Dash in the Blue Pacific (5 page)

He fought for control, tried to steady his
hitching body with deep, even breaths because the sound of grinding
bones was worse than the dripping water.

“
The fucking sun will come out
tomorrow,” Dash tried singing, needing his mother’s comforting
voice, but his mouth would not work, would not bring her
closer.

Any hope for his vision was lost, not that
there was anything to see at the bottom of a leaking grave.
Dizziness swept over him, a sensation of falling from the tops of
clouds, from six miles above an empty ocean. He vomited again, and
then mercifully passed out. He dreamed he was lying next to Sarah
in the gloriously cold snow. They were at arm’s length, about to
make snow angels, his dick shrunken from the Vermont chill but
still fully intact.

A month of dreams.

* * *

“
It is crucial we retrieve every
piece of wreckage.”

The voice was female, but masculine and heavily
accented. Not British or Irish; it was more like the Aussie action
movie hero, or the poor crocodile hunter TV guy whose daughter
would never get to know him.

“
You crazy. No way to fix airplane.
Broke in too many pieces.”

It was a man’s voice, authoritative, also
perhaps Australian, but the sentences came in short bursts, the way
Tonto spoke to the Lone Ranger.

“
They need to be examined to find
answers for the victims’ families.”

“
Your airplane killed our fish,
turned lagoon to shit. Fish go belly up, taste like bad clap-clap,”
said the man.

The accusatory words entered and bounced around
the walls of Dash’s grave, made him wonder about good clap-clap.
His head no longer ached, and his stomach was empty. He was hungry
despite the piss and mildew smell.

“
The airline company will make
restitution. They’ll pay for the damage. Their environmental team
is the best in the world. My concern is with wreckage, anything
that may have washed up on your island.”

The man grunted and his language changed to
something flowery and sing-song, nearly all vowels. His words set
off a stampede of bare feet, followed by a long pause.

There were murmurs—small talk that sounded more
like tropical birds and communing insects. It slowed time and
nearly put Dash to sleep.

Feet slapped the ground, heavier and much
slower. Dash heard strained breathing and the sound of rustling,
two plastic buckets dropped onto stone.

“
One million dollars, small bills,”
said the man.

“
With all due respect, Chief, I
can’t imagine what your people would do with currency.”
Exasperation tinged the woman’s words, and Dash felt sorry for her.
“We need to salvage airplane sections, plastic or metal. Segments
we can piece together.”

“
You take good look at my island,”
said the Chief. “You see mini pretzel factory under breadfruit
tree? These come from your plane. Bags say these are savory treats
everyone loves. Mini pretzels
are
wreckage. One million
dollars.”

“
These are food snacks. And that
bucket is filled with sanitary napkins.” There was more rustling,
and Dash pictured the woman taking inventory. “Passenger
headphones, airsick bags, magazines.”

“
Half million dollars; you keep
buckets.”

French words were exchanged among the woman’s
clan.

“
Merde
,” said one. Dash knew
it meant ‘shit.’ One of his high school pals had also taught
everyone how to say fuck, handjob, and tits.

“
I’m very sorry for what’s happened
to your lagoon. We have sixty kilos of rice and a fair amount of
coffee. It will be our gift. We’ll bring it from our boat with help
from your people.”

“
You pay one million dollars if we
find metal pieces of airplane?”

“
We don’t have money, Chief. Our job
is to investigate the cause of the accident.”

“
What you pay for
people?”

“
Did you find human remains?” The
woman’s voice was skeptical. Too skeptical, as far as Dash was
concerned. “Did a body wash up?”

“
You have one million
dollars?”

“
No, I’m sorry. Just rice and
coffee.”

“
Then we only found what’s in
buckets.”

* * *

Dash drifted off to the intoxicating smell of
fresh brewing coffee and melodious chatter in exotic tongues. He
dreamed his own feast, though his jaw required help from strange
hands that smelled of coconuts and slightly sour milk. Every joint
was a rusty hinge as he gobbled spoonfuls of steaming rice heaped
with tiny whole shrimp and a fishy sauce. He was a voracious Tin
Man with no can of oil, itchy hands, and a missing dick. A metal
body polished by busy bees with coarse rags, although each bee was
a non-stop complainer in clunky English phrases.

“
Cries more than sick
baby.”

“
Smells like old squid.”

It’s the fault of these grass and mud mittens,
he yearned to respond. It’s these corroded knees and dented feet.
I’m trapped, lodged in this too small tub. The toilet might as well
be on the moon. I try to hold it in!

“
I’m a mess,” Dash whispered to the
hands that had quit polishing, had left him in the dark.

A ghost barged into his sanctuary before he
could drift back into his dreams, interrupting his loneliness. The
apparition was tall and square shouldered. Light from a single eye
cast a white glow from head to toe. A rag was draped over one
shoulder, stained with something like blood and gore. The creature
stank of ammonia, things found under kitchen sinks. Dash drew a
breath and watched it peel one hand off in its teeth, then reach
down with the remaining stub to part the flesh beneath its bulging
stomach. It pulled out what resembled a human penis that created an
arc of yellow fluid. Whistling noises emanated from a scabby face,
a tune resembling Led Zeppelin’s “Stairway to Heaven.”

The creature shook its phantom member, made a
farting noise, and dissolved into the black wall as though it never
existed.

“
Stairway.” Dash once loved that
song, had sung along with Sarah each time it played on the classic
rock station out of Burlington. He sniffed hard, cleared his throat
of the lingering ammonia. Maybe there was hope for his vision, if
only to watch pissing goblins in hell.

He began to hum about a lady and things made of
gold.

A
hand prodded Dash’s face,
pinched his nose, and shook it from side to side.

“
Wake up, Cracker, no more cleaning
your filth.”

“
That hurts.”

The hand drew away when Dash reached. Long
nails with dirty crescents in a flickering candlelight. The mud and
grass bandages were gone. The pain was gone. He wiggled five pale
fingers. No scars on his wrists.

“
You okay now to wash own ass.” The
voice came from above and was followed by a sharp hand clap. “Let’s
go, let’s go.”

Two women in matching men’s underpants and
white sports bras grabbed him under his armpits and lifted. He
stood wobbling, weak and pathetic, leg and back muscles threatening
to give out. He was naked except for the same style underpants as
the women. His were saggy, pastel, maybe light blue.

Dash remembered the female voice: “They need to
be examined to find answers for the victims’ families.”

He grabbed at his crotch, found numb resistance
beneath thin material, the sensation of touching someone else, a
corpse, perhaps. He wedged his hand into the fly, digging until he
located a shriveled, lifeless member.
It might be asleep
, he
reasoned, and squeezed as hard as his muscles allowed. There was
nothing, no pain, not a distant tingle. He kneaded, groped his
testicles.

“
You do nasty stuff on your own
time,” said the woman on his right, who began moving them forward,
leading the way out of a place that had no resemblance to a
bathroom. It was a stone chamber, a cave with charcoal walls,
barely head high, but wide enough for them to march three across.
It dog-legged left and the sun struck him like a fist, his vision
exploding in a white flash, heat searing his face and
chest.

Dash whined, his knees buckling. The women
grunted, struggling with their awkward load. “Come on, Cracker, you
too big to carry,” said the woman, propping up his left
side.

“
And too stinky,” added the
other.

“
Even flies scared to land. You
gonna walk or crawl, but Manu wants you washed up to
eat.”

He kept his balance, squinted into the hellish
glare. Each arm draped over a squat woman.
Wait a second
.
Did this Manu person intend to eat him? What kind of crackers were
they talking about? If he could see, and if his legs could manage a
few good steps, he might have considered running.

Instead, he allowed himself to be shuffled
blindly forward. With no escape from these women, he confronted his
fate. “Are you going to eat me?”

“
You dumb as you look.” The woman
hocked and spit to show her disgust. “Nobody eat people for long
time.”

“
Especially white man who smells
like rotten fish,” said the other. “The girl will come for you when
food is ready. You need to wash first. Give some stink back to the
sea where you came from.”

Dash stopped the forward momentum when his toes
hit water. He struggled against the women’s grip, tried
backpedaling. His vision returned in time to see the enormous
expanse of blue water. He might have come from the sea, but he
wasn’t ready to return. He had images of fire and demons, terrible
things lurking below the surface. It took a ruthless shove from
both cantankerous women to send him splashing into the
water.

He tried turning, twisting his arms and bending
at the waist, but they were too strong, or he was too weak. “I
don’t think I can swim,” he cried out in voice so pathetic that
even he was embarrassed. Dash was being overpowered by a pair of
short female cannibals and was on the verge of tears. Nothing out
there was burning, he told himself, and he was too easy pickings
for any devil to bother with. He looked down at his spindly legs,
his knobs for knees. He worked to get hold of himself, recover a
sliver of dignity despite his smell and dirty
underpants.

His captors grunted, forced him deeper into the
lapping water. It felt like a thousand tongues. He tried not to
look.

“
You gotta wash, not swim,” said the
woman on his right. “White man is a big baby when he don’t have a
gun.”

Dash wanted to tell them he’d never owned a
gun, never even fired one. He had friends who shot deer and even
moose up in Maine. But they weren’t good friends, just people he
knew, really. You might even call them strangers. Sure, there were
rusty antique weapons hanging in his father’s shop, but Dash only
wanted to fish as a kid. He was a boy who set model airplanes on
fire, left the real killing to others.

He was pushed deeper.

“
I just wanted to fish.”

The heat was stirred by a headwind that carried
the noise of seagulls and distant waves crashing over a partially
exposed reef. The shells underfoot were all razors and broken
glass, shredding the pads of his delicate feet and surely
tantalizing the deadliest species with fresh blood. The trio
splashed into water that surged and pulled, the bottom becoming
slick rocks and sea grass that tangled around his ankles. They
stopped when he was waist deep, rolling waves pushing at his
damaged crotch, extra material an underwater cloud, a blue
jellyfish hugging a too pale man.

The women loosened their grip, allowed him to
take two more steps forward on his own.

Dash swayed in the cool water, all the color
returning to his world. He dropped open hands to the surface,
fingers spread and palms slightly cupped. He turned slowly,
creating a light wake behind each hand, careful not to slip on the
unstable bottom. His back to the sun, he saw the world come into
full focus. Framed by his two escorts—both frowning, middle-aged
women with chocolate skin and wild black hair—was a panorama of
unimaginable beauty. He stood gaping at a tropical paradise as the
woman to his right fumbled a hand into her bra, produced a sliver
of soap, and tossed it at him.

“
Be sure to scrub that calf meat
real good.” She licked her lips, then turned and trudged back
toward dry land.

“
Yeah, and get both them ears
clean,” said the other, gripping her own ears and waggling. “They
good and chewy.”

He began to lather his whole body.

* * *

Dash scanned the heavens beyond the clusters of
puffy clouds, numb penis in his right hand, soapy underpants at his
knees. He tried recalling a snippet of prayer from one of the
half-dozen times his grandmother had bundled him off to church
without his father’s knowledge, but too many years had passed, and
he’d been too young. He’d only hoped for something generic, since
no rural Vermonter had risen in church to ask God’s help for his
sort of ailment. He mostly remembered the shiny pews that made your
thigh skin squeal when you slid in shorts and the smell of hair
tonic. Even the songs he’d stood up to sing next to his Nanna were
long gone.