by Weston Ochse
Akani swung in beside him. “Whatchu doing giving stinkeye at the haolies, brah? They gonna find out and come get you.”
Akani and Kavika couldn’t be more different. Akani was a head taller than Kavika. His arms were thick as anchor cables and covered with before-time tattoos, where Kavika’s skin was smooth and unadorned and his muscles were just beginning to develop. Akani had his hair cut into a mohawk, but Kavika liked to keep his long. What they both shared were ready smiles, and now Akani flashed his at Kavika.
But the younger Hawaiian wore his ever-present worry on his face like a birthmark. “No stinkeye,” he said. “Just wondering what it was like before.”
Akani shrugged. “Why think about things you can’t control? Might as well wonder why the fish swim in the ocean or the Sky Winkers stare at the sky.”
The two of them wore shorts down to their knees. Cured sharkskin was lashed to their forearms and palms, providing protection against the burning of the ropes and cables as they used them to transit the heights of the city. On their feet were slips of rubber, cut to fit their soles and lashed across the top of their feet to provide better traction, especially on the wet decks and rigging.
Kaja joined them. Tall and lean, he was the leader of the Pali Boys. Kavika couldn’t help but admire everything he did. Even the way he stood was cool, and made Kavika shift his position until he could match it. Kaja’s skin was free of tattoos except for a single thick line that began at his hairline and ran down his face, neck and chest to disappear into his shorts. He’d Dived the Line and survived. The mark told everyone of his bravery.
“Whatchu two lolly-gagging for?”
Akani glanced at Kavika before he answered. “Little brah says he’s waiting for the storm. Wants to become full-time Pali.”
Kaja raised his eyebrows and apprised Kavika, who tried to stand straighter under the other’s gaze. “You ready to make the leap? You wanna leave part-time and be full-time? Think you can do it, Kavika?”
The Pali Leap was the most dangerous stunt any Pali Boy could ever make, but to become a full-time Pali one had to do it. Like the leap from Nu’uanu Pali Pass on the old island of Oahu in the days of King Kamehameha, if the winds were right, a Pali Boy could jump out and be pushed right back. If the winds were right. More than one wannabe full-time Pali Boy had fallen to his death, or worse, been maimed when the winds shifted or suddenly died entirely, as they tried to change their fortunes and garner the respect of the Hawaiian people. When it happened it was considered Lono’s will. Kavika wasn’t so sure that luck didn’t have a lot to do with it, too, and if there was one thing that he didn’t have, it was luck.
Akani laughed. “Look at him. He looks sick.”
Kavika tried to push the fear away, hide it behind a memory like the others told him to do, but he had nothing scarier than the idea of leaping into the air without a rope, cable or net to hang on to.
Kaja placed a hand on Kavika’s shoulder. “Don’t worry. Everyone’s scared at first. Soon you’ll be up here with the rest of us... like your father was, loving life and living large.”
Akani leaned back, gripping a line with one hand and howled, “Living large!”
The cry was echoed in the rigging across several ships as other Pali Boys took up the cry. Kavika couldn’t help but smile. If the Water Dogs ruled the water, the Pali Boys most certainly ruled the sky.
He watched as a Pali Boy named Oke dove from the top of a container two boats away towards the deck far below. The bungee line slowed him so that by the time he was a few feet from the deck, he came to a stop. He grabbed a line of fish from an unsuspecting haolie, then snapped back. The haolie, an elderly Filipino with gnarled legs and arms, screamed obscenities, Kaja and Akani exchanged grins and took off towards Oke, grabbing lines and netting as they went. They moved upwards so they could dive downwards, propelling themselves through the sky. The nets used by the residents of the city to harvest birds for meat served as the Pali Boy expressway.
Kavika remained. Part of him wanted to join the others, but he knew that if he did he’d be expected to do things he wasn’t prepared to do. The Pali Boy motto was to live large, and they did so at every opportunity, but he seemed to be more aware of his own mortality than the others. He told himself that he’d love to live large, but he also had to find ways to feed his mother and sister. They’d never be able to eat if he became a crip, unable to climb into the heights again.
The wind shifted, bringing him the smell of cooking meat. He searched with his eyes and saw a group of haolies armed with handguns guarding a barrel hollowed out into a barbeque. Kavika’s mouth watered. He could almost taste it. But as one of the smaller Pali Boys and with no other male in his family, meat was a very rare treat. He could count on one hand the number of times he’d been able to bring meat home to his mother and sister since his father died. Five Pali Boys hung on ropes above the cooking, just waiting for the haolies to let down their guard. The only thing better than stealing freshly-caught meat was stealing freshly-cooked meat.
Haolies were what the Pali Boys and the rest of the Hawaiian families called everyone else aboard the city, but in truth the city was divided into distinct ethnic lines. The Hawaiians called an old oil tanker home and were its sole occupants. Kavika and his mother lived in the bottom of the bottom. Hawaiian society was based on a meritocracy, so where you lived was based on your ability to contribute.
The Boxers lived aboard an old Chinese guided missile destroyer. They attempted to harvest their own fish and plankton, which put them in constant conflict with the Water Dogs. Water Dogs lived over the sides of the ships and called the water their home. They controlled everything outside of the Corper fish bins and fought constantly to keep anyone else from fishing. If you wanted to eat from the water and didn’t want to go through the Corpers, you had to become friends with the Filipino Water Dogs. If you weren’t their friends, you were their enemies.
A single ship far out on the edge of the city was occupied by a strange contingent of haolies. Once scientists and engineers, they were called Sky Winkers and spent their time staring at the winking lights in the sky. They said they communicated with the lights, but Kavika and the rest of the Pali Boys thought they were ten waves past crazy.
The Koreans, also known as the People of the Sun, held two ships on the other side of the Freedom Ship which the Japanese called home. The Koreans kept to themselves. Besides an affiliation with Los Tiburones, Kavika knew little about them.
Los Tiburones were multi-ethnic gangs. They owned the drug trade and did swift business in betel nut and marijuana. They had harder chemicals if one wanted, but Pali Boys laughed at the idea that something man-made could be better than a natural high.
The Mga Taos were perhaps the strangest of all the groups. They were monkey-worshipers, and allowed the creatures to roam their temple ship at will. Kavika shuddered. If anything was a sign of bad luck, it was the monkeys. No one really knew why, but the Corpers used them to filter blood, something to do with trying to find a cure for Minimata. One moment a haolie would be enjoying life and living as large as he or she could, the next they’d have a monkey surgically attached to their backs, tubes driving their blood through the monkey’s organs to filter them for some strange experiment.
The Real People constituted the largest group of organized haolies. They were all white of some sort. They controlled a dozen ships and pretty much lived at peace with everyone.
The last major ethnic group was the Vitamin Vs. Their home comprised three former Russian nuclear submarines, interspersed around the city. The crews had mostly left ship and assimilated into the city, leaving only a core group who still maintained the submarines. Many of them had taken wives or husbands. They were the only contingent of whom the Corpers were afraid. Rumor had it that their missiles were armed and ready. They said that as spread out as the Vitamin V subs were, all they had to do was begin firing inwards and the city would explode. Kavika didn’t know if this was true or not. The only
thing Kavika was certain about was if you wanted liquor, the Vs had the best hooch in the city.
A cry went up and was answered across the rigging.
Kavika echoed the call, turning to see where it originated. It took a few seconds, but he pinpointed it at about the time the others did. He climbed the netting, then dove across a gap, catching hold with both hands. Soon he was moving fast, using the nets and cables to propel himself just as he’d learned when he was seven and his father had first taken him into the heights.
They converged on one of the Real People ships. Several dozen haolies surrounded a body on the deck. Pali Boys from everywhere were converging.
Kavika felt a sour pit yaw open in his stomach. It looked like someone had fallen. “Oh, Lono,” he murmured, invoking the God of wind and storms. “Let him not be a crip.”
Kaja was the first one to get to the body. Akani and Oke were close behind. By the time Kavika arrived, there were twenty Pali Boys either hanging or standing nervously nearby. He slid down a line and joined Kaja on the deck. It was Akamu. He was a year older than Kavika. They’d played in the lower nets as kids and had crazy days leaping into the water, only to be fished out by the Water Dogs.
But Akamu’s days of leaping and living large were over.
His skin had turned a light shade of gray. His eyes stared skyward; his mouth open in a scream. His legs were splayed but unbroken. The only signs of life were in his fingers; they slowly curled and uncurled, as if they were trying to clutch the air. His chest held the ghoulish evidence—nine puncture wounds, three by three—that he hadn’t fallen.
Kavika brought his own hand to his chest, just as many of the other Pali Boys had already done.
Blood rape.
Someone had taken Akamu’s blood.
Akami kneeled and held the Pali Boy’s head in his lap. “I got no pulse.”
“Then why is he still moving?” Kavika asked.
Akani shook his head. “Reflexes. I don’t know.”
They all watched as Akamu’s hand uncurled, then stayed that way, a spider’s legs dead on the ground.
Kaja was the first to act. He spun towards the haolies that had gathered around them. “Which one of you did this? Who did this? Was it you?” He pointed at a man who stood towards the front.
The man’s eyes widened and he shook his head. Everyone shook their heads. Many of them stepped back.
Kaja balled his fists. “Who saw this happen?” He turned in all directions, trying to make eye contact with everyone in the crowd, but most looked away.
Kavika could see it if Kaja couldn’t. No one here was involved. This was Corper madness. This was something they did. Everyone knew it, but it would be easier if it was a haolie. Pali Boys could get retribution from a haolie. Getting even with the Corpers was like trying to punch the ocean.
Akani waved for several Pali Boys to help him with Akamu. Soon they were carrying him back to the tanker. Kaja fell in line close behind, his head down, while Kavika walked after the Pali leader. Above them swung the others. They took up a mournful howl. And after a while, it seemed as if the wind itself had joined them.
CHAPTER THREE
“YOU NEED TO watch yourself, Kavika. Don’t let what happened to Akamu happen to you.”
Kavika nodded as he knelt beside his mother and sister. Their assigned living space was five feet wide by six feet deep and less than a hundred feet from the reservoir of oil still stored in the aft section of the hold. Although ventilation shafts had been punched through the sidewalls, the smell of oil permeated everything. That there were people who lived closer to the oil showed that their life wasn’t as bad as it could be. But if it wasn’t bad, it was close enough to be a first cousin. Kavika hated it. He hated more that he couldn’t do anything about it.
“If he hadn’t been doing his stunts, this never would have happened,” his mother continued.
Kavika knew that he shouldn’t argue, but he couldn’t help it. “He wasn’t stunting, mom. He’d been walking on the decks and was attacked.” He dared to look up and saw the impatience in her eyes. He offered her a smile. “If he had been stunting, whoever it was would never have got him.”
“You don’t know that for sure.” She frowned as she punched a needle through a stiff length of shark skin. She was making a dive suit for the Water Dogs. Once completed, it would allow her family unlimited fishing rights for a time. But completing it was difficult. Everyone wanted shark skin, and it was rare that the distribution made it to her on the lower levels. It seemed to Kavika that she’d been working on the same suit for years.
“They found the holes in his chest. It was a blood rape,” he said.
“Ssst.” She cut him off as his ten-year-old sister stirred. “Do you think she needs to hear such things? We know about the holes. Everyone on ship knows about the holes. No need to broadcast the fact.”
Kavika watched his sister for a time. He remembered back when she was eight and how much energy she’d had. Who knew that a bad load of fish could so change her existence? Now when she walked it was as if she were a doll and her legs weren’t her own. She still had convulsions, although they were becoming more and more infrequent.
“How is Nani?”
“She’s getting better. The nurses think she’ll come around. You know that she would love for you to spend more time with her.”
“I’d love that too,” he said.
“Then why don’t you?”
How was he to explain something she didn’t understand? He had to sleep on deck. He had to be part of the group of boys wanting to be full time Pali. How else was he going to have a chance to better their lives?
As if she could read his mind, she said, “You should try and work with the others up top. The Third Mate is always looking for good maintenance workers. You could learn how to weld and then you’d have a trade.”
Kavika shook his head savagely. “I can’t do that. I’m a Pali Boy. I can’t be something I’m not.”
“Your father said the same thing and now look at us.”
“My father wouldn’t want me to keep hidden in the dark.”
“Your father would want you to take care of your sister.”
He felt the blood boil inside him. “I am taking care of my sister.” He stood. His hands were shaking. “I’m trying to move her and you to a better level.”
His mother paused from her work and stared at him. He watched as her anger slid into something much worse... disappointment. “Your sister can’t tell which level she is on. But she can tell whether you are here or not.”
The guilt almost overwhelmed him. On one hand he knew that his sister needed special attention, but on the other he had a need to be with the others so he could have a chance of making their lives better. He felt stifled below decks. Even staying here for the few moments it took to talk to his mother felt like punishment.
He reached over and placed a hand on his sister’s forehead. He held it there for a moment, then stood. “Listen, I got to go. Is there anything you need?”
She shook her head sharply and resumed sewing. “We’ll make do.”
The last time he’d been here they’d argued as well. When he’d left, he’d stooped to give her a kiss and she’d turned away, saying, “Only boys kiss their mothers. You want to be a man, act like one.”
Still, he lingered, wanting to kiss her, wanting to hug her and tell her how much he loved her. But by the stern set of her jaw, this was not something she’d accept. The wanting of it wasn’t enough, but it was all he’d ever have. After all, he was a descendant of an ancient warrior line and he should act as such.
So Kavika set his jaw, turned and made his way carefully through the families who lived on the lowest of levels. He tried not to make eye contact with anyone. He kept his gaze focused on the square of light filtering down the stairwell from the deck high above. He was so keen on thinking about his mother and sister that be bumped right into someone, knocking them to the ground. He mumbled an apology and c
ontinued on.
“Fucking piece of Tuna guts Pali Boy, why don’t you watch—” Suddenly the speaker began laughing.
Kavika walked two more steps, but the laughing got even louder. He turned and saw that he’d knocked down a slip of a girl. Then the girl spoke again, and the voice was anything but a girl’s.
“Go figure. I get knocked down by a wannabe Pali Boy who can’t even stunt on his own.”
Kavika stared hard at the figure on the ground for a moment, then turned and walked away.
The figure leaped up and followed. “Wait a minute, Kavika. I was coming to see you and your mother.”
“She’s back that way,” he said, hooking a thumb back the way he’d come. “I’m going this way. See you later.”
The figure paused to glance backward into the depths of the hold, then decided to follow Kavika anyway, not catching up until he was almost all the way up the stairs and out into the sea air.
“Kavika, wait!”
She grabbed Kavika’s arm, and he stopped and turned. She was a scant Filipina who couldn’t weigh more than eighty pounds. Her long hair and fingernails were perfect. Her pouty lips begged to be kissed. Her long, fake eyelashes accentuated her eyes. She went by the name Leilani. If her real name hadn’t been Spike, he’d be sorely tempted to kiss her.
“What do you want, Spike?” He gently removed her hand from his arm.
“You hurl me to the ground and this is all you can say?” She wiped at her shimmering gray dress and found a microscopic piece of dirt. “And you got me filthy in the process.”
