Law Clerk on Gilligan's Island
Chapter 12- Angaur
...when I myself hear that somebody is dead, I simply shrug and say
what the Tralfamadorians
say about dead people, which is 'So it goes'."
-Kurt Vonnegut, Slaughterhouse Five
Stephanie and I are sitting in the shade under a tree in the noonday heat, plucking clumps of rice and fried fish out of tinfoil trays with chopsticks, washing it down with canned mango juice. After we've eaten our fill, I lean back on my elbows in the grass and close my eyes, enjoying the warmth of the sun filtering through the leaves above me. Stephanie empties out the pockets of her dress into her lap and begins intently examining her recently acquired collection of unusual sea shells, one-by-one.
I can't help but chuckle to myself, which distracts her attention from the small hunk of deep blue coral in her fingers. "What?" she asks.
"I was just thinking," I say, "that this is the most pleasant funeral I've ever been to."
I like to think it was my technical know-how that landed me an invitation to the big event. After helping Jill and Stephanie each install the Palaunet e-mail program, word had filtered out that I knew a little bit about computers. Eventually, Natus from the Probation Office at the court came calling. He had somehow crippled the system on his computer and was no longer able to dial up Palaunet to get his e-mail. I said I'd do what I could to help, but after hearing that his nephew Rich, an employee with the PNCC-- the company that runs Palaunet-- had tried to slove the problem and failed, I was skeptical that I'd fare much better.
I fixed the e-mail problem more or less by accident after a couple of hours of tinkering. Ask me today what was wrong with it, and I'm at a loss to tell you. But Natus was so grateful for my help that a week or two later, when a big event on his home island of Angaur, the tiny speck at the southern end of the Palauan archipelago, Natus repaid the favor with an offer of a trip down there.
A couple of weeks ago, the small commuter plane that flew twice daily circuits linking the southern islands of Peleliu and Angaur with Koror crashed in a heavy rainstorm on its final approach to the Airai airport. All 9 people aboard were killed, including five people from Angaur and two from Peleliu. It was the most tragic accident ever experienced by Palau, and the government was finally ready to send the bodies of the victims home to be buried. Angaur, having borne the lion's share of the loss, was going to be the site of the largest state funeral in Palauan history.
The boats left at 6:30 a.m. Saturday morning. I had invited Stephanie to come along to see Angaur, and we met Natus down at the dock and climbed aboard the gleaming white Fire Department boat that was to bear us there in style. After quick introductions to the Minister of Justice--Natus' boss and the man who had arranged for this high-speed, private transport down to Angaur-- we fired up the engines and pulled out of the dock. Behind us, the Angaur state boat, a converted ferry (nicknamed by the locals, somewhat macabrely, as "the Titanic") crammed full of passengers, slowly lumbered away from the seawall to begin a two-hour journey to the cemetary twenty miles across the lagoon to the south. Within minutes, we were out of sight of the state boat, zooming south towards Peleliu on an early morning sea that was as smooth as glass, the water so unmarked by ripples that you were convinced you could jump overboard and skate on it like ice.
Less than an hour later, we were cutting the engines off the shores of Peleliu. Some of the guys were trailing out fishing lines over the stern. It didn't take long before one of them got a strike on his line, and quickly reeled in a glittering silver torpedo of a fish, nearly a yard long. The fish was quickly consigned to a wooden footlocker near the stern where it continued to twitch its last several minutes of life away with sporadic thumps against the lid and walls of the footlocker. I tried to seem as pleased as everyone else with the catch, but inside, questioned the necessity of plucking this muscular silver dart out of the ocean and suffocating it in a dark wooden box, just because it committed the crime of looking for something to eat. The depths of my pity for the poor fish, who had finally given up its fight inside the footlocker, surprised even me, and I regretted the fact that Michele would never know how much of her animal rights philosophy had rubbed off on me in 2 1/2 years of marriage. Before I even finished the thought, though, another fish had struck on the other line, this time a wider, flatter fish whose bright yellow skin refracted drops of water into tiny rainbows on its scales. It too went into the footlocker to thump its last breaths away. "Mahi-mahi," Natus hungrily pronounced the second fish.
With two fish in the hold, it was time to crank the motors up again for the seven-mile jaunt across the channel to Angaur. Peleliu sits on the southern tip of the reef that encircles most of Palau, and thus, the channel between it and Angaur to its south is pure, unimpeded Pacific Ocean. Unlike the protected lagoon, surges frequently coursed through the channel, sometimes kicked up by the wind into whitecaps so formidable that even the drunken boaters knew enough to wait them out anchored off the Peleliu shore. But today, the channel was practically indistinguishable from the lagoon inside the reef, and we shot across to the northeastern end of Angaur in about 15 minutes, where the captain once again throttled back the engines and out came the fishing lines.
I instead took the opportunity to study the geography of Angaur's coastline. Most of it consisted of jagged volcanic rock and broken coral, stripped bare of any vegetation by eons of pounding, unimpeded surf that left the coastline with all manner of crinkly edges where the softer bits of rock and coral had been quickly disposed of by the sea. Twenty feet above where the surf crashed against the vertical cliffs, Angaur's surface smoothed out into a soft-looking carpet of vivid green grass and trees. I was captivated by the way the waves broke over large irregular coral hunks near the shore, which in turn diverted the seawater into dozens of tiny waterfalls, cascading down the crags of the the rock in thin white veins before it finally found its way back to the sea, just in time to be lifted up by the next swell and sent for another trip down the rocks. Hypnotized by the tranquility of the view, I almost didn't notice that there had been another strike on the line behind me.
"You reel this one in, Brian," Natus shouted over the rumble of the engines. "This one's yours!" He gestured to me to begin hauling in, hand-over-hand, the nylon line tied to a railing at the stern. Taking a deep breath and recognizing that my philosophical objections to the practice had, for politeness purposes, to take a back seat to being a cheerful guest, I reluctantly began hauling the line it. It felt very light in my hands, and I secretly hoped that whatever had struck had managed to get free from the hook, but as I drew the last of the line in, Natus reached over and pulled up another sliver fish, smaller but similar-looking to the first-- a barracuda this time. As soon as he took hold of the leader at the end of the fishing line, I took the first inconspicuous opportunity to step away from the scene, but Stephanie decided that "my" triumph needed to be recorded on film. She insisted that I hold up the fish, still wriggling in an attempt to dislodge the big, barbed hook puncturing its gills, while she took a picture to record the event for posterity. I complied, but almost certainly with an expression on my face that registers how uncomfortable I was with the whole scene.
Shortly after we had gathered up the fishing lines for the day, we were joined by a school of spinner dolphins about 50 feet away. At first, all I noticed were small brown triangular fins that momentarily protruded above the waterline, then quickly disappeared. Within a few moments, though, the school surrounded the boat, and several could be seen as pale whitish-gray shapes just under the surface of the water that swam quickly for the side of the boat, playfully veering off at the last minute and sliding under the hull to the other side. Capping the experience off, one finally deigned to show itself, leaping up out of the water in a low, graceful arc, a scant 20 feet away from the side of the boat, before disappearing under the surface for good. I again thought of Michele, and about a similar sight on a rafting trip in Hawaii elicited from her a childlike, ecstatic gasp of delight, and I missed her for about the millionth time on this trip.
The Minister of Justice took the opportunity of our slow cruise around the northern shore of Angaur to tell a story about Angaur's role in World War II. Like most of the the Pacific, and all of Palau, it too was occupied by the Japanese, and liberated by a bloody American attack in 1944. According to the Minister, who looked far too young to have firsthand knowledge of the facts, by the time the Allies had secured Angaur, there was not a leaf on any tree on the island as a result of the extensive Allied bombing and shelling designed to drive the Japanese out. Of course, now, 55 years later, the island was no worse for the wear, since it was impossible to see into the interior through the thick growth. Once Angaur and Peleliu had been secured by the Marines, the Minister claimed that you could walk all the way from from Angaur to Peleliu across the flotilla of military ships that anchored in the channel. Even accounting for the hyperbole, I looked over the stern and pictured hundreds of slate-gray ships clustered in the channel, waiting for the next assault on the next island somewhere in the Pacific.
Passing around the northwestern end of Angaur's shoreline, we were treated to the sight of one of the "blowholes." At first, it was noticeable only peripherally-- a sudden flash of movement just outside your line of sight. We watched as waves crashed into the shoreline, broke apart, and began receding, when suddenly a puff of white smoke would lazily spurt out of the top of a column of rock closer in to the shore. Only it wasn't smoke, it was seawater which had found its way into the underwater opening of a lava tube (a vestige of Angaur's volcanic heritage) and was forced by the pressure of the surf up through the opening, until it blew out of the top of the tube as a fine white mist. Natus launched into the telling of an old Angaur legend about a "shark man" who allegedly lived under the water, but I only half-listened to the story. For me, the labored puffing of the blowhole was fascinating of its own merit, and didn't need local color to be interesting.
Now having rounded the corner and headed for the dock on the western coast of Angaur, we passed a long stretch of postcard perfect sandy beach, completely empty. I sort of wished that I could spend the day just lounging on that beach instead of going to the funeral, but I had a feeling that would have been considered impolite. (Stephanie had asked that morning if I thought we should bring out bathing suits. "It's a funeral," I told her, "what do you think?" She brought hers anyway, as well as a camera, which I had also forgotten.)
We shot around the seawall at full throttle, finding ourselves in a wide, tall cement bunker that constituted the sheltered Angaur boat dock. Tying up to several other boats that were already there, we climbed up the seawall and gathered under a wooden awning to wait along with about 40 others, all Palauan, for the state boat to arrive so the day could start. Up a small hill behind us was "downtown" Angaur-- a grassy field dotted with a couple of tin houses, and a white cement building with a red roof across a wide road of crushed white coral from another white cement building, this one with blue trim. These two buildings turned out the be the legislature and the governor's office respectively. It was clear that the grass had been recently mowed, the roadsides raked, and the rest of the area tidied up for the big day.
Along the path from the dock to the grassy patch in front of the legislature were bunches of flowers tied to wooden posts with wide silk bows. There was a quietness in the air, perhaps brought on by the solemnity of the event, but I had a feeling that it was more than that. The absence of vehicles (other than pickup trucks shuttling big cardboard boxes from the dock into town) made it possible to stand there listening to -- nothing. There was an absence of nearly all artificial sound, which, coupled with the hushed tones everyone was talking in, made the atmosphere immediately relaxing and peaceful.
Along the path to the legislature was a large white stone plaque, obviously commemorating something. Natus explained that it was the tomb of President Salii, Palau's second President and an Angaur native, who committed suicide while in office. (There are some in Palau who, to this day, believe that foul play was afoot, and that Salii was actually assassinated just like his predecessor. Nevertheless, some scholars here have published Palau's first history textbook, and definitively state in it that Salii committed suicide, which, as far as I can see, effectively ends the debate. History belongs to those who record it, and Palau's academia have forever decreed that Salii's blood is on his own hands.) His body was brought back to Angaur as its final resting place, and the people of Angaur built a nice little memorial for the local boy who made good. Stephanie and took a short stroll up to see it.
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Thin whitewashed wooden rails outlined a path around the site, enclosing a large block of black stone, upon which sat a low, white rectangular marble tomb. Someone had placed a big wreath of purple flowers on the unmarked tomb, and others had long-ago set out votive candles on the white vertical slab, also unmarked (save for a thin metal cross), that stood at the head of the tomb. Steph and I took a few minutes to walk around it reverently, curiously wondering why no one seemed to want to say anything in particular about Salii on his own memorial, much less even mention his name. But in the end, we decided that it had its own elegant simplicity, one which matched (or maybe reflected) the simple, peaceful manner of the village square it found itself in. |
It was only about 9:30 a.m., but already it was noticeably hot-- more so than it seemed in Koror. For being on a small island in the middle of a giant ocean, the air seemed surprisingly still in Palau, and Angaur was no exception. There wasn't even the slightest hint of a breeze to be found. After we had stood around under the awning for a few minutes, a young woman came by with a cardboard tray in her hands, offering us cans of mango juice. It was a little like drinking a can of fruit cocktail syrup, but it was nice to have something-- anything-- cool to drink. After even more time had passed, and it appeared that standing around waiting was all that was on the agenda for the foreseeable future, Stephanie decided to go for a walk. Although I've discovered that she's very much into her own solitude, I decided to join her anyway, since my only other option was to hang out on the dock, eavesdropping on dozens of hushed conversations, all in Palauan.
After a short walk along a rutted dirt path, we found ourselves deep within another tropical jungle. However, the "jungle" on Angaur didn't seem quite as thick as Koror's. Maybe the Allied attack is still having repercussions in keeping the growth thin, or maybe the thickest, lushest vegetation from Koror isn't indigenous to Angaur. The latter seemed more likely, since Angaur's flora seemed to lean much more to tall trees that spread their leaves in a high canopy over thin trunks, rather than Koror's broadleaf growth that tends to grow more out than up. We even spotted a few trees that looked like pines, which completed the feeling that we were going for a walk in the woods, just like back in the states. Well, sort of. In the woods, it would be unusual to find land crabs scuttling back and forth across a forest path, retreating to holes in the dirt as you approached. And in the woods, it would be unusual to see scores of young saplings growing out of large green nuts that had fallen on the forest floor. But they had them here, along with the rusting steel skeletons of buildings that once served the war effort, now covered with vines, and huge volcanic rocks, split open by the extensive root systems of trees that had decided to take root in them.
Something up ahead of us heard us coming, and nosily disappeared into the underbrush along the side of the path. "Did you see that?" Stephanie asked. I hadn't. "I think it was a small crocodile," she said. We headed, a little more cautiously now, up to the spot where the thing had disappeared into the forest, and as we approached, whatever it was made even more noise quickly scrambling even deeper into the woods and out of sight. I said that it was probably one of the legendary Angaur monkeys, and not a crocodile, largely because it moved awfully quickly. This prompted Stephanie, who thought she had seen something that certainly didn't look monkey-ish, to claim that the crocodile was the "fastest land animal." After being confronted with the counter-example of the cheetah, she revised her statement to "over a short distance." "They can move really fast, you know," she tried to explain. I was skeptical, but chose not to push the matter. It was too nice and tranquil an environment to have an argument over trivia. (A postscript: when telling this story to Natus several days later, he first opined that it was probably a monkey, but upon being told that Stephanie insisted she saw something reptilian, Natus stated that it was probably one of the large monitor lizards that live in Angaur. I suppose that means Stephanie was at least in the right phylum, so she gets partial credit.)
After about 3/4 of a mile of walking, we came to a small cemetery in a clearing by the side of the path. Inside a small square plot, several tiny white tombstones stood on either side of a larger plaque which declared that the monument was "In honor of the dedicated artillerymen who gave their lives, September 1944." It was a military cemetery all right, but it took a minute before I realized that all of the tombstones had Japanese writing on them. I thought a little bit more about the dedication, and it began to seem a little strange to be standing in the middle of a partisan memorial like that. Despite being a child of the first fully peacetime American generation (the Gulf War doesn't count in my book), I still have a profound respect for the men who went off to fight for their country in years past. And while few Americans still bear ill will towards the Japanese over events of more than half a century ago, it still felt slightly traitorous for us to be standing there, admiring the simple memorial to the "dedicated" Japanese who did their best to kill as many American soldiers as possible. It was almost like being Romeo at Tybalt's funeral, or a cop at the wake for the local Hell's Angels chapter President. But I admired the elegant simplicity of the memorial, and took notice of several graves that had apparently been visited recently. It seems to be an Asian tradition to leave some token gift for the dead at gravesites, and several of the sites here bore small statues of religious icons. More interesting, though, was one tombstone upon which rested an empty can of Asahi beer. While it could have just been some kid from Angaur ditching his empty, I liked to think that the can was deliberately left by a visitor on the grave of an old war and drinking buddy, a reminder of nights gone by half a century ago.
Wandering around the cemetery, I spotted another memorial tucked back behind some bushes on the other side of the path. More cryptic than the war memorial, this consisted of two intricately carved Fu dog statues on pedestals, flanking a tiny carved-stone temple. Nothing around the site provided a hint as to who put it there, what it meant, or why, but nestled at the base of tall trees, with just the strange calls of tropical birds to keep it company, it seemed like just the right thing to put there.
Behind the cemetery, through a break in the trees, we could see the blue ocean. Stephanie wordlessly struck off that way through the vines on the ground, and after it became clear she just wasn't jockeying for a better look, I followed. Fifty yards later, we were on the beach that we had seen on the way in. We kicked off our sandals and waded down to the water, letting the surf wash in over our ankles. Stephanie wondered if there was time for a swim, but I said I doubted that there was. Partly because it would have been uncomfortable to sit through a Palauan funeral, whatever it entailed, with a layer of salt all over you, and partly because I didn't have a bathing suit with me and was jealous that I wouldn't have been able to join in. So we sat down on the sand for a while and just watched the waves, which had been rolling along unimpeded since leaving the Philippines some 800 miles to the west, come to a crashing halt on the sand a few feet in front of us. The relaxed atmosphere that I had felt since setting foot on Angaur really took hold of me on the beach there, and I felt more at peace just sitting there watching the surf than I had ever recalled feeling before. Practically lulled into a trance by the sights and sounds, I hadn't noticed that Stephanie had stood up and began combing the sand for shells until she handed me something to look at.
It was a tiny shell, with black and white stripes running diagonally around it. "Isn't it cool?" she asked. Then she showed me a blue piece of sea glass she had found, which again made me think of Michele. After we had first moved up to Niagara Falls, Michele and I took a walk one night along the shore of Lake Ontario, and Michele had plucked what had appeared to be colorful, but well-worn jewels off the sand. "Sea glass," she called it-- bits of broken beer and wine bottles, window panes, and whatnot, continuously abraded by sand and tides for years and years, until they finally washed up on shore as smoothly worn, slightly translucent pebbles of pure color. Every outing since then, I gathered up every piece of sea glass I had found on beaches and presented it to Michele, who would select out only the ones she liked, and which went into her collection in a bowl on our coffee table. I explained to Stephanie what it was she had, and she seemed disappointed that the little blue jewel in her hand might have come from something as tacky as a beer bottle. But she kept it anyway.
The trance broken, I got up and joined Stephanie in the shell hunt, using my toe to sift through the band of broken coral and shells that marked the farthest reach of high tide on the beach. Here and there, I found something odd, like a little hunk of deep blue coral or a purple-colored shell that made a 90 degree turn ("a piece of aquatic plumbing," I called it) which I tendered to Stephanie for her approval. Like Michele, some she kept, others were less interesting and discarded. A few times, I thought I had found a good shell, only to realize that it was still occupied. I'd watch as it slowly slide along the beach, a tiny hermit crab inside, desperately trying to escape from what it could only assume was a predator.
By the time we hit the other end of the beach, the state boat had rounded the north shore, and was steaming by the beach, slowly making its way towards the dock. "I guess that's our cue to head back," I said. "I suppose it would be kind of rude to come here and then miss the funeral," I added, hoping that Stephanie would have some good argument to the contrary, or might have gotten the impression from Natus that our presence at the ceremony wasn't necessary, and that we could therefore just beachcomb and wander the jungle all day. She agreed that we probably should go back, but we spent another 10 minutes wordlessly sifting through the sand before we finally got our shoes back on and found our way back to the trail.
By the time we got back to the dock, the state boat had unloaded, and the funeral procession was just beginning. One by one, the four coffins (two victims, a mother and her four year-old child, were being buried together) were carried off up the hill, followed by a crowd of mourners, all to the strains of a tuneful hymn sung in Palauan by some members of the crowd that followed behind. We fell in with the rest of the crowd, following the procession up the hill to the legislature building where the service was to take place.
Although Natus urged us to grab seats in one of the rows of folding chairs set up under a few tents on the lawn outside the legislature building, both Stephanie and I felt that our idle sightseeing was easily trumped by genuine mourning, and we instead plopped down in the shade of a tree towards the back of the crowd. From here, we could see through the screened windows into the "legislature building," which actually was just a big, empty meeting hall-- the "legislature" of Angaur being all of maybe 8 people. The building had also been filled with folding chairs for the occasion, and was serving as a makeshift chapel, with the four coffins laid out under bouquets of flowers in the front. Apparently, the lawn seating was for the overflow, but as we waited for the service to begin, young Palauans circulated throughout the crowd outdoors, offering complementary cans of fruit juice and bottles of water from cardboard trays. By this point, the mid-day heat was bearing down, and we took advantage of every offer that came our way.
After a half hour of sitting, we were still waiting in silence for the event to begin. (Natus explained that in Angaur, a funeral was a reflective affair with little or no singing or dancing, unlike other parts of Palau. To me, such a tradition seemed to fit Angaur's nature as a quiet, contemplative place.) Once again, the refreshment squad began circulated, but this time, instead of offering drinks, they were carrying plastic grocery bags filled with aluminum foil trays covered in plastic that they distributed to all the mourners. Before I knew what was happening, everyone in our group had been handed a "bento box," the Asian equivalent of the t.v. dinner. Underneath the plastic dome that covered the shiny tray was a large helping of rice, some pickled cucumbers, squares of fried fish, a barbecued chicken leg, half of a grilled hot dog, and so on. Never having been handed food at a funeral service, and a little unsure of the protocol, Stephanie and I stared at each other, each hoping the other would give permission to dig in (breakfast was now over seven hours ago), but neither of us had any idea what to do. Looking around, we saw the Palauans begin wolfing down their own lunches, so we figured that lunch was a standard part of a Palau funeral and began hungrily scooping up the rice with chopsticks.
The service began as we were finishing up our lunch. The speaker, a casually dressed Palauan, stood at the podium outside (inside the building were all the coffins, and, I had assumed, all the "guests of honor"-- the closest relatives of the deceased, making the placement of the speaker a bit odd; imagine sitting in a church for a funeral while the priest conducts the service out on the lawn, shouting through the window), and began delivering some sort of speech, all in Palauan. Here and there, Natus or someone else we had been introduced to would pause in their wandering about the crowd and plop down next to us for a few minutes, translating interesting information being conveyed in the speech. I learned very little about the victims from our itinerant interpreters, but did gather at least one fact of note. Apparently, donations were collected throughout Palau to aid the victims' families, and one of the states up in Babeldoab had been particularly generous. One of our friends explained that, during World War II, when Angaur was seized by the Japanese, all of the Angaur residents were rounded up and relocated to this particular state in Babeldoab for the duration of the war. Although the people moved back to Angaur after the war was over, the bond between the two states had remained strong, and fifty years later, the northern state had emptied its pockets to help out its sister state to the south. The largesse of some villages on the other side of the country towards the people of Angaur struck me as incredibly touching, as if all of Angaur's 200 residents had been adopted in spirit by their neighbors up north.
I relaxed in the sun, and Stephanie began to idly examine the different shells she had gathered. I sat up and looked around the crowd, interested to see how they were reacting to the funeral. Surprisingly, almost no one was weeping, or even tearful. The crowd all sat quietly and respectfully through nearly two hours of speeches from various individuals, but there was a certain absence of emotion from everyone. A small choir of women dressed in white suits did perform a couple of nicely sung hymns in Palauan, but other than that, going just by the reaction of the crowd, it was impossible to conclude we were at a funeral, rather than a political rally for unusually passionless candidates.
We got at least one eulogy, I think, for 39 year-old Pat Tomei, who was also the subject of dozens of purple t-shirts worn by various mourners. The back of each one read, in yellow letters, "In Remembrance of Pat D. Tomei, Born April 5, 1959, Died Nov. 17, 1998." Other mourners were also wearing similar purple t-shirts, which simply said "Angaur" on the front. As I thought about it, I decided that a memorial service for five victims out of a community of only 200 was as valid an occasion to demonstrate civic pride as anything else. After Pat Tomei's eulogy concluded (or at least when the person at the podium speaking in Palauan but occasionally invoking the name of "Pat Tomei" finished), I waited around to hear someone speak about Sharon and Cherokee Blau, the mother and daughter who perished in the crash, but it never seem to come. I'm certain I would have been able to pick the word "Cherokee" out of the endless stream of Palauan filling the air, but I never heard it.
Just as Stephanie and I were starting to get fidgety, the service abruptly ended. No closing prayer or hymn, just all of a sudden, people started standing up, stretching a little, and walking away. We found Natus and the Minister of Justice, and were escorted down one of the crushed coral streets along with the crowd, towards what I was assuming was the town cemetery for the graveside service. When the road quickly came to an intersection with another path into the woods, Natus and the Minister veered off that way, leaving the rest of the crowd behind. We followed them through the woods until we came to a "summer house," an open-sided wooden pavilion, under which some of Natus' relatives had set up a pool hall and weight room, complete with a promotional "Budweiser" lamp hanging over the pool table. Stephanie and I watched in detached bemusement (with Stephanie capturing a few clandestine photos of the site, which she found too funny for words), as the Minister chatted with the pool players and Natus went to start up an old tour van that was parked among some miscellaneous refuse.
We all climbed into the van, and went for a guided tour of Angaur, courtesy of Natus. We stopped by his boyhood home, a small tin house, now empty and abandoned in a field of weeds and overgrown grass. Natus spoke somewhat wistfully of the house, regretting that it was slowly being reclaimed by the jungle now that no one from the family was left on Angaur to take care of it. Pulling in behind the house, I was convinced we had caught a couple of vandals in the act of breaking in, but it was just the other passengers on our boat, who had used the house to reduce the three fish we had caught on the way down to a styrofoam container of sashimi which just about everyone snacked heavily on during the rest of the tour.
Much of Angaur looked exactly like the path Stephanie and I had already explored-- roads that were little more than twin tire tracks that had worn through the grass, almost completely shaded by a canopy of trees high overhead. Natus took us through some thick underbrush to some land his family owned on a beach south of Angaur, and spoke briefly about how he thought about building a small "ecotourism" resort there. I, on the other hand, imagined what it would build a nice house deep within the woods there, with just enough modern amenities to make it comfortable, and to then retire there years from now, spending my remaining days in this quiet little corner of the world with a loving spouse (who I never really put a face on), sitting on the beach together, going for exploratory walks around the island, watching the sun set, and just generally absorbing the tranquility that had enveloped me since my arrival on the island.
We got back in the van, and drove for quite a while through unchanging scenery, without ever encountering another car, before coming out in a clearing. Off to the left was the Angaur "airport," a crushed coral airstrip with tufts of green grass growing up through cracks in it, stretching far off into the interior of the island. As I stared down the runway, I mulled over the idea that this was the last place that the people in those four coffins were ever seen alive, and the thought gave me a chill. The same stillness that made Angaur so relaxing also made it slightly spooky, and the fact that Angaur was traditionally considered the place where spirits of deceased Palauans go, where they wash the remains of the earthly world off themselves before disappearing into the heavens, only emphasized the point.
The runway ended where our van had parked, and about 40 yards past the edge, a grassy area ended in tall cliffs overlooking a rocky shoreline and the open ocean. We stood on the edge and watched the surf pound in 30 feet below us, as somebody told of a young man from Angaur who had been drag racing with friends along the airstrip when his brakes gave out. Unable to extricate himself from the speeding car, he sailed over the cliffs and smashed on the rocks below. The story struck me as a quintessentially American way for a teenage boy to die, and seemed very out of place on an island where there seemed to be practically no cars at all. A small patch of cement had been poured at the edge of the cliff, and someone had scratched in it before it hardened a message memorializing "our friend" so-and-so and some dates. Some faded plastic flowers and a few empty jars, their lids scorched from candles that had burned themselves out to extinction during past vigils at the site, decorated the plaque.
Back in the van again, and we passed an old, abandoned station formerly used by the U.S. Coast Guard during a stint on the island. The Minister of Justice reminisced fondly about going to see movies there in an outdoor theater when he was younger. Rounding a curve, we drove by an overgrown, weedy patch occasionally fenced in by a decaying stone wall. A rusted steel gate hung brokenly off one hinge, and further inside, a small stone house was in the middle of slowly turning itself back into a pile of weathered rocks. Natus pointed out that this was the American cemetery for the servicemen killed in Angaur during the war. The place was in terrible shape, and there was not a tombstone in sight, all of them either overgrown by weeds or just eroded away after decades of neglect. The irony was not lost on me that the Japanese had lost the war, but that their heroes' graves were still tended to, while the tombs of American soldiers had been forgotten about.
And then it was all over with. Natus dropped us off at the dock and went to return the van. Within minutes, we were back on board the Fire Department boat, with a couple extra passengers who had noticed how we had arrived in style compared to the state boat and managed to convince someone with pull to let them ride back with us. We headed back up to Koror on the west side of the Rock Islands, and along the way, I pointed out various landmarks of note to Stephanie, who was down in this end of the islands for perhaps the second time, but she was either bored or lost in thought (or both). I sunk into my own world of thoughts myself, feeling deeply affected by the day, but being unable to understand exactly why or in what way.
Even after reducing the experience to words for this chapter, I'm still at a loss to say what it was about Angaur that got to me. It was a day filled with a lot of very strong emotional moments, many of which centered around ideas of death and loss. It was also a day when I was reminded about more experiences I had had with Michele than I've had any day since we split up, which itself brings up thoughts about lost loved ones.
I dropped Stephanie off at home, and in the process of plucking out her water bottles and ice packs from the cooler, gathered up much of the snacks that we had brought but not eaten into a bag that I dropped in her own little cooler, unseen, while she was gathering up her other things. I felt like my mother, who has a tendency to unload the contents of her kitchen cabinets on her children before they leave after a visit home. Although the significance of the gesture was probably lost on Stephanie at the time, after a day of standing by helplessly as people grappled silently with a sudden, tragic loss, I felt better knowing that, when she unpacked her cooler, she'd be surprised by finding something good inside instead of emptiness. Psychically, that one little act of kindness seemed to balance out a day that had been infused throughout with the thoughts of loss and loneliness, and I drove home smiling, for no particular reason.
This chapter uploaded on 12/15/98.
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