The Plover: A Novel (16 page)

*   *   *

More and more it was Taromauri holding Pipa in the bow as the
Plover
slid gently through moist green mornings and crisp blue afternoons and calm bronze evenings. East and then east. For a few days Piko held Pipa the same as always curled against his long chest with his rope beard braided in her hair and then one morning he let Taromauri hold her and Pipa sank into Taromauri like a pebble into a sea. Declan fished and repaired and tightened and cleaned and tinkered and puttered and hauled and charted and fumed and snickered. Piko set up a dizzying series of experiments measuring salinity, oxygenation, depth, the attraction levels of various baits for various species of edible piscatory populations, and, his opus, a meticulous map of the music on board by
approximate instrument,
as he said, for example the rigging of the jib, which produces a remarkable song in winds of certain speeds, or the door of the hatch, which emits a piercingly sharp solo when waggled energetically, or the subtle sound produced by our gullish friend when he or she banks to starboard, a wholly distinctive sound from, as you certainly have all noticed, the one produced when she or he banks to port. Piko spent most of an afternoon making a detailed musical map of the
Plover,
poring over it with such attention that he missed the jaeger that slid past the bow so fast that even Taromauri, who had eyes like a prophet, caught only a flitting image and not a confirmed sight; but she knew what it was.

*   *   *

Enrique refitted the
Tanets
. He sold cargo and bought cargo. He made arrangements. He had discussions. He listened to what was not said when something was said. He hired two silent crewmen neither of whom was totally sure of the names they were supposed to use in this chapter of their lives. One said he was Rapanuian and the other said he was Rungarungawan. They spoke more than Taromauri had, but not by much. It seemed to Enrique that they were brothers or cousins but they denied this. One of them said he had only read one book in his whole life a page a day and when he got to the last page he went back and read the first page again and so on and so on. He claimed he had read the book so many times that the words had fallen out of it and the pages were all blank so he had to read the book to put the words back in or the book would be all forlorn and naked. Enrique forbore to check the accuracy of this claim or even the title of the book, although he did notice the battered red cover had no words on it. The other crewman owned only possessions made of wood or cloth and was reluctant to touch let alone handle anything made of metal or plastic. He said that things made of metal or plastic were the tools of the eyeless ones and must be avoided at all costs. This posed a problem briefly inasmuch as most of the
Tanets
was made of steel and iron and copper and bronze and plastic but Enrique was able to persuade the crewman to conduct the usual and necessary duties on board wearing gloves and a face that flickered with fear whenever Enrique stared at him. It seemed to Enrique that they were surely brothers or cousins not for obvious reasons of similar physique or deportment but for subtler tells and flags; they both laughed hesitantly and then wholeheartedly, rivulet to river; and they sneezed the same way, quick staccato bursts instantly covered with coughs, as if they were embarrassed to briefly explode; and both flinched when the shadows of large birds flickered over the deck; and while only one crossed himself when the shadows came, the other would stand and close his eyes for an instant; Enrique couldn’t tell if he was praying or terrified or both. Not that there was any difference between the two, he thought. Praying was only a way to beg not to be beaten, and you were not even begging the right overlord. People who prayed for health or good weather were begging the cold universe for heat. You might as well beg a rifle not to spit its bullet. Better to pray for what was, and what would always be, which is sickness and bad weather; at least you were sure of those things, and so your prayers were always sure to be answered, and in full measure too.

*   *   *

Just thinking the crewmen were brothers made Enrique think of his own brothers. The lost tribe. Scattered to the seven seas. Some to the stars and some to the sea. Some sailed some jailed. We all left. Poor Mama. One after another. Seven brothers with no mothers. She left too. She left early. Her body stayed but the her of her left. Burned on the altar. That little room in the back where she said she could see Papa burning in the prison and then burning in the lake of fire. He never shrove his sins and now he is ash and so shall we all burn. Her eyes burning and her voice burning into the baby. He never did have a mother that brother. Even their names are burned away. Unto ash we shall return. The house burning the sun burning our eyes burning. If everything must be burned I will do the burning and so I will not be burnt but be the fire. Everything I ever loved burned and so I will be the burning. There is nothing but that which must be burnt. Women will burn and children burn and houses burn so I will be nothing that can burn. I will be the fire. The fire has no home. The fire goes where it wants. The fire arrives and departs and none can account the meaning of its travels. Everything I ever touched burned. The prison burned and no man escaped not one. It was an accident. It was unavoidable. No man could be saved. No man can be saved. All men must burn. And Mama burned away, day after day she stayed longer in the back room among the candles, and she would not eat, and she burned away, and the baby cried, and my brothers left one by one, and Mama’s eyes burned, and in the end there was nothing left of her but her eyes burning in the dark, even the candles had burned away by then, and they came for us, and the little house burned, the house that used to be us, and they took the baby, and his voice is burning me. Where are you, brother? When are you coming for me? They took me away and I said your name and you did not come and I am lost and burning and when are you coming for me, brother? When are you coming for me? Remember we would talk about the water, the blue water and the green water and we would live in it and nothing could ever burn us again and we would be green and wet and safe, you remember we talked about that, about the water? Remember that, brother?

*   *   *

Piko and Taromauri sitting in the stern. Two of their twenty toes are touching; neither one knows this. Pipa asleep in her chair; her left foot is tucked under Piko’s ponytail. Declan asleep with his head pillowed on the hatch cover; his right foot is touching Taromauri’s right hip; neither one knows this. The gull is asleep on the stern railing with his or her tail brushing Pipa’s hair.

Well, says Piko, it started the same way every guy’s beard starts, as a third armpit, you know. You grow it because you can. Even if you really can’t. Even if it looks silly. Probably
because
it looks silly. Guys are like that. Then suddenly it changed color, to a kind of red.
That
was weird. God knows why
that
happened. Then it changed
again,
to a kind of silver. Elly and Pipa thought this was hilarious so I couldn’t cut it off then and so the moment for cutting it passed and it became part of the old facial landscape, you know? Like when you plant a tree and you don’t think about it after a while and then suddenly it’s thirty feet tall and shoving the shed over so bad that you have to turn sideways to get your tools, and you think, man, I better cut down that tree, but you forget, and about two minutes later it’s too late, man, that is a serious tree, you can’t cut down a tree
that
big, you have to just build another shed, you know? Trees win when it comes to pushing matches with sheds. And my beard kept changing colors by itself, and Pipa really got into putting feathers and coins and messages and pencils and crayons and mouse bones and little flags and notes and stuff in it, and you would have to be an idiot to cut a beard that your kid is leaving
notes
in, am I right? I still have all her notes somewhere in a box. She used to write tiny notes on walnut shells and hazelnut shells and scraps of bark and spruce fingers and stuff like that. For a long time she totally got into writing on maple leaves. You ever see big-leaf maple leaves? They’re like
rugs,
man, and they float forever when they get loose, they are a kick to watch. So Pipa would load up the old rope beard with maple leaves with little messages she’d written, and then we would climb a tree or go up to the top of the hill, someplace where we could get our faces into the wind, and I would shake the old noggin, and her messages would soar out over the yard, or the valley, or sometimes when we did it at the beach we would watch them float out over the surf.
That
was cool. I thought of that a lot when I was throwing fire at Makana, that I was sailing messages again, sort of, like me and the pip used to do at home.

And your hair? said Taromauri.

Same principle. Just fun to let it grow. The pip ties it to my beard when I am napping. Tied it, I should say.

I hear her voice inside her body, you know, said Taromauri.

Pardon me?

I can hear her speak. She laughs like bells.

She did, yeh.

Does.

Did. So, listen, what’s the story with your tattoos? I never saw totally blue arms before. What are you, the village newspaper?

I think perhaps she is more awake than you know.

Your tattoos are history lessons, or religious things, or what?

Why do you not talk about her?

I was going to get a tattoo once but I figured what’s the point, you know? Paying someone to punch holes in your body, that’s nuts. Life punches enough holes in your body for free, right? Plus I kept seeing myself age eighty with my tattoo sagging down to the ground. Not a pretty sight, right? What’s to talk about? It is what it is.

I hear her voice.

You don’t know the kid from a hole in the wall.

I lost a daughter too. I can’t hear her voice anymore. But I hear this one.

Piko doesn’t say anything to that. He wants to say everything to that. But he says nothing. What’s to say? No one says anything. No one says anything for a really long time.

*   *   *

Danilo Somethingivi
ć
tried on new names. He tried on new voices. He tried not speaking at all again for weeks at a time, because he noticed that if you do not speak then people do not see you very clearly, if at all. He swam as much as he could in the warm water and he sang as often as he could in the church choir and he worked as many hours as he could at the tiny airport saving as much money as he could and learning every scrap of every language that came by whether in mouths or boxes or songs on the radio or squawks on the intercom. He learned Abu and Ama, Foi and Gal, Bima and Basa. He learned to pilot a small plane. He learned some words of a language called Hermit, which was said to be extinct but wasn’t. He learned to fish at the edge of the reef with the younger guys from the airport cargo crew. He learned some words of a language called Kewa which was different depending on which side of a mountain you lived on. He learned to sing solos and duets and trios and one time a slate of barbershop songs from an American pilot from Iowa who said his given name was Mister, that his mama figured if she named him Mister that would save enough time over the course of his life where he would get an extra year of life. He learned some of a language called Mamaa which is only spoken by women. He learned to read and speak American and English and Australian, which are three different languages. He learned some Maguindanao and some Masbateño. He fell in love with three girls one after another each one for almost a year but not quite. He tried to forget his brother and their childhood and the snow and the fear and the forest but he couldn’t not quite. When he first awoke in the night in his cottage near the beach and found himself deep in the snow deep in the forest he would leap up and run to the ocean and dive in and swim in the warmth, but as the years passed he learned he could just sing away the snow and the forest and the fear, that if he sang as hard as he could the snow would melt and the forest fade away and he could get back to sleep before dawn; and slowly, so slowly that he did not even notice the ebbing of the tide, he stopped dreaming about the snow and the forest. On the day he turned twenty he sat on the beach and learned some words of a language called Tobi from a man who told him in the old days when ships came out of the sea you could tell if they were good or bad from the songs of the birds, and that you would welcome a good ship but with a bad ship you would dress up like a monster, with a huge thatch monster mask, and dance and caper on the beach, and the bad ship would fill with fear like water, and sail away, and then everyone would sing on the beach. That is what happened in the old days.

One time it rained so hard for an hour that really and truly you could not tell if you were underwater or on deck under deluge, and when the rain stopped there were fish squirming all over the boat, enough to eat for three days for everyone including the gull who ate so much she could not fly for a day and made happy groaning noises. One time when the wind was high and all sail set Piko tied himself to a longline and tied his feet to cedar planks and surfed behind the boat until the rope snapped and he described a somersault very nearly landing back on his feet again in the water but not quite. Another time a pod of whales swam right at the boat their massive foreheads like seething walls in the water but at the last possible second they split into two lines and slid past the boat making booming sounds so deep and thorough and amused that Pipa mewled happily for an hour afterward. Another time a shark circled the boat for an hour until a leap of porpoises shot past and hammered the shark mercilessly until it fled. Another time flying fish flew over the boat east to west in such numbers that it seemed the
Plover
was covered with a silver sheen, silver snow, a living shroud, a moist blanket, a shivering roof. Another time the sky was so stuffed with stars and so many of them shooting stars that you would swear the stars were plummeting into the sea faster than the sea could drink them. Another time something enormous in the water rolled not five feet from the boat and an eye the size of a refrigerator opened and then closed and whatever had been there wasn’t and no one was quite utterly totally sure that there had been something there except for the memory of that epic eye. Another time it seemed inarguably true that two suns were rising out of the ocean to the east until one of them vanished as if someone had flipped out the light. Another time fairy terns appeared out of a clear blue sky by the hundreds and perched along the rigging and on the mast and along the railings and on the wooden engine box and on the cabin, crowding the discombobulated gull, until suddenly at some silent and mysterious signal they rose again as a body and swirled away east so swiftly and thoroughly that again no one was quite utterly totally sure that they had been there except for the inarguable evidence of what they had most recently eaten, which the captain of the
Plover
suggested
ought
to be cleaned off by the
father
of the child who probably
summoned
the birds with her blessed Jesus fecking
magic
somehow and me personally as the captain I might personally suggest that said
father
use his useless
goat’s ass
of a
beard
for a mop whereas you might as well make that third armpit do some
useful
work around here bless my soul.