A Dolphins Dream (26 page)

Once they were away they slowed their pace and the boat pushed easily against the black water that churned silver phosphorescence beneath the bow. The moonless night was star blown and the white sand beaches along the shoreline glowed blue in their light. Compton let his hand drag over the side of the boat and his fingers felt for the tongue of warm water that rose to lick them on each swell. They passed the lights of the resort, which in their glare felt harsh on their skin and obscene to the eye. They did not speak in the revealing gleam but hurried to the sanctuary of darkness around the next point.

“Do you think drugs are bad, Keli?”

“What kind of drugs you talking about?”

“Pot. Do you think pot is bad?”

“Why do you ask?”

“Because you are an American. You know about drugs, eh. You have used ‘em?”

The darkness shadowed Compton’s face and Moses could not read the shift in its aspect but his answer was curt and revealed himself. “Sure.”

“Was it a bad thing?”

“My second wife liked to smoke pot because it made sex better for her. It wasn’t my drug of choice, as they say.”

Compton reached deeper into the sea and scooped up a handful and splashed it on his face. “You been smoking?”

“An American came here last year and gave me some pot. I went down to Orchid Beach to smoke. I liked the pot but I worry, also.  In Fiji they put you in jail for five years if you have pot.”

“That’s a lot of years in jail but I imagine you’re fairly safe out here. I mean, who would know?”

“Sometimes the police come from Taveuni and check. The sergeant, he used to bust up fights but now he is looking for the pot.”

The boat rounded the western point and the swell increased. Compton gave himself over to the rocking motion, which the kava seemed to thrive on. 

Moses adjusted the throttle and the boat rolled gently over the swell. “The American give me seeds to plant and said he would buy the pot from me and I could smoke it when I wanted. He did this so he would not have to find it in Suva. I am thinking about the pot all the time and worry that the police will find the plants.”

“If he needs to fly to Suva to score his pot, it sounds like he’s got a drug problem.”

“This pot is something, eh. Make you dream all the time. Everyone in Fiji like it. People are growing it all over. It is maybe a bad thing for me. The easy money is earned in worry.”

“Can’t you make money doing something else?”

“Money is hard in Fiji. There is no work, only the resort and the copra fields. In the copra fields you pick up two hundred and fifty coconut, about two hundred pounds, and carry them on your back to the drying shed, sometimes a half mile away, sometimes more. Then you cut them in half and sit with the copra and dig out the meat. You must cut your own firewood to fuel the dryer and put the meat in the dryer for eighteen hours for one bag. The workers are paid by the bag, one dollar and fifty a bag. Good worker can average three bags a day.“

“Jesus, that’s terrible. What about the resorts, what do they pay?”

“Not so bad, twelve hours for seven dollars but I don’t like the resort. Someone always watching you. Everyone is a boss except the Fijian. That’s the way in Fiji, everyone takes advantage; plantation owners, resorts, the Indians. All because we  jes’ need a little money, so that is what they pay us. We work hard but not all the time. Life is for a bit of work, a bit of fun, and for sitting, eh. Too much work make you sick.”

“Well, you better stay away from America, that’s all they do there is work. It gets worse every year. I remember when just my dad worked, now both parents work long hours. I was up to my eyeballs in work.”

Compton let the water roll through his fingers. It felt warm and inviting.

“The competition is fierce in America. Everyone is looking for an edge, something that will put them over the top. They lie and cheat and after awhile you begin to do it, too, just to keep up. You tell yourself it doesn’t feel wrong. When I was a kid, I could feel the wrong in my acts, then when I grew up the feeling sort of disappeared. Lately, my world has changed and has been exposing the things I’ve done that can’t be excused away.”

Moses spit into the water. “What is it that you did for the money?”

“I used to be an architect and built spec houses on the side. But I went broke, as you know, doing that, so now I’m training other architects how to use CAD software programs.” Compton reached down and pulled the water to his face, and doused it. “My father was a doctor. He took pride in his work. He once said that the only good work any man can do is the kind that can be felt and seen at the end of the day.”

Compton paused for a long moment, watched the water spill through the fingers of his outstretched hand, letting the kava release his burden.

“When my wife and I split up she got an injunction so I couldn’t see my son. My world came apart. I began to do cocaine. Then I broke my leg in a car wreck. Two places in the thigh bone, I got this rare thing called fat emboli which was caused by the bone break and got into my blood and formed a clot at the base of my brain stem. Couldn’t get any oxygen to the brain. Almost died, was in a coma for twenty-eight days. When I get out of the hospital, my ex had married somebody else and told my son I had died, and moved to Dallas. I haven’t seen either one in nearly two years. I’ve been trying to put my life back together ever since. Let me tell you, I’m a far better spear fisherman than I was a freelance architect. But being a spear fisherman in American is like being a computer repairman in Qamea.  Unique perhaps but not a whole lot of demand for their skills.”

The boat moved into a lee and the sea calmed to glass. Neither man spoke and Moses kept the speed of the boa at idle.

“That explains much,” said Moses, following the stars. Then he laughed, “Man is crazy, eh. He chases something that kills him if he catches it. Sometimes I think only the rich and the poor are free. The rest work for promises that never come.”  

The late moon cast its blanched light through the opened window of the hut illuminating the white netting that surrounded Compton in his bed. It appeared web-like and sinister and to further the illusion a large spider was making its way across the top of the netting, its weight enough to shake the net with each step. In the moment, Compton felt helplessly trapped and doomed to a gruesome fate. Thrusting open the netting he launched the spider into flight.

“I want that Silver Fish,” he said aloud. The spear gun leaned against the fallen tree and he went to it. Using a flashlight, he carefully inspected it, diligently going over the detachable spear cable looking for kinks that might eventually become splits. He checked the rubber where it was tied to the metal wishbones that fit into the grooves of the spear shaft for any stress cracks, finding none. All was in order with the gun. He removed two pounds of weight from his belt so that neutral buoyancy would be ten feet deeper. Satisfied that all was in readiness, he slipped into the wetsuit at the sound of Moses’ outboard breaking the predawn tranquility as it came round the East Point. A diffused light of the still buried sun cast across the gray heavens, leeching into a stainless steel sea, obscuring any delineation between the two. Though the air was warm, the lack of sun created the illusion of cold and Compton involuntarily shivered. A light rain began to fall.

Moses looked at the sky. “The fish are tamed by the rain. There will be wailu on the reef.” He then pointed straight ahead. Suspended between the gray sky and sea floated a small boat.

“Aprosa,” uttered Moses.

The way he said it quickened Compton’s competitive pulse, warming his stomach and dissipating the false coldness. He had his gear on and was ready to enter the water the moment they arrived. At full throttle Moses soon came alongside Aprosa’s yellow-hulled skiff a young boy was sitting in the stern mechanically bailing water. A forty-five pound mackerel lay in the bow and Aprosa appeared thirty yards away swimming towards the boat bringing another. Moses had arrived at Orchid Beach before dawn and Compton had thought they would have plenty of time. Now he hurried into the sea, anxious to impress the master. He cocked the gun as Aprosa swam by carrying a fish as large as the one in the boat. Compton swam a hundred feet north of the boats and made a dive to clear his suit of bubbles. He was near the north edge of the reef where he had seen the fish before and there was no sign. He feared that Aprosa might have taken the only two fish on the reef or that he had spooked the others after the last spearing. Compton leveled off at thirty feet, turning slowly in a three-sixty sweep, the coral reef spread out below like a stone cloud. On the far edge of the coral two mackerel came in from the outside. Compton had not the breath-hold left to dive to their depth and waited in the hope that the fish would see him and begin to drift up. His throat had already constricted and he was in need of air. His chest grew tight and he could feel a convulsion looming in his solar plexus. The fish came swiftly now but he knew he could not wait them out, spear one and make it back to the surface and rose reluctantly before the fish reached his position.

Aprosa dove past Compton coming silently out of the gray ceiling with the fluid grace of a raptor descending on its prey. He leveled off at a depth equal to the mackerel, sixty feet, and like a statue framed in white coral, waited for the fish. One behind the other they came and when they were astonishingly close, he let loose the spear. The shaft struck the fish and stopped it dead in its tracks. It was a remarkable sight to witness. More remarkable was the realization that Aprosa was able to do this on each and every shot. He swam the fish up from the depths, his thigh muscles large and rippling from the load. He had placed the spear exactly on the lateral line behind the pectoral fin. The second fish drifted off undisturbed by the subtle swiftness of its partner’s demise and the reef went about its usual business unaware of any intrusion.

Compton inhaled several deep breaths and dropped down on the remaining fish, which had circled back and leveled off at fifty feet. When parallel to the fish and very close he aimed and pulled the trigger. The shaft hit an inch off the lateral line and the mackerel accelerated off towards the bottom. Compton held the line and kicked hard against the tremendous pull of the fish that, in its frenzy to wrench free of the spear, tore muscle and skin as it fought against it. Kicking furiously with legs now strong from his months in the water, Compton was able to make his way to the surface fighting the fish every foot of the way. From there he hauled it up with a determination he had never known in himself.

The two boats had been lashed together and Compton handed the still fighting fish up to Moses and climbed aboard. The rain had stopped and Aprosa sat in his boat with fins off eating a pawpaw.

“Your legs are strong, Keli,” he said. “Save you another trip to Somosomo.” 

Compton grinned sheepishly. “Yeah, I saw too much of the fish, missed the spot.“ He spoke while restringing the shooting line and preparing to reenter the water. Aprosa made no move to join him and Compton hurried off the boat and into the water. 

Save for a school of barracuda that breezed the reef like wingless vultures searching out carrion, the water was devoid of further fish activity. After a fruitless hour Compton returned to the boats where Moses and Aprosa were sharing a coconut, lost in idle gossip.

“No fish?” asked Moses. “Aprosa say they gone from the fight of the last one. They smell the death in the water.”

Compton removed his fins and settled into a seat across from Moses. “Is there somewhere else we can go?” he asked impatiently. 

‴We have enough, eh.” replied Moses. “Hard to find fish now.  Did you see that big wailu?”

“No, nothing,” said Compton indignantly to the bottom of the boat.

“We go to the village, have plenty fish for everyone,” said Moses in a jubilant manner that seemed to disturb Compton, who did not reply and appeared overly absorbed in removing his wetsuit. He sat in the bow throughout the trip, thus avoiding conversation. They found passage through the barrier reef that encircled the resort and cut across the bay as before but when they broke through the far side of the bay they did not shoot straight across to the Half Done Village, instead heading southeast down the channel. On the far shore, emerald hills of tree and grass stretched to the low gray sky. An easterly breeze was rending the clouds and through patches of blue poured yellow light, polishing the hillsides to jade. Brown, thatched huts grew out of the hills as if fallen from the light and gardens splashed with deep purples and reds vibrated in the breeze. Pathways were lined in white stones that were used to encircle coconut trees and flower beds, further highlighting the magical setting.

At the shoreline where the mangroves ended and earth met the mud, two old and wrinkled women shucked clams. Moses said that they were in their seventies and had dived for the clams in nearby shallows. A thin, muscular man balancing on a narrow raft of bamboo stalks drifted silently out of the mangroves. He was holding a four-pronged spear and, according to Moses, was returning from a hunt along the mangroves for small fish, which he speared from the raft.  A tall, muscular man, heavy boned in the face and very black skin, introduced by Moses as Vito, had come down to the muddy shoreline to greet them. Shortly, children, men and women gathered at the base of a grassy knoll that stretched clean and uncluttered to the first bures and beyond.

Aprosa arrived and his three fish, along with Compton’s fish, were lifted from the boats and placed at the foot of the crowd. Compton stood apart from the gathering and when the fish were taken and paraded up the hill, he motioned Moses.

“I think it would be best if I went back to Orchid Beach.”

Moses appraised Compton for a long moment, then said, “All right, you go to the boat.” 

After speaking to Vito, he returned wordlessly to the boat and poled out of the mud. From the beach came a shout from a woman. She was waving the boat back to shore but Moses shook his head no and she dropped her hand. Behind her stood Sinaca regally observing and when Compton saw her he turned his face to the sea as the boat cleared the mangroves.