Routine Activities

by Nick Niels Sanders

  “Quite so.”

  “And if Australia wanted to do something that would be damaging to the rest of the world? Where then would your obligations lie?”

  “Like what?”

  “Stockpile nuclear weapons with the goal of making a nuclear wasteland of the entire northern hemisphere.”

  “I have to oppose Australia on that one.”

  “So, your obligation, according to James – and I think he’s right, by the way, is to define the entity of which you are a part as broadly as you can, to understand the best needs of that larger entity, and to act locally in ways that advance the best interests of that entity.”

  “Quite so. But what happens if you are in a position where you can’t do that. Like here. If they were voting in Sydney today, no matter how much I recognize it as my obligation to do so, I can’t participate.”

  “The key is ‘as broadly as you can.’ Clearly, in your present position, you can have only a limited effect on anything other than this island and its inhabitants. But that is looking at the short haul. You can also have an effect on the rest of the world to the extent that what you do here influences the other people who are here to do a better job of conducting their lives after they leave. I think that’s why James told the story he told last night. It’s his way of using his influence to make the world better, even if it’s only by a few people at a time.”

  “Oh my god. Quite so! Thanks, Paul. I see and I think I understand, but I have to do a lot more thinking. I sense this was a message you did not need to hear.”

  “On the contrary, I needed to hear it as much as anyone. I was just much better prepared for it than you were, because I have been dwelling on these issues for some time already. Shelly was clearly ripe for an epiphany, and her sudden comprehension, at whatever level it happened, helped many of the rest of us along. I wonder how some of the others are doing with the message – Jeanne, Ralph, Julia, Mark, for instance.”

  “Goodness.”

  “Keep working on it, Ron. You are really well down the pathway. Talk to Jim about it – using him as a sounding board will help you both.”

  “Quite so. Thanks, Paul. This has been very helpful.”

  “I’m just doing what I see as being in the best interest of our world. This does not mean that it does not give me pleasure or satisfaction to do it. James, I’m sure, feels the same way about his practice of medicine, but he still uses that practice to make a living.”

  “Quite so.”

  And the conversation drifted to a quiet halt, as they continued to whittle together.

  Marcella excused herself from the group working on the fishing net. Shelly asked if she could help Marcella, an offer Marcella found it hard to turn down, less because she needed help than because of the totally unexpected person from whom the offer came. The two young women moved to the kitchen together to begin preparations for lunch as the others continued tying knots.

  Val looked over at Dr. James. “I wonder where Jeanne can be.”

  “I’m sure I don’t know. Has anyone seen them since breakfast?”

  “I gave Jeanne a treatment and left her sleeping as she usually does after her morning honey application.”

  Julia: “I saw them here in the Kitchen Tent about an hour after you and she walked away to do her treatment.”

  No one could recall having seen them more recently than that. James summed up the situation: “I’m sure they are OK, and missing a treatment right now is not a big deal, considering how well Jeanne is doing. Let’s wait a bit more before we start to worry.”

  Jeanne and Ralph played in the water, splashing, chasing one another, and swimming for some time. Emerging, they walked up and down in the sun to dry off then sat on the sand to eat the pan bread, talking about the life they had waiting for them at home, and wondering if people were worried about them. But sitting in the mid-day sun is hot work, so pretty soon they were back in the water, swimming first out to the reef, then along it, then back in to Boulder Beach.

  How different Boulder Beach was! The sand was darker than on the beach they had just left, and the beach was littered with lava rocks ranging from the size of a beach ball to the size of a house. They climbed one rock and looked out to sea, pretending they were looking for the rescue ship that was coming from that direction. Jeanne posed and Ralph pretended to be taking photos; Ralph posed and Jeanne pretended to be taking photos.

  They climbed down and explored the rocky headland of the beach that consisted of layers of lava, occasionally with strange white or light colored layers between. There were reds and blacks and browns and whites, ranging from shiny to dull, from solid to foamy. There was water seeping out, forming a rivulet down the face of the rock wall. Ralph put out his hand, forming a cup against the rock, and collected a puddle of water. They both drank and drank. They had forgotten that they needed more than a bit of food to get them safely through the day.

  Rehydrated, they wandered some more through the rock-scape beach. Jeanne suggested that it would be a great place to play hide-and-seek; Ralph told her to go hide, he would give her 30 seconds before he followed. That was adequate time for her to put several large rocks between them. Ralph searched carefully and craftily, having footprints to follow, and spied her disappearing around a mound of rock the size of a large house. The chase was on! He ran after her, not always having her in sight, but frequently rounding a rock to see a vision of her backside disappearing around another rock. He was faster than she was and gradually closed the distance. Soon, he was close enough that it was just a dead run chase. Jeanne collapsed onto the sand, gasping for breath. Ralph was by her side, also panting. Jeanne began to crawl away. Ralph crawled behind her, his loins stirred by the chase and the capture.

  Jeanne looked back. “Oh, again! Please do. Just watch out for the burns!”

  Their cries of delight echoed off the headwall of the beach and the large rocks around them, and the echoes stimulated them to be even louder.

  Exhausted by the exercise, Jeanne looked around and found a patch of shade beside one of the rocks, under an overhang. It was large enough to fit both of them. They crawled in and Jeanne went right to sleep.

  Shelly rapidly made herself useful in the kitchen. She opened several cans of tuna and began to mix it with mayonnaise, creating a tuna salad. Warming up pan bread she had cooked previously, Marcella counted and decided she needed to make some more in order to have enough, wondering who had been snacking on pan bread while she wasn’t looking. Between the two of them, lunch was soon ready – pan bread, tuna salad (carefully spiced by Marcella), blue cheese and a flavored drink made from a powder Marcella had found among the canned goods, mixed with water by Shelly.

  Lunch was announced and everyone crowded around to indulge in it.

  Mark reappeared from his lean-to, looking less sullen than he had in some time, participating in the conversation over lunch, reviewing with approval the work that Ron and Paul had done in creating more fiber for the fishing net and taking a keen interest in the progress of the fishing net itself.

  After she had finished eating, Mark took Julia aside and offered his apology. “I guess I was a bit out of line in what I told you. I’m sorry. I take it back. You can certainly dress or not as you like.”

  “Thanks, Mark. I appreciate your rethinking of the issue.”

  “Well, I listened to James last night, and you know, what he said about supporting the society in which you live made a lot of sense to me. I don’t think I can bear to take off the rest of my clothes – I’m pretty uncomfortable already – but it is clearer to me now that you are doing what you think is necessary and appropriate in the circumstances, and I have to honor that, even if I disagree or cannot myself participate.”

  “I’ll have to congratulate James on his story.”

  “Don’t bother. I’ll do it.”

  Julia kissed Mark on the cheek – the most public display of affection that had passed between them in public
in the memory of anyone present. “I forgive you, this time.”

  “Thanks.”

  After lunch, Marcella, Julia and Maria went to clean up; Marcella thanked Shelly for her participation in preparing lunch, helping Shelly to feel she had made an important contribution and that her help was very much appreciated. Shelly emerged from the kitchen area smiling.

  Having finished eating lunch, Jim and Ron moved to their lean-to. Ron told Jim about his talk with Paul. He was still struggling with the concepts Paul had expressed, having understood them and yet not feeling he understood the implications of accepting them. He tried to explain his confusion to Jim, and, in doing so, drew the two of them into a conversation that involved both of them in getting a firmer grasp on the message.

  What was clear to both of them was that taking an aloof position as an artist was not what was called for – they should expect of themselves that they would – at the same time – be self-interested individuals, members of the castaway group, artists, whittlers, water carriers, story tellers and choir leaders, and yet not forget that they were also members of the larger ecosystem of the island and citizens of the world. Understanding how they were called upon to behave in each of these roles was difficult, but at least some sense of it was possible. The choice of how to act at any particular time was clearly theirs – and there would be times when their personal needs took priority over the needs of larger organizations, though much of the time, they would want to tailor their actions in serving their own needs to also serve those of a larger grouping to which they belonged.

  Starting slowly, the conversation reached a peak, ideas flowing rapidly between them, then tapered off into contemplative silence as each absorbed new insights. They lay in the lean-to on their backs, side-by-side, thinking. Soon both were asleep.

  After lunch, James was disappointed to lose Maria, Marcella and Julia to the kitchen, Jim and Ron to a nap and Roger to his tai chi. Val was helping; shortly Shelly joined in; Paul was whittling fiber ties. Mark came over and commented that they seemed to be doing a really good job and wondered how he could help.

  “You could take over this job,” Paul commented. “You are much better at it than I and I am very good at tying the net.”

  “OK.” Mark immediately sat down opposite Paul and started whittling. Paul got up and moved to one edge of the net, where he began inspecting parts of the net that had been retied, moving rapidly through a large section of repaired net and starting to re-tie at the first unrepaired area he came to. His self-assessment of his tying was a correct one. His fingers were long, quick and agile; the area he had repaired spread rapidly.

  Having excused himself for half an hour after lunch to practice tai chi, Roger returned to the Kitchen Tent eager for another snorkeling trip. He asked James what the schedule for the afternoon was, indicating his eagerness to snorkel again. James replied that the fishing net was his first priority, and that he would appreciate any help Roger was willing to provide. They might be able to snorkel later in the afternoon. Roger was free to snorkel by himself any time he wanted.

  Maria, Marcella and Julia were talking about snorkeling as they finished up the kitchen. Roger heard the conversation and asked them if he could snorkel with them. They looked at one-another and could not think of a good reason why not. They planned to go at about 3:00, since James would still be hard at work on the fishing net and would still want to go fishing. The plan was made. Until 3:00, they sat down at the fishing net to contribute to its repair.

  Shelly and Val, when asked, indicated they would like to join in the snorkeling. The prospect of losing six helpers to snorkeling at 3:00 was a motivator to James, who hoped to have the fishing net repairs complete by then.

  The re-tied areas of the net were rapidly approaching one another. Paul found himself more and more checking on previously repaired areas, making an additional knot here and retying one there. They could no longer work on the net gathered up on laps and in a heap on the floor. They took it out and laid it on the sand in the shade; James and Paul started at one side, moving back and forth and creeping forward, checking on ties. The others started in front of them, near the middle of the net, arrayed beside one another across the net, tying and retreating from the center, leaving the repaired net spread smoothly before them. Even with their smaller number of workers and the large width to cover, James and Paul were initially moving forward more rapidly than the other six were moving away from them, leaving retied net between them; then the dynamics changed. First one, then another of the repair crew began to encounter previously repaired areas and the rate at which repaired net appeared between the two sets of workers increased. Before 3:00 arrived, the repair crew declared that they were finished and would now go snorkeling, leaving James and Paul to complete the rechecking. By 3:00, even that was done.

  Afternoon activities

  Roger and the five women declared the repair job on the net complete, rose, and collected the snorkeling equipment. Even though the appointed hour had not arrived, they dashed to the water, donned their equipment, and set off to snorkel in the lagoon, heading west toward Third Beach.

  Having completed rechecking the knots, Paul and James reattached the floats and weights and the strings to tighten the net when fish were within it. At this point, Jim and Ron reappeared, asking if they could help. The offer was quickly accepted; they helped first with the weights and floats and then with piloting the two life rafts so that Paul and James could pay complete attention to the fishing.

  They motored out to the reef, shut off the motors, deployed the net, and began to row slowly eastward along the reef. It was the right direction to turn. In a matter of ten minutes or so, they had come upon a school of the larger yellow fins. Carefully surrounding the fish with the net, tightening it, and lifting it they found they had about 20 fish. They saved four and threw the rest back into the water – they could catch them again another day. The net had worked! And they would have fresh fish for supper.

  They hauled in the net and headed back to shore and the Kitchen Tent. They dressed the fish and left them in a pot of sea water for Marcella; they hung the net on one side of the Kitchen Tent so that it could dry. Paul and James inspected it for damage and could find none.

  Jim and Ron pulled the two life rafts up onto the beach, then went to see what Mark was doing. When Paul came to tell Mark that they would not need any more net material, Mark shifted back to preparing the leafy parts of the fronds for weaving; Paul showed Ron and Jim how to weave the mats. James watched briefly, went to the water and swam briefly, went to his lean-to and lay down. Jim took a turn at weaving a mat; Ron picked up a finished mat and looked at it carefully. Then he walked out into the sun and held it up.

  “It makes good shade, Paul,” he commented.

  Jim looked up with a flash of understanding, “I wonder if we could use this technique to make hats to shade our faces.”

  Paul was dumbfounded, “I wonder why no one ever thought of that before.” He went to work on designing a pattern that would result in a hat. When Julia returned from snorkeling, he would have to talk to her further about how to make a hat.

  When Jeanne awoke, they went back to the spring and drank again. Jeanne suggested they swim around the next headland to see what was there. They did, coming in to Black Beach from the water, a view of Black Beach different from what Ralph had seen before when the explorers had encountered it. There were dancing mirages of puddles of water on the sand, shimmering lights and reflections in a variety of colors, then, as their angle of view changed, the sand turned dull black, looking almost like there was nothing there. The beach was small and the sand very hot, but there was a shady area at its west end, at the base of the forbidding lava wall at that side of the beach. Jeanne started building a sand castle in the shade; Ralph joined in. What they built was neither as large nor as elaborate as what they had built with the others several days before, but it occupied them for a time with great satisfaction. Even in the shad
e, it was hot work. Jeanne went to rinse herself a couple of times, thinking that this was almost as good as a sea water compress.

  On her third trip to the water, Ralph came along. He followed her out of the water, coming close behind her, reaching around to cup her breasts in his hands.

  “Oh! Aren’t you the lusty one?”

  “Well, I can’t touch your back, so what can I do, I have to touch your front – and all I find is your bosom.”

  “Well, buster, there’s an implied promise in that touch. Are you prepared to fulfill that promise?”

  “I suspect I am.”

  “Another time? How wonderful!”

  They made love again. They weren’t as noisy this time, but they were spent when it was over. Limp legs feeling too weak to keep them upright, they sat down on the sand, still in the shade of the rocky wall, feet still in the water, and splashed while regaining strength and composure.

  It was a little after 4:00 when the snorkelers returned to the beach, doffed snorkeling equipment and walked up the beach to the Kitchen Tent, finding Mark, Paul, Ron and Jim working on weaving palm fronds.