by Tom Wright
. . .
During the night we motored past Dall Island and rounded Cape Chicon and turned north toward Ketchikan. We saw no lights, but we were not sure if we would have seen lights in that isolated section of Alaska anyway. At dawn, we headed into Clarence Strait, which led to Nichols Channel, which led through Tongass Narrows to Ketchikan. We had our doubts about approaching a populated area through such a constriction, but we needed to repair badly. We felt—or hoped—that maybe this part of Alaska had not yet descended into chaos.
Sonny played with his cell phone again and continued to complain about the battery going dead. That was when he and Jill spotted something on a small island to port: smoke.
I scrambled across the top of the boat to get a better look at the smoke. I caught my foot on a loose cable and lost my balance. I fell, face-forward, toward the railing of the boat. In that instant between losing my balance and hitting something, my brain made thousands of calculations, determined that I could not avoid hitting my head on the railing, and came up with a course of action—the only course of action that it could imagine which provided a chance to miss the railing. I involuntarily thrust myself up and forward in an attempt to clear the railing. As time slowed and my head seemingly inched toward the railing, the realization set in, and I prepared for the pain, hoping it wouldn’t be that bad. As I cart-wheeled into an upside down position, I looked at the gray sky.
Then everything went dark—and cold, very cold.
. . .
DAY 46, GILLIGAN’S ISLAND, ALASKA
It remained black for some time, but the cold eventually faded. I awakened to a crushing pain in my head and the vision of being on the inside of a cone. Curved sides sloped upward above me to a spot of light at the top. Strange music echoed around in my head. The unmistakable smell of marijuana smoke wafted on the air. It smells like burnt sage, I am told, but although I never had an occasion to smell burnt sage, I know marijuana when I smell it.
Very foggy-headed, I groped for some sense of the present, like when you awake from a particularly realistic dream and cannot determine if that was the dream or this is the dream.
I reached for the back of my head near the origin of an awakening pain and felt a bald spot and a ribbed area, like a zipper. What the hell? Swollen and mushy, it felt like a very ripe avocado. Hunger ripped at my gut. I tried to get up but could not. My atrophied limbs refused to move despite my synaptic commands.
I called out and produced only a squeak, but it was enough to roust someone near me.
“He lives!” the man shrieked as he leapt to his feet.
“Hey dude!” he said. “We didn’t know if you were ever going to wake up!”
The man came into the light. A long, scraggly beard hung from his haggard face. His eyes were bright but bloodshot, and he smiled at me toothily. His breath smelled awful—and suddenly I knew where the marijuana smell came from. He wore a dirty tie-died poncho—one of those woven woolen kind from the seventies. Darkness prohibited me from seeing below his poncho, but I prayed he was wearing pants.
“Peace man. Take it easy,” he said. “I am Jonathan, but my friends call me Jonathan,” he laughed.
“Where am I? And what am I doing here?” I asked.
“You’re in heaven, man!”
“Seems more like hell to me.”
“Whoa!” Jonathan said trailing off, as if he had just discovered something earth shaking. “She was right.”
“Who? What are you talking about?”
“Jill, man. She said you would say that. You just blew my mind!”
“I’ll bet it didn’t have far to go.”
I tried again to sit up, but Jonathan held me down by the shoulders with little effort.
“Whoa there, fella. I wouldn’t do that just yet.”
“What happened?” My voice was gravelly and barely perceptible, even to me.
“You almost died, man.”
“How? Where am I?”
“I don’t know man, but when you guys pulled up you were all limp. Blood everywhere. It was a freak show, man!”
Jonathan hovered over me and stared into my eyes. I couldn’t escape the stink of his breath, and I gasped for air.
“Jesus! Get the hell off me!” I yelled, my voice returning.
The throbbing in my head kept me from being able to force my way free.
“Hey, Victor!” he said to the darkness. “Get the other dudes. He’s awake!”
“Take it easy, man. They’re all here, your crew. Jill fixed you up good, man. She’s something else. You’re all cool, man!”
I relaxed and hoped he was right. I was sure I would wake up at any moment and be back on the RY, all of it just a bad dream. There had been so many bad dreams that, while this was definitely up there on the strangeness scale, it was not surprising.
Jill was the first one in. She walked over to me and gave me a kiss on the cheek and grasped my head with both hands. She stared into my eyes, just inches from my face.
“Do you know who I am?”
“Of course. What the hell is this?”
Jill followed up with a cacophony of questions. “What year is it? Who is the president? What is your name? Where do you live?”
I must have answered them to her satisfaction because she let out a relieved sigh.
Sonny scrambled in, followed by Jeff.
“Hey, I think he’s going to be ok,” Jill said.
“Oh man, you gave us a scare,” said Sonny.
“It’s nice to see your eyes open,” said Jeff.
“Well, now that the gang’s all here, would you mind telling me what happened? Where are we?” It hurt to talk, and I winced. I lifted my hand up to shield my face from the light above. “What’s the matter with my head?”
They proceeded to tell me how I hit my head on the railing on my way over the side. How I nearly drowned.
“How did I get back aboard?” I asked.
“How do you think?” Jeff asked, motioning to Sonny.
“My hero,” I squeaked lamely.
Everyone laughed. I tried to laugh too, but it hurt.
“You really went in after me?”
“Yeah, but don’t look forward to that again. That water is freakin-assed cold!”
Jonathan walked back in and whispered something in Sonny’s ear. They slapped right hands, clasped them, and then made that half-hug thing than guys do.
“I’m pretty sure you have a cracked skull,” Jill informed me as I looked back to her. “We stitched you up—well, I did—and it looks like it’s healing up without any infection. I think saltwater is a good disinfectant. You had a bad concussion, and I was worried about a brain injury. You were unconscious, but as far as I could tell, the light was still on. Sometimes it just takes time for the body to respond and heal up.”
“Jill has been quite an attraction around here,” Jeff said with a smile. “They have medics, but she is their first real doctor.”
“I don’t think she’s sat down for five minutes since we’ve been here,” Sonny interjected.
Jill couldn’t suppress a radiant smile.
Sonny jumped in again: “She wasn’t worried about pressure on your brain from swelling, you know, because of your cracked head. Relieves the pressure I guess. I didn’t believe you had a cracked skull. Too thick, I told them.”
Everyone laughed but me—it still hurt too much.
Jill put her fingers on my left eyelids and forced them apart. Then she checked the right eye. I couldn’t help but notice a spark in her eyes. It was beautiful.
“Looks good. Feeling dizzy?”
“A little.”
“I suppose so. When that goes away, you can get up. But make sure one of us is here when you stand up for the first time.”
“Yes, ma’am.”
“Where are we?” I asked.
They explained to me that we’d landed on an island along the coast of Alaska. A large group of people lived there and they called it Gilligan’s Island. They
were working on fixing up the RY.
My surroundings began to come into focus as my senses returned. The cone shape I noticed when I first awakened was now obviously the top of a teepee. Smoke from a fire rose out through the opening. I was warm and save for the pain in my head, quite comfortable.
Some smart looking fellow rushed in and whispered something to Jeff. Jeff turned to Sonny and said: “Come on. We need your cell phone.”
I drifted back to sleep.
When I woke the next time, it was either still light or light again. I was immediately able to focus this time, and my head felt better. I called out, but no one answered. Just as I was about to get myself upright, the flap in the teepee opened, and a girl walked in. She was skinny as a rail and had a rather homely, freckled face. Her long red hair hung wildly, and she wore the same poncho as Jonathan. Her hair was a little cleaner and she didn’t smell like anything. It is funny how some people always stink and others are able to smell utterly like nothing.
“I’m Krystal. Let me help you.”
She grabbed my arm to steady me.
We stepped out into the light, and it was raining lightly. Occasionally, a fat snowflake survived all the way to the ground. A line of females, perhaps thirty in all, stood waiting for us. They ranged from young girls all the way up to old women. Their skirts varied in length and color, but each wore that same poncho. Krystal led me to one of many campfires and sat me down in a wooden Adirondack-style chair. Hewn from fir, as far as I could tell, and the chair had obviously been built on site.
One-by-one, they filed past and hugged my head from behind, careful not to touch my wound. Then they went back to whatever it was they were doing before I woke up.
A young girl approached me from behind and handed me a bowl of soup.
“Fish stew,” she said. “With herbs.”
“What kind of herbs?” I asked skeptically, thinking back to my encounter with Jonathan.
“Black Cohosh,” she said. “Squawroot for pain. We have other medicines, but Miss Jill thought we should try this first. Don’t take pills if you don’t need them. That is what she said.”
I appreciated that Jill would say that, since I had the same philosophy about synthetic pharmaceuticals, but yet I hesitated.
“It’s all natural!” she exclaimed in a bubbly voice. I thought about how arsenic is also all natural, but Denver and his natural cures popped into my mind, so I just thanked her instead. I took a heaping spoonful, and just as I was about to shove it in my mouth, she stopped me.
“Miss Jill said that you should sip the broth first, before eating the rest.”
“Well, whatever Miss Jill says,” I said, smiling to the little girl.
As I sipped the broth, I looked around at the variety of teepees and other haphazard structures that constituted the encampment. The rain came a little steadier and more snowflakes mixed in. I noticed the cold and looked down and saw that, to my shock, I was wearing one of their ponchos!
“Do you like it?” asked an old woman. “I made that one, just for you.”
“It’s lovely. Thank you,” I said, trying desperately to hide my insincerity. The ponchos were ugly as sin, but I had to admit it was warm, and somehow waterproof. “Where are my clothes?”
“They’re sitting in the teepee. We cleaned and dried them.”
I thanked them again. Some of the women got up and moved into other teepees, out of the rain.
“You don’t have to be scared, mister,” a little girl said as she peeled potatoes.
“I’m not scared, sweetheart. I’m just a little confused. Where are my friends?”
“They are down at your boat,” said yet another woman. “It’s almost done.” This woman was heavier than the others but still fairly petite by most standards. I realized that all these people were very skinny. This woman had very clean hair and was an earthy sort of beautiful, the sort of beautiful that most women would die to have as their starting point. To her, it was the end point.
“What are you people? What is all this?”
The old woman explained how they had gotten there. They came from all walks of life, but collectively decided that they wanted a better life. They had been preparing to move away from civilization for a long time, but The Red Plague gave them just the push they needed. They sold off all their belongings and moved out to this island. There were 179 of them—soon to be 180 according to Krystal. They all seemed very nice.
It suddenly became more snow than rain, but the fire was making my shins hot. So I pushed my chair back from the fire. The effort sent a spike of pain through my brain, and I winced.
“Where are the others?” I asked.
“Hunting, fishing, gathering. A work party is building a lodge about a half mile that way.” The old woman pointed to what I thought was north.
“Do you want to live here mister?” the girl asked.
“It seems very nice,” I said. “But, I am trying to find my family. I lived overseas when all this happened, and they were in Seattle. I am trying to get back to them.”
“Do you think they are alive?” she asked before being shushed by her sister.
“That’s ok,” I said to the sister. “I hope they’re ok but I have no way to know. I have to go find out.”
The little girl got up, came over, and sat in my lap.
“I hope they’re ok too,” she said, putting her head to my chest.
“We all do,” the old woman said. “But you know, you would be safer here by the sound of things.”
“In some ways, but not others,” I replied.
The woman asked me what I meant. I told her that I thought the climate was going to grow much colder. I pointed out that it was already snowing on that coastal island in the middle of the summer. They all seemed completely unfazed by the news.
“Frank will take care of us,” the woman said.
Frank was a scientist and their leader.
I grew tired again as the natural medicinal cocktail began to work. With my pain gone, my face felt flush. I suddenly felt less in control than minutes earlier. I wanted to say more about the climate, but I wasn’t sure if I could speak without slurring. I yawned and tried to get up—I needed to lie down again. My legs felt like noodles. Krystal held my hand to steady me and led the way into the teepee.
“It’s the cohosh,” she whispered with a giggle. With any other people, I would have been concerned.
When I awakened the third time, it was dark and I was alone. The smell of wood smoke hung thickly in the air. I generally felt better, albeit slightly hung over from the soup.
The fire inside my teepee had died to coals, but I remained toasty warm. I stood up and stepped outside on still wobbly legs. I considered calling out for someone, but large bonfires raged nearby and I thought I could make it. I heard music from the fire to my right and chose to go that way. As I approached, I noticed large skewers with fish splayed out on them like fans ringing the fire. I had seen that before at a touristy Indian salmon bake at Blake Island State Park near Seattle. Steam rose from the fillets and a sweet, smoky fish smell filled the air. I noticed the faint aroma of marijuana again.
I hesitated to move into the fray due to an irrational phobia of mine: fear of groups of strangers. I always worried about what strangers thought as I walked amongst them and searched for somewhere to sit or people I knew. I reassured myself that, so far, everyone had been more than nice, and I just walked straight in. As I entered the light, a man sitting at the first table greeted me by name and jumped up to hold my arm. He led me to a table.
I found my three friends seated with two other strangers. I sat next to Sonny, and after the greetings, he offered me some fish. It was salmon, and it was delicious. Jill handed me some sort of cooked or boiled plant—seaweed maybe.
“I don’t think so,” I said.
“Eat it!” she exclaimed.
Startled by her tone, I did so, and it was horribly bitter. They asked me how I was feeling, and I lied that I was fine.
I learned that we had been on the island for three days, and the plan was to leave the next day.
Sonny handed me a wooden cup.
“What is this?”
“A sort of beer they’re trying to make. It comes from some plant around here.”
“A sort of beer they’re trying to make. I don’t think so.”
“Good choice,” Jill said.
“It’s fine,” Sonny said. “Look it doesn’t affect me at all,” he stood up and stumbled back into a seated position.
Jill gave him a sour look.
The music stopped, and the man named Frank stood up. He was a strapping sort and wore an orange canvas hunting vest instead of the standard issue camp poncho. Given his short stature and petite frame, I wasn’t prepared for what came out of him when he began speaking.
“On their last night with us, I just wanted to wish our new friends good sailing,” the deep voice boomed. “May your waters be smooth and your wind friendly, and if you don’t find what you are looking for down south, please come back. You are always welcome here.”
Sonny, not usually one for words, stood up to reply. It must have been planned that way.
“We just wanted to thank you for all that you’ve done for us. We could never have fixed the RY without you. And I personally wanted to thank you for the beer and, uh, other stuff.” Many laughed, and children whispered questions to their parents or older siblings and were rebuked.
“I’ve made a lot of friends here,” Sonny continued. “And in other circumstances I would stay. I am committed to seeing this through, but you may see me again.” The onlookers greeted that statement with cheers.
Frank came over to sit with us and took a seat on a small bench with Sonny. Given his small frame, he fit perfectly well there. Frank had dark hair under his hunting cap, and his thin moustache and pock-marked face reminded me of a porn star from the seventies.
“I hope you are feeling better,” Frank said to me, his voice equally imposing close up.
“I am. And thank you so much for your hospitality.”