Extra Chapter: Ebb and Flow (8.5/10) “Pineapple Lessons”
Title: Ebb and Flow (8.5/10) “Pineapple Lessons”
Rating: PG 13
Characters: Penny, Desmond, Ben, Sawyer, Juliet
Pairings: Desmond/Penny, implied Jack/Kate, Sawyer/Kate,
Spoilers: Up to Through the Looking Glass
A/N: Once I finished the series, I regretted not having a chapter that showed Penny’s adjustment to life on the island. This should be read alongside the on-island section of part 8. You can read the rest of the story here.
x x x
On her first night on the island, Penny had slept propped up against a tree. She had been half convinced if she fell asleep she would wake up in her hotel room in Fiji so she fought to keep her eyes open. She tried to focus on John’s story but somewhere during his description of an elaborate machine he built to break the glass on the hatch roof she had drifted off, before he even got to the part about Desmond.
She dreamt about horses, hundreds of them thundering across a valley. She stood amongst them in a cloud of dust kicked up by their pounding hooves. She had no fear of being trampled, held her arms out wide. Their tails whipped the tips of her fingers. She awoke with a start at dawn, disorientated and stiff, the beat of running horses still rumbling inside her.
On her second night on the island, Penny did not fight to stay awake. She slipped into a dreamless sleep, lulled by the familiarity of the arms that held her in an unfamiliar bed in an unworldly place. When she awoke rested and knowing exactly where she was, she couldn’t help but smile to herself.
Her smile faded when she saw Desmond’s own expression. He lay on his back staring at the ceiling; one arm flung over head, one hand stroking his beard. He was miles away and didn’t even stir when she rolled over.
She nudged his leg with her knee and ran her hand across his chest. “Des.”
“Hmm.” His pained look disappeared, quickly replaced with softness, but its existence lingered in her mind. “Pen.”
“Morning.”
“Morning.”
“Where were you?”
“Here, with you.” He traced his thumb across her collarbone. “Unbelievably.”
“Indeed.”
She slid her leg across his, wiggled closer. He moved his hand to her hip but she was surprised when instead of drawing her nearer he held her back.
“Last night,” he began. Sadness flooded his face again, finishing his sentence for him.
Her first instinct was jealously. Was this when he told her there was someone else? That was the question she had come close to asking Kate so many times but could never bring herself to voice. She had promised herself, whatever the answer, she would accept it. He didn’t owe her anything. She herself had been married and divorced in the interim. In fact it would be better if he hadn’t been alone.
Was it the pretty young girl with the toddler, Claire? Or Juliet? Or even, god, the man who had been so dismissive of her yesterday, Sawyer?
He seemed to read her mind or her stricken face. “No, no, no,” Desmond said, rolling over so they were face to face. He tucked a piece of hair behind her ear. “It’s just we can’t, last night… we shouldn’t have… How much do you know about this place?”
“But Sun…”
“We can’t take that risk.”
“And there’s no…”
“It’s the first thing they ran out of…”
“I see.” She rolled onto her back, tucked the sheet around her breasts. This was the last conversation she thought they would be having. “That’s very chivalrous of you.” She didn’t mean for it to sound as sarcastic as it did but it stung that the most risky thing she had done in the last twenty-four was to have unprotected sex. Then it hit her, how unprepared she was for being here.
What had been the first words out of his mouth yesterday? “You shouldn’t be here. This place is - it’s all wrong. It shouldn’t be like this.”
It might look pretty but the island dripped with death and darkness. After all, her first introduction had been seeing Desmond, whom she’d always thought had made a better monk than a soldier, close to beating a man to death. Since she never expected this to work, she hadn’t really thought about what she would be giving up or what she would have to face by coming here with no escape route. She imagined this is what he had been dwelling on when she woke.
If anything, the sex was the easiest thing to solve. Well, we’ll just have to get creative, she thought.
“It just means we have to be creative,” he said.
“I always prided myself on being resourceful. And you, who I suppose, has had time to imagine this happening in a hundred different ways, might have some suggestions.”
“Oh, that would be an underestimation,” he agreed, tugging the sheet away from her body.
Well then, she thought, reaching for him. There would be time for her worries later. All she had now was time.
x x x
There appeared to be an unspoken agreement amongst the island inhabitants to leave Penny and Desmond alone for one day, as if this was all they needed, before the Elizabeth was besieged with visitors. It was natural that people were curious about her and the outside world but she couldn’t help feel resentful of their intrusion. She didn’t have answers for most of their questions, be they about their families or who had won the pennant in whatever sport they used to follow. Besides major elections and the war in Iraq, she had been too preoccupied with her search to keep up with current events. And having gone through their own wars and regime changes, no one expressed much interest in these.
All she could offer them was information about the lawsuit against Oceanic led by Sabrina Carlyle and tidbits about Kate and Jack. They seemed grateful, if not entirely optimistic, to know two of their most trusted friends had been trying to figure out how to get back ever since they left. Nobody asked about the baby so she assumed that had been private. It wasn’t her place to share the sad news.
It was strange to meet the people she had read and heard so much about. In some ways they were just like she imagined, individually at least. What surprised her was the overwhelming sense of community projected by the crash survivors. Everyone had grown into a role that played a critical part in keeping things together. Sayid was calm and strong, the one they all looked to for solutions. Claire, not the most obvious of leaders, seemed to be whom everyone circled for encouragement. Then there was Rose and Jin, offering two different types of protection, one soft, the other hard, both equally necessary for survival. It was as if the sum of them was greater than their parts. They needed to be in order to compete with whatever the island threw at them and the hive mentality of the Others.
John had a foot in each group, though she felt he was not entirely claimed by either, nor fully trusted. He seemed to be the island’s representative, come down from Olympus, unable to fully bond with mere mortals because of his burdens and rewards. She had only been here two days, and was already starting to think of the island as a person unto itself.
She observed Desmond had also remained on the periphery, deliberately, she believed because he had been alone for so long; it was more comfortable. Even now he stood off to the side while people gathered around her. It was safer to retreat rather than get attached. His failure with Charlie, she sensed, though he had not spoken of it to her, clung to him over a year later.
And then there was Ben.
He arrived after everyone else had left, when she thought she had Desmond to herself again. It was almost dark and they were was sitting quietly on the deck, sipping vegetable soup from mugs, watching the sun slip beneath the horizon.
He didn’t call out, just cleared his throat several times until they got up and looked over the side of the Elizabeth. He stood on the dock, holding a lantern and a basket.
“Yes?” Desmond asked.
“I thought you would like to know that Mikhail is locked in one of the lab cells.”
“Did you see to that yourself, then?”
“I did.”
“Wonderful.”
“Your people are guarding him.” Ben sat the basket down. “Hello Penelope.”
“Hello.”
“In colonial America, sea captains returning from the Caribbean would place a pineapple outside their front door to announce they were accepting visitors. They were a symbol of hospitality.” He held the lantern over the basket and she could see several pineapples inside.
“Oh. Thank you.”
“Will you come with me tomorrow, both of you, to see Jacob?”
“No,” Desmond responded without hesitation. He took her hand as if he was worried she would accept the offer and leave immediately.
“It’s not me who's asking.”
“Well, you can tell your Jacob, if he wants to see us, he can come here. I’ll leave a pineapple out.”
“That’s not how it works, Desmond.”
“That’s exactly how it will work.”
The lantern’s flame reflected in Ben’s glasses. Then a gust of wind came from the water and snuffed out his light. “That’s your choice.” He walked off without another word, leaving the basket behind.
Desmond wrapped his arms around Penny and kissed the top of her head. “Just another day in paradise.”
x x x
Day four brought splinters, a surprise and Sawyer.
When Penny was young she had played pioneer girl. She would tie her hair in braids, dress up in her mother’s long skirts, bind her doll Diana to her back, and traipse through the woods behind the house. She collected pinecones, reeds and leaves, crushed berries into paste, and scraped sap from trees, her stores for the long winter ahead. She huddled over a circle of stones, stoking the pretend coals that would bake her carefully prepared mud pies. One summer she built a lean-to with her cousin Henrietta and gained her mother’s permission to let them sleep outside. That experiment lasted a few hours before they were tucked inside her cozy bed, drinking hot coco and watching television.
Given that this was the extent of her outdoor experience, she was inadequately prepared for life on the island. And unless the islanders wanted to put on a theatrical revue, South Pacific perhaps, she had no practical skills to offer.
Still, she gamely followed Desmond into the jungle at the crack of dawn to help him collect firewood for the signal fire. He explained there were others things she could do, help on the farm, assist Sun in her soap making or work in the communal kitchen, but neither were ready to be separated. So she piled what he chopped on a tarp, kept her limbs away from the axe, and then helped him drag it all back to shore where they loaded it up onto the boat.
By noon she was sweaty and achy and ready for bed. Of course, that might just be because she had spent all morning watching a shirtless Desmond swing an axe.
Before they left for the beach camp, he insisted she let Juliet take a look at the stubborn splinter stuck deep in her hand. If the doctor was amused by Desmond’s over protectiveness she didn’t show it, merely ushered Penny into the examination room and sat her under a bright light. Juliet probed her palm with tweezers and quickly extracted the piece of wood.
While she disinfected the small hole, she asked, “Has Sawyer come to talk to you yet?”
“No, why?”
“He will and he probably won’t be very nice about it but give him a break.”
“Okay.”
“He was very close with Jack and Kate,” Juliet explained. “Especially Kate.”
“Oh,” Penny said. Suddenly the couple she had only known as Jack and Kate made more sense. There had always been something hanging between them, a distance, sometimes as big as the room, at other points as small as a snail. She thought it had just been the trauma of what they had gone through, and that was probably some of it, but maybe this was the other part.
Did that mean-Ellen? She would have to be the one to tell him about Ellen.
She didn’t look forward to this and was relieved when the afternoon was spent at the old beach camp where she had the pleasure of meeting Hurley. He embraced her like they were old friends and she felt that maybe one day they would be.
“Why’d you wait so long to bring her over?” He teased Desmond. “I’ve been waiting here on pins and needles.”
“Yeah, that must have felt like a lifetime for you, brother.”
Penny left them to discuss the Mikhail situation while she wandered around the beach. She tried to imagine it full of people instead of the handful that were there now. The only sign that a plane had once fallen on this spot was a row of airline windows making up the wall of someone’s abandoned shelter.
She stumbled across a graveyard. Two crosses made from sticks lay placed to one side. Penny wondered if these had been for Jack and Kate and had been hastily removed after the news of their survival travelled via walkie-talkie. In the centre was a marker for Charlie, a wooden cross to which his guitar was tied. She wished she had thought to bring flowers for him.
“Thank you,” she whispered, running her fingers over the instrument’s cracked wood.
Desmond joined her, seemed to say his own prayer then led her into the jungle. They walked for about half hour until they came to a hole in the ground. A hole was the wrong word, it was a crater. All that was missing was the smoking asteroid. She sat on the edge, dangling her legs into the void. Desmond scrambled down the side and poked around the jagged layers of dirt with a stick.
She had no words. What was more remarkable? That he had lived in this hole for three years or that he had survived the explosion which destroyed the hatch?
Her father was many things but she didn’t think he was a sadist. Had this been his way of giving Desmond an opportunity to be something, while simultaneously getting him out of her life for good?
Thinking of her father reminded Penny of her mother. It didn’t matter that they hadn’t been close in years, that the last time they'd spoken, her mother had called her a damn fool (a sentiment she would undoubtedly think was an understatement if she knew where her daughter was now). It was wrong to have now put her in the position she had been in for so many years, left behind alone, a loved one lost at sea.
Her reflection was interrupted by a holler from Desmond. She leaned over the side to see him climb excitedly up the crater. When he was on the surface, he collapsed on the ground beside her and retrieved something from the waistband of his shorts. It was a book or part of a book missing its cover and chunks of its pages.
“I can’t believe this,” he said, showing it to her. “I’ve been down here before and there was nothing!”
She read the visible text on the charred page. “ ‘Her heart-is given him, with all its love and truth. She would joyfully die with him, or, better than that, die for him. She knows he has failings, but she thinks they have grown up through his being like one cast away, for the want of something to trust in, and care for, and think well of. . . .’ This is your book.”
“Pages sixty-three to one hundred and one anyway.”
“Did you ever read it?”
“Almost, once.”
“Only you would have the discipline not to succumb to curiosity, here of all places.”
“It wasn’t discipline. It was fear.”
“And now?”
He tossed the wrecked book aside. “Now, I’m going to wait until I’m old and in a home. Then some beautiful young nurse will read it to me.”
She cupped his cheek and kissed him softly. “Sounds like a plan.”
As they sailed back to the barracks, Hurley caught a big Kokoda and he invited them for dinner. Her mouth watered as he described cooking it with coconut milk and lime. Once they docked, he dashed off to his house to prepare it, insisting they come over soon so Penny could learn how to clean fish. His enthusiasm was infectious so out went the plans for an early night and quiet evening alone. She met him at the fish hut where she held her nose and watched as Hurley casually scooped out the gory contents of the large fish’s stomach, removed the fins and gills, then scaled it, all the while regaling her with stories of his adventures with Des. She decided then and there she liked Hurley very much but would not volunteer to be the island fishmonger.
Later than night, Desmond and Penny strolled back to the Elizabeth, hand in hand, with full stomachs and lazy minds. It reminded her of many such times they had walked home together after a party or show, like they had never stopped doing this. Hurley’s dinner had been lovely and if there were enough moments like these, she thought maybe everything would be okay.
Of course the moment was ruined when Desmond stopped in front of the dock and whispered a warning. “There’s someone on the boat.”
“How do you know?”
“The ladder’s all twisted. Stay here.” He picked up a rock from the water’s edge and crept quietly along the planks.
“Should I go get someone?” she asked but he didn’t answer. With the rock in one hand, he climbed the rope ladder up and disappeared over the side of the boat. She didn’t know what to do. Should she run and get Hurley? Find Sayid?
She jumped when a branch snapped behind her in the brush. She swivelled around to see a black blur, a small animal perhaps, run through the trees. Penny couldn’t help but feel that something could reach out of the ground, the woods or even the water and snatch her away.
Then a lantern was lit on the boat and quiet voices carried across the water. Desmond leaned over the side and waved her over. Apparently whoever the intruder was, he was friendly.
She hurried over and climbed up. There was Sawyer lounging on a chair he had taken from inside, feet up on a duffle bag. He had a knife in one hand and half a pineapple in the other.
“I guess I wasn’t the first welcome wagon.” He pointed with his knife to Ben’s basket of pineapples. He put down the fruit and dug around his bag, coming up with a bottle of wine. “Course I was saving this for a special occasion, but then what’s more special than true love.” He pulled the cork out with his teeth and took a long drink, then held the bottle out to Penny.
She sniffed it before she took a sip. It was some sort of fruit wine, sugary and highly potent, she expected. She gasped as the sweetness trickled down her throat.
“What do you want Sawyer?” Desmond asked. “It’s late.”
“The owl and the pussycat went to sea in a beautiful pea green boat.” Desmond and Penny exchanged blank looks causing Sawyer to shake his head. “I thought you folks were supposed to be literary.”
“I know the poem. What are you talking about?”
“Don’t you think it’s time we took this pleasure craft out for another test run? See if we can’t get off this rock? Maybe she’s your lucky charm.” He jerked his thumb toward Penny.
“That’s not a bad idea, Des.”
“Well, what are we waiting for?”
“You want to leave now? Tonight?”
“I’ve got no reason to stick around. Do you?”
“We’d need supplies and I’d want to make some repairs first.”
Sawyer looked disappointed. “How long will that take?”
“A week, at least, maybe more.”
He thought this over. “Consider me your first mate. I’ll scrounge up whatever you need.”
“Alright.”
Sawyer held out his hand and Desmond shook it. “Alright.” He grabbed the bottle of wine from Penny, took another drink, then gave it back. “Try not to district him too much. He’s got work to do.” He swung his bag over one shoulder and climbed over the side of the boat.
Penny followed him to the ladder. “Sawyer,” she called down and he looked up. “Can I come see you tomorrow morning?”
He studied her and she thought he was going to leave without answering. “Yeah,” he said softly, then disappeared into the night.
“What was that about?”
“Just some business between old friends.”
He cocked his head but didn’t press her for an explanation. He took the bottle from her and drank. “This is awful.
“He must be saving the good stuff.”
He held the bottle up to the light and swirled cloudy liquid. “I think he made this.”
“So, do you think the Elizabeth will point you home this time?”
“I had come to believe that perseverance didn’t mean anything in the face of fate but maybe I missed the point.”
“And that is?”
“That giving up and failing aren’t the same thing.”
“That sounds wise.”
He took another sip of the wine and grimaced. “I’m not wise, just old.”
“Not old, experienced.” She took the bottle from him and set it on the floor, wrapped her arms around his neck. He slid his hands around her waist, then moved lower, pressed her tight against him.
Penny was tired, her back ached from carrying the wood and her palm still throbbed where the splinter had been. Five minutes ago she had been terrified something dreadful was going to happen, and she got the feeling that more often than nought, something dreadful usually did happen here. The little balls of anxiety she had when she first stepped out of the dinghy had since doubled in quantity and size, rolled around inside her like electric marbles. Yet she had experienced versions of these feelings back home, alone, where it had been worse not knowing.
She exhaled a sigh, heavy with longing and acceptance. Everything here was a bit of a paradox.
x x x
A/N: Thanks for indulging this insertion.
Go here to read Part 9: "Every Man is a Piece of the Continent"
Rating: PG 13
Characters: Penny, Desmond, Ben, Sawyer, Juliet
Pairings: Desmond/Penny, implied Jack/Kate, Sawyer/Kate,
Spoilers: Up to Through the Looking Glass
A/N: Once I finished the series, I regretted not having a chapter that showed Penny’s adjustment to life on the island. This should be read alongside the on-island section of part 8. You can read the rest of the story here.
x x x
On her first night on the island, Penny had slept propped up against a tree. She had been half convinced if she fell asleep she would wake up in her hotel room in Fiji so she fought to keep her eyes open. She tried to focus on John’s story but somewhere during his description of an elaborate machine he built to break the glass on the hatch roof she had drifted off, before he even got to the part about Desmond.
She dreamt about horses, hundreds of them thundering across a valley. She stood amongst them in a cloud of dust kicked up by their pounding hooves. She had no fear of being trampled, held her arms out wide. Their tails whipped the tips of her fingers. She awoke with a start at dawn, disorientated and stiff, the beat of running horses still rumbling inside her.
On her second night on the island, Penny did not fight to stay awake. She slipped into a dreamless sleep, lulled by the familiarity of the arms that held her in an unfamiliar bed in an unworldly place. When she awoke rested and knowing exactly where she was, she couldn’t help but smile to herself.
Her smile faded when she saw Desmond’s own expression. He lay on his back staring at the ceiling; one arm flung over head, one hand stroking his beard. He was miles away and didn’t even stir when she rolled over.
She nudged his leg with her knee and ran her hand across his chest. “Des.”
“Hmm.” His pained look disappeared, quickly replaced with softness, but its existence lingered in her mind. “Pen.”
“Morning.”
“Morning.”
“Where were you?”
“Here, with you.” He traced his thumb across her collarbone. “Unbelievably.”
“Indeed.”
She slid her leg across his, wiggled closer. He moved his hand to her hip but she was surprised when instead of drawing her nearer he held her back.
“Last night,” he began. Sadness flooded his face again, finishing his sentence for him.
Her first instinct was jealously. Was this when he told her there was someone else? That was the question she had come close to asking Kate so many times but could never bring herself to voice. She had promised herself, whatever the answer, she would accept it. He didn’t owe her anything. She herself had been married and divorced in the interim. In fact it would be better if he hadn’t been alone.
Was it the pretty young girl with the toddler, Claire? Or Juliet? Or even, god, the man who had been so dismissive of her yesterday, Sawyer?
He seemed to read her mind or her stricken face. “No, no, no,” Desmond said, rolling over so they were face to face. He tucked a piece of hair behind her ear. “It’s just we can’t, last night… we shouldn’t have… How much do you know about this place?”
“But Sun…”
“We can’t take that risk.”
“And there’s no…”
“It’s the first thing they ran out of…”
“I see.” She rolled onto her back, tucked the sheet around her breasts. This was the last conversation she thought they would be having. “That’s very chivalrous of you.” She didn’t mean for it to sound as sarcastic as it did but it stung that the most risky thing she had done in the last twenty-four was to have unprotected sex. Then it hit her, how unprepared she was for being here.
What had been the first words out of his mouth yesterday? “You shouldn’t be here. This place is - it’s all wrong. It shouldn’t be like this.”
It might look pretty but the island dripped with death and darkness. After all, her first introduction had been seeing Desmond, whom she’d always thought had made a better monk than a soldier, close to beating a man to death. Since she never expected this to work, she hadn’t really thought about what she would be giving up or what she would have to face by coming here with no escape route. She imagined this is what he had been dwelling on when she woke.
If anything, the sex was the easiest thing to solve. Well, we’ll just have to get creative, she thought.
“It just means we have to be creative,” he said.
“I always prided myself on being resourceful. And you, who I suppose, has had time to imagine this happening in a hundred different ways, might have some suggestions.”
“Oh, that would be an underestimation,” he agreed, tugging the sheet away from her body.
Well then, she thought, reaching for him. There would be time for her worries later. All she had now was time.
x x x
There appeared to be an unspoken agreement amongst the island inhabitants to leave Penny and Desmond alone for one day, as if this was all they needed, before the Elizabeth was besieged with visitors. It was natural that people were curious about her and the outside world but she couldn’t help feel resentful of their intrusion. She didn’t have answers for most of their questions, be they about their families or who had won the pennant in whatever sport they used to follow. Besides major elections and the war in Iraq, she had been too preoccupied with her search to keep up with current events. And having gone through their own wars and regime changes, no one expressed much interest in these.
All she could offer them was information about the lawsuit against Oceanic led by Sabrina Carlyle and tidbits about Kate and Jack. They seemed grateful, if not entirely optimistic, to know two of their most trusted friends had been trying to figure out how to get back ever since they left. Nobody asked about the baby so she assumed that had been private. It wasn’t her place to share the sad news.
It was strange to meet the people she had read and heard so much about. In some ways they were just like she imagined, individually at least. What surprised her was the overwhelming sense of community projected by the crash survivors. Everyone had grown into a role that played a critical part in keeping things together. Sayid was calm and strong, the one they all looked to for solutions. Claire, not the most obvious of leaders, seemed to be whom everyone circled for encouragement. Then there was Rose and Jin, offering two different types of protection, one soft, the other hard, both equally necessary for survival. It was as if the sum of them was greater than their parts. They needed to be in order to compete with whatever the island threw at them and the hive mentality of the Others.
John had a foot in each group, though she felt he was not entirely claimed by either, nor fully trusted. He seemed to be the island’s representative, come down from Olympus, unable to fully bond with mere mortals because of his burdens and rewards. She had only been here two days, and was already starting to think of the island as a person unto itself.
She observed Desmond had also remained on the periphery, deliberately, she believed because he had been alone for so long; it was more comfortable. Even now he stood off to the side while people gathered around her. It was safer to retreat rather than get attached. His failure with Charlie, she sensed, though he had not spoken of it to her, clung to him over a year later.
And then there was Ben.
He arrived after everyone else had left, when she thought she had Desmond to herself again. It was almost dark and they were was sitting quietly on the deck, sipping vegetable soup from mugs, watching the sun slip beneath the horizon.
He didn’t call out, just cleared his throat several times until they got up and looked over the side of the Elizabeth. He stood on the dock, holding a lantern and a basket.
“Yes?” Desmond asked.
“I thought you would like to know that Mikhail is locked in one of the lab cells.”
“Did you see to that yourself, then?”
“I did.”
“Wonderful.”
“Your people are guarding him.” Ben sat the basket down. “Hello Penelope.”
“Hello.”
“In colonial America, sea captains returning from the Caribbean would place a pineapple outside their front door to announce they were accepting visitors. They were a symbol of hospitality.” He held the lantern over the basket and she could see several pineapples inside.
“Oh. Thank you.”
“Will you come with me tomorrow, both of you, to see Jacob?”
“No,” Desmond responded without hesitation. He took her hand as if he was worried she would accept the offer and leave immediately.
“It’s not me who's asking.”
“Well, you can tell your Jacob, if he wants to see us, he can come here. I’ll leave a pineapple out.”
“That’s not how it works, Desmond.”
“That’s exactly how it will work.”
The lantern’s flame reflected in Ben’s glasses. Then a gust of wind came from the water and snuffed out his light. “That’s your choice.” He walked off without another word, leaving the basket behind.
Desmond wrapped his arms around Penny and kissed the top of her head. “Just another day in paradise.”
x x x
Day four brought splinters, a surprise and Sawyer.
When Penny was young she had played pioneer girl. She would tie her hair in braids, dress up in her mother’s long skirts, bind her doll Diana to her back, and traipse through the woods behind the house. She collected pinecones, reeds and leaves, crushed berries into paste, and scraped sap from trees, her stores for the long winter ahead. She huddled over a circle of stones, stoking the pretend coals that would bake her carefully prepared mud pies. One summer she built a lean-to with her cousin Henrietta and gained her mother’s permission to let them sleep outside. That experiment lasted a few hours before they were tucked inside her cozy bed, drinking hot coco and watching television.
Given that this was the extent of her outdoor experience, she was inadequately prepared for life on the island. And unless the islanders wanted to put on a theatrical revue, South Pacific perhaps, she had no practical skills to offer.
Still, she gamely followed Desmond into the jungle at the crack of dawn to help him collect firewood for the signal fire. He explained there were others things she could do, help on the farm, assist Sun in her soap making or work in the communal kitchen, but neither were ready to be separated. So she piled what he chopped on a tarp, kept her limbs away from the axe, and then helped him drag it all back to shore where they loaded it up onto the boat.
By noon she was sweaty and achy and ready for bed. Of course, that might just be because she had spent all morning watching a shirtless Desmond swing an axe.
Before they left for the beach camp, he insisted she let Juliet take a look at the stubborn splinter stuck deep in her hand. If the doctor was amused by Desmond’s over protectiveness she didn’t show it, merely ushered Penny into the examination room and sat her under a bright light. Juliet probed her palm with tweezers and quickly extracted the piece of wood.
While she disinfected the small hole, she asked, “Has Sawyer come to talk to you yet?”
“No, why?”
“He will and he probably won’t be very nice about it but give him a break.”
“Okay.”
“He was very close with Jack and Kate,” Juliet explained. “Especially Kate.”
“Oh,” Penny said. Suddenly the couple she had only known as Jack and Kate made more sense. There had always been something hanging between them, a distance, sometimes as big as the room, at other points as small as a snail. She thought it had just been the trauma of what they had gone through, and that was probably some of it, but maybe this was the other part.
Did that mean-Ellen? She would have to be the one to tell him about Ellen.
She didn’t look forward to this and was relieved when the afternoon was spent at the old beach camp where she had the pleasure of meeting Hurley. He embraced her like they were old friends and she felt that maybe one day they would be.
“Why’d you wait so long to bring her over?” He teased Desmond. “I’ve been waiting here on pins and needles.”
“Yeah, that must have felt like a lifetime for you, brother.”
Penny left them to discuss the Mikhail situation while she wandered around the beach. She tried to imagine it full of people instead of the handful that were there now. The only sign that a plane had once fallen on this spot was a row of airline windows making up the wall of someone’s abandoned shelter.
She stumbled across a graveyard. Two crosses made from sticks lay placed to one side. Penny wondered if these had been for Jack and Kate and had been hastily removed after the news of their survival travelled via walkie-talkie. In the centre was a marker for Charlie, a wooden cross to which his guitar was tied. She wished she had thought to bring flowers for him.
“Thank you,” she whispered, running her fingers over the instrument’s cracked wood.
Desmond joined her, seemed to say his own prayer then led her into the jungle. They walked for about half hour until they came to a hole in the ground. A hole was the wrong word, it was a crater. All that was missing was the smoking asteroid. She sat on the edge, dangling her legs into the void. Desmond scrambled down the side and poked around the jagged layers of dirt with a stick.
She had no words. What was more remarkable? That he had lived in this hole for three years or that he had survived the explosion which destroyed the hatch?
Her father was many things but she didn’t think he was a sadist. Had this been his way of giving Desmond an opportunity to be something, while simultaneously getting him out of her life for good?
Thinking of her father reminded Penny of her mother. It didn’t matter that they hadn’t been close in years, that the last time they'd spoken, her mother had called her a damn fool (a sentiment she would undoubtedly think was an understatement if she knew where her daughter was now). It was wrong to have now put her in the position she had been in for so many years, left behind alone, a loved one lost at sea.
Her reflection was interrupted by a holler from Desmond. She leaned over the side to see him climb excitedly up the crater. When he was on the surface, he collapsed on the ground beside her and retrieved something from the waistband of his shorts. It was a book or part of a book missing its cover and chunks of its pages.
“I can’t believe this,” he said, showing it to her. “I’ve been down here before and there was nothing!”
She read the visible text on the charred page. “ ‘Her heart-is given him, with all its love and truth. She would joyfully die with him, or, better than that, die for him. She knows he has failings, but she thinks they have grown up through his being like one cast away, for the want of something to trust in, and care for, and think well of. . . .’ This is your book.”
“Pages sixty-three to one hundred and one anyway.”
“Did you ever read it?”
“Almost, once.”
“Only you would have the discipline not to succumb to curiosity, here of all places.”
“It wasn’t discipline. It was fear.”
“And now?”
He tossed the wrecked book aside. “Now, I’m going to wait until I’m old and in a home. Then some beautiful young nurse will read it to me.”
She cupped his cheek and kissed him softly. “Sounds like a plan.”
As they sailed back to the barracks, Hurley caught a big Kokoda and he invited them for dinner. Her mouth watered as he described cooking it with coconut milk and lime. Once they docked, he dashed off to his house to prepare it, insisting they come over soon so Penny could learn how to clean fish. His enthusiasm was infectious so out went the plans for an early night and quiet evening alone. She met him at the fish hut where she held her nose and watched as Hurley casually scooped out the gory contents of the large fish’s stomach, removed the fins and gills, then scaled it, all the while regaling her with stories of his adventures with Des. She decided then and there she liked Hurley very much but would not volunteer to be the island fishmonger.
Later than night, Desmond and Penny strolled back to the Elizabeth, hand in hand, with full stomachs and lazy minds. It reminded her of many such times they had walked home together after a party or show, like they had never stopped doing this. Hurley’s dinner had been lovely and if there were enough moments like these, she thought maybe everything would be okay.
Of course the moment was ruined when Desmond stopped in front of the dock and whispered a warning. “There’s someone on the boat.”
“How do you know?”
“The ladder’s all twisted. Stay here.” He picked up a rock from the water’s edge and crept quietly along the planks.
“Should I go get someone?” she asked but he didn’t answer. With the rock in one hand, he climbed the rope ladder up and disappeared over the side of the boat. She didn’t know what to do. Should she run and get Hurley? Find Sayid?
She jumped when a branch snapped behind her in the brush. She swivelled around to see a black blur, a small animal perhaps, run through the trees. Penny couldn’t help but feel that something could reach out of the ground, the woods or even the water and snatch her away.
Then a lantern was lit on the boat and quiet voices carried across the water. Desmond leaned over the side and waved her over. Apparently whoever the intruder was, he was friendly.
She hurried over and climbed up. There was Sawyer lounging on a chair he had taken from inside, feet up on a duffle bag. He had a knife in one hand and half a pineapple in the other.
“I guess I wasn’t the first welcome wagon.” He pointed with his knife to Ben’s basket of pineapples. He put down the fruit and dug around his bag, coming up with a bottle of wine. “Course I was saving this for a special occasion, but then what’s more special than true love.” He pulled the cork out with his teeth and took a long drink, then held the bottle out to Penny.
She sniffed it before she took a sip. It was some sort of fruit wine, sugary and highly potent, she expected. She gasped as the sweetness trickled down her throat.
“What do you want Sawyer?” Desmond asked. “It’s late.”
“The owl and the pussycat went to sea in a beautiful pea green boat.” Desmond and Penny exchanged blank looks causing Sawyer to shake his head. “I thought you folks were supposed to be literary.”
“I know the poem. What are you talking about?”
“Don’t you think it’s time we took this pleasure craft out for another test run? See if we can’t get off this rock? Maybe she’s your lucky charm.” He jerked his thumb toward Penny.
“That’s not a bad idea, Des.”
“Well, what are we waiting for?”
“You want to leave now? Tonight?”
“I’ve got no reason to stick around. Do you?”
“We’d need supplies and I’d want to make some repairs first.”
Sawyer looked disappointed. “How long will that take?”
“A week, at least, maybe more.”
He thought this over. “Consider me your first mate. I’ll scrounge up whatever you need.”
“Alright.”
Sawyer held out his hand and Desmond shook it. “Alright.” He grabbed the bottle of wine from Penny, took another drink, then gave it back. “Try not to district him too much. He’s got work to do.” He swung his bag over one shoulder and climbed over the side of the boat.
Penny followed him to the ladder. “Sawyer,” she called down and he looked up. “Can I come see you tomorrow morning?”
He studied her and she thought he was going to leave without answering. “Yeah,” he said softly, then disappeared into the night.
“What was that about?”
“Just some business between old friends.”
He cocked his head but didn’t press her for an explanation. He took the bottle from her and drank. “This is awful.
“He must be saving the good stuff.”
He held the bottle up to the light and swirled cloudy liquid. “I think he made this.”
“So, do you think the Elizabeth will point you home this time?”
“I had come to believe that perseverance didn’t mean anything in the face of fate but maybe I missed the point.”
“And that is?”
“That giving up and failing aren’t the same thing.”
“That sounds wise.”
He took another sip of the wine and grimaced. “I’m not wise, just old.”
“Not old, experienced.” She took the bottle from him and set it on the floor, wrapped her arms around his neck. He slid his hands around her waist, then moved lower, pressed her tight against him.
Penny was tired, her back ached from carrying the wood and her palm still throbbed where the splinter had been. Five minutes ago she had been terrified something dreadful was going to happen, and she got the feeling that more often than nought, something dreadful usually did happen here. The little balls of anxiety she had when she first stepped out of the dinghy had since doubled in quantity and size, rolled around inside her like electric marbles. Yet she had experienced versions of these feelings back home, alone, where it had been worse not knowing.
She exhaled a sigh, heavy with longing and acceptance. Everything here was a bit of a paradox.
x x x
A/N: Thanks for indulging this insertion.
Go here to read Part 9: "Every Man is a Piece of the Continent"