Horizons (20 page)

“Oh, lay off, guys,” Kelly told them. “This could be interesting. Lord knows it’s got to be better than counting flies on the wall.” She scooted closer to Alita and held out her hand. “Do mine first.”

Alita studied Kelly’s palm very seriously for several seconds. “This,” she intoned, tracing a line on Kelly’s hand, “is your life line. Very long. Your love line is broken only once, which probably indicates your divorce from Brad. These two marks below your lit
tl
e finger are marriage lines, the lower one being your marriage to Brad, which would lead me to believe you will marry once more.” She curved Kelly’s thumb into her palm and counted the creases formed by the lower knuckle. “Four, one faint and three strong, which could mean one miscarriage and three full-term babies.”

“I’ve already had the miscarriage,” Kelly said.

“Then you will have three more natural children, not counting any you may adopt or otherwise inherit.”

“What about me?” Blair asked curiously. “What does my future hold?”

Again, Alita took a moment to study Blair’s palm. “Your life line has a narrow arc to it, which says you are a private or shy person, as a rule. You need time to yourself to revive your energies. Your head line is deep, with a long curve, to indicate that you are an intellectual who is very creative and good at communication, possibly in the field of writing.”

“Oh, my gosh!” Blair gushed. “I’ve always dreamed of someday writing a book. While I was in Australia, I did a lot of research on a possible idea I have for one.”

“If we ever get rescued, you’ll have one heck of a storyline,” Gavin pointed out. “All about our island adventure.”

Alita went on with the reading. “Your love line is very strong. You love deeply. I hope you love Anton very much, for I see only one marriage line.” She curled Blair’s thumb over and added, “I also see five children for you.”

Blair grimaced. “Five? Are you sure? Anton is not going to be thrilled to hear that. Three is pushing it, for him and our budget.”

Alita gave a definite nod. “Five. But perhaps your money problems will ease once your first book is published, no?”

“This is a bunch of bunk!” Zach declared.

“But entertaining,” Kelly countered. “I want to hear what she has to say about you, Zach.”
He frowned, and she wheedled, “Oh, come on. If it’s all in fun, where’s the harm? L
et her see your palm.” Reluctantl
y, he held it forth for Alita’s perusal.

“Your life line is strong, long, and widely arced. You like being around people and are very creative. Your love line is also long and deep, and when you give your heart to someone it is for always. I see two marriage lines. Your head line indicates that you are very good with facts, numbers, and logical thinking. Ah, see here? There is a three point fork in it, which means that you are exceptionally intelligent.” She folded his thumb over. “You will father four children in your lifetime.”

“This life or the next?” he jeered.

Alita smiled. “This one, and may they all be smartasses, like you.”

Next, she reached for Gavin’s hand. “Your life line is strong, but it has a few problem areas which signify illnesses or injuries. Your heart line is shallow. That usually means you hold back your affections, or do not love as deeply as most people. You are going to have to work hard to achieve the success you want. You will marry or be involved in
serious relationships three times, and have two children along the way.”

“What hocus-pocus bull!” he grumbled. “And what about you? What does your own palm say about your life? Or is that a big dark secret?”

“I, of course, am very talented and creative. My life line is strong and wide. But like you, my love line is lightly grooved. I do not trust enough to give my heart fully to anyone, yet I will probably marry four times and have one child.”

“Too bad Earl isn’t here. It would be interesting to hear how his palm reads, wouldn’t it?” Blair commented.

“Probably like a murder novel,” Kelly said with a shiver. “Or a nightmare.”

“He can’t be sane, to prefer being out in this storm,” Zach stated flatly. “Look at it. The wind is blowing so hard that some of the trees are bent nearly in half and are being stripped of their leaves.”

Kelly peered out. The rain was coming down sideways in thick sheets. The wind was howling, in a loud mournful bellow. Loose debris, mostly foliage and branches, were whipping around as if caught in a giant blender. The storm seemed to be getting progressively worse with each passing hour, with no let-up in sight.

M
uch later, in the middle of the night, they were awakened by a huge thud, which literally shook the earth beneath them.

“What was that?” Kelly wondered aloud. In the wavering light of their little fire, she scanned the rock ceiling overhead, relieved not to find any menacing cracks or signs that it might be ready to cave in on them.

“My guess would be that a tree just blew down,” Zach answered. “Somewhere close.”

“It must have been a big one, to make the ground shake like that,” Alita surmised warily.

Now, along with the moan of the wind and the steady pounding of the rain, they could hear a variety of mysterious creaks and groans from outside the cave, though they couldn’t see a thing in the black-as-pitch night.

“This is terrible, hearing all these ominous sounds and not being able to tell what is making them,” Kelly said. “It reminds me of those slumber parties we used to have as teens, where we’d sit up all night and scare the peanut butter out of each other by telling ghost stories.”

“We did the same thing around the campfire at scout camp,” Zach admitted. “Eerie tales of ghouls and goblins and escaped convicts on the loose. We’d frighten each other simple and think it was great fun.”

“I should have figured you for a boy scout,” Gavin commented. “And to make it even more realistic, we’ve got our very own real-life murderer wandering around out there somewhere, probably trying to concoct ways to bash in our heads.”

“More likely trying to find a way to breathe water,” Blair argued. “It’s still raining cats and dogs. You should have built an ark instead of a raft, Gavin.”

“I’m wide awake now,” Alita complained.

Kelly nodded. “Me, too, but I’d rather not exchange ghost stories tonight, if you don’t mind. This weather has me jittery enough as it is. Let’s talk about something more cheerful.”

“Like what?” Blair yawned. “The bedtime fairy tales I read to my children?”

Kelly shrugged. “I don’t know. Old movies? Good books we’ve read. Whatever. Anyt
hing to take our minds off the s
torm.”

“Okay, I’m game,” Zach surprised her by saying. “Name the seven dwarves.”

“You’ve got to be kidding!” Gavin scoffed.

“I’m as serious as a grave,” Zach assured him. “My daughter and I used to do this sort of thing all the time.” For five fairly intelligent adults, it took them considerable time and mental effort to finally name all seven. They kept forgetting about Happy. Even when Zach finally recalled him, the others were skeptical. “Are you sure his name was Happy? I don’t remember him.”

Next, they recalled all of Santa’s reindeer. That accomplished, they went on to list the items for the Twelve Days of Christmas, and nearly wound up in an argument over whether the maids were milking or dancing, and whether the geese or the swans were a’laying.

Then Kelly suggested something more challenging. “Name all the Waltons.”

“From the T.V. show?” Alita asked. “How many kids did they have, anyway?”

“A whole slew of them,” Gavin replied. “Plus the old couple and the Mom and Dad.”

“Seven or eight, I think,” Blair said. “I remember three girls and at least four boys.”

At length they remembered all of them, though no one could recall the grandparents being called anything but Grandma and Grandpa. They even recalled Ike, who ran the general store. But the stumper was remembering the two old-maid sisters who still brewed the family “recipe” in their kitchen. Nobody had a clue, and they finally gave up, though Blair swore not knowing would drive her nuts until she finally thought of their names.

In retaliation, she said, “List the seven seas.”

“Which seven?” Alita wanted to know. “There must be hundreds.”

“The seven referred to in books and in songs,” Blair clarified. “As in, ‘he sailed the seven seas.’ ”

“Of course, Miss Trivial Pursuit already knows the answers to t
his one,” Gavin presumed correctl
y.

They tried, but eventual
ly had to worm the answer out
of Blair before going on to the seven wonders of the world. After a series of movie titles, song lyrics, and famous actors,
they tired of the game and settl
ed down to try and sleep again.

Kelly, punch-drunk from lack of sleep and trivial overload, yawned and called out, “Goodnight, John Boy.”

Alita giggled. “Sleep tight, Mary Ellen.”

Zach got into the act. “ ’Night, Ben.”

“Back at you, Jim-Bob,” Gavin grumbled.

“Darn it, you guys!” Blair groused. “Now you’ll have me trying to remember those two old ladies again!”

As one, the others chorused, “Goodnight, Elizabeth!”

Chapter 20

A
couple of hours past dawn, the storm stopped as suddenly as if someone had flipped an electric switch. The rain quit, the sun shone brightly, the wind ceased so completely that not a leaf stirred. The small tribe of temporary cave dwellers ventured out into the open for the first time in twenty-four hours.

“Thank God that’s over and done!” Kelly exclaimed, turning he
r face to the clear blue sky. “I
was starting to develop claustrophobia.”

“But it might not be,” Zach said. “This may be just a short respite, the eye of the storm, with more to come.” Alita gazed about, at the cerulean sky stretching as far as the eye could see, at their rain-washed sun-dappled surroundings. “Couldn’t be. There’s not a cloud in sight. No storm brewing on the horizon. No haze. Just hot, glorious sunshine.”

“And no breeze whatever,” Zach pointed out. “Which is odd in itself, as if we’ve been locked inside a vacuum.”

“Or the center of a typhoon,” Blair agreed. “If it’s large enough, we could have hours of calm weather before getting hit by the backside of the hurricane.”

Zach nodded. “In which event, we’d better stick close to the cave today. Just for safety’s sake.”

In scouting their immediate area, they discovered the storm had done more damage than they’d suspected. Numerous limbs, branches, and whole trees had been felled. Most of the flowers that had been in bloom were now denuded, as were some trees, many of which now
sported windblown seaweed in place of leaves. Several dead birds were strewn about amid the debris. But the strangest sight were the fish—swept ashore by the gale and deposited
willy-nilly three-quarters of a mile inland, some landing on rocks, others high in treetops, like some type of bizarre
ceremonial decoration.

“This is downright weird!” Gavin declared.

“Weird or not, it’s food. Manna from heaven,” Zach insisted. He turned to Blair. “Have you ever studied how
to dry meat in strips?”

“Like jerky?” she asked. At his nod, she said, “I’ve read abou
t it, but I’ve never tried it. I
think it needs to be smoked over a fire, and salted.”

Alita wrinkled her nose. “Sounds like a lot of work to me, especially when we already have fresh food to eat.”

“I suppose so, but I hate to think of all this food going to waste, particularly the pigeons. They’re hard enough to kill with that slingshot, and these have all but landed in our laps.”

“Then let’s preserve the pigeon meat, and bake a couple
of
fish for dinner,” Kelly suggested. “I can’t say fish jerky sounds very appealing to me, except as a last resort.”

“To me either,” Gavin granted, “but it might be a good thing to take with me on the raft.”

“Okay, I'll try it,” Blair agreed. “But the rest of you have to help.”

Other than what had been stored inside the cave, there was no dry firewood to be had. There was, however, plenty of available seaweed, without having to trudge down to the shore to get it. Kelly also discovered that, as the sun dried small pools of saltwater atop the lava rock, it left behind a deposit of salt, ready and waiting to be harvested.

Their project was soon underway. Together they toted a dozen big flat rocks inside the cave, on which to lay the meat to dry. They cleaned fish, plucked birds, sliced the meat into thin strips. All that remained was the actual smoking and drying by the time the weather began to reverse once more. They moved their venture indoors, lest their providential harvest be waterlogged or blown away, and were soon inundated with the fishy odor.

“Sheesh! This must smell worse than a dockside tuna cannery!” Kelly declared.

“It’s making my eyes water,” Alita complained.

“If there are any cats hiding away on the island, they’ll show up at any moment,” Zach said in a nasal voice, the result of trying to breathe solely through his mouth and not his nose.

Gavin echoed that. “Yeah, the nine-lives dinner bell has definitely been rung!”

Blair, declining comment, bolted for the cave entrance, one hand clamped to her mouth. Much to her surprise, Kelly followed suit within seconds. Zach found them hunched against the outer wall, pale and shaky. He urged them inside again before they got completely drenched. “Sit by the entrance, where you can get some fresh air and still stay dry. Now that we’ve got the gist of how to do this, Gavin, Alita, and I can handle it from here.”

Alita cocked a sassy brow at him. “Thank you so much for volunteering me, Zach. It’s so gallant of you.”

Zach returned the arch look. “You’re so very welcome, my dear Alita. Now kindly can the lip and flip. The bird,” he added, when she just stood there. “It’s burning. Turn it over. Flip it.”

Alita ignored the charring pigeon long enough to flip Zach the bird, in fluent sign language.

T
he backside of the storm hit with a vengeance, dumping torrents of rain while the wind wailed like a demented banshee. It was as if all the furies of heaven and hell had been unleashed en masse.
Trees crashed earthward, sand-
littered debris hurled past the cave entrance in a endless, deadly whirl. Even large rocks were tossed about, as if they were weightless bits of dandelion fluff. The earth trembled in awe of this mighty assault. The very walls and floor of the cave seemed to echo this quaking, as did the people huddled within.

“Dear Lord! I’ve never seen anything like this!” Kelly exclaimed in fearful wonder. “And look at the fire, and the lanterns.” She and the others watched in anxious amazement as the madly flickering flames inclined in a severe angle toward the entrance, akin to a plant being drawn toward sunlight.

“It’s as if all the air is being sucked out of the cave,” Blair noted.

“There is definitely an outward draw,” Zach concurred, “but I don’t think there’s any danger that we’ll suffocate, if that’s what is worrying you. Nor, regardless of the unstable sensations, do I think the cave will collapse. To be out in the storm, with no protection whatever, would be a far greater peril.”

“Makes me wonder how Earl is faring,” Kelly said.

“If he’s lucky, he’s not airborne or clinging to a treetop right now,” Gavin stated with a smirk.

“Like the Flying Nun?” Blair suggested.

“More like the Flying Felon,” Zach quipped.

“For all we know, he could be a phantom by now,” Alita contributed on a more serious note. “A real one—as in dead, deceased, departed.”

“I wouldn’t wish that on anyone, not even him,” Kelly said. “Especially not him, at this point in his life. Maybe, given enough time, he’ll see the error of his ways and repent.”

Blair nodded in accord. “And escape having to spend eternity in hell.”

Gavin groaned. “Oh, stop with the evangelistic moralizing. It’s starting to feel like a tent revival in here!”

“Not such a bad idea, under the circumstances,” Zach commented, staring out at the fierce storm. “I think all of us would like to feel a little closer to God at this moment. Not necessarily face-to-face close, mind you, but assured that He’s watching over us.”

T
he storm finally wore itself out several hours later, and everyone heaved a grateful breath of relief. They also abandoned the cramped, smelly cave as quickly as possible, eager to be back on what they now considered home turf, beneath the old banyan tree.-The return trek was almost as long and hazardous as their trip to the cave had been. This time, they had to skirt fallen trees, heaps of branches and rubble, and sodden quagmires.

Again, they stopped at the pool to fill their coffee-pot/canteen, only to find that the water was strewn with leaves and murky with sand and lava grit. It would take a day or two to settle properly. The water pouring from the spout Zach had rigged was much clearer, however, saving them the necessity of filtering it through a cloth sieve.

Upon arriving at their previous haven, they discovered,
to their united dismay, that it was in similarly sad shape. Limbs littered the small clearing, as did a variety of dead and injured birds and bats. The rocks surrounding the fire pit had been scattered. The wind had ripped away a good portion of the leafy overhead bower, leaving half of the original area now uncovered and the ground underfoot soggy. Fortunately, the section s
ti
ll protected was spacious enough to accommodate them in comfort, once they cleared away the clutter.

There was no sign of Earl, or that he had been back here. Nor had they seen him along the way. A quick survey of the beach gave no evidence of him, either. It did reveal that the storm had completely dismantled their SOS and signal fire, which was disheartening, though not entirely unexpected.

When Gavin went to check on his raft, they got their first clue as to what might have become of their missing castaway. Gavin came running, his face flushed with anger. “It’s gone! The raft is gone!”

Zach’s primary response was, “Are you sure you looked in the right place? The storm destroyed a lot of trees and landmarks we’ve become accustomed to.”

“I’m sure.”

“Could it have blown away?” Kelly asked.

“Or floated off?” Blair added. “The tide must have risen far beyond its normal mark.”

“No,” Gavin fumed. “I checked the tide mark, and it isn’t anywhere near the spot. And I doubt the wind carried it off, or there would be pieces of it scattered everywhere. As it is, I can’t find so much as a splinter of the raft or the oar I made, but the rocks I used to anchor it are still there, all pushed to one side in a nice tidy pile—almost as if someone stacked them there on pur
pose. Someone by the name of…
”

“Earl!” came the united cry.

Immediately, Kelly thought better of their conclusion. “Surely not! Surely he wouldn’t be dumb enough to attempt setting off on the raft in the middle of s
uch a terrible storm. That…
that would be suicidal!”

“Besides,” Alita cut in, “he was the only one of us who wanted to stay on the island. Why would he decide to leave now?”

“Because, to use his own words, he was as much a prisoner here as he would have been if the plane hadn’t crashed,” Zach explained, his expression grim. “As for leaving in the middle of the storm, I presume that’s
precisely what he did. It’s enti
rely possible that when the eye hit and the weather cleared, Earl thought the storm was over and it was safe to light out on the raft. He’d have been in a hurry. He wouldn’t have wanted us to catch him in the act.”

“Which would have made him all the more desperate and impetuous,” Kelly deduced.

“Damn!” Gavin cursed, pounding one doubled fist into the other. “Damn that man to hell and back!”

“Which is where he’s at now, no doubt,” Blair said solemnly. “I truly doubt anyone could have survived a tempest of that magnitude on a rickety little craft such as that. Why, the waves must have been several times as high as the raft was long!”

“We may be wrong,” Zach told them, offering another scenario. “Earl might still be holed up somewhere on the island, with or without the raft. If he did take it, he might be hiding it to keep Gavin from setting sail and bringing back help. Or he could be biding his time, waiting for the sea to calm before leaving on it himself.”

Gavin considered this. “Maybe, but other than searching the entire island inch by inch, how would we find him, preferably before he decides to launch the thing or destroy
it? The rain and wind have washed away any tracks he would have made.”

“There is no easy way,” Zach stated. “We can search, we can keep our eyes and ears open for any sign of him, but there’s little else we can do.”

“I hope he did set off on the raft,” Alita declared adamantly. “I’d rather he be drowned and out of our hair once and for all, than skulking about on the island with us.”

Kelly nodded. “You do have a point there, Alita. But, either way, we are still without a raft.”

T
hey started all over again, practically from scratch. In fact, for two days, until the wood dried out, they couldn’t even light a campfire, though they still had the coconut oil lamps for light at night. Until then, they were back to eating fruit, a lot of which was now lying about on the ground—squashed, bruised, but within easier reach. While the women set the camp to rights, Zach and Gavin began work on a new raft. They even found something constructive for Sydney to do. Unlike the adults, the tot thought it was great fun to scoop the sand and dead bugs from the pool and toss the muck aside.

On the third day, Zach decided to make a return trip to the cave, on the off-chance that Earl had taken up residence there after they’d abandoned the site. “I also want to take another look around that entire area,” he told them. “It’s struck me odd, ever since we first discovered it, that we never found a rifle. You’d think that Japanese soldier would have had one, wouldn’t you? He was wearing his uniform, complete with sword, pistol, and helmet. So where is the rifle he should have been carrying?”

From the start, Earl had not only claimed the pistol, but the helmet as well. He’d been wearing it the day of the
storm, on the way to the cave. It was gone now, too, along with Earl. Presuming Earl has set off on the raft, the others figured he must have taken the helmet with him, possibly employing it as a container for fresh water. Likewise, they assumed he’d used his shirt or trousers or something that would serve as a makeshift pouch in which to carry a store of food—for surely even Earl, hunter that he’d professed to
be, would not have sailed without those simple but essential provisions.