by Cole Alpaugh
Dash noticed Willy lurking in the protected water up to his thighs, twenty yards from where two women were fishing with circular throwing nets. Willy was only half solid, the breakers out beyond the reef visible through his upper torso. Willy eyed the women at work, his muscular arms flexing, hands making wide, sweeping motions. The women stood back to back, at a slight angle, casting the nets out in identical spinning arcs. It took Dash a moment to understand Willy’s strange, traffic cop motions, as he was now signaling with his entire body, looking down over the clear water. Willy was directing schools of silvery fish toward the women’s outspread nets.
Manu handed Dash a six-inch section of bamboo plugged at both ends and motioned for him to drink. The water was hot from sitting in a sunny patch next to a pile of spare paddles, but he opened and drained the container in two gulps.
Manu led the group along a jungle path Dash had never seen. It was slightly uphill, even more cave-like than the one connecting the village to the island’s southern tip. No light penetrated and the heat was stifling. Dash could hear dozens of low voices when they approached the bright opening of the compound, as if an important meeting was going on instead of the usual busy work of preparing food and fixing broken things. The children weren’t screaming or laughing, or out of breath from chasing balls.
The fresh air struck Dash’s sweat-drenched body like a bucket of ice water, as Manu led them to the center of the village where the entire population was gathered. They walked to the spot where the Yule tree had been the night Tiki had given him his gift. Dash frantically patted his mostly naked body, as though trying to find car keys in a winter coat. His hands froze, and again he saw the smooth amber disk disappear into the foam and the surge that must have drawn it straight out to sea. Some fish would bolt from the deep and swallow it whole, or a fucking bird would snatch it in its talons to feed its young.
The guards had fallen back, and it was only Dash and Manu who were enveloped by the hushed mass of brown flesh. Dash briefly wondered if this was where the boat thief would be set upon, torn apart by people who’d endured years of murder and kidnapping by people whose skin matched his. Their faces gave nothing away. There were no tight lips or furrowed brows, and no smiles either. They weren’t his enemies, but he might very well be theirs. Manu stood close, shoulder to shoulder, while Dash looked from face to face, seeing the people, fifteen deep in places. Children in the outer perimeter were jumping up and down for a glimpse, little faces appearing and disappearing as if they were riding pogo sticks. So many faces, all with calm expressions, bright white eyes shifting from him to Manu, waiting for the chief’s next order as the old man seemed to gather his thoughts.
The volcano spoke first with a low growl, the sound of a dog’s bad dream. Then a gassy hiss from high above followed, and a few heads turned for a peek. The smoke drifted sideways from the mountain, turned the haze a deeper blue, the stink of rotten eggs ten times worse. The volcano had its own stash of hidden eggs, Dash thought, smiling as he recalled his dead father’s bedtime story. Several people flashed toothy grins in return, but only for a second.
The ground shivered and a flock of small birds took flight from trees on one side of the village clearing. They zigged and zagged with one mind, soaring over the crowd and then finding safety in an identical tree on the opposite side. Not nearly far enough, Dash could have told them, as he watched a few stragglers join the rest. You’ll need to find a good warm wind, one leading to a place that’ll hold together through a storm or two and keep you out of the mouths of sharks and away from dancing bait.
Manu cleared his throat for attention, and Dash could feel the circle collapse farther inward. He could close his eyes and count the people by heat and smell.
“There will be no white baby to offer the soldiers.” Manu’s voice was strong and convincing, commanding respect, like that of an old-time news anchor, back when television was black and white. No wonder he was chief. You didn’t question that voice, just waited for the next order, prepared to act without hesitation. It was the voice of a jetliner captain.
The people pressed into Dash to hear the plan, the volcano shaking their footing, ruffling the walls of their homes. Hanging metal pots swung over cooking fires; the pigs in their corral squealing for food or a chance to outrun the volcano. The birds had vanished from the tree top, and Dash wondered if they’d taken his advice.
“The Volcano God speaks clearly of her desire for sacrifice,” said Manu. “And she will protect us as she has since our fathers were summoned to her shadow. We will present her gift the night the moon is in balance and shows half its face.”
Dash felt something creep along his injured right hand with the probing legs of a spider. His three middle fingers were encircled by Tiki’s small moist hand. He looked down to see her tear-streaked face tilted up to the crowding villagers. Dash was confused when Manu’s speech resumed—the words scrambled, nonsensical—and then realized the chief had switched to his native language. Heads nodded all around as Manu spoke faster, words less measured. The crowd murmured, Dash sensing instructions were being given and agreed to by the people.
Dash’s fingers were squeezed tighter when the surrounding faces turned downward at Tiki and cast accusing eyes at her doomed soul.
“The Volcano wants me, too,” she whispered up to him, as if reading his mind.
Chapter 28
A sliver of moon arced across the cruddy sky, nearly invisible until the dull sun dropped below the treetops. Dash knew it was a waning crescent from an intro to astronomy course, knew it had been up there all day, leading the sun across the sky’s dome even though it couldn’t be seen most of the time. He never suspected the lesson would come to bear so much weight on his existence.
The countdown would begin for real when the moon rose in full shadow to follow the sun, then make a tandem plunge into the western sea. It would mark seven days until its white and black faces came into balance—what his professor called a first quarter moon—and send him and the girl off a cliff and into the volcano’s fire. He dared to hope another crescent would rise that dawn, allow more time for a miracle, if only for the girl’s sake.
He sat up in the former love hut, watching the burly backs of two men guarding the opening. He’d listened to the village sounds as days and nights dragged by. The casual, workaday vibe changed, anxiety hanging in the air heavy as the foul stench. Mothers scolded roughhousing soccer players in sharper tones; the men developed short tempers, back from fishing or tending the taro with chips on their shoulders, ready for a fight.
He listened to scuffles, the sounds of slapping skin and animal grunts, and feet shuffling in the dirt for leverage. The confrontations started and ended quickly, and he decided these people were more comfortable being a society of victims than fighters. Going to battle would never be in their blood. But the bickering increased, regular arguments in sing-song words, as the volcano kept the village shrouded in putrid fog.
Healing hands itched in a way he could not scratch, and sunburned skin peeled in fat strips over scabby blisters on his shoulders and back. His beard, long enough to see if he pulled it from his chin, had turned blond from the salt and sun, or maybe fear had made it white. He ate bowls of tasteless fish and rice twice a day, drank watered-down clap-clap from a tall jug. He huddled on death row in a cell made of bamboo, grass, and woven fronds, waiting for Tiki to come, but fearing the news she might bring, that the moon’s orbit had sped up, a mighty shove given by a volcano impatient to feast.
He thought about his mother, had developed a new kind of empathy for her craziness. She’d had her finely crafted baby dolls to confer with, while he now spoke to half empty bowls, usually when the jug was spent. Sarah had ridiculed her for believing the dolls were alive, but how many movies had they sat through with his fiancée wiping away tears? Sarah, caught up in fiction, wept for imaginary things, laughing and jeering at villains and heroes who were all phony. She’d squeezed his hand, braced for death or survival that wa
s nothing but light and shade cast upon a painted white screen. Any cheating fiancée should be sentenced to nights in a black cave filled with spiders and watched over by cynical gods. Perhaps it would soften a few heartless souls.
Dash fell out of love on a sleeping mat still scented with oils from a failed night of sex. “You can have her,” he told the backs of his guards. “You hear me, Curly? You got that, Moe? Don’t leave her alone with that Tommy guy, and you’ll be hunky dory, live happily ever after.” They ignored his offer, but he didn’t care.
The pregnant woman who brought his food lingered while he picked at the burned fish. She knelt with her arms folded across her belly, as if wanting to speak, or maybe only to observe a condemned man up close. She watched him eat, then spoke slowly, telling him that Manu wanted him at the drinking circle when he was finished. But she hesitated, had something more to say.
He sipped bitter water, offered her the empty cup when she took his uneaten food.
“It’s wrong for you to die,” she finally whispered, then got to her feet and walked out. She paused for a brief exchange with the guards, who let Dash pass a few minutes later.
* * *
The clap-clap circle was aglow. Every other man held a coconut candle in front, eerie shadows cast on their haggard faces. Dash was woozy after one round, but grateful to see Willy amble up and seem to sit on top of two men to his right. His semi-translucent body settled over their spots, seemed to possess both until one of the men sneezed, and then wiped his nose on his forearm. It was clear the three were simply sharing the space, Willy with his own cup and jug, one in each hand, apparently off the wagon.
The man on Dash’s left drank and spit. He held the cup out, and Dash raised it in a toast. “Long live the fish!” He sipped and spit, then passed it on as Willy chugged his own private stash. The two men trapped inside Willy’s aura were more fidgety than the others. They kept looking back over their shoulders, rubbing at their ears as though they were plugged with water.
“I thought you quit drinking,” Dash asked the former god, and the men on either side of Willy shrugged and looked toward their chief.
“Our ancestors came to this island from a distant land.” Manu’s voice silenced the boozy murmurs, although Willy hummed and poured a refill. “They traveled beneath mighty sails, in boats wide and flat, to carry the pigs and goats, all their possessions.”
“My mother came from a fish tank,” said Willy, who was double the size of the man next to him but had a voice much smaller than the chief’s.
“The journey took two cycles of the moon,” said Manu. “They left their homeland under a black face moon to show faith in their gods. They knew they would be taken care of, that their gods were closest when the moon was hidden.”
“My mother was a special attraction on a passenger steam ship sailing under a British flag,” said Willy, draining another cup. “On board were a hundred children of wealthy aristocrats being sent overseas to study. Couple of young bucks snuck into the dining room late one night, when it was dark like this. Thought it would be a hoot to steal my mother from the tank over the bar, put her in their girlfriends’ wash basin as a practical joke. Imagine turning on the light and finding something like this?” Willy tapped a finger to his head, the fleshy bulb pulsing to illuminate his sharp teeth.
The men inside Willy looked up at the sky, then rubbed their eyes hard.
“Twenty-eight brave explorers on two boats,” Manu continued. “They fished and collected rainwater, and might have traveled ten more moons had the Storm God not made herself known.”
“Girls screamed bloody murder when they found her,” said Willy. “Dropped their toothbrushes and bolted out of the crapper. Somebody in the hall pulled the fire alarm, put the entire ship into a frenzy. The boys knew they were up shit’s creek if the crew found the stolen fish. They grabbed my mother and wrapped her in a bath towel. Bastards ran out onto the main deck with the other passengers, who were half asleep, stumbling around in pajamas.”
“One boat was lost in the current and never seen again,” said Manu. “But seven men and seven women were summoned to these shores by the Volcano’s orange eye on the black horizon.”
“They threw her overboard in the middle of nowhere,” said Willy, slamming an open palm into the dirt. Some of the men felt the impact and watched the rising plume. “Imagine living your whole life in a glass case, fed all the juicy shrimp you can eat, water changed every month. And then to be dropped twenty meters into the wide-open ocean by some pinhead teenagers.”
The cup came around to Dash, and Willy held his own out to him. They mimicked clinking them together, both mouthing the word ‘cheers.’
“We owe everything we are and everything we will become to the Volcano God,” said Manu, who glanced up into the dark.
“One of the men on the lost boat caught my mother on a hook baited with a dead grasshopper. She would have been starving by then, as were the humans. But as hungry as they were, they didn’t eat her. She was like no fish they’d ever seen, and they took her as a sign from a god they didn’t know. They filled a bucket with seawater and fed her the remaining bait. I never told you how much I look like her. And my father, too.” Willy pointed to the lump on his jaw that had a small tail growing from it.
“The Volcano is the mightiest of gods, and accepts our sacrifice as a sign of faith. The stronger the belief, the more powerful is the god,” said Manu, voice booming.
“The lost ship beached on a beautiful island three days later,” said Willy. “Rich soil as black as coal, and fresh water springs that trickled down from rolling hills. They set my mother free in a crystal lagoon, where I was born a few months later.”
“The Volcano God has provided the soil to grow a bounty to feed our people,” said Manu.
“Our soil sprouted withered seed from a thousand mile journey, was as fertile as the women who brought a half-dozen babies that first year,” said Willy, digging his fingers into the hard ground next to his thigh. “Not like this dust. She doesn’t care for her people. No loving god would spit poison ash, tolerate earth like this. The storm slaughtered my people, but not because I didn’t provide. I showed my soul through things I gave.” Willy’s voice trailed off as he refilled his cup. There was silence around the circle before he resumed speaking. “And I planted the dead like they’d planted tubers to grow their taro.”
Dash rubbed his scabs, the clap-clap masking the constant itch.
“You hope good things grow in their place.” Willy’s voice was low, as though not to disturb the men he’d consumed, the two small brown bodies now moving in slow motion, hands out in front to explore the surface of an invisible wall, eyes glued to a dangling light. “Not just weeds and more vines, but something special,” said Willy.
“No more stolen children, no more violations. I have the Volcano God’s promise that we will be free,” said Manu, and the circle nodded and muttered, bodies rocking, all of them drunk. “Peace will rain down when the moon is right and her belly is full.”
Willy turned to the chief, whose trembling hands were busy with the cup. “You have it wrong, old man,” said Willy, jerking a thumb toward Dash. “You might as well be praying to this guy’s sweaty rabbit for a chocolate egg.”
The men inside Willy’s body were clinging to each another, reciting the same muffled sing-song phrase over and over, when a sudden burst of wind blew out the candles around the circle. The captive pair found themselves free, and began rubbing dust from tearing eyes.
Willy was gone.
Chapter 29
Dash longed for his cushiony airplane seat and the tide pool where the sea delivered surprises twice daily. He was allowed onto his front steps, a pair of stone slabs that were uncomfortable under his boney ass. When the breeze flooded his hut with sour air, he sat outside picking scabs from both palms, missing his dark cave and even the elusive spiders and old urine stink.
The four young men who’d pulled him from the waves were his constan
t chaperones, although they mostly sat bored in the hut’s shadow. They never used English, always traditional words in shorts bursts, as if everything they spoke was a command. Dash assumed they addressed him that way for the same reason that their eyes were filled with resentment and the muscles at the back of their jaws flexed when they looked at him. Dash knew that after killing him slowly they would eat his heart, delivering justice for every crime his color had committed.
“Good for you, Moe,” Dash would say when he caught one staring. “Good for you. I’d hate me just as much.”
When he needed the outhouse, one escort would get up and trudge behind. If he lingered near the compound’s wild green perimeter, the guard would cross his arms as if tempting him to try something stupid. Dash wished for the mettle to use the element of surprise, maybe shout a few lines of AC/DC lyrics and leap for the nearest tree, swinging from vine to vine, away and free.
“I bet you miss fishing,” he told the guard. “I bet your girlfriend is skinny dipping in the lagoon with some handsome new boy toy right about now. You think you know her, but I can tell you plenty of stories.”
The guards remained stoic, but there was no mistaking the fire in their eyes.
“Hey, Tarzan, maybe I can talk the Chief into throwing you in with me,” Dash told the tallest of the group, who was also the surliest. He had pockmarked cheeks and a small scar across his upper lip that gave him a look of perpetual contempt. “Synchronized diving is an Olympic sport. We only get one shot at a medal, but no guts no glory.”
The guard only grunted as he followed Dash to the cut where the six pigs were fenced. Dash had smuggled a piece of fish from his dinner, tossed it to the smallest pig, a gray runt always on the outside of food scrums. The smaller pig hesitated, sniffed the morsel first as if it couldn’t believe its fortune or didn’t trust who’d thrown it. One of the other pigs snatched it away and gobbled it down, demanded more as the rest of them converged, ramming one another, snouts first.