Dash in the Blue Pacific (24 page)

“
Your clothes smelled like the store
when you went to school.”

Dash remembered the girl in math class. He had
a crush on her and she didn’t know he was alive. He practiced a
hundred ways of talking to her.
Those are pretty earrings
,
he’d tell her in algebra class.
Did you get that bracelet for
Christmas? That drawing is great, you should be an artist
. He
imagined Lisa Pederson would smile, perfect white teeth flashing
just for him. And she’d say thank you, it was nice of him to say.
Dash also secretly noticed the strain between the third and fourth
buttons of her blouse, the little gap that showed her tan bra.
Skin color
, he’d thought after his first peek.
Lisa
Pederson wears a skin-color bra
.

And they had finally spoken. Actually, she’d
spoken to him when she leaned across the narrow aisle where she sat
to his right. He flinched away at first, thinking maybe she dropped
her number two pencil, didn’t want to be the guy who head-butted
her like a total dork. But she hadn’t bent over, just moved in so
her face was real close to his. He could smell her perfume or body
wash, or whatever girls splashed themselves with to smell so
awesome. He could feel his dopey smile, waiting for her to crack a
joke about Mrs. Harbough’s blooming pit stains, ready to snicker
along. It was going to be great, until he saw Lisa’s nose wrinkle,
and her beautiful lips pucker as if she’d tasted something
sour.

She sniffed twice, then cocked her head
sideways. “You smell like mildew.” Lisa’s voice was loud enough for
other kids to turn and look at the kid with the funny
odor.

“
I would have gotten an instant
nickname if she’d used a different word,” said Dash. “At least she
used a word that wasn’t catchy. So I was Mildew Boy for a couple
days, but no big deal. It would have been worse if she said I
smelled like moldy cheese or a dirty jock strap. How’s it goin’,
Stinky Cheese? That would have lasted.”

“
Not a great crowd to help get you
through your dad’s death, huh?”

Dash shook his head. “I knew two other kids who
lost a parent. Danny’s mom died of cancer, and Jenna’s old man was
killed in a car wreck. That was a drunk driving thing. Don’t know
if her dad was drunk, or if it was the other driver. Not that it
mattered, right? Same result.”

“
Both kids were treated differently
than you.”

Dash was quiet for a minute. He remembered
going to church services for each family, and it seemed like the
entire town had turned out. It was a rare time when kids hung with
parents instead of collecting in their own groups and moving off to
find something more interesting. You had the feeling some cosmic
balance was off, and being with your folks was safer. Men were
bawling their eyes out. Men who wore greasy work shirts and dark
blue uniform pants during the day were filling up handkerchiefs
with snot and tears, and didn’t seem the least bit embarrassed. It
made teenagers cling to their parents seeing that. You could look
down into a coffin at somebody’s dead mom easier than you could
look at a grown man cry.

“
There were those big yellow
chrysanthemums at the service for Danny’s mom. I remember ladies
saying they were her favorite. The whole church had that smell. I
don’t know how anyone could think it was good. Made the air so
thick that I had to work to keep from gagging.”

“
They didn’t come when your dad
died,” Willy said. “Not most of them.”

Dash had looked back over his shoulder in the
church, his suit coat two sizes too small, but who could blame his
mom for not being in a shopping mood after her husband cut open
both his wrists? By that time, Lisa Pederson had pointed out he
smelled like mildew, and sure enough, that was exactly the odor
coming off his old suit. The smell was probably worse than all his
other clothes combined, but Lisa had been the first to point it
out, to show her disgust by crinkling her nose.

“
At least I didn’t smell like those
fucking chrysanthemums,” Dash told Willy, who was slowly shaking
his big fish head, light a steady glow.

“
They weren’t just cuts on your
father’s wrists, though, were they?”

Dash took a deep breath, tapped the flat part
of the blade on his thigh. “Christ, it was like he took it all out
on himself with a steak knife. He hacked away with one hand, then
was able to switch up and do a pretty equal job on the other wrist.
It was like something you read off the metro wire at the paper.
Something some kid on crack or meth might do.”

“
Why’d he do it?”

“
You can read my mind. You already
know everything.”

“
We’re friends talking. It’s good to
get it out, it helps.”

“
That was the big joke. Mildew Boy’s
crooked father slit his wrists because of an old table. Let me try
and remember.” Dash paused, looked up at the clear sky.
“Technically, it was known as a French carved-oak barley-twist
center table. But an old table is just an old table when there’s a
good piece of gossip to share around.”

“
What was it about the
table?”

“
It was a fake, just like all the
other crap in the shop. He’d sold it for something like three grand
to a guy and his wife supposedly up from Manhattan. A month later,
my dad gets a visit from two police detectives. It had been a
setup, some kind of sting by the state cops. The paper ate it up,
too. My dad had told the undercover couple the table was from an
estate sale in the Loire Valley of Central France.”

“
Made in China, huh?”

“
Hong Kong. Same place all the big
ticket inventory came from, the stuff that paid the bills, kept the
place open over the years. The stuff that opened up the fat wallets
of New York and Boston tourists, and put heating oil in the
tank.”

“
What did his note say?” Willy
asked, and Dash noticed the outline of his wide shoulders begin to
waver, and the colors of his hulking body to fade.

“
What note?”

“
Tell me what his suicide note said.
Details keep the plot juicy, make the story sing.”

Dash could see an image of his father’s
sweeping script, the feminine handwriting that a few of his
teachers commented on when he turned in school notes. He also knew
Willy could see the writing, including the red line where blood had
run across the middle, cutting in half the oddly formal signature.
The note began with an apology to his wife, garbage about how much
he loved her and how she’d been his entire world. The last line had
been for his teenage son.

Dash leaned back to look at the sky. There were
no birds or clouds, no sign of high-flying jets. The volcano was
gone, or maybe it was behind him. He didn’t care enough to turn. He
cleared his throat, remembering his father’s final message.
“ ‘I should have played catch with you,’ ” he
said.

They drifted without talking, the water lapping
against the hull. Dash wondered how far from land they must be for
there not to be a single bird. He’d seen gulls flock around fishing
boats like a shaken snow globe, but did they follow tankers along
shipping lanes?

“
Willy, you ever see a snow
globe?”

Willy flashed a pincushion smile, gills opening
and closing. “We’re in the globe, my friend,” he said. “We’re in
the globe.”

They were quiet again, at the mercy of the
current, water making the only noise until Dash spoke.

“
On the plane, right before it
crashed,” he began, then coughed to clear his throat, “there was a
voice on the intercom calling for someone.”

“
Cindy,” Willy said, and gooseflesh
broke out across Dash’s damaged skin.

“
Right. The voice kept calling for
Cindy. I don’t think it was the captain.”

But Willy was shaking his head even before Dash
could ask. “Maybe you imagined it,” he said. “Or maybe it was
another lonely person who knew he was about to die. You can relate
to that, right?”

The silence between them came back and
stayed.

Dash tossed the knife overboard when the sun
began dipping into the horizon. The blade caught the orange and
yellow rays twice as it rotated through the air, winking at him
before slicing into the dark surface. Dash knew for certain he’d
carve the same brutal grooves in his own wrists if he didn’t get
rid of it before spending another night alone.

T
he current reversed track
and began pulling the skiff into its own wake. Dash watched the
cloudless sky rotate, head forced to one side, the remaining
coconuts sloshing against his legs. Seagulls had found them. They
clamored, flapping filthy wings, shitting in bursts and then
swooping down to investigate what each had deposited on the waves.
Idiots
, he thought, hating the smug bastards who had spied
on him for the volcanic shrew who’d surely sent the shark. He was
consumed by conspiracy, surrounded by those writing his ticket to
martyrdom.

“
Valelailai,” he whispered,
remembering the day he’d met the wobbly old chief. It was what the
whites christened the island, but had it been the soldiers or the
missionaries using the word ‘toilet’ to rename what he’d first seen
as paradise? No big deal, Manu told him. One name is as good as
any. “Then I’ll call it Hell,” Dash now said in a hoarse croak.
“I’m going to Hell.” His laughter stopped when he coughed a bloody
spray across his sunburned chest. He smeared the blistered pad of
his right index finger and drew a red smiley face on his gaunt
stomach.

The boat drifted, bumping and swaying across
the undulating surf. It sometimes strayed, veering either north or
south, but eventually it was tugged back on course, just as an
errant pupil is chastised into behaving when finally noticed by the
distracted teacher.

Willy was silent. Sometimes he was as real as
the smooth coconuts at his giant feet; sometimes nothing but wisps
of gossamer silk. Out beyond his changing form, another god spewed
angry smoke, and had grown fatter around the middle, her rock and
dirt waist bulging, threatening to explode in all
directions.

“
She sent the shark.” Dash looked
out over the moving water, knowing the animal wouldn’t return, its
job done. He hadn’t been in any danger, could have leaned over and
rammed his head into its mouth, and would have been spit out like a
dented license plate. It was the Volcano who wanted to eat
him.

Willy’s eyes were yellow marbles, his jaw
opening and closing only once every half minute or so. His body
rocked with the boat’s motion as though he was dead weight, and he
showed no sign of hearing Dash’s voice or thoughts.

“
Simon says touch your nose,” Dash
said. “Simon says take us to Tahiti.” Dash turned his head side to
side, looking out over the water. “I guess you’re out, Willy. Take
a seat at the end of the boat and pretend you’re dying.”

The skiff continued slow rotations as it was
summoned. The brown monolith grew larger, its white smoke more
vivid. Dash mostly slept, welcoming even the worst dreams as
escape. In one, he married Sarah and they had a baby girl with
brown skin. “Love her now,” Sarah told him. “Love her while you can
because they are coming to take her away.” And he probably cried
out in his sleep, asking who was coming, and why he couldn’t keep
his daughter. He held her little body in his arms, determined not
to let her go. But then he must have held her too tightly, because
she stopped breathing and no amount of shaking could wake her. And
then Dash was on his knees in a wide field under a pale sky filled
with a scorching sun. A thousand seagulls made lazy circles, and he
watched their shadows with wings that were too sharp, bat-like and
evil. He could see their heads turn as they passed closer and
closer, shadows jerking as their eyes hunted. Dash began pulling at
the dirt, scooping and flinging it between his legs like a dog with
a bone, his lifeless daughter growing cold in the sweltering
heat.

It was in one of these dreams that he realized
his daughter’s name was Cindy.

* * *

They drifted three days, not a single cloud
blotting the sun for even a second. It was his punishment, one he
accepted and endured with blistering lips and a blazing fever. He
sprawled on the skiff’s smooth floor; the few inches of salt water
he lay in had turned hot—a soup of blood, puss, and what little
urine had trickled from his emaciated body. The smiley face he’d
made on his stomach was mostly washed away; only part of one eye
and the corner of its smile remained.

As they got closer, Dash pictured the volcano
as a steam locomotive, heard the chugging engine strain against
metal brakes, and he was going to be late. He found himself wanting
to hurry back, willing the waves to pull faster. Inside the volcano
would be dark and blessedly full of shade. He couldn’t imagine ever
thinking anything different; couldn’t imagine not wanting to be out
of the sun, tucked away inside something so willing to envelop his
body and end his suffering.

Willy had been jostled to an odd position, legs
up and ankles crossed on one side of the hull. The bottoms of his
feet, which had lost color from days of soaking, were puffy and
lined with deep cracks.