Island Fire

by Toby Neal

  Her own belly was just as loud as she peeled the orange, inhaling the citrusy scent as she broke off each bit of peel. She and Sam ate their oranges slowly, letting each juicy bite melt in their mouths. Nick, already done with his, hung his hands between his knees, looking out at the ocean.

  “Don’t know when we’ll ever have another one of those,” Bea said, and handed her last slice of orange to Nick.

  “I’m not used to thinking of them as a big treat,” Nick said. This time he shut his eyes, savoring the bite of orange. “But everything is different now.”

  “Yes, it is. I think we’re going to keep finding out how different,” Bea said. The three of them looked over at the boat, revealed in all its battered potential.

  “Think we should try to hide it?” Sam asked.

  “No. Too much work.” Bea’s exertions seemed to be catching up with her. She yawned.

  “We have a lot more work to do, and we need some stuff to do it,” Sam said, frowning.

  Bea went still and put a hand on Nick’s arm to caution him. He froze as he spotted what she’d seen. One of the small, sand-colored francolin quail, brought over to Lanai for hunting fifty years ago, scratched in the leaves under a nearby naupaka.

  Beside her, Sam slid his slingshot out from his back pocket, loaded a lead weight, and pulled the thong back, tracking the bird as it scratched and moved into the open. He sighted and let fly.

  The plump little quail never even chirped. It burst into the air in an explosion of feathers, falling dead to the ground. Sam hurried over and picked up the limp bird.

  “Now we have to get the fire going. These aren’t very good raw.”

  “Awesome!” Nick exclaimed. “You have to show me how to do that.”

  Sam grinned. He flipped open the Leatherman he carried and hacked the bird’s head off. He hung it upside down to drain. Blood pattered on the sand, and the air filled with a coppery smell. Bea smiled at the way Nick watched in fascination.

  “Nice shot, Sam,” she said. “A few fish ought to round things out.”

  “I tried for hours and didn’t get anything. You guys have to show me how it’s done,” Nick said.

  “Well, it helps to have the right equipment. We have to go get it. Our fishing gear is hidden over by the shack.”

  They walked back to the shack, leading Rainbow. Bea tied her out and made sure her bucket had water. Sam put on the extra pair of tabis Jaden had left behind under their hiding log and took out the pry tool, the three-prong spears, a couple of masks, and a handheld line and hook, which he handed Nick.

  “You can use this,” Sam told Nick. “We just need a shrimp for bait.”

  He showed Nick how to catch one of the small transparent opae shrimp by grabbing a cluster of limu on the side of the tide pool and trapping the opae in the leaves. Bea pulled her clothes off over her head, uncovering the bathing suit she wore underneath. She pulled on her tabis and sharpened the prongs of her spear between a pair of stones.

  “Follow me,” she told Nick. “I’ll take you to a deeper pool where you can catch something bigger.”

  Sam took off in another direction across the reef as Bea led Nick through knee-deep water. “Tide’s kind of high, but that’s good in some ways. The water’s deeper, and the fish are moving around, looking for food. You okay in those jeans?” She slanted a look back at him.

  “They’re fine.” Nick was clearly having a hard time pushing through the deeper water behind her and was creating a lot of turbulence. She stopped him with a hand.

  “No splashing. Just glide along. Like this.” She demonstrated a smooth stride that kept the water undisturbed. “I’m glad you have shoes on. There are a lot of ways you can pierce a foot, and it’ll get infected.”

  He followed her slowly until she reached the large pool where she’d caught the eel a few days ago—days that now seemed like years in how much the world had changed.

  “Find a spot where you’re out of view. The fish can see you up above the water, you know.” She touched his arm, positioning him so his shadow fell away from the pool. “Now, let out the line and jig it up and down gently above the bottom so the shrimp seems to be moving.” She demonstrated, then handed him the ball of line wrapped around the stick. “You do it.”

  She got him situated, then said, “I’m going diving. Sam’s just over there, so give a shout if something goes wrong.”

  “Can’t imagine what that would be, beginning with how do I get a fish off the hook if I get one,” Nick said ruefully.

  Bea grinned. “You’ll figure it out, city boy.” She swizzled a little water in her mask, spat into it, swirled the mixture around, put it on, and slipped under the water, spear in hand.

  Nick watched Bea’s sleek figure sink beneath the waves in the shallow water. He couldn’t keep his eyes off her as she swam away toward deeper water, but then he felt movement on the line, a jiggle almost. He turned back, looking down into the pool, and saw the shadow of a good-sized fish looking at his bait. It darted forward and hit it.

  He yanked upward hard and whooped when he felt resistance, and his hands were full trying to pull in the fish, keep it tight, and wrap the slack line around the stick, and then he had the flapping fish up out of the water, a black-and-white striped one with whiskers beside its mouth. He clutched it and ran splashing to the beach, afraid it was going to get away.

  From down the reef, he heard “All right, Nick!” from Sam.

  At the beach he struggled to get the hook out of the fish’s mouth. He realized that he’d never fished before, or even touched one of these cool, slippery creatures alive. He almost wished he could take Bea and Sam to Chicago and show them how he knew how to survive on the streets there, because he felt so clumsy and useless here.

  Finally, he used a stick to push the hook’s point back through the fish’s cheek and extracted it without stabbing himself.

  The fish was fully dead by then, the sheen gone from its scales.

  Sam returned, and Nick felt embarrassed by his excitement over his tiny catch when the younger boy held up a whole row of fish he’d strung on a stick through their gills. “Looks like we’ll have enough for a meal.”

  They’d gotten a driftwood fire started in the fire pit in front of the shack when Bea came back, making him think of a warrior mermaid in her bikini with the spear in her hand, mask on her head, and a metal loop made out of an old coat hanger at her side—flapping with still-live fish.

  “Almost lunchtime.” She grinned. “I’ll show you how to clean fish while Sam does the bird. I bet we’ll get all the fish done before he gets that one bird cleaned.”

  Cleaning the bird wasn’t as easy or as pleasant as cleaning fish. Sam gutted the quail, tossing the bloody offal into the ocean as Bea showed Nick how to gut the fish and they worked their way through the pile. He hated plucking birds, and without dipping them in boiling water, the feathers were nearly impossible to pull out. He’d come up with a skinning method for out in the field: he slid the point of the knife just under the skin after he’d cleaned the bird, and pushed it point-first between the meat and the layer of feathers, pushing the knife and pulling on the feathers until he was able to get the bird’s skin off.

  Bea and Nick had all the rest of the fish cleaned by the time he finished with this laborious, messy process. The bird ended up about the size of a papaya. Oh, well. It would taste good. Sam’s mouth watered at the thought of the crispy little drumsticks.

  “Granola bars are easier,” Bea said, rinsing her hands. “But nothing tastes quite as good as something you’ve caught, killed, and cooked yourself. Especially when you’re really hungry.”

  “I believe you,” Nick said, comically licking his lips. They cooked the fish and grouse on a wire mesh someone had used before, and this time they were able to fill their bellies.

  Sam watched Nick eat. The older boy even needed Bea to show him how to get the fish’s skin off, how to avoid the tiny bones. He was useless. How was he going to take care of him
self when they sailed away on the boat? And Sam could see by the way he looked at Bea that the older boy liked her.

  Not as a friend.

  It made Sam uncomfortable. He’d always thought Jaden was the one Bea cared about that way, but Bea was sitting a little close to Nick for friends, and surely she didn’t have to feed him a piece of fish with her fingers?

  They ate most of the fish and saved some for dinner. Sam found an old plastic container and put the fish in it, wrapping it in grasses and burying it under the naupaka tree.

  “The flies and bugs won’t get to it, and it stays cool that way,” he explained to Nick. “So. Bea. You were going to go find the windsurfer sail before we got distracted by getting food. Why don’t you do that, and Nick and I can get a little more done on the boat before it gets too hot.” Already the sun was directly overhead, beating down on their heads. When it came to the boat, Sam felt confident telling the older kids what to do.

  “Sounds good.” Bea stood with an abrupt movement and walked down to the water, rinsing her hands.

  Sam gestured to Nick. “Come. Let’s talk about how to fix up the boat.”

  The older boy looked after Bea but followed Sam back to the Hobie cat.

  “Jaden’s her boyfriend, you know,” Sam said, clearing a final piece of driftwood away from the boat’s hull, feeling a pang of loyal defensiveness toward their longtime friend.

  “I get that he wants to be, not that he is,” Nick said. Sam looked up into the older boy’s level blue eyes. “She can make up her own mind.”

  Sam frowned. “We’re leaving on this boat.”

  “And I want to come with you.”

  “I don’t think so,” Sam said. “You don’t have anything we need.”

  A long silence followed this. Sam knelt in front of the hole in the hull, reached in to pull out some debris that had gotten inside. He felt bad. He’d never said such a mean thing to anyone in his life.

  “I hope I can change your mind by the time the boat is ready,” Nick said softly, kneeling beside him, digging debris out from under the hull. Sam wouldn’t meet his eyes, instead standing up to brush sand off his legs.

  “I’ve made a list of things for the boat. We have a lot of what we need in my dad’s workshop, if we can break into it. I think we’re going to have to go back to our house.”

  “And there’s where I might be useful,” Nick said, with a grin so nice Sam couldn’t help smiling back. “How are you going to get the boat from up here down to the water?”

  “Didn’t think that far ahead.”

  “Well, here’s something I know about. We can put wood down in front of it and pull it over the sand. Like this.” Nick lay a stick in the sand and demonstrated.

  “Not a bad idea,” Sam said. It was going to be interesting to see how Nick could help them break back into their old house. Maybe Nick could be useful after all.

  Bea returned from fetching the windsurfer sail, frayed but intact. It was still sleeved onto a carbon-fiber mast and had been used to make a fishing shelter, propped up among tall bushes to cast shade. She’d passed the rig a hundred times, hardly noting it except as another example of how nothing went wasted on Lanai. She’d had to take the sail off the mast, roll it up (difficult with the plastic battens still inside sleeves on the sail), and carry it in front of her on Rainbow as she held one end of the mast and dragged it.

  By the time she returned, the afternoon sun was hot. Both boys had taken shelter under a naupaka bush near the boat, and a row of salvaged items decorated the sand in a row in front of the Hobie.

  Bea’s spirits rose at the sight. Fixing the boat was beginning to look doable, if still daunting. “We’re going to do this thing,” she whisper/thought to Beosith.

  Yes!

  The enthusiastic response from the dragon made Bea grin. She could tell he was somewhere cool and dim, waiting for dark. Bea slid off Rainbow, and the mare blew out a breath loudly.

  “Okay, girl. Getting some water.” She filled the hollowed dent in a nearby stone with water for the horse from one of the jugs they’d brought from the Apucans’. “Did you make a list of what we need?”

  “I brought my journal.” Sam held it up. “Mainly we need a lot of rope.”

  She came over, sitting between Sam and Nick and pretending she didn’t notice how it felt when her shoulder brushed Nick’s. The three of them bent over the journal.

  “Nick helped me,” Sam said, with a tone of being deliberately fair. There were sketches of a crude rudder and how to attach the mast. Sam’s clear brown eyes, so much like their mother’s, met Bea’s with worry in their depths. “I know where a lot of this stuff is. At our house, in Dad’s shed.”

  The metal shed at the back of their yard held the mower and their father’s tools and supplies, many of which would be needed for this project.

  “Okay.” Bea looked down at the list. “Dad’s toolbox is what you need, Sam—and more.”

  “I know.”

  “Well, this is all we can do with the boat right now. Let’s go set up camp at the fishing shack and take a nap until dark. After we get the stuff from the house, we’ll come back.”

  The three of them settled down to rest through the hot afternoon hours. Nick took off his shirt and lay down on it on the floor of the shack. His back was a painful-looking bright red. Bea took the bottom bunk and Sam the top. It was too hot to cover up with anything, so Bea curled on her side facing the wall and let exhaustion draw her down into heavy slumber.

  Bea heard the boys’ voices and woke up. She rolled over. Looking outside, she could see the shadows under the naupaka tree stretching long toward the water, and the sun was low over Molokai across the Channel. They’d slept away the hot middle of the day, a rhythm that made sense in the islands.

  Bea got up and emptied the two backpacks she and Sam had brought inside the shack, sorting the food items and then digging a hole in the sandy floor and burying them.

  “What’re you doing?” Nick asked, looking over her shoulder.

  “Hiding the food. If someone comes by while we’re gone, they’ll just think it was their lucky day.”

  He didn’t answer, just began digging a second hole for the rest of the food.

  “I think we should wait until after dark to do our raid. I’ll keep the pit bull busy while you guys sneak into the shed,” Bea said, as Sam joined them. “You’ll know better than I what could be useful, and you can each carry one of these backpacks.”

  “Sure. I know what I need. In and out.” Sam’s voice rang with false bravado. “Nick helped me with the list, so he knows, too. No problem. I just hope they haven’t already broken in and raided it.”

  “Okay, then. By the time we get to the house, it’ll be dark. We can leave Rainbow at the rocks, like last time.”

  “What are you going to do for a distraction?” Nick asked.

  “I’m not sure. I have to check the situation out when we get there.” Bea had an idea, but she didn’t want to tell them what it was.

  “We might as well eat the rest of the fish, or it will go bad,” Sam said, and he went to fetch it from its hiding place. Bea walked out onto the beach, wandering up and down until she’d collected a pile of small driftwood chunks. Nick followed.

  “Can I help? You planning to throw stuff at the dog?”

  “It’s an idea. I may use Sam’s slingshot.”

  “Not bad.”

  He helped her fill a bag with small wood pieces. They fetched Rainbow, and with Sam riding because of his bad foot, the two of them took turns packing with him up the hill to the outcrop of rocks where they tied the mare out.

  Sunset was flaming over Maui to the east. They stayed in the shelter of the rocks to wait for full dark. Sitting with her back against one of the warm stones, Nick beside her, Bea’s mind went back to Jaden.

  Was he wondering where she was? What she was doing? She felt guilty all over again thinking of how they’d left, but she knew his family needed him. The Apucans would never agr
ee with their plan to go to Molokai and might even try to prevent their going.

  Nick’s firm, bulky shoulder rested against hers. She liked the way he made her feel, almost like there was a magnetic field around him, drawing her into it. But wasn’t it Jaden she liked?

  Jaden who was always there for her, through all the stuff with their dad. Jaden, her fishing and hunting partner. Jaden her old friend, who had been looking different to her in the last few months.

  It was all so confusing. “Let’s get going,” she said, standing up abruptly.

  “Let’s wait until full dark,” Nick said, catching her hand and pulling her down beside him. “Just until the sunset’s over.” He didn’t let go of her hand once she was sitting beside him.

  The last of the violet-orange sunset streaked the clouds overhead on the other side of Molokai even though the sun was gone. Bea let herself relax, sinking back against the rock, still warm with the afternoon’s sun.

  She didn’t have to figure anything out right now, and for just a little while, she was safe—with Sam leaning on her from one side and Nick on the other and her belly full. She knew there weren’t going to be many moments this good in the coming days until they found her aunt and uncle on Molokai, if then.

  Finally, the sky overhead had gone indigo, the first stars poking holes in the darkness. The moon glimmered on the ever-present ocean and over the uneven ground.

  Bea thought she saw a large, rippling shadow not far away, but when she turned her head and tried to focus on it, it seemed to vanish. Beosith?

  I’m here.

  Good. I need you. I have an idea, she thought to the mo’o dragon. She sent him a mind picture of what she was thinking, and felt his reluctant agreement. He’d been so absent lately. Are you doing okay?

  Keeping an eye on you. She saw a tiny flash of light in the darkness, like a firefly, as he winked a lambent eye.

  “Seems like it’s dark enough now,” Nick said. And all Bea’s apprehension came flooding back.

  They set off across the open, barren field covered in bunchy grass. Bits of black plastic, used for irrigation and ground cover, stuck up from the earth to trip them—mute evidence of the pineapple farming of the island’s past. Bea had often wondered why Dole hadn’t cleaned it up—but they’d owned the island. They didn’t have to. Now some computer billionaire owned Lanai, and with the solar event, what would be happening to all of them?