I yanked my shorts down. “Ahhhhh!” The relief to my bladder was exquisite.
“You got that right,” Randy said, putting his shriveled carrot back into his shorts. He slapped me on the back, altering my urine stream to splatter my shoes. “Don’t miss!”
“Dang it!” I said, adjusting my stream back to the intended target. I peed as fast as I could to avoid another disturbance from my friends.
Randy, Brian, and I sat back under the For Sale sign shelter while Miguel remained on his rock, still squatting. He looked perplexed.
“Guys?!” he cried out. “You got any T. P.?”
The three of us laughed.
“Nope!” Brian said, then laughed again uncontrollably.
Miguel grimaced.
“Well, what do I do about... you know?”
“Wash your butt in the lake?” Brian suggested.
“I’m not doing that!” Miguel whined, then sighed. “Can you bring me something to wipe with?”
“Like what?” I said. I had no idea where we’d find any toilet paper or something even approximating toilet paper.
“Here,” Brian said, then he grabbed a bur oak tree branch on the ground near us, about the diameter of a pencil and a foot long with five dried leaves at the end in the configuration of a star. He plucked the leaves off the branch, then folded them carefully and neatly into a square as if creating origami. “Give him this.”
I took the small square from Brian and rubbed it between my fingers. It was dry, brittle, and course, not worthy of rubbing against your butt, emergency situation or otherwise.
“OK.”
I stood up and wiped dust from the seat of my shorts with my free hand, then stepped down to where Miguel was squatting on the rock.
“Here,” I said, handing him the dry, brittle square. “Brian said use this.”
Miguel examined the rough “toilet paper” and grimaced again. I joined my friends back in the shade. We watched Miguel swing his hand around to his backside—the brown square clinched in his fingertips—but the minute he dabbed the square against his butt, it disintegrated into bits and left his fingers unprotected from the residue of his defecation.
Miguel cried out in horror. “I got poop on my hand!”
He screamed, then without warning, jumped into the water. Once his head bobbed above the surface, he used his left arm to keep him above water and his right hand rubbed his backside underwater to clean himself. He was quite dismayed about it. The three of us on land cackled at his dilemma. For a brief moment, it seemed we forgot that we were stranded on the rocky island and were having fun like we were on vacation or something.
Miguel swam a few feet away from where he cleaned himself, as if to avoid any of the dirty water around his butt from washing back over him. Once he was far enough away, he flipped on his backside and casually swam, exhibiting a leisurely backstroke for a dozen strokes or so. He then turned over and approached the island with a sturdy breast stroke, his mouth clinched shut to avoid letting in the foul water that he left behind. But something caught his eye and his swimming strokes became more determined.
“Hey guys! I found something!”
This got our attention. We stopped laughing.
“What is it?” I called back.
“You won’t believe it!” he said, climbing out of the water.
He trudged back up to where we were—drenched to the bone and his sopping curly hair clinging to his head—with a very familiar object in his hand: a soda can.
“Look!” he said, excited. “A can of Pepsi Light!”
“Whoa!” we all said.
“And it’s not opened!”
The coloring on the can as well as the Pepsi logo were sunbleached and it appeared to be at least a few years old. One end bulged as if it might have been shaken and ready to burst at some point, but didn’t, the carbonated explosion in suspended animation. The other end had traces of green algae clinging to it. Pepsi Light wasn’t our soda of choice—although all our mothers drank plenty of it along with Tab and Diet Rite—but who were we to complain? It was like a gift from Mother Nature, an offering of something she knew her creatures of the woods wouldn’t want, but her creatures from the city certainly would.
“You think it’s still good?” Randy said, curious. He licked his lips.
“There’s only one way to find out,” Brian said, then snatched the can out of Miguel’s hand.
“Hey!”
Brian yanked the aluminum tab off the top of the can, tossed it over his shoulder, and took a swig.
“It’s flat but yummy!” he said, pleased. He licked his lips, then wiped his mouth with his forearm.
“Let me try,” I said.
I took a swig, then passed the can to Randy who did the same, then finally to Miguel. And like that, the Pepsi Light can was empty. Miguel turned the can upside down above his mouth to show us how much remained inside. One amber drop fell out.
“That was fast!” Miguel said, then crumpled the can and tossed it on the ground.
“Maybe there’s more,” Randy said, peeling his t-shirt off and tossing it in the shade of the For Sale sign. He trudged down the incline and jumped in the water. Miguel quickly followed him.
“Wait for me!”
I wanted to follow them, but once I saw the look of fear on Brian’s face, I decided to stay behind with him. I pointed to a jutting rock to our left and suggested we watch Randy and Miguel from that vantage point. Brian smiled and nodded. He followed me to the rock and we sat on the end—our feet dangling—and we watched Randy and Miguel splash around, looking for more cans of soda or anything else worth consuming. A cool breeze came in and tickled our backs.
“How long do you think we’ll be stuck here?” I said to him.
He shrugged. “I have no idea. Seems no one knows we’re here.”
He plucked a bit of scraggy grass from a crack in the rock, then dropped it in the lake. The blades floated like miniature rafts.
“I know. I was hoping Tony would come looking for us, but he probably doesn’t know we’re here either.”
“He probably thinks we ran home or called our parents or something.”
“Yeah,” I said.
We sat in silence for a couple of minutes while we watched Randy and Miguel down in the water—splashing each other instead of looking for more sodas—until I had a realization.
“Do you think we should create some rules while we’re here?”
“Rules?” Brian said. His face scrunched as if I suggested something preposterous. “You mean like laws or something?”
“Yeah. It’s probably what adults would expect from us. Right?”
Brian was collecting an assortment of pebbles in one hand and, once the pile had gained some substance, tossed them one by one into the lake with the other hand.
“We don’t need any rules since there aren’t any adults here. What would rules do for us anyway?”
I didn’t have an answer. I guess I hadn’t pondered before that day the reasons why rules existed. I just followed whoever seemed to be in charge. I was just that type of kid: a stickler for the rules.
“Maybe they would help keep us busy?”
“Keep us busy?”
“Yeah.”
“The reason adults have rules is to keep kids in line and to keep other adults occupied while they do whatever they want behind their backs.”
“No, they don’t,” I answered, but then immediately regretted my answer.
“Yes, they do. Adults hate rules. They tell kids to follow them, but secretly they hate them, too. It’s true.”
He tossed a few pebbles onesie-twosie into the lake, then hurled the rest of the pile all at once. The shrapnel dotted the surface of the water.
“We should just be kids and not have any rules. It’ll be better that way.”
“OK,” I agreed, but I was also confused. “But isn’t being in the Boy Scouts about following rules?”
Brian nodded. “I don’t know if
I want to be in the Boy Scouts anymore.”
This was a startling revelation, to say the least. I mean, Brian admitting that he didn’t want to be a Boy Scout anymore? He was as close as can be to becoming an Eagle Scout, the tippy top of the scouting hierarchy of ranks. I wasn’t sure at the time what caused his change of heart, and I wasn’t ready to find out either.
At this point, Randy and Miguel were thrashing water at each other and laughing, their offensive hacks becoming more forceful with every swipe. As we watched them, I noticed some movement on the lake toward the horizon. I jabbed Brian in the ribs with my elbow. “Look!”
Out in the bay in the direction of the marina, a couple of small, white triangles skirted along the horizon, then turned toward Sometimes Island and grew larger as they approached. The triangles raised slightly and billowed, revealing their sailboats underneath.
“Look!” I cried out, then jumped to my feet, flapping my arms above my head. “Hey!”
Brian jumped up and we both cried out as loud as we could, both of us waving our arms to catch the attention of whoever was on those sailboats. Randy and Miguel turned to look in the direction we were shouting and saw the sailboats. They quickly swam back to the island and climbed up to where we were. The four of us called out desperately.
“HELP! HELP!”
Just like the speed boat the day before, the sailboats turned to our left once they got close to the orange buoys, the signs for danger lurking below the water. But the two sailboats moved much slower than the speed boat, and without the noise of the engine drowning out our pleas, so it seemed the potential for them to hear us was much higher this time. We jumped and screamed and flapped our arms.
“HELP US! OVER HERE!”
The two sailboats—each maybe the length of a school bus—slowly made their way past the island. The first boat had two people on board: one man at the back holding the tiller to steer and a woman near him cranking the ropes of the sails. The second boat also had a man and woman steering and controlling the boat, but had an additional passenger—a little boy sitting on the bow at the front. The little boy saw us calling out to them from the island, and he stood up, holding a suspension rope with one hand, and waving to us with his other hand. He called back to who I assumed were his parents, pointing at us and demanding they look, but they didn’t. They were too busy navigating.
“HELP US! HELP!”
As both sailboats passed the island and made their way out to the open waters of the lake, we jumped and screamed as much as we could. The little boy on the sailboat eventually stopped waving and sat back down on the bow. And just as he did that, the foot on my gimp leg landed on a rock and twisted my ankle. I toppled to the ground, almost knocking my friends off the jutting rock.
“Ah shit!” I cried, as my body crumpled into a useless pile.
Randy quickly scooped me up in his arms and carried me over to the shade of the For Sale sign shelter. He gently laid me on the ground.
“You all right, dude?” he said, worried.
“Yeah, but I hurt my leg.”
The pain was excruciating—muscle memory conjuring the moment the bullet from the 25-caliber American Derringer pistol tore through my leg in elementary school—and I gripped my hip to try to relieve it.
“Sit still,” he said.
“But what about the sailboats?”
He looked up, sighed, then looked back at me.
“They’re gone.”
Brian and Miguel sat with me, too.
“I’m sure another boat will come,” Miguel said. “I hope.”
He and Brian looked in the direction of the marina, then shook their heads.
20.
Later, Brian and Miguel continued to sit with me in the shade as I nursed my sore hip while Randy searched down by the waterline for something else for us to eat or drink. After Miguel found the can of Pepsi Light, Randy was certain there was more for us to consume down in the cold, murky water. He just had to look hard enough to find it.
“If Miguel found a diet soda, then I can find something too,” he demanded, stomping down to the water. The rest of us were skeptical, but we also didn’t want to tell him to not look.
The sun slowly set for our second evening on Sometimes Island, inviting the armada of mosquitos back for another feast of our blood. This time, we had grown more accustomed to them and didn’t swat at them as much as the night before. There wasn’t anything we could do about them anyway. We could dab the bites with spit-mud all night long, but the more we dabbed, the more the mosquitos were determined to keep stabbing our skin in fresh spots. It was useless to even fend them off. Brian was more worried about my hip than the bloodsuckers anyway. He was an attentive medical aide.
“Let’s try to lift your leg.”
“OK,” I said. I attempted to lift my gimp leg, but the pain in my hip was excruciating. A yelp escaped my lips. “It hurts too bad.”
“Then don’t move it,” Miguel insisted, placing a hand on my shoulder.
A lethal amount of toxic guilt consumed me. Our fathers and step-fathers—the ones we all missed the most at that moment because they would’ve known exactly what to do to survive or even get off that island—taught us that crying or showing any emotions was a sign of weakness, so I tried my best not to cry. But I couldn’t help it. The pain in my hip was too much to bear. At first, one of my weary eyes eked out a single tear. Then, without warning, both my eyes sprung a leak. I sobbed uncontrollably. The abject display of emotion startled my two friends. I knew they, too, suffered under the oppressive regimes of their fathers’ toxic masculinity. But soon enough, their gentle pats turned into comforting embraces—the only thing that calmed me down.
I held both my friends in my arms. “Thank you.”
Randy must have heard my crying from down by the water.
“Is everything all right?” he called out.
“Yeah, no problem,” Brian replied.
“OK. Just checking.”
Randy continued to search. Once the sun hid behind the distant hills, twilight swirled across the sky in strokes of pink, orange, and yellow, like an unseen giant from the ancient past had painted his impression in wide swathes in the sky. It was a mesmerizing atmospheric display. Miguel was in a contemplative mood.
“How long do you think we’ll be out here?” he said.
“You got me,” Brian replied. “I’m not a bettin’ man so...”
“You’re not even a man,” Miguel said, then pshawed. A shower of spittle rained on me from Miguel’s tempestuous lips.
“Ewww! You spit on me!”
The three of us laughed, which was encouraging. Even in the worst of times, humor was a salve for what ailed us. It seemed no matter what, if we were all together, then we could get through whatever was troubling us. Encouraged by our laughter, Miguel continued.
“What if this island had secrets like on Gilligan’s Island?”
“What do you mean?” Brian said.
He and I trained our eyes on Miguel, who continued enthusiastically.
“You know how they’re always finding stuff on Gilligan’s Island? Or they seem to make themselves at home by making whatever they want out of stuff on the island?”
“Yeah,” Brian and I both said.
“Sometimes, they seem so comfortable that they don’t even act like they want to leave the island at all.”
“So, you’re saying there might be something like a hidden room underground filled with stuff for us, like food?”
“Maybe,” Miguel said, smirking. “Would be nice, wouldn’t it?”
“Yeah,” I said.
“Who do you think is hotter: Ginger or Mary Ann?” Brian quizzed us. He rubbed his chin while pondering his own answer.
“Ginger!” I squealed. Both my friends giggled.
“What about you, Miguel?”
He scratched his scalp, then inspected his fingernails. He always seemed to have a habit of doing that: inspecting his nails after a scalp scratch. He n
ever seemed to find what he was looking for whether it was lice or dandruff or whatever scalp condition worried him.
“I like Mary Ann. She seems more like girlfriend material. Ginger is kinda slutty.”
Brian laughed. “I like slutty.” A smirk slid across his face.
“Perv,” I said.
“Yup.”
“How about this?” I continued. “Who’s hotter: Mary Ann from Gilligan’s Island or Mary Jane from Spider-Man?”
“Wait a minute?” Miguel said. “One’s on a TV show and the other is in comic books. You can’t compare them in real life?”
“Real life?!” I cackled. “Neither one of them are real life.”
Miguel began to argue his point when a gust of wind screeched from behind us, shoving our backs adamantly, reminding us that we were in the midst of Nature and not merely on summer vacation. The wind probed our ears and billowed our shirts, and even pushed our hair into our eyes—except for Brian’s Afro, which did its best to maintain its suave symmetry. It was as if Nature was doing its damnedest to get our attention, even though Nature wasn’t aware just how stubborn a group of teenaged boys could be with their attentiveness. There was a reason the fathers from our generation claimed we were obstinate or hardheaded, declaring the best way to grab our attention was a heavy hand or a commanding bark. Nature hadn’t been as brusque up to that point, preferring a subtler, more passive aggressive approach. But that was about to change. All of a sudden, we heard Randy screaming.
“Owwwww!” he cried out, down by the water.
Without even thinking, Brian jumped up and trounced down to help him. Miguel stayed with me. Soon enough, the two of them appeared under the For Sale shelter with us, Randy’s arm bent around Brian’s shoulders for support, both drenched with lake water from the waist down. Randy clutched his left wrist, his limp hand swollen and red with two maroon dots oozing blood. A look of grotesque fear hung on his face like one of those ancient wooden, tribal masks you’d see mounted on a city museum wall.
“A snake bit him,” Brian said. “Probably a water moccasin.”
“What do I do?!” Randy said, worried. He panted and looked around like he wasn’t sure if he was in a dream or not.
The Benevolent Lords of Sometimes Island Page 16