Blue Skin of the Sea (14 page)

The guard stared down at him, irritated. “You can go to the Civic Auditorium or the Civil Defense Office.”

Grampa Joe nodded and headed back up the way we’d just come. Keo and I followed him back toward the Jeep. I felt slightly dizzy.
Emergency shelter.
Rows of bodies laid out on the ground, covered with blankets.

Suddenly, Grampa Joe angled off into the tall grass along the river. “Take all day to get a pass,” he muttered, as we snuck through the trees and skirted the barricade.

I started breathing quickly, sucking in uneven gulps of air. I tried to slow down and breathe normally, but couldn’t. I’d never felt that way before, like something awful was going to happen and I was powerless to do anything but keep moving toward it.

The rubble crammed up into the back end of the river was incredible—splintered buildings, boulders, cars, bent and twisted steel beams, dead fish, telephone poles, and cane trash. And a sampan as long as Dad’s, red hull to the sky.

Grampa Joe stopped suddenly, staring into the mud on the other side of the river. Keo and I quickly saw what he was looking at—a red truck, a Toyota like Uncle Raz’s.

“Lots of people drive red trucks,” Grampa Joe said.

Dad would have heard the warnings and made it out of there. But Uncle Raz … Could he have gotten antsy and argued that it was a false alarm? Could he have talked Dad into going back into Waiakea Town?

Men were everywhere, with shovels, axes, crowbars, hoes, and ropes, working in heaps of mud and boards. No guards bothered us once we were inside the barricaded area. They were as confused and overwhelmed as we were.

I stood facing the ocean, the mucky world strangely peaceful. I was looking at the mouth of the river …

The mouth of the
riven

The fish market was gone!
Waiakea Town
was gone!

Not damaged, gone—a whole town, flattened and pushed up into the heel of the river, splintered and shoved inland in pieces.

The mouth of the river and the shapes of the hills in the distance stood like unrecognizable landmarks, ghosts of another century. Steel parking meters were bent flat to the sidewalks. Where buildings had once been, there were only vacant cement pads. The houses, shops, and boats lay farther back, in shattered heaps, with men digging through them. Fish trapped in puddled gutters flopped hopelessly in brown, foot-deep ponds.

“No need to go any farther,” Grampa Joe finally said. “Better we help, and ask questions.”

Nearby, three men were pulling and prying tangled boards apart, trying to get to something beneath them. A woman watched them work, as if in a trance. She stood off to the side with her arms crossed, still as a gravestone.

Grampa Joe went over to help Keo and I followed, picking our way through the mud. Like fools we’d come to Hilo completely unprepared, in all respects. Nails jutted from splintered boards. Chunks of broken glass and other sharp objects suspended within the mud threatened to slice through the thin rubber thongs on our feet. I searched for something solid to step on.
He’s okay.
Dad’s okay. He
bad
to be.

Keo glanced over at me, his face drawn. I’d never seen him look more somber, as if he’d already given in to the worst, and was now turning to me for a final shred of hope. Then he turned away and continued picking his way through the debris.

Off to my left four cars were smashed into each other, bent
and tangled together, like steel seaweed. I didn’t try to figure out what it took to get them that way. Everything I felt in those first few moments came to me in small, manageable scenes. By instinct I moved into a protective matter-of-factness, a way of being that allowed me to accept everything I saw and thought as simply being the way it was. Dad and Uncle Raz were
neither
dead nor alive, they simply were—somewhere. But
where?

Keo and I and Grampa Joe helped the three men dig through the broken boards. After a while, one of the men stopped and looked up “We’re looking for a girl,” he said. “A small girl.”

Grampa Joe winced, and studied the muck around his feet.

We pulled damp boards away and piled them off to the side without speaking. But we had to ask questions. Grampa Joe broke the spell slowly, and thoughtfully. Our need for information was as great as their need for silence.

“Did you have warning?” Grampa Joe finally asked.

“Plenty warning.”

We continued to pull trash from the pile. Then, minutes later, the man went on. “Four hours, about, between the sirens and the waves. Some people never left. Some came back just before the waves hit, thinking it was a false alarm. We’ve had them before.”

Grampa Joe nodded, then said, “We’re looking for two men. They were at the fish market.”

The man shook his head, as if to say, “poor souls.”

We helped them for about fifteen minutes, then drifted away. The little they’d said, though, gave me hope. Dad had had time to think.

But the red truck in the river …

For the next hour we made slow progress through small groups of mud-covered people. Digging. Still finding bodies. As we worked our way back toward the Jeep the three of us broke apart. I felt better alone, as, I suppose, did Keo and
Grampa Joe. In the river I saw three more half-sunken sampans. Whoever owned them should have taken them out and dealt with the waves at sea.

I studied the mud for a safe place to step, pushing slowly down into the muck. I was so worried about getting cut that, at first, I didn’t recognize what I was staring at.

I held my breath. Didn’t move.

Afoot
…

A small, muddy foot.

I stood suspended over it, sluggishly, realization coming slowly. A great, burning ball rose up inside me, a hot wave covering me. My skin rose in the sweat of fear. A small foot. Rising just inches from the mud.

Keo and Grampa Joe had moved on, unaware. It must have been a full minute before I could speak.

“Wait …
waitr

I knelt down into the mud and started to move the rocks and cane trash and splintered wood from around the foot. Once Aunty Pearl had shielded Keo and me from the squashed body of one of the cats that hung around Keo’s house. Now there was no soft voice, no nice way of telling me that the foot belonged to a child, a person younger than me who was dead.

Keo and Grampa Joe hurried back and stood over me. I looked up at them.

“Oh, no … ” Grampa Joe said quietly, kneeling down at my side.

We scooped away the thickening mud, handful by handful. She lay face down with one leg bent back. As if she were as delicate as rice paper, we dug around her, leaving her as she’d fallen. Finally Grampa Joe lifted her and held her, as he would have held a sleeping child. She was a small, thin girl, about seven years old, wearing pajamas.

“Keo,” Grampa Joe said quietly, “go find a policeman.”

I thought of the woman staring into the rubble as the three men had searched it. Was this
her
child? The sight of Grampa Joe holding her made my chest feel shallow, and tight, but I wanted to see her, to see what it was like being dead. A quivering sensation began in my ears.
This is how Dad felt when my mother died.
He would have called to her—
Crissy, come back, come back.
Then he’d have realized that she was gone, and known that they were both alone, he in life and she in death. He would have screamed, silently, way down inside himself, pounding his fists against his chest because he’d know that there was absolutely nothing he could do to change what had happened.

“Sonny,” Grampa Joe said. I must have looked as if I were about to pass out. With a tenderness I’d never heard before, from anyone, he said, “It’s as it should be, boy. The living have no edge over the dead. She doesn’t feel your pain.”

Keo came back with an army guard and two men. One of them was the man who’d been searching for the child. His eyes watered when he saw the girl. He closed them for a moment, then nodded to the guard.

Grampa Joe held the girl until the man was ready to take her. When he did, he thanked Grampa Joe, bowing his head slightly, then carried her away, the other men following silently. Grampa Joe watched them leave, the front of his shirt covered with mud.

The memory of the small foot, the muddy face and caked hair, the closed eyes, began to consume me. I took in steady gulps of air, trying to settle down, but it only made it worse. More than anything else in the world I needed to stand beside Dad, to have him rest his hand on my shoulder, and to ask him why.

My vision blurred as we made our way back through
the deep grass to the Jeep, a stink rising from the scarred earth.

Just before we got to the grove of trees where the Jeep was parked, Keo, who’d gone on ahead, turned back and started jumping up and down. Grampa Joe had been walking next to me with his hand on my shoulder. He stopped. “Thank God.”

Uncle Raz sat alone in the driver’s seat of Uncle Harley’s Jeep, his arms crossed, asleep I ran past Keo and shook him awake. “Where’s Dad?” I said. “Is he okay?”

Uncle Raz jumped, and grabbed the steering wheel. “Sheese! You want me to have a heart attack? What the hell are you
tolas
doing here, anyway?”

“Looking for you,” Keo said.

“You buggers,” he said, sounding angry, but clearly pleased to see us. “Don’t scare me like that. I was going up to the school when I saw the Jeep in the grass. I thought I was going nuts, it was
Harleys
Jeep! Sonny,” he added, looking at me, “your daddy’s okay. Don’t worry.”

“Where is he?”

“Suisan and some people from Tuna Packers wanted to get together with the fishermen. Raymond went while I waited to see who’d show up here. Big problems. No ice to ice fish, the ice plant is gone. And they got to clean out the river so the boats can get back in. At least those that went out in the first place.”

Grampa Joe humphed.

Keo told Uncle Raz that we knew about the wave from the transistor. “No phone, no lights, no nothing. We didn’t know if you were dead or alive, so we came over.”

Uncle Raz got out of the Jeep and put his arms around me and Keo. “Thanks,” he said. “We tried to call, too. When the siren started wailing we went up the hill. Half the people just stayed in their houses waiting for another warning or something.”

“Did you see the wave?” Keo asked.

“No, but we heard it. There was more than one, but the big one came in with a roaring sound, first like hissing, then rushing louder and louder. Then the whole town went black.”

“Where’s your truck?” Grampa Joe said.

“Up by the school. Why?”

Grampa Joe glanced over at me and Keo. “Just wondered.”

For a minute no one spoke.

“Let’s go get Raymond,” Uncle Raz finally said, climbing back in and starting the Jeep before he’d finished the sentence.

He drove us out of the grass in low gear, the Jeep jerking over uneven ground. The sound of the grinding engine soothed me, even the sickly, familiar smell of its exhaust.

My throat burned as I watched Dad walk out of the school toward us.
Dad,
more a part of me than anyone else on earth.

“Hi, son,” he said, as if nothing out of the ordinary had happened. I wanted to hug him, but I didn’t, not in front of everyone.

“We were worried,” I said.

He put his hand on my shoulder and squeezed.

Dad and Uncle Raz said they were going to stay in Hilo for a few more days to help out. Many people were still missing.

Grampa Joe fired up the Jeep I climbed into the seat next to him. Keo wanted to sleep in the back.

The old pockmarked saddle road was still damp, but the rain had passed, and patches of clear sky scattered acres of blue into the mist and low clouds of the high country. Dusk was closing in and the air swirling around us in the Jeep was getting cooler.

Just above Waiki’i, Grampa Joe pulled the Jeep off the road. It was dark by then, and cold. Keo was curled up in the backseat under a blanket.

“Want to drive?” Grampa Joe said. “Plenty dark. No police around here.
No anybody
around here.”

“ … Sure,” I said.

“Get over here then,” Grampa Joe said, hitting me in the arm. “Do you some good.”

My feet barely reached the floorboard when I stepped on the clutch. The steering wheel pulled in my hands, complaining about every crack and stone on the edge of the road. The warmth of the engine spread around my feet, radiating off the metal.

The clouds finally cleared and a zillion stars filled the blackness around me. I squinted over at Grampa Joe when I reached the stop sign at the junction where the saddle road met Mamalahoa. He was asleep, or just sitting there like Uncle Raz had been, with his arms crossed and his eyes closed.

I sat thinking at the stop sign, the engine idling and nothing in sight except the stars and the beams of light in front of me. I was twelve years old, driving my cousin and my grandfather home on the main road in pitch black; I’d seen a dead girl; I’d thought my father was dead. Somehow being behind the wheel felt right, as if I could control something in my life, if only for an hour or so. The soothing vibration of the Jeep pushing through the night, and the open spaces, on all sides and above me, endlessly into the stars, seemed to have the power to lift the weight I felt inside. Maybe that’s why Dad was a fisherman. Maybe that’s why he spent so much time alone.

I drove around Mauna Loa, across the island highlands, and all the way to Grampa Joe’s doorstep before he opened his eyes.

His face was white in the reflected glow of the headlights. He got out slowly, yawning and rubbing the stubble on his jaw, playing the part of an old man. “You okay, Omilu?” he asked.

“I’m okay, Grampa.”

He went into the house and closed the door without looking back.

1 drove down into the thick, black coffee grove as Keo climbed into the front seat, keeping the blanket around him.

Grampa Joe had called me Omilu, a term he used sparingly, and it meant a lot to me to be compared to the
ulua,
a fish that would give any man a tough, two-fisted battle.