The Night Marchers and Other Strange Tales (16 page)

The Saints can wait a little longer before returning. I have already asked Maria Haberno to craft me a doll and some clothes. After I place Juan’s seed bag in its hands, one more will be returning to Mechalu with them. Saint Marco Haberno. Herald of the Green Man of Punta Cabre. Maybe his home will be in my church. I need to fill it. 

JELLYFISH MOON 

Twin crescent beaches of fine, white sand fanned out from the rocky tide pools at the foot of the steep cliff, a calm and shallow bay between them. Two larger-than-life figures hewn from the rock flanked a wide cave entrance leading into the heart of the island. The seated men had the elongated heads of salt-water crocs, and were said to be servants of Harat, the guardian spirit of the small fishing community turned exclusive tourist haven. Where the beaches thinned and arced together forming the narrow mouth of the bay, San paddled his dugout full of tackle and wire to repair the nets. Bare-chested and barefoot, his dark skin glistened with salty sweat.  

The bay was closed off from the ocean with nets. Just as it had been every time this year for generations. San’s father, and his father before him had been a net diver. With the growing tourist industry came stronger nets and plastic buoys, but the job was always the same:check the nets and keep the bay free of crocs for the Jellyfish Moon. 

San paddled close to the line of buoys marking where the nets disappeared beneath the water. 

Every paddler was on the water patrolling for crocs. San heard his brother-in-law Charlie’s deep chuckle. Of course he was happy. The sun was shining, all was cool and calm, and he came home everyday to his wife and children.  

“San, you take your head out of da sky and dive down to those nets,” his sister, Tal, called from a cluster of paddlers. 

Her voice surprised him. She should be preparing for the festival but she loved to wrestle the crocs out of the bay with her husband Charlie and the boys. 

“I checked them twice already today,” he said. 

“Den check ’em again.” 

“Got ’em,” Charlie cried. His rope noose was taut from the struggling of a snared croc below. Tal deftly turned her boat to go help. 

“And when you are done, Marika is here,” Tal called over her shoulder as she paddled away. “Charlie says one of the boys took her bags up to Ruby Shores.” 

San’s arms went weak upon hearing her name. 

It was the worst time, he had so much to do before the dark of the moon. 

San put his feet in the water, readying himself to check the rocks at the sea floor anchoring this section of nets.  

It had been almost a year since she had left. Only two more days to the dark of the summer new moon, the Jellyfish Moon. Already the round, translucent creatures were flowing in with the tide. The nets were wide enough to let their fist-sized, spherical bodies pass, yet small enough to keep the head of even a small crocodile out.  

Feeling the soft creatures against his toes, he gazed at the huts and viewing platforms that had already been set up for the rich tourists at the distant edges of the beaches. Normally these were the least desirable places to sunbathe because of their distance from the palm tree shade and the outdoor pavilion of shops and vendors on the other side of the Temple. Soon they would be the most desired spots to view the yearly return of the invertebrates and the ceremony and festival that followed. 

San thought of the sunset parade; the locals, his friends and families selling aqua-fresca, roasted nuts, fresh baked cookies, chocolate and fruit brownies, and the frosted coconut cake he enjoyed so. Marika had loved that cake. 

“Come with me, San. Lets watch together from the Temple.” 

“I have to go and check the nets. It’s my job to keep the crocs out.” 

“But it’s the festival.” 

“I love you Marika. You know I was a diver long before you came. It’s who I am. Who my father was.” 

“I’m your lover. I’m going to be your wife.” 

“Don’t make me choose.”
 

He didn’t have to. That night she left without a word and had not returned. 

He still couldn’t believe it. Though she was an outsider—born in Czechoslovakia but living in New York, Paris, and Milan since her early teens—San knew she felt the wisdom of wind through palm, of the sunshine on the water, and of letting the outside world of war and strife go to hell. A photo shoot had brought her to the island, and days later she told him she wanted to leave behind her career and the life that went with it. She had been ready to escape the grind of the fashion world and her wealth granted her that luxury. 

Tal had told him that no matter how sweet the smile or sincere the words you can’t trust an outsider. “All they want is a fantasy, a fling with an islander and island life. Sooner or later they go,” she had said. 

As the months passed after Marika had left, he had heard word of her through the newspapers and the tourists on his snorkeling boat. He hadn’t realized how famous she was. He hadn’t cared. 

San threw his diving knife at a small croc nosing about his boat. It missed and sank into the clear depths.  

Marika, I always wanted you back, but what was I gonna do? Go to New York and fight for you? How? With my diving knife and my tackle?  

If Marika really had come back then there was a chance. Maybe she’d see that she belonged here, with him. He’d show her. If only there wasn’t so much to do. 

**** 

“He’s a big one,” Tal yelled. “San, come on over and help us carry him out of the bay.” 

San stopped his paddling. He desperately wanted to say “no,” and run to Marika, but he could feel Tal’s eyes on him, just waiting for any indication he would refuse. 

He rolled out of his dugout into the shallows and waded over to Tal and Charlie, who along with Lynden and Big Rog were leading the snared croc to shore.  

“She’s an eight footer,” Lynden said. “You think it’s Gertrude?” 

“Can’t be sure till we get her on shore,” said Charlie. “Don’t complain, back on San Raphael I used to see twelve to fourteen footers all the time.” 

They wrestled the croc out of the water onto the rocky shore. San didn’t think the four of them needed his help, yet he bound the leathery reptile’s jaws closed with a roll of silver tape.  

They finished taping its front arms and the four of them picked it up. Tal prevented its tail from thrashing. 

“Come on now, over to the other side of the island to the nice garbage dump where there’s lots of food for you,” Charlie said. 

She’d find her way back, San thought. They always did. Took them a couple of days. But it was enough time to let the festival go through.  

Charlie groaned playfully. “What’s the point of taking them out of the bay? They just come back anyway.” 

“How long you been here, sweetie? The bay is to be kept empty and free of the influence of Harat, at least for one night. The jellyfish enter, with the dark of the new moon as they do year after year. The absence of the moon and the spirit of the migrating jellyfish brings purification. Cleansing. The restart of these cycles brings renewal.” 

“I could use some of that renewal,” Charlie said, groping for his wife. “But Harat is just a story.” 

“But he’s our story. The real reason, of course, is that the big man at Ruby Shores wants the crocs gone. Thinks they’ll scare the tourists away, and then he’ll have no more money.” 

Charlie laughed. “Crocs aren’t a danger unless you’re swimming at night in the garbage dump.” 

“I know, dear. I know. What are we gonna tell ’em? It was the crocs’ bay first?” 

They approached the path leading up the cliff to the Temple.  

They can take it from here, San thought. “I have to go and meet Marika,” he said. 

“I thought that was one that would stay gone,” Big Rog said. 

“Let the man be,” Charlie said.  

“She’s back to suck us dry,” Rog muttered under his breath. 

“I’ll see you tomorrow,” Tal said to San. She spoke the words as if they were an order.  

San climbed over the rocks to the path. Why did he even bother to help? Now he wouldn’t have time to clean up and still have a chance of catching Marika before dinnertime. He wished things could be like those first idyllic months when he woke with her to the morning sun, came home to her after a day on the boats, dined with her on fresh fish on their grill, and drank and walked the beach till it was time to start over again the next day. 

San entered the black cave mouth leading into the Temple. Strings of electric lights lit the passage, illuminating tribal ceremonial markings alongside old and modern graffiti. The handrails for the tourists were pitted and rusting from the salt air.  

Within a minute he came upon the main chamber. Two croc-men, like the giant pair outside, sat in silence next to the lone, stone slab of an altar.  

A pile of incense ash and a bunch of wilted, yellow flowers lay before the slab. Harat was strong, San thought. His people were always fortunate. With the hotels, tourism was booming. But, with the outsiders came many rules and insidious problems. Loyalties were divided and one had to go farther and farther to get a good catch of fish. Many made a better living by working the tour and dive boats. The island was changing. San himself even ran a snorkel boat on his off day. He didn’t know what kind of gods the outsiders had, but he hoped Harat was strong enough to wrestle with them and prevail. 

He turned the corner, hurried down the passage, and pushed open the door that led to the pavilion.  

A dozen hotels and twice that many day spas and restaurants lined a square paved with clean sand colored stones. Stalls and carts spread out like a snail shell from the central fountain: four stone crocodiles, modern replicas in the style of the temple, spurted water on a giant jellyfish in the center. At the edge of the strip, hulking iron cranes lifted the girders of next year’s new hotel into place, spewing oily smoke into the clear sky. 

A small crowd had gathered around Mr. and Mrs. Henderson’s trinket stand. He could hear the old woman yelling, and something told him to pick up his pace. He broke into a run when he saw Marika. 

She was sprawled on the floor, one high heel off, her leg twisted. Mrs. Henderson alternated between yelling at Marika and her husband who was taking pictures with a yellow disposable camera from their shop. 

San knocked the camera out of his hand and bent to Marika. “You all right?” 

“She break. She pay,” Mrs. Henderson said. “She no wanna pay.” 

“I didn’t break anything. I broke my heel, then he started flashing that thing at me.” 

San helped her to her feet. Marika kicked off her other heel and leaned against him. 

“You fall and break glass,” Mrs. Henderson said, pointing at a few broken jars of expensive skin crème made from the bay water and jellyfish that was popular with the tourists. 

“Old lady,” San said indignantly, “you should be ashamed. This is my girl. And you let her lay there and don’t help?” 

Mr. Henderson rummaged through stacks of t-shirts looking for the camera. 

“This is my business,” Mrs. Henderson said. “I don’t go and break your swim masks.” 

“I tell you what. I pay you for your crème, on payday. I’m good for it. But, I don’t want to see none of those pictures nowhere, ya hear?” 

“Deal,” the old woman said. She waved to her husband to clean up the crème. 

San slid his arm around Marika’s waist and led her to the hotel. His arm against her back and his hand on her pelvis bone made him shiver. 

“You okay?” he asked. 

“It’s gonna be fine,” she said. 

A uniformed teenager opened the security gate to the grounds of the Ruby Shores hotel. The palms were cleaned, and the flowering shrubs manicured. Small beach-rock fountains gurgled, surrounded by oceans of thick emerald grass. 

“Why didn’t you tell me you were coming?” 

“You’d only yell,” she said. “It’s better this way.” 

Beneath her heavy eye makeup were dark circles from lack of sleep. She’d lost weight. In her fancy sundress she looked like one of the too-skinny girls from the magazines the tourist women read on the beach. Her face was the same. The most beautiful he had ever seen. Her eyes were alert jewels, which despite their striking beauty somehow spoke of sadness.  

Marika smiled to the staff who greeted her as they walked through the spacious lobby. When she looked away, San noticed their disapproving frowns. It felt like a long time until the elevator dinged and arrived to take them. 

When the doors closed, he smelled the vanilla and spice of Marika’s perfume and beneath a hint of her sweat. The smell of her. 

“I saw picture of you and some man in the paper. What is it? You coming here to make sure it’s me, not him that’s right for you?” 

“Something like that. It’s complicated.” 

San looked at her. “You’re tired of the big world life again and you’ve come home to me. I can see it in your eyes.” 

She pulled on a strand of her thin, sandy hair like she did when she was nervous. “Am I that transparent?” 

“No, I know you.” San wanted to kiss her and push her away all at the same time. The magnetic pull between them had not diminished with time, but there was something more. Sex wasn’t why she returned. 

“I know a lot has happened, but you and the island were always in my heart,” she whispered. 

She was so close and feeling her skin on his as he supported her was like a dream he had wished for, for so long. But he remembered he had also felt the same dreamy sense with her, right up until she surprised him and disappeared. 

“They say you come down here to have one last fling with me, then you go back to New York?”  

“San, not now. What do you want me to tell you? All I know is I’m here now. Isn’t that enough?” 

Maybe it was. Maybe it was too much. 

The elevator halted, and the doors opened to her suite at the top of the hotel. 

A cool breeze moved through the simple, elegant quarters. Thin, sand-colored drapes flapped at the big windows, giving a panoramic view of the bay.