by A. Sparrow
Chapter 25: Recovered
I awaken from the blankest sleep of my existence: an utter void with not a hint of a dream—an atheist’s vision of death.
I lie scrunched against the center post of the hut, wrapped in a frayed and perforated quilt that I don’t remember draping on myself. A rubber boot is my pillow.
A jolt zings me as I remember that snake and realize I’m on the ground, but I see the door pushed tight. A dim light seeps through gaps around the frame. I relax.
I hear a scraping and a rustling beyond the hanging partition. Sabonis starts humming something jazzy—Stella by Starlight, I think—his voice deep and toothy as a rip-saw. The curtain parts and he scuffs out, spikes of hair and beard jutting like a frightened porcupine. Flakes of dried vomit and spittle crust his beard.
I sit up. “Holy shit,” I say. “You're looking great!”
“Oh yeah?” says Sabonis. “Then why do I feel like a heap of turds?”
“I mean you’re all put together,” I say. “Whatever Bianca did to you … it worked wonders.”
“Wonders,” Sabonis mutters, running his fingers through his tangled hair. He squints into a chromed hub cap he has hung for a mirror. “It didn’t come cheap.”
“Oh?”
“Bianca says, if I don’t bring you back to the mountain, they’re coming after me big time.”
I tap on the partition and whisper. “Is she—?”
“She left,” says Sabonis.
“Well … if they’re threatening you … I mean, if they really want me back on that mountain. Maybe I should go. I’m more ready now … than I was ... I think.”
Sabonis wheels around to face me. “What the fuck? You giving up that easy?”
“I didn’t know that coming down here would cause you so much trouble.”
“Trouble? You’re no trouble,” he says.
“Still … maybe I should do what they want.”
“Nu-uh,” says Sabonis. “No deal. I ain’t taking you back up till you show me the way.”
“Show you … what … exactly?”
“The place where souls come in. Remember? That sewing machine in the sky you said you saw?”
“Well, yeah, but—”
“You’re taking me there,” says Sabonis. “Afterwards, I don’t give a shit. You do whatever the hell you want. But first, you take me. That’s the deal.”
I don’t remember making any deal, but Sabonis’ expression reminds me of a guy who stopped me once on Route 13: indignant; in the full bloom of road rage. So I stay mum.
I fudged the part about the giant sewing machine. I actually remember very little about coming here. But now didn’t seem the most opportune time to break that news to him.
Sabonis stares and glares. Gradually, his eyes soften and the calm returns to his countenance.
“I’m starving,” he says. “Want some breakfast?”
I squint as Sabonis pushes open the door to a yard reflecting the orb in full gleam. I rise slowly and follow him outside.
He’s already knee-deep in the lagoon, picking things off the bottom. He holds a plastic garbage can lid upside down like a waiter with a platter.
He veers over to some thorny bushes and plucks something off the branches, and brings it all over to something that looks like a picnic table. It’s bumpy and rickety and made of lashed together lengths of driftwood.
The platter is full of sea urchins and rose hips. We crack the urchins open and pick through their peach-colored roe with our fingers. The rose hips are dry and seedy but their tartness makes a nice counterpoint to the fatty roe.
Sabonis cleans up by tipping the table on its side. He strides off past the lagoon and over some dunes. I marvel at how strong he’s looking. What a difference a day makes.
I follow him to a rocky cove where the ocean comes in deep. A hulking shape covered with reed mats lurks atop a stone ramp on rollers fashioned from straight, round lengths of sapling.
Sabonis peels off the mats, revealing a de-masted outrigger canoe, its main hull carved from a single massive tree trunk. It’s decayed and ancient, like something one might find in a museum of Polynesian history. It looks far from seaworthy.
Sabonis wrestles its detached mast into position.
“Need your help to hoist this,” he says.
I step in and help him lift the mast. I look like a Marine on Mt. Suribachi as he chinks it into place with wedges he bashes in with a mallet.
He unrolls a sail: a patchwork of rice sacks, blue tarps and windsurf sails, stitched and patched with fishing monofilament. It attaches to the mast and boom with bits of netting and nylon line of every color, knotted together.
I run my hand along the hull. Bits of wood break off, crumbly with dry rot. Cracks sealed with pitch run down its length.
“Does this thing even float?” I say.
“It’ll be fine,” says Sabonis. “Long as we keep bailing. Not like we need to be out there long, if you know where we need to go. Then there’s no need to dawdle. I don’t give a shit if it sinks once we reach the interface. I’m not like Delgado. Once I leave, I’m not coming back to this shit hole.”
“Interface?”
“The place where souls cross over. That’s what Bianca calls it,” says Sabonis. “You still remember it, don’t you?”
“I suppose.”
“What do you mean, you suppose?” says Sabonis. “You said you saw it.” He flashes me a worried look.
“Well, it’s all a bit fuzzy now.” I say, picking at the punky wood with my fingernails.
“But you said you knew.”
Anxious to please him, I dredge my earliest post-mortem memories for details of my floating. “I remember bits and pieces. I was up in the air, looking down, and the sea … it was curved.”
“This place,” says Sabonis. “Is it a single spot or does it circle the whole island?”
“I don’t remember.”
Sabonis grunts and shuffles his feet. “Let’s get our ass out there and maybe it’ll jog your memory. We gotta skedaddle anyhow. If Bianca says heat’s coming, the heat is coming.”
“I don’t think I can get you where you want to go,” I say.
“What do you mean?” says Sabonis.
“I mean I don’t have a clue where this interface place is.”
“Sure you do,” says Sabonis. “You just gave me some clues.”
“But that’s about all I know,” I say. “And honestly I’m not sure I want to go through with this.”
Sabonis clenches his mallet and takes a long breath. “What do you mean? What is it you wanna do?”
“I don’t know,” I say, fidgeting. “I was confused, scared, when I was on that mountain. But now … I think, maybe, I want to go back.”
“You’re shitting me,” says Sabonis.
“No,” I say. “I’m serious. I want to give it another shot.” I’m not sure I believe my own words, but going back would relieve some of the worries bedeviling me and put me back in Bianca’s good graces.
Sabonis looks out over the ocean, wistfully. “So where is it exactly that you want to go?” he says.
“I don’t know. Maybe … back to that first beach.”
He scrunches his face. “There? Really?”
“Yeah. I think so,” I say. “From there, I can go back up the mountain.”
He stands, studying, pitying me.
“Fine,” he says, bouncing the mallet in the hull. He kicks away the chocks that keep the outrigger from rolling. “C’mon. Help me push it in.”
“But—”
“I’ll take you there by boat,” he says. “It’s quicker. Safer.”
I hesitate, before rushing over to help.
“Sorry … I misled you.”
“Forget about it,” says Sabonis. “I’ll find my own way.”
He throws his shoulder against the prow. I push with both hands. The boat doesn’t budge.
A storm rages in my stomach. Maybe it’s that ske
tchy breakfast we just ate, or maybe it’s my reaction to choosing a path that eliminates the prospect of returning to Gina.
But how much confidence did I have in this raggedy man and even more raggedy boat to bring me back to life? Particularly, since he was counting on me to show him the way. How much confidence do I have in myself?
I dread being set adrift in that ocean again. Something tells me that this time it won’t be so gentle on my body.
“Push, goddamnit!” says Sabonis, straining.
I’m just standing there, mostly leaning against the thing, but now I press full weight against it. We strain and strain until one of the rollers snaps off a knot and the outrigger rattles down the stone ramp and splashes into the cove.
Sabonis climbs in and holds the boat against the ledge until I can join him. As I set myself down on a strut, he tosses me a broken plastic pail, the kind of beach toy a child would use to make sand castles.
“Here, make yourself useful,” he says. “Get ready to bail.”