Backstory

Note: I mentioned in "The Next Morning" that it was part of a longer story. Well, here's the beginning of that story, drenched in the grief of a man who has lost his wife, who wakes up every morning wondering how to go on and then, one day, wakes up on a private island in the South Pacific. He's comfortable enough. There is a beautiful beach house fitted out with every known amenity (and some that are still unknown). But the grief stays with him. And then, on the first anniversary of her death, things begin to change.

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December 23

It rained.

It's never happened before. I don't really know what to make of it. The sky just wept for hours. I sat on the front porch of the beach house, under the tin roof, and listened to it beat down. Eventually I got up to pour a glass of red wine, and to light some candles. By late afternoon it looked like a little shrine around me--candles flickering, a half-finished bottle of wine on the table, and me--staring straight ahead into the gloom, watching the lightning flash its anguish across the grieving sky and listening to the rain pound down like fists on a grave.

December 24

All that rain caused a mudslide that came oozing down the mountain and into the back side of the beach house. There's lots of it. It comes almost up to the kitchen window. So, I spent most of the day yesterday shoveling mud into a wheelbarrow and pushing it through the forest to a nearby ravine where I dumped it and went back for more. I'll do it again today. I'm trying to get it while it's still mud, before it bakes in the sun and hardens so that I have to chip it apart with a pickaxe and haul it away in pieces.

It's not supposed to be like this on the island. There isn't supposed to be rain or mud or heavy manual labor. But yesterday it felt almost good to have something difficult and mindless to do: to fill the wheelbarrow again and again, push it through the forest, and dump it out. I didn't have to think about; just had to do it. Today will be the same. It hasn't rained again but it has been overcast both days and that's good; that keeps the mud from hardening. I can hardly believe what I'm grateful for--overcast skies and difficult, mindless mud-shoveling labor.

December 25

I finally got through shoveling all that mud from behind the beach house. I hosed it off and when I got done it looked almost normal again. I may have to scrub it with a brush. But I was exhausted--hot, sweaty, muddy. I went down to the water and stripped off my shorts, jumped in and let the ocean roll over me for a while. It felt wonderful.

When I finally headed back in I saw that something had washed up on the shore. It was a wine bottle, a Cline Zinfandel 2002, with a cork still stuck in the top. I love the Cline Zinfandel, but there wasn't any left in the bottle. There was a rolled-up note, cliché as it sounds, and on it the words "Blessed Christmas."

December 26

I kept wondering where that bottle had come from.

On Christmas night I slept out on the sleeping platform and could have sworn that I saw a light on the horizon. A boat? Would that explain it? Some well-wishing sailor with a preference for Cline Zinfandel who had steered near enough to my island to toss a bottle over the stern? I wouldn't have seen him (her?), what with all the work I was doing behind the house. And so I spent a good part of the day yesterday walking along the beach toward the southern end of the island, just to see if I could find any other evidence. I did. About two miles south of here, just where the cliffs start and you can't go any farther along the beach, I found some footprints. Just one set. Rather small, delicate feet. It made me wonder if someone had pulled in to the shore here before sailing on around the cliffs to the other side of the island. I made up my mind to have a look the next day--today--but it's still early. I'm just having coffee. And wondering whose footprints those were and if she is still on the island.

December 27

Yesterday I saddled up Pina, one of the Marquesan ponies I keep here, and rode the ridge trail up to the collapsed cone of the ancient volcano that made this island. From there I could see the entire shoreline, more or less, and when I looked to the southwest I saw a boat anchored in a small cove I have visited only once before. I had brought the binoculars and when I looked I could see someone moving around on the deck of the sailboat, a woman, wearing a white one-piece bathing suit. Well! She was trespassing. Someone had to confront her. So I picked my way down the mountain carefully and rode up to the edge of the cove. There she was, filling water bottles from a bucket. I called out a cheerful hello and she turned around, startled, spilling the bucket.

"Damn!" she said. "I walked a half mile for that bucket of water!"

"You walked a half mile on my property," I laughed. "May I come aboard?"

She nodded and I dismounted, tied Pina to a tree, kicked off my boots, stripped off my jeans and T-shirt, and dived into the cove in my boxers. I swam the distance in a few dozen easy strokes and climbed up the chrome ladder on the back. I shook the water from my hair and pushed it back with one hand so I could get a good look at her.

Wow.

December 27

She was so beautiful! It took me a minute to remember what I wanted to say to her, and then I did:

"What are you doing on my island?"

"I'm not on your island," she said with a mischievous grin. "I'm on my boat."

"Well, your boat is in my cove."

"And you are on my boat," she said, stepping forward menacingly.

"OK, OK," I laughed. "Truce!" And then I asked her who she was and what she was doing there.

She said her name was Monique, and that she was sailing as far away as she could. She had started from Papeete a couple of days before and was just stocking up on fresh water before she continued. I told her I didn't mind her stocking up on fresh water, but I did mind her complete disregard for island courtesy--the least she could do is ask. She told me that she used to visit this island all the time when she was a girl, that it was her favorite of all the small islands, and in some ways she thought of it as her own. She apologized, and said she should have asked.

"I would have given you all the water you needed," I said, smiling, "and cooked dinner for you."

"Well!" she said, arching those beautiful eyebrows, "is it too late to accept that offer?"

"Not at all."

I swam back to shore just long enough to untie Pina and send him back toward the barn. He knows the way. And then I sidestroked back to her sailboat with my boots, jeans, and shirt in one hand.

"You didn't have to bring those," she said, teasing me.

"Wouldn't want to distract you while you're sailing," I shrugged, stepping into my jeans.

And then we weighed anchor and headed toward the beach house.