He went into the bathroom to brush his teeth, caught his reflection in the mirror. His mood went terminal. I am never going to get laid again as long as I live. I should have pressed them about Kimi. I didn’t even ask about what in the hell kind of cargo I’m going to be flying. I am a spineless worm. I’m scum. I’m the Hindenburg, I’m Michael Milken, Richard Nixon. I’m seeing ghosts and bats that talk and I’m stuck on an island where the only woman makes Mother Theresa look like a lap dancer in a leper colony. I am the man who put the F in failure, the P in pathetic, the G in gullible. I am the ringworm poster boy of Gangrene City. I’m an insane, unemployed bus driver for the death camp cartel.
Tuck went to bed without brushing his teeth.
33
Chasing the Scoop
Natives slept side by side, crisscrossed, and piled on the deck of the Micro Spirit until—with a thu showing here, or a lavalava there, streams of primary color among all that gelatinous brown flesh—it looked as if someone had dropped a big box of candy in the hot sun and they had melted together and spilled their fillings. Amid the mess, Jefferson Pardee, rolled and pitched with the ship, finding three sleeping children lying on him when the ship moved to starboard, a rotund island grandmother washing against him when the ship listed to port. He’d been stepped on three times by ashy callused feet, once on the groin, and he was relatively sure he could feel lice crawling in his scalp.
Unable to sleep, he stood up and the mass moved amoebalike into the vacated deck space. A three-quarter moon shone high and bright, and Pardee could see well enough to make his way through to the railing, only stepping on one woman and evoking colorful island curses from two men. Once at the rail, the warm wind washed away the cloying smell of sweat and the rancid nut smell of copra coming from the holds. The moon’s re-flection lay in the black sea like a tossing pool of mercury. A pod of dolphins rode the ship’s bow wave like gray ghosts.
He took several deep breaths, relieved himself over the side, then dug a bent cigarette out of his shirt pocket. He lit it with a disposable lighter and exhaled a contrail of smoke with a long sigh. Thirty years in the tropics had given him a high tolerance for discomfort and inconvenience, but the break in routine was maddening. Back on Truck, he’d be toweling off the smell of stale beer and the residue of an oily tumble with a dollar whore, preparing to pass out with a
volume of Mencken under his little air conditioner. No thought of the day to come or the one just passed, for one was like the next and they were all the same. Just cool cloudy sleep that made him feel, if only for a minute, like that young Midwestern boy on an adventure, exhausted from passion and fear, rather than a fat old man worn down by ennui.
And here, in the salt and the moonlight, on the trail of a story or maybe just a rumor, he felt the fungus growing in his lungs, the pain in his lower back, the weight of ten thousand beers and half a million cigarettes and thirty years of fish fried in coconut oil pressing on his heart, and none of it—none of it—was so heavy as the possibility of dashed hopes. Why had he opened himself up to a future and failure, when he had been failing just fine already?
“You can’t sleep?” the mate said.
Pardee hadn’t heard the wiry sailor move to the rail. He was drinking a Bud tallboy, against regulations, and Pardee felt a craving twist like a worm in his chest at the sight of the can.
“You got another one of those?”
The mate reached into the deep front pocket of his shorts, pulled out another beer, and handed it to Pardee. It was warm, but Pardee popped the top and drank off half of it in one gulp.
“How long before we make Alualu?” Pardee asked.
“Three, maybe four hour. Sunrise. We drop you on north side of island, you swim in.”
“What?” Pardee looked down to the black waves, then back at the mate.
“The doctor no let anyone go on the island except to bring cargo. You have to swim in on other side of island. Maybe half mile, maybe less.”
“How will I get back to the ship?”
“Captain say he will swing back around the island when we leave. Captain say he wait half an hour. You swim back out. We pick you up.”
“Can’t you send a boat?”
“No boat. No break in reef except on south side where we unload. We have many fuel barrel and crates. You will have seven, maybe eight hour.”
Pardee had seen the Spirit arrive in Truk lagoon a thousand times; the ship was always surrounded by outboards and canoes filled with excited natives. “Maybe I can get one of the Shark People to ferry me.” He did not want to get in that water, and he certainly
didn’t want to swim half a mile to shore, wasn’t sure he could.
“Shark People no have boat. They no leave island.”
“No boats?” Pardee was amazed. Living in these islands without a boat was akin to living in Los Angeles without a car. It wasn’t done; it couldn’t be done.
The mate patted Pardee’s big shoulder. “You be fine. I have mask and fins for you.”
“What about sharks?”
“Sharks afraid around there. On most island people afraid of shark. On Alualu shark afraid of people.”
“You’re sure about that?”
“No.”
“Oh, good. Do you have another beer?”
Three hours later the rising sun lay like a silver tray on the horizon and Jefferson Pardee was having swim fins duct-taped to his feet by the first mate. The deck bustled with excited natives eating rice balls and taro paste, smoking cigarettes, shitting over the railings, and milling around the ship’s store, trying to buy Cokes and Planter’s cheese balls, Australian corned beef, and, of course, Spam. A small crowd had gathered around to watch the white man prepare for his swim. Pardee stood in his boxer shorts, maggot white except for his forearms and face, which looked like they’d been dipped in red barn paint. The mate stuffed Pardee’s clothes and notebook into a garbage bag and handed it to him, then slathered the journalist with waterproof sunscreen, a task on par with basting a hippo. Pardee snarled at a group of giggling children and they ran off down the deck screaming.
Pardee heard the ship’s big screws grind to a halt and the mate unhooked a chain gate set in the railing. “Jump,” he said.
Pardee looked at the crystal water forty feet below. “You’re out of your fucking mind. Don’t you have a ladder?”
“You can’t climb ladder with fins.”
“I’ll take the fins off until I get in the water.”
“No. Straps broken. You have to jump.”
Pardee shook his head and the flesh on his shoulders and back followed suit. “It’s not gonna happen.”
Suddenly the children Pardee had frightened came running around the bridge like a squealing pack of piglets. Two little boys broke formation and ran toward the journalist, who looked around just as he felt four tiny brown hands impact with his back.
Pardee saw sky, then water, then sky, then the island of Alualu laying on the sea like a bad green toupee, then the impact with the water took his breath, ripped the mask from his face, and forced streams of brine into his sinuses strong enough to bring blood.