Sharks in the Time of Saviours

by Kawai Strong Washburn

  So maybe Mom and Dad and the gods didn’t care about me the way they did about Noa. That didn’t mean I couldn’t be something. I was still here.

  4

  DEAN, 2001

  Kalihi

  There’s this saying and it’s a poster on the wall opposite the end of my bed so I see it every time I wake up, and I believe it more than anything. It goes like this: Every morning gazelles gotta run faster than the fastest lion or they going get eaten. Every morning lions gotta run faster than the slowest gazelle or they going starve. That’s true, that there’s just the two types of people in the world. I see it all around me at Lincoln High yeah, kids in boro-boro clothes and crying about how prep school kids just get whatever they want and don’t know nothing about real life, but these same Lincoln High kids is only ever just bitching like that and then waiting, palms up. Don’t none of ’um ever stand up and take what they want, I figure that makes them the gazelle. There’s no gazelle in me, I don’t do the scared running. I’m only and always a motherfucking lion.

  But even then there’s a third type of person I guess. Not a type really, just my brother, and I don’t wanna believe in him but most times I do. I do. I seen the sharks, then after, how crazy smart he’s getting, people coming to see him because of what they heard happened at New Year’s. Mom and Dad, Mom especially, talking about ‘aumakua and old gods of the ‘āina coming back. When she says it sometimes I get chicken skin, even. So yeah, I believe. I hate it—I hate it—but I believe.

  Except, plenty mornings I wake up and there’s Noa across the way in his bed, drool-sleeping with his faded blue sheets, same like when he used to come find me in my bed, nightmares he’d had, and I’d tell him it’s going be all right and let him climb in with me, him hot as a hibachi charcoal. Only now I wake up without him, eating cereal and joking with Mom and Dad, Kaui coming in, and I get them all laughing and smiling, just me. Until Noa shows up, right, and suddenly it’s all questions about what’s happening with his day and did he sleep okay and here’s some thoughts about which extracurricular program he should enroll in at Kahena.

  Hard not for get angry at that. I’d feel it like a fist flexing inside my own chest.

  Used to be we’d live like this: I’d cup a fart around my brother’s nose and he’d go Quit it, mahu, and come rolling into me. We’d throw into a wrestling knot, even pull Kaui in, all three of us on the cheap-burn carpets at Old Navy or the steep shore at Sandy Beach. Back then it was all grapples, no hate-spit running from our mouths or us putting our elbows in each other’s windpipes, that came later. But when it did it came hard.

  Or all those weekend kanikapilas, when we’d both do ‘ukuleles on the scratchy red-and-green folding chairs, singing “Big Island Surfing” while Mom’s pulling Spam musubi out the cooler and Dad’s getting the shoyu chicken going on the grill. That was us, too, until Noa got to be so he could move so fast on the strings and neck of the ‘uke, and he’d do it even faster when I was trying for keep up. Just so he could smile and say, Let me slow down and show you.

  Shithead. But he could never beat me footracing, or in any sports, and I could see it wasn’t like how school or music was, coming natural to him. So I kept balling, with him or without him, until I was nothing but flow on the court, until everything out there was mine. Sometimes I’d get Noa to come to the park and play D on me if there wasn’t no else there to play against, I’d even let him score some points, get us in a actual game, before I’d take over and wreck him. For a long time Noa kept coming to those park days, even when he knew he’d never win.

  But then, after New Year’s, after the sick and hurt and hoping neighbors started showing up, after the Parkinson’s guy, each one made Noa a little more and more . . . off. Something breaking, is how I figured it. Sometimes I’d wake up in the middle of the night, no idea why, sure enough I turn over for face the room and Noa’s awake, sometimes outside the room, and I can hear him going through the medicine cabinet in the bathroom, probably trying everything in there. Or sometimes he’d still be in our room but crouching into my stash box like he’s some Mission Impossible and it’s a bomb, next day I run the count and sure enough I’m short. I wonder if he even knows how to roll a joint, or if he just ate it or what. But you could see how something was getting to him, small-kind, kids all whispering in the hall at school like they always do, Mom and Dad almost like it’s obvious they think something’s wrong with him. Like he’s broken. Even though he’s still bringing home principal’s medals and like that.

  Then one day I came home early on a rest day and there was Noa at the counter going through Mom’s purse. I asked what he was doing and he said he wasn’t doing nothing and so I was all, “You need to get it together.” He didn’t say nothing at first, which is how I could tell I was right. Me and him both standing there thinking about how there’s something going on with him, his abilities. How we know he’s not living up to what everyone thinks he should be. Then he was all, “You take her money all the time.”

  That wasn’t fully true. Because yeah, sometimes I’d take from her purse, but it was only when I needed small-kind for important things—a little more to pay back Roland if my sales was slow, maybe some McDonald’s for after practice—and I could always make it back four or five times over in a day, once me and Roland got good again. So that’s nothing like taking money just to take it.

  I said to Noa, “It’s not like you need it.”

  He shrugged. “Sometimes I just want a little something, you know?” he said. “Like one of the Limited Edition Quiksilver board shorts. I mean, even just a Coke from the store, without having to ask anyone.”

  Of course I knew what he meant.

  “Besides,” he said, “I’ve been making us money, from the people visiting for help. It seems like I can have a little bit of it. Not like you.”

  “You’re not making shit anymore,” I said. “Not for a while.”

  “Yeah, well,” he said, “I guess I’ll just have to try for your C average and study hall, right?” We were standing close and he’d dropped his hand from Mom’s purse, then tried to push past me for our room. But I put a hand on his chest.

  “Stay straight,” I said. “You don’t want this.”

  “Get out of my way,” he said. But it wasn’t the words that set me off. His eyes was louder than his mouth, and I could see he was fully thinking down about me, like if family was a tree he knew which one of us was the rot.

  So I hit him. Full-on false crack—my knuckles, his nose. When he went down I put my knee on his chest bone and got ready for lump him more. But he was yelling and just like that Mom was there, out from the shower I guess. We’d fully forgot about her. Towel-wrapped and her dark Hawaiian skin all slick and still soaped, long hair kinked and shiny, and she tried for hold her towel up with her armpits but also tried for get me off Noa.

  The more she pulled at me and hollered to stop the more her hands said who her favorite was—all these years—so I turned and hit her, too. Hard. I’d maybe been in one or two scraps at school and then mostly in like seventh grade or something so even hitting Noa with real heat was something I never done. But no one in our family ever hit each other like I hit Mom right then. I mean when I hit her—when I felt the meaty spark of bone hitting skin—I knew I was turning myself into something ugly and new.

  Mom’s strong, though. She stood up straight-backed, didn’t even touch her cheek, and asked, “What are you doing?” and I tried for say, Fixing him, but then Mom’s towel coasted off her body. I didn’t want to, but still I saw the stretch marks, the woolly fan of her urumut, and when she bent, her tits lolling down like goat udders. My stomach all spinning with shame. I was still straddling Noa’s chest.

  “Get off me,” Noa said.

  “Never,” I said. “You don’t know what you’re doing.”

  “Like you do?” he asked.

  Normally Mom’d be, like, I don’t need to keep you boys, I know just where to hide a few dead bodies and me and your dad ca
n make more kids, only this time they’ll all be girls, thank God. But she didn’t say none of that this time.

  I let Noa push me off. He made like he was going to the garage, then changed his mind and slammed out the front door. The screen door wobbled, then the creak of the hinges and the crack of the frame after.

  “All right, okay,” I said to Mom’s stare. “All right, okay, okay, okay, all right,” all the way to my room.

  There was the rest of that night, then the morning after. We had an away game, and most game days I’d start my morning slow, dream about what I was going for do on the court, like this: me bringing the ball up the floor, all AND1 Mix-tape at the top of the key, my shoes chirping and the other team scrambling, they bring the double team but I got a sick crossover that breaks their ankles, mongoosing between two chumps as I spin to the rim, and when I finger-roll for two the net goes swish like a air kiss to the crowd, and the crowd comes back at me with that roar.

  But not this time. No daydreams. This time I hid away at home, then hopped the city bus to school without breakfast. School was school, something happened in my classes I guess, but might as well I was standing in a Laundromat, teachers like a bunch of stupid machines churning around me, making noise.

  When the game finally came that night, I played like limp dick: passing out of bounds, air balls from inside and outside the arc, crossover bouncing off my knees, turnovers turnovers turnovers. I couldn’t feel nothing of my flow. Nobody from my family was at the game, too. It was an away game anyway, and sometimes Mom and Dad had late shifts or whatever, but something felt like no one being there was maybe on purpose.

  When the team rode back to Lincoln after, I couldn’t say nothing. Normally, I’d get Nic up on my lap, let her put her ass on my legs, her mynah bird laugh, but instead this time it was me just thinking, over and over, Anyone can have one bad game. Looking at my hands. But even then I knew this wasn’t just gonna be one time.

  When I got home it was only Mom and Dad sitting on the couch. I figured I’d see the same bruise on Mom’s face that had been growing the night before but her face was brown and unswollen. Dad kissed her on that same cheek, stood and looked at me like Later, later, we’re gonna catch up on this, and then when he’d passed I heard the fridge opening and closing. The spit and clatter of a beer bottle being opened. Then the wood creaks of him moving down the hall. Whole time Mom looking through me with funeral eyes.

  “I’m sorry,” I said to Mom.

  She shrugged. “You hit like a flight attendant,” she said. “I was in tougher scraps at Walmart Black Friday.”

  “I don’t know why I did it,” I said.

  “I don’t believe that,” she said. “I think you know why.”

  She was right. That punch was how many years in my heart and knowing she knew? Might as well I was hitting myself, too.

  “He’s getting stupid,” I said. “I was trying for fix it.”

  “Trying to fix it,” she said. “Dean, seriously. Speak the way you were raised.”

  “The hell is this,” I said. “Why won’t you let me say I’m sorry?”

  “Because you’re not,” she said, and we stood there, staring at each other until I stopped.

  After, there’s a Monday-night game against Saint Christopher and I went three for fifteen and brick four from the foul line. Might as well I was a pregnant whale, how I handled the ball. Was a home game but not feeling like home with our crowd quiet as a pop quiz. I tried for shake the feeling I still had, something bruised and queasy every time I thought of Noa, of Mom, of family. But nothing worked, the feeling just clamped on me all the same, all over the court.

  Saint Christopher stomped us bad and I got benched while still had five minutes left, on the end of the bench I dropped a towel over my head and let everything be dark and stink and muffled. Just before the towel covered my eyes I saw two scouts up near the rafters, packing up their cameras and laptops and heading for the door.

  Maybe they weren’t there for see me.

  Had a rest day after Saint Christopher, and I was home from study hall watching SportsCenter. There was the Top Ten with windmill dunks and over-the-wall catches, holes in one and right hooks for the knockout, all of it giving crowds that roar, same as I used to give us.

  Someone entered the room from behind and a sandwich bag of my buds came plopping into my lap. Noa’s voice said, “Saw this in one of your shoeboxes.”

  I rolled my head back since he was behind the couch, so I was looking at him upside down, and I was all, “What, you’re going through my stuff now?”

  “You need to be more original than a shoebox. Plus,” Noa said, “I thought you were done with this.”

  I rolled my head forward and looked at the lumps of sweet pakalolo inside the Zig Zag papers.

  “Don’t you got some cancer to cure?” I said. “‘Ukulele masterpieces to write?”

  “I thought you said you’d quit,” he said again.

  “I did,” I said, which was true.

  “If that’s quitting then my farts don’t stink.”

  “Might as well they don’t, the way you act,” I said. “Nose up in the air when you’re the one that’s all bust-up. Anyway, I bet this bag is short from you lifting buds from it.”

  “I didn’t touch it,” he said. “Nothing’s wrong with me.”

  I go back to watching SportsCenter. “Yeah, right. Almost no one coming around our house anymore, yeah? And the ones that does get sent away by Mom and Dad. Goes like this,” I said, then in my best Mom and Dad voice, “We’ve decided it’s for the best that he takes a break from helping people for a little while. Please don’t come back until you hear from us.”

  For just a second he was fully surprised, but he fixed it fast. “Yeah, I bet you’re happy,” he said. “I bet you smile every time you close the door on someone.”

  “I ain’t happy we’re broke.”

  That shut him up. On SportsCenter there was Tiger Woods, sticking it to everyone else, Vijay Singh just behind him, and I’m all, I bet there’s some pissed-off haoles at the country clubs tonight.

  After a minute Noa said, “We’re still better than we were on the Big Island.” The way he said it was almost like he was sorry, like he didn’t want a fight anymore. Might as well he just admitted something’s wrong. But I couldn’t stop myself.

  “I mean I guess,” I said. “But no thanks to you anymore. Mom and Dad been counting on you.”

  Then he was all tight and cold. “That’s the problem,” he said. “That’s all you guys think about. Us, us, us. This is bigger than Mom or Dad. Bigger than all of us, bigger than me just making chump change for our family—”

  “Ain’t nothing bigger than our family,” I said. But I maybe said it, too, because I could tell he was right, that the things he was gonna be was bigger than all of us. “That’s what’s wrong with you.”

  “The drugs, though, Dean,” Noa said. Him all rubbing his face like he was talking to a bad dog. “Don’t be stupid.”

  Mom was right, I wasn’t sorry. I figured if I hit his teeth hard enough he’d swallow them. “Just shut up,” I said. “I oughta knock you out.” My muscles was all heat, and the only thing that kept me from hitting him again was how it felt the time before when I did it. So I turned the volume up.

  “Dean,” he said. “Shit. I’m sorry.”

  “Whatever,” I said.

  “It doesn’t have to be like this,” he said.

  “Then what does it gotta be like,” I said.

  “I’m sorry,” he said, and I knew what was in his voice, it was true. I should’ve said sorry, too, I should’ve clapped his hand and maybe clowned around or something, tried to go back to before, when we was just brothers. Only I couldn’t. There was too much in between. Too much of him.

  Watch me rise, I wanted for say, you watch what I do the next five, ten years, you watch me on SportsCenter. Won’t be nothing bigger, only I’ll be it just for our family. But he was gone, and we hadn’t finished w
hat we’d started. So I said to the empty room, “And I don’t need for sell nothing anymore. I don’t.”

  The whole week after, Coach went at us hard. We kept losing games. Last one that time was to Kuakini by seventeen. Us at practice, maybe a few days before the game against Kahena Academy, and Coach was all, Kahena is going to be on you like it’s prison and they’re selling your buttholes for cigarettes, and you deserve it, too, if we lose I’m the first one putting up the highlights on YouTube. He dragged two trash cans out from the bathroom and put one at each end of the court and said, We’re doing suicides until someone pukes, and then we did, we sprinted back and forth to the touch lines until our legs was all beat to wobble and the blood in my chest was like a whole cave on fire. Every time Coach hollering and keeping his stopwatch, and if we couldn’t match the last one he made us run another.

  Alika stopped after the fifty-something suicide and palu’d into the trash can. We watched his stomach squeeze and the way his legs wiggled just before it came up and then the spatter as it hit the bottom of the can.

  “Now you know how I felt after our game last night,” Coach said, standing next to Alika but staring at all of us. “Every time I watch the film of our sorry-ass loss I’m going to be like Alika is now. What’s your problem?” Coach asked me. Must’ve been I was staring at him.

  And I wanted for be like: I don’t know what happens next.

  “I said what’s your problem,” Coach said.

  I could talk big in front of Noa, but maybe won’t none of it get better.

  “Nothing,” I said, hands on my knees, sucking wind. “I don’t got a problem, Coach.”

  I stopped by J. Yamamoto on the way back from practice, even though I had the drunk head of too much workout and not enough water. I was off the bus and walking through the mist from the hot rain that just finished sizzling on the blacktop, and the shopping carts was all hissing and crashing across the lot while the workers lined ’um up and I stood at the huge J. Yamamoto front windows and watched my mom. She was in full-on work mode: green apron, fingers pecking at the keys, and easy wrist flicks to close the register drawer every time after she gave change.