The Plover: A Novel (5 page)

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But he was lower on fuel than he expected after the two terrific storms, not to mention losing a tank overboard, and the island he could see all green and wreathed in mist was filled with fruit beyond calculation—he could smell it even miles offshore—and despite his powerful reluctance to land at all, let alone speak to anyone, he determined to slip in after dusk, tie up somewhere for the night, and refit as necessary; he also found that having seen land he suddenly had a powerful thirst for beer, and beer made him dream of meat, and meat of wine, and wine of cigars, and by dusk he was so addled thinking of the sensuous pleasure of a cigar that he hauled his sea anchor and headed toward a crescent bay he could see opening like a smile as he approached the redolent island in the sifting dark. The engine chortled quietly. I’ll just tie up to a jetty for the night, there’s no marina or anything, get a steak and a cigar, stash some fruit, and away we go, no big deal, no permits and all, no one needs to know, cold hard cash, maybe a box of cigars to go, and just as he sighed luxuriously thinking of the dark pleasure of a mouthful of smoke, a quiet voice spoke to starboard.

Ahoy the boat.

Jesus blessed Christ. Who are you?

The
‘Ili’ili
.

What?

‘Ili’ili,
river rocks.

What the hell do you want?

Are you the
Plover
?

Who wants to know?

I have a letter for you if you are the
Plover
.

Show me.

A light went on and Declan saw a muscular young man with long black hair in a narrow wooden canoe painted bright blue. The word
‘Ili’ili
was carved into the bow and the prow was carved into the head of a hawk. Beautifully carved, too—Declan admired the extraordinary craft of it for an instant before he snapped back to attention.

Who the hell are you?

Who the hell are
you
? the young man answered; was he smiling?

They stared at each other for a moment, and Declan quietly reached for the baseball bat he kept tucked under the stern railing.

I might be the
Plover
. Who wants to know?

I have a letter from a friend of yours.

What friend?

You call him Piko.

Piko’s here? No way. Not possible.

Possible. He’s on the island with his daughter.

He … what? Why are they here?

Here’s his letter.

Cautiously suspiciously reluctantly Declan reached for the letter, a papery gleam against the dark sea. The young man stood, hand on his hawk, and handed it up.

Thank you,
‘Ili’ili
.

You’re welcome,
Plover
.

Do you know Piko?

We have other names for him.

We?

He has many friends here.

Where is here?

Makana.

Makana is this island?

Makana is a mountain on the island where some of us live.

Who are you?

A friend.

Are they okay?

Better read the letter.

Come aboard if you like—I have lots of almonds.

Thank you, no. I have children to watch. I appreciate the offer.

Thanks for your help. Piko is a good friend of mine and I love his kid.

Piko is a greater man than he knows, and the girl is a … gift, said the young man, again with what looked to be a smile, although it was hard to tell in the dark. He spun the canoe effortlessly, with just a shrug of his shoulder, and it slid away silently through the dark like a long blue knife.

Dear Dec: This letter will come as a surprise. But when I heard you were gone from Neawanaka I figured you would eventually drift this way. Remember how you used to ask me to take a long trip to go fishing or surfing or whatever? The time has come, man. The tide came for us.
Ma’i ‘a’ai
, the cancer came for Elly and just ate her up day by day. Every day she lost a pound. She got smaller and smaller as we watched. Eventually she weighed about fifty pounds and all that was left of her was translucent skin stretched on sharp bones. You could basically see through her. Her skin was like the most incredible paper. She never complained. Her hair turned brown and then silver, and then it left. She just lay in bed with Pipa all day. Pipa got smaller too. She stopped eating too. The two of them got to be as small as sparrows. I could pick them up with one hand. On the last day Elly just sang quietly in bed all day with Pipa. I was in the bed too. It was lovely outside, all wild light coming down through the knuckles of the trees. There was wild light all over the bed. Elly just stopped breathing and all the Ellyness went out of her just like that. It was the weirdest thing. We buried her ourselves out by the big cedar on the hill. So she could have a decent view. That’s the one place where you can see the ocean. I made the coffin. Pipa helped by watching. She did a very good job of watching. But she kept on getting smaller after Elly died and it was time for us to leave. There was too much not-Elly for us to be there. Everywhere you looked there was a hole exactly the size of Elly. So I sold everything and quit the job and we came here to wait for you. We knew you would come this way. Dec, it’s a big thing to ask, but I have to ask it—can we go with you? I have money, I can help with the boat, I have all my charts and equipment, we can take whatever you think you can use, I’ll take care of Pipa. I don’t know where you are headed but that’s where we are going. It’s a lot to ask, man, but I have to ask it. We’re ready whenever you are. Pipa’s a lot easier to carry now that she’s the size of a sparrow. We will be on the beach whenever. Come on up to the mountain if you want or we can come down. If you don’t want to come ashore just wait for my friend Kono and he can carry messages. You can trust him. Up here I am throwing fire. I kid you not. It’s a long story. I’ll explain when we see you. Dec, I really appreciate this, man. I can’t explain why I know this is the right thing but I know it’s the right thing. Trust me. Yrs Piko

But getting the girl down from the mountain was no small feat, because she did not actually weigh as much as a sparrow, she mewled in terror when anyone other than her dad carried her, and the tiny community where Piko and Pipa had taken refuge was a lot farther up a twisting tangled trail than you would think, gazing at the unprepossessing mountain from the shore. Declan and Piko, smoking cigars, contemplated the problem from the wooden tower on the edge of the village. This tower was an odd structure altogether, some forty feet high with a carved wooden platform on top, something like a small theater stage, and a waist-high railing around it carved with all sorts of flowers but only one kind of bird—the fairy tern, Piko explained,
manuoku,
a shy gentle creature that lived everywhere on the mountain and laid its eggs aloft, unlike its tern cousins, who camped down in the duff with their buddies the albatrosses.

How’d you get her up here? said Declan, still trying to get his land legs, spooked by his sudden waterlessness.

Carried her, said Piko, puffing happily. Man, this is a good cigar.

Took a while?

Days. You wouldn’t believe how steep and twisted that trail is.

Sure I would. I just walked it.

Imagine walking it with a nine-year-old kid on your back. Walked an hour, rested an hour. Turned out to be kind of a pilgrimage. We camped out along the way. My back still hurts.

I druther not wait days. I druther get going. I am getting wiggy on land these days. Druther be on the water.

Ah.

It’s actually not that big a mountain. From here to the beach is a pretty straight shot. Whyn’t we rig a slide?

Like a zip line?

Alls we need is good rope. I got plenty of rope.

We could do that.

We could most certainly do that.

Let’s do that.

Could we just sling Pip? Do we have to sling you, too? She’s tiny and you’re huge.

I think we can just do her. It’ll go so fast she won’t have time to be scared.

We could do that.

We could most certainly do that.

They did that, and in remarkable shipshape fashion, too; Declan was, if nothing else, as he said, handyish, and Piko was one of those long thin guys made out of steel wire, ten times stronger than you would ever imagine looking at the skinny sinewy of him. Other people chipped in and Declan plotted the rigging but mostly the labor was Piko, wearing his usual baggy silver pajama pants, shirtless as usual, barefoot as usual, silver earrings swaying and clinking, his silvering ponytail plastered against his sweat-soaked back, his braided salt-and-pepper goatee sopped against his chest. He had started growing that goatee—his third armpit, Declan called it—when he was sixteen, and somehow never did get around to shaving it off, and now it hung down nearly to his waist, thin and cheerful, braided anew every morning, and sometimes featuring feathers and coins and religious medals; Pipa used to braid notes and drawings into it when she was little. Man, Declan would say, it looks like you got a kelp whip growing out of your face, which is disturbing, but it’s your own ugly, and besides maybe that’s an oceanographer thing, having seaweed on your chin, or whatever. Your call, brother.

By late afternoon the sling line was set and tested twice, Piko tucked his daughter into an air chair made of pillowcases and fishnets, Kono waited patiently with her, and Piko and Declan ran down the trail as fast as they could go to receive the holy package. Pipa flew like a tiny pale bird, squeaking and fluttering, into her father’s arms, and rather than tears or terror on her face, Declan noticed, there was the hint of a hint of a smile. He didn’t say anything to Piko about that, though, and soon they were all three aboard the
Plover,
headed north by west; Declan thoroughly relieved to be at sea again, at some deep level that surprised him; he had been uncomfortable on the island, wary, itching to be back on the boat. Man, he thought, you never loved the sea, and now you get wiggy on land, where the hell else is there? Do I have to live on the wing like a blessed albatross?

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Where to actually bunk the kid was a problem, though, a conundrum made harder to solve by a blizzard of fairy terns around the boat. Jesus Christmas, said Declan, it’s not like we are fishing and there are scraps of fish to be had, what’s the deal? There were really an amazing number of terns, more than they could count, and they whirled and spun and fluttered and thrilled and chattered and made their creaking gentle music like a hundred wagon wheels. Sweet mother of the mother of the lord, said Declan, do we have to go below to get a word in here? Which we have to do anyways to figure where to stash your progeny, brother. Better get to that now. To bed at dark and up at dawn on this boat, captain’s law. Whyn’t we put your little fairy tern in my bunk, and you and I can camp out alongside? You can open these sliding panels, see, so she’s right there, she can see you and you can see her and no one has to look at old Declan, but she’s tight as a tick in there, she can’t bounce out no matter what the weather. Fair enough? Jesus Christmas, Piko, when are you going to cut that goat testicle off? Pretty soon it’ll be getting tangled up in your private parts,
that’ll
be hard to explain to a doctor. She’s all square in there? All tucked in? Good night, little pumpkin seed. So you to port and me to starboard, brother. You are left wing and me right wing. We’ll figure it out. Just move that stuff up front a little. We’ll balance it out tomorrow. Let’s get some sleep. No weather tonight. You want an orange? Jesus blessed Christmas. I don’t believe you’re finally on the boat. Jesus, what a crew. I can’t believe I have a crew. I am awful sorry about Elly, man. Real sorry. She was a peach. I sure liked her. Why she married you is a mystery to me, but strange things happen, is what I think, and hey, you got the pip out of the deal, so you totally win. You don’t see some beauty marrying
me
and then presenting me with the world’s coolest kid. Nope. Old Declan O Donnell, a solo mio, solo sailing the silent She. Say that three times fast, brother. Good night, crew! Long day. We’ll figure it out. Good night, Pipsqueak. Sleep tight. Shipshape sailing the silent sea. You guys want an orange?

*   *   *

Nihoa and Nalukakala, Kauo and Kanemiloha’i, Punahou and Kapoho and Pihemanu, Mokumanamana and Mokupapapa, ah, the Leeward Islands, the dots and rocks and sand spits and atolls and coral outcrops west and north of the populated tail of the Emperor Seamounts, that vast chain of mountains beneath the sea, that tremendous fence amidst the Endless; a scatter of souls lived there now, intent scientists and stoner caretakers and such, though in the old days there were tiny villages and tiny terrace gardens and beaches and cliffs used only for prayers and sacraments; but the little islands were covered by incalculable numbers of birds of every shape and size, tiny finches to epic frigate birds, little golden ducks with piercing eyes, albatrosses by the thousands of thousands, and most of all, it seemed, the same brilliant bright white terns that had followed them since they left Makana. The terns were so used to the
Plover
now that dozens of them perched cheerfully on the rigging, and one particularly brassy specimen sat comfortably on the cabin roof exactly where the gull used to reside. Every time the wind surged or changed direction the feathers of the terns ruffled and riffled with an audible fliffle and Pipa rustled in response, sitting in the throne they’d rigged for her in the stern; Declan had tinkered his fishing chair to fit her like a huge cotton glove, and they could spin her in any direction for stimulus and sightseeing. Declan spent most of one afternoon ostensibly puttering around the boat fixing things but actually gauging the pip, while Piko snorkeled and fished the brilliant shallow waters of what appeared to be Disappearing Island, if my charts are right, said Declan, be careful, man, if the island vanishes come on back to the boat, we’re not going anywhere today, it’s housecleaning day. And indeed he draped everything adamantly moist on the cabin and rigging to dry, shooing away the terns for a moment, and oiling the engine, and triple-checking sails and backup sails, and wading around the
Plover
in his battered high-top sneakers scraping off the biggest of the freeloading barnacles, and airing out bedding, and opening all hatches and doors, and counting and recounting fists of garlic, and again discovering that he was shipping a huge cedar bow and some fifty arrows, I do
not
remember stashing arrows, that is totally weird, although now I can actually shoot fish, if ever there was a place to shoot huge strapping fish this would be the place, man, as even when wading around the boat with scrapers in hand he had seen snapper, jacks, grouper, tangs, surgeonfish, squirrelfish, parrotfish, goatfish, butterflyfish, eels, and lean gray reef sharks fast as whippets, not to mention gleaming friendly dolphins and seals as fat and sleepy as uncles on Sundays. Place is a fecking paradise, he thought. You could live here for a year eating fish and never seeing a blessed soul. Doesn’t sound half-bad. Onions and limes and grouper. Dry out in the sun. A thousand miles from anywhere anyone anyhow.
Peace is always in our power,
says old Ed Burke, although what did he know, all tumult and struggle and hated because he was right, the poor old Irish goat. Boy, it’s bright. I better cover up the pipsqueak before she turns red. Poor little parrotfish. What does she think in there?