The Royal Handmaid (21 page)

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The men were working on a more permanent storage place for food and water at Chip’s insistence. “When another big storm comes along,” Chip had informed them, “the water might not be drinkable for a while—even from the spring. We’d better have some stored along with the food. We need to build something well off the ground to keep it protected.” The men worked hard cutting timbers with the hatchets and forming a framework.

The story of the soap making had got around, of course. As they cut timbers they talked about the women’s excitement over the soap. Charlie Day couldn’t understand what all the fuss was about. He huffed, “If you wanna make somethin’, Travis, make a still. I’m dyin’ for a drink.”

“I wouldn’t mind a drink myself,” Oscar Blevins said. “Just somethin’ to warm me up on these cool mornings.”

The day was blistering, and Day’s remark earned approval from Cerny Novak. “That’s right,” he said. “It should be as easy to make whiskey as it is to make soap.”

“I don’t think we need anything like that,” Captain Barkley said.

“I ran a still once,” Lars Olsen put in. “It wasn’t too hard.” The big Swede was leaning back against one of the timbers that supported the platform. “Of course you’ve got to have copper tubing.”

Cerny Novak stopped working. “You know how to make a still?”

“Sure I do,” Lars said.

“We won’t have any stills,” the captain said in a flat voice.

Novak turned to the captain. “If we wanna make a still, and we know how, we’ll make one, Barkley!”

Everyone grew still. It was the first time any of the crew had ever left off the captain’s title. Now suddenly, out of the quietness of the afternoon, a crisis had erupted. To Travis it was almost as if a bomb had gone off. He tried to ease the
tension by saying, “Well, there’s no point in arguing about that. There’s no copper tubing here.”

“If I find a way, I’ll make it,” Novak growled. He made a threatening figure, big and strong and dangerous. “Let’s get one thing straight right now. Back when we were on the ship, you were the captain and we were the crew. But we’re no longer under sail. Nobody’s paying anybody else.”

“Somebody has to be in charge,” Captain Barkley said.

“Who said it had to be you?”

“I see you think you could do a better job.”

“It’s kind of like in the old days. The best man runs the show. I think I’m a better man than you are, Caleb. I always thought so. You might be able to navigate better than I can, but that don’t mean a thing out here.”

“Wait a minute,” Travis said quickly.

“No,
you
wait a minute,” Cerny snapped. “Who said we have to be democratic here?” A grin creased his meaty lips. “Maybe there’ll just be a king. Whichever man is the strongest, eh?”

“I hope it doesn’t come to that, Cerny,” Travis said.

“You think you can take me?”

“I think all of us together could.”

“That’s right,” Pete Alford said. He came to stand beside the captain and Travis. The three of them, all strong men, stared at Novak. “We don’t need to fight about this thing.”

“Yes,” the professor said. He had been of little use on the structure, for he was not good with his hands, but now he did not like what was happening. “Nobody wants to lord over anyone, but we have to have a leader.”

Cerny Novak was no fool. He saw that the tide was against him and laughed shortly. “All right, I guess you’re still the boss, Captain.” He sneered as he used the word
captain,
and then he turned and walked out into the woods.

Charlie Day called out, “Wait a minute, Novak!” Charlie took off after Novak.

When he was gone, Captain Barkley said, “That could have been a bad scene.”

“Yes, it could.” The professor gnawed his lip. “I’m glad you two stood by the captain. I’m afraid Novak could be a very violent fellow.”

“He would be if he had a chance,” Dalton said. He had taken no part in this conversation until now. “But there’s one more thing. We do need to be sure that we have some sort of democratic system here.”

“Do you want to be the leader, Dalton?” the captain asked.

Dalton flushed. “I didn’t say I wanted to be the leader, but I think it’s important that we don’t get divided.”

“I think it’ll be all right,” Travis said. “Everyone knows that the captain is used to leading men.”

Dalton started to respond, then shook his head. “All right, we’ll have to keep an eye on those two. Now, let’s get this platform built.”

CHAPTER THIRTEEN

Clothes Make the Woman

Feeling a slight pull on the string she had tied around her index finger, Rena quickly reeled it in. Skillfully she plucked the soft-shell crab off of the end, where he clung tightly. She had mastered this rather simple art of catching crabs, having learned from Chip that all you needed was a piece of meat on the end of a string. The crab clung to the morsel of meat.

“You’re a pretty silly fellow,” Rena said under her breath. “All you had to do was to turn loose of that bait, and you could go on about your business. Now you’ll wind up in a stew tonight.”

The sound of her own voice disturbed Rena, and she shook her head as she plucked the stubborn crab loose and tossed him into the canvas bag by her side. She never used to speak aloud to herself and knew that this was just another result of the life she had been living for the past five months. She tossed the bait back into the pool, then leaned back and looked up at the sky. She had learned to judge the weather with a little help from Chip, who seemed to be a reliable weather prophet. She knew there would be rain later on, and this again caused her to think. Before they had landed on this island, Rena had hardly ever paused to even look up into the sky, but now she was a part of nature in a way she never had been before.

Her thoughts were cut short when she heard a voice calling her name and looked up to see Chip walking toward her. He wore only a pair of shorts, as was his custom, on his lean,
tan body. “Having any luck?” he called out cheerily as he approached.

“Yes, I think I have about enough for supper. What have you been doing?”

“Gathering some herbs,” Chip said. He opened the small canvas bag he was carrying to let Rena look inside.

Rena plucked out a broad-leafed plant with orange in its center.

“It’s good for killing pain.”

“Really? What do you do with it—just chew on it?”

“Chew on it or soak the leaves in water and let them boil. When I was a little boy I had a toothache, and my mother used to dope me up with this stuff.” He grinned at her. “I learned how to do it by watching my mom, and one time I decided to dope myself up. I made up a bunch of it, and my tooth was hurting real bad, so I drank it all.” He laughed, his white teeth flashing. “I nearly killed myself. I think it slows the heart down or something like that.”

“That could come in handy.”

Chip sat down beside her, and the two talked freely as the sun climbed higher into the sky. The Hawaii native had become a good friend to Rena, and she had been shocked to realize what a wealth of knowledge he possessed. Before being cut off from her own world, she had been quite a snob, though she had not been conscious of it. It would never have occurred to her then that someone as uneducated as this man could have far more knowledge than she had. She listened as he told about a plan he had devised to build a better shelter, and she realized that he was worth far more to the group than she herself was.

The subject progressed to the meeting they’d had the night before. “That was a fine sermon you preached last night. I love good preaching like that.”

“I wasn’t too happy with it,” Rena said. “How did you become a Christian?”

“I was just a wild young fellow, seventeen, but I had been
to a mission school, and I’d heard all about Jesus. Made no impression on me, though,” he said with a sigh. “I wasted a lot of years.”

“But how were you converted?”

“I got with a bunch of no-good friends, and we all wound up drunk and in jail. The jailer there was a Christian man. He could barely read, but he knew his Bible. I woke up with my head splitting and feeling miserable. It was a dirty and awful place, that jail. The jailer—his name was Lewis Simpson—he began to tell me how wonderful it was to be a Christian. I’d heard it all before, but somehow the Lord touched my heart there. I looked at my life and saw what a mess it was, and after Lewis shared the Gospel with me and asked if he could pray with me, I said he could. While he was praying, it was like the Lord himself spoke to me, and I began to cry. I called out and asked Him to save me.” Chip smiled, and she saw tears in his eyes. “Life’s been different since that day, Miss Rena.”

“That’s a wonderful testimony, Chip.”

“Well, I wish I could get all the other members of the crew to believe it, but some of them are pretty hard cases.”

Chip rose and said, “I guess I’ll go try to find something nice to put in the stew for lunch. I just wanted to tell you that was a good sermon you preached. It helped me a lot.”

After Chip left, Rena stayed for another half hour, caught a few more crabs, then decided to go back and help Oscar prepare lunch. She had become a fair cook under his training. As she started back for the camp, she made a little detour to go by the stream where they had put in some fish traps. She found Travis emptying one of them. “Anything big enough to eat?” she called out.

“Most of them are pretty small,” he said. The fish traps were simple enough, put together with wire from the wreck. Chip had taught them how to make the traps, so they now had fish as a regular part of their diet.

Travis replaced the bait in one of the traps and put it back
into the water. When he reached the bank he glanced at her bag. “What have you got?”

“Soft-shell crabs.”

“I always enjoy those. I’ll walk back with you if you’re through.”

“Yes, I want to help Oscar cook the meal.”

The two walked alongside the stream, then veered off on the path they had made, which wound its way back to camp. They had not gone more than two hundred yards when suddenly Travis stepped to one side. He plucked something from a branch and extended his hand to Rena. “A flower for you.”

Rena reached out and took the beautiful flower. It was an exquisite light lavender with a dark purple center. “It’s an orchid,” she said. She lifted it to her nose. “If we were home, this would probably cost a lot of money, and here they’re free.”

Travis smiled. “The best things in life are free, I guess, as the old saying goes.”

“I never really believed that before.”

“Before we came here?”

“Yes. I can look back now and see that I missed out on so many things.”

“I guess most of us feel like that.” He watched her lips make a small change at the corners, and she lifted her shoulders in a little gesture that somehow seemed filled with grace. She wasn’t really smiling, but there was the hint of a smile at the corners of her mouth and in the tilt of her head.

“Things have changed for us, haven’t they, Rena?”

Looking up quickly, she tried to see if there was anything behind the casual words. “What do you mean by that?”

“Well, I mean we’ve had to give up a lot of things we thought were important, and maybe we found a few things we never expected to. At least I have.”

“I see what you mean,” she said thoughtfully.

His voice changed abruptly. “Aren’t you ever going to forgive me, Rena?”

She knew what he meant. Ever since he had kissed her, she had kept her distance from Travis. They had spoken politely, but she had never relaxed and let her defenses down. Now she suddenly realized she had been foolish. “It was my fault as much as yours, Travis. I’m sorry I’ve been such a sorehead.”

“That’s good to hear.”

An awkward moment quickly passed, and he laughed. “I never was much good at apologies, but I’m having to learn.”

“I was never any good at it either,” she confessed. “Why is it so hard just to say those two words ‘I’m sorry’?”

“I think it’s a matter of pride,” he said. “We don’t want to admit to being wrong, but I’ll say it now. I’m sorry if I offended you. It wasn’t intentional.”

“You’re forgiven.” He stepped back onto the path. “You ready to go?”

As the two made their way back to the camp, Rena reflected on their encounter. She had hardened herself against any overt move he might make, but now as he spoke quietly, she found herself thinking what a good man he was. Over the months she had watched him without comment as he constantly put himself out for others, and now she realized she had been foolish to judge him so harshly. She was glad that the wall between them was now down.

****

The meal that night was especially good. The crabs were succulent; the white meat of the fresh fish peeled off in flaky layers. The breadfruit had been roasted in an oven that the men had built out of stone. All of it was excellent. Chip had shown them how to make a delicious coconut sauce, which he served over a pudding made of taro root, coconut, and honey.

Everyone was tired, but there was a peace about the meal that Rena was happy to see. She took the time to scrutinize the group. She had a mind that organized things methodically. This sometimes went against the streak of deep romanticism in her that she tried to ignore. It was a strange mixture. Now
the mathematical, orderly part of her mind observed the group, and she organized them, almost as if writing it down on a blackboard, into Men, Women, and Crew.