John Frum The Reluctant Messiah

Follow The Yellow Brick Road

 John's eyes met with a group of villagers dressed from head to toe in their ceremonial garb. By now he was more or less accustomed to being confronted with the most bizarre items of clothing and decoration. Chicken's feet necklaces were particularly popular as were porcupine quill hats, but this group had a whole new slant. These fashion-forward Beau Brummel's had all chosen to share a similar theme this time- a combination of vintage army surplus with Euro rave party necklaces and ring pops. And plenty of them. 

John couldn't help but feel a tad responsible this new trend, that he, or more accurately his spilled cargo might have been the source of their inspiration. One poor soul had so many glow-in-the-dark necklaces strung about his neck that his eyes were barely visible. But beneath it, John could make out a familiar shape just hanging around his neck.

"Jesus! Is that a real mortar round!?" John stepped back in disbelief.

"Silence!" the group's leader demanded.

Wordlessly he motioned to the men who then proceeded to grab each of John's arms and led him to a large rock. It wasn't threatening, no one ever really seemed genuinely threatening. They just never bothered with stuffy formalities. Like asking if grabbing you was OK. It was efficient in getting things done to say the least- for them.

The rock was covered in spattered remnants of washed-out white paint. At least that's what John hoped it was. Earlier he had seen a large number of Nazca Boobies, a name that stuck with him and every other giggling, pubescent fifth grader, and their droppings were particularly pungent. He wasn't keen on the idea of laying himself down in that. They stripped him naked and began to pelt him with the white ash, covering him from head to toe.

"What is up with this constant white-washing!?" he wondered. "Was this the official uniform of an ever-mistaken messiah?" he thought.

"Mutu!" yelled the group's leader.

The men immediately stopped and backed away, allowing the shop foreman to critique their work. John was hacking like an aging, Pennsylvania coal miner while trying to clear the ash from his eyes. Apparently satisfied with John's new look, the leader reached into a canvas gunny sack and began removing some of John's things. Among them, his cargo pants he'd been wearing on the day he "dropped in", his boots and more importantly, his magic box cell phone. 

He quickly put them on and placed the cell phone in one of the pockets. One of the men approached him with eyes lowered and arms outstretched holding a coconut shell filled with Kava. He motioned for John to take it. Luckily for John, there was much more shell than there was liquid but now resigned, John raised his shell to the crowd, muttered "cheers" and tossed it back like a shot of cheap tequila at a Super Bowl party.

"Ughhh," he shuddered.

They brought out a bright red chair with wide armrests adorned with the skulls of what looked like wild boar and draped in the skins they used to live in. John had become rather good at interpreting their actions and without prompting, walked over towards the chair, and sat in it. Only later would he find out that by sitting in it he had accepted the challenge and all that went with it. 

Without warning, two poles appeared and slid through the rings beneath the armrest. He was suddenly raised and being run down a dirt path deep into the jungle and away from the airfield. John looked back, quickly scanning the crowd, and caught a last glimpse of Sam's face as he bounced down the path. Sam, forever smiling, was still doing that, which gave John some much-needed assurance that things would be OK, whatever they had planned. 

He really didn't know Sam all that well, but John had always lived by the saying "judge a tree by the fruit that it bears" and well, Sam so far had produced some truly wholesome fruit. There was a kindness about him, an honesty that despite the language barrier, despite the cultural divide that told John that Sam was a man who could be trusted.