A Dolphins Dream by Carlos Eyles Page A

right outside the store. He have to get a job to buy the fish! I ask ‘em why he do this, an he shake his head and walk away.”
    Compton read the shopping list to Moses. “Bread, rice, coffee, cooking oil, flour, tea, salt, onions, garlic, eggs, crackers and peanut butter if they have it. How about a couple of six packs of beer?”
    “No beer, that’s in Somosomo. Also, two gallons of kerosene to get the refrigerator working,” added Moses taking the list. “I’ll fish on the way over and be back in the afternoon.”
    Compton gave him thirty dollars.
    “There is not much food in the Indian store,” advised Moses.  “Thirty dollars is too much.”
    “That’s all right. Bring me back the change.”
    “Right, right. Bring back the change.”
    When Moses had pocketed the money, Compton idly wondered if he would see any of it again. Moses jumped into the boat, poled out to the edge of the reef and threw a crab baited hook over the side. Within minutes he pulled up a small fish, waved once and sped off into the open ocean towards Taveuni.
    Compton walked over to an exposed flat rock that was well beyond the sandy beach and watched him go. The tide was out and the rock, as big as a kitchen floor, was pitted with tiny pools and fissures. A black-spiked worm-like arm caught his eye, twitching its way out of a thin film of water. At first glance he thought it could be the arm of some exotic octopus but closer inspection revealed the arms of a spidery starfish. Black-spiked arms began to materialize from every crack and beneath every rock, writhing like newborn snakes. The very rock he stood upon became festooned with serpentined arms and he leaped off of it as though it had become electrified. The creatures that slithered and squirmed about the earth disgusted him. He loathed the feel of an octopus, sea hare, or eel, for they conjured something from the underworld that was sinister and, at the very least, disgusting.
    Returning to the far side of the beach wearing sandals, he edged out onto the coral that extended into deeper water and carefully made his way to a point where he could peer down into the pale shallows. Fish in brilliant yellows, blacks, oranges and neon blues gyrated like shimmering butterflies that had flocked to his feet to sun their wings. He blinked and backed away several steps for fear they held exotic poison that by their touch would render him ill and unto death. To his left was a large, shallow, pool with aerfect white sand bottom. The pool was empty and he gazed into it for relief both of his eye and his anxiety of unknown things. A ghostly apparition stirred before him, seen only in the eye but not the mind. Then a shadow glimmered briefly across the white sand but no object appeared as its source and he stepped to the safety of the dry beach. There, squinting into the pool, he again surveyed it until, above the shadow, there was revealed the faint outline of a fish, translucent as air and all but invisible were it not for its shadow. Another appeared, and another, all shadows of themselves. Unsettled by the fecundity that sprang from every inch of this water, he stumbled back upon the beach and sat among the broken shells. Selecting half a dozen whose flawed beauty had directed his hand, he later placed them in the center of the kitchen table and observed the sea from a less intrusive distance, where he contemplated this far place he had brought himself.
    For even in his wildest imaginings he would never have placed himself in such circumstances. It was as if some other person or force had emerged from the bed of his hospital and was now inhabiting his body. This outrageous environment and its incongruous people that could read thoughts and in general occupied another realm of reality clearly disturbed him. It was the absence of control over these circumstances that had him in a state of imbalance and fear. Trying to keep this thing together was like trying to contain smoke. He felt on the edge