Calico Pennants (8 page)

At trail’s end was the beneficent cove where Amie now made her home—a place curiously familiar and comforting. Green, moss-covered stones were cast against black lava rock, like dusky segments of an abstract memory. A place of safety: this she knew—somehow.

“There’s an idiot on the beach!” cried the parrot.

“So you’ve returned,” Amie acknowledged, searching the fronds of a tall palm nearby.

“Where is the navigator?” the parrot inquired.

“As far as I know, I’m the only person on the island,” she said.

“He talks to himself,” the bird related.

“Does he now?”

“And he’s fascinated with every word he says...”

“Some of us love hearing the sound of our own voice,” she allowed.

Again the remarkable parrot had managed to present a riddle that seemed impossible for her to solve.

FACE DOWN on the beach Julian found himself examining the remains of an antediluvian eruption. Bleached white by the sun and salt water, granular pieces of pumice, tiny multicolored bits of silicon, and broken fragments of shell commingled with minuscule segments of washed-up coral. Shaped minute after minute by wind and water, the sand was, at the same time, light and dark, wet and dry. Alive with timid sand crabs and creeping vegetation anchored in golden drift, it felt at once hot and cold. It was both solid and soft. It was earth at the edge of the water.

Still soaked to the skin from the storm, Julian lay weak and exhausted but glad to be alive. Just before dawn the storm was at its height, and the white-capped waves were cresting at ten to fifteen feet and pounding furiously over the reef. Had he tried to swim to shore just a few hours earlier, he would certainly have drowned.

“Buenaventura! Are you here?” he called.

The echo of his voice returned to him from a world full of emptiness, but Julian was convinced that his avis friend had flown to safety. Upon a distant and misty cliff he saw birds of many species roosting in tremendous numbers. Perhaps there Buenaventura had found refuge.

Fallen tree trunks and piles of driftwood cluttered the shoreline. Roots and creepers grew gnarled and sinewy. With needle-nosed beaks, red-footed booby birds fished the shoreline for crustaceans, while egrets and albatrosses glided upon subtle air currents and hunted for tiny black lizards that camouflaged themselves in the forest brush.

It was no longer raining, yet the clouds hung low in the canyons. Fog hid the mountain peaks and crept down the slopes to cast the trees in silhouette. Julian looked past his beached boat and out to sea, trying to delineate the horizon. A moment later (or was it an hour?), he thought he heard the sound of a familiar, though still invisible, twin engine aircraft. This time, however, the plane was not merely circling; it was in distress. Panning the breadth of the sky he saw nothing at first, though his ears told him all he needed to know. Still concealed by the remaining clouds, the plane fumbled like a blind man in a strange room, and the fine hair on the back of Julian’s neck bristled from a sudden change of energy that seemed to originate somewhere beyond time. Just then the Electra came cutting through the clouds. Rocking and wobbling as it passed perilously overhead, Julian thought, for a split second, that he could see the pilot’s face through the glass of the cockpit. It was a vaguely familiar face, a face he’d once seen in a picture, or in a dream. Or perhaps in a reflection...

Running frantically up the beach to determine where the plane might touch down, he tripped over his elongated, sopping pant legs and went sprawling onto the sand. Passing his tongue over his cracked lips he tasted a drop of his blood. He spat out sand and grit and discovered he’d chipped a tooth. As he lay prone on the beach he heard an impact uphill, though there was no explosion, nor evidence that the downed plane was on fire. Veiled not only in fog, this exotic locale seemed to manifest some impossible schizophrenia.

Up the mountainside he struggled, determined to reach the crash site before it was too late. The humid rain forest, with its tangled overgrowth, resisted intrusion. But Julian would not be denied. He knew the survival of those on board the plane might depend upon his timely arrival, and possibly his own rescue was contingent with theirs.

Hardly equal to such a strenuous initial test, he was nearly overcome with exhaustion. He knelt down in the mud and covered his face with slender, trembling hands. Appealing to some higher power, he found himself supplicating renewed strength and clarification.

“Where am I?” he muttered. “How long was I lost at sea? Is it possible I’ve landed in the Marianas? Or the Carolines? Have I drifted as far as the Phoenix Islands? Kiribati? Vanuatu?”

Finding strength, he moved onward. He had to try. Lives were at stake. Possibly his own... His muscles begged for rest with each step. What if they were all dead when he reached them? Who would he tell? Such morbid thoughts were not even to be considered, he told himself. The plane had not exploded upon impact. They were not dead! Of course they weren’t...

But once he reached the perceived crash site, he found only a clearing lush with ferns and flowers. A solitary dragonfly whirled round and round his head. Where was the plane?

Running on line. Will repeat. Will repeat
...

Julian was immediately confronted not only with the enigma of the missing plane, but with a tumultuous landslide composed of his fears and regrets from the past. Hopes, memories, fantasies, doubts, questions, faded dreams: his emotions tumbled over him unexpectedly and pressed upon him like a rockslide, as if all the loneliness he’d ever denied demanded expression at this inopportune moment. Tears dampened his sanguine cheeks and he found himself wondering whether he might have died and was encountering an afterworld of his own making.

“She’s over there,” directed Buenaventura at the last possible moment before Julian lost himself to a plethora of emotional confusion.

“Where are you, BV?” he called.

“Time is on our side, Captain.”

“Did you see the plane?” Julian implored.

“Remember Eddie Rickenbacker!”

“The plane!” Julian insisted. “Didn’t you see it go down?”

“Over there,” repeated Buenaventura.

“But I’m sure I saw a plane. The engines were choking. Just like the Scoundrel’s engines. I know that sound all too well. And I’m sure it came down near this spot!”

On his perch in a nearby fir tree Buenaventura turned a full somersault, then spread his wings and flew directly onto Julian’s shoulder.

“Maybe I only thought I saw a plane,” Julian theorized. “I might have been delirious from swimming ashore. The waves were huge and the effort took nearly all my energy. There was one brief moment when I thought I had drowned. Or that I might drown... Then, suddenly, I was face down in the sand, carried in by a wave. I looked for you, BV. But I couldn’t see you. Then I heard the engines. When the plane emerged from the clouds, I thought I could see the pilot’s face. Or perhaps I was confused from having had too little food and not enough water while we were lost at sea. It was several weeks, you know. At least I think it was, wasn’t it, BV?”

With Buenaventura riding on Julian’s left shoulder, the companions started back down the trail Julian had cleared on his frantic ascent, and at times, with his wings spread out for support and balance, it appeared that the bird was steadying his partner, the man.

For here Buenaventura was at last delivered from the indignities of human domination and returned to his natural element. Having spent the first year of his life performing in a four-parrot sideshow in front of the Pioneer Inn in Lahaina, he was reborn the day Woody Emory rescued him from such a degrading fate. Of course BV always felt a little out of place riding over the pipeline on Woody’s shoulder, but at least with Woody he was free to live in the natural world. Since his most recent adoption, however, BV was contemplating a rather more inclusive return to ephemeral life.

Julian returned to the beach where he’d first swum ashore. The size of the waves had diminished considerably, and with the emergence of the sunshine the sea in the cove shone a tranquil shade of blue. The wet fronds of the palm trees glistened like cellophane, and the moist earth radiated a primal, musty scent.

During his trek up the mountainside it had become apparent to Julian that even if the island were populated it was not going to be easy to locate the inhabitants. Umbrage was dense and there were no obvious paths leading from his landing point. He would have to camp out on the beach overnight—possibly longer.

“Welcome home!” said Buenaventura.

“If nobody comes for us, I don’t know what we’ll do,” Julian lamented.

“Easy come, easy go,” said the bird.

To retrieve much needed supplies from the Scoundrel, Julian stripped off his clothes to make the swim. Reaching down to untie the laces of his deck shoes he noticed that the crystal of his Rolex watch was shattered. He held the watch to his ear, but it was not ticking. The face of the watch appeared distorted through a water bubble, and Julian saw that the hands were frozen at 7:20, the precise hour that the Scoundrel had run aground on the reef. For the castaway such an irony was devoid of humor; possibly his future had ceased to exist at that moment, and perhaps he’d even begun backtracking into some primitive, if sublime, existence. He took off the watch and placed it inside the pocket of his perspiration-soaked shirt before wading into the water.

Once on board the Scoundrel, he sorted through the many items he’d purchased in Hilo. Though wet from rain and ocean surf, most items were still useable. Of course his most immediate concern was food. After weeks adrift all that remained of his stock of provisions was a can of beans, some mushroom soup, half a box of oyster crackers, two dozen dried apricots, a little condensed milk, and about half a pound of Kona coffee.

Yet one thing concerned him even more than his meager food supply: the need to devise some kind of anchor for his boat. Disabled as it was, the Scoundrel remained his best hope for returning to civilization.

While he had enough chain link to reach bottom, Julian was able to find nothing on board he could employ as an anchor. Abandoning a more conventional approach, he put on his snorkel and went over the railing to assess the damages and further examine his boat’s position upon the reef. To his relief the hull of the cruiser had not been breached, but the waves generated by the storm had tossed the small boat onto the coral ring in such a way that it was now leaning precariously starboard. Julian remembered seeing four heavy steel spikes in the compartment that contained the scuba gear and he determined that he might drive these into the coral with his hammer then chain the boat right onto the reef itself. It was worth a try.

Back on deck he took off his mask and began collecting the tools necessary for the project. Before going back into the water he fastened four lengths of chain onto various parts of the boat, then tossed the ends into the water—one off the prow, one off the stern, one off the starboard side, and the other off the port side. Ready to proceed, he spit into his mask, took up his tools, and went over the side.

Though he did stir up enough sediment to cloud his vision a bit, it was relatively easy driving the spikes into the coral, and it was not long before he was back on board his boat, pleased with his own ingenuity and secure in the opinion that his craft would not break free and drift out to sea. Furthermore, the boat was a beacon for anyone who might be searching for him.

Intent upon improvising a barge, Julian collected his water containers. In a calculated act of abandon he poured out all the remaining fresh water and sealed the lids tightly so that buoyancy could be achieved. He’d seen fresh water flowing in the mountain streams, but there was of course no way of knowing if the water was contaminated by bacteria or parasites. Still, if the island water was not potable, the few swallows left in his container were not going to sustain him much longer anyway.

He began lashing together the airtight containers with nylon rope. He wrapped them with the tarpaulin and secured it. Liberating the foam rubber seat cushions from their protective plastic sheaths, he zippered his meager food supplies, as well as several flares, into waterproof envelopes for a journey over the waves to shore.

Pushing the homemade barge over the side, he jumped into the water. And using the inertia of the incoming waves he guided the ferry toward land. When he finally dragged the supplies on shore he was exhausted and lay down upon the sand, breathing heavily and repeating the name of the Savior.

In burnished twilight, Robinson Crusoe Crosby busied himself preparing a shelter. He wrapped the now dry tarpaulin round the extending roots of a ten-foot diameter banyan tree, creating an enclosure with immovable supports. On the beach he lit a fire. He cooked beans and brewed coffee for his supper. Buenaventura ate the last of the oyster crackers and watched as Julian sent up a distress flare; the exile never really believing there was anybody nearby to see it, and BV knowing well that they were not alone.

AT DAWN, Julian awoke to the most glorious chorus of birdsong he’d ever heard. Finches, egrets, doves, honeycreepers, hornbills, plovers and mynas: thousands of birds sang in unison to herald the coming of the light.

Excited by the feral cacophony, Buenaventura paced prodigally over his keeper’s chest and stomach. The parrot blinked his eyes furiously. He spread his plumage and cocked his head to listen. In time he joined the aria.

Julian held out his finger as a perch, and BV climbed aboard without probation. Pulling back the canvas flap of the improvised shelter, Julian poked his head outside. The sea was calm and the sun was bright. Beneath a mauve sky the Trades blew through the tops of the trees. It was a sublime morning in Paradise.

Yet Julian felt overwhelmed by such unlikely circumstances. Three months ago he was passively moldering in a monotonous job, practically dead, though lacking the sense to lie down. Until this moment he’d failed to realize that, for years, he’d been desperate for a miracle, all the while never really expecting any significant change in his life. “So what am I supposed to do now?” he called out. The congregation of birds abruptly stopped their singing.