by Jill Barnett
Hank looked down at the kid’s bowed head. “I have a riddle for you.”
Theodore looked up. “What’s a riddle?”
“A question game.”
“How do you play?”
“I give you a question and you have to tell me the correct answer.”
“Okay.” The kid’s voice was barely a whisper. “What is the best thing about being on a deserted island?”
The kid looked all around them. “The beach?”
“No.”
“The sand?”
Hank shook his head.
“The sunshine.”
“Uh-uh.”
“The bananas?”
“Nope.”
Theodore’s face puckered in thought.
“You give up?”
He appeared to think about it, then nodded.
“On deserted islands there are no orphanages . . . or prisons.”
Theodore gazed up at him. A few seconds later, his freckled face brightened.
“Now let’s go. I need you to help me.”
“You do?”
“Yeah, kid. We have a hut to build.” Hank turned and walked up a short sand bank.
A few seconds later Theodore was dogging Hank’s steps again.
“Hank?”
“Yeah?”
“What are those?” Theodore pointed at a green coconut lying in the sand.
“A coconut.”
“Oh.”
“Where’d it come from?”
Hank stopped and pointed. “See those palm trees. The tall ones?”
“Uh-huh.”
“There are coconuts high in the branches. Look closely.”
The kid smiled. “I see ’em!”
They walked along a few more steps, then the kid asked, “What’s a coconut?”
“Food.”
“What kind of food?”
“A coconut.”
The kid frowned up at him. Hank grinned and nudged the kid’s arm. “You’re supposed to say ‘What’s a coconut?’”
“Why?”
“Just say it.”
“What’s a coconut?”
“Food.”
The kid stopped, thought about it for a long few seconds, then said, “What kind of food?”
Hank grinned. “A coconut.”
The kid looked up at him, then asked tentatively, “What’s a coconut?”
“Food.” Hank laughed.
“What kind of food?”
“A coconut.”
By the time they reached the clearing, the kid was laughing, too.
Chapter 8
She’d misplaced the baby.
“How the hell can someone lose a baby?”
Margaret crawled out from beneath a clump of oleander bushes and glared up at Hank. “I don’t know,” she snapped. “I’ve never lost one before!”
She stood up and dusted off her hands, her eyes scanning the area. Lydia was crying. Hank was swearing. And Theodore was gazing up at Hank. Annabelle was nowhere.
Margaret felt the most consuming sense of failure, compounded by guilt and anger, all directed at herself. One second Annabelle had been toddling in the sand just ten feet away. A few minutes later, she was gone.
“For Christ’s sake!” Hank turned and bellowed at Lydia, “Stop that blubbering and help find your sister!”
Lydia’s head shot up, and she stiffened. Her mouth clamped shut, and the sobs stopped. Through stunned and damp eyes, she stared at Hank.
“Get up!”
Lydia scampered up and stood at attention.
“Go search that area!” His hand shot out, pointing at the stream and the waterfall. “Theodore! You go with your sister.”
Without a word, the two children scurried off toward the stream.
He turned back to Margaret. He didn’t say anything for a long moment. He just gave her that hard stare of his. “I’ll search the beach.” He paused. “And the water.” Then he left.
Margaret stood rooted to the ground. She thought she might vomit. Annabelle couldn’t swim. She doubted the child was a year and half old yet. The toddler could drown in one wave.
A surge of panic hit her so hard that when she took a step, she stumbled slightly. She braced her hand against a tree trunk for support, and she stared at the sand, seeing nothing. Her mind flashed image after horrid image. A few seconds later, she took a deep breath. “Annabelle!”
There was nothing.
“Annabelle . . .” Her voice grew smaller. She could hear the distant sound of the others calling the baby’s name. She could hear the waves, a sound that suddenly had no soothing peace to it.
Think. Think! Use your head.
She covered her mouth with her hands and paced, then moved to the spot where Annabelle had last been seen. There were no signs of her. Margaret’s hands fell to her sides, and she took another deep breath. Annabelle had been looking up at the sky, pointing up at the birds and giggling as she watched them fly.
Slowly, Margaret searched the ground, looking for a trail. There was little sand here, just thick short clumps of monkey grass. She began to walk in concentric circles, moving outward, examining every inch of grass until she finally reached the sand. Still nothing.
She stopped and glanced back to the area already searched, just in case. The front of the clearing led to the beach and the other three sides were framed with thick bushes and tropical flowers. To her right, rocks were scattered between three coconut palms that made spotty shade on the nearby sand. The landscape was empty. There was no Annabelle.
She moved out farther, expanding her search. A few more circles and she spotted round and deep hoof marks from the goat and a scattering of small w-shaped gull tracks, but nothing human except her own footprints.
For eternal minutes she kept looking, moving farther outward. She swiped the hair from her face repeatedly as the warm breath of the trade wind continually ruffled it into her eyes.
She looked toward the stream. Lydia and Theodore were searching the bushes and climbing between the rocks. Without thought she glanced back at the shoreline, not realizing until she saw Hank wading in the water that she was terrified of what she might see.
She looked back at the sand, driven to find something. And when she did find some little marks in the sand, she was so desperate that she thought she’d imagined them. But there they were . . . barely. Footprints with little baby toe marks
Ready to call out to Hank, she looked up. Her words froze in her throat like winter air. Out of the corner of her eye she saw their blankets hanging from a rope tied from a thick guava tree to a spiky pandanus palm. Hank had rigged the line the night before.
She stood in the spot where they had slept last night. She looked closer. All around her were footprints from each of them, Hank, Lydia, Theodore. Everyone’s prints were scattered between the trunks and tarps and ship’s salvage. Last night’s footprints. Not today’s.
“Annabelle!”
A warm, thick breeze drifted by and made the damp blankets snap.
“Annabelle! Annabelle . . .” Margaret’s shoulders fell slightly and her hands hung uselessly at her sides. The breeze died as suddenly as it had begun. The air felt stiller here, heavier. With one hand she shielded her eyes from the glare of the new sun and looked down the beach.
A dull tapping sound broke the stillness. “Annabelle?” Margaret spun around, looking this way, then that way. “Annabelle!”
One of the large wooden trunks behind her wobbled.
She ran over to it and threw open the humped lid. A little head with bright red curls popped up. “Hi!”
Margaret slumped to the ground. Her relief was fierce. It sped through her in a bloodrush that made her face feel hot. She sat there trying to take in a deep breath, but she was shaking so badly she couldn’t.
Annabelle was grinning. She gripped the edge of the trunk in two chubby fists and pulled herself up until she was peeking over the edge of the trunk. “Peeeekaboo.” She ducked her impish
head down and giggled.
Margaret had the completely insane urge to cry. To blubber like Lydia. She reached over and lifted the baby from the trunk. Annabelle kicked her feet and laughed. “More! More!”
Margaret clasped her to her chest and rocked her for a minute, until Annabelle stopped squirming, popped two fingers in her mouth, and nuzzled comfortably against her while she played with the fingers on one of Margaret’s limp hands.
She placed her cheek on Annabelle’s soft baby hair and closed her eyes. Margaret held little Annabelle tighter than she had ever hung on to any single living thing.
And that was how Hank found her.
“Are you crying?” Hank scowled down at Smitty. She looked up at him from eyes that were damp. “No.”
He gave a snort of disgust and strode past her, then stopped and cupped his hands around his mouth. “Hey, kids!” He waved at them. “Come on back.” He watched them jump down from the rocks, and he muttered, “The sun is barely up and already she’s lost and found the kid. Instead of telling anyone, she sits there blubbering.”
He turned toward her just as she put the baby inside an open trunk. She bent over and dusted the sand off her backside. Hank stood watching as Annabelle crawled over the rim of the trunk and toddled off toward the coconut palms where that damn goat was grazing. He kept an eye on the kid and waited.
Smitty straightened, turned around, and looked in the trunk. “Oh, my God!” She whipped around. Hank didn’t move. He just pointed.
“Annabelle!” Smitty raced over and plucked up the giggling baby. With the kid balanced on her hip, she marched back and pinned him with a hot glare. “You let her run off again? After what just happened? Why didn’t you say anything?”
He shrugged. “I knew where she was. Besides, the kids are your problem.”
She looked at him as if he’d grown horns and a tail. “What a perfectly horrid thing to say.”
“What? That they’re a problem? It’s true. They are a problem. But they’re your problem. You’re the woman.”
“Sex does not define responsibility.”
“No. But sex is a helluva lot more fun than playing nursemaid.”
She rolled her eyes at him. “This is serious. It’s only fair that we both be responsible for them until we can get help.”
“There is no help. The island’s deserted.”
She looked around. “Are you certain?”
“Yeah, except for the jungle, and you can’t take three kids into that.” He started to turn, then played an ace. “Some of these islands have never seen a white man or woman. Just other natives.” He paused for effect. “And cannibals.”
“That’s absurd.”
“You think so? Well, sweetheart, I don’t intend to be anyone’s Sunday pot roast.”
“You’re not joking.” She frowned, then shivered slightly and looked over the landscape with a wary eye. “What are we going to do?”
“I’ll run things, and you take care of those kids.” He turned and took a step, then stopped again. “And after what just happened with that baby, I’d say you need some practice.”
Smitty spun around and opened her mouth, but before she could say anything Theodore and Lydia came running back.
“You found her!” Theodore skidded to a stop in front of Smitty and stuck his face up toward Annabelle while he petted her small arm.
But Lydia stopped at the perimeter of the clearing, about ten feet away. The look on her face made Hank take pause. He watched her standing there. Outside the scope of the rest of them.
Lydia looked at him, then quickly averted her eyes. She started moving again, walking past him with stiff forced steps. She stopped in front of the group. After a second, she said, “I’ll take my sister.”
Smitty handed her the baby.
Hank exhaled, shaking his head. He knew trouble when he saw it. He started to walk away, but Smitty touched his arm.
“We need to talk.”
“About what?”
She glanced back over her shoulder at the children, then looked him straight in the eye and said quietly, “About caring for the children.”
He held his hands up in front of him and shook his head. “No.” He backed up a couple of steps, then turned and walked away.
“Hank!” She scurried to catch up with him, kicking up sand behind her.
He ignored her. He had bottles to dig up and a shelter to build.
“Hank!” She tapped him on the shoulder, but he kept walking. She kept right up with him. “I don’t know anything about children,” she said in a harsh whisper.
“Try paying attention.”
“What?” She grew roots. And he wouldn’t say she had shrieked, but the noise she made was close to it. He stopped and turned to face her one last time.
She stood scant inches from him, her hands planted on her hips. Her expression reminded him of the prison mule.
“For Christ’s sake, woman! How hard can it be to watch a little kid?”
It was harder than trying to reason with Hank Wyatt. Margaret spent a couple of minutes retying the knots in the rope around her waist. She turned and walked toward the banana plant. As Margaret reached for a banana, the rope went taut as a clothesline.
“Not again,” she muttered. For what seemed like the tenth time in the last hour, Margaret turned and followed the thirty feet of rope. This time, it was threaded like Maypole ribbons around and through three hibiscus bushes and two spiky pandanus palms.
Right in the middle of everything stood Annabelle, the opposite end of the rope tied securely around her waist. She grinned at Margaret, then on chubby feet she began to weave in and out of the bushes, tangling the rope and poking her head out. “Peekaboo!” Then she laughed and laughed and did the same thing all over again.
The rope tugged at Margaret’s waist again and again. Annabelle seemed perfectly happy to tangle the two of them to anything and everything nearby.
Margaret’s neighbor’s two pet pugs had been easier to care for than this one child, and those dogs had half dragged her down Taylor Street chasing an alley cat.
There was a logical way to handle this. There had to be. She thought about it for a few minutes. Her leash idea had made sense, but now? She glanced at the rope twisted through the trees and bushes. It looked like a game of cat’s cradle.
Lydia ran up the beach with a bucket. Margaret looked up, the rope looped at her feet, and waved. Lydia slowed down, looking at her sister, then at the rope. She set down the bucket filled with mangoes. “My mama used to play with her.”
“Did she?”
“Yes.”
“How?”
“You know, fun little games like all mothers do with children.”
“I don’t know, Lydia.”
The girl cocked her head and stared at her as if she were an oddity. “Why not?”
“I haven’t been around children much.”
“Don’t you like children?” There was a challenge in her tone, as if she expected Margaret to admit she didn’t like her.
“It has nothing to do with liking or disliking anyone or anything. I just don’t know any children. I don’t know how to entertain a baby.”
Lydia turned away and seemed to think about that for a minute.
Margaret stood there equally quiet. She didn’t know how to make Lydia understand that they weren’t opponents. Or how to reach across the awkwardness of the moment.
Theodore called out to Lydia. She muttered something and ran off down the beach, seemingly eager to leave.
As Margaret watched her run away, she wondered what it was Lydia expected of her. There seemed to be a challenge to everything she said, as if she thought Margaret didn’t measure up to what an adult should be.
Margaret plopped down hard in the sand, hugged her knees, and rested her head on them, feeling like a failure for one of the few times in her life. She sat there thinking, unable to reach a plausible solution.
When faced with a dilemma in her work, she
had made notes, analyzing the problem from every angle, listing all possible solutions. This method forced her to view all sides of a problem. The process opened her mind while the words kept her focused.
She looked down at the sand and began to scribble words with her finger. Girl. Anger. Loss. Orphan. Child. Mother. Baby.
Nothing came to mind. No word triggered an answer. She glanced up, frowning. Then she saw Annabelle, and any thoughts she had went off with the wind.
The child was curled beneath a hibiscus bush, a bright orange flower clutched in one small hand and two fingers of the other hand in her mouth. She looked to be sound asleep.
Margaret stood and walked over to the child, squatted down and untied the rope. Annabelle was asleep. Margaret reached out and slowly pulled her fingers from her small mouth. Annabelle sighed but didn’t wake.
Her skin was so soft and pale, unlined by time. Her cheeks were bright pink, her curly hair as deep an apricot color as the hibiscus blossom clutched in her pudgy fingers.
Her head rested on one plump arm, and her fist was next to her mouth. Her little bare toes were curled into the pale sand and waxy green hibiscus leaves clung to the ragged hem of her pique gown. She looked utterly at peace.
How could one small and happy little child create such havoc? Margaret was fast gaining a new respect for motherhood, something she hadn’t thought much about until now.
She had never watched a baby sleep. What amazed her was how quickly children could fall asleep. One minute they were running and laughing and playing and the next minute they would be asleep. Sound asleep from what she had seen in the last couple of days.
She reached out and stroked Annabelle’s forehead. Margaret had no idea how long she sat there. Her mind was far away in thoughts so foreign that it seemed as if her mind were not her own. Because for the first time in her adult life she wondered what it would be like to give birth to a child.
Chapter 9
Muddy’s bottle had hit land the night before after being tossed about during a violent and rocky storm. But with two thousand years’ worth of experience, he’d weathered worse—floods, hurricanes, a tornado in some place called Kansas.