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WHEN YOU have a real treasure map in your hand, all sorts of thoughts go through your head. The first is, Don’t lose the map. The second is, Hey, what happened to the map? The third is, Oh, yeah, I gave it to Don. The fourth is, Hey, where’d Don go? The fifth is, Oh, there he is.
A dead bum was being eaten by vultures. Another bum held up a sign, See My Friend Get Eaten By Vultures—2 Paleekas.
I noticed things I had never noticed before, like the dew on the spiderweb and the blood on the giant spiderweb.
I was aware, for the first time, of all the meth pipes in the weeds and all the used condoms on the sidewalk.
In the jungle you come to realize that death is a part of life. The bat eats the moth. Then the giant moth sucks the life out of the bat. Then the monkey eats the giant moth, pulling the wings off first, because he doesn’t like that part. Then the monkey gets a parasite from the moth that slowly eats his brain. It’s all part of the beautiful circle of life.
I WOKE up screaming, “There are spiders all over my face!” like I do every morning. But this time there really were spiders all over my face.
Just to show off, Ponzari started telling us the history of the Golden Monkey. As soon as I heard the word history I stopped listening. I started listening again when I heard the words missionary position.
If Superman ever visited Tarzan, at first they’d get along, but then Superman would finally have to say, “How can you live like this?”
WE SAILED on and on, into the unknown. How strange that we have explored the moon and the other planets and yet we know so little about Hawaii.
Towering above everything was the Great Temple. That was where the sacrifices were held. Like most advanced cultures, they had made the huge leap to killing people.
THAT NIGHT, around the campfire, Don asked me what I was going to do with my share of the treasure. “You’ll think it’s silly,” I said. He promised he wouldn’t, so I told him. “I’ve always wanted a big top hat with a little cannon that would come out, fire, then go back in the hat.” He looked at me for a moment, and nodded.
I went back to the boat and got a fishing net. I don’t like to catch a girl in a net just to meet her, but if I have to I will.
Pirates and boat pieces were blasted sky-high. A few pirates were able to maintain their dignity in midair, but most were flipping and flailing out of control. After they hit the water, the alligators that had been following us made short work of them. It was a horrible sight. And after a while, to be honest, it got kind of monotonous. Chomp-chomp-scream, chomp-chomp-scream. We get it.
You can’t help thinking about the families of the pirates. Every night a pirate’s “old lady” would be patiently waiting for him at the back door. But never again would she hear the gentle tap of his peg leg on the porch, or hear him blaspheme when he saw the dog chewing on his spare peg.
I was on a crashing airplane. The old man next to me was praying. Down and down we went. I started hitting the old man with a rolled-up magazine, yelling, “Pray harder, old man!”
The palm trees began flapping around like Grandpa when the horseflies got him.
I looked around for some bugs to eat. If you get hungry enough, believe me, you will eat bugs. My friend Jerry found that out the hard way. He was slow getting the snacks out for a party once and we ate his butterfly collection.
A hail of sharp sticks stuck in his chest. “AAAAAGHHHHHEE!” he screamed, dropping his gun. He twisted, just in time to get another volley of sticks in the back, then twisted again to get some more in the front. He lurched back and forth. A couple of late sticks bounced off his head. He looked like a porcupine, only not a regular porcupine—a porcupine of sticks.
