Indifferent Sea (2). Atoll.
Fiction. Chapter 2.
This is a work of fiction. Atoll is the second chapter of the story. Read Chapter 1...
In the afternoon, I want darkness. The sun blinds my eyes and burns my skin. After the second night falls, I beg for the light to repel the claustrophobia smothering me in the darkness of the open ocean. You want what you don’t have. I want sleep. I want the steadiness of land.
I swing up on the swell, and to my left, the horizon is a shade of purple. It is the first light, or the light before it. It fades the stars and prods the darkness higher up the sky. The Milky Way is still the bright cloud through the heavens, but losing to the faint glow of the waking sun.
I hurry it to come. I want it to rise and fend off the sharks and the giant squid. I invent monsters like a child who feels them under the bed and in the closet, always there when unseen but purged by the shine of day. I feel them swarming under my feet in the deep. They will perish at sunrise. The sunlight will not deter the sharks, I know, but it will lessen my panic.
‘There is a break in the reefs in the line between two islands,’ the Captain told me before I leaped off the ship. How am I supposed to see them? Atolls are visible from atop a ship’s deck. But I am in the water, bobbing on the swell. The low-lying reef islands are easy to miss from a mile away. I don’t even know what I am looking for. We motored for two weeks before I plunged off the boat. I could be in Micronesia, French Polynesia, or the Marshall Islands. Marshall Islands, most likely. I remember the trade winds changing to East North East. We crossed the equator into Northern Hemisphere. They blow East South East in the South.
It is light, and soon, the sun’s rays warm my skin. Atop the swells, I scan the horizon in ninety-degree arcs. First, the east, where the sun is climbing, then south and all around. Three times. Only water. And a bird.
I let the sun warm my skin. It is gentle in the morning. It will be angry hot soon. I swing my head and find The bird. A large span of black wings and the long fork tail of the frigate bird. These fly close to land. I am excited, then let it pass. I know I am close to land. I don’t know where it is or how far. I turn back to the sun and close my eyes.
I hear whispering, murmuring. My mother wants me to go to school. Not today, I say, but she persists, and I slowly awaken. My face is hot. The sun above me bakes my skin. I see trees half a mile away. And the murmuring is the surf breaking against the reef.
I panic. I swim towards the trees and the sound of the surf, then stop. The swell swings me six to eight feet up and down. The breakers will crush me against the coral and grind me into a mess of contusions, lacerations, and broken bones. I know not to try.
‘In the line between two islands is a break in the reefs.’ I spin around to take bearings. I see only one island, the atoll next to me. There is nothing on the other side. On the map, the atolls looked close, but even if they are a few miles apart, I would never see the other from the water's surface.
I listen to the surf. It is a consistent sound but still muted by distance. Quarter mile? It is hard to tell. The breakers are invisible from the ocean side. I look for the telltale spray. I am still too far.
I swim towards the surf. The life jacket fights me. It is built to keep my face up and it tries to roll me over. My go-bag is clipped to the side, it handicaps my stroke and turns me to the right. I flip on my back. It is easier to paddle and kick, but I can’t tell I am making progress. Don’t paddle into the breakers, I think, and roll over every thirty seconds to watch for the spray.
The surf’s hum splits into crashes of individual waves. I see a steepening of the swell before it spills onto the reef and explodes into mist. The reef exhales like blowholes of a hundred whales.
The fear grips my rib cage. Think, think. I can’t survive the reefs in this swell. Just too big. Think. I can’t see the beach beyond the breakers, but I see the coconut trees. They are floating past me from left to right at the pace of a lazy swimmer. In another mile, the current will carry me past the atoll and who knows where. No way. I will have to risk it. I won’t. I have not the courage.
I stop paddling. Defeated. Minute after minute, I float. Coconut trees pass. Bread trees further back. I could survive here even without people. I could survive on land, but I am dying a quarter mile away.
The swell in front of me is not as steep. I don’t see the spray shooting from the reef. It must be a gap. I paddle. Furiously. What if I am wrong? Does not matter, I must take this chance.
I swim slightly against the current to make the gap, but the life jacket and my bag fight me, shortens my stroke. I will not make it. I fumble for the chest release, unhook the latch, shed the life jacket, and swim for my life. Fuck! The bag has my passport and all else. I turn but cannot see it. It pops up on the swell a few crests away. I look at the gap. The spray is kicking up downstream yards away. I scream and paddle for the gap. All I got. My fastest sprint.
I wait for a wave to catch me and surf my body onto the rocks. Instead, the wave stays shallow, and I power through next to the breakers. A few more strokes, and I am in the lagoon. There is no swell. It is calm on this side of the barrier, but I surge away from the ocean, twenty more strokes than I need, propelled by fear and elation. Then I turn to look.
The furious breakers are on each side of the sixty-foot gap, smashing into the coral and boiling. A meat grinder. I hold back the vomit. The exhaustion besets me, and I feel the heaviness pulling me underneath. My life jacket is gone, and my clothes are waterlogged, pulling me down.
I turn around and swim to the beach a few hundred feet away. The water is clear inside the lagoon. I see the sand bottom through the reflection of the sky. My foot touches the sand and I walk slowly. The firmness of the bottom. Amazing. Is it what someone feels atop Everest? I have it better.
I wade, and my shoulders rise out of the water. In ten more steps, my chest. I look around to my left and right. The trees. The sand. An outrigger canoe with three boys just a hundred feet away. My eyes register what I see but the mind discards it like an exhibit photo at the end of a long day at a museum.
The boys are in shorts. Two are in T-shirts. The shirtless one is wet and is holding a spear with a fish pierced by the tip. Islander boys. Ten or twelve. They are watching me walk in silence. I am surprised to see them, and they are me. They murmur to each other. The words, carried on the breeze, snap the image into reality
“Hey,” I yell. My cry startles them. They uncrouch. The two in T-shirts pick up their paddles. I am waist-deep. They are further out. I think about going towards them, but my body shivers at the thought of re-entering water. “Come here,” I wave with my hands.
They talk amongst themselves. Voices urgent. Then they paddle. I smile, but the canoe turns away, and they head for the next islet of the atoll, a mile away across the lagoon.
“Come back! Help!”
They turn away from the wind and hoist a triangular sail. Two kids move from the hull towards the outrigger as the canoe speeds away.
Tipnol, I think, the smallest canoe for the local journeys and fishing. I studied them for an article. Their settlement cannot be far away. I recoil at the thought of having to swim across the lagoon.
I wade out of the water. The trees and their shade are feet away. I shake a coconut tree. My effort is feeble but enough to rustle the top. No coconuts fall on me. Good. I can wait here.
I lean my back against the trunk, inhale the smell of trees, and the sand, and dirt. The scents intoxicate me. I close my eyes for an instant but unsnap my heavy lids. I must watch the tipnol on its journey back to the village, to find out where it is. The canoe is fast. I can stay awake long enough.
I fall off the ship and hit the water. The terror of the fall wakes me. My back slides off the trunk, and I fall sideways on the sand. I am groggy. I look for the sun to check how long I have been asleep, then remember I have a watch. Four o’clock, but I have no idea when I sat down.
There is a coconut next to me where it was not before. A foot from my head. Well, I am losing surprise at not dying. I grab it and head to the beach to find a rock to split it.
Three sails are heading my way. Two smaller triangles and a large. Tipnols and a jolok, I assume. The second is a larger, more robust canoe for journeys in the open water between nearby atolls. It could be a Walap. Even a bigger boat for long-distance voyages across oceans. They would not sail one in the lagoon. I don’t even know if any are around anymore.
The trio sails my way. The kids fetched help before entangling with a white monster who came from the sea. Cautious. Prudent.
If these are the Marshall Islands, people will speak English here; at least someone will. But it could be French Polynesia, too, a thousand miles away. The fishing boat could have been anywhere before my jump. I speak a little French.
I stand on the beach with my arms open wide. It is a greeting and a sign of hands empty of weapons.
The trio turns towards me and drops the sails. They coast, then paddle until the bows touch the sand. The three kids from before are on the tipnol. Two man are on another. Two more men are on the bigger Jolok.
“Hello,” I grin.
Two men, one from each boat, jump onto the sand. The kids stay put. They are all watching me.
“Hello,” the eldest answers. He is in his twenties.
“Do you speak English?”
“Not good. Leroij speak good English.” He waves where they came from. “She will see you. Boat?”
“I have no boat. It sank.”
He turns to his people and talks to them in a language I don’t know, but it reminds me of Hawaiian. The kids point to the gap in the reef. He looks at me and asks me something I don’t understand. I shake my head. “Swim?” he tries again.
“Yes, many days. My boat sank.”
“Where things?”
“I have nothing. I lost my bag and life jacket on the other side of the reef when I tried to swim into the gap.”
He nods his head. “Leroij good English.” He motions me to the jolok.
I get in the middle behind the low mast, and he points me onto the rail towards the outrigger. Both men push the jolok off the beach, paddle then set the sail.
“I am Niko. Mateo or Tama,” he points to his companion on the stern. Tama waves. He is in the Nirvana t-shirt with the baby in the pool. The image is faded, flaked off in places.
“Andy,” I wave. "Marshall Islands?"
Nico nods.
“ What is this atoll?” I ask
Niko shrugs. Waves his hands.
“The name of the island?” I try again.
“Jabo,” he points to the right, “Loen, Majkin, Namu, Rongrong.” He names a few more, pointing around.
He is naming the islets that make up the atoll. A few surround the large central lagoon where the old volcano, which gave birth to this place, died millions of years ago. It fought the ocean to rise above its surface but then lost to erosion and subsistence once it could no longer feed itself with the new rock from the hotspot beneath the tectonic plate. The plate moved on its relentless treadmill from birth to death and cut off the volcano from its source. But before death, the volcano built a platform for the corral to grow and lift the flat sandy islands from the its old rim.
The maps I know give a single name to the entire atoll. Maybe one of the names he said is what I am looking for, but I don’t recognize it. Thousands of islands are in this ocean.
The men on the tipnol shout and point. Tama shouts back, then talks to Niko, who nods. One tipnol veers off. The boys on the other boat shout, but Niko waves a ‘no’ with his hands. The boys shout, plead but Niko is silent, and they follow the jolok.
Niko pulls out a radio from his shorts pocket. He talks into it, and there is an answer. Words and static. Niko listens, then says ten-four.
‘Ten-four?’ The radio surprised me, but the American ‘ten-four’ jolts me, makes me homesick.
“Fish,” Niko points to the tipnol. I turn and watch the sail drop and the canoe swing into the wind. The man on the bow dives into the water with a spear. For about two minutes, he is under, but then he breaks the surface. The spear's tip pierces something bigger than the man’s head. We are too far now to see what it is. I think I want to do this, to dive for fish. Then I think I don’t want to go in the water again.
Leroij is a woman in her fifties. Her English is flawless but simple. An American accent from Hawaii or the West Coast. She is in a floral dress that is tight against her generous body. It is bright and clean, and I wonder if she put it on for this unusual occasion. I man floating from the ocean to their atoll is an unusual occasion, she says.
“Has it happened before?”
“White people come every few years, but on their boats. Americans. French. But never float in.” She laughs.
“My boat caught fire. I ended up in the ocean.”
“For how long?”
“Three days,” I say. I don’t mention of the gun runners. No need.
“You made it past the reef?”
“You know the local waters?”
“Go out fishing sometimes. Went out fishing at times,” she corrects herself.
“Your English is impeccable.”
“Is it now? Not what Americans said.”
“What did they say?”
“The English of a Micro.”
“Micro?”
“From Micronesia. The Hawaiians weren’t too keen on us being there.”
“In Hawaii? When?
“Until ten years ago. Twenty, maybe? Time does not matter once you are home on Namu.”
“Did you immigrate to the US? Then went back?”
“Immigrate? No. Just went to work there. Thought of making it home, but they did not like it.”
“The government?”
“The locals. Did not like our dresses or our ways. They wanted us to be American. I wanted to be Marshallese.”
“You could work there?”
“It’s a trade. For the bombs and the army bases?”
“The nuclear tests?” I ask, and she nods. “And the US military bases on the islands?” She nods again.
“It was not bad. Being in Hawaii,” she says, “some bad days. But the people were good. Just a few sour ones. I just needed my people. Here.” Leroij is cooking something. “Too fast there. Twenty years passed in a blur. Not a way to live. We need slow times. All people need it. To see what life is. Things must go slow. To see.”
She is boiling rice in the pot. It smells of coconut.
“Leroij, do you have Internet or a way to talk to your capital? ”
“For kids in school. We have Internet. But not today. Tomorrow after ten.”
“My family does not know I am alive.”
“Awful. We will go to school tomorrow and you can talk to them tomorrow. Goodness.”
“Why not today?”
“No power. They, the school, must conserve it. It comes from the sun.”
“Radios? Or Phones?”
“Phones are local. For Namu only. Radios? There is a radio to talk to the capital, but tomorrow, too. Sorry, you must wait. Very sorry.”
She takes the pan off the stove, mixes the rice and dishes it into a deep bowl. Then unwraps the foil from a fish fillet and sets it on the rice pile.
“Eat. Boys brought grouper,” she says.
I am so hungry.
The school is a small building with walls made from local wood and a thatched roof. Corrugated metal covers the wall facing the lagoon. One room is the classroom, and the other is the library, where two computers face each other. I dash for one. The school's librarian, who I assume is also the teacher and the principal, looks uncertainly at me. But Leroij waves him off and talks to him in Marshallese.
These are old Windows machines, and I stumble around to find the browser. The connection is fast. I wanted to WhatsApp my family and Lance, but I don’t remember their numbers. They are names in my phone, and the numbers are written down in the waterproof go-bag floating west in the current. But I remember the emails: first and the last name for Lance and a once-funny moniker for my parents on the Hotmail service.
"Hey, people. This is me, Andy. I am alive and well. I lost the boat in an accident, more on that later, and washed up in Namu, Marshall Islands, yesterday. Could not contact you then. The Internet is only on here for a few hours a day. So you know it is not a cruel joke, here are some details. Mom, I still don’t wear socks with my running shoes, and yes, the feet stink. But I kept the pair of the WigWam wool socks with the grainy Sasquatch you gave me for the cold days. Yes, I wore them. Dad, your favorite baseball team is… lol. I suspect you are still anti-baseball, but I will turn you. Remember the bet you lost four years ago? I intend to cash in, so we will visit Fenway Park when you visit me in Boston. Lance, the photo from Adirondacks you hate is in the Guy de Maupassant volume on the second shelf. Feel free to toss it. Although, I promise to never bring it out at dinners with our friends. It will take a while to get home as the boat service from the island to the capital is infrequent and unscheduled, but I will try to work something out. Don’t have your numbers. Yes, stupid! Email me the numbers, and I will call you on WhatsApp. I am well. (I have been advised discretion; write with that in mind.)"
I sign my name and send the email. Confirm it is sent.
"Leroij, could we stop in on the way back from the radio?”
She nods at the teacher.
“After twelve,” he says.
The radio is in another building. It is similar to the school but with a space in front for gatherings and a long antenna wire leading from the corner of the roof to a pole. I expect someone inside to run the radio, but it is empty. Leroij opens the curtains. She turns on the set. I imagined an old World War II-style set, but it is a modern ICOMM unit less than twenty years old—a previous generation of the one I had on my boat.
Leroij powers it with the switch, then pulls on the toggle to check the battery voltage. These units are power-hungry. She looks at a cheat sheet with five frequencies and taps Majuro's frequency on the keypad. She talks into a mic\ in Marshallese, but I recognize the repeated pattern of call signs. It is quiet on the other end.
“Need to try a few times. The capital people are busy doing nothing. Need to catch them when they are doing nothing by the radio,” she says.
“How far is Majuro Atoll?” That’s the capital.
“Two hundred miles.”
“How do you know if the atmospheric conditions are right for the signal to bounce.”
“I don’t know anything about it. It works, or it doesn’t. It works every time, pretty much, if someone is there. I don’t know.”
“Why not call them since the Internet is up?”
She shrugs. “That’s how we talk about the boat.”
There is a voice from the radio. It is clear and female. The women chat. It sounds lighthearted. Leroij laughs as she listens. I imagine the person on the other end laughing, too. Leroij looks at me as she speaks into the mic, says my name, shakes her head. It is a telephone banter, away from the radio protocols.
“No plans for the boat next week or the next,” she tells me. “But maybe next month. No plans for an airplane either.”
“Can you ask how I can get hold of a US representative on the island?”
“Like who?”
“Anyone. I need to figure out how to get back home to the US.”
“Figure it out when you get to the capital.”
“Maybe more complicated. I lost my passport. I don’t know what needs to be done.”
“They will know.”
“Who?”
“The Americans. They always know what paperwork you need.”
“I will read on the Internet. They could arrange for a boat or something.”
“They won’t,” she says.
“Why not?”
“Even when there is trouble, no one comes. Only when somebody wants to sell or buy enough to make it worth it.”
She speaks without bitterness. Statements of how things are. Accepted.
“So I am here for a few weeks, then. What should I do? I can work or whatever.”
“We find you things to do. We need hands. But you fish with Nico next week. Make his English better.”
“Is he leaving?”
“He is the only young man who does not want to. But the only one who should. Smart.”
“Why do you want him to leave?”
“I don’t. I want him to go to Hawaii and work as an EMT. When he is sick of it, he will be back. We need more island people who know how to fix others.”
“What if he is tempted to stay in Hawaii?”
“Others would. He won’t. He is like you — needs the sea. Needs to be free from a schedule other people make for him.”
“I am like that?”
“You are.”
“What did I say for you to know that?’
“Nothing. People are more than words. I can read your soul."
Matter of fact, again. Her truth. Indisputable.
“Niko is your son?”
“Nephew.”
We stop back at the school, and there is a note from my family. Words of tears and phone numbers. Leroij gives me her phone.
Days follow each other in an easy routine. I stay in a hut three away from Leroij. It is in the shade with openings to channel the wind. It is never hot inside.
I fish with Nico. We take tipnol canoes every day, but once we motor out on a flat bottom fiberglass skiff with a thirty horsepower Yamaha on it. I don’t see a reason to use it, but I suspect Nico likes to drive it. Likes the speed and the noise. I prefer the canoes. Maybe we both prefer what is foreign.
His English is fine. Nothing like the halting performance of our first meeting. He did not want to talk to me then, he tells me, he did not trust me. But now we speak almost conversationally, with pauses for words he does not know, which I teach him. I correct his sentence structure and dropped articles, but only infrequently, one out of ten times that I should. I don’t want our chats to become tedious.
He teaches me to spearfish. He dives with me a few times but mostly watches from the canoe. He paddles the tipnol between me and the sun, then, from the bow, watches me dive in the twenty feet of transparent water of the lagoon.
He finds me a spear, but I use his diving weights. They are bare lead, threaded on a rubber diving belt with an easy-release handle and a knife. A modern setup and new. I spear parrotfish, trevally, and rabbitfish. We fish early in the morning; then, by ten or eleven, we head back.
I work on their generator. It is an old Honda, reliable and simple. But it succumbed to bad fuel and the salt in the air. It runs again after a few afternoons of patient repairs. They need it for rare emergencies and during the rainy season in a couple of months when the solar fails to make enough power.
Tama stops by to carry the generator back to the shed. I protest when he tries to lift it on the upper shelf. He listens but does not understand me, tries to lift it again, but I hold it down. He is neither angry nor impatient. He sets it on the floor and leaves but gestures for me to stay. Five minutes later, he is back with Leroij, and I explain they must start and run the generator every two weeks or it will stop working again. “Falls apart like an idle man,” Leroij nods.
At sunrise, Nico stops by my hut. He is carrying a paddle. He gives it to me. Something is different today - the quiet catches my attention. I don’t hear the wind, yet, it is the season of trade winds. They blow from the East, always there, a presence you no longer notice until it is gone.
We push the tipnol into the water and point it at the reef. It is almost a mile away. Nico is paddling at the bow. I am at the stern, paddling, and steering. Nico allows me to steer now that he does not think me a sailing imbecile. He removes his t-shirt and lays it on the crossbeam of the canoe. His strokes are smooth and rhythmic, twenty on each side, then switch. Each stroke is short but powerful, with a quick reset from back to front and into the water. His muscular back flexes, and his muscles bulge with each stroke. Soon, he glistens from sweat, but his breathing is silent. I can’t hear it through my huffing, and through the whoosh of the water against the hull.
He stops paddling two hundred yards from shore and stands up. The water is glass, without a ripple. He scans the horizon in every direction, taking a longer look to the east and the west.
“The wind should not stop today. Not the season,” he says.
“Is the weather coming?”
“The weather coming?”
“Will it storm?”
“Don’t know. I don’t see it. But if the wind stops, then something is coming. Not soon. We can fish.”
We continue to paddle.
“Why did you not trust me,” I ask.
“You are an American. Not good to my people.”
“How?”
“My mother lived in Hawaii with Leroij. Long time ago, when young. She told me people were mean. Like we are small people,” he pauses, “Not as good. Micros.”
“Things are better now.”
“You know? You a micro?”
“People changed. People talk now about how it was wrong to treat minorities as second-class people.”
“Second class,” he files the words away. “People talk one thing but do a different thing. My people have memory. Far… long memory. Long time of bad treatment.”
“That’s true. I am sorry.”
He paddles in silence.
“What happened to your mother?” I ask.
“Disease from bombs.”
“Was she from this island?”
“No. Another. Downwind.”
“Downwind from here?”
“The bombs.”
I paddle in silence.
“My mom. My grandmom. My granddad,” he says a word for each stroke. “All died early. Downwind of Bikini Atoll. Atomic bombs. My dad from here, but died from a knife in Hawaii.”
We paddle in silence.
“White people not good to my people,” he says in a few minutes, “but I like you now. You spent much time in our sun. You are less white now.”
We dive in sequence. He dives the first thirty minutes than I go. We switch again. I watch him underwater, moving slowly, then still on the bottom, by the brain corral. Waiting. Three minutes underwater. I can muster two, at best. It was one minute two weeks ago, so I am happy.
He lets go of the spear, and the rubber band slings it under the rock. He pulls on the line, and I see a grouper at the tip. It is still. Big fish. Perfect shot. He hurries up top with the fish in tow. He gasps for air and leans back to catch his breath. Three and a half minutes underwater is long even for him. The grouper is larger than anything I’ve seen in the lagoon. I am envious that it was not I who caught it. But I have time. I offer my hand and pull Nico on the canoe. He does not need help, pulls himself without effort every time, but it has been a long day. Diving exhausts the body, even the body as one with the water as Nico’s.
A gentle wind returned an hour ago. Gentle, but enough to feel on the skin and to ripple the water. The ripples make music against the hull. We sit and let the water do the talking.
‘I have time.’ The thought pleases me and surprises me. The news of the ferry not coming to Namu for weeks or months threw me into a fury when I heard it. A quiet fury contained in my head. I could not be ungracious to my hosts. In the week after, my anger reduced to agitation. Then, the slow but active rhythm of the island life displaced it from my mind. I have not thought of the ferry this week. I think of it now. I am fine with it taking its time. I am useful here. I am the electrician and the English teacher of sorts. I stop by the school every other day and talk to kids in English. Slow English. They know many words but not how to join them together.
“Nico,” I say. He is lying on the canoe and slightly turns his head in my direction. “Thank you for thinking of me kinder than the rest of my people.”
“You are better than your people.”
“I am not rushing to get home anymore.”
“Rushing?”
“I am not in a hurry to leave.”
“You want to stay.”
“I must go back, but it is good if it takes time.”
“Why must go back?”
“Why do I have to go back?” I repeat for his benefit and to think. “I don’t know. I want to see my family.”
“Why did you leave them?”
I hear no judgment. Curiosity. “My job. I needed to write a story. And I wanted an adventure. To see the world. Do you want to see what the rest of the world is like?”
“When smaller… younger. But many people left, now are back. They say they are happy only here.”
“Why do you think they feel that way?”
“Why are you not in a hurry to go home now?”
“I feel useful here. It is peaceful. Quiet.”
“Not peaceful in your home place?”
“Busy life. Run this way. Run that way. Always on a run to do tasks.”
“Who makes you?” He turns his head more.
“Well. No one. The job does. People expect you to do many things each day for them. But that is how it is.”
“You are not your own man.”
“Not always.”
“You like it?”
“No. Would you?”
“No,” Niko says, “I stay here. Here I am my own man. And now you are not in a hurry to go back too.” Nico looks at me.
I think about it. I think about it for minutes.
“Do you have a woman?” I ask him.
“Yes, she left for Majuro. Big city.”
“Will she be back?”
“I don’t know. I will wait for now. Do you?”
I wonder if my truth will break our bond. “I had a wife, but we are not together anymore.”
“Are you lonely?”
“No, no. Not lonely.”
“You are a writer, Leroij says. All people know you. You have many womans… women.” He grins at me.
“No, only a few know my writing,” I shake my head. “What if this life is not enough someday?”
“I do another life then.”
“The doors close when you are older.”
He is confused by the idiom.
“It is hard to make a change when you are older.” I try again.
“I need less change as I am older. Less is enough. My aunt said that, and I now understand. You need more all the time?”
“I need to feel like I am moving forward. Moving to a different place in life.”
“The world is round. Keep moving and come to the same place.”
“I mean, I need to learn and build on what I’ve learned, to progress in my understanding, move along.”
He laughs, “When I was in school, the teacher yelled, ‘Sit down, you must learn.’ Have to stay in one place to learn, he said. You say - keep moving. Your teacher was different.”
His smile vanishes. He drops his feet on each side of the canoe and sits up. Then, points West. I hear it now - a drone of an airplane. It is so odd to hear it. At home, it is a constant accompaniment to the din of the city. But I have not heard it for months. The sound is strange. I follow it. The plane is flying low over the ocean a mile away, parallel to the island, then banks towards Majkin Islet. Cessna Caravan, a cargo plane popular in the bush. It makes sense here. But it does not make sense here now.
Niko stands up, snatches the paddle, and points me to mine. I grab the it. He shoos me to the bow and takes the steering position. He deploys the sail but it is not enough to push us through the water at speed, so we paddle.
My heart is racing. It calms down after a few minutes of steady rowing.
“Why is the plane coming?” I ask between breaths. We are moving fast.
“It comes sometimes. People, food, tools, batteries.”
“Did you know it was coming?”
“No.”
“Do you normally know when it is coming?”
“Yes.”
“But not this time?”
“No.”
“Where is it coming from?”
“Always Majuro. The capital.”
This is my ticket home. I talked to the US embassy in Majuro twice a week via email and WhatsApp. They said they would try to help. Timothy Trenton. Lovely man. Looks like he came through. I am excited. And I feel weird. I don’t know if the plane will stay for long. Rushing off, leaving my hosts with but a quick thanks feels wrong and ungrateful. But I am excited. I will need a new passport and the money. Lance already arranged the money. It will be at the embassy. And I will replace my passport there too.
What if the plane does not wait? I paddle harder. The wind feels for me and picks up in strength. Niko puts away the paddle and adjusts the sail. We are going too fast for my paddling to make a difference, but I keep stroking. Niko yells to stop. I put away the paddle.
At the shore, we pull the canoe out on the beach. Niko ties the line around a coconut tree without much hurry while I wait half-turned and ready to sprint. I don’t know where the plane landed, there is no airport. I remember an open field mid-island. It is short, grassy, and bumpy, but these Cessna Caravans can land anywhere. I was in one once, when we touched down on a rocky, half-dried river bed in Alaska. So I lead there slowly, waiting for Niko to overtake. He passes me and leads me in the same direction. I am a foot behind him, right on his back.
We march past the huts, the empty chairs, and toys strewn in the dirt. Everyone went to meet the plane. I soon see it through the trees, a square white fuselage with a red bottom. Exhaust grime on the wings. The kids are running around it. A few adults are unloading crates and set them on the ground.
We are almost on the field. Then I stop and grab Niko’s arms. He makes forward, but I hold him. He looks at me, and his face shifts to concern. I pull him back, and he follows me into the trees.
Three people are chatting by the nose of the plane. Olu is the tallest of them, in a polo and shorts. Olu from the ship. He is quarter-turned away from me, but there is no mistake. He turns to watch the man offloading crates, and it is his face. Why he is here? Besides, for me. I can’t make sense of it.
Niko looks at the men. Looks at me and sees my fear.
“You don’t know where I am,” I tell him.
He nods his head. I drop his arm, turn, and run back to the canoe. I untie it. Push it into the water. Paddle away from shore. The breeze is stronger now. I struggle with the boom, it is on the wrong side of the mast, then set it and deploy the sail. I point the tipnol into the lagoon, then change my mind and turn it to follow the shore. If someone comes out to look, they are less likely to see me along the beach. I need to get two islets away and hide in the trees. There is no one there. If Olu decides to look, he will find me, but I bank on the plane leaving soon and Olu leaving with it.
My hands are shaking. They are sweaty. I can’t hold on to the main sheet controlling the sail. The sheet is not slippery, and my hands are weakened with the ebbing adrenaline. I tie the sheet on the pegs and steer to the wind. I think of why Olu is here. I know why, but I can’t articulate it in my head. My mind is racing, jumps between ideas and between thoughts on what to do.
My breath is irregular, and I count to steady it. I lose count before thirty, and start again, then again. One hundred fifty. My mind is steadier now, strength returns to my hands. And I can think but decide not to. Let me get to the beach. I count to one hundred. Look back and see no one there.
My tipnol sails past a channel splitting two islets. I see the reef and white caps crashing against it in the break. One more, I decide. I need more friendly distance.
Two islets away. I sail into the channel, beach the tipnol, and tie it.
Did Olu know the Captain let me jump off the ship? Of course, he did. He left me food in the middle of the night. So he was on my side. Why is he here now? I suspect their bosses did not want any loose ends. But how did they know I was here? Where else would I be. The crew would know when I disappeared, so someone just needed to look at the starting location and the currents to figure out where I might end up. But why did they assume I made it? I am a fucking idiot. I am sure I made the news. I have not seen or read the news in the last three weeks I have been here. Why would I? Why would anyone who lives here? The news has no relevance. The weather does, but only half a year. So I came up in the papers or something. The rescued American - a fucking survival curiosity and now fucking dead. A bit dramatic? No? Shit.
I restart my breathing count to stop the pounding in my chest. I make it to twenty a few times.
I did not tell Leroij or Niko the actual story. I did not tell it to Timothy from the embassy either. Why would he not make it news? Should I have told him? No. Too much explaining to do. Interviews. Interrogations is probably a better word.
I lie by the bread tree inside the island a few hundred feet behind the coconut palms on the beach. Someone must enter the channel to spot the tipnol. No one would find me here. I relax. It takes an hour, but I relax. Close my eyes. Should I tell Timothy from the embassy the real story? No. I have to make it to the US. I will tell my story there.
I close my eyes. Daydream. The sweat on the strong shoulders in front of me, paddling. I wonder what my ex-wife would think about my new tastes. Why did she come to mind? I still care what people think, I guess. I return to the sweat on the strong back and imagine myself against it, securing the weight belt around the shaped waist. Pressing myself into the body.
I hear the airplane engine revving. I jump. I am downwind, so it happened seconds ago. It is in the past. The wind carries history to me. I sprint to the beach, watch the Cessna Caravan bank away from the atoll, and head west. It disappears behind the horizon, carrying away my captor and leaving me my freedom. Ironic. This morning, the plane was my freedom. But that is nonsense, too. I am free here. I am more free here than with the magazine deadlines.
What if he did not leave? Would Olu stay? If he did, then I am free here until the boat comes or the next plane. But there's no reason to hide on this islet.
I walk the beach along the channel to see the sea state in the lagoon. The wind is stronger now and can whip up a nasty chop. But the chop is manageable. The wind is not. It is a direct headwind and I am not good on the tipnol upwind. It takes two to balance it. I sit down and lean against the coconut tree. I will wait until it weakens in the evening.
I hear the Yamaha outboard, then see the skiff. It skims the water close to the sand where the chop is light. I see Niko, Tama, and a third man. He is a local but I have not talked to him. They pull into the protection of the channel. Kill the engine. Tama and the local jump out, nod, then walk to the tipnol. They launch it and paddle it out of the channel into the wind. They can sail in anything.
“Leroij wants you,” Nico says.
“Has the plane left with everyone?”
Niko does not respond. And we ride back in silence.
“What are you not telling us, Andy?” Leroij is angry.
“I knew a man on the plane. We have history and he is trouble.”
“The man from the embassy?”
“The tall one? He is not from the embassy.”
“He said he came for you from the embassy.”
“He is not from the embassy, Leroij.”
“Don’t bring us trouble, Andy.”
“I do not mean to. Is there trouble now?”
“You need to start talking.”
She stares at me. Niko stares at me.
“After my boat burned, I floated in the sea for a week. A fishing boat found me, and I spent three weeks with them. But they were not legal fisherman, and they were trading in illegal things with other ships. It was not safe for me to return to port with them.”
Niko nods. “Big boats took our fish outside the reefs before. Many times.”
“It is illegal fishing. They don’t want people to find out. I thought I had to leave, so I jumped off the boat at night when we were close to this atoll.”
“And that man?”
“He was from the boat. What did you tell him?”
“You were with others fishing on other islands. Back in three days,” Nico says.
“What did he say?”
“Asked if I could take him to find you. I said I did not know where. He left.”
“He just left?”
“Left with the plane.”
That night, we had the first thunderstorm of the season.
The tension between me and Nico ebbs in three days. It takes a week with Leroij. But things settle into their rhythm. We fish in the morning. I fix things in the afternoon, mostly electrical problems. I install the wind generator that came on the plane. The village bought it months ago. They have more power now with the trade winds. After fishing, I go to school to help teach English three days a week. The kids are picking it up. They are bright and eager.
I talk to my family every other day. ‘You look happy,’ they say. I check in with Timothy at the embassy once a week. He confirms I made the news. I probe about the airplane. He says he found out after and asks why I did not return with it. Fishing too far away with others, I say. I still don’t think I will tell him the whole story. Maybe when I am there. Or maybe when I am back in the States.
Next week, he tells me the boat is heading over to us in two weeks. He made arrangements and will meet me when I return to the capital. It should be happy news, but it worries me. Olu tracked me here. Is he going to meet me on the dock in Majuro, too? Will he be on a boat?
Olu is not on the boat when it comes. The boat is smaller than I imagined. Three people return to the island. They bring boxes of clothes and sacks of rice. Boxes of canned goods. The crew and the men from the village unload a few drums of fuel.
Other boxes are loaded onto the ship - baskets the locals weave from the palm leaves to sell at the capital. Bins of coconuts.
I climb on the boat last. I have nothing but my clothes, a sash with cooked food from Leroij, and a spear Niko gave me weeks ago. He insists I take it. I do not have the heart to tell him I cannot bring it on the airplane when I fly stateside.
We say our goodbyes. Mine is emotional. Theirs are restrained but warm.
“I will be back to visit.” I mean it. Deeply.
Leroij smiles, “Live your life well.” She hugs me.
Niko hugs me, too. “You keep moving; the world is round, and you will end up in the same place again. Maybe here,” he laughs.
I stand at the stern, and the island disappears into a mirage. I am going where I belong, and I am leaving where I belonged. I hope I can fill the profound emptiness overwhelming me now with the meaning of a righteous life. I will need to learn what that is.
Egor I am truly enjoying your writing. Is this published here on Substack as you create or elsewhere? Somehow I deleted my previous comment and clearly am still trying to figure out Substack!
Hope you had a wonderful summer and are treated to fair winds and calm seas on your return south. J