Baahir

I push the wicker door of my bungalow open and am assaulted by the morning sun. I close my eyes and tip my head as if I were striding in to the gale. Jesus Christ, I hate mornings. Well, it isn’t so much the mornings as the fact that they are so early in the day. A clever God would have put them later in the day. Of course, he would probably discourage me going to sleep drunk every night, as well.

I grip the neck of my Don Papa and walk the rickety planks to my chair. The walk down and back every day constitutes my daily workout, that and kicking empty bottles of booze out of my path. My mind, for a moment, slips back fifteen years when I was all gung-ho military, running three miles every day before breakfast. What a stupid asshole. Those days are long gone and now for my troubles, the VA deposits a nice check into my account every month. More money than anyone on this misbegotten island will see in their lifetime. A fact I keep to myself due to liking how my head is attached to my body.

I fall into my chair and my shirt slips open to reveal my rather rotund figure, the sun beating hot on my belly. Funny how bananas, mandarin, duhat, dried fish, and rum can result in such a figure. I pop the cork on my Don and have my first drink of the day. It must be 9am by now, not too early for a nip or two. And it is, after all, paradise.

The sound of clear blue waters gently lapping the shore is broken by the sound of small feet pattering behind me. Damn it. A beaming face slowly peeks around me to see if I am safe to approach.

“..mornin’ Hari….”

For the longest time I tried to tell this kid that my name is not Harry before it was explained to me that he was calling me ‘King’ on account of having the best hut on Tobi Island, not that having the best hut would take much.

“What do you want?” I respond without looking straight at him. It is easier to remain gruff if I don’t look at his always hopeful little face.

He holds out a small wooden bowl filled with cut mango. I can’t help but wonder who he stole these from. It doesn’t really matter as no one says anything about stolen fruit once it is in my hands. The benefits of stardom on a small island, I guess.

I take the bowl and shove a piece of mango into my mouth. My stomach isn’t really ready for much more than one piece. I gotta let the rum smooth things out first.

He stands there smiling.

“Now what do you want, you little shit?”

He glances down towards my chair, back to my face and back to my waist. A cloth bag hangs there.

“So, you think you are smarter than you were yesterday? Do you want to give it another try?”

His eyes twinkle his answer. Damn kid. I am supposed to be a rat-bastard curmudgeon but his demeaner makes it so damn hard.

I open the bag and he reaches his small hand into it and pulls out a small square piece of wood with a letter on one side. A scrabble piece with a ‘B’ on it.

“What letter is it?”

“Bee.”

“Right. Now what word starts with a B?”

His little brow furrows as his brain searches for an answer. I put on a smug grin, a challenge. He looks around the lagoon and into the jungle and into the air. I see a dozen good and handy answers but he weighs it all out. I can see his lips sounding ‘b. b. b.’

Finally, he smiles and pokes my stomach. “Belly!”

“Goddamn you…!” as I grab the arms of my chair and motion as if I was about to leap out of it and grab him (as if I COULD leap out of it..).

He takes off running the length of the dock, gets ten steps and turns back, holding out his tiny hand. I reach into my shirt pocket and pull out a lemon drop and place it in his palm. He pops it into his mouth and turns back and runs off the pier and into the blue waters.

We have been playing this game for three years. When we first started, all he spoke was Bajau and, of course, could not read or write in any language. After all, he was barely three at the time. Everyday I pull out a letter from my bag and he tries to tell me what word starts with that letter. He can identify all the English letters and usually knows a word or two for each. On stormy days we sit in the bungalow and play this until the rum rocks me to sleep.

I have never learned where his parents are or why he is here, he just showed up on my dock one day, all smiles and twinkles. The badjao had passed this way about that time and I fear they simply left him. Some nights he sleeps in my hut, some nights here in my chair. I have no idea where he sleeps the rest of the time.

I do know he is like a fish in the water. Every day he pushes himself, seemingly by instinct, to stay longer and longer under water. Having no watch and no way of knowing for sure, but I would estimate his current time is about five minutes. Not bad for a six-year-old.

His smiling face burst the water’s surface and he swims to the post in the center of the pier. Gripping it with his hands, he walks up it. It is like watching a monkey climb up. He has been under for four or five minutes but isn’t at all out of breath. He turns and runs and jumps again, this time grabbing his ankles and spinning backwards in the air. His enthusiasm is infectious and a part of me wishes I could join him.

The minutes click by. Three. Four. Five, by my reckoning. He still hasn’t surfaced. I set my Dom Papa down and lean forward in my chair. I scan the beach and the dock for any sign of ripples or his smiling face. Another minute? It seems like more. I rise to my feet, my heart pounding in my chest. I look frantically all around. I try to listen but all I can hear is my pulse in my ears.

I stagger to the edge of the dock. I can see him now struggling beneath the water. He is pulling something and his face is horror stricken. I have never seen anything but smiles and playfulness on him. A panic comes over me.

Finally, he breaks the surface and scales up the dock. He grabs a rusted pirah that some fisherman left stuck in top of pier and jumps back in. What in the holy hell is going on? He grabs the post again with one hand and raises the other up to me, a fishing net in his little grasp. Without thinking it over, I pull as much as I can and he, once again, dives down. I can see him working the net and something else. I can see something else stuck in there with him. I pull with as much strength as my old rum soaked body can muster.

The weight suddenly evaporates and I fall backwards onto the wooden planks. Moving forward on my hands and knees, I lean forward and see him swimming to shallow water. A dark shape swims along side of him. I am confused. Did the little bastard find a baby mermaid?

He sits at the beach; the water is up to his armpits, lapping at his chest. A dark shape circles around him in ever decreasing arches, slowing down as it does. My head clears and I can see what it is. A shark. The boy had freed a shark from the netting and now is in the water with it!

“Baahir! For Gods sake, get out of the water! Now! Baahir!” Goddamn it, caught up in the moment, he isn’t listening.

The shark swims up behind him and circles around his back and comes to rest on his lap. It is a two-, maybe three-foot nurse shark and it is simply resting on Baahir’s lap. I sigh heavy and hold my chest. The kid damn near did me in. My fear subsides. A small bull shark would have been one thing, but a nurse shark of this size shouldn't anything to worry about.

I notice that I am still holding the netting in my free hand and I go to throw in back into the water and thought better of it. Hard telling what else the boy might save. I toss it on the dock behind my chair and I sit back down, still gripping my chest.

For the next few weeks, our days start off the same but after our spelling lesson, Baahir splits his day swimming with his new friend and simply sitting in the shallows with the shark on his lap, petting and stroking it. The shark is small enough that it poses no threat to the boy and it provides the only companionship the poor kid has, you know, besides this rotten old curmudgeon.

I sit there in my chair and watch the twilight twinkling on the water. The crystal blue of the sky and sea is replaced with a vibrant pink. A storm will be here before morning. My hut will take another battering, my empty rum bottles and the boy’s friend will, without a doubt, wash out with the currents. His unabashed optimism, however, will prevail and there will be more rum and life will go on. It is, of course, paradise.