She couldn’t stand looking at herself in a mirror anymore. When she was younger, she’d been justifiably proud of her figure. “I used to have cheesecake legs,” she had told Mac’s sister a few months earlier. “Now I have cottage-cheese thighs.”
She had been lying in the bunk around midday for almost an hour, exhausted, but unable to fall asleep. At first, the whine of a chain saw had kept her awake. Since the only one on the island belonged to Roy, she wasn’t surprised when she went up on deck and spotted him west of their anchorage, near an old seaplane ramp, hunched over, chopping down another big coconut tree.
Mac was ashore—as usual. Muff hoped he would avoid a confrontation with Roy. Let him cut the blasted trees down. Who cared? She sensed Roy was threatened by Mac, the man he could never be. Her husband was honest, capable, and energetic, while Roy had his own sly methods of getting what he wanted. As when he copped the chair she’d put aside…and now, destroying a tree to get coconuts rather than shinnying up. But Roy was always quick to seek Mac’s help, and Mac was always willing to give it.
When the sawing stopped, Muff made another attempt to sleep, but failed.
Honestly, she didn’t understand where Mac got all his energy. Since they’d come to Palmyra, he’d been getting up around sunrise, his favorite part of the day on the island. In all the years of their marriage, she’d never seen him so eager to start the day—usually, he slept late.
Now, she stayed in her bunk later than Mac, took a nap or two in the day when he was out working or exploring, and still she was the first in bed every night. The island life that invigorated him debilitated her. It wasn’t fair.
She shut her eyes to try again, but opened them as soon as she heard the sound of a boat engine that wasn’t the Zodiac. There were new voices, too. As she got up, it occurred to her that it must be Jennifer and Roy’s friends arriving with their supplies.
She went up on deck. There was an unfamiliar sailboat motoring into the lagoon, heading for the dolphins. She could see a bearded, long-haired young man standing on the bow.
Great, Muff thought. Just what we need on this island. More useless hippies preaching about self-reliance and begging us to feed them.
CHAPTER 13
TOLOA, THE BOAT THAT pulled into the Palmyra lagoon on August 13 as Muff was trying to nap, was a well-kept twenty-nine-foot sloop with two men aboard. They were definitely not hippies, and neither knew Jennifer and Buck.
The long-haired fellow was Thomas Wolfe, a pensive twenty-six-year-old chemical engineer from San Diego. He had lived for three years on a sailboat docked at Underwood’s Marina, where Mac had berthed the Sea Wind, but had never met the Grahams. He had taken a year’s leave of absence from his job with a pesticides company so that he could sail the Pacific and end up in New Zealand, which he’d always wanted to visit. He’d delivered a boat to Hawaii for a San Diego yachtsman who had sold it to someone on the Big Island. There, Wolfe sought a ride to the South Seas, and found it aboard the Toloa, next to which, coincidentally, he had docked in Hilo.
Norman Sanders, the Toloa’s owner, had until recently been a geology professor at the University of California at Santa Barbara. A burly man with graying mutton chops and an Old Testament salt-and-pepper beard, Sanders showed more verve and intensity than many of his students. He had fallen into disfavor with the school administration for his confrontational tactics against what he considered to be the treacherous evils of big business. One of his campaigns had been directed against offshore oil drilling. To dramatize his opposition, he once sat in a strategically anchored rowboat in the Santa Barbara Channel for four days to stall placement of an oil-drilling platform. His self-published book, Stop It!, offered a step-by-step blueprint to other no-growth proponents on how to convince elected officials to halt development projects. After seven years of employment without a single pay raise, the outspoken Sanders failed to gain tenure at the university. Disgusted, he declared himself an expatriate and planned forthwith to move to Australia. His wife, Jill, and their little girl had sailed with him from San Diego to Hawaii, but at Hilo, the long-suffering seasick woman declared that she wasn’t going to sail one more nautical mile. With daughter in hand, she caught the next flight to Sydney. So the former professor found himself in need of a crewman to help him sail the rest of the way to Australia.
For Sanders and Wolfe, the voyage to Palmyra had been uneventful. The sea had been blessedly calm, and the wind steady. The greatest excitement on the way down had sprung from their regular arguments over environmental matters. Sanders accused Wolfe of working hand in hand with the “enemy polluters.” Wolfe usually countered that pesticides are necessary to human progress and Sanders was living in a fantasy world. They would become irked with each other and not talk for a few hours, then happily go at it again the next day.
One thing they had agreed on was stopping at Palmyra. A former Fullbright scholar, Sanders specialized in coastal geomorphology, or the study of coastal regions and the forces of nature that influence them. The prospect of visiting an island largely untouched by civilization was professionally appealing to him.
“I can’t believe this island isn’t going to have at least a few hippies living off the land,” Wolfe joked.
“No, it’ll be deserted,” Sanders insisted. “Everything I’ve read says so.”
Gliding into the placid lagoon under power, they saw one boat moored across the lagoon and a second boat—a ketch—anchored in a cove a few hundred yards to the west. They were steering the Toloa toward a dilapidated wharf when a rugged-looking man called to them from a dinghy he was rowing their way.
“You don’t want to tie up there,” he shouted. “Too many rats around the dock. Best place is next to my boat. I’ll give you a hand.”
When they were secured to a dolphin, the man in the dinghy came aboard. Barefoot, he was bronzed from the sun, with shoulder-length hair and a full beard, and wore nothing but dirty cutoffs. He introduced himself as Roy, then asked: “You guys have any dope?”
Sanders shook his head and Wolfe said, “Sorry.”
“That’s okay,” the visitor said. “I have my own. It’s getting down to the dregs, though.” He took a small plastic bag from his pocket and began rolling a joint of mostly seeds and stems.
Wolfe moved away to finish stowing the sails. As he passed Sanders, who was within earshot of Buck, he cracked pianissimo, “So much for your deserted island, Norm.”
The air was soon filled with the pungent odor of marijuana.
THE NEXT morning, the newcomers gathered their fishing gear and went ashore to meet “Roy.”
Warning them about poisonous fish in the lagoon, he’d offered to show them his favorite fishing spot and teach them which types of fish were safe to eat.
As Wolfe and Sanders approached the clearing where Roy had promised to meet them, they saw Jennifer, whom they’d also met the previous day, digging with a shovel as her boyfriend worked nearby.
The young woman’s New York accent had surprised Wolfe, who had come across few New Yorkers sailing in the Pacific. Just as he was about to ask her how she’d ended up on Palmyra, a pit bull came charging out of nowhere, racing furiously toward them.
The two men halted, expecting the dog to stop and take a defensive stand. When the animal kept on and came within reach, Wolfe considered kicking it in the head but decided against such a drastic move in front of its owners. Surely the dog would stop, either on its own or in response to a command. Jennifer finally shrieked, but it was too late. The dog bowled Wolfe over as it bit into his midriff.
“Popolo, kapu!” Jennifer screamed. “Kapu!”
The pit bull backed away with a piece of torn shirt in its mouth, chewing greedily like a hyena snapping up a bit of offal.
As Wolfe stood up, he could see that the bite was deep. “Goddamn dog!” he shouted. “If that sucker ever comes near me again, I’ll kill it.”
“Good,” Buck said, looking up coolly from his work. “We’d have some fresh meat
around here.”
Not only are the dogs pitifully hungry, Wolfe thought, but so are the people. Did this Roy fellow with the “Buck” tattoo care that little about his dog, or was he simply refusing to accept responsibility for its aggressive behavior? Whatever the case, he vowed to prepare himself for the next time the pit bull came around.
Wolfe returned to the Toloa to clean and bandage his stomach wound, then he joined Sanders again for their delayed fishing expedition.
Wolfe and Sanders followed Buck to Strawn Island, where they fished unsuccessfully for about an hour. Sanders gave up then and went off to study some nearby coral formations. He did not hear their odd guide say that he was going to try shooting a fish. In fact, Sanders didn’t even know the man was packing a gun.
At the sharp reports—bang, bang, bang—Sanders instinctively dived for cover behind a tree trunk. He immediately thought, Is this scary-looking doper trying to kill us?
To his immense relief, he heard Wolfe shout excitedly: “You got one!”
Wolfe hadn’t believed their guide could hit a fish with a bullet, but Roy was good with his .22-caliber revolver. He was less adept at logic. Even a gravely wounded fish doesn’t wait around to be speared for dinner. The mullet thrashed on the surface for a few seconds, then submerged and disappeared.
Sanders waited for his heaving chest to subside before stepping out from behind the tree. He didn’t want the guys to know that the unexpected gunfire had terrified him as much as it did.
After returning from fishing with Buck, Wolfe and Sanders returned to the Toloa for lunch. Wolfe then went back ashore for a bath, taking his machete along.
As he walked down the trail to the bathing area, he heard a dog bark. An ugly black muzzle poked through some nearby brush, as if trying to pick up his scent. He drew the machete from the sheath at his side.
The pit bull trotted into the clearing and bared his teeth in a hideous grin.
Wolfe stood his ground. “My turn, Rover,” he said between clenched teeth as he tightened his grip on the machete. This time, he would fight offense with offense.
But the pit bull did not advance toward him. It was as if it knew better than to attack now. Nonchalantly, it lifted a leg against a tree, then turned its back on Wolfe and sauntered away.
A little disappointed, Wolfe slipped the machete back into its sheath and continued on. He came across Jennifer, still digging, this time near a concrete blockhouse.
“Exploring?” she asked, leaning on the stock of the shovel. “It won’t take you long to realize you’re seeing the same thing. Over and over.”
“You mean like jungle and more jungle?”
Jennifer smiled. “And birds and more birds.”
“What are you digging for?”
“Dirt.” She giggled at his expression. “For real. There’s a serious shortage of it around here. We’re trying to get a garden going. The crabs aren’t helping matters. They eat anything they can reach, so we’re fixing up a place on the roof.”
“A roof garden—just like in New York. You from there? Manhattan maybe?”
“Originally, yeah,” she answered, “but I haven’t lived there in years. This paradise is home now.” The last line was delivered sarcastically.
“Guess you and your boyfriend thought you’d be alone here.”
“Just like Tarzan and Jane. ’Course, Mac and Muff thought they’d be alone, too.” She brushed back a wisp of damp hair from her forehead, less like Jane than an overworked Pearl Buck heroine.
In discussing the Grahams with Jennifer, Wolfe got the impression there was friction between the two couples, but did not press the point.
“Say, how’s your flour and sugar supply?” Jennifer asked.
“We’ve got plenty. We don’t bake much.”
“If you give me some, I’ll bake bread for you and keep a loaf for myself. Buck and I are almost out.”
“His name Roy or Buck?”
“Well—Buck’s a nickname.”
Wolfe could see that she and her boyfriend were woefully ill-prepared and having a hard time of it on Palmyra. He agreed to give her some flour and sugar even though he and Sanders didn’t need any of her baking, since they still had several loaves of bread they’d bought in Hawaii.
“We’re thinking of sailing to Fanning to buy supplies,” Jennifer said.
“Sailing? It’s upwind the whole way. You’d better count on using your engine.”
“Can’t. It doesn’t work.”
“You’d take a helluva pounding against the wind.”
Wolfe didn’t tell Jennifer, but he would not have sailed anywhere on the rickety-looking Iola. The rigging, he’d noticed, was rusted telephone cable. The mast was inexpertly homemade, likely to snap in a bad storm. The spars looked spindly. And the boat obviously leaked, because he heard the noisy bilge pump running off and on. If it leaked while moored in the lagoon, what would happen when they tried to sail upwind against the trades? If her mast broke in the rough seas, they would drift downwind with little chance of being rescued, since no commercial freighters took that route. They might float helplessly for weeks, even months, until they starved or died of thirst under the burning sun.
“Maybe we won’t have to go,” Jennifer said. “Some friends in an Islander 32 are coming down in a couple of weeks.”
“An Islander’s a good boat.” Hearing that made Wolfe feel better. The boat was a new fiberglass craft designed especially for the rigors of ocean sailing. The hippies would be all right once they got resupplied.
Later that afternoon, Wolfe and Sanders visited the Sea Wind. Wolfe in particular hit it off with Mac and Muff. He could see that the Grahams were a well-prepared, experienced yachting couple with an absolutely magnificent boat, a queen of the seas compared with Buck and Jennifer’s garbage scow.
As Mac gave his traditional boat tour, Wolfe thought, Jesus Christ, this isn’t a boat, it’s some kind of damned museum. He listened politely as Mac pointed out various design features and pieces of equipment, but he was most impressed by the evidence provided by his own eyes. On the many long ocean voyages he’d made, he learned that the brass went first in the pernicious salt spray, then the wood. But here an antique sextant gleamed brightly in its velvet-lined rack, the compass and the flare pistol glistened. The varnish on the wood surfaces looked fresh, and had been waxed recently. He’d never seen anything like it except in pictures of the great yachts of multimillionaires who had salaried crews to keep every last fitting polished.
Mac took Wolfe ashore to show off his neatly arranged workshop. On a bench sat the old rusty outboard motor from the Iola. “I’m trying to fix it for them,” Mac explained, “but it might be hopeless.” In a garage next to his workshop, he boyishly asked Wolfe to admire a 1940s fire engine with tires gone flat. Behind it against a nearby wall were stacked numerous boxes of rat poison.
“Like to go fishing?” Mac asked.
“Sure. Haven’t caught a thing since we got here.”
“We’ll take care of that.”
The two of them took off in the Zodiac. They zipped across the lagoon to Mac’s favorite fishing spot near the channel entrance. Wolfe, seeing his line knotted, dropped his hook and leader over the side. He was working at untangling the line when he landed his first fish. Catching a fish on an unbaited hook astonished him. After the hapless expedition with Roy that morning, Wolfe had assumed that the fishing around Palmyra was poor. Actually, the finny creatures were lining up to get caught.
It was close to sunset before they finally started to head back to the Sea Wind, laden with about fifty pounds of edible fish. Mac whistled most of the way in the gathering darkness, looking, Wolfe thought, the picture of perfect contentment, the confident male animal in control of his territory.
Back at the Sea Wind, Muff invited Wolfe and Sanders for dinner. She broiled some of that afternoon’s catch, fixed steamed rice, and put together a salad from a small palm Mac had cut fresh that afternoon.
When Wolfe t
old his story about being bitten by the dog, the Grahams were frankly disgusted. It was clear from the conversation that Muff hated sharing the island with the other couple. And both she and her husband were especially leery of Roy.
“He doesn’t say anything to me anymore,” Muff said, “even when I say hello.”
“He sure doesn’t talk much,” Wolfe agreed. He was reminded of the phrase “keeping his own counsel.” That described Roy. So did “tightly wound.”
“And those missing front teeth,” she went on, “make him look—creepy.”
Wolfe saw Muff give a slight shudder.
AUGUST 16, 1974
ON THEIR fourth and last full day on the island, Wolfe and Sanders joined the Grahams for a fascinating exploration of Palmyra’s outer islets. The party marveled at the variegated formations, chatted playfully, and caught dozens of small crabs, a fine pretext for a going-away feast aboard the Sea Wind that night.
When they returned from the excursion after dark, Wolfe and Sanders walked back toward their boat in order to clean up. They dawdled along the way, stopping at a few old buildings and searching with flashlights for keepsakes of their stay. When Wolfe stepped into the shed where the old fire truck was parked, he noticed right away that the rat poison was gone. Every last box of it.
Normally, Wolfe wouldn’t have thought twice about the missing poison. There were enough unwanted rodents on Palmyra to justify spreading some around. But after hearing Muff go on and on about Roy the previous night—well, her paranoia was contagious. The Grahams had so many things on the Sea Wind that Roy and Jennifer went without. Most important, good food and plenty of it.
From his occasional work with pesticides, Wolfe knew that this particular poison, warfarin, would be fatal to humans. It had been mixed with cornmeal, shaped into cubes. A few cubes crushed up and mixed in food might never be detected. It was odorless, tasteless, and effective in very low dosages. Not that the poison would kill anyone immediately. Rather, death would be an extremely painful, drawn-out affair lasting up to a week, during which the victim would be hemorrhaging internally and frequently vomiting.
And the Sea Will Tell Page 14