Boat

by Michael Baughman

  This was the morning that memories of western Pennsylvania began to disappear, like writing in chalk erased from a blackboard at school.

  Underwater

  Not long after my first surfing lesson Boat told me the name of a shop on King Street where I could buy a spear, sling, diving mask, and fins.

  The smaller the waves were, the better conditions were for spearing, and the day after I went to the shop Waikiki was nearly flat. I signed out a small canoe and an anchor and, with Boat steering, we paddled through Baby Surf in front of the Royal Hawaiian, and then through Populars.

  “We go to the old barge,” Boat said. “Plenty fish. Not so deep. Good place to learn.”

  As we paddled, Boat explained the basics of spearing.

  When he dropped the anchor we were about a quarter mile offshore.

  “Good clear water,” he said. “Low tide. Perfect day. Nothing to be scared of here, bruddah, except for the moray eels. Look.” When Boat held out his right hand I saw deep scars all the way across the hand above the knuckles. “A moray did it. Big buggah. I reached for a lobster out Laie. That moray got me. You see one, you stay away. The barge is right out there, twenty, thirty yards.” He pointed. “We anchor here so we no spook the fish.”

  Boat, mask in place, spear and sling in his scarred hand, dropped gracefully over the side.

  The turbulence created when I splashed into the water caused a cloud of bubbles in front of my mask that blinded me at first.

  When the bubbles lifted and cleared, what had always been dark shadows and white sand seen through a shimmering surface while surfing or swimming became, in an instant, an extraordinary new and silent world, far removed from anything I’d ever known.

  I covered the distance to the sunken barge in a minute or two. The dark patches were coral formations of varying shapes and sizes growing out of immaculate sand. Underneath me, leading toward the barge, was a long, low reef with mysterious holes and ledges, and everywhere around the reef were brightly colored fish, some in schools, others swimming in pairs or alone.

  Then came the remains of the barge, half or more of it buried in sand close beside a large, dark reef. Hundreds of the gaudy fish swam lazily between the barge and the coral, circling, darting and stopping, starting again, as I treaded water over them.

  The depth at the barge varied from ten to fifteen feet, so I could easily reach the bottom. My equipment was simple—the six-foot spear with a hinged barb behind the sharp point, and a Hawaiian sling made of two lengths of surgical rubber lashed to a bamboo handle. When drawn back the spear could be shot through the hollow bamboo like an arrow loosed from a bow.

  At first I shot at fish from too far away and missed. Then, when I tried getting close, I spooked my chosen targets before I could aim my spear. Meanwhile, Boat speared fish, swam back to drop them into the canoe, then returned to the barge for more.

  Finally I speared one from a school of small white fish with vertical black stripes, a manini, Boat told me as we paddled in after wind and waves came up in the early afternoon. Boat had speared aweoweo, moana, palani, and, most prized of all, kumu. He explained that the best fish, like kumu and aweoweo, usually stayed well hidden in deep holes and under the darkest ledges. “The best fish never come easy,” he said. “You got to look hard for the good ones. You like the spearing, Mike?”

  “Yes!”

  “Someday I take you in my powerboat where it’s deep.”

  We had been out for three hours that, in my exhilaration, had passed like one.

  The next day the waves were up, so I surfed.

  Haoles

  Mostly because of Boat I made friends at the beach, and mostly because of sports I made friends at school. My closest friend was Doug, a Punahou athlete and Outrigger Club member whose parents owned and ran high-end clothing shops, including one at Waikiki.

  Not long after dark on a Sunday night Doug and I were along Kalakaua Avenue through Kapiolani Park with our stringers of fish and spearing gear after spending the afternoon and evening diving along the shallow reefs off the tip of Diamond Head. We were heading back to the club.

  Near the aquarium half a dozen local boys came out of the park and stood across the wide sidewalk, blocking our way.

  One of them called us “fucking haoles,” then swung at Doug, who blocked the telegraphed punch and knocked the boy onto his back with a right to the side of his head. As he hit the sidewalk hard the rest of them swarmed us. There’s no actual pain, only a kind of numb astonishment during a beating. I felt their punches landing, and their kicks once I was down, but it didn’t last long.

  When I woke up flat on my back in the Queens Hospital emergency room the family doctor was sewing my face together. I could smell liquor on his breath. He sutured above both eyes and across my right cheek, then bandaged my broken nose.

  Dr. Chalmers, when he saw I was conscious, reassured me as he worked, told me I’d be fine, and he was right. Doug took more stitches than I did, but after a few months our scars barely showed.

  At Punahou I competed in football, basketball, and track. The school had been founded in 1841 by the same Protestant missionary families that dedicated themselves to converting natives, and to stealing their islands in the process. As a Punahou kid, I became a small part of one ingredient in the complex cultural stew of racial feuds and alliances that was mid-twentieth-century Hawaii.

  Trying to fit in, I learned to speak acceptable Pidgin English. I also learned some Chinese and Japanese, and, thanks to Boat, the commonly used Hawaiian words. I taught myself to play the ukulele. But what had happened in Kapiolani Park wasn’t unusual. On a bus or a city street, boys I had never seen before called me a fucking haole and asked if I wanted to beef. I won some fights and lost a few.

  First Break

  Just as Boat had predicted, the first-break surf came in early summer, a few days after school let out.

  When I walked onto the beach at the club in the morning the waves were breaking all the way from Castles, near the tip of Diamond Head, across to Populars and well beyond. The day was partly cloudy with intermittent showers of warm rain, and a vast, hazy rainbow spanned the sky far at sea, its shadings as indistinct as the colors in puddles of oily water.

  I knew Boat and the other beachboys would be late today, because these waves were far too large and dangerous for taking tourists out in canoes. Watching from shore, I judged the swells at ten to twelve feet, more than twice as big as anything I’d yet ridden.

  A few surfers were out there already, spread between Queens and Canoes, but twice as far from shore as usual. I heard the distant thundering crashes when the waves broke, and the roar of rolling whitewater.

  I was afraid, but I needed to earn Boat’s respect, and I walked back around to the locker for my board.

  Paddling straight out from the club, I watched intently, timing it to get beyond the major break in a lull between sets—but even during lulls the waves were bigger than anything I’d seen.

  Paddling up the steep face of a feathering swell and then sliding down the backside gave me the same queasy feeling as a roller coaster ride. Ten or fifteen yards behind me, each swell I passed over curled and crashed, and the white water roared, louder all the time.

  I paddled beyond where I thought the biggest swells could break and sat on my board gathering courage while three sets of waves lifted and dropped me and crashed inside, about thirty yards away.

  Each crashing wave seemed to shake the ocean.

  The offshore wind threw spray back into my face.

  No one was anywhere near me.

  The rainbow had disappeared.

  I could see Manoa Valley, steep green mountains with cumulus clouds drifting close above them. Off to my right was the dark silhouette of Diamond Head. On the beach, seeming very far away, were the white Moana and pink Royal Hawaiian. Chick Daniels, head beachboy at the Royal, had set up his red-and-white umbrellas in two straight lines on the private beach in front of the hotel.

&nb
sp; Looking to sea, I saw the waves of another set. They grew as they came, their faces building steeply against the wind. With the first wave a hundred yards away I judged that it might break before it reached me, and I dropped to my board and paddled desperately, straight out, as fast as I could go.

  I barely missed getting caught in the thunderous break.

  I had to catch the second wave because I knew the ones behind it would be even bigger.

  I raised to a sitting position, quickly turned my board around, and dropped back onto my stomach. I paddled only twice and I was on the second wave.

  As I felt immense power pushing, then lifting and carrying my board, I stood.

  A few yards to my right, the wave broke with a fearsome crash and roar. I turned left to slide across the steep face and beat the break, and I quickly stepped forward to increase my speed, and stepping forward dropped me down the face, down and down, my insides turning over, but increased speed didn’t help, because two or three seconds after my turn the wave curled over me and everything exploded into whiteness.

  The board was gone. Everything was gone except water, and the rushing water dragged me under deeper and deeper and carried me forward and rolled me head over heels, over and over and over again. I had no feeling of possessing arms or legs and my eyes had to be open because everything remained bright white, and the one ludicrous thought that came to my mind was that this was like being trapped inside a gigantic high-speed washing machine.

  I’d never known or imagined such force. All I could do was hold my breath and wait and hope. I have no idea how long I was trapped and dragged underwater. It might have been only ten seconds, but it seemed like half a minute or more.

  When I could finally use my limbs, could try to kick and claw my way to the surface, I didn’t know which way was up. Then, in the whiteness, I saw bubbles, and I knew they must be moving upwards, so I swam with the bubbles and broke the surface and sucked in air, and I heard a deep rumbling roar close behind me and looked, and more white water was closing in, coming fast, the next wave of the set.

  I believe the set had eight waves. I tried taking deep breaths and diving underneath them but I couldn’t dive deep enough. Each time I reached the surface to breathe I saw more white water rolling at me and each wave held me down and dragged me closer to shore and, after five or six times, I thought I might die, and I fought off panic.

  Finally, I surfaced and sucked in air and looked and saw no white water, only a swell that, as I treaded water, carried me up and then dropped me easily into the trough behind it.

  Several swells passed that way as I recovered strength, as the sun burned down between clouds and the white froth left by the break dissipated. When I knew I was ready I swam for shore, using the waves. After I reached the inshore break I bodysurfed. Far behind me I heard the waves of another first-break set crashing, rolling in.

  I found my board in the shorebreak between the club and the Moana.

  I lay across the board sideways, resting, facing out, watching the big, distant waves break and roll.

  After a while I paddled back to the club.

  I spent a good half hour in the locker room shower, shivering under the hot water.

  I’d tried to surf a first-break wave and hadn’t died, and I wanted to tell Boat.

  After my shower I changed into dry shorts and went into the club dining room for a ten-cent bowl of rice and gravy. I could watch the waves and surfers from my window table. More surfers were out, but not many more, because the waves had grown larger and were breaking farther out. Even the shorebreak pounded loudly now, and white water rolled all the way up the slope of the beach to the lineup of canvas-covered canoes.

  Right after a waiter delivered my rice and gravy Boat walked in and sat across the table from me.

  “Been out there yet?”

  “I caught one wave.”

  He nodded his head and smiled. “Good for you, bruddah!” he said. “Wipe out?”

  “Yes.”

  “Scared?”

  “A little. Sure. Yes.”

  “Hell yes! But you did it, bruddah! Good for you!”

  “I didn’t go back out. I didn’t try again.”

  “No problem, Mike. You did it. Now you got to think about it. You got to understand. You took the challenge! The first wipeout is the worst. You got nothing to be scared of now. You know you can do it. You think you be ready to go out again tomorrow?”

  “Maybe. I guess. Yes.”

  Boat stood up and pointed through the window. “There goes Rabbit!” he said. “Sliding left! Way out at Canoes. See him?”

  I spotted the surfer Boat meant, sliding left on a larger wave than mine had been. He looked tiny against the steep blue-green face of the feathering swell. As he dropped down the face the swell curled and broke over the top of him, and he disappeared for two or three seconds before emerging from the tube. The wave curled evenly and, sliding left, Rabbit stayed well ahead of the break. Then, when the wave’s most violent power had subsided, he turned and came back sliding right, barely visible in the churning white water.

  “How can you tell it’s Rabbit from here?” “That’s Rabbit’s style, bruddah. He likes that spot where he got that wave! He likes riding that white water! He be out there forever when first-break waves come, right in that spot! Listen, Mike—the ocean is all around us here in Hawaii. For hundreds of miles, thousands of miles any direction you go. You see its beauty every day. That beauty is best when the waves get big, like now. When the wave wiped you out, you felt the power. The only way you feel the real power is when you go surfing on the big waves. First break at Waikiki, winter surf on the North Shore at Makaha. When you catch a big wave and ride it all the way, you feel the thrill. It’s all good—the beauty, the power, the thrill. The thrill is best, bruddah! Look! Over by Queens! There goes Blue!”

  Boat stood watching Blue on his wave, shading his eyes with his hands like the man in my dream.

  Wild Birds

  In Pennsylvania my boyhood heroes had been Pittsburgh Pirates: Ralph Kiner, Wally Westlake, Hank Greenberg, Frank Gustine. Of course my Hawaiian heroes were Waikiki beachboys: Chick, Rabbit, Panama, Turkey, Buffalo, Willy, and most of all, Boat. When I wrote about the beachboys for an English class paper at Punahou I compared them to free-flying wild birds that sometimes crash into plate-glass windows.

  Willy was a relatively small man for a Hawaiian, but twenty years before I knew him he had been a highly ranked middleweight boxer. On the same day as my first-break wipeout I watched him fight a sailor nearly twice his size on the beach in front of the club.

  I was sitting with Boat, Blue, and Rabbit on the sand, watching the surf, not long after Rabbit and Boat had come in from surfing.

  Willy had left his board a few feet behind him on the beach near the high-water line and was standing in the shorebreak, looking to sea to gauge the waves.

  Three young sailors, pale in their baggy swimming shorts, the big one in the middle, came walking down the beach toward Diamond Head.

  The big one, a smile on his face, picked up Willy’s board and kept on walking.

  Willy turned and said something.

  The sailor said something back, and kept on walking.

  When Willy chased him down and reached for the board the sailor pushed his arm away with his free hand, then dropped the board and swung a roundhouse right.

  I don’t think anyone actually saw what happened next. After a loud splat, there was the sailor sitting on the sand, blood streaming from his nose down over his chest all the way to his baggy shorts. He touched the blood on his chest and looked at his hand as if he couldn’t quite believe what he saw there.

  When his friends approached he waved them away and lumbered to his feet and, growling, swinging wildly, charged at Willy.

  Another splat and he was down again, this time flat on his back.

  He struggled up four or five more times in half a minute. By the time he quit he was coated with sand and blood. One ey
e had already swollen shut and a lump the size of a golf ball had appeared under his ear. His nose streamed blood the whole time.

  His friends hoisted him up by his arms and dragged him away, back the way they had come.

  After the sailor quit, and Willy began paddling out on his board, Boat shook his head. He had been smiling and happy after he came in from surfing, but now he looked sad. “Why can’t people let us alone?” he said. “Why can’t we live our life how we want to?”

  Christmas Day, six months after Willy beat the sailor bloody, Boat threatened to kill a haole tourist.

  Every Christmas afternoon the beachboys gathered to drink Primo beer, play their ukuleles, and sing under the hau tree on the beach between the Outrigger Club and Moana.

  On this occasion they sat in a loose circle around three metal washtubs containing stubby brown Primo bottles immersed in water and floating hunks of ice. I noticed that a map of the islands was printed on the Primo labels.

  A favorite beachboy song was “Manuela Boy,” and I remember the verses they sang that caused the trouble:

  I want to marry this wahine I know

  Her name is Haunani Ho

  I told my papa and he said no

  Haunani is your sister but your mama don’t know

  I told my mama what my papa had said

  She said no hila hila

  You can marry Haunani Ho

  Your papa’s not your papa but your papa don’t know

  As the beachboys laughed the tourist emerged from a small crowd of onlookers. He was a skinny, pink-faced, middle-aged man dressed in Bermuda shorts and a long-sleeved white shirt, and he hurried across the sand from where he had been watching and stopped next to Boat, who was the first beachboy he came to.

  Without preliminaries, he launched into what amounted to a sermon. He asked Boat if he knew it was Christmas Day, the day of the birth of our Lord. He said that, because they were drinking alcohol and singing songs about infidelity and incest on Christmas, the beachboys were blasphemers.