SWELL

by Corwin Ericson

  She darted me with an angry one-eyed stare and then draped the wet towel over her head like a wimple.

  The rest of us gawked. It was odd to have so much empathy for a woman in the throes of arousal. I’d always wanted to know, but I’d imagined the context differently. Arousal was the wrong word, anyway. Waldena had set off a panic in us all and triggered some awfully dangerous instincts. Provocation maybe was the better word. A big fish had got away not long ago, and now we’d landed another one, and none of us, fish included, were done fighting. I had nothing overtly evil in mind, and my partners were supposed to be honorable mariners. That’s why I didn’t feel insulted when Waldena pulled up a pant leg and took a knife from her boot sheath. Two men can be a hazard—partners in crime—but three men are the beginning of a pack and the end of reason. Lettie had known this, probably had some Mace ready the whole time. She even led our pack for a short while. Her cell phone, her waiting boyfriend, her dissatisfaction all served to remind us of how to behave. Waldena was a wounded wolf who had just noticed that the deer she’d been hunting so scornfully had begun to cooperate. We were squid-eating deer, though. We weren’t a threat.

  “Don’t worry,” I told her.

  “I will worry all I want,” she said with her teeth clenched.

  We reached the dock quickly, but just before we tied up, Ill John reversed the motor, dropping it just enough to keep us from drifting in with the waves. “Spill,” he said.

  Waldena glared at him.

  “Tell us the story.”

  “Let me off this boat right now!”

  “Tell us what happened,” ordered Ill John in his best DMZ border guard voice.

  “Mind your own business.” “Exactly. You are in our own business.”

  Waldena was probably sussing us out like a pool shark. Our heads were the billiard balls. Chosen, however, had a pretty persuasive pool cue, and the only duel she’d win against him was a kegeling contest.

  “The chum buckets of Bismuth will be filled with chunks of Snorri of fucking Finlindia and Donny Lucy of buttsucking Bismuth.” She paused to clench her entire body. A spasm was presumably condensed to a tiny, dense diamond and stored away to be spent later. “Maybe I will think of a way to feed them to each other. And you three will be in the chowder. Dock this boat.”

  Ill John gave her a good, solid, island hairy eyeball.

  “I have three hard Estonindian crewmen waiting for me in town. And, like the Americans say, they do not truck with this island shit.”

  If a person could go cross-eyed with just one eyeball, she did. “And they are simmering in the outdoor hot tub on the back deck of the Muffin Basket Inn drinking bloody mimosas! Fuckers! I pay them! For what?!”

  “What is wrong with your boat?” asked Ill John.

  “The Maiden has a screw loose and a fouled shaft, thanks to Snorri. He is a saboteur and a bearfucker. Or he wishes. His prick is too tiny.”

  “A screw loose, indeed,” I said.

  “Foul shaft!” she growled.

  “And what made you so unseaworthy?” asked Ill John. “You tell me,” she said.

  We explained the relationship between Bismuth and the tigers of Korea.

  “He said it was coke.” Waldena endured some kind of internal weather. “Give me those beers.”

  “Why Donny?” was what I really wanted to know.

  Waldena stood upright, seemed as if she were about to stretch, or maybe stab me, handed me the can she’d emptied in a gulp, and then sat back down with her knees to her chest. She still held her knife, but wasn’t exactly brandishing it. “He said he wanted to trade. He said he had the package—the sampo.”

  “What did he want for it?” Donny Lucy? Fuck.

  “Oh Donny Lucy is the big gigolo on little Bismuth, is he not? He calls me up, says we can have ‘a little bite’ at the Topsoil. Says he has something he knows I want; he can hardly wait to give it to me. Donny is a. . . you don’t have the word in English. A kind of sea-ape. A sort of unevolved merman that masturbates very often.”

  Ill John stood by the wheel, goosing our slow drift. Chosen held his AK in his lap.

  “So you went on a date with him?”

  “Do not mock me, Whippey. I do what must be done. Dinner with that oaf was a price I thought I could afford to pay. I suppose the seared skate punches were not bad. A chantey is a work song here, right? He says you sing one about him—“From Pawtucket to Bangor?”

  “It’s not about him. It’s supposed to be about an old pirate.”

  “It is a stupid song. He winks at the bartender as he sings it. At that point I was glad I had told my crew to stay at the Inn.”

  One night when we were at sea, Donny took it upon himself to perform this song as freestyle gangsta-rap. Whenever he couldn’t think of a rhyme, he’d say “Donny Lucy, Yo!” His dad came out of his bunk, slapped his son’s head, and confiscated our beer and seagum.

  Waldena continued, “So he goes to the bathroom and returns saying he has left me a present in the ‘Buoy’s Room’ and promises that it is not shit. He says to hurry up, there is coke. I believe him, since I know Americans do their cocaine in the bathroom. I am a busy woman, and I thought sniffing a line will get me off this island even faster because it is a breeding factory for imbeciles. But it was too late. I had become an imbecile myself. Donny is so eager for me to open my present, he is snickering as

  I go to the bathroom. There on an old paperback book on the toilet tank is a line of what Donny says is coke. I do the line and look for the package. Nowhere, of course.”

  “He was trying to slip you a Donald, instead of a Mickey.”

  “Give me another of those horrible beers.

  “Your Donald walks right into the Buoy’s Room, asks me how I like it. I’m getting ready to tell him I have something much more interesting than waterboarding to show his country if he does not give me the sampo-gift. Then the Donald-coke hits me like a man-o-war sting. I think I tried to vomit through my eye sockets. He says he has my package ‘right here, baby,’ so I kick him as hard as I can right where he is pointing, simply out of instinct. I cannot say I remember leaving the restaurant. I could not even have a thought until I got to the Maiden. Then I suspected I had been tampered.”

  “You mean dosed. Tampered is for containers.”

  Waldena hugged her knees and clenched the knife’s handle. “I mean the boat was fucked! Sabotage! I went a short way out into the harbor before I realized it was the Maiden, not me, that had been tampered. I was wrong, of course; it was the both of us. She would only steer to starboard; I hoped the top of my arc would get me far enough from Donny to collect myself. That is when I saw you.”

  “What was with the abominable snowman marching music?”

  “I was trying to focus my thoughts. We use the music to stun whales when they are close to the boat. It destroys their echolocation. I thought it would help boaters stay away.”

  “Was Donny, like, lying on the bathroom floor, moaning—”

  “Enough! I do not know! Put me on the dock now!

  She’d spilled enough to satisfy Ill John, evidently. He goosed the Princess and let her drift in. “And enough dilation from you,” he said. “That sampo gift was not for you, not for Donny. It was for Snorri. And he will receive it tomorrow. Enough divagation. Tomorrow we meet again.”

  Waldena jumped to the dock. “Enough of my ass you pricks. My hind is the last you will see of me.”

  “No, not your hind,” said Ill John.

  “And why is that?”

  “We will bring Snorri. You and he may reckon.”

  Waldena gave us ex-lobstermen a look just like Rover did that day I really shouldn’t have given her a bath.

  She began to walk away; I waved and tossed her a line, shouting, “Hey, tie us up!”

  CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR

  Brief Redemption

  Angry ethnonationalists with foul shafts and screws loose. Divagations of sampo. Squid tentacles softening in what looks like f
izzy strawberry milk. Waldena’s hind. A rotting whale. The sun was set and a dimness was upon the land, and I was standing all by my lonesome on the town dock, scratching my balls and slowly realizing that I was unchaparoned. Waldena had set off to moil her crew in the Muffin Basket hot tub. The Koreans had wished me goodnight and made plans to meet tomorrow before they motored off to wherever they’d been keeping themselves. That left me to my own devices, devices that hadn’t seen much use lately. Freedom was perplexing.

  Thank God my feet don’t overthink. The walk from the dock to my house was a mile more familiar to me than my own body. Lefty and Righty were taking me home without even asking. Good for them. The rest of me came along, gradually comprehending where I was headed.

  Until I arrived, it seemed strange to have a home at all. Did Waldena have a cozy cottage in Estonindia? Did she neglect to mow her lawn for the month of August? What did Chosen’s kitchen look like? It seemed unreasonably mundane to be a lifelong resident of the ol’ Bis.

  While I walked, I tried to savor the nostalgia and anticipation for this place I’d sought to flee much more often than to return. Sometimes it seemed almost unreasonable that I had a house at all. I grew up in the house. My parents didn’t drink Sterno. Mom was almost entirely sane. Dad, like most island men, used to have eleventy-seven different jobs; often, it would seem, all at once. I went away; I came back. I went away; I came back. My parents learned not to be disappointed, and my mother in particular came to learn that it was better to assume I was alive and just as boring as ever, even if she hadn’t heard from me in over a week. We really were out of reasons to bother each other by the time they announced they would not endure a single ’nother winter on the island.

  I didn’t think they would like Florida, but they were hooked up with a mafia of snowbirds from these parts. I imagined them all in ugly shorts and pastel sun visors standing around an alligator eating ducks at the golf course water trap, discussing the profligate idiocy of Florida culture, disgusting the natives with their seagum-loosened lips and habitual parsimony. I was supposedly paying my father the same sum in rent that he had once paid monthly before the second mortgage was paid off. I hadn’t though, and apart from a few hints about their condo association fees, he’d let it slide. The lack of grandchildren made visiting with me much less interesting—they began each summer intending to drive up, but hadn’t made it much past Georgia in recent years. I’d never been to their condo.

  Rover looked mussed and bed-bodied. “Daddy’s home,” I said quietly. She sniffed my cuff and walked down the hallway to sit and stare at me from the kitchen doorway. “Your daddy’s here in his home,” I told her more loudly. She seemed disinclined to spring into my arms and slobber me with kisses. I said, “Stay back you vicious cougar!” And she did. “Well, looks like Mitchell’s been feeding you, at least.” She showed me her butthole and walked with a crooked, peevish tail up the stairs to where she could be observed ignoring me all the better. “I hope you bought beer,” I told her.

  I had lordly plans to find the joint I thought I might have stashed, then sample each of my mod cons as my sobriety slipped away and mild euphoria was gently replaced by oblivion. The joint went unfound, unsurprisingly. And, following Rover’s lead, I felt more lordly spurning my shower, clean clothes, and TV/VCR/DVD in favor of the couch. I’d see what havoc or at least what degree of shedding Rover had left for me upstairs later. I didn’t care if bears were denning down cellar. Maybe I just felt too displaced to sleep in my own bed. As soon as a bit of my drool on the throw pillow had activated the smell of Rover and smoke, I was out.

  When someone knocks at the door, you’re supposed to get up and open it and say hello. Or some variation thereof. It was the variations that were confusing me. I could lie right here and shout, “I’m not home!” or “Who is it?” or “I am my own personal savior.” What was it that polite people said? Then there was the whole apparatus of locks and security chains to worry about. Only I’d lost my key long, long ago and there was no chain. The knocks continued. I settled on yelling, “Coming!” but only because my butler had the day off.

  “I didn’t ever have to knock before because you weren’t here, but Dad says your light was on.”

  Moira.

  “I’m coming in. You look gross,” she said, opening the storm and sidling past me.

  Rover gave her the big hello she’d withheld from me. Moira got down on knees and elbows and the two of them rubbed cheeks. Then they fairly scampered down to the kitchen together. I followed, feeling big and dumb.

  My fog hadn’t cleared at all yet. I watched Moira haul out the big bag of cat food, wrapping it with both arms. She scooped a mugful from the bag into Rover’s bowl. As Moira changed the water bowl, Rover crunched her kibble, purring through her nose.

  “You want some coffee?” I asked.

  Moira told me a “no” that came from a deep well of exasperation with grown-up men.

  I looked around. I didn’t have any, anyway. My first clear, self-diagnostic thought was that I was going to have a big headache soon.

  I rubbed my face and scratched my head. “Where’s your dad?”

  “Home.”

  “This your weekend?”

  “Mm-hmm.”

  “Where’s your mom?

  “The boat, I guess. I can call her.”

  “Nope, I was just asking. She still mad?”

  “She says it wasn’t really my fault, but I should know better.”

  “I meant at me.”

  “You hurt her feelings. She said she was dumb to trust you.”

  “I didn’t know; I thought we were just going on a ride.” “Aunt Mini is still yelling at Snorri.”

  “Well, tell her I’m sorry.”

  “OK.”

  I opened a few cabinets and the old dishwasher, just for the sake of it. Still no coffee. “Can I come over your dad’s with you?”

  “He said to bring you back, as long as it was you.”

  “I am. Probably.”

  Mitchell rented a decent house near me. He crewed instead of skippered these days and didn’t appreciate it. Moira was his every other weekend and on every Wednesday with an R in it, or some such schedule.

  “You’re wearing my jeans,” he said.

  He was my height and several waist sizes wider. I’d had trouble keeping them up the past few days. His belly and grizzly beard began after he and Angie separated; they were becoming his defining characteristics.

  “You drank all my coffee.”

  “I was out.”

  “I was pantless.” I couldn’t figure whether we were going to fight or he was going to make me coffee. We had his pants and his ex-wife’s ire in common. “Thanks for taking care of Rover.”

  “No problem. I’ll make some coffee.”

  I was redeemed.

  Mitchell even had cigarettes, but I passed—it was too early, and I’d seen enough stars the previous night. He’d heard two fairly different versions of Moira’s voyage to the bottom of the sea. I gave him a third version, emphasizing Snorri’s blamewor-thiness and Moira’s safety.

  “That doesn’t make any sense,” he said.

  “I probably left some parts out.”

  “No, I mean, a dead whale. Who cares? You sure he was saying ‘antenna?’”

  “Yeah, I saw it.”

  “You sure it was Snorri’s whale?” said Mitchell.

  “He showed us the rune, said there were rustlers.”

  “So Snorri call the sheriff on his rustlers?”

  “Yeah right. He must have thought it was Waldena; last night—”

  “Waldena the Estonindian?”

  “The same.”

  Mitchell was at the counter scraping wet coffee grounds from a paper filter he meant to re-use. He looked over at me at the table and said, “Let me just tell you now that you don’t have a lick of sense.”

  “So I’ve been told. Anyways, she says Snorri sabotaged her boat—it must be revenge for the whale. She was shi
t howdy.”

  “What are they up to?”

  “I look like I know? I try to stay out of their business, but I can’t. Why me?”

  “Poor Orange. You got something they want.”

  “I don’t. They thought I did. I even thought I did for a while.” “Maybe they just like you,” Mitchell said, allowing for the improbable.

  “The Northern Indians think Bismuth is their omphalos, their point of origin. All the stars rotate around Bismuth. They climbed up out of the center of the earth right here and went on to settle the world. But they’re suckers for nativism. They’ll claim they were here first, but I think they get off on hanging around with us. We’re a new sort of native to them. We’re an island full of sidekicks for them.”

  “You once said your parents were the first members of your family to ever live offisland. That’s pretty native, I guess.”

  “I’m glad I’m not from a Sherpa family.”

  “The who?”

  “An entire ethnicity of sumpters.”

  “Whatever, Whippey.”

  I had a broader point to make about ethnic primacy and nativism, but wasn’t up to the rhetorical task. I told him about Korean tiger testicles and snorting seagum instead. Leaving out, of course, the story of Angie hauling me aboard. I could tell he was very interested in Waldena’s extreme unction. Maybe he was just on his second pot of coffee.

  “So you cut it?”

  “Donny didn’t, but don’t, Mitch.”

  “Why?”

  “It’s bad medicine. Our ancestors must have known. Christ, our parents probably knew. The island is too small, that’s why. The wisdom of the ancients, you know?”

  “Still.”

  “You’ll regret it,” I warned.

  “You should probably take a shower.”

  CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE

  Sampo in the Shed

  Ill John looked around, asked me if I’d decorated the house myself. Mostly my mother, I told him.

  “Do you think of yourself as an ideal islander, Orange?” “Ideal?”