Dirk Pitt I am not
June 8, 2005Pacific Harbour, Fiji
10:18 pm
There is a drop of pool water aching down the back of my arm, approaching my mealy elbow. It is hanging, looking at the tile floor, waiting to splatter, dry and disappear.
Gareth, Nicki, Isabella and Mercedes just left. We had a great dinner and then a single game of Euchre which Nicki and I lost 10-8. The kids watched Charlotte’s Web, with Hud making the moves on Isabella around halfway through. He got up from his side of the couch and meandered over, all Richie Cunningham-like, and then plopped down between the arm of the couch and Isabella. He then wiggled his wee bum in a space too small for a wee bum. They sat like that for a while until Isabella moved to the floor, needing her space. Hud just wanted a quick cuddle. Isabella is six and a half. Hud digs the mini cougars.
On the menu this evening? Parrot fish, red snapper and two other indistinguishable types of fish. There were potatoes and sweet potatoes baked into crispy squares, a green salad with green peppers more expensive than gold, cukes, tomatoes and carrots. A loaf of buttery garlic bread that I singed on the BBQ next to the fish. For dessert, cubes of watermelon and pineapple, red grapes seeded and split in half, oranges peeled, pith scraped and cut in two, with vanilla ice cream and crumbled Oreos. All accompanied with red wine and random, light conversation with us laughing at our own silly country jargon.
They left and we all stood at the door and waved, like a well-lit postcard.
Today was day four of rain. Day four of going to the cultural centre for coffees, internet, groceries and booze. We really are longing for one more good day of sunshine before Saturday’s flight to Melbourne.
Although Steph and I have already dreamed about slipping on our molded jeans and perfect sweaters and sitting outside and feeling the simple bite of a cool evening. Perhaps with a handful of Shiraz and a mouthful of stinky cheese. In the background the intermittent sound of the ocean slapping the shore mixed with Hud’s sleepy exhale. I can almost see the moon’s reflection through my own foggy breath as I wait to see Steph’s smile again.
I hope the Victorian coast of Australia is as craggy and aggressive as I imagine.
I hope the white crested waves crash like cymbals and deafen my partially infected ears.
I hope it snarls and dares me to enter.
I hope it envelopes me and spits me out like venom.
Love to all,
J.
June 7, 2005
Pacific Harbour, Fiji
9:40 pm.
I am sitting in my plaid Old Navy boxers after just diving in the pool. It is raining big drops but I needed to cleanse, as I was dewy from walking home with sleepy Hud on my shoulders. We had dinner at the Stices tonight. The Stices are the owners of our villa, the former Peace Corps Californians who immigrated to Fiji back in the seventies.
Tonight there was no CSNY or homemade granola, as I initially dreaded when Steph made the plans for dinner. Actually tonight, within moments of our arrival, I was requested by Chris and Eddie, son and father respectively, to go down to the canal that runs all through our little villa sub division. I am half way across the world and I am living in a wet Ajax. The boat they share with their next-door neighbour had taken on water and was almost sunk. Mercury 115 outboard fully submerged in the salt water. So it was me, Eddie, Chris, Atif the neighbour, and his son Alan managing the predicament. Zeus, Atif’s sinewy, hand shy mutt watched over the proceedings from a comfortable distance.
The plan was to back up a trailer into the water, guide the boat up the rubber wheels, hook it up to the trailer, and drive it back to Atif’s to drain. Simple. Atif was an easygoing man with a throaty laugh and a beautiful cigarette dangling his mouth. Alan was around 16, with a British accent and not as dark as the Fijians, leading me to believe his mother was white or they were from another country all together.
Chris was in the water when I arrived. His beard dipping in and out of the canal, fluorescent plankton nipping at his calves. Eddie started backing the trailer down the launch and into the water, and after a couple of which way should I turn the wheels, he planted the trailer in the centre of the launch, in about four feet of water. Chris had the daunting task of holding onto this 21 ft boat and keep it from drifting down the river into an inland lake miles away. The tide was up and the current was strong so I commend his ability to keep the bow pointed towards the trailer and not hooking on a ski rope and woo hooing down the river.
Alan and I were the muscle. Ok, Alan was the muscle. I was the white bowling pin that, with ferocity I might add, leapt into the water to be part of this late night boat saving expedition (this is me reading too many Clive Cussler novels). I of course was wearing my nice Gap khakis with the rolled up, trytobecoolcuffs. So I feigned I grunt, I faked a huzzah, and we were able to pull the boat up to at least where we could tie it to the wire and crank her up the trailer. Alan cranked it. I suggested different angles to crank, with authority of course, and Alan, bless his 16 year old naivetÈ, actually took my advice. It was at this point I slinked backward a couple of steps to avoid the snapping of the taut wire and beheading me. My biggest fear being a frozen decapitated facial expression of knowing what I was doing and becoming a Fijian legacy of assholeness.
So the boat was up as far it was going. It was now Eddie’s job of gunning the four wheel drive Honda and getting this bad boy on dry land to drain. He gunned; it worked, right up until he grounded the motor. The electrical system was shot so the trim was down, and no one, including Captain Graham, knew how to put the motor up manually. So, Eddie, bless his easygoing heart, suggested we leaving it right there until morning. It was three quarters out of the water, big rocks behind the wheels. It was not going anywhere. There was bubbling and gurgling, which sounded like water draining from the bilge, so mission partially accomplished. The biggest problem will be saving the motor. A problem that is not mine.
So dinner was nice, they really are nice people. Deb made homemade pizza and Chris and his wife made banana Foster. Hud and Josiah played without incident, dancing even, Hud on harp and Jo on sax, it was great for Hud. We chatted about their impending kids coming to live in Fiji, about what Steph’s and my dream jobs are (male hooker paid in diet coke and gyros on a pita), and how nice grandchildren are.
Around 9 we left, walked the five-minute walk home, and I put Hud to bed.
There is other stuff from today, groceries for tomorrow’s dinner party with Nicki and Gareth that was supposed to be tonight, drinking coffee and eating slushees, reading e-mails and wonderful comments. Hud leaning over a small bridge and watching water bugs skate along the surface.
But I am tired, and I bet Steph has drifted off, leaving me to my short glass of red wine.
There. Gone.
Love to all,
J.
posted by Jason @ 4:57 PM
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