Wolohu’s Sunday School
by
Wahanui
Preface
This stuff actually happened, sort of. What follows is an account of a delusional madness that befell the valley of Hi’ilawe on the island of Hawai’i in the early 19th century. The sickness had arrived with a shipwreck, a young man named Bennie, and it grew malignant in the mind of a syphilitic demagogue named Wolohu, who misconstrued the Christianity preached by its resident missionary, Bertram, as a cargo cult that cried out for new leadership. Its treasures, piled high in San Francisco, awaited delivery to the Hawaiians of Hi’ilawe, but Bertram had lost his touch, and Wolohu was determined to prevail in the Battle for Christmas.
The madness persisted into modern times, when a crass developer, Avery Bagwell, stumbled into possession of the remains of Captain James Cook, who had made himself persona non-grata with his Hawaiian hosts at Kealakekua Bay on that same island, and been eaten, sort of, for his trouble. For the next thirty-some years, the remains of England’s Great Navigator–his head, actually, had been watched over faithfully, at a heiau deep in the forest of Hi’ilawe, by Waha, a priest who believed them to be the bones of the god Lono. One day, unable to constrain his curiosity, Waha opened the basket, and seeing that he had been defrauded, he cursed the head of this white devil and pronounced his anathema upon those who had profaned his sacred trust, and their descendants, in perpetuity. It proved a fine madness indeed.
*Author’s Note: The Journal of Molesworth Detmold in Chapter 1 has been adapted from the Journal of Captain Cook’s Last Voyage, to the Pacific Ocean on Discovery, Performed in the Years 1776, 1777, 1778, 1779, and 1780 and The Three Voyages of Captain Cook Round the World. Vol. V. Being the First of the Third, by James Cook … just so you wouldn’t think I was making any of this up. You have it straight from the Old Man himself. ~ Wahanui