Kimberly threw the blanket aside and sat up fast. Frowning, she swung her head from side to side as she got to her feet. She was still in her white bikini. She looked terrific. She also looked worried.
Andrew and Billie were already striding toward her. (Billie had straightened her bikini top so nothing showed that wasn’t supposed to.)
Kimberly said, “Dad, what’s going on? Where’s Keith?”
“We don’t know, honey. He was supposed to wake up Rupert at four, but he didn’t. From the look of things, he’s been gone a long time.”
Kimberly suddenly shouted “Keith!” toward the jungle. She got no answer, so she cupped her hands to the sides of her mouth and belted out, “KEITH!”
Then we all started yelling his name.
We even tried calling out in unison. That was Billie’s idea. She counted to three, and we all yelled “KEITH!” at once.
Then we waited, but no reply came.
“Do you have any idea where he might’ve gone?” Andrew asked Kimberly.
“No. Are you kidding? He wouldn’t go anywhere, not when he’s supposed to be keeping watch. Not Keith. Except maybe for five minutes, if he had to go to the john. He wouldn’t take off for hours. No way!”
I’d never seen her this upset. She wasn’t hysterical, though. She didn’t cry, but her voice sounded tight and she had a frantic look in her eyes like she wanted to scream for help.
“Something’s happened to him,” she said. “He’s had an accident, or…” She shook her head. “We’ve gotta go and find him.”
We might’ve started a general discussion about the various possibilities, but Kimberly didn’t hang around. She picked up her shoes and started running toward the jungle.
“Kim!” Andrew yelled. “Wait for us.”
Still running, she glanced back over her shoulder.
“Stop!” he ordered.
She quit running, turned around, and walked backward toward the jungle.
“Somebody should stay here,” I suggested. “You know, in case Keith shows up. If he comes back and everyone’s gone…”
“Good idea,” Andrew said. “You wanta stay?”
“No, but…”
“I’ll stay,” Connie volunteered.
“I don’t want you here by yourself,” her dad said.
“Rupert’ll stay with me.”
“I want to help search for Keith,” I said.
The skipper pointed at me. “Stay with her.” He dug into his pocket, came up with the lighter, and tossed it to me. “Get the fire going, Rupe.”
“Aye-aye, sir.”
Andrew, Billie and Thelma spent a couple of minutes picking up odds and ends such as shoes, hats, and sunglasses. Then they hurried to catch up with Kimberly.
Before long, they vanished into the jungle. Connie and I stood by ourselves on the sand.
“He’ll turn up,” Connie said.
“I hope so.”
She frowned the way she does when she wants you to know she’s concentrating hard. “What do you think happened to him?”
“He went out in the jungle to take a dump last night, and the local headhunters nailed his ass.”
“Ha ha ha. Very funny. You’re sick if you think that’s funny.”
“Maybe not headhunters,” I said.
“I should think not.”
“Maybe a snake got him. I bet something did. Might’ve been one of those giant spiders I heard about—they’re indigenous to these islands. They have this special venom that turns your blood to acid so you burn up from the inside out.”
“Yeah, right.”
“Really.”
“Get fucked,” she told me, then spun around and walked off toward the water.
“By you?” I asked.
“In your dreams,” she said, not even glancing back.
Not in my dreams, I thought. I didn’t say it, though. I’d already said enough, pretty much.
She went in for a swim, so I built a new fire in the ashes of the old one. When the fire was going good, I fetched my pen and journal and got to work.
The search party still hasn’t returned.
Connie’s been leaving me alone.
After swimming around for a while, she went climbing on the rocks at the point. (Good thing I didn’t leave my journal hidden up mere. She probably would’ve found it and read it, and then I’d be in some real trouble.) Later, she climbed down and swam some more. Then she sprawled out on the sand. She’s acting like I’m somewhere else.
We didn’t exactly have a model relationship before this trip, but it started to really deteriorate as soon as the others entered the picture. I think she considers it a big mistake that she asked me to come along.
Oh, well.
I’m having a good time, mostly, in spite of her.
On the negative side of things, it’s not a good sign that the search party has been gone so long. I’m afraid something bad might’ve happened to Keith.
I sure hope they’re all right.
Shit! What if they don’t come back?
I don’t want to think about that. Besides, it isn’t very likely.
So long for now. I’ve got a few personal matters to take care of while I’ve got the place pretty much to myself.
Keith Turns Up
Oh, man. Oh, shit.
The search party hasn’t come back yet. No wonder. They’re still out there looking for Keith, probably.
I found him.
I didn’t have to look far, either. Just up.
Here’s what happened. Since there was nobody around, and I’d been holding things in for a while, I decided to take advantage of me privacy to answer nature’s call. I took a paperback book with me. Not for reading purposes. I figured I could start ripping out pages from the first half, which I’d already read. (It’s not that great a book anyway.) I went wandering over to the area that our group has been using since our arrival yesterday—in the jungle and a pretty good distance south of the stream. It wasn’t very far to walk, and the foliage in there was thick enough so that you could disappear after just a few steps.
Most everyone had gone in, at one time or another.
It was the first place that Kimberly and the others had searched, too.
But they’d missed him.
I didn’t stop at the first likely trees, but went in a little deeper. After all, no telling when the searchers might return.
I found a good place, and did my business.
I had taken off my swimming trunks to make the job easier, so then I had to put them back on. The problem was, I hadn’t taken off my shoes. When I stood on one foot and tried to slip the other into the leg hole of my trunks, the heel of my Nike got caught and I lost my balance. I hopped and tried to work my foot loose. All of a sudden, though, I was out of control. My shoulder slammed into the trunk of a tree in front of me. The blow turned me, and I landed flat on my back.
Which is when I found Keith.
I’d crashed into his tree.
It wasn’t a palm tree, by the way. The jungle here was full of regular, non-palm trees of maybe a zillion different varieties. This one looked like a normal tree—the sort that has a thick trunk, branches starting about ten feet up, and normal-sized leaves instead of fronds.
Keith was a little higher than the first set of branches.
All I saw, at first, was the bottom half of a naked man dangling almost directly above my face.
I pulled my trunks on, fast as I could, then got out from under him.
He was up there so high that I couldn’t see enough of his face to recognize him. There was no doubt in my mind, though. This was Keith. He’d lost his flip-flop sandals. He’d also lost his trunks. What he still wore was his bright green, blue and yellow Hawaiian-type shirt. It was fluttering in the breeze up there. And he was swaying just a bit from side to side.
I was pretty sure he’d been hanged, even though I couldn’t make out the rope.