Ol' Blue

At the end of the tenth day we were, as usual, hurrying to get back to the lagoon before nightfall. The sun was already below the western curve of the seaward cliffs and the orange light of early evening was turning blue. Whenever we were on the move we wouldn't talk, so all our communication was by hand signal. A clenched fist meant stop and stay still, a flat palm held horizontally to the ground meant hide, a pointing gesture with all fingers kept together meant move forward cautiously. We'd never discussed the meanings of these signs, neither had we discussed the new words we'd started using. We'd say, 'I'll take point,' instead of, 'I'll walk first,' and we described distances in terms of klicks. I don't actually remember how or when these things had been adopted. I think they'd simply felt like the most appropriate vocabulary for the situation.

That evening, Jed had taken point. He always did if the light was failing because he knew the island so much better than I did. I was having a little difficulty in keeping up with him, unable to find his easy compromise between speed and stealth, and when he gave the clenched-fist signal I missed it and walked straight into his back. The fact that he didn't frown or swear made me aware that something serious was up. I eased myself away from him and stood still.

Just ahead of us the jungle became patchy and broke into a wide area of grasses and shrubs, so at first I assumed that Jed had seen someone in the clearing. Then I noticed that his gaze was pointed almost directly at his feet. For a couple of moments we both remained motionless. I still couldn't tell what the problem was because his body was obscuring my view. After a long minute of silence, I cautiously reached out and tapped him on the shoulder. He didn't react and it suddenly struck me that there could be a poisonous snake on the ground in front of him. I glanced around for a stick but I couldn't see one, then I inched to the side in order to get a better view.

I would have gasped if my jaw and chest muscles hadn't seized up. Lying less than a metre from Jed's feet was a Thai. He was flat on his back, eyes closed, and he had an automatic rifle lightly resting in the crook of his arm. Jed slowly moved his head to face me, as if he was afraid that by disturbing the air he might wake the man. 'What now?' he mouthed. I jabbed a finger in the direction we'd . come, but he shook his head. I nodded vigorously, and Jed shook his head again, glowering. Then he pointed at his foot. He was standing on the barrel of the rifle. The pressure had lifted the butt several inches above the Thai's bare arm. As soon as he moved his foot away, the butt would drop.

'Shit,' I mouthed, and Jed rolled his eyes desperately.

I thought for a minute. Then I started to creep backwards along the track. Jed stared at me as if to say, 'Where the fuck are you going?' but I raised a hand to tell him not to worry. I knew what to do because I'd seen it done on Tour of Duty.

I can never remember the names on Tour of Duty. That's partly because the series is so terrible, but it's also because the characters come from the same school as NYPD Blue's (black lieutenant, unorthodox cops who get results). So in Tour of Duty you have the tough sergeant who knows all the tricks, the green lieutenant who learns all the tricks, the simple Southern hick who learns to make friends with the sassy blacks, the Hispanic you can rely on in a firefight, and the East-Coaster who wears glasses and probably reads books. The names really aren't important.

The main thing is the scenes that these characters play out — tending the orphan who's been wounded by shrapnel, stopping a rival platoon from doing a Zippo raid, leaping from helicopters into a whirlpool of flattened grass, hugging comrades as they cough and die, and dealing with mines.

The platoon is walking through the jungle when suddenly there is a barely audible click. Everyone hits the dirt except one man, an FNG, who stands rigid with fear. 'I don't wanna die, Sarge!' he blurts, and starts to recite the Lord's Prayer. Sarge crawls over on his belly. 'You hang on in there, soldier,' he mutters. He knows what to do. He had the same thing happen in Korea, '53.

Bizarrely, Sarge starts to tell the soldier about an apparently unrelated incident that happened when he was a kid, working on his daddy's farm. Sarge had a hound dog that he loved dearly, name of Ol' Blue, and the soldier listens, distracted by the clever ploy. Meanwhile, Sarge is easing his knife under the soldier's boot and sweat is cutting a line through the dirt on his brow.

Ol' Blue was caught in a rabbit snare, Sarge explains, and every time he struggled the snare grew tighter. The soldier nods, still not grasping the connection. 'What happened to Ol' Blue?' the soldier asks. 'Did ya get him out, Sarge?' 'Sure we did, soldier,' Sarge replies. Then he tells the soldier to lift his foot, nice and easy now. The soldier is confused, frightened, but he trusts Sarge. He does as he is told, and Sarge slips a rock on to the knife blade, maintaining the pressure on the mine. Sarge chuckles. 'Son, all Ol' Blue had to do was relax.'

I wasn't going to start blathering on to Jed about Ol' Blue. As I gently laid the stone on the rifle barrel, even the noise of rock scraping against metal sounded like someone hammering on a petrol drum. When the stone was positioned I looked up at Jed. He shrugged calmly and motioned for me to get up. I suppose he wanted me to be ready to start running if the gun dropped.

Inch by inch, Jed eased up his foot. The butt shifted downwards a fraction and I heard him draw in a quick breath, but it didn't contact the Thai's arm. We exchanged a glance, stepped gingerly over the man's legs and continued quietly down the island. Drama over.

It took us another forty-five minutes to reach the top of the waterfall, and I grinned solidly every step of the way. I was grinning so much my jaws were aching, and if we hadn't needed to keep silent I would have been laughing out loud.

Credit

I dived off the waterfall that day, much to Jed's surprise, and much to my surprise too. I hadn't been planning it. We were standing on the cliff edge looking at the sunset, which was cloudless and very beautiful and deserved a moment's reflection. Sometimes, with these cloudless evenings, the light played a strange trick. Instead of beams of brightness radiating out from the horizon, there were beams of darkness — in other words, the polarized image of a traditional sunset. At first glance you accepted the image, only vaguely aware that something about it was wrong. Then, as with Escher's endless staircase, you suddenly realized it made no logical sense at all. Each time I saw this effect it intrigued me and I could always pass twenty quiet minutes, pleasantly confounded.

Jed had no better answers for the phenomenon than me, but he always gave it a try. 'Shadows, cast by clouds hidden behind the horizon,' he was arguing that night, when I tapped him on the arm and said, 'Watch this.' Then I toppled forwards. The next instant I was watching the cliff face rushing past me and feeling a distant sense of alarm that my legs were bent. Their displaced weight was turning me in the air, and I was in danger of landing on my back. I tried to straighten them and a moment later I hit the pool, where I spun through several violent underwater revolutions, lost all the air from my lungs, and drifted back to the surface.

Up on the cliff top I could see Jed watching me with his hands on his hips. He didn't say anything, but I knew he disapproved. A little while later he snapped at me as we made our way from the waterfall pool to the camp, although it may also have had something to do with the song I was singing.

It was 'I saw a mouse! Where? There on the stair. Where on the stair? Right there! A little mouse with clogs on, well I declare, going clip-clippity-clop on the stair, right there!'

'Jesus, Richard!' he said, as I looped the tune and began the chorus again. 'What's got into you?'

'I'm singing,' I replied breezily.

'I know you are. Cut it out.'

'You don't know that song?'

'No.'

'You must know it. It's famous.'

'It's the stupidest song I ever heard.'

I shrugged. I couldn't deny it was a stupid song.

We walked in silence for a few minutes, me turning the tune over in my head and humming under my breath, then Jed said, 'You know, you want to watch yourself, Richard.' I didn't know what he meant so I kept quiet, and a couple of seconds later he added, 'You're high.'

'...High?'

'Dope. High.'

'I haven't smoked a joint since last night.'

'Exactly,' he said with emphasis.

'...You're saying I should cut down on smoking dope?'

'I'm saying dope's got nothing to do with it.' A branch was blocking our path and he held it aside until I passed him, then let the branch snap back. 'That's why you should watch yourself.'

I snorted dismissively. The way he was talking reminded me of his obscure references to blame on Ko Pha-Ngan. Sometimes Jed could be wilfully cryptic, and uncharitably I decided it had probably led to his alienated position in the beach life just as much as the awkward circumstances of his arrival. That, in turn, made me think of my own budding alienation.

'Jed,' I said, after a pause. 'Do you think it would be OK if I told people about our run-in with the dope guard? It doesn't involve Zeph and Sammy...' 'Mmm.'

'...See, I'm constantly being coy about what we 're doing up on the island. I sort of feel like this would be a chance for me to...'

'Tell them,' he interrupted. 'No harm. It's probably a good idea.'

'Uh-huh?'

'We don't want it to seem like we're hiding stuff from people.'

'Great,' I said, and started to whistle the first bars of the mouse song before catching myself.

It was pitch-black back at the camp. What colour remained in the sky was entirely blocked out by the canopy ceiling. The only light came from candles through the open door of the longhouse and spatterings of red cigarette and joint butts, glowing in clusters around the clearing.

Although I was looking forward to telling my ex-detail about the sleeping dope guard, my first thought was food so I aimed straight for the kitchen hut. Every day Unhygienix wrapped a couple of portions in banana leaf for me and Jed, and made sure we got some of the choicest bits of fish. It was cold by the time we'd get to it, but I was usually too hungry to mind. That night I noticed Unhygienix had added papaya to the stew, which irritated me slightly as it meant Bugs had succeeded in tracking down my orchard.

After getting my parcel I walked around the clearing, joining the dots between the clusters of smokers, looking for my friends. Unusually, they were nowhere to be found, and nobody seemed to know where they were. Confused, I checked Keaty's tent and then the longhouse, where I found Unhygienix, Cassie and Ella playing blackjack, and further up, Jesse writing in his diary.

'Ah!' said Unhygienix when he saw me, and pointed to my food. 'What do you think?'

'Of the stew?'

'Yes. You notice the fruit? A good taste?'

'Sure. Sweet and savoury. Very Thai.'

Unhygienix beamed. 'You know what I did? I made some papaya juice and stewed it with the fish, but I only put in the flesh in the last

two minutes, or it falls apart in the heat. So this way you have the taste and the texture.'

'Ah.'

'And, Richard, we can have this again, because Jean will plant the seeds and we will grow papaya in the garden. I am very pleased with this dish.'

'You should be. It tastes really good. Well done.'

Unhygienix shook his head modestly. 'You should be thanking Bugs.'

'...Why's that?' I said suspiciously.

'He discovered these papayas in the jungle.'

I choked on a fish bone. 'Bugs did what?'

'In the jungle, he found a whole orchard of papayas and monkeys.'

'No he didn't!'

'Yes. Yesterday, he found this orchard.'

'I found the fucking orchard! I found it a couple of weeks ago!'

'...Really?'

'Was Bugs saying he found it?'

'...Uh...'

Cassie smiled. 'Yes he was.'

'That prick!' In my temper I squeezed the banana leaf and some of the stew spilled on to the ground.

'Careful,' said Ella.

I frowned, suddenly aware I was making quite a scene. 'Well, anyway... he's lying.'

'Don't worry,' Cassie chuckled, laying down a long run from a three to a black Jack. 'We don't doubt it.'

'...Good.'

They went back to their game and I continued up the longhouse towards Jesse.

'I heard,' he said drily, as I approached. 'Congratulations on finding the papayas.'

'Yes, well, it isn't a big thing. It just...'

'Got on your nerves,' he finished for me, and lowered his diary. 'Course it did. Understood. Are you looking for Keaty?'

'...Yeah.' I nodded morosely. As a consequence of the papayas my mood had gone bad. 'And the others. I can't find them. I think they've all gone off together somewhere.'

'Right. He left me a message to give you.'

'Oh,' I said, perking up a bit. 'Let's hear it.'

'It was a note. I put it on your bed.'

I thanked him and jogged the rest of the way up the longhouse, keen to find out what was going on.

The note was folded on my pillow, and beside it was a rolled joint. It read 'Smoke this quick! Phosphorescence! Keaty!'

I frowned. 'Hey, Jesse,' I called. 'What does the note mean?'

I waited while he finished writing, then he looked up. 'Dunno, mate. Didn't read it. What's it say?'

'Phosphorescence. And it's got a joint.'

'Ah.' Jesse waggled his pencil at me. 'Phosphorescence!'

'What is it?'

'You don't know?'

'...No.'

He smiled. 'Go down to the beach. You'll see. And make sure you smoke that joint on the way.'

Date: 2015-02-03; view: 741