Blue Skin of the Sea (20 page)

One morning Keo and I took Dad’s skiff two miles offshore and closed the engine down. We both wanted to know what it was like to swim in silence over a hundred fathoms of water, with nothing but our bodies and one small boat to count on.

I swam around the skiff, never more than a few yards away. The ocean was deep, deep blue, and flat. But it wasn’t the peaceful place I thought it would be. It snapped and clicked, eerie staticlike sounds rising from a billion living things below.

The ocean itself, its endlessness and its strength, was warm and comforting, but thoughts of what lurked beneath my feet were like flies that wouldn’t be batted away. After years on the water there was still something that made me fear and doubt the ocean as if its one goal was to pull me down and swallow me. And there were those thoughts, or dream-memories—
Calm down, now
…
it was nothing
…

I headed back to the skiff and pulled myself aboard.

Keo swam out toward the horizon until he was nothing but a black speck. He turned and waved for me to follow him. I waved back and pointed into the boat, as if there were something important there I had to do.

Keo kept on waving. Nothing about swimming out there bothered him in the least. But I felt as if it would suck me down into its lightless depths, into the hungry mouths of gigantic sharks. I lay in the cradle of the skiff with my hands behind my head and feet up on the stern seat.

“What’s the matter,” Keo said, pulling himself over the side of the skiff. “It’s wild out there, spooky. You can see only the top half of the island. Why didn’t you come out?”

“I got a cramp,” I said, rubbing my leg. “I had to get back in the boat and work it out.”

“Shee,” Keo said. “You lie like a fish in a frying pan.”

“Okay, I just didn’t like the feel of it. Could be sharks out here.” I thought about telling him about my dreams, but didn’t. It would only give him more reason to laugh at me.

I moved to the stern and pumped some gas into the outboard, then pulled the cord and got it going. White smoke blossomed out of the bubbling water, smelling sweet and sickening at the same time.

“Could be,” he said, yelling over the sudden noise of the engine. “And could be sharks in by shore, too.”

He turned his back to me, not seeming disgusted, but as if he were feeling sorry for me. Somehow things were changing between us. Maybe it was because of Cheryl Otani and the way Keo was so absorbed by her. She didn’t let him get away with very much. But Keo never complained. In fact, he seemed to like how she kept her eye on him. She would have driven me crazy.

But maybe it wasn’t because of her at all.

∗    ∗    ∗

A week later Keo got his driver’s license and came down to my house to take me for a ride to the pier in Uncle Harley’s Jeep. I had my permit and was itching to get behind the wheel myself, but he wouldn’t stop and switch places no matter how much I begged. I glared off into the trees. He’d better let me drive on the way back.

When we got down past Emma’s Store people were crowded all along the seawall, from the palace to the pier, looking down into the water. Keo drove along the road behind them and parked by the banyan tree in front of Taneguchi’s. We ran over and squeezed into the crowd.

“Look at
that]”
Keo whispered.

An enormous tiger shark loomed just inches below the surface, circling around the bay, first passing below us, then meandering over to the pier on the right, then out toward the nearest mooring, and back in again. It moved slowly, tail wafting lazily from side to side like a palm in a morning breeze.

I’d never seen a shark in the bay before, and had never in my life seen one as big as this—more than half the length of Dad’s sampan. The sun spread flickering silver dollars of light over its gray skin as it glided by a second time.

I whispered to Keo, “I wonder what brought him in here.”

“Someone must have dumped a lot offish guts.” Keo rubbed the side of his arm, as if he were cold, and kept his eye on the shark.

“Maybe it’s sick.”

The shark swam by the pier one last time, its dorsal silently cutting the water. It angled out toward the moorings and disappeared under the thin blue skin of the sea.

“Come on,” Keo said, losing interest. “Let’s take the Jeep out to the airport, then up to the dump.”

“Give me the key,” I said, reaching out. “It’s my turn to drive.”

Keo scowled. “I said later. You want to come along or what.”

He turned and jogged over to the Jeep without looking back to see if I was following him, but waited after starting it. I took my time getting there.

About noon we drove back down to Kailua. We’d gone to the airport, then to the dump, then up Palani Road to where it meets Mamalahoa. Keo drove the whole time.

We ran into Uncle Harley on the pier. He’d been meeting with some of the charter boat skippers and hotel managers. Something had to be done about the shark, he said. People were afraid to go in the water. “If it hangs around too long we’re going to have some empty hotel rooms, and what if it came back and someone was swimming, or out spear fishing? We need help. I’m going down to Honaunau to get Deeps … want to come along?”

Of course, we did. The name “Deeps” wasn’t one people used freely around town, though I’d heard every story ever told about “shark-killer” Deeps. And like sharks, people feared him based on reputation, accurate or not. Dad said he was either the bravest or stupidest man alive.

“Someone has to kill the thing,” Uncle Harley said as we drove through the village. “You just can’t take a chance on it coming back and hurting someone.” He paused, thinking. “What I can’t figure out is what attracted it.” Uncle Harley puffed tip his cheeks and blew out the air, tapping the steering wheel with his thumb.

Keo sat in the middle of the truck cab between me and Uncle Harley. The whole way up the hill and south through the Kona highlands he blabbed on about how to catch the shark and kill it. You’d have thought
be
was the one who was going to hire Deeps.

After about an hour Uncle Harley turned seaward and
dropped down to the coast. “Keep your eyes out for an old shack with shark jaws all over it.”

The lush highland jungle dried into brittle trees and brown grasses, and the coolness in the air evaporated quickly once we reached sea level.

Keo saw it first.

What sounded like twenty dogs exploded in a frenzy of barking as we pulled into the rock and weed yard. I rolled up the window on my side of the cab even though my T-shirt was glued to my back. Those kind of hunting dogs don’t care
who
you are, dogs bred half crazy to their brothers and sisters and trained to be mean—usually short-haired, mostly pit bull mixtures, gray with black spots, breedless. No finer hunting dogs existed, Dad would say. But they would eat your heart right out of your chest if they found the smell of blood and fear on you.

Uncle Harley turned off the ignition. The dogs, actually only six of them, leaped at the windows, raising lips and showing teeth and yapping as if they hadn’t seen anyone around the place for years.

“Deeps!” Uncle Harley called. He didn’t roll up his window, but he pulled his arm in.

The door to the shack was open, but it was too dark inside to see anything. On the outside no less than thirty shark jaws hung on nails, some small, some huge, all pried open, with full sets of teeth slicing out at you.

Uncle Harley called again, louder, the dogs worked into a frenzy by now.
“Deeps,
you home?”

A dog yelped, then another, both hit by small stones. The barking broke up, then stopped and turned into agitated whining. From somewhere behind the truck, Deeps called off his dogs, keeping back as if he thought someone might leap out of the cab. I watched him in the mirror on Uncle Harley’s door.
He studied us for a moment, then came up to Uncle Harley’s side of the truck and squinted into the cab at Keo and me.

I’d expected someone bigger, maybe a pockmarked face, or thick beard. But he was short and wiry. And bald as a porpoise, wearing only a baggy pair of dirty khaki pants. The lines shooting out from his eyes were sharp, cut deep into the skin from a lifetime in the sun. Long, wispy strands of hair drooped down from his chin like limp fishing line.

“We need you in Kailua,” Uncle Harley said quietly, with respect. “A tiger shark, maybe twelve, thirteen feet, hanging around the harbor. We’ll give you twenty-five cents a pound for it. Could weigh over a thousand.”

The dogs paced back and forth on either side of the truck. Beads of sweat streamed down from my hair. I opened my window a couple of inches.

Deeps’s face remained blank.

Then Uncle Harley added, “I can guarantee fifty bucks, catch ‘urn or not.”

Deeps turned and went into his shack, two dogs following him. The others decided to stay and keep an eye on us.

“What’s he doing?” Keo whispered.

“Hang on,” Uncle Harley said. “He’ll come with us. He’s
lolo
as his dogs, but he’ll come. All I had to say was
shark”

Deeps came back out into the sunshine carrying a five-gallon plastic bucket full of lines and hooks, and a long aluminum pole. He put them in the bed of the truck, then went back into the shack. The heat in the cab was almost unbearable, even with the windows open, but no one wanted to get out.

Deeps came back with a handful of meat scraps and threw them on the ground. The dogs growled and snapped at each other, fighting over them. Then Deeps climbed over the tailgate into the truck. Keo and I turned and watched him settle down with his back to the cab.

Uncle Harley started the truck and headed up the mountain into the cool highlands. Deeps hadn’t even closed the door to his shack.

It was past five o’clock when we got back down to the pier. The charter boats were in and twenty or thirty tourists were standing around taking pictures of a marlin hanging from the fish hoist. Dad and Uncle Raz sat facing the crowd on a low, wood rail on the cove side of the pier. They’d already cleaned their boats and moored them for the night.

“You hear about the tiger that came into the bay this morning?” Uncle Harley asked, sitting down on the rail next to Dad.

“You” Dad said. “Still around?”

Dad lifted his chin to Deeps, his way of saying hello. Uncle Raz did the same. Deeps ducked his head slightly.

“I need a boat and some fish,” Deeps said, slapping the flat side of a steel hook against the palm of his hand. He turned around to spit after he spoke.

His high, thin voice surprised me.

Uncle Raz pushed himself up and went over to his truck. He pulled out a fair-sized tuna by the tail, about forty pounds. “This enough?”

Deeps nodded.

“You can use my skiff,” Dad said.

Deeps glanced down at Dad’s eight-foot skiff floating silently just off the wooden deck below the main pier. The outboard was still on the transom.

“Sonny,” Dad said. “Go pull the skiff in.”

I dropped down to the lower level and brought it alongside the landing. Deeps followed and climbed aboard. Uncle Raz handed him the tuna and the pole and bucket of hooks and cable that Deeps had brought.

I coiled up the stern line and was about to throw it out to Deeps when he turned to Uncle Harley.

“I need the boy,” he said.

Uncle Harley is eyes shifted to me, then to Dad.

“I want to go, too.” Keo dropped down onto the wooden deck.

“No,” Deeps said. “I just need someone to run the boat.”

Keo came up and stood next to me. “I can run it,” Keo said, “and … ”

Deeps waved his hand. “This boy better, smaller. I need the room.”

Keo glared at me. I shrugged my shoulders.

Dad nodded, a look that told me to go ahead.

Keo began pacing.

Deeps put the bucket in the bow and tucked the pole under the seats. “Let’s go,” he said, “unless you afraid, and then I take the other boy.”

“Let
me
go,” Keo said. “I can run the boat, and I’m not afraid of sharks like he is.”

Deeps looked up at me from the skiff.

“Ready when you are,” I said.

Keo spun around and stalked off. I pushed the boat away from the pier and jumped in.

The outboard caught and I headed out beyond the end of the pier and into the open harbor where scattered fishing boats slept at their moorings.

“Go ‘round one time,” Deeps said, pointing into the bay where the shark had been. There was maybe an hour of sunlight left. He studied the surface of the water as we circled in near the seawall. A small group of people watched from the pier. Keo stood on a chock with a pair of binoculars.

“It’s probably miles from here by now,” I said.

Deeps nudged the tuna with his bare foot and smiled. “Fish guts bring ‘urn back.”

A couple of minutes later Deeps said, “Did you see it?”

“Yes.”

“Tell me about it.”

“It was big, about twelve feet long. It circled around the bay twice, slowly, like it was just checking the place out. Then it went under, and that’s it.”

Deeps pointed to the farthest buoy. “Go to that white float,” he said, then started digging through his bucket. I brought up the throttle and headed out.

The long aluminum pole stuck out from under the seat, its point resting on the bow. I studied it, trying to figure out what it was.

“For kill shark,” Deeps said, without looking up. He reached over and ran his hand along the barrel. “Twelve-gauge pow-erhead, better than a cannon. Poke ‘urn on the back. The shell goes off and breaks the spine. Makes about twelve inches of mashed potatoes. But if you miss, the shark gets mad as hell.”

When we got to the buoy, I slowed and grabbed it, then killed the engine. Deeps waited for the sun to go down and the sky to darken. I sat facing him, thinking about what Keo had said.
Afraid.

Calm down, now … you’re not a baby anymore.

On the pier, I could barely make Keo out, now sitting on the hood of Uncle Harley’s Jeep with the binoculars, though I doubted he could see anything. Dad, Uncle Raz, and Uncle Harley were probably standing around talking in the dark somewhere.