by Cole Alpaugh
The girl’s voice returned in a scream, not far away, but the cave’s acoustics made it difficult to judge. He rolled from his mat, crawled on hands and knees toward the sound, toward Tiki and whatever had her.
He knew it was something to do with the motor. The soldiers were back, had gotten hold of the child and were hurting her. He scrambled blindly, reaching the cave’s opening on his knees, knowing it was day from the sun’s heat. He lifted his chin, eyes swollen completely shut, and gently pawed at the puffy mess with one hand. He reached out to the wall at the cave’s mouth and pushed his way up, getting first one and then the second wobbling foot under him.
He listened for more cries, and it was a minute before her voice came again. More screams, and maybe she called his name. He stumbled forward on bent legs, hands out in front, forming a picture of the tunnel-like pathway toward the village. Up and over a slight knoll carpeted with broken shells, and then into the humid air as the vegetation closed around him. The sound of insects grew tenfold as he crept forward, vines ensnaring his feet and sharp things drawing blood from probing hands. A man’s laughter and more screams, but not from the direction of the village. Tiki had been caught, pulled inside the jungle by a monster, and Dash was feebler than ever, blind and stumbling, because he hadn’t heeded her simple advice not to swat the bees.
Twenty more steps and the insect noise was maddening, blood pulsing in his ears as he collapsed to his knees and felt for the opening that led toward her last scream. It was the clearing with the stone altar she must have been taken to, hopefully biting and scratching. God’s House, the missionaries had named it. He tore at the vines, cutting his hands on the prickly bushes, his knees becoming pincushions. He stopped prodding the thick wall of low growth to pull out a finger-length thorn sticking from the top of his left thigh. He fingered the needle in his clumsy hands, touched the tip to one wrist to test its strength, where it slid easily through his skin and found muscle.
He could feel the jungle vibrate as he brought the thorn to his left eyelid and slipped the point into his puss-filled flesh. The skin burst like a volcanic pimple, and he carefully kneaded the inflamed tissue with his bulbous knuckles. He wiped the mess away with his sweaty forearm, then switched hands and slowly plunged the thorn into his other bloated eyelid. He plunged twice this time, pressing and kneading. He could once again blink, could see forms in the dark jungle—the yellow leaf plants and white flowering vines giving texture to black satin shadows. The world looked hazy, as if deep under water.
The opening through which Tiki once led him was five paces beyond, and he got back to his feet and lunged forward. He could hear her cries over the insect noise, as well as her captor’s mocking voice. Or maybe it was his imagination that kept her alive, his desperate hope that her throat hadn’t been slit on the sacrificial altar. He stumbled over rotted tree stumps and through tangles of bushes that claimed pieces of flesh. He flung his body forward, falling and clawing to his feet, his panicked mind driving him to her rescue. Nothing in his disappointing life had ever mattered as much as getting to her, as stopping whatever the monster was doing.
Dash tumbled into the circle of piled stones beneath the leaf-covered altar. His breath was gone, blackness threatening to take away the vision he’d recovered. He searched the shadows for a uniform, although he’d only imagined what the soldiers wore. He’d pictured them in Australian outback clothing—tan uniforms suitable for the harshest bush. He rose, stood tall with his fists out in front, ready for a battle to the death.
But there was nothing to fight, only a small slumped figure on the wide stone where the countless spiders had saved their souls. When he reached for the whimpering child, she made a choked noise and pulled away. Her underpants lay in a lump next to her, a bloody handprint on the outside of her thigh. He dropped his forehead to the wet stone, let his eyes close until night took firm hold.
Chapter 23
The tiny, careening spiders stayed hidden, maybe because they’d failed, or maybe because they didn’t exist. Dash leaned over the massive stone, watching the empty leaves, the only movement caused by Tiki’s occasional fits of shivering. It was hours before she stopped pulling away from his touch. He slid his hands beneath her dirty knees and fragile neck, gently scooping her up and holding her as steadily as his own frail body allowed. He carried her through the jungle and delivered her to the sea without resting, cradling her in the protected water until she said she was clean. The soldiers’ boat was gone, with only a single aluminum can left bobbing, trash captured in a lazy vortex within the reef’s bony tip.
She spent two days and nights in the cave, Dash sleeping restlessly under the Pacific sky in an aisle seat, his own toxins drifting away on the wind.
He dreamed of thousands of spiders spinning their frantic circles, him standing over them in judgment. He lifted a bare foot and brought it down over their soft bodies, smearing them in a short arc in one direction and then the other. The blood and guts looked like the two strokes a child’s crayon might make when drawing a seagull.
He checked on her before heading up the east coast to gather driftwood for a signal fire. She’d been sound asleep on his grass mat, but halfway up the beach he noticed her following his footsteps in the sand. He slowed for her to catch up.
They made it all the way to where waves swept across dead coral shallows at the island’s northern tip. It was a foreboding panorama, bleak and windy, stinking of things rotting in salt. But maybe if he’d first woken here, had spent weeks and months staring out over this landscape, it would all be as familiar and comfortable as the southern end.
Wood was plentiful, caught in bleached tangles like smashed ribcages over the rocky terrain. He picked the driest pieces, snapped them into similar lengths.
“They took one of my sisters,” she whispered, her voice forced through a too small space, as if she was still being choked. “We need longer vines.”
It broke his heart some more as he watched her tie a perfect knot in a green strip to secure one bundle. She walked to the edge of the jungle and disappeared without hesitation, barefoot and determined. Her fearlessness made him feel pathetic. Not in a million years would he dare wander into the thick growth that was infested with snakes and colorful giant spiders with hinged legs. And maybe white men filled with even worse poison.
He didn’t explain the expedition, and she helped without question. A signal fire would bring rescue, make everything right. Safely away, he’d convey the plight of the villagers to anyone who’d listen. The pirate raids to steal children would cause outrage, bring protection after years of misery and loss. Salvation was achieved from one’s self, not a god who may or may not understand words amid the raucous chorus. His escape was the only chance for her people, not his murder or suicide. Not his persecution.
She touched his arm with a vine lasso for his bundle of sticks. He hoisted the wood across his shoulders, sharp parts digging into sunburned flesh. She pulled her package lengthwise from a cord around her waist, the back end bumping over rocks and sand, a wavering claw-mark trail left behind.
The fire’s purpose was the first lie. He told her he wanted to cook his own last meals, even if he had to ask for handouts from the passing fishermen. She would only need to bring his water, and he’d have no trips at all to the village. He was ashamed to be playing on her sympathy, but he knew she expected him to follow Manu’s vision into the volcano’s mouth. Perhaps if Dash had rescued her, she would have understood him wanting to rescue himself.
They lugged the wood across the lava to a spot near the airplane seats, where she picked at the knots. They arranged the wood in a log cabin stack that rose just above her shoulders. He filled the hollow center with the driest foliage he could scavenge. The sun would bake out any remaining moisture in one afternoon. They pulled giant banana leaves into a pile next to the tinder chimney. He would use the leaves to shelter the wood if rain threatened, but their main purpose was to create smoke once the stack was burning. The green le
aves would become the signal, white smoke against black lava and the brown volcano behind.
They stepped back to look at their work.
He heard skepticism in her choked voice. “You can’t cook with this. It’ll get too hot, burn up too fast. The wood will be wasted.”
His heart broke some more.
“It’s for coals.” It was his second lie, but he still felt a sense of accomplishment. He looked beyond the structure to the glimmering sea, dotted with whitecaps in the late afternoon breeze, each spec on the horizon a potential ship. And help for these people, too, he reasoned, looking down at the girl who was watching him, her eyes filled with emotions he didn’t recognize.
She returned to the village alone, but her face came back to Dash when he was lying on his sleeping mat under a single candle’s yellow glow. He again saw her eyes, and recognized the emotions as sadness and betrayal.
When he walked down to the tide pool in the morning light, he wasn’t surprised to find his chimney of wood gone. Each stick and every last twig had vanished, probably cast back out into the water to drift another thousand miles.
He stood with his arms at his sides, the breeze cold on the open sores left by the stings, his only company a thirty foot shadow of a lonely man. He turned his back to the sun and raised his arms to change the shadow into a cross. Then he spread his legs and dropped his hands to form a triangle that might also be a volcano. He hooked his thumbs and made a shadow puppet bird, then turned it into two mouths that talked.
“I’ll go to a movie.”
“A Coke with ice would hit the spot.”
“And sit in the first row.”
“Let the light and colors fall over me.”
“Laugh at things not funny.”
“Or cry.”
“A double feature if they still have them.”
“Hope for a happy ending.”
“There are no happy endings.”
“What makes them believe the almighty Volcano won't spit you back up to where the big planes fly?”
“Before drowning them in melted rock.”
“Blood, the girl calls it.”
“The girl dragged into the jungle, violated and left on an altar, while one less tempting was snatched away forever.”
“Left at the altar.”
“You’re their savior.”
“Their last hope.”
“There are no happy endings.”
His arms were tired when he dropped his hands. The sun burned his still shoulders, his skinny neck. He scanned the ocean beyond the coral reef and decided to follow the driftwood.
Chapter 24
The birds were watching, one gull circling like a vulture, head tilting a dead eye wherever he went. Small brown things with probing beaks were tucked into low bushes where they didn’t belong, out of tree tops and vulnerable to snakes, no longer performing high-pitched songs. The sound of wings came at night while he squatted to relieve himself in the ocean, the snapping leather noise of feeding bats. But would bat radar work on a man slinking up a path? Would the gods trust something blind? Was the blind thing only a myth?
He waited two nights for solid cloud cover, using the time scouting the spot where the fishermen beached their skiffs at day’s end. The gull rode the air above, but Dash walked like he had no plan, picked up stones and slung them out into the flat water. He had a fair idea of the layout near the lagoon’s crescent mouth, and it was a simple hike along the shoreline, the unused path marked by toenail slashes, tiny marks from rats or mice. The jungle was kept at bay by the high tides that overpowered hopeful vines and left a salt coating to bake in the sun.
The cove’s southern edge was where women did their washing and bathed with the children, and where he’d been spotted spying on his love hut girl. Below the lagoon were flat stones set in the sand for gutting the daily catch. The area was desolate after sundown except for the birds swooping in to explore the scent of entrails pulled toward the open sea by the current. He imagined the underwater creatures drawn by the gore, swimming upstream with mouths open, gills pumping.
He followed a single candle flame for his escape. He lugged a half dozen coconuts packed inside his sleeping mat, a bucket of fresh water held steady against his side. Tightly rolled rice balls in folded banana leaves were tucked between the coconuts, along with his last three candles and the magnesium bar and striker. He also slipped the amber disk Tiki made for him into the top of the bundle, wedging it next to a finger-shaped stone he’d use for opening coconuts.
His stomach was queasy with the prospect of going out into the open water. He hoped Willy would make an appearance, assure him everything would be okay. He’d been alone since discovering the vandalized rescue fire. He hoped Tiki found the comfort she needed from the village women. Maybe Willy could somehow let her know how much he would miss her.
Dropping his mat into the bow of the nearest skiff, he pinched out the candle and stowed it with the supplies. It took a moment for some gray light to give depth and texture to the darkness, and it was enough to allow him to carefully set the water bucket into the skiff’s flat midsection, anchoring it against his bundled mat. He followed the rope to the mooring tree and worked the knot with shaking fingers. He slid the heavy craft through the sand, sending it into the still water in reverse. It was a longer and fatter wood version of the canoes he’d rowed in the quiet ponds near his home. Hopping in, he grabbed the paddle and was successfully away.
It took ten minutes to reach the end of the reef, the bow more difficult to control as the chop increased. The skiff was longer than two men, always wanting to overcorrect, but he managed the turn into the deeper water, his trio of empty airplane seats left directly behind. He felt propelled as the current took over for the first hour. The wind remained still, and the prevailing flow allowed him the cut through the black water at a decent clip with easy strokes.
Freedom replaced apprehension, and a nagging feeling of being followed slipped away as his muscles warmed and then began to ache. He paddled blindly, pulling the oar twice on one side, then switching to the other, hoping for a straight course.
His hands were bleeding when the sky lightened and began its color change. Blisters had formed in the dark like mushrooms and then burst. When he finally dropped the slick handle and reached for the bucket to drink, he noticed Willy slumped behind on the stern bench, his enormous body translucent.
“Welcome aboard, old pal,” Dash mumbled, lifting a leg and turning to straddle the bench. The volcano over Willy’s shoulder rose out of a low haze that hid the island. “How far, ya think? Four miles? Ten?”
Dash took a deep breath and exhaled noisily, waited for the sick feeling of pins and needles to leave his wrists and elbows. He licked his cracked lips. “You’re looking a little see-through. Not sure you wanna be here? Or is it that I can’t decide if you’re real?”
Willy’s fish head lay sideways across one shoulder, gills pulling deep and hard, bulb dark. Dash leaned to pull the water bucket close with the heels of his hands, joints cracking and lower back muscles a balled knot. He drank until his belly ached, then waited for any sign of returning energy, a second or third wind, or whatever number he was up to.
“You just came along for the ride, huh? Cat got your tongue?”
Dash turned back to face the bow. He held his breath when he took the paddle in his hands. It was a glowing iron from a blacksmith’s fire, but he held his grip, lifting the pear-shaped blade over one side of the hull and pulling a long stroke. A few million more and I’m in New Zealand, or maybe Australia.
“How many licks does it take to get to the center of a Tootsie Pop?” Dash asked through clenched teeth and then made a strangled chuckling sound that turned into a coughing fit.
“If I don’t know, then you probably don’t either,” he said after catching his breath.
He resumed his strokes, but glanced back and noticed one of Willy’s arms extended out over the water, fingers skimming at first, but then cutting
deeper into the surface. The fingers infuriated Dash. They were slowing the momentum, creating drag that was responsible for his bleeding hands and the brutal throbbing in his shoulders. It was Willy’s fault his body was turning into one big infected tooth. Dash fought an impulse to turn and smash him with the paddle, make him pay for his suffering. But he kept pulling the long strokes, sometimes keeping count, then losing his place. He paddled into a morning fog that echoed back his grunts, as though some other sorry bastard was in the same predicament, just out of view, grimy feet half submerged in briny water turning red as his life also drained away.
He took a final stroke when the sun reached its apex, a merciless prison spotlight with no shadows. The sea was gray and nearly still, and there seemed to be no birds. When he looked behind, Willy was almost clear, his body leaning so far back that his head touched the sea, bulb submerged. The bow should be high in the air with all the weight so far aft, but then Dash realized Willy probably weighed no more than a bad dream.
“You could have saved her,” Dash hissed, drooling despite his thirst and ruined lips. He wished for the strength to push the former god overboard. “You did nothing. I made you up, and now I’m done with you.”
He let the paddle slide from his hands, quarter-size bits of skin attached like barnacles. He half-rose, then lunged forward to the short bow seat and grabbed at his sleeping mat. The bristled edges sent lightning bolts across his vision, the pain so raw and unbelievable because nothing could possibly hurt so much. He swooned, his world going dark for seconds or maybe minutes, his own animal panting the first thing he was conscious of when his senses returned. He dropped from the bench to his knees, then curled against the side of the hull. Using only his fingertips, he tugged the mat over himself to hide from the sun.
* * *
He slept for hours. The sun dropped enough to throw shadows over half the skiff. The volcano smoked on the horizon, creating a vertical line that combined with the island to form an exclamation mark, although a high-altitude wind would eventually bend it into a question. He examined the mess he’d made of hands that now involuntarily pulled into claws. He tried shielding his palms from the sun, then leaned over the side of the skiff and plunged them into the cool seawater. The first seconds were bliss, the immaculate relief of soothing salve. Then he heard the shrieks—of someone or something, a pig caught in a leg hold trap, a siren stuck in the on position with a broken switch. Dash screamed his throat raw, holding his damaged hands out in front as the minutes passed.