Hazel burped. “Want a kiss now?”
Randy said nothing. He felt sick.
She laughed and said, “Makes sense, though, if you take all your philosoph’in out of the equation. Your grandmother understood people would want to leave here. The natural order eventually takes over and some people just can’t stay in one place.” She was making her case for leaving the island, pleading for him to hear her, but when it came to staying on the island or leaving, he couldn’t give in.
Randy drank beer made from turmeric root. It was dark orange and bitter, but packed a punch. “People came here from thousands of miles away to enjoy the peace and tranquility. It’s as close to heaven as anything I’ve ever heard of.”
Hazel drank her mother’s label. Like the gone world, they had wine from grapes, and liquor made from corn, papaya, berries, and apples. The papayas were indigenous, but the rest had been cultivated by Ash and her family since The Day.
“That’s because you haven’t heard anything except what you’ve been told. For all we know that wall isn’t brown, it’s blue. How would we know?” Hazel said.
“The sacred texts?”
“All made up fantasies like the fabled bible,” Hazel said. “We don’t have copies of any of the religious instruction manuals, but many of the books in the Foundation refer to various faiths and there are still a few people alive on Respite that have been to a church or equivalent. The mix of old world and new that began on The Day has shifted to people who’ve experienced nothing but Respite, but still many folks practice the old ways. Makes them feel normal, I guess. Bollocks.”
“I get what you mean,” Randy said. “With the inconsistencies in the sacred texts, we only know what’s real and what’s fantasy because they told us so.”
“Exactly. Is magic real? Have people gone to the stars? Is anyone else out there? Or here on Earth? Can rabbits talk? Can little boys fly?”
“Don’t make fun of me.”
“I’m not.”
“You’re not asking the right questions. Instead, ask can rabbits communicate? Do little boys think they can fly?”
“Do rabbits, orcs, and Hollus exist?” she asked. “I’ve never seen any of them.”
“Hollus? You citing sacred text Calculating God worries me a little,” Randy said.
She laughed.
“Really. Faith isn’t your thing.”
She stopped laughing. “You’re wrong. I have faith in what I can see, and taste, and touch.” She closed her eyes, sucking in the scent of candle smoke and stale beer. She said, “Shit don’t mean shit.”
They both laughed. Outside in the jungle, two sea petrels yammered back and forth, their mournful bleating echoing through Citi. Palm leaves rattled, and the sounds of humanity going about their lives brought a smile to Randy’s face. “You should drink more. You… you seem happier,” he said. Randy wanted to ask her why she was unhappy, but then he asked himself. They lived a life that had been sought after by the old ones. Hazel should be happy.
She took a sip of wine. A gentle breeze pushed through an open window, and the two candles on the bar flickered and almost went out. “Your mom had guts pulling the message out of her butt at the perfect time,” Hazel said. “With the maps and a functioning sailboat, it wasn’t hard for her to sell her plan.”
“Most people didn’t believe her, but your dad did,” Randy said.
“Like I said, your mother could have come up with a plan to go to space and my dad would’ve signed on,” she said.
“Yeah.” There was the huge unmovable tangled ball of shit that was their family history.
“The charts and maps showed a big world. Only the older folks grasped what it meant to cross an ocean and bob around on thirty-foot waves,” Hazel said. She sipped her wine as the aroma of basil and oregano cut through the candle smoke.
Randy finished his beer and went behind the bar and refilled. “Turns out it didn’t matter what anyone thought,” Randy said.
“You got that right. Respite law is clear when it comes to salvage. Finders keepers,” Hazel said. “Your mother found the boat, with the help of Jerome and my father, but she led them. It was her property by law and she could take the Jolly Roger anywhere she wanted.”
“Dad tried to stop her, but you can imagine how well that went,” Randy said.
“About as good as it did for my mom,” Hazel said. “Being a little kid, I actually believed my parents wouldn’t fight about my father leaving. I thought mom would understand and accept dad sailing off with your mother.”
“That’d be a first.”
“The way everyone agreed on who should go counts as a first,” Hazel said.
“Not everyone.”
“There wasn’t a single nay vote for Tye Rantic or Jerome Hess, and Tye was fifty-eight when they left and Jerome only twenty-one with no experience off island,” Hazel said.
“True, but as I recall, your grandfather wanted to go,” Randy said.
She laughed. “He did, but nobody took him seriously. He was too old and everyone knew it.”
“And the elders had no problem telling him so,” Randy said.
“I’m still amazed your mother asked for their permission at all,” Hazel said.
“I remember a few nights when she came home ranting to dad. She needed the council because if the elders didn’t want her to leave the island, they could prevent it. She couldn’t have gotten the boat out and stocked without help,” Randy said.
“People have left the island and come back. That is nothing new,” Hazel said.
“I’m not talking about a paddle to a nearby island, or floating around on a life raft. The
