Authors: Homer Hickam
I shall murder Bosun O'Neal,
Josh swore silently, forgetting that he'd busted the man to basic seaman, then made another attempt to convince the woman what the situation was. “Perhaps,” he said, “it has worked out that we are married, at least according to your customs, but isn't there a younger and better man you're attracted to?”
“Oh, well played, sir,” Rose answered sarcastically. “You at once reject me and try to fob me off on someone else. Perhaps you
should
abandon me. There are, of course, many other men who would be pleased to marry me.”
For the first time, Josh saw a glimmer of hope, a sliver of opportunity, and a slice of possible salvation. “If such a man pleased you, would it be possible for you to divorce me through some procedure and marry him?”
“Yes, if I loved this hypothetical man more than you,” she said forthrightly “At this moment, I think I would love a pig more.”
“Very well!” Josh cried with great satisfaction. “Then while we look for a better man, one that you will love, our marriage will be one of convenience and formality and not consummated.” Josh stuck out his big ham hand. “Is it a deal?”
Rose looked askance at the big hand, then answered, “I suppose so. But before I touch you again, even to shake your hand, I wish you to bathe.”
Josh smiled. He would have laughed, but he feared it would split his skull. “Then we are in agreement. Take me for a scrubbing. And bring along that Australian soap.”
And so Josh and Rose, husband and wife, ventured to the lagoon, there to bathe him with the Australian soap. Rose also provided Josh with a straight razor borrowed from Mr. Bucknell and a toothbrush a missionary had given her long ago. She smiled at him as he washed and shaved and brushed. She thought he was a bit rough but salvageable, and so set her course to snare the man she had already married.
Once the jad cleaned up to Rose's satisfaction and was fed and rested, Josh sat on the mat outside Rose's hut and worried about all the things he had to worry about. The mutiny of Bosun Ready O'Neal and the marines, he decided, had to be his first priority. He called to Rose. “Do you have paper and pen?”
She stood in the doorway, her hands on her hips. “I do, of course, since I am literate.”
“Might I borrow such? I will pay you back.”
“What is mine is yours, husband,” she replied in a tone that made it sound like a rebuke, then disappeared inside only to quickly reappear with a stubby pencil and a tattered spiral-bound notebook. “Will this do?” she asked.
Josh took the items, inspected them, noted that the notebook, besides being tattered, was only faintly mildewed, and said, “Yes, it will do very well. Thank you.” Then he began writing down a list of charges against the bosun and the marines, ones he figured to scare them with, although he was a bit distracted by Rose, who was standing very close, so close the hem on her lava-lava brushed his arm.
Josh deliberately moved his arm, frowning and clearing his throat to indicate that he was preoccupied. Rose, taking the hint, went back inside her house, where the sounds of housekeeping continued. Josh jotted a few more words, then stood and, ducking low through the doorway, went inside to see what Rose was doing. He saw that she was rearranging her few simple sticks of furnitureâa battered trunk and several wooden boxes with kitchen suppliesâto place a large mat on the floor. “What's this?” he asked.
Rose pushed the hair out of her eyes. “It is customary that a justmarried man and woman sleep on a new mat. I purchased this one from Malua, who lives four houses toward the beach from us on the second row. She is a fine weaver.”
“It is very nice,” Josh said. He stood for a moment, trying to think what else he should say, but after nothing came to mind said, “I am going to see Chief Kalapa.”
“Please feel free to go where you wish without asking my permission,” she said.
“I wasn't asking permission, just telling you. It is the polite thing to do, you see.”
She smiled and then got down on her hands and knees to smooth out the mat. “You need not do even that,” she answered from that position. “It is not customary for a man in this village to concern himself with his wife's feelings.”
“I will keep that in mind.” He watched her for a moment longer, her fetching hips wiggling as she worked over the mat, then said, “Even though we sleep on the same mat, we will not sleep together, if you get my meaning.”
She sat up, again pushing her long hair from her eyes. “I do get your meaning very well, but it does not matter. Who in this village, who indeed of your men, will believe that we do not ficky-ficky?”
“Ficky-ficky? What kind of word is that?”
“The women say the marines taught it to them. It means coupling.”
“It is not a word, even in the marine lexicon. They made it up.”
“That does not change that you and I know what it means. Nor does it change the fact that everyone will assume we are engaged in it.”
“We
will know we aren't, and that is what is important,” he said and walked out of the house, bumping his head on the doorway as he went. He thought he heard her laugh, then decided it was his imagination. He walked down the common road until he reached the chief's hut. One of Kalapa's wives was grinding up a root of some sort, and he asked her to relay his wish to speak to the chief. She pointed. “Chief along boathouse.”
Josh tipped an imaginary cap, his being lost on Betio, then walked down the sandy road, where he encountered a new structure, a simple thatched roof covering a few rows of benches, which were filled with children. In front of them stood Sister Mary Kathleen pointing at a chalkboard, no doubt left behind by the missionaries. Apparently she was teaching the children, and then Josh recalled Bosun O'Neal had mentioned that fact. Marveling at how quickly everything had changed in just a few short days, he
climbed inside the boathouse, where he found Chief Kalapa seated on a log bench and looking thoughtful. “What-what?” the chief demanded.
Josh opened the conversation casually. “Good morning to you, Chief. A great day, is it not?”
The chief inclined his head in agreement but squinted suspiciously since he doubted this was a friendly call. “How is it, Jahtalo? No more drink gin?”
“No more drink gin, Chief,” Josh agreed. “It made me do things I wish I hadn't. For instance, marrying that woman.”
Chief Kalapa smiled. “Ah. Too much pretty, that Rose. She make you happy man, Jahtalo.”
“No, she won't,” Josh said. “She's put me in a pickle, that's what she's done.”
“Pickle I no savvy.”
“She's trouble. You savvy that well enough, don't you?”
Chief Kalapa was all surprise and innocence. “What-what? But Rose too much good woman. She make baby belong you.”
“I don't want baby belong me. I want to leave Tahila, go back to Tarawa.”
“No baby?” Chief Kalapa shook his head slowly from side to side, as if unable to bear the news.
Then Mr. Bucknell entered the boathouse, bowing first as was the custom to the totem at the entrance, which, Josh reflected, he had failed to do. “May I enter this house?”
“Come,” Chief Kalapa answered gruffly.
Bucknell greeted Josh. “It's good to see you up, Captain.” Then he sensed the tension in the room. “Am I interrupting something?”
“I'm trying to make the chief understand why I can't be married,” Josh replied, tamping down his irritation. “I suppose I'm not explaining it well. Maybe if I used the local dialect I could do it better. I used to know it but I've forgotten it over the years.”
“Perhaps your wife could help you learn it again,” Bucknell proposed with a bit of a smirk.
Josh glared at the diplomat, then gave up on that particular subject. He had bigger fish to fry. “Yes, perhaps she can,” he agreed. “Now, Mr. Bucknell, Chief. I need to let you know something. Bosun O'Neal and the marines are engaged in a mutiny. I intend to put it down.”
“Mutiny?” Bucknell breathed. “I'm stunned.”
Josh regarded him and doubted that the Britisher was stunned at all. “You and Chief Kalapa must not interfere,” he said. “This is a matter of the United States, which I represent as ranking officer.”
“Chief Kalapa and I would never think to interfere, of course,” Bucknell replied, “but, from my observation, Bosun O'Neal and the marines simply agreed to help us while you were sodden with gin. That is scarcely grounds for a charge of mutiny.”
“Perhaps, but now I am recovered, and yet Bosun O'Neal refuses my orders.”
“What orders would that be?”
“To gather up our things and leave.”
“You mean abandon us? Including your wife?”
Josh glowered, and he clenched his big fists. “You know what I mean.”
Bucknell shrugged. “Captain Thurlow, the way I see it is you lost control of your men by abandoning them for gin. Perhaps you can regain their trust, but it may take a while. In the meantime, it is obvious you are still exhausted and perhaps inclined to drink again, although I must tell you I have locked up my remaining stock of gin. Anyhoo, Bosun O'Neal told me all that you did on Tarawa, or, more properly, the atoll of Betio, and it is no wonder you require rest.”
“I don't require rest, you Brit lackey!” Josh thundered, then staggered a little when he thought surely his head was going to tear itself right off his neck.
“Dear me,” Bucknell said. “Captain, I implore you. Rest up, then you may take charge of your men. Until then, let them defend us.”
Chief Kalapa rose and put his hand on Josh's shoulder. “Jahtalo no fight. Jahtalo sleep much. Ficky-ficky Rose. Be happy.”
Josh saw now he was outnumbered, and his show of weakness had also mortified him. Holding his head, he turned and marched out of the boathouse and past the school and up the common road to sit on the mat in front of Rose's house. There he sat for a long time. Pink clouds floated over the headland where the sun was falling, and the breeze rustled the fronds of a nearby palm and also the tiny leaves of the candlewood tree that shaded the house. Many things passed through Josh's mind, but he was unable to make much sense of them. Finally, he latched onto the one thing he understood to be true, though he could scarcely believe it. He said it to himself:
have no responsibilities.
He must have said it aloud since Rose replied from within the house.
“What responsibilities do you wish, husband?”
“I don't know,” he answered absently. He continued to sit as the giant red orb of the sun slid down and then sank behind the headland with a spray of purple and gold. Josh suddenly thought that perhaps tomorrow he would climb that hill and watch the sun fall into the sea. Perhaps, he considered, he
might even see the green flash, an optical spectacle the sun in those latitudes sometimes managed to produce. Maybe, he also thought, Rose might want to see it, too.
“Yes, I would like to see it with you,” Rose replied from within her house, and Josh realized that he had expressed this thought aloud as well.
After darkness spread across the village, Rose came outside and sat be-side him. She said nothing, just helped him look at the stars. Finally, after a long while, she asked, “Do you fear not having anything to do?”
“Yes,” he confessed. “A man needs to work, else he loses his sense of worth.”
“Then why did you choose to drink when you came here? Surely you knew there was much to be done.”
Josh thought about that, then said, “I was sick. Not sick like with fever or with wounds, but sick up here.” He tapped his head. “I thought drinking would fix things. It didn't, of course. It only made me drunk.”
“Why were you sick, husband?” Rose asked after what she considered a suitable time.
Josh answered, with sudden insight, “I don't think I've been right since I was on top of that big sand fort on Tarawa.”
“Tarawa?”
“It is a group of islands in the Gilberts. There was a big battle there on a Tarawa atoll called Betio.”
“Tell me about this big sand fort. I want to hear it, and I think you want to tell it.”
Josh looked at her in surprise, then knew she was right, he wanted to tell it very much. “It was one of the last obstacles we had to take. There was this man I met there. His name was Sandy. He didn't have to be there but he was, because he felt obligated to help out. He organized an attack against the fort and, against all odds, it succeeded. After it was pretty much over, Sandy and I were atop the fort and I was talking to him when he was struck in the head with a bullet, though I didn't know it at first. When I realized he was dead, I looked up at the sky and a bird flew over me. The thing is, I knew this bird, Rose. It was a pelican and its name was Purdy. It lives on Killakeet and is very old.”
“Killakeet? Is that an island in the Gilberts?”
“No. It's where I grew up. It's half a world away from the Gilberts.”
“Then how did this pelican from Killakeet get to Tarawa?”
Josh blinked a few times, his mind aswirl, then shook his head. “You see, that's just it. I don't know. All I know is that I'm sure it was him. After that,
I felt like reason was slipping away from me. I took fever but then came out of it long enough to hold myself together on the voyage here. I even performed surgery on a man with the help of Sister Mary Kathleen. But then we arrived on Burubu⦠“ He shook his head. “The people there were murdered, Rose. It was not easy to see.”
“Did you see the pelican there?”
“No. Just a crucified chief and a cry from a crazy man who wants Sister Mary Kathleen for a reason I can't figure, and she won't tell.”
“You like her, don't you, husband?”
Josh sorted through his mind. “Yes, I like her. She is a remarkable woman.”
“Do you love her?”