Cheerney sat at the wheel, fingers drumming out the rhythm to Jethro Tull’s “Aqualung” as he drove down the road. It was an essential part of his listening canon. He never paid mind to the words of this song, just the rhythm and the tone. There were very few songs he really listened to. To him, people who listened to the lyrics were pretentious. Rhythm and tone were good enough for him.
Kaneohe was quiet today. It was an odd thing, befitting this odd town, a mix of both the fresh and modern, and the old and run down. It was eclectic, reminiscent of Honolulu, though thankfully on a much smaller scale. Cheerney avoided going to Honolulu if he could. The windward side was where he liked it best. It was an odd place, like no other locale in the world. And there was no other place in the world that Cheerney wanted to be.
He pulled to the side of the road beside the market. Fresh fruits and vegetables sat on tables all around. Cheerney opened the door of the car and turned off the engine. As the sound of the music faded away, the smell of shrimp and steaks from nearby trucks drifted to his nose. Cheerney began to salivate. It was a delicious smell. If he had any money left after buying what he needed at the market, he would have to get himself something to eat.
Cheerney locked the car and walked into the market. He began to shop, picking up fruit in his leathery, ancient hands, looking them over carefully. He was a picky consumer. Age had given him this trait. Years of existence had caused him to be particular about what he chose to spend his money on. He’d been played one too many times, and now he was careful.
All around him the other people wandered through the market. They were a diverse mix. A Hispanic boy and a white boy looked over some bananas. An Oriental mother and her teenage daughter chatted as they shopped, their voices sounding like excited birds. An Oriental man, more subdued than the women, was listening to a small, red-haired man talk with a black woman about how the school district was going to hell in a hand basket.
Cheerney did not pay them much mind. HIs focus was upon what he was doing at the time, another product of all his experience. Distractions were bad. There were no two ways about it. So Cheerney kept his mind upon the activity at the moment.
As his hand reached for a particularly juicy looking tomato, it brushed another hand. Cheerney looked about, startled by this unexpected human contact. The hand belonged to the Oriental teenage girl. For a moment, the two of them looked at each other.
And suddenly, like a dark cloud rushing, images came to Cheerney’s mind. All at once, he was taken back to another time, another place. It was the hot jungle, in a hut lit by the faded light of a lantern. The girl was there, but she wasn’t, not really. It was another Oriental girl, dressed in rags with eyes that were chock full of fear.
He was holding an M16. Only, he wasn’t anymore, because he had put it beside the door of the hut. The girl backed away but he came forward, came lurching towards her with out-stretched hands and a leer on his face. His mind was consumed with one singular emotion, and she knew it. She tried to turn away but he grabbed her, forced her down, and began to strip off her clothes with grimy, maggot-like fingers.
And suddenly, Cheerney was back at the market. He was staring at the Oriental girl, mouth agape, breathing heavily. That feeling was rising up in him again, like it had so long ago. The girl seemed to know it, to know what was going through Cheerney’s mind, for a vague expression of disgust and horror moved across her face.
Cheerney turned away quickly and headed back to his car, dropping the fruits he had been carrying on the way there. He struggled with the keys as he unlocked the car door and got inside. For a moment, Cheerney sat there with his hands on the wheel, hoping the feeling would go away. It didn’t. So he turned on the vehicle to drive away. For the first time, Cheerney heard the lyrics to “Aqualung”. He shut off the music in anger.
