The Secret Island of Edgar Dewitt

by Ferrill Gibbs

  Surprisingly, the raft floated extremely well—even with all his supplies on board. Encouraged, he embarked upon a tight, brisk circle around the small island.

  Up and down the choppy waves he went, and immediately in his aching hands he felt the stinging of the rope burn blisters.

  Ugh, he thought. How far are the French Southern and Antarctic Islands again?

  He didn’t know if his hands could take so much rowing but then again, what other choice did he have?

  He would just have to suck it up.

  Once the raft had completed a successful circle around the island, and he gave it an affirmative nod of satisfaction, he said, “Maybe you don’t suck so much after all.” Patting its orange, vinyl side wall, he gave the clumsy raft his blessing.

  Glancing over the side, he noticed the Ambercod were out in numbers—as far down as he could see—feeding on darting bursts of smaller, silvery prey. It would have really been a great day to fish.

  It would have been a great day for anything—anything other than this.

  With the reality of his plan weighing heavily on him now, he paddled to shore once last time and with his heart beating wildly in his chest, he stilled, closed his eyes, and tried to calm himself by taking deep breaths in sync with the splashing, swishing tide.

  H tried to gather his courage and remember what he was doing all this for—trying to remember whom he was doing all this for. With trembling fingers, he lifted his father’s old Zippo lighter from the pocket of his yellow raincoat and struck it. A blue flame burst forth upon the wick, and, tipping it forward, he touched its orange tip to the master fuse coiled up upon the shore. Like a slithering fire snake, it jumped instantly into action and slithered toward the dynamite, sending sparks everywhere in its wake, forcing Edgar to frantically retreat, his arms rowing like blender whisks.

  The fuse hissed wildly on the island behind him. Edgar lurched away from the dynamite sticks, breaking madly for the open sea and churned the two plastic oars with all he had in him.

  How much time was there before the island exploded, he had no idea, but guessed about five minutes before the lit fuse reached its first stick of dynamite, based on the practice strips he’d lit back at the house and using simple mathematics. It would be just enough time to get himself clearly away from the impending blast—that was, if the blast wasn’t bigger than what he estimated. Truth was, Edgar knew nothing about this sort of thing: he’d never been around any dynamite. The only thing he knew for sure was how much dynamite he’d used for that, and that was all of it.

  Frantically he continued to paddle expecting at any moment to be shaken by the blast—the blast that he knew might either deafen him or even sink his boat—or both—and every now and again he glanced behind him to see just how much distance he’d covered and if he was safe. For the moment, the island was suddenly nothing more than a tiny yellow speck in a vast seascape of blue—he had really been moving!

  This little orange raft is even swifter than I expected! he thought, realizing he might just survive this lunacy after all.

  Suddenly, just when he thought he’d rowed far enough for the boat to be clear of the blast, he rested his tiny oars on the side wall and checked his watch to see how much time had passed. There, on his wrist, was nothing but a white, watch-shaped region where his Pathfinder watch used to be. He’d almost forgotten: he threw it down the hole.

  Why had he done that again?

  Because, he thought, it was an offering—a good one, too, to the Earth. For good luck. For good sailing.

  And most importantly, for homecoming.

  Any good seaman would have done just the same.

  So just as he was studying his watch-less wrist, the world up and convulsed before him like Armageddon.

  It was an explosion like nothing he’d ever seen or known, rocking the seas before him, shaking the wide expanse of waters as if Poseidon himself had stabbed the ocean with his mighty trident.

  In a flash, Edgar was hurled to the back of the raft like a ragdoll and for a moment, he thought he was dead.

  “Ugh,” he muttered, coming to, his ears howling with pain—his temples throbbing and pulsing. In the bottom of the boat he remained curled into a ball, feeling about his ears and earlobes, checking for bleeding. Am I deaf? he thought, suddenly horrified at the possibility. He pulled his fingers from his ears and checked them for blood, but, thankfully, they were clean.

  As he continued to stare at his fingers, his entire body numb from the blast, suddenly he began to feel the sting of hot rubble and ocean water falling from the sky splashing down all around his boat. At first he could only, marvel at the strange shrapnel pelting down, and was fascinated in his reverie by the shards bouncing off the rubber side walls of the raft. Then, in a panic, as the situation washed over him, he lunged across the raft and spread his arms open wide, sprawling outwardly as far as he could to absorb as many of the projectiles that he could. If his rubber raft was punctured, with no island remaining in the sea, he would slowly sink and drown. His raft was all he had left.

  Jagged bits of the island mercilessly pelted his yellow raincoat which he flung across the uncovered remains of the raft. Then, stretching his body even further, he prayed silently that the material might hold.

  Holding his breath as he absorbed the sting of the falling rubble, he waited. Soon, the horrible rock shower was over, and he sat up and blinked at the huge waves coming for him.

  Why hadn’t he brought a raft repair kit? He cursed himself for not doing so.

  As he rose and fell upon the tall waves, he inspected the material for pinholes and felt of the vinyl, tuning his ringing ears to the surface to listen for escaping air.

  Thankfully, the raft was intact. It didn’t seem to be leaking. Relieved, he took a deep breath and turned to the island, squinting to see what had become of it.

  “Holy . . .” he said, marveling at the destruction. He had sure blown the island to smithereens. There was no island anymore: everything—the hole, the shore—everything was gone. All that remained was a wide-open sea all the way to the horizon, and nothing more.

  Reaching into the supplies, he withdrew a pair of binoculars and scanned the waters more closely, rising to his knees. When he finally saw it—the perfect circle of bricks that marked the top of the hole, that were just under the water now, he let out a big, cackling laugh. He thrust up a finger in celebration as he stared through the binoculars, like a sea-swept pirate just discovering land, bouncing up and down, hollering in the raft, he now saw in the last fading light of day what he’d hoped he would see at the end of all this.

  A large, churning whirlpool spinning angrily in the sea.

  The spout was spinning directly on top of the submerged bricks where the island used to be, and he totally knew why: because the hole was giving way to the Indian Ocean. The island was blown below the waterline, so it was nothing but a drain now—just like a drain in a hospital sink. The ocean was falling headlong into the hole, and it was then that Edgar knew he’d done all he could do.

  There was no going back now. The center of the Earth was quickly filling with water, stranding him on this side of the world.

  Dead bodies of Ambercod began surfacing all around the boat, belly up from the blast. It made Edgar sad to see them floating alongside, but as he studied their bobbing bodies, he discovered an extremely troubling fact: the more he rowed away from the whirlpool, the more the Ambercod bodies seemed to stay with him and the boat.

  Meaning: he wasn’t moving forward much at all.

  Setting down his oars, he turned around and cupped a hand over his worried brow to scan the seas, and there, with panic in his chest, he realized that the remains of the hole had not moved at all. Soon, it became apparent that he was not not out-paddling the Ambercod; no, rather, it was much worse than that.

  The whirlpool was getting closer to the back of his ra
ft.

  No, that wasn’t it, either.

  Actually, the hole was now sucking him backward into itself! He hadn’t been strong enough to out-paddle its pull and now it was drawing him backward—threatening him with a watery death—like a tractor beam.

  Diving to the front of the boat, he snatched up his oars and thrust them into the sea, rowing with a brand new fervor, heaving with all his might. He was rowing for his life now—rowing just to stay alive—and as he did, he looked behind him and let out a whimper, discovering that with each vigorous stroke, he got no closer to the falling seas, but also, he got no further away. Basically, if he rowed as hard as he could row, he would only maintain staying in one spot—like a hamster on a running wheel.

  Meaning he’d have to row like mad for as long as he could maintain it just to not drown.

  It was a terrible predicament to be in.

  “God help me,” he muttered, already feeling his shoulder muscles beginning to burn. “There’s no way I can keep this up for long.”

  When the sun went down and the stars came out, every few minutes or so, Edgar would slow his rowing and turn the flashlight to the raging whirlpool. Each time he did, his heart sank knowing that he hadn’t moved an inch from where he started earlier that day.

  The current of the falling water seemed so strong there was no way he could outlast it. Even still, fueled by panic and the base desire just to stay alive, he kept rowing all night.

  If he wanted to survive this, he knew one fact: he’d have to row until morning—until low tide.

  He just didn’t think he could do it. He didn’t have much strength anymore and it was all he could do to keep up the rowing. It had broken him down, knowing this, and in his misery, he tried not to cry as he kept going.

  But still, he kept going.

  __________

  His mother sipped hot coffee at the barricade, rubbing her temples from weariness, unashamed that she was the last non-press member remaining at the fire line in probably the entire region of western Washington.

  She was determined, though. Nobody would ever argue that.

  Milly Dewitt knew the officers’ names by now and they all knew hers. They’d long since brought her a stool to sit upon—the only person at the barricade who even had a stool.

  They brought fresh cups of coffee, too, just like the one she was drinking now, and around the clock they made conversation with her, talking about how their wives had been praying for her and her husband, and for her son as well.

  “Thank them for me,” Milly said to them.

  The reporters and journalists themselves had even begun to treat her as one of their own, sometimes bringing her slices of homemade chocolate chip pie from the local restaurant, or bottles of cold water.

  And always, at dusk and dawn, they brought her coffee. Lots and lots of coffee.

  And when it got chilly at night, they covered up Milly Dewitt with their own coats and sleeping bags and blankets.

  They loved her, basically.

  “Thanks, y’all,” she’d say in her charming Southern drawl. “Any word on the next search party?”

  At night, with her eyes beginning to shut, those at the fire-line escorted her to various news vans where they’d offer her a pallet made of spare clothes or duffle bags or whatever else they could pile up together that was soft.

  Drowsily, she nodded to them and said, “G’night, y’all.”

  As the reporters practiced their stories in the mornings outside of those vans, reporting on the wide swath of destruction that the wildfire had wrought, their voices tapered off she came to, and passed them by.

  “Good morning, Mrs. Dewitt,” they’d say, swallowing their lines out of respect. “Any word from last night’s search party?”

  At dawn the day, the miracle happened—the event that changed everything—in the soft morning light she sat by the barricade sipping from her cup, chatting warmly with Robert, the head ranger of the Mount Baker—Snoqualmie National Forest. They were fast friends by now, Bob, originally from the Mississippi Coast, which made Milly feel like she’d found herself a real Southern companion.

  They’d both discovered they had a common love, too: the beautiful Gulf of Mexico, as well as deep fried crab claws. Bob had moved to Washington from the South many, many years back, but Milly told him she didn’t hold that against him.

  A half-white wooly beard stretched across his face, and hard lines around his eyes widened and grew when he smiled, kind of like Santa Claus, revealing to her a life lived out in the unblocked sunshine, with fresh air, and contemplation.

  For now, though, they spoke of pleasant things as they waited for word from the fire line: about gardening, local restaurants, and animals he’d seen frequently in the area. Bob rattled on about all the species of the forest he’d encountered—about the time the grizzly who’d sired her cub near the road had drawn photographers from around the world that blocked the highway for days.

  “If you ever had a Southern accent, Bob,” said Milly, interjecting, “you’ve certainly lost it by now.”

  “Well,” he said, “I think it’s best not to have a Southern accent up here. The bears can sense it.”

  “Oh?” she asked. “And which do they think tastes better: a Southerner or a Yankee?”

  “‘Yankee?’” he chuckled. “Mrs. Dewitt, that is a very derogatory word. It also turns out that bears are also attracted to hateful talk, too, so I’d watch myself.”

  She grinned at him and sipped her coffee again, reminded of a similar conversation she’d had at her own dinner table with her long-lost husband and son: how they’d both giggled at the word “Yankee,” and how the times were easier then, and how she’d give up everything to be back home at that moment, at that very same dinner table. All of a sudden, as she was thinking about these things, a boom shook the Earth and rattled the landscape like nothing she’d ever felt—or heard—before.

  Everyone shouted in surprise, swaying from the Earth’s lurching, as they reached for the nearest stationary objects to maintain balance.

  “Earthquake?” somebody shouted, and in a way, it was. Turning to the north, the people began to point and shout and the others, who were lost for words, stood with mouths open beholding the sight.

  Something due north of them—just south of Mount Lanier—was shooting out of the ground and stretching into the sky.

  Milly turned to Bob and shouted, “What is that?” over all the thundering and shaking.

  He was gazing at it, in awe. “I have absolutely no idea,” he proclaimed, just as a small pebble avalanche came tumbling down the hillside near them. The sands and rocks across the mountain road were dancing wildly around their feet, first with slight vibrations, and then, like popcorn.

  “WHOAAAA!!” cried the newsmen, as well as the firemen, the large crowd holding palms over their eyes to behold the unworldly sight in the faint light of dawn.

  For many moments they all just gaped at it—nobody saying a thing as the translucent beam shot into the sky like a rocket—with wide eyes they scanned the valley and mountaintops, watching it, until suddenly, Bob turned and looked at his own arms, saying.

  “What the—?”

  Milly watched as he lifted his forearms to his face, and there, running down his tanned, leathery skin, were droplets of clear liquid.

  “What is that, Bob?” asked Millie, trying to gulp down her fear.

  “It’s . . . well, Milly,” he said, frowning at his arms. “It looks like . . . rain.”

  And at that, many more droplets began to fall, covering them, and soon, the drops came bigger and fatter and they were a torrent, and before long, they were all at the barricade standing beneath a full-blown shower, looking at each other in confusion, trying to understand.

  Only when the cameramen turned and began to frantically film the beam, and the newscasters began their
wild chattering to report it—all of them squawking on their cell phones to collegues in Mount Lanier like a bunch of wild ducks—did the firefighters turn their faces to the falling moisture and begin to raise their hands in celebration, cheering on the onslaught of rain.

  They turned to each other and hugged one another, laughing and cheering, jumping up and down with huge grins lifted to the sky, all of them shouting a wild and enthusiastic welcome to the first rain they’d seen in over half a year.

  With arms around one another, pulling each other into themselves tightly, they began to dance.

  As for her, surrounded by the chaos, she looked up into the sky with all humility, a sort of sudden peace upon her face.

  Her face, which was very beautiful in the soft glow of the fresh morning light, filled with rain like big tears from the sky.

  Finally, bravely, she decided to open her mouth and taste the water—trying not to be shocked at what she might find, because for the last eighteen hours, after trying to figure out how her son could have possibly been stung by a box jellyfish, trying to unravel the mystery of what he could have possibly been involved in that brought him so much monetary success—she was ready to believe in something.

  She was ready to believe anything.

  And, just as she figured, this, too, would turn out as strange as everything else.