Robert Stone - A Flag for Sunrise

“Watch where you’re sitting, sir. There are sea urchins all around you.”

The man turned on his side and eased toward her, feeling the way before him with his swim fin. She put out a hand and he took it in his, leaning his weight on her, dragging the injured leg. His mask was up on his forehead.

Justin guided him out of the water and had a look at his leg. Sure enough, his left knee was swollen and purple with small spine ends visible through the skin. Justin poured some of the ammonia solution over his knee and rubbed it in with a cotton swab.

“You can also piss on it,” Justin explained.

“It’s not so easy to piss on your knee sitting down,” the man said.

He was looking grateful and embarrassed. He was a tall well-built man; his face, in Justin’s eyes, bespoke softness and self-indulgence. But perhaps it was only the pain and his being a tourist.

“I’m really sorry to be trouble. Are you from the mission here?”

“Yep.” She took a hemostat from a kit and lifted a spine end off the mottled flesh of his knee. “Hey,” she said, “I got the end out.”

“I’m sure you have more important things to do.”

“Oh, stop it,” Justin said. She went after the second spine and pulled it out. “That’s gonna be sore for a while but the real bad pain will stop very soon. It’s nothing serious.”

“I guess I was lucky.”

“I guess you were. When you doubled up I thought a shark had hit you.”

“A shark? Right here?”

“There are sharks in the channel here. And a carpet of sea urchins. And the water’s polluted. It’s like a harbor.”

“I’d better restrict my snorkeling to Playa Tate then.”

“You should,” she said. “This is a lousy place for it.”

And what now? He should be given an aspirin, put in the shade. He did not appear to be in shock. Nursey business for the tourists.

She helped him across the dirt road, sat him under a ceiba tree and went back up to her dispensary for aspirin.

“Poor fellow,” Egan said as she passed through the kitchen to replace her bucket. “A nice chap.”

“Yep,” she said.

As she went down to him, two young loafers from town walked by along the road and paused briefly to mock him. He was indeed mockable, she thought, with his swim fins in his lap and the mask and snorkel still fitting on the front of his skull and his Day-Glo kneecaps. An absurd and unnecessary person.

“Have an aspirin,” she said. “Have two. Forgot the water.”

He took the pills and swallowed them. Some color was coming back to his face. In the scattered afternoon sunlight that shone through the great ceiba’s branches, she noticed that there were two identical and very nearly invisible scars on his right earlobe and that a small piece of the lobe itself was missing.

“My name is Frank Holliwell,” the man said. “I was just talking with your Father Egan.”

“Is that right?” When the man’s ear was out of the sunlight the small scar disappeared. “How will you get back now?”

“The boat will pick me up.” He looked at the angle of the sun through the ceiba leaves. “They should be by anytime.”

“You O.K. now?”

“I feel a lot better.”

“Good. Take care now.”

“I understand I’m coming to dinner on Friday.”

“No, I don’t think so,” Justin said, blushing. “I think Father Egan means to go into town with you. If he’s well enough.”

“I see.”

“We’re in a state of disarray. We’re closing down soon.” There was something in the man’s affectless stare that made her uneasy. She glanced quickly at the scar, visible again in the sunlight. “They’ll have to get along without us.”

“You’re a nun?”

“That’s right,” she said.

He asked her what order she was and she told him. He went on nodding as though the Devotionists were familiar to him. Catholic.

“They used to rap you on the knuckles, right?” she asked lightly.

“Not on my knuckles. I had Jesuits for that.”

“Oh, I see. Well, that’s … classy.”

“Are you coming to dinner with us too?” he asked. She was startled by the manner in which he put it. It was as though he was flirting with her. What’s the world coming to? she thought. And how would I know?

It sometimes happened to Justin that she would relax a bit and speak earnestly and directly to a man and the man would think she was becoming flirtatious. It was annoying. It had something to do with the way she looked.

“No, I can’t,” she said. “I’ve got a whole dispensary to pack.”

“What’s it like being a nun these days?”

“Oh,” she said, “well, there are all kinds of nuns.”

He is , she thought, he’s coming on. He probably can’t help himself. That’s what that softness in his face is all about.

“What’s it like for you?”

“It’s medieval,” she said. “And otherworldly.”

She was pleased when he laughed, in spite of herself. “What’s that business on your ear, Mr. Holliwell?” Put him on the defensive.

The question seemed to surprise and embarrass him.

“It’s a tribal scar. I got it in Southeast Asia.”

“Really? Where?”

“Indonesia,” he said quickly. “Celebes. I’m an anthropologist.”

“And you were being one of the gang.”

“Yes,” he said, “one of the bunch. I asked for their smallest size.”

The buzz-saw whine of a large outboard sounded on the ocean; they both turned to see the Paradise dive boat on its way to Playa Tate.

“Well,” she said, “take care of your foot. Be thankful you knelt down on a baby one or we might have had to open up your leg to get the spines.”

“Thanks,” he said.

“And try to keep it clean.”

“What?”

She laughed at him. “Your knee.”

“Oh … yes. Look, maybe I’ll see you again. At the ruins or somewhere. I’d like very much to talk.”

“I’ll be pretty busy.”

“Packing and telling your beads.”

She smiled at him and turned away. He was impertinent and patronizing and for all she knew, depraved. He was the kind of man she thought of as “cheesy.” But he was sort of nice. And not just a tourist, she thought; Justin was innocently snobbish in the extreme.

Back on the veranda, she felt a little high. The very recognition of her exhilaration was enough to depress her; she was shortly guilty and ashamed. Air-headedness. Petty foolishness. The thought of waiting through another night was dreadful. But she would have to. She would have to go on believing in them.

She leaned on the rail, gripping it until her knuckles were white.

“Christ, it’s impossible,” she said.

Egan was in the kitchen. Drunk.

“Now, now,” he said. “There’s a good girl.”

Pablo opened the hatch to dazzling sunlight and stepped out on the hot boards of the afterdeck, barefoot and shirtless. The Cloud was tied up by a cement pier in a town of red-tiled roofs. The streets, unlike those of Palmas, were paved, the walls of the harborside buildings were whitewashed. Over the port captain’s shed was a double-masted flagstaff displaying a banner with a white cross on a star-dappled blue field and the horizontal tricolor of Holland. Beyond the town was desert, grown with cactus and thorny acacia. Across a sparkling bay lined with limestone palisades, a low white peak rose like a cone of salt.

The water lines were over; Pablo picked up a hose and laved his head and face with a jet of fresh water. The water was good and cold. Spring water. Wiping it from his eyes, he saw Tino approaching.

“Like to start d’ day wid some beer?” Tino asked pleasantly.

“You kidding me?”

Tino motioned him toward the rail. Stacked up on the dock were a dozen cases of Amstel beer. A yellow-haired Creole driving a forklift was lowering more beside it.