The Curse of Lono - By Hunter S. Thompson Page 0,21

a desert of hostile black rocks, mile after mile of raw moonscape and ominous low-lying clouds. Captain Steve said we were crossing an old lava flow, one of the last eruptions from the 14,000-foot hump of Mauna Kea to our left, somewhere up in the fog. Far down to the right a thin line of coconut palms marked the new western edge of America, a lonely-looking wall of jagged black lava cliffs looking out on the white-capped Pacific. We were 2,500 miles west of the Seal Rock Inn, halfway to China, and the first thing I saw on the outskirts was a Texaco station, then a McDonald's hamburger stand.

Captain Steve seemed uneasy with my description of the estate he was taking me to. When I described the brace of elegant Japanese-style beach houses looking out on a black marble pool and a thick green lawn rolling down to a placid bay, he shook his head sadly and changed the subject. "We'll go out on my boat for some serious marlin fishing," he said.

"I've never caught a fish in my life," I said. "My temperament is wrong for it."

"You'll catch fish in Kona," he assured me as we rounded a corner into downtown Kailua, a crowded commercial district on the rim of the bay with half-naked people running back and forth through traffic like sand crabs.

We slowed to a crawl, trying to avoid pedestrians, but as we passed the Kona Inn a potbellied man with white hair carrying a beer bottle in each hand came running out of the driveway yelling, "You dirty bitch! I'll break your neck!" and crashed against the car at full speed, smacking my arm against the door. He fell back on the street and I tried to open the car door to get out and stomp on him, but my arm was completely numb. I couldn't lift it, or even move my fingers.

I was still in shock when we stopped at a red light and I noticed what appeared to be a cluster of garish-looking prostitutes standing in the shadows of a banyan tree on the sidewalk. Suddenly there was a woman leaning in my window, yelling gibberish at Captain Steve. She was trying to reach in and get hold of him, but my arm was dead and I couldn't roll up the window. When she reached across me again I grabbed her hand and jammed my lit cigarette into her palm. The light changed and Captain Steve sped away, leaving the whore screeching on her knees in the middle of the intersection.

"Good work," he said to me. "That guy used to work for me. He was a first-class mechanic."

"What?" I said. "That whore?"

"That was no whore," he said. "That was Hilo Bob, a shameless transvestite. He hangs out on that corner every night, with all those other freaks. They're all transvestites."

I wondered if Mr. Heem had brought Ralph and his family along this same scenic route. I had a vision of him struggling desperately with a gang of transvestites in the middle of a traffic jam, not knowing what it meant. Wild whores with crude painted faces, bellowing in deep voices and shaking bags of dope in his face, demanding American money.

We were stuck in this place for at least a month, and the rent was $1,000 a week -- half in advance, which we'd already paid Mr. Heem.

"It's a bad situation," Captain Steve was saying, as we picked up speed on the way out of town. "Those freaks have taken over a main intersection and the cops can't do anything about it." He swerved suddenly to avoid a pear-shaped jogger on the shoulder of the highway. "Hilo Bob goes crazy every time he sees my car," he said. "I fired him after he had a sex-change operation, so he got a lawyer and sued me for mental anguish. He wants a half-million dollars."

"Jesus," I said, still rubbing my wounded arm. "A gang of vicious bull fruits, harassing the traffic on main street."

"Yeah," he went on. "I made a real effort with Bob, but he got too weird for the clients. I'd get to the boat in the morning with a terrible hangover and find him asleep on the ice chest with his hair dyed orange and lipstick smeared all over his face. He got real bitchy and strange after he had his operation, and he started drinking a lot. I never knew what to expect. One morning he showed up with the ass cut