Sharks in the Time of Saviours

by Kawai Strong Washburn

  One hundred and eighty days minus time served. That’s what I made. Arrested on February 26 and arraigned the day after just like that. I thought there was, like, you go to the police station and then you get released and come back for a court date, but—between the forced entry and the car theft and the buds on the counter?—I wasn’t going nowhere. April 15 is this morning, and so I get one hundred thirty-two to go. That’s the best I ever been at math right there, look at me subtract. You get good at all kinds of things in here.

  February 26, after I got Kaui out the car and drove straight to the Sheriff like I was gonna deliver something. Sheriff and then his backup coming after, both in their tight lumpy black coats walking slowly around my driver and passenger sides, blue and red lights from their cars flashing in my eyes. The crunchy wind coming through their radios and them talking down into their coats while they walked the car, looking in at me. I just kept my hands up on the wheel and tried for breathe slow. I remembered every story I heard about how not to get shot.

  Me and Kaui didn’t have no time for talk. We could have run again, yeah, ditch the car and go for the streets. But I dunno, it’s just I reached a point where I was like, Fuck that, I’m not gonna run away anymore. Me and her had been talking, before, about Noa, the sharks, what he’d felt and what we’d felt, and whether some of what he was, if it was in us, too. Like maybe just because he was gone, everything didn’t have to be over. But you look at her and what she’s been doing, and you look at me and what I done?

  Easy answer. I did what we all needed.

  Kaui saw the whole thing happening and I felt bad for her, but this way was the only way. She got all this shit she learned in school, about how to build things. How to make things. Wasn’t right for her to be the other things, the police and the pakalolo and the stealing, the running.

  I swear. Me and those cops. That was the worst part, the waiting after they stopped me. Had the feeling they could do whatever they wanted and wouldn’t nobody stop ’um. I just watched while they was checking out the car. I could tell Sheriff was figuring out the car was stolen, he’d written a bunch in his book and pinched the radio clipped to his shoulder. I still had on Noa’s sweatpants that I couldn’t barely keep at my ass, they were so small. The seams all cutting and biting into me.

  Sheriff made a motion, like, roll down the window. I did.

  He was all, You just keep those hands on the wheel.

  I am, I said.

  Where’s the sister? Sheriff asked.

  She was fighting me the whole time, I said. Had to get her ass out the car. I dunno where she gone.

  He was all, I thought this was going to end okay when I let you go.

  Yeah, well, I said, you don’t know me.

  There’s an edge on the side of the sink in this cell. I read somewhere that when Muay Thai fighters is training, they roll and tap sticks on their shinbones to kill the nerves, make the bones strong and so they can’t feel pain. How nothing hurts after. So when I walk back the three and a half steps from the door to the bunks I swing my shin into the edge of the sink. Just a light tap. Killing those nerves. Three and a half steps, tap. Three and a half steps, tap. The first times I’m shinning the sink like that, I feel the tap all the way up to my teeth, this confetti pop of pain like I’m seeing my veins all red in my head, needles on my bone. But then after I do it enough (three steps, tap, three steps, tap) the pain dulls down.

  “Ayo, ayo,” Matty says from his bunk. “Rocky.” His voice all smooth and even. He could be a radio announcer. “Howbout you knock off that training until the morning. It’s dark o’clock up in this bitch.”

  “I thought you was asleep,” I say. I’m still facing the door, with its window and the low lights outside it, coming into our cell. There’s that cold going up the bottoms of my feet but my shins is way hot and a million little lines of hurt pumping with my pulse.

  “I was trying to jack off.” He says it like it’s something he gotta check off a list. “It’s hard when someone’s kicking the fucking sink.”

  I smile in the dark. I still got my back to Matty and the bunks, but I smile all the same. “All right,” I say. “Get back to it, player.” At least he’s still got the sheets up over himself. I walk back over and climb up into my bunk up top and right away a soft, steady creak starts up from below, bucking and swaying through the frame. You gotta be kidding me, Matty, but I can’t do nothing but lie there until he’s done, yeah, so I’m straight staring at the wall, thinking maybe if I look long enough, I can read some more of the words there, even if there’s no lights.

  “I guess you can’t really tell me how it is in there,” Mom says on the phone. Twelve minutes left, since I talked to Kaui first.

  “It’s boring, Mom, I swear to God,” I say. “Don’t nothing happen. We just sit and sit and sit.”

  “Television?”

  “Yeah, get plenty. It’s funny though”—I almost laugh—“before, when I was working warehouses and all that, on the weekends all I’d do sometimes is watch TV. But now I hate it.”

  “Don’t they have you working? I feel like I read something about prisons being used for free labor camps.”

  “Yeah, we get all that. But there’s like a whole system for getting on the teams outside, right, the ones that get, like, forest work and all that. You gotta sit inside for some of your time at first, only the guys that’s been here a little while with good behavior and all that. My turn’s coming soon maybe. The guards is assholes about it, though, and it’s one of the first things they take away if they can.”

  “Oh.”

  “Yeah, so maybe I don’t want it. I dunno.”

  “I see.” She does a small cough. Just to pass the time. I can hear some thumps in the back, the crumple of a paper bag, makes me think of grocery stores and how there’s so much light and space in ’um, and how it was before, at J. Yamamoto.

  “You can’t let no one else get something on you,” I say, “not while you’re in here. You get it? Once someone’s got something on you it’s all over, you lose.”

  “You’ll be home soon,” Mom says. It’s what she says every time she can’t think of nothing else for say.

  “How’s Dad?” I ask. “Kaui’s saying he’s . . . I dunno. There’s problems.”

  “Your father,” Mom says.

  “Right, Mom,” I say. “Who else?”

  “He’s fine.”

  “Mom.”

  “We’re surviving,” she says. “It’s the same out here for us as it is in there for you, Dean.”

  “Same for you,” I say. “The fuck it is.”

  “No, no,” Mom says. “I didn’t mean it that way. What I mean is that . . . I know you’re not telling me how it really is in there.”

  “Maybe not all of it,” I say. I even smile when I say it.

  “So we both edit,” Mom says. “That’s what I’m saying.”

  “Okay,” I say. “Yeah, okay.”

  “If I had ever known this would be where you’d end up, Dean,” Mom says, starting that same thing up again.

  “Mom.”

  “I should have done it different back when you were in school—”

  She goes for a minute, same old same old, since every time I been on the phone with her in here, so I stop listening. Eight minutes left now. Part of me wants to tell her it’s okay, but part of me doesn’t. How messed up is that? Like I want for her to know that yeah, maybe it should have been different back in high school days, maybe she shouldn’t have been so sure about Noa and the ‘aumakua. Maybe she should have been more sure about all of us.

  “Nothing we can do about none of that,” I say. “It’s all done.”

  She says something off the phone to Kaui and then there’s a weird robot-glitch sound of the cell-phone signal going bad on her end. When she comes back I say, “Hey, Mom.”

  “Yeah?”

  “I think maybe I’m going at it alone in here.”

  “Dean.”

  “When we get to talk
ing there’s all this stuff from outside that comes back in here,” I say. “I don’t need all that right now. It makes it harder, you know? Plus it’s like people can smell ’um if you’re missing things outside, if you’re hurting.”

  “It’s not a good idea,” she says, “to not have us in there with you.”

  “Nah,” I say. “Best idea I ever had.”

  “Dean.”

  Like she can scold me now.

  “Let me do it my way,” I say. “You don’t have a choice.”

  That’s the end of it.

  But check what does get to me from outside: There’s the yard, right, with the fences and the concrete court, lap track around it, little spits of yellow summer grass out in between them. Basketball court—hell, yeah—and jail might be shitty but the backboards is solid and the rims, too, plus there’s a net. I been listening to that kiss sound when the ball slips through, all these days since I first came out to the yard for rec time. Balls are fresh and pumped up, and it’s maybe sixty days in before I let myself step out on the court. Two prison guards stand at either end, just by the hoops.

  Some of the guys is in torn-up shorts or denim-style, looking all gangster with headbands and shit, it’s sort of hilarious how hood they look. I been watching these guys stumble around each other and throw elbows and pretend they’re Jordan and it’s not even close, I’m way on top.

  “Knew this tall motherfucker’d be out here someday,” Roscoe says, I don’t know him so well. He’s got a thick Mexi mustache, rolls with one of the gangs in here.

  I keep my head down, don’t make eyes. Guys in here is like dogs that way.

  “Brian’s knee is all beat up anyway,” one of the haole guys from the other team says.

  “Fuck you it’s not,” that’s Brian.

  “You can’t jump higher than a pregnant hippo,” says the guy.

  “Look who’s got big words all of a sudden,” says Roscoe again. He nods, chin up, at the guy that was talking. “Been reading in the library, GED-ready, huh, Toni Tone?”

  “You bet,” that guy, Toni or whatever, says. “Been reading up on how to school your ass, too.”

  And they go back and forth, jokes about who’s been studying what and whether they even know how to study anything if they can’t beat his team, check the scoreboard, all that garbage.

  “Howbout you take a break, Brian,” I say.

  “Right after you lick my balls,” he says.

  “You be careful out there, Weston,” one of the prison guards calls out. “Sounds like you’re looking to lose some rec privs.”

  There’s ooos on the court, everyone stands a little taller like it’s basic training with the drill sergeants. We’re all smart-asses, yeah, until the guards start talking.

  Brian steps off the court, keeps his hands folded out in front of his pants like a good little schoolboy. Someone bounces me the ball.

  Even just to touch it. Been a long time, feels like, since I had this. All that time I was back in Spokane after I got cut: I didn’t touch no basketball, not once I wasn’t dressed with the team. I figured that was it, all retired from basketball, and then once I was slipping—beers in the parking lot, buds and late nights, all the television couch time, no running—I didn’t want for feel what it would be like, me all slow and heavy on the court.

  But now I got the basketball in my hands like what. And I feel the flow the second I’m holding it. Like all my muscles are ready for the jump, every part of me. Like some sort of lion. King again, me across the water. Only this time I wonder if I can really listen, if I can reach from here to there.

  “You don’t check the ball in and you don’t bring it up,” Toni says to me. Toni the haole dude with his gorilla-hair chest, wannabe pretty-boy face. “You play center, tall boy. Pass it here, I’ll start us up the court.”

  I smile. “Why don’t you clear on up there,” I say, waving up the court. “I’ll bring it.”

  “Give me the ball,” he says.

  “Clear on up there, boy,” I say, and there’s some other guys on the team, some brothers, and I know they see something and smile, because they’re telling him the same, Clear on up, let the man go, let’s see how it rolls. You can’t pass for shit anyway, someone tells him.

  I get started.

  Maybe I’m slow somewhere still, yeah, but not on this court, not right now. I’m liquid, is what I am. We go for another twenty minutes and I’m all over the court like I ain’t never missed a day of practice, like don’t no one understand how it feels. I get the ball and cut between two boys, shoulder off their hack fouls, tomahawk the ball in so hard it almost bounces back up into my face and I hang on the rim. I thread passes down low to the brothers and even Toni, slip it between suckers’ legs, even get a crossover. Kids are slow in here, too many drugs, too many forties, too many weights and not enough running, and now they’re all mine. I fadeaway-jumper kiss it in off the glass. I find my three-pointer and I murder ’um with it whenever I feel like it. Automatic. Yeah, I miss a few, okay, more than a few, and soon enough there’s heat and ache in my knees and back, like I’m an old man for the first time, but whatever, it’s nothing. I’m here. I’m now.

  Everyone knows who I am when I leave that court.

  Days go a little easier after that. At the tables, on the work crews, guys is nodding at me, giving me space, and since I don’t run my mouth or pull any stupid stunts, not beating my chest like some moke or getting smart, there’s respect. It comes on silent and steady and sometimes it even sounds like disrespect, when guys is all jawing at me, saying this or that about the court, but even then I know they say it because I’m the one to get after now, yeah. Even some of the guards is like that. There’s a couple that work the yard more than others, Officer Trujillo, he’ll nod and say some stuff low to his friend when I pull my slick cuts and drop a fadeaway. I see him nodding and all that.

  Which I think is what helps give me the other idea. Later, I’m back in the cell and it’s those three and a half steps again, all the memories like obake haunting me, and I’m tuning my shins on the sink again. Three and a half steps, do it. Three and a half steps and make my bones sing on the steel.

  Matty goes, “What you need is some OC. You could kick that sink all night and not feel a thing.”

  I stop kicking. “Already getting so I don’t feel nothing. Or it’s like my brain sees the pain coming and shuts it up.” I can feel the flex in my jaw, though, from gritting my teeth, that’s for sure. But I don’t tell Matty that.

  “On that OC, though,” Matty says. “You ever did it?”

  “That’s that show with haole girls and boys, yeah? Rich ones or whatever in Hollywood.”

  Matty laughs. Like he fully cackles after I say it.

  “Oxy, son,” Matty says. “I’d give my left nut for some in here. Just one run of it, man, I swear. Flatten this whole place out into one quiet line I can sleep through. I miss it more than my mom.”

  “You telling me you can’t get that in here?” I say. “You ask around?”

  “First thing I did when I saw somebody,” Matty says.

  “Back in the day, like high school? I’d get you that easy,” I say. “And I don’t even know what it is. But still I coulda got it for you.”

  He snorts. “Look who’s dreaming of being Santa Claus.”

  “I coulda got it,” I say. “I swear.”

  And just like that it’s there, the whole concept. Trujillo nodding after my game, Matty hurting for some drugs. Whole idea falls in my lap.

  So the next time we’re on the yard and Officer Trujillo is the one getting the game shut down at the end of rec time, I’m the one holding the ball that gets to hand it back to him. I went like ten for twelve on the floor, had this mean reverse near the end that had everyone like oooooooh. Officer Trujillo is standing there and he says, “Time for the ball, Flores.”

  Him in his khaki uniform, mustache and goatee like every hair is exactly where he wants it, eyebrows and all, marine-style haircu
t. All I need is a little friendliness. Used to be I could make anyone friendly.

  “You guys work real hard in here, you know that?” I say.

  “The ball,” Trujillo says.

  “I mean I bet the hours is long, guys like us giving you a hard time all day,” I say. “I only seen a little of the crazy, guys shitting and pissing on the floors and stuff, fights and all that. Heard Crazy Eddie tried to give one of you guys hep C by spitting on you.”

  “You don’t know the half of it,” Trujillo says.

  “I’m from Hawai‘i,” I say.

  “The ball,” Trujillo says, holding out his hand.

  “I’m from Hawai‘i,” I say.

  “Don’t make me ask again,” Trujillo says.

  “What I’m saying is, like, when was your last vacation, yeah? I know all about vacations, what they cost and all that.”

  “Flores,” Trujillo says, like he’s tired and I’m in between him and his bed, but he’s not angry and he’s listening, and that means I done it right. Okay, I never won a trophy in Spokane. Not the Big One, after all those years. All those hours and palu and sweat and hurt. Me and Mom and Noa with that fight in the kitchen, all the silent fights after. Me flying off to that goddamn ice storm of a state, all for basketball. All for number one. In the end there wasn’t nothing to show for it. Long time in here I was sorry—sorry Mom sorry Dad sorry Noa. That’s what I was saying in here every day in my head until now and there’s no sorry left anymore. I got other things to win.

  Do you believe in destiny, is what Noa asked on the phone that one time. About what we’re supposed to be, if it’s written from the start.

  That maybe what he felt in the islands and what I felt on the court were the same thing, and I could be like he was.

  It’s too late for that now, Noa. But I can still be what we need. There was basketball, now there’s this. Both supposed to end in money.

  “Listen,” I say to Trujillo. “Howbout there’s a way I can help you out with that vacation.”