Under the Wave at Waimea

by Paul Theroux

  Sharkey was driving, badly—but he’d insisted. He accelerated—his way of replying—and past Red Hill said, “Let’s look at these papers first. Get acquainted.” He said nothing more for a few miles and then, at the Pearl City exit, “He’s just ashes now.”

  Sharkey drove on, pondering. That the man was reduced to ashes was both a solution and a dilemma. He was no longer a whole corpse, with the scars of the accident—not a stitched carcass and cracked staring head, yellowish, waxen, wounded, looking offended in death, the fatal embodiment of blame. He was now dust. As a pile of ashes, probably a few scoopfuls in a small box, he had less power to haunt.

  But that was the paradox. Pulverized, he seemed impossible to identify. He was not a man anymore, he was less than ashes, he was powder, like a heap of coarse-ground pepper. You could scatter him over a bowl of noodles and who would know the difference?

  * * *

  Sharkey was silent the rest of the way, the sort of silence that was more and more his mood, his demeanor, as though stunned and enfeebled, bringing darkness wherever he went, and at times a sudden irritability, as when he had shouted at Wencil, “I could kill you too.” It was shocking to Olive because it was just what she feared, that he was dangerous, not only to himself but to anyone near him—and she was nearest.

  “Are you sure you’re okay?” she asked in traffic at Wahiawa.

  He did not answer until a mile farther on, at Helemano.

  “I can drive,” he said, looking grim, because the shoulder of the road there was loosely paved with crushed lava stone that had the appearance of ashes.

  Afraid of angering him, Olive said nothing more. She knew, as a nurse, that it was a provocation to remind a patient, especially a frazzled one, that she was a caregiver. Better to promote the illusion that she was a friend, that he was not fragile, that whatever issue had arisen could be solved; and above all, never to suggest that his mind was shattered, that he managed to survive only by groping and being ignorant of the truth of his condition and not acknowledging that she was doing most of the work, propping him up and humoring him, as she did in the hospital to the most damaged patients.

  They had descended to the coast road, he’d seen the waves, the white rollers of surf and the incoming swell. Sharkey gripped the steering wheel in both hands, as though in the cockpit of a plane, pulling it out of a nosedive, his forearms stiffened, pale with effort, making his tattoos bluer.

  The waves were bawling. Olive could see from Sharkey’s reaction that the waves were speaking to him, rolling to the shore, daring him to ride them. She knew that Sharkey never saw a wave without imagining himself on it—and not merely on it, but crouched in a posture that suited that particular wave; and he often criticized the technique of the surfers who were on it. But these loud waves mocked him for driving past, reminding him that he’d once mastered them and that he was powerless now.

  The wash and chuckle, the lap and swirl of breaking waves continued to Waimea, where Sharkey finally said, “Talk to me.”

  “We’re almost home. We’re fine.”

  He hated that she was trying to reassure him, as though he were weak; he hated most of all the suggestion of being weak. Approaching his driveway, he was surprised to see the big gate of solid boards sliding sideways on its rail, as though he’d given a signal. Then dark fingers on its edge dragging it and a face in shadow under the visor of a ball cap.

  Moe Kahiko. He stepped from behind the gate and waved the car in, kicking a fat goose out of the way.

  “I feed the chickens,” he said when Sharkey had parked, speaking to him through the car window. “Give some pellets to the gooses. Change the water—the water real dirty. And this,” he went on, reaching into his pocket. “I pick you some mountain apples—ripe, the apples. It’s all good, brah. You want me close the gate?”

  These favors, this fussing, and his toothy smile: he stood at attention. Olive said softly, “This numpty wants something.”

  He snatched the door open for Sharkey, clumsily deferential, while at the same time showing him a mountain apple, weighing the small pinkish fruit in his hand as though awarding a prize.

  “For you, braddah.”

  “He’s tired, Moe,” Olive said from the far side of the car.

  “It’s okay,” Sharkey said. “You need something. What is it you want?”

  “Nothing, brah!” And Moe laughed, mirthless and shouty. “I never want nothing. It Skippy, he need. I asking for Skippy Lehua.”

  “Asking what?”

  “That you go over to his surf hui and say something. Talk story.”

  “But why are you asking?”

  “I owe Skippy one favor. He help me out udda day, get me some products. But I have no money for give him. Can only pay when I sell ’em. But in the meantime I still owe him, like I wen’ say. He say if I no pay he give me lickings. ‘I come looking for you!’”

  “I still don’t get it, man.”

  They were standing among the lemon trees beside the garage, the two men sparring near the fallen fruit, in the sticky odor of bruised citrus.

  “He give me one condition. He give me a break if I ask Sharkey to talk to the hui guys.”

  “If you ask?”

  “If you wen’ agree, brah.”

  “You’re the favor, Joe,” Olive said. She’d picked some lemons; she held them in her hand, and she kept herself a little apart from the men, smirking at them, trying to be patient.

  “Ass right,” Moe said, startled into truthfulness. “I promise Skippy you wen’ do it.”

  Sharkey frowned at Moe’s pleading eyes, the guilelessness of his appeal, imposing on their friendship because of the debt, to help calm Skippy, buying time for Moe to sell the pakalolo.

  “’Cause matter of factly, I tell Skippy I never for see you surfing these days, which mean you probably have plenny more time to talk story.”

  Moe’s hopeful face was the face of a child, and even the apple he clutched to propitiate Sharkey was offered like a child’s tentative gift.

  “You got something else to do, brah?”

  The simple earnest question stung Sharkey into confusion. “No—nothing.”

  Relieved, and in a careless reflex, Moe raised the apple and took a bite, filling his mouth, showing Sharkey a bulgy smile.

  “Community center,” he said. “Hale‘iwa.”

  * * *

  He prepared himself for a crowd and, resentful in anticipation, said to Olive, “Better not keep them waiting.” But he was saddened by the few cars in the parking lot at the community center, and humiliated, seeing no more than ten boys on the folding chairs toward the front, and a few girls sitting in a group on chairs behind them, all of them grommets. They were very young and awkward, as though unused to the rigidity of chairs, sprawling or seated sideways, uneasily balanced, hugging themselves, none of them sitting upright.

  “Here the man,” Skippy said, scuffing toward Sharkey, looping a plumeria lei over his head, giving him a hug. “This my hui, all surfers. They waiting to hear your mana‘o.”

  Sharkey raised his hand, making a shaka sign. They mumbled their greetings, and he was dispirited again—so few of them, so young, mostly haoles, slung like monkeys on the chairs, barefoot, with wild hair.

  “Guys, e pule kakou,” Skippy said. “Say a prayer. Aloha ke Akua—God is love.”

  The chairs creaked as the youngsters bowed their heads, clutching their spiky hair in an attempt at piety.

  “Ka mana o ke Akua e ho‘opakele mai ia kakou,” Skippy intoned, then, “The power of God proteck us.” He glanced up. “Say Amenay.”

  “Amenay.” The growl filled the hall, then died away.

  “Okay, this guy been on the North Shore since fo’ever,” Skippy said in a new voice, chirpy, his enthusiasm causing him to stammer. “He know Eddie Aikau, he know Jock, he know Sunny, and all the Hawaii ohana. He wen’ surf the big monster in Nazaré, but you never hear about it, ’cause Garrett he get all the credit—for true!” Skippy turned
to Sharkey and slow-clapped in appreciation. “I admire this brother so much, and thanks for his kokua, showing up here. Let’s hear da kine he got for us. Give it up for surf legend da Shark—Joe Sharkey!”

  Instead of applauding—which he expected—the youngsters shifted and gabbled in their seats, thrashings that made the metal chairs creak.

  “Aloha,” Sharkey said.

  In the murmur of response, he saw that Olive had taken a seat several rows behind the little group. Pale and apprehensive, she looked in her concern more than ever like his nurse, and he was reminded of his last glimpse of Hunter, feeble and flustered, attended by his nurselike wife.

  “Thanks for that introduction, Skippy—but, hey, please don’t admire me. Yes, I knew Eddie. He died in a super-heroic attempt to reach shore from the Hōkūle‘a. He’s known more for that than for any wave he rode or prize he won. His sacrifice made him a god. And Jock—a great surfer. He still fixes roofs. Sunny Garcia—he made a million bucks in prize money and he’s one of the most depressed people I know.”

  “Triple Crown, brah,” Skippy called out.

  “But winning the Triple Crown didn’t keep him from trying to kill himself. And look at Andy Irons—how many titles? World champion. And he drugs himself to death, thirtysomething, in a hotel room in Texas.” Sharkey paced back and forth before the youngsters, whipping his hand at them. “You guys are groms—you need to know this. Maybe you’ve got the moves. Hey, you’ll probably blow your knee out hotdogging in a tube. Maybe you think you can get famous by riding a wave, even a monster wave, like me and Garrett. But let me tell you, it’s a very brief ride, even on a monster. A few minutes at most, and then it’s over. That’s not a sport, that’s a kind of play—surfing is playing in the water. And what do you do the rest of the time?” He paused and stared at them, then growled, “My hero, Greg Noll—da Bull—rode a monster in Makaha, or did he wipe out? No one ever saw it. He was spooked and gave up surfing.”

  “Some guys, they wen’ see him,” Skippy said. “Just no picture.”

  Sharkey leaned at them and hissed, “You’re stoked. Then you get old. Then you lose the stoke.”

  “Wait, wait,” Skippy said, standing up, clutching his T-shirt in his distress. “You’re bumming them out, brah.”

  “I want to hear more,” one of the girls yelled from the back. “Let the dude talk.”

  “The wave,” Sharkey said. “Consider the wave. You think because you’re riding it that you’re superior to it. But you’re not—the wave is one of a kind. It’s unique—but you’re not unique. The wave has not existed before. It comes out of the sea, rising on an unseen reef. It lifts you, gives you a ride, and then it’s over. It’s dead and gone. Or maybe you’re not on the wave. Maybe no one’s riding it. Maybe no one sees it. Think about that.”

  Sharkey defied them, facing them, his crazy hair making him seem a wild man. They looked scolded. Skippy was murmuring to the boy next to him. Olive seemed to be suppressing an urge to tell him to stop—he saw a kind of panic in her widening eyes. He had not known what he was going to say, but something in Skippy’s prayers and praising introduction, saying how he admired him, filled him with shame that had become anger.

  “Get rid of the contests!” he shouted. “I know what you want. You want to win prizes. You want respect. You want to compete. You want to win and be a hero.” He took a breath, and panted, saying, “But winning is nothing—it doesn’t help you. You get to my age and you’re pau. No one knows you. No one remembers. Look at me—you don’t know who I am!”

  Out of breath from his rant, he thought of the purity of the waves, how they were shapely and brief and neutral—neutral most of all. And with the waves rolling toward him in his mind he saw the oafs jostling in the lineup, who splashed into them and tried to wrestle themselves upright.

  “I’ve done nothing, I’ve made no difference, yet the wave always leaves a mark,” he went on, because his pause had created an awkward silence. “Even a small wave reaches the shore, disturbs the sand—grains of it—or shifts a whole beach, or chews at the dirt of an embankment, and maybe undermines and collapses a house. Then it vanishes. The perfect crime. And maybe in its short trip to shore, it tips you over and drowns you.”

  Someone called out, “Sweet!”

  “Like life,” Sharkey said. “You drop in, you ride for a while, then you die. The ultimate hold-down.”

  The word seemed to excite a boy in the front, who pulled his finger out of his mouth and wagged it at Sharkey and said, “Like, did that ever happen to you, man—a real bad hold-down when you thought you were drowning?”

  Sharkey said fiercely, “Yes, I’ve been under a wave—hold-downs, tossed by a boomer, caught in a cave in a reef, over the falls, the duck-dive into oblivion—all of that, shacked in the impact zone. It’s like being waterboarded.”

  “But, like, I mean drowning,” the boy said, gnawing his finger.

  “I’m drowning now!” Sharkey shouted into the boy’s face, and the boy looked slapped.

  The chairs creaked, there were groans, they were startled by the shout, by Skippy raising his arms and yelling, “It’s all good, brah.” Olive staggered to her feet, kicked her chair aside, rushed to Sharkey, and took him by the hand and led him away, Skippy calling after him, “Next time, brah, for these keiki, I hope you have a more better message.”

  6

  Paperwork

  All this fricken paper,” Sharkey said in a blaming and aggrieved way, stepping back at the sight of the separate piles of folders Olive had set out on the long koa dining table. She stood at the head of the table, as though presiding over a meal she’d prepared.

  “I tried to make it chronological,” she said, and hearing Sharkey swear under his breath, she reacted sharply, smacking the table in frustration, shaking the nearer stacks.

  She’d been up early, sorting the papers, leaving Sharkey in bed, undisturbed in his stupor. After the fiasco at the community center, Sharkey had gone to bed, and he had not woken until long after Olive had finished her work, tidying the documents, creating files.

  “Start as we mean to go on,” she said.

  “What does that even mean?”

  “Be meticulous in creating a profile.”

  “What’s the point?” Sharkey said, turning away.

  “There’s a man buried somewhere in all this paper.”

  What Sharkey mumbled in reply was indistinct, but his tone was dismissive.

  “The man you killed,” Olive said, and Sharkey reacted more forcefully than when she’d smacked the table—it was as though she’d smacked his head. “The man you don’t know, whose ashes are sitting in a box, jinxing you.”

  “I hate paper,” he said with disgust. “I hate documents. People say, ‘We have to do the paperwork,’ and I want to puke at the word.”

  In a pitying voice, and looking sorrowful, Olive said, “You’re afraid.”

  “Out of my element.” He pushed at his face with his fist.

  “What would that element be?”

  “Surf.”

  “You almost drowned in the surf at Waimea, mate.”

  “Maybe I’m not used to this.” He wandered back to the table and flicked one stack with his finger. “I’m not into paperwork.” He saw that Olive was still watching him with pity. “I never wrote a real letter,” he said. He hated the precision of paper, its stern language, the obligations it imposed, the formality of it, the demands. “I never read a real book.”

  “That’s the sort of thing a little kid might say,” Olive said. “A lazy little kid.”

  He wasn’t insulted. He shrugged and with a stubbornness that hinted at pride he said, “I never had to.”

  “You have to now,” Olive said, edging toward him. He was so big when she was near him, her head below the scorpion tattoo on his biceps. But her anger gave her courage. “If you don’t, you might never surf Waimea again. Or anywhere.”

  She could see that he was intimidated by this, or at least daunted b
y the prospect. And so she walked past him and went to the first pile, then lifted the folder and slid out a formal document that looked like a diploma, framed with a blue ornamental border.

  “Birth certificate,” she said, pinching it. “Forget the other names—this is our man. Max Mulgrave, born in 1950, Floristan County, Arkansas. A southerner. I looked up Floristan. It’s somewhere in the Ozarks. And here’s his diploma: Floristan, the Crusaders.”

  “Class of ’69,” Sharkey said. “I was lifeguarding then. What was his sport?”

  “No mention of sports here,” she said. “But Stickney did the donkey work by getting all these documents.”

  “What’s this pile?”

  “Military.”

  Hearing the word, Sharkey involuntarily came to attention. He saw the Colonel. He hadn’t thought of him in years. As a father, yes, but not the man in uniform, peering down at him, a cigarette burning in his fingers. Stand up straight and Elbows off the table and You need a haircut. The smoker’s growl.

  “He was a soldier,” Sharkey said in a wondering way, his voice trailing off, daunted again but this time by the fleeting apparition of a stranger in uniform, faceless, looming a little, a shadow, someone like his father. He looked aside, wincing.

  “So it says. Stickney must have got his records through the Freedom of Information Act—or probably his department applied.” She was holding a manila folder. Opening it, she said, “This is all public domain stuff, but it’s something.” And she read, “Official Military Personnel File—service number, dates of service—July 1969 to May 1971. Branch—Unit C-Troop. Final Rank E 7, Gunnery Sergeant—Staff Noncommissioned Officer. Place of entrance, Fayetteville, Arkansas. Place of separation, Fort Irwin, California.”

  “And what does that tell us, other than he was a grunt?”

  “Look at the dates. He enlisted at eighteen, at the height of the Vietnam War.”

  “My father’s war,” Sharkey said, and saw the man again, his severe face and upright posture, reeking of cigarette smoke, implacable in his order-giving.