The rain was bucketing down on the Fiji coast road from Suva to Nadi.
We had decided to rent a car and drive down to see the capital after a week on Beachcomber Island. The rental was an early Corolla or some such, but in the late ’70s this road really needed something tougher.
On the way back north to Nadi the deluge started, turning the road dust to mud inside and out, and fogging the windshield. (A word to the wise: don’t try to wipe the fog away with a sunscreen-soaked terrycloth sun hat.)
Bouncing and splashing through the mud, we felt something much worse. We had a flat tire.
Well, how bad could it be? I stuck my hand out and it was a lot like the sun-warmed showers in our bure on Beachcomber.
Okay. I struggled into my bathing trunks and got out into the bath. It was actually kinda nice.
On the way to the trunk I saw the value of the 1950s-style frost shields stuck on the back window. It was fog-free in those two attached pieces of clear plastic. Wow. In the tropics. An old tech solution from a cold country.
With the jack and wrench out, I got started. And it was still pissin’ down. I hoped somebody was looking for a towel.
I don’t think I was swearing too much when I realized I had company. Two young Fijian kids were quietly watching and–I hope–not listening. About 10 or 12, I figured, but the Fijian people I’d met were pretty big, so they might have only been eight or nine. I’m remembering their shirts as fairly bright orange and red.
I clearly remember that those shirts looked pressed, like they’d just come out of the package. Starched and neatly folded. I could see the folds. I was in my swim trunks, looking like the proverbial drowned rat, and their shirts looked fresh and most of all dry.
We chatted for a bit while I struggled away in the mud changing the tire. Y’know, like where was I from, do they live nearby… touristy questions and answers.
Finally the job was done and I asked them if we could drive them somewhere. No no, they were okay thanks. So I started putting stuff away in the trunk again.
Going back and forth to the trunk I noticed that the downpour had produced a real gullywasher in the eight-foot deep ditch, eroding the shoulder to within about three feet of the car.
When I looked up to say goodbye, the kids were gone. Just gone. No sign of them anywhere.
I got back in the car as clean as I was when I got out; like I’d just had a shower.
When I told my wife and son about talking to these kids and what their shirts looked like, they asked, “What kids?”
They never saw them.
Oh.
I was working with a Fijian guy at the Vancouver airport back then. When I told him about this adventure, his reply, in all seriousness, was: “Well, they were probably ghosts.”
I still wonder.
