Free A Dolphins Dream by Carlos Eyles Page A

they really did.”
    Mariah nodded but did not comment, choosing instead to gaze at the chickens that pecked at ground near their feet. Bala worked silently in the kitchen, grinding roots into mash and squeezing it into milk while Adi stoked the fire.
    Mariah smoked her cigarette and Compton absently became aware of his breaths.
    “Do you live in the city?” asked Mariah, briefly startling Compton.  
    “Well, I moved around. Mostly I lived in the suburbs of a city.”
    Mariah drew deep inhales and exhaled slowly, watching the smoke curl to the ceiling.
    “I’ve been to the city. I stayed in Suva with my daughter, Corin. Have you been to Suva?’
    “No, I came straight from Nadi.”
    “They always lookin’ at their watches in Suva. My daughter and her husband, they always late for somewhere. Rushin’ about. That is no life. That is the poorest way a man can live. I don’ understand why young people go to the city when everythin’ is here.”
    Compton nodded in agreement, played it safe. “It is very quiet here, very peaceful.”
    “They want their own things. They want money.”
    Compton grew bold. “There’s nothing wrong with money. In America, you have to have it just to get by, lots of it.”
    She looked and blinked with those deep brown eyes revealing things unknown to him and he wondered why he undertook to speak at all to such wisdom.
    “Here we don’ need money, not much. We need rain. The rain don’ make us look at our watches, eh. When it comes, it comes. The rain is not in a hurry.”
      Mariah smoked the newspaper down to a nub and let it drop on the coral floor. She blew out the last of the smoke. “It was better at the beach,” she said to the smoke.
    Compton, fearful of another inane comment on his part, waited for her to continue but she watched the smoke wind its way into the light of the window and disappear. Eventually he could not contain himself in the deafening silence. “Do you like being so far away from other people?”
    “It was lonely with a family. My husband was out and about and the children was gone. I got chickens to keep me company. When my husband died, Esther went to Suva and found Moses and brought him home. It’s not lonely when you have a family. You have a family?”
    “My mother and father are divorced. I have a son but I don’t see him much.” Compton turned away from her insightful eyes and looked at the coral floor, feeling the pain of his loss etching its way across his face. Mariah did not reply and he reluctantly continued almost in a whisper. “He lives with his mother. My wife, well ex-wife. We’re divorced.’’
    “I’m happy for my children. Moses’ a good man. He doesn’t work the garden like he should, he fishes, spends his money on the fuel. It’s a foolish waste, eh. But he loves the sea. He knows it well. It is a love, eh. What can you do? It’s a better life than the city. The city make him sick. He come back with very thin eyes. The cities make people sick.”
    “You have everything you need here,” said Compton filled with false courage, “food, shelter, your health. It looks like Moses takes pretty good care of you.”
    “Oh, that Moses, he makes me laugh. He makes Esther frown. Once she give him a hundred dollars that she save from her job to buy the farm a few things for Christmas. He was gone for tree days, drunk and runnin’ about with woman. Nobody give him money after that. He no differen’ then all Fiji men. They no good with easy money. They jes’ spend it on grog and end up fightin’. They don’t need money. They family always have a house for ‘em and there is fruit on the trees and fish in the sea.”
    Mariah stared in silence at the chickens for such a length of time that Compton began to shift in his seat, which caused her to turn to him and ask, “What is marijuana? Do you smoke it?”
    Compton was unprepared for the question that appeared out of, well, the smoke-filled haze. Clearly she was looking for