The kitten sniffed at the squid then licked it enough to see that it wasn’t fit to eat and turned its head away. Very slowly I reached out and pinched it at the back of its neck. The other kittens ran back into the cave.
Curled up and hanging from my fingers, it was as light as a plumeria lei. It struggled a little, but mostly just stayed curled up, its eyes stretched back, probably scared spitless.
I pulled my T-shirt over my head with my free hand and slipped it down my arm, then pulled the cat’s head through the sleeve. I wrapped the rest of the shirt around its body, a wad of T-shirt with a scrubby cat’s head poking out. It hissed when I let go of its neck.
When Keo and Grampa Joe returned, I was sitting on a wooden chair that I’d found. The kitten had gotten used to me by then. I stroked its head to calm it, but kept it wrapped in my T-shirt. Keo’s twenty-two lay on the ground next to the chair.
Grampa Joe laughed when he saw the kitten. “The cat shrunk,” he said.
“There are three more of these down where the big cat was.”
Grampa Joe shook his head and started taking the junk out of his trunk. Keo came over and bent down to scratch the kitten’s ears and got a hiss for it. “It’s got to get to know you first,” I said.
“What are you going to do with it?” he asked.
“I don’t know. Keep it.”
“What for?”
I shrugged.
“What about Jack?”
“He said to get a cat.”
“He said to shoot a cat,” Keo said.
“I know, but maybe hell change his mind.”
Keo stood up. “Jack? He won’t. Only your shooting the cat will prove anything to him. You have to do it just like he says.”
“Do you do everything he says?”
Keo picked up his rifle. “He hasn’t told me to do anything yet.”
“But if he did, would you? If he told you to shoot a cat, would you?”
“Easy.”
“Okay, then. How about a dog? Would you shoot one of those?” I said, pointing to the dogs nosing around in the bottom of the dump. Keo loved dogs. If he said yes, he’d be lying.
“Stupid question. I’m already a Black Widow. I don’t have to do anything.” Keo took his rifle to the car.
By the time Grampa Joe dropped me off at my house the kitten was getting pretty antsy about getting out of the T-shirt. Grampa Joe told me I’d better soak the shirt in alcohol after carrying a mangy, flea-infested dump cat around in it. His arm hung down the side of the car door, the engine idling.
“Listen,” he said. “I’ve known lots of guys like this Jack, who like to talk big and make you scared. Sometimes they were mean pachooks, that’s for sure. But most of the time they were all smoke and no fire. Don’t let him make you do something you don’t want to do.” Then he scratched the kitten’s head and backed out to the main road.
When Dad came home from fishing, he found me sitting on the steps leading up to the porch, introducing the kitten to the dogs. I’d tied a length of nylon fishing line around its neck, like a leash, so it wouldn’t run off and get killed by a mongoose. The dogs were curious, inching up to sniff at it, but holding off when the kitten hissed at them.
Dad asked where I’d gotten it, and I told him the whole story. His eyes narrowed when I told him Jack wanted me to shoot a cat to prove I was worthy to join the gang.
“Is Keo going along with all this?” he asked.
I nodded. “He’s already a Black Widow.”
Dad stood in the yard looking up at me with his hands on his hips, wearing only shorts with shiny dried fish slime by the pockets from wiping his hands on them. “So, you were going to shoot a cat because you wanted to be a member of Jack’s gang?”
I nodded.
“Did Keo shoot one?”
“He didn’t have to. He’s a sixth grader.”
“What about Jack?”
“He winged a mongoose.”
“Everyone shoots mongooses,” Dad said. “But cats?” He paused a moment, then went on. “Why do you want to be a part of this gang, anyway?”
“For protection. Jack says we’re going to get into a lot of fights with the seventh and eighth graders. He says they carry knives.”
“You believe that?”
I shrugged. “I guess so.”
Dad stared at me, as if trying to read my thoughts. “Do you think your Uncle Harley and I would let you and Keo go to a school where the kids carried knives?”
I thought about that a moment, then shrugged and said, “I don’t know.” It had never entered my mind that Dad or Uncle Harley ever even thought about what we did at school, except ask us how our grades were once in a while.
Dad started up the steps, and put his hand on my shoulder as he passed. “If Sonny Mendoza can shoot this cat, or any cat, then I don’t know a thing about my own son.” He nudged my head with his hand. “Take that scrubby rat and soak it in the ocean until all the fleas float off, then you can bring it inside the house.”
On Monday I left home later than usual and walked slowly so I’d arrive at school just as it was starting and wouldn’t have to talk to Jack until recess.
I’d made a small dome-shaped pen out of chicken wire and staked it into the yard, a place for the cat to stay while it was getting used to its new home. I figured out that it was a female, and decided to call her Popoki, Hawaiian for cat. When I left the dogs were lying on the grass nearby watching her with droopy tongues, panting.
At recess, Keo came up to me before going outside. “How’s the cat?”
“Okay.”
“Jack’s expecting to see it, a dead cat. He doesn’t know you have a live one.”
“So.”
“So nothing. Just reminding you.”
Keo stared me in the eye a moment, then strolled off with the same disgusted look on his face he’d given Bobby Otani.
I stayed in the classroom. Keo went out to join the Black Widows under their tree, a billowing monkeypod that Jack had commandeered as their meeting place. Only Black Widows and invited guests could sit under it.
Mrs. Lee asked me if I was feeling all right, and I told her that I was. She sat on a desk and studied me. “After as many years as IVe taught fifth grade boys, Mr. Mendoza, you can’t tell me that nothing is bothering you. A boy never stays inside at recess unless he’s sick, it’s raining, or he has a problem.”
I told her a lie and a truth. Everything was okay at school, but I was worried about my new cat. I told her I didn’t want a mongoose to get it, then went outside before she could ask too many questions.
Keo, Bobby Otani, Jack, and four sixth grade Black Widows sat under the Tree of Webs, as Jack had started calling their meeting place, building more into his Black Widow idea every day. Three sixth grade girls sat with them.
“Hey,” Jack called when I came out into the yard. “Where is it?” The girls and the Black Widows turned and looked over at me. Seeing Keo among the band of taunting eyes made me feel lost, as if I were in a strange school and he was just a boy I’d never seen before.
“I have it,” I said.
“Good!” Jack said. “So show us?”
“It’s at home.”
Bobby Otani pinched his nose. “Must be getting ripe.”
Jack stood and puffed up his chest, then strolled over to me, the group following him. “Black Widows!” he called, waving to the girls as well. “Come in close.”
A low round of sniggering ran through them as they surrounded me. Keo held back a step, and mostly kept his eyes on the ground.
Jack went on. “Sonny wants to be a Black Widow, and we want him to be one, too. So I gave him a test. Anyone who’s not a sixth grader has to take a test.” Jack peered into the eyes of everyone in the group, capturing their full attention. “If he passes,” he went on, “he’s in. If he fails, he’s out.”
The Black Widows and the girls waited silently.
“His test was to shoot a cat at the dump and bring it to
me in a box.”
I think that startled the girls. All three of them moved closer. One opened her mouth to say something, but kept quiet, squinting her eyes as if Jack’s order was so appalling she couldn’t find the words.
“Tomorrow,” Jack said, staring at me. “Bring it to school.”
Keo shook his head when I glanced over at him. He must have been picturing Jack’s reaction when he learned about the kitten.
The next morning I took Popoki to school in a small box, leaving late again, and walking into the classroom with everyone sitting at their desks watching me. Word had spread in whispers that I was bringing a dead cat to school. But within ten minutes the whole fifth and sixth grade knew there was nothing dead in the box at all, by all the noise the kitten made.
Even Mrs. Lee heard it, and came over to take a look. “It’s so cute,” she said, picking it up and showing the class. “I can see why you were so worried about it.”
Jack refused to look at me the whole morning, acting as if I didn’t exist. Keo kept to himself too, and so did the rest of the Black Widows.
At recess I took the box outside and was immediately surrounded by a horde of girls wanting to see the kitten. Jack and the Black Widows shoved their way through them. I stood holding the box with Popoki’s head peeking through the slightly opened top.
“I said a dead cat, stupid.” Jack glared down at me, looking as if I’d made a fool of him.
“Kill it.”
A hush fell over everyone. No one moved or even dared to breathe. Keo, standing behind Jack, looked as serious as if he’d been told his dogs had run off. Jack reached for the box, and I jerked it away.
“You little punk,” he said. He slapped the box out of my hands. When it hit the ground, the kitten stumbled out and rolled into a forest of feet, then sprinted away. I started after her, but Jack tripped me and fell on me, sitting on my stomach slapping at my face. “Sissy little punk,” he said.
I turned from side to side, trying to dodge his hands, my arms pinned under his knees. I heaved up with my stomach, but he was too heavy. The stinging slaps turned into blows. One of them hit my nose and sent a pain through my head like I’d never felt before. I squirmed and twisted, but the blows kept coming, harder.
Then suddenly Keo slammed into Jack, knocking him off me. The ground shook when they hit. The Black Widows spread away, some of them saying, “Get him, Keo, get him.”
I got up on my hands and knees, blood from my nose dripping down into the dirt. Keo and Jack rolled back and forth, their faces contorted, making spitting sounds. Jack pushed Keo away and scrambled to his feet. Before Keo could get up, Jack kicked him. Keo tried to slide away, but Jack kept going after him. I staggered over and hit Jack from behind and knocked him to the ground again.
“Boys! Stop it, nowl” Mrs. Carvalho yelled, suddenly appearing, swatting at us with a yardstick.
I let go of Jack. He jumped up with his fists clenched, glaring at me with demon eyes.
“Sonny! Keo!” she said. “Go to my office! You should be ashamed of yourselves ganging up on Jack.”
Then she turned to Jack. “Follow me.” “But I have to get my cat!” I said. “Not another word!”
As Keo and I made our way through the crowd of kids, I saw Bobby Otani handing the cat to Mrs. Lee.
Dad was disappointed in me when he heard about the fight, especially since Mrs. Carvalho called him and asked that I stay out of school for three days. He took me out fishing with him, making me scrub the deck after every fish he caught. Keo just stayed home and shot at tin cans with the twenty-two. Jack had to stay away from school, too.
Mrs. Lee seemed genuinely pleased to see me when I returned and even asked about my cat. I told her she’d gotten to like the dogs and that no mongoose would even think of bothering her with them around. She patted me on the back and told me to try to stay out of trouble.
Jack now sat under the Tree of Webs alone. Only Mrs. Carvalho couldn’t see his mean streak. But the rest of us stayed away from him, watching him from the opposite corner of the school yard. He usually spent the entire recess throwing a pocketknife into the ground, trying to get it to land blade down.
Around two weeks after the fight Mrs. Carvalho came into our classroom and asked Keo and me to please follow her outside. Everyone in the room watched us leave.
When we got out on the wide veranda, she searched our eyes. “You are excused from school for two hours,” she said. Keo and I just stood there staring at her. Then she smiled and tipped her head toward the school yard. “Go with him.”
Grampa Joe leaned up against the hood of his car with his arms crossed.
“What’s going on?” Keo asked as we approached him.
“Nothing,” he said. “I’m just taking you to lunch.”
Keo and I looked at each other, then got into the car. Grampa Joe fired it up and drove us up the hill, to the highlands—to the high school.
“We’re having lunch here,” he said. “You know Herman Fukuoka? The guy with the coffee trees next to my place? His wife runs the kitchen.”
“But why eat here?” Keo asked.
Grampa Joe tapped Keo’s shoulder and said, flicking his eyebrows, “Good food.”
The cafeteria buzzed with students, many of whom we knew from last year at the elementary school. A couple of them waved and came over to eat with us. The lunchroom was loud. Everyone seemed excited, but the guys who sat with us said it was like that every day.
I looked around to see how many white boys there were— only two. But no one was bothering them. They were just like everyone else.
The whole time we were there Grampa Joe kept quiet, just ate his lunch and listened to us talk with our friends. When lunch was over, he drove us back down to the elementary school, talking about his coffee trees all the way.
When we got out of the car, Keo said, “Why did you take us up to the high school for lunch?”
“I told you, good food,” Grampa Joe said. “How’s the flea-bag cat?”
“Fine,” I said.
Grampa Joe nodded, then left.
Walking back up to the classroom, I kept thinking about the two white boys at the high school. Then it suddenly struck me that Jack was white, too. I don’t know why I hadn’t thought of it before. The Black Widows weren’t our protection, they were his—Keo and all the other boys with dark skin and mixed blood. Jack Christensen was smart, all right. But I didn’t care very much what Jack thought. It was what Keo thought that mattered.
After a while Jack, Keo, and I were talking again, but we never brought up the cat, or the Black Widows, or the fight. We didn’t even talk about high school. But Jack did confess that he had tied the mongoose to the flagpole.
As the school year ended, Keo’s worry changed into boldness. He was going to the big school next year. You could see it in the way he walked and the way he started holding himself more erect, pushing out his chest. He went to work for Uncle Harley that summer, weighing and buying fish from the charter boats, and from the small commercial boats, like Dad’s, then selling them in Hilo.
Jack met us on the pier late one afternoon, to say good-bye. He told us his parents were moving back to California. Keo and I were sitting in Dads Jeep, waiting for a ride home. Jack stood on Keo’s side, still wearing jeans and a T-shirt with the sleeves rolled up, and greased-back hair. Our conversation was full of long silences, where each of us paused, and looked off somewhere.
“Hey,” Jack said after one particularly long quiet spell. “Maybe you could start up the Black Widows again.”
Keo nodded, staring straight ahead at the steering wheel with a blank look on his face. “Maybe,” he said.
Beyond Jack the ocean was turning slightly pink. Waves thumped easily into the rocks on the other side of the small boat landing.
Jack pulled a pack of cigarettes out of his back pocket, something we’d never seen him with before. He tapped one out and stuck it in his mouth, then pulled a wooden stick-match from his front p
ocket. There was no breeze, but still Jack cupped his hands after striking the match on the side of Dad’s Jeep His cheeks sank as he sucked in. A cloud of smoke surrounded his face. Jack shook the flame out. His eyes watered, and he coughed.
“Nasty things,” he said, taking the cigarette and hiding it in the palm of his hand, pinching it between his thumb and first finger. Then he pointed the pack of cigarettes at us and shook a few of them halfway out of the pack. Keo and I each took one. “Hey, look me up if you ever get to Los Angeles.” Jack backed away, then turned and strutted off toward the seawall.
“Hey, Lolo,” Keo called.
Jack turned, walking away from us backward. He smiled, and flipped us off, then went on. We both laughed. There was something about Jack that you just had to like.
I started to throw the cigarette away, but Keo said, “Wait! Give it to me. It’s good for cleaning face masks, better than seaweed.”
We sat in the Jeep watching Jack make his way along the seawall. Just before it ended he stopped and flicked what was left of his cigarette out into the ocean. You could see it twirl out in a graceful arc, spinning flawlessly into the water, as if he’d been smoking and flicking the butts away every day of his life.
While Keo hauled fish with Uncle Harley that summer before seventh grade, I went to work as Uncle Raz’s deckhand.
The Optimystic, Uncle Raz’s sleek, white, forty-five-foot Chris-Craft charter boat, wasn’t anything at all like Dad’s ancient Japanese sampan. It was nearly twice as long and twice as smooth, fanning over swells like a water ski. The Optimystic had a hull of fiberglass and practically flew out to the marlin grounds under twin gas-powered Chrysler engines, instead of laboring under the weight of wood, and crawling along the coast on a single worn-out diesel.
Every year for five years straight a rich man from Bakersfield, California, had tied up Uncle Raz and his boat for a week-long charter in July. His name was Red, a big man with orange hair that never looked combed. For a week straight he poured beer and money into Uncle Raz like there was no end to it. Until now he’d always come with a couple of his friends, other loud men with stomachs for fishing drunk five days in a row. They’d caught at least one good-sized marlin every year, and despite all the drinking, not one of them ever seemed to feel the slightest bit queasy while they were out on the boat. Even Uncle Raz wondered how they did it.
Blue Skin of the Sea Page 7
