by Marni MacRae
“Gonna build a signal fire?” I was laid out on my back with my head elevated on a life vest Lucas had fetched from our palm hut-nest. My legs were thrust into the sun, my body from the waist up tucked into the shade of a leaning palm. The warmth felt luxurious. Somehow, I could now sit in the sun with the shade as an option. It had the psychological effect of making the sun rays that toasted my skin feel yummy, rather than the scary headache-inducing result when floating out at sea. I imagined I was at a spa, enjoying the view, basking. Oh Lord, it's good to bask.
“It will burn up fast, I thought we should be prepared. This will make some good coals to roast the fish, we can enjoy our drinks and luxuriate while on vacation.”
“Oh ho,” I chuckled, “I hope you feel the same way five years from now when no rescue comes, no boats or planes or long distance scuba divers. You’ll be stuck with me, no alcohol and fish to eat every day.”
“You don’t seem concerned.” He took a break, plopping down beside me in the sand, and stretching out his long legs. His feet a sat a good four inches past my toes that were sprinkled with white sand, like sugar on a donut.
“I’m not.” I put my arms under my head and studied him, he was shirtless, with a pair of khaki shorts that had to have twenty pockets on them. They reached past his knees, and I figured stuffed full, his pockets could probably hold all the contents of my purse. No wonder men don’t carry purses. Their clothing could hold an assortment of knives and wallets and keys, cell phones and an array of manly items, without ever worrying where you misplaced your bag. Lucas’s feet were covered with a pair of brown deck shoes that looked comfortable and well-worn. He was already showing a decent tan, and I was determined to catch up.
“I figure,” I continued as I admired his physique, “that if we can’t leave, we can hope for rescue, but being here, well, making the best of it really isn’t that hard. We'll have to find food, water, stay safe, don’t do anything stupid that will get us killed. But Lucas, if we're to be stranded anywhere on the planet, I can’t really bitch and moan about paradise.”
Lucas sighed and looked around us. “Yeah, I have to agree. I mean we did actually pay to go to a deserted island alone, so I guess we got what we paid for.”
“Oh yeah, and then some, plus, even though the ‘alone’ part was a total attraction to me, I'm thrilled I’m not. Relieved, grateful, thankful, blessed. I wouldn’t be this chipper if you weren’t here.”
“Really? Well, thanks.” Lucas grinned widely, and his eyes sparkled a deep blue in the shade of our palm. “I'll admit you were a bonus to the package too, Sophie. You’re right, being here alone would be a whole other story.”
“Hmm …” I closed my eyes and let the sun soak into my skin. The shade was moving, and I gauged five more minutes and I would have to readjust, scoot down the beach a little more.
Lucas had carefully unwrapped my bandages before he went trekking for the firewood. My cuts and scrapes and gashes looked pretty ugly, and it was a bizarre sight to see my leg decorated with staples, but it was clear they were on the path toward healing. The breeze off the water and the warm sun encouraged the skin to dry out, and the smaller cuts were already hardening. I was concerned about my thigh, it seemed pretty red and inflamed, but I didn’t know if that was normal. There was nothing to be done for it anyway, except the now familiar hoping and praying. So I put the worry aside and opted for looking on the bright side.
“How much have you explored? You didn’t find a resort, a hospital, a 7Eleven?”
“Nope, none of the above. I've walked a good portion of this beach but haven’t circled around to see the other side. This morning when I found your purse in that big mass of seaweed, I found some tangled fishing line. The test was much stronger than what I had, so I spent some time untangling as much as I could. I got about fifty or sixty feet of it, and a good sized hook.” He waved lazily at a gnat-like bug that was buzzing around his face. “When I went in search of food I noticed the peninsula, a little ways past that bend on the beach.” He pointed his long, tan arm southeast. At least I thought it was southeast, being south of the equator, all my compasses were upside down and backward in my head. I determined I would do some serious calculating on that issue later and looked to where Lucas was pointing. I had to shade my eyes with one hand, squinting against the glare off the bright sand. My sunglasses were back in the trees with my purse.
“One side of it drops pretty steeply into the ocean, so I took a chance and rigged up a pole and sat to fish. It’s pretty hard to cast a line without a reel, but years of fly fishing taught me some technique.” He shrugged and smacked at the gnat, leaving a red mark on his shoulder and a tiny black corpse that he flicked off to land in the sun, just outside our line of shade. “The tuna practically hopped on the hook, begging to be brought in. I was wondering if it was luck or if these waters are a great fishing spot.”
“Only time will tell, I suppose. Speaking of the tuna, we should get to roasting before it starts to turn.”
“Hmm, doubt it will turn in the hour or so since I caught it, but as you so command, my lady,” Lucas leaned in and kissed me, “so shall I do your bidding.” Then he tipped an imaginary cowboy hat at me and rose to go in search of more wood, sugar sand sprinkling off of him as he strode away.
Yes, he definitely made this not only a tolerable experience but a delicious one.
* * *
A few more trips and a few more armloads dumped on the pile, and Lucas deemed we were ready to begin. He brought out of the jungle an old brown palm frond and laid it in my lap. “Shred that up as small as you can for tinder, I'll go get a coconut and a fresh frond for roasting.”
The dead brown leafy thing in my lap would have been crisp dry, and perfect for tinder if it hadn’t rained recently and then sat on the muggy jungle floor. But I shredded it into threadlike strips and laid the pieces in the sun beside me to dry. In ten minutes, I had a nice size pile of light fluffy tinder that was growing crispy, just as my legs were turning pink.
I decided my tan time was over and lifted my weight up on my hands and dragged myself backward. I managed about six inches per scoot, but soon I was in full shade and still had the benefits of warmth and wind.
Lucas soon returned with an armload of palm frond, green and succulent looking, and a few coconuts still in their tough, green casings. He deposited the ingredients beside me in the shade and went off to get our dinner. Returning with the tuna, he laid it on the fronds and then sat beside me to begin attacking the coconuts.
I had begun a tally of our blessings as I lay in the sand, encouraging my wounds to heal, and I counted Lucas’s knife as one of our greater ones. He made quick work of opening the brown hairy ball that was an all too familiar sight if you’ve ever watched Gilligan’s Island. Lucas began smacking the ridge of the round ball with the hard backside of the blade, all the while turning the coconut until he had smacked it all around the equator. One more turn with some sturdy smacks and the fruit cracked in half.
“Oh, yay!” I was thrilled there was no loss of digits, no throwing against rocks, or working up a sweat. Lucas made it look easy. “How did you do that without an ice skate?” I laughed and reached out for the two halves, careful not to spill the coconut milk that balanced in one of the creamy white bowls of sweet meat.
“My mom, she’s a baker, or rather, she bakes a lot and cooks from scratch. I’ve watched her smack open these tough nuts in three blows.” Lucas then chuckled as he said, “And Sophie, you watch way too many movies.”
“Well, you clearly understood the ice skate reference so I could say the same. Besides, there won’t be a worry of too much of the tube here. Your mom sounds like a fun lady.”
“Oh yeah, she loves to laugh and cook and feed her kids, she’s a lot like Paula Deen, but without the southern accent.”
Lucas moved to the pile of firewood and began digging a pit in the sand using his hands. When he deemed it the perfect depth and size, he strolled off into the jungle hunt
ing for rocks.
I started thinking about our earlier conversation. Being stranded and making the best of it. I really couldn’t summon up any fear or dread, but I did wonder how my mother was doing with my farm. It was a handful to take care of alone, and I knew the animals and their finicky ways. All the personalities and the dispositions, they were my friends, so I didn’t mind, I enjoyed tending them. My mother, though, didn’t have a farm, because she didn’t want one. A week was all I could beg out of her, she was the only one I trusted to do it right even if she didn’t enjoy it. I hoped she called Lilly to come and stay and help her. I hoped they were OK, they must be beginning to miss me now.
I would have to figure out the time difference, but I thought I was due back today. Flying back I would almost be arriving the day I left. Even though the return flight would be just as long as my flight out had been, the time change would work in my favor. When I didn’t disembark from the plane at the airport, would Anna panic? I tried to imagine the steps she would go through. She would call me first. With no service, no battery, and a thorough dunking, my cell would not get that call. After a couple tries, she may inquire with the airline, see if I booked a later flight. If she didn't find me on any manifest that night, or in the near future, she would probably call the family.
My family consists of my mother and my two sisters. I had a brother, Jared, but he had passed away two years ago. A car accident. Then, of course, there is my aunt and my cousins. So my mother would call Clara, my older sister, who would then call the airlines and the travel agent in Malé. Once she learned of the missing yacht, she would call the authorities. I was wondering if they had already been notified when Lucas returned, lugging an impressive armload of rocks.
“Hey, do you think the travel agency knows we're missing?”
He began layering the bottom of his fire pit with the rocks and seemed to think on the question for a minute. “It’s possible. Jok had said they had expected more visitors to the castaway isle. So with the yacht not being returned, they might go and check to see if we made it.”
“Seems logical,” I agreed. “In which case, the authorities are looking for the yacht, and for us. So maybe our families have been notified.”
Lucas finished layering the rocks and began piling the now dried palm fronds in the middle of the pit. I watched as he built a teepee of twigs over it and then another teepee of sticks to cap it off. Then he sat back on his heels and looked at me.
“Possibly Sophie, maybe our moms are wringing their hands, our families figuring out what to do, who to call, where to search. We can’t know. And we can’t do anything to help them.”
We fell silent then, both of us lost in our own thoughts. The sun was lowering in the sky, and the shade felt nice, less of a wet oven, more relief. The topic of rescue and stressed out family depressed me. I wondered how Lucas felt. He had his ranch to get back to and memories of a failed marriage that lurked there. I had my life in Washington that consisted of basically the same thing, season after season. I loved my life there. Or I had, until the thought of leaving this beach, struggling through the next season, actually depressed me.
“Do you want to go back?” I asked the question softly, almost as if it were a taboo thing to say out loud.
Lucas rose and strode over to where the lighter still lay on a log in the sun. It should be bone dry now, and the fluid absolutely combusting to be set free.
When he returned, he knelt in front of his well laid pile of sticks and said, “Ask me after we eat, and I have a beer in me. I’ll likely be more honest.”
I nodded my head and watched with bated breath as he put the lighter to the shredded palm and flicked the metal roller, hoping for a spark to hit the flint.
Apparently hoping and praying does work, if you cross your fingers on both hands, scrunch your eyes tightly shut, and whisper; please, please, please, please. On the third flick of the Bic, I heard a soft crackle and smelled smoke. I cracked one eye slightly and witnessed the miracle of fire.
“Fire! Oh, thank the heavens above, and the Bic Company and your awesomeness, we have fire!” I reached out to Lucas, and we high-fived, he had a grin splitting his face from ear to ear, and I could see he was proud of himself.
“Well played, island man. Now to the feast!” I carefully set aside the coconut halves that had grown warm from being held in my lap, and reached for the succulent palm fronds. “Do you want to gut the tuna, maybe slice it into steaks, it will be pretty hot once we pull it out of the fire.”
“Good idea,” Lucas quickly gutted the pretty fish, sliced the meat off its body into four healthy steaks, and handed them to me to wrap. He then picked up the fish guts and wrapped them in one of the fronds. “I’ll keep this for bait, I can bury it under a rock, so the crabs and birds don’t get at it.”
“We have crabs here?”
“Oh yeah, tons of them, pretty crazy looking too, they’re huge. I saw a bunch down at the shore this morning.”
“Huh, I can’t wait to discover what else this island holds.”
Lucas smiled and fed the fire some more sticks. “Soon. Your leg should be able to take weight in another day or two. Then we’ll explore.”
The flames were greedy, and I saw that Lucas had once again been right. The wood would go fast. I was glad he’d stocked up.
I began laying the tuna steaks on the palm leaves, then I carefully soaked each one with the coconut milk. Finally, I dug out some meat, which proved way more difficult than I had thought it would be, and added the white chunks to the fish before I finished wrapping them. It was easy to tie the fronds to themselves to keep the wraps intact. I placed the meal to the side and watched Lucas down at the water, washing the fish from his hands.
He was still something of a mystery to me, but the learning of him was so enjoyable I didn’t want to rush it, push him. I compared the experience to an excellent meal or an exotic dessert. You take each bite and taste it. You eat slowly, sipping it with wine. You enjoy the experience, the flavor, the texture. Lucas wasn’t a chew-and-swallow kind of meal. He was a rare cuisine I intended to enjoy every bite of.
The fire soon made a bed of coals, and Lucas laid the bundled steaks on top of them. He fed the fire all around the coals and hot rocks below, but didn’t bury the tuna in sticks and flames. After ten minutes, he turned the bundle over and kept at his rock oven until finally he deemed the steaks ready to eat.
My mouth was watering with anticipation, and my stomach was clenching, and growling like a beast. Using two sticks, Lucas picked up a now darkly singed frond bundle and set it before me.
“While it cools enough to touch, I’ll go get our drinks.”
I almost didn’t hear him. The beast was clawing to get out. Eat, eat, eat.
Finally, Lucas landed beside me in the sand, handed me a bottled water, a beer, and the Mudslide. I saw that he lined up the same for himself except his third was the Piña Colada.
“Oh, this is going to be good.” He leaned over, and with his knife cut down the center of the green, fish/palm calzone. “Can we eat the palm leaves?”
“They do in Hawaii; I’m gonna give it a shot.” I picked up my half, noting that the tuna was cooked perfectly, white around the edges with a little pink in the middle. Like fine sushi from a master Japanese chef. I lifted the wrap to my mouth and took a bite.
“Oh my God!” I moaned and rolled my eyes. I tried to relish it, enjoy it, chew slowly, but the beast in me was set free, and I devoured the entire thing, palm fronds and all within five minutes.
Each of the four steaks had been huge. Knowing the size that Bluefin tuna could reach I had guessed that Lucas had caught a young one, but even so it had been an extremely large fish on the scale of a trout or a bass. But even as stuffed as I was, I almost wished it had been bigger. I lay back and let the beast settle, my stomach stretched to Thanksgiving proportions.
After a week of surviving on water and random candy bars, huge amounts of stress and dehydration, the tuna was a bl
essing. Add to that, borderline sunstroke and being beat to hell on Paradise Island’s coral reef, my body and spirit had needed the fuel and I didn’t regret a single bite.
Lucas had clearly enjoyed the feast as well. His tuna-coconut-palm disappeared as quickly as mine had, and then he too lay back on the sand beside me, the coals of our fire smoldering at our feet.
“Oh yeah, that was crazy good.” He reached out and took my hand, and we just let our bodies bask in the feeling of finally being full.
“Hey,” Lucas said after a few minutes.
“Hmm … yeah?” I lay almost comatose with the warm air, full belly and general feeling of contentment.
“The sun is about to set.”
I pulled myself up and reached for my beer. I wasn’t going to let my full belly stop me from enjoying my first real sunset on land. The bottle wasn’t a twist top, so I handed it to Lucas who did some quick magic with the lighter and handed it back.
“I could never figure out that trick.”
“Well, at least I know you'll keep me around as long as there's beer to open.” He winked and lifted his bottle. “What should we toast to?”
I turned to watch the blazing ball of fire sink slowly, dousing its light for another day. The sky set free it's dressage of reds and oranges, yellows and pinks, making paradise glow with holiday flamboyance and magical mystery.
“To surviving in style.”
Chapter 17
The next two days dragged by. It didn’t rain again, and when I expressed my concern about refilling the drinking water, Lucas showed me the metal can. He had dumped all the water that had gathered in Ducky, into the can, almost topping it off. It had to be almost five gallons. I was instantly relieved, but we both agreed to ration anyway, not knowing how long we would have to go until the next rain, or if we would discover fresh water on the island.
