The Raft: A Novel (28 page)

Later, once I was able to think back on it (
Bang! Crash! Bang! Don’t look right. Look left
), I knew my brother had given me a warning of some kind. I asked how he knew. He said he didn’t know what I meant. He didn’t remember saying anything, and we never brought up that weird, shitty day ever again. It took me a while to work my way through the events of that day—reach any kind of firm resolution—but I found myself listening to my brother all the time. The more I listened, the more
sense
he started to make. He’d still babble and digress, but I never thought of wuh-wanting to run away. I’d play all day in the sun, and later, after meeting with my brother, would talk about my day a little differently, fill him in, make him part of it. I was no longer smug about it. We became a team. I became his eyes and ears in the world, giving him reports on the working world—what I had seen and heard and figured out about life in the light—and he’d report back on what he’d seen and heard and figured out about life in the dark. In that way, as was always meant to be, we got the whole gig covered.

The world was a funny place around that time. There were the riots. The bank bombings. Six hundred angry people crashed through the front doors of the Gausen Telecommunication Tower and trashed the offices one floor at a time until they reached the top floor, burst through the CEO’s office door and threw that old Carl Gausen guy off the rooftop of his own empire.

My father was brought home late that night by one of his friends. His head was bleeding and he was hobbling like he’d been in a fight. I tried to find out what had huh-
huh
-happened but my mother told me to go to my room while she grabbed the med-kit and cleaned his cuts in the bathroom.

Later, when the footage came out, I thought I saw my father between those tower-stormers, but I told myself it wasn’t, that it was just someone who looked like him. To this day I’m not really sure. My brother, on the other hand, had nothing to say about it. He didn’t even watch. All he said when I came back to my bed that night were two words:
Bad fruit.

Then he turned over and went to sleep.

After that, more people came to our house, and I watched them from the door of my room. My mother sat on my father’s lap in his armchair, listening to what these strangers had to say, but something was different about these later meetings. My father was less vocal, let others do the talking. One night he and my mother came into our bedroom to talk to us about something important. My brother and I just sat in our beds and listened. My father said that we’d be leaving. It was buh-
buh
-buh-best for us all if we didn’t live in our house anymore. My mother was rubbing his back, nodding and smiling at us.

There are people who want to own us
, he said.
They’re everywhere. Sometimes they’re even people we think we like. But we have to be careful, because they’re really trying to control us, and the best way to control someone is to first get them to like you. We see these people on TV and in magazines. Sometimes we meet them in the street. But we need to leave because we believe in something better, don’t we, boys? We believe in freedom.

He said we’d be on a ship for a few weeks. We’d be there with our closest friends and family. I asked where we’d be going and he said,
An island. There’s a beautiful island owned by one of these bad people. It’s a floating island. One of our dearest friends saw it, and he knows where it’s going. So we’re going to find it and we’re going to take it from him. That’s where we’ll live.

I could barely contain my excitement. An island! Juh-juh-just like in the movies! But when I turned to share the moment with my brother, I saw he was looking back at my parents with these scared, scared eyes. At the time, I didn’t get it. I mean, we’d live with our friends and float around the world, going wherever we wanted and doing whatever we wanted. No stupid school. No pollution. No problems.

My father saw his alarmed look.
Don’t worry kiddo
, he said.
There’s plenty of shade on the island.

Then my parents left the bedroom arm-in-arm and closed the door behind them.

Two weeks later we were on the ship. It was an old ship, but enormous. My parents were excited that day. I ran on board to find our cabin, and as always, bagged the top bunk. The lights of the cabin were kept dim, the curtains of our little window remained drawn and the door stood only slightly open. The first night, everyone ate dinner in the Mess Hall. (Except my brother—he ate his meals in the cabin. He could tolerate electric light, but he’d become kinda solitary.) I recognised a few people from our neighbourhood. Kids from our street, a coupla teachers. A local security guard, my father’s mechanic, the Indian from the corner shop. And a few others I only knew by face. Anyway, everyone seemed optimistic. Friendly. Helpful.

Everyone but the captain.

The captain was a raggedy old man, built like a German Panzer, and he never smiled at anyone. I’d pass him in the c-c
-cuh
-corridors and he’d look at me as if he was planning on putting me between two slices of bread. I asked my mother about him and she said he was one of the most respected men in the group; I should always do what he said. Not that he told me to do anything—didn’t speak to me at all, actually—but still, he knew I was there. I reckoned he didn’t like me too much, which didn’t bother me. He was just this beat-up old bastard with knives in his belt (he always had knives on him), and when I asked my father about those knives, my father only said,
When you’re out in the wild, knives have all kinds of purposes. Cutting ropes and gutting a fish or peeling an apple. A knife’s like an explorer’s palm-plate, son.

Well, that ship sailed the ocean for three weeks, and by then, you can imagine, people were getting impatient.
Where’s this island?
everyone was asking. The excitement was gone, the thrill—and then there was this one night when my friend’s father’s tiles slipped off his ol’ roof—if you know what I mean—and he began flinging tables and saying we’d run out of food, which scared the shit outta everyone. A bunch of guys had to take him into another room, calm him down.

It rained a lot, so we were stuck in our cabins, with nothing to do. Sometimes we’d get into a storm and everything would fall this way and that, and we’d have to pinball ourselves against walls just to get to the bathroom.

But then, one morning, we heard someone shouting from the deck. I was on my bed, peeling an apple with a knife I’d nicked from the kitchen. I saw this group of people rushing past our cabin doorway. I hopped off my bed, told my brother to come see. He was on his bunk below, saying it was too b-b-bright out there. I said that was fine, I’d tell him everything when I got back.

By the time I got to the deck there was this crowd of people leaning over the rails, whistling and shouting and cheering. I pushed my way through them and grabbed the rail.

The island.

My first thought was that it was unusual-looking, protruding from the ocean like a gigantic green nose. Someone yelled they could see the wake in the water, and that the island was moving, definitely moving, and everyone cheered.

It wasn’t just any island. It was our island.

We’d made it.

It was just in time too, because that table-flinging father hadn’t been far off course; we’d almost completely run out of provisions. That night everyone got a small portion of the last remaining food and we simply trailed behind the island at a fixed distance.

Father said he and my mother had to have a meeting with the others. The island was owned by a member of the most powerful company in the world. We’d have to approach carefully. These big shots wouldn’t give up their toys without a fight, father said, but luckily we were in the business of fighting too.

The next day the ship pulled up behind the island. The men brought out the secret stash of guns and weapons we’d had on board all along. They lined up along the rail as the ship came in. The rest of us watched through the murky windows of our cabins. The closer we got, though, the stranger the place appeared. The trees were perfectly straight and evenly lined up like an oversized fence. Behind the trees we could mmm-muh-make out a mess of dark and thick jungle, and on top of the hill, there were a couple of house-like structures.

I gotta say, even then it didn’t look as formidable as we had been expecting, but nobody said a thing. Nobody cared. Nobody gave a shit what it looked like. We were all silent now, just the s-s-s-sound of the waves crashing against the sides and the steady drone of the engine, like a big sleeping thing. Then the engine was shut down, and we drifted closer, guns pointed and aimed. We honestly believed we were ready for anything.

We pulled right up to beach without a hitch. That was the easy part. The ship touched the back of the island and the anchors were thrown on shore. A bridge was unscrewed, lowered onto the sand, and the men with the guns went down first, though they were hardly trained soldiers. Most of them could barely hold a gun. There was my English teacher, Mr. Harris. He couldn’t seem to decide whether to keep pushing up his glasses or keep his finger on the trigger. Another was my neighbour, Mr. Caldwell, clutching a big black handgun like it was a kid’s water pistol. In front of them all was Captain Knife-Pants, a cigarette hanging from the corner of his mouth, walking ashore with the anxious toddle of a man looking for the nearest bar.

The rest of us began to leave our cabins. We moved onto the deck. My brother was wrapped in his black hood, fully clothed and gloved, even though it must have been about ninety d-d-duh-duh-degrees out there. My mother held him close. We made our way to the bridge and down onto the beach—the white strip where the men were already standing in a huddle, throwing their barrels up in every direction, ready for action. But nothing happened. No cannons, no armed guards running out of the jungle.

For a while everyone simply stood together, wondering what to do next. We ventured forward and saw signs on the trees warning if we trespassed we’d be putting ourselves in extreme danger, but this lot took it as a bloody invitation to go hunting.

So into the jungle we went.

The women and children were told to wait on the beach but none of us wanted to be separated. I suppose they could have gone back on the ship, but no one did. Instead, we walked into the jungle together, gun barrels pointing the way. I was walking next to my brother and he didn’t say a thing all the way. My mother and father stayed out in front.

We walked for about ten minutes, and then, as you’ve most likely guessed, we saw the fruit. Bur-bur
-big
juicy fruits hanging from the trees like colourful lanterns. Something for every taste.

Needless to say, everyone dove right in. Everyone that is except my father, he wasn’t ready to relax. He had his gun aimed into the dark crannies of the jungle, still cautious, still worried about being ambushed by a hidden enemy.

I was about to grab an enormous orange when I felt my brother’s hand on my shoulder. I turned to him and his earlier words clanged into my brain, the way they had on the street with Joey and Ben:
bad fruit.

I nodded, trusting my other half, my eyes in the dark, and watched the rest of it unfold. I felt some concern, but mainly I was curious. People clambered up trees and stuffed the fruit in their mouths. It was the first fresh food they’d had in weeks and nobody wasted a moment. Everyone began chewing and mashing it down, and juice ran like small waterfalls from their chins. Eating and grinning and looking like a bunch of loons. Guns fell to the ground, people were laughing, hugging and kissing each other, saying they were home, they were
home!

Everyone was eating except for my brother, my father and me. I asked what was happening, why everyone was so happy, and for the first time my father had an uncertain look on his face, as if he too didn’t know. I mean, there’s a cuh-cuh-cuh-craving, and then there’s
craving!
Even my mother was eating and laughing and bouncing around. The three of us who hadn’t touched the fruits expected the group to come to their senses at any minute, but they wouldn’t. Even after they’d finished gorging out, they were still duh-dancing and lifting each other in the air, singing praises and hallelujahs.

My father told them to keep their voices down,
We have to be careful
, but nobody took notice of him. He grabbed my mother’s arm.
What on earth’s gotten into you, sweetheart?
She threw her arms around him and planted kisses across his face. He pulled her head back and told her to snap out of it,
What the bloody hell, Jane?
but she wouldn’t. Then my mother turned and kuh-k-kissed some other man, full-mouthed kissing with tongues, and then another man. My father tried to pull her away, yelling for her to stop.

This went on for a few minutes before everyone
did
calm down. The laughter died, the kissing and hugging, and now puh-puh-people were ambling slowly in small circles with blank looks on their faces as if a thick mist had come down, shrouding them.

I remember my father panting, resting his hands on his knees, saying at least it was all over,
whatever the hell it was.
He took the opportunity to tell the men to pick up their guns and keep moving, but they still wouldn’t listen. He shouted at them and slapped a few of them in the faces; they stood frozen in some self-induced trance, haunting the little clearing.

That’s when things went from bad to worse.

Everyone did come out of the trance—Mr. Harris, the captain, my mother, the soccer kids and rest of them—but now there was a different look in their eyes. It wasn’t joy or relief. Nope. Now they all looked duh-duh-deranged. That’s probably the right word.
Deranged.
My father shook my muh-
muh
, my
mother,
and told her to come around,
Come around baby,
but her gaze turned on him and all he could see in her eyes was fear. Fear like he’d never seen in anyone before, and it sent him reeling backwards in shock. A deep, deep panic grew and grew in her until she was screaming and she held up her hands and her hands were like gnarled claws. The vein on the side of her head began to throb and throb. Her neck tightened, her teeth began to grind. Each person began to turn on the other, snatching, screaming. I grabbed my brother and we jumped into a bush. My father fumbled for his gun and didn’t know where to point: his neighours, his friends, his
wife
?