The Plover: A Novel (8 page)

*   *   *

Fixit Day on the
Plover,
by command of the captain. Declan and Piko repatched the hole in the hull, repacked supplies, dried spare sails, set lines for fish, swam with Pipa. They repaired the mast as well as they could, which wasn’t very well, but it will have to blessed Jesus do for the moment, said Declan. We have enough fuel to make Tungaru and we can use the mast if the wind stays easy. Time for your tutorial in sight reduction tables, spherical trigonometry, observed latitudes, celestial declinations, and computation of the azimuth! Time for you to undertake considerable things, as old Ed Burke says! You’re an oceanographer, don’t you already know this stuff?

Nope. I know more about what’s in the water than what’s on it. We always had taxi drivers when we did research projects. Guys like you.

Tall handsome guys?

Trolls with tattoos.

I only have the one tattoo. Don’t lie in front of the kid.

Got it when you were drunk?

Nope. Birthday present for my sister. I told Grace I would do one crazy thing for her, whatever she asked, and she thought about it for a couple days, and she decided we should both get tattoos, and I said tattoos are stupid waaay beyond the usual stupid, paying people to punch holes in your body is nuts, but she insisted, although she wanted both of us to get
is fearr bás ná náire,
death before shame, but that’s nuts, so I got this one,
misneach
.

Meaning?

Stay afloat. Don’t drown. Don’t quit. Stay with the boat.

Lot of meanings for one word.

Big word.

Let’s go over charts and navigation, Dec. I feel like I am not really helping much as a crewman. Wouldn’t it be best if I steered and you could fix things?

Yeh. We can take turns. I think we can make Tungaru in three days if the weather stays clean. We can refit there and make some decisions.

Like?

Piko, what are you going to do with the pip? You can’t stay out here forever.

Says the guy who is going to stay out here forever.

C’mon. She needs nurses and stuff. How are you going to pay for that? You want to go back to Makana? Oregon? You got to get a job somewhere, counting whale peckers or whatever it was you did.

Actually I studied oceanic dead zones. Hypoxia. Low oxygen in the water.

I’m serious, man. You got to work and the pip needs a crew.

I’ll figure it, Dec. Thanks.

You’re blowing me off here, Piko.

I’m not, Dec. I hear you, man. It’s just that I don’t know what to do yet. It’s just me and Pipa and I don’t quite know how to work it. I leaned on Elly more than I knew. She was the glue. She wouldn’t let them put Pipa in the cripple house. I wanted to let them do it, Dec. I couldn’t stand it anymore. I fought as hard as anyone in the first couple years but then every time I saw Pipa it burned me for who she could have been and never will be. The kid we had died on the road by the bus stop. That kid is dead. I couldn’t take it anymore. That sounds scummy but it got real dark for me. I never told anyone. Elly knew. Pipa knew too. I think it burns her inside somewhere that I was the scummy dad who would have said yes to the cripple house and probably hardly visited her there. I used to think I was a good guy, Dec. I was a good guy before something hard came along to test me and I failed totally. Then Elly got sick and she got smaller and smaller and you could see through her and she died holding Pipa in her arms, Pipa making that bird sound and me sobbing like a baby. Pipa kept making that bird sound for weeks afterwards and it drove me insane, Dec. I had to hide in the shed outside sometimes because she would just lie there chirping and mewling and I knew she was crying for her mama and not for me. I never told anyone any of this and it burns me even telling you but I am so lost at sea that being lost at sea for real is not so bad. I don’t know where to go. I want to be the best dad ever and I was the worst. So what happens next, I don’t know. Maybe it’s on your charts. Sorry I popped a gasket here. I miss Elly. I miss Pipa. I guess I miss the me I thought I was but wasn’t. What’s an azimuth?

*   *   *

Pipa knew. She remembered how her dad stopped rocking her in his arms every night, stopped sitting in the beanbag chair making up stories about foxes, stopped washing her slowly in the afternoon with old soft towels. He didn’t stop all at once; he just did one less gentle thing a day. He continued to do the hard things, the dutiful things, the awkward things, but the thousand tiny quiet other things—the unconscious braiding of her hair while they watched basketball, the eggs flipped for exactly thirteen seconds as they had together determined was exactly the exact right number of seconds to get eggs exactly over easy, the notes left for her at the breakfast table, notes written on whatever he could find, sometimes oak galls, sometimes maple leaves, once the carapace of an enormous beetle—those things slid away silently, one per day. She knew. She watched the little gentle things he used to do leave the house, padding away into the moist forest, the branches shivering from their passage. But she could not speak and she could not write and she could not catch his eye in such a way that he knew she knew; and she discovered she did not want to catch his eye that way, for fear he
would
know she knew, and be pained by his own retreat; to hurt him was unthinkable, incomprehensible, unimaginable, it hurt to even
think
about hurting him; but she missed those towels more than anything in the world. A thousand times those towels had wicked up water from her shimmering skin, and sacrificed their nubs to her, and become so incredibly thin you really could see through them when they billowed in the yard like small sails in a salty wind; but no words fit their softness anymore, they were way beyond soft, they were a sort of skin themselves when her mom ever so gently rubbed her with them after a bath; but Pipa remembered her father’s hands behind those towels like sweet bones under the skin, and remembered the day he only used two towels instead of three, and then one instead of two, and then none instead of one. She knew.

*   *   *

She also knew more than anyone knew she knew. She knew how to call to birds in ways no one heard but the birds. She knew how to see inside dark places without using your eyes. She knew how to sleep with her eyes open and how to be awake in some parts of you and asleep in others. She was learning how to call to fish although whales and porpoises were as yet a mystery. She knew which trees were the friendliest near the house they used to have. She could hear what people meant when they said things they didn’t mean. She could hear people coming from a long way away. Miles and miles. People were much larger than their bodies, is how she would have tried to explain it if she could talk again. People are a lot longer and thicker than they think they are. People jostle with more things than they know they do. We don’t have any words yet for how this happens but this happens, is what she would try to say. Our bigger selves are always bumping into each other and into other things. Only things that are alive have this big thing around them. Some people and some living things, when we jostle and bump them it’s comfortable, it’s like when Dad would dry me off with the towel gentle and rough, it’s good to be rubbed like that, or like when Dad bumped shoulders with his brothers and they would laugh, but some people and some things, when your bigger self bumps against their bigger self, it feels uncomfortable, or it even hurts. And some big selves don’t forget that hurt. The hurting stays like a scar. Like your big self remembers things that you don’t. But only living things, or things that used to be alive. And your big self stays alive for a while after your body stops. Like it’s always looking for the smaller person that used to be in the middle of it. And other people’s big selves are looking for that missing person too. But the missing person isn’t there anymore so the big self gets smaller and thinner and it cries as it fades. I heard Mama’s big self crying all the time afterwards. Crying for the person it used to have inside it. Her big self, it used to go around the house looking for Mama and crying and crying, and Daddy would say what
is
that noise, Pip, it sounds like a cat is stuck under the house, I better go see if there are raccoon kits down cellar or what, and I would want to shout Daddy it is Mama’s big self! don’t you feel Mama’s big self? But he didn’t feel it. Or maybe he did but he didn’t say. His big self is quiet now. It didn’t used to be so quiet! His big self was the loudest funniest self you ever saw! It would rub against any other big selves and that would be so funny! Like that time with all those whales on the beach, there were so many big laughing selves I kept getting knocked down on the beach when they laughed and we were all laughing so hard! Those were the biggest selves I ever saw until now. Daddy sent them back. His big self rubbed them all back in the water. Now there are some big selves below us that are so big I can’t even feel the edges of them and I don’t know how to call to them yet but I will. Some of the small fish say that you cannot talk to the biggest selves down there at all but I think you can.

*   *   *

Late in the afternoon they slid past an unmarked atoll so crammed and bubbling with terns that it appeared to be a seething white raft in the brilliant blue sea, and they paused for a bit to stare at the sudden profligacy. Declan was interested, Piko was fascinated, but Pipa was mewling and flapping her hands wildly with that hint of a hint of a smile, and sure enough hundreds of terns were soon lining the rigging and railings again, a tern perched on every open square inch of the boat, staring fixedly at Pipa.

What is she, queen of the birds or something?

Got me. Birds at home didn’t do that.

Even with hundreds of the little white creatures on the boat there seemed to be thousands on the atoll, and Piko and Declan watched for a while as some rose and hovered effortlessly over their nests like spirits, and others circled over the little island like sentinels, and others bobbed in the lagoon like boats in a children’s pool.

Manuoku,
the fairy tern, said Piko. Lovely bird, gentle, not much for harrying.

You know your birds?

Some. Spend enough time out here and you get to know some of what’s out here.

You liked working out at sea?

Loved it. It’s the last great wilderness. There’s medicines and foods and amazing secrets down there more than anyone could ever count. Might be the future.

What, the ocean?

Yep.

Ocean’s a killer, man. Trust me.

So are we, Dec.

At least we feel bad about it sometimes.

Maybe the ocean does too.

Nah. Trust me. It just kills and eats and moves along. The best you can do is work out a truce. I thought we had a deal, I harvested and she let me plow the waters, but there were some incidents and misunderstandings, and I am not sure where we stand now, me and the old blue beast. Old murder mother.

Pipa mewled loudly and a whole line of terns shot into the air as if commanded, just before a dark gray bird shot over the boat like a bullet.

Jesus blessed Christ. What’s that?

Jaeger. Looks like a gull but acts like a hawk.

The jaeger now plunged headlong into the seething mass of terns on the atoll and emerged with a struggling chick in its razor beak; and then suddenly there were two more jaegers falling like arrows, and ten more and twenty more, and the atoll was suddenly a battlefield of screams and shrieks and shredded terns. Pipa flipped and fluttered and mewled and Piko gathered her into his arms to bring her below away from the carnage as Declan set the
Plover
south and west. Down below Pipa went silent but her eyes were open. Piko rocked her silently. The last Declan saw of the atoll was a single tern rising to battle the jaegers as they stooped again to the slaughter; but as he watched the tern was torn limb from limb, shreds of it raining down on the darkening sea, where lean fish flashed suddenly like knives.

*   *   *

Night was blacker than black. Moonless starless. Declan in the cabin dozing. No light anywhere in the world except a faint luminescence in the
Plover
’s wake. Suddenly a wall is alongside and a grappling hook flung down like a huge talon. Declan storms out of the cabin and runs into a shotgun aimed at his eyes. A huge shadow slides past him silently and goes below. Piko comes up with Pipa in his arms. The huge shadow stands behind them. A voice behind the shotgun says quietly you come with us or he comes with us. Choose. Declan uses foul and abusive language. The grim shotgun barrels touch his forehead. The voice says okay fine we will take the other guy. Declan says no fecking way over my dead body who the feck are you get off my fecking boat. The voice says your dead body is fine but then who will care for the child? Piko says easy Dec easy. The square shadow behind Piko and Pipa doesn’t say anything. Piko says easy Dec easy we will figure it out. The voice behind the shotgun says go. Pipa doesn’t say anything but everyone sees her shocking eyes. Piko says easy Dec easy now be easy. He hands Pipa to Declan. Piko says we don’t have a choice right now so you take care of the pip and we’ll figure it out easy now. The voice behind the gun says go. Piko clambers up the wall into the darker darkness above. The voice behind the gun says remember to forget this. The voice behind the gun and the huge shadow vanish up the sudden wall into the darker darkness above. Declan stands there seething and shaking. Pipa stares up where her dad went. The darker darkness slides away south. Declan makes a strangled sound. He sits down with Pipa in her chair in the stern and kisses her awkwardly on the head and says listen pipsqueak I don’t know who those guys are but we are going to find your daddy and make everything right, okay? I
will
fix this. You trust me and I will trust you, okay? They went south so we will go south too. They won’t hurt your dad, okay? Your dad will be okay. I will square this you bet. Anybody home? Can you hear me in there? Pretty soon you and your dad will be sitting together looking at the birds, okay? Stuff happens and you fix it. That’s the way stuff is. No worries, Pippish. We will figure it out, okay? We’ll work together like a good crew does. You and me, okay? No worries. Can you actually talk to birds and stuff? If you can talk to the birds tell them to keep an eye on that ship for us, okay? Like scouting parties. We could use scouts. Jesus fecking Christmas. Okay. This is like a bad storm and we will just stay with the boat and stay cool and work through stuff and make it out on the other side and everything will be okay. Okay? Jesus. Okay?