Garbage Island

by Fred Koehler

  Once Archie sank beneath the school of menhaden, he paused and counted to five in his head. Suspended and perfectly still below the surface, he admired the deep blue extending beneath him as far as he could see. Large, blurry fish shadows patrolled the edges of his field of vision, but they were so far away it seemed he could pinch them between two fingers. Still, they watched the shrew with curiosity.

  He picked out a target and kicked once toward the surface. Aiming the spear as he turned, he let go as soon as the fish was in its path. The spear, propelled by the rubber band, shot out of his paw like an arrow to hit the menhaden. The rest of the school scattered.

  The unlucky fish, roughly half the size of the shrew, was impaled halfway up the spear and dove downward. Archie, beginning to lose his breath, fumbled with the rope that connected the spear to his arm. The larger predators below took notice of the struggling menhaden and began to ascend.

  Archie kicked toward sunlight, locked in a deadly game of tug-of-war. With every flick of the fish’s tail, Archie was yanked farther down. With every upward kick, he lost a little more breath. Meanwhile, the predators circled closer. Another second and he’d have to let go of the line. But the shrew broke the surface just in time, transferring the rope to Mr. Popli’s outstretched paw.

  Archie scrambled out of the water. Still weak from the spider bite, Mr. Popli could not fight the fish for long. The rope slipped in his paw. A shadow beneath the surface raced toward the boat. Archie slid down next to Mr. Popli and grabbed hold of the rope, hauling the menhaden paw over paw up the water barrel. As he pulled it onto the top, an enormous striped wahoo exploded out of the water, barely missing Archie’s outstretched paw. The wahoo arced alongside the Abigail, then splashed down a tail’s length in front of them.

  Archie grinned, holding his flopping catch as he caught his breath.

  “One way or another,” Mr. Popli told the gasping shrew. “Your pet snake is going to be the death of us both.”

  Inside the Abigail, Huxley slithered hungrily toward the smell of fresh fish.

  They’d tried to make him a vegetarian, offering algae and nori they’d collected, chopped up, and seasoned with sea salt. But the infant reptile had refused everything, even the brown, leathery meat of the gooseneck barnacles Mr. Popli had harvested from the spiders’ island. Without food, the snake had become more and more lethargic. So Archie had decided to go fishing.

  Mr. Popli hated himself for it, but he secretly hoped the snake would not survive its infancy. It would be much easier that way, the mouse reasoned. No one knows about it but the two of us, not even Colubra. We’d never have to tell another soul.

  But a bond had grown between the snake and the shrew. Archie lulled Huxley to sleep on his chest, the rhythmic roll of the waves syncopating with the steady beat of his heart.

  It had been Archie’s idea to create the spear and shoot it underwater with the rubber band. He’d begged Mr. Popli to borrow his knife for the experiment. It was only after hours of badgering that the mouse consented.

  “But if you lose my knife, I’ll make a new one of your shinbone.” The shrew had little doubt that Mr. Popli meant it.

  Now, watching Huxley unhinge his jaw to swallow the big chunks of fish Archie tossed to him, Mr. Popli wished he hadn’t enabled Archie’s invention. “No good will come of this,” he warned. “This creature has a taste for meat, and I wouldn’t be surprised if we both end up in its gullet. I can only hope it eats you first.”

  “It likes me,” Archie replied, patting the snake on the head. “So you’d probably save me for last, wouldn’t you, Huxley?”

  The snake nodded vigorously, then gulped down another chunk of menhaden.

  “Stop calling it that! You’re going to get attached. And when it grows into a full-sized carnivore, you’ll be sorely disappointed. You’ll also be dinner.”

  The tiny snake was no threat to them now, but it was growing by the day. “It’s a living thing,” said the shrew. “And it’s a baby. We can raise it to only eat fish. Maybe you can even train it to protect the island.”

  “Snakes are killers,” said Mr. Popli. “They can’t be reasoned with.”

  The mention of the island only deepened Mr. Popli’s concern. What would Colubra do if they came back with her kidnapped son? Even now, there could be a war raging if she merely suspected the islanders were involved in the loss of her egg. No, the snake could never be allowed to return with them to the island, regardless of Archibald’s attachment.

  Archie, too, worried about their return. Here he was, on the precise adventure he’d been hoping for, in a machine of his own design, with every opportunity to search for the family he missed so much. And he looked for them. At the crest of every wave, in the shadow of every cloud, he sought signs of life. But the ocean persisted in relentless emptiness. A suspicion began to take root that perhaps the family he dreamed of was only a memory. And perhaps he’d turned his back on the only family he had left.

  The Abigail continued on a southeast heading, although Archie was unsure if this was the right direction. At least we’re getting farther from those spiders, thought the shrew. It’s nice to not worry about being eaten for a change.

  The shrew awoke to a flash of fangs and the flicker of a forked tongue against his eyelids. The snake wrapped Archie in his coils and squeezed.

  “Good morning, Huxley!” said the shrew, yawning.

  “My instinct is to eat you.”

  “Indeed!”

  “I’ll soon be sufficiently sized.”

  “Yes, yes.”

  “I suspect that you would taste similar to fish.”

  “I certainly hope not! I’d like to think that I would taste a bit sweeter. And crunchier.”

  Archie and Huxley gently leaned their heads together as they laughed. The snake was growing quickly with his steady diet of menhaden. He’d even shed his skin.

  It had been three weeks since Huxley hatched, and the sea snake could now fish on his own and for the crew. Soon he would be too heavy to perch on Archie’s shoulder. Already the shrew buckled under Huxley’s girth. And although they now had plenty of food and summer rains provided fresh water, both Mr. Popli and Archie worried that they might never again find the island.

  “We should turn a bit more south today,” said Huxley. His tone was matter-of-fact, as though it were an indisputable truth. “We’re close to home.”

  “Wait! How can you know that?! Some sort of homing instinct?” asked Archie.

  Even Mr. Popli’s ears perked up at the comment. The snake nodded. “It says we’re getting close.”

  By day’s end, they’d begun to pass familiar areas, including a sargassum patch littered with hundreds of bobbing rubber duckies.

  “It’s the fabled ducky patch!” announced Archie. “I’ve always wondered if it was real. Can we get one?”

  “Why?” questioned Mr. Popli. “They float past the island all the time.”

  “The Abigail could use a masthead. And besides, duckies are lucky!”

  “We’ve been gone for over a month, hopelessly lost, facing daily, deadly perils. Now we’re finally within sniffing distance of home and you want us to stop so you can wrestle a rubber duck on board and then attach it to my beloved houseboat?!”

  “Yes!”

  “Absolutely not!”

  Archie’s ears drooped. “Please?”

  “No.”

  “Please?”

  “Will it make you stop asking?”

  “Yes.”

  “Fine. But make it quick,” the mouse huffed. “Duckies are lucky, indeed. What nonsense!”

  Chapter 21

  Huxley’s instinct may have sensed their proximity to home, but it could not anticipate the shark. The long, crooked dorsal fin divided the surface of the water, swaying back and forth indifferently—almost as if it had nowhere in particular to go and all the time in the world to get there.

  The Abigail veered right. So did the fin. They tracked to the left. The fin follow
ed.

  “It’s been tailing us for ten minutes. Tiger shark, I should think.” Mr. Popli handed the looking glass to Archie. “This is bad.”

  “Very,” the shrew replied.

  “Do you have any brilliant ideas?”

  “We’re riding the ocean in a flimsy plastic bottle pursued by a species known to eat everything from old tires to fur coats. No, I don’t have any ideas. Unless you’d like to salt and pepper yourself. I’m confident we would make excellent appetizers.”

  “Archibald!”

  “What? Do you think of yourself as more of a dessert?”

  “Could you be serious for one minute?!”

  “Sorry!” Archie pulled the brake lever to bring the houseboat to a stop.

  “What are you doing?!”

  “We can’t outrun it. We may as well let it know that we know it’s here.”

  “That’s quite possibly the worst idea you’ve ever had.”

  But no sooner did the Abigail turn toward the shark than the fin descended.

  “It’s stalking us,” said Huxley. “It doesn’t like to be observed.”

  “Wonderful,” said Mr. Popli. “Now we can wait for it to attack us from underneath.”

  “Yes,” Huxley agreed. “Let’s not sit still.”

  Archie shrugged, releasing the brake lever to allow the paddle wheel to churn once more. Slowly the Abigail chugged forward. Within a minute, the fin surfaced behind them, only closer this time. And now with every swish of its powerful tail, the tiger shark was closing the distance.

  They tried to think of ways to rid themselves of their persistent pursuer.

  “Killer whales eat sharks,” said Archie. “Can anyone make noises like an orca?” They tried making whale sounds. The shark was not impressed.

  “Is your new arrow launcher finished? Can you shoot it in the eye?” asked Mr. Popli.

  “Yes. And a great idea! If you jump overboard and start swimming around, I’ll have a perfect shot right as it comes up to swallow you.”

  “Well, then I don’t know what else to do!” said Mr. Popli. “Stuff its gills?”

  “Bite it on the nose?” suggested Huxley.

  None of their ideas, it seemed, would give them a fighting chance.

  “We’re no match for a tiger shark,” said the mouse. “A match!” said Archie. “That’s just the thing! But we’ve got to act quickly. We’ll need the supplies from the spider island.”

  “And then?”

  “All we’ll have to do is get the shark to attack us.”

  Once Archie had explained it, Mr. Popli was no longer convinced it was the worst idea the shrew had ever had. Perhaps only the second or third worst. But, having no better plan, they went ahead with it.

  Using his glass knife, Mr. Popli scraped the sandpaper-like stuff from the side of the matchbox into a pile. He poured it onto a wedge of aluminum foil next to the shrew.

  “Careful!” said Archie. “It’s highly combustible when it all mixes together.”

  “Explain it one more time,” said the mouse. “When the stuff from the side of the matchbox rubs up against the stuff from the tips of the matches, it makes a tiny explosion.”

  “And the bigger we make this pile of stuff—”

  “—the bigger the blast!” Archie finished his sentence.

  “How many matches?” asked Huxley, carrying three more between his jaws.

  “All of them.”

  They rushed through the work, leaving the houseboat momentarily without a pilot. They could easily replot their course as long as they didn’t have to do so from the belly of the shark.

  When they’d finished, Mr. Popli lifted the wedge of aluminum foil, piled with all of the explosive powder that they’d harvested from the waterproof matches. “So what do we do with all of this?” he asked.

  “We stuff it inside an old friend,” said the shrew. “Then we go fishing!”

  Chapter 22

  Archie slit the rubber ducky along its back, then held open the cut while Mr. Popli stuffed the cavity with crumples of aluminum foil.

  “Hurry,” hissed Huxley.

  “This is not necessarily the type of thing one should rush!” Archie whispered as Mr. Popli carefully placed the explosive packet into the cradle made by the aluminum foil. Archie anxiously released his hold on the gash, allowing the thick rubber to close almost as if it had never been cut open at all.

  “Now how are we going to get it into the water?” asked Mr. Popli.

  “Delicately.”

  Suddenly the houseboat lurched and the duck tumbled off the deck and into the ocean. A massive head rolled out of the water. Rows of jagged teeth marched past the trio, followed by a speckled eye with an almond-shaped pupil.

  “It’s now or never!” yelled the mouse.

  “Is it too late to pick never?” Archie whined.

  In response, Mr. Popli leapt to the helm and yanked the brake release, pushing them to full speed. A rope made from every shred of string they could salvage stretched between them and the ducky. When the line ran out, the ducky surged to life, skiing two shark lengths behind the Abigail.

  The tiger shark turned in pronounced patterns, arching its back and flaring its tail as it circled the houseboat. They could easily make out the rippled stripes down its side and tail. It paused to consider their bait, breaching halfheartedly and bumping the rubber ducky with its nose. They held their breath.

  “Just a nibble!” begged Archie. “A tiny taste!” But the shark submerged and circled slowly around. It surfaced again, this time knocking the ducky with its dorsal fin. Then it turned toward the Abigail. The trap had failed.

  Archie fired arrows at the shark from his new launcher. They bounced harmlessly off its broad back. When he ran out of arrows, he flung bottle caps.

  “It’s no good, Archibald,” said Mr. Popli. “It wants a meal. And we’re it. I suppose we all have to get ready to jump and see if maybe one or two of us can get away.” They were out of weapons. Out of tricks. Out of luck.

  And then it was Huxley’s turn to have a terrible idea. He slithered up to Archie and, without warning, struck at the shrew.

  Defensively, Archie swept his arrow launcher toward the snake. The pointed tip cut across the snake’s belly, leaving a thin red line.

  “Why did you do that?” Archie demanded. “I could have killed you!”

  “The shark needs to be enticed,” said Huxley. And without another word he slithered off the side of the boat and into the ocean.

  “Huxley! Wait!” Archie yelled. He tried to jump in after the juvenile snake but Mr. Popli tackled him to the deck.

  The shrew fought to free himself from the mouse’s grip, but Mr. Popli held firm. We had to get rid of it sometime. And at least this way the snake made its own decision. Not that Archibald will ever forgive me for stopping him.

  Huxley swam right over the shadow of the shark toward the trap they’d set. He wrapped himself around the rubber ducky and squeezed. A big ruby red drop of blood rolled down the side of the duck and into the ocean.

  As if an alarm had gone off in the shark’s head, it spun excitedly toward the trap, now baited by Huxley. The fin submerged.

  Huxley looked at Archie and flicked his tongue, as near to a smile as a snake could manage.

  Archie—still gripped tightly by Mr. Popli—yelled and motioned wildly for him to swim back.

  The snake looked both ways as if he were going to cross a path. He began to slide off the ducky, back toward the houseboat.

  Archie relaxed. It was going to be all right. Mr. Popli helped him up.

  The shark launched out of the water, upper jaw extending to reveal layers of jagged, mismatched teeth. Rubber ducky and snake sailed skyward in its mouth. Huxley twisted sideways, landing on the shark’s snout.

  The jaws snapped. The explosive cracked.

  A tooth ricocheted into the side of the houseboat.

  Everything splashed down together.

  The Abigail, still tied to
the ducky, surged toward the shark. The predator surfaced, thrashing its head wildly at the burning sensation and the taste of sulfur. Smoke poured from its open mouth.

  The houseboat jolted and jerked. “Cut the line!” Mr. Popli shouted, clinging to the steering mechanism.

  The shark rolled on the surface, wrapping the line around itself and pulling the Abigail toward a whirlpool of flailing fins and slashing teeth.

  Archie reached for the rope with both paws and began to bite.

  It surprised him how quickly the line snapped free and the houseboat rocked backward from the shark. Archie grabbed hold of the trailing end of the rope to keep from being thrown into the sea. Exhilaration raced through his veins. He’d never felt so animal before.

  Mr. Popli pedaled away as quickly as he could.

  “Wait! Where’s Huxley?”

  The mouse pulled back on the brake for a moment, considering. The snake had just saved their lives. But it’s a snake. It hadn’t chosen to be born a snake any more than he’d chosen to be born a mouse. But it’s Colubra’s son. It was a life. And it was in danger. But Colubra destroyed my home! Everything he’d built, everything he believed in, depended on the possibility that natural enemies could live in harmony if they chose to do so.

  Mr. Popli made his choice.

  “Okay,” he said. “Let’s go find Huxley.”

  Sunlight glinted off black and white scales bobbing on the ocean’s surface. Mr. Popli saw Huxley first and dove in from the top deck.

  He wrapped the snake around his torso as he began treading water. Huxley gave a tiny squeeze before laying his head on the mouse’s shoulder. With that small gesture, a wash of fatherly instinct overcame Mr. Popli. Suddenly he understood both Archie and Huxley in a different way.

  “Everything’s going to be all right,” he told the snake.

  “I bit it on the nose,” the snake whispered.

  “What?”

  “The shark. I said we should bite it on the nose. I did. Did it work?”

  “Yes, Huxley. It worked.”

  Archie helped Mr. Popli carry the listless snake on board.