by Laird Barron
You see, Gary was a frugal man, but not inappropriately so, considering the circumstances of his upbringing. Born with the sluggish blood of German stock on the cusp of the Platte River Valley, he wore his innate thriftiness as a badge of honor. It was the right thing to do. It was the Nebraska thing to do. Gladys, a former Kansas City socialite and theatre actress of little renown, was quite the opposite, and although she loved her husband as a historian loves a bygone civilization, she always chafed at his chintzy ways. But the heart doesn’t deal out fairly, so she suffered his shallow pockets mostly in wifely silence. Mostly. That would be her story, anyway.
But on this night, Gary bit the bullet. He didn’t like the taste, mixed as it was with the floury chocolate he was trying to work out of his bridgework, but he understood that men sometimes do things they don’t want to do. The burden of the masculine, and all that jazz.
Gary finished his Beam and water, placed his hands on the tablecloth, and made the pronouncement. Gladys was ecstatic, and nearly spilled her Mai Tai as she leapt with surprising speed across the table and planted a series of awkwardly received kisses on her husband.
“Hawaii, right?” she asked rhetorically.
Gary, long since accustomed to her odd fascination with Don Ho, tiki parties, and all things Polynesian, just smiled. “You’ll see,” he said with one of his patented, ex-jock winks that first wooed Gladys all those years ago, all the while searching his internal map of the South Pacific hard earned back in ’68.
Gladys blushed and hugged him tight. Gary inhaled her Avon perfume that always smelled like Raid on her skin. “I love you,” she whispered. Gary grunted and patted her arm. Gladys released, and clapped her hands like a schoolgirl, drawing much-needed attention from the room, and trundled off to the bathroom, squealing happily through tears.
Gary sat back, exhaled, and ordered another drink.
***
When they arrived home, Gladys hustled to her laptop to purchase a whole new wardrobe of “nouveau chic cabana wear” from QVC online, while Gary logged onto his desktop, searching out “affordable vacation options in Micronesia.” Hawaii wasn’t even an option. Fiji and Tahiti were out, obviously. Money-sucking tourist traps lousy with shirtless newlyweds and Eurotrash stuffing their uncut manhood into Speedos. Murderous. Guam would be fitting in a way, as a former Navy man, but he knew Gladys would see right through this, and nag him into suicidal thoughts he’d long since put behind him.
Clicking through various slick tourist sites, Gary finally came upon a promo page for Walakea, a flyspeck peeking up from the water nearly equidistant between the Philippines and Easter Island, which sported “A cozy resort nestled upon a dreamy, secluded island of exotic, black sand beaches.” “Cozy…” Gary grumbled at the thought of such forced intimacy. Worse, a backwater like this probably wouldn’t even serve proper liquor. But before he could move on, his gaze was caught by The most affordable vacation value in the Pacific! highlighted inside a flashing gold star. Nice. These islanders were speaking Gary’s language, and doing it with class. Cross-checking a few reputable news sites, he discovered that Walakea had experienced a spate of underreported “ecological incidents” that had nearly ruined the local fishing economy late last year. Gary nodded with satisfaction. If he had to hand over his hard earned greenbacks to foreigners, might as well do a little charity work amongst the godless zipperheads while he was at it. Two birds with one stone, moonlighting as a Christian imperative.
Gary now had to sell Walakea to his wife. He whipped up a batch of Malibu Rum Runners and presented them to Gladys as she stood in front of the mirror, going way easy on the condition of her pearish body while babbling about various crash diets “that all the actors do.” Gary kept the cocktails flowing, and after less than an hour, his wife was on board.
A belated honeymoon on Walakea. Let the angels sing.
***
The creaky SouthPac Airlines 737 circled the tiny, mountainous island a few times, shedding altitude like a bad habit as it began a tight, controlled corkscrew. Gary, who hated flying with a white-hot passion normally reserved for illegal immigrants and tax hikes, steadied himself as his stomach rose into his throat. He glanced nervously past Gladys, down on the lush greenery below, which seemed to chew its way up to the lip of the pitch-black beach, as if wanting to retake the land from the sea. From above, Walakea looked like a sooty History Channel graphic of the islands of the Pacific theater in WWII. Guadalcanal. Palau. Okinawa. Back when America won its wars.
Suddenly, the plane shuddered, jerked nose down and careened toward the tragically short landing strip. Gary gritted his teeth, tasting the bourbon and club crackers that served as his breakfast after waking up mid-flight, hoping that it was already over.
After a screaming descent that felt more like a free fall, the plane finally skipped, skidded, then thudded onto the asphalt, and wobbled toward the lone gate of the one-horse airport. The AC was cut, and Gary mopped his brow, feeling the creep of the unencumbered sun that beat down on the winged metal cylinder. This was heat without season.
“Wow, wasn’t that something!” Gladys chirped, clutching Gary’s leg. “What an adventure!” Gary was just hoping their baggage had made it into the guts of this rattletrap during their layover in L.A., and that the rooms had central air and plenty of ice. He had vacation drinking to do.
The passengers disembarked across the boiling tarmac, and were met by a garishly painted golf cart that took them to the Sea Pearl Resort, where they had booked three nights of “fun with the sun,” as the confirmation agent assured him in choppy English.
The room was modest, and smelled a bit musty, which was odd for the dry, kiln-like conditions of a Pacific islet squatting on the equator. Gladys flopped on the bed with a laugh, and excitedly paged through the various faded brochures left on the nightstand. Gary set about inspecting the room, checking for faulty wiring and load-bearing beams behind the walls. This was earthquake country, and he’d be good god-damned if he’d breathe his last under a pile of cheap roofing smack dab in the lap of slanty-eyed heathenism.
Suitably satisfied that the walls would hold for the next three days, Gary rang down to the front desk while Gladys peeled off her Spanx and launched into a clumsy fashion show, ripping off tags and dangerously stretching new, non-breathable fabric. As she kept calling for Gary to look, he scanned the television, finding nothing but bizarre Japanese game shows and incomprehensible regional news, which seemed to be covering yet another natural disaster somewhere along the dark Indochinese Peninsula. Retribution for the godless Socialists, Pat Robertson always said, before he lost his mind and started talking about legalizing dope. Gary clicked through the channels a few more times, hoping for a different outcome, but found nothing remotely resembling ESPN or Fox News. Hell, he’d even settle for the Trinity Network, just to get a little home cooking. “Jesus Christ,” he hissed, hoping to high heaven that they sold Tom Clancy at the gift shop.
There was a knock on the door. Gary leapt up to open it, moving past Gladys, who was in the middle of asking his preference between a TrimShaper skirtini and something called a “sarong.” Gary opened the door and found a pineapple standing at shoulder height in front of him, decorated with a wispy moustache and mirrored sunglasses. It was the room service attendant, a huge grin etched across his wide, pock-marked face, making it seem wider and more pock-marked than Gary thought possible. Must be some strange genetic quirk, he thought. Inbreeding, he finally deduced with a nod of finality, as the walking botany experiment held out a red and white plastic bottle and two Dixie cups.
Gary glared at the label. “The hell is this?”
“Language, Gary,” Gladys trilled from the bathroom.
“Whiskey,” the attendant answered simply, then smiled again, putting the bottle to his mouth as if instructing this confused round-eye what to do with it.
“I asked for Jim Beam,” Gary growled, taking the plastic container of Black Velvet and holding it out in front of him with d
isdain. The total lack of understanding of decent distilled spirits was worse than he’d feared.
“Whiskey,” the Walakean repeated, handing Gary the Dixie cups, and held out his hand, palm side up. Gary looked at him with disappointment and shook his head. “It’s already starting,” he sighed as he dug into his pocket and pulled out some loose change, which he dropped into the man’s gnarled, net-scarred hand. The attendant’s smile only dampened slightly. He bobbed his head, and loped away, walking in a manner more accustomed to being on the deck of a pitching skiff than solid land. Gary frowned at the shabby bottle, most likely airlifted in during the Reagan administration. Better than nothing, he surmised, and a definite necessity to survive the next half of the “beachwear for the mature woman” burlesque going on inside their room. When in Rome, drink low.
“He kind of looked like Don Ho, didn’t he?” Gladys called out from the bathroom. Gary sighed and closed the door.
***
The sun dropped quickly behind the island’s volcanic peaks, and under the burden of jetlag and cheap bourbon, Gary was soon ready for a nap that would hopefully extend into an early bedtime. Gladys had other plans, and finished her fashion show with the grand finale, waddling out of the bathroom in an ill-fitting, matronly nightie cut from way too much shiny material. She slunk over to the bed and shook Gary awake, purring something about “consummating the honeymoon.” Gary knew the drill, and got down to business, turning the light off while he fought through his boxers.
“No,” Gladys cooed. “Tonight I want us to see each other, like the natives on the Island of Blue Dolphins.”
Gary looked for his Dixie cup as her eveningwear hit the floor.
***
In their intertwined, post-coital positions, the couple listened to massive waves crashing down on the beach below. “I think I felt the earth move while we were…. You know,” Gladys whispered.
Gary, feeling buzzed, smiled. “Yeah, I have that effect on women.”
She giggled. “Can you believe these waves?”
Gary scratched at his jaw. “Must be high tide,” he muttered, dozing off.
Gladys listened as Gary began to softly snore. “We could get washed away at any moment,” she said quietly, delighting in some imagined danger on this forgotten reef thousands of miles from civilization. Now that he was asleep, she snuggled up close to Gary’s thick torso and exhaled happily, running her fingers through his chest hair that always reminded her of Magnum P.I.
***
That night, Gary dreamt that the whole world was heaving and pitching around him, then disintegrated like a sand painting into an endless, howling abyss below. But as everything melted away, Gary stood tall in the middle of nothingness, balanced perfectly on a six-fold circular pattern shimmering bright yellow below his booted feet. He looked down into the void, and found a comfort in the emptiness. He paused for a second, trying to remember his waking life, then leapt off the edge.
Gary fell, but didn’t experience a plunging sensation. Instead, he felt himself twirling, tumbling slowly upward amid a cloud of oily bubbles. His body softened, becoming pliable, and finally clove into a double helix. Even through all of this, Gary didn’t try to wake up. He just watched, inside his dream, as his body separated into minutia, wondering how it would all end.
***
The next morning, Gary awoke with a start, threw off the smothering covers, and tried to press himself back together. He couldn’t remember his nightmare, which was strange. Gary was inclined to bad dreams and cursed to remember them all, filing them away in a dark vault deep inside. He’d seen a lot. In the haunted jungles of Vietnam. In his private, shameful thoughts since then. But this was different. Stark flashes came to him, yet he couldn’t make heads or tails of what he had actually dreamt last night. Just fractured glimpses. Suffocation… Choking… Drowning in the sky… Gary blinked his eyes and crawled out of bed, careful not to wake Gladys, who slept with a contented smile on her face. God bless her little mind. She never dreamed.
He pulled on some baggy swimming trunks and padded to the dresser, where he poured the last of the Black Velvet into his limp Dixie cup. Gary took a sip, trying to burn away the strange feeling nagging at him, and looked in the mirror, squeezing a portion of his hardened gut. Not bad, sailor. His self-examination was broken up by an unholy racket coming from outside, down by the beach. The frantic squawking of birds.
He walked out onto the patio and looked down at the waterfront, where a jabbering cloud of sea fowl were dive-bombing the sand. Gary reached for his flip-flops.
***
Gary made his way down to the beach, approaching a gathered group of locals helplessly watching the feeding frenzy in silent mourning. A few shooed away birds in hopes of salvaging the fresher carcasses, but most were ruined, chewed up before they hit shore. It was the same scene up and down the beach—black sand hosting a twisting colonnade of the ocean’s gleaming dead. Gary examined the heaps as the first squirm of rot began to set in. Amid the mass of dismembered commercial fish and knotted balls of kelp, he spied some very unusual creatures. He’d watched plenty of Jacques Cousteau with his oldest in the ’70s, and knew that what he was looking at wasn’t your usual collection of supermarket filets. Here and there were the pulpy, many-legged remains of bizarre creatures from the darkest depths, possibly never before seen by human eyes. Whatever violence drove these things to dry land must have dredged them up from somewhere impossibly deep.
Wanting a souvenir, Gary bent down to pick up a bony, rigid specimen sprouting what looked like a dozen eyestalks and feet-like flippers, when a hand stopped him. He looked up, and found a squatty, strong-shouldered Walakean gripping him tightly by the arm. The man just shook his head and pulled him back. Irritated by this close contact but not wanting to make a scene, Gary scowled, stood up and gave ground, while the man shook his head again and crossed his arms, continuing his silent gaze at the unhallowed funeral in front of him.
Suddenly very thirsty, Gary turned and headed back to the room and his deteriorating Dixie cup, passing a rusted front loader belching smoke into the screeching sky as it headed toward the shore.
***
After a continental breakfast of slimy eggs and bacon presumably hewn from shoe leather, Gary took initiative and proposed that they go for a swim, which had the added bonus of allowing Gladys to show off her new “Day One” bathing costume.
Hoping to gain wide berth from the aquatic holocaust that choked their side of the island, Gary and Gladys caught a scooter-drawn rickshaw to the opposite, undeveloped side of Walakea, which, according to the desk clerk—an oddly proportioned man with puffy hair and sideburns who looked like a villain in those knock-off Bruce Lee films—boasted a secluded beach not even used by the locals. That suited Gary just fine. It had been forty years since he swam in the ocean, and he’d be damned if some grinning native or snickering tourist saw him trip over a rip tide or lose his shorts in the undertow.
In a dusty trinket shack just outside of town, Gary picked up some antiquated, Navy-issue snorkeling gear that must have come from a returning American brother, freshly emerged from the slimy hell of Vietnam, his sanity left behind in a bloody jungle pill box.
The scooter puttered up a bumpy dirt road that meandered into the hills, affording a view of the oblong island and the never-ending water that tried to swallow it every high tide. Even with the underpinnings of black sand, the surrounding sea just beyond the breakers seemed darker than most volcanic islands in the South Pacific, hinting at an unusual depth, positioning the island of Walakea as just the tip of a capacious ebony spear thrust fast and hard from the sea floor.
Gladys slipped her arm under Gary’s, interrupting his musing. “Isn’t this romantic?” she sighed.
“Yeah, it’s something else,” he replied.
She rested her head on his shoulder. “I want to be buried here.”
Gary knew she was just caught up in the moment, but his thoughts turned to the grim-faced locals gathere
d on the beach, watching as his wife’s swollen, naked body sank slowly to an unreachable ocean bottom. Patting her absently on the head, he surmised that Gladys probably wouldn’t find a watery grave, chewed to the bone by unclassified fish, as romantic a notion. Moving his gaze to the hills to his right, he scanned the ridgeline of the leveled-off peaks. He did the same just outside of Da Nang. The zips cut them to fucking pieces that day, raining down hot death for eighteen straight hours. Ghosts of the past never rest, especially in heat like this.
Just then, something not altogether natural in the shadow of the mountains caught Gary’s attention. Shading his eyes from the blazing sun, he spotted a ring of tilted, worn statuary on a sloping hillside. Aside from their greenish gray color, they looked similar to those silent monoliths found on Easter Island. But that couldn’t be the case, as Easter Island was 4,000 miles away.
“What are those things?” Gary asked their driver. Gladys looked around quickly and fumbled with her camera, hoping to shoot something interesting enough to impress the gals at Sunday brunch. The driver turned around to Gary and motioned to his ears. “What are those things? Up there!” Gary yelled, jutting his finger at the hillside.
The driver just shrugged and smiled, as everyone seemed to do on this goddamn island.
Gladys began snapping pictures at random, not sure what Gary was talking about. “What is it, honey?” she called. The driver glanced up at the hills and made tiny movements with his hands. Gary noticed this, and looked up at the worn, discolored monoliths, sneering at such superstitious nonsense. But just as they rounded a curve and were out of sight, Gary could have sworn that one of the statues looked vaguely amphibian, which would clearly make them not like the exaggeratedly human effigies carved on Easter Island. “What did you see?” Gladys asked again, checking her shots.
