The Plover: A Novel (9 page)

III

1° NORTH, 173° EAST

DAYS OF EPIC RAIN
. Declan talked to the Tungaru Police Service. The rain was incessant. He talked to the commander of the coast guard, which consisted of a single patrol boat. The rain fell sideways and backwards and from several directions at once. He talked to the minister for fisheries and marine resources. Sometimes you couldn’t tell the rain from the ocean. He talked to the minister for foreign affairs, who was the same minister as the minister for fisheries and marine resources. People talked about the rain as if it were a person. He talked to the attorney general. Old man rain is sure angry today! they said. He talked to a man who knew a man who would know the men who would steal a man. One man in a store suggested that they sacrifice dogs to the rain as they used to in the old times. He raged and sulked and shouted and filed complaints and filed reports and waited in steaming anterooms and offered bribes and roared and accused and challenged and waited behind huts for messages that would surely come but did not no matter how much he raged and promised and bribed. A small girl on the island of Beru drowned when she caught her foot in a rain barrel and the barrel slowly filled with water and next day someone noticed her pigtails floating in the barrel. Our patience will achieve more than our force, said Declan quietly to Pipa in the bunk, after three fruitless days in Tungaru harbor. That’s old Ed Burke and we are going to steer by old Ed here. No passion so effectually robs the mind of all its powers of acting and reasoning as fear. So we are going to stay cool and figure this out. We will get your daddy back and make the thief pay. O yes. We will work during our despair, as old Ed says. O yes. Stay with the boat, Pip.
Misneach.
We don’t know each other very well but we are going to work together here. We’re a good crew. There’s three of us now and we are going to stay three of us.
Misneach a ghlacadh,
arm the boat. Our antagonist is our helper, says old Ed. He that wrestles with us strengthens our nerves and sharpens our skill. I can do some things and you can do some things and we will get some things done. I think you are awake in there and there’s ways to get you out. Maybe old Ed will help us. Old Ed was a tough old bastard. His enemies hated his guts and he laughed at them for their clumsy attempts at his destruction. I know you can hear me, Pip. You stay with the boat and we will get somewhere. I didn’t expect a crew and I didn’t want a crew but now we
are
a crew and that’s good. Maybe I was wrong to not want a crew. There. I said it. Don’t go blabbing that to everyone. Keep it to yourself. A good crew keeps its own counsel. Old Ed didn’t say that but he should have. He was an islander, you know. I bet you
do
know. You know more about everything than I do, that’s for sure. I see you smiling, Pip. I see you in there.

*   *   *

On the
Tanets
Piko was immediately put to work as the pilot. He explained to Enrique that he was not actually a pilot and Enrique replied firmly that indeed he was now the pilot and becoming a good pilot as fast as possible was the best way to avoid major accidents to his former shipmates, for example a sudden fire. You would be surprised how many accidents of that sort happen to small boats this far out in the open ocean. It is not unusual to find small boats floating rudderless with no one on board and no sign of what happened to the captain and crew. The ocean is a wilderness and there are all sorts of accidents in the wilderness. You would be surprised. Piko was not surprised. He bided his time. He calculated percentages. He examined his situation. He banked his fires and shut down the roar in his heart. He wrote Pipa’s name on a piece of paper and fingered the paper all day long to keep sane. He approached his situation in a scientific manner. He tried to stay calm with middling success. He gathered information and was alert to pattern. He sifted through facts and gauged possible courses of action.

He could flee; a poor choice, given the lack of means by which to flee and lack of knowledge as regards the location of the
Plover
.

He could overcome his assailants; another poor choice, as they were armed and he was not, and the impassive crewman was so enormous that even Piko, with a healthy ego and male confidence in his own strength, dismissed the thought of winning
that
fight.

He could attempt to cripple the
Tanets;
an idea that appealed to him, and that he filed away for further action pending more information.

He could appeal to passing vessels for assistance; probably a dangerous idea, not to mention there weren’t any passing boats.

He tried to stay calm and think that the best thing he could do for Pipa was to return to her in good shape and as fast as possible, which would take guile, not power. He tried to stay focused. He tried to absorb as much as he could as fast as he could about the
Tanets
and Enrique and the impassive crewman. Information is weaponry. The more he knew the better he would be able to solve the problem. Despite the drama, and the undeniable danger, the problem was essentially simple: he was in the wrong place, and he needed to return to the right place. There would come a moment when he could set things in motion to solve the problem. That moment was not now. Therefore he would gather as much information as he could in order to be prepared when the moment came. Information wins wars. He tried not to think of Elly. Sadness was a weight he could not afford to carry. He took every opportunity to explore the ship, such as it was; for all that it seemed so much bigger than the
Plover,
most of it was cargo space. He could not discover what the cargo was. The hold was locked twice over and the impassive crewman was always nearby, watching silently. He tried to talk to the crewman but the crewman never replied nor smiled. There was never a moment when Piko was awake that the crewman or Enrique or both were not in sight, and even if they did not seem to be aware of him he knew they were; and when he turned in at night they locked his door from the outside. That first night, when he lay in the heaving dark in his reeking bunk, so frightened for Pipa that his chest burned, and he heard the cold snick of the lock, a rage and fear rose in him like a roaring tide; but he quelled it deliberately, coldly, and calmed his breathing, and bided his time. A moment would come. That moment was not now. Therefore he would wait until the moment was now.

*   *   *

The problem, said the minister for fisheries and marine resources and foreign affairs, is jurisdictory first and geographory second. The rain had stopped and the palm trees seethed and bristled in the onshore wind. The incident occurred outside our territorial waters. It is a matter of the high seas. The high seas are not adequately policed in my opinion. This is why for example we have a smuggling problem. I hope you will keep these remarks in confidence. I hope to expand our police presence in the near future but our budgetory expectations are necessorily low given the lack of income sources. Additionally the other boat involved in the incident is geographorally unknown at present. We can and have issued information to our Police Service boat but as you know they have not seen the culprit and there is only the one boat at present. I hope to expand the number of boats in the near future but that is a matter of subtle negotiation with our Australian friends who do not at present see the matter with the same urgency as we do. So you see our ability to assist you further in this matter is limited even if our willingness to do so is not. I am a father myself and can well imagine the feelings of the man in question. Also I am an uncle as you are and I can imagine the pressures of your worries as regards stewardship and care of the child. I would be happy to make arrangements for the temporary care of the child as a guest of the republic under my aegis if that is what you choose to do. Also I can alert our citizens to your plight and ask them to report sightings of the other ship as a matter of public service to a guest. I speak with confidence for our citizens when I say that they would make every effort to assist you in finding the father of the child. Unfortunately we are not in a position to offer financial assistance at the present time but you would be surprised how far goodwill and sharp eyes at sea go especially when the matter at hand is a saddened child. Our citizens are much on the sea, given the geographoric nature of the republic, and if the other boat is anywhere within a hundred miles I would be surprised if it is not soon seen.

The minister stood and bowed and Declan stood and for an instant, as he reached to shake hands with the man, ten thoughts ran through his head at once, so that his head thrilled and sizzled: what a wry kindhearted soul, this minister; why would he bother to be so helpful to a stranger; how sensible it would be to put Pipa in a home for a few days; how good to have someone smart and professional care for the kid; how much easier it would be to chase that bastard and get Piko back if I didn’t have to worry about the kid; how can a country even a small one possess only one fecking police boat; what can I trade from the
Plover
for a serious gun; how did I get into this anyways; all I wanted with this trip was to just be left alone for a long while; no way I can leave the pip. No way. I got a kid now. How funny is that? Never even had a serious girlfriend and now I have a kid. Fecking miracle.

Most sincere thanks for the offer of help, sir, but I must keep the child with me. I promised her father. But the eyes of your citizens for that ship, yes sir, I would be most grateful if as many eyes as possible were hungry for that ship. Yes sir. Most grateful indeed.

*   *   *

Declan had never bathed a child. He had never wiped a child’s bottom. He had never fed a child with a spoon. He had never held a child in his arms and rocked her to sleep. He had never held a child with his left arm and positioned a barf bucket with his right arm and thought that his left arm was going to absolutely fall
off
after a few minutes. He had never recited the names of every bird he had ever seen to a child. He had never cut a child’s toenails and fingernails. He had never cut a child’s hair. He had never run sections of rigging through a child’s hands while explaining the various sizes and shapes of rope necessary for conduct through this vale of tears and fears. He had never placed a wriggling bright green fish in the startled hands of a child. He had never tucked a child into her bed by running his hands along the outside of the blanket like a lawn edger to make sure the kid was tucked in tight as a tick in the rick of the bunk. He had never stared at a child’s face after she fell asleep and gently moved a tangle of hair to the side of her face ostensibly so she could breathe better but really so he could see the incredible miracle of her herness. He had never taken some scatters of old canvas and stitched them together into the shape of a Fairy Tern, complete with jet-black eyes and beak, and stuffed it with handfuls of coconut hair, and stitched it shut so tightly and beautifully that a seamstress would have been awed, and tucked it into a child’s arm so that when she awoke in the morning she would make the most amazed bird trills and mews he had ever heard which he heard from the cabin where he was as he would admit if he was an honest man waiting for her to wake up and discover the tern.

But he did all these things with Pipa.

*   *   *

The bus that smashed Pipa was driven by a man named Kinch. He was a school-bus driver. Yes, he had heard all the jokes from the kids on the bus. Klinch, Klutch, Klench, Klutz. Sure he heard them. He didn’t mind, much. He liked the kids, mostly. Only once in a while did he stop the bus, or get out of his seat silently, or step off the bus to have a word with the mom or dad or grandma or neighbor who was there to retrieve their kid. Only once had he ever furiously followed a driver who blew past the bus even with the stop sign blinking, and even that one time he was so startled at his own rage that he had to calm down for an hour before he called the cops with the license plate number which he had scratched on the dashboard of the bus with his ignition key to be sure he got it right; those six numbers remained on the plastic skin of the bus ever after, and he would run his fingers over them sometimes like a blind man reading a terrifying story. Them numbers never did heal, he said once to another driver, who looked at him oddly. After the accident he didn’t drive anymore. He just stopped. He walked in the next morning and put his letter on the dispatcher’s desk and walked down the hall to the supervisor’s office and sat down to wait. His buddy took his route. He went to work for the town doing other things. For a while he worked at the library but there were too many people who when they saw him turned and looked away like they hadn’t seen him. For a while he worked at the police station as a night dispatcher but there were too many kids getting hammered or worse. For a while he worked at the docks checking registrations and bills of lading and safety equipment and permits and load limits but then a guy from a new boat asked him isn’t this the town where a bus hit a kid waiting for the bus, Jesus, can you imagine such a thing? Finally he worked fixing trucks and buses for the town but then he started fussing over the buses too much and had to quit. By then his wife’s pension package was mature and she quit and cashed in and took the same job on contract and he didn’t have to work but he had nothing else that interested him so he quietly went crazy. He got religion for a while but that didn’t work and he got into art for a while but that didn’t work and finally he built a canoe with a little cabin in which he could camp out for a couple or three days on the islands off the coast. More and more he took to taking his canoe and vanishing for a few days into the islands where he counted the little foxes who lived there and drew maps of their trails and watched as they caught mice and eagles caught them. He knew it was only normal and natural that eagles caught fox kits but the first time he saw it happen with the kit mewing and struggling in those inarguable talons he lost his temper so thoroughly his nose bled, so the second time he saw an eagle stoop on a kit waiting for its dad by a bush he leapt up and roared and danced and the kit dove to safety and the eagle sheered off grim and furious, and Kinch laughed so hard that he wept.