Calico Pennants (10 page)

“Sorry for the nausea,” she said. “It’s necessary.”

“My ears are ringing,” he swooned.

“The whistling in your ears is the sound of land shells. It is the roaring resonance of your exile. Now, slip into peace and contentment. Feel the lightness of your being. Roll with the waves of your destiny.”

AT THE SUNRISE ON MAUI, Julian was on familiar ground again. He stared inquisitively at Song Cajudoy as she poured him guava juice. “This one’s on the house,” she said.

“Thanks.” said Julian. He drank down half a glassful immediately. “The taste is luxurious,” he sighed.

“Don’t mention it.”

“I think it’s the sweetness I miss most,” he confided.

The Filipina smiled paradoxically. “Everybody wants to taste sweetness,” she said.

Kamehaloha was lounging at his usual table. Sleepy-eyed, he stared across the water at Lanai Island. Tamara Sly was with him, looking lovely as always.

“Aloha, brother!”

“Hello, Kamehaloha. Hello, Tamara.”

“Are you taking good care of the Scoundrel?” asked the Hawaiian.

“I’m having a little trouble with the carburetors,” Julian related. “Perhaps you can give me some advice.”

Kamehaloha shook his head. “It’s all a matter of balance and flow, Julian. Keep working with them. You’ll master it. I have confidence in you...”

“Thanks, Kamehaloha.”

Tamara crossed her bare legs and her sarong fell away from her knee and thigh. Julian held his breath as she looked at him with limpid eyes and said, “Why didn’t you wait for me in Hilo, Julian?”

“I did wait,” he told her. “I thought you went with Woody.”

“I was coming,” she laughed. “You didn’t give me time!”

“I guess we’re all out of time. Sorry,” he said. And he really was...

Suddenly everything changed. Along with the familiar and comfortable surroundings at the Sunrise, the images of friends faded like shadows in twilight, and Julian found himself exiting his body through a tear duct in the corner of his right eye.

And carrying the weight of longfelt resentment upon scrawny shoulders, he marched to a place near the volcano’s cinder cone, where Polynesians had once performed sacrifices. He knew he must throw off all feelings of bitterness and regret. Kamehaloha called him haole. Perhaps that was appropriate after all.

Deep inside a cave his spirit lover presented him with a wood- carved talisman to wear around his neck; and by the light of a blazing fire she told him they would have great adventures together, hereafter only under the cover of darkness. They did not become intimate in their dreams, but rather their dreams became intimate.

NEXT MORNING Julian awoke long after daybreak. Inside his tent he felt disoriented, as if he’d had too much to drink the night before. Of course that was impossible. There was no alcohol here. He remembered the initial stages of his illness: the waves of nausea, the desperation, fever, and weakness. Apparently the dysentery was over now. Though his stomach still hurt and his muscles ached. Carefully he sat upright. Looking for his shirt, he became aware of a small, carved figure hanging by a braided string round his neck. Of course he had no idea from where it had come. Yet he felt a certain degree of familiarity with the amulet. Then he noticed a basketful of fruit and flowers near the doorway. What was this?

Along with the gift was a short note written on paper- thin bark in red ink:

“
Dear Unfortunate Companion,

Apparently your poor sense of direction rivals my own. Nevertheless, I bid you welcome. When you wake, meet me where the mountain stream flows into the Seven Sisters. The parrot will escort you there.

Amie
”

Excited, Julian scrambled out of his tent. During the night some Good Samaritan had found him in distress and left an offering of friendship, as well as an invitation. Perhaps his exile would soon end.

He took a mango from the basket, peeled it, and began eating. The succulent flesh of the fruit and the sweet juice tantalized his taste buds like no food he’d eaten before. Though he’d not been habituated to sugar in the past, Julian found himself craving sweetness, as a bee deprived of pollen. What might once have seemed insipid now provided the ultimate nourishment. Finishing the mango, he immediately began on passion fruit. After that, star fruit and papayas.

He danced a happy little dance on the warm sand, but quickly realized he was not yet fully recovered from illness. Feeling dizzy, he sat down to reconstruct as best he could the chain of events leading up to this glorious moment. There was the landing. And the dubious plane crash... Evidently BV was fending for himself without difficulty. And what had he eaten that made him so sick? Was it the mullet fish? The berries? Or was it the combination of bitter greens he’d made into a salad?

“Buenaventura! Buenaventura! Where are you?” he called. “Come out of the trees, my friend. Good news! Good news! We’re not alone after all!”

HAVING SPENT HER ENTIRE LIFE with her keeper in Manhattan, the captive one day discovered her wings were never clipped. Taking to delirious flight within the confines of the apartment, she came upon an unexpected reflection. Totally absorbed by the ecstasy of meeting one of her kind, she flew headlong into the harsh reality of the bathroom mirror. Stunned, she collapsed into the basin, a pathetic heap of bones and ruffled feathers. A powerful stream of water from the spigot pummeled her as she fluttered helplessly upon slippery porcelain. Nearly submerged and starting to lose consciousness, she slipped into a long, black tunnel, only to awaken some time later in a splendid place, previously unknown to her. Instinctively she knew she was finally home, but home alone.

Now concealed amidst a crop of cool green ferns she waited impatiently near the massive down-sloping clay field. There she’d observed the blue and yellow macaw twice before, and she knew he must come again to ingest the particular red clay necessary to neutralize food toxins.

True to her prediction he came at last to the mud field. The female watched as he clawed at the ground and dipped his beak into the grit. His head bobbed as he swallowed the clay. He clawed again, ruffled his wings, spread out his tail feathers. When he’d ingested enough of the clay he flew away. Never out of her sight, he landed in an acacia tree. There he began sipping nectar with his tongue from the tree’s yellow flowers. From her perch she flew to meet him.

“It’s about time...” she addressed him.

Surprised to come across another of his kind, he acknowledged, “It’s the nature of this place.”

“Have you always been here? “ she wanted to know.

“Shipwrecked,” he said. “How about you?”

“I once lived in New York City,” she told him.

“What happened?”

“That life went down the drain,” she said.

Buenaventura knew something about abrupt changes and found no need to inquire further as to the means of her arrival. For he felt as if he’d come upon some part of himself that he’d not previously recognized as missing. Mutual destiny became their rite and purpose. “What are you called?” he wanted to know.

“I am Jewel,” she said simply.

“And I am Buenaventura!”

Two spirits had been released from the confinement of a linear world and delivered into one of beauty and bliss—a world made on the first day of Creation for their specific rendezvous. At once theirs was a magisterial relationship, aphoristic since the beginning of time.

Compelled to practice the manifold rituals of courtship, yet understanding all along that ritual must ultimately give way to preordination, they soared above canyons and waterfalls and took harborage from inclement weather inside tree hollows and cliff side rock notches. They explored every demarcation of their new home: its sounds; its smells; its topography. They played the game of flight and pursuit. They cooed and preened, and she slept beneath the warm and protective cover of his wing.

“We don’t need the humans anymore, Buenaventura,” Jewel observed.

“But without us they are probably helpless,” he said.

“What is it about them?”

“They won’t give themselves away. They remain hidden behind artifice.”

“Why?” Jewel wished to know.

“Because they’re frightened of currents and draughts and storms. Over and over again they make themselves empty amidst a world of plenty.”

“But they act so superior,” said Jewel.

“It’s true,” BV conceded. “That’s because they don’t realize that every other species sees through their duplicity.”

CUT OFF by the impenetrable forest and steep mountains, Julian paced up and down the shoreline bitterly muttering to himself about the Scoundrel’s infernal carburetors, about his ineptitude as a sailor, and about the obvious limits of his beachfront encampment. Knowing another was somewhere present on the island, yet having made no contact with his benefactor, only reinforced his sense of isolation to the point of despair. He ate the fruit left for him by Amie, and he fished.

“Buenaventura!”

His outcry tumbled back at him from the wall of the escarpment at the end of the beach. The note left by Amie promised that the parrot would help him locate her, but Julian had not seen the bird for days. Where was he?

In frustration Julian sat on the sand with his back against a rock and looked out to sea. How vast the ocean was! Cast adrift for two weeks without bearing he’d not fully comprehended its enormity. Suddenly he was aware of his diminutive position.

“
Water, water, every where,

And all the boards did shrink;

Water, water, every where,

Nor any drop to drink
.”

Like the Mariner, he’d killed the Albatross, his arrow being default.

No effort at reconciliation was made as Kelly slammed the door on their marriage; no protest lodged as Kirsten ran like a refugee for Seattle; and no rally mounted on his behalf by co-workers in an attempt to save his job. Nor had he the courage to entice Tamara Sly with all her ambidextrous possibilities... Truly a castaway before the fact, Julian had been seduced by a Siren of the Sea then set adrift to pitch and roll with the current. Sucked into the vortex of enigma he was now the prisoner of his own feckless initiative.

AMIE APPOINTED her particular charge to everything within this tropical capsule. Here she was supreme goddess. Yet with the arrival of the man, she realized, a critical plurality had been reached. In time he would compromise her influence, abridge her power. The balance would shift.

It had been three days and still he had not come to her. Perhaps she should not have entrusted the fickle parrot to guide him to her encampment, but from the start Amie knew she could not be the one to approach. She climbed to the top of the promontory and hid herself amidst the rocks and foliage. From her belvedere she watched as he sat, motionless, on the beach, looking out to sea. Perhaps she understood how he was feeling. In time he would come to terms with the fact that there was no escape. The island’s mutable validity would ultimately impose itself upon his attitude. One grew accustomed to abstractions.

I have learned to be my own best friend, thought Amie to herself. Until now I have been all things human to this domain and I have come to cherish the harmony I impart. Would it be selfish to wish for peaceful continuity?

She left her reconnaissance post and walked through the banana grove to the place where the pure waters of the Seven Sisters consoled her uncertainties and replenished her inner beauty. Today she bathed in the last of the descending pools, for the water in this pondlet was the warmest of the cascade.

ON THIS PACIFIC ATOLL loneliness synthesized its own peculiar sound—one that emanated from deep within Julian’s temperament. First perceived as distant thunder, these reverberations flowed up from his solar plexus and into his chest. They rattled his rib cage and surrounded his heart. Not a single drop of replenishing rain moistened his sunburned, parched lips.

And had Amie not come to him in his time of desolation and illness, suicide might now be a serious consideration. Indeed, what a pathetic legacy his human bones would make! Julian took up a handful of sand and sifted the white granules through his open fingers, and it occurred to him that each falling grain defined the retreat of sovereign possibilities. If only this friend called Amie would reveal herself...

The full moon rose behind him and cast its glow upon the crests of the incoming waves. Stars swirled overhead, while the tide ebbed and flowed to incomprehensible rhythms. In a single breath Julian exhaled everything he’d once assumed true.

AMIE lay on her inflatable life raft bed, the same rubber raft she’d salvaged long ago from the wreckage of the Electra. Now, she seldom thought about the crash—or about her airplane. Not inclined to retrace her steps, Amie focused intently upon the present. She contemplated the yellow moon in the indigo sky; she bathed herself in the sentient breeze; she watched geckoes climb bamboo curtains half-lowered on the windward side of her structure.

Yes, it was a beautiful tropical night, but Amie was restless. Naked, she tossed and wrangled beneath her woven mat. It was a night filled with fantasies; torpid dreams; forgotten lust; fires cooled by loss of polarity, then suddenly, surprisingly rekindled; pleasures abandoned for the sake of emotional survival, now precipitously recalled.

Tonight Amie was aware of her body. Try as she might she could not relax. She ran her hands over her warm stomach, felt the fullness of her breasts, followed the lines of her waist and hips. Her inhalations grew deeper and deeper. In the darkness Amie self-consciously touched her femininity and felt the humid warmth of her first menstruation since coming to paradise.