Beautiful Wild - Anna Godbersen Page 0,42
course they were all weak and fatigued, when they all needed a hand to help them—she let herself be a steady support as Camilla rose to her feet. “Discretion,” Camilla muttered as she brushed the sand from her silk skirt. “As though I want to talk to anyone anyway.”
“Well,” said Vida brightly, “you certainly don’t have to talk to me.”
If Camilla was insulted by this, she didn’t show it. She just nodded and followed Vida past the first trees in search of fallen bark, leaves, twigs, and other combustible items. They didn’t talk any more than they had to, but kept always close enough to the beach that they could hear the others. Every now and then Vida would glance up to assure herself that she could catch a glimpse of the endless ocean through the trunks and hanging vines.
They foraged a long time in silence.
Then the sky was purple, and then pink. As they returned to the camp carrying a tattered tablecloth piled high with small, dry scraps of the forest, they saw the others gathered around a new structure. It was the bashed-up shards of the ship, propped together like a teepee. Fitzhugh beamed when he saw Camilla and Vida appear, and clapped his hands.
“Thank you, ladies, you have brought the final ingredient,” he said. And as they stood holding the tablecloth, he and the other men began taking the kindling they’d gathered and shoving it inside the structure. When it was all gone—all their work, jammed under the old boards—Fitzhugh whipped a tinderbox from his pocket. An old-fashioned tinderbox like the ones Vida had seen in antique shops when she was slumming with Bill Halliday back in San Francisco. Fitz worked it and for a moment Vida was afraid for him, afraid the promise of the big pyre would fall flat because he couldn’t get this pathetic little antiquity to work. Then she saw the spark and her heart started. The spark initiated a small flame. His palm sheltered it as he kneeled. The flame touched a dried leaf, caught a dried branch. No one spoke. They just watched until the fire spread, became a big pyramid of fire.
It was not that they had been very cold. They had been wet, and at night chilled occasionally. But mostly the dense air held the sun’s heat even after dark. They hadn’t been warmed like this, though. The heat off the flames warming the skin of their hands and faces. They smiled and laughed—that variety of amazed laughter which is mostly relief.
Vida turned from them, gazed at the horizon. As the others talked, marveled at the fire, she watched that eerie strip of green, a reddish line, and above that a deepest blue. She strained to make out the silhouette of a mighty ship. But time passed, and she saw nothing. She was brought back from her disappointment by the excited exclamations of the others, and she turned to see how Sal and Fitzhugh used long sticks to carefully remove what had been hidden on the stones under the pyre. A package, wrapped in banana leaves. Before she could hope for anything specific, she saw Fitzhugh open the package. Inside was a large, blistered fish.
Everyone lined up and each was given a steaming cut of white flesh, placed on a ripped piece of green leaf. Some went to sit on the sand, while others were too impatient and stood devouring their portion. Their first helping was gone almost before anyone noticed and then they came for seconds. Everyone buzzed happily, but Vida, overwhelmed by an emotion she had no name for, walked away from the crowd and sank down on the sand. The stars were emerging against the great, dark dome of the sky.
“Here,” said Fitzhugh. He had sat down beside her before she could tell him not to.
She stared at his outstretched hands offering her a piece of fish on a square of leaf. She resisted, not so much because she wanted to spite him (she did, though oddly not with the same verve as before). Mostly it just seemed bizarre to have something so like a meal offered her here.
“Try some.”
Before she knew what she had done, her fingertips had dug into the white flesh, the flakes had melted on her tongue, and she knew that taste of salt, of fat in her mouth, and the wonderful satisfaction of food absorbed by her belly. She had almost forgotten what it was to eat and feel satisfied.
“It’s good,