The Plover: A Novel (10 page)

*   *   *

Dusk on the
Plover
. Pipa asleep. Hatches battened, ropes coiled, pots washed and stored. The boat rocked gently. He saw a dark gray heron picking its way silently along the beach. My kingdom for a Jesus blessed Christ cigar. But suddenly a wash of memory and regret, a terrible brilliant flash of images and sounds all at once: young crows moaning in the trees in summer at home, the dusty-old-raspberry flavor of thimbleberries in August, the hilarious stench of skunk cabbage in March, the waddling sprint of ground squirrels in summer, the ubiquity of wild cucumber vines, the layers of blue mist like veils and tendrils in the morning over the green hills, the hills arranged like breasts and fists. The oily clay, the crumbling sandstone, the cougar prints as big as dinner plates along rivulets high in the hemlock hills where no one ever logged. The tunnels in the trees up there where only deer went easily and even old man bear thrashed and lumbered, too big for the deer roads. The way when you really wanted to eradicate wild cucumber you had to track down the man-root deep in the loam, never where you wanted it to be for easy access, and get your brothers and buddies to shovel down after it with you, and when you found it finally it really was as big as a man, with arms and legs and everything, and you had to haul it out of the dark, heavy as sin, before you could kill it.

*   *   *

Dawn like an eye opening. The
Plover
rocking gently. A pregnant silence, a deep silence filled with waiting, the invisible musicians with their transparent hands poised over their evanescent instruments; and then a lorikeet whistles in the woods; and then the inquisitive quizzical koels ask their quiet questions, and then a sea of warblers all at once as if by command, by signal, by the descent of a baton only they can see; and then the deluge, pigeons and doves, noddies and tattlers, godwits and turnstones, curlews and pipers, teal and widgeon, boobies and petrels, whimbrels and phalarope, and o my little terns! says Pipa in her spirit voice from the dark of her coffin bunk to the first terns coming to her call, gliding into the rigging like brilliant prayers; and with the blinding white terns now come bigger gray terns, and cocky terns with dashing black crests, and terns with black masks, and a tiny tern with a call like a creaking door. They line the railings and cover the cabin and shuffle scratchily aside only to admit a single large gull, which appears silently like a dream and takes up its familiar spot on the lip of the roof of the cabin, right above the doorway. And who might you be? asks Pipa with her big-soul voice, her spirit voice, the voice that goes with her bigger-than-her-body self. The gull explains, in her creaky raspy rusty-hinge voice, her travels and travails; she does so at elephantine length, the gulls being a garrulous race. Pipa explains the situation and the gull says she will have to ponder the matter. The terns, rippling on the rail, express general skepticism; when have gulls ever looked out for anyone other than themselves? Pipa opens herself to all birds in the harbor. The gray herons on the beach are startled by the touch of her spirit; they have never been spoken to in this way before, with a voice they cannot hear with their ears. They rustle and burble uncomfortably, stalking stiff-legged around in the shallows like tall stern old professors, and Pipa says gently perhaps you should have something to eat before we continue this discussion; the herons are a peckish race. She and the terns discuss the danger of jaegers and skuas in the open sea. We think you should approach
iwa,
the frigate birds, say the terns. They are afraid of nothing. What about the albatrosses? asks Pipa. The terns go silent; they can find no way to comprehend her question. The albatrosses are the albatrosses, say the terns finally in their small white voices. We cannot talk to the albatrosses. They live forever and they have no enemies. No one eats them and they eat none of us. We do not see them except at sea. When they come to land they keep to themselves, singing in their forest, until their new children are ready to live forever also. The albatrosses are the albatrosses. They are much older than we are. In the beginning of the world there were no islands and the albatrosses were the only birds because they could fly forever. All the world came from the albatrosses. Their droppings became all the islands. We do not know how they came to be or what happens to them when they die. They are the oldest of birds. They are not unfriendly but they have no companions among the birds. No one speaks to them and they do not speak to us although they sing among themselves. The albatrosses are the albatrosses. We cannot speak of them because we do not speak to them. Even the gulls cannot speak to them and the gulls speak to everyone all the time. Perhaps
you
can speak to them. What kind of being are you, to speak to us? Are you a bird with useless wings?

*   *   *

Declan emerged scratching his belly and urinating over the stern and then gaping at the troops of terns before noticing the gull. He laughed aloud.

Sweet blessed Jesus Christmas. Welcome back, bird. Could use another hand around here. Things are intense. Lots of work to be done. Hard work. Messy. You’re a messy race, you’ll be comfortable. We are going to go fishing. Fishing for men as old blessed Jesus Christmas said. Trawling for trawlers. Harvesting a man. Adding to the crew. Which reminds me we have a kid on board. Her name is Pipa. She’s a pipsqueak. You wouldn’t know the word. You’ll like her. She don’t say much. Quiet kid. Add her to the manifest. That’s three of us now with you and we will go get our fourth back. His name’s Piko. You’ll like him. Looks like a tall skinny goat. Good guy. He got borrowed but we are going to borrow him back. O yes. I bet today is the day.

Indeed today is the day. The minister for fisheries and marine resources and foreign affairs sends a message that a rusty gray trawler has been seen to the northwest, near the atolls the fishermen call Anewetak. There are so many atolls and islets there that no one is quite sure how many there are. Some of them have no names. He, the minister, has enclosed charts and graphs for the
Plover
’s progress. He, the minister, cautions caution in those waters, as even the charts and graphs enclosed are not perhaps fully accurate, and the shifting sands and tides in that wilderness of atolls and islets, not to mention the effects of storms, make caution the watchword of the wise. He, the minister, wishes that he could be of more direct assistance in the matter at hand, but he trusts that the recipient understands the press of ministerial duties, and the vagaries of communal responsibilities undertaken by the undersigned by virtue of his appointment to the ministry, a signal honor, which he, the minister, wishes to discharge with every iota of his energy and passion for that which we hope someday, by the grace of Atua who made all things, will someday be a republic, not unlike, perhaps, that from which the
Plover
came, and by the grace of Atua shall safely return. Also we enclose ten shillings as a gift for the child.

*   *   *

Moonless night. Overcast. A thorough and incredible dark, as if the concept of light had never been invented. The only hint of light other than the boat’s running lights is the
Plover
’s wake, a bioluminescent furl. Pipa had been buckled into her chair in the stern but she mewled so plaintively that Declan finally picked her up and grumbling carted her around the boat until she indicated where she wanted to be; to his amazement, she wanted to sit at the very tip of the stern. This is a particularly and remarkably poor idea, Pippish, said Declan, but she was so weirdly insistent to be exactly
there
and nowhere else that he finally surrendered, muttering darkly, and he arranged her sitting up, facing forward, and strapped her down with every scrap of rope and line he could find; I may never get you
un
strapped, he murmured, and you will forever be the figurehead of the
Plover,
every ship no matter how small should have a figurehead, isn’t that right, you know what a figurehead is? Heck, sure you know what a figurehead is, you are probably some kind of raw genius and just can’t get your genius out your windows anymore. She stared at him with those eyes like pools like seas like windows. It was so dark he could see only the faintest outline of her head, although her hands seemed to glow gently. The terns that had been with them all day as they roared northwest had faded away as dusk fell, but the gull was again silently floating exactly nine feet above the stern, last he noticed, at sunset.

Back in the cabin he slows the boat to a crawl and stares into the murk. Never despair, but if you do, work on in despair, said old Ed Burke. Exactly so.
Misneach
. No way I can see the bastard’s ship, can I? But he can’t see us either. So I’ll
smell
him. Old shitbucket smelling like rust and oil and dead things. He must be stopped for the night. No one can navigate in this. Should have told the pip to maintain total pip silence. As he thinks this he notices her hands waving madly; is she waving at him to stop? He shuts the engine off. Blacker than the blackest black. The tiniest of lapping wavelets ticking against the boat. She flaps her right hand. Is she signaling? Can she signal? Jesus. He peers and squints; nothing; but there is the faintest whiff of diesel fuel. Isn’t there? Is there? There is. He shuts off all lights. It is the darkest night in the history of the world. How can I still see her hand? How is her hand lit up? Weird. He slips up to the stern. Her eyes are wild. He bends down to whisper directly into her ear. Pipa, don’t move. Don’t make a sound, okay? I’ll be right back. Everything will be okay. I am going to get your dad and we will be back in about ten minutes, okay? We’ll come up the stern as quiet as we can. Don’t make a sound when you see him, okay? It’s real important that you don’t make a sound. Don’t let any of your birds make a sound either if they are around, okay? I’ll be right back. He slips back to the stern and strips down to his black shirt and shorts and eases over the side and vanishes into the darkest night in the history of the world. For a moment Pipa sees a shiver of bioluminescence opening like a fan behind Declan and then the dark closes in again like a tide.

*   *   *

Beneath the boat there are fish so tiny no eye can see them. There are fish bigger than the boat. There are mammals and mollusks and cetaceans and crustaceans. Far below sprawled at an awkward angle as if its neck was broken by the fall there is a warship so covered with mud and kelp that its name and numbers are lost. Barracuda swim through its corridors. Fifty feet away there is another warship from another country. It too is now a reef. Once it was designed for death and now it is a nursery. The two ships sank together one evening. It took all day for them to sink. Men rode them down through the darkening water. On one ship there was a boy of fourteen. He was tall for his age and had learned that if he did not speak when questioned but only nodded assent his interlocutors assumed he was older than he was. He had loved the sea ever since he could remember and probably before. He first heard it when his father carried him down to the shore when he was two years old. They lived in an apartment in the city and his mother and father borrowed a car and they drove down to the sea with the boy and his sister. His sister was afraid of the sea. He could not imagine how that could be so. He ran to it like it was waiting for him. It thrummed and seethed in his dreams. He wanted to be in it and of it and on it and under it. At age ten he ran away from home and tried to go to sea and his father was desperate and searched the docks all night and found him just before dawn huddled near a crab boat. At age twelve he ran away again and boarded a freighter and was loading cargo until the bosun discovered him and put him ashore. At fourteen he stood as tall as he could and nodded silent assent to questions and the navy took him and he had been at sea one month and one day when his ship sank. The ship was terribly damaged in the morning and the bow half sank first and then the stern half. The bow sank in the morning and the stern sank at dusk. The boy huddled in a room alone as the ship sank. He could see his sister’s face and hear his mother weeping and feel his father’s hand on his shoulder. His father had lean long hands as hard as wood but they had never touched the boy with anything other than the most gentle and tender affection. Everywhere else in the stern as it sank there was roaring and rending but in the room where the boy was the sea whispered in ever so politely and slowly. The boy kept his head above water for as long as he could not from duty but from love, because he loved his mother and father and sister and wanted to see their amused faces and feel his father’s hand on his shoulder, but finally he closed his eyes and opened his mouth and sank to the bottom of the room and the last thing he heard was the thrumming and seething of the sea just as he had heard it in his dreams when he was small.

*   *   *

The
Tanets
is stopped for the night. Enrique in the pilot house, smoking a cigarette, absorbed in charts. Piko in the stern. The impassive crewman amidships, watching Piko. The silence of a darkened stage just before the play begins. Enrique thinking of Something Somethingivi
ć
. A loss is a loss. Men have been lost before. Many men. The way of the world. The song of the sea. We all lose what we start with. The nature of the beast. It happened to me. It happens to everyone. An excellent pilot. He had a brother. The brother who sang like an angel. I had brothers. Not one of us could sing, however. Mama told us that! It comes time to leave and you leave. The way of the world. The nature of the beast. The world is a beast. You make your way. You leave and you do not come back. What is there to go back for? An ocean of dust. I made my way. I have a boat. I go where I want. The laws do not apply to me. What laws? I take what I like. Who is to say no to me? They will not come for me. They will not take anything of
mine
. I am the shark now. I go where I want. I take what I want. They think the law will protect them but there is no law. There are only people who believe in law. If you do not believe in law there is no law. I am the law. I teach them the true law. The true law is that there are sharks and there are the things that sharks eat. That is the law. If I want fish I take fish. If I want timber I take timber. If I want guns I take guns. If you can take something, take it. That is the law. So much talk about the law. What is there to talk about? Talk talk talk. My papa talk talk talk about the law and they came for him and said they were the law and so much for his talk talk talk about the law, where was the law then? There is no law. The law is I am the law. If I want a pilot I take a pilot. This pilot is not so good as Something Somethingivi
ć
. Perhaps he will be lost too. A loss is a loss. His child will learn the law. The small child. Better to learn the lesson young, like I did. I am doing his child a great service. The shark is a great teacher.