The female on the branch next to him must have been thrilled, because she jumped down onto the coral sand and turned her wet, droopy tail feathers aside. To his excitement, she exposed her pink, puckered backside to his view. He belly flopped onto her, dug his toenails into her back feathers for traction, and tried to give her the most satisfying, if instantaneous, butt bump she had ever had. From that point forward, they had eyes only for each other. They cuddled and butt bumped throughout the morning, intermittently preening their feathers dry.
Later, they flew off together and began circling two sparsely forested bird islets off the colorful fringing reef nearby. These bird islets had their beginnings in the sunken coral forests along the reef’s edge. Here, parrot fish incessantly crunched the coral and excreted the sand. It later washed up, along with storm-broken chunks of coral, onto the reef flat. Hundreds of storms later, small sandspits began to form here and there. They were forced to migrate up and down the reef by one storm or another until, by happenstance, a seed or two was blown or dropped or pooped out of some wandering bird’s butt and something began to grow.
By that time, seabirds resting before their next foray into the multiple feasts that punctuated the surrounding waters had pooped and fertilized the growing islet well. The trees took root and the sands held firm. Then more and more birds landed, and the process accelerated. And there they were with their expansive white beaches, green clumps of shrubs and trees, and hundreds of birds of different kinds — flying and gliding and landing and taking flight.
Thus, the birds and the islets of the sandy atoll grew in harmony. This was not lost on the humans, who allowed them to thrive in their own realm. When the birds flew over the kidney-shaped island at the southeast edge of the atoll, they observed numerous females picking up leaves, branches, and immature breadfruit, casualties of the evening’s storm. Then the females carried these remnants of the wind toward the interior of the island, where broad-leafed fruit trees with bunches of green-and-yellow fruits grew, and discarded them in piles.
The islanders had studied the island-forming process and, like the birds before them, had mastered it. They protected the bird islets by enforcing customs that prevented indiscriminate bird killing and the eating of eggs during the seasons they bred. The islanders studied the birds and used this knowledge to fish more successfully. They referred to the Chief and his kind as the irooj of all birds, because of their size and because they took their tribute from the other birds by making them regurgitate their catch.
As the Chief and his companion glided over the island that morning, he hardly noticed that the women who looked up at them were amused by his inflated, bright red gular sac. They pointed at him and called out to the others to look. They all sang out, “Lale ej rōrōñ!”
As the two birds glided higher, they gained perspective on the groups of flappers coming and going. Various fishing feasts sprung up here and there, around the agitated, white-waved perimeter of the reefs encompassing the peaceful azure lagoon. The Chief saw numerous outriggers under sail, but his worker’s boat was not in sight. As the morning wore on and the tide receded across the reefs, they saw male and female humans alike wading at the reef’s edge to gather snails and other morsels from the sea.
After a while, the Chief’s throat sac gradually deflated, making flight and hunting more practical. But inflated or not, there was no way he could outcatch his fishing companion. She made it embarrassingly clear that she was not a bullying vomit eater! She fished right along with the flappers, only instead of diving into the water to catch the swarming silver tidbits below the surface, she caught them as they took flight to escape the tuna below. Or more often, she plucked them from just below the surface with the hook of her bill. He was getting hungry just keeping up with her — that is, until she started flinging fish his way. Of course, he was always able to catch them in a dramatic, manly fashion. He had learned long ago to dive faster than a falling fish.
For his first two seasons, his worker had fed him on his branch first thing in the morning and again every evening. And children would bring numerous treats as tribute during the day. Then, once he began to fly, his worker began to play a game, tossing his fish into the air to allow him to perfect his flying skills. If by accident he missed his treat, he still had a second option — to pluck the prize from the water’s surface with his bill before it sank. Ah, happy fate, to have attracted the perfect female to replace the suddenly lazy and distracted commoner.
***
Overwhelmed by the events of the day before, Ḷainjin and Liṃanṃan slept late into the morning. They had stripped off their wet pandanus wrappings during the night and clutched onto each other’s damp bodies to absorb the other’s warmth within their dark, endlessly rocking enclave. Later, as the sun rose and the rocking turned less violent, they had separated their sweaty bodies ever so slightly to better feel the pleasant, fresh breeze, some of which penetrated beneath their sail-covered craft and circulated the air within the hull. When Ḷainjin awoke, light was diffracting from here and there into the hull and partially illuminating her face, in front of his. He became lazily engrossed by the features of that lovely face. Her magnificent tattoos ran over her shoulders in perfectly straight lines ending in triangular patterns, the bases of which formed a straight horizontal line across her upper chest, above her pointy, unsuckled breasts. She consumed his every thought. What luck had brought them together, and had his mother’s spirit guided their drift toward each other? Was she out there somewhere, still guiding his fate? Tears welled up in his eyes at the thought, and a moment later, Liṃanṃan’s opened and met his.
“Why do you cry?”
“Well, I heard you snoring, and I was thinking, ‘How unlucky to have chosen a woman who snores louder than the thunder that dampens the strength of a gale.’”
With that, he felt a firm downward yank on his manhood. “Too late — it’s me or the banana patch for this fish!”
“Okay, okay!” He laughed.
She kissed him on the mouth and then wiped the tears from his beard with both of her thumbs. “You are crying because you’ll never revisit any of those old holes again! You are my ṃaj now! I am going to take your knife and trim all this hair off your face so I can see how handsome a ṃaj you are, and so all the women on the island immediately adore you and become so envious they rush to their bathing pools to view their images and cry, ‘Why not me?’ But first tell me why you cried.”
“I was thinking of my mother. You make me think of her. I was wishing I could…”
“Tell me about her. Why not? What am I going to do with you? You are just like my father. He has never talked to me about my mother! I had to have Grandma tell me how she died. He blames himself, I suppose.
“You men are all the same. You keep your thoughts rotting inside your throat until it explodes and the stink comes out like a bloated, dead fish on the shore. Where is your knife? I’m going to cut deeper into that neck this time and sniff what terrible stink comes out!”
“Then I’ll smear blood all over your skirts, and everybody will think I only chose you because you threatened to kill me,” he responded.
“I’ll just tell everybody I cut your throat open because you wouldn’t give me the names of all the stinky holes you’ve known! They will say, ‘Serves him right.’ Because everybody knows you men don’t talk. You men must all take some secret vow of silence once you become of age and promise never to talk about anything inside ever again.”
“We’re silent like good fishermen.”
“Oh, that explains everything,” she continued sarcastically. “Two men are walking down the village path to the ocean side and neither has a word to say to the other. The ocean is still a long way off, but they are silent because they are stalking a big fish! That explains everything, except why you were crying. Tell me!”
“I promised her I would never tell.”
“That’s just like you! You hide your story inside. Then you break off one kernel a
nd toss it out there, but only if you have to,” she teased. “‘I’m called Pako, the shark hunter who’s killed a hundred sharks. I’ve got their teeth to prove it, so don’t worry about all these ones circling, these ones who want to eat you! Just jump into the water with them, and I will fill in the rest of the story later!’’’
“Ṃanṃan, I have many stories stuck like fish bones in my throat. Trust me, I would have coughed them up long ago were I able.”
“Then hurry up and kiss me! I will fish them out with my tongue” — she raised his ring, which hung around her neck — “and no farting this time, or I vow I will really cut into that thick sharkskin throat of yours!”
He kissed her on the mouth and then covered her face with kisses until she giggled contentedly.
“Oh, that’s right, I forgot. You are not an eel wanting to intertwine your tail and clutch onto your hole on the reef’s edge. You are a shark who is afraid of me, so you circle, watching me, because as soon as you turn away, you know you’ll forget you ever saw me! And that’s when I’ll attack and cut off your manhood and throw…”
“…it into the banana patch,” they said in unison.
One thought must have led to another. Suddenly she became anxious about her brother and decided to crawl out and look for his sail on the horizon. His gaze fixated on her naked body as she pushed aside the sail covering the open hatch between the outrigger yoke and the foredeck and emerged into the sunlight. The thought that, soon enough, she would ask her father to bring her to him was enthralling, and he was captivated as she untied her woven skirts from the rigging and began securing them with her belt.
“Ḷōpako, I don’t see your sail! Could they have already arrived back at the island?”
“Not likely,” replied Ḷainjin. He stood naked, searching the horizon, and then stepped off the outrigger platform and plunged deep into the water below. When he surfaced, he grabbed onto the craft with one hand and drifted next to it. Liṃanṃan dropped her skirts again and followed him into the water with a splash. She put her arms around his neck. He felt her naked body against his and, for the hundredth time, felt intractably aroused.
“You’re peeing, aren’t you?” she asked.
“I’m not saying.”
“Just like you. Here, feel this!” She took his hand and cupped it between her legs. He felt the warm water pass from her body.
“I was ready to burst!” she said.
He held onto the boat and she wrapped her legs around him. Then she took his knife from around her neck and began trimming his beard to her liking.
He launched himself out of the water, reached down into his hull, and returned with a piece of greenstone. “Here, use this.”
“What is this?”
“Dekā maroro.”
“But it’s black.”
“Hold it up to the sun.”
“It’s green inside.”
“And very sharp. Be careful not to drop it.”
“Where did you get such a thing?”
He smiled and flicked his head back, as if to say, “Out there.”
“I knew it! You are like the black clam too bitter to eat. You keep your shiny, round stone tucked inside, all to yourself. Ḷōpako, I will pry open your shell ever so little, a bit at a time. Before you know it, I will have all your secrets. Wait and see!”
“That stone can scrape the hair off my face if you want.”
“No, you would look too much like a boy, and my father might not accept that. Besides, you would look even more handsome, and I’m starting to worry about the reaction of the women ashore. Why do you keep your hair so short, and why do you have no holes in your earlobes?
“My grandfathers refused to allow it. They were not from Rālik or Ratak. They taught me such things were vain and were a liability to a warrior in a fight.”
“So you like to fight?”
“No, I hate fighting, but they taught me how to protect myself!”
“Father will never forgive Ḷōbōkrōk for abandoning his boat in the storm.”
“Is that your brother’s name?”
“Yes.”
“If you don’t want your father to know, don’t tell him.”
“I thought your plan was for Father to know you saved me and his boat, to get his approval to choose me.”
“Trust me, your father will know this boat flipped over whether we tell him or not. He must retie all these lashings before it sails again. He will know I must have been of help, but I do not need to impress your father at your brother’s expense.”
“But where are they?”
“Last night they were on the water, and they drifted away in the storm, very far and very fast. We were in the water and drifted slowly. We should see my sail soon, and when we raise ours, they will see us and we’ll meet them halfway.”
“And switch boats again?”
“Yes.”
“So we’ll tell Father everything but the part about switching boats?
“I wouldn’t tell him the part where you ripped off your skirts and peed in my hand.”
“What about the part where you tried to feed me to the sharks?”
“Or the part where you pretended to feed me like a bird, with your tongue!”
They bantered on like two children until she had him trimmed the way she wanted. Then they got back into the boat and saw the sail of Ḷainjin’s boat on the horizon. That was when they raised theirs in the modest breeze and set a course to meet the other boat midway between themselves and the atoll.
As the boats approached each other, they dropped sails and the helmsmen paddled toward one another. Ḷainjin had told Liṃanṃan what he wanted her to do. He approached the other boat head-on, each boat’s outrigger to windward, each boat’s lateen sail dropped and suspended to lee. As their prows were about to ram, Ḷainjin backpaddled as she grabbed onto the forestay of his boat. Both prows were naturally turned into the wind, with their dropped sails bumping and mingling into each other. Liṃanṃan’s grandma, who had been sitting on the foredeck, moved forward to help her keep the boats attached by grabbing the rojak ṃaan of the companion craft.
The boats firmly attached, Ḷainjin crossed from one prow to the other. The first man he faced received two nearly simultaneous slaps that caused his head to swing from one side to the other with such force that Ḷainjin’s foot punch, which launched him backward into the sea, seemed — in hindsight — almost merciful. On the outrigger platform, he met the second man, who tried to defend himself by swinging one of Ḷainjin’s oars at him. But Ḷainjin’s forward momentum was such that he arrested the oar at its shank in midswing and butted the man’s nose with the crown of his head. Blood burst onto the luckless man’s face. Ḷainjin held firm to the oar, stepped back, and likewise kicked him overboard into the water. Then he turned to face Bōkrōk, who was standing on the stern deck with terror in his eyes. Ḷainjin did feel pity for the hapless youth but had already let fly with the oar, which darted straight as a spear, hitting him with the tip of its blade on the top of his scalp and peeling it back at the hairline as he, too, fell into the sea.
He saw the women looking at each other, both in complete astonishment. At first Liṃanṃan appeared unsure about what she had unleashed on her companions, but Ḷainjin sat down defiantly in his place at the stern of his recaptured vessel. Anger spent, he seemed more intent on fishing his lost oar from the water and munching on a pandanus fruit than further assaulting the sorry trio. One by one, each man, sporting a battered face, shaken and in awe of what hit him, popped up from the sea and climbed aboard their own vessel.
Liṃanṃan crossed to her father’s vessel and spoke with them at length. Her grandmother gazed back at Ḷainjin, her face saying that she could not approve of what he had done. When she finished speaking to them, she crossed onto Ḷainjin’s prow and her grandmother let go of the other vessel’s forestay. The boats slowly separated. Next, Liṃanṃan raised the sail and they embarked on the final leg of their jou
rney, leaving the others behind to nurse their wounds.
She approached Ḷainjin, leaving her grandmother on the foredeck. “That’s my brother you just attacked. What happened to you?” she asked.
“Sorry, I forgot who… I mean, I lost…”
“He’s going to wear that scar for the rest of his life.”
Embarrassed and searching for a response, he replied, “Scars are good for a man. They add character and remind him of his mistakes.” With that inadequate reply, he sheeted in and set a course for the passageway next to the southwest islet of the atoll.
Liṃanṃan appeared skeptical. “You’re just saying that because you couldn’t resist showing me what a warrior you are.”
“No, I told you I hate fighting. I learned to fight only as a last resort, and always to give an opponent an alternative. I learned that would make him aware he could have avoided the fight and would cause him to blame himself for the result. I made it clear to them that climbing onto my boat was not an option. Remember, I got into the water to help them save their boat. They should have stayed there.”
“Okay, so tell me about these two mistakes here.” She touched each of two scars on each breast muscle. They looked like small wounds that he had allowed to fester. “Why?”
His eyes roamed the horizon, the sea ahead of them, and the bulge in the sail that was gliding them toward the green-forested islands on the horizon ahead… He said nothing, but his thoughts were crowded with terrible remembrances of that night of vengeful blood — yes, fateful mistakes — broken bodies, and of course, the belated scream he would never forget. “That is your sister!”
Man Shark Page 9
