by Cole Alpaugh
And they had finally spoken. Actually, she’d spoken to him when she leaned across the narrow aisle where she sat to his right. He flinched away at first, thinking maybe she dropped her number two pencil, didn’t want to be the guy who head-butted her like a total dork. But she hadn’t bent over, just moved in so her face was real close to his. He could smell her perfume or body wash, or whatever girls splashed themselves with to smell so awesome. He could feel his dopey smile, waiting for her to crack a joke about Mrs. Harbough’s blooming pit stains, ready to snicker along. It was going to be great, until he saw Lisa’s nose wrinkle, and her beautiful lips pucker as if she’d tasted something sour.
She sniffed twice, then cocked her head sideways. “You smell like mildew.” Lisa’s voice was loud enough for other kids to turn and look at the kid with the funny odor.
“I would have gotten an instant nickname if she’d used a different word,” said Dash. “At least she used a word that wasn’t catchy. So I was Mildew Boy for a couple days, but no big deal. It would have been worse if she said I smelled like moldy cheese or a dirty jock strap. How’s it goin’, Stinky Cheese? That would have lasted.”
“Not a great crowd to help get you through your dad’s death, huh?”
Dash shook his head. “I knew two other kids who lost a parent. Danny’s mom died of cancer, and Jenna’s old man was killed in a car wreck. That was a drunk driving thing. Don’t know if her dad was drunk, or if it was the other driver. Not that it mattered, right? Same result.”
“Both kids were treated differently than you.”
Dash was quiet for a minute. He remembered going to church services for each family, and it seemed like the entire town had turned out. It was a rare time when kids hung with parents instead of collecting in their own groups and moving off to find something more interesting. You had the feeling some cosmic balance was off, and being with your folks was safer. Men were bawling their eyes out. Men who wore greasy work shirts and dark blue uniform pants during the day were filling up handkerchiefs with snot and tears, and didn’t seem the least bit embarrassed. It made teenagers cling to their parents seeing that. You could look down into a coffin at somebody’s dead mom easier than you could look at a grown man cry.
“There were those big yellow chrysanthemums at the service for Danny’s mom. I remember ladies saying they were her favorite. The whole church had that smell. I don’t know how anyone could think it was good. Made the air so thick that I had to work to keep from gagging.”
“They didn’t come when your dad died,” Willy said. “Not most of them.”
Dash had looked back over his shoulder in the church, his suit coat two sizes too small, but who could blame his mom for not being in a shopping mood after her husband cut open both his wrists? By that time, Lisa Pederson had pointed out he smelled like mildew, and sure enough, that was exactly the odor coming off his old suit. The smell was probably worse than all his other clothes combined, but Lisa had been the first to point it out, to show her disgust by crinkling her nose.
“At least I didn’t smell like those fucking chrysanthemums,” Dash told Willy, who was slowly shaking his big fish head, light a steady glow.
“They weren’t just cuts on your father’s wrists, though, were they?”
Dash took a deep breath, tapped the flat part of the blade on his thigh. “Christ, it was like he took it all out on himself with a steak knife. He hacked away with one hand, then was able to switch up and do a pretty equal job on the other wrist. It was like something you read off the metro wire at the paper. Something some kid on crack or meth might do.”
“Why’d he do it?”
“You can read my mind. You already know everything.”
“We’re friends talking. It’s good to get it out, it helps.”
“That was the big joke. Mildew Boy’s crooked father slit his wrists because of an old table. Let me try and remember.” Dash paused, looked up at the clear sky. “Technically, it was known as a French carved-oak barley-twist center table. But an old table is just an old table when there’s a good piece of gossip to share around.”
“What was it about the table?”
“It was a fake, just like all the other crap in the shop. He’d sold it for something like three grand to a guy and his wife supposedly up from Manhattan. A month later, my dad gets a visit from two police detectives. It had been a setup, some kind of sting by the state cops. The paper ate it up, too. My dad had told the undercover couple the table was from an estate sale in the Loire Valley of Central France.”
“Made in China, huh?”
“Hong Kong. Same place all the big ticket inventory came from, the stuff that paid the bills, kept the place open over the years. The stuff that opened up the fat wallets of New York and Boston tourists, and put heating oil in the tank.”
“What did his note say?” Willy asked, and Dash noticed the outline of his wide shoulders begin to waver, and the colors of his hulking body to fade.
“What note?”
“Tell me what his suicide note said. Details keep the plot juicy, make the story sing.”
Dash could see an image of his father’s sweeping script, the feminine handwriting that a few of his teachers commented on when he turned in school notes. He also knew Willy could see the writing, including the red line where blood had run across the middle, cutting in half the oddly formal signature. The note began with an apology to his wife, garbage about how much he loved her and how she’d been his entire world. The last line had been for his teenage son.
Dash leaned back to look at the sky. There were no birds or clouds, no sign of high-flying jets. The volcano was gone, or maybe it was behind him. He didn’t care enough to turn. He cleared his throat, remembering his father’s final message. “ ‘I should have played catch with you,’ ” he said.
They drifted without talking, the water lapping against the hull. Dash wondered how far from land they must be for there not to be a single bird. He’d seen gulls flock around fishing boats like a shaken snow globe, but did they follow tankers along shipping lanes?
“Willy, you ever see a snow globe?”
Willy flashed a pincushion smile, gills opening and closing. “We’re in the globe, my friend,” he said. “We’re in the globe.”
They were quiet again, at the mercy of the current, water making the only noise until Dash spoke.
“On the plane, right before it crashed,” he began, then coughed to clear his throat, “there was a voice on the intercom calling for someone.”
“Cindy,” Willy said, and gooseflesh broke out across Dash’s damaged skin.
“Right. The voice kept calling for Cindy. I don’t think it was the captain.”
But Willy was shaking his head even before Dash could ask. “Maybe you imagined it,” he said. “Or maybe it was another lonely person who knew he was about to die. You can relate to that, right?”
The silence between them came back and stayed.
Dash tossed the knife overboard when the sun began dipping into the horizon. The blade caught the orange and yellow rays twice as it rotated through the air, winking at him before slicing into the dark surface. Dash knew for certain he’d carve the same brutal grooves in his own wrists if he didn’t get rid of it before spending another night alone.
Chapter 26
The current reversed track and began pulling the skiff into its own wake. Dash watched the cloudless sky rotate, head forced to one side, the remaining coconuts sloshing against his legs. Seagulls had found them. They clamored, flapping filthy wings, shitting in bursts and then swooping down to investigate what each had deposited on the waves. Idiots, he thought, hating the smug bastards who had spied on him for the volcanic shrew who’d surely sent the shark. He was consumed by conspiracy, surrounded by those writing his ticket to martyrdom.
“Valelailai,” he whispered, remembering the day he’d met the wobbly old chief. It was what the whites christened the island, but had it been the soldiers or the missionaries using th
e word ‘toilet’ to rename what he’d first seen as paradise? No big deal, Manu told him. One name is as good as any. “Then I’ll call it Hell,” Dash now said in a hoarse croak. “I’m going to Hell.” His laughter stopped when he coughed a bloody spray across his sunburned chest. He smeared the blistered pad of his right index finger and drew a red smiley face on his gaunt stomach.
The boat drifted, bumping and swaying across the undulating surf. It sometimes strayed, veering either north or south, but eventually it was tugged back on course, just as an errant pupil is chastised into behaving when finally noticed by the distracted teacher.
Willy was silent. Sometimes he was as real as the smooth coconuts at his giant feet; sometimes nothing but wisps of gossamer silk. Out beyond his changing form, another god spewed angry smoke, and had grown fatter around the middle, her rock and dirt waist bulging, threatening to explode in all directions.
“She sent the shark.” Dash looked out over the moving water, knowing the animal wouldn’t return, its job done. He hadn’t been in any danger, could have leaned over and rammed his head into its mouth, and would have been spit out like a dented license plate. It was the Volcano who wanted to eat him.
Willy’s eyes were yellow marbles, his jaw opening and closing only once every half minute or so. His body rocked with the boat’s motion as though he was dead weight, and he showed no sign of hearing Dash’s voice or thoughts.
“Simon says touch your nose,” Dash said. “Simon says take us to Tahiti.” Dash turned his head side to side, looking out over the water. “I guess you’re out, Willy. Take a seat at the end of the boat and pretend you’re dying.”
The skiff continued slow rotations as it was summoned. The brown monolith grew larger, its white smoke more vivid. Dash mostly slept, welcoming even the worst dreams as escape. In one, he married Sarah and they had a baby girl with brown skin. “Love her now,” Sarah told him. “Love her while you can because they are coming to take her away.” And he probably cried out in his sleep, asking who was coming, and why he couldn’t keep his daughter. He held her little body in his arms, determined not to let her go. But then he must have held her too tightly, because she stopped breathing and no amount of shaking could wake her. And then Dash was on his knees in a wide field under a pale sky filled with a scorching sun. A thousand seagulls made lazy circles, and he watched their shadows with wings that were too sharp, bat-like and evil. He could see their heads turn as they passed closer and closer, shadows jerking as their eyes hunted. Dash began pulling at the dirt, scooping and flinging it between his legs like a dog with a bone, his lifeless daughter growing cold in the sweltering heat.
It was in one of these dreams that he realized his daughter’s name was Cindy.
* * *
They drifted three days, not a single cloud blotting the sun for even a second. It was his punishment, one he accepted and endured with blistering lips and a blazing fever. He sprawled on the skiff’s smooth floor; the few inches of salt water he lay in had turned hot—a soup of blood, puss, and what little urine had trickled from his emaciated body. The smiley face he’d made on his stomach was mostly washed away; only part of one eye and the corner of its smile remained.
As they got closer, Dash pictured the volcano as a steam locomotive, heard the chugging engine strain against metal brakes, and he was going to be late. He found himself wanting to hurry back, willing the waves to pull faster. Inside the volcano would be dark and blessedly full of shade. He couldn’t imagine ever thinking anything different; couldn’t imagine not wanting to be out of the sun, tucked away inside something so willing to envelop his body and end his suffering.
Willy had been jostled to an odd position, legs up and ankles crossed on one side of the hull. The bottoms of his feet, which had lost color from days of soaking, were puffy and lined with deep cracks.
A yellow flash near those huge feet caught Dash’s attention, and he had to blink his crusty eyes to focus on the small bird perched on Willy’s pinky toe. The bird preened, stretched its delicate wings, and then froze with its head cocked toward Willy’s face. Another flash of yellow and the bird landed on the fantastic creature’s brawny shoulder, head tilted to inspect the dangling appendage in front of those awesome teeth. The bird was tantalized by the lure’s herky-jerky motion, and the fleshy bulb pulsed brighter, as though Willy was working all the angles to draw the creature in. The bird made sideways steps, edging toward the bands of iron neck tendons for a better shot at the mesmerizing prey. It was the hunter being hunted, as the bird coiled its toothpick legs and tensed for attack. The bird flung itself upward, legs unsprung, wings beating in a bright flourish.
Willy’s mouth snapped open and shut. The bird was simply no more. Dash watched the muscles in Willy’s neck work, might have heard bones crunch.
“Dinner is served,” Dash told the air where the bird had been. Perhaps the god, if he was one, cracked a smile.
The water bucket was long dry and Dash didn’t bother with the remaining coconuts. He hadn’t seen the stone he brought to pry them open, assumed it went overboard with the paddle. He only watched the billowing smoke until the southern tip of the island was visible over newly sprouted whitecaps. The heavenly airplane seats were there behind his tide pool, and good old Manu had brought a greeting party of four strapping young warriors. The five brown men in funny underpants waited patiently. No one shifted from foot to foot. No one pulled a pocket watch from a dirty waistband to frown and shake his head. They were all on the Volcano God’s time, knew Dash would arrive soon enough.
Someone will have to go for a paddle if they want to get this thing back to the lagoon, he thought guiltily. The one he’d lost probably took days to carve, and even though he hadn’t summoned the shark, it was his fault for stealing the boat in the first place.
And then Dash saw Willy’s mighty hands squeeze hard, as if bracing for impact. Willy’s knuckles turned the same color as the skiff’s bleached wood when the bottom struck the rocky shelf, spinning sideways in the surf. The next wave was larger, the sun suddenly eclipsed by Dash’s scrawny legs as the skiff rolled. He watched Tiki’s little amber disk go airborne and tumble into the foam.
The noise of the locomotive was overwhelming as the train dragged him down and ran him over.
Chapter 27
Dash tumbled across the jagged lava, spinning and rolling with the rushing water. Wave after wave pushed and pulled, and he barely managed gulps of air. He heard shouting over the thunder, and glimpsed muscular brown legs beating against the tide. Strong hands under his armpits lifted and then lugged his limp body, the tops of his feet bumping along. His shins burned and blood ran from his elbows. The other men charged past, probably to recover the skiff.
He was carried to Manu, where they set him down on bruised knees. Salt water released from his sinuses, gushing over his mouth and off his chin. He coughed hard and spit bloody foam onto the rocks.
“Ocean is bad place for you, Cracker. She keeps chewing you up, spitting you out. Maybe you taste bad.”
Dash tried swallowing, wanted to tell Manu that you didn’t have to be a drunken old chief to be visited by a Volcano God. Hell, he’d even gotten up close and personal with one of her bootlicking minions dressed in a shark suit.
Fuck you, he wanted to say more than anything.
“Every man must strive for freedom. So many of my people died because I did not understand where real freedom lives.” Manu put a hand on his bony chest and tapped. “I did not know to listen to the gods. To respect their will. To accept sacrifice with an open heart.”
Dash mouthed the word ‘sacrifice’ and wanted to laugh. His father used the word a thousand times. At least it wasn’t part of his final letter. That would have been a little too rich. Manu squinted, leathery face filling with deep wrinkles, perhaps mistaking Dash’s disgust for revelation. The old man rubbed his chin and nodded.
“Sacrifice,” said Manu. “Sacrifice brings freedom. I give my blood every time the white soldiers come
. My flesh and blood leaves on their boat.”
The skiff skidded across the rocks behind, and Dash craned his neck to see if Willy was still aboard. He no longer wanted inside the volcano, but to curl up alone in his spider-infested cave. Sulfur was heavy in the air, the blue haze even here where the steady breeze kept mosquitoes at bay. He tried twisting from the iron grip of the men clamped to each shoulder, but they held him down with ease.
Manu spoke in his native tongue, waved an arm for them all to head back up the path Dash had crept along under cover of darkness. The two men walking at his sides were now his guards. Dehydrated and trickling blood from dozens of small cuts, he imagined making a break for it. Unable to get away in a boat, he’d tackle one of those big birds that nested in underground burrows. Surely he was sufficiently emaciated for a piggy-back ride to the nearest cargo ship bound for civilization. Wouldn’t a man riding a bird be a more difficult target for rocks slung from a volcano? Those bastard sharks could circle and snap their jaws all they wanted while he prodded the bird with imaginary spurs. The birds owed him, after all.
He was out of breath when the path opened to the mouth of the lagoon, his heart pounding, chest heaving. The guards allowed him to bend and grab his bloody knees. The skiff was lowered onto the narrow strip of sand and given a once-over, four hands running along the inner and outer surface. The men, who found plenty to complain about, grumbled to each other and the chief.