T
he birds were watching, one
gull circling like a vulture, head tilting a dead eye wherever he
went. Small brown things with probing beaks were tucked into low
bushes where they didn’t belong, out of tree tops and vulnerable to
snakes, no longer performing high-pitched songs. The sound of wings
came at night while he squatted to relieve himself in the ocean,
the snapping leather noise of feeding bats. But would bat radar
work on a man slinking up a path? Would the gods trust something
blind? Was the blind thing only a myth?
He waited two nights for solid cloud cover,
using the time scouting the spot where the fishermen beached their
skiffs at day’s end. The gull rode the air above, but Dash walked
like he had no plan, picked up stones and slung them out into the
flat water. He had a fair idea of the layout near the lagoon’s
crescent mouth, and it was a simple hike along the shoreline, the
unused path marked by toenail slashes, tiny marks from rats or
mice. The jungle was kept at bay by the high tides that overpowered
hopeful vines and left a salt coating to bake in the
sun.
The cove’s southern edge was where women did
their washing and bathed with the children, and where he’d been
spotted spying on his love hut girl. Below the lagoon were flat
stones set in the sand for gutting the daily catch. The area was
desolate after sundown except for the birds swooping in to explore
the scent of entrails pulled toward the open sea by the current. He
imagined the underwater creatures drawn by the gore, swimming
upstream with mouths open, gills pumping.
He followed a single candle flame for his
escape. He lugged a half dozen coconuts packed inside his sleeping
mat, a bucket of fresh water held steady against his side. Tightly
rolled rice balls in folded banana leaves were tucked between the
coconuts, along with his last three candles and the magnesium bar
and striker. He also slipped the amber disk Tiki made for him into
the top of the bundle, wedging it next to a finger-shaped stone
he’d use for opening coconuts.
His stomach was queasy with the prospect of
going out into the open water. He hoped Willy would make an
appearance, assure him everything would be okay. He’d been alone
since discovering the vandalized rescue fire. He hoped Tiki found
the comfort she needed from the village women. Maybe Willy could
somehow let her know how much he would miss her.
Dropping his mat into the bow of the nearest
skiff, he pinched out the candle and stowed it with the supplies.
It took a moment for some gray light to give depth and texture to
the darkness, and it was enough to allow him to carefully set the
water bucket into the skiff’s flat midsection, anchoring it against
his bundled mat. He followed the rope to the mooring tree and
worked the knot with shaking fingers. He slid the heavy craft
through the sand, sending it into the still water in reverse. It
was a longer and fatter wood version of the canoes he’d rowed in
the quiet ponds near his home. Hopping in, he grabbed the paddle
and was successfully away.
It took ten minutes to reach the end of the
reef, the bow more difficult to control as the chop increased. The
skiff was longer than two men, always wanting to overcorrect, but
he managed the turn into the deeper water, his trio of empty
airplane seats left directly behind. He felt propelled as the
current took over for the first hour. The wind remained still, and
the prevailing flow allowed him the cut through the black water at
a decent clip with easy strokes.
Freedom replaced apprehension, and a nagging
feeling of being followed slipped away as his muscles warmed and
then began to ache. He paddled blindly, pulling the oar twice on
one side, then switching to the other, hoping for a straight
course.
His hands were bleeding when the sky lightened
and began its color change. Blisters had formed in the dark like
mushrooms and then burst. When he finally dropped the slick handle
and reached for the bucket to drink, he noticed Willy slumped
behind on the stern bench, his enormous body
translucent.
“
Welcome aboard, old pal,” Dash
mumbled, lifting a leg and turning to straddle the bench. The
volcano over Willy’s shoulder rose out of a low haze that hid the
island. “How far, ya think? Four miles? Ten?”
Dash took a deep breath and exhaled noisily,
waited for the sick feeling of pins and needles to leave his wrists
and elbows. He licked his cracked lips. “You’re looking a little
see-through. Not sure you wanna be here? Or is it that I can’t
decide if you’re real?”
Willy’s fish head lay sideways across one
shoulder, gills pulling deep and hard, bulb dark. Dash leaned to
pull the water bucket close with the heels of his hands, joints
cracking and lower back muscles a balled knot. He drank until his
belly ached, then waited for any sign of returning energy, a second
or third wind, or whatever number he was up to.
“
You just came along for the ride,
huh? Cat got your tongue?”
Dash turned back to face the bow. He held his
breath when he took the paddle in his hands. It was a glowing iron
from a blacksmith’s fire, but he held his grip, lifting the
pear-shaped blade over one side of the hull and pulling a long
stroke.
A few million more and I’m in New Zealand, or maybe
Australia
.
“
How many licks does it take to get
to the center of a Tootsie Pop?” Dash asked through clenched teeth
and then made a strangled chuckling sound that turned into a
coughing fit.
“
If I don’t know, then you probably
don’t either,” he said after catching his breath.
He resumed his strokes, but glanced back and
noticed one of Willy’s arms extended out over the water, fingers
skimming at first, but then cutting deeper into the surface. The
fingers infuriated Dash. They were slowing the momentum, creating
drag that was responsible for his bleeding hands and the brutal
throbbing in his shoulders. It was Willy’s fault his body was
turning into one big infected tooth. Dash fought an impulse to turn
and smash him with the paddle, make him pay for his suffering. But
he kept pulling the long strokes, sometimes keeping count, then
losing his place. He paddled into a morning fog that echoed back
his grunts, as though some other sorry bastard was in the same
predicament, just out of view, grimy feet half submerged in briny
water turning red as his life also drained away.
He took a final stroke when the sun reached its
apex, a merciless prison spotlight with no shadows. The sea was
gray and nearly still, and there seemed to be no birds. When he
looked behind, Willy was almost clear, his body leaning so far back
that his head touched the sea, bulb submerged. The bow should be
high in the air with all the weight so far aft, but then Dash
realized Willy probably weighed no more than a bad
dream.
“
You could have saved her,” Dash
hissed, drooling despite his thirst and ruined lips. He wished for
the strength to push the former god overboard. “You did nothing. I
made you up, and now I’m done with you.”
He let the paddle slide from his hands,
quarter-size bits of skin attached like barnacles. He half-rose,
then lunged forward to the short bow seat and grabbed at his
sleeping mat. The bristled edges sent lightning bolts across his
vision, the pain so raw and unbelievable because nothing could
possibly hurt so much. He swooned, his world going dark for seconds
or maybe minutes, his own animal panting the first thing he was
conscious of when his senses returned. He dropped from the bench to
his knees, then curled against the side of the hull. Using only his
fingertips, he tugged the mat over himself to hide from the
sun.
* * *
He slept for hours. The sun dropped enough to
throw shadows over half the skiff. The volcano smoked on the
horizon, creating a vertical line that combined with the island to
form an exclamation mark, although a high-altitude wind would
eventually bend it into a question. He examined the mess he’d made
of hands that now involuntarily pulled into claws. He tried
shielding his palms from the sun, then leaned over the side of the
skiff and plunged them into the cool seawater. The first seconds
were bliss, the immaculate relief of soothing salve. Then he heard
the shrieks—of someone or something, a pig caught in a leg hold
trap, a siren stuck in the on position with a broken switch. Dash
screamed his throat raw, holding his damaged hands out in front as
the minutes passed.
Willy came back. He was nearly solid, head
cocked in sympathy, body leaning forward as if to deliver
comforting words. Through the searing pain, Dash sensed he’d
summoned Willy, the fire in his hands and fingers causing his mind
to seek out anything that might alleviate his suffering. Dash
silently begged for mercy, an unspoken plea to heal his wounds or
slice off his hands and take them far away. Either would be an
acceptable solution.
The more the pain ebbed, the more he believed
that although Willy was nothing like a flesh and bone creature,
neither was he a mere ghost from his imagination. The diminishing
pain left space to truly imagine the misery Willy had absorbed from
the thousands of souls he’d had to bury. Willy had come as a
beacon, an energy form to accept Dash’s agony, a man-shaped sponge
to take on the hurt. Human torment made Willy whole.
Dash leaned forward, elbows on his knees, limp
and useless hands dangling in front. A bead of drool dropped from
his lower lip on a thin line toward the bloody water. “Maybe you’re
real,” he whispered, and then mouthed the word
sorry
.
Willy’s dangerous mouth, with its horrible
spiked teeth, became a lopsided smile. “You never had to be
afraid,” he said in a familiar woman’s voice.
Dash’s mother had taught him to believe in
things he could not see or touch. Her bedtime stories ranged from
rainbows that ended at pots of gold, to magic bunnies that hid
chocolate eggs for children who cleaned their rooms without being
asked. His father had provided the skepticism, and would come sit
on the edge of his young son’s bed in the spot still warm from his
mother.
“
Your mother told you about Good
Rabbit?” his father would ask, and Dash would nod, eyes wide as he
inched the blanket higher for protection, knowing the story to
come. “But she doesn’t tell you anything about Bad Rabbit. That’s
the bunny a boy’s really got to know about.”
Dash had barely started school when the more
graphic tales had begun, and they’d lasted for years. He suspected
they only ended because he stopped showing fear, stopped believing
they might be true. Or maybe they ended when scaring a child
stopped being entertainment for his father.
“
Bad Rabbit sneaks into a child’s
room late at night, and there’s nothing anyone can do to stop him
from coming. Even if there are no windows, he knows a magic
entrance, just like Santa Claus. Once inside, he crawls right in
with the unsuspecting bed owner,” his father would say, patting
Dash’s blanket where the interloper would take refuge. “The child
is safe from any real harm because Bad Rabbit isn’t interested in
biting them. Of course, your sheet and blanket, and even your
favorite pillow, will turn awful from an odor so foul that no
amount of detergent will make them right.”
His father spread his hands out over the bed.
“All this will have to be set afire come daylight. Everything will
need to go right into the burn barrel, lest the odors get into the
walls.”
“
But kids can be washed, right?”
Dash pictured being rolled up in his bedding and stuffed inside the
rusty old drum down by the brook that cut through their
property.
“
Well, I’ve never heard of a child
having to be burned.” His father would pause, removing his metal
frame glasses to polish on his shirt. “But I don’t think parents
would want that sort of thing in the news. It’s very bad form to
admit you’ve torched your child for smelling bad. Might even bring
the law.”
Dash nodded, trying to recall the worst thing
he’d ever smelled, something so bad that his parents wouldn’t want
him anymore if it got on him. There had been a raccoon killed on
the road near their house early that summer, maybe too close to
their neighbor’s driveway for the vultures to get at. The coon had
gotten fatter and fatter, and his father had explained it was
because of the gases forming inside, just like a party balloon. It
gave Dash the notion to sneak out by the road with a stick to see
if it was true, thinking somehow that if he poked a little, the
raccoon might lift up off the ground and drift away on the summer
breeze. But the coon was heavy, all muscle and hair. His father had
lied. It was nothing like a balloon. He jabbed hard, trying to push
it off the gravel and into the grass when it made a wet thump and
began to deflate.
“
Pay attention, son,” his father
warned. “Bad Rabbit goes for the easy pickings first, so you should
listen close.”
Young Dash would peer up at the black rectangle
of glass on the far wall. “The window,” he whispered, smelling the
memory of the coon.
His father would follow his gaze, nodding
slowly. “Easy as pie. Bad Rabbit would use his front paws to raise
the wood frame, get his long nails underneath and push. Then he’d
slip his fat belly over the sill and drop to the floor like a sack
of butcher’s meat.”
“
What does he want?” Dash knew the
story, but felt compelled to repeat the questions he’d asked the
first time. It was his part in the telling.