The Plover: A Novel (24 page)

I need coffee, says Declan. You want some coffee? I need coffee.
You
don’t need any coffee. You
are
coffee. You want to help me make coffee? Yes? All right, pipe down so we don’t wake everyone up. Hang on, let me get around the corner here … all right, here we go … sweet Jesus, did you get taller overnight? Your legs are eight inches longer than yesterday. Here, fold up here for a moment. Are we going to have to tow you behind the boat on a long skinny raft? Jesus Christmas. Ever since you got your voice back you are growing an inch an hour. Maybe I can use
you
for a mast. You want juice or juice? Juice? Good. No, you can’t have coffee. Coffee is for
captains
. New rule. Hang on one second before you start chatting again and let me get my coffee and then we can go on deck and you can grow some more. A
moist
day, as my sister would say. The rain is raining all around, it falls on field and tree, it rains on something something, and on the ships at sea. All right, ready, up we go, keep your arms around my neck, sweet blessed Jesus! You grew another inch
as I watched!
Don’t laugh! We’ll have to hire a boat just for your
feet
!

*   *   *

Business and Emergency Planning Meeting on the
Plover,
by command of the captain. Here’s the deal, says Declan. Piko and Taromauri know the score but you two don’t and God knows what the pip knows about anything. A while ago we had a confrontation with a bigger boat. This boat is called the
Tanets
. I don’t know what that means either. The confrontation was complicated and I can explain the details later but the short version is that I am sure it’s looking for us, with bad intent. This isn’t legal but we are not in a position at the moment to complain to the cops or wave cease and desist orders as the fecking thing tries to run us down. So we are going to be prepared as well as we can for whatever happens. I hope nothing happens. It would be great if nothing happens. But we will prepare for something happening. If push comes to shove we have a kid on board and we will protect the kid as necessary. Everybody understands what I mean here? Questions?

A plethora of questions, says the minister, but later.

General agreement.

In other business, says Declan, this is a small boat and we all work. Piko and Taromauri know the drill and can show you what to do. We could use a better cook than the one we have now, so if either of you can cook, speak now.

Who is the cook now? asked Danilo.

I am.

I can cook, says Danilo.

I appoint you cook, says Declan. Congratulations. See me after class.

I can catch fish, says the minister. Also I am a student of sacred theology, if that helps.

Yes to fish, no to religion, says Declan. No religion on the boat. Prayers yes, religion no. Practice whatever religion you want but do so silently. I appoint Taromauri pope of the boat in all religious matters. I appoint Piko boatswain and carpenter. Also oceanographer. Finally I appoint the pip assistant coffeemaker and musician-at-arms.

What does that mean, at-arms? says Pipa.

I haven’t the faintest idea, says Declan. Sounds cool, though, doesn’t it? Better start singing. Recruit anyone you like for your singing crew.

*   *   *

Which she did, the instant Danilo opened his mouth; and instantly they were friends and soul mates; and they sang for hours in the stern of the boat; and she was thrilled by the way he sang, without affectation or noticeable effort, as if his job as a person was only to open the gate of his mouth to free his impatient and extraordinary voice; and he taught her all the songs he could remember from his cold gray childhood, and the songs he invented for himself in the forest, and the songs he had heard when he dove in the sea, and the songs he had learned from the guys at the airport, and the songs he had learned in the choir on the island; and she taught him all the songs she could remember from her wet green childhood, and the songs she had invented for herself in the years when she was silent, and the songs she had heard when she set her spirit loose in the sea, and the songs she had learned from her mother in those last weeks when she and her mother lay huddled in the bed as her mother shrank and vanished, and the songs she had learned from the troops of the terns; for of course the terns had a vast and ancient array of songs and chants, lays and sonnets, litanies and dirges, sure they did. All birds and animals and fish have their own peculiar and particular symphonies and adagios and jingles; just as the stories in and of a species outlive its individuals, so do its songs. In some species some individuals are charged with remembering and teaching the songs and poems; in other species the songs and poems are on their own, and find their chosen vessels among individuals, some willing and some reluctant; there are more manners and means for this sort of thing than can be accounted here, even if we had a thousand pages for just the stories of music among the millions of forms of things granted life; suffice it to say that we know this is true, and so we can well imagine the sweet tumult and tumble of songs in the stern of the
Plover
this morning, as the tall young man and the spindly child perched in her chair singing like birds; the gull on the roof of the cabin, listening intently.

*   *   *

Enrique is in the cabin of the
Tanets
poring over his charts. He has a terrible headache. He has a pistol on the chart table about ten inches from his right hand. His left hand has curled into something like a gnarled paw and no matter what he does he cannot get it to loosen. The pain in his head is worse on the left side than the right. Since the Rungarungawan and the Rapanuian abandoned ship he has tried to run the
Tanets
on his own and he is exhausted. Not even rage and fury can keep a man going day and night infinitely. He is too weary to hijack fishermen as crew. The pain in his head is worse at night than during the day. His left eye does not appear to be working as well as it did in the past. He can hear his mother say
we should get the boy to a doctor
and his father says
doctor? doctor?
Enrique can feel the end of something. An ending is on the horizon. For years he has steered according to the horizon and the horizon never ends but now somehow it is. He has no idea how he knows this but he does. He has tried soaking his hand in hot water to get it to loosen but it won’t let go. His mother told him a story once about a man who turned into a bear starting with the left foot. He admitted to himself last night that there is no reason for him to care about the boat with the red sail, the loss of a taciturn crewman is easily replaced, he’s done worse to other boats than steal a man, why should he care, why is he so furious, every hour of rage is money lost, money is control, money is power, money is defense, money is an island impregnable to assault, but as soon as the sun stumbles over the horizon every morning he is back in the cabin poring over his charts, guessing, estimating, measuring miles, calculating fuel expenditure and wind speed, gauging the weather. This doesn’t make sense. I have always made sense. Reason is control. Nonsense is chaos. There is no such thing as imagination; imagination is another word for nonsense. Imagination is a polite way to say dreaming and dreamers are weak. Yet he could not detach himself from his charts, and he saw the sail redder in his mind by the day; and he loaded rifles and set them in their waterproof jackets everywhere on deck: two each to port and starboard, one each in bow and stern, two in the cabin; and he kept the pistol on his person at all times, clutching it unconsciously with his left hand while he slept.

*   *   *

Taromauri and Danilo are in the sea with Pipa. Declan is in the cabin poring over his charts. Piko and the minister are sitting on the hatchway chatting. The gull is on the roof, listening. The warbler is eating dried berries that Taromauri left under the water tank for her. Several terns, unused to Pipa being in the water, are whirling nervously above the stern in gentle circles. It turns out that Danilo is a terrific swimmer and Taromauri has been more comfortable in the water than out of it since she was a child so much bigger than the other girls that people would laugh just seeing her standing with other girls for example in line at school or on the beach for various ceremonies. Danilo can hold his breath for three minutes at a time and several times he dives down below Pipa’s dangling useless feet and puts them on his shoulders and kicks up until his head is almost at the surface and she is almost but not standing in the ocean and she is laughing so hard the terns relax. No, no, says the minister to Piko, my vision of Pacifica does not include me as president or prime minister or king or leader of any sort. I do not think there is a word invented yet for what I would be in Pacifica. A sort of uncle-at-large, perhaps. There are all sorts of jobs and tasks to be done and each child can choose. Perhaps when you are thirteen you choose three jobs to pursue, and then whichever job wants you the most chooses you. Something like that. Also each child would have more families than only one. You might have, say, seven families. There would be ambassadors from the nations of children also—perhaps nine from each island. Nine is a shapely number. Perhaps there would be ambassadors from the other species also. Some people would be asked to contemplate numbers and see what we could do about that. Also I would like to see if we could find a way to make weapons forget what they are made of. There should be an unweapon for weapons, I believe. Anti-matter for the matter. Perhaps there is a way to persuade weapons to talk to each other so that one weapon could say to the other, listen, what are we doing here, this is not our fight, let us wander off, or let us dissolve ourselves, or let us go fishing instead, or something like that. Also I believe there should be more religions; the more there are the less any one can insist it is the boss of the others. Religions should be as common as sandals, so that you could wake up in the morning and shuffle out to the porch and grab any two in which to walk for the day. That would be good, I believe. Also I think we should have long weeks and short weeks. In the wet season we could have long weeks, say nine days, so we get a lot more repair work done around the house and boat, and in the dry season we should have short weeks, say five days, so that we have more weeks to enjoy the dry season. Something like that. These are just a few of the things I think. What do you think? Most of all I think we need more thinking. This is why the very first thing we should do when Pacifica is born is to start the National Dreamers. How could you have a new country without excellent dreamers?

*   *   *

The afternoon being lazy and his arm aching, Declan retires to his bunk to read Edmund Burke; or rather read
about
Burke, today’s reading being selections from the comments of people who knew that most interesting Irishman: “petulance, impatience, intractability, anger, irritability … he was often intemperate and reprehensibly personal … a vein of dark and saturnine temper … sonorous but harsh tones … his utterance was often hurried and eager … his banter is nearly always ungainly, his wit blunt … his gestures clumsy…” Hmmph. No wonder I like the guy. He’s me, or I am him. The poor Irish. Brilliant idiots. Charming fools. Engaging boneheads. Enthralling nutcases. Entrancing charlatans. Alluring disasters. We are the rocks and reefs of the human sea, tumultuous outcrops, magnets for wrecks. The peaks of mountains you cannot see: that’s us, all right. Dark even on the brightest day. Stony and defiant of the prevailing currents until we are eventually worn down and dissolved. Sometimes soaked and sometimes dry as a bone. Hammered by tides and grimly standing our ground against the pounding. Probably even secretly enjoying the pounding. The poor Irish. An island people, as the old man reminded me many a time. A muddy rock soaked by rain and tide and blood. From which we fled for the farther shore. We leave, we left, we have been left. Into the waters of the world. Each of us an island. No man is an island, my butt. Trust an Englishman to make an eloquently stupid remark. I am an island, and the boat is an island. Although bless me how so many other people got on the boat is a mystery absolutely. Jesus Christmas. A bird, a child, four men and a woman. It’s the opening line of a joke. A man sets out to sea to see what he can see … and ends up driving a fecking bus. Jesus. And where this will end no one knows. Probably we’ll just keep picking people up until we sink. That would be about right. A boat that doesn’t float. An island at the bottom of the sea.

*   *   *

Taromauri tried the dried berries first, thinking that warblers probably eat mostly insects and fruit; and the berries vanished as soon as she turned her back. Then she tried almonds, which did not work; they sat untouched until the minister ate them. She went back to the berries, this time laying out a trail leading out from under the water tank into the sunlight. This worked, and she saw the warbler for an instant, leaping out and back so fast you would not believe there had been a bird there except for the inarguable absence of berries. Taromauri experimented with the distance the warbler would emerge for berries; after a couple of days and many experiments, the answer seemed to be about four feet—approximately the height of a Pipa, as Danilo remarked. Then one afternoon a swarm of insects swirled over the boat and Danilo caught a few in his cap and tossed them under the water tank; the warbler, considering this an act of remarkable generosity, emerged shyly and stood at the very edge of the tank’s shadow, looking up at the mountainous beings. Taromauri, with that odd gesture of her hands, folded down onto the deck, and the warbler vanished instantly; but emerged again a moment later, standing in the shadow, only her beak poking into the light. Taromauri slowly reached out and placed a berry between them. For a moment, no one moved a muscle, not on deck, not below, not on the roof of the cabin, where the gull watched, absorbed; and then the warbler bounced out, and stood over the berry, staring at Taromauri, who slowly opened her hands and lay them against her skirt like islands against a sea of red. Another long moment of utter stillness, as the boat rocked gently and the rigging clinked against the mast; and then the warbler, quicker than the eye could see, leapt up into Taromauri’s hand, and then to her shoulder, and then into the black lawn of her hair. Pipa burst out laughing, a lovely trilling sound that draws the terns into the air; they regard the warbler with amazement, wondering where this tiny cousin came from; and Taromauri stood up grinning, taller by two brown inches.