by John Morano
Kemar nodded. He understood.
“So after I finished that first tour, I don’t know what I was thinking, I signed on for another. But before I returned to action, I went on leave in San Francisco. I went to a nice Italian bistro. I sat there in my dress blues with my two best buddies, and I ordered that meal. The three of us sat quietly, soaking up the atmosphere, enjoying the America we had missed, when this woman walked up to our table. I stood up. I mean, I was raised to be a gentleman. She reached her hand out to me. I shook it. She asks, ‘You were in Vietnam?’”
“I said, ‘Yes, ma’am.’ All this time, I’m thinking maybe she has a brother or a husband stuck over there. Maybe my mother or sister saw a GI and went up to him in a restaurant thinking of me and offered a kind word to him. But instead of sharing a friendly thought, she looks into my eyes and pours her drink over my uniform. Then, in front of everyone, she calls me a ‘killer,’ a ‘murderer.’
“But it’s what happened next that really got to me. I reached down to my hip for my sidearm. I wasn’t wearing one, but I could feel myself unhook the holster. That same lifeless glaze that I had in the jungle came over me. You feel like your life’s already over and that whatever crazy thing you have to do doesn’t really matter. It was a bad moment, as scary as anything that ever happened over there.
“When I ordered that meal, it was the first time I felt alive in so long. It’s all I wanted. And that woman walked over and ripped it from me. I never did anything to her.
“As I lifted my hand from where I expected my holster to be, I felt another hand on mine. I didn’t know the man, but the hand belonged to an officer, a general by the name of Del Anderson. He held my wrist with one hand, took out a handkerchief with the other hand, and personally wiped the drink from my ribbons. Then he said, calmly, ‘Son, you would do me a great honor, and you would honor the Corps, if you would join me at my table as my guest. Please bring your two comrades.’
“For a minute, I just stared at him. I felt as though I was coming back from somewhere far away. I thought I heard rotor blades from a chopper cranking through the air. The woman was still talking, but I wasn’t listening. I just walked over to the general’s table. Then the owner of the restaurant—I still remember his name, John Caragiulo—came to the table. He put his hand on my shoulder, squeezed it gently, and left a bottle. I had a drink, maybe two. Never did get to eat that pasta. I knew then I could never come home. I didn’t fit in anymore.
“Wanna hear more?” Al asked.
As Kemar began to answer yes, Campbell touched his arm softly, interrupting the boy, and said, “Want to tell us more?”
“A little bit.”
The two nodded simultaneously.
“Near the end of my second tour, I was pretty amazed that I was still in one piece. We took a lot of fire that day, and me and this sergeant named Karl DeMasi were zipping down this dirt road trying not to get killed when all of a sudden we hit something in the road. The front of the jeep lifted up. Dirt, rocks, metal were flying everywhere. I could see the trees, then the sky, then I was laying in the bush. The jeep had turned completely over, and the sergeant was underneath.
“The first thing I did was look for my weapon. I spotted it, scooped it up, and ran for cover under the smoking jeep. Thought I’d check on Mace, that’s what we called the sergeant. He was messed up, but nothing crazy. I figured we got dojoed by the VC, so I gathered some ammo and waited for them to approach.
“Well, we waited and waited and waited. No one came. Finally, I crawled out and poked around a bit. I looked in the brush and along the road. Then I spotted a big triangular hunk of metal not far from our vehicle. When I picked it up, it was still warm. At that point, I was pretty dizzy, and I noticed that blood was dripping from my ear. A drop fell on that piece of metal I was holding.
“As I wiped the blood off, I saw words, Armorie de France 1957. Of all things, here we are in Vietnam, and a French land mine that’s over ten years old almost kills me and Mace. Don’t know whether the VC buried it or the French did. Didn’t seem to matter. Then I blacked out.
“So I wake up in a MASH unit with Mace a few beds away. Sittin’ right next to me is a Methodist minister. I’ll never forget him, Captain Morton Magee. He was this incredible combination of huge and gentle, kinda like a friendly bear. I mean, here we are in the middle of Vietnam, in the most screwed-up war you can imagine, and this minister is so serene, completely at peace. He saw all the craziness, all the crap, but it didn’t seem to rattle him. At least he didn’t show it. The captain was there on a mission of his own. You could read it in his eyes.
“A padre, they see the worst—the worst wounded, the worst of the war, all day. But I could tell by looking at him that it would take more than a war to shake his faith. I thought that was cool. I wanted that. That sense of peace. I think it was the most powerful thing I ever saw in the eyes of another human being. Kinda strange that in the middle of a war, the most powerful thing I saw was peace.
“The two of us have this long talk. I guess he thought I was Catholic, ’cause he ends our conversation by saying, ‘Go and sin no more.’ Well, that really struck me—I mean, it hit me like a physical blow. So, since the captain outranked me and I had already done two tours, I figured he had just given me a direct order. ‘Go and sin no more.’
“So I just got up and left . . . left the hospital, left Vietnam, left the military, left the whole damn messed-up world. I bounced around a little bit, but when I got to Makoona, I stayed. I like it here. And one day, I’m gonna have the same peace that I saw in the eyes of Rev. Capt. Morton Magee.
“I saw this place in his eyes. The same calm blue that I see in the shallows. The same calm blue that I see in the sky. He sent me here. I’m sure of it. And I’m never leaving.”
Al fired up the outboard. It replaced the silence after he stopped speaking. Once again, the waves slapped the bow while the hull bounced on the white-caps. Campbell reached out and tenderly squeezed Al’s hand. He shook himself and lifted his head a little higher, and his eyes lost the faraway look of someone seeing his own past, if there is such a thing as past.
Chapter Eight
A Friend in Need
Binti hadn’t eaten since she strung her eggs. She’d lost track of the days and should have felt famished, but the expectant octopus had no desire to nourish herself. In fact, she hadn’t even left the lair, terrified that something might happen to her eggs. Hootie had stopped by several times. Once, he even brought a detail of gobies, compliments of Paykak, to tidy up the eggs and their mother. Even Ebb abandoned his fields to make quick visits. Binti was always gracious to her guests but continued to refuse food.
Although the octopus appreciated the concern of her friends, she felt disconnected from them. She was in a different place. All that mattered now were the young. She was consumed by caring for them, summoning energy, devotion, and selflessness that Binti never knew she was capable of. Her biggest fear—indeed, her only fear—was that somehow, the eggs would be harmed.
Although Binti was never known for keeping a spotless nest, her home had somehow surpassed immaculate. It is, however, difficult to leave crumbs and shells when you refuse to eat. Yet anytime some dirt or debris invaded, Binti whisked it away, using her siphon as an underwater blower.
The octopus lost all interest in spirit-shells, searches for truth, surprising Ebb, visiting the cleaning station, and even Molo. She politely asked Hootie and her other friends to stay away from her home. She had no time for socializing, and visitors would only draw attention to her location and endanger her young. Of course, her friends all understood, except for Hootie, who spent his spare time swimming watch from the coral above Binti’s den.
Executing her duties as an expectant mother, Binti began to see that her life did indeed have a purpose, and a very important one at that. Before she’d become a mother, her life was filled with a desire to find out who she really was and why she existed. She’d enjoyed her life yet had often felt
troubled. Now, everything seemed crystal clear. Binti believed that life was about life—living it, creating it, preserving it, enjoying it, understanding it.
Her eggs had become her life, replacing her former habits and desires, lifting her above them. The eggs weren’t merely new life for a species. They gave new life to Binti. She was reborn. But just as these tiny capsules of hanging octopuses provided a future for her kind, they could also provide nourishment for others who lurked beyond in the coral garden. For that reason, Binti wouldn’t leave her eggs, not to feed, not to fight. Nothing would pull her from her lair.
Since octopus young go off on their own immediately after hatching, one might think that the newborns receive no motherly interaction, but Binti did a fine job making sure that as many as possible would feel her presence while they were with her. Instinct—her inner voice, the collective voice of thousands of generations of octopus mothers—directed her in how to care for the little ones both before and after they would hatch.
Binti touched the eggs often, cleaning them, caressing them. She told them useful things she would likely not be able to tell them after they hatched. She studied the youngsters, watching them through the translucent eggshells, wondering if they were also watching her. The little ones had to survive long enough to leave the lair. After that, instinct and common sense would guide them.
All this mothering, all this pressure and worry, drained Binti. She began to lose the ability to change color. At first, whatever shade she chose was muted, the vibrancy gone from her once-colorful chromatophores. As time went on, she could no longer change color at all. Her flesh faded to soft green, then tan, then a pale yellow. Eventually, the octopus would become pure white, like an empty shell lying on the beach, bleached by the sun. Binti wondered if she’d ever get her ability back.
She’d never seen a white octopus before but knew that a white octopus wouldn’t last long on the colorful reef. Sitting in her home, she tried to diagnose the disorder. Perhaps she lost her camouflage because she hadn’t used it enough lately. Maybe it was the result of not eating. The food might fuel the color. It was also possible that she’d passed the talent on to her young and relinquished it in the process. This last theory was the one Binti hoped was true. That would be worth it.
While Binti got paler, thinner, and slower, her babies grew. She watched thousands of minute octopuses ripening, blooming all around her. Each one was perfectly formed in its own little bubble, capable of performing all the tricks of a mature octopus. Soon, they would hatch and race out onto the reef, getting bigger and learning more every day.
Binti began removing the sponge from her doorway for short periods of time. Her home became a bit less secure, but the increased flow of clean water added to the health of the young. The mother watched the opening carefully, praying to the spirit-fish to keep danger away.
Hootie increased his presence. He knew that the eggs would hatch soon. Perched inside his coral lookout tower one perilous dawn, the scaly sentry could see predators emerge and predators return. Some were bloated and ready for sleep after a night of feeding, swimming sluggishly to shelter, allowing potential meals to pass under their fins unmolested. But others woke from their slumber hungry or returned famished after a disappointing night’s hunt. It was a deadly time to be on the reef.
The blowfish spotted a hole in a boulder, deflated as much as he could, and squeezed inside. Then he puffed up again, wedging his body into the crack so nothing could remove or join him. Hootie wondered what he’d do if he did spot danger. He guessed he’d try to alert Binti, but beyond that, what could a blowfish do to fend off an attack from a shark or a barracuda? Hootie hoped he’d never have to find out. But, of course, that’s just when danger arrived.
The puffer spotted something nosing around a pile of coral rubble at the base of an ancient wreck. It wasn’t a very threatening act in and of itself, but the digging and the activity could easily have attracted other, more formidable feeders. The sun was low in the sky. A long shadow shrouded the wreck. The foraging fish was completely covered by the rubble it rummaged through, which indicated to Hootie that the fish was smaller and not a direct threat.
Even if nothing larger was attracted, a school of small hungry fish could devastate Binti’s eggs, so he felt it was a good idea for the fish to dine somewhere else. Deciding the best defense would be a good offense, he emerged from the rock, slid down the slope of Binti’s lair, and hid just outside her entrance.
“Binti,” he whispered, “it’s me, Hootie. Don’t get nervous, but something’s poking around the wreck, and it could cause trouble. I’m going to swim it off.”
The tip of Binti’s arm, which was now ivory in color, appeared near the opening. It carefully latched onto the brown sponge and pulled it snugly into the crack, sealing the octopus and her eggs from the coral canyon beyond. She used her other arms to cover and compress the strings, shielding them from sight and scent. But what the protective mother hadn’t noticed was that a solitary egg had broken free from its string and slipped out of the den when Binti reached for the sponge.
Now Hootie took over. He was uneasy. He didn’t know exactly what he was approaching. Whatever it was, it was too close for comfort. The blowfish swam toward the diminutive dust cloud that marked the scavenger’s location. Hootie planned to become a living decoy if necessary, luring the fish as far away from Binti as he could.
Hootie was close enough to see coral rising and rolling. Dust clouded the water and cloaked the creature within. Wanting to make an entrance that would lead to a chase, the blowfish swam closer until he was under the same shadow that spread across the coral. He puffed himself up and squeezed all the water from his body with one powerful compression, blowing the debris away, and revealing just who it was nosing around the coral-encrusted wreck.
To his complete dismay, Hootie found himself gills-to-gills with a very formidable predator, or more accurately, several predators not nearly as small as the puffer had anticipated. Three large morays gaped open-jawed at Hootie. For a heartbeat, they contemplated each other and the situation. Then the chase began.
The blowfish fled. Instinctively, he cruised low over the coral contours of Makoona, turning tightly, unpredictably. Yet as much as he wanted to lose his pursuers, he didn’t want them to give up and return to Binti’s backyard. At this point, however, the morays gave no indication that they were interested in anything other than blowfish de jour.
Hootie worried about an ambush. He struggled to keep himself in the lead, with the morays far enough away so that he couldn’t be outflanked and subsequently trapped. The helpful blowfish had never expected to antagonize a family of eels.
Believing that he’d lured the morays far enough from Binti and tiring from the chase, Hootie tweaked his strategy. He decided it was time for a cleaning and raced to Paykak’s. Winding through weeds, accelerating around anemones, sprinting through sponges, Hootie reached the cleaning station with all his scales intact.
Although it was a practice that was frowned upon, using the cleaning station as a safe haven was Hootie’s only chance. He hoped that when Paykak realized it was done to protect Binti, the goby would give sanctuary to the puffer and declare the morays “uncleanable” if they attacked the blowfish while he was at the station.
Paykak, however, didn’t see the situation Hootie’s way at all. In fact, he refused to make any such declaration, saying, “The cleaning station is not something I can use to protect my friends. The rule is intended to preserve the balance, even if it means that Binti, her eggs, and a well-intentioned blowfish suffer.”
The morays waited ominously behind a wall of fan coral, listening to Paykak’s judgment, eying Hootie with culinary curiosity.
“But what if I’m being cleaned?” the blowfish argued. “What I’ve done before I came to the station shouldn’t matter. The fact that I’m being cleaned or waiting to be cleaned should protect me. The fact that I need a cleaning doesn’t disappear because I’m being chased, does it?�
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Paykak considered the logic in Hootie’s plea. He asked simply, “Do you need to be cleaned?”
“More than I ever have in my life,” the blowfish spouted. “I’m very dirty. Soooo dirty.” Hootie glanced over at the morays behind the fan coral and continued, “If I don’t get cleaned right now, tomorrow, one of your helpers will be sucking pieces of me out of their jaws. You bet I need a cleaning.”
“That’s not a legitimate reason to need a cleaning. Do you have a parasite? A tick? A lesion, perhaps?”
“Well, if I don’t, I’m gonna get one.”
“If you do, you get cleaned. If you don’t, well . . .”
At that moment, Wiff approached Paykak. He smiled at Hootie and turned to his boss, saying, “Rhett me rhook the ruffer rover,” strangely slurring his speech.
Paykak nodded, and the goby performed a cursory, half-hearted inspection.
With his life on the line, Hootie protested, “Come on, Wiff! You can do better than this. Be thorough.”
Wiff resumed and, without anyone noticing, spit something under one of Hootie’s gill covers. Then he winked at the blowfish, shrugged at Paykak, and swam off.
Hootie grinned for an instant. He puffed himself up, waved Paykak over, and said, “I think Wiff might’ve missed something.” The blowfish opened a gill cover for Paykak to examine.
“Is that a leech in there?” the goby observed.
“A leech?” Hootie howled. “I’m infected! A parasite! Oh, he’s sucking the life out of me. Who does a fish have to swim with around here to get a cleaning? Someone help me!”
“Okay, blowfish, you’ve made your point.” Then Paykak commanded, “Someone clean this bag of scales.”
