Bright and Distant Shores

by Dominic Smith

  26.

  The Cullion did not return at noon on the third day. They waited all afternoon on the beachhead, the boat loaded with trading spoils, ready to walk the ancient piebald out onto the tidal mudflats. From there it would be a matter of coaxing the mare into the swells and towing her behind the rowboat. Owen knew that horses could swim—he’d once seen a palomino ford the mire of the Chicago River during a stable fire—but he also knew this hack could barely walk, never mind dog-paddle. He didn’t let his thoughts eddy beyond the image of the horse flanked to her ribs in seawater, did not plumb the proposition of getting her aboard the bark. The skeptical villagers looked on from a distance, watching the sun transit the quadrants of clear blue sky, waiting for a ship to speck the horizon.

  By late afternoon, Owen began to speculate about the reasons for the delay—faltering winds, flukey tides, a mishap in navigation. If the Cullion had forayed half a day north, to the anchorage of the nearest island, then it was hard to imagine a botched return. The sky was a high blue and the wind was blowing fresh from the west so that the clipper could easily zag its way south. The hours passed without sight of the bark and a band of clans-women appeared on the beach as a distraction from the waiting. They collected fish from the mudflat weirs and urchins from the silvered tide pools, gathered up an array of cowries and cat’s eyes and cockles from the wet sand. Owen and Argus watched them in silence. Carnation and hibiscus garlands around their necks, bandeaus of leaves and myrtle blooms in their hair, girdled in paperbark, they picked across the sand without haste, singing and calling to one another. The word among traders and colonialists was that whenever you saw the women you were safe. Tribal attacks never occurred with women present; this was the inherited wisdom. The Tikalia trusted the two clayskins now that a deal had been struck, it seemed to Owen, but he could feel his tongue coat with thirst as he stared out at the younger clanswomen’s bent, lithe, and near-naked forms. There were sylphlike girls and old crones with breasts as pendulant as eggplants, daughters and sisters and cousins of the same bloodline, judging from the familiarity between them.

  More than anything, it seemed to Owen, the extremes of life felt a part of the natural order in the islands—the vigor of youth and the plainness of death was everywhere. It reminded him of a plot of ground out by the Livestock Emporium where a full-bloomed pear tree and a burned-out byre flanked each other on the same hillside. He thought of polite women in Chicago, about their fruit-laden hats. Wasplike waists and with tempers to match was the saloon refrain. Adelaide was wholly different; well-bred but also earthy and decent. He imagined her teaching a daughter to sew, pictured a sunny kitchen with a dog curled at their feet. He needed, suddenly, a diversion from the twilit haunches and jostling breasts before him. Those visions of the future anchored him, promised a kind of safety. From what? he wondered. From his own flawed character? From a trader’s hut on a lonely far-flung beach? He heard himself swallow and it felt like his mind blinking over. He was ready to surrender wholly to his future, however it unspooled.

  Argus watched the native women a little distantly, as if from a height. In the falling light he thought their flower coronals made them resemble English wives of title and dominion, like aristocrats walking in a dusky rose garden instead of godless women gathering shellfish at low tide. A lone woman walked apart from the others, some distance behind, and Argus wondered whether she was childless. A native woman without children was adrift, invisible. He thought suddenly of Malini and hoped she was safe aboard the ship. He had been a negligent brother, gone six years and now letting her fend for herself. He felt a pang of guilt and quietly said a prayer for her.

  The women departed and Argus made a pathetic fire with coconut fiber and scantling washed up from a wreck. The flames flickered and sputtered. It was barely enough light to read by, and anyway Argus felt much too hungry for orphans flung out. They had traded their tinned food and rice and fishing supplies, and the Tikalia had led them to believe that catching bonito or barramundi would be an intrusion. As a small gesture of goodwill and hospitality a few villagers brought down a clay pot of fermented breadfruit and left it in the sand by the campfire. They said it had been buried in the earth for a year and was eaten in the caves during the big wet. The sticky, glutinous compound— yellow and formidable as bookbinders’ paste—required a swift finger to spool it mouthward before it was retracted by the rest of the brimming compote. They ended up still hungry, with their shirtfronts and trousers strung in fermented breadfruit.

  Owen retrieved a flask of whiskey and a scrimshaw knife from his rucksack. He sliced crescents of coconut from a shell that was woody and slightly green. He placed them on a hank of cloth. “Dessert,” he said to Argus.

  Argus took up a piece of coconut—thin and curled as a wood shaving—and popped it into his mouth. He hesitated when Owen passed him the whiskey. He didn’t like the heat and smoke of whiskey but didn’t want to be impolite. A small sip was enough to make his chest and windpipe burn. He handed it back to Owen, who took a long pull.

  “Do you think the ship will come tomorrow?” Argus asked.

  “I’m sure of it,” said Owen. In fact, he was far from sure. All afternoon and evening he’d been playing out various mishaps in his mind—the ship had been scuttled on a reef or had caught fire, had been involved in an act of mutiny or piracy, or Terrapin had simply decided to take what trade items had been stowed in the forehatch and bulkhead and steamer for home. In any event, his meditations saw him and the mission houseboy stuck among the unyielding Tikalia for many months before a frigate happened by. In one vision, Adelaide would give him up for lost or dead and marry her blue-blood dentist, a man named Erasmus Plimp. Such was the mockery of his thoughts. And it could all be justified, he thought, these events flowing in the wake of his object obsession. He should have steamered for home as soon as he got her letter. The word monomania came to him before he quelled it with whiskey.

  “I have the sickness of worry about my sister,” Argus said, taking another little nip of liquor. The heat led to a kind of singeing in his chest.

  Owen had noticed that Argus’s English faltered whenever he was nervous or anxious. Properly drunk, the boy might start up in tongues. “I’m sure everything is fine. Tomorrow the clipper will come and we’ll work out how to get the horse off the island.”

  “And bring back feathers for the Tikalia,” Argus reminded him.

  “Yes, the feathers as well.”

  After a while the fire all but died, but the moon came up full and bright. The old mare chewed in the broad-bladed grasses up from the beach, black and white as a Holstein, its ponderous head dipping in and out of the leafy shadows like a derrick.

  “Is it true a ship’s captain can marry lovers at sea?” Argus asked.

  Owen smiled at the turn of phrase. “Technically, I suppose that is true.”

  “This worries me. What if Master Terrapin decides to marry himself to my sister?”

  Owen took the whiskey flask in mild disparagement at the idea. “In the first place, I don’t think the fat old sod wants to marry your sister. He just wants some company in the stateroom. And in the second place, I don’t think a captain could marry himself. It wouldn’t seem right. The admiralty wouldn’t stand for it.”

  Argus leaned forward conspiratorially. “The captain’s head is very large. Have you noticed?”

  Owen grinned. “A ghastly thing! The ship heels to leeward on account of that enormous crown.”

  Argus shot out a laugh, part of it through his nose. “Will you have a very big wedding?”

  “If it were left up to me it would be the two of us, a preacher, and two civil witnesses dragged in at random from Michigan Avenue. But it seems Adelaide will have her way with a big wedding and my side of the church embarrassingly empty.”

  “Your family will not come?”

  Owen shook his head. “All dead.”

  “Mine too. Sister is all I have.”

  With mock gravity Owen declared, “Th
e world is full of orphans,” then, a moment later, “I must be getting drunk.”

  “My heart is fighting with my ears.”

  “Good. That means it’s working. An empty stomach does the trick.” It felt good to be drunk again. How odd that he kept himself sober among the bawdy seamen but gave himself license to drink freely with the pious houseboy. There was a chastity to Argus that demanded resistance in the same way that a month of Adelaide’s charity and altruism demanded at least one alehouse bender. The smell of saloon sausages and eggs on the skirt of a Sunday morning had kept him sane all through their courtship, this secret communion of the damned. He would give her nine-tenths of his body, mind, and soul, and keep the remainder for himself. That seemed like a fair proposition.

  Argus said, “My blood is all smoke and whiskey. It makes me want to pray to the Holy Ghost.”

  Owen said, “Don’t get religious on me. I was partially raised by nuns and they left me sore about God.”

  “I can’t help it. I am drunk with God also.”

  “Steady now. A man should never say exactly what he’s thinking when he’s drunk. Least of all about religion or politics.”

  “Oh. I see.”

  The night fishermen were dragging their dugouts through the surf and the two watched them paddle out beyond the breakers. The torches were lit and the nets ghosted over the waves like clouds. They spoke more about Chicago and America, about doughnuts and underground trains and tall buildings. They spoke about the way Argus would meet his future wife in a department store.

  Owen said, “She will be shopping for lacy undergarments and you will buy her lunch in the cafeteria.”

  “What will we eat?” Argus asked.

  “Ham sandwiches and cake.”

  “That sounds very good to me at present.”

  They stared into the dying fire for a moment, hungry and smitten with the thought of real food.

  After mulling it over for a few moments, Argus said, “Or I might meet her in a big church with carved pews. Imagine taking communion in a cathedral of stained glass. That is something I would like to do.”

  “Let’s go swimming,” Owen said, standing. He threw the empty flask by the fire.

  Argus followed him down to the water’s edge and watched as Owen stripped naked and plunged into the waves. The sight of a white man’s body had always been unnatural to Argus; the spackled limbs and luminous buttocks seemed to demand coverage. Owen began swimming out through the surf, his face in the ocean. The fishermen watched the naked clayskin from their dugouts, cursing him for scaring the shoaling fish. Argus took off his shirt only and folded it neatly on the sand. He waded into the surf and let it break around his stomach. The water was warm and it made the air feel cooler than it was. He had always disliked putting his face underwater; the salt burned his eyes and mouth. Owen was waving to him and hollering. Argus held his nose, pinched his eyes shut, and dived beneath an oncoming wave. The surge of the ocean in his eardrums turned the drunkenness into something leaden and dark. When he came up for air, he felt horribly afraid that he was not going to make it back to shore. He tried to call out to Owen but the trader was already mid-stroke into an Australian crawl, his legs and arms thrashing as he rose up the face of a wave. Argus let the waves pummel him back into the shallows so that he could stand again. He shivered slightly, exposed to the cooling air from the waist up. He watched Owen swim wildly past the breakers then return to shore on a single wave. Naked, invigorated, Owen jogged up the sand from the ocean and for a moment, with his arms raised and his head back, he looked like a man resurrected.

  The Cullion finally appeared the next afternoon on the leeward side of the reef, her canvas quarter-set and drawing. The tide was coming in and the weirs were filling up. The bark took in sail as she approached the coral skirt and came onto a broad reach and prepared to heave to. In silhouette, Owen could see the entire crew on deck and the chief’s canoe being towed astern. It looked as if additional cargo had been placed in the pull-behind, perhaps some of the naturalist’s spoils. Good, because he would need all the room he could get for his windfall. Argus broke camp and they dragged the laden rowboat down to the water’s edge. They looked back at the tethered mare, still eating in the copse of trees, and for a brief moment Owen contemplated leaving the animal behind. Then Argus trotted up the beach and led it down to the sand with the sapling hackamore, its eyes walled, nervous in every hoof-step. Owen steadied the wooden prow into the knee-high waves. The decorated and braided nag stood indignant at the waterline and Argus came in front to pull hard. Owen tossed him a rope, ten fathoms of old halyard, and Argus attached it to the hackamore’s crosspiece. Without a metal bit in its mouth the tow-line was going to pull mostly around the creature’s sinewy neck but it was all they had. Owen backed up the boat, keeping the prow into the surf, and they took the rope together and began to haul.

  A few of the Tikalia gathered on the beach to watch the white man and the Christian kanaka reclaim the god-horse. They were leaving as clumsily as they had arrived. The horse got its front fetlocks wet and flexed its haunches in defiance. Come on now, Owen was saying. They wrapped the rope around their waists and shouldered out onto the sandbank. The mare snorted then buckled forward. All four hooves were now in the water but the horse reared its head up and began to sink into the sand. For good measure, it pebbled out a few pounds of dung when it flexed in terror. Owen told Argus to get up behind it and whack its hindquarters but the resulting slap was more conciliatory than anything else. Owen untied the rope from his waist and let Argus take the boat. He took up an extra length of halyard and went behind the mare and whipped it sheer across the rump. In a show of temper and dexterity, the horse shot out a hind leg like a piston and caught Owen full in the stomach. He fell back, swearing and burning for air, drenched to the hat felt.

  Argus called out but Owen told him to keep the boat pointed into the waves. He strained up, clutching his rib cage. Bitch of a horse was all he could manage to say. The horse turned its head to keep him in its periphery. Owen knew as much about horses as he did about dogs, which was very little. Some inherited idea of showing them who’s boss and not looking too deeply into their uncanny bay-brown eyes. He skirted round, considering the dilemma from all angles, ready to flay the animal bloody with the halyard.

  “Let me try,” said Argus, calling above the surf.

  Owen spat and waded forward to take the prow of the boat while Argus advanced upon the creature. The boy leaned into the horse and started voicing hymns and rubbing its flank like a lover so that Owen could barely watch. The grizzled old mare snarled its lips, bared its big yellow teeth, thrashed its tail in response. Undeterred, Argus kept combing its hair and shell-braided withers with his hands and that gospel voice gushing quietly into one pricked ear. Some little clicking noises with his mouth eventually moved the horse a few feet forward, the seawater now to its shanks. With the water girding higher, Owen was able to find some traction as the waves shifted the sand beneath the horse’s hooves. The rope strained around his waist and Argus pulled close to its mane. In this fashion, a few feet at a time, they managed to get the mare to its dappled girth and barrel, its nostrils flared and snorting. Owen jumped into the rowboat and pulled on the oars, the rope still attached. A big wave shoaled off the reef and forced the mare to break free of the sand in order to keep its muzzle dry. It rode up the wave, braying madly, and Owen pulled on the oars and the god had no choice but to swim. Argus scrambled into the boat and kept a hold of the towline.

  They rowed into the narrow channel through the heads of coral, Owen turning now and then to sight the Cullion’s broadside. The old mare snuffled and gurgled with unnameable humiliation but continued to paddle forward, doglike, ears back, wild-eyed. The trade items were wet but intact, cinched to the gunwales and partially covered by tarps. They made it out past the breakers and the reef’s serrated edge. Argus held the towline tightly, his hands burning with the rope, but he almost let go when he saw the tall, skinny natur
alist sitting in the tribal canoe that trailed the ship. Owen saw something register in the boy’s face and he stopped rowing to turn and take it in. Jethro Gray sat hatless in a grimy oiled guernsey, his face horribly sunburnt, dead birds and stuffed lizards and bottled frogs piled high on all sides. For a moment Owen thought of the effigy in the hold, the sculpture of smoked human skin and the taut, bloodless expression in the eye sockets and hinged jaw. The insurance heir did not move but stared back in a stupor, mouth open like a thirsty cat, apparently incurious that a slavering horse was being pulled behind a rowboat. Owen called out to him and waved but he failed to stir from his trance or show any sign of comprehension. Something moved in the prow of the canoe and Owen saw the mongoose, then the wallaby, then the Siamese cat and the clip-winged green parrot. The Djimbanko stowaways had also been banished.