by Tad Crawford
“After all the time you’ve worked on it, it won’t seem very long.”
Tex had been holding Mayonaka by the blade and tapping the white handle against his other palm.
“I should probably explain to you why it took us so long,” he said. “Especially if you’re going with us. You should know.”
“Okay.”
“Tsukino-san and I don’t think that the raft has a chance. No matter how you improve it. It’s just not good enough. If it doesn’t capsize, it will drift. Anyone on it is as good as dead. That’s one reason we didn’t want to finish it.”
“That seems like reason enough,” I said, since this echoed my own thoughts. “Then why consider going out on it now?”
“There’s another … thing.” Tex chose the word after a moment of deliberation.
“What?”
“We agreed to something early on. Once we agreed, we felt that we would have no choice but to do what we had said. It was a sensible thing, for survival. But it’s what made us keep finding faults with the raft. We would build it and take it apart. We kept constructing it in different ways. None of the rafts was that different, but we didn’t want to finish.”
“This agreement,” I asked, shifting on the leaves and sand, “what was it?”
Tex raised Mayonaka, holding it vertically and focusing on the blade.
“That out on the raft, if we were still alive after we had used up the supplies, I would let Tsukino-san cut my veins with this knife. I would let him drink my blood. When I couldn’t live any longer, I would let him kill me and eat my flesh. That is what we agreed.”
“That’s madness! Because you’re his prisoner?”
“No.”
“But … ” I hardly knew where to begin with my objections. “That would be murder. If it won’t work anyway, why leave the island?”
“Because we haven’t much time left. If I die before the raft is launched, Tsukino-san will lose his best chance to survive.”
“But you’ve been hiding from planes and boats for decades. Why go looking for people now?”
“I told you,” Tex said. “I’m not well. We have to leave soon.”
“And you want my help?”
“Yes. I want your help. Tsukino-san wants to visit the shrine for those who died in the wars. He wants to go back to his hometown and honor his parents’ graves. I want him to get to Japan. And you, New York, I want you to get back to where you come from.” As he spoke, his eyes began to shine. “I was born in Brownfield, south of Lubbock. I wouldn’t mind going back, but I’ll have to be satisfied wherever I end up. And if push comes to shove on the raft, I want you to share with Tsukino-san. Whatever I have to give, you share with him.”
“But …,” I started to protest.
He waved a hand to silence me.
“It’s what I want. And do me a favor.” His mouth curled in a smile. “I always hoped to go to the top of the Empire State Building. See the skyline of the greatest city—that would be something. Next time you’re up there, will you take a look for me?”
27
I heard the plashing of water. Turning on my light I saw the rocky shore of an underground lake. The water lay still and black as oil. I had no idea how deep it was or how far the lake might extend. Yet I had to continue, even if I swam to the far shore.
The sound came nearer until I saw a small boat with an oarsman standing at its stern.
“Give me one guilder. I’ll take you to a good place.” The boatman had a booming, cheerful voice. “Give me two, and I’ll take you to a better one.”
He laughed, a large man of sixty or so with matted hair, torn layers of loose clothes, a red bulbous nose, and a face streaked black with grime. He looked to be a bum, and a drunken one at that, judging by his boisterous voice and laughter. The boat entered an inlet near me and halted a few feet from the shore.
“What place?” I asked suspiciously
“Where the dogs are,” he answered.
“Dogs?”
“You can’t hear them now, but you will on the other side.”
“What kind of dogs? Are they dangerous?”
“Guard dogs. Dangerous if you go where you shouldn’t.”
“What do they guard?”
“Questions, questions,” he sang the words. “Are you coming with me or not?”
“Once I get over there”—I gestured with my head, and the miner’s light flashed upward for a moment before returning to his face—“how will I return?”
“You pay for a round-trip.”
“How do I know you’ll be there?”
“I’m always here, on one side or the other. It’s back and forth, back and forth. You’d think it would get monotonous, but I like helping people out.” Here he stopped and, confirming my suspicions, drew a dark bottle from inside his tattered coat, unscrewed the top, and took a long drink. Clearing his throat happily, he twisted on the top and returned the bottle to his inner pocket. “Amazing how many people come here, like you, desperate to get to the other side. Don’t have any idea what’s over there. So tell me, if you don’t know what’s over there, why do you want to go?”
“I have to.”
This made him reach into his coat, remove the bottle again, and imbibe.
“Want some?” he asked.
“No, no thanks.”
“Up to you.” He wiped his lips with the back of his coat sleeve and put the bottle away. “So, are we going or not?”
I looked at the black water and thought of the dogs.
“Yes, let’s go.”
The boat was still a few feet from the shore, but he didn’t move to come closer.
“Judging by your underwear and boots, you must have been a fine-dressed gent, but I don’t offer credit here. Unless you’d like to give me that nice light on your head as a guaranty for future payment.”
“You want money?” I asked.
“Didn’t I say as much?”
I reached under my tongue and brought out a silver coin. Holding it up, I saw that it appeared ancient, perhaps Greek, with a chariot and warriors led by a flying divinity on one side and a circular snake whose mouth engulfed its tail on the other. He paddled to the shore so I could hand it to him.
He examined the coin closely on each side, testing it between his teeth before pocketing it.
“All right, climb aboard.”
“Both ways?”
“Yeah.”
I crouched in the bow as he wove the oar back and forth to move us over the dark surface.
“So what brings you down here?” he asked.
I had turned off my light. He didn’t have a lantern but seemed quite comfortable moving through the dark. Occasionally I would turn on the light and glimpse him standing in the stern, but I had to save the batteries.
“I’m not sure yet,” I answered.
“Just a little excursion,” he suggested in his cheerful way.
“You might say that.”
“Leave anybody at home? A wife? A baby girl? A little guy named Junior?”
“No, no one.”
I could hear the oar wagging from side to side.
“Why not?”
“I’m not married, for one thing.”
“You’re not that ugly, so why not?”
“I was married, but not anymore.”
“Any regrets?”
“I don’t know.”
“Somebody steal her from you?”
“No, that’s not what happened.”
“Imagine this,” he said. “A man comes to rob you. He comes at night and you’re asleep. He has plenty of time to wander through your home. He uses his flashlight to find the gold and jewels you’ve hidden away.”
“I don’t have anything like that.”
“He’s persistent. Whatever you value, he eventually finds it. But when you wake in the dark and happen to stumble on him as you head for the toilet, what is he stealing?”
“I don’t know.”
“When yo
u hear him, you go back for the pistol you keep in the side table by your bed. It’s loaded. The safety is off. You face him, the pistol raised toward his chest. You’re not ten feet away. At this range you couldn’t miss. He has a large bundle over his shoulder, a plastic bag filled to bursting. He puts it on the floor and opens the top so you can see into it. It’s filled with your trash, every bit of trash that he could find in the house. He’s looking at you, waiting for you to decide. So what will it be?”
“I don’t keep a pistol in the side table. I don’t own a pistol.”
“But imagine you did.”
“I’m not going to shoot him. I don’t care what he’s stealing.”
“Oh?”
“I told you. How much longer is it anyway?”
“We’ll be there soon enough. But what if you confront the man and he has a bundle in his arms? As you look at him, you realize that the bundle is your baby, your newborn. He’s kidnapping your child. You have the pistol and a clear shot at his head. Or, if you don’t want to kill him, you can cripple him with a shot to the leg.”
“I don’t know.”
“He has your child. What choice do you have?”
“Are you always so talkative?” I asked him.
“If you don’t like pistols, how about this? A man wants to buy something and offers the price to the seller. What do you think the seller says?”
“I’ll wrap it up for you,” I answered, mystified at what he might be after.
“Maybe. Or maybe the seller says it’s too much trouble to wrap it up. It’s too much trouble to put it in a bag. In fact, it’s too much trouble to sell it at all. So he tells the buyer to keep his filthy money. It’s a matter of principle.”
“I don’t see it,” I said.
“It has to do with the stars.”
I looked up but saw only blackness above me.
“What are you talking about?”
There was a pause in the rhythm of the oar. Flicking on my light, I saw him take a long swallow from his bottle.
“You can learn so much from the stars—the patterns, the shifting of the planets.”
“Yes?” I said dubiously as darkness returned.
“Marry when you have the chance, the sooner the better.”
“If I meet the right person …,” I began.
“Because your time to be a father … it’s passing. Maybe you have ten years. Yes, ten years at most. After that, it’s a solo trip.”
“How can you know that?”
“Do you like pie?” he asked.
“What are you talking about?” I yelled.
“Pi, the number. It should be perfect. If I had to choose a perfect shape, I would choose a circle. So why is the circumference divided by the diameter irrational? It makes no sense. It should be a golden number. Instead it runs off into eternity.”
“What’s your point?”
The hull of the boat scraped in the shallows. I clicked on my light. This shore looked as forbidding as the one we’d left behind. Jagged boulders thrust up in the darkness. He used his oar to hold the boat against a flat rock, and I stepped ashore.
“So it’s good-bye, then,” he said, pushing off a few feet.
“Until you take me back,” I answered.
“Yes, of course.” He bent and picked up a package from the bottom of the boat. “Take this. You may need it.”
“For what?”
“You’ll know,” he replied, tossing it to land beside me.
I doubted whether he would come back.
“You’ll be watching for me, won’t you?”
“Yes, yes.” He had slipped beyond the range of my light. I could hear the paddle and his final words. “When I bring you back, maybe you’ll come for a visit with the missus and the little ones. Eat home-cooked food and sleep in a soft bed. Think it over.”
28
E ach day I sat in a shaded niche in the boulders and let my gaze shift back and forth from the poorly made square of the raft to the waves. Even on a calm day, I kept picturing the raft broken, capsized. I would see Tex, Tsukino-san, and myself sinking through the vast volumes of salt water to the distant bottom.
In another scenario, far worse than the first, the raft remained afloat. After a week or more adrift beneath the burning sun, we would have to deal with Tex. Would we really butcher him? I could refuse, couldn’t I? But could I trust myself? Did I know to what lengths hunger and thirst might drive me?
Life on the island had to be better than facing such a quandary. Yet the island offered so little. Is it better to die on this barren outcrop? I had read enough of adventures on the high seas to know the unwritten law. If necessary for survival, human flesh could be consumed. Yet that law applied to shipwrecks, accidents, unforeseen tragedy, not premeditated murder. We could, after all, remain safely on land.
Tsukino-san visited often to sit with me for an hour or two. Small, wiry, browned by his years in the sun, he moved through the sweltering air with an ease that astonished me. He thought nothing of coming around midday, when the heat made the air tremble. He too had thoughts about how to improve the raft. One by one we discussed our ideas. I wanted us to be in agreement before we started the actual work. It wasn’t until the fifth or sixth day that he inquired about something other than the raft.
“Were you married?” he asked.
I considered his question. It seemed so long ago.
“Yes,” I answered.
He didn’t ask another question that day. We began to dismantle the raft. We’d started early in the morning, before the fiery warmth of midday. The sun rose above the volcano’s peak and cast its pink iridescence over the waves and the clouds in their hovering formations. We worked in a spot between two boulders that was shaded except during the middle of the day, when we’d break for several hours.
“Were you happy in your marriage?” he asked the next day as we finished unfastening the raft and began to rearrange its materials in a new shape. It would have a crude prow, a rudder, and, centered between them, a mast with a sail stabilized by a horizontal boom. This would give us some hope of moving with the winds and setting a course. It would be more difficult to construct, and require additional materials, but I believed that we could complete it within a week or ten days. Our first task was to set up log rollers so we could easily move it down the slope to the rocky embankment and slide it into the waves.
“Yes, for a time.”
“Only for a time?” he asked, straining to roll a tree trunk into position.
I went to help him.
“We divorced.”
He grunted. We pushed together and soon had the rollers in place so we could begin the raft itself.
“She disobeyed you?”
I wasn’t certain how to respond to this.
“No, not at all,” I finally replied.
“Why didn’t you want her?” he asked.
“I did want her. We were married for ten years. In the end, she didn’t want me.”
His lips pursed in disgust, as if he had eaten something bitter.
“She lived in your household,” he asserted. “Didn’t your mother instruct her?”
“My mother didn’t live with us. We lived by ourselves.”
We worked in silence for a while. I knew he came from another culture and another time. He didn’t ask more until we stopped at midday and moved deeper into the rocks to rest in the shadows.
“You had sex with your wife?”
“Yes.”
“You enjoyed it?”
“Yes, very much.”
“You did it often?”
“Yes.”
“For ten years?”
“Yes, for ten years.”
Tsukino-san sat with his legs crossed and his back erect like a monk in meditation. He closed his eyes. At first he’d seemed suspicious and quick to take offense, but he let go as we worked together. I could see the boy in this old man, a boy who had spent most of his life as far from the centers of civilization as
one could imagine. I rested on my back, the humidity like a saturated cloth spread over my face.
“Did you have a son?”
I had fallen asleep. Often we napped and woke when the sun had moved behind the cliffs. He sat in the same posture. I raised myself on an elbow and pushed up to face him. The sleepiness remained with me. For a moment I was at a loss for how to answer.
“No.”
“A daughter?”
“No.”
“Could she have children?”
“Yes, I think so.”
We returned to our work. For the most part I focused on what we had to do and not on the journey we would attempt.
Much later that day, when the sun hovered over the scarlet rim of the ocean, Tsukino-san asked me another question.
“Did you have a job?”
“Yes.”
I expected him to ask what kind of job, but he didn’t. We had begun to position the logs we would fasten together for the deck. Stopping for the day, we took the short walk back to the cave. Tex sat by the entrance, his back against the stone. He grinned and raised a hand when he saw us coming.
“How’d it go?” he asked.
“Fine,” I answered.
“How much longer?”
Tired from my labor, I sat beside him.
“Maybe a week, give or take a few days.”
“That’ll be good. The sooner the better.”
He said something like this every night when we came back. He wasn’t well enough to walk the short distance and check on our progress for himself. His face had a pallid cast despite his deep tan, and he kept his hand pressed to the ribs on the left side of his chest.
“How are you doing?” I asked.
“To tell you the truth, I don’t know.”
“You feel worse?”
He shook his head. “It’s about the same. I just want to make it on that raft.”
“What is it, then?”
“Now that I can’t move around much, all I do is think and daydream.”
“What are you daydreaming about?”
“It’s never one thing, but part of it’s not very pleasant.”
“Tell me about it.”
“Today, about the war, the training, my buddies, the planes, some of the missions, and being shot down. I go over that again and again. Places I went that I had never heard of when growing up in Brownfield. Then,” he gave a bashful smile, “about girls, the girls I knew back in high school mainly. I see them like they’re standing in front of me. Sometimes I think I even smell them. And my mom. I remember her hugging me good-bye in the mornings before school. I’d grown too big to want her to kiss me, but she kissed me anyway. Every day. I’d hug her now if I could, you can bet on that. And working on the farm with my dad, the cattle, the fields, the pens. My mom cried when I enlisted. She hugged me and wouldn’t let me go. My dad shook my hand and looked into my eyes. That’s stayed with me always, that look. Today I got to thinking about where they’re buried. I’ve thought about it before, but it was strong today. There’s only one cemetery where they’d want to rest. It’s in Brownfield. The entrance has brick pillars. Then it’s flat, with grass that gets scorched and a bunch of trees that don’t give enough shade. I imagined tramping through the old markers till I found my mom and dad side by side.”