Read Blue Skin of the Sea Online
Authors: Graham Salisbury
Blue Skin of the Sea
ALSO AVAILABLE FROM
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ALSO BY
GRAHAM SALISBURY
UNDER THE BLOOD-RED SUN
EYES OF THE EMPEROR
HOUSE OF THE RED FISH
LORD OF THE DEEP
SHARK BAIT
For Robyn, Sandi, Miles, Ashley, Melanie,
Alex, and Keenan. And, of course, Anno,
Pato, Carol, Rex, and Loriann.
“When you cannot find peace in yourself it
is useless to look for it elsewhere.”
La Rochefoucauld
Many thanks to my good friends and
mentors: William Melvin Kelley, Diane
Lefer, Pamela Painter, Gladys Swan,
Wendy Lamb, Emilie Jacobson, and
Marian Biscay, with a special note of
gratitude to Alex Haley, whose extraor
dinary book, Roots, transformed me into a
voracious lifetime reader.
A noon-high Hawaiian sun poured over the jungled flanks of the Big Island, spreading down into the village of Kailua-Kona and the blistering metal bed of Uncle Harley’s fish truck. Keo and I sat across from each other on black rubber inner tubes that Uncle Harley, Keo’s father, had gotten for us at the Chevron station in Holualoa. It was so hot you could lick your finger and make wet lines on the tubes, then watch them disappear in a matter of seconds.
I’d wanted to stay up at the house with Aunty Pearl, where it was cooler, and shoot cardboard boxes with Keo’s new BB gun. But Keo wanted to go down to the harbor with Uncle Harley and go swimming. “And if you don’t come with me,” he said, “HI
never
let you shoot the BBgun.”
Uncle Harley pulled up under a grove of palm trees at the far end of the village, where the pier was. Before the truck had even stopped, Keo leaped out and raced through the trees to the small, sandy cove on the back side
of the pier. He ran into the ocean until he fell, then swam out to deep water.
I threw the tubes out of the truck and ran down behind him, but held back when the water reached my waist.
Uncle Harley backed the truck out of the trees and started to drive out onto the pier. Then he stopped, and yelled. “Hey! You boys stay in the shallow part.” But Keo had gone under. The glassy water barely rippled where he had been.
“Sonny,” Uncle Harley said, scowling down at me. “Tell him to stay in the shallow part.” He shook his head and drove away.
I stared at the spot where I’d last seen Keo, waiting for him to surface. The wide rock and concrete pier stretched off to my left, then elbowed out toward open sea, just past a small boat landing on the cove side. Dad’s small skiff dozed at its mooring a short distance out.
Keo finally popped up far from where he’d gone under. “Come on,” he yelled. “It’s fun out here.” When I didn’t move he made chicken sounds, yelling
“buk-buk-bu-gock!”
and pretending to flap a pair of wings.
He knew I was afraid of deep water. At seven, Keo was fearless. Dad was like that, too, and I wanted to be like them so much my head hurt just thinking about it. It just came to them naturally, like breathing. I was chicken, just like Keo said. But why? I tried and tried and tried. I was six, only a year younger than Keo, and I still couldn’t swim.
“Kay
-o,
Kay
-o what do you
say
-o,” I yelled back. Uncle Raz sometimes said that, and Keo didn’t like it.
I waded out to shoulder depth and copied the way Keo swam, like a dog, only I stayed close to the beach in water just shallow enough to kick the bottom with one foot whenever I started to sink.
Keo swam in to shore and ran up to get the tubes, his
glistening back several shades darker than mine, because his mother, Aunty Pearl, had Hawaiian blood. I was Portuguese-French.
Keo brought both tubes back and ringed one out to me. I dropped it over my head and hooked my arms over an inner curve, then followed Keo out into the cove toward the small boat landing. With the tubes we were equals, and for the moment I splashed along beside him, forgetting Uncle Harley’s warning to stay in the shallows.
“Hey.” Keo pointed to the opening between the pier and the end of the breakwater.
Dad’s small, blue and orange sampan disappeared on the far side of the pier. Its old diesel engine
tok-tok-tok-tokked
slowly into the harbor, sounding slightly muffled when it slipped from view.
My heart thumped against the tube. Even then, six years into my life, Dad was still a mystery, a quiet shadowy man. I saw him every afternoon when the boats came in, but I didn’t really know him. I didn’t even
live
with him because my mother had died when I was a baby. I lived with Keo and his parents, my Aunty Pearl and Uncle Harley.
I started back to shore to go out on the pier, following Keo. Why had Dad come in so early? I stopped kicking and let the tube drift. If Dad had seen us in the deep part, I’d be in for it.
“Wait,” I said.
“What?”
“Let’s go catch crabs on the rocks.”
“What for? Let’s go to the boat.”
“Naah, more fun to catch crabs.”
Keo scowled at me, but he turned and kicked over toward the rocks anyway.
A half hour later Dad buzzed into the cove in his skiff, his sampan cleaned and moored in the bay. He shut the engine
down and let the skiff glide in to the beach, tilting the outboard up so the propeller wouldn’t scrape the sand.
Keo slogged through the shallows and caught the bow. “Take us for a ride, Uncle Raymond/’
“Not today, Keo. Sonny and I have something to do.”
Dad smiled at me. “We’re going swimming.”
Out of the corner of my eye, I saw Keo look over at me, but I pretended not to notice.
“But Uncle Raymond,” Keo said. “Sonny can’t swim. He’s
chicken”
I glanced up at Dad, then looked away when our eyes met.
“There was a time, Keo, when you were chicken, too,” Dad said. His words were sharp, like fishhooks. “Go play by yourself for a while—we’ll be back in an hour or so.”
Keo stared at Dad, his mouth slightly open. Neither of us had ever heard Dad sound so angry. It took a lot to get him upset.
