Aunty Pearl thought for a moment. “That Raz and your fathers are just a bunch of boys who don’t want to grow up. But that’s all right, they’re good boys. And I like Daddy just the way he is. If he grew up he’d just get cranky.”
Keo put three cold beers on the table and picked out a mango for himself. A chicken clucked outside the open kitchen window. Sweat came out of Aunty Pearl’s hair and trailed down her temples. “Sonny,” she said. “Put some food in the tank, just a couple of pinches.”
Aunty Pearl’s thirty-gallon aquarium sat on the counter behind me, the pump vibrating through the glass sides. Uncle Harley had built it for her when it became too hard for Aunty Pearl to go down to the pier every day like she and Uncle Harley had done for years. As time had passed, she’d gotten bigger and bigger, and moving around had almost become too much for her. Now she mostly stayed home with her goldfish and swordtails, instead of watching the boats come in.
Keo stuck a bottle of beer in the back pocket of his shorts and grabbed the other two in one hand. We walked out of the kitchen leaving Aunty Pearl shaking her head. “Don’t worry, boys,” she called after us. “I know that man. He’s soft.”
Outside, Dad and his two brothers were leaning up against the Jeep and Uncle Raz’s shiny red Toyota pickup Uncle Raz was laughing at something Uncle Harley had said. “This I gotta see,” he said. “This I gotta see.”
I glanced at Keo. He shrugged his shoulders.
Dad said, “I always thought you were a little off, Harley. Making ice, selling fish, and raising a pig doesn’t give your brain any exercise. Maybe you better take up something that makes you sweat a little.”
Keo handed them the beer. We hung around hoping they’d give us a clue as to what was going on.
“Tonight,” Uncle Harley said.
A fly buzzed near my ear and I brushed it away.
Dad, Uncle Raz, and I drove back up later, squeezed together in the front seat of the Toyota. Uncle Harley and Aunty Pearl were sitting on the porch watching the sunset and Keo was in the yard shooting at a saki bottle with his BB gun. Bullet and Blossom came barking up to us.
We were all dressed for the occasion in shorts and clean T-shirts, and acting as innocent as Aunty Pearl herself.
Three empty beer bottles stood in a neat row on the side of Uncle Harley’s wooden chair. He’d put on a blue aloha shirt and had slicked back his hair.
Aunty Pearl was dressed in a nice muumuu—red, with yellow and white flowers. Her hand surrounded Uncle Harley’s. He always looked smaller when he sat with her on the porch.
“You ready?” Dad called.
“Ready as ever,” Uncle Harley answered with a grin.
Aunty Pearl seemed pretty happy, but it was hard to tell for sure because the pinched fleshiness of her face gave her a kind of permanent look that was difficult to read.
I went up on the porch and gave her a hug. I did that every time I came up, even if I was just there a few hours before. Small beads of perspiration dotted her upper lip, but the heat of the day had passed and it was beginning to cool down some. No matter how hot it was, she always seemed happy to see me.
Keo and I followed Dad, Uncle Harley, and Uncle Raz to the pigpen. “Want to double it?” Uncle Harley asked, looking Uncle Raz straight in the eye. “Two hundred bucks?”
Dad looked at Uncle Harley like he’d just made a huge blunder. Uncle Raz’s jaw dropped slightly. He glanced over at Dad, then back at Uncle Harley. Then he smirked. “You’re on, sucker of suckers. “
Uncle Harley seemed happier than usual, as if he knew something that no one else knew. But then he always looked that way when a bet was at stake. He swung his arm out in the direction of Uncle Raz’s Toyota. “Bring your truck to the ramp.”
The ramp was something Uncle Harley had cooked up for Aunty Pearl so she wouldn’t be stuck at home so much. Uncle Harley no longer had the strength to lift her into the front seat of his truck, even if she could have fit, which we all began to doubt. So he built a small rock retaining wall and spent a couple of days dumping dirt behind it, shaping it and tapping it into a long, easy ramp. It worked perfectly.
“Keo, Sonny,” Uncle Harley called. “Go get Alii.”
Keo went into the pigpen and tied a rope around Alii’s neck. Then, dangling a fishtail in front of him, we coaxed him out to the ramp. It was a good thing Keo had thought about the rope because Alii got a little nervous when Bullet and Blossom whisked around him yipping and yapping.
“You boys ride with the pig,” Uncle Harley said after we got Alii into the back of Uncle Raz’s truck. “Keep him from moving around when we get out on the road.”
“Where are we taking him?” Keo asked.
“You’ll see.” It was clear that Uncle Harley didn’t want us asking any questions.
Uncle Raz moved the truck away from the ramp and Dad backed Uncle Harley’s truck into its place. Uncle Harley went up to the porch to help Aunty Pearl. She looked happy. She loved going places.
Dad dropped the tailgate on the truck and waited while Uncle Harley ceremoniously accompanied Aunty Pearl from the house, down the dirt yard, and up the ramp. Aunty Pearl walked onto the bed of the pickup and sat gracefully down on a special upholstered seat that ran from side to side just behind the cab. She looked up at Uncle Harley and smiled, then raised her hand. Uncle Harley squeezed it.
The bed of the truck had sunk at least two inches when she stepped onto it. She was some woman. Her Hawaiian name was Malanamekahuluohemanu, light as the feather of a bird. A name that fit her spirit perfectly.
“Okay, let’s go,” Uncle Harley said, climbing into the cab. But we didn’t get two feet before Grampa Joe and Tutu Max came roaring up the dirt driveway in their rusting Impala, a cloud of dust billowing out behind them.
If anyone could mess up a nice plan, Tutu Max could.
Tutu Max was driving, as usual. Next to her, Grampa Joe looked like a pet dog leaning against the door with his nose out the window. They pulled up next to Uncle Harley’s truck. Tutu Max looked over at her daughter.
“Hoo-ie, Pearl honey, where you off to?” Tutu Max asked, ignoring Uncle Harley.
Aunty Pearl smiled down at her. “Downtown. The pier. See the boats and fish.”
Like a wary cat trying to keep watch over her trusting, openhearted kitten, Tutu Max had a habit of always checking up on her child, even though Aunty Pearl had been married to Uncle Harley for more than ten years.
“Why the pig over there?” Tutu Max asked, hooking her thumb over toward Keo and me.
“Gonna weigh him. Tomorrow Daddy going shoot ‘urn,” she said in the smooth, lilting, Hawaiian-style English she and Tutu Max spoke.
Tutu Max looked sideways over at Uncle Harley. He nodded slowly and lifted his wrist from the steering wheel in a lazy wave, holding his hand open, fingers spread, like signaling the number five.
Tutu Max squinted her eyes. “Why’s the pig in the truck?”
“Like the last supper,” Uncle Harley said. “You know, like when they plan to shoot a prisoner the next day they give him what he wants for dinner? Same thing. Only this is a last ride.” He smiled after he said it, knowing he’d given her a good answer without having given her an answer at all. Uncle Harley once told Keo and me that Tutu Max was the nosiest person he’d ever known.
Tutu Max glared at Uncle Harley. She knew he was a master at the straight-face lie. And ever since Aunty Pearl broke her foot climbing onto Uncle Raz’s boat, Tutu Max had become as protective of her as a starving cat with a fish head. The fact that Uncle Harley mostly ignored her and usually just went about whatever he was doing didn’t help.
Tutu Max turned back to Aunty Pearl. “How long you going be gone?” she asked.
“Couple hours.”
“We wait here for you,” Tutu Max said.
Grampa Joe had yet to say a word. But no one expected him to, not when Tutu Max was around.
“Fresh sashimi in the icebox,” Aunty Pearl said. “We come back soon.�
��
Keo and I waved as we pulled away. The pig got a little jumpy and we had to hold on to him.
I looked forward, to the back of Uncle Harley’s truck. Long, loose strands of hair flew across Aunty Pearl’s face. She nearly filled the seat from one side of the truck to the other. Once when we were out fishing, Uncle Harley told me that Aunty Pearl was the kindest and most beautiful woman he’d ever known. There was nothing she owned, he said, that she wouldn’t give to someone else who needed it. And if something was bothering you, she’d come over and sit by you, and talk about all kinds of things that had nothing to do with your problem. But pretty soon you’d be pouring your heart out.
She had a way, he said. He didn’t know what he’d done in his life to deserve it, but he was the luckiest man on the Big Island.
The torches along the water at Kona Inn had already been lit by the time we got to the pier, and the sky was a golden-orange from the sun just disappearing below the horizon. The serene, wavering sigh of a Hawaiian steel guitar, wrapped within the sweet smell of cooking steak, drifted out from the restaurants and gave me a warm, comfortable feeling, as if all I could ever want out of life was already around me.
We parked on the pier with the front of the truck facing away from the bay so Aunty Pearl could sit and watch the charter boats come in. She was a sight, sitting there surrounded by Uncle Harley and a good-sized collection of her countless friends and relatives. Some sat in the bed of the truck with her, like servants at the feet of the queen. People who’d never seen Aunty Pearl before watched from a distance, amazed. Aunty Pearl smiled at everyone, and waved.
The Kakina was just in and its crew was hoisting a fat blue marlin from the water. As the fish rose to the pier, a watery stream of blood and ocean flowed into the harbor from its rough bill. A man pulled the hoist around and swung the fish in over the pier. The skipper called out the weight. “Eight hundred forty-two pounds.” A murmur rose from the crowd.
Uncle Harley, Dad, Uncle Raz, and a couple of their friends stood around Aunty Pearl drinking beer and passing stories around. By seven-thirty almost everyone had gone home.
With Alii snoring in the truck, Keo and I squatted on our heels at the edge of the pier, staring into the darkening harbor and watching reflections of town lights shimmy out across the water. Keo had been pretty quiet all afternoon, mostly just taking in what was going on and keeping an eye on Aunty Pearl.
“Raz, back your truck up to the scale,” Uncle Harley said, startling me. “Keo, Sonny, get in the back with the pig.”
“What you going do, Daddy?” Aunty Pearl asked.
“Weigh the pig,” Uncle Harley said.
“Oh, good idea.”
Dad rigged a sling out of an old torn tarp and wrapped it around Alii’s belly. He tied it tight with wire fishing leader and looped the wire over the hook on the fish hoist. Uncle Raz pulled on the chain and Alii rose from the bed of the truck. Keo and I held him steady and kept him from getting too excited. His grunts and screeches were deep and rich, coming from way down inside him.
When he was three or four inches off the bed of the truck, Uncle Harley called for Dad to read the scale.
“Three sixty,” he called. “No, wait, three sixty-two.”
“Not bad, not bad,” Uncle Raz said, unimpressed.
“Yeah,” Uncle Harley said, ignoring the flatness in Uncle Raz’s voice. “Hard to beat that.” He looked at Uncle Raz with a face that invited him to add another couple of bucks to the bet.
Uncle Raz ignored him. “Hard, but not impossible,” he said.
“What’s the weight?” Aunty Pearl called from the truck, which was parked far enough away that she couldn’t hear what Uncle Harley and Uncle Raz were saying.
Dad called over to Aunty Pearl, “Three sixty-two.”
“Hooo-ie!” she said.
“Okay, now what,” asked Uncle Raz, in a low, mumbling voice.
Uncle Harley turned his back to Aunty Pearl. “Don’t worry,” he said. Then he called to Dad to get some more beer.
I went with him, following him down to Taneguchi’s market. We walked slowly, the pavement of the pier warm under my bare feet. How would Dad feel if he were in Uncle Harley’s shoes, if Aunty Pearl were my mother? Would be make a bet about her? Dad hardly ever talked about my mother, and I was starting to wonder why.
“Dad,” I said, just before we reached the store, “what do you think about Uncle Harley and Uncle Raz making a bet about Aunty Pearl?”
At first he just kept on walking. When we went into the bright lights of the market, he said, “None of my business what Harley does, but PU tell you this: he wouldn’t do anything to hurt Pearl.”
Dad pulled two six-packs of Oly out of the cooler and headed to the cash register as if everything in life was as it should be.
When we returned with the beer, Uncle Harley walked over to us. “If we’re not home soon, nosy Max is going to come poking around.” He looked down the road that ran along the seawall.
Uncle Raz came over for the beer. “She’s had eight beers already. Pretty soon she’s going to want to get out of the truck.”
Keo and I were beginning to figure the whole thing out. Aunty Pearl hardly ever got out of the truck when we went to the pier. But when she had too many beers she became extremely happy and would do unexpected things. We found that out one night when we’d all gone to a big luau down at Kahaluu beach. Aunty Pearl gave us each a beer, which she’d never have done in her right mind.
The plan was simple. Get Aunty Pearl full of beer, step number one. Then for sure she’d want to get out of the truck to take a long, slow walk on the pier with Uncle Harley. She loved to do that. The key to the whole thing was in her wanting to get out of the truck. There was really only one way to do it: the fish hoist. And while Uncle Harley was lifting her from the truck, someone would just happen to look up at the scale.
Keo climbed into the truck and sat near his mother. I glared at Uncle Harley whenever I got the chance to catch his eye.
By eight o’clock Aunty Pearl had downed three more beers and was starting to laugh at anything anyone said. Uncle Har-ley squeezed onto the seat next to her with one leg hanging over the side of the truck. He told jokes and wild stories, his arm around Aunty Pearl’s neck. With his free hand he gave her beer from a cooler that he’d brought from the house. Dad and Uncle Raz shared the new six-packs.
Aunty Pearl seemed to roll in one continuous laugh. I was beginning to think that Uncle Harley had forgotten all about his plan.
Then he dropped down to the pier and stretched and called Keo and me over to him. “Run down to the end of the pier and see if Tutu Max is anywhere in sight,” Uncle Harley whispered.
It was almost too dark to tell, but Keo was pretty sure that no one was coming. Just as we started back to the truck, I saw Tutu Max’s car moving slowly past Emma’s Store. I followed Keo and didn’t tell anyone.
Aunty Pearl was standing in the, truck.
“Come on, Mama,” Uncle Harley said, “it’s a nice night for a walk on the pier.”
The color from the sunset had slipped away. The sky was black. Only two lamps cast yellow cones of light to the concrete, one above the fish scale.
Uncle Harley handed her another beer from the cooler and she guzzled it down in one take, as if it were guava juice. Dad turned away, shaking his head. I think he never stopped being amazed by his brothers. Aunty Pearl told me Dad was always the quiet one, the Mendoza boy who always did everything right. When Uncle Raz and Uncle Harley were boys, she said, they were fighting with each other all the time. But Dad was the nice one. He never got anyone’s feathers up. That’s why the most beautiful girl in the islands married him, she said. “She loved him so much, Sonny. And I never heard your daddy say an unkind word to her.” It always made Aunty Pearl cry when she thought of my mother. “She was one of my best friends,” she’d often tell me. And though some people made a big deal out of what race you were, Aunty Pearl had never cared that my mother
was Caucasian, a haole. Aunty Pearl had a gentleness, something that came up and hugged you.
“Okay, Daddy, okay. How you going get me down?” Aunty Pearl said.
“Raymond, bring the chain,” Uncle Harley called to Dad. “Raz, make the crossbar.”
Uncle Raz pushed and slapped at Alii, who was lying on the crowbar in the truck. Alii snorted back at him, and dragged himself up. Uncle Raz wove a loop with a short length of rope and tied it to the crowbar at its midpoint. He then threw the loop over the giant hook at the end of the chain hanging from the fish scale. Dad pulled the hoist and raised the crowbar until it was even with the bed of the truck. Uncle Harley laid it at Aunty Pearl’s feet.
“Okay, Mama. Stand on the bar, one foot on either side and hold tight to the chain. We’ll lift you out.”
Aunty Pearl moved her huge feet into position, giggling. Uncle Harley kissed her on her forehead. “You ready, Mama?”
I glanced down toward the seawall. Tutu Max and Grampa Joe had just turned onto the pier and were driving toward us with one headlight busted and the other one aimed up into the trees. “Uncle,” I said. “We got company.”
Uncle Harley groaned. Aunty Pearl looked off toward the one-eyed car.
Tutu Max pulled up alongside the truck and got out. “Why you still down here? What’s going on? What you doing, Pearl?”
“Just getting out of the truck,” Uncle Harley said quickly, all innocent.
Uncle Raz tried to keep from laughing.
“What you laughing at?” Tutu Max demanded, staring at Uncle Raz. She was a good foot shorter than him, but a lot heavier. She took to him almost as poorly as she took to Uncle Harley. There’s got to be something wrong, she said a thousand times to Uncle Raz, with a twenty-eight-year-old man who still has no wife.
Uncle Raz sobered up some and took a step backward to put some distance between himself and Tutu Max. She wasn’t against using her hands to emphasize a point.
Blue Skin of the Sea Page 3
