Dead Reckoning

by Tom Wright

  We passed in front of the Hospital and Denver stopped. He asked if I could wait a minute as he needed to get something from inside. While I waited out front, I watched people come and go from the building across the street. High plywood fences surrounded the complex, much like what you might find at a lumber yard. People came and went through a single gate, carrying sacks of rice. I moved over a few feet so I could see inside as the gate opened and closed.

  The spot was sheltered from the wind, and the sun beat down, so I began to perspire heavily again. The gate opened, and I saw hundreds of identical bags of rice stored inside. The writing on the bags was not English. I thought it might be Filipino. The place reminded me of a feed store, but for people.

  Just as I was about to go over and look around in the feed store, some children ambled by, distracting me. Then, Denver came up behind me.

  “Ok, let’s go. I’ve got it,” he said as held up a brown bag, apparently thinking its contents were obvious to me.

  Denver was six inches shorter than me, but his stocky little legs moved quickly. I had to work to stay up with him. People were everywhere. Of the people we passed on our side of the road, Denver greeted more by name than he ignored. We walked into a neighborhood of silver trailers—single wide—which, anywhere else, would have been a sign of poverty. But on Ebeye, such trailers were excellent accommodations. I immediately recognized them as old Army trailers that had been donated to the Marshallese—the government, that is—free to the mayor and almost certainly re-sold or rented to the people at a handsome profit.

  Children gathered around as we approached Denver’s trailer. Ebeye’s children had grown used to Americans passing out candy when they visited, which almost certainly contributed to the Diabetes epidemic on the island. Denver said something to them in Marshallese, and they all stepped back and began milling around as if that was what they had intended all along—all, except for a little boy with no legs who slipped out from under the trailer. He moved by using his arms as legs to swing his body forward, much like a monkey. He stopped in front of us and blocked the path to Denver’s trailer. Denver said something to him too, something which I only recognized as different from his order to the other children. The boy refused to move. Denver picked him up and placed him out of the way. A girl came over to comfort the boy. I smiled at them on passing, and the girl reciprocated. The boy simply stared blankly.

  The trailer was as clean as could have been expected on Ebeye, but it was, of course, not well appointed. Upside down buckets served as chairs around a very old, steel-legged, orange-vinyl-topped table. A window-unit air conditioner held open a window, but otherwise sat idle.

  I heard voices and a child crying from a back room.

  “Just a minute. You can come if you like,” he motioned me toward the back.

  We entered what apparently served as the master bedroom at the end of the trailer. A woman and an ancient Marshallese man sat on a bed consoling a young girl. Denver handed the bag to the old man. The old man opened the bag and withdrew some sort of plant and began to mash it into a bowl. When the plant became a paste, the woman drew back the covers. The girl’s right arm was black and blue and swollen between the wrist and elbow. The girl began screaming again, although no one had yet touched her. The woman shooshed her, and I realized that the sound for quiet was the same in any language.

  The woman grabbed the injured arm and began to massage it. The girl howled in pain. The old man scooped up a large portion of the plant paste and spread it over the girl’s arm. She screamed again.

  Despite the tears and snot streaming down her face, the girl was adorable. I took her to be about six. She looked at me with pleading eyes.

  “What is the matter with her arm?” I asked Denver.

  “It is broken,” he said.

  “Broken?” I asked, surprised.

  “Yes,” said Denver, pointing to the old man. “This is Ollie. He is a doctor.”

  “Why are you rubbing her arm?” I asked the woman. She looked as if she had no idea what I asked. “And what is the plant stuff?”

  “That is a mixture of Kadjo leaves and Kaido roots,” Denver responded. “Good for pain.”

  The woman continued to rub the girl’s arm as she squealed with pain.

  “Tell her to stop touching her arm.” I told Denver.

  “No, that is the treatment that Ollie recommends.”

  I looked at Ollie. “Is that right?”

  He obviously did not speak English either.

  “Denver,” I said. “If her arm is broken it needs to be set and put in a cast—not rubbed. Rubbing will do no good. It only hurts worse.”

  “This is what we always do,” Denver said. “They always get better.”

  “They don’t get better because of the rubbing, but in spite of it. It just heals on its own, and the pain eventually stops. But it won’t heal right unless it is put in a cast.”

  “We cannot afford a cast,” Denver said. “We cannot afford to go to the hospital, especially for a cousin.”

  “She is not your daughter?” I asked.

  “No, she is a cousin.”

  I learned that cousin is a designation that the Marshallese apply to any relation not part of the immediate family.

  “Why is she here?” I asked.

  “My cousin, her father, cannot afford these treatments,” he said.

  “You can’t be serious!” I said. “These are not treatments. He is some kind of witch doctor.”

  “You may be surprised what our plants can do,” said Ollie.

  Ollie was extremely old. I would have assumed him to be well up into the hundreds anywhere else, but Ebeye had a way of putting extra years on people really quickly. In fact, Denver was five years my junior, but he looked much older than me. Ollie wore some sort of robe and a number of shell necklaces. His cloudy, unseeing eyes were spooky when they looked at you.

  “This is ridiculous,” I said, as I stepped over to stop the “treatments.” “I’m taking her to the hospital.” I grabbed the girl and pulled her over to me, careful to avoid disturbing her arm any more than necessary.

  “No, you can’t!” exclaimed Denver. “No money!”

  “I will pay for it,” I said.

  Silence filled the room

  Ollie shrugged and got up to leave. He spoke to the woman in Marshallese, and she got up too, and they both walked out. The girl whimpered, but clung to me, apparently thankful for the pain relief, even if she had no idea what we were talking about.

  “Is this really what you do with broken bones?” I asked. I didn’t intend to be as dismissive as I was, but it was hard to believe things like that were still done.

  “Yes,” he said. “When we can’t afford to do anything else.”

  “Doing nothing would be better,” I said as I carried the girl out of the room.

  I carried the girl all the way to the hospital and walked in through the front door. To my surprise, it smelled and looked like a real hospital, if not quite as clean.

  I approached the counter and placed the girl on it.

  “Do you speak English?” I asked the receptionist.

  “Yes.”

  “This girl has a broken arm,” I said.

  The woman stood and began looking at the little girl’s arm. Noticing the stethoscope that dangled from her neck, I took her for a nurse.

  “I would say so,” she said. “But….”

  “Don’t worry about it,” I said. I took out my envelope of gun money, pulled out two hundred dollars, and placed it on the counter. I saw Denver looking curiously at the fat envelop. I placed it back in my shirt pocket.

  “Is that enough money to set her arm and put it in a cast?” I asked the nurse.

  “Yes,” she stated matter-of-factly.

  “Good. Please make sure you give her something when you set it. She’s already been through enough pain.”

  “I will,” said the nurse ambivalently.

  I held the nurses eyes for a few seconds
and saw no emotion. She lifted the girl off the counter and set her on a gurney. I sighed and turned to walk out.

  I approached the door trailed closely by Denver, when someone latched on to my side. It was the girl in the yellow dress, from the church—Denver’s other “cousin.” She hugged me.

  “What is this?” I asked.

  “Komol Tata,” she said, tears streaming down her face.

  She let go and ran over to the nurse and the girl with the broken arm.

  Denver and I walked out.

  “What was that all about?” I asked.

  “That is her also cousin,” he said in broken English. “Did you not see her following us?”

  I hadn’t. The Marshallese were like ghosts sometimes.

  We stood on the curb in silence. I was unsure how to broach the topic that brought me to Ebeye.

  “Our cures have helped for thousands of years,” Denver said, breaking the uncomfortable silence. “What if you did not have a hospital to go to? Maybe you would need these cures.”

  “I don’t know, Denver. I hope to God that never happens,” I said.

  “This is a very nice thing you have done,” Denver continued.

  I turned and faced him.

  “Look, I know you guys don’t have much money over here. But there has got to be a better way to live than this. Why don’t you all rise up and do something about your conditions? Christ, Denver. That girl was suffering and that so-called doctor was making it worse.”

  “We don’t have the…”

  “I know, money.” I cut in. “But not everything is about money. And even so, this country gets a shit load of money from my government. Do you have any idea how much money my government pours into this country? Where does it go? Condos in Honolulu for the landowners? The mayor? The King?”

  “What can we do?” he lamented.

  “Rise up. Refuse to work. Demand better.”

  “But they will put us in jail.”

  “Look around! You are already in jail. What do you have to lose? They can’t resist if you all rise up. How many police are there over here? Twenty? There are fourteen-thousand of you, for Christ’s sake!”

  I realized that those were easy things for me to say, but the treatment of the girl really bothered me, as did the thought of how many other children suffered on that island every day. It wasn’t Denver’s fault, or my fault, or even America’s fault. It was the fault of their corrupt government—a government that took the millions given to it by the U.S. and squandered it. It was the fault of universal human greed.

  “You shouldn’t use the Lord’s name in vain, especially not today,” he said. He lowered his head embarrassed—I felt like he was always embarrassed in my presence. His flower-print shirt flapped in the breeze, and I noticed his cheap cologne for the first time.

  “People all over the world rebel against much less than this,” I said. “I’m sorry I hurt your feelings, but I don’t understand why you just take it.”

  Denver didn’t know what to say. I knew it wasn’t sinking in, and it would make no difference. The savage spirit of the ancient Marshallese people—fierce warriors who used to be feared across the Pacific—has long since been worn out of those people. No work ethic, no spirit, a virtually dead people—at least on Ebeye.

  “Listen Denver. I didn’t come here to lecture you. I came here for something very important. I need your help.”

  Denver looked up, his spirit suddenly restored. “I will do anything for you, my friend.”

  I knew he meant it. And I trusted him, but it was very difficult to know where my request would lead. I doubted he had a gun himself, but he would surely know somebody. He always knew somebody. It was that somebody that worried me. I was definitely paranoid, but I felt certain that anybody on that island other than Denver would throw me under a bus for a small fee—and the police would certainly love to catch an American doing anything illegal for the revenue it could produce. But I was desperate.

  “What I am about to ask you, you can never tell anyone.”

  “You can trust me, Matt. You are my best friend.”

  I reflected for a moment on his comment and then blurted out my purpose.

  “I need to buy a gun.”

  He briefly looked at me like a stranger. I suddenly worried that I’d scared him off.

  “But Matt, why would you want a gun?”

  “I can’t tell you. But I promise you that I’m not going to hurt anyone. It is very important. Do you know anyone who has a gun?”

  “Yes,” he said nervously. “But this is very dangerous, what you are asking.”

  I told him that I would pay him well and immediately felt cheapened by it. I knew he didn’t need money to help me. I treated him with as much real respect as I believed he deserved, not the veiled condescension the Marshallese usually endured at the hands of the rich, guilt-ridden American visitors. I treated him like I wanted to be treated, and because of this, he probably did consider me his best friend.

  Denver stared at me as if trying to force me to change my mind. I didn’t waver. Finally, he motioned for me to follow him.

  We walked a few blocks, and Denver stopped at the blue school that I had passed by earlier. The kid was still there guarding the door. Denver said something to him in Marshallese. The kid looked at me again, laughed, and then motioned us in. I worried about what Denver had said to him.

  We entered through a side door and immediately descended a dark stairway. The humidity hung in the air of the stairwell, and I noticed a mixture of cigarette smoke and Pine-Sol. As we reached the bottom of the stairs, a fat, smelly man squeezed by us and ascended the stairs.

  The dimly lit hallway connected a series of rooms. A sudden argument in Marshallese startled me, and as we passed the room, I glanced in and saw a man stand up and slam playing cards down on the table. A half dozen other men stared nervously through the smoky light.

  Denver raced past the next door, and a burly Marshallese man emerged in front of me. He began to yell at me, but I couldn’t understand what he was saying. Denver grabbed his shoulder from behind and yelled back. The man slapped Denver’s hand away, but stepped back into the doorway.

  “This way, my friend,” Denver said calmly. I noticed music in the background.

  As we passed a succession of rooms, I saw a lingerie-clad woman lying on a bed alone, smoking; two children played in another room; and a uniformed police officer emerged from the final room as I passed. He buckled his belt around his ample stomach. Two young girls stood behind him. They couldn’t have been much older than my own daughters. A sickening feeling crept inside me. I felt very out of place.

  Suddenly, we emerged into a larger room. A half-dozen young men sat around on a variety of furniture. Some were shirtless, others wore hoodies, but all wore long pants and had bandanas wrapped around their heads. The room was better lit than the rest. Smoke hung in the air, and rap music thundered through the room. A nude woman danced in the middle of the floor. Neither attractive nor unattractive, at least she appeared to be an adult, I thought bitterly.

  I had heard of gangs on Ebeye, and although I had been to the island many times, I had never seen any—until now, it seemed.

  I stood by Denver’s side, unsure what to do. Denver waited until the man in the middle of the room—the apparent leader and the one, I suddenly realized, for whom the woman danced—waved him over. Denver leaned in and spoke to the man. The man looked at the guy by the stereo and drew his finger across his throat like a knife. The music suddenly stopped. He spoke tersely to the woman and gave her a start. She scrambled from the room, her saggy breasts and flabby rear bouncing all the way.

  The leader stood up and walked toward me. I became very afraid. He stopped just in front of me and stared into my face. I figured him to be eighteen or twenty at the most. I could smell the styling gel in his hair, and his feeble attempt at a mustache would have made me laugh at nearly any other time. His hollow eyes contained little sign of humanity.


  He looked me up and down. He noticed the envelope in my shirt pocket and reached for it. I covered my pocket defensively, and all the men jumped to defend him. I withdrew my hand and allowed him to take the envelope. He opened it, thumbed through the bills, and stepped back. He nodded to a kid across the room who disappeared through a door.

  The leader withdrew a couple of the hundred dollar bills, walked over the Denver, and placed them in his shirt pocket. He patted Denver’s cheek and then spoke loudly in Marshallese. Denver jumped and hurried to leave, which unnerved me greatly.

  Denver stopped at my side and said: “It is ok my friend. They have agreed to your offer.” I didn’t remember making an offer.

  The man yelled at Denver again. Denver patted my shoulder and he left the way we had come.

  My apprehension grew as the seconds passed. The men just stared at me. Finally, one of the men said something, and they all laughed. This further agitated my already frayed nerves. I wondered if anyone would come to my aid as these men—kids really—beat me to death. How long would it take for the Range to notice my absence and come looking for me? The skin around my testicles tightened as I remembered telling Bill that I was leaving. He might think I left and never come to look for me on Ebeye. Even if he knew, what could he do? Ebeye was sovereign Marshallese soil. Those kids could kill me, dump me in the ocean, and go back to their strip show. I reassured myself that all would be fine—Denver said so. I didn’t think he would put me in danger for two hundred bucks. Actually, I knew he wouldn’t do so intentionally, but he didn’t always have the best common sense.

  Finally the kid re-emerged from the door with a gun. Two uniformed Marshallese police officers filed in behind him—the fat one from before and another skinny one.

  The kid walked over and offered the gun to me. Everyone watched as I hesitated. I looked at the police officers, and they stared back. The fat one smiled, and his gold front tooth gleamed in the light. He nodded his head as if to encourage me.