Of course, we did. The name “Deeps” wasn’t one people used freely around town, though I’d heard every story ever told about “shark-killer” Deeps. And like sharks, people feared him based on reputation, accurate or not. Dad said he was either the bravest or stupidest man alive.
“Someone has to kill the thing,” Uncle Harley said as we drove through the village. “You just can’t take a chance on it coming back and hurting someone.” He paused, thinking. “What I can’t figure out is what attracted it.” Uncle Harley puffed tip his cheeks and blew out the air, tapping the steering wheel with his thumb.
Keo sat in the middle of the truck cab between me and Uncle Harley. The whole way up the hill and south through the Kona highlands he blabbed on about how to catch the shark and kill it. You’d have thought be was the one who was going to hire Deeps.
After about an hour Uncle Harley turned seaward and dropped down to the coast. “Keep your eyes out for an old shack with shark jaws all over it.”
The lush highland jungle dried into brittle trees and brown grasses, and the coolness in the air evaporated quickly once we reached sea level.
Keo saw it first.
What sounded like twenty dogs exploded in a frenzy of barking as we pulled into the rock and weed yard. I rolled up the window on my side of the cab even though my T-shirt was glued to my back. Those kind of hunting dogs don’t care who you are, dogs bred half crazy to their brothers and sisters and trained to be mean—usually short-haired, mostly pit bull mixtures, gray with black spots, breedless. No finer hunting dogs existed, Dad would say. But they would eat your heart right out of your chest if they found the smell of blood and fear on you.
Uncle Harley turned off the ignition. The dogs, actually only six of them, leaped at the windows, raising lips and showing teeth and yapping as if they hadn’t seen anyone around the place for years.
“Deeps!” Uncle Harley called. He didn’t roll up his window, but he pulled his arm in.
The door to the shack was open, but it was too dark inside to see anything. On the outside no less than thirty shark jaws hung on nails, some small, some huge, all pried open, with full sets of teeth slicing out at you.
Uncle Harley called again, louder, the dogs worked into a frenzy by now. “Deeps, you home?”
A dog yelped, then another, both hit by small stones. The barking broke up, then stopped and turned into agitated whining. From somewhere behind the truck, Deeps called off his dogs, keeping back as if he thought someone might leap out of the cab. I watched him in the mirror on Uncle Harley’s door. He studied us for a moment, then came up to Uncle Harley’s side of the truck and squinted into the cab at Keo and me.
I’d expected someone bigger, maybe a pockmarked face, or thick beard. But he was short and wiry. And bald as a porpoise, wearing only a baggy pair of dirty khaki pants. The lines shooting out from his eyes were sharp, cut deep into the skin from a lifetime in the sun. Long, wispy strands of hair drooped down from his chin like limp fishing line.
“We need you in Kailua,” Uncle Harley said quietly, with respect. “A tiger shark, maybe twelve, thirteen feet, hanging around the harbor. We’ll give you twenty-five cents a pound for it. Could weigh over a thousand.”
The dogs paced back and forth on either side of the truck. Beads of sweat streamed down from my hair. I opened my window a couple of inches.
Deeps’s face remained blank.
Then Uncle Harley added, “I can guarantee fifty bucks, catch ‘urn or not.”
Deeps turned and went into his shack, two dogs following him. The others decided to stay and keep an eye on us.
“What’s he doing?” Keo whispered.
“Hang on,” Uncle Harley said. “He’ll come with us. He’s lolo as his dogs, but he’ll come. All I had to say was shark”
Deeps came back out into the sunshine carrying a five-gallon plastic bucket full of lines and hooks, and a long aluminum pole. He put them in the bed of the truck, then went back into the shack. The heat in the cab was almost unbearable, even with the windows open, but no one wanted to get out.
Deeps came back with a handful of meat scraps and threw them on the ground. The dogs growled and snapped at each other, fighting over them. Then Deeps climbed over the tailgate into the truck. Keo and I turned and watched him settle down with his back to the cab.
Uncle Harley started the truck and headed up the mountain into the cool highlands. Deeps hadn’t even closed the door to his shack.
It was past five o’clock when we got back down to the pier. The charter boats were in and twenty or thirty tourists were standing around taking pictures of a marlin hanging from the fish hoist. Dad and Uncle Raz sat facing the crowd on a low, wood rail on the cove side of the pier. They’d already cleaned their boats and moored them for the night.
“You hear about the tiger that came into the bay this morning?” Uncle Harley asked, sitting down on the rail next to Dad.
“You” Dad said. “Still around?”
Dad lifted his chin to Deeps, his way of saying hello. Uncle Raz did the same. Deeps ducked his head slightly.
“I need a boat and some fish,” Deeps said, slapping the flat side of a steel hook against the palm of his hand. He turned around to spit after he spoke.
His high, thin voice surprised me.
Uncle Raz pushed himself up and went over to his truck. He pulled out a fair-sized tuna by the tail, about forty pounds. “This enough?”
Deeps nodded.
“You can use my skiff,” Dad said.
Deeps glanced down at Dad’s eight-foot skiff floating silently just off the wooden deck below the main pier. The outboard was still on the transom.
“Sonny,” Dad said. “Go pull the skiff in.”
I dropped down to the lower level and brought it alongside the landing. Deeps followed and climbed aboard. Uncle Raz handed him the tuna and the pole and bucket of hooks and cable that Deeps had brought.
I coiled up the stern line and was about to throw it out to Deeps when he turned to Uncle Harley.
“I need the boy,” he said.
Uncle Harley is eyes shifted to me, then to Dad.
“I want to go, too.” Keo dropped down onto the wooden deck.
“No,” Deeps said. “I just need someone to run the boat.”
Keo came up and stood next to me. “I can run it,” Keo said, “and … ”
Deeps waved his hand. “This boy better, smaller. I need the room.”
Keo glared at me. I shrugged my shoulders.
Dad nodded, a look that told me to go ahead.
Keo began pacing.
Deeps put the bucket in the bow and tucked the pole under the seats. “Let’s go,” he said, “unless you afraid, and then I take the other boy.”
“Let me go,” Keo said. “I can run the boat, and I’m not afraid of sharks like he is.”
Deeps looked up at me from the skiff.
“Ready when you are,” I said.
Keo spun around and stalked off. I pushed the boat away from the pier and jumped in.
The outboard caught and I headed out beyond the end of the pier and into the open harbor where scattered fishing boats slept at their moorings.
“Go ‘round one time,” Deeps said, pointing into the bay where the shark had been. There was maybe an hour of sunlight left. He studied the surface of the water as we circled in near the seawall. A small group of people watched from the pier. Keo stood on a chock with a pair of binoculars.
“It’s probably miles from here by now,” I said.
Deeps nudged the tuna with his bare foot and smiled. “Fish guts bring ‘urn back.”
A couple of minutes later Deeps said, “Did you see it?”
“Yes.”
“Tell me about it.”
“It was big, about twelve feet long. It circled around the bay twice, slowly, like it was just checking the place out. Then it went under, and that’s it.”
Deeps pointed to the farthest buoy. “Go to that white float,” he
said, then started digging through his bucket. I brought up the throttle and headed out.
The long aluminum pole stuck out from under the seat, its point resting on the bow. I studied it, trying to figure out what it was.
“For kill shark,” Deeps said, without looking up. He reached over and ran his hand along the barrel. “Twelve-gauge pow-erhead, better than a cannon. Poke ‘urn on the back. The shell goes off and breaks the spine. Makes about twelve inches of mashed potatoes. But if you miss, the shark gets mad as hell.”
When we got to the buoy, I slowed and grabbed it, then killed the engine. Deeps waited for the sun to go down and the sky to darken. I sat facing him, thinking about what Keo had said. Afraid.
Calm down, now … you’re not a baby anymore.
On the pier, I could barely make Keo out, now sitting on the hood of Uncle Harley’s Jeep with the binoculars, though I doubted he could see anything. Dad, Uncle Raz, and Uncle Harley were probably standing around talking in the dark somewhere.
Deeps finally spoke. “Give me the fish.”
I stood and lifted the tuna over the center seat. Deeps, a dark gray shadow in the reflected light from shore, pointed to the floorboards by his feet. “Put ‘urn there.” Then after a pause, he said, “What’s your name, boy?”
“Sonny Mendoza.”
“Raymond’s boy.”
I nodded.
“You ever see a shark eat a man?”
“No.”
“Ugly thing. I work long time on a Japanee sampan. Off Kauai, one day, me and a Hawaiian guy was under the boat fixing the prop and three sharks came by. Not big like this one, but big enough. The boat was loaded, plenty fish inside the hold—the sharks could smell ‘urn.”
He chopped half the tuna into fine chum as he spoke, then dumped everything out of his bucket onto the floorboards and put the guts and chum into it.
“The two of us came out from under the boat,” Deeps went on. “We yelling to the guys on top—Pull us up! Pull us up! First they pull me, then they pull the Hawaiian guy, but one shark come grab the leg. I never hear one man scream like that before.”
“What happened to him?”
“The sharks ate’urn.”
Deeps put a huge chunk of raw meat on a hook attached to about three feet of chain, which was then connected to fifteen or twenty feet of steel cable, and threw it all over the side of the skiff. Then he churned the chum into a mushy mixture in the bucket and threw it out into the water. He washed his hands and the bucket in the ocean and told me to head back to the pier. We left the bait line attached to the buoy.
Fiery light from torches on the grounds of the King Kam Hotel reflected over the water in long, shimmering spears as we pulled up to the small boat landing. A cigarette glowed in the group of shadowy men milling around waiting for us.
Keo squatted on his heels on the lower dock. Uncle Harley gave Deeps a blanket and a beer. I guess Deeps would sleep on the beach.
Deeps walked by me and said, “We check ‘urn in the morning, boy. About seven.” Then he took his blanket over to the far side of the sandy cove into a small grove of palm trees.
“What was going on out there?” Uncle Raz asked.
“Sitting around, waiting for dark to set the bait.”
Keo wandered over, and within a couple of minutes, he was doing all the talking. “We could have done that without Deeps,” he said. “It’s the same as when we caught the shark out by the lighthouse.”
“This one is three times bigger,” I said.
“Sheese,” Keo said, wanting me to think he had all the answers.
“Setting the bait is the easy part,” Uncle Raz said, breaking into Keo’s complaining. “Tomorrow you’re gonna see why he’s here. When you Ye messing with a big shark you don’t want any mistakes.”
That night I gasped myself awake, popping up on one elbow in a sweat. I dreamed that I was in the skiff, buzzing out into the harbor with a dog that wouldn’t stop yapping at the water. Then the engine went dead, as if it had run out of gas. The dog got even more crazy and barked louder and louder. I peered into the water to see what he was so excited about. Instantly, a shark was charging up at me, rolling over, its eyelids closing and its cavernous mouth opening. Don’t ever do that again, boy … calm down, now … you’re not a baby anymore. The shark slammed the skiff, and sent the dog and me flying. I woke up when I hit the water. It’s okay … it was nothing … it was nothing.
I couldn’t get back to sleep for an hour.
Keo banged on my door at six o’clock. We got to the pier at six-thirty, Keo trying to look as smooth as Uncle Harley behind the wheel of the Jeep He still hadn’t let me drive.
We parked on the pier, the sun an hour from breaking over the top of the mountain. Dad had gone down to the harbor long before.
I felt a little dizzy and the palms of my hands sweated.
Deeps stood on the pier with the blanket folded under his arm, gazing out toward the buoy. Dad sat with Uncle Harley in his truck, drinking coffee. I went down to the skiff and Keo went over to talk to them.
Deeps and I hummed past the end of the pier into the harbor, the water calm, almost glassy. Through the thin hull of the skiff the ocean felt like a sheet running under my feet. A sheet to wrap a dead body in—the parts the shark might leave behind.
I shut the engine down when we got to the buoy. Deeps worked up the cable.
The bait was gone.
Deeps looked off toward the horizon, running his finger over the edge of the steel hook. He coiled his cable and chain neatly into the bucket. “Let’s go back,” he said, quietly.
He spent the rest of the day squatting on the seawall watching the water.
That evening Deeps set his line again, but this time with a hunk of beef and two eight-inch steel hooks and four five-gallon buckets of cow guts from a slaughterhouse up the hill.
When we went out to the buoy the next morning the cable held. Deeps smiled and winked at me.
I squinted into the water, but couldn’t see anything. I shuddered deep inside, the dream with the dog still haunting me.
Deeps began pulling the cable in.
“We got him,” he whispered, the lines on his forehead furled into a tight scowl. The muscles in his neck stood out like strands of wire, and the cable around his fists made the skin go white. “This one’s big as a cane truck.”
A dark mass moved out from under the skiff, a huge, quivering shadow circling around below us like a submarine.
“Put the pole by my foot,” Deeps said, the cable giving slightly. I moved the powerhead closer. Keo would’ve let me drive the Jeep for a month to have been here instead of me. Sweat started to bead on Deeps’s head. He pulled the shark another foot closer.
“You’re not going to shoot him now, are you?” I asked.
“No worry—just give me the pole when I tell you.”
“But that thing’s bigger than the skiff,” I said.
Deeps wound the cable around one hand and pulled, then around the other. “I said no worry.”
I dug my fingers into the wooden seat. I wanted to pace, I wanted to feel the concrete of the pier under my feet. I could see the shark’s eyes.
I stopped breathing.
Deeps pulled the shark closer, never taking his eyes off it. Uncle Raz may have been right about Deeps knowing what he was doing, but Uncle Raz was sitting on the pier, and so were Dad and Keo.
A small whirlpool sucked at the side of the skiff as the shark’s tail swung by in a sudden burst. A few feet of cable hummed out over the wooden gunwale. Deeps grabbed at it, and slowed the shark’s run. Maybe it didn’t even know it was hooked.
Dizziness overwhelmed me, a quivering sensation that ran across my forehead, and turned my stomach hot. Fear had struck me many times before, but never like this—the kind Deeps’s dogs could smell. I saw the dream shark again, blasting up at me, at the yapping dog.
“Wait!” I yelled. “You can’t take a chance on killing it in a boat this small
. It’s too big.”
Deeps snapped around and glared at me, about to say something, but turned away, back to the shark, still holding the cable taut. He pulled the shark closer.
“ What if you miss? Or what if you hit him right but he doesn’t die? He could turn this thing over with one hit!” My whole body was shaking.
But all Deeps wanted was the shark. He stared at me through slits where eyes should have been. “Get hold of yourself, boy. I don’t miss.”
“But what if you do?”
“Goddamn it! ShetT Deeps threw the cable back in the water. “Take me back to the pier.”
I started the engine and moved us away quickly. Deeps turned his back to me as I wove the skiff through the buoys in the bay, my legs trembling.
A solemn conference of fishermen began as soon as we got out of the skiff. Deeps stood among them. They had to get a bigger boat for the shark.
I waited off to the side.
Keo came over. “What happened out there?”. “Nothing. The shark was too big for the skiff.”
“It looked like you were yelling at each other.”
“It was big. We got excited about it.”
Keo shook his head. “I didn’t think Deeps was such a pan-tie.”
I shrugged. “It was too big, that’s all.”
Keo spit and walked away.
What was I going to do if Deeps wanted me to take him back out in the skiff?
The conference broke up and Uncle Raz walked over. “Come on,” he said. “We’re going to use my boat.” He called to Keo. “You boys are going to see something today. Deeps says the bugger’s a three-man fish.”
Soon Uncle Raz was walking the Optimystic gently out to the buoy. Keo and I lay on the bow, hanging over the edge, searching the water. Usually we stood, but this time we weren’t taking any chances. When we got to the buoy, we climbed up on the roof of the cabin. Dad and Uncle Harley waited on the after-deck, with Uncle Raz still at the wheel of the idling boat.
Deeps put a shotgun shell into the end of his aluminum powerhead. “Okay,” he said. “Pull ‘urn up easy.”
Blue Skin of the Sea Page 15
