by John Morano
Kemar picked up an old shell and rolled it in his hands. Although he couldn’t know it, this was the same shell Ellaber had gifted Binti. The boy contemplated his actions as he rolled the hermit’s husk in his hands. Why had he gone with Bao?
Then Meela sat down next to him. Neither spoke. Kemar passed the shell to his friend. Meela held it out in front of her, bounced it in her palm, and then passed it back to the boy. She was the first to speak.
“I’ve felt what you’re feeling now,” she began.
“You know what happened?”
She nodded. “It’s not as bad as you think. Someone told Al where you and Bao were fishing. It didn’t take him long to figure out what was going on. Campbell got most of her fish back. She bought them from the Filipino, who was a little reluctant to sell, but Al persuaded him to accept the payment. They’re returning the fish they could retrieve right now . . . So you didn’t ruin Campbell’s study.”
“I just damaged it.”
“When you spend your life just trying to survive, sometimes a choice that seems right in the moment isn’t right in the long run . . . I’ve been there myself.”
“You never fished.”
“Fishermen don’t have a monopoly on bad judgment. You love this ocean? Do you really love the life that’s in it, all around it?”
Kemar lifted his head slightly, absorbing all the beauty that surrounded him. A ghost crab ran along the sand, tormented by a testy tern. “I would say yes, I love this sea more than anything, but my actions do not say that.”
“Then change your actions. Get a new flight plan. I loved being a pilot more than anything, anyone. And some of the things I did in the name of aviation horrify me as much as what you did last night horrifies you.”
“I must leave.”
“That’s what I did. Shame doesn’t mean you have to leave.”
“I don’t deserve Makoona.”
“Maybe today you don’t. Does that mean you should leave? Bao doesn’t deserve this place, but he lives here. Let me ask you, if you packed up and left today, would you ever deserve Makoona?”
“Probably not, but I couldn’t hurt this place any more. I couldn’t hurt Campbell or Al or you.”
“You haven’t hurt me. Takes more than stupidity to hurt me. So you run, and then no one gets hurt. How does that help Makoona?”
“I’m no longer here to hurt it. That’s help.”
“Too easy. It’s not enough. Where’s the payback?”
“The what?”
“The payback. You still haven’t made things right. You’ve only avoided future harm. You haven’t healed this place. Leaving does not right the wrong.”
“How does one undo what one has done?”
“I can’t answer that, Kemar.”
“Then who can?”
Kemar and Meela dipped their toes into the surf. They listened to the breeze, were soothed by the slap of the swells against the docked boats, and watched a dozen giggling gulls pluck mullet from the water.
“Back in Cambodia, when a boy feels he must surrender his life to his faith, what does he do?” Meela asked quietly.
“A Buddhist boy? A Catholic boy? Either would become a monk, a priest. You think I should become a monk?”
“No, not unless you do,” the mechanic said, chuckling. “But if you really feel as much for Makoona and its life as you say you do, then give your life to it just as a monk would give his life to his faith.”
At this point, Kemar saw Meela do something he’d only seen her do twice before. She lit her cigar. The old woman blew a thin line of smoke through the gap between her front teeth. The smoke escaped, slowly rose, and dissipated into Makoona.
“Reminds me of sky-writing,” Meela mumbled.
“I always thought fishing was a way to become part of the reef,” Kemar said, “but it isn’t. Fishing would never heal what I have done. Fishing destroys.”
“Well, depends how you fish, but who’s talking about fishing anyway?” Meela took a thoughtful drag on the stogie. “What’s my motto, remember?”
Kemar knew it well. He recited, “Live and learn.”
“There it is. Do that. Live and learn.”
“Do what?” Kemar asked, confused.
“If there was a priest or a monk of Makoona—a holy person who looked at all this with reverence and gave their soul to it—who would that be?”
Kemar looked sourly at Meela. Was she trying to make him feel worse? It wasn’t necessary. “Campbell,” the boy answered. “The person I hurt the most.”
“Then become Campbell.”
“Become Campbell?”
“Live and learn. Yes, if anyone heals this place and protects these reefs, it’s her.”
“But she’s a scientist, a professor. I sleep on a cot in your tool shed. If I have proved anything, I’ve proved that I’m unworthy.”
Meela carefully laid her cigar on a stone. She reached into her pocket and took out a small, lockblade pocketknife, opened it, and cut the smoldering tip from the rest of her precious smoke. Then she returned the unlit cigar to her mouth.
“Campbell asked me yesterday if you were a good assistant to me. She asked Al as well. We both told her yes.”
“Why would she ask about me? Besides, that was yesterday. Things are different today.
Meela grinned and said, “Maybe not. Ask her. Maybe she wants you to do some work for her. Maybe she wants you to get a real education. Sounds a little better to me than running away. Wanna try it?”
Kemar looked perplexed. He’d done wrong, and yet it seemed he was being rewarded. It didn’t make sense. Meela reached into one of the many pockets on her coveralls, removed something delicate, and laid it on Kemar’s leg. The boy looked down and saw his father’s glasses, just like in his dream.
“Where’d you get these?” he asked.
“They were lying beneath your cot,” Meela said. “I picked them up before one of us stepped on them. Put the glasses on. Maybe they will help you see.”
The boy put the spectacles on, stretching the wire over his ears. They seemed to fit his head a little better today. And when he looked through the lenses, for the first time, what he saw wasn’t fuzzy or distorted. The world was crystal clear.
“What would he have wanted you to do?”
“University school costs money, lots of it. And I have only a few dollars.”
“Kick the chocks out from under your feet and go see Al and Campbell.”
“I have seen them. I know what they think.”
“You have seen them, but you don’t know what they think. Go see Al and Campbell.”
She crept up to the tattered octopus, weak herself, shocked that she was leaving her eggs even for a moment. But Binti had to speak to Molo. He’d watched over her and given his life for her eggs—their eggs.
“Molo, do not speak. I will sit with you.”
However, asking Molo not to speak was like asking the current not to flow. He knew there was very little time left and yet there was so much he wanted to say.
“There are times when you can beckon. There are times when you can call. You can shake a ton of reckoning, but you can’t shake it all. There are times when I can help you out, and times that you must fall. There are times when you must live in doubt and I can’t help at all.”
“You have helped,” Binti said. “You’ve saved the little ones, saved me.”
“If I had the world to give, I’d give it to you, long as you live. Would you let it fall or hold it all in your arms?”
Binti placed her pale arms around Molo, holding him closely.
“A hundred years on down the line, will any part of our love light shine?” he asked.
“Of course it will. There are thousands of love lights about to hatch in my den. They will shine.”
“Like an angel standing in a shaft of light, rising up to paradise, I know I’m gonna shine,” Molo said absent-mindedly.
The octopus sensed his end and didn’t want Binti to see h
im go. “ . . . leave me alone to find my way home.”
“Not yet, Molo. Not yet.”
He whispered, “Never had such a good time in my life before. I’d like to have it one more time. One good ride from start to end, I’d like to take that ride again . . . What a long, strange trip it’s been.” Molo looked beyond the reef.
“I won’t be far behind you.” Binti sensed that she, too, didn’t have long. The voice of her ancestors, of mothers before her, told her that in order to give life to her young, she must relinquish her own. Just as her mother had never seen her, Binti would almost certainly not greet her children when they were born. Having starved herself to care for her eggs, she wouldn’t be nourished in this world again. It was the role the octopus played in the harmony of the spirit-fish.
As she reached this epiphany, one of the eggs deep in her lair broke open. The liquid inside the orb mixed with the seawater. A perfect little octopus emerged, flashed forty different colors, and swam toward the opening. Another joined it, and another. The tiny cephalopods gathered together and spilled out onto Makoona in a fresh, new wave of life. They instantly disappeared and blended behind whatever they could find.
Binti watched it all, holding Molo tightly. As if she squeezed the words out of him, her mate wheezed one last contorted phrase, one last exotic thought.
“My head was full of nothing but the pounding of the surf. And whirling kind of slowly like the spinning of the Earth . . . All of my fancy, all of my dreams come true just to be here with you for the last dream. All of my life starts to make sense now. I think I see what it means . . . Crippled but free, I was blind all the time I was learning to see . . . I’m going where the chilly winds don’t blow.”
Molo breathed in the liquid of Makoona, holding it deep inside him, hoping to bring it with him on his journey to the spirit-fish. “Fare you well, fare you well. I love you more than words can tell. Listen to the river sing sweet songs to rock my soul.”
There was no life left inside of Molo’s body. Binti studied it, seeing that it had become nothing more than a shell. The octopus had a shell after all, a soft one. Binti realized that what really mattered—in the end, anyway—wasn’t the shell at all, but what lived inside of it and what was given to others beyond it.
The octopus left her love and dragged herself to her den to see if there was anything else she could do for her children. She turned one last time to the empty mantle in the sand and said with pride, “So swift and bright, strange figures of light. Who can stop what must arrive now? Something new is waiting to be born.”
Kemar couldn’t face Al, but truthfully, he couldn’t face himself. For his entire life, whenever he’d been confronted with a moment of truth, he’d run.
Although many would have done the same and he was only a boy at the time, he never faced the Khmer Rouge. He ran. He’d survived being a refugee—a boat person—but had done nothing to alter his situation or the lives of those around him or the brutality of Phan. He saw how wrong Bao was in his treatment of the reef and yet had actually helped Bao commit his brutal acts. Worst of all, perhaps, the three people who’d given him so much, he’d hurt deeply.
Consumed with self-loathing, Kemar decided he would run no more. Whatever Al would do to him, he would face. It was part of the price he would have to pay for assisting Bao in the desecration of the reef, the professor’s study, and the faith that friends had placed in him. Kemar went to Al.
Al, wanting to put the morning’s events behind him, didn’t expect the boy to behave like a man, especially after their earlier encounter, so he decided to take the initiative. The two met coincidentally on the beach halfway between Meela’s shop and Al’s hut. Al forced a sour grin and sat down on a long piece of driftwood waiting for Kemar to reach him.
“Sit down, little bro,” Al said.
The boy sat on the sand.
“You have to know that I’m pretty unhappy, pretty disappointed in you.”
“I’m sor—”
“Stop. Let me do my thing. You’ve already done yours. Like I said, part of me is very unhappy. But to tell you the truth, I got no right takin’ the high ground. I’ve done worse, much worse, many times in my life. So how can I get all high and mighty on you?”
“So what do I do now?”
Al smiled another thin, bitter grin, “Wanna go fishing?”
“Please don’t tease me. I did something wrong, and I want to make it right . . . so . . . so we can be friends again.”
“We’re friends. I believe in strong friendships, not fragile ones.”
“But what you said to me earlier?”
“Heat of the moment. No reason for that. My bad.”
Kemar nodded. “Meela says, and I agree, that I must heal what I have done.”
“Then heal it, brother.”
“How?”
“I don’t know. I didn’t mess things up. I’ll tell ya, though, if you have trouble living with yourself after you do something bad, that’s actually a good sign. Means deep down, you give a damn. And that’s the most important thing . . . You wanna be okay with me? I mean really, rock solid okay?”
“Yes. I’ll do anything.”
“Well, don’t be such an idiot. Be a little smarter next time.”
“There will be no next time.”
Al shook his head. “Little bro, there’s always a next time. So get ready for it now.”
“And how will I do that?”
“Learn from this experience, and . . .” Al stopped and let his second thought fall onto the sand.
But Kemar picked it up and dusted it off, asking, “And?”
“ . . . go with Campbell.”
“Leave Makoona? No, I have decided that I will not run, not this time.”
“For now, one way not to be stupid—and that’s an issue here—is to get smart. Go and get smart. That’s not running away.”
“She will take me with her?”
“I would,” Campbell said as she lowered herself onto the log and sat next to Al. “I hear you can be a good assistant. Maybe I could use one.”
“It was her idea,” the American said. “You know, when I was back home on leave one time, I saw a movie called The Graduate. It was about a young guy who had just graduated college. There was a scene I still remember. When the world got too loud for him, when it was all just too much, he’d jump in his pool with scuba gear on and just sit underwater. In a way, he became the pool. It was quiet, no one bothered him, and he escaped the madness. I think that movie helped me find Makoona. I became this place, and it helped me escape the madness.”
“But you did not desecrate this place.”
“Maybe not this place, but I already told you, I had a life before I got here. And I did some stuff I’m not proud of. But I believe I’ve learned from those moments, and you should learn from your actions.”
Al reached into a pocket, pulled out a leather wallet, and removed a tattered piece of paper. “Just before I went to ’Nam for the first time, my mom gave me this. She was real religious. I think she wrote this never dreaming I’d wind up in the jungle.” Al read, “Your life is God’s gift to you. What you make of your life is your gift to God.” He folded the paper and returned it to the wallet.
“You got a chance to make your life special. Eventually, you could know these waters better than me, and you could know these fish as well as Campbell. That’s cool. And that’s how you become this place. Just like that kid in the movie became the pool, you immerse yourself in it. That’s when the noise goes away and other things start makin’ more sense.”
“How will an assistant be able to pay for everything? There are too many expenses, I’m sure.” Kemar shook his head.
“That’s where Uncle Al comes in. I never got to go to college, but I can help you.”
“You will kill more fish to pay for my education? How does that help Makoona?”
“Good! Now you’re thinking. You’re right, fishing’s not the solution.” Al laid an old army-issu
ed shoulder bag on the ground in front of Kemar. He unsnapped the tabs, opened it up, and reached inside. The American looked into his young friend’s eyes and fixed his gaze. Al produced a rusted blue can and handed it to Kemar. “Here’s your scholarship,” he said.
The boy breathed deeply, quickly, but felt as though no air entered his lungs. His heart pounded, but it felt like no blood reached his veins. He recognized the can instantly, even though the others didn’t know its provenance. As Kemar popped the lid, he looked up to Al and asked, “How?” without actually uttering a word.
“It’s amazing what you find when you pick up garbage on the beach.”
The gold taels were still stuffed inside the can. It looked to Kemar as though they’d never been removed, never counted or weighed, never even touched by Al.
“Don’t really know how much it’s all worth,” Al said. “But I know what it is, and I’ll bet there’s enough for all three of us to go to school.”
“Then come with me,” Kemar implored Al.
He smiled. “I can’t leave here . . . Maybe someday, but not now.”
“I break your trust and ruin Campbell’s work, and you give me this?”
“We’re giving you a second chance. It doesn’t mean that if you blow up the reef, I’ll give you more. This is a one-time offer. Take it and get an education. Do it, bro.”
Kemar studied the can, rubbing the gold between two fingers. He looked out at the water and turned back to his two friends. “Okay,” he said.
Kemar would go with the professor. He would do it for his father and his mother, because it’s where they would have sent him. He would do it for all of his friends and family from Cambodia who lost lives and opportunities. He would do it for Mir Ta, Son Ba, and the people whom Phan extorted the taels from.
He would do it for Al, Meela, and Campbell, because it was a good way to right a wrong. He would do it for the octopus who visited him on the reef and in his dreams, because she needed a human to fight for her. And most of all, he would do it for himself, because nothing had ever felt so right in his life. He would become Makoona in thought and deed.