Mary and MacGyver

1

            It was the strangest thing I had ever seen, with tubes and wires and pieces of string and chewed up bubble gum and scotch tape and other odds and ends.

            “Hey MacGyver, what's all this supposed to be?”  I shouted to my new acquaintance, as I walked up the beach, who was twitching around the other side of the mass.  He was twisting and taping and pushing the pile into something that resembled one of those way old cell phones that had a giant base and a really long antenna.

            “If I can pick up a signal then I should-”

            “Pick up a signal?  You do realize that we are on a deserted island, right?  An island so far from civilization that even if someone sailed for a week they probably wouldn't even come within a year of this island.  How on earth do you expect to get a signal?”

            “Well, I'm going to make a signal booster that should-”

            “Look kid, wait, what's your name?”

            “Perry.”

            I looked at him and let my left eyebrow slowly rise up.  “Yeah, uh, I'm not going to call you that.”

            He looked at me confused.  “Why?”

            I just laughed and shook my head.  “Anyways MacGyver, even if you created your own tower no way anyone is gonna hear you in a million years.  We're way too far out.  Heck, there probably won't be a plane to fly over for another couple months, so I'd say instead of coming up with a plan to get rescued we come up with a plan to survive on this island.  I'll go into the forest to find some building materials; you go to the plane and look for anything salvageable.”

            “And survivors.”

            “What?”

            “Well, shouldn't I look for anyone else who might have survived the crash?”

            “Look MacGyver, the only reason we survived was because we were the only ones who got off the plane before it crashed.  Everyone else was asleep.  And now, sorry to be blunt, but they're all dead.”  I shrugged in a way to convey a 'nothing we can do' look.

            His eyes welled up and he wiped his arm across his face.  He looked like he needed a hug, but that’s not my thing.  I grabbed a machete that I had already grabbed from the plane and headed off into the thick jungle.

            I probably could have used some of the stuff on the outskirts of the jungle and avoid these friggen mosquitoes but that would mean staying out there where I could see the boy.  Poor kid, he's probably only about seventeen or so, which would be only a year younger then myself but I'm pretty mature for eighteen.  I have a house, a job, and a substantial history of tragedies that lead to them.  I unintentionally started to think of all these tragedies.  In the end I had a pile of jungle leaves and wood and vines to use for a shelter and two wet red eyes when the boy stumbled into my area of the jungle.

            He looked startled to see me crying.  “Oh, I'm sorry I didn't mean to interrupt you, I'll um, leave so you can cry by yourself.”

            “I wasn't crying.  And you're not interrupting me, grab that bundle of logs and take it back to the beach.”

            “Okay,” he went to pick up the bundle.  “It's okay though, I mean, all those people dying is definitely something you could cry about-”

            “I wasn't crying about that.  And I wasn't crying!”

            “O-okay,” he said, frightened.  Great.  I'm gonna be spending the next couple months or even years with this kid and he’s scared of me… AND he thinks I'm a baby.  Well, no use crying over spilt milk.  I grabbed all the branches and vines and started off to the beach.

            When I emerged from the beach the boy had a pile of more junk by his first pile of junk and a fire a few feet from them.

            “How on earth did you start a freaking fire?”

            The boy jumped and looked at me.  He took off his large wire rimmed glasses.  “Well, I um, just angled the light from the sun through my glasses and on to some of the wood and, well...”

            “Jeeze, MacGyver.  Good work.”  He beamed, like he had never been paid a complement before in his life. He turned back to his first pile of junk and started messing with it again.  He wore baggy worn out cargo pants and one of those t-shirts with thin horizontal lines that you expect to see in the pictures of kids in old textbooks.  Basically, I could tell his family probably was not very well off.  “So MacGyver, where were you headed on the plane?”

            “Um, there was this young inventor’s conference that I was going to go to.”  His forehead crumpled up, “My whole neighborhood raised money for me to go, and now...” He looked really downcast.  Then he looked over to me where I was setting up the frame for our shelter.  “What's your name?”

            “Mary.”

            He paused. “Mary?”

            “Mhmm?”

            “What were you crying about?”

            Sigh.  “Oh, I've had a lot, I mean a LOT, of bad things happen to me.  I try my best to block them all out but sometimes...” I shrugged the 'nothing I can do' shrug again.  “How old do you think I am?”

            “I, um, uh,” he stuttered.

            “I'm eighteen.”  He looked really surprised.  He must have thought I was much older.  “What about you?”

            “Seventeen.”  I was right.

            “Well MacGyver, let's get to work.  We've got a lot to do and not a lot of time to do it in.  Just kidding.  We've got all the time in the world on this God forsaken island.  But we should get this done before nightfall.”

        

        We spent the next couple of days making the island able to sustain life. We got a lean-to, water collectors, and hordes of fruits and nuts set up. It was a good thing MacGyver was such a brainiac.  He knew the most effective shelter style, how to find drinkable water, and could identify edible foliage. 

        Something we both swiftly realized, was that we are active people. It was one of the few things we had in common. Both of us had to be doing something. Building, hunting, gathering, whatever. After we had the bare minimum set up we didn't take a moment to rest. We set up traps in the small jungle for meat. I knew how to weave baskets, one of the few things my mother passed on to me. I made so many baskets that first month, I swear I got callouses on my fingertips. And they were tight enough to hold water. 

        After our food and water supplies were well taken care of, work began on the shelter. Every morning we would wake up with a fresh set of ant bites from sleeping on the ground. One day while climbing a tree, I realized the mosquito population was much lower at that higher altitude. So, with more than a little hesitation, we decided to build a tree house. Sure it would be a grand endeavour, but it's not like we had a time shortage on our hands.

        Eventually, strung between three great palm trees, about eight to ten feet apart, we formed our new 'house.' It was great. But I couldn't keep myself buisy with it once it was done. And those moment where my brain wasn't occupied with surviving. Those were the moments I dreaded.