The Turtle-Girl from East Pukapuka

by Cole Alpaugh

  Dobby looked down into the face of the little girl clinging to him.

  “Where’s my turtle?” Butter suddenly asked, as if realizing for the first time she wasn’t still clinging to its shell. And the captain’s heart sank again, maybe down to where dead turtles wind up.

  Chapter 28

  Eight-thousand miles from the Vermont apartment his ski team trainer claimed had been filled with his belongings, Dante hunched over a partially eaten burger. Those belongings had included four flat screen televisions, three water bongs, and five overflowing cartons of girl-on-girl porn videos that she’d sold or bagged for the trash while he suffered through daily rehab.

  It began raining—noisy drops tapping at the corrugated plastic awning.

  “My oldest daughter is a policeman here on Raro, a Senior Sergeant,” the grandmother across the picnic table told Dante, while patting the child’s bare back. A chilly new gust of wind cut through the humid air and stole a few napkins in a flutter. “She knows most of the rescuers who went to East Pukapuka after the big wave, and there was nobody left. They buried a few bodies, but most were washed away. They’ve all moved to the next life on Happa Now.”

  Dante pulled a nylon ski team jacket out of one backpack, scratched at the itchy beard taking over his pale face. He no more recognized the face he touched than the thin jacket with sponsor logos on the chest and shoulders. Oddly, he knew VISA was a credit card, but didn’t know what an Alka Seltzer did. As for his face, he tried to make sense of what his former trainer had said. How he’d been able to seduce so many women, herself included. When he looked in the mirror, his blue eyes looked droopy and sad to him, almost pathetic, like the eyes of a beagle who’s chewed up something irreplaceable and is about to face the music. The funny cleft chin that he pinched to make deeper. Did he inherit it from his father? From his mother?

  Dante had plenty of scars on his legs, but most were older and not from the final crash. The damage that lingered from the recent accident was mostly on the inside. He had stood before the mirror in the care center bathroom clenching his teeth, flexing the big muscles at the hinge of his jaw, watching the unfamiliar face change. His brown hair was short and his jaw line sharp.

  “Who are you?” But the face that looked back at him wore an oddly blank expression.

  “I’m nobody.”

  “You’re just a bunch of blurry pictures in photo albums.” Dante grabbed both sides of the sink basin, his legs weak from standing on the hard tiles. “Almost funny, isn’t it? You were such a great guy that the people who visit sit tapping their feet, wishing like hell the time was up so they can get the fuck away from you.”

  “There’s no fixing it,” the face said.

  “Damn fucking straight there’s no fixing it,” Dante replied. “So what’s next? I just get on a plane and go home? I just forget these people?”

  “You’re a joke, Dante. Who do you have to forget?”

  “Okay, I get it. You’re right.”

  “People have wanted to escape from you for longer than you want to know. One of the pictures they stuck under your nose was of your old man. I guess one of the docs wanted to see if something clicked inside your empty head. Bet you didn’t see that guy’s mug bringing you flowers and a box of chocolates. Any get well cards with a Florida return address? Hey, for that matter, exactly how many get well cards did you get?”

  Dante looked away from the mirror, back toward his bed and the empty table next to it. “Enough, I’m done.” His leg muscles burned.

  “You wanna hear the last straw with dear old dad?”

  “I know what happened.”

  “Guess who was sneaking out of the team hotel rooms in Europe while his mother was dying of cancer? They had to plant one of the ski tech guys in the lobby just to keep you from bars and whorehouses while Mom was wasting away from chemo.”

  “I remember.”

  “They put up with your bullshit because of your potential.”

  “I didn’t even call her, did I?”

  “Hey, you want to hear something else that’s a real hoot? You picked up a few of those bar sluts by telling them about your sick mother. Nice, huh? You couldn’t be bothered to pick up the phone and tell her you loved her, but you could use her cancer to get some of that fine pussy. Just between you and me, I’d say that pretty much makes you a royal asshole.”

  Dante’s legs wobbled and he considered punching the glass, shattering this stranger’s face just for the hell of it. He turned and went back to bed instead.

  Back in Dante’s present reality at the burger joint, the grandmother finally said, “You had a vision,” and nodded her head. But Dante was still lost in thought, staring off at the misty hillside. “A vision from a place you’ve never been.”

  “The doctors said I had a dream.”

  “That’s what a vision is, young man. You come tell my Ophelia your dream about the sad little girl and who she was looking for. My name is Mary.”

  Dante took her hand across the picnic table. “Dante,” he said.

  “That makes sense for you. The name Dante means ‘to never give up.’ You aren’t the kind of person to give up, are you?”

  “Does Ophelia have a boat?”

  “Hah, this is an island, Dante. Everybody has a boat,” Mary teased, as the two watched the bus driver push aside his empty plate, rise, and walk to the edge of the awning to wait for a break in what was now a steady downpour. “Your vision is comforting news.”

  “My dream? What’s comforting about it?”

  “Yes, your dream is probably some kind of message from Happa Now.” Mary paused and rolled the child over in her lap, adjusting the diaper. “It’s very common for people to be homesick.”

  “You mean people who have died? Dead people get homesick?”

  “People who have moved on, like my cousin Charles Darwin,” Mary corrected. “When one person moves on, he may speak to his loved ones very quietly. Only they will hear his voice, like a whisper on the wind. But imagine the noise after a bus crash?”

  “Or an entire village wiped out by a tsunami,” Dante said. Even though he understood that he’d somehow been elected as a spiritual medium, he wasn’t ready to buy into the whole concept. Had he believed in god before his accident? He should have asked his trainer if there were any bibles or crucifixes mixed in with the gigantic collection of girl-on-girl videos she’d made snide remarks about.

  “Yes, that’s right,” said Mary. “An entire village of people not prepared to move on to Happa Now died too soon. Small children and strong, healthy adults, all with many years supposedly ahead of them, chosen by the gods to be sent on to their next lives.”

  “Or maybe it was just a dream.”

  “Like I said, dreams are visions. They all have meaning, even if you don’t want to believe in them. But you come tell my Ophelia, okay? I want her to hear it from you.”

  * * * *

  Ninety minutes later, Dante was sitting in the great room of a Raro bungalow. It was so completely engulfed in thick vegetation it was difficult to decipher how big or small it really was. Ducking under low hanging palm fronds, Dante followed Mary up the flat stone pathway, through a wrought-iron gate, then up four steps behind her to the arched front doorway.

  “Ophelia’s still sleeping,” Mary whispered over her shoulder, then hoisted her grandson, who was also still sleeping, over that same shoulder and led them inside. Mary whisked the child off to bed then reappeared to fuss with an ancient coffee percolator. “She’s my youngest daughter’s child. One of them is an important police officer; the other drinks in bars and sometimes doesn’t come home for days.”

  “I’m sorry,” Dante said.

  “Life has a way of evening out. There’s always bad with the good, nothing to be sorry about.”

  The rain had tapered off into a blowing mist beyond the large glass panes that took up most of one wall. With so many deep shades of green it was hard to imagine this part of the island ever getting hot. Dottin
g the garden landscape were tropical flowers in variations of orange and red, with bursts of yellow. A tall wooden fence, mostly hidden behind thick foliage, circled the entire perimeter of the property.

  “It’s really incredible here.” Sitting on a thick cushioned couch, Dante searched the many dark nooks and crannies of the high-ceilinged room. It wasn’t the home of a wealthy family—more like one handy with tools and woodworking. What would the tools that made these walls feel like in his hands? Would they be vaguely familiar? Had he ever used any sort of tools? Dante hoped so. He expected a fair amount of rebuilding awaited him on East Pukapuka. He’d anticipated paying for a place to stay, slipping right into a new life. The house meandered away from this one large room via three narrow hallways, almost cave-like tunnels that disappeared into shadows cast by windows covered in lush plants.

  “How do you like it?” Mary asked from the kitchen, just as a brand new vision appeared at the mouth of one of the dark hallways. The vision was a tall female, arms crossed over a bright floral kimono robe. Her skin was pale white, highlighted by the few rays of light filtering in through the high window near her left shoulder.

  Dante believed he was seeing a ghost.

  “Sugar? Milk?” Mary popped her head out of the kitchen to see why she wasn’t getting an answer. “Oh, good morning, Ophelia, I put Christian to bed a few minutes ago.”

  “She’s still not home?” the blond vision asked. Her face was as long as a fashion model’s, with high cheekbones and lovely full lips. “Where did you take him?”

  “I left a note. I took him to the fruit stands in Nikao.”

  “There’s fresh fruit?” asked the vision, who had apparently decided to ignore the strange white man sitting on her couch.

  “Well, we stopped at the beach to watch the hermit crabs ...”

  “So there’s no fruit? You went all that way and you two ended up playing with hermit crabs?”

  “This is Dante.” Mary pointed at him. “We met at the burger stand on the trip home. He was on our bus.”

  Still ignoring Dante, the vision asked about coffee.

  “Dante is going home to East Pukapuka,” Mary said, measuring water for the percolator. “He’s never been there, but his reasons are a bit complicated. He has a very interesting story I think you’ll want to hear.”

  The glorious young woman was now glaring at Dante instead of ignoring him. She hadn’t changed her stance in the hallway, as though protecting someone behind her. Dante realized it was the hallway Mary had dashed off to with the little boy. Dante recalled Mary saying her daughter was a police sergeant.

  “My new friend Dante has had a vision, something he calls a ‘dream.’ ” Mary switched on the metal coffee pot, which immediately began making sucking sounds. “His vision was about a little girl still alive on East Pukapuka. Isn’t that right, Dante?”

  Dante sat quietly.

  “The island you said he’s never been to?” the exquisite woman asked, and even her accusing voice was angelic and lovely. Dante melted back into the couch, wanting to hide. The circumstances behind his story never seemed to translate well into words.

  “I had an accident,” he tried to explain, but the two women had gone back to ignoring him. “I was in a coma.”

  “He heard a little girl crying out for Charles Darwin.” Mary set three cups side by side on the counter, grabbed a towel to wipe up stray coffee grounds.

  “Mom, Charles Darwin has been dead a hundred years. That’s not a vision. That’s a footnote in a book.”

  “You have sick days.” Mary located a clean spoon for the sugar bowl.

  “I do not!”

  “You have vacation days.”

  “He’s brain-damaged!” the vision shouted and pointed at Dante, who was trying to blend into the couch’s floral pattern. “Hit by a car? A train? What was your accident? Did you jump off a building?”

  “Don’t be cruel,” Mary told her daughter. “It was just an accident. He doesn’t want to talk about it.”

  “It’s six hundred kilometers, Mom. I’m not taking him.”

  “Your Aunt Darwin is family,” Mary said. “How would you like your coffee, Dante?”

  “A little sugar, please.” Dante tried not to stare at the beautiful blond policewoman in the kimono.

  “There’s no way I’m taking you.” The vision stormed past him for her cup, then turned to head back down the hall. “You want to get there so badly, you’re welcome to swim.”

  When she was out of sight, Mary spoke quietly. “You noticed Ophelia’s skin is white?”

  “Yes.”

  “Once she was also a lost little girl with no family,” Mary said, setting Dante’s cup in front of him. “You never leave a crying child alone in this world.”

  Chapter 29

  “Help me, Ratu!” Jope called out in the dark, slapping the surface of the water with open hands as a wave picked up his skinny black body and tumbled him across the sharp coral reef. “Ouch! That hurts!” Jope screeched, trying to grab his new sore spots and still keep his chin above the roiling salt water.

  “Ratu!” Jope called helplessly into the night, his nose and ears full of water, knowing one more wave would fill the rest of him. “I can’t swim!”

  Ten seconds later, a wave that had been gathering steam for some two thousand kilometers flipped Jope upside down and sent him headfirst toward the bottom of a deep spot between the reef and the island. “Ratu,” Jope attempted to say again, but he painfully discovered that trying to talk while submerged was only good for filling your lungs with stinging sea water.

  “Aaaaak!” Jope tried to say, but only topped off his lungs and slowly drifted toward the bottom, straight as a pencil, until his head bumped the sand. A big crab scuttled away. It was probably a good thing it was pitch black, for the crab would have literally scared the crap out of the pirate. Jope was deathly afraid of crabs, especially creepy talking and singing ones, like in the movie previews of The Little Mermaid.

  Jope stayed in this position, upside down like a piece of sea grass, the current from the waves above shifting him to and fro. But just as Jope was beginning to enjoy the peaceful feeling—the tickling at his toes and the funny way his penis bobbed inside his cut-offs—Dakuwaqa the shark-god swam out of the blackness and sat down near his face, a glowing light-blue aura surrounding him.

  “I can’t talk,” Jope told him. “I’m underwater.”

  “Uh, you are talking, dumbass.” The shark-god pulled a fat cigar from a hidden pocket and struck a long match on the back of a starfish.

  “I hate it when people call me names,” Jope whimpered.

  “Aw, now you’re gonna cry?”

  “Did you come to save me?” Jope fought back tears. “Saving people is what gods do.”

  “Boy, I don’t think anyone could ever save you. Take a look around.” The shark-god waved his cigar, its smoke forming a visible line like airplane contrails.

  “Do I at least get one last wish?”

  “Last wish?” The god cocked his head.

  “You know, like before a firing squad shoots you. They have to give you whatever you want.”

  “Okay, sure, what the hell,” said the shark-god, taking a big puff and sending a plume of gray smoke toward the surface. “You got one wish, kid.”

  “I wish that you’d save me!” Jope heard the pride in his own voice at his cleverness. It wasn’t often he felt clever, especially not in front of a god.

  “Yeah, sorry, that’s not going to happen.” The shark-god jammed the cigar back into the corner of his dangerous looking mouth.

  “But you said you’d give me a last wish!” Jope was crestfallen.

  “Well, I said I’d give you one.” The shark-god casually flicked an ash into an open clam. The gesture occurred with a mild stutter, as though the underwater world worked a little slower than up in the air. “I didn’t say I’d grant it.”

  “That’s not fair.” But Jope was used to these sorts of disappointments.
He’d been enduring them his entire life. Why should dying be any different? “You aren’t supposed to be an evil god. I made posters of you for my bedroom.”

  “All right, all right.” The shark-god snickered and puffed gray swirling smoke. “How ’bout I give you three wishes? You wanna be rich? Have a giant wang?”

  Jope kept his mouth shut. He wasn’t falling for the same trick again. He just quietly wafted back and forth, upside-down in the gentle current.

  “Ah, you ain’t no fucking fun.” The shark-god stubbed out his cigar in the sandy bottom. “Here you go, pal. Abra-fucking-cadabra!” Dakuwaqa used his deepest shark-god voice, theatrically crossing his muscular arms, nodding his head and blinking hard, like a Baghdad genie.

  Jope continued to slowly waft, blinking back at the shark-god.

  “Your skinny black ass is saved,” the shark-god pronounced. “And you’re welcome, dumbass!”

  As the shark-god turned to swim off, Jope felt a tug on his right big toe. He immediately recoiled, fearing it might be a singing Disney crab, or maybe even one of those bloodthirsty cannibals from Malakula. Jesus, don’t let it be one of those bastards! While some tribes didn’t bother eating anybody unless they had the pleasure of killing and tenderizing him themselves, story had it that the Malakula tribe would eat week-old roadkill covered in flies and wriggling maggots. Jope swooned at the thought.

  Whatever was after him had a solid grip around his ankle, and Jope had no leverage to fight. He caught a glimpse of the soles of the shark-god’s feet kicking away, but everything else was murky. Up he went, pulled from above.

  “Don’t go! I’ll take it!” Jope called after the shark-god. All the jerking and tugging made him feel like a rag doll in a dog’s mouth. “You can leave me dead, but make me rich. Or give me a giant wang! Something … anything … please, please come back!” But the shark-god was long gone, not a bubble or hint of cheap cigar remaining.