The Last Island

by Joan J. K. Groves

  John Henry passed a Coke to me, and I missed my mouth. The new stain on my T-shirt went well with the BBQ stain—which went with the basic grime, grit, and dirt that shaded the former white shirt into an eighteen-percent gray fashionable off-white hue.

  Manta continued his story. “It wasn’t long before some wunderkinder from the Fatherland, some German scientific prodigies, got here and hired the Deacon and his buddy as underwater guides to explore the U-Boat.

  “The wunderkinder had sent some equipment—very specialized, very scientific, and very sensitive—ahead of their arrival on the island. They needed a place to make specific final calibrations, and they rented my space. When they needed this or that, they would ask me the best procurement method. The wunderkinder were not secretive, but rather very particular about their workings and were very good at avoiding questions regarding to whom or what they were affiliated. Often I would observe, but for the actual diving they wanted the Deacon and his buddy. I guess they reasoned that since they had been first upon the scene, they would be the best on the block.

  Manta went on. “There were the first explorative dives and then the dives became more involved and more complex in nature. Finally, you could see that the exploration was reaching a climax. The wunderkinder became ever more elated, as if success were at hand. The amount of equipment started to decrease. Their group never repacked it, but the general equipment became less until they started to rely on some strange Area 51-type stuff.

  “Then one day they drowned. All the wunderkinder drowned—at the same time and in the same place. They were good divers—the kit and caboodle of the Fatherland’s best—dead, dead, and dead. The Deacon said they were trapped in the U-Boat. That the U-Boat had tumbled into a mangled mess. But, such things do happen, right?” he asked.

  “Yeah, right,” I answered.

  “The wunderkinder were dead for sure, but that thing about his buddy is the confusing part. It was about this time that he became the Deacon. And one more thing, I went over to the Deacon’s—for what or why is still not clear in my head—but, anyway, I was there and, laid out in perfect pristine display, was the equipment from the wunderkinder’s collection.

  “I do not know how the Deacon gained possession of the equipment, in payment for service, or if he purchased the stuff, or if it was willed to him, or just left in the rented space.” Manta stopped.

  I didn’t know what to think.

  What could I say? The account they placed before me was presented as gospel. I knew that they believed it, but was it true?

  “Check the tank.” They both said it in unison.

  8

  I had made the assumption that the overly-constructed old LION tank was empty. The water was more than perfectly clear and with such perfection appeared to be without substance.

  What was the meaning of their command? I pondered. Was there something about the chemistry of the water that was particular or peculiar?

  Before I could do a chemical analysis, it, the water, moved. The angle of the light produced a shimmer in the water. I had never observed this shimmer before. I had never been attentive to what to me was an empty tank of water under the mind and hand of a human aberration, the Deacon.

  I gathered myself and was about to start again with intensified enthusiasm. As I was about to begin, a slow, low, and sure voice behind me declared, “Don’t.”

  That was all, “Don’t.”

  My first thought was, what the—

  During my opening of the LION, the Deacon had stood haloed by the back light of the brilliant tropical sun. Now he pivoted and diffused away into the light. There was no emotion in his voice. It was not a command and it was not a threat—it was just a simple declarative statement. I decided to respect his declaration.

  It was afterward that the Deacon became my obsession. As if I were doing a dissertation on a protozoan, I observed him. As if I were doing a vivisection on a dog, I dissected him. As if I were mapping the range of an endangered species, I followed him. The Deacon knew but he was uncaring and the truth of my participation into the Deacon’s life did not influence or invalidate the uncertainty principle of truth. My remote actions did not remotely affect the Deacon’s actions.

  9

  “The LION is ready for some new specimens,” I was telling John Henry.

  “Well, let’s lock and load, Bro.” I had been talking to John Henry but Manta answered from behind.

  “Don’t we need papers to collect specimens?” I asked.

  “Papers! Who needs papers?”

  Manta was a free man.

  They both gave that ‘Last Island laugh’ that was a mixture of joy, revolution, and sabotage.

  John Henry and Manta were excellent divers. Manta was one of those giant lumbering beasts that you see on land enslaved under the relentless and insufferable downward pull of gravity. I always imagined that Manta was just one exhale away from imploding under the force of his mass. It was only his massive backbone and his big-boned limbs that defeated all the laws of physics. In the water, Manta was unrestricted—seeming to slip through the inter-space of the ocean’s water molecules—a great gelatinous globule.

  John Henry on the other hand swam with the precision of a diamond-cutter holding a fistful of nitro in a storm. There was no wasted energy in her motions and she seemed to prove that the Second Law of Thermodynamics was nothing more than an antiquated science sentence. Each portion of energy was utilized into a frictionless forward-motion pulse.

  I had to improve to become a very good diver and, to my deliverance, excellence could not be exceeded, but excellence could be achieved. I became an excellent diver.

  We collected in haste, but discarded at leisure. The LION was coming to life.

  John Henry, Manta, and I collected in the shallows of the reef but always, in the black of the wall in the deep of the reef, was the silhouette of the Deacon there in the deep and dark past-blue color of the Abyss. He was always, always down there in the deepest water.

  The Deacon was always in the solo Deep—solo.

  The Deacon was, when seen, just a dark dot far below in the ill-illuminated bleak. All around the Deacon was an undefined cloud that oozed and quivered. The Deacon appeared to be a nucleus in a primitive protoplasmic cell. In the Deep, no life could be detected from the Deacon except for the energetic dynamism that radiated electrically through the density of the sea.

  I would float in neutral buoyancy above him in awe of his unity with the water. As he swam, the water apparently flowed through his body and not around his body. The efficiency of his mixed-gas “air” caused my imagination to hold its breath. The slow-pulsed regularity of the expanding jellyfish gas bubbles—one at a time—were as regular as a slow motion pendulum.

  I asked Manta about him. “What does the Deacon collect? He seemingly brings nothing to the surface but he is way too good a diver to break the surface empty-handed even once.”

  “The fruit seeds of the ghost,” Manta replied to the question.

  I looked at John Henry. She looked away.

  Fruit seeds of the ghost was the answer.

  What the— was my answer.

  “Plant or animal? Genus and species, please,” I asked.

  “Can’t, Bro, for it ain’t so.” Manta answered me.

  I looked at John Henry.

  John Henry looked away.

  John Henry, Manta, and I collected. The sea was abundant with colorful life: plant, animal, and such stuff that falls between animal and plant. In an overflowing ocean, most of the life was neither animal nor plant because the dynamic motion of the ocean life was unable to be bound by the boundaries of texts. Between Manta’s natural man’s knowledge, John Henry’s instinct for correctness, and my catalogue-like comprehension, the stuff of ocean life was put in its place in the LION.

  The LION was coming to life except for the tank at the back. There it was waiting— empty. There I was. With each day, with each dive, with each sight, I was becoming ever more filled wit
h the emptiness of the filled tank. “The fruit seeds of the ghost”—that was what Manta said and Manta was no fool. And, John Henry was trying to hide the truth in daylight.

  I kept thinking about that “Don’t” from the Deacon and evermore there seemed to be a force acting through a distance that was attracting me to the filled empty tank. The steel and the glass of the tank were inert in will but the water pulsed with a greater life force than all the combined life in all the tanks in the LION.

  It, the tank, was empty but it was filled to ever-flowing with the bare nature of life. There was an immeasurable and unclassifiable protoplasmic entity of life in the tank. I felt it in my primitive brain but my rational brain knew nothing of the sort—and that was that.

  10

  Manta entered the LION. John Henry and I were running some lines from the air compressor to a few of the exhibits.

  “The Deacon is not happy.” Manta announced the fact.

  “How many?”John Henry questioned him.

  “Captain and crew are four, a ship’s master who is a professor, and less than a dozen mates—students. Rich kids taking some inter-semester study class, doing a sail for credit. Good way to get through college without reading a book. They showed the papers so I guess all is cool. It is called ‘Sea Study Survey.’” Manta answered her.

  “My God, did the Deacon go volcanic?” John Henry wanted to know.

  “Krakatoa would be a sky rocket compared to his reaction,” Manta said.

  “Oh, boy. I’ll help you some other time, Vaughnie. I have to go.”

  With that response I thought about the situation.

  “Manta, what’s up?”

  Manta was seldom silent. He was often still but seldom silent. After a bit he answered.

  “Oh, she has gone to her shop. They will probably begin there and that is the most likely place where they will come face to face with the Deacon. She will act as sort of a tsunami barrier.”

  “I cannot imagine the Deacon engaged in or enraged by anything or any person,” I said.

  “Let’s just say the Deacon is an acquired taste.” Manta was diplomatic.

  “That’s for sure.” My reply was sincere.

  “But mostly he does not like visitors or strangers.” Manta explained needlessly.

  “That’s for sure,” I said.

  “Did you ever see his door number?” Manta asked me.

  “Yes.”

  “Well, that’s the number he has determined is the right number of people for this island and you, Vaughnie, made it one over.”

  “If I was the one that made it one too many in the Deacon’s census count and I was treated that way, then these people are in for a world of pain,” I said.

  Manta grabbed me in a big hug and squeezed me as if I was a wet sponge and forced from me a pitiful “ugh.”

  11

  Quo diabolus ago was the name of the ship.

  “John Henry, who would be so pretentious as to name their boat that?”

  “Not my ship. Not my life. Not my problem, Vaughnie. Their money spends. Be careful of your judgments,” was her reply.

  I looked at her and just thought, What the—

  I went to Easy Chair Rock to let the sun work its magic upon my soul, mind, and body. The iced tea was perfectly chilled and perfectly sweet. I began my religious slouch with my butt in the rock, my face to the sun, and my feet in the teasing foam.

  In the intertidal zone, the students were going about their tide work. The logo on their brightly colored surf shirts was ‘SS.’ I gasped. I dropped my sunglasses down over my eyes – it was ‘SSS.’

  Out a little way they appeared to be a pod of marine mammals just grazing in a lazy fashion. There was one co-ed off and about on her own—the one nearest to me. Through the iced tea and sunglasses I observed her motions as I had observed so many other sea mammals with a solely clinical curiosity.

  “Do you know what this is?” The co-ed inquired with one of those please-tell-me girly voices.

  I did not reply. I did not think she was talking to me.

  “I’m not very good at this invertebrate classification stuff. I try but I just am not that good.” She was talking to me and, yeah, I did know the common name, genus, and species of what was in her hand.

  “It’s a Magnificent Sea Anemone or Actinia Magnifica.”

  I yelled the answer back to her. I was not going to tell her but for some reason I did.

  As I was looking toward her through the lenses of my sunglasses and iced tea, the water changed in appearance. The water morphed from colorless fluid to gray gel.

  I lowered the iced tea and dropped my sunglasses and the water was colorless again. Was it a refraction and reflecting light effect?

  The co-ed was about chest-deep in the water bobbing up and down for specimens as if she were at a party bobbing for apples. A shrieking cry raced over the rolling surf. It was the co-ed. Instantaneously, she was standing in a chest-deep pool of bloody water and soon she was face-down in the water, then under the surface of the water—gone. She had been attacked. As I and everyone prepared to rush to her aid and rescue, she surfaced on her back in the arms of the Deacon. Dripping blood from his face and body, he carried the girl ashore. The salt-water blood falling from his dreadlocks and his cut figure of pure muscle gave him the look of a sea demi-god or demon. By the force of his silence and bearing, everyone understood that he was her savior and not her attacker.

  I did not understand how or why the Deacon was at that spot out of all the spots in the Pacific at that given moment but I did know that if any person could have saved the co-ed, it would be the Deacon.

  The co-ed was transported to the local medical center. She survived.

  What had happened? I could not make sense of it as I walked along the road, refusing lifts from the family buses. John Henry was out in front of her place and I ambled over. I did not have to report what had happened, for news travels at the speed of sound on small islands. Strange, in Cleveland, Ohio, gossip traveled at the speed of light.

  “Either Tangaroa or Tawhiri, they have been at it a long time.”

  I closed my eyes and asked myself –Is God talking to me?

  It might as well have been the voice of God but it was a voice just slightly less imposing—it was Manta. Manta was a techno man in mind, but in his heart Manta was a natural man. He explained Tangaroa and Tawhiri to me. They were the gods of the island. He explained how Tangaroa and Tawhiri came into shallow water and drew blood when the peace of the waters was disturbed and that the peace of death was the methodology that restored harmony to the sea. So, the sea was in confusion till the peace of death was collected in tribute.

  And, he was serious.

  The only thing that has more life than combined oceans is the imagination of man.

  “I do not know if it was Tangaroa or Tawhiri but I do know that it was a Rhizodontida, a supposedly extinct predatory lobefin lungfish.” It was a second God-like voice but unlike the kinder voice of Manta’s New Testament, this voice was the serious Old Testament tone of the Deacon.

  God, sea creature, or morphed mutant, we four stood there—betwixt and between what we believed.

  “This is the deal. It broke the contract. It drew human blood, spilled blood sugar into the sea water, and now it has to die.” The Deacon spoke in the cold judgmental voice of a hanging judge.

  “What? You are going to take vengeance out upon a dumb sea creature?” John Henry questioned the Deacon in a disbelieving voice.

  The Deacon spoke in a voice even slower and more merciless than before—if that was possible, “It broke the contract and so it must die.”“Manta, say something,” John Henry pleaded with him.

  “Man, beast, or god, each lifetime is a life space. It was what it was, it is what it is, and it will be what it will be.” Manta gave his answer.

  “What the—” Those words were my confession.

  Here was a man who was going to prosecute justice upon a sea creature. Here was
a woman who was defending a sea creature. And, here was a man who saw the human drama in the mythos.

  John Henry did not understand stupidity and she was stupefied. Manta understood and he never got mad. The Deacon was clinical and he placed no judgment on an action of penance.

  The moral vacuity of the sea had come ashore and had exposed the bedrock of our collective mental plasticity and inelastic fathoming.

  I did not tell anyone what I had seen just prior to the bloodbath.

  12

  Time passed and inertia once again gained control of our lives. John Henry was doing inventory and re-supply. I had opened the LION. The Deacon had passed his judgment upon the creature. Manta had become ever more the complete man.

  Manta suggested that we go off-island to Apocalypse Reef. Apocalypse Reef was a spit of coral-head that on the best day at the lowest tide was still underwater except for Ol’ Joe’s. Apocalypse Reef was without government. It had never been under any flag. Ol’ Joe placed his claim on this last bit of claimless land on Earth. All there was on the reef was Ol’ Joe’s which was a place for the coldest beers and juiciest hamburgers—in fact the only hamburgers—on the island.

  Ol’ Joe in his decades-old tee shirt, beat-up old lava-lava, old torn flip-flops, and ancient greasy apron seemed a vision dreamed up by an old hippie on old LSD. But Ol’ Joe was a sight for old or new eyes and was a good and fine person.

  Ol’ Joe’s was simple with no formality and just as few words. It was elementary. Come into Ol’ Joe’s and in a few minutes dinner would be served. There was no need to order, for all Ol’ Joe served was beans, burgers, and beer. Manta would request multiple orders, John Henry would not finish hers, and mine did not stay that long on the plate.