White and Other Tales of Ruin

Roddy shivered, aggravating his sunburn. It was a strange statement, especially from Butch, but it seemed so right. Roddy tried to shake the words but they were spoken now, and they held power. “Max?” he said, searching for something. Comfort, perhaps.

Max looked at him long and hard. Roddy had known him for a long time and he had never seen a look like this. He knew that Max was vaguely superstitious, but he had never actually seen him afraid of something he could not see. Max’s superstition was like the trace of his own religion, in that it was inbred rather than self-propagated, handed down through generations instead of defined and created through personal experience. Even though Max was a thinker, some things were planted too deep to think around.

“We make our own Hell,” Max said.

“What the fuck is that supposed to mean?” Butch exploded, digging his hands into the sand.

Max shrugged. “It just seemed to sound right. This place feels all wrong. We’ll have to be careful.”

“How can a place be wrong?” Roddy asked. Max was frightening him, badly.

“It’s God’s place,” Butch said, imploring Ernie to back him up. “Isn’t it, sir? God’s own place, and He’s saved us from dying on the sea.” His hands had closed tight, and sand flowed between his fingers like sacrificial blood.

“I’m sure God doesn’t know a thing about this place,” Ernie said. He turned and looked past the palm trees, to the rich wall of foliage hiding any view further inland.

“Bollocks!” Roddy said. Hiding his fear. Becoming angry so that he could not dwell on what he was really feeling, the jaws of doubt even now gnawing at his bones. “Crap. Get your act together, you lot. We’ve got to find water, food and shelter. Norris!” He stood and called along the beach to where the cook was rooting around by a fallen tree.

“There’s something blowing bubbles in the sand,” Norris shouted back.

“Come here, we’ve got to start getting ourselves together,” Roddy said, but then he felt his knees beginning to betray him, and he fell onto his rump in the sand. He slumped slowly onto his back, a hand catching his head and easing it down. Nausea overtook him, then a swimming fatigue that worked to swallow him whole. As his eyelids took on a terrible weight he tried to see the first stars, dreading that he would not recognise any of the constellations. But the palm trees hid them from view, and darkness blanked his mind.

He was not really unconscious. Everything moved away for a while; noises coming from an echoing distance, sensations of heat and pain niggling like bad memories. Voices mumbled dimly, words unknown. He felt the cool kiss of water on his lips, sudden and sweet, and he opened his mouth and glugged greedily.

“Steady,” Max said. “Not too much.” He was kneeling above him, twisting his shirt so that drops fell into Roddy’s mouth.

“Fresh?” Roddy asked.

Max nodded. “There’s a stream further along the beach.” His face was grim and he said no more, but Roddy felt too tired to pursue it.

The five of them sat where they had landed for an hour, taking turns to walk to the stream and soak their shirts in fresh water. Max had made a half-hearted search for a smashed coconut to use as a cup, but found none. There was little talk, but their attitude spoke volumes. Ernie had stopped praying.

When Roddy’s turn came to fetch the water he relished the time alone. He realised that he had experienced no privacy for five whole days, even performing his toilet in front of the other men. The sea roared at the reef to his left, the silent shadowy island was a massive weight to his right, threatening at any moment to bear down and crush him into the sand. He tried not to look into the jungle, averting his gaze from darkness as he had as a child, struggling to convince himself that what he could not see would not exist. Even the silence seemed wrong. Where were the animals? Away from the attention of his fellow survivors, the feeling of being watched was almost overwhelming.

When he reached the stream he eased himself to his knees and leant over the running waters. In the vague light of the clear night sky, he was a shadow. The water spilled and splashed past rocks holding out against time.

The banks were scattered with things carried down from further inland, and he tried to see what they were in the moonlight. A huge feather, tattered by whatever had torn it from its owner. A dead thing with many legs, as big as his hand and hairier. Something long and slinky, with oily scales glimmering in the silvery light and a pasty smudge where a chunk had been taken from the body.

All bad things, Roddy thought. All dead. But was dead necessarily bad?