Calico Pennants (9 page)

Realizing his most immediate concern was finding food and water, Julian took one of the containers to a stream he’d seen yesterday on his way up the mountainside. He filled it only halfway so it would not be too heavy to carry. As for food, he knew he’d be able to fish, but he would need vegetable sustenance as well. Without straying far from the beach or the stream he made another foray into the rainforest, this time searching for edible plants rather than phantom airplanes.

His initial quest was encouraging, for he was able to locate a patch of ripened raspberries and a number of fallen coconuts. He also gathered seeds shed by a kukui tree. For his part, BV collected a cache of pine nuts and spread them out upon a piece of driftwood just up shore from their encampment.

With a single blow, Julian split one of the coconuts upon a rock. Immediately he drank the sweet milk inside, for he was desperately thirsty for anything other than water. He broke open several more shells and scraped the gelatinous fruit from inside the nut, savoring both taste and texture.

Later, he took his mud-stained clothes back to the stream and washed them as best he could in water that tumbled over smooth, slick stones. Back on the beach he spread his laundry over a rock to dry.

Staring at the horizon, he thought: We fear what we desire most. And courage ends up being the ability to confront that which we fear. If we spend our lives living close to the flame, we burn out quickly; but if we never test our courage, the experience of living grows tedious and meaningless.

For in the process of testing courage new dimensions are revealed. Again and again we see ourselves reflected in nature—from the social structures of the smallest insects to the power of the most awesome volcano! We are as patterned as the veins of a leaf. We are thinking cells; we are waves of light. We are the memory of variations. Ultimately, we put our peculiar charge upon existence...

Caught in a philosophic spiral (was it of his own making?), Julian knew he must look away or go hopelessly insane.

Having had recent fishing practice while adrift on board the Scoundrel, albeit with limited success, casting a line was not a totally foreign pursuit for Julian. So, baiting his hook, he walked down to the waterline. There sandpipers and plovers fed upon swarms of gnats, then frantically danced away from the incoming surf. They left lines of three-toed tracks on the wet sand, which were in turn washed away by receding water. Julian took a position on a rock not normally touched by the waves and put out his line.

And having come to the conclusion that his survival might depend upon a singular effort, Buenaventura went alone into the rain forest to search for the particular elements necessary to maintain himself. With a strong beak and powerful jaws he cracked open palm nuts. He sipped nectar and pollen with his tongue and fed upon succulents growing in the salty soil of a windswept beach. There were virtually hundreds of seeds available for him to eat, but he found he also had to ingest large amounts of clay to neutralize toxins contained in some local sources of food.

As evening came Julian cooked three small mullet fish over a driftwood fire. The smoke rose into the air, and the aroma of the frying fish made his mouth salivate. The sensation surprised him, for over time he’d learned to ignore feelings of emptiness and hunger. He split open several more coconuts and collected more raspberries. Feeling a hunger for leafy vegetables, he did not refrain from experimentation, though he had no way of knowing which plants might be edible and which might be poisonous.

Sitting in front of the fire and eating fish right from the skillet, Julian knew that soon he would have to undertake an exploration to determine if the windward side of the island was inhabited. It would not be an easy journey though; that much was obvious by looking at the succession of promontories he would have to traverse. Now he needed rest and fortification. His ordeal at sea had not only sapped his physical strength, it had exhausted him emotionally as well. Having spent only two days as a castaway he was still growing accustomed to the idea of survival. As he finished eating, BV flew onto a perch a few feet away.

“How are you faring?” Julian wanted to know.

“For some of us the rainforest is a hard place to make a living,” concluded the bird.

“Do you like raspberries?” Julian asked. He held out one of the fruits in the palm of his hand. Buenaventura took the offering in his beak. “They’re good, aren’t they?” said Julian.

Once the coals of his cooking fire burned low Julian watched the twilight slowly fade. Darkness grew full, and the pervasive sounds coming from deep within the forest suggested a secret and mysterious population, still unknown. Tonight sleep would not come early, so Julian lay back on the warm sand and watched the stars emerge along the curve of the encompassing dome.

AMIE'S FAVORITE SENSATION was feeling the morning dew on her bare feet. And as the sun climbed above the horizon and began to warm the leeward side of the island, she walked serenely along the velveteen pathway that she had worn over time. With her she carried two handmade baskets in which to place ripened breadfruit and bananas, mangoes, papayas, and the light green, ovid fruits from a mulberry tree. She knew exactly where to find a cluster of mabolo trees, from whose limbs she collected four-inch- round butterfruits. Prolific in season and tasting similar to peaches, Amie considered them a special treat.

From time to time she gathered elements indigenous to the rain forest to make articles necessary for her solitary lifestyle: items such as paper tree bark, from which she fashioned long burning torches; or extra thin bamboo shoots to use as sturdy needles. She collected perfect feathers, which she sharpened with shark’s teeth to make writing quills; and she harvested tumeric root for dye and ink. From the poinciana, which Amie now called ‘flame of the forest,' she collected the long brown seed pods filled with pea-sized nuggets. Along with colorful dried berries, she strung the seeds on braided threads to make necklaces, bracelets, and waistbands. Often she would pick the splendid white plumeria blossoms to wear in her long hair.

But Amie’s survival effort surpassed her acumen as a gatherer; for not half a mile from the place where she made her home, she discovered a long-abandoned, overgrown taro field. Over time and with dedicated labor she managed to reconstitute part of the once productive field into a high yielding farm.

At yet another location she came upon a self-perpetuating sweet potato patch and she successfully transplanted some of the tubers adjacent to the taro field. Year round she grew more than enough of the two distinct roots for her needs.

In mid-afternoon Amie took her nets to the enclosed, pearly green fish breeding pond that she’d reconstructed during her second year as a foundling. Bordered by lava rock, succulents, and a few patches of reeds, fresh water flowed from underground and mixed with ocean tides, allowing a unique system of aqua culture to develop and thrive.

Amie spent long hours diligently studying the food chain in order to maximize a marine harvest. She deduced that bacteria and other microorganisms broke down organic matter into nutrients that were recycled back into the pond. Photosynthesis enabled the phytoplankton and seaweed to use the nutrients for growth. The zooplankton ate these plants, as well as larger fishes. Young, small fish entered the lagoon from the sea through a grate of poles set in the channel that connected the smaller pond to the sea. Grazing on algae, plankton, and small shrimp, the small fishes would grow too large to escape back through the grate into the sea. Amie was able to take many varieties from the pond, including mullet, surgeon fish, goby, scad, and eels. Carnivores such as barracudas and jacks were at the top of the food chain.

She lowered her hand-tied net as she surveyed the familiar surroundings. Tall coconut palms, iridescent when cast against the backdrop of gathering clouds, nearly obscured the volcanic mountain in the distance. The tops of the palm trees flapped like banners in the breeze and glistened like diamond-studded tiaras. Their long, ringed trunks, bulbous at their base in the sand, or shackled by the debris of peeled bark—some charcoal gray, some bleached white—supported splendid botanical corollas. Seedpods looked like swarms of bees.

Behind the palms grew the twisted trunks of a colony of deciduous trees, the entire population shaped by prevailing patterns of wind and light. Here they remained unchallenged by malevolent forces, for no manmade order presumed to impose. Conventional time was easily dismissed.

Billowy clouds promoted expanded self-image and provided a backdrop so one did not forever discount the world of forms. Indeed, such a thing might happen if Amie were to define herself solely within temporal rhythms. South Seas surrealism enclosed this beach, this forest, and this lagoon inside a protective bubble where deep relaxation was not only possible but wholly unavoidable. Amie no longer felt any panic at venturing out-of-body, beyond clouds and mountains, over waves to meet a timeless horizon; overcoming gravity, too, until time itself ceased to have meaning—or perhaps until it began to flow backwards—or until she glimpsed the future—or eternity itself! This environment was pure sweetness. It was a velvet touch upon the skin. With such ease she became lost in the ecstasy.

“The Scoundrel’s on the reef!”

Startled by the voice of a recent acquaintance, Amie’s attention returned to the present as BV swooped down and landed on a nearby rock.

“You keep showing up at the most unexpected moments,” Amie observed through a smile.

“The captain’s out of sorts!”

“How so?” she asked.

“Dysentery,” said the bird woefully.

As Amie cast her net into the pond, BV darted from tree to tree. Attempting to command her attention, he spoke to her in compelling riddles.

Amie listened as he chattered on endlessly about the invalid captain and the Scoundrel. Having taken not a single fish from the pond, she decided she must pull her net from the water at once.

Away from the shore and up a pathway that led over the north-facing promontory, she followed Buenaventura’s course. Through the steamy forest she hiked, knee-deep in soft ferns, a canopy of dracaenas overhead. Delicate orchids grew upon fallen, water-soaked limbs. Red and yellow-leafed crotons, along with prolific stands of torch ginger, marked her line of ascent up the cliff side. And waiting restlessly for her at each turn was the intensely provocative budgie.

Reaching the top of the incline, where the vista spread over inlet and seashore, Amie first noticed the wrecked ship upon the coral reef. Her reaction was not one of joy—or fear. Rather it was one of confusion.

Crouching behind a large rock and surveying the shoreline, she noticed the tarpaulin wrapped round the extending roots of the banyan tree. Upon the yellow sand she observed the charred remains of a fire. Strewn near the shelter were a number of articles: the water tanks; tools; a few pieces of clothing. Amie could barely distinguish two bare feet sticking out of the tent.

After so many years alone, how could she consider not risking contact? Early on (before she’d grown decidedly accustomed to solitude), she would have been glad to come across anybody, for there were times she thought she might literally die of loneliness. Her legacy was one sadly destitute of expression.

Buenaventura perched upon an extending branch very close to Amie’s ear. “There’s an idiot on the beach,” he croaked again.

“Is it a man or a woman?” Amie asked.

“The only man in a forgotten world,” lamented the bird.

“What about the boat?” Amie wanted to know.

“Hopeless,” said BV.

“What’s wrong with it?”

“Bogus carburetors...”

“Can’t they be fixed?” she wanted to know.

“Only Kamehaloha,” said Buenaventura.

“Is that the man’s name?” Amie asked.

“Give me a pine nut!” said the parrot.

Amie continued to watch the castaway from her coverture on top of the promontory, all the while hoping he would come out of his tent and show his face. Growing increasingly excited by the prospect of contact with another human, she also cultivated reticence. What if he was deranged or violent? What if he was the carrier of some appalling, communicable disease?

“Did you also arrive on the boat?” she asked BV.

“Alas, set adrift over uncertain seas!”

“From where did you sail?”

“Captain Cook—what a crook!”

“You mean you came all the way from Hawaii?”

“Aloha... Surf’s up... Through the pipeline...”

“If we’re near the Hawaiian chain...” Amie speculated. “No, that’s impossible! Electra never had enough fuel to stay airborne all the way to Hawaii!”

“This is Electra calling Itasca. We are running on line. Will repeat. Will repeat...”

“Where did you learn that?”

“Merciless life laughs in the burning sun...”

“That’s my poem!” she protested.

Repeating a previous inquiry, BV challenged, “What are you doing here?” Ruffling his feathers and cocking his head, he waited to hear Amie’s reply.

“I told you, I was marooned here a long time ago.”

“He heard the crash, you know,” Buenaventura volunteered.

“Impossible,” said Amie. “That was long, long ago.”

“The Scoundrel’s on the reef!” BV blasted.

“And I arrived here on the wings of a dragonfly,” she said with a playful glint in her eye.

“Impossible!” shrieked the bird.

“No more impossible than you drifting here all the way from Hawaii...”

“Anchor’s gone. Too bad!” BV shook his head and clicked his tongue inside his beak.

“You must understand,” she told the bird, “I’ve been on my own for years and years. I need time!”

“We’re all out of time,” reminded BV.

“Don’t worry,” said Amie, “I will help him. You’ll see my torch in the forest after dark. Then you’ll know I’m on my way...”

BUENAVENTURA flew down to the beach to keep a vigil over Julian, while Amie hiked over the palisade to her home near the great banana grove. BV was not inclined to detail his meeting with Amie to Julian, and even had he been disposed to do so, his companion was in no condition to converse.

Throughout the afternoon Amie felt the lively fluttering of a thousand butterflies in her stomach. Nervous as a schoolgirl, she assessed her bright and youthful face in the mirror above her outdoor, tortoise shell basin.

As twilight cast mountain, grove, and coastline in honeyed hyalescence, she assembled the items she wished to bring for the castaway. Besides a basketful of fruit and flowers, she packed a blanket made of tapa cloth and decorated with her own drawings of tropical images, as well as one of her own frond-woven sun hats. Amie also gathered together the peculiar components for the administering of awa.

She waited for darkness before setting off on her journey. Through the pulsating forest she moved, climbing with little effort to the top of the protected ridge. A glowing torch lighted the way she knew from memory. Her handmade, wood frame backpack rested squarely upon her shoulders, and it was only half an hour before she approached the desolate beach where Julian had landed just three days before.

Buenaventura saw the light from Amie’s torch as she drew near and flew to meet her where the sylvan slopes of the promontory descended toward the shore. Landing on top of her carrier, he admonished her for taking so long. “The captain’s out of sorts,” registered the caretaker.

“I know, dysentery... Don’t worry, I have everything necessary to put him right.”

“He doesn’t look well,” said BV doubtfully.

“You must understand,” she told the parrot, “such a purge is to be expected for one coming out of civilization into a world so undefiled.”

“Kahuna knows best,” BV allowed.

Amie crossed the sand expecting a welcome from the island’s newest tenant. He did not present himself. Stopping near the improvised shelter, and not knowing whether there was really someone inside the tent, she called out hesitantly, “Hello... Is anybody there?”

No response. She again made overture. “I’m here to help,” she said. “No need to remain hidden.”

Still, no reply... What was she to do?

BV perched nearby, and Amie looked to him for advice. “You should go inside,” he declared. “I’m afraid he’s fallen unconscious.”

Amie planted her torch in the sand and approached the sanctuary. It was not her wish to violate anyone’s privacy, but now she feared something was terribly wrong. Just for a moment she was overcome with a sense of panic... What if she had not come in time? What if he was beyond help? Or what if he was already dead? No! Such irony would be too cruel.

Cautiously she drew back the flap and peered inside the tent. By the light of the flickering cresset she observed a middle-aged Caucasian man, prone and looking pallid and quite emaciated. Perspiration covered his forehead, and his purple lips were swollen and cracked. He was shivering. With eyes rolled back, he coughed weakly then muttered something unintelligible. Judging the situation critical, Amie went immediately to his side.

Awa was good when one was exhausted. After laboring day and night—diving, paddling, stooping, pulling—she had taken this cure herself! The awa had to be chewed, and to that end she was obliged to help the invalid. Then the heads of fishes were unwrapped from ti leaf sheaths. A bunch of dead-ripe bananas, some sour cane, and sweet potatoes—ringed in shape and deep red in color—was each presented and blessed. More awa was strained through fibers. Water was added and the dregs were squeezed until there was no fluid left. She poured the vile potion down his throat, and the patient gagged.