The Plover

by Brian Doyle

  Really? I thought she was still with you.

  Nope.

  My mistake.

  Don’t you have an engagement elsewhere?

  Indeed I do. I must go. Do consider this a dream tomorrow when you awake.

  Will do.

  See you again someday.

  I hope not to see you again for sixty years. All due respect.

  I understand. I’d best be off.

  Thanks for the visit, I guess.

  Anytime.

  No thanks.

  And there was a silence, during which the stars glittered more than before; and then the gull rustled and fluttered in her sleep, and Declan went below, rattled and thoughtful.

  * * *

  Danilo was up first, before dawn, an old habit; so he was the first to see the Tanets on the horizon. He woke Taromauri so that she could keep an eye on it, and then he woke Declan. Who stared at the horizon for a moment and said fecking fecking feck and woke Piko.

  Is that him?

  Yup, said Declan. I know that hull. I climbed that hull.

  What do we do?

  You and Taromauri get the sail up and I will run the engine.

  Can I help? asks Danilo.

  Do whatever Piko says.

  Are we running?

  Yup.

  Can we outrun him?

  Nope. But we can make him work all day to catch us.

  Then what?

  I don’t know. I’ll figure it out. Wake up the minister if you guys need help.

  They ran. They ran all morning at full speed, Declan nursing and wooing the engine, everyone else taking turns nursing and tinkering the sail. No one ate. The Tanets drew closer by the hour. The minister and Taromauri took turns sitting with Pipa and answering her questions. She had many questions. Her terns swirled confusedly for the first hour and then settled into a steady flight in a small phalanx something like a diamond. The gull also lifted off and hung in her usual spot nine feet above the stern. Taromauri said something to the gull but the gull just hung in the sky and didn’t say anything or look at anyone. Just as the terns settled into their diamond formation an albatross appeared and surfed along behind the gull over the stern. Early in the afternoon the engine coughed and died but Declan got it humming again within four minutes a new fecking world and Olympic record the fecking old thing made of spit and rust. Late in the afternoon the wind began to wither. Piko tacked in every direction to catch every last breath; to no avail.

  Dec …

  Yeh, I see. Haul it in and hope for dark.

  * * *

  On the Tanets all Enrique could see was the red sail and the blue water and the dwindling daylight. Everything else was outside the narrow cone of his vision. I see you, he said aloud. I see you. You cannot hide. The night will do nothing for you. I know where you are. I know where you are going. You stole from me. You took what was mine. This cannot abide. One theft leads to ten. And then where are we? Adrift. Disorder disrupts order. I give the orders. I command both our boats. I command you to flee. I command fear. Having committed disorder you have brought disorder upon you. It is the law. I command that you will be caught one hour after full darkness and your boat destroyed and my property returned and no evidence of your existence or destruction will be found evermore. What you were will sink to the bottom of the sea and be lost and none will remember or testify.

  But with a real start of surprise he heard himself talking aloud in a loud cold voice, and some deep part of him was frightened; he sat down and put his face in his hands, and was startled at the shocking heat of his skin and a slather of sweat so heavy his hands glistened. Am I sick? Is this a bad illness? His left side ached from his eye to his toe. Nausea rose in him like a tide. He sat hunched and haunted for a few moments, and then stood to splash water on his head and face and was there steam? Steam rising from his face? Or was that smoke? Smoke! He jumped to the railing just in time to see another burning stick whirling right at his head; he leapt aside, furious, and the stick crashed against the cabin wall and shattered into smoking wreckage. Bastards! Bastards! He reached for the first rifle he could find under the railing and fired on the red sail just as the Plover swerved and slid past his stern. Enrique sprinted around the corner and along the port railing, cursing and firing, but the smaller boat was either deftly swerving or he was losing his vision altogether, because the red sail seemed to be shimmering—there for a moment and then not there at all, and then suddenly there again, but not where it had been before; and then somehow it vanished altogether, just as Enrique realized he was perilously close to the reefs of what looked like atolls so low that they were probably underwater most of the time. He sprinted back to the cabin and hauled the Tanets to port, but not before the boat scraped against the reef with an agonizing shriek; then he was in deep water again, and so angry that white flecks of froth appeared on his lips. He bent over the railing and heaved his bile into the darkening sea. When he stood up again, staggering, the sun was gone, the Plover was gone, and his left hand was locked so tightly on the rail it took him fully ten minutes to pry it loose.

  * * *

  Jesus, said Piko. That was close. His chest heaved and his hands were black with char. He and Declan bent over the charts, their faces an inch from the maps; no lights on the boat, by command of the captain. We can slide through this passage, said Declan, and then run all night, but he’s got a bigger boat, and more fuel, and he’ll catch us eventually. But I think it’s just him. I didn’t see anyone else on his boat. Did you?

  No. But I didn’t get a great look.

  Jesus Christmas, said Declan. My hands are shaking.

  Let’s go get him, said Piko.

  They stared at each other.

  There’s no moon, said Piko, and if we don’t get him now he’ll get us tomorrow. He won’t let us get close enough to board him. We have to get him.

  Again they stared at each other, each man thinking many thoughts at once: how did it ever come to this, the pipster, the infinitesimal chance of all five able bodies on the Plover boarding the Tanets at once, a vision of a bullet hole between Taromauri’s eyes, a vision of Pipa weeping at the loss of her mother and her father; also both men thought of the word murder but neither said it aloud. Each was startled at the grim willingness to violence in the other; but neither spoke of it.

  There’s a smokestack above the engine in that boat, said Piko in the dark. It’s a mess down there. Oily rags everywhere. Plus who knows what his cargo is. Maybe it’s oil or gunpowder. I drop a stick in there and he’s got a fire that will keep him busy for a week.

  Can you do that?

  Silence.

  I don’t know. Yes.

  You’ll have about three tries max, you know. He’ll shoot as soon as he sees where the sticks are coming from. He can’t miss us forever.

  Silence.

  Can you do it? asks Declan, very quietly indeed.

  Silence; the lapping of waves against the boat in the shallow passage between atolls; the faint crush of surf on the reef; the sharpest ears might catch the breathing of the four rattled beings belowdecks, and of the warbler beneath the water tank.

  Yes, said Piko.

  * * *

  On the Tanets Enrique was sick again and again, as if his body wanted to empty itself completely. He hung exhausted over the stern. He knew he should be alert; he had been boarded once by the man on that boat, in a manner Enrique still couldn’t figure out, his hull being sheer and slippery; but his fury had ebbed to embers. His mind rattled and leapt with images: his mother’s eyes in the firelit dark; dust swirling around his brother’s feet; broken adobe walls; dry mountains lined along their ridges with lovely swaths of pines and firs and mountain cedar. That is what heaven had seemed like to him when he was a boy, those dense thatches of cool forest in the sky; he had climbed there a few times later, when he was a teenager, and never forgot the clarity of the air, the cool shade under the trees, the sharp scent of the conifer trees. For a moment he stared into the darkness
and saw another life he might have led, in the mountains, the bushes filled with butterflies every winter, the occasional lynx or mountain lion glimpsed like a russet shadow on a ridge, his axe and saw the tools of his trade, coming down from the mountains occasionally to the big rivers, or the coast, or the city, for weddings and wakes; but then the burning part of him rose again and he went around the ship checking that the rifles were all loaded. In the cabin he stared at the charts showing a thin passageway between the two low atolls. Half his mind calculated odds and percentages, wind and current, angles of approach, the relative weights of the two boats, ramming speed, the maximum number of rifle shots he had at his command; the other half, first silently and then mumbling and then speaking quietly, said we could just turn around and go. We could just go. We could sell this last cargo for a good profit and sell the boat for a serious profit and burn everything else behind us and go to the mountains. We could go. We can make decisions. Circumstances do not dictate decisions. Decisions dictate the process of circumstances. We can decide to go. That is not surrender. That is magnanimity. With a wave of the hand we spare their lives.

  But the burning half of his mind was grim and silent. He was finally two men, one weary of rage and the other starving for it, one desperate for the drug and the other finished and done and sure at last it would lead to death, one immersed in the past and the other dreaming of the future, one stoking his fury with the past and the other wishing nothing more than to be done with it forever, one lawless and the other lawful, one at war and the other at peace, one heat and the other cool; and they strove in him mightily, this last moment in the cabin. His head throbbed and he reached up his left hand to rub his eye and he saw that his hand had become an unusable claw. He stood up and made a sound like a sob or a scream and he spun the wheel and the Tanets slid toward the two low atolls.

  * * *

  Again Danilo and Taromauri built a small fire on the hatch cover, and roasted firesticks, the minister holding a canvas tarpaulin over his head to hide the light; again Pipa shivered in her bunk, and sent her spirit into the deep waters, to see what she could see. Declan maneuvered the Plover out of the inlet and into the ocean, peering desperately into the gloom for the lurk and loom of the Tanets. Piko shimmied up the mast, and balanced himself for a moment like a dancer on the tip of it, feeling for the wind, for he knew that he would need every hint of wind for these throws; oahi depended not on strength but on skill, the ability to read the wind, the deft snap of the wrist, the perfectly burning stick; the wood could not be too burnt, or it would fall apart in the teeth of the wind; it could not be insufficiently burnt, or its weight would cause it to plummet; and the glowing stick had to have just enough of a handle for the thrower to launch it into the wind without hurrying the throw to save his hand from scorching.

  He shimmied back down, the coins in his beard clinking against the mast.

  Can you throw from up there?

  No. Can’t keep my footing.

  He jumped up on the cabin roof, nearly crushing the gull, who leapt away silently into the darkness, and then he bent down to whisper to Declan in the cabin.

  Dec?

  Soon. I hear his engine.

  For a moment there are only the gentlest of sounds: the pitter of waves against the boat, the faint thrum of the Tanets, the faint thump of surf, the faint crackle of the tiny fire under the tarp, the faint shuffle of the minister’s feet as he tried to evade the smoke, the quiet groan of the Plover’s engine, a faint snap as Danilo fed the fire.

  Declan tapped on the roof and Piko bent down again.

  I’m going to slide by once slow enough for you to get two throws. Then I’ll come around and go back along the same side real fast. That will give you one more throw.

  Got it.

  Ready?

  Yeh.

  The Tanets loomed out of the dark suddenly, moving slowly—loomed just as it had that night long ago, thought Declan distractedly for an instant, before he cut the engine and turned the Plover to parallel the larger ship, perhaps twenty yards away. Taromauri reached into the fire, caught a stick, and handed it up to Piko, who set his feet and whipped it end over end into the darkness. It seemed to hang in the air for an instant, and then shattered against some hard surface; they could see the deck of the Tanets illuminated for an instant by the sparks, and a flash of Enrique’s body running along the railing. Taromauri handed Piko another firebrand, and he set his feet, aiming four feet above the last one; but this one, perhaps traveling too fast, also smashed against something unyielding and shattered, although somehow it seemed half the impact of the first. By now the Plover was nearly past the Tanets altogether, but Taromauri snatched a third stick from the fire and tossed it to Piko, who caught it, whirled to his right, and threw; and this stick, like the first one, seemed to hang in the air for a remarkably long time, before it winked out as suddenly as if it had been extinguished. At exactly that instant a bullet from the Tanets shattered a starboard window of the Plover’s cabin, passing directly over the steering wheel. Taromauri screamed; and then the Tanets exploded with an incredible roar and sheet of flames.

  * * *

  We read and talk about explosions as if we know much about explosions, said Piko much later, but very few of us know anything at all about explosions. Explosions are terrifying. They are so huge and sudden and immediate that there aren’t any decent words for the horrific assault on the senses. You can say shattered and obliterated and destroyed but none of those words give the right sense of absolute naked terror and fear, and displacement; as Piko put it, it’s like the world you were sure you knew doesn’t behave, for a moment, and then when it rights itself there’s a terrible mess, and after that you never think quite the same about what you thought before. Also explosions are indecent. They’re obscene. They offend nature; they’re unnatural. Even when they are ostensibly natural, like volcanoes. Twice I have seen volcanoes explode, once on land and once at sea, and both times that was the end of the nature that was there before the volcano blew, and everything and everyone was unsettled essentially ever after. Talk about offending nature, you know? But explosions caused by human beings; I don’t know, there’s something really and truly obscene about that, I think. Believe me, I know what I am talking about. I caused an explosion that I will never forget, and I have tried to forget it sometimes. You could argue all day long that it was the right thing, we had the right to self-defense, the theory of just war, violence can be fairly met with reciprocal and commensurate violence, violence is the default mammalian function when offspring is threatened, blah blah blah. I’ve heard it all. I’ve thought it all, I’ve taken refuge behind it all. Believe me, on dark days I have blamed evolution for my mammalian default function when offspring is threatened. But there are still a lot of nights when I see that ship explode into a million pieces, man. I see it in front of me as real as can be. I am standing on the roof of the cabin and the universe shatters and I hear screaming and I can’t see for a while. Sometimes I think I will see that particular explosion until the day I die. Maybe afterwards. Maybe.

  * * *

  Declan felt the bullet slice past his face, by a hair; he had leaned back from the wheel to look up at Piko. He spun away from the wheel toward the stern and was coming up fast from a crouch when the world exploded. Piko, on the roof, dropped to his knees instinctively, covering his head, and then leapt off the roof for Pipa. The minister, still covered with the tarp, was knocked down by a shard of flying wreckage and was crumpled against the railing to port. Danilo, who had been crouched by the fire on the hatch when the Tanets exploded, had the wit to scatter the fire with his feet just as wreckage fell and waves from the explosion nearly overturned the Plover and he went sliding into the huddle of the minister. Declan counted people instantly without thinking and shouted for Taromauri and Pipa but Piko, already down the ladder, shouted from below that they’re all right! we’re all right! you all right? Declan leapt back to the cabin for the wheel and gunned the engine and shot t
he Plover ahead a thousand yards, listening with an unconscious ear for the rumble of surf to be sure he was not gunning the boat right into the reef, and then he suddenly had to pee so ferociously he thought his groin would burst. Holy shit. Holy holy shit. Holy shit. Holy holy holy shit. Calm. Calm. Regroup. Boat. Pip. The minister! He turned from the wheel again but Piko was kneeling by the minister, with a groggy Danilo, who had cracked his head against the hatch cover in his slide; and the minister sat up, also groggy, but saying something animatedly to Declan, it seemed; his mouth was moving but no words were coming out. The minister stopped talking, and looked like he was waiting for an answer; and when Piko and Danilo also turned to look at Declan, Declan realized that he couldn’t hear a thing.

  * * *

  Are there survivors? is what the minister had said. We should look for survivors. The Plover was still reeling from the waves caused by the explosion, but Declan realized what the minister meant and he went back to the cabin, started the engine, turned around, and then stopped for a moment; do I want to pick up that guy, if he lived? Wasn’t the whole point to get rid of that guy? But something in him clicked the questions off like a light switch, and he nudged the boat back to where the Tanets had vanished, shaking his head to try to get his hearing back. Must have been the explosion. Hate to be deaf. Fecking fecking feck. Never hear the pip squeak again. Shards of wreckage seething in the sea began to bump and jostle the boat, and Declan slowed to a crawl.

  Piko, he said quietly, and heard himself say the word; wheeeew.

  Dec.

  They okay below?

  Yeh. Taromauri was down there in a flash and had the pip wrapped up bug in a rug.

  Man. Nice shot. I can’t believe you actually pulled that off.

  Me neither.

  Look for the guy. Look for anybody. God knows who or what was on that ship. He must have had explosives or oil drums or weapons or something. Get everyone to keep their eyes peeled. Use flashlights or whatever.

  Okay.

  You okay?