Lucky Birds

Fast Eddie was quite a character. He could charm you out of the contents of your wallet and make you like it. But like many who are a little too smooth for their own good, Fast Eddie never seemed to enjoy the jingle of coins in his pocket for long. This story is not about the misfortunes suffered by Eddie; it is about a story that he told me late one sultry afternoon on Taveuni, the Garden Isle of Fiji. To paraphrase Mark Twain, Taveuni remains the fairest of the fleet of islands anchored in any ocean. Anyone who has visited the island will attest to its tropical charm but none will wax on like a local planter, who is in love with his island.

"We've been blessed," Eddie said pausing for a moment to relight his pipe. "Do you hear that bird?"

"I do," I said. "Is that part of the blessing?"

"It is," he replied neglecting to say anything further about the bird.

I kept silent for bird life on Taveuni was as common as cocnut palms which were prevalent up to at least seven hundred feet where the rigors of altitude began to stall production and planters took steps to have the palms replaced by hardwood growth.

I took a sip of my beer.

We were sitting on the deck of what was then called the Taveuni Travelodge, but which is now part of a dive center.

"Right next door to this very hotel," said Eddie, "Right beside the general store, then stood our one and only hotel. It had four rooms and a lively pub."

As the sun began its perilous plunge into the darkening still waters somewhere it seems right above Rainbow Reef or perhaps even the Great White Wall, world famous for purity and clarity, among divers far and wide and made world famous by Michel Cousteau of the family that gave the world scuba, I took another sip of my beer and gazed westward down the deceptive tranquility of Somosomo Strait.

"In those days, a bit before my time, you understand, a bedraggled sailor washed up on these shores without much baggage save four crates that he dragged up on the beach well above the high water mark."

"Don't tell me," I said. "He went to the pub and drank himself silly." I raised my glass to him. Fast Eddie might tell a slow story but he made it worthwhile for he took his time so that the listener got the feeling that he had actually been there and done that whatever that was.