Dash in the Blue Pacific (18 page)

He nodded and shrugged, his hand
shaking.

“
It looks like an engagement ring,”
she said.

He nodded again, cupped hand turning pink from
the bitter air. Icy rain droplets, each bigger than the diamond,
collected on his bare skin.

“
Of course I’ll marry you!” Sarah
lunged at him, and he squeezed his hand closed just in time. She
covered his face in cherry-scented kisses, her lips soft and damp
on his cold skin and warm tears. Sarah pulled open her coat to
share her warmth, nuzzling into his neck, whispering things about
love and happiness. He trembled as she pressed her whole body
against him, nearly suffocating him with the residue of Tommy’s Old
Spice cologne.

* * *

Dash awoke shivering in the stifling cave,
feeling the ghost of Sarah’s embrace. He tried holding onto the
dream, grasping it tight to make it stay despite the truth.
Loneliness made him want to retain all her smells, even the ones
that cut his heart into pieces.

He grabbed his underwear and stumbled into the
sunshine. He walked the path along the coast, toward the cove where
the villagers did their laundry and bathed, and the fishermen tied
their skiffs. He had an urgent need to be near people, to be close
to them without being seen. They hated him, wanted him burned to
death because he’d failed. Did they really believe throwing him
into the volcano would calm their god?

Ducking low when he heard voices, he crept
forward to squat behind a screen of sticker bushes with twisted
barbwire arms. Noise carried farther here, the healthy reef slicing
apart the waves, sapping most of their energy. Scavenging birds
took their complaints away from the shoreline, more intent on
silver flashes among the coral and tumbling whitewater. A wedge of
quiet space between jungle insects and ocean was left for human
voices.

Three women faced one other in mid-thigh water.
They chattered while scrubbing small pieces of clothing they pulled
one by one from a floating basket. The clean clothes went into a
woven sack strung from one woman’s shoulder. A trail of gray water
bled from them in a narrow river that led back down the coast. Dash
had smelled the soap while sitting by his tide pool on still
days.

All were naked, two with small pregnant
bellies, the third showed only her backside as she wrung out
underpants and sports bras, tucking each item into her sack. They
worked slowly, spoke with hands that danced and sprayed droplets.
He imagined the women in a coin-op Laundromat back home, meeting
once a week at the same time, catching up on gossip, family news.
Two would have been friends since middle school, married high
school sweethearts, turned up pregnant within a month of each
other. The newcomer was young, brought dating stories to the group
that the others ate up. He imagined she’d recently struck out on
her own, moving into a tiny efficiency, paid for from her salary as
an insurance company secretary. She could type like the wind, which
was another reason the pregnant homemakers embraced her. It was a
skill, something more exotic than their last two years of
meatloaves and Lemon Pledge shines.

The women were living artwork and Dash was
powerless to look away. He yearned to be a part of their painting,
but there would never be a place for someone like him, even if the
brushes were still at work. He’d be the lurking shadow, would ruin
the composition. He would corrupt the story of loving friendship,
expose tension, or introduce dread. The artist would fill his
skinny arms with rank chum he couldn’t hold, a few flicks of a
talented wrist bringing sharks to the scent.

Dash craved everything he’d lost, then realized
he’d never experienced anything like what these women seemed to
happily take for granted. His mother had promised he’d find good
friends; they just hadn’t met each other yet. But she was wrong.
School was miserable, and summers worse. Summers brought solitary
confinement where he suffered the demands and eccentricities of his
father.

One woman laughed, put a wet hand on another’s
shoulder, and pointed an index finger, a soapy bra dangling from
her fist. The woman with her back to him turned.

She was as dark and beautiful as when she’d
slid over his body in the love hut. Younger under the sun, her eyes
wide at first, curious as she followed her friend’s words to where
he crouched on the shore. He remained frozen among the thorny
plants while her eyes explored the landscape and found him. She
took three slow steps away from the others, allowed the strap to
fall from her shoulder, the half-filled sack set adrift. Dash
searched for words, an apology, anything that would make her come
closer, come touch him. He would learn her language to share
anything she wanted to know about mountains not filled with fire or
pillows made of feathers. He had nothing, but still had so much to
give.

He read lips that formed the word
cracker
, and held his breath, praying for those lips to
curve into a smile. She jostled in the water to spread her feet,
pushing her hips forward. He tried to look away when she reached
down and snatched fists of coarse hair and screamed two words at
him, then repeated the message each time she thrust her
hips.

“
Nova oom
,” he heard himself
repeat, recognizing the words Tiki sometimes used.

“
Nova oom
,” shouted the
woman, pulling at her hair, rocking her hips.
My daughter is
nine
, she called out with two sing-song words that to Dash
sounded like a moan at end of the world. And he knew her daughter
must have the same fine bones and unmarked skin, and was incubating
under the sun for her turn with evil.

Dash ran away, bare feet slapping down on
things hard and sharp, not stopping until he was curled up alone in
his dark cave, surrounded by spiders.

T
hunder rattled the cave,
shook dust from the ceiling and sent startled spiders scrambling
for their holes. Dash rolled from his mat to hobble down the rocks
and splash cold water on his chest. He washed his gritty feet and
picked thorns from a callused heel, thick skin that was the color
and texture of a worn sandal. He should be building a boat rather
than moping, but standing there alone made him feel every god was
against him. The storm had gathered to the southeast, with soaring
clouds flashing lightning deep inside their purple guts, wind
lifting spray from whitecaps. He could never build something
capable of withstanding such power.

He took one step forward to feel the energy of
the rushing tide push against him, foamy water riding up his shins
and cascading off bony knees. Another step and he felt the energy
begin to shift, as if deciding it might want to take him with it.
He barely existed on this island, as if there really had been no
survivors. The plane and all its beings who mattered were at the
bottom of the sea. It wouldn’t be a sin to keep walking, if only he
possessed the courage.

Had Sarah bothered attending his funeral? Did
she stand next to his crying mother whose useful life had already
ended? His throat tightened at the thought of his mother’s image.
As pale and fragile as the tea cups his father kept on the highest
shelves, away from the grubby hands of youth.

Tommy Chambers was good with heavy equipment;
perhaps his latest job had been at the cemetery. Tommy in the
excavator cab, cigarette dangling, as on the night he’d given Sarah
a ride in the plow truck. Good old Tommy, waiting for the last
person to leave so he could sling some dirt, looking forward to
sharing a good laugh with his drinking buddies about the assholes
who paid cold hard cash to bury an empty coffin.

Dash turned from the sea, trudged back up to
where Willy lounged in his favorite window seat.

“
A real fairy tale story,” Willy
said, fingers from both hands working to prop a three-inch plastic
Snoopy doll on his muscular abdomen. The toy had been deposited in
the tide pool the day before, along with two baby eels currently
doing laps, probing the walls for a way out.

Dash sat to watch the waves roll over the black
lava. The wind blew from the north, pushing at the storm as an
invisible barrier, piling the clouds taller. “I lost my job because
of that bastard. My fiancée and my job. Everything.”

“
You have your health,” Willy said,
then glanced down at Dash’s crotch and made a wet clicking sound
with his mouth. “Oh, sorry.”

“
That’s for the girl.” Dash pointed
at the Snoopy. “She expects the soldiers to give her a kitten. Nice
clothes and a kitten.”

“
Do they really have nine
lives?”

“
I won’t let her go. I need to
figure out how to build a boat, and keep the birds from ratting me
out. Who knew birds took sides?”

“
This was made in China.” Willy held
the toy upside down for Dash to see the stamped letters. “Imagine
it coming so far. If the girl doesn’t know you found it, we should
put it back in the ocean and let it keep going.”

“
I should have died in the crash
with everyone else.”

Willy made the clicking sound again, which was
followed by a bright flash and rolling thunder Dash felt through
the seat.

“
You’re a bundle of joy,” said
Willy. “You survived for a reason, my friend. She knocked the plane
out of the sky and let you live. You might have been singled out as
the best baby-making prospect, but she didn’t figure on you
throwing a wrench into your delicate mechanism.”

Dash leaned forward, turned to look up at the
monstrosity spewing wispy puffs of smoke into the gray scud. From
where they sat, it looked too steep to climb. There had to be a
path on a hidden side, chiseled steps in the stone face making easy
access for sending innocent castaways to their deaths. He imagined
a lovable, bumbling Gilligan with his trademark white cap gone, his
red shirt and white pants in bloody tatters, being prodded to the
edge of the volcano by sharpened spears, the villagers humming the
sitcom theme song.

“
You’re bumming me out with this
shit,” Willy said, obviously reading his thoughts. “Think of
something cheerful, will ya? Tell me the story about your
bride-to-be and the snow plow driver. That was a good
one.”

“
You can be a real jerk.”

“
How’d the guy get you
fired?”

Dash reached across the middle seat and plucked
the Snoopy from Willy’s cavernous belly button. “I really do want
to give this to Tiki.”

“
Suit yourself. How’d he get you
shit-canned?”

“
Tommy worked the counter at his old
man’s bowling alley when he wasn’t driving a plow. You know
anything about bowling?”

Willy tilted his fish head at him, bulb at the
end of the dorsal spine flickering. “I know whatever you know about
bowling. You’d order a couple of light beers and try to impress
your girl with an awesome follow-through.”

“
Okay, okay, so we’d either catch a
movie or bowl a few games on Saturday nights. It was the winter
after graduation, and I’d started writing for the newspaper. Not a
whole lot to do in northern Vermont once the sun goes
down.”

“
You spent your time bowling even
though your penis worked? Must be a very satisfying
game.”

Dash ignored the sarcasm. “I started noticing
some of the people who’d come into the bowling alley. They’d hang
around the front counter where Tommy chain-smoked behind the
register and sprayed disinfectant into rental shoes.”

Willy lifted a huge bare foot and wiggled his
toes. “Never owned a pair of shoes in my life.”

“
I recognized a lot of these guys,
mostly local business owners. One had a third-generation sandwich
shop, another owned a Hallmark franchise. An insurance guy, a tax
preparer, all pillar-of-the-community types. I also knew their
faces because they’d stop in to shoot the breeze with our ad reps
at the paper, or go to lunch with my managing editor. But what the
heck were they doing at the bowling alley with this lowlife
Chambers? A few times they rolled a couple of frames, but some
didn’t even switch out of their street shoes.”

“
Bad for the lanes, right? Scuffs
them up.”

“
Yeah, I guess. You’re supposed to
wear special shoes,” said Dash, who owned his own pair, kept them
tucked away in a hall closet. Only now they were either boxed up in
his mother’s basement or had been donated to charity. He’d kept
them next to the used bowling ball he’d found on Craigslist for
fifteen bucks. “Sarah complained that we stopped going to movies
because I planned on trying out for the Olympics.”

“
No kidding? Bowling is an Olympic
sport?”

“
Jesus, I don’t know. Something was
going on between Tommy and the business owners. I started a list of
who was coming and going. There was a story buried there some
place, and I was determined to dig it up. It involved a whole lot
of important people in town.”

“
You sound like a lousy date.” Willy
made more clicking sounds with his mouth. “Your girl didn’t know
what you were up to?”

“
I couldn’t trust her to keep it
secret. She was still going out drinking with her friends on nights
I had late assignments.”