Dash in the Blue Pacific

by Cole Alpaugh

  “Watch me.”

  She jammed the candle into a crevasse, then used her teeth to tear open the fire starter package. She separated the striker from the silver block labeled magnesium. “You shave some from the block then use the other side to make spark. It looks like magic, but isn’t.”

  A flick of her wrist and white hot sparks jumped from the bar onto the kindling, a curl of smoke rising from a yellow baby flame. She reached for a new candle, ran the long stick under her nose with her eyes closed, then put wick to flame.

  “Bees make candles.” She handed it to him. “I’ll show you in the daytime. And I’ll show how to rub your teeth with charcoal to keep them clean. Missioners brought the fire starters to make us civilized. Light, Jesus Christ, and shiny clackers make you righteous. They brought soap and these clothes because the Son of God doesn’t want to look at lady bosoms and filthy bums.” She snapped the waistband of her underpants. “There aren’t new ones because they’ve been gone so long. You have Ooba’s. He fell out of a tree and was sent into the waves. We’ll all be naked again soon. I guess it was meant to be.”

  Dash touched the waistband of the dead man’s underwear. “The missioners taught Christianity?”

  She nodded. “And that clap-clap and pagan gods send you to a fiery hell at the bottom of the sea.”

  He tried breaking a length of bamboo over his knee, but failed and had to add it to the fire whole. She collected rocks and shaped a small fire pit. They sat upwind of the smoke, on a bench of smooth lava that grew tiny ferns where dirt had collected in cracks.

  “Your people didn’t stop believing in the Volcano God.”

  She shrugged. “The missioners think their god stays alive inside a book. They open the book to give him breath, and to release his love in song and prayer.”

  “It’s not the missioners coming to take you away.”

  “No, those are the white soldiers. They have guns. Not all the missioners are white, but all the soldiers are. That’s why the warriors want to feed you to the Volcano. White skin is a special evil that brings sorrow to our people.”

  Dash hunched over his knobby knees. Every explorer he’d learned about delivered disease and death. They discovered what had already been discovered, planted flags in soil mixed with bones of other people’s ancient ancestors.

  “You talk different than other white men. Same language, but different sounds. Maybe that’s also why Manu is waiting to hear from the Volcano. She brought you here, and other gods did not claim you. Manu believes there is always a reason for things to happen.”

  “I’m from America. I guess the missioners taught English?”

  “They were from a church in Australia, but their houses were in different places. Some lived next to elephants and had the same color skin as me. Australia is an island this big.” She held her arms in a circle. “There was a book that showed maps of the whole world, but it burned in a fire when I was little. Our teacher drew maps from memory. America is far away. Many months by boat, she says.”

  “How often do people other than soldiers come?”

  She paused as if to think. “Only when a plane crashes.”

  Dash pictured some sort of Bermuda Triangle, airplanes of all sizes in death spirals, caught by a magnetic field and splashing down like meteors.

  “How often do planes crash?”

  “Just one so far, but Manu says the Volcano is angry with us. She will throw more stones before she bleeds. Maybe more planes will fall.”

  “Manu says she’s angry because the ground shakes?”

  “She punishes him by making his bones hurt, and by making it hard for him to pee.”

  “Does he say why she’s upset?”

  Tiki picked a dry twig from the lava, ran it around her toes as if making a chalk outline. “Only that our people are doing something wrong. He is punished because he’s our chief, but we feel it too. Not in our pee, but other ways.”

  “Like how?”

  “The fever comes to kill babies and old people. And the hearts of everyone else are made heavy when the dead are put into the sea.”

  Dash began to suspect who the white soldiers were. Not mythical bad guys from ancient times, but living human beings coming to pick from a new crop.

  “The soldiers only take away pretty girls? Never anyone else?”

  “Only girls who are ten. The prettiest. They come during the hot season. It’s a great honor, but I’ll miss Talei and Bulou. We were all best mates.”

  “And your mother?”

  “She was put into the sea when I was little.”

  “I’m sorry.”

  “Me, too,” she said, feeding the fire with strips of vine.

  “Where are the girls taken?”

  She took a deep breath, then used her hands again. “To a place with houses taller than a volcano. So tall they touch the clouds. Even the strongest birds can’t reach the front door.”

  Her mood changed, and her eyes lit as she looked directly at him.

  “The girls are given a house filled with beautiful clothes, instead of these scungy old daks. They have mirrors more clear than still water, and rows of bottles that squirt perfume more pretty than flowers. The floors are so soft it’s like walking on air. The chosen girls can eat whatever they want from a big box that makes cold air and keeps away bugs.”

  “Refrigerators,” he said.

  She squinted, leaned toward him. “Did you have one in your house?”

  “In my apartment, yes.”

  “Did you have a kitten? A magazine that didn’t burn up has a picture of a kitten eating food from a yellow bowl. It’s gray and fluffy and has blue eyes.”

  He smiled. “No, kittens make me sneeze.”

  “How?”

  “Well, it’s called allergies. Something about their skin. It gets in the air and makes some people sneeze.”

  “I’m going to have a kitten in my house even if I sneeze all day. I’ll hold it in my arms while we watch the birds fly below us.”

  “It sounds wonderful,” he said. “A girl should have a kitten. Do the soldiers speak the same English?”

  “Yes, like the missioners taught us. But the missioners stopped coming when I was real little. They gave up on us and went other places. Manu says they called us godless heathens, but that shows how dumb they are. We have lots of gods. Lots more than missioners. How many gods do you have?”

  Dash was suddenly embarrassed about being a godless heathen. “Pretty much the same as the missioners,” he said.

  Tiki held out both hands to count on her fingers. “We have a Sea God and a God of the Sun. A Bird, Time, and Dirt God. The Volcano God, Storm God, and Wave God. The Wave God is different from the Sea God. That’s eight, and there’s one more,” she said, frowning, trying to remember.

  “Our one god is supposed to watch over everything.”

  She shook her head. “The world is too big.” She put a thumb and index finger together and held them to one eye. “This island is only this big on my teacher’s map.”

  “Having lots of gods makes sense.”

  She nodded, then spoke in a low voice. “But it makes people worry. So many gods to pull you underwater or make you fall out of a tree. Gods bring thunder to keep you awake at night, and wind to blow away your house.”

  “What god protects little girls from soldiers?”

  Tiki’s smooth lips formed a pout, her eyes squeezed into a glare. “How much do you want to leave this place? Do you want to grow old in a stinking jungle?”

  “But this is your home,” he said. “These are your people, your family.”

  “Mama is gone.”

  “I can only imagine how much that hurts.” When he reached to touch her shoulder, she slapped his hand away with the same blind motion as the old woman in the aisle seat.

  Tiki lurched from the stone bench and kicked sand over the fire, suddenly furious. “I’ll have two kittens if I’m pretty enough,” she said, crossing her arms and turning her back to him.<
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  He groaned as he struggled to his feet. He was tired and everything ached. “I’m sorry. Please don’t be angry.”

  The two lit candles had dripped wax into wide pools, one now only a stub. He hadn’t noticed their small flames, had wasted precious light he needed to survive.

  “I have to make a place to sleep. Will you help?”

  “I’ll come back in the morning.” She headed toward the path, then stopped and turned. “The Fire God is the one I forgot. He mostly lives inside the Volcano to eat whatever she swallows.”

  Dash touched his throat. Going back into the fire was a thousand times worse than going back into the water.

  “I told you gods were scary,” she said, then turned and disappeared into the black tunnel.

  Chapter 7

  Sleek birds with white and black painted bodies patrolled the sky, the calm sea mirroring their aerodynamic designs and sweeping orbits. A slight wind left the water mostly still—flat swells that lifted and lowered with unstirred crests. Dash watched each bird take a turn abandoning formation, shedding elevation until belly feathers kissed its reflection. Dagger-like beaks cut the surface in narrow, car-length incisions, stuttering once with a sideways flick of the head. Graceful wings stroked the salty air, and the bird would ascend with a small fish impaled, its flapping body working like a useless propeller. The birds seemed to never miss.

  To his right was the coral reef looming just beneath the waves. It was a protective wall running north into the distance on a parallel track to the island. The reef interrupted waves born hundreds or thousands of miles away. He wondered how far short the plane had come from reaching Fiji. The online maps showed blue almost everywhere in this enormous section of the route. There were more smudges on his laptop screen than specks of land. He was now the proverbial needle in a haystack made of infinite pieces of dried grass because they’d stopped looking. He looked down at the sheltered calm spot where the women had taken him for his first bath. He’d been awestruck by the mountain breathing smoke as though it were a living thing, the exotic leaning trees and untended beaches he’d seen only in pictures.

  He stood at the end of the lava shelf, the edge of a black table he supposed was some of the planet’s newest land. It was a twenty to thirty yard tongue, depending on the tide. It provided a view of a more hostile world, deep water where anything could lurk, but was also the direction he imagined the ship would come for his rescue. He watched the surging water tumble cream-colored shells, fish chasing bubbles, and tiny skittering creatures with countless legs. Bits of plastic garbage washed up here from ships or other islands, maybe even Australia or somewhere in Asia. He stood a few paces beyond what was currently an anemic blowhole, emitting knee-high puffs twice a minute. The rounded shelf was like the lower third of a surfboard. It cantilevered over a bottom that sloped into the dark. He could only guess how far the sea traveled underneath the island, and never in a million years would he dive in for the answer.

  “Where am I?” he asked the tiny creatures taking refuge between his toes, jealous they’d made it to safe harbor. It seemed unfair. The giant over his shoulder who took care of this island wanted to eat him alive rather than offer asylum. Dash was tempted to step back, but didn’t. He let them be for now.

  The two places he’d experienced the ocean were in New Hampshire and New Jersey. One the temperature of an ice-filled Styrofoam beer cooler, and the other so crowded that hungry sharks would have to eat their way through tons of pasty tourists before posing any danger. The old Jaws movie had a lasting effect on New Englanders, especially those in the mountains who only occasionally wandered down to sea level. Dash knew all the things that could slither into a lake. But oceans held monsters beyond imagination, according to movies and his father’s collection of National Geographic magazines.

  A flash of white against the black lava caught his eye. He padded across the sharp edges, thinking it might be a discarded toy, and pulled one side of a jawbone the waves had wedged into a crack. He turned the bone over in his hands, felt its smoothness and light weight. It held a single tooth at the shorter curved end where the jaw was broken. The tooth wiggled and came free. He cupped it in one hand, and reached to feel his own lower front teeth. They were a close match. He carefully retreated with his find, keeping an eye on the craggy black landscape for other skeleton parts.

  Up a short slope was a circular tide pool six feet across, its water replenished only at the peak of high tide, when the strongest waves rolled over the backs of others along a narrow stone channel. On the far side was a perfect stone bench, probably formed when the molten lava met the cool sea during a battle of fire and water. It was a mostly shady spot because of a single squat palm tree growing up behind the bench through a gash in the lava. It leaned with the constant breeze, wide fronds swaying. He sat facing the tide pool, which mirrored the ocean beyond, providing a dual view of the spot where the fishermen paddled their skiffs around the southern edge of the reef. It was the first and last leg of their daily expeditions, return trips sometimes weighed down by bows stacked with big, tuna-looking fish from the deep water.

  Behind Dash and the palm were puka trees he recognized from vacation brochures. They were small and bent over, probably stunted from the constant sea breeze that made them all lean toward the leeward side of the island. Another skiff skimmed across the tide pool and the real ocean beyond, as he fingered the sleek bone. Dash looked up and waved, then lowered the jaw onto his lap and jammed the tooth back in place. A fisherman shouted, but the words were drowned out by the wind and hissing blowhole. Dash nodded, held up his right thumb to wish them luck and watched as they turned the corner around the reef to head back north. The long, skinny boats looked no match for such a huge amount of water, not to mention the hungry whales and giant squid. Manu’s young warriors might be tough guys, but the fishermen were the truly brave ones.

  Dash raised the bone when they were gone, measured it against his sunburned face. It was an adult for sure. The tooth tumbled out again, bounced across the thin layer of black sand. It was yellow, maybe from age or stained from coffee and cigarettes. Could it have belonged to the lady in the flowered dress with the bag of knitting? Perhaps whatever swarmed outside the reef had picked her body clean, recycling the old gal in a way she could never have imagined. He hoped she hadn’t suffered, even though she’d been certain he was doomed to hell for violating the irresistible crack in the wall. She’d at least had something to hope for, had somewhere to go. Maybe she was there, or maybe she’d been nothing but one day’s nourishment for scavengers.

  His penis hurt from thinking about the noisy hole, but touching the front of his briefs proved the pain was a ghost. He was as numb as ever. He stroked the smooth surface of the bone instead, tilting it to examine tiny holes in the harsh sunlight.

  The girl had told him the eating never stopped until you were made of nothing. If so, then the woman could be at peace, whether or not heaven was real. But he realized there was still one piece of her left, or two, counting the tooth. He should throw them back into the waves, let the Sea God finish the job.

  Perhaps the jaw’s appearance was her attempt to communicate from the next life, to remind him of the inevitability of death just as Hamlet had been reminded by his dear friend Yorick’s colorless skull. But the all-powerful sea had intercepted the messenger and smashed up her news, or her one last chance to tell Dash he was a dirty, filthy man. Maybe it was the Wave God’s work, or maybe the Bird God had filled its belly on her last morsel. Perhaps the Sun God had broiled away every last bit.

  Being a godless heathen was easier.

  He rubbed the bone as if summoning a genie, held it against his thigh to contrast the color. He tapped it against his numb parts, still feeling nothing. He arched his back and lowered the waistband with his left hand to expose his pathetic member. He thumped the bone directly on the pale knob. “God, smite the sinner with a paralyzed pecker!” he imagined the lady’s message was meant to say. He drummed t
he bone hard enough to bring tears, but his penis was unconscious or dead. The bone became a blur as he beat himself, and then chuckled with an awful thought. He might be in bad straights, but what sin had the woman committed to be reduced to a mere drumstick?

  There was another flash of motion in the tide pool, different from the spraying blowhole. He stopped whacking his crotch and looked up in time to see a man lift himself out of the water onto the edge of the shelf. He was immense, with bodybuilder chest and arms, wide shoulders glistening bronze under the high sun. There were no boats in sight. No crashed airplanes.

  Dash tried to look away from the man’s nakedness when he stood tall and stretched, striking heroic Greek god poses. But the strange object perched atop his shoulders was impossible not to watch. If the man’s mouth did not move and his eyes did not turn and blink—and if the small bit of bone or cartilage did not light and flicker over his forehead—Dash would have been certain it was a Halloween mask.

  The herculean man with the grotesque fish head stalked up the jagged lava and swept around the tide pool. He sat heavily next to Dash, who could only stare. The man’s lower jaw was set in a drastic under-bite; narrow teeth were pointed barbs, made more ominous by wide gaps displaying reddish gums. His jowls hung from his jutting bottom lip down to a human Adam’s apple.

  The creature looked at Dash with blue eyes that appeared startled from skin pulled taut and missing eyebrows. What looked to be the front spine of a dorsal fin bobbed freely on a hinge in front of his awful mouth. The tip of the spine was bulbous and glowed. Dash was hypnotized by the creature’s dancing light.

  “That’s kind of weird,” said the giant in a clear voice, fish head tilted down to where Dash held the bone frozen in mid-drum over his exposed member.