The Plover: A Novel (27 page)

He shimmied back down, the coins in his beard clinking against the mast.

Can you throw from up there?

No. Can’t keep my footing.

He jumped up on the cabin roof, nearly crushing the gull, who leapt away silently into the darkness, and then he bent down to whisper to Declan in the cabin.

Dec?

Soon. I hear his engine.

For a moment there are only the gentlest of sounds: the pitter of waves against the boat, the faint thrum of the
Tanets,
the faint thump of surf, the faint crackle of the tiny fire under the tarp, the faint shuffle of the minister’s feet as he tried to evade the smoke, the quiet groan of the
Plover
’s engine, a faint snap as Danilo fed the fire.

Declan tapped on the roof and Piko bent down again.

I’m going to slide by once slow enough for you to get two throws. Then I’ll come around and go back along the same side real fast. That will give you one more throw.

Got it.

Ready?

Yeh.

The
Tanets
loomed out of the dark suddenly, moving slowly—loomed just as it had that night long ago, thought Declan distractedly for an instant, before he cut the engine and turned the
Plover
to parallel the larger ship, perhaps twenty yards away. Taromauri reached into the fire, caught a stick, and handed it up to Piko, who set his feet and whipped it end over end into the darkness. It seemed to hang in the air for an instant, and then shattered against some hard surface; they could see the deck of the
Tanets
illuminated for an instant by the sparks, and a flash of Enrique’s body running along the railing. Taromauri handed Piko another firebrand, and he set his feet, aiming four feet above the last one; but this one, perhaps traveling too fast, also smashed against something unyielding and shattered, although somehow it seemed half the impact of the first. By now the
Plover
was nearly past the
Tanets
altogether, but Taromauri snatched a third stick from the fire and tossed it to Piko, who caught it, whirled to his right, and threw; and this stick, like the first one, seemed to hang in the air for a remarkably long time, before it winked out as suddenly as if it had been extinguished. At exactly that instant a bullet from the
Tanets
shattered a starboard window of the
Plover
’s cabin, passing directly over the steering wheel. Taromauri screamed; and then the
Tanets
exploded with an incredible roar and sheet of flames.

*   *   *

We read and talk about explosions as if we know much about explosions, said Piko much later, but very few of us know anything at all about explosions. Explosions are
terrifying
. They are so huge and sudden and immediate that there aren’t any decent words for the horrific assault on the senses. You can say
shattered
and
obliterated
and
destroyed
but none of those words give the right sense of absolute naked terror and fear, and displacement; as Piko put it, it’s like the world you were sure you knew doesn’t behave, for a moment, and then when it rights itself there’s a terrible mess, and after that you never think quite the same about what you thought before. Also explosions are
indecent
. They’re obscene. They offend nature; they’re unnatural. Even when they are ostensibly natural, like volcanoes. Twice I have seen volcanoes explode, once on land and once at sea, and both times that was the end of the nature that was there before the volcano blew, and everything and everyone was unsettled essentially ever after. Talk about offending nature, you know? But explosions caused by human beings; I don’t know, there’s something really and truly obscene about that, I think. Believe me, I know what I am talking about. I caused an explosion that I will never forget, and I have
tried
to forget it sometimes. You could argue all day long that it was the right thing, we had the right to self-defense, the theory of just war, violence can be fairly met with reciprocal and commensurate violence, violence is the default mammalian function when offspring is threatened, blah blah blah. I’ve heard it all. I’ve
thought
it all, I’ve taken refuge behind it all. Believe me, on dark days I have blamed evolution for my mammalian default function when offspring is threatened. But there are still a lot of nights when I see that ship explode into a million pieces, man. I see it in front of me as real as can be. I am standing on the roof of the cabin and the universe shatters and I hear screaming and I can’t see for a while. Sometimes I think I will see that particular explosion until the day I die. Maybe afterwards. Maybe.

*   *   *

Declan felt the bullet slice past his face, by a hair; he had leaned back from the wheel to look up at Piko. He spun away from the wheel toward the stern and was coming up fast from a crouch when the world exploded. Piko, on the roof, dropped to his knees instinctively, covering his head, and then leapt off the roof for Pipa. The minister, still covered with the tarp, was knocked down by a shard of flying wreckage and was crumpled against the railing to port. Danilo, who had been crouched by the fire on the hatch when the
Tanets
exploded, had the wit to scatter the fire with his feet just as wreckage fell and waves from the explosion nearly overturned the
Plover
and he went sliding into the huddle of the minister. Declan counted people instantly without thinking and shouted for Taromauri and Pipa but Piko, already down the ladder, shouted from below that they’re all right! we’re all right! you all right? Declan leapt back to the cabin for the wheel and gunned the engine and shot the
Plover
ahead a thousand yards, listening with an unconscious ear for the rumble of surf to be sure he was not gunning the boat right into the reef, and then he suddenly had to pee so ferociously he thought his groin would burst. Holy shit. Holy holy shit. Holy shit. Holy holy holy shit. Calm. Calm. Regroup. Boat. Pip. The minister! He turned from the wheel again but Piko was kneeling by the minister, with a groggy Danilo, who had cracked his head against the hatch cover in his slide; and the minister sat up, also groggy, but saying something animatedly to Declan, it seemed; his mouth was moving but no words were coming out. The minister stopped talking, and looked like he was waiting for an answer; and when Piko and Danilo also turned to look at Declan, Declan realized that he couldn’t hear a thing.

*   *   *

Are there survivors? is what the minister had said. We should look for survivors. The
Plover
was still reeling from the waves caused by the explosion, but Declan realized what the minister meant and he went back to the cabin, started the engine, turned around, and then stopped for a moment; do I
want
to pick up that guy, if he lived? Wasn’t the whole point to get rid of that guy? But something in him clicked the questions off like a light switch, and he nudged the boat back to where the
Tanets
had vanished, shaking his head to try to get his hearing back. Must have been the explosion. Hate to be deaf. Fecking fecking feck. Never hear the pip squeak again. Shards of wreckage seething in the sea began to bump and jostle the boat, and Declan slowed to a crawl.

Piko, he said quietly, and heard himself say the word; wheeeew.

Dec.

They okay below?

Yeh. Taromauri was down there in a flash and had the pip wrapped up bug in a rug.

Man. Nice shot. I can’t believe you actually pulled that off.

Me neither.

Look for the guy. Look for anybody. God knows who or what was on that ship. He must have had explosives or oil drums or weapons or something. Get everyone to keep their eyes peeled. Use flashlights or whatever.

Okay.

You okay?

Yeh. Rattled.

Me too, man. Me too.

They stared at each other by the faint light on the chart table.

Now what? said Piko.

Look for survivors and get the hell out of here, I guess, said Declan. It’s not like we can file an accident report with the cops. Listen, take the wheel for a minute, okay? I have to pee like a racehorse.

*   *   *

At the instant the
Tanets
exploded Pipa’s large spirit was some three hundred feet below Enrique’s boat, which was just over the slope of the reef where it descended precipitously to a trench half a mile deep; her spirit flinched at the powerful shock in the water, and she instinctively hugged the slope of the undersea mountain as fish fled past her at incredible speed; in another context, at another time, she would have been thrilled by the rocketing colors and flashings sheets of animals zooming past, headed for the safety of the deep. Angelfish, butterflyfish, parrotfish, wrasses, triggerfish, sharks, eels, turtles, dolphins, what looked like a small whale, and at least two seals shot past her quick as a blink. A series of shivers in the water rocked and shook everything that clung to the slope, and then odd objects began to fall slowly from above: large shards of metal, immense steel drums painted bright red with
WARNING!
stenciled along their flanks, a series of large metallic tubes, various sizes and pieces of piping, several dark wooden boxes that were so heavy they did not turn end over end like the other detritus but fell smoothly, with a stolid lumbery dignity; and last, a large safe, which struck a ledge above Pipa’s spirit, somersaulted over her as slowly as if it was in a slow-motion film, and continued bouncing slowly down the slope until it vanished into the darkness below. As it careened ever so slowly over Pipa she noticed the bright silver combination mechanism gleaming like a brilliant silver eye; and twice, as the safe tumbled slowly into the depths, she saw it flash again, before it vanished for good and all. She waited another few seconds, to be sure the shocks were past, and then fled back to the
Plover;
when she opened her eyes she found herself wrapped in a life jacket and wrapped in Taromauri’s arms, just as her father leapt into the room, covered with what looked like ashes.

*   *   *

It was Danilo who found Enrique, or what was left of Enrique; as Danilo said later his eyes had spent so much time in the darkness of the forest that he and the darkness had come to a sort of understanding, and he spotted the slightly darker jumble of sopping limbs that turned out to be Enrique, unconscious and badly burned, but not fully dead yet, said Taromauri, after examining him carefully, Danilo and Piko standing over them in case of tumult—as if anyone on this earth could overpower Taromauri, said Declan later, the very idea is laughable, she’s the strongest being I have ever seen, male, female, or vegetable.

They stripped off the wet tatters of his clothes, cleaned and anointed his burns as best they could, and put him in Taromauri’s tent, posting a watch of two at a time until morning. Taromauri and Danilo, the strongest of the six, took the first watch. Piko, now shivering uncontrollably for some reason, went below to sleep with Pipa; the minister, nursing a burn on his right foot, curled up below; and Declan set a course northeast by east for an hour, after which he shut off the engine, threw out the sea anchor, and fell asleep so fast in his bunk that when he woke in the morning he thought for an instant he was in his childhood bed, his sister snoring on the other side of the thin wall between them; but then he realized with a smile that it was the minister snoring like a seal, not a foot away. The events of the night before flooded in on him then, and he leapt up the ladder to discover a brilliant sky, an empty blue sea, the gull floating effortlessly nine feet above the stern, and Danilo grinning over a sleeping Taromauri. She just fell asleep an hour ago, just as the sun came up, he whispered to Declan. Let her sleep. I’ll keep an eye on the guy. You got any coffee? I could really use some coffee.

VIII

24° NORTH, 170° WEST

WHERE ARE WE?

I think we are sitting on the blessed Jesus Tropic of Cancer, believe it or not, if I have read my charts and sight reduction tables correctly, which of course I have, being the blessed Jesus captain.

Longitude?

What the hell do you care for?

Eeeeasy there, Captain. Just curious.

Longitude was invented by an English bastard anyways, so who can trust it?

Somebody
’s all viss and pinegar this morning.

Well, hell, I am running a fecking ferry service, as far as I can tell. Look around. There’s people as far as you can see on the boat and God knows how many are below. I lost count a few days ago. This trip started with one people, me, and now there are more than I can count.

Seven. Counting you.

Jesus.

He’s not here. Although He did go on a boat, didn’t He? Fishing boat, too.

Jesus blessed Christmas. Take the wheel.
I
am going for a swim.
I
am abandoning ship.
I
am leaving the ship in your hands, despite you having a college degree. Don’t screw up.

Take the pip with you. She loves the water.

Okay.