Dash in the Blue Pacific (17 page)

“
Kids were the best part of my job,”
said Willy. “They had just as many worries as adults, but were much
easier to calm down. Sometimes I didn’t even need words. You know
how mothers sing lullabies? It was like that.”

“
You miss the kids.”

Willy’s head tilted, mouth full of pointed
teeth opening and closing slowly, bulb pulsing dimmer. “My island
went underwater. There was no safe place, no ground high enough. A
volcano would have at least saved them from drowning. But the waves
rolled across the backs of other waves, and more waves rode across
those until the rich soil was covered from west to east. I know
because even though I’d blacked out from all the alcohol, I felt
the panic somewhere deep. I heard the prayers in my sleep, dreamed
the death of each of my people.”

“
Willy ….”

“
The storm came and went, took what
it wanted. The day after, the sky was deep blue, the sun high and
strong. I stood on the beach facing the ocean, my back to what had
happened. The sea and heavens were unchanged, the same as they’d
always been. The storm only scarred things behind me. It wasn’t so
bad standing there, not as long as I didn’t turn around. I wanted
to keep looking at that peaceful scene, the pictures you see all
over postcard racks in your world. The sun, water, and sand were
all the mixings for a tropical paradise. Give me a piña colada with
a little umbrella, a beach chair, and some heavy duty
lotion.”

Dash waited for him to continue, but the big
man didn’t. “You had to turn around,” said Dash.

“
It was like those old black and
white movies you watched when you were a kid,” Willy said. “It was
London during the Great Plague, men pulling carts through mud
streets, calling for people to bring out their dead. Only I didn’t
have a cart, and I was doing all the bringing out. I carried them
two at a time, one broken body over each shoulder. People I loved,
and people who had loved me. People who believed in me enough to
make me a god. Believed I’d take care of them.”

“
No survivors?”

Willy’s light blinked a little brighter. “One
thing lived. A small dog with big ears and sad eyes. Mutt wouldn’t
leave me alone, kept right on my heels, back and forth as I carried
the bodies to what had been the growing fields. The ground was soft
there, the bamboo roots cut away for taro. I suppose I found the
kid who’d taken care of the dog, a boy younger than Tiki. I pulled
him from the crook of a tree, set him among the rest. It was the
only time the dog left me. He hopped around and yipped, started
licking the boy’s crooked face. He climbed across his chest,
nuzzling and licking some more. I stood watching, maybe hoping
something would happen, half expecting a miracle to come from all
that love. I mean, how could it not? But the dog finally gave up,
came moping back to me with his tail curled beneath his legs. I
can’t hear most animal thoughts, but knew he was asking me to make
the boy better, to fix him. The dog begged me to wake
him.”

Willy was shaking his head.

“
I went back to work until I had
them all lined up. The ones who hadn’t washed out to sea. The fish
took care of those, which was fine because that’s what they’re
supposed to do. I started digging holes, one by one. Not deep like
the ones your people make, but deep enough to keep the birds away.
And it’ll be a good long while before rats find their way back to
the island.”

“
How long did it take to bury
them?’

Willy gave a long exhale. “I don’t know. More
than three hundred graves. Four days, maybe. Five. That little mutt
never again left my side, though he whined like crazy when I
covered up his boy. Started digging real fast, dirt flying up from
between his legs. I slapped my hands together, told him ‘no, bad
dog.’ When I tamped down the last grave, I sat in the middle of the
field, surrounded by my people. It should have been noisy, the air
filled up with the chatter of a thousand thoughts. It should have
been like standing in the middle of a busy marketplace on a
Saturday morning.”

Willy paused again.

“
Even the insects had washed
away?”

“
Yes, the insects were gone,” said
Willy. “And not a single dirty seagull was in the air. It was dead
silent, not one soul left to pray. Stupid little dog jumped in my
lap, all starved looking, shadows between each rib. He hadn’t eaten
because there was nothing left. I tried listening for his thoughts,
but those had gone quiet, too. The thing he most cared about was
buried, like a bone to dig up later.”

“
What happened to the dog?” Dash
asked, but Willy only dropped his strange chin to his chest. “Did
you leave him alone on the island?”

Willy’s mouth opened slowly, the sound of air
rushing in and out of his massive chest the only noise for quite a
while. He finally raised his head and cleared his throat, took
another deep breath.

“
I picked him up in my arms and
rocked him. It was nice. I’d never held a dog before, but could
tell right away what all the hullabaloo was about,” said Willy. “I
held him real tight. I guess I held him too tight, because I ended
up having to dig another hole.”

D
ash found the cave opening
by starlight after Willy slipped back into the sea. He fumbled with
the striker over coconut husks, then touched a wick to the flame.
Stashing Tiki’s gift with other finds, he drank straight from his
bucket, pouring the last of the water over his face and chest. He
stepped out of his wet underpants and draped them across one of the
knobs protruding from the wall. He shook hidden bugs from his
sleeping matt, then grabbed the candle and went around the room
touching the flame to all the others.

“
Deck the fucking halls,” he sang,
and dropped onto his matt. His useless member stared up at him with
one black eye.

Numb genitals hadn’t been an issue with Sarah.
She’d repeatedly crushed his heart while questioning his spine, but
even the darkest times would find him skulking away with a
semi-erection.

On the final Christmas break from school, he’d
tucked a heavily flawed diamond engagement ring into his front
pocket. It was the beginning of an ice storm, a light rain falling
and freezing to everything, a sugary coating that caused tree limbs
to reach toward the dead grass. The ice tested power lines along
the empty roads as he drove to Sarah’s apartment building, where
she didn’t answer the buzzer. He would have given up and gone home
around midnight, but his nearly bald tires were no match for the
lousy weather, spinning in place until he cut the engine. The power
blinked off an hour later, and his car ran out of gas a little past
three while he tried to keep warm.

He plodded back up the walkway to the heavy
lobby door and pressed the buzzer again, but it made no sound. A
yellow emergency light in the foyer cast long shadows. His own
black image divided the icy landing, a weary ghost locked from its
haunt. He hammered on the door until his knuckles were sore. A man
pushed open a second floor window as he turned away, told him to
stop the racket or he’d call the cops. Dash sat on the stoop and
watched the ice thicken, his coat turning stiff, until there was a
crunching sound each time he shifted his ass on the
cement.

He huddled and eventually dozed, hair freezing
to the brick wall, fingers and toes aching from the icy dampness,
even in his dream.

There would be a girl and a boy, close in age,
with Sarah’s blonde hair. They would be three explorers roaming the
paths of his lonely childhood, holding hands when there was room.
He’d show why he’d brought sheets of construction paper when they
reached the grassy patch next to the stream. Dash blew on his
hands, despite the summer heat, then went about folding and
creasing paper the exact way his mother had made hats for her
porcelain babies at play time.

“
What are you making?”

“
Can mine be green?”

“
I want the red.”

“
It’s a hat!”

Dash shook his head, smiled, and began work on
the sheet of green.

These hats would be boats made to sail away
from little fingers, occasioning nervous gasps when they went out
of reach, then glee when approaching the rapids, four feet spinning
and scurrying along the bank to play catch-up.

“
Mine is faster!”

“
Mine will sail forever.”

Wet sneakers and muddy pants. Miniature
clothing covered miniature body parts.

“
Be careful.”

The explorers would go as far as thorn bushes
allowed, boats driven by fearless captains finally dipping into
dark channels between mossy rocks.

Everything disappeared.

A truck with a flashing yellow dome over the
cab rolled up the street, pushing a wave of dirty ice over the
curb. Brakes squealed at the end of the apartment walkway. The
truck’s salt spreader cast pellets in a shimmering arc.

The driver’s face was in profile, lit by
dashboard instruments and plow lights reflecting from the giant
blade. Tommy Chambers was behind the wheel, eyes closed and head
tilted up, cigarette dangling from his lips. Tommy was rocking in
his seat, a slight but steady motion as if the truck was rolling
over a cobblestone street. Dash first thought he was moving to
music, but that wasn’t it. Not the way his back arched, the way his
head lolled. What else could it be? The local tough guy, too cool
for school, or any boss for more than a few weeks, was bopping his
bologna along a public street in the heart of an ice storm, had
pulled over to masturbate while his truck continued flinging salt
against the grill of a parked Chevy.

Dash could feel the smirk draw across his own
cold face, the slew of snide comments bubbling forth. You gonna buy
that hand dinner, Tommy? Hey, Tommy, you bowl righty and beat it
lefty? You wanna polish my car when you’re done polishing your
knob?

It was just too good to disturb. The great and
awesome Tommy Chambers spanking his monkey in a town plow truck,
face now scrunched up as if it hurt, orange tip of his butt so low
it should be burning his greasy chin whiskers. Dash half-expected
some cowboy to yahoo when he finished, but Tommy only went limp,
head drooping forward. Tommy took a deep drag that made his face
glow, blinked and rubbed his eyes as if he’d just woken
up.

Dash was flush with superiority for the first
time in his life. There he sat, suffering through a brutal night
while waiting for the love of his life to return, a man right off
the pages of a romance novel. So what if he was actually stranded,
and that Sarah had been wise enough to stay off the roads, probably
spending the night with her folks? It had turned out to be a good
night, priceless even, despite his freezing extremities.

When Sarah sat up in the truck cab next to
Tommy and wiped the back of a hand across her mouth, Dash
discovered the rain had somehow gotten inside his body to turn the
rest of him to ice. His frozen lungs could draw no more breaths,
and his rigid heart could no longer beat.

Time stopped, or at least hesitated. The
spinning salt spreader went still. The truck’s exhaust hung in a
cloud that did not drift. The turning dome light over the cab
paused on the same tree and the same porch across the
street.

Tommy didn’t climb out and open Sarah’s door.
He let her push it open, step down from the high seat into the
slushy mess without help. Dash knew Tommy was thinking,
Fuck it,
she’ll be back
.
They love it when you treat them like shit.
They eat it up.
Dash could see her brown boots under the
truck’s belly. The door slammed and the boots turned and
disappeared around the plow blade. Tommy revved the engine and
Sarah skipped back into view, in and out of the blazing headlights.
Dash imagined himself behind the wheel, dropping the transmission
into gear and popping the clutch when she was in the center of the
massive blade. Here, let me wipe your mouth, I’ve got something to
get rid of what Tommy left on your lips, and I’ll toss some road
salt on it for good measure.

Sarah was pulling her white knit hat down over
her ears when she looked up and found Dash. Her stride didn’t
flinch when Tommy blasted the horn and ground the gears.

“
What are you doing here?” Sarah was
smiling, lips shining from the cherry lip balm she always
used.

“
I’m cold,” was all he could
manage.

Sarah dug through the pockets of her puffy
winter coat, coins and keys jingling. “The power’s off all over
town,” she said, and he wondered if it was something she’d seen for
herself, or if Tommy had given her a play by play while she was
bent over his lap. Had it been cold in there?
Did you keep your
coat zipped when you were tugging down his fly? Did he feel warm in
your hands? Was the red check-engine light on, flickering in your
silver hoop earrings while you went to work under the steering
wheel? Were your eyes closed? Did you think of me?

“
I brought you something.” He found
the ring in his pocket, held it out in his palm. Sarah squinted,
her door key pointing at the tiny diamond.

“
It’s a diamond ring,” Sarah said,
looking up at him. The whites of her eyes were yellow from the
emergency light.