The Plover: A Novel (33 page)

Authors: Brian Doyle

BOOK: The Plover: A Novel

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No one thought to introduce Enrique, who sat quietly in the stern.

Kono suggested that he and Akia carry the pipster in to the aunties on shore, who would bathe and feed her and make much and merry of their beloved
manuoko,
their little tern, and that way Piko would be free to help unload whatever and whomever; this seemed like an excellent idea, and after Kono hoisted up fruit and fuel for the
Plover
—how had he known to bring that?—Piko hoisted a happily burbling Pip down to the canoes. Kono, with arms like tree limbs, reached for her as you would casually reach up for an apple, but Declan noticed Akia’s long hands steadying the child with something like reverence; as she guided the pip into Kono’s canoe her hair fell across her cheek and Declan looked away again, rattled.

* * *

The
Plover
then ran northeast around two massive headlands and into a broad shallow bay, at the east end of which was a long wooden jetty; here Declan unloaded his passengers and what little gear they had. Taromauri hoisted Enrique up to Danilo and Piko like he was a bird she barely needed two hands to lift. They all shook hands again and Declan clambered back down and cast off. The men and woman on the jetty waved until the
Plover
cleared the bay but Declan, mumbling to himself, waved once and then kept his eyes on the surf line.

You never know with these fecking bays when and where the tide line turns into a wall, and this is no blessed Jesus surfing boat, he said, or thought; was he speaking to the albatross he assumed was still behind him? You just never blessed know.

Well, bird, he said, this time aloud for sure, what do you say, south and then south? I never been south of south. Let’s do south. We did west and west and east and east and north is for fecking polar bears. He turned to add something cheerfully rude to the albatross and indeed there it was, huge and calm, hanging nine feet over the stern, just like the gull used to hang in the exact same spot, without even a flicker or shiver of wings, how do they
do
that? But even as he watched, the albatross effortlessly banked away from the boat and headed back to the bay.

Jesus blessed Christmas, said Declan. Even you, Brutus? Fine. Fecking fine. It’s you and me, boat. Same as ever. We started out as you and me and here we are again, old bucket. Free as air. Into the blue. The continent of the sea. No—the vast blue nation of Pacifica, as the minister said. What a nut. South and then south! Nature the sturdy adversary, as old Ed Burke says! Difficulty the severe instructor! Amen to that, boat. Amen to
that
. Listen, if you were a
good
boat you would be able to read sight reduction tables yourself and not lean on
me
to do it, but no. Fine. Fecking fine. No more passengers, nobody shooting at us, nobody expecting anything or leaning on us for anything, free free free!

The
Plover
was by now a mile back out to sea, and Declan shut off the engine while he checked his course; he had plenty of room between this island and the next bigger one to slide south between them and then southeast into open ocean, where the next island would probably be Easter or Christmas, sweet weeks away, and I bet the wind will be with us too so we don’t have to use any fuel, and we have plenty of fruit, and me, I
like
fish, and
you
are not eating much if I don’t have to use up the fuel, so we are set, boat, as far as I can see. No scurvy, no doldrums, plenty of food in the ocean, no expectations, no complaints, no duties, no passengers to deliver, nobody asking for favors, freshwater falling from the sky occasionally, what could be better than this, I ask you that? What could be better than this?

The wind freshened, and he noticed the bullet hole; might as well fecking fix that now as later, he thought. He went below to look for putty, and then remembered that Taromauri had used the putty to help secure Pipa’s chair in the stern. Hope she left some on the railing, he thought. He climbed back up the ladder, noticing that Pipa’s bed slats were open.

Indeed there were two gobs of putty left under the railing, more than he needed. He rolled them in his palms for a while, to soften them up enough to plug the hole, and then he rolled them together into a single large ball, and then he gently put the ball of putty in the exact center of the railing where Pipa’s chair used to be, and walked back into the cabin, and started the engine, and turned the boat half-around, and headed back around the two headlands to the hidden bay from which the canoes had emerged; and as he came around the second headland, happy and confused, thinking of Pipa’s face, the wind shoving him along, he saw a canoe coming out to meet him; and his heart rose as he saw that it was a brilliant green.

THANKS & NOTES

My particular thanks to Admiral Michael McCabe (Ret.) of the United States Navy, who flew combat missions off the USS
Kitty Hawk
in the Pacific and eventually commanded the U.S. Navy’s Third Fleet there (the fleet once commanded by Admiral Bull Halsey in the Second World War) for general counsel as regards ships and the sea, and also for great wit and humor, no conversation with the admiral (“Don’t call me Admiral!” “Yes, Admiral.”) is anything but a delight; to his friend and former shipmate Gary Bean Barrett, once master of the
Pau Hana,
who was a great help to me on cold hard facts of life aboard a small boat in the Pacific; to Dr. Edward Tarlov, of Massachusetts, master of the
Presto,
and his shipmate Dr. Suzanne Roffler Tarlov; to the anonymous authors of
The United States Coast Pilot, Pacific Coast,
a book I came to love with a deep and abiding love; to the memory of my personal and literary hero Robert Louis Stevenson, of Scotland, by all accounts a gentle and generous and open-hearted soul, a great husband and stepfather and friend who also wrote like an angel, especially of the sea, upon which he lived for almost a year, in the Pacific, on the schooner
Casco;
to the Living Treasure of Hawaii called Puanani Burgess, of Oahu, for her great spirit, and for the gift of the
Illustrated Hawaiian Dictionary,
by Kahikāhealani Wight, published by Bess Press in Honolulu, a book in which I have swum happily for years like
honu,
the gentle sea turtle; to the eminent photographer and journalist Hob Osterlund, of Kauai, for introducing me to that most interesting seamount and many of its residents, like
manuoku,
the Fairy Tern, and
moli,
the albatross, not to mention the migrating plover; to Kim Steutermann Rogers, of Kauai, for help with fire-throwing arcana; to Mahealani Wendt, of Maui, for her help with the Hawaiian language and history; to Gaylord and Carol Wilcox, of Oahu, for lending me their house for two weeks, during which I fell in love with plovers and Hawaii; to my friend Suzanne Case, of Oahu, and her friend Leokāne Pryor, of Maui, for their haunting music, which was a lodestar for me during the dreaming of this book (it is their song “Ke Ho‘olono Nei,” from Leokāne’s album
Home Malanai,
that appears in bars throughout this book, for which I especially thank them for permission and meticulous musical notation); to the late Robert Gibbings, of Ireland, whose books of water journeys surely soaked into my unandsubconscious; to Stanley Ayling, of England, for his invaluable
Edmund Burke: His Life and Opinions;
to the late Thomas Copeland, of Massachusetts, for his heroic editing of
The Correspondence of Edmund Burke
(old Ed wrote thousands of letters, in which, as is the case with many superb writers, the most characteristic and revealing writing is found; this is true, to choose two geniuses at random, of both Stevenson and Flannery O’Connor); to Sir Arthur Francis Grimble, of England, for his lively and beautifully written books
A Pattern of Islands
and
Return to the Islands;
to Sir Arthur again (called Kurimbo by the people of Tungaru, who admitted him to the islands’ sun clan) and his editors Harry and Honor Maude, for the monograph
Tungaru Traditions,
from the University of Hawaii Press; to Peter Harrison for his lovely
Seabirds of the World;
to the oceanographer Sylvia Earle of the National Geographic Society, for her clear and useful book
The World Is Blue;
to Judith Schalansky, for her absolutely lovely and idiosyncratic
Atlas of Remote Islands,
an astounding book I swam in almost daily for years; to the marine biologist Edith Widder for her remarkable work with oceanic bioluminescence; to my able consultant in making ropes from fibers found in Pacific Northwest plants, George Schramm of Oregon; to Katrina Van Dusen, of Maine, for the lovely woodcuts in this book; and most of all to Mary Miller Doyle and our children, Lily, Joseph, and Liam, of Oregon, on whose love I have sailed for many years; I am the luckiest ship ever.

ALSO BY BRIAN DOYLE

Fiction

Mink River

Cat’s Foot

Bin Laden’s Bald Spot & Other Stories

Nonfiction

The Wet Engine: Exploring the Mad Wild Miracle of the Heart

The Grail: A year ambling and shambling through an Oregon vineyard in pursuit of the best pinot noir wine in the whole wild world

Essays

Reading in Bed

The Thorny Grace of It

Leaping

Grace Notes

Two Voices
(with Jim Doyle)

Credo

Saints Passionate & Peculiar

Poetry

Thirsty for the Joy

Epiphanies & Elegies

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Brian Doyle edits
Portland Magazine
at the University of Portland in Oregon. He is the author of many books, among them the sprawling Oregon novel
Mink River
. His work has been reprinted in the annual
Best American Essays, Best American Science and Nature Writing,
and
Best American Spiritual Writing
anthologies. Among various honors for his work are a Catholic Book Award, three Pushcart Prizes, the John Burroughs Award for Nature Essays, the
Foreword Reviews
Book of the Year Award in 2011, and, puzzling him to this day, the 2008 Award in Literature from the American Academy of Arts and Letters.

This is a work of fiction. All of the characters, organizations, and events portrayed in this novel are either products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously.

THOMAS DUNNE BOOKS.

An imprint of St. Martin’s Press.

THE PLOVER.
Copyright © 2014 by Brian Doyle. All rights reserved. For information, address St. Martin’s Press, 175 Fifth Avenue, New York, N.Y. 10010.

www.thomasdunnebooks.com

www.stmartins.com

“Ke Ho‘olono Nei”: music by Leokāne Pryor, original lyrics by Suzanne Case, Hawaiian poetic adaptation and translation by Kaliko Beamer-Trapp

Chapter illustrations by Katrina Van Dusen

Map by Cameron Macleod Jones

Cover design by Steve Snider

Cover photographs: boat in water © Steve Estvanik/Shutterstock; rusted metal © Ivankov/Shutterstock; metal frame © Ensuper/Shutterstock

The Library of Congress has cataloged the print edition as follows:

Doyle, Brian.

The plover: a novel / Brian Doyle.—First Edition.

p. cm.

ISBN 978-1-250-03477-9 (hardcover)