Richard Laymon: Island

You don’t turn down an offer like that.

I don’t, anyhow.

I decided to postpone the inevitable—breaking up with her—until after the excursion.

Now, there might not be an “after.” Yee gads, stuck with her for life. No no no. Won’t happen. We’ll probably be rescued shortly. There’s just no way this can turn into some sort of Robinson Crusoe deal. At most, we might spend a few days here. More likely, we’ll be picked up before dark; that’s if somebody heard or saw our boat explode.

It was one hell of an explosion.

For a while, crap kept falling out of the sky and plopping into the water. Pieces of the boat—and undoubtedly Wesley. (I expected to see a foot or a head or a big looping coil of entrails coming down, but nope.) Many of the pieces were on fire. They got snuffed out when they landed in the water. Nothing came down on the beach, luckily.

Then mere wasn’t much left but a bunch of junk floating on the water, and a smudge of drifting smoke.

At the time it went up, we couldn’t spot any aircraft or boats. We sure did look. Some of us did, anyhow. Not Thelma, of course. That’s when Thelma clutched the sides of her head and started shrieking, “No! No! Oh my God, no! Wesley! My poor Wesley! No!” And like that.

After a few seconds, Kimberly put her arms around her. They stood there hugging each other, Kimberly patting her sister’s back and murmuring to her. Kimberly was wet. She’d gone in the water for a little swim after our picnic lunch on the beach, and had just waded ashore a minute or two before the explosion. Her black hair was matted against her skull and hung in a sheath down the nape of her neck. Her back was golden and smooth and dripping. She wore a white bikini. The pants of her bikini hung a little crooked, lower on one hip than on the other, showing more of the top of her right buttock than her left. And the middle of the seat had a crease in it…

Enough of that.

She looked damn fine, that’s all. I couldn’t help staring. But I also spent my share of time looking out across the water. The cloud of smoke had moved on and thinned out. I could see a couple of islands, way off in the distance. But not much else except water and sky.

Kimberly led her sister away from the rest of us. They sat shoulder to shoulder on the blanket where we’d had our picnic.

“Poor thing,” Billie said, watching them.

“Splendid move on Wesley’s part, blowing up our boat.”

“Andrew!”

“Fumes in the engine compartment,” he went on. “The idiot knew they could blow us to hell and gone. My mistake. Shouldn’t have let him stay on board, nobody there to keep an eye on him. Should’ve known he’d fuck up the works. The bastard. He was too dumb to live.”

“Andrew!”

“At least he blew himself up with the boat. That’s the silver lining.”

“Don’t let your daughter hear you say such things. She loved him.”

“He sure as shit didn’t love her. Anyhow, good riddance. Rest in pieces, Wesley.” And he hocked a wad of spit onto the sand at his feet.

After that, Andrew and Keith went out on the dinghy to see what they could find at the scene of the explosion. I offered to go along, but they said it wouldn’t be necessary. Typical. Maybe it’s because they think of me as a useless kid or because I’m not part of the family. Maybe there’s a reason I don’t know about. Even though they’re generally nice to me, they treat me like an outsider. I get excluded a lot. I’m sort of used to it by now, having spent several days with this bunch.

Anyway, they left me behind with the women while they puttered out and started picking up nearly everything that was still afloat.

Connie stood on one side of me, her mother on the other.

“They won’t bring back Wesley, will they?” Connie asked, making a face like the one she’d given me once when we talked about eating beets.

“We should give him a proper burial,” Billie said.

“He’s probably in chunks,” I added.

“They’d better not bring back chunks of him. God! That’s just what we’d need.”

“If we’re stuck here very long,” I said, “we might want to eat him.”

“Rupert!” Billie gasped.

“God!” Connie snapped. “I can’t believe you sometimes. That’s disgusting!”

“We’d have to jerk him right away,” I said, “so he doesn’t go bad on us.”

Billie shook her head at me. She was smiling slightly. “You’re demented,” she said. “Just don’t say anything like that around Thelma.”

“I wouldn’t,” I assured her.

She swayed sideways and bumped me a little with her shoulder. “I know,” she said. “You’re demented, but sensitive.”

“That’s me.”

“Cut it out, huh?” Connie said. I think she meant both of us. I’d noticed before how it seemed to annoy her when Billie and I talked or goofed around. Come to think of it, just about everything about Billie seems to annoy her. Maybe it’s one of those competition things, and she knows she doesn’t measure up. I mean, her mother has her whipped in every department: looks, brains, sense of humor, compassion, you name it.

Must be hard on Connie. I’ll have to be more understanding.

After she told us to cut it out, we just stood there silent as the “men” gathered floating treasures.

The sand of the beach was almost white. The water lapped in gently—no big combers, I guess, because of the reef. (There’d been some pretty good waves right after the explosion, but they didn’t last long.) The water, pale blue, was a little murky. It had been incredibly clear until the boat blew, and would probably be that way again in a while. There was a soft, warm breeze taking away the worst of the heat. And there were the gals.

Man oh man.

It’s a shame that Prince Wesley had to go (I’m sure), and it’s too bad that Thelma is taking it so hard, but I couldn’t help thinking how lucky we were to be stranded in a place like this.

At feast far a while.

The longer the better, as far as I’m concerned.

Not really. But I wouldn’t mind a couple of weeks, as long as we don’t starve (no need to worry about fresh water, because of the stream).

After a white, Andrew and Keith returned with a boat full of odds and ends—including some packets of food, but no bits or pieces of Wesley. I’m sure Connie was relieved.

“Is his body out there?” I asked.

“Bet on it,” Keith said.

“We’re going back out,” Andrew said. “We’ve gotta salvage what we can.”

“I could go with you, this time, if you need an extra set of hands.”

“That’s all right, chief,” Andrew said. “Somebody’s gotta stay here and watch out for the ladies.”

Chief. He calls me chief quite a lot. It’s like a thing with him. I’m almost nineteen years old, and he calls me chief like I’m a kid.

Oh, well, maybe it’s quaint.

“Whatever you say, skipper,” I told him.

He hoisted an eyebrow.

Anyway, Thelma and Kimberly came over. Thelma had stopped crying, and seemed groggy. They pitched in, and everyone helped to unload the boat. Then Andrew and Keith cranked up the dinghy’s motor and took off to scour the inlet for more loot.

The gals got to work on the goodies we’d just unloaded, so I went over to our picnic area to get my notebook and a pen. They were in my book bag along with a couple of paperback books. Instead of taking them out, I just swung the bag onto my back and took the whole thing with me.

I called out, “I’ll be back in a while.” Before anyone could ask questions or offer to accompany me, I hurried off.

I walked alongside the stream, figuring to follow it into the jungle. Keith and Kimberly had gone exploring before lunch while the rest of us dinked around on the beach, and they said the stream led to a great little lagoon, complete with a waterfall—if you hiked inland far enough.