A Dolphins Dream (41 page)

Every few minutes Moses stopped and carefully examined a particular tree for cutting. He measured its width by hand lengths and eyeballed it for straightness. When a tree was found to his liking, he cut it down and trimmed off the branches.

Compton slid the stripped trees down the steep incline near the bure site on the East Point. In two hours, Moses had cut six posts ten feet high. They hauled them to the clearing where he stripped the bark with his cane knife and left the timber there to dry out before placing them in salt water. "Tomorrow maybe we cut twelve straight timbers from the cibi tree for the frame."

On their way back to Orchid Beach Moses asked, "You are thirsty, Keli?"

Compton acknowledged that he was and Moses cut a hanging vine that gushed with clear water.

"Drink this. It is the sweet water, plenty around. We use this when the hurricane mucks up the wells and the streams."

Compton drank from the vine and it was clean and sweet as promised. Along the path Moses dug out wild yams and carried them in his shirt. "The jungle is like the sea, eh. Full of secrets. When a man knows the secrets, his life becomes easy."

When they arrived back at the beach, Moses went immediately to his boat.

"Keep the fish in the refrigerator and I'll pick it up early in the morning so I get across the strait before the heat of the day."

Moses came with the sun and dropped off an armload of pawpaw then continued out across the strait in a forest of light beams that pierced the overcast sky like God’s favored pincushion. In these days of coarse food, the pawpaw was a luxury and he savored the sweet juice, grateful for a fruit that all but grew wild in the bush. There was fish for breakfast and ground up taro root that, without the onions to give it flavor, was bland and starchy. He was eating fish twice a day and hunted nearly every day. Lately he had found himself giving thanks for his bounty from the sea. To cover his spiritual bases, he acknowledged the Christian God for breakfast and the Sea God for supper.

Like the orchids on the tree something unique was revealing itself within Compton, a sense of completeness, a simplicity of knowing each and every act of daily living in its entirety. When he ate a meal that was all he did and when he washed dishes in a sandy tide pool that was all he did. Every act was separate and fulfilling, perfect in its place, each following the other with no thought given to future events or to the world outside Orchid Beach. The sea and the wind and the smells of the beach poured through him as the sea filters through the gills of a fish, extracting from it the essential elements of life. This existence had infused a certain calm readiness, an odd combination of always being a bit fatigued but never sleepy, relaxed, yet alert, never full in the belly but satisfied. He had actually lost weight but was stronger. His days were lived in the immediate present. That is, until he thought of Sinaca.

 Then the wound reopened and spilled out in cascades of self-reproach. Why did things always go so wrong? Was it all my own doing, my own foolishness? No, it was love, not foolishness but Moses would say they are the same thing.  

The sea was his escape from the self-recriminations and once they began, he would dress for the water and spend the entire morning and much of the afternoon adrift.

Seawater is very nearly equal in its components to human blood and it was in this vein of Fijian water that he flowed as a corpuscle in the body of the greater being towards the East Point. All was familiar, yet new. There were the same schools of emperor fish and the wary snappers and curious coral trout but there were also fish he had never seen and caves yet unexplored and he drifted as if out of his body, yet within himself. Stalking prey not in the manner of one seeking but in the manner of one waiting in readiness. He knew his meals to be gifts presented and would come as long as he remained alert and these days he could not be otherwise.

Diving and soaring to the hundred-foot bottom, he was unaware of depth and gave no thought to his breath. He ascended as a seal ascends, still attached to the bottom by sight and sense but moving, unaware of the action, as if responding to another force that could not be known. It was thus he drifted, attached to the water but unaware of his attachment, as a fish is unaware its atmosphere is liquid or that the element also harbors its catalytic power. In such a state, everything that can be observed is observed including those movements that are subtle and hidden. 

Such a movement occurred on his seaside periphery causing him to turn partially and sustain the full visual impact of the creature that bore down on him from out of the blue, freezing him in his tracks. The dolphin came directly toward him and then dove, turning to its side, its clear, brown eye observing. Compton gathered himself, sucked in a breath and slowly dove to twenty feet, hanging perfectly still. The dolphin came round again and glided by less than six feet away. When he rose for a breath the dolphin ascended as well and they exhaled simultaneously. He uncocked the gun and let it fall near the reef and dove again where the dolphin waited for him. It appeared to be the same dolphin he had seen months ago. It was nearly eight feet long and gray with white spots on its chest and a white belly in the shape of an hourglass. Its smile was perpetual and it brought warmth to him, as in the reunion of friends long separated. At each turn the dolphin came closer. It mimicked his every movement and followed him when he went to the surface for breaths. Several times he extended his hand to touch the dolphin when it came close but it would slip away, just out of reach, never taking its eye from him. They spun up and down the sea scale, sometimes inches apart but never touching. The dolphin came toward him and lifted up, nearly standing on its tail. It cocked its head from one side to the other, looking into his mask, attempting, it seemed, to make contact of another kind. A wave, like a warm vibration, passed through Compton and he had to choke down a cry of welling emotion. The dolphin slipped behind him, barely ticking his fins and he stopped and turned toward it as it came alongside. Reaching out, he brushed his fingers along its full length. Then, as if the touch had been the intent of the encounter, the dolphin angled off and out into the deep water and was absorbed into the blue as a corpuscle in the life stream that was the plasma of the planet.

Moses came in the late afternoon with a rumor of fuel but he came on the strength of his arms at the oars and he brought little else. He had discovered which village the fisherman Peter lived in and had attempted, unsuccessfully, to track him down. He did, however, speak to a man who had fished the Fourteen-Mile Reef on a big boat and had given him bearings.

"This man say that the reef come up very high at low tide. Where is the white water, we move north two miles and there is the fish. Also he say that the Sea God is on that reef."

The image of the Sea God bearing down at close range rose vivid and clear in Compton's mind. At was not without effort that he blinked it away.

"I'm not going to worry about that," he said. "I'll just quietly sneak in and take the fish before the Sea God knows I'm there. It can be done with the one shot spear."

Moses agreed. "You stop all that thinking and the world come right the proper way."

"Does that same law apply to Sinaca?"

Moses shrugged. "Maybe it's better that you don't see her again. All that happened at the village is in the proper place, eh. You get your fish and then you go. All stays proper."

"I don't believe that, Moses. I should say, I don't feel that in my heart."

"Let me ask you something, brother. You did not make love to Sinaca when she was here, eh?"

"I made a fool out of myself before we could. Why do you ask?"

"If she is from the Sea God then no man can make love to her. She only makes love to the dolphin in the water. That is her marriage, to the dolphin."

"If I make love to her, will you believe that she is a woman of flesh and not the mistress of the Sea God?”

"If you try and make love to her, Keli, her brothers will punch you up again," said Moses giggling.

"It's odd that you should bring up a dolphin because yesterday I had an incredible experience with one." Compton recounted his moments with the dolphin.

When he had finished, Moses shook his head in that familiar way Compton had come to recognize as a precursor of disturbing news.

"It is amazing, eh, that such a wise creature would make a visit. This thing does not happen to the Fiji diver. Sometimes they see the dolphin but it is only a quick look, eh. But this one, it came near and stay with you in the water. And you were able to touch it? And you see it before?"

“Yes. Three or four times since I’ve been here. And I did touch it, with my fingers. It was an incredible sensation. Magical!"

Moses stared out to sea.

Here it comes, thought Compton.

"First the Sea God," said Moses in a voice that baffled Compton in its intent, "and now you touch a dolphin."

"Why does it trouble you? This sort of thing happens all the time in different parts of the world. I've heard about men and women touching dolphins all the time."

"But not the wild dolphins, Keli."

"Why don't I have a good feeling about this. What does it mean when a person touches a wild dolphin?"

Moses inhaled a breath that seemed to fill his body. Slowly he turned to Compton as he let out the breath.

"A person does not touch a dolphin. It is the dolphin that lets the touch happen."

Compton had no idea where he was heading. "Yeah, so, what are you getting at? What's this all about?"

Moses finished his exhale as if to engage the words he was about to speak but they would not come. After a long pause he said, "It is nothing, Keli. You must leave Sinaca to the village. She cannot come here and you will not find her if we go there. It is the wisdom of the village."

"I won't argue with that but I won't ignore her. If she comes, I'll take her in my arms."

"If she come, there will be no wrong doing on you," counseled Moses, who was now looking out across the strait to a low sun over Taveuni that glowed crimson through a narrow vein of muscled, charcoal clouds.

"That is an amazing color," he said, "like blood."

Compton dove the deep reef twice a week for three weeks, spearing seven mackerel, stoning all but one. The one fish had been mortally wounded but had come off the spear and fallen to the top of the reef ninety feet below where it convulsed in its death throes. He had dropped down to the reef, retrieved it and lifted its forty pounds up through the immense pressure to the surface, a feat that four months ago he could not have imagined much less accomplished.

He continued to hunt for his daily food off the East Poing nd maintained the same masterly level of accuracy, supplying both himself and Moses with an abundance of seafood.

Meanwhile, rumors persisted on Taveuni that fuel was on its way and, indeed, Moses had made a trip to the island a week before and discovered that five hundred gallons had arrived a day earlier and every drop had been sold within six hours. He had become angry with the Indian for not holding twenty gallons but would not advance the money as Compton had suggested.

"We would not see the money or the fuel. It is better that he knows I have the money. It will make his desire strong to take it from me. We wait."

In his travels, Moses had located Peter the fisherman and found that his bearings for the Fourteen-Mile Reef were consistent with those of the big boat fisherman. He was confident that with these bearings, sea conditions permissible, they could find the reef. "But if the sea changes," he cautioned, "then we turn around and come back, eh. I'm the captain on this trip and if I lose my boat, I'm finished."

Moses was leaving for Taveuni with the last mackerel and put his nose in the air. "I can smell the fuel on Taveuni, brother. Get the spear ready. We go in three days when the moon and tides are right."

Moses’ intuition, as always, was faultless. The fuel had come in and he returned with fifteen gallons, scarcely enough for the round trip voyage. Stopping off at Orchid Beach, he gave the news and a bag of rice to Compton.

"I also have other news," he said slyly. "The planes are going again."

Compton considered this new development with mixed feelings. The timing was right. Perhaps it was time to leave. Maybe I should listen to Moses instead of my heart and let the village have Sinaca. Before Compton's thoughts could fly unchecked into the future, Moses had him shove the boat off the sand and into the water.

"I come by in a day," he called out. "We can check everything then, eh."

"We should go over the bearings," agreed Compton, "and be ready to leave early Thursday morning."

"Right," said Moses pulling on the oars, stretching his back toward the East Point. It pleased Compton that although he had the fuel, Moses had elected to row and he watched him snatch up the sea in easy, strong strokes.

That night Compton was awakened by the sound of dripping water. As he looked through the gauzy netting, a shadow fluttered before him and he blinked to clear his eyes of sleep.

"It's me, Keli," said the soft voice of Sinaca, who revealed her face through the netting.

Compton lifted the netting, bringing Sinaca into focus standing before him in clothes wet and clinging.

"Sinaca," whispered Compton, whose hands reached for her but fell short of their mark in awkward indecision. Moving past her, he found a towel and placed it over her shoulders, wrapping it around her and squeezed tightly. "What are you doing here? I thought they were watching you night and day?"

They walked outside and Compton lit a lantern. Its light scattered the land crabs that were scavenging the kitchen and he made tea and sat next to her at the table.

"You leave soon, eh," said Sinaca. "I come to give goodbye."

"How did you know? How did you get away?"

"Moses say to a man from the village who was at the Indian store that when you have the big fish you go back to America."

"Fiji communication," conceded Compton, "never ceases to amaze me. Even my private thoughts become common knowledge."