The Legend of Hok
The Legend of Hok
by Henry N. Manney III
It was in that little bar on the Rue des Poux, sitting with one of the Bataclan dancers, when I must have winced a little bit pouring her another glass of Sancerre. How deed you hurt your shouldair? Trowing tings at Dagmar again? Casually adjusting my Bond Street ascot inside my Poirier shirt inside my “Crasher” Mozart jacket, I snapped my fingers at the garcon for more foie gras before diffidently answering O it is just a souvenir of my search for the lost city of Gah in the Brazilian jungle, a very long way up the Amazon. Oo la la she breathed, her gold-digging little eyes as bright as fly buttons . . .
A bloody long way up the Amazon it is in the best of times which of course it wasn’t what with 100° heat and 100% humidity, mosquitoes as big as turkey buzzards, snakes like your average gas station hose, spiders large enough to catch tapirs and snuffly noises outside the firelight’s perimeter. My porters disappeared with everything worthwhile, including the Spode dinner service, leaving me only a rusty cutlass the first time one of them got a poisoned arrow through the buns and the high-class launch we were promised turned out to be an old aluminum canoe with a corroded Husqvarna outboard for motive power. The cutlass did double or even triple duty; paddle, plug wrench, fork, knife, and even flyswat. But it was on to Gah, puffing up the green-grown Amazon and occasionally carving my way through a wall of human flesh with the cutlass, dragging my canoe behind me. The last of these attacks from the local abos became rather tricky and had it not been for my trusty Cycle World (advt) enduro jacket I should not have been in the Rue des Poux. As they were closing in upon me, brandishing their wallaboreebies and I closed in upon them, still carving my way through a wall of human flesh and dragging my canoe behind me, a ragged figure with a long white beard emerged from the underbrush and spying my jacket, cried “IMSHI”. The natives scattered. Motioning me to follow him, he turned up the river bank and within a few paces we were at his home, a dilapidated old river bungalow up on posts of stone. Curiously carved stone. Could it be?
Following the custom of the jungle, he invited me inside and abandoning the canoe for once, I accepted. Dusk was falling and the fascinating smells drifting from the kitchen almost made me faint, as I had eaten only some raw uggapugga Tuesday last if you don’t count mosquitoes of course. Presently a native girl appeared, presumably his wife as she had whip marks all up and down her back, and first setting a steaming dish on the table, returned with several bottles of homemade beer before retiring to the kitchen. Even as she flickered her oblique eyes at me in warning, I noticed the strange gold ornament on a thong around her scruffy neck. Could it be??
The old settler uttered not a word besides an occasional belch, satisfying himself with trying to drink up all the beer, and his only sign of life was to produce a tattered copy of Vol 1 No 1 of Cycle World before falling insensible. The girl appeared again, threw the plates out the window (provoking a terrible scrabbling outside) and without a word showed me to a mat on the floor before blowing out the hissing kerosene lamp. Much much later I was awakened by a feeling of someone standing over me and prying open my lids, perceived dimly the slim form indeed standing over me. Clad only in a few strings of Sao Bacalao bottle caps, the gold bauble, and a good half inch of petrified frying grease, she was a provocative figure indeed in the moonlight. Putting her finger to her lips, she took my hand and led me out into the jungle, down a creeper-infested path that would have made Sammy Miller think and along a draw that gradually became wider and wider. Suddenly I noticed that I could hear footfalls after an age of slipping in Amazonian mud and dropping to my knees, I felt paving stones . . . carved paving stones! Could it be??? Stumbling onwards, we noticed that the sky began to lighten but curiously in the surrounding jungle there were none of the normal early-morning bird calls. Suddenly we came to a pair of great pillars, all overgrown with vines, obviously the Great Gate of Gah. The Dead City of Gah! Genuflecting to the long-empty sentry box, she padded inside and motioned me to follow; the gathering dawn revealed broken columns and walls of gigantic stone buildings, mostly tumbley-down by some great cataclysm, fashioned in a manner and style never seen elsewhere. Obviously familiar with the city (was she one of the few descendants of the original Amazons?) she led me down twisting byways and past an ornamental fountain to what was plainly the principal square, dominated by an imposing three-tier structure flanked by stone steps. Cautiously we approached the main entrance and as we squeezed through the overhanging vines, she motioned towards the main altar. There was a figure . . . something glittering . . . was it the Treasure of Gah? An early Sputnik? An idol studded with rubies and diamonds? Could it be????
There was a sudden commotion behind us and the old planter burst through the door, slashing at the creepers with my cutlass. Our blood ran cold. HOK! he croaked, his eyes wild. HOK! and then fell dead on the floor. As the girl and I looked on in horror, there was a steady rumbling sound and slowly the long-dead machinery of a long-dead city opened a panel in the roof, permitting a ray of light to fall upon the Idol. It was HOK. HAWG? It was the Harley-Davidson FLH 80.
