Cannibals in Drag: Musings from Mangaia

We boarded the single-engine plane with three other passengers and a fuselage stuffed with cargo then set out on our journey, banking over Rarotonga and into a boundless, blue, ocean horizon.  I stared out the window at cotton-batten clouds, pensive and a little worried this single-engine aircraft couldn’t handle its bloated stomach, when suddenly my hair tossed wildly in a gust of wind.  I shot my head up like a sparrow just as the co-pilot jettisoned a candy wrapper out the window and pulled the window shut.  Julia and I glared at each other with gathering terror.

Our destination was Mangaia, part of the archipelago known as the Cook Islands.  Outside of the Cook Islands, few even know it exists, and the only reason we chose it was because the flight to our intended destination, Atiu, was booked.  With two available seats on the Mangaia flight, an Air Rarotonga employee called her friend (Tu) and booked us three nights at Ara Moana Bungalows.  This impromptu change of plans seemed mildly adventurous, so off to Mangaia we went, with no expectations and no idea what was about to transpire. 

The plane lit on a gravel runway and trundled to a stop in front of a wood and corrugated-steel building, with a hand-painted sign saying “Kia Orana” and “Welcome to Mangaia.”  A large woman stood at the edge of the canopy.

“Tu?” I asked, assuming it was her, since the airport was otherwise deserted.

“Kia Orana,” she responded, her face brightening like an island sunrise.  We attempted to shake hands, but she opened her arms wide and consumed us both with a motherly hug.  She guided us to her 4x4 pickup truck and we set off through lush tropical foliage, following earthen tracks formed by the balloon tires.  Twenty minutes later, we arrived at Ara Moana, which was buried under a canopy of palm and pandanus trees.  She showed us to our bungalow, a tiny A-frame building painted coral yellow.   From the outside, it looked like a garden shed and on the inside, the inside of a garden shed.  Carving out most of the main room was a double-bed and toddler-sized furniture.  Looking to the back, which was about six average paces, there was a toilet, a sink, and a cold water shower that only allowed you to rotate on axis.  We instantly realized that this was not the “Polynesian Room” at the Fantasyland Hotel, but the broom closet at the Howard Johnson.

 

With no itinerary, no apparent recreational activities, and a queue of gangly black hornets on the door-handle of our bungalow, we walked over to chat with Tu and her sister.  They were weaving brooms from broad grasses and coconut husk, which made us feel part of a museum diorama for traditional crafts of the Maori.  Tu’s sister told us she had moved back to Mangaia after her husband died, but that she could still feel his presence.  Glancing around, I observed that Ara Moana had all the ”cabin-in-the-woods” slasher movie tropes, even Tu’s nephew was named “Jason.”

Tu suggested options for our three-day itinerary: “You can take the stairs to the bottom of the cliffs.  You’ll find a lovely beach down there.  There are many hiking trails.  I will talk to my cousin Tere and see if he’ll take you on a cave tour.  Tomorrow morning I’ll drive you to the craft market, oh, and you’ll have to come to the island festival tomorrow night; it’s our biggest festival of the year!”

How serendipitous it was for us to arrive at the same time as their biggest festival of the year.  We expected a cultural showcase of intricate percussion and knee-jerking, hip-jiggling, Cook Island dancing.  We booked Tere’s cave tour for the morning then were forced to retire early because the electricity cut abruptly at 9:00 pm. With little ambient light in the middle of the Pacific Ocean, the darkness was profound and unnerving, the perfect location for Jason to launch into a killing spree.  The door on our bungalow didn’t lock.

We awoke the next morning to dazzling sunlight and walked to the patio where we met Jason, the resident chef and an expert with knives.  A large box of Corn Flakes and jug of milk were perched on the table. I poured some cereal, milk, then listened while Jason apologized for the breakfast choice. 

“There’s no electricity for the toaster,” he said. “The island is rationing diesel fuel for our electrical generators because a TV show, “Survivor,” has commandeered the supply boat for filming  on Aitutaki.  We get three hours of electricity per day and only in the evening.  Oh, and we don’t know exactly when the power is going to be cut.”

“It’s a little rustic,” I said to Julia, “As long as we keep our flashlights close by, we should be fine.”

I passed Julia the box of cereal and as she tipped it over, a cockroach the size of a prune, tumbled out of the box and into her bowl, scrambled out, skittered across the table, leapt off, then disappeared between the floorboards.  I stared blankly at my half eaten bowl. [CLANG!] Julia dropped her spoon and buried her face in her hands.

“We’re leaving tomorrow,” she whispered intensely.

After breakfast, we greeted Tere beside the garden for our cave tour.  His Saddam Hussein style mustache belied a friendly, jovial demeanor.  Minutes later, a man approached and introduced himself as Benny.  He, his wife, and another couple had arrived that night, having flown all the way from Sweden.  Our group of six followed Tere into the cave where he carefully pointed out every jagged obstacle that could break an ankle, or stalactite that could cause a cranial wound.  We climbed deeper until we came upon a three-metre wide crevasse.

“This is called the tortoise,” Tere said, pointing to a rock that emerged from a semi-circular mound resembling a tortoise shell.

“Ah,” we all said in unison.

He paused, sat on a rock, then pulled his leg towards his stomach.

“Let me tell you about this place,” he said, his voice deep and oozing gravitas.

“There was once a tribe who lived in this cave that only came out at night. They hunted children from local villages and brought them here.  The children were slaughtered, cooked, eaten, and their bones were discarded down here.”

He leaned over and peered into the crevasse then invited us to look into the black void. 

“Finally, the local villagers came after them,” he said, “There was a great battle in the cave, but the cave people lost.

He gazed back into the crevasse.

“Now their bones are down here too.”

There was a long silence, broken by Tere who, suddenly upbeat, said, “My ancestors, they were misguided.  C’mon, let’s move on.”

Tere’s oral history fused wit with dark humour and was relayed with a toothy grin under his thick salt-and-pepper mustache.

“When the first missionaries came to Mangaia, we ate them, so they sent more, and we ate them too,” he chuckled, “Finally, missionaries came from Samoa with a picture of a man tied to a cross.  It looked like how my people performed sacrifices.  That image led Mangaians to adopt Christianity and end cannibalism.  Did I mention that my ancestors were misguided?”

The trail eventually led us to a field of feral coffee plants and pineapple bushes.  Tere explained that Mangaia had once exported top-quality coffee and their pineapples were “the sweetest in the South Pacific.”  In the 1990s, globalization gutted agriculture then New Zealand austerity measures slashed government services and forced a mass exodus of the Island’s young people.  Most sought service or labour jobs in New Zealand, leaving their children behind to be raised by grandparents like Tu.  I asked Tere about promoting tourism and he told me that Mangaians have rebuffed opportunities to build tourist infrastructure on the Island, choosing instead to preserve Mangaia in its pristine state for future generations.  Mangaians, he explained, are stubborn and fiercely independent, the only Cook Islanders to worship the god, Rongo, instead of Tangaroa.  But with a population of barely 500 and dwindling, Tere worried their very existence was now threatened.

“Soon,” he said softly, “there may be no Mangaians left to stop development.”

After an educational and entertaining morning with Tere, we returned to Ara Moana in mid-afternoon for a brief rest.  At dusk, Tu drove us to the Island festival, where we joined Benny, his wife, and the other Swedish couple as “guests-of-honour” in the front row.  It looked like the entire population of Mangaia was in attendance.  Lanterns swayed and palm fronds sizzled in the humid breeze.  With heightened anticipation, the first group walked on stage and the music started.

Unlike groups on Aitutaki and Rarotonga, Mangaians had few instruments besides ukeleles and a few acoustic guitars they all shared.  Empty plastic tubs and other discarded household containers were used for percussion, but the music sounded virtually the same: a highly-syncopated, time-shifting rhythm, jumping between melodic choirs and pounding, aggressive, drum stanzas.

Between musical interludes, they performed a pantomime about a great warrior who fell in love with a simple peasant woman.  It was an enchanting story, but there was something odd about the peasant woman; she had a chiseled physique like the Statue of David. The second act also featured a female performer with a muscular body and I was beginning to have suspicions.  I bumped Julia with my elbow.

“There’s something odd about these women,” I whispered, “they seem very muscular.”

“I think they’re men,” she responded.

Once the third act began, it was evident: we were watching a drag show.  The crowd howled with excitement as successive men performed transvestite burlesque.  The group from Tu’s village told the story of a princess trying to seduce a lonely king.  She gyrated around the stage and shook her buttocks towards his face, but he only yawned and slumped deeper into despair.  When the princess’ servant boy arrived, the king, suddenly aroused, had a steamy love affair with him while the princess danced obliviously toward the audience.

The crowd roared with laughter then cheered heartily with approval.  When the festival ended, we sat for a few minutes dumbfounded, glancing at each other, mouths agape.  What did we just witness?  Was this culture or folks just letting off a little steam?  I still don’t know, but whatever that was, only six people outside of Mangaia have this story to tell, and four of them live in Sweden.

Driving back to Ara Moana, I sat with Benny and a group of children in the box of Tu’s truck.  The glowing red tailights receded into night as we swayed and yawed.  With our backs against the cab and our asses bouncing on the bare truck bed, Benny and I grimaced every time the truck hit a bump.  The children laughed at us.  Then, seemingly on cue, they all started singing a traditional Maori song.  Their angelic voices rose above the crumpling stones beneath the truck wheels; a sharp crescent moon followed us through the corridor of palm fronds.  Benny and I sat in silence, ingesting the experience, then he turned to me and said exactly what was rattling around inside my head.

“You know, at this moment, there’s no place in the world I’d rather be than right here.”

I smiled and nodded.

That night, with Mangaia blacked-out, Julia and I sat at the cliff edge drinking a bottle of wine.  The Milky Way speckled the night sky, the stars so vivid, they beamed down like billions of minuscule laser pointers.  It felt like we had stepped off the end of the World and were floating in outer-space.

“I’m so glad we came to Mangaia,” I said to Julia, watching a solitary fisherman swing a glowing lantern while strolling across the reef below. “That was an incredible day.”

“It was,” she replied, “but we’re still leaving tomorrow.”

The Legend of the Wakaw Walker

Josh didn’t like going to the farm.  For him, everything about the farm was creepy.  Doilies and dolls haunted every desk, bureau and armoire, and every wall had a picture of Jesus spiked to a cross, bloody ribs and looking mildly Ukrainian.  The dolls, garmented in white beaded shirts and red embroidered dresses, had cyan eyes that followed him as he walked around the room, their gnarled fingers grasping the air like they were protruding from quicksand. His uncles drank heavily and wobbled around the farmhouse, their mouths devoid of front teeth, flaunting vampire grins.  His aunts, all five-feet tall with sturdy builds, lunged at him and left blood red lip smacks across his mouth.  This was not a place for city kids.

The Ukrainian farm peaked in the 1970s when family members moved off and financial comfort meant there was much more time for leisure.  Josh, aged 14, his 12 year old sister Sarah, Dad Ivan and Mom Kerri drove to Brooksby every few weeks in the summer and once or twice in the winter.  Ivan wanted the kids close to their roots, but he knew the family farm was suffering from a long, slow, terminal illness, the blight of mechanization.  Ivan loved his Mom, whom everyone called Baba.  At 82, she lived her entire life on the same plot of land.  Ivan felt she deserved some luxuries so he brought her things from Saskatoon: a vacuum, an iron and a food processor, which she never used, but displayed proudly like a porcelain figurine.  Ivan felt the 1980 Celebrate Saskatchewan summer festival provided an opportunity for the family to get together, so like many Fridays before, they loaded the Cutlass Supreme and set out for Brooksby.

For Josh and Sarah the drive was torture: two hours in summer and as many as five death-defying blizzard hours in mid-winter.  It felt like they were being sucked into a black hole, with Ivan hunched over the steering wheel madly wiping the windshield, while lazer beams of white snow shot into the headlights like a firefight from Star Wars.  Every few minutes, Kerri would implore him to slow down and remind him they should have stayed home.  Josh and Sarah memorized all the details of the towns along the way to Brooksby: Aberdeen, Alvena, the onion-domed church in Smutz, Birch Hills, Kinistino, Beatty, Melfort and finally, at the mouth of the gravel road to Brooksby, Star City--population 500.  There was one other town along the way: Wakaw, famous for lakes and camping.  The sign made it look like paradise and in Saskatchewan it was the closest thing to Waikiki.

The one thing Josh liked about the farm was freedom, especially having grown up in the confines of Saskatoon’s largest suburb, Utopia.  As soon as they arrived, Josh ran off with the other boys to plot world domination and gossip about the adults.  The conversation usually turned to Uncle George, the hard-boozing farmer from the town of Dirty River.  Uncle George was always red-faced and had wisps of white hair that stood up like antennae.  He reeked of alcohol, farm grease and purple gas.  Sometimes he would slip drinks to his young nephews.

“Here ya’ go, boys, now run off and join the circus.” he would say, his upper lip dangling limply without the support of teeth.

Aunt Gertie, George’s wife, died two years earlier in a freak farming accident.  Josh remembered vividly the day Uncle George called his dad, heavily inebriated, looking for Gertie, his mood pulsating between remorse and rage.

“George… George… look, I’m sure she’s fine.  No, George, you know she’s done this before.  I know, I know.  Did you call her sisters?  George what happened?  What did you do this time, George?  Calm down George.  Look.  Come on George you don’t mean that.  George call back when you’re sober.  Yeah, I know.  It sounds like you’ve had more than one beer.  Good bye George.”

Aunt Gertie was found six days later buried in a grain silo, asphyxiated by wheat kernels, her face frozen in terror, taking a final futile breath: a terrible way to die.  Nobody questioned why she had climbed in there and while the family rarely talked about it, Josh knew his Dad was suspicious.  Accidents on the farm were commonplace, but some smelled of more sinister intentions.  Suicides were common too, but they were also made to look like accidents, otherwise the body was relegated to an unmarked grave outside the cemetery; “suicide” could never be etched on a headstone.  After Gertie’s death, George’s drinking got heavier and his behaviour more erratic.

George and Gertie’s son, Kevin, was the typical farm kid; he had perpetually dirty hands and fingers as thick as hot dog wieners.  He was moody and always wore black dungarees attached by large cream coloured diaper pins.  He had a bronze arm tan that stopped mid-bicep then transitioned suddenly to a bleach bottle white torso.  George cut Kevin’s hair in a ruler straight bang that encircled his entire head.  He was the oldest of the cousins at 18 and generally kept to himself, but Kevin also possessed a strange talent; he could vanish then reappear, unexpectedly, in the oddest places, like a wraith.  Perhaps Kevin developed this camouflage to avoid his dad, whose persistent anger towards him was palpable and unnerving.

“Kevin, git yer’ lazy ass over here right now!” he bellowed, usually followed by a veiled threat, “Unless you wanna visit yer’ mother.”

On Saturday, Celebrate Saskatchewan started with a carnival in Star City then, after a long afternoon in the beer gardens, finished back on the farm with drinks, food and raucous games of kaiser.  Sarah, Josh and their cousins ran off to play in all manner of dangerous situations, climbing on tractors and combines, riding the lawn mower, and playing lawn darts with an elevated level of risk.  They would make a circle around Kevin who would pitch one dart into the air while everyone scattered to avoid being impaled by the four-inch spike.  Kevin would laugh like a hyena and attempt to catch the dart on its way to the ground.  He would pick it up, make a crooked death mask, and pretend a lawn dart was protruding from his skull.

The party in the house continued unabated while some of the younger cousins went to sleep in the summer kitchen.  Josh was still prowling for mischief so he went for a walk around the yard.  Behind the chicken coop he found Kevin, smoking, having stolen three cigarettes from his dad’s pack of Rothmans Blue.  Josh scurried over, thrilled at the idea of a secret smoke.  Kevin saw him, crinkled his face, then stared down at the ribbon of smoke streaming from his hand.

“Hey Kevin,” Josh asked. “Can I have one?”

Kevin turned up his head tossing his equator straight bangs.

“Yeah,” he responded snidely, “come over here, but let me tell you a story first.”

Kevin motioned for Josh to lean against the red-sided chicken barn, then started speaking.

“Behind the pig barn over there was once the scene of a terrible crime; a crime so horrible that the adults won’t speak of it today.  It was Uncle Metro. He was bludgeoned to death with a birch wood cane, he…”

Josh interrupted suddenly, “That’s not true!  Dad said he died of the flu.”

“Your dad’s wrong, Josh, he was murdered!”  Kevin said making a stabbing motion.

“He was killed, stabbed through the heart with a sharp stick.  Right there, as an 8 year old boy, Uncle Metro was found dead.  DEAD!  And it wasn’t by accident, it was by the bony hand of the…”

“What’s happening over there?  Is Uncle George drinking?  Baba is looking for him.”

“Ah crap, it’s Sarah,” Josh cursed. “We’re over here, but keep the noise down.”

Sarah came galloping through the waist high grass, her stuffed rabbit “Peddy” flailing in her left hand.

 “What are you doing?”

“Shshshshshshsh… keep it down, we’re smoking and Kevin’s telling me a story.”

“I wanna hear.”

“Okay, okay,” Josh said, “but don’t go crying to Mommy.”

“I won’t,” responded Sarah, scrunching her face and suffocating Peddy against her chest.

Kevin glanced over at Sarah, grunted, then continued.

“As I was saying, Uncle Metro was murdered right there.”

“Murdered?” screeched Sarah, throwing her hands to her mouth and sending Peddy plummeting to the soil.

“Shshshshshshshsh!  Shut up Sarah.  Please continue Kevin.”

“He was murdered by the “Wakaw Walker.”  Now, before you scream again, there’s something you need to know.  He only kills children who tell secrets and this is a secret.  Uncle Metro told a secret and now he’s buried in Maryvale.  You don’t want to join him do you?”

Sarah and Josh shook their heads in unison.

“Good.” Kevin said, taking a long draw on his cigarette before squeezing smoke through his beige teeth. “The rumor is that the Wakaw Walker roams the countryside stabbing little children with his birch wood stick, just like this one here.  Don’t touch!  It could be his.”

Sarah yanked her arm back as if it had just come in contact with fire.

“The Wakaw Walker was a boy named Danny who came home from fishing to see his trailer on fire.  He screamed: ‘Daddy, Daddy, Mommy, Mommy,’ but he heard nothing.  ‘Bobby?  Sally?’ He called for his brother and sister, but again it was only the fizzing and popping sounds of fire.  A feeling of deep dread came over him but suddenly he felt a strong urge to walk into the fire.  Are you following?”

Josh’s lower jaw was hanging open like a humpback whale feeding, while Sarah’s hands half covered her ears, Peddy resting like a corpse on her shoulder.

“He picked up a birch wood stick from the front yard and walked into the flames like he was sleepwalking or something.  The fire was so thick that he had to use the stick to poke around, then he hit something.  It was his Dad, but he was black and crispy like Baba’s over-done chicken.  Danny poked him and busted his ribcage like an egg.  Guts started oozing out everywhere.”

Sarah pulled her hands back to her mouth but this time Kevin thought she was about to puke, so with a sly grin he continued, staring straight into Sarah’s distressed eyeballs.

“The next body Danny poked was his sister, but she looked worse, like she was wearing a Halloween mask of a skeleton.  When he jabbed her, his stick got stuck in her eye socket.”

Sarah inhaled harshly then gagged.

“Whoa!” Josh said.

Kevin took another long satisfying drag on his cigarette then turned to Josh.

“Then he found his younger brother, Bobby, who looked like burnt toast.  His black arm crumbled into a cloud of dust when Josh reached down to help him up.”

“He… he… was dead too?” Sarah asked meekly.

“Poof!”  Kevin said kicking a mound of soil.

“What happened to his Mom?” Josh gulped.

“Well, this is where things got really bad.  Are you ready?”

At this point, Josh was mesmerized by Kevin, his hair that shook like a grass skirt and his cigarette that made an orange comet streak as he swung his hand around in the sullen moonless night. 

Sarah’s lower lip started quivering as she crushed Peddy against her face.

“Danny saw his mom come running from the kitchen, her hair and clothes engulfed in flames but still alive, screaming at him!”

“She was alive!” Sarah said, instantly relieved.

“Not for long!” Kevin responded abruptly, “Danny angled his birch wood stick towards her then impaled her through the neck.  She fell off the end of his stick like a burning rag, then lay dying in front of him, blood gushing out of the doughnut-sized hole.  She gurgled the name ‘Danny’ as he thrust the stick through her chest and into her beating heart.  He watched her boiling blood form a fiery puddle on the ground.”

“Eeeeyiw!” Josh said.

Sarah screamed into Peddy then ran away, crying, running through the grass like a spooked gopher.

Josh stood in silence for a minute, trying to understand what he was told.  He finally mustered the will to speak.

“So, what happened to Danny? I mean, how did he survive the fire?”

“Oh he didn’t.”  Kevin replied, “That’s what makes the Wakaw Walker so dangerous.  He was already dead and to this day he still walks around these farms murdering children with his cane because he doesn’t want anyone to know that he killed his Mom.  If you ever say anything about this to anyone, he will come for you too and he can’t be stopped.”

Kevin paused to look askance towards the house ablaze with orange light, laughter and Ukrainian patois emanating from inside.

“Who’s there?” Kevin whispered intensely towards the row of grain silos, his eyebrows angling down to form a V above his nose.

“What?” Josh said, rotating his head around like an owl.

“The Wakaw Walker.  I thought I just saw him.  It’s probably nothing.  The wind.  You should go.”

Josh, walked away slowly, got to the edge of the chicken coop then started running back towards the house.  He stopped next to the outhouse when he heard Sarah vomiting inside.

He looked back and saw Kevin glance down to his pocket then pull out the two remaining cigarettes.  He tossed one into his mouth then raked a match across the weathered boards and smiled in silence.  Josh’s horror turned to anger.  He felt betrayed that Kevin didn’t appreciate giving up one of his cigarettes so he fabricated the entire story to make them go away. He rapped on the outhouse door.

“Sarah,” he cursed. “C’mon we’re going back.  He’s a filthy liar.”

Sarah crept out, wiping her mouth with the sleeve on her bunny hug.

“What do you mean?” She asked timidly.

“He only told us that story because he wanted us to leave.  There’s no Wakaw Walker and Uncle Metro died when he was a baby, from the flu.  He wasn’t murdered.”

Josh turned around and started walking back towards the barn.  The night hung like a black curtain behind a bare light bulb dangling over the chicken coop.  Kevin stood there, leaning against the barn.  He took a long pleasing drag and exhaled a phantasm of white smoke into the darkness.  He reached down to the birch wood stick leaning against the barn beside him, swung it up and admired the end he had carved into a sharp point.

Josh stopped walking then looked over at Sarah.

“C’mon Sarah,” he said, “let’s go back to the house.”

Uncle George died in a house fire later that summer.  The cause: excessive alcohol consumption while smoking in bed.  Kevin’s remains were never found; “Presumed dead” was the official story.  Josh never told anyone about the Wakaw Walker, until now.