“I think it’s Tony!” Brian cried out. “But where’s he going?!”
Brian stopped jumping so he could examine the boat’s course through the binoculars. He kept them trained on the boat while Randy and Miguel continued to yell and wave their arms.
“Keep it up!” he said, turning his head to stay with the boat. “It is Tony. He’s going to the lake house. Maybe when he cuts the motor, he’ll hear us.”
Randy—now seemingly unaffected by the poison from the snake, and full of life—stopped yelling and reached for the binoculars.
“I wanna see!” he said, then snatched the binoculars out of Brian’s hands.
“Hey!”
“Just let me look a sec,” he said, peering through the lenses and adjusting the focus knob. He squinted his eyes, then dropped his arms, a look of astonishment washing down his face. “It is Tony.”
It’s funny what the adrenaline created by this type of excitement will do to the infirmed. Just like Randy, I quickly joined my friends on the jutting rock without any concern for my once hurting hip. The only sign remaining from Randy’s ill reaction to the snake bite was that he was still sweating profusely, even on that cooler than usual morning; the jaundice color of his skin had returned to normal. Brian snatched his binoculars back from Randy and narrated Tony’s every move, since the rest of us couldn’t see that far. It was obvious Tony couldn’t hear us anyway, just as Brian’s narration revealed.
“What’s he doing now?” I quizzed Brian.
“He’s tying the boat to the pier. And now he’s getting out of the boat... and walking toward the lake house.”
“Is anybody with him?” Miguel said. He scratched his scalp, then examined his fingernails, finding nothing of concern.
“Nope. He’s all alone. Now, he’s walking up the steps to the back door and... he went inside.”
“Do you think he thinks we’re still there?” Randy said.
Brian lowered the binoculars. “What are you asking me for?”
“I’m not asking you. I’m just talking out loud.”
“Then be quiet. You’re making it hard for me to tell everybody what he’s doing.”
Brian raised the binoculars back up to his face. Randy defiantly stuck his tongue out at him, which cracked me and Miguel up. Unconcerned, Brian squinted his eyes as he looked through the binoculars.
“He’s coming back outside. Now, he’s... just walking around. Looking on the ground or something.”
“He must be looking for clues,” I said. Randy and Miguel agreed.
Brian continued. “He’s walking around the lake house. He’s out of sight, probably walking around the other side.”
“I wonder what happened to Rogelio,” Miguel said.
“Probably went back home,” I said.
Miguel shrugged.
“I see him again!” Brian continued. “He’s walking back to the pier. And now he’s...”
Brian stopped, then lowered the binoculars and rubbed his eyes with his free hand, digging out any blurriness with a swiveling fist. Then he raised the binoculars.
“He’s looking this way. He’s just standing there with his hands on his sides. Just looking.”
“Do you think he can see us?” Randy said.
“I don’t know. But he keeps looking this way. Now he has his hands over his eyes. He keeps looking at me!”
“Do you—” I began, but Brian cut me off.
“He’s getting back in the boat. Now, he’s... he got the motor running. And now he’s coming this way!”
Brian dropped his arms and a big smile slid across his face, beaming like a thrilled child on a hopeful Christmas morning. The four of us knew the promise of what was transpiring.
“We’re gonna be rescued!” we all cried out.
We couldn’t contain ourselves. The excitement of the possibility of being rescued was too much to keep inside. We hooted and cheered.
Little did we know what would happen next.
23.
Our nightmare was over. We were rescued. The sight of Tony navigating his motor boat towards Sometimes Island was as exciting as the time Brian’s parents revealed the entertainment for his seventh birthday party was Mister Mystical the magician. We about crapped our pants back then just with the mention of the magician’s moniker, and we about crapped our pants again at the sight of Tony: our rescuer. Brian kept his binoculars trained on Tony’s boat as he continued to narrate his progress, even though we could see Tony perfectly fine at this point for ourselves. The distance between his motor boat and our place on the island had drastically reduced, and we continued to jump and scream to keep his attention. But the lake grew angry—the surface boiled and stabbed at the hull of Tony’s boat, rocking it side to side as he approached us. The lake wasn’t ready for us to be free kids quite yet.
“He’s getting closer,” Brian said. “Almost to that orange floaty thing.”
“We can see him perfectly fine. He’s not that far away,” I told him.
He dropped his binoculars and scanned the lake with his bare eyes. “Oh, you’re right.”
“Maybe we should go over there so we can be closer to him,” I said, then pointed to a spot down the island where another jutting rock plateaued, the top of it sticking out from the island like a granite diving board.
“Good idea!” Brian replied.
We made our way to the flat rock—large enough for all of us to stand on—then continued to watch his progress. Once he was close enough to the orange buoy, he throttled the motor in what I imagined was reverse, then cut it. He steadied the boat with an oar.
“Hey! Are you all right?!” Tony called out.
We were so excited to be rescued that all we could do was cheer and flap our arms like baby birds elated with the return of their absent mother, but Brian had better ideas.
“Hey guys, calm down. He can’t hear us,” he said. The three of us stopped cheering. Brian cupped his hands around his mouth and cried out. “Come closer!”
Tony stared blankly at us. “Are you all right?! I can’t hear you!”
“Come closer!” Brian repeated.
Tony watched us as if he was waiting for us to respond, the oar in one hand propping him up in the boat and his other hand on his hip. Maybe it was the wind out on the water past the buoys or various noises from the marina and the campground that kept Tony from hearing Brian’s pleas. We didn’t know. The frustration we felt was palpable. We wanted desperately to get off that island and the fact that Tony was so close yet so far was disheartening.
“I can’t come any closer!” he called out. “Hey! Can you hear me?!”
“YES!” we all said. “Help us! Help!”
Tony shook his head, then set the oar down in the boat. He climbed to the back, pulled the starter cord which awoke the idle motor, then turned the boat toward the marina and headed that way. We pleaded for him to come back, but he didn’t.
“Where’s he going?” I said.
“I don’t know,” Brian said. “Maybe to get more help. At least he knows we’re here, though. That’s great news!”
“Yeah,” Miguel said, dejected. “Hopefully.”
“I guess all we can do is wait,” Randy said, gently supporting his wounded hand. “I’m sitting in the shade.”
Randy trudged back to the For Sale sign shelter, then sat in its oblong shade. The rest of us soon joined him—our knees to our chests and our sullen eyes leering in the direction of the marina—happy to get a respite from the blazing morning sun. The wind picked up and hissed, occasionally screeching. How long do we have to wait? I remember thinking. I’m certain my friends were wondering the same thing. My stomach growled like a wounded beast and I laid my forearms across my belly to quell it.
“I could eat a horse,” I lamented.
“I second that,” Brian added.
“Me too!” Miguel said. “And ladies and gentlemen, we have a quorum!”
The three of us laughed, something I hoped would ease our
desperation. I turned to Randy and slapped him on the back, hoping he’d join in, but instead he wilted and laid on his side.
“Randy, are you all right?”
“I think I’m gonna die,” he said.
His skin turned a color I can only describe as spoilt milk and beads of sweat oozed from his furrowed brow. He clutched his wounded arm at the wrist as he writhed on the rocky ground.
I turned to Brian and Miguel. “I hope Tony comes back soon.”
They both nodded. I gently rubbed Randy’s back.
We sat under the For Sale sign shelter for what seemed like an eternity, only shuffling our sad configuration when the sun’s movement pushed the cool shadow of our shelter a few inches here and there. The dryness of my mouth was excruciating and felt akin to wool cloth lining my tongue and the roof of my mouth. I gave up on licking my lips as it just made them feel worse. To keep my mind occupied, I asked Brian to hand me the binoculars and I secretly hoped that observing the water would conjure a rescue boat of some sort. I scanned the horizon in hopes of seeing something promising, but saw nothing.
As I sat there, I experienced a feeling that I can only describe as stupefying lethargy. The combination of exhaustion, hunger, and dehydration infiltrated my body and left me with the feeling that I was sinking in quicksand. Thoughts entered my mind of the comfortable numbness of sleep and nothing sounded better than falling fast asleep and never waking up. It’s a horrible thing to admit—the idea that death was enticing. But for a brief moment, it was, until Brian slugged my arm.
“What’s that?” he said, pointing to the lake.
I blinked my eyes a few times before lifting the binoculars. In the distance was a blurry mass approaching us, something that looked like a tortoise floating on the water, and as it slowly approached, I soon realized it was a pontoon boat, or what I would later learn Tony called a party barge. The shiny aluminum railings and pontoons glimmered in the sun and from the reflections off the water. Its maroon canopy perched above it like a sad beret, and underneath were two people I was grateful to see: Tony driving and Victoria standing at the front.
“They’re coming for us!” I said.
Brian grabbed the binoculars from my hands and peered through them. “It’s Victoria.”
We looked at each other. “We’re saved!”
Brian, Miguel, and I couldn’t contain our excitement, giving each other high-fives and such. I even patted Randy on the back to let him know of our fortune. He simply groaned.
“Stay here with Randy,” Brian told me. “Miguel and I will go wait on the rock for them.”
I agreed, and my two friends sprinted over to the jutting rock, jumping up and down and waving their arms. Soon enough, the party barge puttered as close as Tony would allow it. He cut the engine and joined Victoria at the front. This time he had a megaphone in his hand.
“Can you hear me?” he called out.
“Yeah!” both Brian and Miguel replied.
“Just so you know, I can’t get any closer than this. Do you think you can swim to us?”
“Yeah!” Victoria added, but realized she needed the megaphone. She grabbed it from Tony. “Do you think you can swim to us?”
Brian and Miguel stopped jumping, then turned to me and Randy sitting under the For Sale sign. It was apparent to them that Randy and I weren’t in the position to swim out to the party barge in the angry lake water. Besides, Brian couldn’t even swim at all on a good day. Swimming was just not an option.
Brian turned back to Tony and Victoria, his hand cupped next to his mouth. “Randy and William are hurt, and I can’t swim!”
Tony and Victoria looked at each other, obviously perplexed about what to do, when Victoria began furiously pointing at the water. Tony ran to start the engine, then slowly reversed the boat’s position from a nearby buoy and the jagged rocks lurking just underneath the water’s surface. Once he was ten feet back or so, he cut off the engine again, returning next to Victoria.
He raised the megaphone to his mouth. “If I throw a rope to you, can I pull you to our boat one at a time?”
Brian looked to me once more, but I could see he already knew the answer.
“No, we can’t!”
Tony and Victoria turned to each other, both shrugged then argued about what to do next. They seemed irritated and frustrated with equal measure when Victoria began furiously pointing at the water again. Tony quickly ran to the back of the boat, but didn’t make it fast enough this time to crank the motor. The party barge lunged toward the buoy as if an angry, underwater creature maliciously pulled it. One of the pontoons jutted up from the water followed by the sound of its aluminum underside ripping open, like the death knell of a radioactive dinosaur in a Japanese monster movie from the 1950s. Tony fell to the platform while Victoria clung to the side rails of the party barge.
“Oh no!” Victoria cried out. “Now you’ve done it!”
“Oh shit!” Tony yelled.
He grabbed a safety pole from the side rails—the kind someone would use to pull in a drunken passenger who inadvertently tumbled in the water while partying—and pushed the party barge back from the wicked rock just underneath the water’s surface.
“We’ll be back!” he yelled, then quickly started the motor and maneuvered the party barge back in the direction of the marina.
Victoria appeared at the back of the boat, holding the side rail with one hand and the megaphone with the other.
“We’ll be back!” she called out. “We promise!”
The party barge slowly made its way to the horizon, then slipped underneath it, disappearing as quickly as they came. Brian and Miguel sulked back to where we were under the For Sale sign shelter and joined us in the shade.
“Well,” Brian began, then sighed. “That sucked.”
“Sucked balls,” Miguel added.
“Yup,” I said. “Another quorum.”
24.
Growing up in the 1980s afforded me and my friends a certain amount of freedom. We were not watched or monitored the way kids are nowadays. But this also came with a certain level of disconnectedness that many now also have a hard time comprehending. When Tony and Victoria floated away, my friends and I had no idea when they would be back. There was no way for us to communicate with them or the marina or anyone else in the surrounding area. We were far away from our mothers and fathers, and they had no idea where we were; for all they knew, we were still at Brian’s house. The fact that Tony even found us was a miracle in itself. If he hadn’t noticed the flickering reflections from Brian’s binoculars, then he never would’ve driven his motor boat out to Sometimes Island. Remember, he told us that no one ever went out to the island. It was just too dangerous—for many reasons. So, yes, the fact that he spotted us out there on that desolate place in the middle of the lake was miraculous. He told me a number of times later that before we were stranded out there, he rarely even looked at the island while he was working at the marina, almost like it was invisible, or it simply blended into the horizon while he puttered around doing menial tasks. I think about this all the time. We were sitting at death’s door, and didn’t even know it.
We stared in the direction of the marina for hours, waiting for Tony and Victoria to come back, maybe with a bigger boat, and hopefully with more help. Not even the sight of other boats and skiers excited us anymore. They just ignored us anyway like we were pests. We just wanted our friends to rescue us, so we didn’t jump and holler at the sight of these unwanted boaters. But we couldn’t ignore the hunger pangs in our twisted stomachs. Miguel and I implored Brian to dig deep in the recesses of his mind for any information from his Boy Scout training that would maybe help us identify something on the island to eat.
“There has to be some leaf or plant we could eat. Right?” I insisted.
“Yeah, something,” Miguel added.
Brian was stumped. He told us he clearly remembered lessons about which wild berries were safe to eat and which to avoid like the plague, but there
weren’t any berries at all to discern on the island. He shrugged no matter how much we protested.
“Sorry, dudes. I already feel helpless as it is,” Brian said, then tossed an innocent pebble into the water.
“And you want to be an Eagle Scout?” I said sarcastically. “I thought you guys knew everything about survival?”
“I said I was sorry!” Brian snapped, then quickly jumped up and stormed off, leaving Miguel and I perplexed.
He stomped to the other end of the island and plopped down at the furthest possible spot where he could sit without falling into the water. Miguel indicated with a tilt of his head that we should go over to where he sat, imploring me with those sad brown eyes of his. I felt bad for teasing Brian. It wasn’t his fault that the Boy Scouts didn’t teach him how to survive while on a deserted island with three of his useless friends. So, I patted Randy on the back—whispering in his ear that we’d return shortly—then Miguel and I made our way over to where Brian sulked. On the way, we gathered a variety of leaves, twigs, and stalks of grass that had potential to be eaten. Then we both sat down with him. I extended one of the green leaves I found on the ground in front of his face, twirling it between my index finger and thumb, exhibiting its potential deliciousness.
“Do you think I can eat this?” I said. “Looks yummy.”
Brian glanced at it, then turned his attention back to the lake. “I don’t know. Why don’t you eat it and see?”
“Maybe I will.”
The Benevolent Lords of Sometimes Island Page 18