Flame Angels

by Robert Wintner

  Okay, look: we’ll go with the two tanks for now, one full and one dry, and hope for the best. If the dailies don’t look perfect, we can get a third tank in an hour and blow it up. Okay? And we won’t need blasting caps. My kid sells fireworks on the side. Okay? He’s like, you know, working his way through junior high. He’s got those whatchamacallit M-80s. Cherry bombs. Whatever. He says it’ll be cake with cigarette fuses. There’s the push — where the hell we ever gonna find some motherfucking smokes? Oh, the kid says he can get some. And he’ll work for scale. Little prick.

  Oh, and we’ll need some goggles and body cover for Mr. Huldquist — and no leather!

  So Turner Huldquist’s statement achieves news value like a single cell sending tiny cilia to root in fertile media for a news cycle with new life — with back story, sidebar and peripheral interviews — teachers, friends and eyewitness accounts. To aquarium or not to aquarium? That is the question, submerged in implication, overtone, repercussion, countersuit and nuance — fuck yes — till, alas, the morality of the thing is revealed, including social order off and on our reefs.

  Then come the fish shots with resurging drama, intrigue and interest. The fish guy avoids overexposure by calling in the young diver who took some very nice shots of his aquarium. Wait a minute — you can’t call in a guy from a dream! Relax, numbnuts; you know this guy. He’s an Oybek recruit, on his way up the evil path but get this: no longer Oybekian! He’s reformed! Come to Neptune! Yes, the showbiz card sailing his way across the poker table of life is an ace! He’s back from the dark side and speaking out, denouncing evil and embracing reform: “Mr. Gorbachev!...”

  By day three a billboard is up on La Cienega Boulevard not too far from the thick of the hub of the pulse of your better LA traffic. Bigger than life, Turner Huldquist is smashing the bejeezus out of a huge fucking aquarium, the water and glass exploding with such viral virtual veracity as to generate a traffic hazard in your face, as it were. The message is concise and potent as a smart bomb aimed at your heart: Mr. Gorbachev!...

  It’s all the talk in a twelve-block radius, with growing speculation on whose body Huldquist’s head got morphed onto — McGuire, Sosa, Bonds? Can the glass/water explosion combo actually carry a plotline or at least nominally connect scenes through a hundred and ten pages of screenplay? Oh, and juiciest of all: just guess what studio is actually test marketing the concept this minute? The radius goes eighteen miles on four hundred more billboards in a blink — take over this, Sumner! You fish-killing fucker!

  Well, all the rage in La La is a tempest in a teapot when viewed from the three thousand mile radius, and viewed it is. A few more tankists in thirty-nine states chew on the idea like it’s broken glass, spitting it out till the next week, when Ravid and Minna Rockulz and their two children Leihua and Justin and Skinny the cat and Little Dog are surrounded in their Maui home by boxes and packing material and the confusion of moving to a new home much closer to home, slightly warmer and far less crowded — when the phone rings.

  We didn’t even know it was working, the phone. It’s Hawaii State Senator Kevin Kanishiro on the line, asking if Mr. Rockulz will support a bill to limit aquarium extraction from Hawaii reefs. “We’ve been embarrassed in the eyes of the world.”

  “No. I will not support regulation. I will support a ban. You want to fuck around with footsies? Or you want healthy reefs?”

  “Please. Mr. Rockulz. Let me do my job. Okay?”

  Alas and again, The End.

  What About the Kids ... and Another Move so Soon?

  For starters, they’re not moving to a brand new place. It’ll be old home week for Little Dog, with familiar scents and the old haunts. Skinny had a couple months there and did fine. She’ll do better on a slower regimen, now that she’s pushing sixteen.

  Not only that, she got the Waikiki hooker treatment leaving LA, not exactly an ass reaming, but every groupie in LA sure as hell wanted to kiss her tuchas. Well, maybe not every groupie — that could chap a cat’s ass — but everyone in wishing distance.

  Packing up one more time is a challenge. It’s different than a duffle, a camera case and some snacks. Now it’s boxes, crates and kid stuff. Then again, most of it is still packed. The reasons for not fully moving into and absorbing the new home are multi-layered. It’s hard to finger the difference between the Hawaii place and the old place in upper LA, each with its marble, granite, glass and steel. But the context has changed. LA has constant audio backdrop, freeway noise in the near, middle or far distance. The Hawaii place sounds like surf in small, medium or large. Maybe surf sounds like traffic.

  Or maybe shallow friendliness in LA was better than growing pains in Hawaii.

  Call it what you will. Minna’s family had gone along through the aloha motions, trying to fit in and connect as true ‘ohana should, talking goo goo to the kids, teaching them da kine platitudes and pidgin meaning or non-meaning, playing with the dog and admiring the indomitable cat. And it had gone well enough, which wasn’t enough, leaving a guy recently from LA to ask his wife, “Okay. Now what?” Well, it’s a tough question to a modern woman also immersed in pop culture, fast pace and stimulation, a woman willing to adapt to the needs of her family, a woman recently burdened by a major move — a woman left with no better answer than a question of her own.

  “What, you think Tahiti would be better?”

  “Yes. It’s French.”

  “Why didn’t you go to France in the first place?”

  Well, he didn’t go because it wasn’t tropical, and he didn’t have the visa or enough money to risk failure in a place with so little tourism compared to Hawaii, and he didn’t speak French and on and on, till he trumps her resistance with, “And because. I wouldn’t have met you.”

  With minimal loss on a quick resale, because he bought it right, they off the beachfront monolith. It doesn’t feel like home. For hardly over a million they get a much smaller place on the island of their convergence, a high-ceilinged fare of native stock, lashed in primitive beauty, with two boudoirs, two salles de bains et un bureau pour Ravid.

  Calling it pas mal feels French and safe. Ravid watches residents use the shallows to cool in the heat of the day. He picks up their trash to no avail, so he picks up when they can watch, to some avail, so he speaks to those who throw stuff on the ground or in the water. This too is French; he tells them to stop, to love their sea as readily as they would use it.

  A month or so in, on the shallow bluff next door, he sees elderly Tahitians greeting men who carry clipboards and blueprints. He walks over and overhears the elders inviting the men to a feast there, later that day, to better express ia orana and thanks for the opportunity the men offer: money, jobs and security. Then they offer regrets: but no, you cannot build here.

  Ravid wants to offer money for legal defense or any expense but on second thought introduces himself with a pledge of support for their efforts.

  He stops shaving. He sets buoys to block the reef from anchoring boats and pedestrians. He gets a jaundiced eye aimed his way but no complaints. He watches the coral recover as his babies turn into children, as his dog trades the fear of separation for the confidence of a stable home. The cat sleeps more, plays less and watches her man.

  Old friends come again, drawn nigh for company and comfort into next phases. Monique and Cosima are an item but live separately, to better stand each other. Moeava works his boat and gets occasional counsel from both women, and sometimes from Monique alone, when she’s feeling uncertain or experimental or nostalgic. Who can tell?

  Hereata becomes tutu to the children out of love and defense against solitude. She cares for them as she has cared for her own. Yet she pines, as if her chevalier may still arrive. Minna is grateful again for a babysitter, and tolerant if Ravid takes longer than he should in seeing the sitter home. Hereata is sixty-five, or six, and doesn’t mind rubbing his shoulders, and who knows what else, or cares?

  Ravid sees more and reacts less; no vehicle proclaims Born & Raised, a
nd nobody asks, How long have you been here? With no development or social resentment to taint the natural beauty or him, he wonders: now what? Well, there’s the more perfect shot, for starters As if reading his thoughts Minna shows him what else for finishers, with natural aptitude for intensive care. She works four shifts a week in Papeete.

  She likes to cap the week with a lively distraction, an outing to Taverua reef or the motus — or to the Tuamotus or Papeete for shopping and late lunch, where Ravid will go whole frog on a bifteck frites et une bouteille du vin blanc. He’ll savor the decadent repast, hoping the donor cow died quickly and never fed on fishmeal strip-mined from the oceans, depleting the base of the food chain and thereby reducing all marine species. He’ll smother it in ketchup and watch the kids screaming in and out of vendor stalls, their frites and sammies half eaten. He’ll wonder who they’ll become, and when.

  He’ll catch his wife watching him and wonder why and how and if not. She’ll rest her fingers on his arm and whisper, nearly playfully, “This is what became of us.”

  He’ll lie down on a bench on the ferry ride home and dream of milestones: surely he’ll still dive at fifty-five and sixty, and he should still be fit at seventy, barring unforeseen illness or weight gain; neither seems likely.

  Eighty?

  He’ll ponder open ocean, sailfish and a vegetarian diet.

  And so a story ends again on a satisfied note, with a primary character dreaming of who his children might grow up to be. He sees Moeava at the helm, following bubbles and a bird frenzy over sailfish working the bait ball from below. Awaiting capture in the foray are several compositions of alertness and curiosity. A billfish flashes in the electric moment, sail arched, lateral line shimmering, body aglow in a rainbow of emotion, electrons, sunbeams and an eye to the lens.

  He’ll rise on a discordant note requiring two aspirin, some bicarbonate and a determination that he may one day need to seek a more prudent path.

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  Robert Wintner

  Robert Wintner, aka Snorkel Bob, is Hawaii’s largest reef outfitter and a seasoned marine photographer. He is Executive Director of the Snorkel Bob Foundation and dedicated to reef conservation and recovery. He also serves on the Sea Shepherd Conservation Society Board of Advisors.

  Wintner currently lives on Maui with his wife Anita, dog Lulu and cat Larry. His writing draws on his own experiences, combining decades on the high seas and below the surface with a literary style honed to efficiency. Flame Angels is his fifteenth book.