Robert Stone - A Flag for Sunrise

Pablo drew up the tarp on which he had been resting and handed it to Holliwell. He started undoing the top button of his work shirt.

“Hey, you want to wear my shirt on top of yours? I don’t need it. I’m fine.”

“Thanks. Keep your shirt.”

The failing sun glowed like an ingot plunged in clear liquid, casting its refracted light on them. Pablo sat facing it.

“Your regular run of people,” Pablo said, “I don’t care about them. They’re no goddamn good.”

Tabor closed his eyes for a moment and opened them.

“Nothing can stop me now, Holliwell. I got it all together. Like there are ten million people think they got it all together but I’m the one who has. That’s how it was meant.”

“Good,” Holliwell said. “Good.”

“We’re gonna stick together, us two. You’re gonna tell me what you’re supposed to — I’ll make you. And then,” he said, “I’ll do the same for you.”

He leaned forward and took Holliwell by the arm.

“When you got the mojo, brother — when you’re on the inside — the world is fantastic.” He surveyed the empty sea, the sky, the violet clouds, with a look of triumph. “It’s mellow, it’s all a high. It’s wonderful.”

“Good,” Holliwell said.

He was not seeing Pablo any longer; it could have been anyone there. His heart beat faster. An old anger was quickening it. If we could get them all together in one place, he thought, all these inspired, these bright-eyed ones, they might no longer make us tired of living.

When Pablo sank back to his rest, Holliwell watched the knife in its sheath as he had watched the ship that passed them in the afternoon. Then, his eyes on Pablo’s flickering lids, he reached down, and as gently as he could, lifted the rubber noose that held the hilt and drew the knife out of its bright plastic sheath. The blade shone, in the last of the sunlight. When he had it, he put it behind him, on his belt. Within minutes, Pablo roused himself. Holliwell waited for him to notice the missing weapon but he never did.

“You know anything about people’s past lives?” Pablo asked him.

“Not me,” Holliwell said.

Something about Holliweill’s look disturbed Pablo. His eyes narrowed.

“You O.K., brother?”

“I have a dream,” Holliwell said. He shuddered, not with the chill but with fear and revulsion. He laughed. “I mean I keep having this dream. It recurs.”

“What dream?” Pablo pulled himself upright along the thwart.

“In my dream,” Holliwell explained, “I’m different from everyone else. Maybe I’m on the subway, understand, and everyone in the car is black except me. Something really lousy is about to happen to me — only nobody cares. Everybody’s laughing because they’re not like me.” He was trembling and dry-mouthed, his heart beat so hard that he felt he could barely contain it. “Or else I’m on a ship. The crew are Chinese or Malays, Indians, anything, something that I’m not. That thing’s about to happen. No one cares. It’s funny to them. I’m different from what they are.”

Pablo nodded, wide-eyed.

“Oh, you got it,” he said. “You got your finger on it.”

“Do I?”

“Because that’s me,” Pablo said excitedly. “That’s what I been running into all my life.”

“That’s what things are like,” Holliwell said.

“I’m Spanish, see? Or my mother was. She was … I don’t know, Indian, Spanish blood. So I never been what anybody else was. And down inside me, I never been. That’s why all these people turn me around.”

“A terrible thing,” Holliwell said.

“It’s the worst thing in the world when people turn you around because you’re something else than them. It hurts you. It fucks you up so bad. You just go round and round.”

“There’s a story about how people are,” Holliwell told Pablo. “You hear it a lot of places. You used to hear it in Vietnam. They probably tell it in Tecan as well.”

“I’m free and clear,” Pablo said, looking at the ridge of violet cloud ahead of them. “Free, man.”

“It’s about a buffalo and a scorpion. I’m sure you’ve heard it.”

Pablo turned his attention back to Holliwell and he shook his head absently.

“What is it?”

Holliwell put his hand behind his back to touch the knife. His arms tensed. He took a deep breath.

“A scorpion comes up to a buffalo on a riverbank. Please, sir, says the scorpion — could you give us a ride across? No way, says the buffalo. You’ll sting me and I’ll drown. But the scorpion swears he won’t. Why would I, he asks the buffalo, when if I did, I’d drown along with you? So off they go. Halfway across the scorpion stings the buffalo. And the poor buffalo says, you bastard, you killed us both. Before they go under, the scorpion says — it’s my nature.”

Pablo looked blank and nodded.

“You get it, don’t you, Pablo? That’s how it is, right?”

“It don’t have to be like that,” Pablo said.

Holliwell licked his rope-dry lips.

“I’ll tell you what, Pablo, I think you’re right after all. I think each of us has something to offer the other.”

“Damn right,” Pablo said.

“But what you offer, Pablo — I’m not having any, understand? Because in my lifetime, boy, I’ve had fucking enough of it. So let me offer you something while you’re still in the mood to learn.”

Pablo was perplexed. “Say what?”

“Call it,” Holliwell said, “the abridgment of hope.” He braced his legs against the stern.

After a moment, Holliwell saw Pablo’s lips move. He was repeating the phrase silently. The abridgment of hope.

Holliwell sprang forward from the brace; his left hand clutched at Pablo’s throat, his right, bent at the elbow, held the knife. In the next second, he made the thrust and felt the horizontal blade strike resisting bone. He shoved harder and the tip worked free of the rib and went in. He pushed until the hilt was against Pablo’s shirt. He was shouting; exhausted, he leaned his full weight on Pablo, forcing him back against the side. Pablo’s hand was gripping his left arm, twisting it numb. When the hand relaxed, he drew back and then he met Pablo’s eyes. In their look was surprise and also disappointment, yet beyond all that something expectant, as though there might be a good part yet to come. Holliwell pulled the knife out and Pablo grunted. There was no good part to come and Holliwell felt sorry.

“Sorry,” he said. Then he punched Pablo across the face to turn away the wrenching accusatory stare, and in a long straining wrestler’s roll, he heaved Pablo out of the boat and into the darkening water. One of Pablo’s hands was reaching for the side; he had an impulse to strike it away but he could not bring himself to do so. He was spent, in shock. Scarcely able to breathe, he watched Pablo’s head and struggling shoulders drift away from the stern. If there was blood he could not see it against the color of the sea.

The last of the sun shone on Pablo Tabor. He brought his arms up once — but only once — in a single feathery stroke, trying to tread water. Then he threw his head back, keeping his open mouth above the surface.

Against his will, Holliwell looked at Pablo’s face. He was at a loss now to find the shimmering evil he had seen in it before. The stricken features were like a child’s, distorted with pain and fear yet still marked with that inexplicable flicker of expectation. It was a brother’s face, a son’s, one’s own. Anybody’s face, just another victim of ignorance and fear. Just another one of us, Holliwell thought.

I get the joke now, he said to himself. We’re all the joke. We’re the joke on one another. It’s our nature. In the same moment, he thought of May. What a misfortune, he thought, that we have only each other.