Love, Joy, Feminism
Island of Aquarius, pp. 25-41
So here we are, in Jonestown—er, I mean in Fake MacKenzie’s model Ohio village on the South Pacific island of Aquarius. Now that they’ve been given a tour of the village, Jay walks over and asks about a path “turning off into the jungle.”
MacKenzie looked strangely alarmed. “Oh, don’t go that way!”
Jay stopped short and stared at MacKenzie in bewilderment.
It’s not safe, Fake MacKenzie explains, adding to the many things that are weird about this island. He starts talking about mysterious evil, “powers, forces, ancient traditions here that are still beyond our understanding,” at which point Dr. Cooper reminds him that he’s supposed to be a Christian and that God is stronger than any evil powers.
It’s all very boring, really.
Oh hey guess what! I’m going to try adding sub headings!
Weird Things Start Happening
Someone steps out of a house and asks Fake MacKenzie to come in and help him check his supply inventory—some things are missing. Fake MacKenzie tells Dr. Cooper, Jay, and Lila not to go anywhere.
“Why do I feel so funny about all of this?” Lila asked very quietly.
“I hope you two have been observing everything,” Dr. Cooper said.
Free Lila!
At this moment, Jay notes that they’re being followed; Dr. Cooper says it’s probably the same guy who burst out of the brush momentarily when they were on their boat in the cove. And indeed, it is!
Suddenly a very eerie voice called from the jungle a short distance behind them, “Hellooooo … strangers! Visitors! Over here!”
“Never a dull moment …” said Dr. Cooper. “Stay close behind me. Jay, watch for MacKenzie.”
Dr. Cooper is wary enough that he’s setting a watch for Fake MacKenzie, but you just know they’re not going to leave this island when they have a chance.
“Your name is Cooper?” the man asked, his big dark eyes glimmering in the dark.
Remember, all of this is taking place after dark. In fact, it was already after dark when their boat arrived at the island.
“That’s right. And yours?” asked Dr. Cooper.
A bony hand shot out. “Amos Dulaney, former professor of geology at Stanford.” All three Coopers mouths opened, but Dulaney blurted, “Please, no questions! Just listen. You must get away from this island immediately! And please, take me with you. We can leave tonight. I can meet you back at the cove.”
But alas! Dulaney has been noticed, and all hell breaks loose!
One of Fake MacKenzie’s followers grabs him and drags him out of the jungle; the townspeople run for their guns; Fake MacKenzie bursts out and declares “Moro-Kunda!”At that, the men holding Dulaney drop him as if he “were a hot coal or a bomb about to explode” and retreat to a safe distance, pointing their guns at Dulaney. Some of this is a bit confusing. We go from one man grabbing Dulaney and dragging him out of the jungle to a “struggling mass of men” holding him. How is unclear.
What is clear is that the townspeople believe strongly in the powerful “Moro Kunda” curse Fake MacKenzie is spreading. When Fake MacKenzie yells “Moro-Kunda!” they freak out and refuse to even touch Dulaney.
This is not going to go well for Dulaney.
“The island is doomed!” Dulaney shouted. “All the animals and birds have fled, the tides are flooding the lowlands, the quakes are getting more and more severe—”
“I said be quiet!” MacKenzie shouted. Then, to some of the men, “Tom and Andrew, bring protectors! Move it!”
“Do you hear me?” Dulaney continued. “Get away form this island while you still can! Kelno is lying to you!”
Tom and Andrew came running with what looked like several red scarves. They tossed the scarves to their comrades and every man whipped his scarf about his neck. Then, as if by magic, all the men grew brave again and moved in to take firm hold of Dulaney.
“Take him away!” MacKenzie ordered.
The guards carried the struggling, screaming Dulaney away.
The idea that people could be convinced to imbue a red scarf with this sort of power is perhaps the most believable thing about this whole book so far. Cults can be trippy. The power of suggestion is real. And people, when isolated the way Fake MacKenzie has isolated his followers, can be extremely suggestible.
The Big Bad Moro-Kunda Argument
After Dulaney is taken away, Fake MacKenzie turns to Dr. Cooper. Dr. Cooper is not impressed, and he says as much.
“I’d like to have all that explained to me,” he said very firmly.
“Moro-Kunda—”
“I want more than that!” Dr. Cooper snapped.
“I can’t tell you any more!” MacKenzie replied. “What do you want me to say? It isn’t a disease, it isn’t an infection … it’s … it’s an evil, a madness, an invisible, c reaping curse that gets into a man who sets foot in the wrong places, or samplers with objects that are sacred, or defies the powers that rule here.”
“You’re supposed to be a missionary of the gospel of Jesus Christ,” said Dr. Cooper, his eyes burning. “Tonight you’re sounding more like a witch doctor! Now if it’s a disease call it a disease, iff it’s insanity call it insanity, but don’t expect me to accept some vague, unknowable trick of pagan medicine!”
MacKenzie’s eyes grew very cold. “Once I believed as you do, but I have learned much on this island. There are many things you do not understand, Doctor …”
“Then enlighten me.”
MacKenzie glared with growing anger at Jake Cooper.
Fake MacKenzie tells Dr. Cooper that Dulaney was once “an upstanding member of this brave community” but has become a “raving madman, with delusions of doom,” and “by tomorrow morning he will be dead!”
“Nothing can violate the spirits that rule here,” said MacKenzie. “Not even the gospel of Jesus Christ!”
Dr. Cooper was speechless.
MacKenzie only gestured to the Coopers to follow him. “I’ll see that you’re made comfortable. You can leave in the morning.”
Do that, do that!
They won’t do that.
Conversation in the Guest Hut
Fake MacKenzie takes the Coopers to the “guest hut” and leaves them there. The Coopers get to talking. No one feels good about this situation.
“Something is desperately wrong here,” Dr. Cooper whispered.
“Moro-Kunda!” Lila said with disgust. “What kind of goofy game is MacKenzie playing?”
“I really didn’t see that much wrong with Dulaney,” her father stated.
Dr. Cooper notes that they saw the tides overflowing in the lowland, which seems to confirm Dulaney’s claim. He points out, too, that while Fake MacKenzie said he wrote the note found on the dead man on the raft ages ago, the date on that note was only six weeks old. Jay points out that Fake MacKenzie said they have no weapons here, and then suddenly they all had guns. Lila points out that Dulaney called Fake MacKenzie “Kelno.”
Jay goes to the window and peers out.
“Dad!” Jay whispered excitedly. “Look at this.”
Dr. Cooper and Lila joined him at the window.
“Kill that light!” said Dr. Cooper, and Lila clicked it off.
They stood in the dark, peering out into the black, silent jungle.
In the distance, twinkling and blinking as it passed among the trees and vines, a floating, bobbing point of light moved silently along, the only thing visible.
“Candle …” said Jay.
“What’s he doing out there at this time of night?” Lila asked.
Just how far through the jungle can they see?
Look, this is remarked on a number of times in this book—this idea that the Polynesian man is out there at all hours just … walking around. We later learn that he’s actually doing something. But if what he’s doing is secret and involves stealth—which it is and it does—the fact that he can be seen from nearly anywhere on the island by virtue of the torch mounted on his head seems … odd. At some point, in order to stay hidden, he puts his candle on a stone, so that he can’t be followed—but I ask you again, how big is this island? How thick is this jungle? This just seems off to me.
But they’re about to notice something else:
“Wait a minute,” said Dr. Cooper. “Jay, open the window a little more.”
Jay cranked the window open. They all stood silently, hardly breathing.
They could hear it now. A kind of chanting, and wailing, and every once in a while a chorus like cheer. The effect was eery.
“Are they having a party out there?” Jay asked.
“Out there, where it’s supposed to be so dangerous, where there’s supposed to be something evil lurking about …” Dr. Cooper mused. He listened for a while, then drew a deep breath and said, “Anybody here want to go for a hike?”
“What?” said Lila in horror.
“All right!” said Jay.
Team Lila! Of course, Dr. Cooper never actually gives them a choice. His question was more rhetorical than anything else. This is going to go great. I’m sure they won’t do something stupid like split up.
By the way, part of my huge Team Lila push is due to having reread Trapped at the Bottom of the Sea, in which … wow. I kid you not, the whole book is about how Lila told her dad off and he immediately put her on the first airplane out of dodge because he can’t handle his emotions and the airplane—which was actually on a top secret military mission—ends up crashing and Lila ends up trapped in a metal capsule under the ocean, giving her lots of time to think about what a bad, selfish person she’s been, and how she never should have told her dad off, even though everything she said was true.
So basically God had a hissy fit too, and trapped Lila in a sealed metal pod on the bottom of the ocean until she was super super sorry for telling her dad off for selfishly dragging her around the world on dangerous missions regardless of her own wishes. Because that’s selfish! And in this world only adult men are allowed to be selfish, not teenage girls!
Death in the Dark, Dark Jungle
So, they head into the jungle.
“We’ll have to divide up,” said Dr. Cooper.
Somehow this feels predictable.
They’re in the jungle, in the dark, see, and they came to a fork in the path. Jay takes one, Dr. Cooper takes the other, and Lila is left at the fork to “keep watch” and “give us a signal if anyone comes from behind.” Give them a signal how?
Lila starts hearing weird noises and then she is ATTACKED oh no!
Her light went tumbling end-over-end into the bushes and she was knocked to the ground, entailed in roots, vines, leaves, and tendrils.
Something had her by the legs! She grappled, kicked, clawed at the branches and roots. She cried out, but her scream was swallowed up by the soft mossy ground.
She tried to kick again, but now her legs were caught tightly. Something heavy had her, pulling her, clamping onto her body, grasp by grasp, inch by inch.
The first time I reread this, I shit you not, I thought she was being swallowed leg-first by a giant snake. I mean, isn’t that how this reads? “Pulling her, clamping onto her body, grasp by grasp, inch by inch”? But no! Lila figures out how to scream and after what seems like forever Jay and Dr. Cooper reemerge from the jungle. And what do they find?
The weight was snatched away very suddenly, and she looked up just in time to see her father heave something aside as if it were a rag doll.
Dr. Cooper trains his gun on the “something” but then stops and sets the gun aside. The “something” is Dulaney! Oh, and he’s dead now!
Dr. Cooper went over to where he had flung the thing and turned it over. They all shined their lights on it.
“Mr. Dulaney!” Lila exclaimed.
He was quite dead, his mouth still frozen in a scream, his eyes wide and gawking with horror.
Dr. Cooper examines Dulaney and finds the same symptoms as were on the guy on the raft: “a separation of the blood, severe dehydration, and a burning of the flesh and skin—madness, panic, bizarre behavior.” Moro Kunda.
Lila asked, “So what was he doing to me? He wasn’t, you know, attacking me?”
“I would say he was panic-stricken, Lila, clinging to you as a drowning man would cling to his rescuer. He wasn’t responsible for his actions.”
At this point Fake MacKenzie comes up and is all “do you believe me now, huh?” Dr. Cooper says he is definitely impressed. No one says anything about the fact that these children have just witnessed death. That does something to you! I was a teenager the first time I was in the presence of death, and I didn’t sleep for days. It stayed with me, it clung to me, it affected me, it mattered. Maybe Jay and Lila have already seen so much death that one more does not affect them, but if so I don’t think that’s a great thing—and they could probably benefit from having someone to talk to about it!
When Dr. Cooper asks Fake MacKenzie about the chanting, he says the jungle plays tricks on people. He takes the Coopers back to the guest hut and leaves them there. The Coopers sleep in shifts that night to keep someone on watch, but Dr. Cooper never asks the kids if they’re okay. They just witnessed death. And it’s worse for Lila. A man clung to her while he died. Dr. Cooper asks if she’s physically okay—if she was injured—but that’s it.
A man they talked to not an hour before, and man they watched being taken away at gunpoint, is now dead, died in front of them, and it’s treated like it’s just another day in the life for the Coopers.
The Morning After
In the morning, they hear Fake MacKenzie berating his followers over some stolen supplies. He claims the thief has angered “Aquarius itself” and will pay the price. Lumber is missing, and nails, and caulking, and more things.
“If you are the thief, come to me and implore my mercy. If these items are returned, I’m sure the powers all around us will be merciful. If you continue in your stealth and your robbery, what could prevent your being cursed? What can even prevent … Moro-Kunda?”
And on and on Fake MacKenzie goes, extremely unhappy with the thefts. The Coopers listen, from inside the guest hut, and talk amongst themselves.
Dr. Cooper says Fake MacKenzie reminds him of the antichrist referenced in Second Thessalonians. (Yep, they spell out “Second”.) Of course they’re not saying he’s the Antichrist. They’re just saying he’s an antichrist.
“It’s just like a miniature antichrist’s kingdom here, a miniature world dictatorship: one man ruling over everyone, everyone wearing his Aquarius medallion, and everyone afraid because of his great deciding powers. It’s almost a direct copy of Revelation 13!”
This sent me to Revelation 13, which—surprise—I don’t find it such a direct copy at all. There’s a dragon and two beasts and horns, and people worshipped the one beast, and the other beast performed great signs and wonders, “even causing fire to come down from heaven to the earth in full view of the people,” and set up an idol to the first beast for the people to worship, and deceived the people, and forced the people to receive a mark on their hands, without which they could not buy or sell.
I suppose you could make the argument that the description fits, but in that case, it fits any cult. And have we been told that the people here have to wear the Aquarius medallion specifically to buy and sell? I don’t think so. Do they even have buying and selling? This seems more like the sort of commune where everything is shared in common.
But! They have to make a Bible connection, see!
“But how in the world did a missionary of the gospel of Jesus Christ get so mixed up?” Jay wondered. “I mean, this guy is really off the wall!”
I wish this were MacKenzie. In all of the Cooper Kids books, the missionaries are always white, and they are always, always, always transparently the good guys. But in real life it doesn’t work that way. In real life, some Christian leaders—serious men of God—take a weird turn and end up being cult leaders. It happens! Being a good Christian does not prevent one from going in a very bad direction—or from transforming into something very different.
I think I’ll end it here for this week, except to say that next week, they are given a chance to leave and they don’t leave. Dr. Cooper is there alone, with two children. This seems like a bad call. They also ignore the Polynesian man for the first time, to their peril, and it won’t be the last.
What Is Agency, Anyway?
What does it mean that the Polynesian man isn’t the bad guy here? Two of the Cooper Kids books are based in the South Pacific, yet in neither of them are the Polynesians that bad guys. In this book, the bad guy is a peace and love cult leader from the United States, who has brought his followers here. In the other book set in the South Pacific, the bad guys are the Russians, trading in military secrets.
I’m not sure whether this is a good thing or a bad thing. Perhaps the Polynesians aren’t the bad guys in these books because Peretti doesn’t view them as having agency, and you have to have agency to be a bad guy? Even the Polynesian man they call Candle is treated as somewhat simple—and the one actually calling his shots is the real Adam MacKenzie. There are good Polynesians in the other book set in the South Pacific too—but they’re also portrayed as simple, and the only reason they’re good is guys because they’re controlled by the white missionary who has settled among them.
In fact, while Peretti is an equal opportunity racist, his portrayal of Polynesians as simple and controlled by westerners may actually be worse than his portrayal of other groups. Gozan and the president in Dragon’s Throat at least had agency and motivations. In Toco Rey, which is set in Central America, the bad guys are westerners trying to traffic in bioweapons. There is a native tribe that end up being good guys and, crucially, they’re not under the sway of any white westerner. They’re portrayed as “primitive” and superstitious but they’re also not portrayed as being simple.
I haven’t reread Desert Stone yet, but in that book it’s an African warlord dictator who is the bad guy. The good guy is a white missionary who has converted a tribe of “savages” whose land the dictator wants to annex into his country. That part feels more like the books set in the South Pacific, but the African warlord dictator, for all of the very very many problems with his portrayal, is not controlled by westerners and has agency similar to Gozan and the president in Dragon’s Throat.
If I had to pick one group and one portrayal out of all of these as least bad, I’m actually going to go with the native tribe in Toco Rey, as they are both not the bad guys and not controlled by white westerners in any way.
Anyway! Next week!
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