S. A. Bodeen by The Raft

Author:The Raft
Language: eng
Format: mobi
Published: 2012-08-30T20:57:09+00:00

thirty-four

Max stopped, leaned back against the raft, and shut his eyes.

My heart was pounding and I took a few deep breaths.

There was more to tell, I knew, but I could wait. We had plenty of time.

The rain had stopped, but the wind had grown stronger. The raft surged along in the waves, which were higher than they'd been since the storm. I was so used to the movement by then that I wasn't frightened like I usually would have been in a boat. And I wasn't feeling the fear I'd felt the first day or two. Anxiety had transitioned to boredom. Just sitting there, watching the same sky, same water, same colors. I longed for something to break up the monotony.

I opened my eyes.

Something moved in the sky, coming closer.

Is that what I think it is?

It was.

I inhaled softly and tears came to my eyes.

A black-and-white Laysan albatross was directly above me, wings straight out and motionless, soaring effortlessly in the wind. For all I knew, it was one of the gooney birds from Midway, one of those who nested in my front yard.

"Hello, gooney bird!" Grinning, I raised both arms in the air and hugged myself.

Funny, all those stories about shipwrecks and people lost at sea, they always wanted to see a bird, because it meant land couldn't be far off. But the albatross didn't raise any such hopes in me. Albatross were capable of traveling thousands of miles to bring food back for their chicks. They ate squid eggs or fish and, once they got back to their nest, regurgitated it for the chicks in an oily, viscous, vile-smelling substance.

That albatross was a little piece of home. The life cycle of the albatross was something I got to experience every year on Midway. From August until October, Midway was void of albatross. The fields were empty, as were the skies. Then, beginning in October, they started coming back. Sighting the first albatross of the season was a game the whole island played. I would ride my bike all over, looking. Then, one day, over the radio, we'd hear, "The albatross are back!" And we'd all race in our bicycles or golf carts to where the first birds had been spotted.

At first, there were a couple in a field, dotting the empty space. But within a week or two, the air was full of them, and soon after every available inch of unpaved open ground and grass had a nest. Albatross mate for life, which can be up to seventy years. They build their nest in the same spot every year. And they dance. A very specific dance, with eighteen actual moves, consisting of dips and bows and calls to the sky. They look so goofy doing it that troops stationed on Midway during World War II nicknamed them gooney birds. We just called them gooneys.

Along with the dancing came screeching. So much that some people on Midway slept with earplugs when the gooneys were dancing. I never did though.

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