Hero of Hawaii

by Graham Salisbury

  Other Books About Calvin Coconut

  TROUBLE MAGNET

  THE ZIPPY FIX

  DOG HEAVEN

  ZOO BREATH

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

  Text copyright © 2011 by Graham Salisbury

  All rights reserved. Published in the United States by Wendy Lamb Books, an imprint of Random House Children’s Books, a division of Random House, Inc., New York.

  Wendy Lamb Books and the colophon are trademarks of Random House, Inc.

  Visit us on the Web! www.randomhouse.com/kids

  Educators and librarians, for a variety of teaching tools, visit us at www.randomhouse.com/teachers

  Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

  Salisbury, Graham.

  Calvin Coconut : hero of Hawaii / Graham Salisbury ; illustrated by Jacqueline Rogers.–

  1st ed.

  p. cm.

  Summary: When a hurricane causes the river near his Hawaiian home to flood, a boy named Calvin Coconut makes a daring rescue.

  ISBN 978-0-385-73962-7

  eISBN: 978-0-375-89795-5

  [1. Hurricanes–Fiction. 2. Heroes–Fiction. 3. Hawaii–Fiction.] I. Rogers, Jacqueline, ill. II. Title. III. Title: Hero of Hawaii.

  PZ7.S15225Cad 2011

  [Fic]–dc22

  2010013161

  Random House Children’s Books supports the First Amendment and celebrates the right to read.

  v3.1

  Contents

  Cover

  Other Books by This Author

  Title Page

  Copyright

  Dedication

  1 The Buzz

  2 Outstanding

  3 Crumbling Like Sand

  4 The First Fat Raindrop

  5 Awesome!

  6 Rising Water

  7 The Skiff

  8 Hissing, Roaring, Swirling

  9 Clarence

  10 Bug Explosion

  11 The Bridge

  12 Tangled Oars

  13 Wall of Water

  14 Overboard

  15 Hero of Hawaii

  16 Flat Island

  17 A Son with Courage

  18 No Blood

  19 Absolute Luckiest Mom

  20 The Stop Sign

  21 Great Riches

  22 Heroes

  23 Darci’s Famous Day

  24 Speechless

  About the Author

  It was going to be the most famous party our street had ever seen. In two days my sister, Darci, was turning seven, and the buzz was that the whole neighborhood would be showing up, invited or not. The Coconuts were building a slippery slide.

  “Ho, man,” I mumbled, squinting up at the sun. “Can it get any hotter?” I’d been trying to think of the perfect birthday present for Darci, something good, something that would really mean something. But it was too hot to think, and I was coming up blank.

  Julio humphed. “Where are those clouds when you need them?”

  “Or just a breeze,” Maya said.

  We were sitting on the grass in my front yard: me, my friends Julio Reyes, Willy Wolf, Maya Medeiros, and my black-and-white dog, Streak.

  At the bottom of our sloping lawn, a slow-moving river sparkled in the sun. It was the color of rust and almost as wide as half a football field.

  Darci and Carlos, Julio’s five-year-old brother, were poking around in the swamp grass looking for toads. Carlos had followed Julio down to my house on a pair of homemade tin can stilts.

  I popped up on my elbow. “Hey, anyone want to go swimming in the river?”

  Julio made a face. “That stinky water?”

  I shrugged.

  Maya shook her head. “The bottom is all mucky. Who wants to step in that?”

  They were right. It was smelly and mucky.

  Still, you could cool off in it.

  “Looks fine to me,” Willy said. He was new to Kailua. His family had just moved to the islands from California.

  “Go,” Julio said. “Jump in. But don’t swallow it.”

  Willy frowned.

  We called it a river, but it really wasn’t. It was a drainage canal that carried runoff from the lowlands out to the ocean. I took my skiff out on it all the time, a rowboat that sat in the swamp grass below us. I got Darci to go with me sometimes, but she didn’t like being out on the water. She wasn’t a good swimmer.

  “So when’s Ledward coming?” Willy asked.

  “Soon.”

  Mom was still at work, but her boyfriend, Ledward, was coming over to build the slippery slide for Darci’s party … a monster slippery slide that would start with a high ramp at the top of our yard and run all the way down to the river.

  Carlos stopped searching for toads and looked up at us. The tin can stilts were slung around his neck, two big cans with strings on them. He took them off and stepped up onto them, then clomped up the slope.

  Julio groaned and closed his eyes. His brothers drove him crazy. He had four, all younger than him.

  “Wanna hear a song?” Carlos said, coming over to us.

  Willy laughed.

  I squinted up at Carlos. “Not really.”

  “Go ahead, Carlos,” Maya said. “You can sing your song to me.”

  “My mom gave me a nickel, she said go buy a pickle, I did not buy a pickle, I—”

  “Come on, Carlos,” I pleaded. “Go sing it to the toads.”

  “—I bought some bubble gum, a-chuka-chuka bubble gum, a-chuka-chuka bubble gum, a-chu—”

  I covered my ears. Where was Ledward!

  “My mom gave me a dime, she said go buy a—”

  “Julio, wake up!” I shouted. “Carlos just wet his pants!”

  Julio peeked open an eye.

  Carlos stopped singing and looked down.

  “Peace at last,” I said.

  Willy cracked up.

  Maya glared at me.

  “What?” I said.

  “You didn’t have to embarrass him.”

  Carlos’s eyes filled with tears.

  Maya slapped my arm. “Look what you did.”

  Julio went back to sleep.

  “Hey, hey, hey,” I said, sitting up. “Come on, Carlos, I was only joking.” Carlos pulled up on the strings that held the tin can stilts to his feet. “My mom gave me a … gave me a …”

  He couldn’t go on.

  “You’re such a meany, Calvin.” Maya got up and put her arm around Carlos. She kicked Julio’s foot. “Don’t you care about your brother?”

  “What brother?” Julio said, his eyes closed. “I don’t have a brother.”

  I sighed and got up. “Come on, Carlos, I didn’t mean it. Look. I was kidding. You didn’t wet your pants, and anyway how’s about you teach me to walk on those stilts?”

  Carlos stared at the grass.

  “Come on. I never learned how.”

  Carlos stepped off the cans and held them up by their strings.

  “Cool,” I said, taking them.

  “Calvin!” someone screeched from the garage.

  I glanced over my shoulder.

  Stella, holding up the dog-poop shovel.

  Stella was from Texas and lived with us as Mom’s helper. She was in the tenth grade at Kailua High School. She wasn’t just bossy, she invented bossy.

  “What?” I said, stepping up on the tin can stilts.

  “Your mom called and said to clean up the yard for the party.”

  “So clean it.”

  “You, Stump. Not me.”

  I squinted at her. I hated when she called me Stump!<
br />
  “Justice for the meany,” Maya said.

  Stella wasn’t leaving until I took the shovel. “Let’s go!” she snapped. “I don’t have all day.”

  “This is all your fault,” I said to Streak.

  Streak tilted her head.

  “Hey, Carlos, you want to help me?”

  Carlos grinned.

  “Go on, Carlos,” Julio said, his eyes still closed. “I’ve done it before, and it’s really fun!”

  Maya grabbed Carlos’s shirt. “Oh no you don’t. Carlos, don’t listen to these fools.”

  I shrugged. Still on Carlos’s tin can stilts, I clomped over to get the shovel.

  Stella eyed me. “Are you some kind of a circus freak? Oh, I know, you just needed help getting up to normal height.”

  She snickered at her own joke.

  “So funny I forgot to laugh.”

  She grinned, holding out the shovel. “Get it all, Stump. We don’t need some kid stepping in something.”

  “Stop calling me Stump!”

  “Well, you’re short, aren’t you?”

  “Stop! I mean it!”

  “And if I don’t?”

  I snatched the shovel out of her hand just as Ledward’s jeep pulled up. He honked.

  “Scoop the poop,” Stella cackled, then rode her broom back into the house.

  “Darci!” I called. “Ledward’s here!”

  Julio and Willy scrambled to their feet.

  Darci ran up from the river. “Yay! Yay! Yay!”

  Ledward got out. He was half Hawaiian, half Filipino, and tall as a telephone pole. He looked down on us. “Is this my construction crew?”

  “Yeah!” we all said.

  I peeked into the jeep. The lumber was new. It smelled good. “Can we help you, Ledward?”

  “Sure can. You going to work in those boots?”

  I looked down at the tin can stilts. “You like them?”

  “Used to have a pair myself.”

  We were as excited as ants in the kitchen. Together we took lumber, blue tarps, stakes, extra garden hose, and Ledward’s tool box out onto the grass. Ledward built the takeoff tower first. It was about six feet high. Then he made a ramp and tacked plastic tarps down over the wood. Below that he staked more tarps into the grass and ran the slide all the way down to the water. But Darci made him shorten it. She didn’t want the slide to end in the river, where the current could take you away.

  “Ho!” I said. “This is outstanding!”

  Later I shoveled up all the dog poop, but I didn’t flip it into the bushes like I usually did. I dumped it in the weeds under Stella’s bedroom window, which she always left open for fresh air.

  By the time Mom got back from work, the slide was done and everyone but Ledward had gone home.

  Darci grabbed Mom’s hand the second she got out of the car. “Come see! Come see!”

  “Wow!” Mom said, hooking her arm in Ledward’s. “The kids are going to have so much fun!”

  Ledward glanced at the sky. “There might be a problem … radio said a storm is coming.”

  “What’s a little rain? They’re going to get wet anyway.”

  “Might be more than just a little rain.”

  Darci bounced on her toes, as excited as I’d ever seen her. “Nothing can stop my party, nothing, nothing, nothing!”

  The next morning, Saturday, Ledward came back over. He grabbed the morning paper off our driveway and headed into the house.

  Darci, Mom, Stella, and I were in the living room, looking out the window at the wild gray clouds. Tomorrow was party day and it wasn’t looking good.

  Ledward tapped the newspaper headline as he eased the screen door closed behind him. MASSIVE TROPICAL STORM APPROACHES ISLANDS, it said. “Looks like a big one.”

  Darci crossed her arms. “We’re still going to have the party. It’s only going to rain, that’s all.”

  Ledward looked out the window and shook his head. “I don’t know, Darci girl.”

  “It does look threatening,” Mom said.

  Ledward nodded. “Thought I’d come tie down that ramp and get all that tarp up and into the garage. It could get windy.”

  Darci’s careful plans were crumbling like sand in the surf. Two friends had already called saying they couldn’t come because their parents were worried.

  But the storm wasn’t here yet.

  Mom hugged Darci close.

  “We still have today, Darce,” I said. “At least we can do that.”

  Today Stella and her big scary-looking twelfth-grade boyfriend, Clarence, were taking me and Darci to the Byodo-In Temple as Stella’s present to Darci. The temple was Darci’s number one favorite place to go. You could feed wild birds right out of your hand, and Darci loved birds. They had a giant gong there, too, which was my favorite part.

  Ledward studied the darkening sky. “Better get going soon. My guess is maybe two, three o’clock this thing will hit.”

  I looked up at him. “But we’re still going to have the party … right? Sometime?”

  Ledward clapped a hand on my shoulder. “Sure! But not this weekend, looks like. Anyways, I should take care of that tarp and go home, stay with my dogs. They get kind of antsy when the wind comes.”

  Ledward lived up in the jungle. He had a small banana farm, a hairy black pig, and four spooky hunting dogs.

  Stella looked disappointed as she gazed out the window. She’d spent a lot of time helping Darci with the invitations, and tomorrow morning she was going to make birthday cupcakes. She had all the stuff ready in the kitchen.

  Mom crouched and looked into Darci’s eyes. “It looks like we’re going to have to postpone your party until next weekend, Darci. I’ll call the parents. I’m sorry, sweetie.”

  “I’ll still make the cupcakes,” Stella said. “We’ll do a practice batch and test them out. It’s fun to bake on a rainy day.”

  Ledward nudged Darci. “Gotta go, but don’t worry, I’ll still cook for your party, whenever it is. What you like, cow brains or pig guts?”

  Stella and Darci made faces at each other. “Eeew!”

  Ledward winked. “I’ll make some burgers, too.”

  Lucky for us Ledward was the best barbecue cooker in the world.

  He and Mom headed out to stake down the ramp and bring in the tarps.

  The slippery slide had been my idea, and I couldn’t wait to try it out. My dad used to come up with ideas, too. Like our last name. He was a singer who gave himself a singer’s name: Little Johnny Coconut. He liked it so much he made it legal … for the whole family. Now we were all Coconuts. It was funny.

  For a while.

  But Dad lived in Las Vegas now, with a new wife, Marissa.

  I pushed that thought away.

  A gust of wind rattled the house as Mom and Ledward put the tarps in the garage.

  Ledward drove off and Mom came back inside. “Boy, you can really feel the wind picking up!”

  “That’s how it was back home in Texas,” Stella said. “You always knew when bad weather was coming.”

  Stella’s mom was my mom’s best friend from high school. She’d married a marine and moved to the mainland, where Stella was born. But now Stella and her mom couldn’t get along, so Stella had come to live with us for a while. She was a pain most of the time, but when her boyfriend, Clarence, came over, she almost turned into a nice person. She even pulled out this fake laugh, just for him. Ha-ha-ha, ho-ho-ho.

  “Maybe you and Clarence should take the kids to the temple another day, Stella.”

  “No!” Darci said. “You said we could go, Mom.”

  “I know, Darci, but—”

  Clarence’s car pulled up outside.

  “He’s here!” I said. “Come on, Darce.”

  Stella grabbed her hooded sweatshirt.

  “Oh, all right,” Mom said, giving me some money. “Spend this wisely, and you come right home if the weather gets worse, you hear?”

  “Don’t worry,” Stella said. “Who wan
ts to be out in a storm?”

  I do! I thought.

  Mom looked at me. “You do whatever Stella says, understand?”

  “Sure, Mom.”

  Stella looked at me like, Are you being sarcastic?

  “Yep,” I said. “I’ll do what Clarence says.”

  Clarence played football and worked part-time at the Chevron station. He spoke Pidgin English, like most people in the islands. He had Polynesian tattoos, and drove a pink car with a sound system so loud it loosened your teeth. Two of the speakers were right behind my head in the backseat as we cruised over to Kaneohe.

  “Stay out of trouble,” Stella said to me and Darci when we got to the Byodo-In Temple. Then she and Clarence went up to the meditation gazebo and pretty much forgot about us.

  Which was fine with me.

  Clarence had said about zero the whole way over. He was one of those big quiet Hawaiian guys who looked like they wanted to eat you for lunch but were really nice. He didn’t try to boss us around or anything.

  I banged the big gong a couple of times. Then Darci grabbed my hand. “Come on, Calvin, I want to feed the birds!”

  I gave the gong one more whack.

  Bong!

  Darci pulled me away.

  On our way through the temple, we stopped to look up at the giant golden Buddha, big as a three-story house.

  “Buddha,” I said, looking up at him. “Can you make storms go away so people can have parties?”

  Darci grabbed my arm. “Shhh! You’re not supposed to talk to him.”

  “Why not?”

  “You’re supposed to be quiet.”

  The Buddha studied me with his peaceful look. I’m happy to see you this morning, Calvin, he seemed to say.

  That was what I liked about the big golden Buddha. He always seemed okay with everything. Like, Don’t worry, be happy, life is good.

  Darci yanked on my arm. “The birds, Calvin, the birds.”

  We bought some feed pellets at the temple store and took them out onto a small bridge over the koi pond. It was still early. We had the place to ourselves.

  Instantly, a swarm of birds fluttered in to steal the feed out of our hands. But some were shy and you had to toss pellets to them.

  A gray-and-white bird with a red head stood on a rail nearby, too wary to jump onto our hands. “What’s that one called, Calvin?”