Sharks in the Time of Saviours

by Kawai Strong Washburn

  Okay, nothing’s the same now when we run. Now I’m not looking to lose myself. I’m looking to expand what I’ve made. I call it a new ahupua‘a: the old system resurrected. When the island was ali‘i split in stripes top to bottom and everything produced was given to everything else: fish from the sea traded for sweet potato from the plains grown from water from the ridges. Only now me and Hoku have enclosed the whole thing in a smaller space, plus incorporated photovoltaics plus water reclamation. It trades and feeds among itself, see? The kalo and the fish and the flowers. Much from little land. It’s going to change what these islands are, I swear. When we first started talking about it. When the articles were in the paper and the island airline’s in-flight magazine, people started coming around. Tita earth mamas with toenails like cracked roof shingles and vana-hair armpits, koi tattoos, and whole farms they were building, just like us. Guys with kinked hair that fell to the middle of their backs, dark-skinned chests that are just plates of muscle. But it wasn’t the news that brought them. They’d been called, too, is what they said. That same voice, the one that came to me like a hula, that came through Dad like a river. All the people that came to us had been hearing it. Driving them to make what they had. And so all us Kānaka Maoli and all our noise? Even important people are coming around: After all, the county councilwoman shrugged, we have to do something with all this land. Me making visits to the legislative hearings, to universities, joined by other farmers and fishers and speakers of the old ways.

  “See that,” Dean said on the phone last night. Like I was just figuring out something he always knew.

  “Oh Jesus, Dean,” I said. “See what.”

  “Noa was right, wasn’t he,” Dean said. “Wasn’t just about him. Even from the grave he gets for be a know-it-all.”

  I couldn’t help it, I laughed.

  But what about you is what I asked him then. Does it call you now, too.

  “You know what,” he said. “You wanna talk about calling. Try listen to this.” And there was a tumble and thump from his side of the phone, an underwater sound. A sound I knew meant he was moving the phone, then moving himself. Then there was a rush of city sound so loud it almost turned into a white-noise rainstorm: car horns, sirens, the cracking of wood pallets and doors. The boom of heavy things tumbling into a dumpster. The long grind and roar of a city bus. Hisses and clatters. Voices. Then those sounds faded and the phone thumped, moving again. A television voice rose, something about markets and expected quarterly growth, predictions of valuation, and then he was back on the phone, right? And his breath. “You heard ’um, yeah?”

  “I heard noise,” I said. “That’s not what I’m talking about.”

  “Noise,” he said. “That’s money,” he said. “That’s me finding ways to make it.”

  He’d been sending more money as he made it, deposits showing up in Mom and Dad’s account on the regular. Mom never asked where he made it, and I didn’t, either. I bet the answer was not as bad as we imagined. But we didn’t ask, because maybe it was worse.

  There was a creak of leather on his end of the line, thump of something closing. The whole time we talked I bet he was moving. He’s always moving. I wonder if that was the worst part of prison for him, the way movement was taken from him.

  “How’s Mom and Dad been?” he asked.

  “Better, every day,” I said. “All of us.”

  “Look at you,” he said. “Maybe Noa wasn’t the only superhero.”

  “He never was a superhero, Dean,” I said. “That was the problem. No more saviors, okay? This is just life.”

  “Huh,” he said. And then: “You know, I still think about Waipi‘o,” he said. It was like I could hear him shaking his head over the phone. “I was down there way after everyone was all back home. The helicopters and dogs gone and me just hiking for find Noa. Up and down all those trails. I kept having one feeling like maybe he was just around the next corner. Just right up ahead of me. Same as when we was kids, he was always ahead of me. Even the last time, like he took the fall because he was so far away from where everyone else walks.

  “Part of me gonna stay down in the valley like that forever. Just chasing him. Part of me ain’t never coming back up. You know?”

  While he talked, I moved through the little house we have now, on Uncle Kimo’s property. I stepped onto the lanai outside our side door. Felt how, like, the hapu‘u ferns and the banana trees and ironwoods made their own atmosphere. And it was different than what there was in San Diego. But just like that how quickly I was back there. Van and all those parties, those climbs. Those drives and climbs and the culverts. And Van. And Van.

  “Yes,” I said. “I know exactly what you mean.”

  He didn’t say anything.

  “You’re not coming home, are you?” I asked.

  “Home,” he said. Like it was a word he’d heard before but still didn’t know. “Whole time I was back in Hawai‘i,” he said, “I run into people and they’re all ‘I remember when you scored thirty-five against Villanova, last-minute bank shot,’ or ‘Back when you was playing for Lincoln I remember going to all your games.’

  “That’s all Hawai‘i is now, yeah? It’s the me that I was before. There’s that and there’s the valley and everywhere Noa. I can’t beat it, sis. That’s it, that’s Hawai‘i. I can’t beat it.”

  Give it another chance is what I told him. “You’d be surprised,” I said, “what this land can do to you.”

  “Nothing surprises me anymore,” he said.

  Oh, Dean. Such a butthole, still. Once upon a time it would have made me angry, right? But I figured what he needed then was just a little credit. Just a little bit of being the best.

  “Hey, Dean,” I said. “The money you sent us, that first time. It got here just when Mom needed it most. I mean really needed it. She was almost gone. Did you know that?”

  He inhaled then. Sharp and fast. Voice cracked a little when he spoke. “Ah,” he said. “Okay.”

  “And I remember that day in Portland,” I said. “I remember who took the wheel. At the end.

  “But you don’t have to keep doing whatever you’re doing now,” I said. “We’re going to be okay.”

  “Oh, yeah?” he asked. “What about all the farming you got started up now? Not gonna be cheap, try and turn that into something big.”

  Okay, he was right—even with potential investment from the county or state, governments never had real funding for people like us. I said as much. And I could already feel his money moving over the wire. Like the muscle of an ocean current.

  “Yeah,” he said. “See that? It’s what I’m saying. We’re not okay enough. Not yet.”

  I realized that this would always be a difference between me and Dean. After everything that had happened to this family. Everything we’d seen and felt from Noa. The echoes of it in ourselves . . . I only wanted, finally, to understand. Let the money fall where it may, you know? But there was no settling that way, not for Dean. For him it had to be his hand, taking as much as he thought we needed to wipe away everything that had happened to us before. To guarantee it was all over. But there wasn’t enough money in the world for that.

  “There’s way more I can make, like coming out our okoles,” he said. “Whatchyou think about that?”

  “I think Mom wants her only living son back,” I said.

  He was quiet a long time. But he was there. I knew he was.

  “Let me think about it,” he said. “Meantime, I keep sending money. Plenty more. I gotta go.”

  I wanted to tell him no again. No more money, just him. That we’d be here, when he was ready. But he’d already hung up.

  39

  AUGIE, 2009

  Waipi‘o Valley

  Ah. Ha.

  I feel the breath of life in the valley.

  Ah.

  Ha.

  Four days and four nights we have been here where it started.

  Waiting. Malia doesn’t know for what but I do. All around is
the blow and the hiss across the kalo and the stands of ironwoods and farther back the kalo that came up with the rain that drops every night from the clouds which have carried other rains to other places in these islands. No rain is coming this night and I can feel the clear moon like a mother watching me from a house that someday I must return to.

  I am returning now.

  Malia is here and Kaui is here and we are on the far side of Waipi‘o near the start of the trail that raised my son up to death. Our tent is set back off the beach the polyester zipping and clapping in the wind and I am outside the tent in the black air walking as I do now because of the voices. Stronger here in this part of the valley. They are growing in me every day the voices all these days since Nainoa left. They give the colors and the smells to my head colors only that I feel and know but do not have the words for. But I know we are waiting. Malia and Kaui do not know for what but I do.

  It happens tonight. As it did those years ago. We have never been the same as we were when we left this place on those engines to go out across the water to O‘ahu with its concrete and its people all of them too many. We were once here with horses riding across the land and when they ran we ran and when they walked we walked and when they took in air and when they stank and when they sweated so did we and each of us was full or empty as the horse. I was once the sugarcane. I was the cane and the clacking and the sugar-sweet smoke of reaping the season when we harvested and started again after the ashes.

  I am here on the sand now in the valley. The gray beach sand an open cupped palm on the edge of the trees and the ocean. The water dances in the black and tumbles to me in a wave then draws out and tumbles back again. The ocean is not cold. The sky is wheeling with other suns other histories already over. My feet are in the sand and the sand is in my feet. To my left is the valley wall and the Z-Trail rising up in the valley dark green and black and the trees and the bushes shining from the moon. The trail slashes back and forth across the face of the valley all the way to the peak of the ridge.

  The voices are strongest up there I can feel it.

  “Couldn’t sleep, babe?”

  Here is my Malia. She is standing in her sweater with the hood up over her hair and her jeans and shoes. Her blunt nose is poking out from the hood her hair is one long thick curl sweeping down onto her chest. Her eyes are old and looking at me deep with worry.

  I try to say what I am seeing. What comes out of me sounds like the kalo growing from the ponds sounds like the roaring of the waterfall sounds like lava sliding into the sea. Malia looks at me her eyebrows scrunched with worry and she says, “Slow down. You’re doing that thing again, where you talk crazy.”

  I try to say again about the voices how they hum. She reaches out to touch me and I close my eyes and start to say again but I can’t get through my mouth.

  “Babe,” she says. Her fingers are on my cheek and I feel each finger feel them all the way down her arm past the elbow and the bones and blood all straight into the hot center of her life. “What’s wrong?” she asks.

  I try to say to her where I have to go. She stops talking she stops moving. Then she turns to face the trail that goes up the side of the valley does she remember the night when we made Nainoa when we were in the truck on the other side watching the torches rise across the ridge does she remember the night marchers?

  “Up there?” she asks.

  I nod my head. They are coming.

  For me.

  She looks at the trail and the moon and I reach and touch her hand which is still on my cheek and try again to say but not with my mouth and now she sees. We grasp each other’s hands and she walks back to the tent and I hear her talk to my daughter and then she comes back. All that time the breath of the valley.

  We climb the trail in the darkness. Malia has a flashlight but once we break from the trees the moon is white and full and I can see it all. She must know because she clicks off the light. We walk those steps that Nainoa took. I am the centipede thrashing deep under the rocks. I am the burrowed bird tucked sleeping in the tree. I am the knot and flex of the trees. My hand is in Malia’s as we climb and climb and climb up the trail.

  Faster.

  “Slow down,” Malia says but she’s falling behind. Her breath.

  The valley’s breath.

  But I know they are coming. We have to meet them I have to go. They won’t wait just for me this night and then I will have to come again. I will have to keep coming until I meet them so now I hurry.

  Faster. Malia is gasping and we are running she is falling behind. I turn and grab her and we lift and move over the trail like the air does. I am the air. We are no longer on the ground we are moving above it. Passing above like a thought that thinks of the top of the ridge and I take us past the trees I take us over their shadows I take us to the top. Malia is clutching me and saying “Holy shit, we were flying, we were flying, Augie, what’s happening, we’re at the top of the ridge,” her asking if I saw what she saw but now when I want to say my words are the mosquitoes singing in the forest my words are the leaves shoving themselves up from the branches.

  We are on top of the ridge. Down below us is the whole valley and wide away on the other side is the lookout and the road and the yellow lights of the houses and everything we left behind. Back behind us is the green night valley and wind stretching back along the top of the valley to the place where the ridges come together.

  But the wind stops.

  The trees go quiet.

  Scrape all the sound from the sky and this is what is left. The sound of now. This is what we stand in Malia and I on top of the ridge of Waipi‘o.

  Then they appear.

  Malia’s grip twists down on my shirt. I feel my skin grow hot with blood just underneath. I try to say this is what we came for. I try to say that this is so good.

  In front of us is the column of Kānaka Maoli each one of them dead. They are men and women and they are both and they are neither. They are dark brown and almost naked the skin all stitched with scars. Their hair is neck-long or longer and kinked like ours and their noses broad as our noses and their faces tight and proud. Over their shoulders are the yellow and red feathered capes. Some wear pounded tapa cloth across their legs. Some wear hollowed gourds as helmets on their heads with huge holes gashed out for sight. Their eyes are nothing but white light a light that goes like smoke.

  Night marchers.

  Malia says “Oh, God,” says it over and over and her voice is tighter and now she has no words and her voice is just quiet but she is still trying to speak and clutching me her heart like an animal that can’t swim suddenly in a lake and so I hold her. I hold her and stare at the night marchers and they stare back. Each one holds in their hand a clump of branches. All at once these branches boom and pop into flame. Each one goes like thunder and the flame crackles and sucks and sets. The torches burning bright now white spitting sparks that do not burn the branches.

  I kiss Malia’s forehead where she is shivering from the sight of the night marchers. I do not know if she remembers them from before from the first time we saw them on the night we made Nainoa but now it is time. I squeeze her hand and let go. I take my place at the back of the line and the marchers turn their sad faces and the endless light of their eyes up toward the back of the valley.

  “Where are you going?” Malia asks. I try to say but it is the sound of sharks giving birth it is the sound of birds plunging for the hunt. I know that I am coming back. I touch her head I touch her neck I touch her shoulder and there is something in me that takes her from the ridge and carries her like air back down to our tent at the valley floor. She will wait. I will be back and I will be the only one.

  The march begins. Each one ahead of me with their torch raised high and their eyes nothing but smoking lights watching the valley ridge and how it rises. They march and I march with them. I take up branches from the ground as we go. The sky is blasted across with stars and the valley still scraped of sound and in front of me each marcher
stepping and holding their torch high. When I have gathered enough branches I think again of Nainoa lost now to us all these days my son my son and as I think of him gone from this world and all the gifts that came with him the thoughts streak from my head down through my hot heart and out along my arm into my hand and then the branches I hold burst into flames.

  That is when I see what all the night marchers see.

  I am the man named Augie and I am the blood that pumps inside and I am the sand that was blown to life with the breath of all our gods and I am the wet mud of the valley and I am the green that grows from within it. I am the shore the drift of the world underwater and I am the shatter the wave throws over. I am the atmosphere that heats the thunderheads and I am the cool rain the thirsty soil reclaims. I am the flex that drives the arm of the wayfinder the planter the carver. I am the beat that drives the hips of the hula. I am the spark that starts the child’s heart and I am the last beat from the elder’s.

  And so it is with Nainoa.

  There he is.

  He never left us.

  ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

  Duvall Osteen has been with me from the jump. Intelligent, charming, fierce, family. Her and the whole Aragi Agency, a band of women small but mighty, including Gracie Dietshe. All good things for this novel came through the work of Team A.

  Sean McDonald, Daniel Vazquez, and everyone else at MCD / Farrar, Straus and Giroux, for more enthusiasm and investment than I ever could have dreamed of, seriously.

  My wife, Christina, and our entire life together. I was writing revisions when your contractions started, and you just kept breathing. We’ve been breathing ever since.

  Benjamin Percy, who was the first person to believe.

  Elizabeth Stork, who was the second person to believe.