The Best of Gene Wolfe

I ran for the knife, the heletay Langi opened coconuts with. I thought of the boar, and by God I charged them. I must have been terrified. I do not remember, only slashing at something and someone huge that was and was not there, and in an instant was back again. The sting of the windblown sand, and then up to my arms in foaming water, and cutting and stabbing, and the hammerhead with my knife and my hand in his mouth.

We got them all out, Langi and I did. But Mark has lost his leg, and jaws three feet across had closed on Mary. That was Hanga himself, I feel sure.

 H

ere is what I think. I think he could only make one of us see him at a time and that was why he flashed in and out. He is real. (God knows he is real!) Not really physical the way a stone is, but physical in other ways that I do not understand. Physical like and unlike light and radiation. He showed himself to each of us, each time for less than a second.

 M

ary wanted children, so she stopped the pill and did not tell me. That was what she told me when I drove Rob’s Jeep out to North Point. I was afraid. Not so much afraid of Hanga (though there was that too) but afraid she would not be there. Then somebody said, “Banzai!” It was exactly as if he were sitting next to me in the Jeep, except that there was nobody there. I said, “Banzai,” back, and I never heard him again, but after that I knew I would find her and I waited for her at the edge of the cliff.

She came back to me when the sun touched the Pacific, and the darker the night and the brighter the stars, the more real she was. Most of the time it was as if she were really in my arms. When the stars got dim and the first light showed in the east, she whispered, “I have to go,” and walked over the edge, walking north with the sun to her right and getting dimmer and dimmer.

I got dressed again and drove back and it was finished. That was the last thing Mary ever said to me, spoken a couple of days after she died.

She was not going to get back together with me at all; then she heard how sick I was in Uganda, and she thought the disease might have changed me. (It has. What does it matter about people at the “end of the earth” if you cannot be good to your own people, most of all to your own family?)

 T

aking off.

We are airborne at last. Oh, Mary! Mary starlight!

 L

angi and I will take Adam to his grandfather’s, then come back and stay with Mark (Brisbane or Melbourne) until he is well enough to come home.

The stewardess is serving lunch, and for the first time since it happened, I think I may be able to eat more than a mouthful. One stewardess, twenty or thirty people, which is all this plane will hold. News of the shark attack is driving tourists off the island.

As you see, I can print better with my left hand. I should be able to write eventually. The back of my right hand itches, even though it is gone. I wish I could scratch it.

Here comes the food.

 A

n engine has quit. Pilot says no danger.

 H

e is out there, swimming beside the plane. I watched him for a minute or more until he disappeared into a thunderhead. “The tree is my hat.” Oh, God.

Oh my God!

My blood brother.

What can I do?

AFTERWORD

Some things you may have thought fantastic in this are simply true. There really were Japanese detachments left behind on various Pacific islands, marooned detachments that stayed right where they were until the local people turned on them and killed those left alive.

And there really are mysterious ruins on many South Pacific islands.

This story was done as a radio play by Lawrence Santoro, with Neil Gaiman playing Rev. Robbins. Gahan Wilson was our announcer—but when we closed our eyes it was Boris Karloff. There was weird music, and the whole production was far grander than I could have imagined. Thank you, Larry!

HAS ANYBODY SEEN JUNIE MOON?

 T

he reason I am writing this is to find my manager. I think her name is really probably June Moon or something, but nobody calls her that. I call her Junie and just about everybody else calls her Ms. Moon. She is short and kind of fat, with a big, wide mouth that she smiles with a lot and brown hair. She is pretty too. Real pretty, and that is how you can be sure it is her if ever you see her. Because short fat ladies mostly do not look as good as Junie and nobody thinks, Boy, I would really like to know her, like I did that time in England when we went in the cave so she could talk to that crabby old man from Tulsa because Junie believes in dead people coming back and all that.

She made me believe it too. You would too if you had been with Junie like I have.

So I am looking for a Moon just like she is, only she is the Moon that I am looking for. The one she is looking for is the White Cow Moon. That is an Indian name and there is a story behind it just like you would think, only it is a pretty dumb story so I am going to save it for later. Besides, I do not think it is true. Indians are nice people except for a couple I used to know, but they have all these stories that they tell you and then they laugh inside.

I am from Texas, but Junie is from Oklahoma.

That is what started her off. She used to work for a big school they have there, whatever it says on that sweatshirt she wears sometimes. There was this cranky old man in Tulsa that knew lots of stuff, only he was like an Indian. He would tell people, this was when he was still pretty young I guess, and they would never believe him even if it was true.

I have that trouble too, but this cranky old man got real mad and did something about it. He changed his name to Roy T. Laffer and after that he would tell things so they would not believe him or understand, and then laugh inside. Junie never said what the T. stood for, but I think I know.

Do you know what it says on the tea boxes? The ones with the man with the cap on them? It says honest tea is the best policy. I know what that means, and I think that cranky old Roy T. Laffer knew it too.