He leaned over, spat, and wiped his mouth with the back of his hand. His eyes burned bright under the brim of his hat. “We went round and round for a while. I killed one, split his head like a pumpkin with that frying pan. Then one flew up in my face.”
The sun had climbed high enough to be blinding. I angled over to one side to get a better look at the man.
“I had one trying to rip my face off and the other gnawing on my leg like a little dog. I managed to bash the one on my head against the bulkhead enough to stun it. That one on my leg, though. He was hard to kill.”
His voice trailed off as if lost in the memory. When he came back, he shot me a weak grin. “But, I was inspired.”
“What happened to the other one?”
Gabriel shrugged. “Got away. It flew off toward the island. Soon as it come out from under the overhead, it started squalling, jerking. I don’t think they like the sun.”
Sweat worked its way down his face.
“After I got here and saw people instead of body parts, I reckoned I’d sit out at night and see if I couldn’t get the last one.”
I stared at him, thinking about the thing that had crawled out of Zachary’s mouth. “You sat out here on purpose?”
His lips twisted into a crooked smile.
“Yeah, on purpose. I suppose turn about is fair play. They’ve done me in. I wanted a little revenge.”
He bent over slowly, painfully, and pulled the duct tape off his pants. The seams split apart, exposing a thick wad of bandages taped around his leg from the knee to the ankle. He peeled the surgical tape off piece by piece. When the last bandage came free, he stuck his leg out for inspection.
I don’t know how I kept from vomiting. The smell that wafted up reminded me of road kill after a few days in a hot sun. It had the same putrid odor of rotten meat just before it liquefies and leaks away in a fatty swirl of pink froth.
Deep puncture wounds welled blood and pus in his calf just below the knee. Farther down near the ankle, a raw band of flesh wept openly. In between lay a mass of meat that looked like it had come off a butcher’s table and been thrown to dogs.
A fly sizzled through the air next to my ear, sped out in front of me, and dropped out of sight. I looked down. At least twenty of the little beasts swarmed between the fish bucket and his leg as if they couldn’t decide upon the day’s meat selection.
One of my high school English teachers hated curses. I don’t know how many times I heard Mrs. Kimble intone that filthy words existed for lazy minds.
I would have disappointed her.
“Damn.”
He glanced up. “You had one here. You kill it?”
“I don’t know,” I said after a moment’s hesitation. “I hit him once in the wing. He took off and flew up in front of the boat. I got one last shot at him flying away. He screamed. Something hit the water. It’s not what I’d call a confirmed kill.”
The older man shook his head. “I had to kill the one chewing on my leg three times. Felt that way at least. It was like holding on to a monkey that had jaguar claws and tiger teeth. I wouldn’t believe it dead until I saw the body, held a wake with it, and shot it a time or two for good measure.”
“You’re sick, not Fever sick, infected sick,” I told him. “You need to come up and let Elsie look at that leg.”
He scowled. “Ain’t nothing you or the old woman can do for me. I’m different.”
I must have had a confused look on my face.
He leaned in closer. “It’s like this. The day I got here, your Elsie come down and preached at me. I listened and told her no. You know what I listened to?”
I stared at him. The sweat roiled down his face, racing from temple to jawbone where it fell and painted dark splotches on his gray pants.
“Her heart.”
He paused and glanced toward his boat.
“I could hear it thumping and pumping like my own heartbeat. Just like I can hear yours. I could smell you standing at the end of the dock, trying to decide whether or not you wanted to wake up the sleeping man.”
The man leaned back, his eyes flat. “There’s no doctoring your old woman can do that will fix this. I ain’t never going to be the same again.”
“How about we make that determination once we get the infection wiped out?”
Gabriel looked up at me, squinting against the sun. He acted like he wanted to argue, but worked himself to his feet instead, leaving his pant leg rolled up. Muscle flexed right in front of my eyes.
“These things are social animals. If one gets away, it won’t come back by itself.”
He stared at me with bright, feverish eyes. “They’re looking for something. They’re the vanguard, the point patrol.”
I stepped back, my mind reeling from the smell and from newscasts full of heinous acts done by sick people.
He caught the sudden need for distance that washed over me.
“I ain’t crazy,” he said, his tones close to sullen. He stood for a moment, leaning as heavily against the fishing pole as he dared. Finally he waved at the bucket.
“You can have those fish if you want them. I’m going to lie down a while. I don’t feel much like eating anyway.”
He moved past me, making a wide berth, and hobbled over to the side of his strange boat. It took him a while to get aboard. Once he made it onto the stern, he stepped inside the pilot house. Seconds later came the click of a lock sliding home.
I took the fish, washed them in the bay, and carried them back up the hill with my fingers hooked inside their gills. Elsie and Daniel sat in the rocking chairs on the porch when I rounded the corner. Elsie puffed away on a cigarette. Daniel looked like he always looked - like a coma victim with his eyes open. Inside sounded like a beehive. Knocks, bangs, and voices erupted from every corner of the station. Someone had opened one of the dormer windows and thrown trash out into the yard. The sudden burst of activity after four days of deafening silence had me wondering who had lit a fire under them. I found out later that Elsie had decided she would only cook for the workers.
She clapped her hands excitedly when she saw the fish.
“When the Spanish are running, men need to be fishing,” she chortled, leaping up from a rocking chair with an ease that belied her age. “Let me get a knife. We’ll fix those two right up. Now, we need a few more to go along with it and we’ll have ourselves a meal.”
The old woman disappeared inside and emerged moments later carrying a filet knife I recognized as having come from Angel. Daniel sat staring out at the ocean while she was gone. The sound of the door banging behind her brought a slow turn of his head. He studied his grandma for a moment, noted the screen door still vibrating, and went back to watching the waves.
Keith and Tyler had built a stack of lumber behind the station. I’d seen it on the way in. I walked around, dropped the fish next to the cistern, and went out back. The wood they’d been piling up looked rough and weather beaten. I pulled out two pieces, both about five feet long, to use as a cleaning station.
The cistern sat on the lee side of the station, away from the winds and just as importantly, in the shade. One could always heat cold water, but with no ice, the old timer’s had no way of cooling it down. The best option they had boiled down to preserving as much of the night’s chill as possible. For that reason, most of the tanks around the small village had been positioned out of the afternoon sun. Elsie had once remarked that she could tell the season simply by sticking her finger in a glass of water from one.
Lukewarm meant summer. Warm meant a hot summer. Chilly meant fall.
She had grinned at me then. “But if you turned on the faucet and nothing came out, well then I’d have to go outside to be sure.”
“Why’s that?” I’d asked with a frown.
She had thrown her head back and laughed. “Cause it either ain’t rained or it’s done got cold enough to freeze the thing solid.”
She didn’t need to tell me what fall felt like. My privates still r
emembered the sudden shock.
The word cistern conjured images of the round stone circles I’d seen in pictures of archaeology digs. The one attached to the station wasn’t much more than a fat metal tank supported by four legs that had been concreted into the earth. The top rose to a foot below the eaves of the roof, putting the bottom of the tank about four feet off the ground. Most of the tanks I’d seen around the old village had been made of steel and painted white on the outside. The paint kept the metal from disintegrating in the harsh salt spray. White reflected a good bit of the sun’s heat. The cistern outside of the station followed the same design.
“How come the inside of these things doesn’t rust?” I asked Elsie.
She took the boards and laid them flat out on the ground, positioning them underneath a spigot that stood out near the bottom of the cistern.
“Most of the newer ones have an aluminum or stainless liner. Some don’t. I remember tasting the metal in the water when I was young. It was a lot worse when it came from the unlined tanks.”
She looked up. “The old ones had a porcelain liner if I remember right. Water was good out of them.”
I watched while she cleaned the fish, trying to figure out what to do about Gabriel. Honestly, I had no idea. I knew from Becky that sepsis could kill just as easily as any exotic disease, even The Fever. I had no way of judging how advanced his case might be. His leg looked horrible and stank to high heaven. To a doctor though, it might just be another infection.
Elsie made short work of the mackerel, scaling, gutting, and removing the heads on both in just a few minutes. Once done, she scooped up the offal and tossed it on a flat stretch of ground twenty feet from the station.
I was impressed.
“You do that like a pro.”
She shrugged her shoulders and wiped an errant strand of gray hair from her face with the back of one hand.
“I’ve been doing this since I was a kid. Fish were a big part of the diet out here. Looks like they will be again. We need more though. This ain’t enough to feed as many people as we have.”
“I went by the dock and talked to the man who came in the other day,” I said suddenly.
Elsie looked up. “And? What did he say?”
“He’s sick,” I told her.
Her eyes widened.
“It’s not The Fever,” I said hastily, “even though he has a fever. One of those things bit him. It’s bad. His leg is infected. If he doesn’t get treatment, I don’t think he’ll live more than a few days.”
She raised a hand to shade her eyes.
“Are you sure?”
I opened my hands in a helpless gesture.
“I’m not a doctor. But yeah, it looks that way. He took the bandage off. Everything under it looked rotten,” I said and wrinkled my nose. “Smells like it too. When that bandage came off, blood and pus poured down his leg. He needs help.”
Elsie glanced off in the direction of the dock. “We don’t have any antibiotics. You had some ointment in your first aid kit and a little bottle of peroxide. We have the whiskey. I can clean up the wound with that but it won’t kill no infection.”
“Can you try the Judge again? If he can get out a food shipment, maybe he can throw in some meds too.”
“What about those people you ran into when you went down the beach? They might have some medicine.” Elsie countered.
I grimaced. “They might at that. I don’t think we’d get any from the Wall Street man even if he has them. I can go back down and ask though.”
She snorted. “From what you told me about your first meeting, you might get shot on sight. No, I have a better idea. I’ll send Jessie and Tyler down.”
“Why those two?”
“Because, silly man, Jessie is as friendly as all get out and Tyler is just a kid himself. They’ll be alright walking down the beach and they’ll be a lot harder to turn down than some wise-cracking old goat like yourself.”
She picked up the filets. “I’ll take these in and see about the antibiotics. You go catch us some more fish.”
For the first time since I’d arrived on the island, I didn’t need to be forced, cajoled, or talked into a task. The sight of Gabriel sitting on the dock earlier had set something inside longing for the water and a rod. I didn’t even bother going back in the house for a drink. A nice, tall glass of iced tea sounded wonderful, but to get it, I’d have to fetch it from the cooler in the kitchen. Inside the station, work, people and responsibility waited.
All three could keep waiting as far as I was concerned,
Back at the dock, no sound came from the little tug boat. I climbed into Angel and hunted down the fishing poles, the tackle box and a camp chair. Once I had the gear, I headed for the point. Not only would the fishing be better, but the wind cooler and I could keep an eye on Gabriel’s boat.
Carrying the items up the hill had me wishing I’d brought the dune buggy. The instant that thought crossed my mind, I remembered that the batteries needed to be charged. I turned back toward the station grumbling a string of curses,
Jessie and Tyler stood out in the yard when I rounded the corner. Tyler had my daypack slung across his shoulder. Full water bottles poked out from either side.
“Stay on the beach,’ I told them. “The walking will be easier. Besides, the day is warm enough to have the mosquitoes hungry and looking for food. In case you missed the concept there, you’re the food.”
I studied the two. Both wore shorts and t-shirts. Both looked excited to get away from the station for awhile.
“The first camp is about three miles down. They’re friendly enough. Jim and Brittney, I think were their names. I’d try there first,” I said and then scowled. “The other one is another three miles or so down the beach. Good luck if you have to go there. The man is not friendly and the woman acted like a ditz.”
Jessie smiled. It was a soft and beautiful smile that radiated from her eyes as much as her mouth. “I’ll act helpless and bat my eyes. We’ll be okay.”
She looked up at Tyler. “You ready?”
He nodded.
“How long you think they’ll be gone?” Elsie called from the front door as they crossed the dunes and disappeared.
“Three or four hours at least,” I said, fumbling through the little compartment on the back of the buggy. Half a dozen things slid under my fingers before I found the little windmill. I pulled it out and held it up for her to see. “I wish I’d thought to charge this thing last night. They could have taken it and been back in a lot sooner.”
The task took all of two minutes. Dad had worked out the charging in such a way that the windmill mounted on one of the roof supports. The cord dangling down the back plugged into a twelve volt receptacle on the vehicle. Next to the receptacle, a push button battery tester showed the batteries in the orange range. I left the windmill spinning in the breeze, hoping my father had known what he was doing. Rounding the corner, I saw the remains of the two mackerel lying in the sun and gathering flies. Rather than bury them, I hunted through the compartments on the buggy until I found a plastic shopping bag and took them with me.
The next three hours drove home the reason I’d come to the island in the first place. I used white Berkeley grubs mounted on a red-head jig to jerk flounder out of the inlet, while the other rod sat baited with strips cut from the offal. Every few minutes, the surf rod would bend over in a tight arc and I’d race over to reel in a whiting or pompano. At one point, I had fish on both lines and had to sit on one to keep it from being dragged into the water, while I fought a fish on the other. I ended up with a dozen decent sized keepers, more than enough to make supper for everyone.
The haul gave me hope that we’d be able to feed ourselves from the ocean, at least for a while. Storing it remained a problem. Dad had often cut fish into cubes, strung it from a piece of fishing line and left it out in the sun to dry. If you could keep the seagulls away, the stuff lasted for days and took on both a unique golden look and a salty flavor. The r
esult ended up chewy and fishy tasting, but still good. If push came to shove, we could dry the meat or smoke it - in theory at least. I knew little about either practice. The thought carried few worries. If we provided the fish, Elsie would know how to preserve them.
My catch rolled with the passing water, strung out on a piece of line I’d brought with me. When I was ready to head in, I left the fishing gear where it sat and pulled them out of the water. At least fifteen pounds of fish hung on the end.
I remember thinking that every day in heaven should be just like the last few hours. I’d give up the harp playing and the flying any day for a warm sun, cool breeze, and an ocean brimming with fish that couldn’t wait to bite my hook.
Unfortunately, those were the last thoughts of heaven I had for a while.
Chapter XIII - To Live or Die
Tyler and Jessie sat on the steps drinking water when I rounded the corner. Tyler looked up and shook his head. Both looked hot and sweaty.
“It’s okay,” I told them, “we’ll think of something. Go tell Elsie I have dinner outside, will you?”
I walked around the side of the station and started unstringing the fish. By the time Elsie came around the corner I had laid them out in a line on the two boards we had used earlier. Once again, she made short work of them, going about the business of scaling and gutting them quietly and efficiently. She looked thoughtful, even stopped and frowned once as if working through something in her mind.
“I called the Judge after you left,” she said finally. The old woman rose with a groan and wiped at her face with the back of her hand. “He said he’d see what he could do.”
“Well-“ I began.
“Wait,” she interrupted, “he called back about an hour later. His hands are tied. The government is running the show. Even the local police have to get authorization. If they don’t, they’ll be treated like travelers violating the ban.”
The Island - Part 3 Page 4