Stanley Elkin - The Magic Kingdom

And leads his strange armada to Discovery Island. Surveillant. The expert here. Signaling their distance, instructing them to cut their engines while he, working with nothing but air — it isn’t strong or concentrated enough to offer itself as wind — seems to take on their stalled and idling energies, to play the Sunfish like a surfboard, his arms and his shoulders, his body and head shifting and busy as a boxer’s.

“Over there,” Benny Maxine says, turning the key in the little boat’s ignition and looking toward the dock.

“Use your head, Ben,” Colin says. “We can’t berth there.”

“Why not?”

“That’s where the boats come in to drop off the tourists. It won’t do. It’s bespoke.”

“Ooh,” Benny says, “which way then?”

“To the other island.”

Ignoring the macaws and cockatoos, the ibis and rheas, ignoring the trumpeter swans, the cranes and white peacocks, ignoring the flamingos and pelicans, ignoring the eagles, they are towed by his chatter and cheer and make land in a cove like the underedge of a key where Colin Bible supervises their disembarkation, still pitching his mood at them as he helps them out of the boats. “And ain’t it?” he asks again. “Ain’t it old Dunkerque? Ain’t it in a way? What was the dear old Dunker anyway if not just about the grandest last stand and evacuation of all time? Talk about your quality time, talk about your finest hours. Am I right? You know it.”

“Where are we, Colin?”

“Shipwreck Marsh, Janet, it’s called on the map.”

“I wonder if there’s snakes,” Noah says.

“Snakes don’t bother you,” Benny says, “if you don’t bother them.”

“They say that about everything. Sharks and tigers and rabid dogs.”

“It’s true. That’s why they say it.”

“How would you know?”

“I been on outings. Before I was sick. I went to just dozens of rambles.”

“‘Before I was sick.’ That’s rich. ‘Before I was sick.’ When would that have been?”

“You don’t think I ever was healthy? You want to bet me? You want to?”

“Congenital. You’re congenital.”

“Oh, I’m congenital? I am?”

“Congenital and chronic.”

“Did you hear that, Colin? She says I’m congenital.”

“And chronic.”

“Did you hear that, Miss Cottle?”

Mary Cottle, downwind of Janet and Rena, takes a smoke from a fresh pack of East African cigarettes and lights it.

“You suppose I could have one of those?” Benny asks.

“Strictly speaking, Ben boy, you oughtn’t to smoke.”

“The nerve,” Lydia Conscience says. “After the way he spoke to her before.”

“May I please?”

“Certainly not,” Mary Cottle says.

“Shipwreck Marsh,” Rena Morgan says. “It’s not very pretty.”

“It’s quite suitable,” Colin Bible says.

“I think it should do,” Janet Order says.

“For our purposes.”

“But it’s not very pretty.”

“Unspoiled,” Colin Bible says, “it’s unspoiled.”

“Just what does that mean, Colin?”

“That the landscapers haven’t been by yet. To put the macaws and cockatoos into the trees. The ibis and rheas. The trumpeter swans.”

“Well?” Mary Cottle says.

“Well what?”

“I was thinking of our famous purposes.”

“What’s the hurry?”

“Where’s the fire?”

“If I’m old enough to die,” Benny sulks, “I’m old enough to smoke.”

“It looks like a marsh.”

“It looks like a shipwreck.”

“That stuff isn’t sand. Is that stuff sand?”

“It’s some kind of cement, I think.”

“The basic building blocks of life.”

“This place must be crawling with poison ivy.”

“Poison sumac.”

“Deadly nightshade.”

“Bloody pokeweed.”

“Leaves of rhubarb.”

“Seeds of castor.”

“Whoever ain’t game let him go back to the boats.”

“Charles?”

“Ask the ladies.”

“Janet?”

“Ask the blokes.”

“Blokes?”

“All right then,” Colin says. “You’ve a grand day for it.”

So they split up. So they paired off. Charles, Tony, Noah, and Ben with Colin. Lydia and Janet and Rena Morgan with Mary. Not even thinking about swimming. Swimming not only out of the question but never even in it, as boating had never been in it either. Making their way in opposite directions across the spare, low, man-made island in the wide, blue man-made lake, stepping through the stunted thickets of mangrove and out into a sort of twin clearing, each group, perhaps not even consciously, seeking purchase, the advantaged, leveraged high ground, running silent as salmon all the traps and steeps (and this not only in opposite directions but with their backs to each other, and not only with their backs to each other but in actual stride-for-stride company with their tall leaders) of inconvenience.

They could have been duelists pacing off their combat like a piece of property.

“I guess this is as good a place as any,” Colin Bible hears Mary Cottle settle.

“Right here’s all right,” Mary Cottle hears Colin Bible approve.

“Okay?”

“All right?”

The boys and girls scramble out of their clothes and lie down to their sun baths in the negligible humidity, in the balmy breeze across the perfect blue sky with its clouds like topping.

“Won’t you be joining us, Miss Cottle?”

“I’m fine. I’m smoking my cigarettes.”

“Colin? This is lovely. It’s really super, Colin. It really is.”

“That’s all right. You go ahead. I’ll keep an eye peeled in case the kid at the marina goes back on his word.”

Separated by perhaps a hundred feet, the two groups lie about on hummocks of earth and rock at skewed, awry angles. Tony Word and Lydia Conscience lie in nests of their own clothes. It is really too great a distance to distinguish features, to make out the still only incipient shapes and chevrons of genitalia. They stare across the distance that separates them and have, each and collectively, a gorgeous impression of flesh. They are skinny-dipping in the air and leer across space in wonder and agape.

“That’s enough, Rena. Put your clothes on. You don’t want to burn.”

“Five more minutes. Please, Miss Cottle? Just five more minutes. Please?”

“All right,” she says and the boys get five more minutes to study her indistinct pinkness, the girls to note the fragile pallor of the boys.

And it was wondrous in the negligible humidity how they gawked across the perfect air, how, stunned by the helices and all the parabolas of grace, they gasped, they sighed, these short-timers who even at their young age could not buy insurance at any price, not even if the premiums were paid in the rare rich elements, in pearls clustered as grapes, in buckets of bullion, in trellises of diamonds, how, glad to be alive, they stared at each other and caught their breath.

Oh,” said Matthew Gale when Mary Cottle, thinking it would be the housekeeper with her towels, answered his knock and opened the door to the hidey-hole, “excuse me. I must have the wrong room. I was looking for eight twenty-two. Oh,” he said, “this is eight twenty-two.”

“May I help you?”

“No, no. No problem. My friend used to have this room, but he’s obviously checked out and gone back to England. Sorry to have bothered you.”

“To England?”

“Gee,” Matthew Gale said, “you’re British too. Just like Colin. Well,” he said, “enjoy your stay.”

“Like Colin?” Mary Cottle said. “You were here with Colin?”