Forbidden Island an Island Called Sapelo

by Tom Poland

  “A canoe,” I said. “A god send. If we can get that canoe, we can explore this entire island before you go back. We can wind our way inland in the creeks. We can split off the channel to go from one side of the island to the other. We can go to the village by water, and just maybe we can find your mysterious man who wears the turban and he can put me onto one Mr. Rikard Blackshear.”

  “Who is he?” asked Tyler.

  “He’s the voodoo priest I need to interview. People say he rules this island like a divine warlock.”

  “Would this Rikard know anything about Lorie?”

  “Jackson said Rikard considers the island his, so yes, if Lorie is here he would know. We have two ways to get the canoe. Swim out at high tide or cross the muck at low tide. The tide should be coming in now.”

  “Can you swim out now?”

  “No. A few years back, I waded into a creek to seine for shrimp, and jellyfish ate me up. Besides if the canoe has no paddles, the wind and current will take me where they please. Let’s go back and get our water jugs, then we can grab some old boards from the home place. I’ll carve them into paddles tonight, and we’ll get the canoe tomorrow.”

  The truth was I couldn’t swim. I scanned the water. A wind was scuffing its surface. There was no way I’d attempt it. On the way back to camp, the wind picked up even more. It was brisk and the brush and trees moved as if they were alive, which they were, but alive as an animal might move, with purpose. We made our way back through this windswept land and were not far from the cistern when a curious thing happened. Burnt pieces of paper swirled and flew through the brush in a whirling wind, a dust devil of paper. Some pinned themselves against branches and one impaled itself on the spines of a Yucca—a Spanish Bayonet—where it fluttered like a bird. Puffs of ashes clouded the air like spirits and flew through the trees.

  We gathered the notes made with care, and I read enough of the pages to know the author was a professor or researcher. The text was stilted and no pleasure to read, but it was written neatly in black ink and quite pedantic—Mallory came to mind at once. We followed the puffs of ashes back to their source—a hastily broken campsite in a secluded clearing. Two tent stakes remained in the ground and a gas lamp hung from a branch. Someone had thrown a hardback journal into the midst of the fire. The charred journal had three words on its cover: “Guaranteed Irish Linen.” It was thick and that had saved it from total destruction. I pulled the journal from the ashes. It was still warm.

  We leafed through the journal, most of which was destroyed, then came across a passage in the book’s center that sent a chill down my spine.

  Here, I have seen many victims manifesting scars where a kidney has been taken. Some individuals have had both kidneys removed and are murdered in such a manner that little evidence of their bodies remains.

  Cameron’s photograph of bleached skulls came back to me. But they no longer stared at Africa. They stared at me, begging for their story to be written.

  ***

  The journal’s revelation jarred Tyler, so I put her to work to get her mind off Lorie and purloined kidneys. At the bamboo forest, I gave her my machete and had her cut four stout culms, as well as several slender ones. They were flexible, green, and strong, perfect for building a latrine. At the old home place, I found two boards to make paddles from. Getting back to camp was a struggle carrying water, the boards, bamboo, and the burnt journal. I had just stepped into my tent to change when Tyler came running over.

  “Come look at my tent.”

  A talisman dangled in the wind from one of her tent poles.

  “What do you think?” she asked.

  “An amulet. I don’t know if it’s good or evil. I do know one thing. Our camp is a secret no more. Check to see if anything is missing.”

  The mysterious package Murphy had sent his brother was still where I had hidden it. Tyler came out with her basket, and I came out with the voodoo book the old lady had loaned me and looked camp over … no signs of visitors.

  “Someone paid us a visit but left no footprints. How odd is that? Let’s see what we have here.”

  I thumbed through Voodoo and Its Practitioners, the book I picked up in Atlanta. I compared an illustration in the book to her amulet. The two were close—round, yellow and green, with a circle in its middle and four lines crossing through a black center. Weird squiggles adorned each sector of the compass-like drawing.

  “Listen to this. ‘This talisman protects its possessor when away from familiar surroundings. Wear it to avoid physical harm. Gran Siligbo is a friendly protective spirit force who looks over you away from home.’ ”

  Protective spirit or not, one fact was certain. Someone knew we were here.

  That afternoon I considered the talisman as I worked the bamboo into sharp stakes that could sink deep into the sand. Using a tarp, nylon rope, and smaller pieces of bamboo I made a latrine for Tyler. She tried out her port-a-let and pronounced it a work of art.

  We took a swim, which was really no more than wading out and letting the waves wash over us. Our sweat went into the sea with all the other salts. Then, just before sunset, we made dinner. We were tired but a good kind of tired. We had learned a lot, plus we had been discovered, and I knew better than to talk about organ thieves. Sleeping in a tent afforded no protection whatsoever, and the blackened journal’s revelation frightened both of us. So, we talked about the canoe, which we needed in the most urgent way. A plan of getting it had come to me. At low tide, I would catwalk across the muck on two boards from the home site.

  Tomorrow morning, first thing, we’d get it while the tide was out. It would be tricky walking across one board, dropping the other, picking the first up and walking across the other one, but it was doable and a risk worth taking.

  We ate beef noodles, potato soup, and drank water while we tried out the radio. It caught nothing but static, an immense disappointment that left us vulnerable to storms. After cleaning up the kitchen, we took a bottle and cups and walked to the beach for what would become an evening ritual: talk about the island.

  Sapelo was a beguiling mosaic of dunes, swamps, woods, rolling breakers, moss laden oaks, and green marshes flecked white with egrets. Shorebirds filled the air. We saw ibises and other wading birds and alligators cruising through duckweed, and once I saw the rare swallow-tailed kite. Sapelo was, indeed, a beautiful place but—as we had been warned—a dangerous place, more dangerous than we imagined.

  We settled onto palmetto logs, and I began shaping the boards into paddles. On the channel’s western end, palmettos and moss draped oaks splintered the sunset and slashes of coral, gold, and red danced across the rippling water. The light, shadows, and textures rendered the evening impressionistic, as if Monet had created it just for Tyler and me.

  To the west, cypress crowns appeared afire. The sun was setting somewhere past Apex, past Atlanta, past my wife’s grave, my daughter’s hospital, and the alleyway. Misery lay to the west but so much beauty surrounded us here. Yet danger was everywhere. An intense sense of being alive filled me for the first time in years.

  The atmosphere magnified the sun and heaved its last fire above the land, an illusion. For even as it shone it was already gone.

  The sun was someone else’s. The night would be ours.

  Fireflies blinked in vegetation along the dune line, and the sea oats, golden asters, and grasses fused into impenetrable blackness. Some force drew my eyes to the Heavens. I looked above the eastern horizon to see a shooting star pierce the void, a stitch of silver in an amethyst sky.

  Tyler poured cups of Comfort as I hacked one board into a paddle shape.

  “I’m getting where I like this stuff,” she said, taking a sip.

  “It grows on you, but nothing beats a cold beer.

  We talked about simple things … where we went to high school, childhood memories, birthdays. Hers was in November, mine in February. We talked about the stuff life grows from. Oddly, neither of us mentioned our daughters.

  �
�The wind really had those papers flying didn’t it?” said Tyler. “Do you think the journal notes are for real? I mean they seem real enough.”

  “Yes, they seem real enough but we don’t know who wrote them. We know that someone—I doubt it was the author—tried to destroy them.”

  Nothing good would come of the journal. Did Sapelo conceal dark secrets as everyone implied? You can’t break a law that doesn’t exist, which meant evildoers could do whatever they wanted here.

  Tyler crossed her legs, leaned back, and took another sip. I finished the first paddle. The splinters wouldn’t be a problem. Sanding the handles would involve nothing more than shoving the handles into a dune, over and over.

  “Do you think poachers cut people’s kidneys out here?” asked Tyler.

  “Let’s say the journal is, in fact, a record of what’s going on here. That means black outsiders are coming here to take islanders’ kidneys.”

  “It must be pretty simple to do, that is, if you’re a doctor.”

  “You and I could remove somebody’s kidneys if we had to,” I said hacking a wedge of wood from the second board. “But here? The island has no electricity. No nothing. A transplant requires a surgical team and a sterile operating room. That is, if you care to see the patient survive. Anesthesia units and operating tables aren’t the sort of thing you’d find on a wild island.

  “These organ thieves or whatever they are—if they exist—need to match the tissue and blood types of the donor and recipient. You don’t just kidnap the first person you see and yank out his kidneys. Then again, if you’re an organ pirate why should you care? The person buying the kidney gets a mismatch and dies. Maybe the donor dies. Who’s left to talk? No laws, no regulations. It opens up a world of evil possibilities.”

  The breeze picked up, and Tyler shivered. Talk of cutting people’s organs out wasn’t helping. It gave me a chill too.

  “Do you want to go back by the fire?” I asked.

  She nodded.

  Back at the fire, I continued shaping the second paddle as she sipped.

  “The key to a successful transplant,” I said, “is to know the donor’s and recipient’s blood type, tissue criteria, and medical circumstances. The journal said affluent Africans were coming here for organs. That makes sense. The villagers’ ancestors once lived in Africa.”

  In flickering firelight, Tyler poured a little more Comfort into our cups.

  “You’re saying the islanders and the Africans coming here for organs share a common ancestry?”

  “Quite possibly.”

  Tyler broke in, “Why not just get transplants in Sierra Leone?”

  “Things in Sierra Leone are a mess. Government is inept. People live in a state of fear. The Revolutionary United Front pillages the country’s diamond fields, selling them on the black market. They burn people alive and chop off the arms and hands of men, women, and children. I’ve seen photographs of girls with stubs for arms holding babies with no arms.”

  “People who amputate babies’ arms will do anything,” Tyler said, holding her arms up to her shoulders as if she were cold.

  “The people coming here for kidneys could be RUF leaders. Think about it. They leave the revolution behind for a while, come here for a pleasant trip, and spend black market diamond money on black market organs. A little rest and they’re on their way back home, back to health, and ready to kill some more.”

  “Why don’t they just take their victims’ organs?” asked Tyler.

  “Probably because of AIDS. They don’t want to risk receiving an HIV-infected organ.”

  “It sounds like some movie script,” Tyler said, “where the bad guys always win. They’re terrorizing people on both sides of the Atlantic. No laws here, so it’s possible.”

  “Anything is possible. A few years ago, I wrote a story encouraging people to donate organs to the Living Gift Foundation. People were dying waiting for transplants. Still are. Football legend, Walter Payton, died while waiting for a liver. A shortage of human organs exists, and a black market is one solution.”

  “It seems you’d hear about it in the news,” Tyler said.

  “Stories about organ theft are out there, street talk. I’ll tell you an urban legend. The guy who told me the story swears he knew the victim. This story, incidentally, took place in Atlanta … if it took place at all.”

  “A what?”

  “Urban legend—a modern-day ghost story. Four businessmen came to Atlanta from Jacksonville, Florida, for a three-day convention. The first night they go to a bar in Buckhead. A good-looking blonde joins a young guy in the group—the only single guy—at the bar. He can’t believe his luck. They start drinking and talking and she’s charming, very. A few hours later, when his friends call it a night, he tells them he’ll see them in the morning.

  “The next morning his co-workers go to the day’s first meeting and their friend doesn’t show. They wink, make locker room remarks, and talk about the good old days. Well, their friend doesn’t show up at all that day. He doesn’t show up that night. Doesn’t even leave a message. The convention winds down Friday and it’s time to go home. They’re not sure what to do. Filing a report with the police seems silly. They shrug their shoulder—boys will be boys—and head south to Jacksonville.”

  “There’s no way I’d leave a missing friend behind,” said Tyler.

  “More likely, they had a tee time to make. Anyway, over the weekend nobody hears a thing. Monday morning rolls around and the guy doesn’t show up for work. Just when his co-workers decide to call the police and file a missing person’s report, he calls. He’s in bad shape, hooked to a slow-drip IV in a cheesy motel. A note is stuck to the phone by his bed. ‘Call 911 or you’ll die.’ The anesthesia has run out. He’s been drugged for six days.

  “The blonde was bait. The last thing he remembered was having a drink and sleeping with her. She drugged him, and when he wakes up, both kidneys are gone. The blonde singled him out. He was young, healthy, and easy. Now he’s on life support waiting for kidney transplants, but, like I said, it’s a modern-day ghost story. No law enforcement agency has ever documented such a crime.”

  Tyler walked over to the fire.

  “God, whether it’s true or not, the thought of that scares me,” she said. “The idea that someone would come on to you to cut out your organs, it’s unbelievable ... well, maybe not too unbelievable,” she said.

  “Life’s just the opposite of what you think it is. A beautiful woman flatters you. You think she’s interested in you and, yes, she is: your organs. It’s the world we live in. You don’t discipline your children because you love them, so they go to school and shoot their classmates. Someone cuts you off in traffic, so you shoot him. The world is crazy. Last week, I watched helplessly as a crack addict murdered a young mother on the way to her daughter’s birthday party. The paper’s headline said it all. ‘Birthday Turns Into Death Day.’ Yes, life is just the opposite of what you think it is.”

  “God, how awful. What did you do?”

  I told her about the alley murder while I finished the other paddle. She couldn’t believe it. “Here’s something you can believe,” I said, holding both paddles side by side. “China executes more prisoners than the rest of the world combined. They ‘harvest’ executed prisoners’ organs. Now isn’t that the ultimate euphemism? ‘Harvests.’ Makes it sound as if they’re plucking a few peaches off the tree. The Chinese execute people for things like tax evasion, take their organs, and sell them. They place a pistol to the back of the condemned’s head and fire. Within five minutes, they collect his organs, kind of like poultry houses, raising chickens to be killed and eaten.”

  Tyler stood and walked beyond the fire. She stood there, silent, then walked toward the opening in the dunes. When she turned back, tears glistened in the firelight.

  “What’s wrong?” I asked.

  “Nothing.”

  I’d not seen her this emotional ever. Something had touched a nerve. I didn’t think she w
as drunk but maybe she was.

  “Something is wrong; what is it?”

  “Bad memories,” she said, and a soft sob escaped.

  “I’m sorry,” I said. “I know what bad memories are like.”

  “Oh God, don’t you just wish you could just forget everything sometimes.”

  “Every day,” I said, and I tried to put my arm around her but she pulled away.

  “Don’t you wonder why my daughter ran away?”

  “Yes, but I’m reluctant to probe someone’s personal life unless I’m comfortable with them, and if I know them well enough, I don’t need to probe in the first place.”

  “Well, you’re stuck with me for three weeks. Don’t you want to know me? I mean really know me while you can?”

  “You can’t just decide to know somebody. Knowing somebody takes place over time. Besides, I don’t want to come across as nosy. It’s not my style.”

  “Then try a new style. Ask me questions. Start with children. Don’t you want to know if I have other children?”

  “Well, do you?”

  “I did. Another daughter, Caroline, by my second husband, Hines, the son-of-a-bitch. She died when she was four. Surprised? I bet you are. I had Lorie by my first husband, Burt. He died three years after Lorie was born.”

  “What happened?” I asked, taken aback—a daughter was dead, another daughter had run away, and she had said she wasn’t divorced but she wasn’t married either. So, she was a double-widow then … a black widow.

  “Burt ran a landscaping company and paid his workers in cash. He left for work one morning and never came back. An employee robbed him that afternoon and shot him. We were inseparable. I mourned for a long time, a long, long time. One morning I woke up and there was nothing left to do but get back in touch with life.”

  So, like me, the mission to the island was her best chance to regain the sole surviving member of her family.