THE SUN IS GOING DOWN IN THE GALAPAGOS. Blue-footed boobies and penguins roost on the rocks by the sea where the turtles cruise through like underwater magic carpets.
I got sick from the waves between the islands, Uncle Percy handing me tiny barf bags, but it cleared up as soon as I set foot on land again, like somebody had flipped a switch connected to my stomach, my sense of equilibrium.
Uncle Percy, rocking only tank-top and speedo and cedar cane, is on his walk. He’s let his beard go long and Brillo. With his full head of white hair, he looks like a dapper prospector from eighteen fifty-nine. He wanted death to follow him here, to this place where Darwin is a secular saint.
From the pier, I toss a can of tuna on the sand and watch black iguanas slither over and lick. The animals here don’t fear people. Yesterday, as Uncle Percy and I walked the trail to Playa de Tortuga, birds landed on branches next to our faces and stared into our eyes. I like my birds to stay away. But these haven’t been hunted. They don’t fly into windows and land feet-up in flowerbeds, lifeless as unwound watches.
A man in a banana hammock and snowshoes clomps up the pier. Somehow, with his long sun-bleached hair and scruffy chin, the snowshoes look natural.
“Scuse me, mate,” he says, Australian as fuck. “I’m looking for the flamingoes.”
“They’re back inland.” I point behind him, toward the mud puddle the size of a football field and the three sad flamingoes that waded out, looking for god-knows-what, craning their pink necks down to gobble and gargle the muddy water.
“Much obliged.” He trudges away, revealing his bethonged, sunburnt bottom.
Uncle Percy is walking the dirt road toward me. I wave. He passes the Australian, stops and stares at the snowshoes for a second, keeps coming. He looks good for eighty-nine-years-young.
The wind whips my hair against my forehead and I turn and look out at the waves, smell the briny tang. The water is boiling with mysterious currents.
When I look at Uncle Percy again, he’s closer, but something’s wrong. His face is pinched. He goes to his knees. His mouth falls open as he clutches a fistful of tank-top over his heart, his eye-whites flashing.
I rush to him, hold him.
“At last!” he cries. “Behold!”
He becomes a wet sack of flour in my arms. I kiss him because he’s done it. He’s died in heaven.
***
There’s no funeral parlor in heaven. I find a nature center with a furnace. The wildlife specialist running the place wears a wetsuit like she was born in it. It squeezes her Italian hips lovingly.
I know zero Italian. We talk it over in a mix of broken English and Spanish. Death is nothing new here. Everything goes cheap and easy. Uncle Percy will soon fit into a can of Nescafe.
The night Uncle Percy is cremated, I take the wildlife specialist to dinner. Dinner is empanadas on the street. Mostly, we speak terrible Spanish and smile at each other.
Children somersault over potholes and run through the weeds carrying crema dolce. Here there are almost no people, and the people have nothing, and the nothing they have is so much better than all the somethings we’ve left behind. The hairs stand on our arms like we’re about to be struck by lightning.
“Goosebumps,” I say.
“Che cosa?”
“Gooseflesh.”
“Eh?”
“Le piel de gallina.”
“Si!” she says, “Pelle de’oca!”
We laugh and kiss. There are so many languages and words in the world, so many ways to laugh and kiss the trouble away. All of these opportunities for kissing and laughter make us hot.
Down on the beach we find our spawning ground. Iguanas creep through the seagrass. The rhythm of the waves in our ears, the bass-booming thrust, the sizzling recession. Turtles slide out of the ocean on their bellies under the half-moon. I have seen the sand dunes where they bury their eggs. They will bury them and they will swim back to infinity.
“Isabela,” she says, her eyes closed.
Her name is Francesca, so I’m confused. “Isabela?”
She slaps the sand. “Beinvenidos a Isabela, fuckface.”
I’m so lost in dopamine I’ve forgotten the name of heaven.
She smiles.
***
A few nights later, I take Uncle Percy dancing. The club is a cinderblock fishing shack on the end of a pier, with a hellacious sound system. There are two rooms, one with only tables and chairs and one with stools lining the walls around a checkered dancefloor. They are blasting old Europop into both.
Drunk fishermen in rubber boots roost on the stools. The locals gawk at the tourists without shame for staring because tourists have no shame. Uncle Percy told me to live on Isabela, you must be born on Isabela. Everyone else is a foreigner.
I set Uncle Percy’s Nescafe can on a table. Women pass by and say things in Dutch and French. I can’t understand them over the music, but when they point to the can, I tap the lid and say, “Uncle Percy,” and they laugh.
What is love? the stereo asks. Baby don’t hurt me.
Francesca is in a fringy skirt. She’s dancing with the Australian. He’s wearing white linen pants like a villain from Die Hard. Crotches pushed together, they wear ecstasy like some people wear hats or scarves. He glides her around the room. She glides him back. Graceful movements born of familiarity, eons of knowing another’s flesh.
It’s love. I can’t feel bad, though, about love. I’m alive, still in the game. While you breathe, you’re still in the game.
Love makes me want to dance. I leave Uncle Percy and find a French girl to steer around to the beat. She’s got back muscles and strong legs, years of soccer balls and bicycle pedals. We can’t speak to each other but settle on oui. I spin her out away from me. Oui! I spin her back into my arms. Oui! Oui! I dance with a Chilean girl, a Dutch girl. We dance and drink rum like we will never see each other again. Uncle Percy always said the most wonderful part of the Galapagos is the lack of Evangelical Christians judging you. Darwin stops them from stinking up the place with their lust for hell and damnation.
I’m sweating to the bass. We become moving bodies with blurring faces. I can see Uncle Percy spinning on his heels, sixty-years ago. He’s laughing with the fisherman. He’s telling the pretty girls dirty jokes until they throw drinks in his face and he buys them new drinks, saying, “Once more with feeling!” In my best dreams he’ll be there, sporting a bowtie and patent leather shoes.
About this time, I notice the coffee can missing. I pull the Dutch girl by the hand and look underneath the table as if it’s hiding in the empty space, some optical illusion.
“Wat is er gaande?” she says.
The bartender sets coffee cups before Francesca and the Australian. They smile hugely, sweat beading on their foreheads, so hot and drunk on rum and love they can’t smell anything. The Australian takes a sip and looks at the cup like there might be something wrong. Francesca tries hers and gags.
I would tell them what’s happened, but the DJ never breaks. The music won’t stop. And if the music won’t stop, you must keep dancing.
I spin over behind the bar. I twist on Uncle Percy’s lid and tuck him under my arm. We move onto the dancefloor under the lights and the pulsing speakers. Once we are gone, he said, the memories thrum with blood and heart.
This is Uncle Percy’s house now.
MAX HIPP is a teacher, writer, and musician living in Mississippi. His work has either appeared or is upcoming in Black Warrior Review, Bull Fiction, New World Writing, Pidgeonholes, Unbroken Journal, and Five 2 One. Tweets @maximumevil
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