island girl

a story I wrote from gazing at the wonderful artwork
of my friend in Paris, Hervé....

The tent flap moves but I already know from her perfume that the native girl has returned. That scent always reminds me that I’m glad I don’t have spare parts to repair the plane, and within moments her sensual brown hand will tenderly stroke my whiskers and she will be giggling. What an alarm clock! And like the cloudless sky, her clear and knowing black eyes will beg me to follow her running along the soft path of plants with leaves the size of Mini Coopers down to where the swift blue water pools into a clear green pond. And she giggles again as she shoves me in with all her might. She loves that, and I hope she knows I love it more.

Yes, I know the origins of her scent. Peering from behind a trunk one evening, I watched her squeeze the nectar from the purple blossoms of an abundant mysterious plant, lovingly massaging it into her naked body. She caught me spying, and with her eyes fearfully ablaze she ran away. I did not see her for long time. Whenever that good-natured island girl is away, I watch the flame at my camp site long into the night thinking too much of home, and I hate it.

One evening, after finishing work burying the rest of the plane at the crash site, and at the water’s edge washing engine oil from my hands, I was startled by a woman’s scream. Beyond the trees in a clearing, I found her unconscious on the pebbled ground in the shape of question mark. In one pouncing movement I had the stone in my hand and crushed the fanged creature to death before it could tear into her bare left breast.

She wakened during the chilly night by the crackling fire, her head resting upon my lap as I dabbed water gently on her bruised forehead. The dancing light of the flame made her skin the color of whiskey. I carried her into my tent, and she fell asleep again wrapped in my old green blanket affectionately holding my hand. A permanent bump would form on her forehead from her tumble, so I made her a tiara of baby red and white flowers in a wire of branching vines. Sometimes she guides my hand to massage the bump, and closes her eyes as though she’s meditating. She snaps out of her trance all of the sudden and gives me the familiar mischievous grin with the crimson-colored lips of the girl at the edge of the pond just before the playful shove.