The Dark Atoll

by Marilyn Foxworthy

  CHAPTER Nineteen - Tribal Formation

  I calmed down a bit and said, “Look, I’m covered with the blood of fools. I’m going to go wash off. Here’s what you all need to do. It looks like there’s about, I don’t know, maybe 60 or 70 of you left. The breeders are gone and about ten more are dead. Your tribes are stupid. Make new ones. This time, choose chiefs, not coaches. How many is up to you. If you still want separate men’s tribes and women’s tribes, that’s up to you. Gather up and negotiate among yourselves. When I’m washed off, I’ll be back, and we’ll discuss it. The wind is going to keep going until midnight, so unless you’re going north, everyone is stuck here for a while. Figure out who you can trust and who you can get along with and form new tribes. And remember, Bebe is with me now. We’ll talk in a half an hour or so. I have a few new rules for you.”

  With that, I called the girls to follow me and I walked toward the beach.

  The four of us were well out of earshot when we finally spoke.

  I started by asking, “Are you girls all OK? It’s going to take time for all of us to recover from that but are you OK for now?”

  None of them spoke.

  I said, “Yeah, it’s hard. I get that. I’m sorry about all the blood.”

  Bebe laughed and said, “It’s kind of sexy, in a way.”

  Christie said, “Yeah, in a totally scary way.”

  Bebe said, “Yeah but admit it; you want him, don’t you? The dude just fought a war for us, for pity’s sake! That’s hot.”

  Allie said, “Um, it kind of is but it isn’t over. I’m all shaky. And at the same time, I’ve never felt so safe in my whole life.”

  I walked into the water and the girls followed me. I started washing the blood off. It covered most of me to one degree or another. After a few seconds, when the bulk of the blood was gone and I had moved to cleaner water again, Christie stepped up close and started washing my back.

  I said, “So, Bebe? What about you?”

  Bebe grinned and said, “As far as I’m concerned, your word is law. You told everyone that I belong to you now. I’m good with that.”

  I said, “And you told everyone that I was your master and lord or something.”

  She smiled and said, “Yep. Totally good with that too. We don’t need to analyze this. Let’s just go with what’s been said already.”

  I frowned and said, “Really? Come here.”

  Bebe came and stood in front of me, looking very happy with the situation. I put my hands on her hips under the water and pulled her body against mine. I thought that she might balk at that and pull away but instead, she leaned into me even harder. When I moved to kiss her, she threw her arms around me and kissed me hard, opening her mouth and encouraging me to use my tongue. I continued for a minute this way, trying to make sure that this was passion, not another act that she was putting on, like she had in the circle when we “fought”. No, this seemed real. I slid my hand down her butt and she wiggled against me.

  We were both a little breathless when we finished our kiss. Neither of us let go of the other’s body though.

  She took a long breath and said, “Wow! That was good. OK, um, you have questions. Hey, I like the way that you just want to get the point and get things settled. I can do that.”

  Allie said, “But Bebe, you are one of Them.”

  Christie said, “Apparently not anymore. Welcome to the family.”

  Allie protested, saying, “Um, guys, I don’t do sex with girls.”

  Bebe said, “Allie, I understand that. I never liked it. Yeah, I did some stuff because we sort of had to but no, it isn’t me. Florin’s penis is pressing against my belly and it feels so much better than anything I’ve ever had sexually. I swear. I’m totally into him now.”

  Christie said, “Really? He’s inside you?”

  Bebe said, “No, not yet. But he’s in my head and my heart already. That’s why I don’t want to discuss it much. I’m afraid that if we do, I’ll find out that he didn’t mean what he said, and I won’t be part of your family. You said I was part of this, right?”

  I said, “Yes. Girls, Bebe is one of us. Bebe, you are my wife now, just like Allie and Christie.”

  I had thought about what I would say but she was right. We’d just get to the point. There was no need to ask questions and give her an escape route and make sure that we were all doing the right thing. This what was Bebe wanted and that’s the way it was going to be. If I got it wrong, she was free to say so.

  Allie said, “Cool.”

  Bebe grinned and said, “Then call me Jennifer and show me where we sleep. I’m a total virgin when it comes to boys. And with girls it was just making out because I had to.”

  I said, “Bebe…”

  She said, “I’d really like it if you’d call me Jennifer.”

  I said, “OK, Jennifer. Hey, this is going to work, and the truth is that I knew that I was in love with you that second time you came to the house. I want to check something though. Can I touch you?”

  She laughed and said, “Aren’t you touching me already? If you want to touch me more than you are, go ahead.”

  I was about to be really bold, but I felt that the situation warranted it. If Bebe, that is, Jennifer, was going down this path, we both needed to know.

  I slid my hand under the water, around to her front. I ran my palm down her belly to her crotch and slid my finger along her slit. Jennifer grunted and pushed against me. My middle finger curled upward and after two strokes between her labia, entered her vagina to the second knuckle. It wasn’t far but it was far enough. Yeah, she was wet. But moreover, she was aroused. Jennifer squirmed on my hand and moved as if she wanted much more.

  I whispered, “Jenn, you feel great.”

  She asked, “Do you really love me?”

  I said, “It was pretty much love at first sight.”

  She said, “Me too. After that first day, when I took you and Allie to trade day, I could stop thinking about you. My life changed that day.”

  I said, “You feel so good, and I do love you, but we are going to have to go back to the circle in a few minutes and I don’t want to have a boner.”

  The girl gasped and said, “Well, in that case,” and grabbed my penis, put her legs around my waist, and slid me between the folds of her lady-part.

  Whoa! That wasn’t what I meant. I meant that we should stop and calm down, not make love here 20 feet from the sand. And how was this even possible? How could she be slick enough to make love in salt water? Did that matter? Wasn’t there anything more important than questions like that happening right now?

  I said, “Oh, I meant…oh, wow!”

  Jenn was thrusting hard but mostly squeezing me with her vagina. She had incredible muscle control and before I knew it, I was climaxing hard. So was she. She left teeth marks on my shoulder as she attempted not to scream out loud.

  A minute later, she looked at me and smiled, her legs still around my waist, and said, “How’s that? Everybody satisfied? That I like boys? Are you going to be able to go back to your negotiations now?”

  I said, “Um, I um, if my brain starts working again.”

  Allie said, “Christie! We missed it again!”

  Christie said, “No, we’re fine. We’ll get turns soon enough. We have to go back and let Florin do the rest of what needs to be done.”

  I finished rinsing off and the four of us headed for the circle again.

  Christie said, “Bebe…Jennifer, um, can we call you Jenn? Anyway, really, welcome to the family. Me and Allie are both really glad that you are with us now. Really. We love you too. You’re family.”

  Jenn said, “Thank you so much. I don’t even know how this works. At all.”

  Allie said, “But you like sex? With Florin?”

  Jenn said, “Have you had sex with Florin? If you have, then you know! If you haven’t, let me tell you, it’s great! How often do you guys make love?”

  Christie said, “Not often enough! Well, seriously, th
ere’s been a lot to do, so not that much yet but we make time.”

  I said, “We’ll make more time soon. Things are getting better. My big concern now is the changing weather.”

  As we approached the circle in front of the hotel again, I could see about the same number of people as before, but this time formed into small groups, standing together. There were more groups than I had expected. I had expected maybe three groups of about 20 people each. Instead, I counted eight groups of between three and ten people and one more large group of maybe 20. No one was standing in the circle.

  I walked to the middle and said, “OK, if you guys can put your war on hold for a little while, maybe we can go inside somewhere quieter and talk about how things will be now. Any ideas?”

  One man raised his hand. That was funny. Earlier I had used classroom metaphors, hoping to talk in a way that these 35-year-old high-school students could identify with. I guess it had worked and now one of them was raising his hand to indicate that he had an answer to my question.

  I said, “Yeah, you. What’s up?”

  The man said, “Um, the hotel here has a lobby. There’s no chairs anymore, and it’s kind of trashed but there’s room for everyone to stand or sit on the floor.”

  I said, “Good. Let’s all go in and get out of the wind. Everyone stay with your group. And keep ten feet separation between groups. Really. I mean it. We’re going to have some order and some restrictions until we figure this out a bit more. Respect your neighbors and they’ll respect you. OK, the smallest groups first. You girls. There’s three of you. You go first. Well, I’ll go in first with my family, but you follow us. Then that group of four, and so on, smallest to largest. You 20 guys come in last. No talking. Nice and peaceful. Ten feet of separation. Got it?”

  I looked around and saw heads nod and I took the girls and headed for the big front doors of the hotel. They weren’t kidding. The place was trashed. It had obviously been looted and hadn’t been cleaned in 20 years. It was kind of dark inside. There were plenty of windows but there was still a lot of clouds outside and it took a minute for our eyes to adjust to the shadows. And yeah, there weren’t any chairs.

  I had the girls sit near one side of the room near a door that lead to an inner garden courtyard and I stood in the center of the big open lobby. When the first group of three women entered, I had them sit a few feet to my family’s right. The next group of four to the right of them. The next group sat on my family’s left. Then a final group of five women beside those.

  The smallest group of men had just four in at. I seated the various tribes of men opposite the women. The largest group had 19. When I asked Jennifer about the vegetables, she and Allie told me that none of them were here. Apparently, they took the instructions to go into hiding seriously, or just didn’t care to come to this. I realized that more likely, the weather had prevented them. Vegetables didn’t have canoes.

  When everyone was seated, I said, “Good. Thank you for that. If we’re going to make it, we have to be civil again. Well done. Now listen, I’m not angry now. I want this to work. Maybe it was working for you before, but I did the math and you wouldn’t have survived more than another five or ten years the way things were going. You started with maybe 400 and now there are maybe 100, counting the Breeders. Hey, on that note, can we change the names here a bit? Others and Them is confusing.”

  There was a little laugh at that, and I proceeded.

  I said, “Good. I don’t want to dictate this, but it seems to me that the women’s tribes tend to be nomads and the men’s tribes tend to be settlers. Can we do that? Nomads and Settlers for now? It doesn’t really matter. But maybe if you want to roam from island to island, we call you Nomads, and if you like to live in one place and have a village, we call you Settlers.”

  I considered calling them Village People but decided against it.

  There were a few nods and no dissenters, so I went on.

  I said, “OK, for now, we’ll go with that. Nomads, Settlers, Breeders, Jensens, and Vegetables. Oh, my name is Florin Jensen. The Jensens are my family. So, let’s see if we can do this. I’d like each group, let’s call them tribes for now, to choose a spokesman. But first, I want to talk about the tribes and give you a choice to reconsider. My hope is that you are sitting with people that you trust. Or people that you feel safe with or care about. If that isn’t the case, change tribes. Just get up and ask if you can join someone else. And here’s the thing: from now on, you go where you want. You like some other tribe; you go ask if you can join. If they trust you, they let you in. If they don’t, you find something else. This isn’t for life. These things work while they work. There are two kinds of relationships here: my family is together forever because we are married; mated. We’ll make that work. The other relationship, the one that forms your tribes, is friendships, working safety, mutual goals, stuff like that. Those can change. If you don’t get along or you don’t fit in, try to find a place where you do. And if someone wants to leave, let them. In fact, help them. Help each other find where they truly fit. OK? Take a minute and think. Talk it over.”

  Most of the people stayed where they were but talked among themselves. The largest group of Settlers, the one with about 20 members huddled up and the talk started to get loud and I was afraid that a fight was about to break out.

  I called out to them and said, “Hey! No fights. Settle this with words. You vote with your feet, not your fists. If you want something different, walk away. You vote with your feet. If you stay where you are, you vote to live under that tribe with its rules. If that isn’t what you want, your feet take you somewhere else. Talk it over but there’s no need for an argument. If someone wants to try something different, that’s OK. This is an experiment. We’re trying something. These three are going to try to make a life with just three. That three is going to try making a life that’s a little different. It’s all good. And we’re all going to trade and get along fine. Just shake hands and make a new experiment.”

  At that, the two smallest groups of women looked at each other and moved to talk to each other. Then the other two groups joined them. There was some discussion but when they parted, I saw just two groups, not four; a group of seven and a group of nine. I nodded at them as they sat down again.

  The large group of men continued to talk for a minute, and then about half split off and stood apart from the others. That made six tribes for the men. All but one tribe had roughly seven to ten members. That one had just four.

  I said, “Great. This is progress. Now, can you all choose a spokesman?”

  There was another minute of discussion and then eight people stood up around the room.

  I said, “Good. I’d like to hear from each one of you, briefly. You might not have a plan, but you may have an idea. And if your idea conflicts with someone else’s, we’ll talk it over. No need to go to war.”

  I indicated one of the women and she took a step forward and said, “Look, we live on the water. Like Kong says, we’re nomads, I guess. And we like this idea he has of being left alone. We don’t see a need to change what we do. We live out there and we come to trade. You don’t bother us, and we get along OK. Hey, we talked it over, and we can keep doing what we do. We take messages, right? If we’re like going to have a real life and a town or something, we can trade for you if you don’t want to come to trade day. You could maybe tell us what you want and what you have, and we take your stuff and bring you back other stuff. Like a post office, I guess. If you want us to.”

  I exclaimed, “Wow. That’s a good idea. See, we can find ways to help each other. And if these women handle that and deliver things, you give them some food or something if they need it. We’re used to that, right? You pay for services? What’s your name?”

  The woman seemed pleased at my affirmation and said, “Call me Toni.”

  The spokesman for the other tribe of women spoke up, saying, “Um, can we have a really short timeout?”

  I said, “Sure,” and the two
women whispered to each other for a minute.

  When they were done, the second one sat down and Toni said, “Um, we decided we don’t need two tribes. Bebe, thanks for doing what you did all these years, we’re sorry we called you Bebe. Um, so, it’s Jeannie again, huh. We’re glad you’re happy. Anyway, we don’t need two tribes. We don’t all stay together anyway, so if we could have just four canoes, that would be great. We’d kind of live in the west but come see everyone now and then. Is that OK?”

  I said, “It sounds great to me. Can we do that? They get four good canoes?”

  Toni said, “We have six now. We only need four.”

  I said, “Anyone have a problem with Toni and her tribe taking four canoes. No? OK. Toni, welcome to our new nation. You guys see? We can make this work. That takes care of the Nomads. We have six tribes of Settlers. Who wants to go first?”

  The man with four in his group spoke up right away, saying, “Um hey, so yeah, we’re in and all, and don’t want trouble, so here’s what we kind of think about this. Um, the four of us, we’re pretty OK, you know? So, maybe we could like just take a canoe and maybe go way south, you know? Like just one little place. It doesn’t need a house or anything. And, if um, the um, if the Nomads want to come once in a while and see if we have something or need something, then maybe we don’t have to see any of you, you know? Um, we don’t even have to say where we’re going, right?”

  I said, “Well, on the surface, that sounds good to me. Anybody got a problem with that? These guys go their own way and we leave them alone? Nobody? OK, cool. So, what’s your name?”

  The man said, “Well, before, I was called Rogers.”

  I said, “OK, Rogers, and you guys with him, go where you want anywhere on the southwest side. You know where my house is. Go somewhere across the atoll on the other side. But here, do this. Wherever you go, set up some kind of a marker on the beach so that we don’t trespass by mistake. Hey but no scary skulls on posts or anything like that. No threatening totems. Just a friendly reminder that this piece of land is where you live, and you don’t want company. And maybe you hang out a sign to let the Nomads know if you want to talk or not. If they see one sign, they just keep going but if they see a different sign, they stop and see what you need. Oh, but if they have a message for you, they stop and yell from the canoes and you decide if you want to listen or not. We all good with that? These boys pick a small spot and we don’t even set foot on their land unless invited? Everybody agree?”