Man Shark

by Knight, Gerald R.

  He climbed onto the underside of the boat’s outrigger platform, his legs spread wide and his back against the submerged hull. It had righted its drift with the outrigger now turned back toward the storm. The ocean water that crashed over him felt warm compared to the stinging rain and the cold air of the storm on his face. He struggled to master possession of his thoughts and recover from the shock. He quickly resolved that he would just have to stick it out like this until morning. Yet he knew that, no matter how warm the gale made the ocean water feel, it could be too cold for too long for his body to survive.

  He realized he was a trapped turtle. He could never turn the boat upright by himself, but could he withstand the cold or would it slowly lull him to sleep and to death? Now it was he that this storm had diminished, but he had faced worse, and as the old woman advised, he was determined to soak up the spirit of this thing and grow stronger for it. Tomorrow would be bright and calm, and surely, the irooj would set out to search for his boat. He could tie the mast upright and tie his kilt as a flag. If not, and if it was calm enough, he could try to unlash the kubaak, right the hull, and retie the complicated lashings.

  “If only Taknoḷ were here,” he thought. No, on second thought, Taknoḷ would have excoriated him for being so foolish! Ḷainjin was glad he was not there, but he remembered his friend’s instructions. Tying the very end of the boom to the perpendicular float was the most complicated lashing on the boat. Taknoḷ had taught him that, to retie the outrigger in the water, you must retie all four booms simultaneously by tying off each phase progressively as you continue. It was as though Taknoḷ’s spirit came to him now to provide the strength and knowledge he would need to overcome his predicament. His thoughts drifted back to the day they returned from their great shark-hunting adventure at Anbōd. After the heroic trip, Taknoḷ announced he would never again leave his beloved Namorik Atoll. Taknoḷ freely admitted the rest of his story would be simple and easily forgotten by others, but he was proud to have been a part of Ḷainjin’s great adventure and vowed to repeat his story often. Ḷainjin envied him, sleeping on his mat next to his chosen and among his children, warm, safe, and wise.

  Then, amid his thoughts, like a fish taking flight from the water, Liṃanṃan scrambled up onto the overturned hull and sat there straddling it, gasping for breath, hugging it, and crying at the same time. Unable to speak a word, she kicked at him again and yet again, as though to reassure herself her nightmare was real and not imagined. He looked over the hull past her and there was nothing.

  She must have swum to him from his boat when the line snapped even as the others had swum in the opposite direction, toward it, he thought.

  He quickly straddled the hull facing the brave woman. Her chest was heaving uncontrollably. She would have been swimming for her very life. He embraced her trembling shoulders to warm her as best he could, and he rocked her as one would a frightened child. She appeared severely shocked by the situation in which she found herself. As she sat there, speechless in the elements tossing them back and forth and with only his warmth to comfort her, Ḷainjin realized the depth of the nightmare into which she had cast herself. He could only imagine her panic, as she would repeatedly have lost sight of the overturned craft as she sank into the trough of each passing wave. She would have had to time her breathing to avoid inhaling any of the deluge of water that engulfed her at the crest of the next. He imagined she must have started to swim faster and faster as panic gripped onto her and then begun to take control, especially when she turned to see that the boat she left had disappeared into the blackness of the storm.

  They sat there, exhausting the muscles of their thighs as the waves rolled beneath and splashed up against them. They squeezed each other, each struggling to join the other as one, amid the stinging rain and cold wind that sucked from their bodies energy that he knew, in these conditions, they could not replace. He needed to coax her down into the sea or they would get tired and useless from the cold, but from the way she had flown up from the water despite her exhaustion, he sensed she was afraid of the sharks.

  He began speaking into her ear. “They call me Pako because I am a shark hunter. Did you notice the walls at each end of my boat? Well, they wall off compartments at each end that I have filled with shark’s teeth like this one in my ring. This evening, I injured one shark that was trying to drag one of your brother’s catch from the hull beneath us. I cut him with my knife from here to there” — he traced his fingernails from under her arm a finger’s length down her side — “and when it swam away, its scent attracted all the other sharks and they swam away chasing it.

  “Let me tell you a secret that few people know. Sharks are very stupid. Have you watched them swimming around you in a circle while you swim? Do you know why they swim in a circle to keep an eye on you?”

  She shook her head once abruptly as she shivered.

  “Because they are afraid of you,” he answered. “They do that because they instinctively know that, once they turn away, they will forget they ever saw you, and at that point, they are vulnerable! The sharks that your brother saw are all gone and have already forgotten they were ever here, and all the fish from the boat are gone except one big one that we are going to eat right now. Then we will throw the rest away so there will be no reason for any more sharks to come. Wait here, I’ll be right back.”

  With that, he sank down into the water and soon popped up again with the better half of a large koko. He stooped beneath her on the underside of the outrigger platform that he wanted to coax her onto, then sliced off a chunk and began eating it.

  “Want some?” he asked. She nodded and he gave her a piece. “Come down into the water and warm up. You are too exposed to the wind and rain there.”

  She climbed down with her supper hanging from her mouth, stooped with him on the underside of the outrigger platform, and braced her back against the overturned hull to stabilize herself against the warm, oncoming waves. She did not speak. She appeared nearly drained of energy. She was in quiet survival mode.

  “How happy is your father going to be when we sail up tomorrow and he sees I have rescued both his beloved daughter and his boat?”

  She shielded her eyes from the rain with one hand and squinted into his eyes up close, studying them to see if he was speaking the truth as he saw it or the story as he hoped it would turn out.

  “The only problem,” he continued with mock seriousness, “is that I’ll be squeezing your hand so tight it will turn black and your grandma will have to cut it off and throw it in the banana patch.”

  He finally got a smile out of her.

  “You know, we can flip this boat over, just the two of us, anytime we want.” This was a lie, as he knew it would be an almost impossible task in the storm.

  She responded with her first words. “What do I have to do?”

  “I’ll show you!”

  He jumped into the water again, this time with the strip of fish still dangling from his mouth. He swam to the line previously anchored to the middle of the kubaak and swam it around to the opposite side of the upside-down hull she had been sitting on. Then he reached up and gave it to her. The line was now in direct alignment between the middle of the upside-down hull and the kubaak. For now, it provided something secure for her to hold on to amid the tumult. Later, it would become a critical part of their endeavor to draw the outrigger vertical beneath them and flip the boat upright. Then, the fish still dangling from his mouth, he came back around to sit where he started. As he finished eating, he said, “My task is to detach the tip of the mast there from the sail,” and pointed to the woven-pandanus sail. It was drooping a little below the surface of the waves but still attached to the boat with several lines.

  “Then I will tie the tip of the mast to the kubaak at the same spot where your line is attached. I will force the kubaak down into the water by climbing up the mast that I will have attached to it, getting it as close to vertical as possible, and that will turn the hull nearly horizonta
l. Your task will be to grab that line with both hands, put your feet flat against the horizontal side of the hull, and lean back with all your weight. That might pull the kubaak just a little past vertical, and its own buoyancy should cause the boat to right itself.

  “Here, eat some more,” he said, as he cut another large chunk for each of them. “Eat up. The more you weigh the better,” he joked. “I’m going to tie the mast to the kubaak now.”

  Tossing the head and the remainder of the fish as far away as possible, he slid into the water to accomplish the first part of his task. First he cut the masthead lines free from the sail. Then he tied each to the kubaak, secured the partially submerged sail, and placed the pole end across the partially submerged hull. She was better able to brace onto that with one hand while keeping the line over her shoulder taut with the other. When all his preparation was accomplished, he returned to her. Stooping on the overturned platform and bracing himself against the hull in the waves, he managed to rub each of her shoulders and arms with a free hand as he held on to the mast, angled from the kubaak to the upside-down hull. The skin on her bony body felt colder than the water. The storm had long since swamped the fire inside her. She might not last till sunrise. He explained to her one more time exactly what he wanted her to do. Then he encouraged her not to be discouraged if they were unable to turn the craft on the first try.

  “Some of this task depends on catching the oncoming wave just right. We need you to lean back and pull just as the boat sinks into the wave trough after its crest. Otherwise, the oncoming wave will work against us. Do you understand?”

  She nodded that she understood.

  “Okay.” He turned away. Then he turned back.

  “One more thing. Our ‘fire starter,’ our kindling inspiration for this task, will be the memory of my best friend, Taknoḷ. He is the hull maker who built my boat and who taught me everything about a proa that a seafarer needs to know. Have utmost confidence in what he taught me. It will not fail us! Emejjia wa ilọmeto!”

  With that, he began climbing the mast he had attached to the upside-down kubaak. He simultaneously reeled in on a line he had attached to the yoke of the hull to keep the mast perpendicular as he climbed and forced the float down into the sea beneath him, and just as the next wave was about to rush upon them he shouted it was time for her part. At this, she stooped flat-footed upon the hull as it turned nearly level with the sea. She wrapped the line around her upper back and clasped onto the loop this made with both hands. When she had adjusted the line perfectly taut, she stood straight as a spear and leaned back. This forced all her weight into the loop just as the boat tipped into the following trough, and Ḷainjin watched her hit the water on her back like a fallen tree as the craft righted itself and its outrigger popped up from beneath the water on the opposite side.

  He rushed to her as she surfaced, surrounded her with his arms, turned her back to the cresting waves, and lifted her as high in the water as he could. “You did it! You did it!” he said. “Now we have one more task for you. Do you know where your father’s lem is secured?” She nodded. “Reach into the hull when I lift you and grab hold of it. Untie it if you have to.” He lifted her by the thighs as she scrambled into the swamped hull and submerged herself to find the lem, which had been secured below. After a few moments, she reappeared with the lem and immediately began using it to scoop seawater from the swamped craft. Ḷainjin realized she was exhausting herself to no avail. The cresting and splashing was causing the seawater to fill the boat faster than she could bail it out again.

  At that point, he realized that, in their haste, they had begun to bail before the boat had righted itself to the wind. The outrigger had not yet turned to windward. Once he removed the mast tied to the outrigger, physically turned the boat, and got the outrigger to windward, she was gradually able to make progress, but it was not an easy task. He showed her how to bail downwind to conserve her energy.

  “Don’t toss it wildly into the air. You only need to move the water a small distance from inside here to outside there.” So she sat and bailed in the wind and rain as the boat bobbed and the waves crested around them, sloshing water into the hull even as she bailed. Undiscouraged, she bailed relentlessly with energy that surprised him and slowly made progress. Once progress was made, less water came in and more water went out, and soon she had emptied the boat. She sat there in the stinging rain, breathing heavily but more alert and in better spirits, no doubt warmed by the energy she had expended. He realized she was probably more exhausted than she realized.

  Ḷainjin knew that he needed to protect her from the cold sickness, but he had one final task for her first. Prudence dictated they refill their water containers. To this end, while she had been bailing, he had untied the mast from the sail, untied the lines securing the sail, and draped the sail over the boat like a tent, to allow the rain to wash off the sea water. Luckily, some of the coconut-shell containers still hung in their nets within the hull. She emptied the brackish water they contained and began filling them again from water Ḷainjin had funneled from the sail. The water was still too salty to drink but not too salty to rinse the hull, so he channeled all the water there instead. She splashed it around as it poured in and then bailed it out again.

  Then, as they were working to flush the hull of saltwater, the storm broke with the first flash of lightening and a loud clap of thunder.

  “Nan Sapwe!” he shouted back to the sky triumphantly. This was a sign that told him the worst was over, and he knew that by surviving, though exhausted, each would be stronger for the experience. Yet again, more lighting broke the darkness about them, and then again, more thunder. He shivered, not from cold this time but from exhilaration at the sound from the throat of Nan Sapwe. He felt the spirit of the storm enter the lower extremity of his spine and tingle up into his throat and out of his tearing eyes as he tried to consider hers. Had they become one, fused together by the hardship they had just endured? Had he finally saved a loved one rather than let her slip, cold and lifeless, between his fingers into the sea? Finally, the wind began to abate. The rain began to pour straight down upon them, and the water poured pure from their sail into their coconut-shell containers. One final time, they bailed their hull empty. Then they covered it with their sail and crammed themselves up into the bow of the rocking hull. Her naked body clutching onto his drove away his thoughts of horrors past, and once intertwined, one with the other, they warmed themselves into an exhausted, wave-tossed sleep.

  [57] Literally: “a man is an eel,” which means that he always develops a relationship with a hole.

  [58] A battle dance; a fierce reenactment of a classic fighting style passed along from previous generations.

  [59] The first birthday feast after the passing of two seasons or thirteen cycles of the moon.

  [60] An idiom used to express surprise.

  [61] The fibrous cloth-like outer sheathing of the coconut flower buds found at the crowns of coconut trees; used to squeeze milk-like oil from coconut gratings.

  [62] “Kapiḷak falls!”

  [63] A name: “woman beautiful.” “Li”: the female prefix; “ṃanṃan”: “very beautiful.” The north star, Polaris.

  [64] One … two … three.

  [65] Ten.

  [66] Twenty.

  [67] To sail close to the wind.

  [68] Mahimahi; common dolphinfish; Coryphaena hippurus.

  [69] A wooden scoop, sometimes attached to a handle, used to bail water from a hull.

  [70] Pohnpeian spirit of thunder.

  The island

  When the Chief awoke, he restrained himself from taking flight but looked down at his pathetic, pink feet grasping the sturdy limb of the kōņņat tree. Surviving the storm had been a lot easier for the brown, black, and white terns, which all share the handy seabird characteristic of webbed feet. That and their oil-coated feathers allowed them to float on waters out of the storm’s path, such as those off the lee shores of the windward islets, like
the bird island upon which he awoke. The Chief and his kind lacked both these characteristics. They had only two more limited and dangerous choices for surviving such a storm: fly up to an altitude above the rain or land. In winds or even light breezes, he could effortlessly glide — even sleep — above the clouds for days. But landing on the water like a tern was never an option. Once wet, his gigantic wings would prove too heavy to lift his skinny body into flight.

  Normally, the Chief would have just landed on his platform and trusted his worker to handle the details. But alas, that jealous bird hater had captured the commoner. This time, therefore, he had followed his new companion to one of the bird islands on the atoll’s southern fringing reef and had landed prostrate in this tree. True, the landing had not been one of his most heroic or graceful moments. His companion had landed gracefully on the sandy beach and then hopped onto the branch next to him. Why hadn’t he thought of that?

  The Chief was soaking wet and out of his element now. It appeared he was trapped on this limb until he dried out. However, there was no hurry to fly anyway. Usually, he avoided these bird islands, where the longed-for butt bumping took place. Something had always made him persona non grata to all the beautiful and much larger, white-breasted females. They always went for the puffer boys, who knew the secret of blowing up their throat, or gular, sacs into bright red, jellyfish-size attraction devices. They melted the pure white throats of these females. Their knees weakened, and their tail feathers twisted away from their puckered backsides. After several fruitless experiments, he had learned to avoid these butt-bumping orgies by staying away from these bird-infested islets. After all, what self-respecting male would want to sit around and watch others doing it? Too embarrassing!

  This time, though, he had met a gigantic cuddle-poop of a female who seemed attracted to him. Even now, she was nuzzling up to him as though he was the only bird there. So why should he fly away even if he could? Once those beautiful eyelids retracted, he imagined that endless, wanton butt bumping would surely ensue. He wanted to gobble just thinking about it! As he did, his bright red gular pouch suddenly began to inflate until he looked exactly like one of the ridiculous puffer boys he had hated over the many seasons past. In short order, he had inflated the sadly wrinkled red sac that hung beneath his beak into a gigantic red bubble that was several times larger than the tiny breasts beneath it. This sexual spectacle — seen by some as stunning and others as simply silly — was so debilitating that it prevented his head from tilting forward.