by Ann Kelley
“I suppose.” We head back toward the camp.
The little kids are paddling, darting in and out of the swooshing waves as they run up the steep beach. I sit down to watch the tiny bubble crabs organize grains of sand into balls. I could watch them forever. Ghost crabs run toward the sea and get swept back by waves. Seabirds scream and whirl in the wind.
Sandy calls in a high-pitched voice, “Hi, Bonnie, aren’t you coming in?” She looks like lots of white-skinned kids who live in the tropics—pale, with dark bags under her eyes. There’s no sun, just low gray clouds, so she won’t burn anyway. Mom says I’m lucky. My skin tans easily, and I love the heat and sun.
“Don’t swim here, guys, it looks like there’s a rip.” I have learned to read the sea from my grandfather in Scotland. He’s a good fisherman. I’m not much good, but he says he’s going to teach me one day, when we go back to live nearby.
“A rip?” shouts Arlene. “What’s that?”
“It’s a very dangerous current. It’ll sweep you out to sea. Don’t go too far,” I call. But they are too scared to come to harm, which is good.
They screech with excitement as each wave threatens to grab them by the ankles and carry them off.
“You are such a know-it-all, Bonnie MacDonald.” Arlene sticks out her tongue. I ignore her. I know what I’m talking about.
“And you are such a know-nothing, Arlene Spider-eyes,” shouts May. Arlene hurls herself at May, who shrieks, splashing and laughing.
Huge dark clouds growl, and for a moment the sea looks as if it will engulf us all. Colors are somehow brighter, more vivid, held in by the strange thick ceiling of green-gray. It’s wonderful sitting here, watching; I feel so alive. Here we are on our very own desert island: nine of us, and Layla Campbell. It’s like the best adventure we could possibly have.
May, Arlene, and Hope go fishing in a large rocky pool near the shore with a fishing net taped on the end of a bamboo pole and a handheld fishing line. Or rather, Hope fishes and the Glossies sit and watch and make stupid comments. Hope falls in up to her shoulders, which means the water is pretty deep given how tall she is, and loses a flip-flop and her glasses. They spend more time fishing for her glasses than for anything edible but bring back some little silver fish, which we’ll cook later.
The juniors have claimed their own private playground under the banyan. The hundreds of roots growing down from branches act as props and form arches and passageways, and the girls run in and out of them and swing from them. They’re having the time of their lives.
Jas says banyans are sacred to Hindus and Buddhists and represent eternal life.
“I thought you said there are bad spirits in them,” I say to her.
Jas shrugs. “There are good and bad spirits everywhere.” She’s very knowledgeable about Thailand. Her mother runs a “Get to Know the Locals” group and she invites people to come talk to them about Hindu and Buddhist customs. I get all my local knowledge from Lan Kua, who has made it his job to educate me. He teaches me how to curse in Thai, and when I do he screams with laughter and does handstands on the balcony rails of our house. He’s good fun. Dad doesn’t approve of him.
Mrs. Campbell has been working hard and as the light fades we eat hamburgers with buns, and Hope’s delicious little fish. Then we toast marshmallows and sing songs around our campfire, red sparks flying into the black sky like fireflies. Mrs. Campbell pulls out her guitar and plucks the strings. She looks every bit the Duchess and Jas and I smile at each other, knowing we’re both thinking the same thing.
“What’s that tune?”
Don’t care if it rains or freezes,
long as I got my plastic Jesus…
“Oh, yeah, Cool Hand Luke. I lurv Paul Newman.”
“Yeah, those gorgeous blue eyes.” May flutters her eyelashes.
The Duchess carries on with a song Paul Newman played on the banjo in the movie when he heard his mother had died.
“Time to turn in now, you young ones,” she says as she ends the song, but we’re all having too much fun and Jody, Sandy, Natalie, and Carly ignore her, getting up and running down to the sea to whoop and screech, jumping away from the rushing waves. Even scaredy-cat Natalie is joining in, though she’s taken her blankie with her.
“What we have here is a failure to communicate,” quotes Jas, speaking in a nasal drawl like the prison boss in Cool Hand Luke, and I laugh.
“Sing that song you made up, Bonz,” Jas urges me.
“You write songs?” Mrs. Campbell’s eyes light up and she smiles at me.
“No, not really. Poems.”
“Poems? I love poetry. You must read me your poems sometime.”
I’m glad it’s dark because I can feel my cheeks start to flush.
Then the Duchess strums and sings sweetly:
Where have all the flowers gone,
Long time passing?
“It’s a beautifully sad song,” I say.
“It’s an antiwar song, Bonnie. Did you know that?” she asks.
“You’re not antiwar, are you, Mrs. Campbell?”
“A rather unorthodox and dangerous thing to be if you live on a U.S. military base in wartime, don’t you think?”
“I guess.” She didn’t answer my question. The Duchess sings again.
“You have a lovely voice, Mrs. Campbell,” says Jas.
“Oh no, Jasmine.” Suddenly her laugh has no humor. “My husband…” Her voice cracks. “My husband was a real musician.” She strums a few chords and bends her head, a curtain of auburn hair covering her face. Without saying any more we follow the juniors away down the beach into the shadows, to leave her to her thoughts.
We play tag, running in and out of the darkness, chasing one another and squealing with pretend terror. The wind sweeps our voices away. Hope gives the juniors towel rides. They love it, even Natalie. They are like little monkeys climbing all over her. I look back and watch the Duchess as she lies by the fire, smoking, drinking from a bottle. She looks so romantic in her ankle-length antique petticoat with lace around the hem. It’s dyed a bright crimson, and with it she wears an embroidered white peasant blouse with ribbon threaded around the loose neck. She has such style, the Duchess; she looks so unusual, so individual.
“Have you noticed she isn’t wearing a bra?” Arlene whispers loudly to May.
“Yeah, so what? Her tits are bigger and perkier than yours.”
“Are not.”
“Are too.”
“Are not!”
Arlene pushes May over sideways and May pushes her back and they both giggle. Jody’s pleading voice interrupts their bickering. “Mikey says can we stay here forever?”
“Who the hell’s Mikey?” Arlene asks.
“Her imaginary friend. Yes, Jody, if you like. We’ll join the monkeys and gibbons in the trees and eat fruit and leaves.” I could get used to living on a desert island. Though I could do without Arlene and May.
There are no stars tonight and the wind has picked up.
I’m dizzy on cola and fresh air and excitement. The juniors are rubbing their eyes from tiredness. The occasional bright star exposes itself between clouds, but then the sky descends, dropping rain from its blackness. It drives toward us in sheets across the sea and we flee, laughing, to our tents.
Tucked into our sleeping bags I read aloud to Jas from the book I brought with me—Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance, by Robert M. Pirsig. Mom’s just finished it and says it’s interesting and adult, and it’s a cult favorite and it’s about time I read something intelligent and challenging.
“Give it a shot—you’ll like it,” she said. So I’m trying to read it, but it’s hard work. I find it’s easier to understand if I read it out loud.
“Everything gets written down, formally, so that you know at all times where you are, where you’ve been, where you’re going and where you want to get…. Sometimes just the act of writing down the problems straightens out your head as to what they really are.” In the boo
k the author’s talking about fixing the bike, but I think his advice applies to lots of problems. I’m always writing down my problems—like, if Lan Kua wanted to kiss me, would I say yes? My journal knows all my secrets.
“Do you think Lan Kua is serious about me?” I ask Jas. She knows how much I like him.
“Yeah, sure he is. And he’s cute.” She beams and makes a kissing shape with her lips.
“Hey. Keep off. I saw him first,” I joke. “Anyway, he’s going to be a monk soon,” I tell her.
“I thought he wanted to be a kickboxer.”
“Yeah, he does, but it’s something most Thai boys do, you know? Like a rite of passage or something. He was ordained last year, and he has to spend time as a monk to gain merit for his family.”
The canvas tent billows like a sail on a yacht.
“Weird. Will he be allowed to have sex?”
“Jas! Stop it.” We hit each other, giggling.
“Time to settle down now,” Mrs. Campbell calls to us above the noise of the wind and the tents. “It’s been a long day for us all.”
I take out my journal and write in it quickly. I couldn’t possibly stay awake long enough to write about everything that’s happened today.
DAY 1, 11 PM
Wonderful day, wonderful island—THE WRONG ISLAND, but who cares! Paradise.
But it sure is windy!
I slip the book and journal back inside my waterproof folder and tuck it inside my sleeping bag against my leg. Jas is breathing as if she’s already asleep. I check that my sneakers are nearby—have to wear them so we don’t get the dreaded chigger bites (pesky critters; they’re such small mites you can hardly see them, but their bites can make you so uncomfortable!)—before I switch off my flashlight, which I’ve looped around my wrist.
two
Help! Help! Oh my God! What’s happening? Help!”
“What is it? Flashlight! Where’s the flashlight? Got it!”
Screams. Breath torn from my chest.
“Oh God, the tent! The tent!”
“Grab it, hang on!”
“Too strong!”
The wind, like some fierce horned beast, rips our tent to shreds. Its vicious roar deafens us as we’re blasted awake. One moment we’re snug in our sleeping bags and the next we’re totally exposed to the elements. Jas and I laugh at first, then realize the enormity of what’s happening. It’s not just us. All the other tents are blowing away, too. We grab at the flimsy stuff and try to hold it down, but it’s useless; torn canvas flies away like a huge freed bird, high into the furious sky. We’re immediately soaked and chilled. We hang on to each other, buffeted by gusts that take away my breath. It feels as if my eyes are being torn out.
“Girls, where are you? Oh God…”
Then there’s an enormous terrifying blast of air, an explosion that takes the last of our tents, leaving us like hermit crabs without our shells. A livid, full red moon briefly illuminates them, turning them into dragons as they are whisked away to disappear into the terrible night. Cries are whipped away from our lips. The wind snarls and tall waves crash close. Sheet lightning illuminates the sky around us. In one flash I see girls etched against the white surf, heads forward, bodies leaning, tilted into the teeth of the wind as if frozen. I see a sleeping bag rolling along the top of the beach and wrapping itself around a palm tree.
“Help! No, no, no!”
“Teddy, my tedd—”
“We’re going to die. Mommy, Mommy… Mommy. Please…”
Screams. Moans. Screams. Soundless sobbing and wailing and calls for help lost in the awesome howl of the wind. It must be a hurricane. It’s chaotic, a disaster. Like a terrible dream. Jas and I try to move toward the others. Sand in my eyes, mouth, I’m breathing sand. I’m choking. My hair feels as though it’s being ripped from my scalp. The wind is attacking us.
“Hang… to… the little ones, hang on… sleeping bags,” shouts Mrs. Campbell, her words whisked away into the night as soon as they leave her lips, and we do, except that we can’t see who’s who unless lightning flashes. I crawl on all fours with Carly, I think, in my grasp, away from the waves, toward the trees, which are being flung and torn as we are. The wind snatches at our sleeping bags, but we hang on, grimly.
A sudden racket of cawing and screeching, and I see in another flash a black mass of birds—like a flock of mad witches, upside down, flying backwards, inside out, in a dense, fast-moving cloud. A fork of lightning strikes a tall tree only twenty feet away and it explodes before our eyes: twelve-foot splinters, like flamethrowers, are hurled into the sea and all around us. We throw ourselves onto the sand and instinctively cover our heads. Nearby on the sand a burning splinter glows and blackens. A huge gleaming branch gallops along the beach, spitting blue flames. I can’t stop shaking. It’s like war, I think, like being a Vietnamese peasant when a bomb drops, maybe dropped by someone I know.
I cling to the trunk of the nearest palm with one arm, the other curled around Carly, who is hit so hard by the wind that I have difficulty keeping hold of her. She loses her sleeping bag; it is torn from her grip and bounces along the shore like a fat acrobat, eventually disappearing into the forest. We crouch together, blinded by sand and wind. The sea is too close but I dare not let go to move farther back into the trees. The palm that is our anchor is blown so far over that the feathered branches are furiously sweeping the sand like a mad robotic broom. In the brief instances of intense light I can see the fringe of palms all along the beach bent almost horizontal.
It’s three AM, my watch tells me, glowing in the dark, and still the wind moans and screeches.
It feels like the end of the world.
“Bon…? Bonnie…?”
“Here, Jas, with Carly,” I yell to her—I can’t see her, but she’s somewhere close. I can’t let go of either the trunk or Carly to switch on my flashlight. I hear the low wail of children, helpless and frail: Or is it me, my own terror?
In a lull, which is somehow terrifying, as if the wind is taking a big breath to blow even harder, we manage to crawl along the beach, moving from tree to tree, rock to rock, and stumbling over fallen trunks and the tumbling branches. Rain and sea spray whip me; snot smears my hair; my legs are clawed and spat at by sand and flying debris.
I open my eyes as little as possible, only to keep track of the crawling bodies ahead of us. I notice, like a fussing mother, that most of us have managed to save our shoes. Thank God. Finally, at the far end of the beach, clambering over and above the rocks where the dragon’s tail curves out into the sea, we find shelter in the shallow cave Hope saw yesterday. It’s more like the armpit of an overhanging rock. Too exhausted to speak, we shiver and tremble in a terrified huddle. The terrible rage and whine of the storm is inside my head, in my brain, cutting out all rational thought. Soaked through, cold, frightened beyond anything in my experience, sand literally everywhere, I give up and simply endure.
We huddle in wet, sandy sleeping bags. Carly shares mine, sobbing against me. The juniors are beyond comforting, curled up like caterpillars. They stink of urine and wet hair. Jas nudges me and points to where we can see waves reaching right up beyond the tree line.
I have no sense of the passage of time, but eventually a faint streak of sickly saffron light appears on the horizon. Low dark clouds hang ragged in a lurid green sky. Mrs. Campbell crawls around us, checking to see if there are any injuries. We begin to talk to one another, hushed and shocked. Mrs. Campbell does a roll call.
“Jasmine?”
“Yes, I’m here. Wish I wasn’t, but I am.”
“Bonnie?”
“Yes.” I am attempting to get rid of the sand in my ears and my nose and the corners of my eyes.
“May?”
“Here, Mrs. Campbell, and I’m covered in cuts and scratches.”
“Hope?”
Hope snivels and mumbles, “Yeah.”
“Arlene?”
“Unfortunately.”
“Natalie?”
&n
bsp; “My leg, my leg.” She’s been whimpering all night, come to think of it.
“We’ll have a look at it in a minute, dear.”
“Jody?”
“Yes, Mrs. Campbell.”
“Carly?”
Carly sobs a small “Yes,” then wails, “Teddy, teddy!” But Mrs. Campbell doesn’t respond.
“Sandy?” she calls next.
Silence.
“Sandy? Sandy? Where’s Sandy?”
We look around us.
“Carly, where’s your sister, honey?”
Carly cries, low and persistently.
“What is it, dear? Where is Sandy?”
“I don’t know, I don’t know.”
“What do you mean? You haven’t seen her?”
“I don’t know.” Carly sobs loudly into my arms, snot streaking her pale little moon face. I shake my head at Mrs. Campbell.
“Sandy! Sandy! Sandy!”
“You had her, didn’t you?” Arlene asks May.
“No, I thought you had her.”
A memory jolts me into words.
“Sleeping bag. Saw it over there, blown along. Empty… thought it was empty.” The image of the windblown bag is as clear to me as if it were happening now. I pass Carly’s limp body to Hope, who draws her close.
Three of us—Mrs. Campbell, Jas, and I—crawl along the top of the beach, from tree to tree, our eyes half closed against the flying sand, to where the sleeping bag is practically buried at the foot of a palm.
“Is she alive? Oh my God, is she breathing?”
“I don’t know, give me room,” Mrs. Campbell says.
“Her head, the blood…”
“Oh no, oh God!” Mrs. Campbell lays her fingers against Sandy’s neck. “She’s dead. She must have hit her head on the tree trunk.”
I can’t believe it. It’s not happening. It can’t be happening. Jasmine and I cling to each other in horror. Mrs. Campbell is crying and breathing strangely.
“What are we going to do, Mrs. Campbell?”
“I don’t know, I really don’t know.”
