The Plover: A Novel (28 page)

Which is why one moment later a long-legged girl, age nine, screaming happily, is flying head over teakettle through the air, nine feet above the water behind the stern, to the astonishment of the gull who usually camps out there, and the woman who threw the child effortlessly high into the air as casually as you would toss a walnut is laughing, and two men in the water flanking the spot where the child will land in a second or two are grinning, and another man with bright pink feet is poised teetering on the stern railing also, ready to launch his considerable bulk into the air as soon as the child lands safely, and a man with a long silvery ponytail and a long rope of a beard stitched with coins and feathers is sitting grinning in the cabin, with one eye on his daughter and the other on a man sleeping under a tarpaulin rigged between the hatch cover and the starboard railing; and the gull quiet on the roof of the cabin, and the warbler huddled companionably next to her; and ten is the number of beings on the boat, not counting the barnacles and algae and microfauna attached to the hull below, who have accreted to such a degree that now unbeknownst to the captain his boat has a long green scraggly bedraggled beard very much like Piko’s, but without, as yet, coins and feathers.

*   *   *

Later that afternoon the captain of the
Plover
issues a command that all hands will set to fishing, as he has a hankering for fresh fish, and the boat could use an infusion of fresh fish, and there are more people on the boat today than there were yesterday, cutting into the extant food supplies, so everyone sets to fishing, even Pipa, who sits in Danilo’s lap in the stern and his hands hold her hands on the fishing rod and she feels the strikes and sprints of creatures she cannot see, trembling through the rod; but when Danilo securely hooks a bonefish and begins to haul him in she wriggles her hands off the rod; and he understands, and sets her down in her chair, and walks with the rod toward the bow, where he kills and cleans the fish, offering a tidbit to the warbler.

The minister and Declan are sitting in the bow, fishing, their legs dangling.

Where is it you are headed, if I may ask? asks the minister.

East.

A certain destination?

Maybe. Why do you ask?

I feel that I have imposed upon you, and should probably be destinatory myself now.

Plans?

I would like to return to the work I began, which was truncated by … events.

What work?

I believe that what is popularly called the Pacific Ocean, and is improperly, in my view, broken up into endless entities and territories, many of them set to compete with the others by former and current imperial powers, is in fact not only one consistent and coherent territory, enormous in scope, populated primarily by undersea residents, and rich with not only the resources that have fed the greedy maw of commerce for millennia, but with other products having to do with creativity, as yet untapped, and in most cases, perhaps nearly all, undiscovered and unimagined. Thus I believe, and I am refreshingly not alone in this conviction, that a remarkable new nation called Pacifica may, and indeed should, arise, from the smatterings of islands and archipelagos, conjoined with the vast wilderness of the ocean, and that this new nation may, and indeed should, be a whole new sort of nation, in which the human residents do not view themselves as kings and conquerors, and indeed cease to war and compete with each other, but instead apply creative thought and energetic imagination to providing food, shelter, safety, cultural stimulus, laughter, spiritual depth, interspecious respect, a general compassion, and freshwater to all residents, whatever number of legs, wings, fins, or antennae they have, or do not have, as the case may be. Certainly this will take some imagination, but it is my conviction, and refreshingly I am not alone in this belief, that the ocean of creative ideas among the countless residents of Pacifica is unimaginably deeper and more extensive than the extant ocean of water, and that if the residents are apprised of their own extraordinary potentialities, and awakened to the remarkable proximity of a nation unlike any other that has yet been invented or imposed, then matters will take a most interesting turn, which I will be most interested to observe, and, if at all possible, enjoy as a citizen of same.

Pause.

That’s … ambitious, says Declan.

Certainly so, certainly so, says the minister. But if we do not dream, then I think perhaps we are misusing our heads. They are not on our shoulders only to be farms for hair.

Good point, said Declan. I think you have a fellow citizen on your fishing line, by the way. If I am not mistaken that is
kawakawa,
the small tuna.

*   *   *

Later Danilo and Pipa are swimming off the stern; or rather Danilo is treading water, and Pipa is sitting on his shoulders, her hands flittering in the water.

I think you
can
sing underwater, she says.
I
don’t see any reason why not. I just don’t think we have figured out the right
song,
is all. I think there are right songs and wrong songs and we just are stuck on wrong. That’s what I think. We are on Wrong Island. Sure we can sing underwater. Why not? Didn’t we all have gills when we were living inside our mothers? That’s what my mama told me and my mama never told any lies that I know about. So we must have sung underwater then, right? So why couldn’t we figure out how to do that again? We figure out
lots
of things. You figured out how to get out of that forest, didn’t you? And you were singing all the way. So really you sang yourself out of that forest, right? So maybe we can sing our way out of problems, couldn’t that be? And everyone sings even if they say they can’t sing. That’s what Taromauri says, that she can’t sing, but she
does
sing, she sings at night when she thinks no one is listening but
I
am listening. She sings in her tent. You can only hear her if you try
not
to hear her, though, isn’t that interesting? You have to try to not try. If you try hard enough to
not
try then you can hear what she is singing but if you
try
to hear it you can’t hear
anything
. Isn’t that amazing?
I
think that’s amazing. And the gull sings sometimes, sure it does, I have heard her. She doesn’t sing any words, though. And Declan sings those songs with the bad words when he is fixing something and then when he sees that I heard what he sang he gets grumpy and barks at my dad and my dad barks back at Declan and then they laugh. They are always saying things to each other that mean something other than what the words mean. Isn’t that interesting? One of them will say something to the other and they both will laugh but what they said didn’t have any jokes in it. I think they speak some kind of code or something. I think they are maybe secret agents and we are on the boat to conduct secret missions. That’s why we picked up the minister, because he’s a secret agent too. Don’t you think he could be a secret agent? He knows all the kinds of fish and birds and weather and everything, even more than Taromauri, and
she
knows when the wind is going to change, she knows what kind of fish we are going to catch before the
fish
knows it’s going to be caught. That’s what my dad says and he never told me any lies that I know about. Are
you
a secret agent? Is that why you escaped through the forest? Was everything arranged so that you could meet the boat so we can finish the secret mission? Am
I
a secret agent too? Do I get to save everybody? I
like
secret missions. Are you hungry? Want to go eat now? Because
I
am hungry and if I am hungry I bet
you
are hungry. Want to eat? Then can we swim again for a while? Want to swim underwater and see if we can sing? Want to?

*   *   *

A greater person, says Taromauri to Piko, would seek the thirteen blessed beings with all her heart and soul, and strive to obtain their blessings, and honor them, and celebrate their works and miracles, and make the world aware of their blessedness, so that the world might be elevated by this, but I am not that person.

She has just explained to Piko, in detail, minute by minute, exactly what happened, or what she
thought
had happened, with Pipa and the gull and Pipa recovering her tongue that morning, as far as she, Taromauri, had seen, or heard, or thought she saw and heard, and then she and Piko sit quietly looking at Pipa as Pipa stares happily at the tern feathers in her father’s beard.

A greater person, continued Taromauri, would change her life completely, having witnessed such a thing, and start anew. But I am not that person.

What did it feel like when it happened to you? Piko says to Pipa.

Like somebody opened a door in the back of my head, says Pipa. My head itched for
hours
after that. Taromauri finally did something with oil and it stopped. Danilo says all the brokenest parts had to march to the back of my head and squeeze their way out through the door but there were a
lot
of them and they were in a hurry so they crowded and shoved as they went through and
that’s
why my head itched, because the door was sore. Is there a door back there really?

What kind of a person
are
you, now, after that? Piko asks Taromauri.

A new one, says Taromauri. But I am not sure what this new person is supposed to do. I think I should find my husband. Did I ever tell you what happened after my daughter vanished? You think what will haunt you is what they left behind, their shoes and combs, the glass she always left in the freezer so it would be icy when she wanted it for a cold drink, her toothbrush with the rubber band on it to serve as a warning that it was
hers
and
no one else
better use it; those are the things you are afraid of because they are tombstones, they are lonely things without their person. But worse was seeing places where her things
weren’t
. She rode her bicycle everywhere and she would just leave it sleeping in the grass and never bring it in out of the rain, she said it loved the rain, which we told her many times was silly talk and would end with a little heap of rust in the grass, and then there was grass that should have her bicycle in it but didn’t. I didn’t know where her bicycle was.

Piko perches Pipa in her chair behind Taromauri and folds Pipa’s hands into Taromauri’s hair and Pipa’s hands flutter in the brief black thicket like birds in a bush.

I should know, said Taromauri. I should know where it is. I suppose it’s in the shed behind the house but I do not know. I
should
know. For the longest time I couldn’t say the words
death
or
die
or
drowned
. I would say
vanished
or
visiting
. It wasn’t that I didn’t know. It was just that I couldn’t get my mouth to be where everyone else’s mouth was. I knew she wasn’t coming back. I knew for certain when Kekenu stopped writing his letters and staking them in the sand. He knew before I did. Did I ever tell you what happened last? He wrote one last letter, a really long letter too, it was probably nine or ten pages, and he went down to the beach and made a fire and burned the letter and the ashes blew into the ocean. You know how there are some things that even when you are about to die you will remember them as if they happened that morning? I will remember that, the way he crouched there and the ashes blew away.

*   *   *

Enrique is awake in the tent, moving gingerly. Taromauri alerts Declan, who comes over and sits down companionably with his Dick Groat baseball bat. Piko leans in with a cup of water.

This is the ship’s surgeon, says Declan. You may remember him. His name is Piko. You ready to chat?

Easy, Dec, says Piko. Easy. He’s bad off.

Yeh.

Enrique tries to speak but his lips are burned and his tongue is swollen and no words get past the gate.

Here’s the deal, says Declan. You’re not dead but you’re bad off. You need a real doctor and a hospital for a while. I’ll drop you off somewhere where there are doctors and hospitals. A sensible guy would have let you drown but I am not too sensible. I’ll assume we are quits now. You created a problem, we solved the problem, the end. I don’t care what your name is or what your problem was but in my view we are done here. Can you hear me? Nod if you can hear me. Good. Want some more water?

Piko leans in with more water.

I don’t like problems, says Declan. Problems are not my thing. I don’t like drama and mysteries. I like things real straight. I like being left alone. I don’t like guys sticking guns in my face and kidnapping my buddies. I especially don’t like guys shooting at my boat and endangering little kids. So I would be sorry about
your
boat but I am not sorry at all. In my view we are now all square. Is that your view? If that’s your view, nod.

Easy, Dec, says Piko.

That looks like a nod to me, says Declan. Good. The surgeon here will keep an eye on you until we get you to a hospital. If you need water or you’re in bad pain, tell the surgeon.