The Last Island Page 4

  Sometimes you have to make decisions. Is it better to eat or sleep? I went outside the door of my new home, assimilated the beauty, and dreamed. Sometimes you don’t have to decide.

  On the grounds there was a shed and in the shed I found all the utilities that were needed to put the LION in proper repair. I started working.

  “This is taking on shape. Looks good.” So far Manta had been the only visitor and helper, but the voice behind me was definitely not Manta’s. The voice continued. “You have a good eye.”

  Looking up from around a display, I saw a lady. First impressions are very important and I was very impressed.

  “Thanks. Been trying,” I said.

  She introduced herself. “Hi, I’m Jeanette.”

  “I am—”

  “I know who you are, you’re Vaughnie.”

  What the—, I thought.

  She must have seen the ‘what the—’ on my face because she began to laugh aloud.

  Damn Manta. Damn ‘ie,’ I thought.

  “You have been talking to Manta.”

  She answered me. “Manta talks to everybody and everybody talks to Manta.”

  I was on my back under the table looking up.

  “Jeanette, good name.”

  “Thanks,” she said.

  “French?” I asked.

  “Pennsylvania Dutch,” she replied.

  “You look more French than PA Dutch from this angle.”

  She laughed.

  “My whole name is Joan Jean Juanetta Jeanette Johnson. When I was a kid, they called me Joan.”

  “What were your parents smoking, herbal potatoes? You would think Joan ain’t all that hard,” I replied.

  She laughed louder.

  “That is why I decided to go with Jeanette—just for spite,” she said.

  “Well, John Henry is your new name,” I said.

  “John Henry was a steel-driving man,” she mocked and then began to sing the ballad—not well—but she continued on.

  “You got some good strong hard-working never-say-quit influences, John Henry,” I said, standing up.

  “I like John Henry. I think I will go with that, Vaughnie.” She giggled.

  We both laughed.

  “Need some help? I am a carpenter’s daughter. I can be another set of hands, I run my own dive shop, after all, and it looks like you can use a dozen score of octopi,” she teased.

  When it comes to a helper for work, I have no pride and besides, I am no fool. It is nicer to be under a table with a PA Dutchie than alone with a plumber’s wrench.

  There are noises and there are silent sounds. I heard one of those silent sounds. It was the sound of a ghost walking on cotton balls. The only sounds were of the miniscule compression of air atoms in my ear. She heard the compression, too.

  “The Deacon,” she said with reverence. I peeked. It was the Deacon. He walked directly to a huge old Navy tank as if he was a positive charge and the tank was a negative pole.

  The tank was of military grade quality construction. It was made of battleship grade steel. Great ribbons of support metal acted as belts that were anchored to oversized bolts set in a reinforced cement floor. The battleship gray was total except for places on the steel rusted through exposure.

  The viewing space was a single face-sized porthole. The porthole consisted of alternating layers of glass and clear plastic secured and reinforced with a rim of plate steel fused to the side of the tank. The only way to view the internal space of the tank was to press one’s face upon the porthole in a most intimate and immodest kiss.

  I couldn’t help staring at the Deacon’s back as he stood in front of the tank. Deacon’s back was a V from his waist to his shoulders, and the bottom was an inverted V from his waist to his feet. He was straight, tall, and muscularly defined with the bearing of a top predator. Somehow, the dreads seemed out of place. They gave him a peacefulness that was not in his soul. He stood looking at the tank. I looked at him.

  Just as silently he exited.

  I got up. She got up.

  “Who is he?” I asked, looking at John Henry.

  She turned and walked to the tank as if it was a magnet and she was an iron piece.

  “You see this tank.” She paused. “This tank is the Deacon. This tank is his body, his soul, and his mind.”

  The tank was oversized, immensely sturdy, and—from what I knew about such things—over-designed.

  She continued, “The tank is for the Devil.”

  “What the—” I stuttered.

  “Well, that is what Manta says it is for—and Manta is no fool.” She turned and faced me. The seriousness was upon her face.

  There is this thing about fear. I don’t have any. I did not know the genus or species of the devil. I knew that John Henry was out of work for today. Manta must have told her quite a story.

  “Hey, man, thanks for your help. I think that I am through for today,” she said.

  There was a ton more work to do, but I was through for today too.

  She pulled herself from the tank and turned towards me.

  “Are you sure?”

  It was one of those ‘are you sures’ that are always said in polite society by polite people with the expectation that a polite ‘yes, I am sure,’ will be the reply.

  “Yes, I am sure,” was my reply. “Quite sure.”

  I sounded like a member of the royal family at a state dinner and for an anti-royalist, I was quite proud of myself, indeed.

  “Then I’ll go. I just remembered some work I have to finish,” she said.

  This was her less-than-silent exit.

  The Deacon gave no announcement of his entrance and even less of his exit and he was not impolite at all. Here we, in order to be polite, do no such thing. Being polite was a royal complication: first, of engagement, and then disengagement.

  “Stop by my shop,” she said.

  “I will, I sure will,” I answered.

  We exchanged a final salutation and standard body language signals; with such, John Henry left the LION.

  6

  I was most happy here. Reaching out for a banana leaf to use as a dinner plate was my kind of fine dining, along with the fact that the silverware was always at the ready at the end of my arms, allowing me to live the fine life of unrefined living. At the end of dinner, wrap up the leaf and throw it away—such a fine way to do dishes. Lastly,with a tongue lick, the silverware was clean.

  There was a village open-air market. Open tables for food stuffs, an open table for dry goods, and one refrigerator was all that consisted of the business center. For me, a scissors, a pile of winter clothes, a quart of gasoline, and a match had converted Cleveland, Ohio clothes into the latest tropical fashion. The cobbled coral road, the only road on the island, was the super-highway to every island location.

  I began to walk. It was not long before along came a family bus—a sawed-off car with an extended back—and I hitched a free ride. More than multicolored on the outside, it was multicolored and multi-smelly on the inside. I stepped over some live chickens, pushed past hanging taro and bananas, ducked under fresh fish, and shared a space with a swine, resting my feet upon a large, very friendly dog.

  I made my way to John Henry’s dive shop.

  “Hello, John Henry.” I spoke to her with my James Bond cool and looked around.

  I’d been an open water diver ever since I took a free certification course in college and qualified in the North Atlantic and, from here to there and back again, dived what felt like a hundred places. I'd been in what felt like a thousand dive shops, and this dive shop was as well-equipped as most. It did not have a volume of stuff, but it had the right stuff, it had the good stuff. You can always tell, and you can always smell quality.

  “Nice gig. I’m impressed.” I spoke this time in my non-James Bond manner.

  She said hello with her eyes and her smile.

  There was a noise coming from the attached work area. I could see Manta working on some gear. />
  There was silence coming from the open door that I had just entered. It was the Deacon.

  The noise from Manta was swallowed up in the vacuum of the Deacon’s presence, and silence ruled.

  With a direct and deliberate stride, the Deacon went to the article he wanted, took it from the display, and simply exited. He did not pay for it; John Henry said and did nothing. As he exited, the sounds of the dive shop returned.

  I thought about the transaction.

  John Henry acted as if she did not see the Deacon.

  I was no cop and less of a hero but I decided to follow the Deacon.

  “I’ll be back.” I spoke hurriedly for I did not want to let the Deacon out of my sight.

  She waved me a good-bye.

  I learned that the Deacon made good and then some on his debts—he was no old man Vargas.

  The Deacon moved through the air and upon the ground as if he were not material. Footsteps did not appear where he walked and the sea breeze proceeded through, rather than going around, him. He was flesh and blood, but seemingly not atomic flesh and blood—he was simply the essence of flesh and blood.

  I followed very silently and from a distance but I knew that he had sensed my flesh and blood, the Deacon was too keen not to be sense-sensitive. He stopped in a half-step and focused on the ocean, not the whole ocean for aesthetic reasons of humanity, but on a single point far away and deep down like a top predator on the hunt.

  “If this were the last moment of your existence, would you be involved in someone else’s existence?”

  It was Manta. He had been behind me for some time, but he had escaped my notice.

  “What the—you scared the devil out of me.”

  I turned and faced the mellow giant.

  “Does everybody on this island walk in silence?” I questioned.

  Manta’s full set of teeth smiled, and then his mouth gave a most resounding sound, “Yes.” It was that Manta had one setting for life—maximum.

  The Deacon was gone—into the sea or into the air, I did not know.

  Manta continued, “That man, the Deacon, is less than human but more than human. His outsides are human, but that man’s soul spirit ain’t human. He hates the ocean, but makes love to it like a faithful lover. He ain’t from this island, but is more native to this island than the first ancient one.”

  Manta was now fully serious.

  I imagined that I understood the Deacon.

  “Out there is the Deacon’s 55th Street.” I whispered the words to myself.

  “55th Street?” The giant repeated my words to me.

  “Yeah, and ain’t no blue Chevrolet gonna drive him off this island,” I said to Manta.

  “Man, have you been smoking some of that jungle weed?”

  Manta’s saucer-sized eyes were looking down on me.

  I reached up, trying to touch Manta’s shoulders.

  “I was homeless at home, but here I am home. The world is too small for the Deacon. The inside world and the outside world are too small for him. Out there in the deep is his place. What or where—out there is his place, Manta.”I tried to explain.

  As I was walking back up the road away from the ocean, I knew the definition for the term ‘dead man walking.’ There was not a defined sound or sight—the sights were muted, and the sounds were muted. Fortunately, it is impossible to get lost on an island with a single road.

  7

  “No, thank you.” I spoke to the service person serving snacks and drinks on the airplane. The lady next to me refused them also.

  “Please, continue.” My neighbor spoke with a touch of angst.

  I continued my truthful tale.

  — – —

  After my attempt to follow the Deacon and a lengthy conversation with Manta I found myself back at the door of John Henry’s dive shop. She was in the space farthest from me, going about the business of sorting. After closing the space, I began to talk. It wasn’t long before John Henry stopped me in mid-sentence. She then told me the history of the Deacon as she knew it, in an effort to help me understand.

  “You present the Deacon as a Captain Ahab,” she began. “No, he’s not a trophy hunter and the Great White Whale he chases is no massive Moby Dick. What he chases is without substance, I think.

  “The Deacon arrived on the island with a dive buddy—just two wave bums who were out for sun, sea, and sand. At the time, he was a green-fin diver. He was someone from another place who had found paradise. Life was beer, burgers, beans, and 3200 psi. He is now a black-fin diver of the abysmal deep. The food stuff of his life is some unspoken motivation. 3200 psi of air has become his personal formula of mixed-gas brew.

  “He and his buddy had found a sunken Nazi U-Boat. They did research and found that the U-Boat had been sunk by the U.S. destroyer Vengeance, exactly as the atomic bomb was exploded over Hiroshima. It was the last Nazi casualty of World War II. It had been reported to the U.S. Navy’s SEPAC, their Southeast Pacific force, but the information had just been filed. The war was over, an atomic bomb had been exploded, and so of what importance could one last U-Boat and a couple score of dead Nazis be to celebrating drunken men? The question of what a Nazi U-Boat was doing so far out of the theater was never asked.

  “The Deacon and his buddy did a massive amount of research and even went back to the States and to several countries in Europe, Russia, and even Japan. They were obsessed—no, they were past obsessed; they became addicted. They were on intellectual heroin. His buddy reveled in the secret. It was as if he had seen the Madonna and had to confess his joy although he knew the sin of his confession.

  “What they learned from their travels and research was pieced together from the discarded annals of forgotten and overlooked history. Even today many historians would laugh because it seems so outrageous and implausible.

  “Near the end of the war, even under siege from all directions, the Reich developed and perfected long-range U-Boats. But the war was lost at sea, in the air, and on land. Still, the minds of the Reich-masters were always working. They perfected and launched three long-range U-Boats from Norway. The U-Boats would be the womb for the next generation of Nazis, for they contained the greatest of the Reich’s secrets.

  “One U-Boat was supposedly carrying technology capable of generating enriched uranium. Another U-Boat carried good Nazis, a substrate for a new generation. The third U-Boat—the last one—was carrying the secret of secrets.

  “The first U-Boat, carrying their version of nuclear technology, was recorded destroyed by B-24 Liberator bombers off the coast of Norway. The U-Boat carrying the next generation of good Nazis foundered in a storm between Brazil and Africa and rests on the mid-Atlantic ridge. The third U-Boat made a lay-over in Ireland of less than half an hour, evaded the Allied fleet, and went into the Deep with its secret of secrets. That U-Boat is out there and haunts the Deacon. As fate has deemed proper and good, the U-Boat rests directly upon the decayed remains of an old wooden slaver. There is some bad mojo out there.

  “But it’s not the U-Boat, the slaver, or the bad mojo that plagues the Deacon.” She paused. Behind her on the wall hung a map of the island and, by chance, I was looking at the name of the bay.

  She questioned me. “Do you know what the name of this bay is?”

  I read the name. “Itua’faga.”

  “Do you know what that name means?” she asked.

  “No,” I replied.

  “The Bay of Ghosts…”

  I did not reply.

  “Beyond that bay is where he remains,” she said.

  “He is—sorry—is haunted by his buddy’s death?” I asked.

  “None of those. I did not say his buddy’s remains are in the Deep. I said his buddy remains in the Deep. His buddy is alive out there in the Deep.”

  What the— I thought.

  I was about to say something, but she interjected. “Do not question me.”

  There was an absolute silence between her and me.

  This ain�
��t no good mojo in here, either, sister, I thought.

  If Manta is as quiet in the ocean as he is on land, then he swims without a ripple. A log fell upon my shoulders and, from its sheer weight, I knew it was Manta’s arm. The arm had solidness. Any illusion of softness was dispelled when I tried to remove it peacefully from around my neck—I did not want to offend the peaceful Buddha.

  His arm suggested that I turn toward his face, and it was a good suggestion. Very properly I did turn toward Manta. There, as always, was that gorgon of open eyes and mouth looking down at me.

  I imagined that with an inhale it was possible to be inhaled into his nose.

  Then he began to speak, his speech slow and measured. He was being very sure to be correct and clinical. “I was with him, or better put, I was in the same place as he was when it all began.

  “In short order, the fact that a Nazi U-Boat was on the reef became news. I really do not know how the information got off the island. I am sure that the Deacon never said a word, but maybe his buddy did say something; nevertheless, the information left the island. It would not have made a difference in the long run for there are no secrets.

  “The US Navy was here. The German government, the Japanese, and even the U.N. were here at one time or another. We were very happy because it was easy money. Each said that they were just doing historical categorizations, but that was not true. They were each and every one looking for something specific. Their behavior was too focused and so very concise.

  “The time frame is clear to me, but there is the problem of exactly when and not how the series of events happened. The Deacon and his buddy were good people and good neighbors but, for the most part, they were into their South Pacific fantasy. No time, no worries, no money, was their theme. Every now and again they would take up a job to buy air and, after the air was gone, they would buy food. I am telling you the story because it was around this time—and I am not sure if it was before, during, or after this event—that his buddy dived his last dive.”