The Plover

by Brian Doyle

  Down below Pipa was mewling in terror.

  Stay with her unless I call you. Put your life jackets on.

  She’s in there tight. I can help, Dec.

  Nothing to do. We either ride it or sink. If it sinks, stay together.

  You staying down here?

  Yup. I’ll check the chute here and there.

  Can we ride it out?

  We can’t run away fast enough. The only thing to do is face into it. If we try to run we’ll get pitchpoled for sure. The chute should hold us facing into it. If we go sideways we sink. If we get rolled we sink. This is a serious bitch and we basically just have to endure it. The boat will float if we stay facing the storm.

  How long will it last?

  Hours. And it’ll get worse than this.

  Nothing I can do?

  Stay with the pip. If I need you I’ll call. The wind will start to scream and she’ll be really scared. Just stay with her unless I call you.

  Okay.

  Isn’t this great, Piko? Happy you came?

  Sort of.

  The bucolic South Seas, said Declan. Serene and tranquil vistas that please the eye and calm the roiling soul.

  The wind started to scream. Declan estimated forty knots, maybe fifty. It went on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on. Pipa puked on Piko. Declan went up three times to check the chute the first hour and four times the next hour. The swells grew to ten feet, fifteen. The thrash and smash of water were such that he wore his snorkeling mask on deck. On and on and on and on and on and on. The wind snapped the rigging like a bowstring, a thread, a strand of web. On and on and on. The mast snapped with a crack like a cannon explosion. Piko leapt up from the bunk and ran on deck. No no no! shouted Declan. Go below! The pip, the pip! But all Piko heard was the last word and he slid back down the stairs to her bunk just as the ocean punched a hole in the hull to starboard and water shot howling through as if from a fire hose. He grabbed Pipa and ran on deck. No no no! shouted Declan, horrified to see the girl, and in the worst nightmare imaginable he watched as Piko reached for the jackline, lost his grip on his child as a tremendous wave hit them like a hammer, and Pipa rode the froth of the seething wave over the bow and into the maw of the sea.

  * * *

  Piko dove for her instantly an incredible leap from the top of the stairs his head crashing against the railing with a terrible crack but he had her foot he caught her foot! and Declan dove for him and grabbed his clip just as Piko washed thrashing over the rail but Declan snapped the clip to the railing just in time the line went cruelly taut he saw Pipa’s wild face in the water her hands fluttering madly he saw Piko gagging but Piko would go to the bottom of the sea with that foot in his hand he would never let go and Declan hauled with all his might o god o god pull jesus blessed jesus he saw Piko’s braided beard whip in the seethe like a fish tail and he grabbed it with his left hand and hauled on both rope and beard with all his might and both Pipa and Piko came thrashing gagging puking over the railing he left Piko clipped to the railing and grabbed Pipa and ran down the stairs to her bunk shouting all right! okay! stay here! I’ll get your dad! don’t move! As if she could move the poor busted kid and he leapt back up for Piko who was a streaming gray huddle and sag on the deck. Unclipped him from the railing shoved him down the stairs. Piko! Stay here! Do not come on deck! Do you hear me? Stay here! It’ll blow over soon. One more hour. Piko! Listen to me. Stay here. I’ll take care of it. I’ll take care of things. You take care of her. Can you hear me, man? Piko!

  A soggy mumble: Dec.

  Jesus, man. You all right?

  Pip?

  She’s all right. Stay awake. Don’t come up. She’s okay. Jesus, Piko. Stay here.

  And none of the three moved again for what seemed like hours, as the storm raged away to the west; the wind shrinking from shriek to howl to roar to shout to thrum to sigh, though the swells remained mountainous far longer; the birds returning to the world, although now they were jaegers, the dark falcons of the sea; and finally when the swells began to subside he hauled in the drogue, his arms heavy and burning. He examined the hole in the hull, the size of his fist, and plugged it with plywood and epoxy enough to keep the water out; he’d fix it better when he had time. The mast was a loss. Nothing to be done now. Cut and stored rigging for splicing and rerigging later. Both pumps going strong. Piko and Pipa asleep. He rolled them both out of their wet clothes and wrapped them in layers of blankets. Poor little pipsqueak. Course south by west. He could not turn into the still-powerful swells and beat back to the little islands, not with the muscular current and insistent mounds of water behind him; he would have to ride the current south and west and hope to hit Wake Island or the Marshall Islands, and stop there for repairs and refitting. Nothing to be done. Our patience will achieve more than our force. Burke. I don’t think I have ever been this tired, and Christ I been tired. They didn’t drown. Boy. They didn’t drown. Heck of a day. The Pacific Ocean, my butt. Total misnomer. They sure didn’t drown, though. Great day. Best day ever. I got to sleep a little. Just an hour. How come suddenly there’s no terns, why is that? Jaegers’ll eat your eyeballs. Wonder where that gull went? Abandoned ship. Absent without weave. Heck of a day. Just a little nap. Just.

  * * *

  Two days of warm sun and gentle breeze and work around the boat drying things and stitching things and repairing things and doubling the patch in the hull and splicing and rigging rope and fixing one of the pumps which gagged and gave out, waterlogged, and praising the other as the greatest tough little pump that ever was, you are going to pump heaven, little man, you are my favorite pump ever, we’ll make a little pump crown for you and have a ceremony when you are done returning the ocean to whence it came, my good little pump brother.

  Late on the second day they rested, all sprawled in the merciful sun, Pipa asleep.

  Tell me about the pip, Piko.

  Not much to tell.

  What works?

  Her hands, pretty much.

  That’s it?

  All her parts work. I mean, she eats and grows and stuff, but she’s sort of trapped in there. She makes that cat sound but she can’t really talk. There’s days I think she’s making some tiny progress but then the next day I know she’s not. She got nailed by that bus, Dec. Hammered her head against the highway. She broke some bones but that’s not what’s broken anymore. The her of her broke, I think. I wonder sometimes if the her of her is in there or not. I don’t know which would be worse, her being all there and trapped inside or her not being there anymore and just her outside keeps going.

  Can she make a comeback?

  I don’t think so, Dec. Been four years. Doctors said no.

  I thought I saw her smile a couple times.

  Me too. I don’t know if it’s for real, though.

  Her eyes work, right? She knows what’s going on.

  Maybe.

  I don’t know anything about kids but I think so.

  Didn’t you take care of your kid brothers?

  They took care of themselves. We weren’t that kind of family. You and Elly were that kind of family. Not us. We were on our own from the start. Like fish eggs. Probably why I am stuck at sea.

  Speaking of which, when are you going home?

  Not. This is home now.

  You’re going to spend your life on the boat?

  I don’t know, man. I am just sort of winging it here.

  Destination?

  Unknown.

  Agenda?

  Don’t sink.

  That’s it? Don’t sink?

  Yup. Ambition can creep as well as soar, says old Ed Burke.

  What?

  Edmund Burke, man. Ed is like the patron saint of the Plover.

  You are a nut.

  Yeh.

  Are we ever going to land?

  You in a hurry?

  No.

  Well.

  I guess we are at sea too.

  Yeh.

  Sorry to poke
, Dec.

  No, man, it’s a pleasure to have you here. And I really like the pip. I never told you how sorry I am about her and Elly. I am really sorry, man. Maybe the boat will be good for the pip. She’s already had wild adventures on the Plover, right? So maybe that’s good. Maybe excitement is good for the little peanut. Get her jazzed up, am I right? That could be.

  That could be.

  That could most certainly be.

  Later, lazily:

  What was this fire-throwing stuff you mentioned back on the island? What was that all about?

  Oahi, it’s called. You really and truly throw burning logs out over the ocean. You wouldn’t believe how far some guys can throw those things, like a mile.

  What’s the point?

  Old tradition. Kind of a holy thing. Ceremonial, celebratory. I just got fascinated by it and got really absorbed and who knows why. We came to the island after Elly died and something about oahi just was … healthy. I can’t explain it very well. Pipa liked sitting in the dark and watching the firesticks go flying out over the water. The wind hits the mountain there and rises and if you get your feet set and throw right your fire just floats out there forever. It’s the wildest thing. You wouldn’t believe someone can throw a burning log a mile and it just hangs there traveling slowly on the wind until it finally hits and sizzles. Incredible.

  Any wood’ll do?

  Best is papala or hau, real light dry woods. Papala you can light one end and throw it like a javelin and the fire burns through it as it’s in the air. Hau mostly you would light both ends and whip it so it spins end over end. It’s hard to learn to do it right and it’s no picnic climbing up the mountain carrying wood but when you see it done well, or even better when you occasionally do it well, there was some powerful magic in it, man. The people who really get it don’t talk about it much. They taught me because I respected it and didn’t talk about it, and because they saw what it meant to Pipa. She would be down on the beach wrapped in blankets with the aunties and they told me she peeped all night long like a chick hatching. They sure liked Pipa. They called her Peepa. One of the aunties told me the pip was learning how to use her new eyes and ears, which I don’t know what she meant but it felt good to hear something other than poor kid and cripple.

  You get good at throwing fire? We could use you in battle.

  I was decent. It’s not strength as much as balance, is what they taught me. I am not the strongest guy but I did okay. It’s not for fighting, though, you know. More like praying, I guess.

  Huh.

  We spent a lot of nights there, Pipa and me, Pipa on the beach with the aunties and me up on the mountain with the throwers. Good guys. We’d make a fire and tell stories and then throw. Sometimes people would be out there in boats trying to catch the sticks as they fell. In the old days it was the height of cool to catch a stick and mark yourself with it, that was heavy medicine. One friend of mine, he was a master at gauging the wind, and he’d shoot over in his canoe and grab the burning stick just before it hit the water. Incredible hands. You met him—he was the guy who delivered the letter. Kono. Excellent guy. There’s a lot of stories about that guy, and he’s a great storyteller himself, he’s like the storycatcher in his town.

  Tell me one.

  There was a kid named Nou who wanted to be a firethrower so bad he could taste it, but he was a little kid, and back then only the top men were allowed to do the deed. Nou sneaks up the mountain anyway one night, but it’s a hell of a climb, as you know, and he’s beat, and stops to rest, and he hears a small voice calling for help. It’s a menehune, like a wood elf, and Nou, a decent kid, frees the elf from the rock that trapped the guy. The menehune, also a decent sort, says he will help Nou throw his fire the farthest that night. So Nou gets up to the top of the mountain, but the older guys are furious that he’s there against the rules, and they want to toss him overboard, but Nou makes them a bet that he can throw the farthest, if he loses they can throw him over. Okay, fine, they say, probably snarling, you know, like in the movies, and he whips his log, but it’s his first time, and he’s little, so his log just falls straight down toward the forest below—but the menehune is on task, and he asks the wind for a little help, and the wind catches Nou’s stick and sails it so far out it looks like a star on the horizon. New world champion of firethrowing: Nou.

  That’s a good story. What happens to Nou later?

  Oh, they killed him later anyway. But his friend the menehune cursed his murderers’ feet for that, and they could never climb the mountain again, the end.

  When bad men combine, the good must associate, said Declan, else they will fall, one by one, an unpitied sacrifice in a contemptible struggle. Old Ed Burke.

  Man, what is your deal with old Ed Burke?

  Brilliant Irish guy, said Declan cheerfully. One of those guys everyone thinks they know what he said but hardly anyone actually reads what he actually said. I just dig the guy. No one reads him anymore and I feel bad for him so I figure I’ll read him, at least. Keep the man alive. So at least one regular person in the world is reading him for fun rather than to chew some obscure detail to death like they do in colleges. Did you know he would give a speech first and then sit down and try to write down what he said? Incredible. Who does that anymore?

  You are a nut.

  A guy throwing burning sticks into the ocean from a mountain is calling me a nut.

  Just trying to learn a useful trade.

  Haw. Let’s eat. You better wake the pip or she’ll miss dinner.

  This is good, being here, Dec. Thank you.

  No worries.

  It’s real generous.

  I needed a crew. You were the first two that applied.

  Thanks, man.

  No worries.

  * * *

  But he did worry, in his bunk, at night. How was this going to work? What about food and fuel and repairs? What if Pipa got worse and needed a doctor? And not to be overly selfish about the whole thing, but this was not the plan. This was a solo voyage. Now there’s three of us. I wasn’t looking for company. Not having company was the point. Company just expects things from you. Other people are kind of fences, aren’t they? Assumptions and expectations. I don’t want anybody expecting anything from me ever again. I was just going to float. Now we have to go somewhere and do something. But they are rootless too. They are flying solo. What are we going to do for money? What do I do when Piko finally says it’s time for them to go home? He’ll have to land her at some point. She’ll need wheelchairs and ramps and machines and visiting nurses and stuff and he’ll have to get a suit job to pay for that. Poor kid. That kid is a cripple forever, I bet. No mother, no house, no voice. Poor little fish. Jesus Christmas. Almost lost that kid. Shouldn’t have her on board. Irresponsible. Probably illegal. No permit for that. Jesus blessed Christmas.

  And thinking of Christmas Declan suddenly got a wash of old old memory from when he was maybe ten years old and his sister Grace was maybe eight and the boys were little crawlers, this was before their mom left dragging her suitcase down the driveway and never came back, before the old man froze up inside totally and hated everyone and everything, and he was sitting by the fire, a roaring winter fire of cedar and oak, a frozen mist like a blanket outside weighing down the spruce trees, the cows all huddled together for warmth in the barn, the radio playing something deep and gentle, some cello thing like deep voices humming, and Grace was half-asleep with her head on his feet in a little castle of pillows they had built by the fire, and the little brothers were tipped over like bowling pins asleep on each other on the huge dark couch, and his mom didn’t hate his dad yet, and his dad was listening to her at the pine table, she was carving something in the air with her hands like golden birds in the gentle light from the kitchen, and his dad had his face propped in his hands like a pear in a bowl, and maybe he was even smiling, the old goat. A Christmas night long long ago. No tree, no presents, no special dinner, but no punching or screaming or cursing either; and every
one together. Best Christmas ever.

  * * *

  The Tanets survived the storm also, with less damage, being bigger, but at the height of the storm the pilot, smoking a cigarette, had stepped out of the cabin to relieve himself and been swept overboard so fast that Enrique, sitting in the cabin poring over his charts, shouted at him to close the door! before he realized there was no one there to do so. He leapt for the thrashing door but knew it was too late even before he gauged the rage of the water. He had expected this, in a sense. He had expected to lose his pilot somehow, in the same way he would eventually lose his massive impassive crewman; pilots and crew came and went, died or fled, stole and ran; it was the nature of people to die or flee, it was their natural end, the spin of the wheel. He made an effort to remember the name of the pilot but could come up with nothing more than the end of his first or last name, he couldn’t remember which: ivić? Something Somethingivić. Nor could he remember quite when the pilot had joined the crew. Probably Vladivostok, when they had to leave in such a hurry and he grabbed the first man who could read a maritime chart. The wordless crewman was different; he had come aboard on the blackest night Enrique could ever remember, many miles south and west of Hawaii, where there was no land for hundreds of miles. The man must have had a boat, but there was no boat or canoe to be seen near the Tanets when Enrique and the pilot found him standing silently in the stern, wrapped in red cloth from his armpits to his knees. Even with a pistol in his face he would say nothing more than taromauri, his quiet answer to every question, and Enrique, who ultimately could not care less about origin and explanation, put him to work; he was immensely strong, seemed to know his way around ships, and ate like a bird despite his mountainous size. For a few weeks Enrique kept his pistol at hand, wary of the man’s strength and sudden mysterious appearance, but after some months neither he nor the pilot even noticed the crewman much. He ate alone, always sitting cross-legged in the stern, and always wore his vast red cloth, and when not working seemed content to sit calmly in the stern, eyes closed, either sleeping or plotting savagery, as Something Somethingivić said with a leer. He and Enrique called the crewman Taro, after what seemed to be the only word in his vocabulary, and had even stopped speculating idly about Taro’s sins and crimes a few weeks before the pilot stepped out of the cabin to relieve himself and never came back.