Reefdog

by Robert Wintner

  What? What was that sound? Oh, Mister Big Shot, better trained! The rueful chorus—Basha Rivka and Skinny—kvetched and mewed on cue. Who but a fool would count himself better off than most, up shit creek with superior treading skills? But it should be to laugh, and he would look back and laugh, God willing—

  What?

  Did you say God?

  Okay, like the man said, it was down to practicality. Control your breathing and the fear will dissipate. But breathing could also ring the chuck wagon triangle; injured fish breathe at the surface, calling out for nature’s mercy. Or his breathing could sound like a baby whale or a monk seal. So he kept his breathing quiet, striving for a smooth, uninjured stroke—not a crawl but a breaststroke, easy, with minimal splashing and a nice rhythm. Oh, hell, the current would carry him out anyway, so what difference could it make?

  Fear surged every minute or two, as it would in the strongest of watermen, till it subsided again to manageable level.

  There.

  Fear filled in between heartbeats till it seemed steady, like part of normal. But how can a body sustain such emotion? It can’t because the baseline shifts, and by the wonders of adaptation, it is normal.

  Until fear spiked at a surface layer of brown foam demarcating two different currents. One side of the foam line was quicker, the seas higher, as the wind bucked the tide. A tide rip was the fishermen’s action zone, where the food chain worked from the bottom up, with little critters trapped in the swirl and bigger critters feeding, up to apex, drawn to the diverse menu with the convenience of a buffet.

  Thoughts and images swirled and thrashed. Ravi clung to the surest flotsam in the ink-dark sea, the twin visage of his mother and cat. Both chided: Look at you! After all I’ve given. After all her love and patience, he was still bull-headed like his father, that bum. What a waste for a boy with so much advantage, and for what, a little piece of babka? Go figure.

  He hoped Basha Rivka could meet Skinny and wondered if they would. No. It was too many miles, and Skinny was a cat, so she couldn’t leave Hawaii without mortal risk in quarantine on her return, and Basha Rivka was a kvetch. You want me to what? Travel halfway around the world to meet a vacocta cat? He could feel the shame and waste of it all, could see the other one, the cat, staring at the immutable truth on her silent meow. He wanted to tell them what a rich and creamy babka it was but kept his mouth shut so one could prattle while the other watched from the dresser as he pulled through two miles, which wasn’t too far, really, unless it was part of a four-mile swim. Because any waterman worth his salt can pull through two miles before his arms weigh a hundred pounds and he can’t feel his legs. Then he slows down because the last two miles are worse.

  So it was near first light, two miles out that Ravi Rockulz gave up. A survivor cannot choose to quit but loses control of arms and legs—fails to find another stroke. Reduced again to a dead man’s float, he looked sideways to lift the blowhole clear for another breath. A shark would hit a dead body sooner than a live one, and with the last half gram of energy, he focused on his limp body as a distance swimmer. He had no oomph to laugh at this great joke on himself.

  But with strength ebbing to zero, a man resigned can spike on adrenaline, can rise an inch to the better view. Only a hundred yards away an outrigger canoe came on to the harmony of five old men chanting in Hawaiian and a sixth old man in the stern.

  Ia wa’a nui

  Ia wa’a kioloa

  Ia wa’a peleleu

  A lele mamala

  A manu a uka

  A manu a kai…

  Six old men? It was the Old Guys Canoe Club. Not that the Old Guys was their real name, but they were old: fifty-five, fifty-eight, sixty years already, some of those guys. Uncle Walter Kanakaokelani and Keahou Lehuamoku had a pact that each would paddle as long as the other. Kimokeo Kapahulehua used to be Bully when he was in your face and stomping your feet, before he found his kumu, Kimokeo Manewanewa, who taught him to be Hawaiian with a Hawaiian name and said, “Take my name. Don’t mess it up. Don’t get it dirty. Represent.” The charter crews called them Old Guys because Elemakule Mea Hoe Wa’a was hard to remember, and charter crews are simple by nature. The Old Guys garnered respect, descendants of the original watermen.

  They paddled more mornings than not, sometimes taking to sea for Niihau or Papahānaumokuākea hundreds of miles out. An open canoe demonstrated what Hawaiians did and yet could do. On their return, they picked up the pace to show what they could do. It wasn’t macho but manly because they worked together and loved the sea.

  And here they were, moving too slowly on such a unified stroke—but a second glance told why: the little tin boat and its forlorn cousins came into view, bailing, in tow, riding low.

  The Old Guys could connect a few dots, so finding four boys in a tin tub with a failed engine and no anchor—and no fishing gear and no drain plug—was suspect. The Old Guys looked annoyed because the Molokai Channel was no sleigh ride. They’d crossed at night for easier wind and waves, only to ride the roller coaster Pailolo Channel and work on around, past Lahaina, Olowalu, Ukumehame, McGregor Point and into Maalaea Bay pounded like poi, only to find a boatload of bad boys adrift. They’d paddled a zigzag course to find Ravi, to save him from drowning while saving the bad boys from murder one.

  Whatever the reason, the morning emerged more mercifully than yesterday. Ravi waved an arm and squealed, “Hoy! Hooyee! Hoy!”

  The outrigger veered, till the helmsman told Ravi to duck under the ama. That was easy, but he could not lift himself aboard. Not to worry; he wasn’t coming aboard—not aboard the canoe, anyway. He would go in the little tin boat, home to the land of aloha. So all the boys and men sat adrift, listening to Uncle Walter indict wrong behaviors and enumerate the reconciliation required of these lands and waters.

  “Our kuleana to care for the sea is no different than our care for ourselves. Our kuleana to our ancestors and our descendants goes seven generations back and seven ahead. We can have no kuleana without kokua, with responsibility we must have cooperation. We share as we share fish or bread, like Jesus guys, though we did it first. You guys. Shame. Shame. Do you hear what I say?

  “My hanai daughter is a hula kumu. She is mainland born. I am her kumu, and my family is hers. She came to me troubled. She heard bad things from people who may have been Hawaiian or something else. Mean-spirited things. They hurt her. They went against my teaching because I had not completed her lessons. So I taught her that Hawaiians have a great sense of justice, besides righteousness and love of the land. These values take care of everything. If you are not Hawaiian, you can live Hawaiian. You must trust in the care of things and don’t get angry and huhu and swear at people. It’s not Hawaiian nature to do that. By your actions, you know aloha. Giving way to anger brings resentment to your blood, and that is not Hawaiian. A true Hawaiian will avoid confrontation. You see locals complaining because they are proud of being born here. They’re often not Hawaiian, but we know what’s been lost. We have faith in justice. You will hear a Hawaiian only by listening…”

  He spoke in English and Hawaiian as the old guy crew shifted in their seats, cooling off but staying mum because of crimes recalled, like when he, Uncle Walter, got picked up with Keahou Lehuamoku. Keahou sat one seat up, as he’d done since the day he got saved with Walter from another drowning and murder one. The details mattered for naught but to remind of responsibilities to place and people.

  “You. Bring him up. Take care. Show him what you know, so he won’t call the police, as he should but maybe won’t. Because if he doesn’t call the police, then you won’t be in prison for years. Unless you find another way to get in. Okay?”

  So Ravi Rockulz came aboard the little tin boat for the second time, hauled in like a ghost net, as a lifeless lump with spent flesh trapped in the mesh. Three cousins attempted aloha by virtue of no threats, no epithets, no hints of violence and no talk of bitterness or blame. Darryl hung his head through Uncle Walter’s talk, as Ravi came aboar
d. He spoke when the tow party got underway again, with strong young men sitting, as the Old Guys paddled. Dishonor rose with the sun, with sky and sea bearing witness—as the lead boat found its rhythm and pulled, as it had across Molokai and Pailolo Channels at night. The boat in tow seemed derelict in spirit.

  Couldn’t even kill one fockeen haole. Looking feebly up, Darryl asked: “When you… make da kine with my girl, she say my name?”

  Overruling this criminal’s spurious thoughts, Ravi dredged up a salt-hoarse voice that grated like a rusty hinge. “No. I made that up. That was a tough… situation, you about to kill me for fucking Minna. We fucked… what? Fourteen days, once an hour, hour and a half. But then when you wake up and want to fuck again, it takes so long to blow your chum, and then once you fucked, you know, six, eight times in a day, then you got to fuck and fuck to get the hot sauce out… Two weeks, six or eight fucks in a day is—what—a hundred twenty fucks or so before I knew you existed. She didn’t tell me. She was blowing me when you drove up in that circus wagon. Wiping her chin when you got there. You know?” The cousins looked worried. But not Darryl. Seasoned veteran of the pissing contest to the death, Darryl smiled. Ravi said, “Hey. This good, eh? Talking. Listening.”

  Darryl nodded, agreeing at last. “Let me tell you what I know.” And softly he spoke, as the grimace moved awkwardly to the face of paler complexion.

  So the shoreline came on as Darryl twisted the dagger. Squeamish reaction could not be contained, so Darryl honed on sordid details. “I knew you was lying when you say about my name. She no care who, she get one Portagee sausage go fump, fump, fump. She no care, she love one cornhole cozzin.” Darryl’s narrative raised a few eyebrows until the cousins pondered personal prospects for cornholecopia. Speculation ended when Darryl asked, “Ey. You like die?” The cousins looked down because no, they no like die.

  Darryl’s skill in a shore break was another point of pride, keeping the stern to the breakers till the bow thudded and surged another eight feet on the next wave to high and dry. All got out and slouched for the road but Ravi, who crawled out and up, not like a first critter evolving from the sea but as a waterman surviving attempted murder. Tourists passing on their fabulous sunrise strolls said hello. Rising at last, he gazed up. The early birds murmured, “Did you see him get in?” These long-distance swimmers were truly remarkable, another wondrous part of Paradise. A woman said, “Lucky we live Maui.”

  Ravi looked drunk, completing the task begun fifteen hours before, staggering home on a heavy shuffle.

  He drank from the hose but had no strength to pull off his wetsuit. So he cut it off, cutting this bond of servitude, though it might have saved his life. The net bag with his shorts and cat food sat on the steps. Gee, it was great to have friends.

  Walking inside to the little red beacon flashing on his answering machine he pressed play on his way to the drawer for the can opener. Small voices told of tomorrow’s charter and low pressure with a system moving in and high pressure from a tourist woman who wanted to get a drink or something to eat or something. Then came: “Hey. Dis Steve Shirokiya wit da Immigration Natchazation Service. You no need one lawyer. Okay? Call me back. Okay? Plan to come right down. Okay? Oh! Bring your green card. We get one problem.” Hammers fell in sequence, banging numbness to oblivion.

  Never mind. He opened the cat food to quell the demand, as if she didn’t know where he’d been or how it compared to a glob of cat food. In the hot shower, he shuddered and cried again but stopped. He dried, oiled his body, and lay down. He got up, made coffee, had a can of sardines with crackers and gave one to the cat. She chewed it halfway and left it, underscoring the indifference of love and nature.

  Laying back down, he dozed deep and woke to a knock at the door. Two people stared at each other as if to ask, What are you doing here? Each held papers.

  A court server served a subpoena from Hundred-Grand Kreeger, the ambulance chaser from hell, famous across Hawaii for suing the state over any accident on any beach or charter boat, citing negligence, claiming damages of 1.5 to 5.1 but mostly settling for a hundred grand. The insurance companies settled because defense would cost a hundred grand. On this subpoena the plaintiff’s name below HG Kreeger’s read: Darryl Ito, seeking damages of one point five million, demanding proof of legal entry on charges of civil rights violations on attempted murder by stealing a drain plug on the high seas, and on to discovery and deposition and on and on.

  The server left. As Ravi drifted back in, the once true love followed, saying that a love like theirs didn’t happen so often. “Once or twice every few years is all, and, I mean, if you could give us another chance, I can show you love like you never had.” She stumbled over salacious potential on her way to innocence.

  He laughed short, more of a snort over one thing or another, till she slapped his back. He waved her off. “What did you bring?”

  “Oh, this.” She unfolded a newspaper to a story of plastic garbage smothering a swath of ocean. “I thought you’d like to see it. You’re such an enviro and what not.”

  The paper said: A plastic soup of waste floating in the Pacific Ocean is growing at an alarming rate in an area bigger than the continental United States, scientists said. It’s a hundred million tons of free-floating plastic adrift between Japan and California, an island of plastic garbage that you could almost walk on.

  A lawsuit for one point five and a dying ocean could darken a day but felt like chaff in the breeze. Among those annoying flecks he saw what he hadn’t seen before. You’re such an enviro and what not…

  Challenges aligned to reveal their lesson: failure to see bears consequence. A randy young man opted for a romp in the canebrake instead of a rightful path. He’d seen the way but held back. Now the trailhead opened. “It’s time to move. Someplace not so crowded or pressured. Someplace still tropical.” He looked up. “You know?”

  She didn’t know. “It’s strange, how you feel about people. You’re so good at what you do, and you like some of them, once you know them. But you hate them as a group. They disappoint me, too, and I love you. I haven’t figured that out, but I think I’ll be here forever, probably down at the hospital in the worst of it.”

  Inanimate as a fence post where lovely songbirds perched, she no longer beckoned. He needed time to sort and forgive—and to step away from blaming her or himself. Because dying many times through a night makes a new man in the morning, more or less. He looked out at her car. “Can you take me to the airport?”

  Yes, she’d take him to the airport or anywhere and accept whatever he chose. He was her hero—oh, she’d admired him already for the usual heroics and his great skill with people in the water. She knew why so many sought him again, whatever boat he worked, one year to the next, and why women came to him, even if that part made her self-conscious, compared to those others. But the big thing was, “You swam the aggregation buoy! Fuck, man! Darryl guys are good with their little boats and what not, always showing off, taking stupid chances. They don’t know what you know. They don’t want you getting any of this.” She meant fish or puhehe, not one little speck o’ da kine because it’s theirs, only theirs. They’d see it die first, and you too. “But you! You swam the aggregation buoy. You know how. You know what it means out there. Ocean spirits feel you. Ikaika, man. You it. And I know you. I feel proud of you. Maybe I cannot be yours, but I love you like the ocean loves you, and for the rest too.”

  He wished she’d said for the rest too and what not, but a strong man forges ahead, no regrets. “Someday I’ll know what got me in. For now, I think about what got me out there.” Tears welled in her sparkly, almond eyes. “Come back in three hours. I’ll call for a flight.”

  Yes, she’d be back in three, and meanwhile, she would just, you know, hang out. She hesitated as if for a look, a nod, or a touch.

  A kiss? Then she left.

  •

  And so our story begins.

  Cut! Cut! Cut!

  But not quite yet because no m
atter how twisted, a yarn can take another kink. The world spins in disarray. Life is daunting till chaos finds a pattern and perversity seems part of the weave.

  A tourism professional won’t ask, “Are you fucking kidding me?” But the question disgorged in a calamitous cavalcade when an Israeli passport proved not viable for entry to French Polynesia without a special visa—never mind that one’s US visa expired years ago. The French were not opposed to Israel, as the French government representative assured the Hawaiian Airlines service rep at Kahului Airport, with Mr. Rockulz listening on speakerphone, “But! An Israeli cannot enter French Polynesia without the special visa.”

  Why not?

  “It is not possible! But! You may obtain the special entry visa to French Polynesia at some Israeli consulates, though you may obtain it most easily in Tel Aviv. If that is not good for you, you may obtain it almost as easily in Los Angeles. Or in San Francisco if you prefer. It won’t take more than forty-five minutes.”

  The good news was that the Papeete flight would not depart until tomorrow night. “So you have time.” Beyond that, the Hawaiian Airlines service rep frankly had people waiting in line, people with flights reserved and paid, people more entitled to service than this rude… what evah. “So? Whatchou want? LA? San Francisco? What?”

  “Why did I get a reservation for tonight if the flight is not till tomorrow night?”

  “Show me your reservation.”

  “I made it on the phone.”

  “Next, please.”

  “Wait a minute. How can I fly to San Francisco or LA and make it back in time for tomorrow’s flight?”

  “I have no way of knowing that.” But the service rep did know the remaining option: deportation back to Israel, charged in advance. If the passenger didn’t have the fare, no problem, he could go to jail, which is not a bad place for the destitute. Ravi hoped to avoid further referral to Immigration Naturalization, who would surely expedite a solution. Avoiding INS seemed hopeless with an expired US visa, but he’d only have to explain to the immigration guys that he was done being illegal and had, in fact, landed—a married man entitled to the pursuit of happiness, life, and stuff.