Flame Angels

by Robert Wintner

  Then came the farewells, “See you next year,” “Gee, it was great” — the scowls, disappointment, implied threats of legal wind and showers, lack of tips, followed by offloading twenty tanks, taking the Hmm to a steady Umph as each tank delivered its awful weight to tired, waiting arms. Incremental consolation came from faith that life’s milestones can be for the best and nearly always show up in difficult context.

  Like a forest critter in winter happening upon a few bread crumbs, Ravid nibbled on these crumbs of faith, muttering yes, ah, yes, all for the best and then there’s tomorrow. Well, next week at any rate. Or next month. Or year.

  Steve softly announced after the tanks were humped that today would be Ravid’s last day, because, because...

  Never mind, Mr. Steve. Finality was expected and understood. You can’t kick the customers, even if they deserve it.

  Glum was the balance of the afternoon.

  That his car wouldn’t start seemed logical and consistent with the continuing delivery of life’s new message, whatever that message could mean. Long a source of fond association — Ravid and his beater — his Toyota Tercel was well into its third decade with more body rust and window webbing than not. Massively nonexistent on the inside from saltwater dripping off scuba gear, it was hailed for its excellent ventilation and drainage capacity — and its superior view of the road between your feet, no matter where you sat. If you thought the seats had too much cacka for your lily-white bottom, no problema: Just peel off the terry cloth towels for a wash and lay them back down on the springs. Ravid’s beater was icon to an era, the Time of Ravid, when value was measured by happiness, fun, adventure, random love and any form of transport available, all on the lowest possible budget. Then it ended as if scripted by chance.

  So Ravid sat behind the wheel going nowhere, a driver of stillness in the aftermath of the wheezing death throes of the vehicle of choice.

  Hail Atlantis! It’s a fockeen car! A material object gone the way of all else, proving that we win again!

  Or something.

  Attempting to find meaning or coherence as feebly as his tired car tried to start, he too could only sigh and wheeze, as if he and the car had thrown off the yoke together, cogs missing their niche, metal clanging, teeth chipping, springs chirping, stuff breaking up to the last belch and dying breath as the spirit left the body. Metal, rubber, flesh; all slumped to eternity. Sitting still in his still, dead car, he wondered and waited to see what would die next. Perhaps his own frail pulse would cease, making him part of the pile, ready for the scrap yard. Well, he felt comfortable with that, comfortable and relieved, reminding himself that some days are meant to be endured, that tomorrow would be a brand-new start — that all the shit stacking up relentlessly could then be sorted with fresh energy. Oh, boy.

  Numbness filled the afternoon of that terribly long day that seemed to have taken days in passing. The awful series of events had been a collision — make that series of collisions — head on and head on and head on, and here was the aftershock...shock, shock, shock, reverberating like the trashcan lid they put over Tom the cat’s head in the cartoon and then banged with a sledgehammer, because Tom was the cat, and people favor the underdog, Jerry, the mouse.

  Fuck.

  Although bleak and foreboding, at least the events of the last few days felt orchestrated — beyond control of the mere players, especially the main character, absolving him more or less from responsibility, relieving him for that matter from the clutches of assessment and decision. Be reasonable — what else could a stand-up man, a mensch among tourists, have done in these situations? Caved in to tourist whim? No. Not now or ever.

  The heavy wind and squalls that whipped and slashed faces on the home stretch had felt fucking perfect, like the denouement in a tragedy with an overture composed by a German, taking the man down to fundamental remnants: breath, tactile sensation of salt, sweat and weight, and of course, the ultimate burden — pride, not in sinful magnitude but in simple fortitude, in asserting what was right, drawing the line on what was wrong.

  I win. It doesn’t feel so good. If death is the ultimate depression, this must be the threshold.

  Mates and friends passed by Ravid in his beater. They passed on foot or rolling out of the gravel parking area, slowing with concern for their friend sitting dumbfounded in his piece o’ junk car. They mumbled, See you.

  Or, A hui hou.

  Or, Later, man.

  Hey, it’s beer thirty.

  Pau hana, brudda. Time for suck ’em up.

  Ravid!

  Yes, he looked beat, without resources, without hope, in need of something, though that something appeared to be solitude. Maybe later that evening would be time for those friends truly concerned and not too buzzed up to stop around at Ravid’s place for solace and a review of the options remaining, and don’t forget the great good times they’d had.

  Twenty minutes of catatonia seemed to do it, maybe providing adequate rest for the muscles bunched low, clamoring to move lest they stiffen with the wreckage. It was time for a slow hobble home like a feeble old man. So he got out, paused for a moment of gratitude to the hunk of junk and the great good times they’d had. He set a hand on the roof to feel the energy. He got none. Hey, what do you expect? It’s a car. But still, it’s hard to think so many miles and such good fun could not be felt by the vehicle of his youth, what was left of it.

  He began the struggle of peeling off his wetsuit for a change into his shorts but fell short on fortitude once the shoulders and arms were wrenched free. The reserves felt tapped out, and the wind, gray sky and fatigue chilled him anyway. So he looped the sleeves around his waist and wore the damn thing, stuffing his street clothes into a net bag for the long walk home, or rather the long walk back to the crummy little hovel that would provide shelter till the end of the month, which would be next week.

  Passing the Kiawekapu General Store, he briefly recalled his idea of saving money on groceries as most beneficial to his exit strategy. That seemed like a long time ago, he thought, heading in for two beers — the liter bottles that stay cold enough for the time you need to drink them if you hurry — and a can of cat food. Standing at the counter, fumbling with his net bag, digging for the right pocket in his balled-up shorts to pull out the money, he stopped when Gene, the big woman behind the counter, said, “Hey. Forget it, Sugar. I got this one.”

  He looked up with more wonder than gratitude. Then came the flood of comprehension — of gratitude and regret. She knew. The word was out. The coconut wireless had carried the news as quick as the speed of light. All the words were out. Ravid Rockulz was out of here.

  Which seemed to be timed perfectly, but then timing was also the biggest challenge. Gene had given such a small gift on such a difficult day that no sooner did Ravid smile halfway and try to say thank you than he cried. He turned around to cover his face, to get past his moment of weakness, as she walked around and pulled him to her massive bosom. She assured him that everyone has tough days and that he had more friends than he could ever be aware of. “Don’t even think about anything. You’ll know what to do tomorrow. Just drink these and take the day off. Take the night off, anyway. Take it easy, Honey. Take a break.”

  Just as a knotted muscle can let go by the touch of a caring hand, so can simple guidance be a godsend, a loosening agent to reveal what can be known. Relieved by the outflow of pent-up emotion, Ravid walked out and down the sidewalk fifty yards, where he stuffed the can of cat food into his net bag and then sat down on the curb to drink the first beer. He must have been having more fun than he’d imagined, because the sun was much lower than usual at this point of his journey home. He pondered his destination briefly, what waited there, what he would leave behind, where he would go...and opened the second beer. It went down quicker than a second beer usually does, but the day’s off-timing called for stronger dosage of available antidotes.

  He looked up as if right on cue to see a star twinkling. He looked left and right to ascertai
n its firstness in the evening sky. He could make no wish because of the futility of wishing. But he watched it. What are you staring at? it seemed to ask. He had no answer but felt solace and refuge in its singular twinkle, which wasn’t exactly a wish come true but seemed like a reasonable destination for a wayward soul clinging stubbornly to life. Soon came a few more twinklers, till any more solace would have brought on the nausea.

  So he stood up, slowly, carefully, too late to avoid the stiffening, too full of beer to walk farther than the nearest hedge, which would be okay that late in the day with so little light, because it would have to be, because a man can’t very well walk home with a two-liter piss sloshing around inside. So he reached for the fortitude and squirm required to peel his wetsuit down to below his pee-pee and then make sure he didn’t dribble on it. He could just as easily have pissed in it and rinsed in the shower down the beach walk where the tourists rinsed. Except that pissing in your wetsuit is disgusting and marks you as a tourist. Besides, a two-liter piss once begun is harder to stop than a mountain stream, which this piss was, except for the missing mountain.

  Well, a man’s recovery can gain momentum on basic relief. No matter what was happening in the world, it was a better place after a major piss. The day still seemed endless in its onslaught, but that was mostly the onslaught of bad events replaying. He’d endured the worst and had only a few more hours till sleep. Then he could start over, in faith.

  In the act of rearranging his essential self back into his Speedos, just prior to pulling his wetsuit back up to waist level from where it had slipped down to his knees, Ravid knew that the pickup truck passing slowly behind him was local — and way undersized, on tires that were way oversized, in a compensatory display that was way overplayed and entirely tedious.

  Then he knew it was slowing and would stop, just as he knew who was inside.

  Of course he nonetheless reacted to the strip of duct tape covering his mouth, but it was a nominal resistance, especially with so many hands on him. Jarred, confused and fatigued, he gave in to what nature had in store for him because he had nothing else to give, and because it hadn’t made a difference anyway, no matter what he gave. So the rough boys who seemed like Cousin Darryl’s other cousins muscled Ravid into submission. They bound his knees with more duct tape and so on around his ankles. They taped his wrists behind his back, and finally, they heaved him way up into the truck bed, where he landed like dead weight, no bounce.

  Ravid’s eyes frantically searched for the star that had been first, to wish belatedly for a little cyanide ampoule that he might gratefully crush between his molars for an express ride to the sweetest sleep any man had ever imagined. But the truck bounced so badly he couldn’t stay focused on any single star. The bouncing and the effects of two liters of beer made him glad he’d at least taken a giant piss in the nick of time. Not that a piss would matter, taken or not taken, and maybe the best thanks to show these abductors would be a nice piss in their truck bed, not that Darryl’s cousins would notice a truck bed full of piss. They wouldn’t have noticed, because they were pissy boys.

  What’s that smell?

  What? What smell?

  Oh, yeah. The truck.

  What, you?

  Born & Raised assured him from the rear window that no matter what he did or thought or who he was, it didn’t mean shit, because he’d never been born or raised.

  At least the most miserable ride of that most miserable day was brief as the backtrack route to the boat launch. The place was empty in the early evening, except for a little aluminum boat with a single outboard idling at the dock and another cousin standing by, waiting officiously for the unsavory but necessary task at hand. When the truck was expertly backed down to within precipitous inches of losing traction, all four cousins dragged Ravid from the bed to a staggering position and from there to the dock, where he was propped alongside the boat. He noted from his precarious position that the little boat had no kicker motor in case of primary motor failure, no anchor to hold the boat in place, to hook the bottom in the event of power failure along with weather or current stronger than the muscle power available on board, and no deck or scuppers, meaning this little sardine can would not self-bail but would sink soon after the first breaking wave broke over the rail. Of course, practical safeguards were incidental to these racially superior seamen.

  Besides that, neither safeguards nor practicalities would soon matter to the fucking haole on board, with the scene shaping up as one more spot on the evening news, taking a minute for the who and the what, with the when and where as yet to be determined. Ravid was given over to gravity, to topple the last four feet of the boarding process, noting with disappointment and glee on his way to yet another impact that this little tin vessel was an Opala brand, famous for its skill requirements in heavy seas — meaning it was known to swamp and sink at the slightest provocation — and equally notorious for its singular flotation mechanism, which was hollow seat wells. The biggest hollow seat in the center was fronted by a plug in the bottom of the hull for easy drainage once the little boat was back on the trailer.

  Ravid’s head banged on the same center seat running athwart the little boat, so he passed out, not quite with the blessed relief of the cyanide ampoule of his recent wish on the little star he could no longer find, but it was a respite in any event.

  When he came to, he could tell that things were underway. Rolling over onto his back on the roly-poly waves that felt far from the placid waters near the boat launch, he wiggled himself into place. The little drain plug jabbed his sacrum wantonly, mere inches from the figurative jabbing he’d felt in the last few hours — never mind, because the drain plug was also mere inches from his hands. Nobody minded when he sat up to see, because what he saw made no difference either. He saw McGregor Point way to starboard, Makena to port with Molokini just forward of that. With the great looming shadow of Kahoolawe dead ahead and the faint outline of Lanai off to starboard, it didn’t take an ace navigator to inform in a heartbeat that the cousins did not intend to dump their nemesis simply overboard. They meant to deliver him overboard at the aggregation buoy — the primary aggregates of which were the complete ocean food chain, from the bottom, including algae and plankton clinging to the buoy, chains, and netting, growing there to host the next step up, little shrimp and fish and so on to the top of the predatory hierarchy. That meant sharks, including tigers and oceanic white tips, who craved man meat in the minds of fearful people and who, like these cousins, lacked normal behavior patterns but would attack and feed as soon as not. So he lay back down, grasping the little drain plug, twisting it to test for movement, wondering if in fact his new friends might not crave a satisfaction far more complex than brother shark ever did.

  The cousins spoke of the old etiquette, by which a hated enemy was sunk with a black rock, so family and friends searching wouldn’t see the body. A respected enemy was sunk with a white rock, so the corpse could be more easily spotted. The other three cousins laughed at the brutal simplicity of the code, their code by rights, and at their fondness of the honest brutality of the thing. Darryl called them stupid, telling them to look over the side and count the rocks they could see. “Foa hunned feet already. Fockeen lolo heads. Fock.”

  Of course he had a point, and with wind and seas mounting, the other cousins turned to other concerns. They spoke of the five-mile rule, delineating the proper distance from shore for bad people to go over the side. They agreed that the white-rock/black-rock rule had no meaning this far out, and likewise the five-mile rule seemed equally moot. They didn’t actually call the point “moot”; they merely reached consensus on the key question: “Da fuck?” Why go the full five in these conditions? Hey, three and a half already. Four miles out was way da fuck out there — no more land already from down in the trough, between the crests. Surely four miles would do it, or even three. Their courage struggled against their apprehension, not to mention their practicality, as if racially superior watermen had every right to be sc
ared shitless for their own survival in a little tin boat this far out this late. But never mind — too late already for three miles, but four miles would be perfect. The cousins muttered affirmation on da kine. Except for Darryl, mum at the helm, with an expression calling for the full five miles, since nobody here was more qualified to make the call, on account of da kine.

  Ravid had wondered from time to time how he might fare in the face of imminent death, not as grist for his masculinity mill but as an exercise integral to his job. Most dive instructors avoided complacency by knowing and respecting the particular hazards of any dive on any given daily adventure. And all had been trained to think and act and repeat as necessary to the bitter end. A dive leader could never lose sight of his daily presence on the outskirts of mortality, in the risky suburbs of tourist instability at depth.

  Ravid had actually welcomed complacency as a blessed relief from stealth commando action with explosives and mortal enemies at hand. He sensed that nobody could actually foretell the calmness they would bring to death’s table, but he viewed his job of leading tourists on dives as a walk in the basil.

  He felt composed, posing questions to his inner self at this difficult juncture — tough questions, like, Why would he cry over the gift of beer yet when facing death remain tearless? Or, How could the truest love he’d known come to this? Or, What could possibly make these guys tick? Or, What could they hope to achieve? Ideas also drifted near and were shooed away, like flies on carrion not yet dead. He pondered a strategy of taunting Darryl with nasty images, complimenting him on teaching his sex pupil so well. This too was discounted quickly. Darryl was a brush fire in need of water, not gasoline. Besides that, another strategy seemed to be firmly in hand — hardly a strategy for survival, but one that would elevate the final play to a level of extreme satisfaction. And that made sense, because a man must reach for the greatest return available, especially with odds so low.

  A wave broke nearby, its outer lip coming into the boat with enough water to alarm Darryl and his cousins. Two sawed-off Clorox bottles floated among them, so two cousins grabbed and bailed. Darryl at the helm said, “Cross sea. No worry. No scared. Hey, you.” He nudged Ravid with his foot. “You scared?”