As Easy As Falling Off The Face Of The Earth Part 13

"Tienen un mapa?" pregunto el hombre de la isla.

"He wants to know if we have a map," said Ry.

"I'll get it," said Del. "Ask him how far it is to St. Jude's." He trotted back to the boat to retrieve the map and back while Ry tried to remember how to phrase the question.

"Como...cuanto distancio hay a St. Jude's?"

"No tienen GPS?"

"No, no GPS."

"Ah, OK," dijo el hombre. "Por cierto, soy Alejandro."

Aha! An easy one!

"Mucho gusto," dijo Ry, and shook Alejandro's mano. "Me llamo Ry; y se llama Del. Somos de los Estados Unidos." He hoped Alejandro would ask him how old he was, if he had any brothers and sisters, and what sports he liked. He could say all of those things.

"No me digan!" dijo Alejandro. "Cual fue mi primera pista?" This meant, No kidding, what was my first clue? Though Ry didn't get it.

Alejandro took one side of the map Del had brought over and pulled it open.

"Esto se llama St. Jeroen. Nosotros estamos aqui-esta isla se llama 'Maceta,' la ultima isla antes de llegar al oceano, el Atlantico. Tienen suerte que pararon aqui. El mar es enorme y africa esta muy lejos."

Roughly: This island is called Maceta ("flowerpot.") You are lucky you stopped here. It's the last island before the Atlantic. It's quite a large ocean-a long way to Africa.

"La ultima isla?" asked Ry.

"Si," dijo Alejandro.

"Antes de Africa?" asked Ry.

"Si."

Ry miro el mapa. Miro at the dot Alejandro had pointed to. He pondered the wrench, the compa.s.s, and the finite-but-not-finite-enough Atlantic. He was pretty sure Del got the picture, but he felt compelled to say it anyway.

"We could have died," he said. "We could have kept going out into the ocean and never landed."

"But we didn't," said Del. "That's what makes it a happy story instead of a sad story."

He said it in a lighthearted, singsong way, as if he were speaking to a child.

"Ven conmigo!" dijo Alejandro. "Les indicare donde esta su isla."

Come with me. I'll show you where your island is.

He gestured for them to follow.

ISLANDS COME, ISLANDS GO.

They climbed a path that traversed the face of the hillside, tacking sharply to the left and the right through profusions of trees and bushes and flowers to negotiate its steepness. Tiny lizards darted and paused. Creatures that seemed something between a squirrel and a prairie dog rose up out of shrubbery to watch them pa.s.s. Goats looked out at them through horizontal pupils but did not stop munching.

The path was wide enough for two of the three to walk abreast. It was only dirt, but it had been carved out and graded with some care. At the top of it, a cart waited. They squeezed past it into a generous clearing, a taming of the undergrowth. As well as the overgrowth.

A low stone wall meandered around the free-form perimeter. At one end a rounded lobe of the clearing held a garden. The striped lighthouse towered from the other end. Midway between the two sat a whitewashed cottage with a red tile roof. In front of it, something roasted on a spit over a fire. Untroubled chickens, reddish brown and white and black-and-white ones, trolled picturesquely upon the green for bugs and worms, scratching and dipping, throughout the territory.

Alejandro led them over to the lighthouse, where they ascended a stairway carved into one of the boulders at its base. From there, they had an un.o.bstructed view of...water and air. Sea and sky. It was a panorama that gave new meaning to the word island. Or the words the ends of the earth. They were standing on one of those ends.

Then Alejandro pointed and said, "Miren! Alli!" Look, there. They miraron and vieron otra isla. Another island. A little b.u.mp rising from the sea.

Now Alejandro took the map from Del and opened it again. He pointed and used kindergarten-level words Ry could mostly understand, to show and tell them that the island they were looking for was on the other side of the island they could see.

"Ya casi estan alli," he said. You are almost there.

"How far?" asked Del. "Ask him how long it will take us."

"Cuanto tiempo por ir? Cuantos horas?" asked Ry. How many time to go? How much hours?

"Esta noche es demasiado tarde, pero manana, al medio dia. Con buena suerte y viento fuerte," dijo Alejandro. It's too late tonight. But tomorrow, by lunchtime. With luck and good wind.

"No lo podemos hoy? Seguro?" asked Ry. Not today? Sure? He could see that the sun was falling toward the horizon. And to be honest, he had no desire to jump back into the boat.

"Conocen bien las estrellas?" dijo Alejandro. How well do you know the stars? And, "Un sitio para descansar por una noche es preferible a uno permanente." A temporary resting place is better than a permanent one.

Of which Ry understood "is better than" and "permanent." It gave him the gist.

"Si estan tan apurados, por que viajan en velero?" pregunto Alejandro. If you are in a hurry, why are you in a sailboat? And, "La noche no sera larga. Que hay tan importante alla?" The night is not long. What is so important there?

It was a reasonable question. Ry wasn't sure his Spanish was up to it, so he just shrugged. But later, he tried to answer it as they sat chewing on roasted meat of some kind. Which was not that bad. Actually, really good.

"My grandfather is lost. In the United States. My mother and father are here on a boat, or an island. We look for them.

"My grandfather's head..." He couldn't remember how to say that something might be happening. Or might have already happened.

"Danger," he said. "We need to find him. My parents need...to know. To help."

"Esta seguro que ellos estan por St. Jude's?" Are you sure they are on St. Jude's?

Yes. I think that. I hope it.

The thing was, his days were getting mixed up now. What day it was, which day his parents had said they were leaving. He was pretty sure it was tomorrow that was the now-or-why-bother day.

THE CRUMBLING CUPCAKE.

"Solamente usted vive aqui?" asked Ry. "En esta isla?" Only you here? In this island?

The three of them sat on the porch of the little cottage, around a table which held the detritus of their meal. Ry was the interpreter. Piecing together a conversation with his level of Spanish skills was like building a bridge out of toothpicks and gumdrops. You wouldn't want to put a lot of weight on it-yourself, for example-but it took your mind off your worries.

"Solo yo y las ardillas de tierra," said Alejandro. Only me and the burrowing squirrels.

Ry didn't know the words for burrowing squirrels. "Ardillas de tierra?" he repeated. "Que son esas?"

Alejandro smiled. He held up a finger, then the palm of his hand, indicating that they should wait uno momento, then disappeared into the house. He returned with a book, a notebook, and a pen. Ry and Del stacked the dirty dishes and pushed them aside to make a s.p.a.ce on the table.

Alejandro opened the book to a photograph. Ry and Del recognized the squirrel/prairie dog they had seen so many of as they climbed up the hill. Through words, sketchy diagrams, and hand gestures, Alejandro told them that the animalitos had been brought to the island from another land, long ago. They were brought by a man who intended to raise them as livestock. As a gourmet delicacy. They were very tasty. As you already know, he added. Then some of them escaped. It was a jailbreak; they escaped by digging tunnels. Burrows. Because that was the kind of animals they were, burrowing animals. They started burrowing all over the island. It was their nature.

Part of the island was rock, solid, and they couldn't burrow through that. But after a while, there were so many of them burrowing through the softer parts that whole chunks of the island became unstable and fell right off, into the sea.

The island used to be bigger, Alejandro said. "Antes era mas grande." People had lived here, then. Ry wondered what would happen when the squirrels ran out of dirt. Alejandro thought maybe they would learn to swim and take over the ocean, too. Not really, he said. But when there were so many, they reminded you of cucarachas. c.o.c.kroaches. Pests.

"Wow," said Ry. "Caramba!"

"Si," said Alejandro.

Allowing for the possibility that he had completely misunderstood or that Alejandro had just been alone on the island too long (though he seemed more rational and sane than Ry thought he himself would be in that circ.u.mstance), it was an interesting story. Creepy. In the crawly sense.

Trying to fall asleep on yet another sofa-this one was not much more than thin cushions on a bench-Ry imagined the island crumbling out from under them in the night. He cast back earlier into the day for a more sleep-friendly image. He came up with the boat. The little boat tipping and tilting in the big ocean. The wrench and the compa.s.s. He cast back further. The homemade airplane. Nothing much in recent history was soothing.

"It's cool that you know some Spanish." Del's voice came from just a few feet away. He was bedded down, or up, in a hammock. "My brain can barely manage English."

"Your brain does lots of other things, though," said Ry. "You're like the ninja cowboy fix-it man." He knew somehow that Del was smiling in the dark. So he went on. "You're like, 'Howdy, ma'am, do you have any broken appliances? Excuse me while I rewire your toaster quick-a-minute.' Zipzapzoop, blow on your fingers, walk into the sunset. 'Oh, you need a ride to the other side of the world? I was just going there.'"

A stray moonbeam found the way through a window and fell in a faint square on the faded carpet, leaving the darkness around it blacker and more velvety. Soft, mild air moved almost imperceptibly in and out of the room. With it floated the gentle traces of ocean salt, flower and vegetation scents, earthy essences, campfire smoke molecules, lingering aromas of roasted foods, effable evidence of human exertion (meaning sweat), all dissolved in great quant.i.ties of fresh pure washed air to make a soporific melange. Sleep Potion Number Nine.

The next island was visible from here. That is, it would be, come morning. There was only one more island after that. Del would get them there. It would all work out.

"And how do you even know how to sail a sailboat?" Ry mumbled into the lullaby of stillness close by and breakers harmonizing rhythmically down below. "You live in Montana. How do you know about the rocks that look like a French warship?"

His words drifted invisibly away from him like seed fluff on the night air. There was no answer from Del. Ry wouldn't have heard it anyway.

WHILE HE SLEPT AND AFTER HE WOKE.

Ry slept profoundly. No dreams could find their way into the black velvet canyons of his sleep. He was physically exhausted, and his mind and his emotions threw in the towel, too. For several hours the lights were out; all was silent. He did keep breathing. He had a pulse. His heart pumped blood through his veins; his organs functioned at a basic level. That was pretty much it.

But wait-a dim light, a soft humming was coming from somewhere. Up in the attic. Brain cells were still sifting through the events of the day and rearranging themselves in light of what had happened. They were looking for ways to organize the new information. They were talking it around and building tentative synapses. Networking.

His muscles were also reviewing their performance. They were blaming everything on the head. This was all stuff they could do. Get over yourself, they said. Lead, follow, or get out of the way. They were prodding. They knew they could not do it alone.

I'm working on it, said Ry's mind.

At what, the speed of mulch? taunted the muscles.

Which is to say, the speed of geniuses since the dawn of time, said the brain, unperturbed. Go flex yourself.

All of these messages traveled osmotically, chemically, through processes but dimly understood, and only by statistically microscopic numbers of humans. They worked on their separate but intertwined tasks through the night. The conclusion they reached was provisional. Ry woke up feeling the uncertainty of the truce, though to himself he just said, I don't want to get in that boat again. But it's the only way out. Don't want to. Only way. Back and forth it went.

After a breakfast abundant with eggs, they made their way down the jackknife turns of the trail. There was the boat; there was the water. Still liquid, still roiling, still mighty.

The de-haffing of the chuffs, the unclipping of the ridings, the lowing of the highs, and so forth to the cleats.

Or rather, the removal of the sail covers, the checking of the bilges, the eyeballing of the rigging.

Suddenly Ry seemed to know what the words meant. Maybe the part of his brain that had been activated by trying to speak Spanish was also working on speaking sailing. He was sailing in tongues.

Del made him put sunblock on, then they waved adios to Alejandro, and motored through the slim tumultuous pa.s.sage out to the open sea.

Del called out to Ry to hoist the mizzen, and he did so.

Del called out to Ry to hoist the mainsail, and he did.

Del called out to Ry to belay the halyard to the cleat on the mast, and he was already doing it. They looked at each other and laughed.

The first island was in sight and they were headed for it. As they drew closer, the second island, the island, crept out from behind the first. The boat danced over the swells. They had a steady breeze. The sails hauled them along, the water sparkled around them, a million diamonds of light skittering over the surface. Ry could not think of anything he had ever done that felt better than this. Not that he was trying to. He wasn't thinking at all, about anything, except wind, sails, water, sun.

A couple of times, when the sails were set and all they had to do was lean back and be exhilarated, inner bits of Ry and Del that were usually snugged in tight somewhere loosened up and leaked out. Floated out.

Ry told Del how once, as a little kid, he had stopped to tie his shoe while his family walked from their car to a restaurant. When he had tied it, he stood up and ran after them. He grabbed his father's hand and started talking away, until he looked up and saw that it wasn't his father. Same build, same kind of coat, total stranger. A nice-enough stranger.

When Ry saw that it wasn't his father, he burst into tears. His parents by now had turned to look for him, and he saw them and ran to them and buried his face in his mother's coat. As the stranger walked by he said pleasantly, "I thought I had a little boy for a minute there." All three grownups laughed. Ry was mortified. He wouldn't even look at the guy.

Ry hadn't thought of this for a long time, and it surprised him when it came to mind.

Del said he wished he hadn't argued with Yulia.

"I was really determined not to," he said.

"You should just say you're sorry," said Ry. "Say you were wrong."

"What if I don't think I was wrong?" said Del.

"Well, how important was it, whatever you were arguing about?" asked Ry.

"Not that important," said Del. "But I wasn't wrong."

Ry said, "All you have to do is say you're sorry, then. Or you can say you were wrong, but leave out part. Like, maybe the whole sentence would be, 'There may have been times in my life when I was wrong; I'm not saying this was one of them.' Or you could say, 'I could be wrong,' and leave out the 'but I doubt it' part."

Del said, "That seems a little dishonest."

Ry said, "Not as long as you really mean the part you say aloud. 'I'm sorry. I could be wrong.' Or just, 'I could be wrong.' Then at least the person knows it's not completely pointless to keep talking to you.

"Didn't you ever go to preschool?" he asked Del.

"No," said Del. "They didn't have preschool back then. We had to go right out and forage for nuts and berries."

After a time they were pa.s.sing fairly close to the first island. This one was large, and populated. Boxy houses that looked small from out here, but probably weren't, were sprinkled over the hillsides, nestled in the foliage. Farther along, a flock of buildings and boats formed a harbor town.

Ry didn't notice the windmill until Del pointed it out to him. Del said it was hundreds of years old. It had been taken apart in the Netherlands, brought here in pieces, and put meticulously back together. This was a Dutch island, owned and operated by the Dutch. It was called St. Jeroen. Del said he had always wanted to take a look at the windmill. He was a big fan of windmills.

"And here we are," he said. "So close." He squinted toward the windmill.