by Ann Kelley
“I’m sorry,” says Mrs. Campbell.
What is she sorry about? That she has been worse than useless, a total waste of time? That she takes mind-bending drugs? That she gave May and Arlene drugs? That she was responsible for Natalie’s death? Or that Hope has died? I turn from her and walk away from everybody, along the thin strand of sand, wanting only to be alone. My nose streams with salt water. I cough and spit up phlegm and find I am vomiting. I fall to my knees and then to my belly, holding on to the sand as if it were solid ground. Jas runs to me and holds my shaking shoulders, but I push her away.
“Leave me, leave me. Go away!”
She shoves the sand with one foot but says nothing.
The dizziness goes eventually, and the nausea, but I am left weak and shivering. Not only have we lost Hope, we’ve lost all means of making fire—Hope’s broken glasses.
The wind has dropped. My mind crackles with furious thoughts. If only we had waited, we could have steered through the reef. If only… if only…
Thunder cracks loudly overhead, followed by a blinding flash, and a torrent of rain falls from the low sky. It hurts. The huge drops are like small opaque white cannonballs and they leave craters in the sand, like in those photographs of the surface of the moon. I turn and run with the others to the meager shelter of our enclosure. Our roof is useless; we are as wet as if there were no thatch. I can almost hear the rain spirits—pee pah—laughing at us, glad we are marooned on this island.
Later, much later, I retrieve my journal from Jas and start writing:
The boatman was right: We should never have set foot here. It is a terrible place; it will kill us all. We are like the people at the party in a foreign movie I saw with Mom. We cannot leave, must stay here forever and live like animals, or go mad, and die.
It’s my fault. I should have listened to Hope. I am responsible for her death.
twenty-six
High in the sky several large birds circle. We hear them cry, a deep mew like a trapped cat, a sound that makes my heart stop.
“They’re vultures, aren’t they? Vultures waiting for us to die?” Arlene says tearfully. May has nothing to say, for once.
“Kites, I think, not vultures,” says Jas. “Maybe Brahminy Kites. Red on the back, white underneath.”
I sit saying nothing. I have said nothing since I returned to the shelter, and the others say nothing to me. It’s as if I’m a stranger. Briefly, I wonder how Jas can bring herself to teach us anything new…. But as always I listen to what she says. And after a moment’s silence, I break mine.
“Kites! A kite!” I shout, surprising even myself. “That’s the answer—a kite.” I twist off of my bottom and onto my knees, turning to face them all. “If we can’t get smoke, we can have a kite.” My words tumble out of my mouth. “Wind we certainly do have. It’s what we have most of, apart from seawater and rain. If we could make a high-flying kite, someone would see it and know there is someone on this island. They would know where to find us. I’ve seen Lan Kua make kites for his little brothers and sisters…. And we’ve flown them often enough….” I stop, suddenly breathless.
I have to think carefully. If I can only remember how to do it…
I draw a simple kite shape in my journal, mark the components like Phaedrus did with his motorcycle, and show the others.
We gather our lightweight clothes together, whatever we can find: the two red neckerchiefs, the orange rag from the monk. Using two thin bamboos I make an A-frame, tied in the middle with the fishing line, very basic but workable. I make notches at the ends of each stick and cut a piece of string long enough to stretch all the way around the kite frame. I make a loop in the top notch and fasten it by wrapping the string around the bamboo stick. Then I stretch the string through the notch at one end of the crosspiece, and then make another loop at the bottom. Next I stretch the string through the notch at the other end of the crosspiece. I finish by wrapping the string around the top of the stick a few times, and then cut off the excess string. It looks great; taut and square, and the bamboo sticks are not bent, not under stress.
Now I position one of the neckerchiefs to fit the frame with a bit left over, a margin. It’s difficult cutting through fine cotton with a knife. Then I remember there’s a tiny pair of scissors in my knife. I get Jody and Jas to stretch the fabric between them so it’s taut before I begin to cut it.
“We haven’t got any glue. How are you going to stick the material to the frame?” Jas asks.
We “sew” the material using a sharp rattan palm thorn to pierce holes in the cloth, then get Carly and Jody, who have the smallest fingers, to push and pull the thread through the holes and wrap it around the bamboo sticks, the way an old-fashioned boat has its mainsail attached to the boom. It’s looking good—primitive but serviceable.
“Well done, girls! Great job,” Jas says, and the juniors flush with pride.
“What shall we use for a tail?” Jody asks.
“I know, I know!” May shouts. “Bonnie’s journal. Tear out the pages and twist them into bows and tie them on the string.”
“No way, May!”
But none of our other materials are light enough. Paper it will have to be, but certainly not from my journal. I pull Mom’s book out of my backpack.
I begin at the title page—Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance, An Inquiry into Values. I tear it out and twist it in the middle and tie it onto a long length of fishing line. Then I tear out the page that gives the name of the publisher. Then the page where Pirsig dedicates the book—FOR MY FAMILY. Next goes the author’s note, and then the next page, which has only these words: “And what is good, Phaedrus, And what is not good—Need we ask anyone to tell us these things?” I tear out a dozen pages in all, worrying all the time about what Mom’ll say when she sees her precious book ruined. As if it matters.
I loop another length of twine and attach it to both ends of the upright stick. This forms the bridle, the string to which the flying line is attached. We are lucky to have enough fishing line. I attach one end of the flying line to the bridle and the other end to a piece of driftwood.
“We must decorate it,” says Jody.
“It doesn’t need decorating,” Jas replies.
“I know what it needs,” Jody answers. “May, where’s your makeup?”
“What do you want that for, you stupid kid?” May snaps.
“Give it here and I’ll show you.” Jody snatches May’s makeup bag and hands it to me.
“Lipstick’s no good; it’ll be invisible on the red,” says May. “Anyway, I’ve lost my lipstick.”
Jody looks guilty.
I scratch the tight red fabric with a mascara-laden little brush, and write the letters SOS as large as possible.
“There,” I say. “Phaedrus would be proud of me.”
“Who’s Phaedrus?” Arlene scratches the open sores on her arms.
“He… Just someone I know. A friend.”
I suppose carrying the kite to higher ground would be a good idea, but it’s so windy on the beach that I might as well try it here. The juniors are excited and want to help fly it. So I let Jody and Carly carry the kite along the sand as far as the string will stretch and then throw it into the air. It doesn’t even take off—it just flops onto the beach and lies there like a dead exotic bird. The juniors are too little to get any lift.
Jas takes it from them and throws it into the wind. I tug on the flying line to try to give it height. For a few seconds it seems to want to fly. It sways and lifts and tumbles, raises its crimson head, and falls flat on its face. Jas follows it and sorts out the tangles before throwing it up again. It doesn’t seem to have the correct lift, somehow. I don’t know why. Possibly the fabric is too heavy for the frame? Perhaps my design is faulty.
“One more time,” I shout to Jas.
She hurls the kite into the wind again and we watch it lift and turn, pulling against the line, the tail streaming in the strong wind.
“Hooray, i
t’s flying!” Jody and Carly are jumping up and down in glee. I’m hanging on like mad, running and letting out the flying line bit by bit, unfurling it from the stick. It’s looking good; we have liftoff. I lean against the wind and let the kite fly high. Something seems to be happening to it, though. I can see red fabric being torn from the frame, like flickering flames, until the kite suddenly dips and falls to earth, sail-less, like a shot red bird. My sewing technique hasn’t been good enough.
This failure is like all the others: the lost girls, the fires that failed, the wrecked raft, Hope’s death. Like the kite, we are plunged into utter despair.
“What now?” May asks me.
“Don’t ask me! Why is it always me who has to find solutions? You think of something for a change.”
“Sorry I spoke.” She walks away down the beach, picking up stones and hurling them into the water.
“Come on, let’s go find some fruit.” Jas takes the broken kite from my hands and drags me to the tree line. Jody and Carly have retired to the banyan. I can’t stop crying.
We take a different route into the forest in the hope of finding fruit or nuts. There’s a big clearing of crashed trees, and a haze of new green growth blankets the muddy earth. New life. Fig trees are everywhere. They aren’t just trees; some are bushes, and others are climbers. No wonder there are so many gibbons on this island. But most of the fruit is too high to reach, and the trees are too flimsy or branchless to climb.
“I think we are going to be stuck here forever,” I tell Jas.
“No, Bonz. That’s crazy. We only came for three nights. Our families will be desperate.”
“If they’re still alive.”
“Don’t say that!” she shouts at me. “You mustn’t give up hope. They’ll come soon. They’re looking, I’m sure. It’s just that they don’t realize that we drifted so far from the original island. We’re closer to Cambodia than Thailand.”
“You think?”
“Yes, and I know we have to keep hoping and helping ourselves. Not give up.”
There’s a sharp whooping and screeching, and a shaking of leaves above us, and a small infant gibbon falls crumpled at our feet. The mother peers down and hoo-hoos in alarm. The infant looks up at us in terror, and then its eyes glaze over. It’s dead.
“What a shame we haven’t got a fire,” I say. “We could cook it.”
twenty-seven
No sleep last night. I’m hungry.
The sea is red this morning. It moves sluggishly, falling in long folds like treacle. The sun has not yet risen, and the sky is a ceiling of heavy violet clouds. Rain will come again today, and we will have no fire to comfort us and be our beacon, nor wind to launch a kite. I sit thinking of my grandparents’ house in Sutherland. I think of sweet chestnuts and potatoes roasting in the ashes of the fire. I can hear the blackened shells exploding, smell the comforting aroma of butter and black-peppered fluffy baked potato. My throat feels as if a stone is lodged there and I can’t shift it.
A transparent crab appears from its small hole and starts shoveling sand. I wait. It moves away from the safety of its burrow and I grab it and put it straight into my mouth and crunch and swallow. I sit still, the wind stretching my hair behind me.
The sea is now purple.
I wait. Another crab comes within my reach and I eat it. I spit out the shell of this one; it’s too crunchy to swallow. I eat six crabs in an hour. About the same amount of flesh as a small handful of peas, but they’ll have vitamins and minerals.
The two juniors are hanging upside down from a banyan branch, getting in the way of Jas, who is trying to tidy our belongings in the enclosure. She is the only one who cares about our comfort, if you can call it that. She shakes the sand from our sleeping bags and sweeps the floor clean of leaves and bits of fruit skin.
Lately we’ve seen evidence of rats in our camp. In the night they steal bits of coconut flesh and leave droppings under our sleeping bags. I expect they are nibbling away at Natalie’s body, and at the boatman’s remains, too. We don’t investigate; we don’t want to know.
Jody asks me to make a bow and arrow for her.
“We should have thought of it before—weapons, we need more weapons, in case… in case we need them,” I say to Jas.
“The juniors have lost their spears already.”
We gather several different sorts of thin bendy branches, and Jas and I experiment. After a day of cut fingers and blistered thumbs I’ve made a bow. I don’t know the name of the tree, but its damp twigs are springy and supple and bend beautifully. I secure string to the bow with a round turn and two half hitches at each end. Arrows are easier: I have whittled sticks to a sharp point, and at the other end I have cut a notch to fit into the line. I did try to make a feathered arrow from a piece of seabird feather, but it didn’t work. I fasten guitar string around the ends of the bow. It makes a flexible bowstring, but when I try to fire the arrow it simply flops to the ground. There must be a better way. I draw pictures of arrows I’ve seen in movies. The correct flight has to be the answer. After walking up and down the beach several times looking for feathers, I attempt to cut and fix them to the arrow. I think I’ve got it now. I split a feather from the top down the center of the quill, leaving a little quill at each end to tie to the arrow. I tie three flights, equally spaced, around the shaft.
I draw a diagram of the bow and arrow in my journal.
“Here you are, Jody. Catch us some supper.” I give her the weapon and watch her whoop and yell, leaping around the beach, Carly running after her.
Encouraged by my success, I put my mind to more ways of making weapons. A catapult should be easy. Having gathered several forked pliable twigs, I choose the most sturdy specimen and cut it to size. Elastic is what is needed, but we don’t have any. Oh—yes, we do!
“Who’s going to sacrifice their underwear for the sake of our survival?” I ask the others.
Jas looks alarmed.
“Don’t worry, I’ll do it,” I say. I have shorts I can wear without my underwear, so I remove the elastic and tie it onto the tops of the V. No, that won’t do. It needs a pouch to fit pebbles in. I untie one end and slide a piece of doubled-up T-shirt sleeve on. I gather some pebbles to use as missiles, and then I practice my shooting skills.
Jas is looking even thinner—she says she’s gone off coconuts. Hunger torments us. It doesn’t matter how much fruit we eat; we are always hungry. We’re not getting enough protein or carbohydrates or vitamins. No wonder we are listless and lacking in energy.
I find myself wandering into the forest. I’d love to tell Jas about the monk. I’m tempted to look for him despite my promise of silence. After all, he has pawpaw and breadfruit. He has chickens, a fire, delicious eggs. He would help us, I’m sure. Perhaps I could bring some of his fire back to the beach? Perhaps I should. Our survival is as important as his—more.
I keep to the paths we have made before, but don’t go too deep into the forest. I see wild boars behind every tree, snakes hanging from every branch. There’s no tiger to protect me here. The figs I find are small and puny. Jas explained once that they grow on climbers, beginning life as epiphytes (plants that live off other plants), putting down roots, eventually strangling the host tree. I’ve learned so much since we were stranded here. I keep walking.
I go back to where I remember finding the bananas and cut a large bunch, which I throw over my shoulder. I head back toward the beach again. I think it was around here that I saw the tiger and fell down into the monk’s ravine, but I can’t be sure. I whistle loudly, not because I’m happy but to warn wild boars and snakes that I am coming. I’m trying to be positive, but thoughts of Sandy’s empty sleeping bag, of the black fin in the lagoon, of the crab crawling out of the boatman’s eye socket, of the billowing clouds of explosions, and of Hope’s flailing arm make a nightmarish patchwork in my head. In spite of the humidity and heat I am shivering.
I don’t go looking for the monk. I cannot put him in danger.
> I promised.
“Look what I’ve got, look what I’ve got.” Jody is carrying a flapping blue fish on the end of an arrow. “I caught it from the rocks. Aren’t I clever? And Carly helped.”
“Good girls, well done!” Jas is always so upbeat, so positive. I don’t know where we would be if it weren’t for her. She’s our surrogate mother. She shows Mrs. Campbell up for the disaster that she is. I hate to think of her being hurt. I haven’t said anything about her father and Loopy Layla, and I never will. What if it was my dad? Would I want to know?
I kill the fish, hitting its head on a rock. We watch the thin blood, pink, slipping into the water. We cut off the head, then skin and fillet the fish, slicing it thinly and squeezing lime juice over it before hanging it in strips over a branch, where red flies gather around it.
We’ve run out of salt.
But nothing is wasted. The juniors are using the empty cylindrical salt container as a pretend telescope.
twenty-eight
Counted twenty-eight new mosquito bites. Got trench foot, too, I think—something disgusting growing between my toes. This morning—heavy rain and strong wind. Sand everywhere.
Rain runs in rivulets down from the inadequate roof onto our sleeping bags. We get up; it’s too uncomfortable to remain lying down. My teeth are mossy, and I can’t open my mouth without my lips cracking. My hair is like greasy string. The scratches and cuts are healing, though; the monk’s poultices worked well. My bruises have faded to a rather sickly yellow.
There is a huge swell, and the sea looks tall, as if there is too much of it for the space it has. The far-out waves are dark green, fading to a paler jade in the shallows. The green-gray sky is streaked with yellow and purple. It reminds me of pansies.
“Jas, Bonnie, come and look! Treasure!” Jody and Carly are very excited.
The tide line is covered in debris: several ten-foot planks of wood; segments of corrugated roofing material of man-made fiber; crushed plastic water bottles with USAF markings; a bottle of unidentified sticky green liquid; a khaki canvas boot, size 12; an AA battery, corroded; a full crate of American beer; a thick red rubber glove; and a single battered flip-flop. A large inner tube from a truck or plane or something floats in and out on the waves. We gather it all together. Maybe there has been some sort of explosion on the base. It doesn’t bear thinking about.
