Bird Season

BIRD SEASON

  Patrick M. Boucher

  Copyright 2012 Patrick M. Boucher

  ~~~

  Very much despite himself, Poke couldn’t help crave the aroma drifting from where Teto stood. His stomach churned and growled with the hunger that had taken up permanent residence, and which was now enraged by the aromas carried in the smoke. He tried to hide the way his nostrils instinctively flared as he inhaled deeply. But they did open wide, despite his efforts, and he took in fully deep breaths to infuse the scents within him while his belly grumbled.

  “You should not have killed it,” Poke said. His voice was soft, yet filled with that quiet self-assurance that always characterized him.

  Teto laughed. It was a hearty, brash laugh meant more for the others in the group than for Poke. “You worry too much about senseless things, Poke.” He exaggerated the two syllables of Poke’s name in an almost mocking way. Poooh-kay. “Many birds will land in the coming days.” He looked around the small islet where the group was collected. It was only a meager bit of land protruding almost defiantly from the sea, covered in little more than low grasses. An occasional tree grew here or there, but they were always thin and barely able to produce leaves. Abrupt cliffs girdling the perimeter of the islet left no place for even a canoe to land, and enhanced the sense of isolation. “And there will be many eggs.”

  Poke stiffened, stretching his back up straight. So much more slender than Teto, almost wiry in frame, he yet had a bearing that always commanded respect. His long black hair reached almost as far as the simple cloth he wore around his waist, covering the deep brown of his skin. The shell lei around his neck contrasted sharply with that deep brown. While no one would ever have considered him muscular, the deep absence of fat on his body defined every muscle cleanly.

  Teto was his opposite in so many ways. His wide, everpresent smile — as though all of life were nothing more than a playful joke — was a marked counterpoint to Poke’s thin serious mouth. And just as no one would ever have called Poke muscular, no one would ever have called Teto fat. He couldn’t be part of this select group if he were. But there was also no denying the largeness of his body that matched the exuberance of his spirit.

  Poke was not ready to let up. The smoke was making him too hungry, and the hunger was making him impatient with Teto’s cavalier, almost profane, attitude. He addressed the other five, conscious of where they stood. Each wanted to give the impression his spot had been chosen randomly, but the effort was too obvious to the careful eye. When it became clear Teto and Poke would argue, each had moved subtly, shortening the distance to Teto while increasing it from Poke, an oblique way of stating where their allegiances lay.

  “None of you should eat of the tern,” Poke said. “At least not if you wish to compete with any honor.”

  Teto’s guffawing laugh was contemptuous. He grabbed a stick and poked at the pit where the bird was cooking. His own hair was short, but just as black as Poke’s. The low sun of the day reddened the dark skin of his back and chest.

  “Do not speak to them of honor,” Teto said simply, his wide grin intensifying Poke’s aggravation. “It is your mistaken faith in honor that will cause you to fail.” Teto paused, waiting for any of the others to say something, but they maintained their studied silence.

  He motioned to the larger island behind him — their home, separated from the small islet by a wide expanse of roiling sea. Swinging his hand in a wide arc to gesture towards the larger island, he asked Poke pointedly, “Do you really think any of them will care about honor? In the end?” That grin never left his face as his dark eyes bore into Poke. His insinuations belied the playful cheer in his voice. “And when it is done, do you think I will be concerned with honor?”

  Poke stared at the earthen oven Teto had prodded with his stick, knowing his silence made it too obvious he’d been successfully provoked. The oven was a traditional pit dug into the earth where stones were heated by fire to cook the food. Staring mutely at it, he was conflicted by the diffidence Teto created within him. His revulsion at his body’s desire for the cooking bird mixed with his disgust for Teto, but the craving to eat the fresh meat of the tern remained impossible to deny.

  Finally, after a long pause in which the silence grew, he turned away and walked down a simple path that had been trod through the undergrowth, coming to rest against an outcropping of rock.

  He leaned back against it, his knees pulled up to his chest, and allowed his thoughts to wander. They would be talking about him, of course. They often did. But only Teto had the guts to say anything to his face.

  Poke was not like the rest of them. He’d come from the main island almost two weeks ahead of the others. “He’s a fool,” everyone said. “It’s too early in the season. He’ll only weaken himself and lack strength when he’ll need it most.” But he’d wanted to take no chances, and when he made the solitary swim, it was with images in his head of returning triumphantly with the prize before any of the others had even left the island.

  It was fantasy, of course. And hopelessly unrealistic.

  The reality instead was that he did weaken himself in his time out here alone. But it was still time that had its value. It gave him time to think about the reasons why he was doing this, and to learn small things about the islet that he yet hoped would turn things in his favor.

  He practiced swimming and climbing and running, all the things he’d been doing at different spots around the main island for months, but doing them now here, on the islet. He challenged himself in every way he could conceive, honing his skills each day. When he climbed, he was able to grip small protrusions on the cliff face with the precision and strength of talons. And when he ran, he flew with the speed of the wind. Even the way he used his eyes had evolved. The constant practice developed deadly accurate sharpness in his vision. He could not have been better prepared.

  If not for the hunger.

  He did it all for her. For Hefua. He knew that with simplicity. This was the only way now.

  It had been almost nine months since he’d last seen her. The two of them had known each other since they were small children, growing up in the island’s same tiny community. A “village,” they called it, but it was little more than a handful of families who shared a few grass huts where they could sleep or rest when the rains were heavy. Even as a small boy, he’d known the truth of his feelings for her.

  As he often did when he felt frustrated or isolated, he let his mind turn to memories with her, immediately bringing him a contented smile. The sounds of the others and, most especially the smell of the smoke, disappeared for a time as he found himself lost in the memory.

  The earliest one he liked was undoubtedly the time Hefua got herself lost. It was a difficult thing to do on an island as small as their home, especially when so many others were constantly acting as lookouts for the children. Every adult in the village kept at least one eye on all the community children. But it mattered only that she thought she’d managed it.

  She’d been running and skipping the way little girls sometimes do, losing herself in whatever thoughts she had at the time. When she came back to reality, looking all about the area where she was, she was surprised to find herself all alone. At the mouth of one of the many caves found all over the island, she was secluded by a mass of lava rock. In truth, she wasn’t far from the village at all, and at least a couple of the matronly women knew exactly where she was.

  But the discovery still frightened her, and she would in later years remember the cave not as the small grotto it was, but instead as a vast, endless cavern she’d managed to lose herself in.

  Poke remembered the way she’d cried out, able to recall the precise character of the voice even after these many years. “Help!” she’d cried, “I don’t know wh
ere I am!” Her voice, even laced with fear, still had a sweetness and innocence about it that Poke fell in love with.

  He was probably about five years older than she was and had scrabbled down the rock that sequestered her on the beach.

  “Hefua,” he’d said as he started down, being careful not to startle her. “Everything is okay. I’ll keep you safe.”

  Her smile was a reward beyond measure. It was the smile of a little girl, her milk teeth small in her mouth with a child’s gaps between them, but the way it stretched from one ear to the other, and the way she giggled playfully up at him, stirred a new something within him.

  “Poke!” she’d said. “You found me!” She scurried across the sand at the water’s edge so she could put her tiny hand within his as he made the final jump down from the rock, his feet plopping into the sand of the beach. “I