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After he had finished building the last hut, a mangled little thing that might not even survive the night, Ralph had dived into the water, wanting to reward himself even just a little.
Feeling the cold water surrounding him, soothing his grimy, sweaty body, Ralph was reminded just a little of that fateful first morning on the island. Before there were fires to worry about, or being proclaimed chief of the island, and even the danger that came with being so hated by the choir boy who could sing C-sharp.
He dipped his head underwater for a moment, pinching his nose and squeezing his eyes shut as tightly as he could, and he stayed like that for a few seconds, listening to the sounds of the sea. Vainly wishing he had goggles, so that he might be able to enjoy the world underneath their little island for much longer, time ran out, and Ralph’s head popped back out as he gasped.
As he regained his breath, he was acutely aware of his once clean, even shiny fair-colored hair, as it now threatened to blind him with how much was currently in his eyes. Using his fingers, which were beginning to get a little webby from being in the ocean, Ralph flicked his soggy hair back and out of his line of sight, as he so often did. Putting his hands back into the water and spreading his limbs out like a starfish, Ralph closed his eyes again, feeling the grime that had accumulated on him from gathering sticks and large creepers for the hut swiftly disappearing.
After a few minutes of allowing himself to aimlessly float around, he recognized that he shouldn’t be away from his duty for this long. After all, they only had three shelters, and the fourth one he had just built did not look like it would survive even the next hour. As he flipped himself upright, he felt his hair flop down onto his head as gravity fulfilled its role once more. Steadily, he began to swing his arms forward, and he settled into a sort of lazy freestyle.
Ralph had learned how to swim from his father after his dad had informed him that not knowing how to stay afloat was more common than it seemed. He had been around five years old, and he vaguely remembered being taken to… some kind of lake that started with a W. Although, if you had asked Ralph to name anything that he had once learned in his textbooks at school about this subject, which seemed like a life that was eons away, he would not have been able to answer you.
He recalled diving into the water with his father, and how after he had been successful in learning how to swim a basic freestyle, his father had rewarded his efforts by splashing him with a wave of water. Ralph had then retaliated with a huge splash of his own, and the two had had a very enjoyable day at the lake.
Presently, as he finally felt the sand smack his fingertips, Ralph clambered back onto dry land, and he felt his feet drag across the sand more than they usually would. As he tucked his hands into the pockets of his navy blue shorts, he let his mind wander, grateful that the sand posed no threat to him, and thus he was free to look at his surroundings instead of constantly judging his every step.
That was something that he especially loathed about the island, among a plethora of other things. They had already been on the island for over a month, and Ralph still had yet to find a thinking spot—somewhere where he could just hide away from the expectations that had been thrust upon him on their first day on the island.
Sometimes, he wondered if he had made the right decision in accepting the role of leader in their little society. So far, it had not exactly proved rewarding. Instead of getting to have fun in the sun all day long, all he had gotten was a bunch of littluns and biguns constantly bothering him with questions that they already knew the answer to.
That, and it seemed that no matter what he did, he would simply never have the gift of articulation that was necessary to being a leader.
He wasn’t like Piggy, who for all his timidness was the most logical and rational of all the boys. He wasn’t even like Jack, who could flip any debate around in his favor with just a few eloquently spoken words. Instead, he was cursed to be in some sort of limbo; always having the rationality of keeping the signal fire burning in the back of his mind, but also letting the group of boys he was supposed to be taking care of run off to go and hunt pigs only a few days ago, all because he had been too scared to call them back with the conch.
Outwardly, Ralph grimaced at his predicament before noticing his foot, which was caked with sand as it always was, had hit something. Looking down, he noticed that there was a decently sized coconut sitting on the shore. Normally, he would have paid no attention to coming across a coconut on the beach.
However, this one was special, for it was not the recognizable brown one usually attributes to the fruit, but it instead had the same curves on its bottom as a bell pepper would. That, and it was a striking shade of green, which Ralph knew meant it was not ripe, and therefore unsafe to eat.
Ralph then crouched down onto the ground, and picked the coconut up, examining it curiously. It was unusually big for its size, leaning more toward the size of a football.
A football…
At that, Ralph had an idea pop into his head. As he continued to twist the fruit around in his hands, he finally confirmed his suspicions, and placed the coconut back on the ground. Almost instantly, Ralph’s right foot gently kicked the coconut a few feet forward, testing its hardness.
After doing this a couple more times, Ralph then began to wind himself up, first backing away a few feet from the coconut, and then running at full speed, kicking the ball with the area of his foot that was between his toes and his heels. He stopped, watching the ball sail about twenty feet across the air, and then landing back on the sand with a loud thump. Ralph tried to stifle his laugh of joy, but he could not stop himself, and he chuckled satisfactorily.
Dashing over to the fruit, he began to do something that he used to do all the time back home in England. He took the ball, and used his instep to balance it on his foot before he began to bounce the ball up and down. He never let it drop to the ground, using either the bridge of his foot, his knees, or less often than the others, his head. The ball continued to stay in the air, and Ralph let a small smile show, thoroughly entertained by his game.
Back at his home, he had been on a football club, and their team was very good. In fact, right before he had had to hop on the train to leave school and head to the airport, due in part to the new policy that had been put out for children at the start of the war, Ralph’s team had won their local championship. He was their team’s striker, and had been responsible for scoring the winning goal. He had been able to juke out the keeper and score a goal in the corner of the net, making it impossible to retaliate against.
He remembered how it felt to have everyone congratulating him as he was tackled by his entire team in a giant circle. Holding that trophy up in the air and being named the star of the game had been one of the proudest days of his life.
In the present, Ralph smiled even wider, his blue eyes shining as brightly as the sunny sky. He had since begun counting the amount of times he balanced the ball using his body, and was already nearing one-hundred bounces. When he uttered that final number, he fell down on the ground, clutching the ball in his hands with a grin that could light up the universe.
He let out a few breaths, his heart beating quicker than normal due to his previous physical activity. Once he had calmed down, he pushed himself back onto his feet, and he ran with his new toy, kicking the ball forward, but soon catching up with it as he felt the sudden urge to tell somebody, anybody, about this connection to normal life.
In his bout of excitement, he had failed to notice that both he and his ball were getting awfully close to the jungle. With one particularly powerful kick, the coconut went sailing into the jungle and landed somewhere between the thick foliage.
Ralph groaned, annoyed with himself for being so reckless. Nonetheless, he cautiously began to walk into the beginning of the path, and noticed that his ball had, of course, ended up near the area where Jack and his group of hunters would have their feasts come nighttime. It was still daytime, so there was obviously no such feast going on at the moment, but he did see that someone else had found his ball.
Jack, who had been tossing Ralph’s coconut in his hands, nonchalantly looked over at Ralph after a full minute of this, as if he had just noticed his presence. Ralph was hesitant to start the conversation, but he knew that if he didn’t say anything, Jack would find some way to embarrass him, as he so often did.
“Hey.” Ralph quietly said. “That was my football. I found it, but I accidentally kicked it into the forest.” Hesitating, he asked as quickly as he could, just wanting to get the sentence out, “Can I please have it back?”
“Have it back?” Jack parroted back to him, acting as if this were the most absurd thing he had ever heard. “You kicked it into my territory, so it’s mine now.” He said with an air of confidence, almost daring the chief to talk back.
Ralph had almost wanted to scoff in disbelief, but he stopped himself from doing so, trying his best to assess the situation. Was Jack still not satisfied after he had completely ruined Ralph’s assembly a few nights ago?
“Listen. I really don’t want to ask again, but I’m going to. I found that ball first, so sucks to your “territory,” but that ball’s mine. Give it back, why don’t you?” Ralph spat, quickly getting fed up with Jack’s shallow attempts to aggravate him.
“Excuse me?” Jack finally got up from his relaxed position of leaning on the nearby tree branch, and his blue eyes sharpened, now filled with a hostile energy. “So just because my territory doesn’t matter to the grand old chief, I should just hand you whatever you want? Fat lot of that.” His fiery red hair swished to and fro as he gesticulated with his hands, still firming gripping the green, unripe coconut throughout.
Ralph could feel himself about to lose his cool, but presently he stayed still, his hands balling into fists as his knuckles turned white. He could hardly get a word out, but he still forced himself to say something in response. “Shut up! I’ve already asked you nicely, but you still won’t listen. Just give me my ball back already!”
“Aww, is little Ralphie angry? Gonna go crying to your mum, you sissy?” Jack teased, beginning to let out an unsettling smile as he stared at Ralph, taking pleasure in how angry a simple piece of fruit was making him.
Finally, Ralph snapped, and he tried to snatch the ball from Jack. He leapt toward the latter, and he stuck his arms straight up in the air, trying to use his nimble hands to get a hold of the coconut. Jack, however, was taller than the former, and he lifted his long, gangly arm into the arm, laughing as he teased Ralph, who was trying desperately to reach it.
“You can’t have it! Finder’s keepers, loser’s weepers!”
Ralph’s hands hopelessly reached for the coconut, as he soon realized that he was never going to be able to snatch it out of Jack’s hands. Unless…
With some quick thinking, Ralph wound up his right foot, and landed a blow right on Jack’s shin. The latter, taken by surprise for a brief moment, loosened his grip on the coconut, and with that, Ralph was able to get a chance to snag it out of the hunter’s grasp.
Holding the coconut in his hand, Ralph couldn’t help but feel proud of himself for coming up with that idea on the spot. Though he usually doubted his quick thinking skills, this moment almost made him feel as proud as he had when he’d outsmarted that keeper in the championship game.
As he continued to relish in his victory, he turned to Jack and simply said, “Thank you,” as if the whole scuffle had been something as unnoteworthy as building a sandcastle, as the littluns so often did.
Jack winced a little, and was tempted to grab his calf, but he did not want to show that Ralph’s strategic kick had actually hurt him. As Ralph began to walk away, already excited to share his newfound treasure with the other boys on the island, Jack’s face burned red with embarrassment, as once again, Ralph had won against him in something.
First, it had been humiliating him in the vote for chief, of which he had been unfairly robbed of simply because stupid Ralph had had to find that stupid shell before he did. Then, Ralph had had the audacity to try and mortify him in front of all his hunters by making it seem like letting the bloody signal fire out was akin to starving to death.
Jack had actually been the one to do something there. He was the one who had gotten everyone meat, and instead of being grateful, all Ralph and his little posse had done was whine and whine and whine about it, like an even more annoying version of the crybaby littluns.
As his cheeks burned a bitter shade of red, Jack couldn’t take it anymore. In a moment of pure unrestraint, Jack dived onto Ralph, sending both boys flying straight into the dirty, forest ground. Snatching the coconut away from Ralph once more, Jack waited until Ralph had gotten himself upright and barely gotten a “What-?” Out before Jack stabbed the coconut with his pocket knife.
Although it did not crack in half on the first attempt like he had hoped it would, he acted as if that were intentional on his part as he stabbed the useless coconut over and over. Jack’s ugly, painted face laughed with an unhinged glee as he watched the premature coconut spill its guts out.
As he watched Ralph’s eyes go wide with shock, he felt a foreign sense of happiness coursing through his veins. This strange emotion was different from what usually made Jack feel happy, as his heart suddenly began to beat faster than it ever had when hunting.
Seeing Ralph’s ears burn red with embarrassment at having been bested by Jack made Jack’s cheeks burn a very different shade of red. One not of embarrassment, but of some other emotion he hardly bothered to ponder on.
“Ha! Not so clever now, huh, Chief?” Jack spat out that last word with the same kind of excitement he had had earlier when he lifted the coconut high up into the air, enjoying the way Ralph had shrunken underneath him. Getting up from his straddled position on top of Ralph from the ground, he dashed away into the forest, still cackling a bit as he eagerly looked for his group of hunters, of which he could not wait to reenact the event with.
Ralph’s eyes threatened to fill up with tears, but he willed them to go away by squeezing his eyes tighter than he ever had before. Feeling nothing but pure misery at having his new discovery taken, and then promptly destroyed by the leader of the hunters, Ralph trudged back to the beach, and settled on beginning to rebuild his measly hut from earlier all on his own, which had fallen apart in the time his ball had been found, stolen, and then broken. Ralph didn’t think of football again while on the island.