No man's (an) island

Part I

             David’s flight from the island of his birth was unceremonious. He woke up one morning, walked into his mother’s kitchen, sat at the end of the table and silently ate his share of the breakfast. It was room temperature, coordinating with the hour. His father had gone and left the guards. Something about listening to his mother sing as she washed the dishes, as if she couldn’t see the posted sentries, the men in suits designed to shrink their world. Something about that made everything fall into place David.

               When his father came home for lunch David told him.

               “I’m leaving.”

               It wasn’t just the patriarch he was speaking to, David realized, but his mother, as well, and the uncle or cousin his father had brought home with him. The words came out of his mouth and it was almost like sneezing, something his body needed to expel, a violent, involuntary gesture. After he spoke, there was nothing left to do but to have an ugly family confrontation. David realized in that same moment that all the posturing in the mirror, standing tall like the man he wanted to be, was rehearsal for that moment.

As it turned out, none of that was necessary. If push came to shove, they couldn’t stop him, after all. The cage in the basement no longer troubled him, so far as they knew. And the bars, the men who watched him and his mother while his father was away, they were only as powerful as they were allowed to be.

               “Do you know for how long?” his father asked.

               David wanted to follow through. He wanted to tell everyone who was in the sound of his voice that he was never coming back, that this was the last they would ever see of him.

               But then his father accepted his mother’s hand. She needed something, someone to cling to, and found a willing buoy in the man she had married.

               David looked from his father down to the hand that was holding onto his mother. “I don’t know.” That made it impermanent. Powerless. That made it a youthful touring.

               His father stood happily, spoke of worldliness and sowing oats. He snapped his fingers and arrangements materialized immediately, like magic, as if this was all his plan. Within the hour, he was pressing documents and currency into David’s palm as he shook his hand.

               David didn’t pack much. In his memory, the gesture of leaving most everything behind meant something else when he had mused on it during mid-morning breakfast and mid-afternoon runs. In his mind, he would need to travel fast and light, by nightfall, in his heroic imaginings.

               When they dropped him off at the docks in the middle of the afternoon, waved goodbye as the town car reversed direction, the knapsack on his shoulder seemed appropriate. He wouldn’t be gone long. His mother had been forbade to give him the kind of send off that was appropriate to David’s occasion. Just a hug, a kiss, a sweep of fingernails through his hair, and a foil covered dish with leftovers from lunch.

               He couldn’t remember the name of the boat, or even the name of the captain, but the smell of the docks, and the scents of the ship would be with him always. The freighter was so large though, it felt like he wasn’t on the sea at all, felt like he was still on land. When he walked the deck on the second day and couldn’t see the island at all, he wasn’t surprised. He did thoroughly wash his mother’s bowl. For safekeeping. He thought then that maybe he really was still in the cage, that it was larger than he had ever imagined, but still a confining space.

               David avoided Miami, all Floridian ports, actually. He told himself it was because he didn’t want the hassle. Because his skin was always on the lighter side, more yellow than brown, more Caucasian than Hispanic.

               “What’s next?” he asked the captain.

               “Savannah,” the man said. He seemed agreeable, but he was providing a favor, and his men did not understand. Likely, they were losing money by the day because of their bizarre route, and over time, everyone had come to understand who was at fault, but not why.

               David knew only small bits about the shipping industry, and sailing business, such were his family’s interests, and his involvement in them. He knew even less about Georgia. “And after that?”

               The captain looked down at his notebook, and turned a page. “Well, Charm City.”

               David knew absolutely nothing about the US eastern seaboard except there was New York, Boston, and then a bunch of other places with less important names to the south.

               “It’s near the capital,” the captain said. He had finally gotten to the point of trying to influence the very important stranger off of his ship.

               David nodded, trying to look considerate in inconsiderate circumstances.

               Several more days passed, and the weather made his decision for him. David knew there were cold places in the world, places where animals needed layers of fat and fur, and one’s urine would freeze moments after leaving the body. He had seen snow in the movies, and heard about things like mittens and sleds. But those places always seemed far away. He had never considered that there were a thousand different grades of unpleasant weather in between the perfect climes of his home and the north pole.

               He couldn’t have them turn back to Savannah, so Charm City it was. Charm City, where from the boat he still couldn’t look back and see the island. He didn’t realize until right then that he was unconsciously trying to sail as far as possible away.

               He thanked the captain. He didn’t know how much money his father had given the man, but he added to the sum. When he walked down the gangway, he did not look back. The new scents mingled with the memories of older ones. This was a dock area, but it was also not like any dock area he was familiar with.

               The first night was spent at a hotel several miles away. The first series smelled strange, unsanitary and spoiled. The next were the same. By the third group, David realized all stay over stops would have a similar combination of chemical cocktails covering the odor of a hundred different guests. He spared no expense on a room on an upper floor, stared out at the lights of the frigid city that was his new home, and slept in the bath tub. He dreamed of the cage.

               The next morning he spent on the phone, calling local engineering firms in the city, explaining that he had a dual degree in civil planning and engineering, and was looking for work. Two of the places sounded interested until he explained where his degree was from, and how reputable it was, despite the fact that they had never heard of it. He changed his story to looking for a paid internship. Hunger forced him downstairs, to the hotel bar.

               A dozen different people were discussing all sorts of things. David ate fish and eavesdropped. He heard the woman coming, and smelled her before that.

               “Is this seat taken?” she asked.

               David turned to see a woman about his age, slim and pretty. How she looked did not match how she smelled at all. Her perfume was pleasant enough, but beneath it, she smelled like one of the dockside hotels. “No,” he said, because it wasn’t.

               She sat, and they began to talk. The topic of the weather folded into commentary on the city beneath it, which segued into David’s earlier failures at securing work. The conversation swerved strangely around David’s residence in the hotel despite his joblessness, and he could feel her tugging, pulling at something. Eventually, she remembered she had some place to be, an important business meeting she had been waiting for. The man behind the bar smirked. He looked like he would say something, and then an older man down the bar from David cursed while shaking his head at the television screen.

               David scanned the flat panel and squinted. The sound wasn’t muted, just very, very low. A body had been discovered and police believed it was an animal attack.

               “Third this season,” the older man said.

               David paid stiffly, then quickly went back to his phone book upstairs.  His distracted efforts were even less successful than his focused ones from earlier. Laying in his bed, looking up at the ceiling, he worked through the evolving math of his dilemma, and thought about his need for proper interview clothes, a resume, a briefcase, a firm handshake and gel for his hair.

               By the time night fell, he was in the cage again. For every year of his life, he had a memory of his mother and the men guarding them. His father. He even lived at home when he went off to school. Just because he couldn’t see the island, didn’t mean that the island couldn’t see him.