by Cole Alpaugh
“Sorry.” Dash shook his head, let the elastic waistband snap closed.
“My name is Weeleekonawahulahoopa.” He extended a hand. “You can call me Willy.”
Dash dropped the bone, allowed the man’s fingers to envelope his hand. It was like slipping into an oversized baseball glove left out in a warm rain. “I’m Dash,” he said, then to explain being caught drumming his privates he added, “I was in a plane crash and can’t feel anything.”
“Tough luck. She’s a real piece of work.”
“Who?”
“The Volcano God.” Willy jerked a thumb over his shoulder toward the smoking peak. “I’d lay good odds she’s the cause of your current troubles. Doesn’t seem fair, I’ll bet.”
“So she’s real?”
“You can’t see her?”
Dash couldn’t help but follow the bobbing action of the mesmerizing light. It made it hard to maintain a train of thought. “I’ve never seen a god before. Is that what you are? Some kind of god of the fish?”
“I’m not a god,” said Willy, and Dash noticed the light go dim. “I used to be, but I’m done with all that.”
“You can stop being a god?”
“Gods are man-made things, my friend. That means they have all sorts of built-in flaws. And gods are usually born out of fear, with a little hope tossed in. Imagine changing light bulbs for a living, but you’re scared of heights. What kinda job you gonna do up on that ladder all day?” Willy paused, looked out over the tide pool at the ocean. “Yep, that’s a god for you. A big old mix of fear and hope. And throw in some desperation, too. Afraid of what’s out there in all that green and blue water? Then just pray to it. Make offerings and even sacrifices to it. An entire ocean takes a lot of prayers to make a god, but it happened. Same with that bitch?”
“The Volcano God?”
“Right.” Willy waved a giant hand in front of his face to shoo tiny moths from his light.
“Why did you quit? Was it all that bad?”
Willy rubbed the sides of his strange forehead, about where temples would be. “My people loved and trusted me. Kids afraid of the dark, and old folks with their days winding down. They believed I’d take care of their island. Bigger place than this, maybe by double or triple. No volcano, though, which was just fine. They offered their belongings, heirloom treasures, to guarantee I’d always protect them, keep them safe from storms and disease. To keep the fish biting. They gave me carvings that were handed down, jewelry that had married great grandparents, all things valuable enough to keep when they migrated across the seas. Fourteen new babies were named Weeleekonawahulahoopa in one season alone. Imagine that?”
Dash nodded that he could.
“They didn’t have to give me their things. I wasn’t the kind of god to hold out on a sick kid.” Willy paused, shaking his head, the light waving back and forth. “But I let them because it was part of the ceremony they loved. Humans are big on ceremonies. Like having gods, they bring comfort, makes them feel closer to whatever they’re praying to. And so I kept the worst sickness away, let the rains fall in moderation. The wife beaters fell out of their boats and drowned, and poison snakes were ready to bite any man with an eye on hurting a child.”
“Sounds like you were a sheriff, too.”
Willy shrugged, and Dash thought he saw a smile.
“I listened to their needs because I loved them, and they loved me back. Even the bad-minded ones were treated with a fair hand if I saw their hearts could change. No one ever questioned whether I was real because I was everywhere. Right up until I let them all die.”
Willy’s swaying light dimmed again, but his face didn’t change.
“I’m sorry,” Dash mumbled, not sure what else to say.
Willy got to his feet, enormous muscles flexing and twitching, sweat rivulets trickling through the creases of hard flesh. His thigh was as big as an old coconut palm trunk, skin the reddish color of the last rays of the evening sun. Dash fought an urge to touch the giant thigh, to reach out and knock on it.
“You oughtta know that I can hear your thoughts,” Willy said. “They come through pretty loud and clear.”
“Yeah, that’s okay. I’m used to it. My fiancée could, too. It’s why she ended up hating me.”
“So much hate out there. Hate and more hate.” Willy stepped around the tide pool and walked to the very end of the island without looking back. Dash thought his shoulders were too slumped even for a former god who’d let all his people die. The giant man paused at the edge of the surf, then dove head first, disappearing into the incoming tide.
Chapter 8
A ship’s daily appearance coincided with Dash’s sickness. Different than flu or any illness he’d known, it came from depression and hopelessness, combined with the things that had bitten him, the accumulation of toxins. The ship arrived under power of oppressive heat, tanks fueled with his oily fish dinners and mosquito fever nights. His countless hours alone knitted the American flag over the Coast Guard cutter’s stern, welded the steel in its hull. Desperation put sailors in crisp uniforms, turned them into busy worker bees preparing a rescue launch from its sturdy railing.
Every detail was correct, from the spinning radar dishes to the single life vest left carelessly on the open deck, all bearing a striking resemblance to the box cover photo on a model received one Christmas from a grandparent.
He could have strolled out across the ocean’s surface, feet barely tasting salt, and stroked the orange fabric of the tidy vessel being readied to come ashore. He could have climbed aboard, wondered about equipment and dials, guessed the meaning of things written in cryptic abbreviations. He could have sat next to a warm-blooded man, smelled his sweat and the coffee on his breath. The sailor would be too busy with a checklist for questions.
The mirage couldn’t account for the thousands of miles separating the black sand beneath his toes and the waters any such ship would patrol, but it didn’t matter.
Passing days blurred the phantom vessel, and the longer he stared, the farther away it seemed. The crew was gone. The red and white paint faded, soon to become the same gray nothing. There was no man or woman to finish lowering the smaller boat dangling on metal arms. It became a ghost ship, and eventually there was no ship at all, only bobbing sea birds where a hundred tons of metal had sunk to the murky bottom of an exhausted imagination.
He was increasingly anxious awaiting Willy’s daily visits, sure that something had changed, that his imaginary friend wouldn’t return. But then the melancholy former god would swim up out of the waves as Dash sat moping on his stone bench. Sometimes they didn’t talk; they were just two gloomy figures casting still shadows.
Each time he heard the village drums, Dash expected an armed procession to come take him away. His cage had no bars, but he was a prisoner all the same. He grew gills in his dreams, and wings in his fantasies, but found how easily hope dried up and quietly died under the heavy sun. The drums mostly sounded in the hour before sunset, but the only one to appear out of the jungle was the girl, usually lugging a bucket of potable water and cooked fish wrapped in banana leaves.
The lava tube cave’s main compartment was pear-shaped. Ceiling cave-ins had created a dead end back where the fruit would be fattest. If he were stronger, perhaps he could clear an opening that would lead all the way into the volcano’s belly, at least until the heat and gases turned him back. The porous black walls absorbed outside reflections and the light from rationed candles. He lit one candle at a time, always extinguishing the flame when leaving for any stretch. His hands shook when he woke in the pitch blackness to fumble with the striker and magnesium block, drops of sweat complicating his efforts.
He’d spent weeks recovering from the plane crash, and could only imagine the free reign all the creeping things enjoyed while he was unconscious. They’d surely used him as a highway, and probably burrowed into his skin to deposit soon-to-hatch eggs. Light kept things he could see at bay, banished the worst to the shadows, ju
st as he had been sent here to wait. One dream had him wrapped in a cocoon by tiny humanoid creatures that spoke the same language as the islanders. He woke trying to imitate their voices, convinced they’d free him if he could match the right sounds.
Existing on a tropical island was a far cry from reality TV or honeymoon brochures. Foraging meant picking through bug-infested fruit that had become nests of baby spiders guarded by alien-eyed mothers. Fallen coconuts were claimed by cockroach-like insects he’d seen served as toasted side dishes. He was allowed into the village once daily to move his bowels in the stinking outhouses, but he felt watched like an enemy. He did his business quickly and got out.
On his twentieth day of exile, Tiki came with a message from Manu. Dash had been using his stone tool to carve a face into a coconut’s outer flesh, crouching over the ground at the very edge of the tide. He’d nicked his fingers in a half dozen spots with the sharp edge, used the salt water to rinse slippery blood.
Tiki cast a thin shadow over his work. “You’re bleeding.”
He kept carving. “Practice makes perfect.”
“Manu will send for you in four nights, when the moon has a big face. All the preparations will be done.”
Dash’s stomach turned over, and he dropped his tool. The unrecognizable bust of his former fiancée rolled out of his limp hand. “Preparations? Oh, god!”
Tiki spoke slowly, as if trying her best to get it right. “Manu said the Volcano God came to his dreams in the shape of a woman. She spoke of the man who fell from the sky and killed the fish. There is to be a feast in his honor because he will save our people from the soldiers.”
“I knew it,” he said, head suddenly aching. “A feast of roasted cockroaches, and then they’ll toss me in the volcano for dessert.”
He rocked onto his butt, soaking his underpants in warm tidal water. After three weeks of fending off spiders and swarming mosquitoes while awaiting his execution, a quick and painless death wasn’t the worst of his fears. This wasn’t going to be a blindfold and firing squad. No lethal injection while listening to classical music in a room painted aqua. This would be snatched right out of his worst recurring nightmare. The warriors were getting their way, the chance to jab sharpened spears in his back to prod him onto a ledge over a bubbling cauldron. He felt his legs catch fire in the dream, heard his crackling hair, eyes boiling as they went blind. He was certain he’d shared Manu’s dream. The Volcano God had gotten inside his head, too.
“Manu says you will learn everything at the feast under the big face moon.”
“That’s not fair. Why not now?” He had to know. Absolutely needed to know.
“The elders are sick from too much clap-clap,” she said. “They spent the morning hiding from the Sun God.”
“But you know. You know what they’re going to do to me. They planned it all while getting boozed up. Manu is sending the bastard who smashed the boy’s hand. What did he do? What could any kid do to deserve that?”
She looked away, hands fiddling behind her back, and he was convinced of the worst. He looked up at the volcano, then out to where there was no rescue ship. How far could he swim? A mile? Probably a hundred yards in the lousy shape he was in. He looked out at the spot among the rolling waves where he’d slip under and drown.
“Please tell me, Tiki. You must have heard them talk. We’re friends, aren’t we?”
“I can’t.”
He reached up and touched her shoulder, the brown skin hot from the sun. Her face was hidden, but he thought she’d begun to cry until she swept her hair behind one ear to look down at him. He saw she was trying not to giggle.
“What is it? What’s so funny?”
* * *
Windy spots were marvelous mosquito-free places. Dash had learned to avoid the water’s midday reflection, and that turning over dead logs when gathering firewood meant risking agonizing bites from hundred-legged creatures. He suffered anxious moments following these bites, waiting for signs of poison, wondering if venom was racing through his blood toward his heart. He only hoped the end would come quickly, that whatever god involved wouldn’t merely paralyze the rest of him.
Being a castaway meant no aspirin for headaches, no handy plastic bandages for cuts. Being shoeless on a volcanic island changed your pace and stride: each step was cushioned with an extra bend in the knee, a slow motion shuffle across hot coals.
He slumped on his hard bench, chin resting on folded arms. He watched the skiffs return from the deep holes where big ones hid. One fisherman lifted a hand and Dash was about to wave when the man lifted his chin and dragged an index finger across his throat.
A fish rose from the sea beyond the surging tide at the end of the shelf, the human torso and legs underneath coated in white foam. Willy came to sit next to him behind the tide pool, body dripping salt water into a puddle between massive feet. His big toes reminded Dash of the dill pickles his mother used to bring from the deli.
“You could build a raft,” said Willy.
“Sure, but where would I drift?”
Willy shrugged, held up his palms. “The currents are weak this season, so it would depend on the Storm God.”
“You think it could blow me into the shipping lanes? Or a bigger island with people living in this century?”
Willy seemed to give this question serious thought, took time before answering. “I think she’d let you drift until you were blistered and nearly dead from thirst. Then she would mercifully drown you, or send a bolt of lightning. She’s the Storm God, not the Norwegian Cruise Line God.”
“Yeah, thanks for the picture.”
Willy thumped water from one cauliflower shaped ear. “It would get so unbearable you’d be grateful to her. Some gods are funny like that.”
“How do you know about the Norwegian Cruise Line?”
“You looked them up on your computer, remember? Then you clicked on pictures of women with large breasts wearing small bikinis. You moved on to a website showing videos of young ladies being forced to have intercourse with prison guards.”
“Okay, I get it.”
“That’s the century you’re looking for, right?”
“It’s complicated.”
“It seems criminal,” said Willy. “The women are already in jail.”
“You’re trying to make a joke?”
“To tell the truth, I could live without knowing any of it.”
Dash watched the life at the edge of the tide pool. Some kind of shell creature, a muscle no larger than the end of his pinky, had opened its hinged body, stuck out a pink tongue to probe the surrounding rock. The creature had been deposited by the last high tide, spent the afternoon in a much smaller world than its usual habitat of the open ocean. Dash wondered if it felt claustrophobic, or if it knew the tide would return. Maybe it relished the calm of the small space, would be content to stay.
“My penis still doesn’t work,” said Dash.
“So what’s the big deal?”
“The girl says Manu wants me to make a white baby. Thinks it will satisfy the soldiers who come steal the girls, and that it’ll be enough to keep them away. He makes it sound like an offering to a god, another kind of human sacrifice.”
“The volcano gave him the idea,” said Willy. “Told him in a dream.”
“How do you know?”
Willy rolled his strange fish eyes. “It’s not that I want to read minds. Thoughts find me.”
“So you still have god powers. You can keep the soldiers away.”
Willy held up a dismissive hand. “I’m not any kind of god anymore. And calling those men soldiers is wrong.”
“Kidnappers?”
“I’d go with slave traders. And dealing with ten-year-old girls makes them a special kind of evil.”
“It’s like they’re filling orders. But maybe it isn’t for sex. Maybe they’re some kind of outlaw adoption ring.”
“You were a reporter before you got fired and had your heart broken by the town tramp, righ
t?”
“Christ, that’s some trick,” said Dash. “You even use the words in my head. You’d make a killing working the carnival circuit back home.”
Willy ignored him. “What did they teach you in journalism school when it came to the bad guys?”
Dash paused, remembering the theme of the class that made him fall in love with the idea of working for a newspaper. The professor described the career as ‘a combination of police detective and mystery writer.’ “We were told to follow the money.”
“Yes, and they’re selling the girls to the highest bidders,” said Willy. “The girls are going to wealthy businessmen and pimps, not loving families. No doubt about it.”
“You were a god, for crying out loud. They’re just humans with guns. Mortals.”
Willy turned to him with an oversized index finger pointed to his own chest. “Exactly what do you think I could do?”
“Sink their boat,” Dash nearly shouted. “I don’t know. Send them over the rainbow in a water spout. Do some god thing. Release the kraken on their sorry asses!”
Willy shook his head. “Not possible.”
“You told me you changed the weather, made it rain. You cured diseases.”
“I don’t exist here,” he said quietly. “Not for these people. They don’t have a Fish God, never heard of Weeleekonawahulahoopa.”
“This is crazy. How does a Volcano God knock an airplane out of sky, but you can’t stop a few armed assholes from kidnapping children? You have to. It’s what gods are for.”
Dash’s words hung in the air for more than a minute. Willy stared down at the puddle he’d made.
“I’m nothing but a ghost. You want protection, go see her.” Willy bobbed his chin toward the volcano. “She’s the almighty one on this turf, but there’s a catch. A volcano is like an octopus, tentacles weaving up through the ground and poking holes to feel around. The rest of its body lives far away, with a little brain that’s made up of next to nothing. Sometimes she does good things, and sometimes she destroys entire villages for no reason. The Sea God acts that way, too. All the big gods are real sketchy, can be buku dangerous. The Bird God is a whole different case. Not many people die from bird shit in their hair.”