Captain’s Log, Day 4:

Whether due to attrition of funds or intolerance of the swarming mosquitoes and sandflies, my original group has petitioned some locals and made it off the island. Will they reach the shore? No one can be certain in this feral-dog eat feral-dog world. Speaking of, there are more than the usual number of dogs out here, fighting with each other and begging for food. Far more. I wonder why that is.

I had originally planned to leave today as well, but found myself charmed into staying at least one more day. Not from the nightly howling, growling, and whimpering every night, but by another set of travelers and an old friend. This new tribe and I vibe even better than the last one, and we spend hours sharing stories of our lives around the game table. I am the clan chief of gaming. Though many challengers have risen, all have failed; no one can unseat me from my throne.

Matt scratches again. This mosquito bite is incredibly irritating. More accurately, the constellation of six bites that have cropped up on his ankle overnight. He found the hole in the mosquito net this morning, a window into his bug-free sleep-pyramid, and patched it with a square of duct tape. But it won’t benefit anyone but the next guy; Matt’s leaving today.

The warm sand gives way beneath his feet more easily now than it has in the past few days. Wearing his backpack makes the sinking steps heavier than usual. He’s decided to walk up the beach a tad bit further to find someplace with WiFi to relax for a bit before his 3pm boat departs. He’s still not wearing a shirt.

And suddenly it’s an hour later and he’s scoping out a room for tonight at the Elephant Guesthouse. Huh? Elephant Guesthouse is further up the beach than he’s stayed thus far, away from the noise of partying and construction, but that’s not why Matt has chosen it.

Matt had bumped into a sharp-chinned, big-haired young man named Sam, a twenty-five-year-old Frenchman and they’d hit it off. Both of them love movies and appreciate the comedy and pathos in Groundhog Day. Both of them understand the appeals of video games such as World of Warcraft and Counterstrike. Further, Sam’s confident and roguish manner naturally pulls in passing island travelers. Which is exactly what he’s supposed to be doing.

Sam’s staying on the island for a few weeks and has struck a deal with the hostel: if he can be at the docks when the new boatloads of backpackers come in and with his convincing fill the rooms of Elephant Guesthouse, his own room and meals are free. It’s a task at which he’s been successful, but every day there are always rooms opening up as travelers leave.

“Hey guy, I need to go down and work on the three o’clock boat. I’ll be back, but just tell the girl downstairs I said you can have the six-dollar rate.” Sam winks behind his narrow, rimless glasses. He gives a hand clasp and half-hug goodbye, and he and his curls are bouncing down the stairs and up the beachfront.

All the hostels on Koh Rong are set literally on the beach and this one is no different. It’s mid-afternoon, so the second-story balcony is deserted; Matt can see most everyone just outside, enjoying the weather. Not him, he’s more interested in sinking into one of these comfy chairs, looking out over the seemingly endless water, staying in the shade, and finally get down to some writing. He hasn’t written a thing in days!

The clatter of fingers over keyboard is heard only briefly before another sound pulls Matt out of his reverie. A throaty, almost-musical voice. A familiar voice.

“Ran?!” the would-be blogger calls out around the corner.

The Israeli from Kampot peeks his head around the unpainted bamboo corner and his face splits in a grin. “Matt! I knew I would see you again!” Light stubble spills from the otherwise neat edges of his short beard. This is only his second day on Koh Rong.

In the late afternoon, the hostel foyer fills up with new faces. Ran lounges on a cushioned bowl seat to one side of Matt, and Sam sits across the table from them, a chessboard between them. He’s frowning at the checkered board, but takes every opportunity for distraction and to pick up conversation with those sitting around him.

“What’s that green piece?” Cristian asks, having been silent while watching the game for a minute or two. He’s a stocky Chilean, though his neatly trimmed sideburns, brought to a point, and stud earrings leave him more beautiful than handsome. His arms are coated with the tattoos of full sleeves, one of which Matt is excited to see is a koi fish.

“The green pawn is my bishop,” Sam tells him (somehow he’d found a green plastic pawn the correct size for his travel chessboard), “And the two crumpled pieces of paper are pawns.”

They had been losing pieces from the set at an alarming rate. Every night they scoop them all up, but every morning they find another one missing.

Matt had loped off in search of something else to use, something that might not be mistaken for garbage, but all he could find was a spare knob of wood from one of the stacks of two-by-fours. He’d picked it up without any of the workers noticing, not like they’d have cared. It’s about half as big as his index finger, but he figured it could be whittled down to look more like a chess piece.

After a few moves and more staring at the pieces, original and replacement, Sam forfeits. They shake hands and he moves over for more room to roll a joint on the wicker tables.

“You wanna play?” Matt asks the Chilean.

The well-groomed traveler shakes his head. “Nah, I’m terrible at chess.” His English is impeccable. “But Sam told me you were looking for stories?”

“Oh, yeah!” Matt shifts his weight in the bowl seat, “I’m collecting stories of other travelers to maybe write them down someday.” He’d heard from Sam that Cristian had a solid tale to tell, no promises, though.

“That’s good, brother, I’ll tell you my favorite. It’s from the first time I was hitchhiking.” Backpackers love telling stories, and with the sky turning from orange to a deep purple behind him, Cristian starts in.

* * *

From start to finish Cristian’s trip will only be three weeks, but from the outset, it’s only loosely planned. He’s from Santiago and looking to hike down to the southern end of his country during the summer of 2010 (which in his hemisphere is December to March). ‘Hike’ being the appropriate word, because he’s pretty much just got a tent and some clothes on him. He’s never hitchhiked before, but has heard and read some promising things.

His sources had ended up bearing out when he was picked up almost immediately after getting to the freeway by a big tractor trailer. It was filled with boxes and boxes of chilled and stinky fish. Cristian had almost refused the offer for the ride until he discovered the band of fifteen similar-minded travelers nestled behind the reeking stacks.

That’s where he finds himself now, passing three rafas of wine around. Each rafa is a five-liter glass jug with a small loop on the side for hooking over your thumb and resting the entire thing on your forearm. Between swigs that require the shifting of a whole arm just to tilt the damned thing, Cristian and the backpackers hold an impromptu jam session.

“How many of you play guitars?!” he asks incredulously after a hasty gulp of blood-red wine. And then another at their waving. He’s got catching up to do.

“Pretty much all of us,” one of the men says from atop a particularly precarious stack of boxes. “But we don’t have enough to go around!”

“Ah, well, when there’s a turn, I’d love a try!” In the meantime Cristian can sing, because unlike some of the others, he can’t play the spoons or plates. He can drink with the best of them, though!

It’s nine at night, a full twelve hours from his pickup, when they get to the islands of Chiloe. Not a one of them has gotten off the fish truck to go anywhere else. Even the driver is going to Chiloe! Their excitement of arrival turns to dread when they finally get off in the main plaza to find the rain coming down in sheets.

“Hey! Hey! Everybody!” the high-stacked sitter organizes everyone under an awning in the sheeting rain. “We looked and we can’t find anywhere to stay.” It’s true. After an hour of reconnaissance the group of fifteen can find nothing. It’s ‘pig season’ as the locals call it, a time when Northern tourists are out in force, booking up everything available accommodation. “The rain’s starting to let up. When it’s done, we’ll fan out and look for a camp site.”

“Spare a cig?” a sixteenth and unfamiliar voice pipes up.

The group rounds on the homeless man who has sidled up to their huddle on the side of the town’s central plaza. Someone finds him a spare cigarette.

He accepts it smoothly. “You got a light too?” A small flame sparks into existence at eye-level and he smiles his thanks while he pulls a drag like he’s gasping for air. “You’re looking for a camp?” At their nodding he nods as well, pausing to take another puff and then exhale before continuing. “Over that way,” he points, “there’s a cemetery. Just before it, a bit after the hill, you can camp and no one will bother you. Ain’t no roads, no lights, no nothing but open fields.”

* * *

“You just…camped where some homeless guy told you to?” Matt asks.

“Yeah, he knew the best place!” Cristian confirms.

“Even in the rain?” Matt’s not the biggest fan of raw nature. Wet, raw nature is even worse.

“For certain! The word got out, to the other travelers, and we had a camp of fifty, then over a hundred. We threw in some money into a hat–it’s called ‘hacer una vaca’ in Spanish, which means ‘to make a cow’, but it really just means throwing some money into a hat for food. And wine. We got ten more rafas and enough chips for everyone. You call them chips, right? Not crisps?”

“Yeah, chips.” Only crazy Brits call potato chips ‘crisps’.

“It was a great time. During the day we enjoyed the scenery, because though that cemetery was next to us, all around was a forest and the view below. The view! Brother, it was a paradise! And at night we built three huge bonfires, each one with a different kind of music.” Cristian sets three imaginary pyres in front of him.

Matt fiddles with his small rectangle of wood from earlier today. It would make a handful of matches at best. “Still not enough guitars?”

The Chilean chuckles. “No, never enough guitars.”

There never are. Even here in a remote corner of the world, there’s always someone with a guitar strumming to the waves and somebody else coming up to ask for a turn.

“We ran out of firewood pretty quickly, yeah? For the bonfires and torches? So in the evenings we started going into a bar down in the town. You’ll love this, hey. They had a bar where all the beer’s free after six or something–completely free,” he confirms at Matt’s surprise, “but after the first person to take a piss, it goes up to full price. When that first person comes out of the bathroom, trying to sneak out, everyone shouts and dumps their beer on them.”

Matt nods, but a bit distracted now. There’s only so much he can listen to someone else partying. “And then?”

* * *

It’s been a week since the impromptu tent-city popped into existence for a few days and then disappeared from the forested island. The only trace of the days-long revelry is the three deeply charred circles in a field. Two days ago the core group of the fish truck band completely split up and went their separate ways. Before then, however, their days had seen them finding a rest stop with its blessed showers and sleeping under tables in a primary school cafeteria. And seriously, those showers.

Now Cristian is away from the band, sitting in a station wagon with a group of local men. They drink from a case of beer while their phones ring intermittently. All go unanswered. Once a year, without warning, these men run away from their wives for the weekend, zero contact with anyone else from back home. This year they’re heading for a local seafood festival. It’s not on Cristian’s way home, but he goes along for the ride anyway.

They tumble out of the car and in the parking lot and head off their own way. Cristian smiles and watches them, laughing and competing on how many missed calls they have already. He ducks into the maze of tents and picks up a bowl of mixed seafood soup. Spicy, tangy, with heavy chunks of fish and prawns? Amazing! He shakes his head, he never would’ve found this festival without them.

“Where’d you find that?” a big guy walking by asks in a gringo accent.

“That stall, right over there,” Cristian points.

A few minutes and several hundred pesos later (the Chilean currency is incredibly devalued) the big man is sitting with him, slurping his thanks for the tip-off on the delicious meal. He asks Cristian of his story thus far.

The hitchhiker’s eyes light up and teeth flash as he relates the story of the fish truck, the cemetery, the cafeteria. And now the runaway husbands. “I’m going up north to Santiago. This is a bit out of my way, but worth it.” He lifts the now-empty bowl as proof.

The man nods, his face still close to his own too-fast emptying bowl. “You need a lift then? I can’t take you all the way, but I can get you as far as an afternoon of driving will go.”

Twenty minutes later, Cristian’s in the big man’s car, looking over at him as he backs out of the parking lot. “You want me to throw in some money or anything for the ride?” It’s polite to offer.

“Nope, it’s fine, I’m going this way anyway. But you think you could pass me my glasses? They’re in the glovebox.”

When Cristian opens the compartment to get them, however, a handgun falls out, slipping to the floor with a heavy thud. He freezes, then starts scrambling to grab the door handle. “Why do you have a gun?!”

“Relax, relax,” the man says. “Keep looking inside. I’m an FBI agent.” He waits for Cristian to rummage inside to find the man’s badge and read it a few times over. “Now, can I please have my glasses? And you think you could put the gun away?”

* * *

Matt listens to the story while whittling slivers off his block of wood. At the mention of the gun, he snaps to attention. It’s been six years since the night he had a gun pointed at him, but even thinking about it gets his heart racing again.

But this isn’t his story, this is Cristian’s. “So what happened next? With this FBI guy?”

Cristian laughs, throwing his head back. His earrings catch the light of one of the hostel’s lamps and he leans forward again to brush the whole encounter off. “He drove me for a bit, paid for my dinner and drinks to apologize for scaring me like that. And we shared stories for a while.” This is the boring part. This is the part that happens all the time when hitchhiking. It’s practically what’s happening right now!

“Hey, what piece are you making?” Ran nudges Matt.

Matt looks down. All he’s managed to make is… a pointed block. “It’s a bishop.”

Ran frowns. “No, it looks more like a pawn.” He tilts his head. “Maybe.”

“Yeah, but more like a…pointed block,” Sam adds, smirking.

“Alright, why don’t you try something?” Matt foists the malformed wood and borrowed knife over to the Israeli.

Ran raises his eyebrows and slowly licks half his mustache. “Okay.” He takes the supplies and hunches over, setting to work.

Matt watches him for a second then turns back to Cristian, who’s been watching with the crooked smile and half-open mouth of someone waiting to continue with what he was saying.

At a gesture, the South American starts back up. “Two weeks later, I’ve been partying with my friends and missing my bed. And I’m wandering the town we’re in–they came a few hours out of Santiago to vacation with me for a week–and I’m thinking ‘Should I go home?’. I’m not sure, but as I’m thinking, these kids run down the street. They have that powdered paint stuff, the red and yellow and blue ones for that Indian holiday or whatever–”

“Holi,” Matt chimes in.

“Right, Holi. And they have that paint and chuck it at me. I’m covered in this shit and I had just showered. ‘That’s it’, I thought, ‘I’m done.’ And I drove home that night.

* * *

Cristian jolts awake at 3am. He’d gone to bed a few hours ago after the drive home. Why is he awake–? There’s a deep rumbling coming from everywhere, the pots and pans and silverware in his kitchen are rattling. Everything’s rattling! Books tumble from their shelves and bookshelves not nailed to the wall fall over and dump the rest of the contents on the floor. Cristian staggers out of bed, tripping over the mess and himself, unable to get his feet under him.

He throws himself at the wall and feels it shudder. He grabs at the fluttering blinds and yanking them aside can see a part of the Santiago skyline dancing. Dancing? The buildings are rippling like seaweed in the current! Powerlines bounce and tangle in each other, already portions of the city are dark. Cristian huddles in a corner as the earthquake makes his city moan.

And then it ends. He peeks out again and sees his three friends, the ones he’d bid a hasty goodbye to just last night, sitting out in the driveway, clutching their shirts to themselves. He races outside.

“Are you okay? Are you hurt?” Cristian babbles his conflicting questions.

“We’re…okay,” the only girl of the group says in a trembling voice.

They sit and comfort each other for a time. They’d stayed a bit longer than Cristian had, but figured with him gone, they might as well come home early, too. They didn’t know it yet, but they’d left just in time. Even an hour later and they would have gotten stuck in immense traffic from the earthquake’s destruction–a magnitude 8.8 earthquake that Cristian would later learn was centered just off the coast of the Southern half of Chile. Right where he’d been traveling the past few weeks!

They calm each other down, listening to the sirens and barking and sounds of the city getting its bearings. It’s a measure of how shaken up they are that it’s not until twenty minutes of sitting in the driveway that anyone mentions that maybe Cristian should go back inside and put on something besides his underwear.

* * *

“My friends were okay. Where they were, outside in the driveway, there was nothing to fall on them. But they saw the chaos all around.”

“They were pretty lucky–” Matt starts.

“Aha!” Ran announces triumphantly. He wheels his arm up and wide, resting the completed chess piece on the table at the center of the group with a small flourish.

“Pffft, all you did was put in that notch.” Matt sulks.

Sam nods, but not in agreement. “This is good. You need the notch for the bishop.”

Ran beams. “I just put a little notch.” He pinches his fingers together. “Just the touch of a bishop.” His pride turns to confusion when the guys burst out laughing around him. “What? What is so funny?”

“The touch of a bishop?” Matt tries. Surely the scandals of the Catholic Church have made their way to the Middle East.

For a second Ran still looks confused then clicks his tongue and chuckles with them. “Ah, the touch of a bishop! Your language,” he shakes a finger, “English is so funny!”

They laugh until Matt gets serious. “Who wants to play another game of chess?”

“I’ll play again,” Sam volunteers, not wanting to do much else besides drink, smoke, and relax on the island. The hostel’s full, he’s set for tonight. “You line up the pieces, I’ll get us beers.”

Deal.

Just a touch of the bishop

Hey, it’s a beach