The Cursed Canoe

by Frankie Bow

  “Of course you can.” I managed a weak smile. Sherry’s remark was a spark of hope in an otherwise miserable morning. This is what makes it all worthwhile, I reflected. The students who are here to learn, not to appease their parents or wait out a bad job market. Give me one or two of these a semester, and I can deal with the rest.

  “My biggest problem right now is putting in the time for class, though,” Sherry said. “You know, paddling practice has been pretty intense lately. Emma’s been working us hard.”

  “Are you ready for the big race? I know it’s going to be a little sad not having Kathy there.”

  “I’m so excited! I can’t believe it’s this weekend already.”

  “Make sure to take good care of yourself” I wondered if I looked as hypocritical as I felt.

  I caught sight of a broad-shouldered figure standing in the doorway, and for a second, I thought it was Donnie. My heart raced a little, and then... cue the needle-scratch.

  It wasn’t Donnie Gonsalves at all. It was his son, Davison.

  Just when I thought my headache couldn’t get any worse.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO

  THE FIRST THING YOU notice about Davison Gonsalves—aside from the fact that he looks like a baseball-capped, acne-sprinkled knockoff of his father—is his tattoos. Apparently the “tribal” designs and kanji characters so popular with his peers were not obnoxious enough for him. Giant brown centipedes writhed repulsively on his arms as he reached up to grasp the lintel of my office door.

  “Eh, Aunty Molly!” Davison gripped my door frame, showing off his muscles and blocking my exit. “Check it out. I’m back in town.”

  “Look at that!” I chirped. “You sure are.” I suppressed the impulse to clutch my head as pain stabbed through my right eye.

  “Don’t get your hopes up, though.” His grin showed off his expensively-straightened teeth. “I’m not staying long. I had to pick up some transcripts and stuff and Dad said I should come by and say hi. Eh, how you like my new bedroom? Sweet, ah?”

  I couldn’t begin to think of an appropriate response, and Davison didn’t wait for one. Sherry had turned around in her chair and was eying him with interest. His deep-cut tank top was designed to show off as much ink and muscle as possible while still technically serving as a “shirt.”

  Davison released his grip on my door frame and sauntered into my dim office, overpowering the tiny space with a noxious plume of cologne.

  “Hey.” He dropped his voice about an octave. “I’m Dave.”

  Sherry took his hand and held it in both of hers. I could have leaned over and waved my arm between their two faces and neither of them would have blinked.

  “I’m Sherry,” she rasped coquettishly. “Like the drink.”

  Somehow, she managed to signal to Davison (sorry, I mean Dave) that she was dying for a smoke, and he indicated he could oblige her. She had apparently forgotten about the pack of cigarettes in her purse. I reminded them smoking was not permitted in the building, which was fine with them. They left my office together, giggling and leaning in close to each other as if it were freezing and they had to conserve their body heat. My wall thermometer showed eighty-one degrees Fahrenheit.

  When they had gone, I logged onto my computer and accepted Sherry’s friend request. Pat refuses to “friend” students, but I don’t see the harm. It’s a nice, low-commitment way to stay in touch. For me, the asynchronous, take-it-or-leave-it interaction of social media is an agreeable substitute for face-to-face conversation, which I find exhausting.

  I’m even online friends with Kathy Banks. Or was friends, I should say. I checked my contact list and felt a chill when I saw her account was still active. Well, of course it was. Who was going to deactivate it? I was tempted to click through to her wall to see whether anyone had written on it, but decided it would be too depressing. Instead, I spent about thirty seconds perusing my contacts’ baby pictures, food photos, and pithy quotes. Then I packed up to go to class.

  My sunglasses steamed up as soon as I stepped out of my building. Between my misted-over vision and my pounding headache, I nearly walked right past my classroom door. I groped my way inside and switched off the overhead lights. Hazy daylight filtered through the blinds. The classroom was warm and humid, the feeble air conditioning no match for the wall-to-wall bodies.

  “Good morning,” I murmured as I fumbled with my sunglasses. I winced as they clattered onto the floor. I retrieved them and stuffed them into my bag.

  “We’re going to try something different today. We’ll keep the lighting dim. Just as they did in the Hawthorne Studies.”

  A young blonde woman raised her hand.

  “Excuse me Doctor Barda, but didn’t the Hawthorne Studies—”

  “Yes. I know. You’re absolutely right. We’re going to keep the lights down anyway.” I turned to the whiteboard, only to find it covered with Rodge Cowper’s class notes. The students arranged themselves into their discussion groups. I spent the first few minutes of class erasing Rodge Cowper’s notes from the whiteboard with one hand while shielding my eyes with the other.

  A leader knows the way, goes the way, and shows the way.

  Become a leader by following best practices.

  In it to win it!

  The last phrase stayed on the whiteboard, no matter how much I scrubbed with the eraser. Rodge, or someone, must have written “in it to win it!” with a permanent marker. I hoped I would make it through the class period without my skull exploding like a shrapnel grenade.

  Sherry slipped in half an hour late and silently joined her group. A few minutes later, they called me over. Sherry had her laptop open.

  “You were right, Dr. B,” she said. “That face recognition software is out there. We might wanna do something with it. But we’re having trouble coming up with a business idea. It’s true sunglasses can fool the software, but any sunglasses work, so you don’t need special ones.”

  Standing next to Sherry, I was hit by the stench of cigarette smoke, mingled with Davison’s powerful cologne. My stomach, already feeling delicate, rebelled at the sensory assault. I slowly inched away from Sherry to stand at the opposite side of her group’s table.

  A young woman in her group piped up, “We had the idea that you could put cameras in nightclubs and have something online like, right now there’s sixty percent girls and forty percent guys, and people would go to wherever the percentages are the best for them. But we found some bar in Chicago already doing that.”

  Someone else suggested, “What about a service that finds your high school classmates using yearbook photos? For class reunions?”

  Then Sherry said, “Nah. I don’t like it. The creepiest kid in your high school would use it to stalk everyone else.”

  “That might already be happening,” I said. I wondered about my own online presence, and whether my photo on our college’s website could lead to anything embarrassing.

  Sherry laughed, “Guess you can’t keep a secret these days. We all better behave ourselves.”

  “That’s great advice, Sherry.” I pressed the heels of my hands to my eyes to still my throbbing headache.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE

  EMMA WAS IN HIGH SPIRITS, anticipating tomorrow’s canoe race. I was looking forward to meeting Donnie for a pleasant dinner on the sunny side of the island while Davison was back home on the windward side with Sherry. No, wait, Sherry would be paddling tomorrow with Emma. Davison was probably already on his way back to the mainland.

  I was driving Emma’s little hybrid. Emma sat beside me in the passenger seat, and her husband Yoshi rode in the back. I missed the majestic heave and sway of my Thunderbird, but with a two-hour drive across the island in each direction, there was no way to justify taking a car that gets eleven miles to the gallon. The dense jungle crowded the narrow road from both sides, and droplets of mist speckled the windshield. I could feel my ears pop although the road didn’t seem steep. We were gradually ascending, approaching the center of the isl
and.

  Yoshi was regaling us with the history of the Labor Day race. I already know all about the Labor Day Race, and I knew Emma did as well, as she was the one who had told me all about it. Neither of us reminded Yoshi of this, however. Yoshi enjoys explaining things to people, and I suppose we didn’t want to spoil his fun.

  “It’s the world's biggest long-distance outrigger canoe race,” he explained. “Paddlers come here from all over the world to compete.” He went on to recite dates, locations, and key personnel associated with the history of the Labor Day race as we made our way up the gentle incline of the cross-island road. Yoshi kept talking until eventually he ran out of gas and fell asleep.

  We emerged from the cloud cover into a bright blue afternoon. The lush greenery had thinned out, yielding to scrubby cloud forest. Up here it was cool, dry, and windy. We still had about thirty minutes to go until we reached the halfway point. Emma would take over driving, and we would start to descend to the chunky black lava fields and misty vog of the west side.

  One reason I didn’t mind taking my turn at the wheel is the driver gets to choose the music. Emma knows my musical tastes—I wrote my dissertation on punk rock, after all—but she still likes to act like each new song that comes up on my playlist is an unpleasant surprise.

  “So what happened to Pat?” Emma asked. “Why didn’t he –”

  She paused in mid-sentence and wrinkled her nose.

  “Is this supposed to be singing?”

  “What were you saying about Pat?”

  “Why didn’t he come with us?” Emma leaned forward and turned down the volume. “I thought he’d want to write something about the race. Lots of local color with the motorcycle clubs and everything.”

  “He said he had a bunch of papers to grade.”

  I glanced at the back seat, where Yoshi was dozing through the rough-edged vocal stylings of a band that had broken up sometime before vinyl had been displaced by CDs. “I don’t think Pat could afford a room at the hotel,” I said. “Now I’m department chair, I know what the lecturer salary schedule is. I have a pretty good idea what Pat makes.” I told her the figure.

  “What?” Emma shrieked. “That’s less than you’d make working at the place in the mall that sells corn dogs!”

  “And they get those snappy uniforms too. Yeah, I know.”

  “Poor Pat,” Emma said.

  “No wonder he hates capitalism,” I agreed.

  Emma picked up my phone (which doubled as my music repository) and examined my playlists.

  “What’s this?” she asked. “Shostakovich. Khachaturian. Saint something. This looks like classical music. Let’s listen to classical music, ah Molly? It’s gotta be better than this!”

  “Oh, no. Those are my mad, bombastic waltzes. They’re not exactly appropriate for a nice drive across the island. They’re more for when you’re riding out to get revenge on someone.”

  Emma laughed. “Only you would have a soundtrack for going out to get revenge on someone.”

  “Seriously. Listen to Khachaturian’s Masquerade Waltz and tell me I’m wrong.”

  “So if Pat couldn’t afford a room, why didn’t you offer to share yours? It’s not like anything would happen.”

  “Well, because Donnie’s going to meet me over there.”

  “Oh, Donnie’s going to stay with you?”

  “No. I’m meeting him over there. If he can get away from work, which I hope he can.”

  “I don’t understand. If Donnie’s not staying with you, and Pat’s not staying with you, who is staying with you?”

  “No one. I just got a room for myself.” I said.

  “I still don’t understand why Pat couldn’t stay in your room.”

  “I don’t want Pat staying with me if I’m going to meet Donnie. Donnie’s kind of old fashioned.”

  “But doesn’t Donnie know Pat’s—”

  “Of course he does.”

  “So what’s his problem with Pat then?”

  Emma had a point. Donnie would never admit it, but it was pretty clear he did have a problem with Pat.

  “He’s never said anything about it,” I said, “but I think it’s because Pat and I have so much in common. We like the same music, we have a lot of inside jokes, we can complain about work, you know what I mean. Donnie and I never really laugh together, and he’s not all that into current events either. Unless it’s something to do directly with running the restaurant, you know, Chamber of Commerce stuff.”

  “The music thing is a mystery,” Emma said. “I’m amazed I know one person who likes this kind of music, let alone two.”

  “I have to make sure Donnie doesn’t feel excluded.”

  “So don’t exclude him,” Emma said. “Invite him to stay in your room. Come on. You two have been together for a while. He can’t be that old-fashioned.”

  “Oh yes, he can. And I’m a good Catholic girl, don’t forget.”

  I glanced at the back seat and was relieved to see Yoshi still fast asleep. “Wow, Yoshi can sleep through anything, can’t he?”

  Emma made a disparaging guttural sound. “Just crinkle a bag of chips next to his ear if you want him to wake up.”

  “I don’t want to rush into anything with Donnie,” I said. “It would be so easy to mess things up with him. You know how he is. Everything about him is perfect and has to be a certain way, you know what I mean? His house, his car, his perfectly pressed shirts—”

  “He is pretty OCD,” Emma agreed. “I guess that’s something you two have in common.”

  “Emma, OCD is a noun, not an adjective. It stands for Obsessive-Compulsive Disorder. You can say someone has OCD, but you can’t say someone is OCD. If you want to do an armchair diagnosis you can say the person is obsessive-compulsive.”

  “Thanks for illustrating my point. Anyway, Molly, you have to get to know him sometime. What if you do end up getting married and it turns out he’s into something you didn't know about? Like he shows up on your wedding night wearing nothing but a hot dog bun?”

  “I don’t see us getting married,” I said.

  “How come? Cause of the kid?”

  “Exactly. Davison. The poison pill in this merger deal.”

  “Isn’t he on the mainland?” Emma asked.

  “I almost forgot to tell you. Donnie’s already brought him back for a visit. And, Donnie just finished redecorating Davison’s room for him. I guess he thought Davison was getting too old for Winnie the Pooh bed sheets or whatever.”

  “The new room must look nice,” Emma said. “Donnie has good taste.”

  “Nice? No, it does not look nice. Davison picked out the furniture himself, apparently from the Rococo Monstrosity Catalog.”

  “So Donnie’s idiot son is part of the deal. But look Molly, no one’s perfect. At least Donnie has a job.”

  Emma glared at Yoshi, who was snoring in the back seat.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR

  “IS THIS THE SONG ABOUT the sentient amoeba? Do we have to listen to this?”

  Emma’s criticism of my musical taste was starting to annoy me. I nudged the volume up.

  “Anyway,” she continued, raising her voice to compete with the increased noise level, “what’s your plan for meeting Donnie?”

  “We didn’t set a specific time. I guess we’re going to play it by ear.”

  “He’s coming all the way across the island just to see you and you didn’t bother to make any plans? Molly, you gotta call him right now and figure out when you’re gonna get together. You don’t want this whole weekend to go to waste. Pull over, I’ll drive.”

  “Are you sure? It’s not your turn yet.”

  “Your lifelong happiness is at stake here,” Emma said. “It’s worth it to me.”

  “Wow, okay. Thanks!”

  We pulled over. On either side of the narrow strip of road, green-tinged scrub stretched to the horizon, punctuated here and there by skinny, dark green ohia trees. Emma and I climbed out and switched places while Yoshi cont
inued to snore in the back seat. Emma settled into the driver’s seat and plugged her phone into the sound system. Gentle slack key guitar strumming filled the car.

  “That was sneaky, Emma.”

  “Sorry, I couldn’t take any more of your music, no offense. Every song on your playlist is so angry! It was starting to stress me out.”

  She waited until the road was clear and pulled back out.

  “It’s not angry-angry,” I said. “It’s satirical, self-deprecating angry. It’s—”

  My phone hummed. Donnie was calling.

  “See?” Emma said. “Good thing you’re not driving.”

  Donnie hadn’t left Mahina yet. He sounded like he wasn’t in a very good mood.

  “Are you going to be able to come out?” I asked him.

  “Sure. I’ll be there. I just have to take care of some things first.”

  I thought of something that might lift his spirits.

  “Oh, Donnie, I forgot to tell you. When I saw Davison the other day at my office? He mentioned the new bedroom furniture you got him. He seemed to like it very much. So, success, right?”

  I thought that would cheer him up, but it seemed to make his mood even worse.

  “Davison only has a short time in Mahina. I thought I’d get a chance to spend some time with him, but I’ve hardly seen him at all.”

  “Oh. He’s still in town? Hasn't he gone back to the mainland yet? Well, maybe he wanted to reconnect with his old friends or something?”

  “No, I think Davison’s met a girl. At least, that’s what I gathered from the few words we exchanged the one time he stopped by the house.”

  “He’s only been home once?”

  “After I picked him up at the airport, he went to campus to get some paperwork. Then he came by to get his overnight bag. That’s the last time I saw him. It wasn’t easy to find a flight for him this time of year, with school starting. Fares are really high. And my customers are spending less per order and less overall than they were last year.”