End of the Ocean

by Matthew McBride

  “No, it’s cool, happy to help. It’s nice to meet a child of God.”

  “Uh huh,” Sage said, grunting, answering questions, hoping the subject of religion would not be broached.

  “What denomination are you?” Owen said.

  “Catholic,” said Sage: a Southern Baptist who did not know the first thing about Catholicism. Then, under pressure, realizing what he must do, he changed the subject.

  “What’s with those men outside? It’s a circus.”

  “Reporters.”

  “I know,” Sage said. “Why?”

  Owen, surprised, said, “You don’t know about the Bali 9?”

  “Well, I mean, I’ve head of ‘em.”

  “Two of them are about to be executed. Myuran Sukumaran and Andrew Chan.”

  “One of ‘em asked if I knew him.”

  “Because they heard you speak. You’re American. They wonder why you’re here.”

  “Oh.”

  “I’ve never seen an American here before myself and neither have they.”

  “How many times’ve you been here?”

  Owen said he didn’t know. Twenty-five. Thirty? He could not remember. When Sage saw his passport he knew why.

  “Holy shit, that’s a lotta stamps,” Sage said, swearing, forgetting who he was supposed to be.

  “Yep, been to thirty-two countries in the last two years. How ‘bout that?”

  “You’re kidding.”

  “No, brother. Just got back from Malaysia. Ever been?”

  “No.”

  “Well, it can be tough; I minister at an underground church over there.”

  “Underground?”

  “Can be a dangerous place. Christianity ain’t exactly popular in a Muslim country.”

  The man behind the counter, who had been so impatient earlier, called to Sage, and, holding a square made of paper laminated in plastic that had 12 in bold print with white on the bottom and blue on top with the words BEZOFK on the left-hand side, asked him again for his passport.

  “I hate to give up my passport,” Sage said, looking away from the man, back at Owen.

  “Nah, nothing to worry about, mate. They give it back up there,” Owen said, turning, pointing to the main building. “Right before you leave.”

  Sage surrendered his passport though he was utterly disinclined to do so.

  “12! That’s a pretty good number,” Owen said, looking at Sage’s card. “You’re lucky, I got twenty-three.”

  Sage agreed; he was lucky. Together they walked from the long building, which was very hot, into the sunlight which was much hotter. Reporters, already approaching them, began to follow. Owen, walking toward a tall building, smiled, so Sage smiled, and, following Owen around them, stepped through a yard of short green grass that looked soft and thick and more appealing than the bed Sage slept on in his room. With journalists trailing, pointing and shouting, asking questions, Owen stopped, and, smiling for the cameras, showing full lips and straight clean teeth, told them he was a man of God, which most of them, after seeing him for a week, already knew. But the others, curious and pushy, cameras in hand, showed more interest in Sage, who, ducking nervously out of the way, doing everything he could to avoid them, said nothing.

  Owen, overcome with the Holy Spirit, told them who Sage was, that he was also a minister.

  “We are both men of God.”

  Annoyed, losing interest, the reporters, complaining under their breath, putting down their cameras, picking up their phones, left, shaking their heads in disappointment to find no story there.

  Inside the building was a large room that was tall and wide and empty and appeared to serve no purpose other than to take up space, but within that space a few long benches stood: some made of hard gray rock, others made of wood, low to the ground and short-legged; a handful of chairs scattered about.

  They walked to a tall round pillar and sat in two chairs beside it and Owen asked Sage who he was there to see.

  “His name’s Grady.”

  Owen, frowning, scratched his head. “Who’s he? He ain’t on the hammer.”

  “The what?”

  “Death row. They call it being ‘on the hammer’.”

  “Oh, right,” Sage said, slightly unsettled at the words death row. “Yeah, he’s not …you know, on the hammer, but they said he got caught with drugs.”

  “OK,” Owen said. “Because I didn’t think his name was here.”

  Pulling a stack of papers from his satchel that were stapled together and bent, Owen, scanning through the names on its pages, told Sage he was right, that he didn’t see it.

  “How long he been in here?”

  Sage had no idea. He told Owen he wasn’t sure.

  “OK, gotcha,” Owen said, handing the papers to Sage. “Here’s a list of inmates on the hammer. Case you have time, maybe wanna speak to a few more? Here,” Owen said, now handing Sage a plastic bag filled with fruit. “Give this to him.”

  “This fruit?”

  “Yes, trust me, he’ll appreciate it. You should see what they feed these guys. They’d kill for a manogsteen.”

  “Thanks,” Sage said. “I’m sure he’ll love it.”

  A guard moved toward Owen and they shook hands. While they talked, Sage scanned the list of inmates who were “on the hammer,” and the names of Andrew Chan and Myuran Sukumaran were among them. Sage did not know much about them, but he knew what he’d read, that they’d been caught smuggling heroin out of Bali in 2005 and the government was going to kill them, despite the fact they were reformed men who turned their lives around and continued to inspire others.

  “Other inmates have offered to take their place in front of the firing squad,” Owen said, “but they’ll be transported to Nusakambangan Island soon, the place where they’ll die.”

  “They take them to an island to kill them?”

  “They call it the Island of Death.”

  Sage, scanning the list, came to the name Lindsay Sandiford, and Owen told him her story. Though not part of the Bali 9, she’d been a legal secretary from North Yorkshire, arrested at Ngurah Rai International Airport with ten pounds of coke. A year later she received the death penalty—even after she’d participated in an undercover sting operation to arrest her associates; the Indonesian government disregarded her assistance and decided to kill her anyway.

  “There’s another one,” Owen said, pointing to Filipina drug carrier, Mary Jane Fiesta Veloso. “She’s in the news right now. She got the death sentence in 2010 for smuggling heroin out of Malaysia, the place I just came from.”

  Sage, uncomfortable, sweating hard, palms slick as he held the paper, felt very anxious seeing firsthand the result of things gone wrong.

  “Makes you wonder why they do it.”

  “For the money,” Sage said, swallowing. “I guess.”

  “Says she didn’t know it was in her bag.”

  “You believe her?”

  “It doesn’t matter. She’s here; it’s our job to lead her to the Lord.”

  Owen, digging through his satchel, producing more papers, found the one he was looking for and handed it to Sage, and, pointing toward the top, told him to read about her. In court, her lawyers argued her trial had been unfair, that her translator was a college student not licensed by the Association of Indonesian Translators.

  “She’s the reason Andrew and Suk are still alive,” Owen said. “She’s scheduled to be shot at the same time, so the executions are postponed till they review her case. That’ll take a while, a few months maybe. Until then,” he said, pausing, looking at Sage, “Andrew and Myuran get to live.”

  Sage could take no more of this. Hearing about people arrested at the airport, meeting people on death row for drugs. It was suddenly becoming real. Too real. Sage squirmed. Hot and uncomfortable, he asked Owen what time it was and Owen told him it was two.

  “S
ee what I mean? They don’t care how long you sit here. By the time you get inside it’s time to leave. Visiting hours end at three.”

  Sage, wiping the sweat off his face with his sweat-stained shirt, listening to Owen say, Here’s another one, Aleksandra Magnaeva, busted last month, only 26 years old, from Russia, caught with five pounds of meth, removed the bottle of water from the side pocket of his shorts and raised it to his mouth and had a long warm drink.

  A guard, walking toward them, stopped, and, yelling out a series of numbers, turned and walked back toward the door he’d come from as a small crowd of people pursued him.

  “He went to 14,” Owen said.

  “Did he?”

  “Yep, empat belas—you’d better go.”

  “Great,” Sage said. Rising off his chair, extending his hand to Owen, he thanked him for his time.

  “My pleasure, Brother Sage.”

  Sage, hesitant and unsure of himself, holding his bag of fruit, made his way across the big room where every sound echoed throughout the vacant open space. He waited in a line that was short and fast moving, and came to a low metal door that would not accommodate his six-foot frame unless he ducked, which he did. Then, stepping into a medium sized room, he stood in another line while eleven people in front of him were questioned and scrutinized and patted down for contraband. Once they were processed, guards took each visitor’s wrist and gave them a small purple stamp, which, as Owen had put it, was the only thing that separated us from them.

  When it was his turn to be questioned, a female guard approached him. Her name tag said Riris. She was tall and thin and more attractive than any Indonesian women he had seen, and after cross-referencing his name on the list with his passport, she asked him to accompany her to a smaller room where an aging Indonesian man in a brown uniform sat at an antique desk that looked small, but heavy. Without standing or bowing, holding a single cigarette, tapping it repeatedly on its butt in an attempt to pack the tobacco, he, pointing to a chair, told Sage, sit. That appeared to have been the only word he knew in English, because, Riris now entered the room and stood beside the man’s desk and interpreted the words he said.

  Holding up his passport, she asked Sage, “Is this you, yes? American?” Pointing to the paper he filled out, she said, “You are …priest or spiritual advisor?”

  “Yes,” he said, abandoning Catholicism for his Baptist roots. “I’m a…a deacon …with the First Baptist Church of …Solomon.”

  He remembered what Wayne said, that these people had no idea who he was or what he did; nor would they have any way to verify what he said. Riris translated what he said and the old man nodded, spoke a few brief sentences in return. Then he watched Sage’s face when Riris told him Grady, the man he had come to see, was dead, that he’d been found in his cell this morning. They were sorry to give him this news, but, apparently, according to eyewitness testimony, he had killed himself the night before, by strangulation, and that he’d used a plastic bag.

  Sage bit his lips together at the shockwave of such news.

  “I sorry,” she said. The old man beside her nodded, also sorry.

  Sage said nothing and any words she said following he was dead were lost to him. He heard nothing but his pulse in his ears. Riris told him again she was sorry; Sage shook his head, as if to acknowledge her. After a full minute, still reeling, he asked her again how Grady had died.

  “He kill himself,” she said. “His cellmate say it was suicide.”

  “Suicide?” Sage said. “You’re saying he … he killed himself with a … with a plastic bag?”

  She said that was correct. “Grady hang himself.”

  “Thank you,” Sage said, standing, preparing to leave the room, preparing to run from the room, knowing no one killed himself with a plastic bag, not even in a place like this.

  His bag of fruit on the concrete floor, he stepped over it, walking out without bowing or saying a word. He returned to the medium-sized room where he’d first met Riris, and, after showing a guard his stamp and explaining the man he had come to see was dead, he was given his passport and his cell phone and told to, in the best English the guard could muster, have a very nice day.

  Leaving the room, ducking his head to walk under the door, Sage saw Owen was nowhere to be found. Very nervously, sure that every eye was on him, waiting to see what he would do, where he would go, Sage walked toward the gray door and stepped outside to find more journalists and reporters waiting, with cameras in hand, but they frowned and mumbled under their breath when they saw that it was him.

  Sage’s heart pounded as he crossed the parking lot, covered in sweat, hands shaking, mouth dry, fighting the urge to turn and see if he had been followed. Grady was dead. He’d hung himself, she said. With a plastic bag. One of the bags they moved their bowels into when their toilets malfunctioned, Sage presumed. How was that even possible?

  When he reached his motorbike he saw his helmet was gone. He looked around but did not see it.

  Surprised and cursing, Sage sat down, plugged in his headphones, put the buds in both ears, started his motorbike, and backed out of the parking space without looking at anyone else.

  He left Kerobokan, pulling onto the road, falling in with late afternoon traffic, thick but fast flowing, and headed toward Ubud, steering with one hand, pulling his phone from the pocket where he kept it. After unlocking the screen, he dialed Wayne’s number, swerving to miss both potholes and people, and when Wayne answered, even before he could speak, Sage, driving reckless, one hand on the handlebar, the other holding the wire close to his mouth, blurted out in absolute panic, “He’s dead, Wayne. He’s fucking dead.”

  “What?”

  “Grady’s dead.”

  Wayne told Sage to slow down. What the hell was he talking about? Grady was dead? How could that be?

  “Yes,” Sage screamed into the wire. He told Wayne he’d killed himself with a plastic bag. “You believe that? A plastic bag?” Then Sage said he was out. “I’m done,” he said. “No way am I gonna end up in that prison, man. There’s gotta be another way—I’ll find another way.”

  Wayne told Sage hold on a minute. “Calm down.”

  A bus came to a stop in front of Sage so he stopped. Wayne told him again to calm down. “Get hold of yourself,” he commanded.

  “No, you calm down,” Sage said. “I’m done. This is crazy; I’ll find another way to do this. I’ll go home, find another job … I dunno. Something. Anything but this, man. They fucking killed him.”

  “OK,” Wayne said. “Now you need to listen to me very carefully. Think about what you’re saying. What about Ratri? You love her, right?”

  Sage shook his head, let his breath out. “I dunno,” he said. “I mean, of course, yeah, of course I do, but this is fucking crazy. There’s tanks and soldiers with machine guns—machine guns. I can’t do this, man.”

  Wayne did not say anything. He listened to Sage breath, then the truck in front of Sage pulled forward and he took off again.

  Wayne asked again about Ratri. “You sure you want out?”

  “There’s gotta be another way.”

  Nearing an intersection, Sage saw two polisi standing at the corner by the small guard shack he’d passed earlier and one of them pointed to a third man, also in uniform, tall, in thick-heeled boots, who, walking into the road, waving his arms about, blew his whistle, forcefully, pointing as Sage drew near.

  The other two stepped into the road and waved their arms as well, commanding Sage to stop.

  “Fuck, I’m gettin’ pulled over,” Sage said, ending his call with Wayne. Reducing his speed, pulling to the shoulder in front of the booth, he turned off his motorbike. All three polisi came at him. They had loud angry voices he could not understand and he knew he should have run.

  “I don’t speak Indonesian,” he said. “No Balinese, I only speak English.”

  The three turned to consult each other and
it was decided the tall one, the one who had approached Sage, the one who spoke the best English, would do the talking for the group.

  He asked Sage for his passport.

  “Sure.”

  Standing, saying, “Just one second,” nodding yes, holding up a finger as he reached down with his free hand and popped the seat, reaching inside, he removed his passport and his International Drivers License from his wallet, as the tall man, moving swiftly, snatched the wallet from his hand, turned, and, pointing, quietly mumbled something Sage could barely hear and would not have understood if he had.

  “I say come,” the man said, much louder this time, waving his arm at Sage, instructing him to the booth where he could speak freely amid his cohorts.

  Sage followed. When he stepped inside the booth he was anxious and did everything he could to prepare his lies. They asked him who he was. Why was he in Bali?

  Then they asked him why was he at the prison and who had he gone to see.

  Sage, caught off guard at the barrage of questions, took a deep breath. They knew he’d come from the prison. How could they have known that?

  “I’m a missionary,” he said. “Here to console inmates, I was just at Kerobokan.”

  Sage watched the men talk among themselves as they rummaged through his wallet and when the last man took his turn he went through the photos. When he did, Sage saw a picture of his ex-wife. The only one he’d kept. He had not even realized it was there. But then, maybe he did. Maybe this was another lie he told himself. That he had known all along but did not have the strength to remove it. To rip it in half and throw it away. Like she had thrown him away. Now there she was, looking back at him from a picture taken when she was just nineteen, at a restaurant in Kansas City.

  She was young and alluring. In her eyes he saw that she had loved him once.

  It was a picture he had seen a thousand times, but now he saw it for the last time. When the guard asked about the photo Sage told him him to cut it up.

  “You no helmet,” the tall guard said. “You pay fine.”

  Sage apologized for not wearing a helmet, even though no one else did. Then he told them the truth, that his helmet had just been stolen. Only moments ago, he added.