“Which of us do you want to cut your trees?” one of the boys asked.
“Neither, I will go myself. We’ll sail into this weather together.”
“Isn’t Etre one of your jebwa leaders?” Tokjān asked, perhaps curious about the prospect of his brother losing a key combatant in the upcoming battle.
“Yes,” Ḷainjin replied.
“Then my brother will be concerned,” Tokjān said, glancing from one man to the other. “What happened to him?”
“He hurt his leg. That’s all he told us to say.”
“Well, I guess you will want to launch your proa,” Tokjān continued. “I will get some men to help you. Come, boys. Let’s get you two fed and ready for weather.” He turned back to look out over the gray face of the new day and then chanted, “Kwe kwōjkwōjwaj jōṇe Lañperan!”
When Ḷainjin returned to the cookhouse, Jitwa was fanning her cooking fire. Thick smoke erupted from her hearth, forcing her to turn her head and squint as she spoke. “Naughty girl there” — she pointed to Liṃanṃan with her teary eyes — “let my fire die. She even blew the flame from the shell lamp I gave her.” Then she laughed. “I can only imagine what naked contortions she was performing on you that had to be blacked out by the night!”
Liṃanṃan, still wrapped in the sleeping mat, squinched her nose at them both. Then she slid her skirts from the floor next to her and struggled to wrap herself in them from beneath the cover of the mat.
Outside, the boys ate and chatted with Jitwa’s two older daughters, who had quickly donned flowers above their ears and seemed excited to receive news of who had said what about whom on the islet across the lagoon.
While they ate, Tokjān had Ḷainjin’s proa carried to the beach and had both boats loaded with pandanus as tribute to his brother. While the boys socialized and Liṃanṃan and Jitwa gossiped over the latest stories brought by them, Ḷainjin strolled down to the shore to evaluate the oncoming weather. Though stronger, the wind had shifted only slightly from a little south to a little north of east. Yet the face of the lagoon, no longer sheltered by the length of the atoll’s southern fringing reef, had changed dramatically from the serene calm of the day before. Sparkling, rippling shades of blue had changed to a frothy, whitecapped gray. The grayish blue of the shallow lagoon water just inside the southern reef was the only color that warmed the otherwise threatening shades of gray drifting about the horizon. The clear waves that had lapped gently upon yesterday’s shoreline had now turned into sand-clouded breakers that thumped upon the beach and broke into sandy, white froth. Then they swept high upon the shore, lingered momentarily, and churned back into the briny tumult from which they had come.
As Ḷainjin suspected, there was no boundary or single line of clouds on the horizon, nothing that foretold a dramatic change in what they would face — just a sky filled with the types of smoky-looking rain clouds that promised steady wind and periodic, annoying gusts of rain. There would be no sudden deluge of wind, and its general westerly blowing direction was unlikely to change radically. Yet each cloud would carry its own personality to them and require equal spirit and personal fortitude from each of them. And so it occurred that as Liṃanṃan and the boys joined him — with Tokjān, Jitwa and their children in tow — the cloud passing over them ejected a gust of wind and cold rain that turned their faces.
Ḷainjin quickly turned to the others and swung his back to the gust, allowing its oomph to shiver up his spine and blossom into a broad smile. “Ejaromrom utute kōj,” he chanted as he looked directly at Tokjān, who laughed affectionately with him as he faced the rain directly to receive the challenge and respond.
“Eke eok jān Ep!” he chanted.
It was not a moment to clutter with further talk. Liṃanṃan climbed up on the proa. Standing high in the wind and stinging rain, she drew the halyard at the mast, hoisted, and then secured his matted sail. Side by side, Ḷainjin and the others lifted and pushed the heavy boat through the crests of the warm, oncoming waves. It went buoyant, but although its bow rose high over the oncoming crest, it threatened to dip precariously before the next. He drew himself up into his place at the stern and used his weight to teeter his bow higher, even as the foaming crest crashed down upon it, splashed water up into the wind, and drenched Liṃanṃan with spindrift as she flopped onto the outrigger deck. She then sheeted in as he leveraged his paddle into the lagoon water. The proa heeled against the wind and angled them off into a smooth, steady glide through the tops of the whitecaps. They rose and fell as the storm clouds maneuvered about them. They teetered over each rising crest and following trough as the underlying energy marched the lagoon waves downshore from the spot from which they escaped.
He looked back as they began to skip quickly from one crest to the next and saw the family launching their companions’ proa. A moment later, Liṃanṃan stood, grasped the mast with one hand, braced herself upon the rocking boat with a wide stance on the outrigger deck, and thanked them with a broad wave of her free arm. Then she reset herself on the stern edge of the deck, her back to the wind and the rain. Her right foot was braced against the hull. Her right hand clasped onto the base of the mast and her left, onto the sternmost outrigger boom. Her left leg dangled bare and free, with her foot now and then dipping into the still-shallow water below. Her breasts, her shoulders, and her arms were pimpled with cold, but her face showed no sign of chill and her spirit was vibrant.
She twisted her soaking hair into a tight bun and lifted her dangling foot, exposing her inner thigh to him. Then she jabbed his shoulder with the ball of her foot. “Why such a hurry? Your jekaro buds will stay moist in this rain.”
“No, just the opposite. The leaves will absorb water from the sky and not pull it through the tree from the ground. At any rate, the bud will not weep if not cut.”
He looked back and saw the boys’ proa rising and falling and following them on their tack to the northeast. The family had retreated from shore, and he imagined them warm and sheltered from the rain in their cookhouse, eating and drinking hot nen tea from shell cups.
Deciding to use her foot to cushion her rocking rear, Liṃanṃan curled her leg beneath her and sat on it. “You know he may not be there.”
“Who won’t be there?”
“Ḷāātre!”
“What do you mean, won’t be there?”
“You know the story.”
“What story?”
“The story of Ḷōkkōkālọk,” she said.
Of course, he had heard the story of Ḷōkkōkālọk many times. The story ends at Anbōd, where he and his friends undertook their great shark adventure. He had always viewed the story — like so many others — as a means to teach about a place that mariners need to know. As boys, they never believed the bedtime story, yet they never doubted for an instant that Anbōd existed.
“Diak!” Ḷainjin said.
Liṃanṃan immediately released the sheet and handed it to him. She backed herself off the outrigger deck, crawled forward onto the foredeck, released the forestay, and grabbed onto the base of the rojak ṃaan. Their craft rocked in the waves and drifted outrigger to windward, with the sail now flapping downwind, perpendicular to the hull. She lifted the heavy sail easily, as if it were but a kite in the wind, and brought the flapping sail back to the mast, to which the rojak ṃaan was attached near its top and from which it hung. Because she had loosened the forestay, the mast had begun to reverse its tilt. After she handed the sail to Ḷainjin, she returned to what was now the backstay and resecured it once the reversal was complete and what had been the bow was now the stern.
After securing the rojak ṃaan in its new position, Ḷainjin sat on the inner part of the outrigger deck beneath the mast. He sheeted in and the craft lurched into the wind on the opposite tack, now headed away from the light blue water that bordered the shore toward the darker water of the atoll’s center. One of the many dark-gray clouds massed about them caught his eyes. It was spraying its vapor in a slan
t angled downward as it drifted over the busy bird islets abaft. That angle, a sign that the wind they were facing on the surface was stronger than the air above, was a good sign because it meant they were in no danger of a surprise drop of more forceful air streaming overhead.
“So what are you trying to say about the story?” he said. He turned his head from the wind and the rain to see her standing proudly and struggling determinedly with the paddle blade secured to the hull, cutting deep into the water. Its shaft was braced firmly in the crotch of her right shoulder, leveraging the proa into heel, raising the outrigger behind him, and flying it conservatively above the oncoming waves.
With a broad smile across a face dripping with water, eyes squinted and peering back and forth, Liṃanṃan rose and fell as the stern teetered with each wave. And as the whitecaps rushed by, she sprang gleefully into song.
Ḷōk-kō-kā-lọk — waow!
Man cause to fly so!
Sail to bring tribute from sea,
sail and cast magical wind.
I’m sleepy now so
standing up I sail — waow!
Boat to catch, boat to catch,
boat to catch, catch.
To catch me and kill…
Off wind will tilt kubaak up
windward to set to rest.
“You’ve heard the story?” She leaned into the wind, levering her oar into the lagoon and raising their kubaak up and over the wave as it surged toward them.
“Many times,” he said, adjusting the sheet, feeling the outrigger taking flight beneath him, and noticing their companions still proceeding downshore on their original tack. So they decided to sail on this way, distracting themselves from the rain and the cold by periodically relating the details of the story to each other as they worked their vessel against the wind amid the dark, mountainous clouds floating about them.
“When Ḷōkkōkālọk returns to Epoon after his long voyage, where has he been?” she asked, raising the tone of her voice as though speaking to a child.
“He has sailed among the islands here in the north.”
“Why would he do that? Hadn’t the woman with him just given birth?” she asked.
“Yes.”
“But everyone knows you never leave a woman who has just had a baby alone!”
“I guess he made a mistake. He was gathering gifts to be distributed at his son’s keemem.”
“Well, that was a very big mistake. What did she do while he was gone?” she asked, continuing to steer them on a close tack a little farther out into the lagoon to get a slightly wider angle off wind before their next tack.
“She became a mejenkwaad and ate all the people on Epoon,” he answered.
“Now that’s a lot of people! I heard there were so many people on Epoon that they wore paths on the reef between the islets with their feet!” she said, still using her patronizing voice, as though speaking to a child.
“That’s true. I’ve seen it myself.”
“So what happened to all the people who made those paths?”
“No one knows.”
“She must have eaten them!” Liṃanṃan suggested, as though doing so would be but a trifling, everyday accomplishment.
Suddenly, they sailed into an additional burst of wind and chilling, stinging rain from the cloud ahead. Their objective, of course, was to maneuver their craft lagoonward, into position for a straight shot at their destination. The cloud, which seemed to be hanging there, was in their way, so they decided they would shunt, turn back toward the fringing reef, and change places to avoid the worst of it. But the cloud’s full, cold downpour engulfed them anyway, and they lost all visibility. A deluge of rain inundated them and dampened even the wind as they glided more slowly into the light blue water they had fished the day before. The rain was so heavy they could not see the bird islets they were approaching, and from inside the deluge, they could not view their companions, last seen continuing their previous tack. Their storytelling temporarily forgotten, they sailed a while, peeking intently at each other through the hair covering their faces and glancing downward from time to time onto the opaque surface of the lagoon to judge by color their distance from the back reef.
The islet appeared close by. Then, out of nowhere, flapping through the rain and seeming larger than life, a gigantic black bird with a white throat appeared and attempted to land on Liṃanṃan, who reflexively covered her head with her hands to protect herself from the screaming fowl. To Ḷainjin, it appeared to be the Chief’s mate, attempting to chase them away from its nesting area. Its feathers were thick, black, and soaked, and it struggled to stay aloft in the rain with no glide to its flight, only a heavy flapping as though the bird was drowning in the drenching air.
Liṃanṃan kept one hand over her head to prevent a second attack, but the bird had disappeared as quickly as it had assailed them. Like a verse in a song, it was gone in a breath, leaving them to wonder about its meaning. Just as they assumed the rain could not be heavier, the downpour increased and drenched even the wind, which had become but a breeze that only partially filled their sail, slowed their progress, and left them idle on deck.
“What was that?” asked Liṃanṃan, her eyes opening wide with amazement.
“I think that was my bird’s mate.”
“What was she trying to do? I thought she wanted to peck out my eyes!”
“Maybe she was trying to scare us away from her nest.”
Liṃanṃan, sitting on her feet, was laughing. “No, we were not close to her nest! Just like a woman! She is jealous! She wants to keep his pathetic little stinky butt to herself! What a vamp!” Looking straight up, she squinted into the torrent of water streaming down her face.
“Talk about Mānnijepḷā!” she said, looking at him quickly as he smiled back at her.
Then she must have remembered she was telling a different story, so she returned to that and asked, “So when Ḷōkkōkālọk arrives back at Epoon, where does he tie his proa?”
“He ties it to a huge rock on the ocean-side reef they call Ḷōkajaaj.”
“Have you seen it?”
“Yes, it’s the height of two men and maybe thirty ñeñe around.”
“And where does he find her?”
“She meets him with blood dripping from her mouth, carrying her baby to the lagoon village.”
“Then what?” she asked.
“Wōjej!” he said, taking the part of Ḷōkkōkālọk. “Where is everyone? And what’s that dripping from your chin?”
Ḷōkkōkālọk’s chosen one said, “There’s a big catch of tuna in the village and everyone is gathered there.”
“Okay, let’s go see. You go first!” he said.
“No! You go first!” Liṃanṃan pretended to toss her baby at him and then placed her hands on her hips and pouting her lips at him.
As he pretended to catch her imaginary child, Ḷainjin dropped the oar he had tied to the boat, and the craft shortly turned into the breeze. Grabbing the oar again and sculling them forward, he began to laugh at the spectacle of her sitting there all pimpled in the cold, pouring rain, pretending to be a mejenkwaad. Then the rain parted, and they caught a tail wind from the cloud that had finally passed. They found themselves over the slope off the back reef where they had fished the day before, so again they shunted and glided out farther into the lagoon. There, they could see their companions, evidently having outmaneuvered them, bobbing far in the drizzling distance on the opposite tack.
“Here,” he said, pretending to give the child back to her. He put his hand on his stomach and pretended to have a stomachache. “I have to make ready first. Let me go behind the bushes and relieve myself.”
“And what are you doing behind there, Ḷōkkōkālọk?” she asked him, pretending to hold a child in her arms.
“I’m making a wind charm from coconut leaflets, and it’s going ‘rup-rup-rup' so you will think I’m farting, but I’m really sneaking back to the reef to retrieve my proa.”
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br /> “Ḷōk-kō-kā-lọk,” she sang, “it’s been almost a long time to finish! Ḷōk-kō-kā-lọk! What are you doing now?”
“I’m placing an empty coconut shell on Ḷōkajaaj to go ‘woo’ in the wind before I set my sail and glide away.”
“Ḷōk-kō-kā-lọk,” she sang again, “it’s been almost a long time now! Ḷōk-kō-kā-lọk!”
“He’s long gone!” said Ḷainjin. “You better rush behind those bushes!”
Liṃanṃan pretended to be running. She teetered her shoulders up and then down, pretending to hold a baby in her arms.
Ḷainjin dared her. “There’s the wind charm. Eat it!”
Liṃanṃan twisted her face into that of a mejenkwaad and pretended to snatch the wind charm and eat it.
“He’s left you with the baby! How will you ever catch him with that baby in your arms?”
She pretended to throw the baby up in the air and eat it on the way down.
“Now quickly run after him. There he is taunting you from on top of Ḷōkajaaj. He is saying, ‘Woo! Woo!’”
Her face still twisted, she teetered her shoulders up and down again, pretending to run.
“Oh! It is just a coconut shell singing in the wind! Eat it!”
She pretended to throw the coconut shell up in the air and gulp it on the way down.
At this point, she twisted her face and stopped to look at Ḷainjin, who broke into laughter at the sight of her dripping in the rain and pretending to be the crazy, frustrated mejenkwaad. Then, still amused by her feigned frustration, he stood up on the stern deck, bracing himself with one hand on the backstay and the other on the tiller, and began to sing.
Ḷōk-kō-kā-lọk — waow!
Man Shark Page 28
