories were highly exaggerated. He held to the belief that someone spiritually in tune could alter weather, and inclement weather should never limit human endeavor.

Larry kept asking Jason what he was going to do about the delay. With every stormy hour, Larry became convinced that Jason was turning out to be useless. If he’d wanted just a crewman, he could have picked up some surfer off the beach to steer the boat and man the sails. That would have been much cheaper than supporting Jason for months—feeding him, teaching him the skills of a blue-water sailor—one who could find his way around any ocean, know the stars at every latitude, and survive any storm. But with Jason and his advanced spiritual consciousness on board, there were not supposed to be any trials and mishaps.

Larry set the boys to work and went ashore with Melanie. Jason and David did some caulking, sanded some peeling paint, and resealed the aprons around the main and mizzenmast.

David couldn’t figure out why Larry thought Jason could alter the weather.

“Solomon Green did some experiments with his close students regarding the weather. In one of his books he writes about a hurricane that had been approaching Palm Beach back in the 70s. Based on the biblical statement that ten righteous men could save a city, Dr. Green thought that if enough individuals could bring into realization the presence of God, nothing destructive could take place where that consciousness of peace existed. And it worked. A group of students meditated to realize the Presence and the storm dissipated and changed direction.”

“So, what’s going on here?”

“Larry isn’t interested in God for God’s sake. He’s interested in having God do something to make his human experience better, like fair winds and sunny skies for this trip. That’s not how it works.”

“So why even pray?”

“You’re right. Praying to a god out there to change a human condition is useless. If God is one, and God is omnipotent, there can’t be anything but God. The moment you have God and a storm and people who want the storm to stop, you fail. To succeed you can only have God.”

“But isn’t that the way you pray?” David said.

“Yes, but I’m not doing a very good job of it. Maybe subconsciously I’m looking for results just like every other human being. I know that won’t bring about a spiritual change. I don’t care about the weather. It’s not like we’re a cruise ship with a schedule to keep. The first principle in spiritual healing is to stop judging—good weather, bad weather—what does that have to do with Spirit? So, either I’m no good at this or there is some other reason for all this suffering.”

“Perhaps one of the reasons is that Larry is an asshole.”

“What’s that statement about God’s rain falling on the just and the unjust?”

“Are we just victims of fate, then, in a godless world?” David asked.

“The block is obviously in me,” Jason said. “Larry hasn’t a clue. He thinks I’m some sort of magician who can miraculously make the crooked places straight. But I don’t see that as the point of spiritual illumination. There’s got to be more to that than just creating a harmonious human condition.”

The next morning the sky was brighter, and the winds had dialed down a couple of notches. They were still blowing from the wrong direction, though. Larry wouldn’t say where he and his daughter had been the night before. Melanie just said they’d been to a settlement across the lagoon to visit some of her dad’s old friends.

That afternoon two more yachts limped into the pass and tied up along the quay. One, a state-of-the-art maxi yacht sailed by a group of teenagers, flew the flag of the British Virgin Islands, a well-known tax haven. Larry was convinced they were drug smugglers even though they claimed they were delivering the Dutch-built ketch to her owner in Sydney. The other yacht looked barely seaworthy. She flew an American flag and was sailed by a young hippy-looking couple with two small children. Larry was equally mad at them for risking the lives of their children, and he didn’t like that the quay had filled up. The next yacht fleeing the storm would have to anchor in the lagoon.

That evening the visitors joined the islanders in the community hall to watch the village dance troupe practice for the Bastille Day fête on July 14^th. They practiced an upa‘upa called the ‘ote‘a, a line dance with girls on one side and boys on the other. The islanders played a collection of drums. Some were five-gallon Wesson Oil tins, others conventional snare drums, but the main rhythm came from the to‘ere, the small hollowed out log played with short sticks. The noise that reverberated off the concrete walls of the hall was deafening.

In Tahitian dancing, the hands tell the story. The men’s hands invited the girls to have sex, and the girls’ hands teased and rebuffed. That night, the visitors joined the natives in their dance which began with two lines of dancers, men in one line and woman in the other, all facing in the same direction. As the rhythms changed, the lines turned so that the girls and boys faced each other. At that moment everyone chose a partner and began courting with their hands. The girls rapidly moved their hips, causing their grass skirts to ripple in waves from the waist to the ground. The guys moved around the girls, flashing their knees in and out, inviting the girls closer.

Melanie attracted the best-looking guy in the line. His smile could have been on a poster enticing Western women to lose it all on his island. He moved around Melanie like a bee to honeysuckle. He came in very close and when Melanie grew hesitant, he took her hips in his hands and got them moving with the beat.

Jason drew the prettiest girl, as he always did, and David attracted the oldest woman dancing. Jason tried to get into the soul of the dance, but the girl was a tease, giving just so much to the foreigner and then withdrawing, leaving Jason frustrated. David’s partner, on the other hand, was the kumu; the master and she guided David into feeling the deeper meaning of the dance, which was not just sexual but also spiritual.

When the tease was at its height, the drummers changed the beat to one that was slow and sexy. Then everybody moved closer—the girls with their arms overhead enticing the boys to come near as the guys extended their arms around the girls, as if hugging them but not touching. Every movement was a pantomime of seduction.

Just when things got really hot, the drummers would change the rhythm again and everyone would move apart and return to their respective lines. Then one couple would come out into the center and show off their moves.

When the ‘ote‘a practice ended and the dancers had a few minutes to cool off, the musicians traded their drums for stringed instruments—banjos, ukuleles and guitars, and began playing Western music. They loved to waltz, and soon all the island couples were spinning formally around the room like they were at Belvedere Palace in Vienna.

The kumu invited David outside. Jason and Melanie were both dancing, so David followed the older woman out into the cool night. She took him to a patch of mangrove near the lagoon, her arm around his waist so that they bumped hips as they walked. They stopped by a picnic table and the woman kneeled in front of David, taking hold of his hips and swinging them in the figure eight movement of the ‘ote‘a. She had him continue the hip movement and then took hold of his knees and moved them from side to side instructing him to keep his hips moving at the same time and pretend like he was climbing steps.

“She’s teaching you the proper way to do it,” came a voice from the beach. Two island men, David’s age, walked up smoking cigarettes.

“She’s the best teacher anywhere. Takaroa always wins the fête,” the other man said.

The woman looked up at David and smiled. She was missing half of her teeth. She moved her hands back up to David’s hips and started undoing his pants.

“She also teaches men how to pleasure a woman,” the first man said as the woman unzipped David’s fly.

“She taught both of us,” the other man said proudly.

David pushed the woman away and zipped his fly. “Fuck,” he said as he walked back to the Mata‘i.

On the ninth day out of Papeete, Larry organized an excursion to a famous shipwreck on the northern end of Takaroa. He hired an outboard motorboat to take him and his crew there, and when they returned that evening, tired and exhausted, they found another boat rafted to Mata‘i. Larry was furious. That skipper should have anchored in the lagoon. The idea of people tromping over Larry’s deck to get ashore was an unforgivable insult. Larry boarded the offending boat and pounded on the cabin hatch. Nobody was there and it was locked up tight.

David checked the name on the transom. “She’s Cozy Cup from Liverpool.”

“Well, she can’t raft to us!” Larry said.

He returned to the Mata‘i and stepped ashore, walking down the quay looking for the owners of Cozy Cup. His crew followed him. They didn’t like the idea of people tramping over their boat to get to get ashore any more than Larry did. Larry found a crewman from the French boat on deck and said in French, “Do you know anything about the boat that’s rafted to mine?”

“Not a thing,” the Frenchman replied.

“Where’s the rest of your crew?”

“They’re off with one of the natives to see a pearl farm. The ladies think they can make a deal.”

“Who let them raft to my boat?” Larry said.

“The mayor came down to the dock when he saw them sail into the passage. You were off to see the wreck, so he tied them to your boat and then they all took off across the lagoon in the mayor’s skiff.”

That sounded strange.

“We’ll have to move them,” Larry said.

“I don’t think they’re from England,” the Frenchman said. “And they off-loaded some crates into the mayor’s skiff before they left.”

That did it. “We’re leaving,” Larry told his crew. “Get the boat ready.” He turned to the Frenchman and asked if he’d help move the English boat into Mata‘i’s place at the wharf. The Frenchman cautioned that the storm was still raging, but Larry didn’t care. He told the Frenchman to beware of the island chief.

Jason looked at David questioningly.

But Larry pushed them to get the Mata‘i ready to leave. They hadn’t much time. The tide was slack so there was very little current in the passage. David took off all the sail covers and reassembled the self-steering gear. Melanie combined the jerry cans of water and took the empties ashore to fill at the community cistern. Jason lashed the cans of extra diesel to the racks that had been installed in Papeete. He attached the staysail stay to the deck and bent on the sail and ran the sheets but left the sail in the bag. If Larry wanted to use that sail all he’d need to do was attach the halyard and hoist it.

When Mata‘i was ready to leave, David boarded the English boat and Jason untied her from Mata‘i. Larry, at the helm, had the Volvo idling. Jason tossed the mooring line to the Frenchman on his boat and the guys pulled Cozy Cup forward until she could be temporarily rafted to the French boat. Then Larry showed why he was considered one of the best sailors in Honolulu. With Melanie onshore handling the spring line, Larry powered forward against that line, which swung the stern away from the dock. When he had cleared the boat behind him, he told Melanie to get onboard and then neatly backed away into the channel.

With the help of the Frenchman, David and Jason hauled the English boat into the space left by Mata‘i and secured her to the quay. Larry then pulled alongside, and the boys jumped aboard their boat as Larry accelerated toward the open sea. The Frenchman shouted at Larry to reconsider, given the storm, but Larry ignored him.

“I want the main up now with a double reef, and then unfurl twenty percent of the jenny,” Larry ordered as he opened up the throttle.

David and Jason went to work and Mata‘i left the safety of the channel and sailed into the raging ocean. It was dusk. Melanie stood by her father as they beat their way into fifteen-foot swells. Larry was unusually quiet as he gaged the wind and found his course. He told Jason to take the helm, hinting that he was responsible for their situation. He kissed Melanie on her forehead and went below. Those on deck were surprised by his sudden departure.