The Plover: A Novel (26 page)

Why not?

I could die of fright, for one thing. Or go mad.

Well, you are not going to die of fright, I can tell you that. Nor is madness in the cards.

What
do
I die of?

No no. I can’t tell you that.

Do I live a long time?

Can’t tell you that either. Listen, I just dropped by to chat, not to be examined.

This is a dream, right? I am dreaming?

If you want to later consider this a dream, sure.

What was it you wanted to chat about?

Oh, I don’t know. I suppose I just wanted to get to know you a bit. A rare impulse for me. Usually it’s just the one final meeting. In your case I thought we could just converse a bit beforehand.

You did.

I did, yes. Don’t mean to scare you. Really.

Are you the only … agent?

No no. There are many … agents.

You know them all?

No no. Far too many. I know some, that’s all. And we come in all shapes and sizes, of course. No two alike. Some better at the job than others, also.

I beg your pardon?

I know one … agent, for example, who couldn’t find the fellow he was supposed to escort. Try as he might he just could
not
pin down the man’s whereabouts. Very embarrassing.

What happened?

Long story. Another agent, not once but twice she escorted the wrong person. The first time it was a nomenclatural problem, the second time cosmetic, I heard. Plastic surgery or something. I am not totally sure of the details there.

Am I really having this conversation?

It’s more like question and answer, I think, but yes.

What happened to my dad?

You know the answer to that.

Do you?

No. We are not issued biographical material, nor do we keep an eye on you in any way. We just escort you when the time comes. Agent is a good word, actually. Now, can I ask you some questions? Because I am only here for a few moments. I have an engagement elsewhere.

What if you miss it? Does the person live forever then?

I wouldn’t know. We don’t miss engagements.

You’ve never made a mistake?

Not yet.

But you could.

Theoretically. But again, let me ask
you
questions for a moment.

Shoot.

When someone you love vanishes, do you always have a hole in you afterward?

I am not the one to ask. Ask Piko. I don’t love anyone, so no one I love can die. See? Good system, eh? Everyone
I
love will live forever.

Is food as good as it looks?

Yes.

What’s the best food of all?

Fresh water. And berries.

Don’t you love the little girl?

Pause.

What little girl? says Declan, very quietly indeed.

The girl on the boat. The girl who can’t walk.

She’s not here anymore. We left her on the last island. At a hospital.

Really? I thought she was still with you.

Nope.

My mistake.

Don’t you have an engagement elsewhere?

Indeed I do. I must go. Do consider this a dream tomorrow when you awake.

Will do.

See you again someday.

I hope not to see you again for sixty years. All due respect.

I understand. I’d best be off.

Thanks for the visit, I guess.

Anytime.

No thanks.

And there was a silence, during which the stars glittered more than before; and then the gull rustled and fluttered in her sleep, and Declan went below, rattled and thoughtful.

*   *   *

Danilo was up first, before dawn, an old habit; so he was the first to see the
Tanets
on the horizon. He woke Taromauri so that she could keep an eye on it, and then he woke Declan. Who stared at the horizon for a moment and said fecking fecking feck and woke Piko.

Is that him?

Yup, said Declan. I know that hull. I climbed that hull.

What do we do?

You and Taromauri get the sail up and I will run the engine.

Can I help? asks Danilo.

Do whatever Piko says.

Are we running?

Yup.

Can we outrun him?

Nope. But we can make him work all day to catch us.

Then what?

I don’t know. I’ll figure it out. Wake up the minister if you guys need help.

They ran. They ran all morning at full speed, Declan nursing and wooing the engine, everyone else taking turns nursing and tinkering the sail. No one ate. The
Tanets
drew closer by the hour. The minister and Taromauri took turns sitting with Pipa and answering her questions. She had many questions. Her terns swirled confusedly for the first hour and then settled into a steady flight in a small phalanx something like a diamond. The gull also lifted off and hung in her usual spot nine feet above the stern. Taromauri said something to the gull but the gull just hung in the sky and didn’t say anything or look at anyone. Just as the terns settled into their diamond formation an albatross appeared and surfed along behind the gull over the stern. Early in the afternoon the engine coughed and died but Declan got it humming again within four minutes a new fecking world and Olympic record the fecking old thing made of spit and rust. Late in the afternoon the wind began to wither. Piko tacked in every direction to catch every last breath; to no avail.

Dec …

Yeh, I see. Haul it in and hope for dark.

*   *   *

On the
Tanets
all Enrique could see was the red sail and the blue water and the dwindling daylight. Everything else was outside the narrow cone of his vision. I see you, he said aloud. I see you. You cannot hide. The night will do nothing for you. I know where you are. I know where you are going. You stole from me. You took what was mine. This cannot abide. One theft leads to ten. And then where are we? Adrift. Disorder disrupts order. I give the orders. I command both our boats. I command you to flee. I command fear. Having committed disorder you have brought disorder upon you. It is the law. I command that you will be caught one hour after full darkness and your boat destroyed and my property returned and no evidence of your existence or destruction will be found evermore. What you were will sink to the bottom of the sea and be lost and none will remember or testify.

But with a real start of surprise he heard himself talking aloud in a loud cold voice, and some deep part of him was frightened; he sat down and put his face in his hands, and was startled at the shocking heat of his skin and a slather of sweat so heavy his hands glistened. Am I sick? Is this a bad illness? His left side ached from his eye to his toe. Nausea rose in him like a tide. He sat hunched and haunted for a few moments, and then stood to splash water on his head and face and was there steam? Steam rising from his face? Or was that smoke? Smoke! He jumped to the railing just in time to see another burning stick whirling right at his head; he leapt aside, furious, and the stick crashed against the cabin wall and shattered into smoking wreckage. Bastards! Bastards! He reached for the first rifle he could find under the railing and fired on the red sail just as the
Plover
swerved and slid past his stern. Enrique sprinted around the corner and along the port railing, cursing and firing, but the smaller boat was either deftly swerving or he was losing his vision altogether, because the red sail seemed to be shimmering—there for a moment and then not there at all, and then suddenly there again, but not where it had been before; and then somehow it vanished altogether, just as Enrique realized he was perilously close to the reefs of what looked like atolls so low that they were probably underwater most of the time. He sprinted back to the cabin and hauled the
Tanets
to port, but not before the boat scraped against the reef with an agonizing shriek; then he was in deep water again, and so angry that white flecks of froth appeared on his lips. He bent over the railing and heaved his bile into the darkening sea. When he stood up again, staggering, the sun was gone, the
Plover
was gone, and his left hand was locked so tightly on the rail it took him fully ten minutes to pry it loose.

*   *   *

Jesus, said Piko. That was close. His chest heaved and his hands were black with char. He and Declan bent over the charts, their faces an inch from the maps; no lights on the boat, by command of the captain. We can slide through this passage, said Declan, and then run all night, but he’s got a bigger boat, and more fuel, and he’ll catch us eventually. But I think it’s just him. I didn’t see anyone else on his boat. Did you?

No. But I didn’t get a great look.

Jesus Christmas, said Declan. My hands are shaking.

Let’s go get him, said Piko.

They stared at each other.

There’s no moon, said Piko, and if we don’t get him now he’ll get us tomorrow. He won’t let us get close enough to board him. We have to get him.

Again they stared at each other, each man thinking many thoughts at once: how did it ever come to this, the pipster, the infinitesimal chance of all five able bodies on the
Plover
boarding the
Tanets
at once, a vision of a bullet hole between Taromauri’s eyes, a vision of Pipa weeping at the loss of her mother and her father; also both men thought of the word murder but neither said it aloud. Each was startled at the grim willingness to violence in the other; but neither spoke of it.

There’s a smokestack above the engine in that boat, said Piko in the dark. It’s a mess down there. Oily rags everywhere. Plus who knows what his cargo is. Maybe it’s oil or gunpowder. I drop a stick in there and he’s got a fire that will keep him busy for a week.

Can you do that?

Silence.

I don’t know. Yes.

You’ll have about three tries max, you know. He’ll shoot as soon as he sees where the sticks are coming from. He can’t miss us forever.

Silence.

Can you do it? asks Declan, very quietly indeed.

Silence; the lapping of waves against the boat in the shallow passage between atolls; the faint crush of surf on the reef; the sharpest ears might catch the breathing of the four rattled beings belowdecks, and of the warbler beneath the water tank.

Yes, said Piko.

*   *   *

On the
Tanets
Enrique was sick again and again, as if his body wanted to empty itself completely. He hung exhausted over the stern. He knew he should be alert; he had been boarded once by the man on that boat, in a manner Enrique still couldn’t figure out, his hull being sheer and slippery; but his fury had ebbed to embers. His mind rattled and leapt with images: his mother’s eyes in the firelit dark; dust swirling around his brother’s feet; broken adobe walls; dry mountains lined along their ridges with lovely swaths of pines and firs and mountain cedar. That is what heaven had seemed like to him when he was a boy, those dense thatches of cool forest in the sky; he had climbed there a few times later, when he was a teenager, and never forgot the clarity of the air, the cool shade under the trees, the sharp scent of the conifer trees. For a moment he stared into the darkness and saw another life he might have led, in the mountains, the bushes filled with butterflies every winter, the occasional lynx or mountain lion glimpsed like a russet shadow on a ridge, his axe and saw the tools of his trade, coming down from the mountains occasionally to the big rivers, or the coast, or the city, for weddings and wakes; but then the burning part of him rose again and he went around the ship checking that the rifles were all loaded. In the cabin he stared at the charts showing a thin passageway between the two low atolls. Half his mind calculated odds and percentages, wind and current, angles of approach, the relative weights of the two boats, ramming speed, the maximum number of rifle shots he had at his command; the other half, first silently and then mumbling and then speaking quietly, said we could just turn around and go. We could just go. We could sell this last cargo for a good profit and sell the boat for a serious profit and burn everything else behind us and go to the mountains. We could go. We can make decisions. Circumstances do not dictate decisions. Decisions dictate the process of circumstances. We can decide to go. That is not surrender. That is magnanimity. With a wave of the hand we spare their lives.

But the burning half of his mind was grim and silent. He was finally two men, one weary of rage and the other starving for it, one desperate for the drug and the other finished and done and sure at last it would lead to death, one immersed in the past and the other dreaming of the future, one stoking his fury with the past and the other wishing nothing more than to be done with it forever, one lawless and the other lawful, one at war and the other at peace, one heat and the other cool; and they strove in him mightily, this last moment in the cabin. His head throbbed and he reached up his left hand to rub his eye and he saw that his hand had become an unusable claw. He stood up and made a sound like a sob or a scream and he spun the wheel and the
Tanets
slid toward the two low atolls.

*   *   *

Again Danilo and Taromauri built a small fire on the hatch cover, and roasted firesticks, the minister holding a canvas tarpaulin over his head to hide the light; again Pipa shivered in her bunk, and sent her spirit into the deep waters, to see what she could see. Declan maneuvered the
Plover
out of the inlet and into the ocean, peering desperately into the gloom for the lurk and loom of the
Tanets
. Piko shimmied up the mast, and balanced himself for a moment like a dancer on the tip of it, feeling for the wind, for he knew that he would need every hint of wind for these throws;
oahi
depended not on strength but on skill, the ability to read the wind, the deft snap of the wrist, the perfectly burning stick; the wood could not be too burnt, or it would fall apart in the teeth of the wind; it could not be insufficiently burnt, or its weight would cause it to plummet; and the glowing stick had to have just enough of a handle for the thrower to launch it into the wind without hurrying the throw to save his hand from scorching.