But though his body worked with the aim of delivering him to the water’s edge, muscle and joint in blissful, ignorant synergy, his mind’s purpose was another entirely. It wandered off, indifferent to the clarity Raoul sought, twisting his nose this way and that and landing his eyes on sniggering consonants and vowels. There seemed to be no escape. Was he going mad? So seemed to indicate the billboard for Mad Mabel’s rum shack. Was he under some kind of magic spell? he wondered, at the sight of the sign for Nut-Magic Nutmeg Tonic and Cure-All, available at Dimwell’s pharmacies island-wide.
“Bite your tongue!” Raoul said out loud to himself. He hated that word—magic—and he refused to entertain the notion that it had him in its grasp, or for that matter, that it was capable of grasping so much as a flea on a mutt on a soggy beach!
Lucky for Raoul, his legs, unthinking, continued to carry him to the harbor, for his mind, which had till then played tricks on him, was wholly occupied in a head-on attack on all things magical, supernatural, supernormal, extra-ordinary, and occult.
“Rubbish all of it,” he muttered under his breath. “Don’t know what they see in it!” They were the islanders in general, the citizens of Oh, so inured to the pranks and meddlings of the stars and the streams that they tended to see magic—nay, to look for it—where there was none. Ever since Raoul, as a young man, had developed his love for facts and for truths, he had found himself at odds with friends and family members, who refused to deny the island’s magical charms. Charms that, as far as Raoul was concerned, could be explained away to a mathematic certainty, if only one tried hard enough.
For years he had considered this uniquely Oh issue, and though his theories were many, he had yet to determine why exactly his neighbors remained so desperately certain of the island’s sorcery. Did they hope to secure some better fate for themselves by bowing to the ocean breeze? Were they too lazy to take life in hand? Was it simply easier to blame the moon for their misjudgments, the palms for their peccadilloes? To chastise the tide when they fell short? It never crossed Raoul’s mind, as he sat down finally on a bench and looked out to sea from the port in Port-St. Luke, that the islanders might just have it right. That sometimes, no matter how hard you tried to hold on, a swift island wind could blow you right off your feet and out to sea, if it really wanted.
It was precisely because of magic, or, more precisely, “magic talk,” that Raoul went to the harbor to clear his head that day and not to the Belly to spend his early lunch break. The Buddha’s Belly Bar and Lounge, which Raoul frequented almost daily, was tucked into the lower level of the Hotel Sincero, owned and run by one of Raoul’s three best mates, the flashy but practical Cougar Zanne. At the Belly at lunch hour, Raoul was likely to meet not only Cougar, but his other two best mates as well, cab-driver Nat Gentle and the crooning, juggling, musician they all called Bang. Any of them would notice immediately that Raoul had a fly in his head, and when pressed, he would have to tell them about his pink graffiti, and how it must have something to do with the mysterious lonely hearts ad and maybe even the hit-and-run. They would no doubt, like Trevor, attribute all the goings on to the awakening island and the drama it loved to stage. They would tell Raoul to forget about investigating, to save himself the trouble and to let Oh work what magic it wanted—especially if it was working it on the side of Raoul’s own house! Didn’t he realize what forces he was up against?
Raoul rattled his head yet again and admired the sea that glistened in front of him. He saw boats being emptied of cargo and wondered about the places they had been. A ship’s captain caught Raoul’s eye and tipped his cap.
“Now that’s a man who knows real life,” Raoul said, raising his hand to return the captain’s greeting. “The stars above him, the sea below, and his ship and cargo in between. I bet he doesn’t fuss over magic.”
A short distance away, a pair of deckhands sipping beer and eating fish-and-chips noticed Raoul talking all alone. They laughed at him and shouted something, but Raoul paid them no mind. When he was lost in thought, or in sleuthing, he didn’t care what anyone had to say about him. His methods were a little unconventional, it was true, but what plain truth wasn’t worth at least a spot of humiliation?
Raoul’s thoughts flitted back to the Belly, and he grew agitated again. “Magic talk! It’s all they do there!” he complained to the ships in front of him. “Ever since the damned place opened up.” Raoul recalled one of his very first visits to the Belly. In those days, forty years before, it wasn’t yet a full-fledged Bar and Lounge, but an overhang Cougar had stuck to the outside of a then-tumbledown Hotel Sincero. Some silly fool had sat and asked Raoul for advice, sure that island magic was keeping him from his one true love. Raoul couldn’t remember who it was, but he remembered keeping their discussion short and sharp.
Resigned to the islanders’ magical obsession, Raoul calmed his mind now and took in the beauty of the silent, simple sea and the massive man-made boats that rested on top of it, like the sugary flowers Ms. Lila put on cakes for special occasions. He saw huge wooden crates unloaded and knew they were headed for Customs, where his colleagues would clear them and tax them. He watched as the deckhands finished their food and drink and took themselves back on board. The ship’s captain gestured and gave orders and walked the length of the pier, and suddenly Raoul’s memory jerked.
“What do you know about that!” he said, moved to a sorry smile and shaking his head in disbelief. He remembered now. He remembered the man who had asked him about magic all those years ago at the Belly, the man who couldn’t win over his one true love. Dagmore Bowles was his name. Captain Dagmore Bowles. (Who, I might add, won over his one true love in the end!)
Well, well. Even amidst the waves, Raoul marveled, Oh’s magic lay in wait. If a wandering and worldly old sea-captain like Dagmore had fallen for its humbuggery, then the still and islandy islanders didn’t stand a ghost of a chance.
8
The Captain Dagmore Bowles that I once was, the one Raoul once met at the Belly, was not born a captain, or even a Dagmore. Nor was he born on Oh. He was the fruit of an island neighbor, but from exactly which tree he fell, I couldn’t tell you. Although he was orphaned from a very young age and got off to an unhappy start, the stars had aligned a grand future for him. A future as brilliant as the stars themselves, I always thought. At least for a little while.
Growing up on that same island that gave him life, the boy that would one day be Dagmore knew himself simply as Quick. The islanders had so dubbed him for his quick legs and his quick wit, and, while none had the space or means to take Quick under wing, they all pitched in and saw that he was dressed and fed, with hand-me-downs and leftovers, respectively. In exchange he used his legs and his wit to run the islanders’ errands and to trap their rats. He slept on the beach, which suited him fine, and bathed in the salty sea. Thus cared-for by all and by none, he confronted and conquered the ages of four, five, and six.
When he was seven, he was struck by a terrible case of wanderlust. His feet itched so badly that he ran around the island quicker than ever, which made his small island seem that much smaller. He knew every inch of it by heart and longed to explore the other islands he spotted off shore, adrift and beckoning and promising of adventure.
Though not every island boasts a dose of magic equal to that found on Oh, where it gushes about like so many raging rivers, each island has a trickle, a stream, a brook that springs to life now and again after an especially hearty rain. Quick’s island was no different. Right about the time that his feet were too itchy to bear, a droplet of magic with Quick’s name on it burst like silver fireworks in a still, dark sky, leaving Quick gaping wide-eyed in awe.
A ship had laid anchor off the island’s shore!
Quick had never seen anything like it. The biggest craft on his island were simple fishing boats. Once in a while some slightly bigger fishing boat arrived from he-knew-not-where with supplies and mail for the islanders, but those boats were mere toys compared to the one he
stood staring at (a pirate ship, for sure!) on the day of the magic droplet. It wasn’t long before the monstrous craft lowered a smaller vessel into the water, filled with six white faces all capped with blond hair. So that’s what a pirate looks like! he said to himself.
A nearby clump of manchineel trees hid Quick from view as the pirates dragged their boat ashore and readied themselves to explore. They had sacks and spyglasses, compasses and charts, maps and blades. They spoke something close to Quick’s language, which didn’t startle or surprise him, for he was seven and words were words. That there might be other varieties of them never crossed his mind.
The so-called pirates were in fact nothing of the sort. They were sea-faring merchants and a scientist or two, who sought profit and specimens of leaf and bug to take back home—“home” a great white bear of a faraway land that had once briefly hugged Quick’s black and tiny island in its colonial paws. So the men Quick spied on (or rather their troublesome grandfathers) were not entirely unknown to the sand on which they tread. And because the sins of the fathers are the missteps of the sons, the landing party had hardly covered fifty meters, when one of its men put his foot into a hole.
“Ow!” the unlucky devil cried out.
“What is it?” This question, as near as Quick could tell, came from the pirate leader.
“My ankle! I think it’s broken.”
“Take off your shoe. Let’s have a look,” said the man with the biggest sack of all.
Curious as he was to see the white, naked ankle, Quick’s wit and his legs conspired to other ends, forcing him from his hiding place while the men were distracted. What’s more, they sent him headlong into the men’s temporarily abandoned boat. While just a few yards away the man with the big sack poked and palpated his companion’s swelling foot, Quick rolled up his lithe little body and squeezed himself under the boat’s stern-most plank of bench.
His wits had told him in a flash that this ankle might mean trouble. It might send the landing party rushing back to the ship instead of reconnoitering on land, and Quick would lose his chance to stow away.
As usual, Quick’s wits were dead on, and outwitting a pack of pirates proved no more difficult than trapping a pair of rats. He had just tucked his knees up under his chin when he heard the men’s voices growing louder and closer.
“Leave me here. I’ll wait in the boat while you go have a look around,” said the injured man, presumably.
“It looks like rain anyway. What’s say we move on, Captain? These tiny islands are all the same. We’ve seen a dozen already and not one any different from the next. Can’t we cross this one off the list?”
The man’s words set off a flurry of questions in Quick’s speedy brain. To which of the remaining faces did this new voice belong? Was the captain the man that Quick had identified as the leader of the other pirates? What did the strange voice mean, all islands were the same? Why, even small and insignificant Quick knew this wasn’t true. He could see from the shores of his own island that the others around were different. One was tall and green, one flat. Another, a little bit of both.
Quick listened to the men debate and argue, back and forth. One of the group was especially vehement in his conviction that the island must be explored. His research would lose all credibility if incomplete, he said. But between the impending rain, the swelling (and now purplish) ankle, and the captain’s short temper (he hadn’t slept the night before on account of losing the last hand of cards), the man’s conviction was trampled on, as convictions often are, and the party left the island straightaway. Quick melted into the dark of his hiding place and left the island with them, the six men none the wiser.
You can imagine what brave, young Quick must have been thinking as his body lurched across the waves toward an unknown and exciting destiny. What would he eat? Would he fit in? Would there be people to talk to? Would they want to talk to him? He worried about these things, mind, because the real worries, the particulars of life off an island, like urgency and noise and too many people, were too foreign even to imagine. Could Quick have ever dreamed what he was in for?
He wondered, too, if when he returned to his island home, assuming he survived and made it back, the islanders would remember who he was. Poor Quick! He couldn’t know that they would mostly miss him when they smelled a rat.
And what of the island? As he sailed unknowing into the future, did he sense a faint breath of remorse on the breeze, a cool hint of lust from the isle that gave him life? Little matter, because another island entirely had set its sights on young Quick, and that island’s shifty winds would blow him rough-and-tumble onto her sunny, sandy shore.
9
Trevor’s Bakery buzzed like a beehive in the full of activity that next day when Bruce’s article on the hit-and-run appeared in the paper. The customers that hovered busy and curious around the counter and the open front door sought answers and explanations to go with their cakes and their honey croissants. In exchange they offered rumor and theory with their coins and rainbow bills. (Oh’s legal tender made up in color what it lacked in economic worth.)
“I couldn’t believe my eyes when I read that headline!” Angela Ratte, elementary school teacher, exclaimed to Trevor, who was busy brushing butter on tops of bread loaves. “Just think of poor Randolph coming upon a lady in the middle of the road like that.”
“It didn’t happen so! It says that right here in the article,” chimed Buster Torrent, carpenter and especially fond of Trevor’s guava tarts. (He ate one every morning, sometimes two.) “‘Equally futile were their attempts to identify the injured young woman,’ it says.”
“Identifying the young woman and seeing her are two different things,” Angela rebutted. “Did Randolph see her or didn’t he?” she interrogated the baker.
“You can ask him yourself.” Trevor motioned with his head in the direction of the door, through which Randolph was entering, his arms piled high with large, empty bread baskets.
“Ask me what?” Randolph deposited his load on the floor behind the counter and slapped away the flour from his trousers.
The island, it seems, had no time for Angela’s queries, for it allowed her not to utter so much as a syllable in response, before police officer Arnold Tullsey busted, bellowing, through the bakery doorway, followed by fellow police officer Joshua Smart.
“Where’s that scoundrel, Bruce Kandele?! The door’s locked down at the Crier. Is he here?”
“Haven’t seen him yet today. Why’s he a scoundrel?” Trevor asked, arranging his loaves into lines on a long aluminum tray, while Angela, angry at having been supplanted in the conversation, picked up her pies and shuttled them home.
“Why, for half a dozen reasons!” Officer Smart said. “Undermining the law, disrupting an investigation, unauthorized tampering and photographing of evidence—”
“Just a minute,” Trevor stopped him. “Disrupting which investigation, would that be?”
“Trevor, you know very well which investigation,” Officer Tullsey continued. “This bike business. Bruce should have called in the police. All of you should have. How can we investigate a crime if no one tells us about it?”
“Alleged crime, Arnold,” Officer Smart corrected.
“Well, that’s exactly what Bruce did, isn’t it?” Trevor asked. “He told everyone about the crime at once. Easier that way, you don’t find?”
“You know that’s not what I mean,” Officer Tullsey replied. “He made us look like fools, ‘soon-to-be-ongoing investigation’! What are we supposed to say to that?”
“Can I get another guava tart?” Buster intervened. (Listening intently he had devoured the first one in record time.) He laid two large coins on the counter.
“Where’s the bike?” Officer Smart asked. “We should take that down to the station. We’ll need your statements, too.”
“Help yourselves. It’s out back in the shed,” Trevor said, and off the two officers went.
It must have been about the time that Off
icers Joshua Smart and Arnold Tullsey were puttering around in the shed—and Raoul was ruminating about magic at the port—that Branson ran into Bruce buying swordfish at the fish market. Branson, who had seen the early edition of the paper first thing that morning, chided Bruce for the inaccuracies in his hit-and-run article, but Bruce defended every last one.
“You didn’t even get Jarvis’s job right,” Branson told him. “He doesn’t drive the bus, Dodger does.”
“I know that,” Bruce said, as if Branson had made the most idiotic of all possible observations. “I’m not a simpleton, am I? But every little bit counts in these cases.”
“These cases?”
“Getting people talking! The ‘inaccuracies,’ as you call them, are icebreakers. Someone says, ‘Hey, isn’t Jarvis a conductor, not a driver?’ and someone else agrees, and before you know it, they’ve examined the whole case and maybe come up with some idea or with a clue. How else are we gonna solve this mystery?”
“How can you be so sure you’ll hear every idea and clue they come up with?”
“That’s the easy part,” Bruce said. “I just hang around the bakery. Every piece of gossip worth chewing on comes out between a bun and a banana cake at Trevor’s. Same holds for clues and theories, good ones and bad ones alike.”
Flawless logic, Bruce’s, and so impossible to debate any further.
Fresh swordfish in hand, Branson and Bruce set off together for the bakery, where the police had already loaded the bike onto their truck and were taking statements from Trevor and Randolph. Buster had finished his second guava tart but lingered, relishing the spicy police conversation. While Officer Tullsey asked the questions, Officer Smart took notes.
“Please tell me exactly what happened.” Officer Tullsey directed the first question to Trevor.
“I was here at the bakery, chatting with Branson and with Raoul Orlean, when Randolph and Jarvis showed up. In the back of the bakery truck they had a mangled bike they found on the road to Thyme. I heard what the boys had to say, and then I called Bruce to take some pictures of it. After that we sat outside and drank some beer.”
Away with the Fishes Page 4