Tales of the South Pacific - James A. Michener [128]
"Why did you join the tribe?" Fry asked.
"Oh, some fellows out here read and some carve boats, and some go nuts. Me? I sort of like to fool around with people."
"What did you do in civilian life?"
"Sold cars."
"Pretty successful, I guess."
"Made a very good livin'. Say, Mr. Fry, would you like to see the two tusks I got when I joined the tribe?"
"Yes, I would," Tony said. "Let's pull in up the road a bit."
Billis led Tony to a small shack which had been fitted up by the Sea-Bees as a recreation hut. It had every known kind of machine or gadget that could be stolen, borrowed, or ripped off a crashed plane. "Where'd you get all this junk?" Tony asked.
"One place and another," Billis replied truthfully. Fry laughed. The room was a monument to the spirit that made America great. "I wouldn't change a splinter of it," Tony said to himself.
From a corner Billis produced a grisly object. It was the lower jawbone of a wild boar. Jungle ants had eaten away the flesh, leaving only the whitened bones, teeth, and the two curving, circular tusks. They protruded upward from where the lower eyeteeth would naturally have been. But they were not teeth. No, cased in enamel they were pure ivory, like the tusks of elephants.
Fry looked at the jawbone for several minutes. Then he asked a cautious question. "Billis? If this is the lower jawbone, as you say. Look at those tusks. They grow right back into the jawbone. That one over there makes a complete circle and grows back through its own root."
"That's the most valuable kind. Of the one-circle tusks, that is."
"But how does it do that?"
"Grows back through the pig's face," Billis said nonchalantly. "That's barbarous!"
"Very difficult to do. Most pigs die when the tusk starts growing back into their face. Most of those that live die when it starts to grow back into the jawbone. The natives have eight or nine different prayers to a pig to beg him to keep living until the tusk makes a perfect circle. Would you like to hear one?"
Billis grabbed the jawbone and started a weird incantation to the dead pig. "Put it down," Fry said. "The damned pig must live in agony."
"Oh, the pig!" Billis said. "I was thinkin' of the Maries. You see, men don't raise the pig. The Mary raises the pig. If she lets it die, she gets a beating. Yes, the pig. It must hurt him pretty bad. The last four years must be real painful."
"Four years?"
"Yeah, it takes about seven years to grow a good tusk. It begins to enter the face about the fourth year. This here pig lived about five years after the tusks started through the bone."
"How horrible!" Fry said.
"Seems funny to me," Billis said. "But everyone I show this to always thinks about the pig. What about the people? They was mighty proud of this porker. It was the best pig in the area. It was sacred. Men came from all the villages around to see it and worship it. Two tusks right through the face. One of them right through the root of the tusk itself. That's mighty sacred as pigs go!"
"You have an interesting time out here, don't you?" Fry asked, somewhat sick at his stomach.
"Yeah, I do. Uncle Sam says I got to stay out here. But he don't say I got to be bored!"
"I'll tell you, Billis. You see about that trip to Vanicoro. I'd like to check into this."
"Maybe we can get a boat somewhere."
"If you can't, nobody can."
"I may have to use your name. That OK?"
"Get the boat. You know how it's done." Fry smiled at his fat friend.
"Mind if I ride down to the mess hall with you, sir?"
"Come ahead, big dealer." Tony was unprepared for what happened that night at dinner. He showed the polished tusk to his fellow officers at mess and Dr. Benoway gasped. "Oh! I'd like to buy that from you, Fry!" he cried.
"It cost fifteen bucks," Tony replied.
"I don't care. Will you sell it?"
"What do you