On the Island

by Tracey Garvis Graves

  A full week passed without either of us seeing the shark. We thought it had gone away for good, that its appearance in the lagoon had been an anomaly, like the jellyfish.

  T.J. started fishing again.

  A few days later, I sat near the shore shaving my legs. T.J. walked up with the fish he’d caught, watching as I dragged the razor slowly up my leg, nicking my knee and drawing blood. He winced.

  “The blade is dull,” I explained.

  He sat down next to me. “You can’t go near the water right now, Anna.” And that’s how I knew the shark was back.

  He told me he had just pulled the last fish in when he spotted it. “It swam back and forth parallel to the shore, with just the tip of its fin sticking out of the water. It looked like it was hunting.”

  “Don’t fish anymore, T.J. Please.”

  There were days I could hardly choke down the fish that made up the bulk of our diet. We checked the shore daily for crab, hoping for a little variety, but we almost never found them and neither of us could figure out why. The breadfruit and coconut would sustain us, but I realized how hungry we would be as long as the shark lurked in the lagoon.

  Another two weeks passed without either of us seeing it. I still wouldn’t go near the water, except to bathe and then only up to my knees. Our stomachs growled constantly. T.J. wanted to fish, but I begged him not to.

  I pictured the shark, waiting patiently for one of us to venture in too far. T.J. believed the shark had moved on, that it had finally decided there was nothing in the lagoon it wanted. Our conflicting theories caused more than one disagreement between us.

  I had long since abandoned the notion that I held any kind of rank over T.J. I may have been older and had more life experience, but that didn’t matter on the island. We took each day as it came, addressing and solving problems together. But placing yourself in the natural habitat of an animal that could eat you struck me as the epitome of stupid, and I told T.J. so which is probably why, when I saw him fishing near dinnertime two days later, in waist deep water, I went ballistic.

  I waved my arms back and forth to get his attention, jumping up and down on the sand. “Get out right now!”

  He took his time getting out of the water, walked up to me, and said, “What is your deal?”

  “What do you think you’re doing?”

  “I’m fishing. I’m hungry, and so are you.”

  “Hungry is not dead T.J., and you are not invincible!” I poked him hard in the chest after each word, and he grabbed my hand to stop me from poking him again.

  “Jesus Christ, calm down!”

  “You told me not to go in the water the other day and now you’re standing in it up to your waist like it’s no big deal.”

  “You were bleeding, Anna! And you wouldn’t go near the water now if I begged you to, so don’t act like you need my permission,” he yelled.

  “Why are you so determined to put yourself in danger, even after I asked you not to?”

  “Because whether or not I get in the water is my decision, Anna, not yours.”

  “Your decisions have a direct effect on me, T.J., so I think I have every right to weigh in when those decisions are asinine!” Tears sprang to my eyes, and my lip quivered. I turned my back on him and stomped away. He didn’t follow.

  T.J. had finished rebuilding the house the week before. I walked in the door and lay down in the life raft. When I was done crying, I took deep, calming breaths, and I must have dozed because when I opened my eyes, T.J. was lying on his back beside me, awake.

  “I’m sorry,” we both said at the same time.

  “Jinx. You owe me a Coke,” I said. “I want a big one, with extra ice.”

  He smiled. “It’s the first thing I’ll do when we get off this island.”

  I propped myself up on one elbow, facing him. “I freaked out. I’m just so scared.”

  “I really do think the shark is gone.”

  “It’s not just the shark, T.J.” I took a deep breath. “I care about you, very much, and I can’t bear the thought of you getting hurt, or dying. I can only handle being here because you’re with me.”

  “You could survive, Anna. You can do everything I can, and you’d be okay.”

  “I would not be okay. I’m fine being on my own back home, but not here, T.J. Not on this island.” Tears welled up in my eyes as I imagined the isolation and pain I would feel if T.J. was gone. “I don’t know if you can die of loneliness, but after a while I might want to,” I whispered.

  He sat up a little and put his hand on my forearm. “Don’t ever say that.”

  “It’s true. Don’t tell me you’ve never thought about it.”

  He didn’t say anything at first, but he wouldn’t look directly at me. Finally, he nodded and said, “After the bat bit you.”

  Tears poured from my eyes and ran down my face. T.J. pulled me down onto his chest and held me while I cried, rubbing my back and waiting for me to finish. Neither of us wore much – a pair of shorts for him and a swimsuit for me – and the skin-on-skin contact soothed me in a way I didn’t expect. He smelled like the ocean and that was a scent I’d forever associate with him.

  I sighed, content in the release that came with a good cry. It had been so long since anyone held me I didn’t want to move. Finally, I raised my head. He cupped my face in his hands and wiped my tears with his thumbs.

  “Better?”

  “Yes.”

  He looked into my eyes and said, “I’ll never leave you alone, Anna. Not if I can help it.”

  “Then please don’t go in the water.”

  “Okay.” He wiped a few more tears. “Don’t worry. We’ll figure something out. We always do.”

  “I’m just so tired, T.J.”

  “Then close your eyes.”

  He misunderstood me. I meant tired in general, from always having a new problem to solve and constantly worrying about one of us getting sick or hurt. It would be dark soon, though, and it felt so good being in his arms. I put my head back down and shut my eyes.

  He tightened his hold on me. One of his hands stroked from my shoulder down to the small of my back, and the other rested on my arm.

  “You make me feel safe,” I whispered.

  “You are safe.”

  I gave in to the pull of sleep and the escape it offered, but seconds before I drifted off completely, I could have sworn T.J.’s lips brushed mine in the sweetest and softest of kisses.

  I woke up in his arms just before sunrise, hungry, thirsty, and needing to go to the bathroom. I climbed out of bed, left the house, and walked into the woods, stopping to gather coconuts and breadfruit on my way back. The sky filled with morning light as I brushed my teeth and combed my hair, then prepared our breakfast.

  While I waited for him to wake up, I replayed last night’s events in my mind. His desire had been palpable, radiating off him like heat from a fire. His breathing had changed, growing louder, and his heart had pounded under my cheek. He’d shown remarkable restraint, and I wondered how long he’d be satisfied with only holding me in his arms.

  I wondered how long I would be.

  He came out of the house a few minutes later, scraping his hair back into a ponytail.

  “Hey.” He sat down beside me and gave my shoulder a squeeze. “How’re you doing this morning?” His knee rested against mine.

  “Much better.”

  “Did you sleep okay?”

  “Yes. Did you?”

  He nodded, smiling. “I slept great, Anna.”

  We sat on the shore after breakfast.

  “So, I’ve been thinking,” he said, scratching one of his mosquito bites. “What if I take the life raft out into the lagoon to fish?”

  His suggestion terrified me. “No way,” I said, shaking my head back and forth. “What if the shark bites the raft? Or capsizes it?”

  “It’s not Jaws, Anna. Besides, you said you didn’t want me standing in the water.”

  “I might have made my feelings
clear on that,” I admitted.

  “If I fish from the raft, we won’t be hungry.”

  My stomach growled like Pavlov’s dog when he mentioned fish. “I don’t know, T.J. It seems like a bad idea.”

  “I won’t go out very far. Just deep enough to catch some fish.”

  “Fine. But I’m going with you.”

  “You don’t have to.”

  “Of course I do.”

  We had to deflate the life raft to get it through the doorway of the house. We re-inflated it with the carbon dioxide canister and carried it down to the beach.

  “I changed my mind,” I said. “This is insane. We should stay on the beach where it’s safe.”

  T.J. grinned. “Now what would be the fun in that?”

  We paddled the life raft out to the middle of the lagoon. T.J. baited his hook and pulled the fish in one by one, throwing them in a plastic container filled with seawater. I couldn’t sit still or stop looking over the side of the raft. T.J. pulled me down beside him.

  “You’re making me nervous,” he said, putting his arm around me. “I’ll catch a couple more fish, and we’ll go back.”

  The life raft no longer had the roof canopy attached and the sun beat down on us. I wore only a bikini, but I was still sweltering in the heat. T.J. was wearing my cowboy hat and he took it off and plunked it down on my head.

  “Your nose is turning red,” he said.

  “I’m burning up. It’s hot out here.”

  T.J. reached his hand over the side, scooped up some water, and poured it on my chest, watching as it ran in a lazy trickle down to my bellybutton. My body tingled and my core temperature shot up ten degrees. He started to dip his hand in again, and then stopped abruptly. “There it is.” He pulled his fishing pole out of the water.

  I looked over my shoulder and every muscle in my body tensed. The fin glided through the water twenty yards away, moving toward us. When it got close enough for us to get a good look, I reached instinctively for the paddles and handed one to T.J. We watched the shark circle the raft, neither of us saying anything.

  “I want to go back to shore,” I said.

  T.J. nodded, and we paddled away, the shark following us into shallow water. When it was only knee high, T.J. jumped out and pulled the raft onto the sand with me still sitting in it. I climbed out.

  “What the fuck are we gonna do about that?” he asked.

  “I don’t know.”

  Because really, I had no idea what T.J. and I were going to do about the nine-foot tiger shark living in our lagoon.

  We walked back to the house. T.J. made a fire, and I cleaned and cooked our lunch. We ate all the fish, stuffing ourselves after going without them for so long. T.J. started pacing as soon as he finished his last bite.

  “I can’t believe you were in the water with that thing.” He stopped, turning to look at me. “You don’t have to worry about me standing in the ocean anymore. I’ll fish from the raft. I just hope it doesn’t decide to take a bite out of it.”

  “Here’s the problem, T.J. We can’t keep re-inflating the life raft every time we take it in, or out, of the house. I don’t how much CO2 we have left. As long as you use the raft for fishing, we’ll have to keep it outside. We’ll have the canopy overhead, but that’s it. No protection from the mosquitoes without the nylon sides.” T.J. already had multiple bites from being in the woods all the time.

  “So the shark gets to decide if we eat and where we sleep?”

  “Pretty much.”

  “That’s bullshit. The shark can call the shots in the water, but not on land. We’ll have to kill it.”

  He’s got to be kidding. Taking on a known man-eater didn’t seem very realistic, and I thought it might also get us killed. T.J. went into the house and returned with the toolbox. He removed the rope, unraveled it, and separated it into individual strands.

  “What are you thinking?” I asked, afraid of what his answer might be.

  “If I can bend a few nails, and attach them to this rope, maybe we can hook the shark and pull it out of the water.”

  “You want to try and catch it?”

  “Yes.”

  “From the raft?”

  “No, from the beach. If we’re on land, we might actually have a chance. We’ll have to get the shark into shallow water,” he said.

  “Well, we know that’s possible. I was surprised how close it got to shore.”

  T.J. nodded. Neither of us mentioned that the shark had been perfectly capable of swimming in waist-deep water.

  T.J hammered three nails halfway into the side of the house and then used the claw end of the hammer to bend them before pulling them back out. He tied the individual strands of the rope around the head of each nail, making a three-pronged hook.

  “I’m not sure what to use for bait,” T.J. said.

  “You want to try and catch the shark today?”

  “I want our lagoon back, Anna.” He had a determined look in his eye, and I figured there was no talking him out of it.

  “I know what we need.” I couldn’t believe I was about to contribute to this insane plan.

  “What?”

  “A chicken. If we put it on the hook alive, it’ll thrash around and attract the shark.”

  He patted me on the back. “Glad to see you’re on board.”

  “Reluctantly.” But I agreed with T.J. that we had to try. Despite the shark, and the jellyfish, and the other dangers we probably didn’t even know about, the lagoon was ours, and I could understand why T.J. wanted to fight for it. I only hoped we didn’t pay for it with our lives.

  We had caught and eaten two more chickens since the one we’d found on our first Christmas. We thought there was at least one left, two if we were lucky. We hadn’t heard or seen one for a while though. It was like they knew we were picking them off one by one.

  We scoured the island and had almost given up when we heard the flapping. It took another half hour to catch it. I looked away when T.J. put it on the hook.

  He waded into chest deep water, threw the chicken as far as he could, and got the hell back out, taking the slack out of the rope so he could feel any change in the tension.

  The chicken flapped on the surface, trying to escape. We watched, horrified, as the shark launched itself out of the water and engulfed the chicken in its mouth. T.J. yanked on the rope as hard as he could to set the hook. “I think it worked, Anna. I can feel it pulling.”

  He took several steps backward and dug his heels in, holding the rope with both hands.

  Suddenly, the rope jerked and T.J. flew forward, landing face down as the shark swam in the opposite direction from shore. I threw myself onto his back and clawed at the sand, snapping back two of my fingernails. The shark dragged us both as if we weighed nothing at all. When we managed to regain our footing and stand, we were knee deep in the water.

  “Get behind me,” T.J. said. He wrapped the rope around his forearm twice. I grabbed onto the end. We took a few steps backward and held our ground. The shark thrashed back and forth, trying to simultaneously eat the chicken and dislodge our hook.

  It jerked us forward again. T.J. pulled back on the rope as hard as he could, forearms bulging. Sweat poured down my face as we continued our tug-of-war, the water now up to our thighs.

  My arms burned and as the minutes passed, I knew with absolute certainty that T.J. and I could never land it. I thought the only reason we’d held any ground at all was because the shark let us. It would have taken three grown men to have any kind of fighting chance, and it was time to give up.

  “Drop the rope, T.J. We need to get out now.”

  He didn’t argue, but the rope was wrapped so tight around his forearm he couldn’t unwind it. He struggled to free himself as the shark pulled him into deeper water, and he was in well over his head when the rope went slack. Relieved, I thought it had snapped, but then I realized the shark was swimming toward us.

  “Get out of the water, Anna!”

  I froze,
watching T.J. frantically untangle his arm from the rope. The fin slipped below the surface, and I knew he’d never make it to shore in time.

  I screamed. But then, out of the corner of my eye, I noticed more fins, moving so fast they sped by in a blur. The dolphins had arrived, two or three of them swimming close together in a group.

  I scrambled out of the water and watched as they surrounded T.J., protecting him while he swam toward the shore. When he joined me on the sand, I threw my arms around him, sobbing.

  Four more dolphins joined the others and now there were at least seven. They charged the shark, battering it with their snouts, pushing it into shallow water.

  T.J. spotted the end of the rope floating next to the school of dolphins. He waded in and quickly grabbed it. We pulled, and with some help from the dolphins, the shark ended up on the beach shaking its head back and forth, a few chicken feathers protruding from its mouth.

  T.J. scooped me up in a bear hug. I wrapped my legs around his waist and we screamed and cheered.

  The dolphins swam back and forth excitedly. T.J. and I ran into the water and though hugging dolphins wasn’t an easy thing to do, we managed. They dispersed a few minutes later. T.J. and I left the water and stood next to the shark, which lay still on the sand.

  “I don’t know what would have happened if the dolphins hadn’t shown up,” I said.

  “We were getting our asses kicked, that’s for sure.”

  “I’ve never been so scared in my life. I thought that shark was going to eat you.”

  T.J. hugged me, resting his chin on the top of my head. “It didn’t, though.”

  “We’re going to eat him now, aren’t we?” I asked.

  “Oh, hell yes,” he said, a big grin on his face.

  T.J. cut the shark apart with the handsaw, and it was the most disgusting thing I’d ever seen. I carved chunks of it into steaks with the knife. The saw and the knife weren’t ideal implements for filleting a shark and the blood covered us, soaking my yellow bikini and his shorts in an oily residue. The smell overpowered me, a sharp metallic assault every time I inhaled. We’d have to bury the carcass somewhere, but we decided to worry about that later.

  I surveyed our work. We had more shark steaks than we could eat and we’d have to throw most of it out, but dinner would be a feast.