by Cole Alpaugh
Butter sang her new baby to sleep, while Jesus Dobby drank himself unconscious up in the pilot house. Night once again fell over the swaying Gypsy Dancer.
Chapter 21
Dante Wheeler peered through the scratched acrylic airplane window, searching the vast expanse of black water for lights, any sign of civilization. The surrounding cabin was also dark, filled with sleeping passengers. He was headed home, to a faraway place he’d never seen in person.
Dante had sensed a lack of commitment when his coaches argued for him to stay. He was, after all, done racing forever, according to the doctors. What was in it for the coaches if he stuck around? Before the crash, he’d been just another reckless kid with flashes of talent, able to hold his own on the second tier Europa Cup. But his career was all about potential and he still had no results in any of the big time events during intermittent call-ups. And now that potential had been irrevocably extinguished in a small grove of pine trees, in a blood-spattered crater in the snow.
Just one jolt to his brain, the doctors had explained, could end his life instantly. No reason existed for why he’d regained consciousness to begin with; it had just been some fluke of nature. Apparently Dante Wheeler wasn’t a being worthy of miracles. No, his resurrection was simply a fluke, especially since he had no real memories of life before being startled awake in that sterile bed.
An occupational therapist who stopped in every Tuesday and Friday had brought Dante a handful of magazines each visit, everything from Sports Illustrated to Popular Science. “You know what a two-percenter is, Dante?” the therapist said. He shuffled through the magazines and pulled one out called MENSA Bulletin. “It’s what these people call each other, the people with IQs in the top two percent of the population.”
“Reading still gives me a headache. I look at the pictures.”
“Your chance of survival was less than two percent. Your chance of a full recovery was more like two percent of two percent.”
“It was a miracle, huh?”
“No, nothing like a miracle.” Sitting at the foot of Dante’s bed, the therapist had removed his wire-rimmed glasses, rubbed his gray beard. “The word ‘miracle’ implies divine intervention, or perhaps an extraordinary effort by your doctors. I think your recovery was just a matter of luck.”
“I’m a fluke.”
“Well, yes, I suppose that’s accurate enough. The important thing now is to look forward. Maybe find something in these magazines that sparks your interest, makes you want to chase after it, like you did with your skiing.”
“I wouldn’t mind some travel magazines.”
“You have to let that go, young man. Look at the color of your skin. You aren’t anything close to Polynesian, although I understand it’s a comforting dream. But a dream is still just a dream. There’s no tropical ocean out that window, just a busy little lake.”
At least once a session Dante had pressed the therapist for magazine articles on the South Pacific. Islands, people, fishing trips, it didn’t matter, anything to help fill the void between dreams and the travel channel. From down the hall, Dante had heard the opening music for Jeopardy, right before Johnny’s introduction of today’s three contestants, and Alex Trebek’s entrance onto the stage.
Dante imitated Johnny’s voice: “An unemployed ski racing fluke from East Pukapuka, Dante Wheeler.”
“And you were never on Jeopardy.”
“I’d really suck at it now, wouldn’t I?”
“If you’re not going to focus on moving forward, I can’t help you. And I’m not sure if I’m the first to tell you, but your insurance company is about to pull the plug on all this good fun.”
No family had visited during his recovery. The doctors and nurses were purposely vague with details about a father living in Florida and a sister somewhere in California. Had Dante chased them out his life?
Late one Friday afternoon, a woman who claimed to have been one of Dante’s ski team strength trainers had taken a turn sitting at the foot of his bed. She had worn tight-fitting Nike sweats that showed off her strong biceps and tiny waist. A fidgety, bored-looking group of six former teammates he didn’t remember had cleared out of his room a half hour earlier. His trainer told him they’d made a special trip east, taking time away from a dry-land training session in Park City.
“That’s not me.” Dante pointed his strong right middle finger at the photo album she’d spread across his lap. “I mean, I don’t remember any of this. Wouldn’t something look familiar?”
“What do you remember?”
“I live on an island in the South Pacific.”
“Dante, you have an apartment in Rutland, Vermont.” The attractive woman sat Indian-style, looking at the photos upside down. “Your coach asked me to make sure your rent was paid while you were getting better.”
“It’s not possible,” he said, more frustrated than argumentative. “I hate the cold.”
“You’ve been a ski racer since you were four years old. You love the cold and you’ve made your life on the snow.”
“I didn’t even know what a ski was until you showed me these pictures.”
“You went helmet first into the trees at sixty miles per hour, Dante,” she said. “Things have changed.”
“I’d be dead,” Dante said, without conviction. “I mean I’d still be dead.”
“It’s all on video, from at least three angles.”
“Jesus.”
“It was the Lauberhorn.”
“I don’t know what that means.”
“It’s a famous ski race,” the woman said, as she’d reached forward under his cotton blanket to stroke his bare shin. “Millions of people watched the crash live, and then it was replayed over and over again on the sports highlights.”
“Jesus.” Did he believe in God? Was “Jesus” just an expression?
“Sort of an agony of defeat moment,” she added, careful to smile only a little. “You rode off in a helicopter.”
“And you were my trainer?”
“I’m one of them.” She leaned even farther forward to find Dante’s cold right hand and rub it softly. “We were kind of boyfriend and girlfriend for a while, too.”
“I don’t remember.” Dante shook his head. “I don’t remember you, and I don’t remember anything in these pictures. You used past tense to mean we’d broken up? I don’t even know your name.”
“Yeah, it didn’t end so well,” she said, even though her smile grew wider. “I should have known from your reputation.”
“Jesus.” There was that word again.
“Yeah, well, you’re pretty well known in about a half dozen countries as sort of a ‘player.’ And my name is Jennifer. I introduced myself when I came into your room.”
“You didn’t introduce yourself,” Dante said. The continued frustration was putting him in a dark mood. He didn’t know why he was upset, just felt the anger coming on like a bad headache. Dante snatched his hand away.
“It’s not a big deal.” Jennifer’s hand retreated to her lap.
“Bullshit!” Dante leaned back against the soft headboard. He reached across the metal gate that was supposed to keep him from falling out of bed and grabbed a small container of applesauce from his lunch tray. He read the words on the foil lid, but only half of them made any sense. It wasn’t his first experience with the crazy new language surrounding him, but he’d tried to ignore it up until then. Dante had read the words on the container’s lid out loud, but they remained gibberish. “This is all a big fucking deal!” he shouted and flung the applesauce against the far wall. It bounced, but didn’t open.
“We were friends, too.”
“I don’t believe you,” Dante said, and immediately felt like a jackass. Of course she wasn’t lying. He was the one in a fucking hospital bed having to be told his own name.
“Have you noticed the small scar on the right side of your penis?” Jennifer asked. “It’s about halfway down.”
Dante begrudgingly lifted the th
in cotton blanket with his left hand, hiking up the hospital gown to expose his scarred penis. “Jesus,” he said once again.
“Bite mark,” she’d said, matter-of-factly. “You told me the story. That’s a pretty good example of how things ended between you and your regular cast of girls. I liked you, though. No biting between us.”
“I’m sorry.” Dante pushed the blanket back down. “I just want to go home.”
“You have more tests and more rehab.” Jennifer unfolded her legs and slid off the end of the bed. “They have a counselor to help you prepare for your regular life again. Checkbooks and disability forms. You suffered a traumatic brain injury, Dante. You were in a coma for a long time. They started thinking you were never going to wake up.”
“I’ve been swimming in the ocean every day.” Dante closed his eyes, shutting out the pretty woman he’d apparently had a brief, unpleasant affair with. He wished he was on the pathway to the leeward side of his island, about to step off into the calm water, leaving this room and this woman far behind.
“It was a dream,” she said.
Dante opened his bright blue eyes, fixing them on the woman whose name had once again slipped his mind. He was certain he’d never met her. “I’m going to need your help.”
“I’ll do what I can.”
“First, I need you to please stop telling me about ski racing, snow, and the women pissed off enough to bite me. Good so far?”
“You’re right, I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to upset you. They told me specifically not to upset you.”
“Do I have money? Is a world-class ski racer rich?”
“Um, you have about eight thousand dollars in your checking account,” she told him. “Like I said, they put me in charge of your bills.”
“Do I own anything of value?”
“I really don’t know, but I can find out. Why?”
“I need you to sell everything I own. I’m serious. Everything, as soon as you possibly can. Will you do that for me?”
“I don’t understand.”
“I have to go home,” Dante told the pretty woman.
That had been weeks earlier.
As he looked out the small oval window of the quiet airplane, he saw that the moon was just a tiny sliver over the South Pacific, not big enough to reflect on the surface of the black water.
“I have to go home, and it’s really far away.”
Chapter 22
Ratu didn’t understand the flashing lights on the boat’s seventy-two kilometer color radar system any better than he did the GPS plotter. And he was too strung out on nearly pure Bolivian cocaine to make sense of the fuel gauge now solidly pinned to the left of the big red letter “E.”
When the twin diesel engines died of thirst, Ratu tapped the fish finder with his knuckles and let out a string of jumbled oaths. When he turned and looked back to where Jope had paused at the top of the ladder, returning to reclaim his spot on the bridge, Ratu’s eyes were huge white orbs, his pupils black specks. Blood was flowing freely from his nostrils, dripping off erect nipples and raining onto the indoor-outdoor carpet. His oily hair jutted in pointed spikes from his black scalp.
“You ain’t looking so good.” Jope’s voice was hoarse and unsteady. Jesus, first the shark-god and now Ratu was looking like he’d been taken over by a demon. And not just some totally cool demon like you’d sometimes see at the free outdoor heavy metal concerts. His friend looked big-time possessed. He looked scary movie possessed. Jope wavered at the top of the bridge ladder, eyeing the set of comfortable pilot chairs. He’d planned on sitting back down next to Ratu and maybe telling him about the cannibals on their trail.
“I think we stopped.” Ratu stared back, all bug-eyed, at his friend. Despite the overwhelming quiet, his words were difficult to understand because his parched tongue lolled from the corner of his mouth. The phrase sounded more like, “I ink we opt.”
“Maybe you wanna go lie down, Ratu.” Jope fought the urge to flee back down the ladder. Fear of having to deal with the shark-god again, not to mention the cannibals, kept him hanging onto the upright metal pole behind the bridge seats.
“We outta gash,” Ratu said, making quick, jerky motions with his head toward the fish finder. “I ink we fugged.”
Each of his friend’s spastic movements made Jope flinch. His own mobility was shot to hell, his arms and legs twitchy and convulsive from all the cocaine. The two pirates stood face to face, each doing a bad zombie dance and totally freaking the other out.
“Shark-god say we in a lot of trouble,” Jope finally blurted, trying to control a brand-new facial tick that was making him dizzy. He looked back down the ladder and gripped the rungs tighter. “We gotta give the coke back or real bad shit gonna happen. I can’t take no more bad shit.”
“We ant!” Ratu’s hands seemed to be swatting at imaginary flies. “Gash ank empy, you dipship!”
“The shark-god said cannibals are coming to eat us!” Afraid of falling back down the slippery ladder, Jope stepped onto the blood-stained carpet. His free hands began to involuntarily mimick Ratu’s, swatting at the same imaginary flies buzzing around between them. He couldn’t help himself.
“Fut the sharp-gob,” Ratu said. His flailing arms splashed blood from his nose across Jope’s face and chest. As Jope lurched away from the terrible mess, the hull of the drifting Julius Caesar slammed into something big and hard, the explosion of wood and glass sounding like a bomb. The pirates were thrown into the helm, collapsing in a gory pile as Jope’s nose began to gush with thick, dark blood.
“Please, please, I don’t wanna die!” Jope was pinned under Ratu’s wet, jerking body.
Ratu moaned as the boat pitched to the starboard side. The sound of snapping wood was like small caliber gunshots in the night.
“My wibs! Yew ewbow iz in my wibs!” Ratu’s voice was a screech as he tried pushing Jope off his ribcage. “We hip sumpthin.”
“It’s the cannibals!” Jope screamed, digging his elbow deeper into Ratu’s ribs. Ratu tried to free himself from the weight of his friend, while Jope clambered to hug him for safety. Both were too slick from blood, sweat, and tears to be successful. The fifteen-meter pirate ship pitched farther to its side, setting off more small-caliber gunshots. “The cannibals are shooting at us!”
“Nod cannibaws. Daz da boat bwaking.” Ratu struggled for breath under Jope’s slimy weight. “We muzda hit a weef.”
“Hold me!” Jope wailed, crying and bleeding, unable to get any sort of grip on his friend.
The next wave tipped the Julius Caesar on its side, directly over the western reef of the recently devastated island of East Pukapuka. Wood splintered, fiberglass cracked, and metal twisted and groaned, as the ocean began to disassemble the pirate ship with each small but powerful nudge. The walls collapsed around the trapped pirates. Glass domes covering navigational instruments exploded like firecrackers. The small amount of gas that remained trapped between air bubbles in the fuel line splashed over the still searing hot engine and caught fire.
“Diz ot good,” Ratu whimpered. The pirates bloody faces were pinned cheek to cheek, salt water spraying them from splintered walls. Ratu was still unable to dislodge Jope’s sharp left elbow from a soft spot between his ribs. “At urts bad!”
Jope squeezed the lower half of his right arm free and worked his shaking hand into the pocket of his shorts to find the tiny coral Dakuwaqa carving. He rubbed the figurine as hard and fast as he could, praying to his scary shark-god in mumbled sobs.
“Op ubbing your alls!” Ratu begged his blubbering friend, now pinned tighter than ever in the fractured, flooding pilot house of the doomed Julius Caesar.
* * * *
The mighty shark-god was on his knees in the sand, his back to the water. The sinewy muscles all across Dakuwaqa’s broad shoulders rippled and flexed in the pale moonlight. His strong hands plied at the sand as he whistled a tune between thousands of razor-sharp teeth. Behind him, dozens of small brown wrapped packages floate
d free from the wrecked boat’s galley, bobbing in the black water. The stolen fishing charter continued to break up from the unrelenting waves. Even Dakuwaqa couldn’t smell the cocaine—it was too pure—but he could smell the recycled paper it was wrapped in, which had once been used to ship coffee. Between whistles he sniffed the sweet scent, longing for a latte as he continued to shape the sand beneath him.
Dakuwaqa finished scooping a deep circular moat, then scanned the immediate area for bits of driftwood to add to his sandcastle. He settled on slivers of broken conch, carefully sticking them into the tower nearest the main gate. On one of the towers his country’s flag would wave; the heads of his imaginary enemies would be impaled on the others.
Over the crackle of fire and rumble of breakers—and his own whistling—Dakuwaqa first mistook the strange sound carried on the slight wind as the call of a New Caledonia kagu, or even the throaty cry of an eclectus parrot. Being an ocean god, he didn’t have much interest in birds, one way or the other. He ate his fair share, but crashing up from the depths to gnash his mighty teeth on a bobbing pelican was more for show than anything else. He’d take a plate of nachos over a bag of feather and bone every time. But when water finally extinguished the orange blaze and sent a trail of thick black smoke up over his head toward the twinkling stars, the plaintive wail became unambiguously human.
“Please come back, shark-god!” shouted a terribly frightened voice in the night. “The cannibals are trying to eat us!”
Dakuwaqa brushed sand from his big hands, sat back on his muscular rump, and smiled down at his work.
Chapter 23
Dante stood on the wet concrete between the Rarotonga International Airport terminal and the plane he’d just disembarked. The heaviest rain clouds had pushed off in the morning breeze, and if there was ever a moment for the former ski racer to experience déjà vu, this was it. The jagged Ikurangi Peak just to the east would have caught the eye of any of the regular European racers. This time of day, it was a twin of the pyramid-like Matterhorn, tinted pink with the same morning alpenglow.