DAY 5
Yesterday was the worst day.
I was walking along the beach trying to remember what Lan Kua looks like. His smile. Thinking about Mom. Wishing I was home helping her with something. I never help her. I leave all that domestic stuff to Lek. And Dad—why do we always rub each other the wrong way? When did I stop being his little pumpkin?
I noticed May and Arlene sitting in the shallows together, chatting as if nothing was wrong with the world. Suddenly they leapt up, screaming and pointing at something washing in with the waves. I ran to see what it was. A dead dolphin? A large fish? No, it was the boatman’s body, or what was left of it. He didn’t look human anymore. It looked as if a shark had attacked him; most of one leg was gone, and a chunk was missing from his side.
It is impossible to push the image of the body from my mind. The torn flesh was like white shreds of overcooked chicken; his one eye stared, and in his empty eye socket sat a small transparent ghost crab. I don’t think I’ll ever forget that crab crawling out of his eye socket, like a scene from a horror movie. His eye patch was around his neck. May and Arlene staggered off to vomit in the sand. Acid rose in my throat and I felt faint, but after I bowed my head for a minute, the dizziness went away. Hope and Mrs. Campbell had come to see what the fuss was about. Hope was the lucky one: She couldn’t really see the extent of his mutilation.
“We’ll need to take the eye patch back as proof… for his family….” Mrs. Campbell signaled to Jas to pull it from the boatman’s neck. Jas did as she was told, but I thought she’d be sick. She handed it to Mrs. Campbell, who pushed it into her bag.
“Now we must bury him. We’ll need to dig a shallow grave. Bonnie, fetch the shovel. The rest of you, help pull him up the beach.”
He looked so slight and small, but no one wanted to lift his leg. Finally Hope offered to drag him on her own and Mrs. Campbell just shrugged. Hope’s amazingly strong. He wasn’t bleeding or anything; just whitened bones and bloodless flesh. He did not look like an old man—more like a skinny boy. The one-legged trail he left in the sand was faint and shallow, like a bicycle track. The drifting sand soon covered it.
Jas, Mrs. Campbell, Hope, and I buried him above the waterline, in a shallow pit, with stones on top of his body, like a cowboy’s grave in the desert. Jody wanted to place a cross on the grave, but Mrs. Campbell pointed out that he was probably Buddhist, so we just tucked a handful of tiny yellow flowers between the gravestones. Mrs. Campbell said we should all pray for his soul, but I’ll admit I prayed that someone would come and rescue us soon. Jody insisted on singing “God Bless America.”
We all cried.
On our compound at Amnuythip there are two spirit houses on a raised platform, where the Thais place bowls of rice, fresh jasmine wreaths, and incense every day to keep the spirits happy. Now that there are two wandering spirits on this island, I wonder if we should build one here.
How the hell are we going to get home now? Is there a home to go back to? What were those explosions?
I worry about Sandy’s body. It must be deteriorating quickly. Surely rats and other small creatures will start to eat it. I keep hearing strange noises in the night, like an animal grunting. A wild boar? I know they live in thick forests, and we saw one here, in the center of the island. There are still black bears, monkeys, tigers, and even wild elephants in parts of Thailand. In the forests of the north, anyway. We should have buried Sandy’s body deeper.
Natalie’s leg isn’t any better. If anything, it’s worse.
“Mrs. Campbell, couldn’t you use whiskey as an antiseptic? Don’t they do that in old Westerns? Or do they use it as an anesthetic?” I ask.
“I don’t think so.”
“But couldn’t we try?”
“It’s all gone, Bonnie.”
“All gone? But there was a nearly full bottle.”
“It’s gone, end of story.” She won’t look me in the eye.
We made a fire but couldn’t find enough dry material to feed it all night and it’s gone out.
“What’s that?” Jody asks, frightened.
“It’s okay, Jody. It’s only a wild pig.”
“How do you know, Bonnie MacDonald?” May says. “It could be a fierce baboon or something.”
“Shut up, May. Don’t frighten the juniors.”
“Yeah, shut up, May,” says Arlene, who is thanked with a smack from May; she is accustomed to Arlene agreeing with her every word.
Every time the juniors open their mouths it’s to beg to go home or to complain about something, and they can’t understand why no one has come to get us. Jas and I watch them constantly, cuddling them when they let us. Most of the time they play as if nothing has happened, but then we’ll find one of them on her own, curled up on the sand, wailing for her mom.
We ate the last of the raisins and shared a coconut among all of us for supper. Almost everything else has been eaten.
Natalie is unconscious.
I’m going to cry. No, I won’t. I take out my journal. It’s battered and scuffed around the edges.
This has been the worst day of my life.
I can’t think of anything else to write.