A Dolphins Dream (20 page)

“Nothing like that on Taveuni,” said Moses who was about to say something else but held his tongue and went about lashing a line to a thwart as Compton donned the new mask and went over the side. He held the line with one hand as Moses put the boat in gear and left the other hand free to guide Moses from ten feet behind the boat. In this fashion they followed the invisible spoor into the fathomless blue. 

The vast ocean was another country. Having no references for distance or depth it became as disorienting as deep space, with the accompanying sense of insignificance. Compton felt reduced by it, small and vulnerable, as if he were a piece of bait being trolled for larger game. Moses made for a reef a mile away that broke water and seemed to be the logical place the mackerel might run. When they reached the reef, nothing of the fish could be seen nor had the gun popped up as Compton expected it would. He guessed that the fish had probably gone deep and wrapped around a coral outcropping in an attempt to rid itself of the spear and in the doing, break loose from the shooting line and gun.

Moses trolled Compton back to the deep reef by way of another route without a sighting. They searched for another hour and when it was clear that neither the gun nor the fish would be found, Compton climbed into the boat and slumped onto a seat thoroughly exhausted.

“That was one hell of a fish,” he said.

“A big one, eh.”

“Yeah, but I don’t know how big. I’ve nothing to compare it to.  It could have been eighty pounds or a hundred pounds or more. It was awfully strong.” He paused, staring down at the bottom of the boat.  Then almost to himself he whispered, “I wasn’t ready for a fish like that.”

Moses said nothing and returned to the outboard and headed for Qamea. At full throttle the boat skimmed across the slick waters with scarcely a bump. Compton sagged in his seat and stared into an opened coconut. The mackerel swam before his eyes as vivid as the sun, shimmering of silver, moving with indomitable power. Out of that vision came the notion that this fish might well have been the Silver Fish that Abraham talked about and he asked Moses about it but he averted Compton’s eyes and shrugged. Compton scarcely noticed, returning to his thoughts. I didn’t see the small spot. I saw too much of the fish, no concentration when it mattered. Suddenly he blurted, ”Where can we get another spear gun?”

“That was an old one we fixed up. The new ones are in the store at Somosomo on Taveuni, a full day journey, eh.”

Compton looked back over the flat water where the reef was hidden. “Can we go to Somosomo tomorrow?”

“We have to get the fuel, but we can go.”

Compton nodded, “Good.” Then softly, “The fish was so big, so awesome, the power of it was… I bet it was a world record.”

Moses scrutinized him with knowledge of the foretold. “Be careful, Keli. It is dangerous to want more than you can carry in your boat, eh. The first big sea and the boat will sink. You never know when the big sea comes. Keep the boa light and you stay safe.

Compton did not hear him. He was staring back at the deep reef. 

Moses arrived with fresh water and a sack of fresh vegetables. They drank tea before leaving and as they rose Compton brushed his legs across the table and winced in pain. Moses caught his reaction and then noticed the red and swollen coral cuts across his shins.

“You have the infections on your legs, jes’ like the Fiji. Coral is hard on the skin. Next time I go to the village I ask Mama Doc for the medicine. Today you go to the water and stand in the waves where it hit the beach. The water throw up the sand and clean the cuts proper.  Best way to clean ‘em up. Make the skin all pink inside, get rid of the rotten skin.”

They went down to the beach and Moses showed Compton where to stand.

“Ohh mannn!  That hurts like hell!” moaned Compton.

“You stay that way, fix you up.”

Compton withstood all he could for fifteen minutes then stepped back and stomped his feet back to life.

“That’s it. Let’s go while I can still walk.”

“A good day for a boat ride,” announced Moses cheerfully.

The morning sun was already scorching a sky barren of clouds and Compton had a notion to take a rain poncho, then dismissed it and climbed into the boat.

They skimmed across the untarnished Tasman Strait to the barrier reef of Taveuni in forty minutes. Moses caught a small jack near the reef and another just inside it. The fish had yellow-tinged bellies that graduated to pale blue near the lateral line. Black dots punctuated their backs, becoming more prominent near the tail. They reminded Compton of the cockatoo his mother kept caged in the kitchen when he was a boy.  

Moses anchored in the mud in front of James’ house. No one was home and they walked through the house to the washboard dirt road. Simultaneously with their arrival, an old, broken down relic of a bus with rolled up canvas windows, dented fenders and bumpers all but rusted away, ground to a dusty halt at Moses’ raised hand.

Brown eyes in smiling brown faces observed Compton and Moses make their way back to a seat on the seaside of the bus. The Indian driver released the clutch as they were about to sit, slamming them into the seat as the vehicle lurched forward in a billow of dust. It raced headlong down the narrow road, wildly careening from one side to the other. All the turns, most of which were blind, were taken recklessly at top speed using the entire road without the slightest regard for man or beast coming in the opposite direction. The passengers chatted amicably amongst themselves and appeared oblivious to the dangerous edge with which their driver was taking them.

“Does he always drive like this?” asked Compton.

“Always,” came Moses’ genial reply. “He has crashed many times but no one was killed. The other driver is much safer but once he crashed and a person was killed, so everyone rides this bus because they think the driver is lucky.”

The bus stopped at a settlement of a dozen derelict houses loosely constructed of wood and corrugated iron. Brightly colored clothes snapped on sagging lines, untethered horses grazed where they pleased. Across from the bus an old woman stood from her chores in the garden and in rapt attention watched the passengers depart and board. Those who came aboard greeted those already in their seats as if they were old friends reuniting after a long absence. No one in the bus escaped a slight nod or raised eyebrow and always there was the warm, open smile. Compton was forced to acknowledge a perfect stranger who openly bid him hello. The bus plunged forward and the veteran passengers took the first seat available before being catapulted down the walkway. Up the road four men were working to clear bush from its shoulder, using sticks of wood to attack an impossible job. They had to jump quickly aside to avoid the bus’wild charge that would have taken them all out. At every stop the smell of poverty wafted in from the streets, yet when the passengers boarded they were cleanly scrubbed and neatly dressed. The bus slowed and felt its way across a rickety, wooden bridge that, by all appearances, should have already collapsed. Below, in a slow-moving river, naked children swam and splashed while old women washed laundry sitting fully clothed in the soapy water. The road opened up for a long straight stretch paralleling the beach. Far out on a coral head a white shawled woman in a blue dress with a white flower in her hair and a fishing line in her hand stood as still as a statue. In the foreground a half-naked man washed his horse in the same sea. The jungle closed off the sea and then opened again revealing two dugout canoes, each with a single fisherman who, Moses said later, rowed in from far islands and would sail back with the wind after they had sold their fish on Taveuni. They drifted silently on the green water, as still as a photograph.

The jarring dirt road smoothed out to pavement and the shacks of the poor were replaced by a few well-groomed yards and freshly painted homes of what Compton believed to be the middle class, such as they were. The bus slowed in front of a hotel across the street from an old train station that had been converted into a holding shed for coconuts. The bus ground to a halt in front of the general store and all passengers disembarked.

“This is Somosomo,” said Moses. “We go up the hill to the police station and get your visa fixed.”

Atop the hill, across from the police station, was the post office, a modern building unlike anything Compton had seen on Taveuni.  Moses pointed to it. “I go in there, you come and get me when it’s done.”

At the entrance to the police station sat a man selling kava for twenty-five cents a cup. This apparent conflict amused Compton, for he believed that kava, the obvious narcotic that it was, was somehow illegal. The officer at the desk was curt and immediately began to ask a barrage of questions. “What are you doing in Fiji? Where are you going? Where have you been?”

“I have come to extend my visa,” offered Compton.

“Not today,” retorted the officer. “The sergeant is out. Come back another day.”

“I can’t do that. This must get done today.”

“Then you have to wait many hours,” replied the deputy and pointed to the only chair in the station.

Compton sat and was making himself comfortable when the sergeant burst through the door and, without comment to anyone, disappeared behind an office door. He was a large man with enormous shoulders and a hard face accustomed to bullying lesser men. This, suspected Compton, is what happens to the few unfriendly Fijians. They become cops.

Twenty minutes passed before Compton was escorted into the sergeant’s quarters. The sergeant presented himself in a gruff and suspicious manner and made no attempt to conceal his disdain for Compton’s intrusion.

“What do you know of the coup?“ he demanded brusquely. Compton had forgotten about the coup and suddenly became nervous. Martial law was serious business, not the sort of thing for which he had pat responses that would appease authority.

“I know very little, almost nothing,” stammered Compton. “I’m a tourist on vacation from America.”

“What do they think of our coup in America?” questioned the sergeant, holding his perpetual frown with ease.

Sweat blistered and burst in Compton’s armpits and beaded on his forehead.

“They believe that Sambuka has done the right thing and they look forward to resuming relations with Fiji.”

The bulldog sergeant nodded his head in agreement. “What is your business in Fiji?”

“I’m a tourist. I’m staying at Taveuni Charters but I’ll be taking a boat to nearby islands for several weeks to fish and dive and I won’t be back before my visa is up.”

“Oh yes, plenty.”     

The sergeant warily observed Compton for a long moment then abruptly stamped the passport. He smiled for the first and only time. “Enjoy your stay in Fiji.”

Compton found Moses sitting in a corner of the post office, his face hidden behind a magazine, and reported what had happened. Moses shook his head with concern.

“It is not good to lie to the sergeant. Pretty soon he know that you stay on Orchid Beach.”

“Come on, Moses. How can he possibly find out about me, way down here?”

“Fiji communication is amazing thing. Did you ask him about staying six months?”

“No. The business of the coup bothered me. I just wanted to get out of there.”

“It will be harder next time,” said Moses to a tree they were passing.

Compton doubted there would be “a next time” and did not press for an explanation.

They walked down the hill and across the street into the general store that inflatedly called itself a Super Market. It had eight aisles running the length of the store. They were stacked with various and sundry items that appeared to be without value or purpose in this part of the world, a source of comic relief for Compton after his encounter with the sergeant. Two entire rows were given to cheap toys and worthless trinkets. Another row contained, among other profitless items, silver polish, car wax, coffee makers, blenders, cheese knives, vacuum cleaner bags and toasters. There were two rows of hardware, with the usual axes, chain saws, shovels and carpentry tools. One single aisle was devoted to diving and fishing gear -- large spools of line, sinkers, hooks, lures, masks, fins, snorkels and spear guns that virtually no Fijian could afford. There were two spear guns that were the exact replica of the very gun the Silver Fish had taken and Compton lifted it from the rack as Moses inspected the rubber bands.

“Sometimes these guns are here for years and the rubber rots away. This one is good.” He pulled back on the band and inspected it at the point it was connected to the stainless steel wishbones that slid into the notches of the spear shaft. He then handed the gun back to Compton and strode off. “The groceries are over here.” Compton stroked the stock of the varnished wood and the Silver Fish appeared in the water and he took the gun and aimed it down the dive equipment aisle and pulled off an imaginary shot, then caught up to Moses in the last two aisles that remained unexplored, where Compton met his grocery needs, including a six-pack of Fiji Bitter, the local beer.

Outside while waiting for the bus, Compton opened a beer and offered one to Moses who refused but could not take his eyes from the bottle until Compton had drained it. The bus arrived with a different driver at the wheel and though presumably unlucky, he did not court disaster at every turn and was decidedly the superior of the two drivers.

The skies began to cloud as they loaded the boat. At the barrier reef dark cumulus bloated with rain coursed in from the south. Upon passing the barrier reef it began to drizzle and Compton recalled his ignored premonition of rain. Moses dug out a slicker of tattered plastic and offered it to him.

“No,” said Compton. “I knew it would rain today and I ignored my intuition. I deserve to get wet.”

“That is the biggest mistake a man can make,” agreed Moses. “That small voice is the true one, eh. The one we must always follow.”

The wind that delivered the cumulus stirred the ocean and swells blew up out of the southeast. Compton stood in the bow with the painter in hand as the downpour turned torrential. Riding the wild seas like a horse, he hooted like a cowboy whenever the boat slammed down on the backside of a wave. For over two hours he rode the foreshortened world of wind, sea and rain until they reached Orchid Beach, where he stumbled ashore exhausted.