Dash in the Blue Pacific

by Cole Alpaugh

  “You’d get a real charge out of stomping me into the ground and tossing me in there.” Dash poked a thumb at the pigs still jockeying for position, greedily licking the mud where the fish had bounced, “but at least I tried to do something. I didn’t sit on my ass while my loved ones were dragged into this jungle and raped. How many sisters have they taken? How many nieces and cousins have you watched disappear on their boat? Did you wave goodbye, you bastard?”

  The guard, his black underpants even dingier than the rest, hair tied with grass rope, did not move, but stood with his hands at his sides. Dash suddenly couldn’t take his eyes off the scar—a one-inch white slash that drew the man’s upper lip away from his teeth ever so slightly. Rage welled, burned in his joints and flooded his wasted muscles. Other than acne, it was the only mark his huge body had sustained, one insignificant nick while he’d allowed the girls to be devastated, kidnapped into the worst of all worlds.

  “You fucker,” he hissed, but only the pigs answered. Dash took one lunging step forward, right hand balled into a loose fist, injured skin allowing for nothing more. He swung a looping roundhouse blow that connected with the scar and teeth behind. Dash lost balance and stumbled to the hard earth that smelled of pig shit and spoiled food, scraping open the wounds on his knees. The guard’s dusty feet were the same dark brown as the rest of his skin, but Dash noticed a distinct line of contrasting shades that extended from toe to heel. The man’s hidden flesh was much lighter, almost white on the bottom. And then the feet turned and walked away, flashing Dash with every step.

  * * *

  Tiki was waiting in his hut. She sat folded up in the back corner as if hiding. Her voice was tiny. “I’m sorry for ruining your pile of wood.”

  He shuffled across the bamboo floor hunched from the low roof to sit facing her. Her hair had been chopped off in spots, a lopsided cut that looked self-inflicted. “I’m sorry I left you.”

  “I wasn’t pretty enough to go with the soldiers. I was only pretty enough to be hurt.”

  “Being pretty had nothing to do with it. Those men are monsters. Evil.” It killed him to look at her. She’d been crying, mud-stained tears tracing vertical lines down her cheeks. He wanted to touch her face, but his hands were a mess. He put them palm up on her knees, and she reached down to feel his damaged skin. She drew soft outlines with the tip of one index finger, sketching paths over the rough texture. He could feel her wounds through that finger, but only the very surface.

  “I think I want to die,” she said.

  And then he was weeping, taking back his hands to hide his face. “I wish I could make everything better,” he said. “I tried to find help because I didn’t know what else to do. I couldn’t protect you. I lost your gift. It fell in the water.”

  She tugged his hands back down and held on. “When I dream that I’m with Mama and then wake up, I get mad at the gods. I get so mad that I scream how much I hate them. Sometimes it’s hard to believe in anything.”

  He leaned forward and she let go of his wrists, then practically knocked him over, throwing her arms around his neck and clinging. He hugged her back, careful not to squeeze too hard. They rocked that way until her body stopped hitching. He let her go, and she sat back to wipe her face.

  “Maybe we can each half-believe,” he said. “Together, it’ll be like a single person who’s one of those Holy-Rolling Bible thumpers.”

  She smiled. “What’s a bible thumper?”

  He had to pause. “Someone who believes so hard that they don’t tolerate anyone who thinks differently.”

  “Like the missioners,” she said, “and like Manu, I guess.”

  Dash didn’t say that murdering your child put you right at the top of the zealot category, whether you were on a remote South Pacific island or on some cult ranch in rural Texas.

  “It’s one more night until the black face moon,” she said, looking beyond him to the hut’s opening.

  He quickly counted the eight days they had to live. “We just call it a ‘new’ moon. It’s the opposite of a full moon.”

  “New moon,” she repeated. “That sounds nice. Things are new because the moon goes black?”

  “I learned it in school, but don’t remember. It means the moon’s phase is starting over, or maybe just ended.”

  “We call it a black face moon because everything is hidden in the dark, and you can’t see a face, even if you are looking right at it. It’s when they come to be near us.”

  “Who comes?”

  “The gods,” she said. “They walk in the jungle all around, but only when it’s darkest. They want to be close to us and feel our love. But they know how scared we’d be if we could see them.”

  He thought of Willy’s encounter with the boys along the shoreline. “That doesn’t sound like something Manu told you.”

  “No, Mama told me when I was little. I remember, though. I remember everything she told me, even though I was a baby. You’re lucky to still have a mama. You don’t have a papa, though.”

  “No, he died when I was in school.”

  “How did he die?”

  “His heart was sick. One minute he was alive, and then he wasn’t.”

  “Were you sad, too? I cried until the village was flooded by little girl tears when Mama was killed. That’s what the grownups said.”

  “I was sad for my mom, but I was mostly sad about things that never happened. And when he died there was no chance for them to ever happen. Does that make sense?”

  “I guess.”

  “My father didn’t play with me. I was jealous of boys whose dads would kick balls with them and throw a football in their yard. Or go skiing with them.”

  “Skiing?”

  “It’s like sledding from the Yule songs, only you stand on plastic boards and slide down a mountain on snow.”

  “I love snow,” she said, nodding, and he thought of the ash that fell on their ceremony once a year.

  “Me too.”

  “I still want Mama to brush my hair, and put it in braids.” She fingered her curls. “What did your papa do instead of playing?”

  “He worked in his antique shop. That’s a place that sells old furniture and things. He worked every day, all day long, even in the slow season when my mother could manage by herself. He went to flea markets and garage sales on weekends. That’s where people put old belongings they don’t want out in front of their houses to sell.”

  “Your papa took their garbage?”

  “Yeah, pretty much.”

  “I’d rather play with a ball than garbage.”

  “It was a treasure hunt,” he said. “Like when we hunted for things on the beach. He always talked about finding a painting from a famous artist. Or coming across priceless jewelry.”

  “Things people put in their garbage by mistake?”

  “Yes, that’s right.”

  “You shouldn’t keep stuff like that. You should tell the people what they did wrong. They’d be happy that you found it and gave it back.”

  “You’re right,” he said. “Things are different where I’m from. Some are worse, some are better.”

  She looked up at him. “Your people would never throw anybody into a volcano.”

  “There aren’t volcanoes anywhere near where I’m from,” he said, but figured there were plenty of gangs and mobsters who would happily take advantage of any volcanoes popping up near metro hubs. “Most of my people believe in very different things.”

  She shook her head. “But you stopped believing in anything.”

  He smiled, thinking again of Willy and the boys he’d frightened so badly. “My father used to say that seeing is believing. It’s why he didn’t believe in God.”

  “Okay,” she said. “Then I have something to show you. But you’re going to have to be really, really quiet, or they won’t come.”

  Chapter 30

  Dash woke from a dream of oiled dancing women when something began tapping his forehead and then squeezed his nostrils shu
t.

  “Shhhh.” Tiki let her fingers slide from his face. “Don’t make noise. We have to be more quiet than ever.”

  As he rose to his feet, the wooden floor creaked as he’d never heard, the thatched grass asking questions when it brushed his hair. The stone slabs rocked the earth with tiny landslides that might have filled the mouths of snoring guards curled up on their mats. They tiptoed over crushed shells and through ash, swept into piles. The last coal from a dying fire blinked twice and stayed black.

  She led him away without fire or moon for light, the stars no longer able to penetrate the volcanic fog. The only sound was the whispered counting of her steps in the pitch-black darkness, something she’d practiced in daylight. He held her hand, trusted where she took him despite his fear of what might be inches away.

  She brought them toward a point of light hovering low to the ground. She pulled the candle from its shallow resting place and tugged him along a path. The flame was held high, a beacon dripping wax over her wrist. They skirted the edge of the clearing where the bees slept, Dash walking extra softly to avoid crushing any scouts and provoking a new attack. They pressed on, into the wide taro field, stalks too narrow to support elephant ear leaves that were perked up to hear distant lions.

  They ducked beneath leaning trees and hurried through silky webs that ignited in bursts, and the flame worried him. The farther they made their way along what was more an animal trail than human path, the more trapped they’d be if the candle went out.

  He sensed the expedition’s vital nature and didn’t want to spoil her secret mission with his worries, even though he could barely take his eyes from the fragile flame.

  She handed him the candle when necessary. When she needed both hands to climb over a set of downed palms, the rotted wood teeming with shiny black bugs, some flashing oversized pincers resembling the letter C. He carefully returned the candle and followed, mindful of where he put each bare hand and foot. They startled dozens of rats, which meant the biggest snakes would be out hunting.

  Tiki hesitated beyond a small patch of open jungle where newly fallen trees had pulled down a tangle of vines, had a hard time deciding which way the path continued. The fog was thinner, allowing a blue glow to wash over the scene. Lit by stars, the landscape might have been an animal burial ground for enormous creatures, a maze of twisted rib bones and lifeless tails.

  “Is there an easier way?” he asked.

  “Yes, but it’s much longer.” She walked on, the candle lighting the trail of bent weeds and tracks of much smaller animals than what would have been ancestors to the decaying skeletons they climbed through. “This is a shortcut.”

  He followed her back under the canopy, into a shroud of fat leaves and wispy hanging creepers.

  “How much longer?” He knew he sounded like a child in the backseat of a car on a road trip, but the scabs on his legs had torn and the candle lit almost nothing. The darkness was dizzying, the uneven ground hard on his knees and back.

  “Shhhh.” She reached back to tug him forward. The air was hot and noisy, and he could feel them gaining elevation. “No more talk. We’re getting close.”

  “We’re going up the volcano?” he whispered, but she didn’t answer.

  Another fifty paces and she stopped and turned, the flame under her face casting stark shadows. He worried about the drip of sweat on her chin, whether it was big enough to douse their only light. “Just a little more, but they won’t come if they hear you. This is our last chance to see them.”

  He wanted to ask who they were, wanted to tell her he had no interest in meeting anyone or anything out here in the jungle, but she began pulling him along like a toy wagon on rusty wheels. I have one week to live, and don’t want to be stranded chest deep in quicksand listening to hungry growls and circling footsteps.

  The air cooled when she led them through an opening and back into the open air. They stood breathing hard at the foot of an enormous mound of glistening black shards that reminded him of a quarry back home. She led them up the hill at an angle, using one hand for balance. The lava here had been pulverized and deposited by a violent geologic event. When they were above the treetops and had more useful starlight, he could make sense of what might have happened. The volcano’s hip had sprung a leak, spilling out tons of small black stones that contrasted with its own brown body. The rocks made tinkling, shell-like sounds when they tumbled away beneath them.

  “Is this it?” he asked, but she again grunted for his silence.

  She took them to a plateau on the volcano itself, a spot where the ground was level because the earth had collapsed when the stones had fallen out. They would climb five times as high in seven days. Or maybe it was ten times. They would climb until there was no more climbing to do.

  She pulled him down to the dirt next to her, and he nearly cried out when he saw her blow the flame dead.

  “It’s okay,” she whispered in a voice so soft that he mostly read her lips. “We can go the long way back. It’s under the stars.”

  He would have sat right there until daylight before returning to the jungle with no candle. There hadn’t been the usual swarming mosquitoes, but the air was filled with a symphony of restless legs and wings. He imagined the infinite tiny scenes of fighting and mating going on all around.

  She leaned into him. “No more talk. They will be here soon.”

  He tried to relax, allowed his eyes to adjust. He blinked, then kept them open wide and focused on the lighter spots of the canopy. They had a view all the way to the sea, a black semicircle across the horizon, ocean darker than the land except where the waves broke and boiled. The air was chilly for the first time since he’d been washed up. The stars were an endless carpet of twinkling dots, and he could make out the trail of smoke from the volcano.

  The jungle went silent, as though a switch had been flicked. The vibrating bodies, hoots and squeals, and the beating wings became still all at once. She squeezed his hand, and he could see her white teeth as if she were smiling wide. There was gooseflesh across her naked shoulder and her body shook. She snuggled in closer, and he wrapped an arm around her, trying to give some warmth.

  Looking out into the dark, he imagined this must be what it was like taking your daughter to a movie—a daughter who is mostly naked and covered in cold sweat and dirt because she hasn’t been recently cleaned by a legion of dancing spiders. This was a daughter not worried about too much homework, or a boy who likes her on the bus. She was child who had never tasted a blueberry Pop-Tart, but had already been violated by a stranger and sentenced to die by her father. She was a little girl who mostly wanted a kitten. He squeezed her again, but not too hard. He wished they were thousands of miles away, closer to his world rather than sitting with their backs turned to a not-so-restful volcano.

  More details emerged as his eyes continued to adjust. Their view was out over a rounded clearing, maybe half the size of a football field. It was a wide bowl, with dark sides and a lighter bottom. Strewn across it were downed trees lying crisscrossed, with black smudges he recognized as humps of lava rock. What looked at first like fog was actually low brush, or maybe stray taro brought by thieving rodents that chewed the sweet parts and left pieces to grow and multiply.

  Tiki suddenly flinched as if she’d touched an electric wire, and he heard her suck in a breath but not exhale. One hand pulled free and she pointed, and although he couldn’t see what excited her, wind seemed to rattle the leaves at the left edge of the bowl, a few drooping vines swaying. The clearing was empty, but he watched her eyes follow something from one side to the other. Her eyes were huge, unblinking, and when a patch of jungle was disturbed on the right side, she quickly looked back to the other edge.

  “What do you see?”

  “She was so beautiful. Her hair was like mine, but she was prettier.”

  “Who?”

  She shook her head, calmed her breathing to whisper. “She looked like Mama.”

  “I don’t understand.”


  “They become almost like us. Almost, but not quite. They have bodies like ours to understand how easy it is to fall with only two legs. Stomachs like us to feel hunger and thirst. They have our hearts to know how simple they are to break.”

  “Who, Tiki? I don’t understand.”

  She half turned and spoke slowly, reaching to put a hand flat against his chest, directly over his heart. “The Volcano God came as Mama, wore her eyes and her smile. She put on Mama’s face to be near me.”

  “I couldn’t see her.”

  He heard a sharp sound, a snapping limb, maybe, and both looked toward the field. She patted his chest once, and then clasped her hands together as if to pray. “Another is coming,” she whispered through her fingers. “Look!”

  But he saw only more vines being made to sway, and then shrubs that seemed to flatten, and spots of soft earth that compressed and filled with new shadows. The swirling breeze carried the scent of tropical flowers and salty fish, as well as the distant sound of jumbled voices, as though a radio dial was slowly turned across a hundred stations on a clear summer night.

  She covered her mouth as if to stifle a cry, wide eyes again following the path of something spectacular.

  “I hear them,” he said, and she gave a quick nod.

  “Look!” She pointed to where two palm trees leaned apart and dropped fruit with hollow thuds. “Maybe the sea, or maybe the sun. It’s a giant god, but she has a disguise.”

  “What is she wearing?” he asked, but wasn’t answered.

  They sat silently watching the invisible procession of three more gods, as the breeze came up stronger and the chill crept deeper. By the time the insects resumed their conversations, Tiki was making little snoring sounds against his shoulder. A flock of birds took off from a shadowy corner of the clearing, and Dash squinted at a moving shape in a spot he hadn’t noticed. There was another of the black lumps where lava had pushed up through the ground, maybe a hundred or a thousand years earlier. This stone bulge was wider, had formed a bench similar to the one he used before the airplane seats washed up.