“What happened to Sasha in the end?”
Luca continues to stare out to sea as he speaks. “We came back to the dorm after a game of football one afternoon, me and some of the other boys.” Luca pauses, rolls back, and faces me. “We found Sasha hanging from the rafters by the neck—dead.” Luca drops his eyes and begins making lines in the dirt again. “I couldn’t protect him,” he mumbles.
Tears roll down my cheeks. Luca slides over, cradles me in his arms, and rocks me gently.
Hours later, Pico comes and brings us back to Kizo’s hut.
As I lie in my hammock in the dark, questions roll over in my mind like waves washing on the beach. Why did the Tara people attack us? Why had I seen Dzil going to the Far Island the week before? What could I have done to save Tiki?
I still don’t understand what I did to make Nando sick, and even after going through the rites of passage for him I haven’t set things right at all. I’m desperate, unable to sleep. It’s not quite dawn yet, and while the others are still asleep, I get up and go to see Tukuman. I hope I find the sympathetic American and not the freaky savage.
By the time I arrive at Tukuman’s hut, the sky has become pink and orange.
“Why are you here?” he growls.
“I need to know what’s going to happen to Nando.”
“Go away. Or are you just looking to get your ass licked again?” He bursts out into strange hysterical laughter, and if I was not convinced he’s truly mad before, I am now.
“I’ve done everything I could. Everything,” I yell over his laughter. “And he’s still sick!”
He stops laughing and stares at me so intensely that I start to back away. Then with a slow and gentle voice, as if he were talking to a child, he says, “Ah, yes, for every action, there is a reaction of equal force. Son, I can still remember the laws of cause and effect. Well, I hate to break it to you, but where people are concerned, it’s slightly more complicated than that.”
“But you told me that since I caused Nando’s sickness, I had to fix it.”
“No, I told you that if you care for Nando, you must do for him what he can’t do for himself. That’s different. You think if you do certain things you can control the outcome? Nobody can control the future. Who do you think you are, some kind of god?” And he breaks into laughter again.
“So what am I supposed to do now?” I bark at him.
“Nothing,” he says flatly.
“Nothing?”
“When you decided to interfere and help him, you also accepted responsibility for him. That’s the way it works around here. So when things went wrong, you had to go through the rites of passage for him.”
“But I didn’t mean to cause problems.”
“Then you should have stayed away and minded your own damn business.” Tukuman clears his throat loudly and spits a large glob over his shoulder onto a nearby plant. “So now, my Nando is finally a man.”
I try to swallow. I’ve been humiliated, attacked by crazy savages, and swum across shark-infested water for Nando, and now it’s confirmed—he belongs to Tukuman. “I-I don’t understand. Nando is yours?” I croak.
“Yes, coconut head, my Nando! Who the fuck do you think his daddy is?”
“His father?” I stand there with my mouth hanging open.
“Well, I’m sure as shit not one of his mothers. Nando is my boy, so you watch yourself with him. See here, you still have his sign.” He leans over and pokes the butterfly stain on my chest.
“Will it fade away?”
“Yes. Now go back, get drunk, and have sex, and well….”
“Well what?” I say.
“Wait!”
It takes more than a few minutes for it to sink in, but then I put together the pieces. It’s so obvious. The reason Nando refused my advances was because he hadn’t gone through his initiation, and so, socially, he was still a child, not yet a man, and so I was forbidden to have sex with him. He was protecting me. I smile, then quiver at my next thought. I’ve had his father’s face literally shoved up my ass.
“Hey.” He jolts me from my thoughts. “You wouldn’t by chance have a stick of Beech-Nut, would you?”
“Chewing gum? No, sorry.” I try to think of a way to diplomatically take my leave.
“Didn’t think so.”
“I guess there must be some things you still miss?”
His face changes suddenly, losing all expression. It’s as if he is someplace else. “December 5, 1945, Flight 19, we were scheduled to do an over-water training flight out of Fort Lauderdale. Just dog fucking, really. The instructor, Lieutenant Taylor, had been in the Pacific Theater and had a lot of combat flying time. Now, with everything over, you know, after the bomb, he had been mothballed, doing defense training in Florida.”
“Hey, why did you ask me who had won the war if you already knew?”
“I just wanted to know if you knew.” He smiles, reaches into a small pouch, and produces a corncob pipe. He sits down cross-legged on the ground. “Fetch me a light from the fire, son, would you?”
I go over to the smoldering fire pit, find a small stick, and light the end. I return, carefully shielding the burning end, hand it to him, and sit down again.
He lights the pipe, puffs three times, and offers it to me. I take a draw and cough.
“See, the game had changed from military action to peacekeeping and political negotiation.” He takes the pipe back and inhales deeply. “Dividing the spoils of war, negotiating with the Russians, stabilizing Germany, Japan, and Italy, and generally trying to clean up the mess that years of war had made. Some of the big boys at the top, like Marshall, had made the transition from war to politics. Lower down the ladder, anyone with a rank was desperately scrambling to make a place for themselves in the new military. With the war over, the combat boys, the grunts who were no longer needed, came home by the thousands. Most of the boys were more than happy to catch the first transport ship or plane back to their families, wives, and girlfriends. The whole of America was caught up with white gowns and wedding bouquets, baby booties and picket fences. America was back in business, raising families, building homes and careers, and buying four-door sedans.” He draws on his pipe and offers it to me again. I say nothing, just wave a light refusal. He shrugs, puffs a couple of times, and continues.
“Well, that’s how most people saw it, anyway. Some of us have a bit of a different take on it. We called it shell-shocked, but the government shrinks call it Post Combat Trauma. That’s the way they do things, you know—give it a scientific sounding label and a file number, nice and neat, and nobody ever has to mention the real reason why so many boys came home, broke down, and killed themselves.”
He stops and looks up past me as if someone has just arrived behind me. I turn to see who it is, but no one is there. He nods in acknowledgment, but it’s not directed toward me. Then he continues.
“For the boys like me, the end of the war meant everything changed overnight, and the world was a far more frightening place than it had been with those crazy Japs and Krauts running around. Being shot down, blown up, or even left for dead was peanuts compared to what me and some of the other boys had to look forward to back home. After we had won the war for peace and democracy and all that red, white, and blue, we lost everything.”
He makes a couple of darting glances past me, breathes in deeply, and half sighs, half grunts.
“I remember the night the news spread through the base that it was all over, the mad euphoria, the tears of joy, the deep embraces. We had made it through alive, and many of us were still in one piece. Not everyone’s tears were tears of joy. Not everyone embraced to say congratulations. Many of us knew this was good-bye forever. Those fucking bastards hadn’t got me. They had cheated me. God, how I wanted to die.
“Oh, I’m not telling you anything the military didn’t know already. Of course they knew. Everybody knew! How can you live, eat, sleep, and die together and not know? There were official policies forbidding anything of the sort with
court marshals and jail. Hey, but during combat many of the boys were going to die anyways, so who really gave a shit who they fucked. Unofficially, beatings, murder, and accidents went on all the time. For the most part, with a little discretion and common sense, one could carry on and nobody gave you too much trouble. As long as it wasn’t talked about, it didn’t exist, not officially anyway. Just let the problem take care of itself.
“So there it was. I had three choices: swallow my pistol and come home in a box, go back and pretend like nothing ever happened and die inside, or stay in the military and try and hang on to the remnants of my life. I, like some of the others who had a little rank, took the third option. There was still an army and a need for defense.” Then he stops and glares at me. “Think about it. Where would you go if suddenly your whole world collapsed?”
I say nothing.
“I think you already know the answer to that, don’t you?” He puffs on his pipe. “Anyway, the new military was a very different place. It was all about building a career, having security, maybe a nice desk job or training assignment in someplace warm and sunny and getting a pension. Since I had done pretty well during the war, I was able to land a sweet post in Florida doing training missions. But what might have been overlooked and even at times tolerated during combat had no place in the new military. Little groups of self-appointed cleanup boys started to take out the trash by either official or unofficial means. I had kept my head low and my cards close to my chest, but of course there were those who knew about me, and I was getting more and more jittery all the time. The clocks should have tipped me off.”
“The clocks?”
“Yeah, the clocks. There were fourteen of us in all, five TBM Avengers. We were supposed to fly out to sea due east fifty-six miles and drop our load over the practice target at Hen and Chicken shoals, continue due east for another sixty-seven miles, turn a course 346 degrees for seventy-three miles, flying over the Grand Bahamas, then finally turn a course of 241 degrees for one hundred and twenty miles, bringing us back to base at Fort Lauderdale. I knew our commander, Lieutenant Taylor, as well as most of the other boys who were assigned to that training flight. All our paths had crossed before, at one time or another, if you know what I mean. At first I didn’t think too much about it. Nice coincidence, I thought. Routine flight, clear weather, friendly squadron, no problem, except for one curious little hitch. All the clocks in all our planes had been ripped out. You know, you saw stupid shit like that all the time in the military, and you just made do. Besides, most of us had watches, so it was no big deal.
“Just after takeoff, however, it was obvious our compasses were also not up to scratch. We radioed back for further instructions and were told to navigate by the sun and the seat of our pants. The first leg was a breeze. We dropped our load on target. The second leg required more guesswork. Lieutenant Taylor had a lot of air time and a great reputation for flying by the seat of his pants, so we continued on, confident we would soon see the Grand Bahamas below us.
“Pretty soon it was obvious that something was very wrong. Our fuel gauge should have read three-quarters full by now, but the needle still showed full. Some of the other planes read half-empty. Taylor radioed back for instructions and was ordered to complete the mission. And that’s when we should have figured it out. We had been set up by the cleanup squad.
“Taylor kept us in close formation and instructed us that with the first plane to run out of fuel, we all ditch and wait for a sea rescue. By now the weather was closing in and visibility was poor. Taylor spotted a group of islands that were too small for the Grand Bahamas. He thought we must have flown off course and were now over the Florida Keys. It would have been simple enough, if they were in fact the Keys, to turn north and hug the coastline back to base. He radioed for instructions. None came. The fog had completely closed in on us, and with no instruments we could trust, no sun, and no visible land below us, we were truly flying blind. Taylor radioed for the squadron to stay in tight formation, but his radio was breaking up. Somewhere in the fog off the Florida coast, he lost sight of the others. Up ahead, he thought he saw a patch of blue sky, so that’s where he headed until his engines, with fuel gauges still reading three-quarters full, cut out. The sea was a lot closer than he had calculated, and when he ditched, he ditched her hard, shearing off both wings and the tail. The copilot, Lieutenant Gus McKenzie, was strapped in with a huge gash to his head, and the plane was taking on water fast. Taylor had only enough time to pop the release and drag Gus out through the smashed cockpit windscreen before the plane went down like a rock, nose first.”
He pauses, taps his pipe on the ground, and breathes in deeply. “It’s the oddest feeling. One moment you are flying through the clouds, your best buddy so close you can almost feel his breath, and suddenly you’re in the middle of the sea, trying to hold his head above water while fighting for your own life.”
He freezes. Not moving. Not breathing. Then his eyes return to focus, as if he has only just realized I’m there in front of him.
“That’s it. That’s all. That’s how I ended up here. Is that what you wanted to know?”
I squint at him, surveying his face, trying to see through the tanned, pierced, and tattooed savage before me. I imagine the face of a young air pilot in his early twenties.
“You’re Lieutenant Taylor, aren’t you?”
“Taylor’s dead!” he roars. He hurls his pipe past my head toward whoever it is that he thinks he sees. “Go away!”
I get up and leave. As I hurry back down the jungle trail, I can hear him laughing hysterically and chanting.
GUY TURNED his head toward Richard and blinked rapidly, as if he had suddenly awoken and was trying to remember where he was. Then he pushed himself up from the sofa and stepped past Richard. “Madness is its own country, isn’t it?” he said as he left the room.
Guy walked down the corridor past the nurses’ station. Armando wasn’t there, and neither was the envelope with the tickets. He smiled.
Chapter 21: Molap’s Finding
“WHERE’S YOUR Audi? I didn’t see it in your space this morning. I was worried you had canceled our appointment,” Guy said as he burst through the door.
“No, I’m here.” Richard swung around in his chair. “Took the subway this morning. Had a little fender bender over the weekend. Nothing at all really, but it was enough to blow the airbags. So now it’s in the shop.”
“Safety glass, seat belts, and now airbags.” Guy paused. “Was a time when none of the cars had that stuff.”
“Were you worried about me?” Richard furrowed his brow.
“Yes,” Guy said, trying to catch his breath.
“Why?” Richard tilted his head to one side.
“Because you promised me you would listen, and my story is not finished yet,” Guy said sternly.
“I’m here and I’m listening, just as I promised you,” Richard said in a reassuring tone.
Guy’s breathing slowed. He slumped back into the sofa and resumed his tale.
THE NEXT day, the men find Tiki’s body floating peacefully facedown near the reef, missing a leg. Rufus had only been looking for a light snack, not a meal. Even though Tiki is officially a man now, Tuss begs to have him returned to her, and the women prepare him for burial, washing his body in oil and wrapping him in cloth, then interring him inside a giant terra-cotta urn. Once all is ready, the entire village, both women and men, form a procession at sunset. Molap takes the lead. Den, his head cast low, follows. I’m overwhelmed with shame and guilt for not having saved Tiki, but no one seems angry with me or appears to hold me responsible. Smiley and I are among the men chosen to carry Tiki’s urn, I guess because we’re the ones who had contact with him last. All the same, I’m careful to steer clear of Molap. With Tiki’s burial urn on our shoulders, we somberly march to the men’s burial cave in the cliff near the sea.
We enter the burial cave with the urn while the others wait outside in silence. The passageway is small and deep
with barely enough room for all of us. We have to stoop and slide the urn along the sandy floor. After about fifty meters, we reach a grotto where we can stand up straight. The torchlight flickers wildly, casting shadows and filling the air with smoke. It’s difficult to see through my tears. The grotto was probably a natural cave that had been chiseled and shaped more or less rectangular. The walls and ceiling are painted with life-size murals, figures of men, ancestors, loved ones, and heroes, I suppose, although this is hardly the occasion for me to examine the murals more closely. Along the walls, there are numerous urns, and some appear quite ancient. We rest Tiki’s urn in the corner alongside the others and leave in silence.
As we emerge from the cave, other men enter, a few at a time, carrying small offerings and simple grave goods. Pico has a painted ceramic plate, Kizo some wooden beads, Lalli a few carved seashells, and others offer bowls of corn, tobacco, and coffee. The burial is a brief affair. Hardly anyone speaks. Nobody offers kind words of condolence. Once all the offerings have been deposited, everyone turns and leaves.
As we near the village, the silent procession splits into two groups, men and women, and I assume it’s finished. Suddenly Tuss bursts into a hysterical rage. I freeze with fear, thinking it’s directed toward me. She lashes and flails her arms and screeches words I can’t understand, and I suspect they are not real words at all. She lunges at Molap and throws him to the ground, beating his face and chest. The other men stand back in shock, and a group of women haul her off him and carry her back home, wailing and sobbing. The rest of the women storm off, leaving the men with their heads hung low.
Kizo hugs me from behind. “This is not finished yet,” he mutters.
“What happens now, Kizo?” I’m still shaking.
“Tuss holds Molap responsible for Tiki’s death.”
“But it was Rufus,” Luca bursts in. “Everyone saw that! We need to kill Rufus!”
“Whatever for?” Kizo has a look of bewilderment on his face.
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