by Cole Alpaugh
“Looks like them boys found a goodie.” Happy followed Billy Wayne’s gaze as the truck went up and over the bridge too fast, nearly launching the men and whatever cargo was in back. “I heard they got twenty bucks riding on the first ones to come up with a hot water tank. That’s a case of beer and change back.”
The truck threw up a rooster tail of dust as it barreled down the gravel road, the driver eventually jamming his brakes and sliding sideways in the wetter muck near the construction site. The commotion had even interrupted Gracie’s morning frolic through the marshes, as the old bear lumbered home to investigate what had gotten the humans all excited. The bear shuffled up to where Hap and Billy Wayne stood staring, leaned back on her haunches and shook mightily. Neither seemed to care about the flecks of muck they now wore.
Billy Wayne held his ground alongside the mechanic, as they watched the figures dismount and begin to taunt the men who’d returned earlier with what were apparently lesser finds. Those men now peered over the sides of the pickup, shaking their heads in what might have been jealousy or respect, as the tailgate was dropped and a large object wrapped in heavy plastic was carefully slid out.
“What in the hell can that be?” Happy wondered aloud.
But once the object was set in the mud correctly, a rush of adrenaline coursed through Billy Wayne’s body like the night he’d first watched Amira Anne’s heated undulations in blue spandex. Billy Wayne licked his lips, his heart beginning to race, as he watched the men cut and then slowly unwrap the heavy plastic, exposing the first signs of beautiful, deep wood grain.
The shape was unmistakable. There was no doubt what this precious object was.
Billy Wayne was unashamed of the tear that rolled down his pink, freshly shaven cheek. Didn’t care who saw his shaking hands, which were barely able to hold his now lukewarm cup of coffee. With each twist of the plastic, more of the object was unveiled. Billy Wayne felt the power of this Holy Grail delivered by such humble and ignorant people. They might as well be unwrapping the helm from Noah’s ark, or an especially beloved Moai Head direct from Easter Island.
With the last bit of plastic tossed aside, Billy Wayne could read the words on the beautiful lectern, recently unscrewed from its pulpit and absconded away to its new home on Fish Head Island: “Welcome to the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints.”
Bless the sinners, Billy Wayne thought. Bless each and every one of these magnificent, whore-mongering sinners.
Chapter 35
The clouds slowly tumbling across the dreary sky were as dark as ever. It seemed like a mistake that the rain had stopped. Something was wrong, as though a steady drumbeat lasting for days had quit for no reason, or a car on a highway had stalled with a half tank of gas left. Perhaps if the sun had broken through to return some of the color to the world, the circus folks would have been quicker to venture out from their damp, hollow spaces. Even a traveling circus growing roots was vulnerable to wretched weather.
Two bad fights had broken out during the rainy spell. A combined twenty-six stitches were knitted into the faces of four men and two women. Three teeth could not be salvaged. All would make up once the weather turned nice and the money started flowing again. It had happened before and would happen again.
Billy Wayne’s nervous energy matched the swirling skies above. He paced back and forth in the muck, rubber boots stamping their imprint in the mud. The footprints lasted for a few seconds, then water seeped from below to flood the impression.
“I just can’t believe it.” Billy Wayne paused directly in front of the finished building. Hap stood cowering in what would be his shadow, if the sun were out.
“I know what you mean, boss,” he said, mostly under his breath.
“They really did it.” Billy Wayne stood staring, eyes wide as they could be.
“Well, ya ever see postcard pictures of that building in Europe? Whatcha call that place?” Happy scrunched his face to search his memory, great lines erupting across his eyes and forehead. “Mother of Christ if I can’t see it clear as day.”
“Vatican City?” Billy Wayne tried, as the pair stood side by side facing the first building ever constructed on the marshy shores of Fish Head Island.
“Nah, it’s close to Italy, or maybe inside Italy.” Happy tilted his head to get a proper perspective on the canted structure. “But it’s got something to do with pizza.”
Billy Wayne realized what was on the tip of Happy’s tongue. The mechanic was trying to come up with the Leaning Tower of Pisa, but Billy Wayne didn’t care to give him the satisfaction. The tilt of his marvelous new cathedral was a technicality. Would you turn your back on the love of your life over a third nipple? Or a couple of webbed toes?
Billy Wayne saw perfection. He half expected the clouds to part at any moment. A marvelous ray of light would stream down to highlight this creation, just like in the pictures in the Pollack minister’s Bible. How could anyone not see it?
The tilt was merely an act of God, Billy Wayne knew.
Globally speaking, that August was one of the hottest months in recorded history, and there was no exception on Fish Head Island. But sandwiched in between strings of ninety-plus degree days was a week of torrential rains over the course of which more than five inches fell.
The nearly intolerable heat had sent the roustabouts into a case of the doldrums, while Billy Wayne mostly lay in his muggy tent dreaming about air-conditioning, counting the painfully slow pounding of shingle nails. What had previously sounded like the rapid fire of a Tommy Gun had fallen off to uneven and intermittent sniper fire. When the rains came, the exterior work was declared complete and the installation of the two likely-stolen toilets and all the pilfered kitchen appliances began.
Billy Wayne preferred not to know how seemingly brand new items kept showing up on the island, yellow energy saver tags still attached, instruction booklets tucked away someplace inside. But the afternoon hit-and-miss thunderstorms and seasonable heat of July had given way to one intolerable weather pattern after the next, and the cash flow had dried up as fast as the rain fell. The pile of surplus cash had taken a hit, as there really was no good way around feeding man and beast. Sure, the rice, beans, and bulk hot dogs could be supplemented with the big bags of chicken necks sold as crab bait, but the soup it made tended to taste like crab bait.
The scavenger hunt was secretly welcomed. Billy Wayne considered his quiet consent the equivalent to turning the other cheek.
“Swear to God, somebody just left it right on the curb. Just imagine how rich you gotta be to throw away a perfectly good refrigerator like that? Be a crime to let it just be hauled to the dump.”
The pilings on one side of the building had sunk another six inches, but it surely couldn’t rain forever. Maybe the weight would eventually level them off? Three of the eight windows had been hung upside down, and there had been quite a bit of creative carpentry involved after they had discovered the walls ranged from eight to nine feet high at various spots around the six-hundred-square-foot kitchen, toilet, and temple. But with a coat of white paint, the one-story building was to be a fine foundation for Billy Wayne and his people. So what if the peas were going to roll to one side of the plate? And a slight uphill walk to the toilet never killed anyone.
“Appears some of them windows are hung upside down.” Happy’s voice was filled with sympathy. “Could very well pinch off your fingers trying to get some air.”
The low spots on the road to Fish Head Island were covered in water, especially at high tide, and the big circus trucks themselves had turned into islands. The circus spent the long days in a kind of lockdown, with no customers and no performances. The only occasional flourish of activity took place when an especially heavy gust of wind pulled up a stake and put one of the smaller tents in peril of being lost at sea.
There was a lot of drinking, but not much more than during the average week. When the rains finally let up, Happy had fetched Billy Wayne to come have a look.
; “They shoulda knowed to dig deeper to get down to bedrock with them pilings,” Happy said, as the two stood with their backs to the mainland, the cockeyed building between them and the inlet. Some of the braver seagulls had come out from where they’d huddled in crevasses, battling the swirling wind to search for bits of food.
“My momma had a book with pictures like this.” Billy Wayne gestured to his new cathedral with both hands.
“A lopsided house book?”
“What? No,” Billy Wayne said. “There was a famous painter who had gone to school to be a draftsman, some sort of architect, you know? His name was Salvador Dali, and he liked to paint these really crazy things.”
“I heard of him. The guy from India that got killed for having a hunger strike. Terrible way to go.”
“Dali painted wonderful images, like pictures of melting clocks, and there was one where a fish is trying to swallow up a big tiger, while another tiger is about to pounce on a naked woman.”
“He paint her bush?” Happy jabbed a pointy elbow into Billy Wayne’s soft side.
“I don’t remember. But I’m saying that for all its flaws, it’s still a piece of art.” Billy Wayne stood admiring his crooked temple, hoping air conditioners could still be installed in the screwed up windows.
“Long as it don’t sink down all the way and fall over in the mud.”
“Sometimes, you just need faith,” Billy Wayne said.
“Or maybe two-by-fours to prop it up with.”
Chapter 36
The August heat also settled over Bermuda, as Morgan watched the white object take wing on a southerly wind, rising from the top of one of the prehistoric-looking palmetto trees standing guard at the edge of St. Margaret’s Bay. It soared bird-like at first, before a sudden updraft lifted it a hundred feet in the early evening sky, directly over her regular spot on the beach.
The wind went still, and the large rectangle of paper floated toward her, rocked back and forth by friction, coming to rest at her sand-covered feet. The week-old front page of The Royal Gazette was filled with color photos, including an image she was very familiar with and had drawn at least a dozen times.
The Bermuda Petrel, or “Pterodroma cahow,” was Bermuda’s national bird. Known locally as the cahow, it was thought to be extinct for three centuries, before its rediscovery in the early twentieth century. The cahow was credited with single-handedly fending off the Spanish conquistadores with its shrill nocturnal cries, which absolutely terrorized the superstitious Spaniards. But the much less skittish and more practical British colonists in the seventeenth century killed them for food and brought rats, dogs, and cats from Europe to destroy their breeding habitat.
The cahow was the saddest of birds, in Morgan’s world. Morgan could remember the hurricane, when she was six years old, that had wiped out most of the cahows’ nesting burrows. She and her mom spent two days stowed away in a big concrete hotel, where her mother had to keep warning her away from the windows.
During the worst storm to hit Bermuda in fifty years, the winds topped a hundred twenty miles per hour, tearing off roofs and knocking down trees. Morgan was drawn to the thick hotel windows. The worst of the winds came in the afternoon, and she held her hands up to the huge piece of glass and pressed her cheek against it, feeling the incredible power just inches away. The little girl couldn’t fathom what it was like to be a bird caught in this storm with nowhere to hide. She had seen fifty gallon metal drums tumbled and flung like toys. The gas station overhang across the highway had been lifted up and tossed away like a stray umbrella.
Morgan’s tears smudged the glass as she willed the wind to stop. But hour after hour it pummeled the island, and she just knew the birds were all dying as she, her mom, and all the other evacuees waited inside.
Morgan fell asleep in her mother’s arms and dreamed she had run outside as the eye of the storm passed directly over the hotel. She ran from bush to bush and tree to tree, searching for birds to save. She found little clumps of feathers here and there, but as the back side of the eye wall approached, there were no live birds to rescue. Just as she’d feared, all the birds had been blown away. She knew they’d died while she’d been hiding away in the big hotel, dry and safe.
The photo on the front page of the Gazette showed a cahow soaring low over the ocean, the way Morgan preferred to draw them. The cahows were excellent fliers and spent the first five years of their adult lives over the open ocean, before returning to their original nesting place to breed. They contributed to their own fragile existence by laying only a single egg each breeding season.
Born and then set free for five years to circle the ocean, Morgan thought. How big that ocean must seem at first. Whether you were forced by natural instinct or the hands of your own human mother, being away from home—away from everything you loved and knew—was hard and unfair. Morgan had spent countless evenings watching the sun disappear out across the bay with the cool breeze and darkness enveloping her, feeling small and pointless. She was just a puny speck on a sandy rock out in the ocean. Maybe her mom was worrying about her, but probably not. Morgan sometimes heard the cahow bobbing out in the water. The Spanish explorers had been scared off by its eerie cries in the night, but maybe the birds were just lonely. Morgan knew what it was like to be alone, crying at night on the beach. For her, it was a pretty regular gig.
In the dying light, Morgan scooped up the newspaper and squinted to read the story about the cahows and other birds. Some man was donating money and land for a nature reserve and bird sanctuary, and Morgan tilted the paper toward the last of the orange glow to read the small print.
“Bermuda is an amazing and critical place for bird lovers,” Michael Dupont, the man donating the money, was quoted as saying. “There are three hundred and seventy-five species of birds on this tiny nation and seven are globally threatened. And it is an important stopping point for migration between North and South America.”
Morgan knew this from school and had drawn most all of them.
The story described the new sanctuary, a series of three islands inside the inlet of Castle Harbor, where the ground was high enough to protect newly constructed artificial cahow burrows from storm surges. There would also be breeding grounds for longtails and terns, as well as the thirty or so species that used the area as a pit stop during long migrations.
There would be an official dedication and grand opening of the reserve, with a picnic lunch and bands from two high schools. Governor Vereker would accept Dupont’s generous endowment for future care of the preserve on behalf of Queen Elizabeth II. The ceremony would be held on Saturday, September 15, according to the story, at the Tucker’s Town main dock. The VIPs would then board boats and tour the new sanctuaries at a respectful distance.
“I’m delighted this project has gone so smoothly,” Dupont said in the article. “With the heart of the hurricane season upon us, it’s been a goal to have all the work complete. For anyone who doesn’t see the point in what we are doing, I urge them to get out into nature and close their eyes, to experience and see with their ears. Listen to the songs of the birds. These songs are the links to our past, and man’s footprint has caused terrible disruption in migratory paths and fragile breeding grounds. But it is not irreversible, and it is not too late if we recognize the work that still must be done.”
Castle Harbor was the largest bay, maybe three miles at its widest, at the far end of Bermuda from Morgan’s spot on the beach. Still, it was only a little more than ten miles from their home as the crow flies. Morgan’s mom had taken them to visit some of the old stone fortresses built on tiny islands, which had provided protection for the harbor from various marauders. But they rarely went beyond Hamilton anymore, except to meet her mother’s travel agent friend at the airport every couple of months. The airport made up the entire northern boundary of Castle Harbor.
The newspaper described Dupont as a video game designer from Charleston, South Carolina. He’d become interested in setting aside natural re
serves for birds after visiting habitats destroyed by hurricanes. He’d spent more than fourteen million dollars purchasing coastal marshlands from South Carolina to Maine. Most of his projects involved nothing more than keeping the land free from high-rise hotels and trophy homes, leaving the land in pristine condition.
There was a head shot of Michael Dupont, smaller than the one of the soaring cahow, and he looked awfully young to be so rich, Morgan thought. His face was long and skinny, too pale for a birdwatcher’s. Wouldn’t a birdwatcher be outside all the time? His wire glasses made him look smart, and his spiked hair was kind of cool. He also wore a geeky blue shirt, buttoned all the way to the top. Morgan supposed Michael Dupont knew all about being teased in school.
According to the paper, the Bermuda project was of a much grander scale, beyond just setting aside land otherwise doomed to development. “Here, we’re involved with protecting endangered species, as well as overseeing the mid-point on the migratory highway.”
Morgan reread the last sentence several times, by what was now moonlight. “Migratory highway,” Morgan said to herself, looking out at the black water, wondering where Gus—the teacher turned pelican—would be spending the night. A carpet of stars had layered the sky and the moon had risen over her left shoulder. She should have been home an hour ago, but it had been so peaceful … None of the kids had come down to boogie board the flat water today. Time had gotten away from her, slipping by as it always did when she wasn’t walled-up inside her school.
Mr. Dupont could hear the birds talking, but Morgan bet he couldn’t talk back to them. Morgan knew she possessed a special gift, an ability most people found impossible to believe. People like her mom and her teacher, Mrs. Jones. It was perfectly fine to make kids believe in Santa Claus and the Easter Bunny, but wanting to find your own father made you worse than a bank robber. Some fairy fluttering into your bedroom to buy your old teeth was fine. Leprechauns sleeping under mushrooms and tending pots of gold at the end of rainbows were reasonable. How many of those freaking shamrocks had she been forced to cut out of green construction paper in her life?