The Plover by Brian Doyle

Author:Brian Doyle
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: St. Martin's Press

VI

4° NORTH, 160° WEST

THE TWO YOUNG ISLAND RATS, kiore, and the tiny warbler, bokikokiko, had long ago come to an understanding, a tenuous peace, something like a truce on the boat; one of the rats had made a gesture toward attacking and eating the crippled warbler, but the warbler had bristled and cocked its one good wing like a grim fist, and the other rat had intervened to calm things down, and an arrangement had been negotiated whereby the rats were masters of the lower reaches and the warbler master of the deck, ruling from her headquarters under the water tank; all three were respectful but wary of the gull, and generally leery of the human beings, especially the smallest one, who knew everything about them although she did not move on her own but was carried about by the other three. It was the warbler who saw the kai, or trees, as she called the human beings, in their most active modes, working the boat, fishing, talking, laughing; the rats, on the other hand, saw the human beings active only when they were cooking in the tiny galley kitchen; inasmuch as the human beings came below only to sleep or shelter in their bunks from wild weather, the rats had concluded that they were a generally somnolent and nocturnal species, and, for all their epic size, probably harmless. But they too felt the thorough attention and curiosity of the smallest of the human beings, the one who was carried around by the others; no matter where you hid on the boat, no matter how far that one’s body was from your body, as one of the rats noted to the warbler, that one sees you.

* * *

Declan falling down and down and dark and down.

Well, you useless rat bastard, I see you’ve come to your sorry end at last, says his father.

Declan is so shocked to hear his dead father’s voice in his ear that he opens his mouth wider and more of the ocean roars in snarling.

Poor boy, says his dead mother. Close your mouth and stand up straight. You look like a trout. God alone knows what to do with that hair. You’ll never be handsome but you are a clever boy and if you work hard you’ll get by somehow.

Drowning while drunk, says his father. What a surprise. What a shock. Fecking sorry bastard. His sister is a better man than he is.

You’re too hard on that boy, says his mother. You drench that boy in your own bile.

He’s a useless flop of a child and he’ll end up a rudderless drunk, says his father.

Because you are a failure he has to be one also? says his mother, grim and cold.

You’re an icy bitch, says his father, and he steps toward her suddenly but Declan jumps up faster and closes his mouth and swings as hard as he can at his father’s bony white face and his hand slams against the rudder and he hauls himself

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