Island 429.1

Ron Koppelberger

Island 429.1

She enchanted the lyric with her endless sashay and when she was done something fluttered near the brim of his hat. She secreted the sweet natured gambol of soul and substance with tender recollections and fate. She yielded the evening sky and as nightingales flow so did the tide of moonlight and indigo ebb.
He sat listening to the chirp of a million crickets and the grunting, rooting pigs as the night took shape around him. An island of desolation the fates seemed to say and yet he was in good company with the song of moon and shadow, sun and wild adventure.
The boat lay in splinters near the sandy shore of island 429.1, an uninhabited secret and his salvation. He tended the few scraps he had salvaged, wood planks and palm scrub in rapt interest with the coals of a new evening hue, bright flaring silhouette and crackling embers of orange. The blissful array of ceremony was a picture that defined sailor and a sated rescue from the dragon of the roaring surf. He culled the broken clam shells and his belly was full of abundant muscle. He thought on his fate for a moment and he realized that the sovereignty of a man’s spirit lay in rocky shores of unknown reception, in truce with survival.
The sudden rush of wild boars and feral pigs surprised Pluto South. He had heard them rooting and crashing in cause and romping possessive rule. Pluto edged away from the smokey flames of asylum to the waters edge as another dozen or so of the pigs meandered toward the campfire. They ran back and forth grunting as something much larger tramped closer to the sandy beach. The ocean sloshed at his heals and he grabbed a rum barrel from the wreckage of the boat. He eased into the surf using the barrel as a ballast. Floating on the half full barrel of rum he watched as the beach bristled with the bodies of dozens of the tusked pigs.
Pluto watched as a monster crashed through the underbrush of the deserted isle. It stood nearly fifteen foot tall and was the length of five or six horses. Its tusks were great graduated lengths of bore ivory, deadly and worried by naught.
It trampled the flames of his tiny fire and screamed an echoing rendition of war at deaths doorstep. The fire puffed out in tendrils of smoke and shadowy silhouette. The giant pig seemed to dance in victory.
Swimming along the shore he wondered what other secrets island 429.1 held.