The Cursed Canoe

by Frankie Bow

  He turned to his father.

  “But, ya know, Aunty Molly?”

  Now what? I stared at my place setting. I wasn’t feeling particularly hungry, but I was hoping the server would come by and interrupt the conversation with our entrees. What was taking so long?

  “You could go to the college website and find her picture, yah?” Davison continued. “You click it to get the address, and take it to one other website with software that looks at the picture and reads her face, and it goes and looks online and it can find other pictures of her.”

  He paused, and I looked up, just in time for him to say:

  “Even if she was using a different name.”

  Davison winked at me. Donnie didn’t see it.

  I had no appetite at all by the time the entrees arrived. I forced down a couple of bites of fibrous, overcooked ahi and pushed the remaining food around on my plate. When I thought we were finally finished with dinner, Davison prolonged my ordeal by ordering dessert, a precariously tall grotesquerie of chocolate cake and coffee ice cream, loaded with spray-on whipped cream. Donnie had a few bites. I declined, even (especially) after Davison insisted (“come on Aunty, you know you want some”). Finally, Donnie signed the tab. He invited me to join him and Davison to go and watch the manta rays. I made my excuses, muttering something about having to get up early to watch Emma’s race.

  CHAPTER THIRTY

  I RODE THE ELEVATOR back up to my room, locked the door, and took my fourth or fifth shower of the day (I’d lost track). Emma’s big race was Saturday morning. I wasn’t actually planning to attend in person. If I wanted to catch Emma and her crew before they left, I’d have to be down at the water before dawn. The dark beach would be packed with team supporters and tourists, and, of course, plenty of little kids careening through the crowd. There would be a live Jawaiian band, or a noisy DJ setup. After their registration and last-minute checks, the paddlers would pile into their various canoes and stroke out to sea. Emma’s canoe and dozens of others like it would disappear over the horizon before the sun was even up.

  The women’s crews would leave the bay, paddle the tough eighteen miles down the coast, and disembark. The women would get out and the men’s teams would climb into the same canoes and paddle back up the coast, where they would arrive at the starting point many grueling hours later. A spectator on the beach wouldn’t see anything after the canoes sped off. I’d be staring out at the empty blue water.

  Emma had told me all of this on the drive over. She had assured me that my presence was not required at the start of the race, so long as I was available to help celebrate afterward. So it was well past sunrise when the hotel phone jangled me out of a deep sleep. I picked up the receiver and for a few moments, I heard big bore motorcycle engines rumbling in the background.

  Then Davison's voice came over the line. Not exactly the wake-up call I would have chosen.

  “Eh, Aunty. Dad wants to know if you wanna have breakfast with us.”

  "Oh, that's very nice of him to ask. May I speak to your father?"

  "He's driving."

  "What? It's only...” I squinted at the digital clock on the side table. “Ten-thirty in the morning. Where are you?"

  "We're coming back to the hotel. We went fishing already."

  "Breakfast with both of you sounds lovely,” I said, “but I'm not quite awake yet.”

  The part about not being awake was true.

  "Come on Aunty, we can get any kine breakfast. What you like grind?”

  I heard Donnie in the background: “Speak English!”

  I didn’t care whether Davison was using Standard English or Pidgin. He could have spoken Sanskrit for all I cared. I was not going to endure another meal with him.

  “I don't want you to have to wait for me. You two go ahead. Tell your dad thanks anyway."

  I eventually woke up for good, got dressed, and went out to wander up and down the main beachfront road. I poked around the shops, but I didn’t buy anything. Crystal jewelry and floaty batik dresses weren’t really my style, and I didn’t need any bargain souvenir t-shirts. When I had exhausted the local shopping possibilities, I parked myself in an outdoor seat at a coffee shop. Every so often a pack of motorcycles would roar by, drowning out the already-noisy traffic.

  Equipped with a tall café Americano, a view of the ocean, and a little table all to myself, I passed the time typing online faculty reviews into my phone. The one I left for Pat referred to an inside joke that would seem impossibly tasteless if I tried to explain it. My reference to Emma’s Dalmatian-puppy lab coat, on the other hand, was written for a general audience. I left an absurdly fawning review for myself, and another one right after it complaining about my heavy workload and unrealistically high expectations. All of these evaluations were accompanied by the highest possible numeric scores.

  The Student Retention Office uses only the numeric ratings, not the qualitative reviews. So when Pat gives me a straight five out of five rating, and writes “Professor Barda sleeps in a coffin and awakens at blackest night to gorge on the blood of innocents,” that still works in my favor.

  As the sun sank to the point where it was aiming right at my eyes, Emma called. I stood and started collecting my things as I spoke to her. She refused to tell me how her crew had done in the race, insisting I come to her room to get the news in person. I assumed it must be good; she sounded excited. It only took me a few minutes to hurry back to the hotel and find her room on the second floor.

  Emma was over by the window, busy on her computer. I almost tripped over her husband Yoshi, who was parked right in the middle of the floor at the foot of the bed, eyes fixed on his own laptop screen. The bedspread was piled on the floor around him and draped over his shoulders. He was eating spicy tortilla chips out of the bag, dipping each one into an open jar of mayonnaise.

  “Hey, Yoshi,” I greeted him, “did you paddle too?”

  He slowly placed his hands over his headphones and pushed them back to expose his ears. I noticed his eyes were red. I repeated the question.

  “Oh, hey Molly. No, not today. I just hung out here. I’m doing the double-hull race tomorrow, though.”

  “Oh, great!” I enthused, as if I knew what a double-hull race was. Yoshi plugged himself back in and resumed watching the brightly-colored cartoon ponies frolicking on his laptop screen. I watched him wipe his mayonnaise-slick fingers on the bedspread.

  “Hey, Molly!” Emma called.

  “Hey! How’d you do?” I stepped over Yoshi and his bedspread fortress and plumped down into the big hotel easy chair behind Emma.

  “We came in eighteenth in our age group,” she said.

  “So do you get a prize?” I asked. “A tiara? A golden paddle?”

  “We got t-shirts. We hadda buy ‘em, though.”

  “So coming in eighteenth is good?”

  “Well, it’s not as good as coming in first,” she admitted. “But it’s an eighteen-mile race, so we decided eighteenth is good luck. It was awesome, Molly!”

  “Great. I’m glad you had a fun time.”

  “I think even you would have liked it.”

  “Seriously?”

  I imagined the combined effects of eighteen miles of repetitive motion, saltwater-drenched swim shorts, and the canoe’s hard, impossibly narrow seat. I could almost feel the blisters.

  “Right at the start,” Emma said, “we saw two sea turtles swimming underneath us. And about halfway down there were dolphins, right alongside us and jumping out of the water. They were so close to us, like they—oh right, I forgot. You don’t like dolphins.”

  “I used to like them just fine, until Betty Jackson filled me in on their, you know, behavior.”

  “Yeah, I know. Frat boys of the sea. Anyway, we did pretty good considering we went iron.”

  “What does that mean, you went iron?”

  “Oh! Sorry, Molly, I thought everyone knew what it means.”

  “I don’t know what it means.”

 
“So in a long race like this, a lot of the crews have an escort boat, yeah? There are nine people on the crew, but only six at a time. You switch out, and everyone gets a chance to rest in the escort boat for twenty minutes out of every hour. But going iron means you only get six in your crew and everyone paddles the whole time.”

  “Emma, are you telling me you could have had three more paddlers in the race?”

  CHAPTER THIRTY-ONE

  “ALL OF THE COMPETITION over who got to paddle in this race. What did Yoshi call it, paddletics? And you could have had three more paddlers on your crew all along?”

  “No need for three more paddlers,” Emma insisted. “It worked out perfect. We had six seats and six crew members. And we did great.”

  “But why—oh, never mind.” I plunked down on the foot of the bed. This was typical Emma. Kathy Banks mysteriously keels over, bringing the number of Emma’s crew down to exactly six people. And Emma doesn't question it or think it seems suspicious at all. No, her response is: Great! Problem solved! Emma doesn’t know how to worry a topic to death, the way Pat and I can. Pat claims it’s a skill you can only get from being raised Catholic, although I have a few acquaintances of the Jewish faith who might disagree with him.

  “Emma, whose decision was it to go iron? So there would only be six spots for people to race, instead of nine?”

  “There wasn’t any decision. We just did it.”

  “It was your decision, in other words.”

  I wondered what would have happened if Emma had gone to the trouble of hiring an escort boat. Would Kathy still be alive today, I wondered? I didn’t share this thought with Emma. It would sound like I was accusing her.

  “Anyhow,” Emma asked, “what about you? What happened last night? I was surprised to see Davison over here.”

  “Yeah. You’re not the only one. Good work getting Sherry out of there before Donnie or Davison could see her.”

  “Well, I didn’t want to risk any big drama right before the race. Poor Davison, did you see when he was asking about her? He was like a sad little puppy, yah? Anyway, how’d it go with Donnie?”

  I glanced at Yoshi. He was grinning at his laptop screen, headphones blocking out the world around him, fully absorbed in the antics of the candy-colored cartoon ponies.

  “Let me tell you how that clever plan of yours worked out. My magical evening of romance.”

  “So was I right, or what? Good idea, yah? Come sit over here. I don’t wanna have to twist around to see you.”

  I scooted the bulky armchair next to Emma, settled in, and related the events of the previous afternoon. Instead of being properly abashed, Emma burst out laughing. Yoshi glanced up briefly and went back to watching his show.

  “It’s not funny, Emma!” I fumed. “It’s appalling!”

  “Hey, opportunity knocked. Can you blame him?”

  “I absolutely can blame him. And you, while I’m at it. Whose big fat idea was it not to call ahead?”

  “Maybe you shoulda went for it. He’s not bad looking.”

  “Ew, what is wrong with you?”

  “What? You coulda helped him forget about Sherry. Eh, you haven’t gotten anywhere with Donnie yet, right?”

  “Stop it, Emma.”

  “I know I’ll never look at scorpions the same way again.”

  “I’m never going to look at scorpions, period,” I said.

  “What does that mean?”

  “I don’t know! Is it time to go down to dinner? I barely got anything to eat today.”

  Emma peered at the clock on her computer screen.

  “Oh! Yeah, it is.” She stood, turned to Yoshi, and bellowed as if she were in the middle of a live fire shooting range:

  “Yoshi! We’re going down to dinner now!”

  He glanced up, pulled off his headphones, and slowly worked his way to a standing position.

  As soon as the elevator door closed behind us, I felt my phone humming in my bag. It was a missed call from Donnie. After the events of the previous day, I couldn’t bear the idea of spending any more time around Davison. At the same time, I had already turned down their breakfast invitation.

  “It’s Donnie,” I said. “He’s probably calling about dinner. I don’t want him to think I’m avoiding him.”

  “But you are avoiding him, aren’t you?”

  “I think it’s time to take preemptive action.” I called Donnie back and told him I’d be having dinner with Emma and her crew. I asked him if he and Davison would like to join us.

  Emma’s jaw dropped and she made wide eyes at me.

  “Are you crazy?” she mouthed.

  Sure, if you didn’t know Donnie that well, you might think I was taking a risk. Sherry would be with us at dinner, and if Donnie showed up with Davison, it would be uncomfortable, to say the least.

  But I know Donnie. He likes to have me to himself. He only attends crowded events like the Business Boosters annual installation dinner out of professional obligation. He’s not a natural extrovert, and doesn’t like to be put into situations where he has to socialize with people he doesn’t know. At least that’s something we have in common.

  As I expected, Donnie politely declined my dinner invitation. Davison would be taking the red-eye in a couple of hours, he told me, and they wanted to eat near the airport so they wouldn’t have to rush.

  “Oh, Donnie, that’s a shame.” I aimed a triumphant look at Emma. “It looks like dinner’s not going to work out. Tell Davison I hope he has a good flight.”

  “Would you like to tell him yourself?” Donnie asked. “He’s right—”

  “No no, it’s okay. I know you’re on a tight schedule and I don’t want to keep you. I’ll see you tomorrow. I’m still catching a ride back with you, right?”

  “I’m planning on it,” he said.

  “It worked,” Emma said when I had hung up.

  “See? I’m not completely inept.”

  “What worked?” Yoshi asked.

  “Molly’s cell phone,” Emma said. “She wasn’t getting any reception back at the paddling store. So Davison’s on his way back to the mainland now?”

  “Pretty soon,” I said.

  Two hours from now, Davison’s plane would be thirty thousand feet above the Pacific Ocean. In my mind’s eye I saw a jumbo jet hesitating, then spiraling down, accelerating toward the black water, billowing black smoke.

  What, was I doing this again? Stop wishing catastrophic death on people, Molly! Stop it!

  “Stop what?” Emma asked.

  “What? Nothing. Just talking to myself. Out loud, apparently."

  "You gonna be okay?" she asked as the elevator doors slid open.

  "Yes. I'm fine. Honestly."

  We walked out into the warm evening air, toward the Sunset Bar, where the rest of Emma’s crew was already celebrating.

  CHAPTER THIRTY-TWO

  THE WOMEN FROM EMMA’S crew, with their various companions and spouses, crowded around a long table at the outdoor bar. It looked like most of the party had been there for a while. Their faces shone with the effects of sun and alcohol. There weren’t two empty seats together, let alone three, so Emma, Yoshi and I had to squeeze in where we could. Sherry gave Yoshi a friendly swat as he walked ahead of me. I don’t think Emma saw it. Sherry motioned me toward the empty chair beside her.

  It was just as well I wouldn’t be seeing Donnie for dinner. I didn’t like the way he seemed to blame me for the mortifying incident with Davison. And come to think of it, Donnie’s following me over to this side of the island didn’t seem so much like a charming romantic whim. It was more like Donnie was keeping an eye on his investment. In case—what exactly? In case some big-bellied biker threw me over his shoulder and went roaring off into the sunset? That wouldn’t even make sense, because driving into the sunset from the leeward side of the island would mean going straight into the ocean.

  I could puzzle this out later. Right now I had to concentrate on making innocuous small talk. Just the two of us
, me and a woman who might be Donnie’s ex-wife, about to have a nice drink and a chat. Nothing weird about this.

  “So Sherry,” I ventured, “Nice job out there today.” I had no idea exactly what they did “out there” today other than paddle, but they had all made it back alive, and Emma had seemed pleased with how things had turned out. It seemed some kind of congratulations were in order.

  “Thanks, Doctor B. You know, I could kinda feel Kathy’s presence today. She was out there with us. I know it.”

  As little as I cared for Kathy, I didn’t like thinking she’d been doomed to an afterlife of floating around on the ocean. Trailing after boring canoe races for all eternity sounded worse than Purgatory.

  “I’m realizing I never knew Kathy well at all,” I said.

  “Kathy was amazing. When I first came back to school here, I was so lost, I was ready to quit. She was the one who got my financial aid straightened out, with my student loans and everything. When I got to Mahina, I couldn’t even afford to buy my textbooks. I have a—a ton of student loans.”

  I wanted to ask Sherry whether there wasn’t someone in town who could have helped her out. An ex-husband, for example? Or a grown son? But I couldn’t think of any tactful way to do it.

  “Back to school?” I asked. “So you’d had some college classes already?”

  “Yeah. I went to college for a while back on the mainland. When I graduated high school, I didn’t think about college. But I started seeing these ads on TV, and it got me thinking. They were right off the turnpike. I useta drive by and see their sign every day, and one day, I dunno why, I decided to stop in. The people at the front desk were real friendly, and they made it super easy for me to sign up.”

  I tried not to wince at the phrase “graduated high school.”

  “But you didn’t finish your degree there?” I asked. “I’m sensing this story doesn’t end well.”

  “Nah. Long story short, I ended up with seventy thousand dollars of debt. And that’s right, no degree.”

  “That’s unfortunate.”