Castle of Water

by Dane Huckelbridge

  “What Michener book?”

  “Hawaii. It was historical fiction, like a thousand pages long. I read it in junior high.”

  Sophie frowned at the middlebrow sound of the thing. “I don’t know about your paperback fake history book, but this is what we need for our canoe.”

  “So now it’s our canoe?”

  “If the damn thing floats and can get us out of here, you better believe that I’ll be on it with you.”

  Barry’s face turned to a sad smile in the flashlight’s wan beam. “I don’t know about that, Sophie.”

  “Don’t know about what?”

  “I haven’t heard a radio transmission from a ship since the storm. I don’t even know if there will be another one.”

  “Who said anything about ships? I’m talking about other islands.”

  Barry burst out laughing; he couldn’t help it. “Other islands? Paddling a few miles out to the sea lane is one thing. But actually venturing out there blind and finding another island?”

  “The people who made these paintings did it.” She shifted the flashlight away from the cave wall, almost accusingly right upon Barry. “They used boats to go between islands.”

  Barry sighed and gently redirected her flashlight back on the paintings. “The people who made these knew what they were doing and where they were going. We’re probably hundreds if not thousands of miles from the closest island, and we don’t have the slightest clue. At a certain point, once you go out too far, there’s no turning back. And the odds of us surviving for weeks or months on the open ocean are one in a million.”

  Sophie pfffed in frustration, although for once it wasn’t so much at Barry as at the seemingly arbitrary cruelty of fate. She knew he was right. Their only hope, and a dwindling hope it was, was that someone out there might still find them or that the ships that passed near the island might someday return. The uncertainty of it all was sickening, almost poisonous in its intensity.

  Eager to change the subject, Barry unwrapped the smoked octopus and bananas from the bindle of his old dress shirt. “Should we have lunch while we’re up here?”

  “Oui, pourquoi pas” was her dry reply as she reached for a banana.

  “They are beautiful, though, aren’t they?” Barry remarked between chews.

  Sophie nodded, still too polite to talk with a mouth full of food, her eyes still fixed on the wall’s armada of ancient ships.

  “And I think you’re right,” Barry added. “If we make our canoe into an outrigger like those, the damn thing will float.”

  Sophie swallowed and shone the flashlight ghost story style directly up at Barry’s face. “I know it will. Because I’m going to help you.”

  This time, Barry didn’t push the flashlight away.

  28

  Sophie’s refined canoe design began exactly as all of her designs had: with a sketch. Only rather than moleskin and a Parker pen, as she had preferred at her architecture studio on rue des Vinaigriers, she worked with damp sand and a thin stick of driftwood. Barry watched as she carved out the plan on the beach beneath them, listening and nodding when she explained the tapered ends, the carved oarlocks, and the angled mast for the lateen sail. There was plenty of nylon rope left over from the dismembered hammock to lash together the outrigger, and the extra plastic tarpaulin, if folded into a triangle and stitched together with fishing line, could readily provide some makeshift sailcloth.

  Which left Barry with one relatively crucial question.

  “So what are we going to make the outrigger and mast out of? There aren’t any palms that thin, and we don’t really have the tools to cut it down to lumber.”

  Sophie, back in her element after more than a year marooned, grinned with a maestro’s mischievousness and licked her sun-chapped lips. “Follow me. I’ll show you.”

  Twirling the driftwood stick in her hands like a drum majorette’s baton, she led Barry into the palm grove and past the freshwater pools, to a secluded spot behind a dense pocket of banana trees—where Barry noticed for the first time a bristling stand of what appeared to be bamboo. It was in fact ‘ohe, a close relative of the Asian species that their Polynesian predecessors had spread throughout the islands of the South Pacific alongside their various other canoe plants, but neither Sophie nor Barry had any knowledge of this fact. All they knew—or rather, Sophie knew—was that it appeared just light, buoyant, and sturdy enough to serve their maritime needs.

  “So this is it?”

  Sophie nodded, running her hand along a segmented stalk. “I noticed them when I was searching for bananas after the storm. I thought maybe I could use the bamboo to make a bed someday. At first I wasn’t sure if it could support our weight, but it’s actually quite strong.”

  “Our weight?”

  “Just shut up and listen,” she retorted, feigning annoyance but inwardly smiling.

  “Okay. Go on.”

  “I think it could be perfect for the canoe. We can use the thinner stalks to make the—what do you call the central part, again?”

  “The mast?”

  “Yes. We can use them to make the mast and the two parts of the outrigger that stick out from the side. And we can use this one,” she remarked, tapping the thickest of the stalks with the ball of her foot, “to make the part of the outrigger that floats in the water.”

  “You think that’ll work?”

  Sophie nodded, as confidently and nonchalantly as she once had to skeptical engineers and surly contractors. “Oui. Ça va marcher. It’s the perfect material for it.”

  Barry clapped his hands and took a deep breath. “All right, then. Let’s get to work.”

  And together, they began choosing the choicest of the stalks and yanking them up from the earth.

  29

  It took almost a month. With Sophie as project manager, what had been a hurried and haphazard affair took on the flavor of a genuine architectural project. She planned and measured everything meticulously, using either charcoal on rock or a sharp stick and sand to diagram her blueprints and a length of fishing line as a makeshift tape measure. The extra work at first struck Barry as persnickety and unnecessary, but the evolving fruits of their labor slowly began to convince him otherwise. Initially, he had complained about all the sanding and trimming, but as the hull grew elegant and narrow, the gripes tapered off along with it. And while the additional time spent calculating the ideal length of the bamboo seemed misspent in the preparatory stages, when the outrigger was lashed and slid seamlessly into the waiting gunwales, he finally understood the value of her scrupulous nature. Barry had to admit, he was in awe of her abilities, and at night, after she went to bed, he would sometimes stroll to the other side of the island, to run his hand along the canoe’s smooth body and admire its progress by moonlight. He was shocked by the almost womanly curves the craft had assumed; he understood why mariners preferred christening their ships with feminine names. It took very little imagination to envision how sleekly she might cut through the water. He had asked Sophie on multiple occasions if they could take it for an early test spin, but she had steadfastly refused. You wait until it’s ready, she told him, and then you do it right. So he waited.

  And waited. Through the deliriously long afternoons spent fashioning the bow deck, the endless nights devoted to stitching the tarpaulin sailcloth, the multiple dawns given to the thwarts and the removable tiller. Through all of it, he waited. And on the morning of his thirty-sixth birthday (she remembered it, he did not), Sophie poked her head into their shelter and told him it was time.

  Barry, still half-asleep, groaned and flopped onto his stomach. “What did you say?”

  “I said bon anniversaire. I just put the finishing touches on the boat.”

  “It’s my birthday?”

  “The fifteenth of July, no?”

  Barry nodded. Crap. “It is indeed.”

  “Well, get up and get ready, you’re going to try it first.”

  “Wait, you mean it’s totally finished?”
/>   Sophie nodded, trying and failing to conceal her excitement. “Consider it your birthday present.”

  “Yes! Let me put in my contacts.”

  Suddenly eager as a Labrador puppy, Barry bounded out of the hut and loped across the sand, to the other side of the island where their craft kept its berth. Sophie jogged just a few feet behind him, excited, for a change, to see the look on his face.

  And there it was, basking in the sunlight. The sight of it stopped him in his tracks. Sophie had erected the mast, fixed firmly in place between the vise grip of two lashed driftwood planks. Its blue tarpaulin sail had been rigged but not hoisted, and one of the emergency raft’s plastic paddles leaned teasingly against its side. Apparently, she had even given it a name: Carved into the smooth wood of its prow was Askoy III.

  “It’s perfect,” Barry uttered, circling the craft and admiring its form. “It looks like something from a museum.”

  “Let’s make sure it actually floats first before we give it a grade. But I feel good about it.”

  “And the name?”

  Sophie blushed, something Barry had seldom seen her do before. “Jacques Brel’s yacht, the one that took him to the Marquesas, was the Askoy II. He loved it. I thought it might be good luck to name ours the Askoy III.”

  “Works for me. But what’s that inside?”

  Indeed, something bunched and filamented was hiding inside the hull.

  “Do you remember that tangled ball of old fishing net that we found buried in the sand?”

  “Yeah. I thought you threw that back in the sea.”

  Sophie shook her head. “I untangled it and cut out a smaller section. I put some weights on it and laced a cord through the top. Maybe it will work for catching fish.”

  “See, I never even thought of that.”

  “Of course not, that’s why you need me.”

  “I won’t disagree with you there.” Barry whittled his palms together eagerly—he was ready. “Come on, give me a hand and let’s push this baby down to the water.”

  He was shocked at how light it was; in its loglike state, it had required a healthy portion of brawn to move it a few feet. The Askoy III, on the other hand, slid like a bobsled across the sand. And when it kissed the water, rather than buck and roll as it had before, it steadied itself and slipped across the surface.

  “Son of a bitch, it’s working! It’s working!”

  Even Sophie let out a very uncharacteristic “Wahoo!” when Barry sprang over the side and sank his paddle in the water. “Try taking it out to the reef,” she called to him.

  “I will, just let me get my bearings.”

  “The water is that way, the land is this way. What more do you need, imbécile?”

  Grinning, Barry waved adieu and paddled the craft past the first small line of breakers, out toward the calmer waters of the island’s shallow lagoon.

  “Take your time,” Sophie shouted through a bullhorn of cupped hands.

  “Don’t worry, I will,” Barry answered, raising the sail.

  And whoosh. He was gone.

  30

  It’s common knowledge among seasoned mariners: Given the opportunity, the ocean will play tricks on you. Spend enough time away from land on that salty desert and any manner of peculiar mirages will appear. Mermaids, St. Elmo’s fire, the lost city of Atlantis—anything is possible when too long at sea.

  Barry, however, had been out on the water for only a few hours in the Askoy III when he received his first dose of maritime legerdemain. He leaned over the prow and sniffed again at the wind, thinking that he must have been mistaken. But no, it was there. Fried chicken. The aroma lingered just for a moment and then vanished like smoke on the next gust of air. Confident that no KFC had opened up shop nearby, he attributed the strange smell to one of those improbable mysteries of the nautical life and decided it best to head back in. Perhaps he had spent a little too long on the water.

  But there it was again, giving him cause to salivate while pushing the Askoy III onto shore. This was bizarre, and after more than a year of bland, starchy bananas, Barry was beginning to resent the ocean’s somewhat sick sense of humor. But his instincts kicked in, and like a bloodhound, he found himself trailing the smell across the island with his nose in the air. It took him weaving into the dappled light of the palm grove, around the fern-kissed base of the rocks, through the shaggy glades of banana trees, and right smack-dab into the middle of their camp, where Sophie had their stone table set and ready for supper.

  And there, on a banana-leaf plate, if his eyes were not mistaken, was his favorite food in the world, the one that reminded him of his grandmother’s kitchen, Fourth of July celebrations, county fairs, and an untold number of sun-soaked picnics. Son of a bitch. Fried chicken.

  “Surprise. I made what you asked for.”

  Barry was speechless. He gurgled and stuttered and made a sound like a frog.

  “You don’t like it?” Sophie asked, afraid that perhaps she had done something wrong.

  Barry nodded to indicate some small measure of his enormous approval. He repressed the urge to fall weeping at her feet.

  “So sit. Eat. There’s enough for both of us.”

  Barry sat down on his rock stool, gazed openmouthed at the drumstick, breast, and thigh before him, and finally regained his powers of speech. “But how? I don’t understand.”

  “You didn’t realize I’ve been raising chickens this whole time? There’s a secret henhouse at the top of the mountain.”

  “No, I’m serious. I … I don’t understand.”

  “Relax, it’s just one of the seabirds. I made a snare out of fishing line—my papi showed me how to catch birds in the Pyrenees—and fried it in some of your coconut oil.”

  Barry didn’t know what to say.

  “Putain, Barry, don’t just sit there and stare at it, eat!”

  So he did. Drumstick first, followed by the breast, he sank his teeth into the most delicious thing he’d tasted in a long, long time. The skin crackled and dripped, the meat practically melted off the bone. And each chew, trailed by the most ecstatic of moans, took him that much closer to a place he seldom visited anymore except toward the coda of warm dreams, where the sweet tea still cooled in mason jars, and the church hymns still rose through a green haze of dragonflies, and the field corn still burst in a gold crown of tassels, stalks reaching high as an elephant’s eye. Oh, Christ, it was good.

  “And you didn’t try your drink.”

  Barry raised an eye from the bones he’d been gnawing and noticed the stainless-steel mug set neatly beside his banana-leaf plate. Pausing midchew, he hooked an index finger through the handle, brought it to his lips, took a sizable gulp, and immediately started choking.

  “Barry, what’s wrong?”

  Stunned yet again, he caught his breath and swallowed. “Sophie, that’s booze!”

  “Well, yes, it was a little harder to get a beer than fried chicken, but I did my best.”

  “What is it?”

  “I left out some coconut water to ferment. It was still very weak, so I added alcohol to it.”

  “But where did you get alcohol?”

  Sophie let slide her most mischievous grin yet. “I squeezed out some of the disinfectant alcohol wipes from the first-aid kit. Be careful, it’s pretty strong.”

  “I’ll be damned.” It was the first trace of alcohol he’d had in well over a year, and its heady taste was still tingling on his lips. He shook his head, smiling and bewildered. “Look, I’m not going to drink alone. You’ve got to join me. I insist.”

  “You don’t need to ask twice.”

  Sophie scooted over beside him and took a big, grimacing swig from the stainless-steel mug, one that also sent her into a fit of coughing. Barry chuckled as he took the mug from her and gave her a trio of playful slaps on the back. When her coughs subsided, he took his second pull of the concoction, this time savoring the drink for the elixir that it was—it seemed to go down smoother with each gulp. Taking t
urns, they passed the cup back and forth, letting an ancient alchemy once again work its magic. Barry tasted bourbon smuggled from a liquor cabinet and Budweiser sipped from a paternal can. Sophie tasted trou normand and a bloodred Bordeaux decanted into a glass. The sunlight sweetened; the universe warmed. A desolate rock at the edge of the earth suddenly became the bright center of the universe, and music pulsed from a set of cosmic pipes. Barry heard Skynnard and eating-club laughter; Sophie heard fado and a plush burst of strings. It was all coming back—all of it, with the lives they had lost seeping back in like the tide. Between rich bouts of laughter, Barry told Sophie about the first time he’d ever gotten drunk and how he’d puked all over a schnitzel stand at the Painesville Oktoberfest. Through a nest of giggles, Sophie described her first encounter with Portuguese ginjinha and how she’d gone roller-skating in her underwear through the middle of the Alfama. Old stories received fresh coats of paint, long-lost friendships were rekindled anew. With their alcoholic tolerance seriously compromised, it didn’t take long for the euphoria to peak and inhibitions to lower.

  Which was precisely when Sophie remembered she still had one more gift for Barry.

  “Close your eyes,” she commanded. “There’s something else.”

  “Come on, just tell me.”

  “Not on your life! Ferme les yeux.”

  “They’re closed!”

  “No, you’re peeking, putain!” she playfully scolded, her words taking on the first round edges of a drunken slur.

  “Fine. My yeux are fermer.”

  Sophie stumbled to her feet and fetched a bundle from the tent, wrapped neatly in Barry’s long-suffering shirt. She placed it ceremoniously in his lap.

  “Open them.”

  Barry blinked, examined the bundle, and spread apart the fabric. Inside were two carved wooden paintbrushes, one bigger and one smaller, and two of the old flare canisters, lids screwed on tight.

  “Sophie, is this what I think it is?”

  Sophie nodded. “I’m sorry there are only two colors, I could only make white paint from ground clamshells and black paint from charcoal. And I had to cut some of my own hair to make the brushes, so I’m not sure how well—”