The Mentor

by Pat Connid

  But, that hadn't happened.

  I looked up just in time to plunge into the billowing, white cloud.

  And for a moment… everything was quiet.

  And cool.

  And then, I burst through the other side and was greeted by crystal-blue beauty.

  In the handles above, my fingers had turned to arthritic claws. Finally, my grip faltered and my shoulders screamed at me, agony, as my arms fell to my sides.

  Exhausted, I forced my heavy eyelids open, falling fast again, like a rock… but looking down, the river of fire had gone.

  I saw only heavenly blue waves, cool white breakers.

  Choking with emotion, I sang to the ocean.

  "And it's No, Nay, Never!

  No, nay never no more"

  And when I cried this time, it wasn’t because of fumes stinging my eyes.

  "Will I play the wild rover,

  No never

  No more!"

  Chapter Six

  I’d parachuted once before, two years earlier, the day before a coworker’s wedding. I wasn’t the Best Man, just along for the ride and free drinks.

  The Best Man sets everything up and, of course, you think strippers, drug-fueled debauchery and crap like that. To be honest, and I love women, but that sorta thing’s not my cup of tea.

  We get in the limo and the Best Man, loud guy, three chins even at twenty-three, he starts talking and getting the groom’s blood boiling-- he’s going to be higher than he’s ever been, girls will be dropping to their knees around him, and he’ll need protection for the whole day… that sort of thing.

  The Jedi Master of Double Entendre, although, groomy didn’t know it.

  Thing is, you can’t jump out of a plane by yourself without a long class and, also, some flight schools even frown upon the idea of parachuting while intoxicated. In fact, I believe, all of them do. So, the seven of us in the groom’s wedding party line up and seven tandem-certified jumpers come out in their gear.

  Minutes later on the plane, just before jumping, one-by-one, they hooked each of us into a harness around their bellies before taking that long, last step.

  The jump with my guy was uneventful except that when the canopy opened it was a rainbow parachute. Not a troubling thing normally, but normally you’re not mounted from behind with the potential for aerial, man buggering.

  The groom, however, did have it a little differently. Turns out, the tandem diver on his back was also a former Miss Hennepin County (at least that’s what chin-man had been told. We bought it). Before they’d jumped, she’d unzipped her jumpsuit to mid-chest, and they were fooling around, falling to the earth.

  Now, I only heard part of this and I’m sure a good amount of it is apocryphal. But, apparently, still strapped to the groom, she’d reached into his jumpsuit, down the front and was stroking him mid-fall. But, as they say, it’s all fun and games until someone gets a wrist-mounted altimeter stuck into your jump suit at five thousand feet.

  Groomy had been spread eagle for the fall while she was pulling the flying Quaker-who-doth-churn-butter act.

  But, caught in his fabric, she couldn’t pull the ripcord so, first time skydiving, and with a booze-infused, high-altitude hard-on, he had to. Trouble was, when they put the brakes on, and they were both terrified, for sure… she didn’t let go of mister wiggler and she kinda pulled the ripcord, too.

  Sure, he was fine after a couple weeks (and a skin graft) but try to explain that to your new bride on her special, special night.

  AFTER MY RACE DOWN Lava Avenue, I’d landed in the freezing waters of the ocean. Which ocean, I didn’t know. My guess, too, was that the water felt unnaturally cold only after the roasting I’d just been through.

  The chute and rigging had come off easily and, sank the moment I’d removed it.

  Initially, I tried to swim directly toward shore, angling away from where the wall of steam jutted up from the water like a snow-white fjord. Closing in on land, however, the water was just too hot. Strangely, swimming in a line parallel to the shore, the scalding water arched away from the shoreline toward open waters. Exhausted but buoyant (thanks to a years-long strict diet of beer and everything), I skirted the entire length of it, at one point wondering if I’d ever stop swimming toward the damp horizon.

  Eventually, the water cooled after I'd tread around the invisible peninsula of hot water. Minutes later, I was climbing onto dry land.

  Standing on the beach, I was exhausted, starving, and incredibly thirsty. I was a pretty good swimmer but the trek had taken what little energy I had left, so I plopped down onto the ground for a moment.

  After a few minutes of raking my fingers through the sand, I started to feel somewhat normal. The effects of the sleep drugs had been washed away by the extreme hot-cold routine.

  Thinking back to the last thing I could recall before waking up in the parachute, I remembered very clearly getting the shot to the head with the three wood. But my guess was that my new bestie had again administered something to keep me knocked out for the length of the journey.

  Clearly, I was a long way from Marietta, Georgia and recognized none of it.

  Not exactly sure how large the island was—but fairly sure it was an island—I looked up and down the beach for any sign of life.

  If I’d been dropped onto some deserted island in the South Pacific, I was dead. This thirsty, I wouldn’t be able to go too far. And from my earlier vantage point in the sky, I hadn’t seen too many 7-11s along the way.

  Thankfully, the hard lump pressing against my butt was my wallet. I struggled to pull it out because my ass seemed to become a salt water sponge, growing a size or two larger. Hawt.

  Finally, it came free, my fingers getting numb and a little red-raw in the process.

  I was left with my Georgia I.D. card but no money and no credit cards. I don’t actually own any credit cards, but it appeared no one, in a random act of kindness, had issued me one whilst I was out cold.

  Taking in a deep breath, the air was cool and salty on the tongue. Behind me, lava was enwrapped in its millennia--long battle with the sea a few hundred yards away. Before me was only sand, driftwood, a couple rotting fish, and a massive wall of black rock.

  What was happening to me?

  Was it some sort of revenge?

  He’d again said, “Lesson begins.”

  Was it then some sort of training?

  For what?

  It wasn’t like some secret society needed the mastery of some long-forgotten, yet out of shape kung fu guy and came looking for me.

  I was more like some not-even-initially-remembered-to-then-later-be-forgotten out of shape drive-thru guy.

  A rather bright fellow with an affinity for cocaine highballs and dirty, little boys once said, Eliminate the impossible and whatever remains, however improbable, must be the truth.

  Well, what happens when you eliminate the impossible and nothing remains?

  Slowly, I lifted my sore body from the ground and walked down the beach, leaving behind a sizeable dent in the sand. With each step I happily left the elemental battle farther and farther behind me.

  I wasn’t sure how far I had to go. The rock wall seemed to go for miles and miles. And, soon, I was reminded how exhausting it is to walk in sand.

  Surely, this hadn’t been some convoluted way to end my life. I wasn’t clear why my abductor had put me on land as barren as the moon’s surface, but it wasn’t to simply have me die. There are far easier ways to do that.

  Was it some sort of test?

  Another thought: how’d I get all the way out here, wherever here was? It wasn’t like I could fly a regular airline knocked out. That might raise a few eyebrows.

  So, a commercial flight was out of the question. I’d been squirreled away on a private plane or jet—and that meant this could be anywhere.

  Pulling my blackened shoes off, the rubber soles now hardened, melted lumps, I tied the laces together and swung them over my shoulders.

  P
eeling off my wet socks, I just dropped them onto the sand.

  I then realized that he had dressed me. I hadn’t worn jeans to bed.

  At least I was wearing the same underwear. He was a homicidal sociopath, sure, but at least he wasn't a perv.

  So, he'd had some sort of plan in place and dressed me for this latest event. It wasn't random abductions. Not sure why, but that was something.

  If my death was to be exacted on Lava Island, I would have very likely been just wearing what I’d fallen asleep in. It seemed he was far more confident in my ability to survive than I had been.

  The massive wall to my left bent inward, arching away from the ocean. I stared down the length of it and it seemed to go forever.

  Glancing east toward the ocean, the sun, out of view in the western sky, was mining a shawl of diamonds from the salt water sea.

  It was beautiful.

  For a few moments, I just stared and appreciated how majestic the world can be. Not where I live, no, but other places (like far-off volcanic islands, for example).

  The temperature was dropping as the sun tucked itself into the ocean on the opposite side of the island. Night was fast approaching. Camping the evening on the beach—without any camp gear and, more importantly, without any water— was not an option, so I walked up to the ancient, black wall and contemplated my chances climbing it.

  Too smooth. It looked like this portion had been created by lava flow ages ago. In that time, the wall hadn’t buckled, cracked or conveniently begun to spring rocky barnacles in the salt-soaked sunlight.

  There were no jagged rocks or lips to use for hand and foot holds.

  Yeah, who was I kidding?

  Even if there were holds, the odds were slim of me ever getting to the top. Likely, I’d get up just high enough to break my neck when I finally fell.

  A slight breeze called my attention to something flapping against the rock wall, about a hundred yards farther down the beach. I walked toward it.

  Often, I’d joked that living on a deserted island would be paradise. Maybe not an island completely deserted-- just an island where the natives were simple and modern conveniences would only likely frighten them.

  Like Australia.

  There I'd be with my Walmart t-shirt and button-fly jeans, and they’d herald me as a king or, maybe, some type of casually-dressed, low-slung deity. Not the sort that could conjure rain or smote an enemy but could make a hell of a daiquiri from fresh pineapple and palm tree pruno.

  I could bring the savages forward a thousand years simply by introducing the drink umbrella.

  As I got closer to the vine banging in the ocean breeze, I wondered if some thirsty tree might have dropped root down this way. My best guess was that someone had lowered it down, as a way to get to the beach. Some boy probably climbed down and fished with a spear all afternoon, wrapped his daily catch in an animal skin sack (hand stitched by his sun-leathered grandmother), then as night approached, he’d scurry back up the vine with the night’s supper strapped to his back.

  When I finally saw the rungs of the rope latter, the image of Jojo the Monkey Boy vanished.

  I walked over to the ladder and tugged on it hard. It felt sturdy.

  Arching my neck back, whew, that was a long way up. And a long way to fall.

  The rungs were dusted with silt, and it looked like it hadn’t been used in a long time. I had the notion to taste the white grit, not sure why, and it was bitter. Salty.

  "Good idea," I said, spitting bits of sand and dried ocean. "I'm dehydrating and decide to go all Lik-M-Aid on sea salt."

  I wasn't excited about climbing the rope ladder, but a look up and down the shore line offered me no other options.

  It was slow going at first.

  Hand over hand, hand over hand. As I got farther from the ground I moved faster, steady, but faster. The twine of the rope ladder groaned each time I pulled myself up a rung and, somewhere in my mind, I could hear the sound of microfibers snapping.

  One quarter the way up, I wrapped my left arm through a rung and rested, staring out at the ocean for a moment. Even in the fading daylight, or maybe because of it, it seemed the world was secretly being swallowed whole by the vast sea. Like we’d screwed it up this time, botched it, and the disappointed planet was slowly taking it all back, maybe give it another shot down the road.

  I’d never lived near the water. Grew up in the Midwest. Mom moved to Oklahoma when Dad took off with a co-worker. I’d just graduated from high school and embarked on a road trip with a buddy to the west coast, hoping to work out what to do next. A few weeks after returning to Minneapolis, I met a lovely, yet very naughty, young lady and we both moved to Georgia after she got a commercial modeling job in Atlanta. She did really well and we cobbled together enough money to get her a good portfolio. Once she’d made a good chunk of change, she eventually moved to New York, ticket for one.

  Georgia’s been my home ever since.

  For me, there’s something calming about the ocean. It seems that we are still controlled—if not controlled, then manipulated in various degrees— by old, cave-born programming.

  Years earlier, I’d read an article about what some call “genetic memory” and, having held similar beliefs most of my life, I bought into a lot of it. This faded blueprint of human behavior seemed to hold the answers to questions about why people do the things they do. The more conventional, over-thought theories, at least to me, those didn’t have answers that rang quite as true.

  Maybe staring out at the ocean was a genetic memory; the first creature climbing out of the water, onto land, taking that initial lungful of air, casting an over-the-shoulder glance at his former home.

  What had it been thinking? Probably something about he’d have to go back that way if he ever want to get laid again.

  No bars on land yet.

  Barely rested, I pulled on the next rung and it came apart in my fingers.

  My left hand darted out to nab the twine cord opposite to the one in my other hand and I held tight.

  Still, I could feel myself on the verge of falling.

  Looking up, it appeared the rope in my right hand had begun to come loose, slipping from its mooring near the top of the rock face, and wooden rungs began to rain down on top of me as they broke free.

  Banging against the rock wall, I jerked downward, little drops, and then bigger, and soon enough, there would be a long plunge to the bottom.

  I was easily a hundred fifty feet in the air.

  For the second time in just a few hours, I was about to fall to my death. On the whole, not a very good day.

  Jerking, banging, reaching for rungs that came loose the moment I grabbed then, I glimpsed at the other rope. It looked secure, so I stretched out for it again.

  That's when I began to fall hard, so panicked and flailing, I clamped my free hand onto the other rope, and it gnawed deeply into my palm.

  Didn’t matter. I gripped tighter with my left hand and it hurt like hell but once my grip began to fasten, I pushed off with my knee and reached over with my right, holding with all the strength I had left.

  The rain of wooden rungs was slowing but those remaining few were really beginning to hurt, falling all the way from the top.

  One of them hit the shoe hanging over my shoulder and exploded into dust and splinters. Not wanting to be beamed unconscious, I held onto the rope, and tucked my head into the crook of my arms.

  Eventually, everything quieted. My battered body was clinging to the rope at the side of the rock face, and it seemed if I were very careful, I had a chance to make it back down uninjured.

  But then what? Being stuck at the bottom again with no path to safety wasn’t a choice worth making.

  I looked up blinking away dust and saw only dimming sky and a long wall of rock. This rope no longer sharing the load with its twin but, out of more reasonable choices, I slowly moved up toward the cliff's edge, hand over hand, hand over hand.

  Stopping often, it must have taken the
better part of an hour to make the rest of the climb. I’d never been so exhausted physically, mentally and emotionally. More than once, the idea of just falling appealed to me.

  Finally at the top, palms chapped bloody, the muscles of my arms now jelly, and I pulled myself up onto the dark shelf.

  I lay on my back for several minutes and found myself fighting off sleep. I’m a bit of a toss-and-turner. Not so good with the two hundred foot drop next to me.

  Finally, sitting up and looking around, trying to pull shapes out of the dusk light, it took me a moment to work out what I was staring at.

  The small house—well, not quite a house—was carved from ugly white stucco. There were no shutters on either window that straddled the door, and on the roof there were so many antennas, dishes, and wires, they’d never have to worry a second about bird shit.

  I smiled and croaked: “Well, they got cable.”

  Slowly, I stumbled toward the Quonset hut, not seeing any signs of life inside. I didn’t care about life. But a bottle of water or beer or juice would be good. Preferably beer. Yeah, I’d earned a beer.

  When I got within fifteen feet of the steel door, it swung open and this huge man, like a Sumo wrestler, with a large black duffle under each arm, came out. He lifted his head and stopped dead in his tracks, his massive legs momentarily shifting as if he were about to bolt back inside.

  I must have looked like hell because, this man who was easily three times my size, looked scared of me. That thought had me laughing, actually laughing, and I couldn't stop for nearly a minute.

  Frozen to the threshold, he nodded slowly.

  Nothing left, I just nodded back and smiled weakly.

  Answering the question I’d been pondering for the entire afternoon, he said:

  “Aloha.”

  “YOU SHOULDN'T DRINK SO fast,” the man who’d introduced himself as Allejo said to me. “It’s not good for the digestion.”

  He reached for my tattered shirt and lifted it.

  “See?" Briefly, he hesitated, put my shirt back down then said: “You’re belly’s getting all distended already. Or, okay, maybe you're just a little chubby. But, it will get distended if you keep that up.”