Flame Angels Read online

  Flame Angels

  a novel of Oceania

  Robert Wintner

  Published by Iguana Books

  460 Richmond St. West, Ste 401, Toronto, Ontario, M5V 1Y1

  Copyright © Robert Wintner, 2012

  All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, recording or otherwise (except brief passages for purposes of review) without the prior permission of the author.

  We would particularly remind readers that uploading this ebook and distributing it via the Internet, or via any other means, without the permission of the author is illegal and punishable by law. Please respect and support the author's rights: purchase only authorized electronic editions and do not participate in or encourage electronic piracy.

  Editor: Greg Ioannou

  eBook Layout Design: Sharlene Hopwood

  Cover Design: Lea Kaplan

  Cover Photo: Moon & Flame Angel

  Fernando Lopez Arborello and Robert Wintner

  Author Photo: Anita Wintner

  Library and Archives Canada Cataloguing in Publication

  Wintner, Robert

  Flame angels [electronic resource] : a novel of oceania / Robert Wintner.

  Electronic monograph issued in multiple formats.

  Also issued in print format.

  ISBN 978-0-9878713-4-3 (EPUB).--ISBN 978-0-9878713-5-0 (Kindle)

  I. Title.

  PS3573.I578F53 2012 813'.54 C2012-904241-2

  This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents are products of the author's imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events or locales or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.

  Visit the Iguana Books website: www.iguanabooks.com

  For Keiko and Rene,

  two mermaids who know how to protect their young.

  Acknowledgements:

  Special thanks to the waterdogs on Maui, Tahiti, Fiji, Palau, the Great Reef and on around, whose minds and hearts share one reef love. Thanks to Anita, Rene, Ziggy, Fernando, Keith, Joan and Lulu.

  For whatever it takes, thanks to Justin, George P, Peter R, Keiko, Inga, Teresa T, Wayne N, Kai N, Brenda F and all the troops digging in to save reef critters around the world.

  And special thanks to Ainslie, for a level of editorial excellence I thought long gone.

  Prologue

  Halfway Out to Sea

  A lean and sun-browned man slithers in the shallows as easily as an eel after fry, till he draws his legs under and stands, taller than the first organisms walking out of the sea but with original intent: to improve his niche, on land.

  With his hair wetted to his neck, a scant loin pocket, and a scruffy beard dripping below swim-goggled eyes, he makes an amphibious transition, coming up and out.

  An emergence from an hour or two of reef repose gives him pause for wonder. Ankle deep, he watches two children and a dog playing naked in the waves. The girl of ten sweeps her long, black hair out of the way childishly with both hands. Composed as a tropical cameo one moment, she surges with energy the next, yelling at the boy to eat: “Mange! C'est une tempête en mer, et tu dois manger pour rester fort!” It’s a storm at sea, and you must eat to stay strong!

  He sits on a paddleboard. She pulls it by a rope along the shallow surf line.

  The dog barks, trying to jump on and finally clambering aboard, where he teeters, facing the back to better watch the boy.

  The boy eats from a plate on his lap: baked yams, carrots and pineapple. Small wave-tops season his lunch. The dog whines.

  Leihua pulls the paddleboard to waist depth and points it into the surf, then gives it a push, commanding him to eat.

  Justin eats, piercing the short break, focused on the pineapple saved for last along with a piece of taro for the dog.

  The man says, “Mes enfants,” as a statement of being, a navigational fix on terra firma. He slogs up a sandy path, no longer buoyant. The kids and dog gravitate and follow toward the house, leaving the paddleboard high on the beach.

  At the house they’ll rest and pass the hottest part of the afternoon. They might doze. In two hours the boy and girl will tend to schoolwork while the man prepares dinner. He may manipulate images on his computer for a while before the woman arrives from the hospital.

  Meanwhile, on the way up, they pass a mound of dirt topped with smooth rocks, the topmost a marker, engraved: Skinny. It’s a final resting place, but its reluctant feline tenant would rather use it as a perch. She jumps to the top and wobbles off, so the man picks her up and sets her on top again. The old, feeble cat with the baby face suddenly sees him and speaks her catch-all word to the omniscient one who insists that she keep living, that she keep processing moments as she has for the last twenty-two years.

  When the man and children pass, she leans forward to swat the dog on the butt but falls off trying and meows again, falling into the procession up the path.

  Compared to What?

  It’s a shorter flight from Hawaii to Tahiti than from Hawaii to LA — only twenty minutes shorter, but the difference felt profound, as if Tahiti could be more accessible than its exotic name suggested. Though closer to Hawaii in miles, French Polynesia seemed far more distant than LA.

  French Polynesia couldn’t possibly have a Walmart or a Sam’s or a Costco, or gridlock or freeways wending to “affordable” neighborhoods nestled among power pylons, transformers and oil vats from the land of Gargantua.

  Could it?

  Tahiti did not surge forward but rather lingered in the imagination as an outpost of Paradise.

  Tension with the French seemed nominal, a minor distraction along with crumbling roads and seeping gutters — minimal nuisances balanced by minimal development. No golf courses, no rush hour, no road rage, no franchise burgers or all-you-can-eat array of American conveniences made for a bygone ambience and set the tone, which was soft as life’s essential goodness in simple effusion. What’s that sound? It’s the relative silence of the unencumbered world, where growth is still vegetative. French Polynesia still glowed, a tropical oasis lush with nature, isolated from a world of strip mall clutter that failed to meet the demands of a population unconstrained in its propagation and needs.

  Where Oceania was French-flavored with an abundance of fish in aquamarine shallows of dazzling clarity, Hawaii seemed removed from tropical simplicity, building out. Greed and power as common denominators strove to dumb down deeper than at any time since the wagons first circled — or since Captain Cook got banged on the head at Kealakekua.

  Hawaii felt more like Santa Monica than Hawaii.

  That was Ravid Rockulz’s assessment and idle fantasy. He’d never been to French Polynesia, but he’d read and heard about it and pictured it and sensed it. He imagined it sometimes first thing in the morning, if the tourists would allow. Most often they interrupted his reverie on the way out to the dive site.

  Like the tourist who stood beside him at the rail as the bow plowed the seductive undulation, serenely cleaving water so clear it hinted at meaning below the surface. The tourist spoke lowly, about his friend in LA who had a nasty rash on his arm with oozing sores to the elbow. The doctor gave the friend one unguent after another to no avail, till the strongest ointment in the world proved ineffective. Finally, the doctor broke the news: Another line of employment would be necessary, because working for the circus, planting elephant suppositories up to the elbow, would keep the rash coming back. The friend in LA asked, “What? And give up showbiz?”

  Ravid didn’t get it at first. Hardly a dim bulb, he couldn’t see why anyone would want to stick his arm up an elephant’s ass just to make a living in showbiz. No joke is funny once parsed, and this joke, too, faile
d to rouse a chuckle. Rather, it made Ravid wonder how the ironic truth underlying most humor actually comes to pass. At least he understood the point of the joke, relative to showbiz, money and festering lesions.

  He didn’t understand LA, except that it illustrated volume exchange in an urban setting. That is, pressure increases by one atmosphere for every thirty-three feet of depth below sea level. Nitrogen and oxygen remain proportionate at depth, about 80:20 — but pressure at sixty-six feet is tripled, so content triples in volume too. The critical factor is that nitrogen absorbs into the bloodstream much faster than it can leave, and excess nitrogen causes the bends if ambient pressure decreases too quickly. The gas wants to escape through the joints, causing them to twist.

  Just so, with world population doubling again, pathogens increase proportionately. Percentages remain stable, though raw numbers rise to toxic potential. Human behavior with no ambient constraint is similar to human joints infused with nitrogen: bent.

  LA looked bent, and the rest of the world was squirming.

  Ravid (rah-VEED) Rockulz was born when Basha Rivka was thirty and beyond hope for a decent match. Still single and already elderly by community standards, a willful, anxious woman perceived as a spinster with resourceful cleverness, she got by in her hometown, Haifa. And so she would have spent her days, till that no-goodnik came along. And what do you know? Schtupi mit no chupi is what. Never mind, he left, and good riddance — and don’t ever think this cloud was not silver-lined, because it was. Mother and son remained friends, confidants in life, seeking solace or venting frustration in each other, as mother and son will do, and then some. Hearing her son’s doubts and concerns on the general decline of the natural world, she recalled the early 1950s when she was a girl, when people lived far from each other and were glad to meet, unlike now. Now, shoulder-to-shoulder, they defend an annoying concept known as “personal space.” In that awkward phase of physical failure known as “elderly,” Basha Rivka shared her son’s misgivings on the world at large, and frankly she wouldn’t miss this mess — after 120 years, of course.

  So they commiserated, mother and son, proceeding with her assurance that the next generations could better cope with their needs and consequences in a world of twelve billion people minus one when God chose to call her, which could well be tomorrow, or even tonight, or, God forbid, in the next minute or two. But she thought she had a decent shot at 2040, given her general health, genetic background, diet and exercise, which wasn’t so much but did include a walk every day to the market, so whatever she got would be fresh, even if overpriced by the heartless mumzerim who, God knows why, had the freshest produce.

  Beyond that she was merely an old lady who frankly didn’t need to hear pessimism, misanthropy or other dark talk from her only begotten child, who was young and had his whole life ahead of him in a world surely destined to be his oyster.

  “What kind of talk would you prefer, Mother?”

  “You know, something else. Not the depression talk.”

  “Do I sound depressed?”

  “Don’t tell me how you sound. I have ears.”

  Then she asked when he planned to move to LA, where he would meet his own kind, including a girl, who would give him a reason to live, and her too, with a family to remember him and his mother when they both were gone — after 120 years.

  Ravid asked why anyone would want to live in LA. He asked the thin air, the clear blue sea and Basha Rivka, whose answer each time was a plea for a wife for him, grandchildren for her and a profession that would provide for his children and his old age — and maybe hers, too, because at his current income she’d need to be about 160 to cash in.

  Ravid often wondered, How old is old age? He wondered as the 6:02 from Chicago passed overhead, and again for the 12:31 from Seattle, each flight delivering hundreds more tourists chilled to the bone, craving the balm and what still passed for the good life, even as development and traffic thickened. Because no matter how thoroughly and sadly overbuilt the beloved rock became, the question persisted: Compared to what?

  Any flight arriving at any time from the other forty-nine states could deliver a few tourists who would choose him as their leader for probing the ocean depths. They would choose the boat that employed him, at any rate, and a dive leader makes a boat’s reputation, so the dive leader himself could be viewed as the object of choice. Besides competent guidance at ocean depth, a tourist or two may need assurance and guidance in the exploration of those other depths craved by the footloose tourist women.

  Ravid’s smile reflected the bright, clear sky, because skill and success made him happy. No argument there, but Basha Rivka’s motherly concern was based on reason and a more practical path, with less of the clear-sky, blue-water razzmatazz and more of what a mensch must do to secure a future for his family — like wearing a suit and tie, for starters, and showing up at an office to make a contribution to society, for which he would be more reasonably paid than a water boy. So the suit wouldn’t be top-drawer goods from New York at the beginning. Never mind. Quality goods will come. You’ll see.

  “You mean I should make more money?”

  “And what’s wrong with more money?”

  “Nothing, Mother. So why can’t you find someone to pay the best dive instructor in Hawaii more money?”

  Then came the sigh and tongue clicking. Oh, he got the point, and they both knew it. What he didn’t get was the motivation a man needs if he’s to get ahead in the world. Was she not on his side? Did she enjoy the constant nudge? That was open for debate, though she had demonstrated, as only a mother can, her unequivocal love, no matter what. She had accepted her son’s resignation from the military on the grounds of opposing the military mentality — a monumental acceptance, given the place. “I don’t get it. You’re one of those objectors? One of those fellows with a conscience?”

  “No. I don’t think I am. I think a conscientious objector doesn’t want to kill anyone. I don’t think I would mind killing someone, if I had to. I think the population should be thinned, but I don’t want to kill any thing, meaning anyone who is not human. The military is so stupid. Many stupid people have many stupid meetings where they say stupid things and come up with stupid plans for stupid behaviors that kill many things. I want out. I want no part of it.” Which was Ravid’s explanation at that time, to which his mother had the good sense to say nothing, not even a tongue click.

  Notably, this resignation was not only from the military; it was from the Israeli military, that esteemed group of defenders held in awe and reverence, as if it were the Fertile Crescent’s very own boy band. These boys lived the credo, never again. Consensus on the credo was unanimous: Better to die fighting than in a fake shower with fifteen grams of black soap gassing the naked minions in preparation for the ovens. Oh, the score was known. The fans raved. Basha Rivka had been proud as any soldier’s mother but had suffered more than the usual angst; she was so worried for his safety, with the guns and bombs and other boys on the other side, some of them perhaps very nice boys, shooting at her son, whom they’d never even met. Once he quit the military, she could worry far less. “So. Let it be,” she’d said.

  Quitting wasn’t so simple. It required a tortuous season of hearings, replete with accusations, character maligning and questionable patriotism. Ravid had known he could win only by allowing the foul names to be called, so he’d stayed mum, knowing that he was indeed a patriot and would be willing to fight in a real conflict in which killing people who hated him and came on to kill him would be natural. But the reality of his military service, like most military reality, was gratuitously destructive — against his conscientious values, from which he knew the difference between right and wrong. Of course such sentiment cannot be expressed, lest the conscientious one be deemed legally insane. That is, Ravid Rockulz could not continue to desecrate the reefs of Eilat with war games against an imaginary enemy guilty of intangible behavior warranting no response. Tearing up the reef with mines, dredges and sundry in
cursions was no longer tenable for an unlikely Jewish seal, a mere boy whose knees nearly buckled under the burden of his first tank of compressed air, who had learned to love the coral down to the little polyps.

  Basha Rivka had asked when the little polyps would love him back. He’d assured her they loved him every time he saw them. How else could he feel so happy in their company?

  That was some years ago. Since then he’d sorted things and settled in the tropics to live in wondrous joy, with sunshine, mostly calm seas and the most beautiful reefs the Central Pacific could offer. He recalled military reality when the United States Navy tested its sonar equipment in the name of national security, blasting decibels below the surface that literally tortured the whales, monk seals, turtles and fish for hundreds of miles. Ravid’s boat and a few others off McGregor Point one day in February witnessed the humpback whales breaching incessantly, as if to escape something or other. One whale breached over a small sailboat, sinking it. Navy rescue was on the scene in an hour, though the sunken vessel’s passengers had already been picked up.

  The story never appeared in the local media, because the US Navy said it didn’t happen, that a tourist made a mistake in thinking a whale could actually fall onto a boat — that they had investigated and concluded that the event never was. So military reality claimed another day.

  Besides military incursion on a big scale into Hawaii, where billions in defense contracts could advance political careers, other incursion also surged.

  Tourism was up, what with terrorism threatening around the world and rampant on the airwaves of America.

  Immigration to the fiftieth state was also on the rise. More tourists asked the simple, tough questions — and gave the answers in the same awakening. LA? Compared to Hawaii? Are you kidding? So they moved to the good life from LA — or from Seattle, Alameda or Portland, from Bakersfield, Boise or Butte. Start out in St. Louis and go through Missouri. Oklahoma City is not so pretty. You’ll see Amarillo and Gallup, New Mexico. Flagstaff, Arizona, don’t forget Pamona, Kingston, Barmaids, yadda yadda San Jalepeno... Life is not as simple as a lyric, but still, it’s fun to sing along. And a catchy lyric helped distract from the thickening density of bodies, cars and pavement.