Joan Groves: The Last Island

I set foot upon the shipwrecked island. I was a pitiful and ragged pirate coming ashore on a desolate island which contained no buried treasure.

“11°22.260 ′ N x 142°35.589 ′ E.” It was the Deacon’s voice.

I knew no wave had enough energy to wash him away.

“Yeah, I know—and it makes sense,” I replied. Then I continued, “How about John Henry and Manta?”

He answered.

“It is all about humanity and organization. John Henry and Manta are doing what they do best: she giving aid and comfort and he constructing out of destruction; they are both good people. Better people than you or I.”

He was correct, of course. I never knew him to be wrong.

To the Deacon and me, life was a controlled experiment where one side had to equal the other side. To John Henry and Manta life was greater than the sum of its parts where one side had an infinite value and the other side was larger than infinity.

“Got something for you,” the Deacon said.

“It came in on the tide and was deposited at the doorstep of the LION. You have to come with me.”

We walked over broken things and people. He talked. I listened. He was the Deacon and I was his disciple.

He stopped. He reached into a sea-worn old goodie bag. He pulled it out.

“Here it is,” he said as he handed it to me. “The sea does not want it.”

What was that expression upon his face ?

“You wanted it. Now, here it is. I do not want it.”

He just stood there taking the measure of my manhood.

“All the others who wanted it,” I said. “I was not one of those who wanted it and now—I have it to keep as a treasure.”

“ It is harmless and incorruptible. It has no power over you—unless you choose to donate the power of your life to it,” he said.

What the— I thought.

The shallow warm foam teased my toes, but not my soul. I had been in the truth of the deep cold Abyss and, though it was playing tag with me, I was not going to be it.

The landing protocol had been concluded and the inertia of the plane was zero as we opened our inertial restraints. As always the opening of the seat belt induced the duel feelings of freedom and relief. The math of Newton had once again delivered a correct solution to: if X goes at this rate of speed with this amount of mass, how much energy is needed to keep me from dying in a plane crash?

“Is that true? Is your story really true?” she asked.

“At the start, you promised to believe. Was that statement true?” I questioned. “I said that I would tell the truth. I did not lie for I am no liar. If you believe in the truth, you should believe me .”

Quietly, she responded, “I am sorry I asked that question but such a truth is almost too enormous to believe. Such a secret is too invisible to see.”

“There are secrets within secrets,” I said.

She looked at me, wanting to probe that statement. She did not.

“It, what about it ?” she said while reaching up to gather her supplies, her back turned towards me, protecting her modesty.

“It is safe,” I said, thinking, where no one will ever look for it.

Finally, she exposed herself. “Is it in the Deep?”

I returned no answer and she was not surprised for that was no secret.

Thinking to myself, I recalled how through cleverness and exposing it to the looking, but not seeing, it had passed through many inspections and was never seen. You can only see what you are looking for and none of them was looking for it as they looked at it. It was secreted away and rested deep in my left pocket upon the gracilis muscle of my left leg. I could feel its mass as it adducted my thigh.

There was time between connections. Enough time to eat and drink. There was no South Pacific before me but I saw it anyway. I had long since given up eating in airports and had constructed a travel diet of the two major food groups: coffee and pastry.

As I was drinking the terrible coffee and eating the terrible pastry, the fine woman from the airplane was before me. She had a salad and bottled water on a tray.

“May I sit?” she asked.

“Yes, most certainly,” I responded. I wanted to show respect but, nonetheless, I did not stand up.

She with coyness placed her tray upon the table. She sat down. She cleaned her hands with those universal alcohol towels. She opened the bottle of water. She opened her salad package. She stuck the tiny fork into the salad. Her face was close to the salad. She began to eat. The fork plucked up the brown and wilted salad mix. She was about to take a bite as she rolled her eyes toward me.

“Secrets within secrets,” she said.

“How much time do you have?” I asked.

“I have more time than I have money,” she said.

I thought my dad was the only person who said that. Where did she hear that?

“Yes, secrets within secrets,” I said as I started talking, again.

Married for forty-one years, Elliott and Joan Groves started their lives together in Cleveland, Ohio, where they got their M.A.(T.) degrees at John Carroll—Elliott in biology and Joan in English. From Cleveland to their dream island of American Samoa—where their son, Joel, was born—then back home to southeastern Pennsylvania, they taught for thirty-five years. Now retired, they like to write, jam on keys and guitar, bike and hike, volunteer, join in family and church activities, and visit Joel on the west coast. Elliott’s special interest is photography while Joan’s is horseback riding. Elliott certified to dive in the North Atlantic when to S.C.U.B.A. dive meant sticking a hose in your mouth and strapping a tank on your back. Joan is a green-fin diver who certified after Elliott taught her to swim. Diving offshore at various islands, they’ve lived in part the life described in The Last Island . Look for them in tropic waters dodging barracuda and razor-edge wrecks.

Copyright © 2013 by Joan J.K. Groves & Elliott Vaughn Groves.

All rights reserved. Published by Aperture Press. Name and associated logos are trademarks and/or registered trademarks of Aperture Press, LLC.

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ISBN 978-0-9889351-1-2

This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are either the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, business establishments, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

Cover designed by Stephen Wagner & Jere Stamm.