Bride of the Baja (12 page)

Alitha found a hollow in the sand and lay down, clasping her knees to her body for warmth, listening to the pounding of the surf. She was no longer afraid of Chia. She’d decided she trusted him. He meant to protect her--he must have killed Malloy to protect her. As she drifted toward sleep, she realized that, after her shock when she had first seen him, she had not noticed his nakedness at all.

She woke up shaking from the cold. Though the sun had not risen, the sky was light and a brisk wind drove clouds over the island from the south. She got up, stretched, felt her hair being tousled by the wind. With a start, she saw that Chia was gone.

All at once she smelled--what? Something being cooked, she was sure. She realized she was ravenously hungry.

She followed the odor to where Chia sat on his haunches in front of a small, circular pit. He looked at Alitha when she sat beside him and, after a moment, reached out and hesitantly touched a strand of her hair, rolling it between his fingers. She smiled at him and for the first time he smiled back.

Chia turned away and removed the dirt from the top of the pit, exposing a layer of matted grass. When he lifted the grass out of the pit, she saw four fish lying on hot rocks. Picking up one of the fish, Chia held it by the tail and began eating the head. Though Alitha grimaced with distaste, she used her fingers to split open one of the other fish and brought a chunk to her mouth. The taste, though salty, was surprisingly good.

After they had finished eating, Chia motioned her to follow him. He led her to a cluster of small holes, each lined with leaves, each partly filled with water. From the storm, she supposed. She watched Chia scoop water to his mouth and drink. Again she followed his example, but when she put her hands into the water for a second drink, he raised one hand waist high to make a horizontal, chopping motion. Unmistakably he meant no. Water must be in short supply on the island,

Chia leaped to his feet and set off toward the beach. Following him, she was surprised when he turned in the direction of Malloy's grave, stopping next to the mound and pointing to an oblong piece of metal thrust into the sand. He had placed a marker on the grave! He must have learned the ways of the white men from seeing a Spanish burial ground at a mission.

She ran her fingers over the plaque, feeling indentations in the metal. Examining the plaque more closely, she saw that words had been etched into the surface, words so worn by time she could not make them out.

She tried tracing the letters with the tips of her fingers. When she was done, she said the one word she could decipher. "Cabrillo."

She had heard the name but couldn't remember where. A Spanish name, certainly, perhaps an early padre or explorer who had been buried on this desolate island a hundred or more years before. Chia had found his grave and brought the marker here to please her.

"Thank you," she said, nodding to him.

He stood and walked quickly away, and again she had to leap to her feet to follow him. She wondered if Chia was actually bashful and hid his unease in these sudden bursts of activity.

They followed the beach until Alitha recognized the rocky coastline where she had been swept ashore. Chia led her to a small cover where timbers had been piled on the rocks well above the tide line. Ship timbers and planking, probably from the
Yankee.
Some had been lashed together to form the beginning of a raft, the rope, she supposed, having also been washed ashore from the ship. Chia pointed to the raft and then north across the sea.

He meant to sail to the mainland. She nodded and began dragging timbers from the pile to the raft. Chia stopped her. After pointing to her, he walked along the beach gathering driftwood until his arms were full. He carried the wood back to the cove and laid it on the rocks.

"I understand," Alitha told him. "The man builds the raft while the woman gathers the firewood."

She set out along the beach, returning time after time with armfuls of driftwood. She soon stopped piling the wood at the place Chia had shown her and began carrying her armloads farther inland to the top of a small hill.

Chia could have his wood for cooking, she told herself, but she was going to make a bonfire, one that could be seen for miles. It would be far easier to be rescued by a passing ship than to brave the currents of the ten-mile stretch of open sea between the island and the mainland.

As she gathered the wood, she found herself walking farther and farther from the cove where Chia labored on the raft. Rounding a spit of land, she came to a sandy stretch of beach where she sat to rest with the water lapping over her bare feet.

Her hands and arms were dirty from the wood, and though the sun was behind clouds, she was hot from the unaccustomed work. After first looking cautiously around, she pulled the chemise over her head and knelt at the ocean's edge to rinse it. She was about to struggle into the wet, torn garment when she changed her mind and spread the chemise on a rock to dry.

She ran into the ocean until the water came to her waist, then walked as far out as she could, shivering until she grew accustomed to the cold. As she plunged into a breaking wave, she felt
the exhilarating sweep of the salt water over her naked body. She dove into oncoming waves, letting them carry her shoreward until she was exhausted.

Wading to the beach, she found a large, flat rock and lay on her back to let the warm air
dry her. Looking down at her body, she brought her hands up over her legs and hips and along her sides to her breasts. She had never been so conscious of her body before. If she had thought of it at all, she had considered her body as something necessary yet vaguely shameful.

A sea gull shrieked overhead as it wheeled above the beach. The sun came from behind
clouds, forcing Alitha to shade her eyes with her hand. She stood up, raising her arms skyward as she stretched, feeling the sun's warmth bathe her as she recalled Chia's similar gesture of homage to the moon.

We make such a secret of our bodies, Alitha thought, hiding them beneath layers of cloth. I doubt if many women even let their husbands see them unclothed. Chia doesn't seem to
think of himself as naked—is the rest of his tribe the same? If the Indians feel no need to conceal their bodies from one another, are they also more open in other ways?

She looked down at the swell of her breasts where the skin was turning an unfamiliar brown. I'm only beginning to know my own body, she decided, and I'll make a vow this minute to never be ashamed of it.
The shadow of a cloud raced toward her along the beach. Shivering in the cold breeze, she ran to retrieve her chemise and slip it over her head. All at once she thought of Thomas.

What would he think of her lying naked in the sun? He'd disapprove, she was sure. Her memory of him had faded; he seemed far, far away, and as she tried to picture him in her mind, images of her father kept getting confused with him.

When she returned to Chia, he was standing on the rocky shore with his spear in his hand. He removed an object—a reddish stone, she thought—from the net bag he wore over his shoulder and rubbed it along the blade of the spear. The stone, no longer than Chia's palm, was carved in the shape of a fish and had a cord strung through a hole in one end.

Returning the stone to his carrying bag, Chia walked along the water's edge to a boulder above an inlet sheltered from the waves by a reef. Spear poised, he waited. Minutes passed. Suddenly he thrust the spear into the water, and when he raised it over his head, she saw a fish impaled on the point. He climbed back to where she stood, removed the fish from the spear and laid it at her feet.

Men catch the fish, she thought, and women cook them. There was no reason she couldn't catch them, too; it appeared easy enough. She pointed to the spear, reaching out her hand for it. Chia stared at her, hesitated, then offered her his weapon. Balancing the shaft of the spear in her hand, she went to the boulder where Chia had stood. She heard him behind her, turned, and saw him offering her his stone charm. She shook her head, remembered he might not understand, and made a negative motion with her hand. After staring at her impassively, Chia returned to the beach, putting the talisman back into his bag.

Alitha stood on the rock gazing into the deep water. A silvery fish glided into the pool, a fish over two feet long, much larger than the one Chia had landed. She raised the spear, waiting, and when the fish was directly beneath her, she drove the blade into the water.

The fish darted away, and when the spear embedded itself deep in the sand, Alitha was thrown forward. Releasing the shaft, she tried to keep her balance, failed and fell face first into the water. She surfaced, spluttering, and climbed out onto a rock, pushing her streaming hair from her face.

Hearing a sound from the beach, she looked that way and saw Chia bent over with his hands on his knees. He was laughing, laughing at her. Embarrassed, she smiled uncertainly and in a few minutes was laughing as hard as he was.
She pulled the spear from the sand, carried it to Chia and placed it at his feet. For the time being, at least, she decided, Chia would fish and she would cook.

For the next three days Chia worked on the raft while Alitha gathered wood for the fires she used to cook fish twice a day, at the same time adding constantly to the pile of driftwood on the top of the hill. On the evening of the third day, she helped Chia half-carry, half-shove the raft across the rocks to the water. With his charm stone in his hand, Chia walked around the raft, touching each of the four sides with the head of the stone fish. When he finished, he pushed the raft over the breakers, threw two hand-hewn double-bladed paddles aboard and rowed along the shore. When he returned to the beach he nodded, evidently satisfied with the seaworthiness of the raft.

Using sticks, Chia marked the high-tide line in the sand and waded into the ocean where he indicated where low tide would be. Standing at the low-tide line, he pointed to the raft and, with his hands, showed the incoming flood tide sweeping in the direction of the mainland. Going up on the beach, he drew the rising sun and a curved arrow to represent the arc of the sun from morning to night, again indicating the start of a flood tide and then pointing to the sun at its zenith.

She stared at him for a moment as she thought through what he was trying to tell her. Of course. He meant to sail with the flood tide, and that tide would come the next day at noon, Chia, she thought, may be a savage, but he was a seaman as well.

Alitha nodded, then walked past him, motioning him to follow. He walked after her, keeping a few paces behind until he saw she was heading for the pile of wood on the hilltop. He quickly walked past her and led the way up the hill. Though the sun was down by the time they reached the top, she waited, sitting on the grass with Chia crouched on his haunches a short distance away. Neither spoke. Finally, after more than an hour had passed, she motioned him to light the fire. He twirled his fire stick in the hollow of a board and in a few minutes sparks showered onto the pile of dry slivers. The wood smoked, Alitha saw a spurt of fire and a moment later flames were crackling up the sides of the pile of driftwood, climbing higher and higher until she and Chia were forced back by the heat. When she saw Chia watching her expectantly, she frowned, not understanding what he wanted. He looked from her to the flames, his naked body a golden bronze in the firelight. Slowly he raised his arms to the blaze and as slowly lowered them again. Of course, he must be expecting her to perform some rite, make some obeisance to the fire.

The sun, the moon, the sea, the earth, fire—these must be the gods around which his life revolved. If she were in his place, wouldn't she worship them just as he did? He must think this fire was her ceremony to speed their escape from the island.

She knelt, praying the signal fire would be seen, praying for their safe passage to the mainland. When she stood up, Chia nodded, seemingly satisfied.

Already the flames were dying, the darkness crowding around them to reclaim the small portion of the island from which it had been banished by the fire. Had anyone seen the blaze? During her days on the island, she had sighted no ships nor had she seen any signs of human life. Only the morning would tell if rescue was on the way.

When she woke shortly before dawn, the sea on their side of the island was calm but empty. She cooked their morning meal—how she was beginning to hate the smell of fish—and they drank from their fast-dwindling supply of water. Leaving Chia to greet the dawn, Alitha climbed the highest of the hills, the same one she and Malloy had climbed when they first came to the island days before.

The shipwreck seemed long ago. Now she was tanned almost as brown as Chia. At night she fell into a sound sleep as soon as she lay down, and she woke refreshed. She felt better than she could ever remember feeling before. She stood on the top of the hill looking around her, saw another island to the east, even smaller and more barren than theirs, saw puffy clouds drifting overhead and the dark Line of the mainland to the north. Offshore a pelican dove into the sea and emerged with a fish held crosswise in his beak. But there were no ships, no beacon fires on the far shore, no sign that her fire had been seen. They would have to rely on the raft. With a sigh she turned and walked back down the hill.

When the tide changed, they pushed the raft into the surf, waiting until they were beyond the breakers before scrambling aboard. Alitha took one paddle, Chia the other, and they sat on opposite sides of the raft rowing toward the mainland.