The Plover

by Brian Doyle

  * * *

  There are times, said Declan much later, supposedly in another context but maybe not, when you just take a flyer on things. People make too much of facts. Also people make too much of gut feelings. Gut feelings probably mean food poisoning. Most of the time you try to be sensible but sensible is just as overrated as intuition. Both of them are just calculated gambles. So sometimes you deliberately gamble the other way, you know what I’m saying? You do the thing that isn’t sensible, because sensible is just a percentage. In a sense you are being extra sensible by playing the odds against sensible, sometimes. Do you have any idea what I’m saying? You gamble backward, which sometimes is the most sensible play. You throw the odds into a tizzy. You throw them off their game. You rattle their fecking cages. Odds are ultimately prediction devices, so if you reverse them sometimes, for no particular reason, then everything’s all swizzled and incalculable again. Which is good. You see what I’m saying? That’s just fair all around. If no one acts exactly how they are always supposed to act, that’s good. See what I mean? That’s just normal, also. That’s how things really are. We are all prediction and expectation junkies and it’s all nuts. If a girl, say, is always leaning on her intuition, she’s always making decisions based on what she feels in her guts, then she’s always making one kind of decision, so the odds stack up against her, you see what I’m saying? Same with a guy who is always being sensible and making the right play based on what he thinks are facts. The guy himself becomes a factor because he’s a fact nut. This is not even to get into how mostly what you think is fact isn’t. But if you make a decision sometimes that’s completely the other direction from facts, the odds are that you made exactly the right decision a certain percentage of the time, you know what I mean? So who doesn’t want to be exactly right a certain percentage of the time? Not me. Like on the Plover that time with the woman we thought was a man but she wasn’t. That’s a good example. Ask Piko about that time. He knows what I mean. He knows exactly what I mean. That is the greatest fecking example ever. You ask Piko.

  * * *

  It took Something Somethingivić seven minutes to drown, the night he stepped out of the cabin of the Tanets to relieve himself and was swept into the roiling ocean: the seven longest minutes of his life. He knew he was going to drown; maybe he always had known he would drown; but he decided to drown slowly, to drown with intent, to drown in his own good time. If he stayed calm and kept his head above water until he was exhausted and sank, he could live another two or three minutes, he thought, and that would be a kind of victory, a kind of epitaph, a kind of something. If he stayed calm and did not thrash and did not drink the sea he could drown at his own pace. He leaned his head back and closed his mouth and tried to breathe through his nose. He tried to close his eyes but they would not close. The storm roared above him but the waves were so large they acted like windbreaks. He watched them loom and tower with a curious lack of fear; he was so intent on breathing calmly and steadily and deeply that he thought of nothing else but breathing for the first minute. Calm calm calm. He made no effort to swim or move at all, not even kicking his feet; his whole existence was intent on floating and breathing through his nose. Calm calm. He pried his shoes off with his toes. The huge wave he was in carried him up to meet another huge wave and as he rose from the trough the wind shrieked and the top of the next wave blew into his face so hard his head snapped back and his mouth opened; but he instantly shut his mouth and swallowed the sea he had eaten. Better in the belly than the lungs. The water was warm. In the forest with Danilo they were free to roam for miles. Danilo knew where there were nests with eggs and berries you could eat and trees with small sleepy birds you could eat. He knew those things. How did he know those things? The woods went on forever. Danilo was easy in the woods even when he was little. When he was lost as a child he was never lost. He might have made it through the woods. If anyone could make it through the woods in the winter he could. It would have been nice to meet him as a man. He would be tall and smiling. He would smile and ask what song do you want, brother? They would sit somewhere near the woods. They would not even eat. They would just look at each other and smile. Remember this other song, brother? Another tremendous jolt of water snapped his head back again and this time he swallowed a lot of it and he was terrified. He tried not to cough but he could not help coughing and another wave hit him as he coughed and he whirled his arms to keep the water off and he felt suddenly utterly exhausted and heavy and sad. What last song do you want, brother? The light in the woods late in the afternoon as they walked home on subtle trails only Danilo could see. The way Danilo held a spruce branch for a second so it did not thrash back and strike his brother. The way Danilo sang quietly, a few feet ahead, so that all you could hear, walking behind him in the last green light, was a bolt of song floating over his shoulder, and then it was gone. The weight of the whole ocean was upon him now. What last song do you want, brother? And he closed his eyes, and opened his mouth to sing, and a wave like a wall crashed upon him, and he sank into the long green light, breathing the sea, his hands rising to cup his brother’s face.

  * * *

  What did happen to Danilo Somethingivić?

  He did survive in the frozen forest. He was not caught and raped and shot and buried under the snowpack by two poachers hunting tigers in the woods. He did watch from high in a red spruce tree as a tiger, a vast grim ghost, stalked and killed and ate one of the poachers. He did not travel during the day but only late at night when only animals and drunkards and thieves used the trails and roads through the epic snows. He did learn to vanish into the woods quick as a sable when he heard the slightest noise at night. He was not caught and held for identification and repatriation by unending layers of authority and assumed authority. He did make his way east through the forest and along the outer edges of towns and cities, occasionally joining school yards and children gathered in knots for games and events, occasions he used for the theft of food in any form whatsoever, and so eating carp and pike, deer and mushrooms, herring and rabbit, potatoes in every conceivable form, even thin salted slices of bear once, a treat so tasty he filled his pockets with bear until he found himself trailed into the woods by slavering dogs. He did not speak for months, afraid that a single word could betray him. He did arrive finally at the shore of the endless ocean which seemed to him very like the endless forest except that it was gray not green. He did not wish to stay in the frigid city in which he found himself and so he slipped aboard a tanker late one night when only animals and drunkards and thieves were awake. He did by chance choose a tanker heading south past Japan and Korea and China. He did not hesitate to slip aboard a tugboat and then a trawler and then a cargo ship, the ships in toto bringing him south and then east. He did get caught twice along the way but once he lied so eloquently and movingly about who what where how that the bosun laughed and let him go (this was the trawler, off Mindanao) and once he was being frog-marched to the bridge by a grinning deckhand who reeked of marijuana when he saw how close the cargo ship was to its destination islands and he stumbled deliberately and tripped the gaping deckhand and whirled out of his molasses grasp and dove into the bosom of the sea. He was fourteen years old. The deckhand was going to report the stowaway but then realized that losing the boy was probably bad news to deliver and then he forgot about the stowaway altogether when he realized the ship was about to dock and he was not in the hold where he was supposed to be. Danilo swam underwater for as long as he could, delighting in the warmth, and in ten minutes he was hidden among dense mangroves where no one could find him and he could once again reinvent himself, perhaps this time as a young sailor weary of the sea and hoping to find work. A week later he was loading and unloading trucks at the tiny airport, singing in a church choir at night, and soaking up the local languages, beginning with the name of the island: Babelthuap.

  * * *

  Fixit Day and Meet the New Kid Day on the Plover, by command of the captain. General examination of equipmen
t in toto especially gudgeons, pintles, rudder, turnbuckles, shrouds (upper and lower), sails, propeller, engine, water tanks, both bilge pumps, all aspects of the restroom facilities, winches, flashlights, diving mask and fins, slickers, and an audit of food supplies remaining especially almonds, a man cannot have enough almonds, as old Ed Burke should have said but didn’t. Serious work on the hole punched by the storm. Repainting as necessary. Actual no kidding holystoning of the decks, on general naval principle. Airing of bedding. Soaking of the pip in the billows of the sea and hosing off thereafter to general laughter, sweet blessed Jesus, did you ever see such a bedraggled slip of a pip as that one? But it was Taromauri who asked quietly if she might dry off the pipsqueak with a towel in each hand. The towels looked like handkerchiefs in her enormous hands. The first time she touched Pipa with a towel Pipa made a sharp sound like the whistle of a flute; but then she mewled happily and fluttered her hands as soon as they were free of the sea of the towel. Taromauri dried Pipa’s hands first, gently, slowly, and then her arms, and then her face and hair, and her back and chest, and then her legs and feet, using both towels at the same time somehow, as Pipa piped and burbled. Declan and Piko had both stopped what they were not doing anyway to watch. Somehow the world maundered along around them as the four of them stood on deck, each alert to the mountain of the moment; Pipa almost smiling as the two towels gently but thoroughly dried every millimeter of her holy pelt; Taromauri silent and intent and immense; Declan amused but amazed, and still, down deep, suspicious; Piko moved, frightened, roiled, saddened, thrilled. The first woman to touch her since. The towels the bath. I used to dry her off like that. In the yard. Under the cedars. The sharp red smell of duff. Flittering into her hair. Braiding her hair. Make my hair a rope again Papa! Make two ropes today! Remember the time we made ten ropes in my hair Papa, and Mama laughed so hard her coffee came out her nose which made her sneeze so hard she peed, remember that Papa? That was the funniest day in the history of ever, remember that Papa? Papa?

  * * *

  Late in the afternoon Declan calls a halt to Fixit Day so everyone can go for a swim, and he appoints Piko captain of the Plover for one hour exactly, and Piko as his first act of command commands that everyone get off the boat for a while, onto the beach, and tell stories, but the stories cannot be about yourself, he says, smiling, they have to be about other people, we are getting all solipsistic and narcissistic on the boat and stories are the antidote, okay, I’ll go first. The second girlfriend I ever had was totally into otters and all she ever wanted to do was study otters and swim with otters and make recordings of otters and listen to otters and watch otters and measure the mudslides that otters made and visit museums to study otter artifacts and read about otters and dream about otters, and this was a lot of fun in the beginning because I like otters too, man, I mean who doesn’t like otters, otters are the tough burly clowns of the animal world, no one messes with otters, but they are total goofballs, probably because no one messes with them, and they can catch and eat whatever they want whenever they want, I mean that’s a pretty good life when you think about it, no one messing with you and eating anything you want and playing in the mud, but after a while things started to pall a little because it was pretty much all otters all the time which did not leave a whole lot of room for dessert if you know what I mean which I know you do. Dec?

  Ahhh, let me think a minute. Does it have to be girlfriends? What’s a girlfriend?

  Liar.

  I had a girlfriend in like sixth grade, man. After that it was … acquaintances.

  Liar.

  Except maybe the one.

  Lia— Tell it.

  I kid you not, her name was Wanda Kiwanda. A name she couldn’t stand. Pinned on her by her mother and grandmother and great-grandmother all the way back like eighty generations to whatever cave it was in Russia they lived in when the glaciers melted. Her thing was reinventing herself by reinventing her name over and over again. She would be Wendy for a week and act like she thought a Wendy would act and then the next week she would be Gail and act Gailic and so on like that. She would switch names every Sunday night so as to be a new person bright and early Monday morning. You would think this would drive you nuts as a boyfriend but actually it was a kick because you had a new girlfriend every Monday morning regular as clockwork. It was kind of stimulating, if dizzying.

  What happened to you and … Wendy?

  Wanda. Eventually she figured out that another way to be a new person all the time was to leave. So she left.

  Did you miss her?

  You know, weirdly, yeh, I did. She was a sweet girl. She was like an excitement junkie, that girl. Everything totally made her day. You never saw anyone so delighted by a cup of coffee, for example. She was appreciative, you know? Panappreciative. She was a sweet kid. I haven’t thought about her for a long time. I think to be honest I was sort of hurt that I wasn’t exciting enough for her to stay so I deliberately forgot her. My family was real good at deliberately forgetting stuff.

  Why is that?

  Ah, who cares. Next.

  Taromauri stood up, her epic arms loose by her sides.

  You don’t have to stand up, you know, said Declan. This isn’t church.

  But Taromauri brought her hands together in that same odd gesture, as if her hands were meeting for the first time, and she said, I will tell you about the husband I used to have. He was a good and gentle man. His name was Kekenu, and his people were the turtle people. The thing he was very good at was catching someone’s last breath and saving it to blow on the next child who came into that family. He was very good at that. He had the quickest hands, and he could catch that last breath coming out and save it in a little bone jar. He could catch last words and songs also. Not everyone can do that but he could and he became famous for it. But then he changed when our daughter went down in the ocean and didn’t come back up. He forgot how to catch last breaths and songs and words. But that was his work and he wasn’t good at any other work. He started writing letters to our daughter and leaving them on the beach at low tide for the ocean to take to her. Every day he wrote a letter and staked it to the sand and every day the ocean came and took it. But he never got a letter back from her. He thought maybe she had become an eel and was living in a reef somewhere. He thought maybe the eels had called to her that day on the boat and that’s why she went down to see what they wanted. He thought that if she read his letters she would understand that we understood what she had done but that we loved her and would be very happy if she would leave the eel people and come back and be our daughter again. He thought you just had to ask politely and it could happen. You couldn’t go fight the eels over what had happened, of course, but you could just explain calmly how you were seeing things, and perhaps they would explain how they saw things, and an agreement could be worked out, like perhaps our daughter would be a woman sometimes and an eel other times. Things like that happen. But we never got a letter back from our daughter, and the eels never said anything either, and after a while Kekenu stopped writing letters. When he stopped writing letters and leaving them in the surf he stopped being Kekenu. He had been a good and gentle man, and I loved him, and our daughter loved him, but when he stopped being Kekenu he stopped being good and gentle, and so our time was finished.

  * * *

  The gull heard all this, of course. Sure she did. And she figured that since Pipa never spoke, she would tell a story, which she did, with the usual rough glee of the gulls, and her story went like this.

  We have saints and criminals too, you know. Did you think you were the only people with saints and criminals? Every people has saints and criminals. Sometimes in the same person. Sometimes saints are criminals who were awakened. That is the story I am telling. There was a gull who was a great thief. He was the biggest and strongest and fastest and smartest gull anyone had seen in as many years as the oldest of us was. Because he could do whatever he wanted he did so. He took whatever food he wanted and mated with anyone he wante
d and killed anyone he wanted. Sometimes he plucked the eyes of sharks and spit them back at the sharks. Sometimes he mated with a gull and then killed her and ate her. Sometimes he stole jaeger chicks and dropped them screaming into the fires of people. There were many worse things he did. I do not want to have those things in my mouth. But one day something happened to him. We do not know what it was and he could not explain it himself. He went another way. He shared food. He fought only jaegers. There were many other things that he did. No one can remember all the other things that he did. No one knows why he went another way. Not even he knows. But he went another way. That is the story I am telling you. Now I am finished with my story!

  * * *

  On the beach they had watched openmouthed as the gull squawked and warbled and bobbed, finishing with a little hop and bow, and Piko laughed so hard he got the hiccups. Sweet blessed Jesus, said Declan, who is that bird and what is he going on about? But he calls us to order, shipmates. Away to the billowing sea! And set the fishing lines because we are out of fresh fish and I am starving and if I see another blessed almond on this trip I will throw you all overboard. Batten the hatches and ready the sail. Hoist the anchor and feed the gull. All hands on deck. Strap in the pip and let’s get ready to hit the road. We leave at dusk on the button. East, my hearties! One hour of all sails and then bare poles and low motor. Away to the impacific Pacific! Away to the mother of all mothers! Away to the hatchery of most of the fish in the galaxy! Away to the ocean that eats people! Away to storms that make you puke and wonder why in heaven’s name you are not at home by the fire in a house with a lock to keep the wind out! Away to wind funnels that make you pee in your pantaloons and wonder why you are not living in the desert where no water can find you and drown you and melt your skin and dissolve your bones! Away to the ocean wherein are animals no man nor woman has ever seen or probably will ever see no matter how cool our coolest instruments! Away to the ocean wherein lie bones uncountable from beings uncountable of species uncountable! Away and avast, two men and a woman and a child and a gull! Avast and away, four hominids and an avian and whatever else we have on board I do not yet know about! Awast and avay!