Swimming in the Volcano

by Bob Shacochis

  “When are you coming back to Queenstown?” Sally persisted.

  “Monday,” the girl answered weakly.

  “I’ll come find you, Jolene. Where is your uncle’s shop?”

  Jolene told her, and Sally adjusted her hips to face the back of the lorry, squinting against the heavy drops that sailed into her eyes. She yelped and sprang up from the bench, hammering the back of the cab with her fist. “Shit, we passed it,” she yelled above the downpour. “Stop! Stop!”

  The lorry fishtailed to a halt. Sally dropped down next to Jolene, whose eyes had become blind, water-filled, her age washed off so that Sally drew back in wonder, seeing not the self-possessed adult who had been there but a teenage girl, young, alone and drowning. She petted the rain from the girl’s sad face, wanting to bring her comfort.

  “When the rain ends make the driver stop and wait for you and go into the bushes and put on some dry clothes. You have too far to go wet like this. When you come back down Monday bring the boy with you. Bring him to my school in the morning. Has a doctor ever seen him?”

  Jolene shook her head no. Sally looked at her, feeling strange; something in the girl’s sadness, its absoluteness, made her shudder. On an impulse, she asked, “He’s not your little boy, is he, Jolene?” but Jolene’s eyes stayed averted and she said nothing. “Bring him and your sister to me Monday morning. Okay? Promise?”

  “All right, Miss Sally,” the girl whispered. The driver honked for Sally to disembark. She kissed Jolene on her slick cheek, sloshed to the rear of the truck and off. The boy who worked for the driver slapped the roof of the cab and away they went, fading ahead into the storm.

  * * *

  Sally took off her sandals and forged the roiling ditches built by the crown agents, her dress heavy and pasted into her body, sagging between her legs like pink webbing. In the minute it took her to walk back to Mitchell’s drive, the rain ceased with mocking abruptness, turning the air fresh and heavy-sweet as a bite of pineapple. Succulents swelled with juice, broadsword leaves looked polished with furniture wax, flowers drooped and bobbed on their stems like bells of velvet flesh, weighted with promiscuity. Johnnie opened the door dressed only in the red-and-black-striped bottom of a bathing suit, her smile plunging but then recovering to a tentative hello. The sight of her breasts unnerved Sally; she glanced over her shoulder for passersby and pushed herself and Johnnie inside.

  “You just can’t answer the door like that,” she said by way of greeting. “Not around here. There’ll be no end to the presumptions and the men will drive you crazy.”

  “I thought you were Mitchell,” Johnnie explained, demure but proud, toeing the door closed. She raised her eyebrows at the water that trickled off Sally, darkening the wood floor. “Who are you?”

  Sally introduced herself as a friend of Mitchell and Tillman.

  “Well, Sally,” Johnnie said, “why don’t you take off your clothes?”

  In the shower stall, Sally stripped off her dress and underwear and toweled her hair. From the opposite corner of the house static alternated with abbreviated gulps of sound as Johnnie scouted a clear signal on the radio. As Sally opened her mouth to call out a number, the tuner settled on a station and the house inflated with reggae. When she dried between her legs the prickly itch flared up to harass her. She sniffed at a brand of perfume she was unfamiliar with and unscrewed the lid off a jar of expensive skin cream to rub a dot on her forehead and nose, as though she was experimenting with luxury. As much as she had tried to protect her overnight bag from the deluge, kicking it under one of the lorry’s benches, up against the cab, unzipping it she saw that her change of clothes was soaked as well, and she had nothing on hand to wear except her own wet bathing suit, which was not enough. She called out to Johnnie, hoping to borrow something, a skirt and tee shirt—she could do without bra and panties until her own had a chance to dry—but realized the radio was too loud, she couldn’t be heard. Inadequately wrapped in the towel, she padded toward the kitchen, tossing her head to shake out the wet loops in her hair, carry her hand-wrung clothes to spread out in the sun on the veranda where they’d steam and dry in fifteen minutes.

  “—where Mitchell keeps the cups?” Johnnie was mumbling to herself, flinging open cupboard doors, when Sally entered the room, wondering why this woman hadn’t had the sense, in the interval, to put on her top. Johnnie’s lack of self-consciousness made Sally feel rushed into a state of intimacy, and that was not a comfortable feeling. Still, it was her house, more or less, her privacy that Sally had interrupted, arriving unannounced, inviting herself. Johnnie found two mugs and set them on the counter next to a pot of water heating on the hot plate. She took belated notice of her visitor and smiled in a way that made Sally begin to trust her. She dangled a bag of Red Rose tea.

  “I may be slow with dress codes but I know something about these hot places and haole girls getting caught in the rain.”

  “Haole?”

  “Hawaiian for white girls.”

  Sally felt uncustomarily coy, wondering why it seemed they had reversed roles, she the newcomer, Johnnie the old hand, that awkward sensation of being instructed, and although she had a healthy attraction for nakedness—women’s bodies too, well-figured ones like Johnnie’s, were always a fascination to her—her midwestern upbringing certainly contributed to her priggishness about inappropriate exposure. There’s an audacity to perfect breasts, she thought, looking at Johnnie’s surreptitiously, that she couldn’t ascribe to her own, their meaty surprise. While Johnnie steeped the tea Sally exited to the veranda to spread her things over the rail in a rectangle of sunlight. The storm was inland now, nowhere to be seen from where she stood, tucking the loosening edge of the towel more securely under the pit of her arm.

  Johnnie fortified the tea with rum and brought it out to her. The first sip scalded the roof of Sally’s mouth and she set the mug down. “I’m sorry to have to ask,” she apologized, “but my stuff won’t dry for a while. Do you think you have something I can wear?”

  “Oh sure.” Johnnie smiled again, creating dimples, wholesome cheeks, an aura of reliability, but she measured Sally’s length and breadth with a blunt look. “We’re not the same size but something will fit. I like loose clothes. Nothing sticky.”

  It was the sort of offhand comment that usually annoyed her, other women’s silky remarks, calculated or unthinking, about her strength, her bones, the fullness of her athletic figure, sabotaging her to elevate themselves, but she was inclined to believe that Johnnie, who had the ease and distracted confidence of a house cat, had meant nothing by her observation.

  “Here,” Johnnie said, reaching toward her. “We might as well put this in the sun too,” and before Sally could protest, Johnnie’s hand had curved in on her to unhitch the towel, and though Sally pulled away instinctively, alarmed but also confused and bashful and then, finally, feeling silly, she stopped and let her do it, relenting to this loss of inhibition, already in a large part forfeited to the rain and Johnnie’s own conduct, unbecoming to a stranger but seductive in its indifference, which was not smug but oddly happy. Carefree, Sally supposed, was the word.

  “You have a sexy body,” Johnnie said, matter of factly, but touched the roundness of Sally’s shoulder, a quick and meaningless caress that caused Sally to make a good-natured smirk—only a man could flatter her this way—and retreat into the house, determined to get back on at least an equal footing with this woman and her powers, which she couldn’t put a name to.

  In the bedroom Johnnie inventoried her modest wardrobe while Sally sat in the only chair, something salvaged out of an old schoolhouse, sticking her ass to the tacky varnish of the seat. It occurred to her that Johnnie had not bothered to introduce herself.

  “That’s perfect,” she said as Johnnie plucked a lemon-yellow wraparound skirt from a hanger and held it out to her. Sally stood up, fastening it around her waist, and with her hands spread the front of the fabric tight across her groin. “You can’t see through it, can you?
Is there a shadow?”

  “It’s fine. Now let me find you a top.”

  “Your name’s Johnnie, isn’t it?”

  “Johanna,” she answered, not annoyed but not explaining the discrepancy either. “Has Mitchell told you about me?”

  “Not really,” Sally said, edging back onto the chair, her arms hiding her breasts. “Just that you were coming for a visit, when we had lunch together, early in the week. Well, lunch isn’t right. A snack is more accurate—I eat lunch with my kids.”

  Johnnie didn’t seem to need this explained. “Oh, more than a visit,” she said. She handed over a short-sleeved jersey and Sally fitted it over her head, squirming into it.

  “Do you mind my asking—are you Mitchell’s girlfriend?”

  “Used to be,” Johnnie answered slowly, as if she wasn’t sure how she should reply. Sally couldn’t tell if she were being evasive, or deciding how to phrase something too complicated for simple assertion. But then, whatever the dilemma was, she resolved it. “And, yes. Now. I am.” There was a quick, subtle sharpening to her expression. “And how about you?” she asked. “Have you and Mitchell been dating? Or whatever?”

  “Heavens no!” Her candor made Sally laugh nervously, though she appreciated getting such a delicate matter straight from the beginning. “You don’t have to worry about that. I mean, I’m deep into it with a local, Saconi, he’s a musician—in fact, that’s why I’m here.”

  The invitation transformed Johnnie, seemed to throw her into a mini-crisis of anxious excitement. Jagger vacations down there, Elton John goes there to fuck boys, Sally told her. Who knows, they might be there too; somebody famous or soon-to-be usually was. Johnnie jumped around the room, searching for something—her cigarettes—and lit one with a shaky hand. Like a child blissfully windmilling, she spun on her heels with her arms outstretched, her breasts swaying.

  “It’s just a party,” Sally said, seeing what she felt was a display of bogus girlishness, though her own sense of adventure was surfacing. It was exhilarating to be here, in this place.

  Johnnie stopped her sophomoric turning, smiling with mysterious privilege. “I was in a rut but I got out of it,” she said, wound up in marveling. “That’s why I’m happy. My luck has changed. You don’t know what it means to just go to a party and have fun.”

  Out of effusive gratitude she bent over to where Sally was sitting and kissed her on the mouth, and this time Sally didn’t know how to take it, this second act of touching, spontaneous and yet not clearly innocent, and the pleasant sensation of reward. The back of Johnnie’s hand brushed lightly—and accidentally, perhaps—across one of Sally’s breasts as she stepped back and Sally stiffened, aroused by a crosscurrent of emotion, wondering what next?, but Johnnie was unaware of her effect, already moving back across the room to the wardrobe to throw on a pullover, and Sally was embarrassed by her receptivity, her naive willingness to imagine messages.

  “When do you expect Mitchell?” she asked, feeling foolish.

  “I’m not sure,” Johnnie said, sighing, the wind of her mood shifting, her energy drained by just that much. She looked concerned. “He seems to be under a lot of pressure at his job.” It seemed important to her that Sally understand this. “When is it we have to leave?”

  Sally checked her wristwatch. The last scheduled flight, a twin-engine De Havilland, left in an hour, but if they missed it, there was a chance they could talk one of the charter pilots into a deal. There was also the ferry in the morning, though that meant missing tonight’s fete, although they’d still get there in plenty of time for Saturday afternoon’s goat roast and whatever was going on that night.

  “What should I do?” Johnnie murmured, in a tone that implied no real solution existed, but she would do what she was told.

  While her clothes dried, Sally said, she was going to take a quick walk up to Rosehill to invite Tillman and his visitor, what was her name? to come along.

  “Adrian,” Johnnie said, lowering her eyes, visibly upset. “But what should I do? I know Mitchell wouldn’t want to miss this no matter what. And I really think he needs a break, don’t you?”

  Sally couldn’t say, she didn’t want to put words in anybody’s mouth, but knowing Mitchell, he’d likely want to take part in the excursion, not so much to raise hell—he didn’t seem to require that kind of release—but he loved Cotton’s reefs, its laidback pace, enjoyed the traveling show of Eurotrash in the little island’s one bar. Like any man living in the islands—she didn’t tell Johnnie this—he liked to cull tourist girls out of any day’s available assortment—the tuna pool, they called it—for one-night stands.

  “What you can do,” Sally said, emphasizing her unwillingness to make up Johnnie’s mind for her, “is think about it until I get back. You can either come to the airport with me then, or wait for Mitchell and take your chances on getting a flight out today, or just go on the ferry in the morning. Whatever you decide, it’s no problem.” Sally got to her feet, checking a last time to see if her pubic hair showed through the light fabric of the skirt. “I should go now.”

  Johnnie actually seemed desperate. “Are you sure you have to run off so soon?” she said with a troubled look. “Why don’t you stay a bit longer?”

  They were running out of time. She asked if Johnnie would like to accompany her up the beach to Rosehill but Johnnie, suddenly remote, said no, she’d better stay behind and start dinner, she had promised Mitchell spaghetti and it was probably time to make the sauce. Her eyes seemed to deaden as she followed Sally out into the front room. Well, thought Sally, that seems to settle it. Before she opened the door to leave, she returned Johnnie’s earlier kiss with a dry peck on the cheek, from which Johnnie withdrew, agitated, as if such gestures were to be hers alone.

  “You’re coming back, aren’t you?” Johnnie said in a flat voice. “You’re serious about going to Cotton Island?”

  “Of course,” Sally said, feeling again as if she had made a fool of herself.

  She left Mitchell’s house puzzled and frustrated by the rise and fall and unpredictable turnings of Johnnie’s spirit, the opaqueness of her intentions, the strange sensation that here was someone who could keep her off-balance, make her do things that nobody else on earth might. Meeting Johnnie was like a blue-water dive without proper training, going too deep too fast into a place that was as risky as it was dreamlike and captivating. Probably she was making a mistake. Probably she should just go, by herself, rather than attempt to play hostess, fabricate a community of skewed sameness for which she had no use or need. But, but, but. She was already into it, descending.

  The woman named Adrian was installed in an orange Yucatán hammock, a Cheshire grin floating between the stanchions of two spindly palms. Tillman sat before her in a rattan chair, a tea service and tray between them on the Bermuda grass; he read to her from a book opened in his lap, cup in one hand, saucer in the other. Behind white-framed sunglasses, Adrian listened with a look of fierce distaste on her mouth, which she aimed at Sally when she noticed her approach. To forewarn Tillman, she said something which Sally couldn’t hear and in response he rotated his upper body in the chair and, when he saw who it was, raised his teacup in a facetious salute.

  “Hold it, lady,” he said, for Adrian’s sake, to tease her, because she had supposed Sally was a registered guest. “It’s not my fault if your luggage is in Caracas, your husband’s in a brothel, your mind is in Kansas City, and your love life is insufficient.”

  “Everything is your fault,” Sally said, feeling fondness for Tillman, his at-your-service sense of humor. “You’re the perfect person to blame.”

  “Whoever this is, I like her,” said Adrian. Tea apparently was not one of her rituals. She puckered her mouth over a straw dipped in a Tom Collins glass. The ice in her drink chimed.

  “Listen to this, Sally,” Tillman went on, refocusing on his book, The Historie of the Black Caribes. He read from a dog-eared page, a gruesome anecdote about the mutilation of a pregnant coloniali
st by eighteenth-century slave-Indian crossbreeds. The woman’s womb had been opened with a captured saber, the fetus extracted and replaced with the head of her recently decapitated husband.

  Sally sucked her teeth loudly, a habit she had picked up from the islanders. “Tillman! What are you doing reading her such awful things.”

  “She likes it.” Tillman relished defending himself. “She wants to know all the horror stories about our poor St. Catherine.”

  But Sally stopped him from making a joke out of it. “Tillman, I’m not going to let you ruin this island for her. Listen, you like to eat goat, don’t you?”

  “I like to eat anything I don’t have to cook myself.” He winked at her over his cup, finishing off his tea, and spit a lemon rind over his shoulder.

  “I’m sure what she means is, crow is too meager for a mouth like yours,” Adrian quipped, a bit too acerbic, Sally thought.

  Tillman slumped in his chair. “Now what could that mean?” he said.

  Sally, elaborating, was not happy to note that her invitation had ignited a dormant tension between the couple. Adrian looked at Tillman with expectation that didn’t couch its challenge and Tillman looked off across the lawns, disassociating himself with a grimace.

  “I can’t get away, Sally,” he said, “but take Adrian with you. If she wants.”

  Adrian dropped a willowy leg out of the hammock, scuffing the ground to make herself rock impatiently. Sally studied her and concluded, prima donna.

  “I don’t understand,” Adrian said. “You’ve got yourself a new cook now. Why can’t you take time off? If not now, Tillman, then when?”