The Plover: A Novel (31 page)

Thought this through a bit, I see, said Declan.

A bit.

What about violence?

What about it?

People shoot people who take away the money trough.

I think there are ways around that, said the minister.

Around violence?

Yes.

Are you an idiot?

I don’t think so.

You know your history, said Declan. You know how it works. Violence is who we are. Our daily bread. Hey, you got kidnapped and dumped at sea, you know what it is. Not to mention you were just in a gun battle, basically.

I think there are ways around it, said the minister. I don’t think this is the way it always has to be. I think if people imagine new ways to be then there will be ways to work in different ways than the ways people have worked in the past. I think violence will eventually be useless. It will wither away because no one uses it, like a muscle that never flexes. Too many people will laugh at it for anyone to use it anymore.

Nah, said Declan. It’s our oldest skill. We’re great at it now and we’ll get better. Eventually we’ll get so good at it that we’ll wipe ourselves out and the world will reboot and probably gulls or jellyfish will run the next version.

Well, said the minister.

Yeh, weird line of talk, let’s get some breakfast going for
our
country, what say? Whyn’t you catch some fish, you got the touch, and I’ll get a little fire going. Can’t believe the captain allows fires on the hatch. What are we, fecking Sea Scouts?

*   *   *

Two hours later they came upon a lovely little atoll and anchored for a while to stretch and swim and fish and clean the boat and air out bedding and collect firewood and doze and gab and yawp and laugh and repaint the hatch because
someone
has been making fires on the cover and the paint job is
not
what it should be on a blessed shipshape ship as if this was a shipshape ship for chrissake look at all the gull poop on the roof and there’s a bullet hole in the cabin window my God
who’s
in charge of maintenance here? Taromauri and Danilo carried Enrique to the beach and walked him up and down for a while to get his new skin used to movement; that must have hurt like hell but he never said a word, observed Danilo, after they established Enrique in a little shady grove and Taromauri had again thoroughly rubbed him down with ointment.

That was maybe the greatest day in the history of days, said Pipa much later, to a gaggle of children who stared at their teacher like you would stare at a person who was telling you about her cool voyage to Mars when she was a child. That was an even greater day than the first day we spent in the Leeward Islands, when my father and I were first on the boat, because this time we had three new friends, maybe four. There were birds everywhere, all sorts of brilliant birds. There was
manuoko
the tern, and
‘a,
the booby, and
‘i’iwi
and
‘o’u’
and
nukupu,
the honeycreepers, and
pueo,
the little owl, and
‘io,
the hawk, and
huna kai,
the sanderling, and
uau,
the petrel, and the plover—what is the word for the plover, who can tell me?
Kolea,
that’s right, very good, Mahealani. Who can name another bird that I would have seen in the Leewards? Anyone?
Ukeke,
the turnstone, very good, Puanani, yes, there were turnstones on the beach. One more? Anyone?
Amaui,
the thrush, good, Marcos—we did not see a thrush that day but yes,
amaui
could well have been there. One more?
‘Iwa,
the thief, the frigate bird, good, Mehana, yes, we saw
‘iwa
.
Piha’ekelo,
the mynah, no. No parking lots with food scraps for old
piha’ekelo
—he is not much of a wild bird anymore, I think.
Very
good guesses, though.
Five
extra minutes’ recess today! But let me finish telling you the story. We had some absolutely great days, the greatest great days, on that journey. There was the first day we were in the Leewards, when I got sunburnt and my father caught a fish with his hand swimming underwater and Captain O Donnell tried to catch fish with his bow and arrows and we laughed so hard I thought our eyeballs were going to fall out and roll across the deck, but they didn’t. There was a day when we saw a blue whale right next to the boat and the whale was so much bigger than a boat we thought it was a blue island until it rolled and smiled at us and slid away into the deep like a dream bigger and bluer than any dream you ever had before. There was the day I got my voice back after not being able to speak for four whole years, imagine all the words that were piled up inside me waiting to come out! There was the day I was washed over the railing of the boat into the sea and almost went to the bottom to be turned into a fish but my father caught my foot and Captain O Donnell caught my father’s beard and we were all okay! There was the day I met my dear friend Taromauri whom you met when she came into class to tell stories last week, as you remember. And there was the second day we were in the Leewards, which was the most perfect day of all, the greatest great day we had on that journey, partly because we all knew it was one of our last days together but not
the
last day, which is a delicious and bittersweet feeling, which you will feel near the end of this school year, trust me. Now I will tell you what we did that day, and you take your paints and pencils, and either draw what stimulates your imagination as I tell you the story, or start your own story from my story, or invent a song for a fish or bird or plant or wind or person, okay? Everyone understand the assignment? You decide for yourself what to do, but you have to start something, and have fun. What you start today is your homework for the weekend, and I will look at them on Monday when we are back together. Okay? Ready?

*   *   *

While Declan fiddled with the hull patch for the four hundredth fecking time, cursing and humming and trying to recite from memory Edmund Burke’s entire speech on reconciliation with the American colonies, and Enrique dozed in the little shady grove, the other five members of the crew wandered the atoll for a while, collecting driftwood and stretching their legs; Taromauri carried Pipa like an oak carries an acorn. Then they made a tiny fire and sat on the beach lazing and talking and vaguely pondering a concerted fishing expedition in the shallows, although as Danilo said after a steady diet of fish it’s interesting how the prospect of fish for dinner is not what it used to be. After a while they got to talking about Declan and after more while they essentially quizzed Piko about Declan because he had known him longest and in other contexts other than captainesque.

Why is he so stubborn about not landing anywhere?

I’m not sure. I don’t think he had the happiest childhood, for one thing.

Why is he so gruff?

He wasn’t always.

Why does he want to be alone?

Does he?

Seems like it.

I am not sure he does, really. I think some of him is a mask.

Was he ever married? kids?

No.

Girlfriends?

Yes, but never for very long. I think he was leery about letting anyone on his boat.

His real boat? This boat?

Metaphor.

Was he wilder then?

He was … looser, I’d say. He’d do anything and go anywhere. He was the one who always wanted to go on crazy trips in the boat. He used to work on his family’s dairy on the Oregon coast and fish on the side, so adventures in the boat were a real kick for him. He was always after me to go with him to lost beaches and remote islands and stuff. That’s why he put in the mast and the strange rigging system, so he could go farther without paying for gas.

Did you go on adventures?

Not much. I had my work and Elly and the pip and then Elly got sick, so.

What happened to Declan’s family’s dairy?

He didn’t say.

Why did he take off on his own in the boat?

Not sure. I think he wanted to cut all cords with his family and town and land and stuff. That’s why he’s weird about landing places, I guess.

Doesn’t he have any other friends than you?

I thought he did.

How did you guys get to be friends?

Met in a bar on the coast. There was an incident and he jumped in to help me and we got to be friends.

What incident?

Hey, look, a frigate bird, said Piko. Lovely bird, although the Hawaiian word for it is
‘iwa,
the thief.

Doesn’t he like us? said Pipa. If he likes us why won’t he come with us to Makana?

I think he likes people more than he wants to admit even to himself, said Piko gently. And I think he likes you the most of anyone in the world, Pip, which really confuses him. I think he decided to be one kind of guy but liking us is rattling that kind of guy and that’s why he’s gruff and grumpy. I think maybe we just leave him alone and be gentle and maybe things will work out. You can’t make people be who they don’t want to be yet. You just be gentle and let them get there themselves. Your mother taught me that. You taught me that. Maybe someday you will be a teacher.

Every time I see any kind of bird now I think of Mama a little, said Pipa, and there was a long silence as the frigate bird drifted away and Taromauri looked away and the minister poked at the fire.

*   *   *

Okay, time! said Pipa to her classroom many years later. Now, I
know
you all took this seriously and started something fun, because I trust you, and your homework for the weekend is just keep taking your projects out for a walk. See where they go. Don’t plan and plot them much if at all. Just let them go where they want to go. Let them have adventures. You would be surprised where projects go if you let them have their heads and sail off free as a bee. Ideas take on lives of their own and become quite real. One of the most fascinating things about human beings is your imagination and how it can create something that was never in the world before in billions of years and will never be in the world again in that form in billions of years to come. Isn’t that amazing? And you yourselves are of course imaginative adventures that never were in the world before and will never be again in this form. Your parents imagined you into being and here you are but you are different every day and every hour and every minute. You are essentially stories yourselves of course, unwinding and unreeling all the time, never knowing your ending; you tell yourselves every moment. Perhaps some aspect of maturity is when you begin to tell the story of yourself rather than other people telling your story.

Mrs. Kuapapa?

Yes, Thomas?

Will you tell us more about that day you were on the boat with your father and the tall lady? When you were little?

Well … do we have time? How many minutes do we have left in the hour?

Pause.

Tenteen!

No …

Seven! says Thomas, who has secretly been using his fingers beneath his desk.

Seven it is, very good, Thomas. All right, I will tell you one more story, and we will save the last minutes today for singing, and then you will all go home and tell your mothers that they are the greatest coolest sweetest mothers
ever,
okay? And don’t forget your homework, to finish your project.

Okay, Mrs. K!

Well, we stayed on that little island all day, and some of us thought maybe we would sleep overnight there maybe, because the weather was fine, but our captain said that islands were dangerous and boats were safe, so we got back on the boat in the late afternoon, and prepared to continue toward these islands.

This
island?

This very one, says Pipa. Now here’s my story: there was a storm on the horizon, and the captain was worried about that, so my friend Danilo and I sat in the bow and decided to sing the storm away. He said if we closed our eyes and sang from the bottom of the bottom of our bones we could make a song bigger than any storm, and the storm would dissolve and vanish, and the captain would be delighted, so we did it. Believe it or not, when we opened our eyes after singing, that storm was gone!

All gone?

As gone as gone could be, says Pipa. Not a hint or sign or suggestion of a storm. If you had never seen the seed of a storm you would have stared at that sky that day and never consider that there could ever be something anything
like
a storm.

Three minutes, Mrs. K! sings out Thomas.

Thank you, Thomas. All right, now, let us sing ourselves out of class today, out of the week, into the weekend, ready, all together …

*   *   *

This fecking hole, says Declan to the hull patch, refuses to surrender. This is a hell of a hole. You wouldn’t think water could punch a hole so thoroughly in wood but you would be stone cold wrong about that, my wooden friend. Because this is not fecking
water
. This is the
ocean
. The ocean is a killer, my friend. Everyone’s always talking about how beautiful it is and how it’s the mother of all life and how it’s the food factory of the world and the hope of the future and how a million new medicines are hidden in it and eventually we will be living in it comfortably somehow in undersea cities and everything will be sweetness and light and we will be chatting amiably with the fish and all but that is crap deeper than the ocean in its deepest parts. The ocean is a professional assassin, my friend. The ocean kills more beings per second than you could count in a million years. The ocean is a vast collection of good ways to die. You and me are just fighting a holding action here. In the long term the ocean will eventually rise and wash over everything and we will all start over again from scratch as monocellular beings in the swashing tide. In the short term you know and I know that I will have to eventually retire you and thoroughly rebuild the hull here and stitch all sorts of materials into this hole in a vain effort to make the repair of the hole stronger than the wood which used to be there before the hole. But the ocean
knows
it cut a hole there once, see, the ocean is smart and never forgets, and it will poke and probe and question and examine my work and we will always be niggling and negotiating about this particular piece of the boat forever after. Fecking fecking feck. You, however, my friend, are doing a fine and excellent job of holding off the mother of all life.
You
are a terrific crew member, working harder and saying less than a lot of the people who have supposedly worked on this boat over the years. I name no names. But you, my friend,
you
are going to have a permanent place of honor on the boat. I think I will mount you in the cabin when you are done down here, so that every time I look up and see you I will think you were a damned fine hull patch, yes you were. You were the best hull patch we ever had. In the long history of hull patches you are an all-star patch and no mistake. If ever I sell the boat, God forbid such blasphemy, I will take you off the wall of the cabin and bring you with me, to the ends of the earth, from sheer respect. You did good. Your mama would be proud, whoever she was, deep in the woods. You did good.