The Plover

by Brian Doyle

  * * *

  Taromauri tried the dried berries first, thinking that warblers probably eat mostly insects and fruit; and the berries vanished as soon as she turned her back. Then she tried almonds, which did not work; they sat untouched until the minister ate them. She went back to the berries, this time laying out a trail leading out from under the water tank into the sunlight. This worked, and she saw the warbler for an instant, leaping out and back so fast you would not believe there had been a bird there except for the inarguable absence of berries. Taromauri experimented with the distance the warbler would emerge for berries; after a couple of days and many experiments, the answer seemed to be about four feet—approximately the height of a Pipa, as Danilo remarked. Then one afternoon a swarm of insects swirled over the boat and Danilo caught a few in his cap and tossed them under the water tank; the warbler, considering this an act of remarkable generosity, emerged shyly and stood at the very edge of the tank’s shadow, looking up at the mountainous beings. Taromauri, with that odd gesture of her hands, folded down onto the deck, and the warbler vanished instantly; but emerged again a moment later, standing in the shadow, only her beak poking into the light. Taromauri slowly reached out and placed a berry between them. For a moment, no one moved a muscle, not on deck, not below, not on the roof of the cabin, where the gull watched, absorbed; and then the warbler bounced out, and stood over the berry, staring at Taromauri, who slowly opened her hands and lay them against her skirt like islands against a sea of red. Another long moment of utter stillness, as the boat rocked gently and the rigging clinked against the mast; and then the warbler, quicker than the eye could see, leapt up into Taromauri’s hand, and then to her shoulder, and then into the black lawn of her hair. Pipa burst out laughing, a lovely trilling sound that draws the terns into the air; they regard the warbler with amazement, wondering where this tiny cousin came from; and Taromauri stood up grinning, taller by two brown inches.

  * * *

  Pipa and Declan are sitting in the stern.

  Where are we going? says Pipa. Are we going to Australia?

  Nope. Actually we are going away from Australia.

  Isn’t Australia an island?

  Yep.

  So why don’t we go there if we have been to other islands in the ocean?

  It’s too big. It’s a continent. An island that huge becomes something else.

  Are you afraid of land like that?

  Yep.

  Why?

  I don’t know. Your dad has asked me that politely and not so politely and I am not sure what exactly is the problem. It’s not like I don’t get tired of being on the boat sometimes. It’s just that I get very uncomfortable if I am not on the boat. I can be on land for a little while but then I want to get back on the boat even if I hate the boat sometimes and use bad language for which someone I know says I owe her money for breaking the rules about using bad language on the boat even though I am the captain and I don’t remember making that rule. I think someone else made that rule and I think she made that rule so someone would owe someone money.

  Are you in love with the ocean?

  No. Sometimes I even hate it.

  Are you in love with anything?

  You. And the boat. I sure love the boat. And cigars. And your dad, in a way. I really admire your dad. Don’t tell him. Also I used to love whiskey.

  Don’t you have a mother and father and brothers and sisters?

  I have two brothers and one sister. My mom went away and my dad died. My mom might be dead by now for all I know.

  I’m sorry.

  Thanks.

  Don’t you love your brothers and sister?

  I guess.

  You guess? If I had a sister I would sure love her. I wish I had brothers and sisters. I wish I had ten brothers and sisters.

  Did you love my mom?

  I didn’t know her very well, Pippish, but I could see why people loved her so much.

  Will she ever come back for me?

  Yes, said Declan, and then he stopped talking, because there was not a hint of another word in his mouth, and he could not lie, not to this child, the child who died in one form and came back in another form, the child he suddenly realized that he did love with a ferocious love, for reasons he did not understand, reasons he couldn’t articulate, reasons that swirled with brokenness and courage and amazement and endurance and other arrangements of letters that claim to be words that mean anything other than a shadow of what is.

  She will?

  Yes.

  But will I know her? Will I see her?

  No.

  No?

  No.

  And Pipa burst into tears, as if she had broken someplace inside and all the water inside her lean body like a whip of kelp, like a fast fish, like a bird in flight, was fleeing from her through a sudden hole; and Declan held her shivering against his chest like a secret.

  * * *

  We have not spent sufficient ink on the sounds of the sea; so let us do so now as the Plover makes its way north by northwest along the Christmas Ridge, a vast drowned mountain range that runs for five hundred miles beneath the sea, invisible from above but epic from below, and how very many things are like that, yes? Massive beneath the surface and absent above, roaring inside, but on the surface not a trace, not a hint, not the slightest indication of subterranea; many things, many things.

  But here we are on the starboard railing, as everyone dozes in the sun, and there is the riffle of the ship sliding through the sea, and the rattle of rigging, and the shiver of sails, and the thrum of the engine, and the croaking complaint of wood, and the arias of attendant gulls, and the flash of fish, and the battering moan of the wind; but these are sounds you would expect. Listen deeper; listen with your throat, with your shins; the ocean is alive with sound discernible with everything except your ears; some things you can only hear with the ears you don’t have, isn’t that so?

  So then let us spend a few minutes with our orthodox ears closed and our other ears open; and now we hear the uncountable residents of the sea beneath the hull and keel; we hear increase and diminution, swell and fade, wax and wane, ebb and flow, charge and retreat, seethe and mutter; the snick of eyes opening, the sigh of hearts ceasing to beat; at any one instant any billion coral polyps emit their astounding tentacles and wave them alluringly in order to eat, just as another billion retract and reboot; a billion other mouths open, a billion fins flicker; and now we are overwhelmed with sounds, more than we could ever imagine, for there are lives below the hull and keel numerous beyond calculation, each one a small symphony of parts and desires, a pulsing narrative of its kind, and no two the same, for all our eager categorization and brave naming; even in this one moment, as the Plover, traveling at three knots, proceeds one hundred yards north by northwest along the hidden ridge, it passes over geniuses and singers, captains of industry, sinners and saints, voyagers and teachers, visionaries and thieves; it passes over beings who see further and deeper than any of their kind who have ever been born; it passes sudden murders and awesome births; it passes over more stories than could be told if there were more years to tell them than there are molecules in the waters of the world; and here we are on the waters of just this one blue world. There are more worlds out there, it is said, than there are molecules of all sorts and stripes here; and if this is so, imagine the sounds in those incalculable other seas among the stars; just the dreaming of that music is an extraordinary voyage, isn’t that so?

  * * *

  Okay, says Declan, silliest stupidest dopiest funniest nuttiest boneheadedest thing you ever did in your whole life, one story each, Piko goes first, ready, go.

  Ah, why me, you always make me go first, you go first, says Piko.

  I am the fecking captain. Go.

  Ehhhhh … one time I was showing Pipa how to catch crabs in the bay and I told her young crabs react to anything that wriggles right near their myriad stalky eyes so I wriggled my toes next to one to prove this and you can guess the rest.
The pip laughed so hard I thought she would turn inside out.

  I remember that! shouts Pipa, I remember that day! That crab was huge! I was scared and laughing! You told me we would have to go to the toe store to buy new toes!

  Your Honor? says Declan.

  Only one foolery, when I could choose among so many fooleries? says the minister, with a smile. O dear. The tide of my sillitude is high. I suggest that I simply offer brief shorthand versions of several errors and the assemblery can vote. To wit. I fell head over heels with my teacher and asked her to marry me, in fourth grade, on bended knee, with a ring that I had carved from the vertebraic material of a shark. You can imagine the derision of my classmates. Also I once dove from a cliff a hundred feet high wearing nothing but a smile, to impress a young woman on whom I had romantic designs, and in my descent I spun awkwardly akimbo, and landed directly on my rear parts, which hurt for months thereafter. Is that enough for the moment?

  Far, far too much information, said Declan, grinning. Danilo?

  Danilo smiled, and this is a good place to point out that he had the most interesting sidelong subtle smile, a hint of a smile, really, an idea toward a smile, you might say; you could tell he was amused, but it wasn’t anywhere close to beaming; it was more like a lift of his lips, a flex of his face; not altogether unlike the gull’s not-quite-a-smile, come to think of it; but once you got to know Danilo you savored the sly allegation of amusement in the man; like, for example, now.

  Hmm, he says. I don’t remember much of my early dopery, as the minister would say, but I do remember one time when I was in the forest and I was so hungry and I found a little scatter of what I thought were black eggs or truffles or mushrooms or something, and I ate one, and it wasn’t.

  Wasn’t what? asks Piko.

  Any of the things I thought it was.

  I get it! shouts Pipa. You ate poop!

  General moaning.

  Probably deer or elk, said Piko, interested in the zoological details.

  Rabbit, I think, said Danilo.

  More snickering and moaning.

  Anyway, says Declan, Taromauri?

  I think I stand with His Honor here in that there are so many choices that … well, here’s one, she says. When I was a girl there was a brief time when my friends and I were fascinated by the production of interior gas, probably prompted by an uncle of mine who was something of a natural genius in that way, and one of my friends who was obsessed with fire convinced us all to try exactly what you think we tried, and by chance the resulting flame caught my grandmother’s riri, her cloth skirt, and what you think happened did happen, and you can imagine the rest.

  Pipa is laughing so hard she loses her voice for a second and looks up terrified at her father but he is on task and smiling and he claps her on the back and she coughs and her laughter returns, startled and a little abashed.

  Pip?

  Yes, Captain?

  This gets a general laugh; one of the subtle pleasures of the pipster getting her voice back is that she has a sly wit all the more entertaining for its dry emergence from a gangly child.

  Your silliest stupidest dopiest funniest nuttiest boneheadedest moment? Choose only one.

  But she, of all the beings on the boat, has to think about this for a moment; for one thing she has not lived as long, and had as many misadventures, as her shipmates have; and for another she spent the last four years silent, sending her large spirit out exploring in ways and realms she has not yet tried to explain to her father, let alone anyone else, although she finds that she wants to explain this to Taromauri almost as much as to Piko; so there is a shard of silence for a moment, as the boat rocks and thwaps; Taromauri notices suddenly that the gull is back in her accustomed position on the roof of the cabin.

  The stupidest thing I ever did, says Pipa suddenly in a voice as sharp and gleaming as a knife, was dancing in the road before the bus came. Papa told me not to go in the road ever, no matter what, until the bus stopped and put its sign out and blinkers on, the blinkers were the sign for me to move, and not before the blinkers, he told me that One Million Times, and I knew that was the Rule, but I did go into the road that morning, because I started to dance in the bus stop, and the bus stop was too small for my dance, so I danced out of the bus stop, and I should have stopped when I got to the road, but I didn’t stop, and I danced right out into the road, and I knew it was wrong, I knew it, but I couldn’t stop dancing, I could have stopped but I didn’t, and it was my fault what happened, it was my fault, and that’s what killed Mama, and that’s why I am crippled, because it’s my fault what happened, if you break the rules you have to pay for it, so I am paying for it, and I’ll never see Mama again ever, and it’s my fault.

  There are some silences that are so huge, and fraught, and haunted, and weighted, and shocked, that they just are; there’s nothing you can say about them that makes any sense. All you can do is witness them, and feel some deep ache that such things arrive, and must be endured, with wordless aching all around. Eventually someone will clear his throat and break the silence awkwardly; but that moment will not come for a while yet.

  * * *

  Late that night Declan could not sleep and he went on deck. Taromauri was asleep in her tent in the stern and Danilo was asleep on the hatch, the evening being warm. Everyone else was below and asleep, the minister snoring like a walrus with a cold. Declan climbed up on the roof of the cabin to sprawl; the gull rustled but did not wake.

  Scoot over, bird.

  Stars by the millions and billions. Fireballs as far as the eye can see. The sea of the stars.

  When I was a kid, whispered Declan to the gull, I dreamed about spaceships, and voyages in the stars, and what it would be like to steer by the stars among the stars, you know what I mean?

  No reply.

  Which you probably do, am I right? Steer by the stars? That’s how you get around, right? With like a magnet in your head? Because I have not seen you haul out a map or chart.

  No reply.

  Not to say you don’t have maps and charts somewhere, like a secret pocket.

  No reply.

  Because everyone has secret pockets, am I right?

  Absolutely so, says a quiet amused voice.

  Jesus, says Declan, the bird speaks!

  No no, says the voice. The bird’s asleep, bless her.

  Declan sits up and looks around but there’s only Danilo, asleep, and Taromauri, asleep, and he leans over the cabin roof and there’s no one on the ladder or in the cabin, and he thinks, not for the first time, Jesus, hearing voices again, it’s the nuthouse for me soon enough.

  No no, says the voice, and now it’s right by his left ear, not in his head, but clearly outside his head, but there is, really and truly, nobody attached to the voice, which is again wry and quiet.

  And you are?

  Don’t get all rattled, says the voice, but I am actually your death, come to visit.

  My death.

  Yes.

  You came to take me?

  No no. Just a casual visit. I happened to be in the area.

  You are my death. My death is a guy.

  Yes.

  Just paying a social call?

  You could say that.

  Why?

  Why not?

  I could die of fright, for one thing. Or go mad.

  Well, you are not going to die of fright, I can tell you that. Nor is madness in the cards.

  What do I die of?

  No no. I can’t tell you that.

  Do I live a long time?

  Can’t tell you that either. Listen, I just dropped by to chat, not to be examined.

  This is a dream, right? I am dreaming?

  If you want to later consider this a dream, sure.

  What was it you wanted to chat about?

  Oh, I don’t know. I suppose I just wanted to get to know you a bit. A rare impulse for me. Usually it’s just the one final meeting. In your case I thought we could just converse a bit beforehan
d.

  You did.

  I did, yes. Don’t mean to scare you. Really.

  Are you the only … agent?

  No no. There are many … agents.

  You know them all?

  No no. Far too many. I know some, that’s all. And we come in all shapes and sizes, of course. No two alike. Some better at the job than others, also.

  I beg your pardon?

  I know one … agent, for example, who couldn’t find the fellow he was supposed to escort. Try as he might he just could not pin down the man’s whereabouts. Very embarrassing.

  What happened?

  Long story. Another agent, not once but twice she escorted the wrong person. The first time it was a nomenclatural problem, the second time cosmetic, I heard. Plastic surgery or something. I am not totally sure of the details there.

  Am I really having this conversation?

  It’s more like question and answer, I think, but yes.

  What happened to my dad?

  You know the answer to that.

  Do you?

  No. We are not issued biographical material, nor do we keep an eye on you in any way. We just escort you when the time comes. Agent is a good word, actually. Now, can I ask you some questions? Because I am only here for a few moments. I have an engagement elsewhere.

  What if you miss it? Does the person live forever then?

  I wouldn’t know. We don’t miss engagements.

  You’ve never made a mistake?

  Not yet.

  But you could.

  Theoretically. But again, let me ask you questions for a moment.

  Shoot.

  When someone you love vanishes, do you always have a hole in you afterward?

  I am not the one to ask. Ask Piko. I don’t love anyone, so no one I love can die. See? Good system, eh? Everyone I love will live forever.

  Is food as good as it looks?

  Yes.

  What’s the best food of all?

  Fresh water. And berries.

  Don’t you love the little girl?

  Pause.

  What little girl? says Declan, very quietly indeed.

  The girl on the boat. The girl who can’t walk.

  She’s not here anymore. We left her on the last island. At a hospital.