When John Frum Came

by Bill Schroeder

  “What mean blessings?” Yani said.

  “Tell them blessings are God’s gifts,” the minister said.

  “Bad fella kill Jesus, maybe his brother, Manup. But Akambep angry with Manup and make Jesus live again. White fella call him Jesus, Blackfella know his name Kilibob. Witman God angry with Manup not give him gifts. He give Manup bow and arrow for Blackfella. He give Jesus rifle for white fella.

  “Picture show Jesus go up through clouds to sky. Jesus go to Heaven see ancestors. Make knives ... tinkens. He live with father. Big Man Duff say Blackfella who good friend of Jesus go to Heaven, too. Good friend of Jesus get gifts here now — tinkens, knives, tools.”

  Although he could not understand Yani’s words in Booga-booga, Dr. McDuff was pleased with the natives’ rapt attention. His message was attracting more attention than he had hoped for. He told Yani to invite the men to join them in building a new church with the stained-glass window.

  “They get blessing for work on church?” he asked.

  “Of course, God’s blessings are upon all who help to build the church and worship him. I will teach them the proper form of worship — prayers, hymns. They will become Christians.”

  “Big Man Duff say you work on church. He give you God’s gifts. I have seen big knives, hatchets, chop knife (he did not have a word for machete). He teach you magic words to say like him. Tell ancestors in Heaven send you tinkens.”

  There was almost a cheer that went up from the assemblage. “Blackfella say you speak magic words. They do what you want.”

  “They’re not magic words, Yani,” the minister corrected. “They’re prayers and hymns. Tell them to be here tomorrow after swim time, and we will start building the Church of God’s Triumph.”

  ***

  The morning dip in the lagoon, usually an extended social time, was one of the shortest ever spent by the men of Christ’s Despair. Everyone was anxious to find out what kinds of gifts could be had from Big Man Duff in return for working on his church.

  Pastor McDuff (as he now wanted to be known and addressed) had to get Yani’s zeal under control, lest he give away all the implements during the first hour. The men who worked for Thompson were accustomed to checking out one steel tool at a time for the day’s work, and then checking it back in at the end of the day. This was all done under the watchful eye of the plantation manager himself. When Yani gave the first few men shovels and picks with no strings attached, a thrill of excitement ran through the crowd.

  “Are you a friend of Jesus?” Yani asked the first few men. If they said yes, he handed them a shovel, or a pick and said, “Then Jesus gives you a tool from Heaven to use in building the church.” The natives read an implied promise that they could keep the tool even when the work was done.

  Pastor McDuff watched and said. “I think we only need about three men each with a pick and shovel. What we need mostly is men to cut down trees to build walls. Open the box of hatchets, and give them out. I think two hands worth of hatchets will be enough.”

  Through a laborious process, Yani counted out ten hatchets by lining them all up on a table, and touching each one with a different finger. When there was a tool to correspond to each finger, he knew he had enough. Now, the competition among the potential workers became somewhat heated. It was clear to them that there would not be enough implements to go around. These were far more valuable tools than the shovels, so some of the friends of Jesus who were initially happy with their shovels wanted to trade them in or give them to someone else to get a cutting tool instead.

  McDuff did not understand what the squabbling was about and asked Yani what was going on. When he explained the situation, the white man said, “Tell them everyone will get a chance to work on the church. Today we only need ten men to cut down trees, and six to dig a foundation. They can come back tomorrow.”

  “Pastor Duff say Jesus need two hands worth of friends cut trees. He give more gifts tomorrow,” Yani said. Someone got hit with the flat side of a shovel when he tried to examine it too closely without the owner’s permission.

  “Jesus does not like fighting!” McDuff yelled. “Tell them there will be no fighting. They will be punished by God for fighting.”

  “Jesus says you cannot be his friend if you fight. Jesus like Blackfella work, not fight. When you bad fella God take gifts back.” Pick and shovel owners almost hugged their tools protectively. They had no desire to part with these treasures under any circumstances.

  Yani was left to decide who would get the tree felling equipment. McDuff assumed the selection would be made on the basis of who was the strongest or most physically fit. There was a lot of hard work to be done. While the pastor might have had misgivings, the natives were not surprised when Yani chose men who had young wives and would be willing to share them with him if they were given hatchets.

  It made sense to everyone present, but it never occurred to McDuff that this was the situation. At this stage of his Christian moral development, Yani was not aware that the minister would have any problem with it.

  ___

  Once the chosen few had their hatchets in hand, Yani and McDuff led the band to a section of the island where there were numerous coconut palms. McDuff lined up his workers and began to sing a hymn. He explained to Yani that on his signal the men would chant a sort of chorus as they marched through the jungle. He sang:

  “Come to the Church in the Wildwood,

  Come to the church in the dell...”

  On cue they all sang,

  “Come... come ... come ... come ...”

  Not knowing the second verse, McDuff sang the first again, and pranced alongside of the single file of workers like an animated bandleader. The jungle resounded with, “Come... come ... come...” as they entered the plantation portion of the island.

  Since he had no idea of building or architecture, Pastor McDuff had visualized his “church in the Wildwood” as being built along the lines of a log cabin. The palms were relatively straight and could be felled by the men with the steel hatchets. They could be notched and stacked pioneer style as he had seen many times in books and magazines about the American western frontier. He did not see the irony in introducing to this Equatorial Island a method of construction believed to be invented by the Iroquois Indians in upper New York State to survive bitter winters.

  McDuff surveyed the jungle and made an “X” with his own hatchet on each tree he thought would be suitable. However, the men did not fall immediately to work and complained to the Churchboy. “What’s the trouble, Yani?” he said.

  “Big Man Thompson tell them no cut down trees. They afraid him,” Yani said.

  McDuff was annoyed. “Well, I’m sure Mr. Thompson doesn’t own every tree on the island. You tell them I say OK. They cut trees I mark. Mr. Thompson does not tell me what to do. He is not Big Man to God.

  “Yani, tell the men to kneel and I will say a prayer,” he said almost defiantly.

  “Pastor speak to God. Everybody on knees,” Yani commanded. They followed the direction obediently.

  “Oh, God, bless this forest of trees which Thou hast given life. Bless these men who are about to do Your work. Help them to achieve their labors in Your service to build the Church of God’s Triumph. We ask this in the name of Your only son, Jesus Christ.”

  The minister made the sign of benediction over the kneeling men, and signaled them to rise.

  Yani told them, “God says friends of Jesus cut down trees pastor mark. He speak magic words. Protect you from Thompson.”

  ___

  In a manner of minutes, the tribesmen started hacking away at the tree-trunks like men possessed. They loved their new hatchets, and each selected his own tree. The din of the chopping did not go unnoticed by Jeremy Thompson who was walking through the jungle on a nearby path. He stopped and listened to the noise. Then, once he recognized what it was he broke into a run toward the hacking frenzy.

  He reached the scene just in time to see the first large tree sag, then crash
into the underbrush. The men all cheered, and shouted encouragement to each other. He was stunned ... He was speechless ... He was outraged. He unslung the double-barreled, 12-gauge shotgun he was carrying and fired into the air.

  The large gun’s report echoed through the trees. Everyone stopped work, almost in mid-chop. All eyes turned to Thompson whose face was so distorted with anger that he looked as though he might explode with more force than his shotgun.

  “What are you doing?” he screamed in English, then immediately repeated himself in Booga-booga. “Put down those hatchets, NOW!”

  Several of the men who had worked for him allowed their hatchets to fall to the ground. But the one closest to Thompson was not one of his boys and clung to his. The white man turned to him and said, “I told you to put that hatchet down!” and made a move toward him to take the tool away from him.

  Not intimidated, the native stepped backward and raised the hatchet above his head in a war-like stance, ready to use it on Thompson if he moved.

  “Stop!” another voice called out in Booga-booga. “Jesus no like fight.” It was Yani.

  “Mr. Thompson, back off before he kills you. Don’t be a fool,” said McDuff.

  The adversaries stood facing each other for a long minute, when the minister thought that discretion was about to overcome valor, Thompson took a step backward and fired his shotgun at the man’s feet. One of the buckshot pellets caught him in the foot and he screamed and fell in a heap.

  McDuff rushed forward to come to the man’s aid. “What have you done? He was going to put the hatchet down.”

  “Bullshit! He was going to sink it into my skull,” Thompson said excitedly. “Besides, if you ever back down to these bastards once, they’ll never do what you tell them again.”

  McDuff examined the wound of the shrieking man, and found that it was a clean shot that went all the way through. Yani translated the necessary directions and a group of men took him back to the village where he could be treated.

  Ignoring McDuff, Thompson addressed his boys in their native tongue. “You know it is taboo to cut down any of my trees. How dare you take an ax to one of my coconut palms?”

  “It OK,” one man explained. “We cut down trees for Jesus. Big Man Duff talk to God. God say OK.”

  Thompson turned his shotgun in the direction of McDuff. “What kind of cock and bull story have you been feeding these people ... You talked to God and he said it was OK to cut down my trees?”

  McDuff was now angry also. “They’re not your trees, Mr. Thompson. God put them here for all of us. I don’t believe they were put here for your exclusive benefit.”

  “The hell they weren’t! The fucking, bloody Germans put them here 20 years ago. They don’t grow here naturally. They were planted by the Huns and purchased — every last one of them — by Pacific Copra Limited. As their representative here, I am responsible for them. Each is worth a fortune for the copra they produce, and you just did a few thousand quid worth of damage.”

  McDuff didn’t know what to say. He feared that Thompson was perfectly right, and he had just committed another blunder. “Yani,” he said, “Tell the men to stop cutting the trees. We will go back to the church and decide what to do next.”

  Yani evaluated the situation rather quickly and told the men, “Big Man Thompson not a friend of Jesus. Him say trees taboo. No cut down. Pastor go back to church talk to God. We go, too.”

  Thompson was gloating more than smiling now. “All my boys get out of here and go to my Big House. We have real work to do,” he ordered.

  The men were talking among themselves and picking their hatchets up from the ground where many of them had dropped them. “You better get your axes back from your boys, Reverend, or you’ll never see them again.”

  “They’re not my axes. I gave them to the men for helping me build the church,” he said in a downcast manner. “I’m sure they will find other uses for them. I need to find out how to build in the native manner — without coconut palms.”

  Thompson’s eyes were wide with shock again. “Do you mean to stand there and tell me that you gave them those tools just on a promise that they would help you build that church of yours?”

  “Of course. They are the core of my new congregation. They’re not employees. They are working with me, not for me. We are building a church out of the love of God,” McDuff said.

  “You gave them those hatchets?” he said again.

  “That’s what I said. I trust these people and they trust me. Together we will change the name of this place from Christ’s Despair to God’s Triumph.”

  “And just how do you expect me to get any of them to work for me? I have had a bad enough time coming up with something to use as payment to get their worthless arses to do anything but kill pigs and screw their women. I finally came up with hatchets and knives and now you give them away free for attending Sunday school.”

  McDuff cowered in the face of Thompson’s rage. The angry man snatched the hatchet from McDuff’s hand. “Let me see that damn thing,” he said, and examined it more closely.

  “Why this thing is industrial grade! Are all of them?” he said.

  “They’re all the same, if that’s what you mean.”

  “That’s exactly what I mean. They’ll never wear out. I give them cheap Jap shit that breaks in six months, and won’t hold an edge. That way they have to come back at some future date to work for me again to get a replacement. With these things, they’ll be handing them down from father to son.”

  Chapter 12

  When Thompson got back to the Big House he expected to find his boys all standing below the verandah, waiting to be chewed out for their misguided allegiances. But, to his dismay, there were only six men standing in a group under the trees. They were all older men, and although he had no way of knowing it at the time, they were also ones who had not received any of the tools that had been given out.

  He didn’t bother mounting the steps to his house, but went directly to the small knot of laborers. He felt the occasion called for a few words of humiliation and sounded the depths of his Booga-booga vocabulary for insults. He told them they were all rubbish men, pig-fuckers, and catchers of dead fish. And without realizing it, he was right. After the tree-cutting episode in the jungle, the elders of the village decided that only rubbish men would work on the plantation. Real men would become friends of Jesus and get food and tools from the Witman churchfella by going to his church.

  Thompson was fuming after he sent his few workers out to collect coconuts for the day. He walked around the grounds surrounding the house, muttering and swearing to himself. One of the dingo dogs that should have known better began to run after him yapping and nipping at his heels. In a fit of anger, he turned and let the poor mutt have both barrels of the 12-gauge, leaving it in a bloody mess for the women to clean up.

  Some of the shot bounced harmlessly off the petrol-driven electric generator in the shed behind the house. Suddenly his face lit up. “That’s it,” he said. “I’ll show that Bible-thumpin’ son-of-a-bitch.”

  He walked over to the rusty machine and cranked it over until it caught. He usually hated its noise, but this time it was music. Once he was certain it would stay running, he went inside the Big House and sat down in front of the two-way wireless set-up.

  He adjusted a few knobs, picked up the microphone and began transmitting. “Despair to Island Patrol,” he said in a voice he reserved for such occasions. “Despair to Island Patrol. Do you read me?”

  He kept it up for almost ten minutes before he got a crackling of static mixed with a voice. “Island Patrol to Despair. Island Patrol to Despair. We read you, but the transmission is bad. Can you hear me?”

  “This is Thompson on Christ’s Despair. Who’s this?”

  “Hey, Jeremy, this is Gale on board the Wombat.”

  “Howdy, mate. Bad static here too. Keep talking.”

  “We’re headed toward your island, anyway. Big news.”

  “Big n
ews?” he said, “What’s going on?”

  “The war in Europe is coming our way. Hitler has ordered British merchant ships to be considered warships. We’re worried about the Fenestra.”

  Thompson was surprised. “Surely there ain’t no German Navy vessels hereabouts?” he said.

  The next few words were broken up by the static, but Thompson heard Gale say, “...Japs joined Axis ... give you details tomorrow. What’s going on there? How come ... the wireless, anyway.”

  Before communication died completely, Gale heard Thompson say, “McDuff is arming the natives...”

  When he lost contact he told Mr. Wembly, “It sounds like we are getting there just on time. I think he’s got a serious problem with the natives.”

  ***

  Pastor McDuff and Yani returned to the church clearing and found that no work had been done on the foundation. Although the tribesmen were very happy with their picks and shovels, they had not been told what to do with them. They weren’t sure how to use them, and Yani had never seen either tool before he found them in the packing cases.

  Even McDuff’s experience was second-hand. Members of the McDuff clan had ceased using picks and shovels a generation before his. Being friends of Andrew Carnegie, they had moved on to financial investment involving the railroads at the turn of the century. However, Moses gave a brief demonstration of what he had seen the Irish day laborers do with them in and around Cambridge, Massachusetts. But, after five minutes of working in the tropical sun, he remembered other obligations.

  “You seem to have the idea, Yani,” he said. “Have them make a hole for the foundation from here to there,” he said marking the beginning and end with stones. “I need to be alone and pray over the problem with Mr. Thompson.”

  He went to his little corner of the unfinished church, and sat on his bed. He leaned forward and buried his face in his hands. In tears, he prayed silently for an answer to the situation that was overwhelming him a little more with every passing hour.

  He heard a rhythmic beating of native drums from the direction of the village. An echoing answer came from a point halfway up the mountain ridge. It went up and down the shoreline, until there seemed to me drum messages everywhere.