A stream of shouting natives spilled out of the bar, waving beer bottles and kicking at the fighters. Earless leaped to his feet and backed off to get a running attack at Bush Knife, who was rising to his feet. Earless hit him with a flying tackle as Bush Knife hacked at his ribs. A pickup truck full of policemen pulled into the parking lot and the crowd scattered into the dark and back into the bar, leaving

the fighters rolling in the dirt. Six policemen stood over the fighters, slamming them with riot batons until they both lay still. The police threw the fighters into the bed of their truck, climbed in after them, and drove off.

Tuck stood stunned. He’d never seen violence that sudden and raw in his life. Ten more seconds and he would have been in the middle of it instead of backpedaling across the parking lot.

“Should be okay to go in now,” said the voice from the dark.

Tuck looked up, but he couldn’t even see the cigarette glowing now. “Thanks,” he said. “You sure it’s okay?”

“Watch your ass, kid,” said the voice, and this time it seemed to come from above him. Tucker spun around, nearly wrenching his neck, but he couldn’t see anyone. He shook off the confusion and headed into the bar.

The skeletal dog crawled from under a truck, seized the severed ear from the dust, and slunk into the shadows. “Good dog,” said the voice out of the dark. The dog growled, ready to protect its prize. A young man, perhaps twenty-four, dark and sharp-featured, dressed in a gray flight suit, stepped out of the shadows and bent to the dog, who lowered its head in submission. The young man reached out as if to pet the dog, then grabbed its head and quickly snapped its neck. “Now, that’s better, ain’t it, ya little mook?”

The bar was as dingy inside as it was out. Yellow bug bulbs gave off just enough light to navigate around drunken islanders and a beat-up pool table. An old Wurlitzer bounced American country western songs off the metal walls. A khaki-wrapped hulk, Jefferson Pardee, sweated over a Budweiser at the bar. Tucker slid in next to him.

Pardee looked up with red-rimmed eyes. “You just missed all the excitement.”

“No, I saw it. I was outside.”

Pardee signaled for two more beers. “I thought I told you not to go out at night.”

“I’m leaving for Yap in the morning and I need to ask you some questions.”

Pardee grinned like a child given a surprise favor. “I’m at your service, Mr. Tucker.”

Tuck weighed his need for information against the ignominy of telling Pardee about the crash. He pulled the crumpled fax paper from his pants pocket and set it on the bar before the reporter.

Pardee lit a cigarette as he read. He finished reading and handed the fax back to Tucker. “It’s not unusual to have changes in travel plans out here. But what’s this about bacteria? I thought you were a pilot.”

Tucker took Pardee though the crash and the mysterious invitation from the doctor, including Jake’s theories about drug smuggling. “I think the bacteria stuff was just to throw off anyone who got hold of the fax.”

“You’re right there. But it’s not drugs. There aren’t any drugs produced in these islands except kava and betel nut, and nobody wants those except the islanders. Oh, they grow a little pot here and there, but it’s consumed here by the gangsta wanna-bes.”

“Gangsta wanna-bes?” Tuck asked.

“A few of the islanders have satellite TV. The people who look like them on TV are gangsta rappers. The old rundown buildings they see in the hood look like the buildings here. Except here they’re new and run-down. It’s a Coke and a smile and baby formula their babies can’t digest. It’s packaged junk food shipped here without expiration dates.”

“What in the hell are you talking about, Pardee?”

“They buy into the advertising bullshit that Americans have become immune to. It’s like the entire Micronesian crescent is one big cargo cult. They buy the worst of American culture.”

“Are you saying I’m the worst America has to offer?”

Pardee patted his shoulder and leaned in close. Tuck could smell the sour beer sweat coming off the big man. “No, that’s not what I’m saying. I don’t know what’s going on out on Alualu, but I’m sure it’s no big deal. Evil tends to grow in proportion to the profit potential, and there’s just nothing out there that’s worth a shit. Go to your island, kid. And get in touch with me when you figure out what’s going on. In the meantime, I’ll do some checking.”

Tuck shook the reporter’s hand. “I will.” He threw some money on the bar and started to leave. Pardee called to him as he reached the door.

“One more thing. I checked around. I heard that there’s some armed men on Alualu. And there was another pilot that came through here a few months ago. Nobody’s seen him. Be careful, Tucker.”

“And you weren’t going to tell me that?”

“I had to be sure that you weren’t part of it.”

Tuck’s first thought of the new morning was I’ve got to catch a plane. His second was, My dick’s broke.

It happens that way. One has a “private” irritation—hemorrhoids, menstrual cramps, swollen prostate, yeast infection, venereal disease, bladder infection—and no matter how hard the mind tries to escape the gravity of the affliction, it is inexorably pulled back into a doomed orbit of circular thought. Anything that distracts from the irritation is an irritation. Life is an irritation.

Inside Tuck’s head sounded like this: I have to catch a plane. I’m pissing fire. I need a shower. Check the stitches. No water. It looks infected. Probably lep-rosy. I hate this place. I’m sure it’s infected. When does the water come on? It’s going to turn black and fall off. Whoever heard of a place with satellite TV but no running water? I’ll never fly again. I’m thirty years old and I have no job. And no dick. And who in the hell was that guy in the parking lot last night? I smell like rancid goat meat. Probably the infection. Gangrene. I can’t believe there’s no running water. I’m going to die. Die, die, die.

Not a pleasant place to be: inside Tuck’s head.

Outside Tuck’s head the shower came on; brown, tepid water ran down his body in gutless streams; pipes shuddered and trumpeted as if trying to extrude a vibrating moose. The soap, a brown minibar made from local copra, lathered like slate and smelled of hibiscus flowers and suffering dog.

Tuck dried himself on a translucent swath of balding terry cloth and slipped into his clothes, three days saturated with tropical travel funk. He shouldered his pack, noticing that the zippered pockets had

been tampered with and not giving a good goddamn, then trudged down to the front desk.

Rindi was sleeping on the desk. Tuck woke him, made sure that the room had been paid by the doctor as promised, then stood in the tropical sun and waited as Rindi brought the car around.

It seemed like a very long ride to the airport. Rindi ran over a chicken, then got out and fought an old woman who claimed the chicken, each tugging on a leg, testing the tensile strength of poultry to its limit before Rindi busted a kung fu move that secured his dinner and left the old woman sitting in the dust with a sacred chicken foot in her hand. (The old woman was from the island of Tonoas, where magic chickens were once called up by a sorcerer to level a mountain for a temple, the Hall of the Magic Chickens.)

At the airport Tuck gave Rindi a dollar for the cab ride, which was twice the going rate, and waved off the bloody handshake the aspiring gangsta offered. “Keep the peace, home boy,” Tuck said.