Dash in the Blue Pacific (10 page)

“
Yeah, that’s okay. I’m used to it.
My fiancée could, too. It’s why she ended up hating me.”

“
So much hate out there. Hate and
more hate.” Willy stepped around the tide pool and walked to the
very end of the island without looking back. Dash thought his
shoulders were too slumped even for a former god who’d let all his
people die. The giant man paused at the edge of the surf, then dove
head first, disappearing into the incoming tide.

A
ship’s daily appearance
coincided with Dash’s sickness. Different than flu or any illness
he’d known, it came from depression and hopelessness, combined with
the things that had bitten him, the accumulation of toxins. The
ship arrived under power of oppressive heat, tanks fueled with his
oily fish dinners and mosquito fever nights. His countless hours
alone knitted the American flag over the Coast Guard cutter’s
stern, welded the steel in its hull. Desperation put sailors in
crisp uniforms, turned them into busy worker bees preparing a
rescue launch from its sturdy railing.

Every detail was correct, from the spinning
radar dishes to the single life vest left carelessly on the open
deck, all bearing a striking resemblance to the box cover photo on
a model received one Christmas from a grandparent.

He could have strolled out across the ocean’s
surface, feet barely tasting salt, and stroked the orange fabric of
the tidy vessel being readied to come ashore. He could have climbed
aboard, wondered about equipment and dials, guessed the meaning of
things written in cryptic abbreviations. He could have sat next to
a warm-blooded man, smelled his sweat and the coffee on his breath.
The sailor would be too busy with a checklist for
questions.

The mirage couldn’t account for the thousands
of miles separating the black sand beneath his toes and the waters
any such ship would patrol, but it didn’t matter.

Passing days blurred the phantom vessel, and
the longer he stared, the farther away it seemed. The crew was
gone. The red and white paint faded, soon to become the same gray
nothing. There was no man or woman to finish lowering the smaller
boat dangling on metal arms. It became a ghost ship, and eventually
there was no ship at all, only bobbing sea birds where a hundred
tons of metal had sunk to the murky bottom of an exhausted
imagination.

He was increasingly anxious awaiting Willy’s
daily visits, sure that something had changed, that his imaginary
friend wouldn’t return. But then the melancholy former god would
swim up out of the waves as Dash sat moping on his stone bench.
Sometimes they didn’t talk; they were just two gloomy figures
casting still shadows.

Each time he heard the village drums, Dash
expected an armed procession to come take him away. His cage had no
bars, but he was a prisoner all the same. He grew gills in his
dreams, and wings in his fantasies, but found how easily hope dried
up and quietly died under the heavy sun. The drums mostly sounded
in the hour before sunset, but the only one to appear out of the
jungle was the girl, usually lugging a bucket of potable water and
cooked fish wrapped in banana leaves.

The lava tube cave’s main compartment was
pear-shaped. Ceiling cave-ins had created a dead end back where the
fruit would be fattest. If he were stronger, perhaps he could clear
an opening that would lead all the way into the volcano’s belly, at
least until the heat and gases turned him back. The porous black
walls absorbed outside reflections and the light from rationed
candles. He lit one candle at a time, always extinguishing the
flame when leaving for any stretch. His hands shook when he woke in
the pitch blackness to fumble with the striker and magnesium block,
drops of sweat complicating his efforts.

He’d spent weeks recovering from the plane
crash, and could only imagine the free reign all the creeping
things enjoyed while he was unconscious. They’d surely used him as
a highway, and probably burrowed into his skin to deposit
soon-to-hatch eggs. Light kept things he could see at bay, banished
the worst to the shadows, just as he had been sent here to wait.
One dream had him wrapped in a cocoon by tiny humanoid creatures
that spoke the same language as the islanders. He woke trying to
imitate their voices, convinced they’d free him if he could match
the right sounds.

Existing on a tropical island was a far cry
from reality TV or honeymoon brochures. Foraging meant picking
through bug-infested fruit that had become nests of baby spiders
guarded by alien-eyed mothers. Fallen coconuts were claimed by
cockroach-like insects he’d seen served as toasted side dishes. He
was allowed into the village once daily to move his bowels in the
stinking outhouses, but he felt watched like an enemy. He did his
business quickly and got out.

On his twentieth day of exile, Tiki came with a
message from Manu. Dash had been using his stone tool to carve a
face into a coconut’s outer flesh, crouching over the ground at the
very edge of the tide. He’d nicked his fingers in a half dozen
spots with the sharp edge, used the salt water to rinse slippery
blood.

Tiki cast a thin shadow over his work. “You’re
bleeding.”

He kept carving. “Practice makes
perfect.”

“
Manu will send for you in four
nights, when the moon has a big face. All the preparations will be
done.”

Dash’s stomach turned over, and he dropped his
tool. The unrecognizable bust of his former fiancée rolled out of
his limp hand. “Preparations? Oh, god!”

Tiki spoke slowly, as if trying her best to get
it right. “Manu said the Volcano God came to his dreams in the
shape of a woman. She spoke of the man who fell from the sky and
killed the fish. There is to be a feast in his honor because he
will save our people from the soldiers.”

“
I knew it,” he said, head suddenly
aching. “A feast of roasted cockroaches, and then they’ll toss me
in the volcano for dessert.”

He rocked onto his butt, soaking his underpants
in warm tidal water. After three weeks of fending off spiders and
swarming mosquitoes while awaiting his execution, a quick and
painless death wasn’t the worst of his fears. This wasn’t going to
be a blindfold and firing squad. No lethal injection while
listening to classical music in a room painted aqua. This would be
snatched right out of his worst recurring nightmare. The warriors
were getting their way, the chance to jab sharpened spears in his
back to prod him onto a ledge over a bubbling cauldron. He felt his
legs catch fire in the dream, heard his crackling hair, eyes
boiling as they went blind. He was certain he’d shared Manu’s
dream. The Volcano God had gotten inside his head, too.

“
Manu says you will learn everything
at the feast under the big face moon.”

“
That’s not fair. Why not now?” He
had to know. Absolutely needed to know.

“
The elders are sick from too much
clap-clap,” she said. “They spent the morning hiding from the Sun
God.”

“
But you know. You know what they’re
going to do to me. They planned it all while getting boozed up.
Manu is sending the bastard who smashed the boy’s hand. What did he
do? What could any kid do to deserve that?”

She looked away, hands fiddling behind her
back, and he was convinced of the worst. He looked up at the
volcano, then out to where there was no rescue ship. How far could
he swim? A mile? Probably a hundred yards in the lousy shape he was
in. He looked out at the spot among the rolling waves where he’d
slip under and drown.

“
Please tell me, Tiki. You must have
heard them talk. We’re friends, aren’t we?”

“
I can’t.”

He reached up and touched her shoulder, the
brown skin hot from the sun. Her face was hidden, but he thought
she’d begun to cry until she swept her hair behind one ear to look
down at him. He saw she was trying not to giggle.

“
What is it? What’s so
funny?”

* * *

Windy spots were marvelous mosquito-free
places. Dash had learned to avoid the water’s midday reflection,
and that turning over dead logs when gathering firewood meant
risking agonizing bites from hundred-legged creatures. He suffered
anxious moments following these bites, waiting for signs of poison,
wondering if venom was racing through his blood toward his heart.
He only hoped the end would come quickly, that whatever god
involved wouldn’t merely paralyze the rest of him.

Being a castaway meant no aspirin for
headaches, no handy plastic bandages for cuts. Being shoeless on a
volcanic island changed your pace and stride: each step was
cushioned with an extra bend in the knee, a slow motion shuffle
across hot coals.

He slumped on his hard bench, chin resting on
folded arms. He watched the skiffs return from the deep holes where
big ones hid. One fisherman lifted a hand and Dash was about to
wave when the man lifted his chin and dragged an index finger
across his throat.

A fish rose from the sea beyond the surging
tide at the end of the shelf, the human torso and legs underneath
coated in white foam. Willy came to sit next to him behind the tide
pool, body dripping salt water into a puddle between massive feet.
His big toes reminded Dash of the dill pickles his mother used to
bring from the deli.

“
You could build a raft,” said
Willy.

“
Sure, but where would I
drift?”

Willy shrugged, held up his palms. “The
currents are weak this season, so it would depend on the Storm
God.”

“
You think it could blow me into the
shipping lanes? Or a bigger island with people living in this
century?”

Willy seemed to give this question serious
thought, took time before answering. “I think she’d let you drift
until you were blistered and nearly dead from thirst. Then she
would mercifully drown you, or send a bolt of lightning. She’s the
Storm God, not the Norwegian Cruise Line God.”

“
Yeah, thanks for the
picture.”

Willy thumped water from one cauliflower shaped
ear. “It would get so unbearable you’d be grateful to her. Some
gods are funny like that.”

“
How do you know about the Norwegian
Cruise Line?”

“
You looked them up on your
computer, remember? Then you clicked on pictures of women with
large breasts wearing small bikinis. You moved on to a website
showing videos of young ladies being forced to have intercourse
with prison guards.”

“
Okay, I get it.”

“
That’s the century you’re looking
for, right?”

“
It’s complicated.”

“
It seems criminal,” said Willy.
“The women are already in jail.”

“
You’re trying to make a
joke?”

“
To tell the truth, I could live
without knowing any of it.”

Dash watched the life at the edge of the tide
pool. Some kind of shell creature, a muscle no larger than the end
of his pinky, had opened its hinged body, stuck out a pink tongue
to probe the surrounding rock. The creature had been deposited by
the last high tide, spent the afternoon in a much smaller world
than its usual habitat of the open ocean. Dash wondered if it felt
claustrophobic, or if it knew the tide would return. Maybe it
relished the calm of the small space, would be content to
stay.

“
My penis still doesn’t work,” said
Dash.

“
So what’s the big deal?”

“
The girl says Manu wants me to make
a white baby. Thinks it will satisfy the soldiers who come steal
the girls, and that it’ll be enough to keep them away. He makes it
sound like an offering to a god, another kind of human
sacrifice.”

“
The volcano gave him the idea,”
said Willy. “Told him in a dream.”

“
How do you know?”

Willy rolled his strange fish eyes. “It’s not
that I want to read minds. Thoughts find me.”

“
So you still have god powers. You
can keep the soldiers away.”

Willy held up a dismissive hand. “I’m not any
kind of god anymore. And calling those men soldiers is
wrong.”

“
Kidnappers?”

“
I’d go with slave traders. And
dealing with ten-year-old girls makes them a special kind of
evil.”

“
It’s like they’re filling orders.
But maybe it isn’t for sex. Maybe they’re some kind of outlaw
adoption ring.”

“
You were a reporter before you got
fired and had your heart broken by the town tramp,
right?”

“
Christ, that’s some trick,” said
Dash. “You even use the words in my head. You’d make a killing
working the carnival circuit back home.”

Willy ignored him. “What did they teach you in
journalism school when it came to the bad guys?”

Dash paused, remembering the theme of the class
that made him fall in love with the idea of working for a
newspaper. The professor described the career as ‘a combination of
police detective and mystery writer.’ “We were told to follow the
money.”

“
Yes, and they’re selling the girls
to the highest bidders,” said Willy. “The girls are going to
wealthy businessmen and pimps, not loving families. No doubt about
it.”