Man Shark

by Knight, Gerald R.

  “Boat water?” asked Liṃanṃan.

  “Remember, he has filled the hull of his canoe with rainwater, but the sun is starting to drink it up, so he takes a plank from his outrigger platform to support himself above the water and shades it with his body. Eventually, he became too exhausted, hungry, and exposed to continue to paddle. He was probably drifting at a good clip anyway!”

  “So what happens next?” she asked.

  “The noisiest secret of the ocean,” Ḷainjin said. “Baak!”

  “Baak!” cried Paratak simultaneously. “Baak! Baak! Baak! Baak!” The men cried together in unison with the squawking birds about the island.

  “Wūnaak,” Liṃanṃan answered her own question.

  “Tuna everywhere — bird hover like cloud upon water — baitfish jump into boat — I want eat but must chance on hook,” said Paratak, talking rapidly with his hands and speaking feverishly to convey the level of frantic excitement he felt after so many days without food. He pretended to hook his baitfish through its mouth, toss it into sea, and paddle as he let out his line. Then he began paddling wildly until his arm went taut — opposite the direction he had been paddling!

  “You’re lucky you didn’t catch a shark,” Ḷainjin said.

  Paratak acknowledged his remark with assent, as though he had been worried about the same thing.

  “How did you prevent the tuna from breaking your line?” Ḷainjin assumed he succeeded in catching a tuna eventually because that was about the only thing that could have saved his life in such a circumstance.

  Paratak swiveled his body to face the direction the imaginary tuna was pulling his line in and pretended to hold the line with both hands.

  “Wōjej! Whoever told of that?”

  “Told of what?”

  “He discouraged the thing from sounding by giving up and letting it drag his tiny boat. The drag from the shallow hull must have been just light enough to prevent the line from breaking. So the small boat served to save his life. Wōjjej! I would have thought the opposite…”

  “How long before the next rainstorm?” asked Ḷainjin.

  “There were many days before rain, and then sun, and then more rain.”

  “How much of the tuna was left when you made landfall?”

  “Nothing, I ate sun-dried bone. I ate yellow fin!”

  “I’m glad I wasn’t there,” joked Liṃanṃan. “He surely would have eaten me, Liṃanṃan.”

  “How many days were you out there all together?”

  “Twenty…,” he said, and then held up an additional six fingers.

  “Twenty-six days?”

  “Yes, twenty-six,” repeated Paratak, nodding his head again to emphasize the number was correct.

  “It shouldn’t have taken you so long with the wind at your back like that.”

  “Drift west — paddle north.”

  “All right, that explains it. Good strategy — you knew the string runs north and south. You figured you were still drifting west and did not want your lips to crack! Paratak, I’d say you deserved to find land! You had a smart drift! Now it’s time to teach you how to count lobsters!”

  Ḷainjin stood up and surveyed the barren reef flat. The moon had risen nearly halfway to its apex. They walked Liṃanṃan to the beached craft. The lagoon water had drained to its lowest level, and the boat was nearly ten paces from the water’s edge. Without taking the time to break branches for the boat to slide upon, Ḷainjin stooped to place his shoulders under the outrigger platform and began a two-part chant: “Wūj uwaṇ in!”

  To this, Liṃanṃan responded, “Jān lōḷḷap in!” She finished the chant and laughed as she pushed the rear side of the platform and lifted while Ḷainjin nudged the boat forward a step. Paratak joined in, lifting the kubaak as they all chanted again, and moved the boat another step closer to the peaceful, shimmering water.

  When they eventually reached the shoreline, the craft sank down into the lagoon. Ḷainjin loosened the fore- and backstays, lifted the foot of the mast from inside the hull, and placed it at the yoke. Then he adjusted all the lines and stepped back. Liṃanṃan climbed onto the stern deck and secured her alele below. With a little push from the men, she glided out above the fragile corals, not far below the proa’s keel. The men watched her paddle out into the light breeze, hoist her sail, and slowly glide back in the direction from which they had come. Then they sauntered back to the spent fire. Paratak grabbed his two baskets, and they began walking diagonally across the reef flat toward the ocean’s edge.

  Ḷainjin resolved to protect his feet no matter what and warned Paratak to do the same. His feet were still tender from so many days at sea although his callouses had begun to harden again, and with care, he knew he would be able to run again with abandon to encircle the best of the sea creatures he wished to capture. They crossed the puddled reef with determination and began wading into the surf where the dead reef flat met the live corals that had sprouted, splashed by the seawater during the lowest of afternoon tides.

  The sounds of the waves tumbling onto the live corals reverberated in their ears in a slow, rhythmic refrain that was invariably followed by choirs of white water plunging up from the reef’s edge. Then it rushed across the live reef crest with the intonation of an exhaled breath followed by a receding hiss of water sucked back between the corals like the sound of air inhaled between a swimmer’s teeth. To Ḷainjin, this was the sound of the never-tiring ocean. Its swells, having traveled in powerful silence for so long, were finally breathing a sigh of relief, gratified to snatch a taste of shore before their continuous columns carried on engulfing all in their wake.

  The two men splashed their way southward along the border of the reef flat, Paratak peering to his left into the deeper water as it rushed toward them. Ḷainjin was searching to his right, in the shallower water that rippled past them onto the reef. He was trying to distinguish movement among the large storm-strewn rocks that stuck somehow to the reef shoreward of the more turbid border area where they were wading. Then he stopped short as Paratak continued along for a moment before turning his face back toward him.

  “Paratak, do you hear that?”

  “What?”

  “Lobster juon is calling you.”

  “Where?” he asked in a serious tone.

  “There,” said Ḷainjin. He stepped forward to put one hand on Paratak’s shoulder, turning him around to face the gradually tapering surf as it calmed to wavelets that, exhausted of energy, sloshed upon the barren reef. He pointed to a spot that appeared to be a small rock. “Come.”

  As they approached the object, it glided lagoonward until nearly out of the water and then stopped. Ḷainjin covered it with his foot and reached down, grasped hold of its broad back with his strong fingers, and pulled the heavy spider-like crustacean from the water. Its eight reddish-brown legs and two sharp coral-like antennae spread in all directions, and the bristly pads that glued its feet to the reef waved in the air in a futile attempt to recover the traction it had lost. “He’s hailing you, Paratak! He wants aboard your basket!”

  “That’s it?” Paratak was surprised the lobster had been so stupid as to trap itself by backing onto the still unflooded portion of the reef.

  “That’s it! Open your basket! Lobster juon says he wants to be carried by the strong Pohnpeian fisherman. He is tired of crawling all over the reef and he is afraid of sharks. That is why he headed up onto the shallow water, because he mistook you for a shark. If he’d known who you are, he would have jumped into your basket from the start!”

  Paratak opened it with a laugh as a surge of surf covered his ankles, and Ḷainjin tossed the lobster upside down into the basket. They splashed back into deeper surf, but this time, Paratak began looking for more rock-like objects that moved shoreward in spurts and stops. Now and then, he would see one approach on his left, but once he took a step or two oceanward, it invariably retreated into the surf from which it came. Ḷainjin had to explain that the lobster woul
d always turn to face a feared predator and by default, swim away from it with its powerful tail flipper. Its nature worked against it only if a man maneuvered himself between it and the reef’s edge. After this explanation, Paratak changed tactics and caught lobsters ruo and jilu. Then Ḷainjin realized that he would have to keep prodding him along or he would waste too much time chasing down the small ones and the females with eggs that Ḷainjin would make him release, and further discussion on those topics ensued.

  “Only chase the biggest ones or we’ll end up swimming,” Ḷainjin pleaded. “We have limited time to traverse this reef.”

  “But they sing to me! They want come aboard my basket,” Paratak joked.

  “Look, can you see that islet there in the distance?”

  “Okay?”

  “Well, that’s our waypoint. When we get there, we’ll only be halfway to Likōkkālọk’s island.”

  He pointed to the islet that jutted out, blocking visual sight of the remainder of the string, and Paratak seemed to acknowledge the considerable span, given the turn in the tide.

  “Now look at the position of the moon. When it gets there” — Ḷainjin pointed as he explained — “we will no longer be able to walk on the reef because the tide between the islets will be too strong.

  “Now we can spend our time filling your baskets with the small ones we chase down here and then struggle to carry them there, or we can fill your baskets with only the biggest ones we find along the way and make our journey easier. The decision is up to us! Small catch with much work, bigger catch with less work!”

  “I understand. We keep walking.”

  “Likōkkālọk is singing to you too. She is hungry and doesn’t want you to waste time or be swept between the islets into the lagoon when the tide comes and the ocean current begins to fill the lagoon.”

  Ḷainjin forged ahead, chasing down the big ones and forcing Paratak, who held the baskets, to catch up. There were so many lobsters that soon his baskets started to get heavy, which discouraged him from wandering off again. Then they began moving more quickly as they progressed toward their destination. They trudged silently, their ears filled with the thump of the swells as they curled upon the reef crest, the white-water rush of the resulting surge of ocean water, and the sucking sound before the next cycle, broken only by the cry of a fishing bird as it flew white or black against the clear, deep gray of the star-dimmed, moonlit sky.

  When they reached the midpoint islet, their destination came into view. Shortly thereafter, Paratak spotted a large lobster that Ḷainjin had overlooked because it failed to move. When he stepped forward, it turned to face him but stayed put in the thigh-high water. He stepped on the lobster’s back, but the baskets prevented him from reaching down to pry it up, and he was reluctant to release his baskets in the surf. He called Ḷainjin. When he rushed back, he found that Paratak had trapped the granddaddy of them all, and both men were quite giddy over the catch.

  “They call that one bọkwōj pedped because it takes both hands to pry it off the reef.” Ḷainjin bent over and, submerging his face, grasped hold of the thing with both hands, pulling and twisting until he successfully unclasped the giant. Its legs spread out wider than Ḷainjin’s chest.

  “You did not hear this one sing?” Paratak teased.

  “I heard him but I took pity because he’s such an old man,” responded Ḷainjin jokingly. Then he transferred the thing to one hand and, holding it upside down over his head, said, “Here, give me one of your baskets.” He took one of the heavy baskets filled with lobsters off one of Paratak’s shoulders and tossed it into the nearly waist-high water. A look of absolute panic crossed Paratak’s face as he worried over the loss of so many of their hard-earned catch. Ḷainjin laughed at his concern and opened the submerged basket wide to show all the prickly crustaceans embracing each other, clutched into a single, inseparable ball.

  “They no swim good-bye?”

  “No, when fish are scared they swim away, but lobsters clutch onto the reef. They’ll hug each other like that until you get tired of watching, or until someone pulls them apart. You can set them down anytime you want,” he explained, before motioning for Paratak to open his other basket. Then Ḷainjin carefully set the bọkwōj pedped right side up inside the full basket, allowing the immense thing to hug onto the top of the pile, and grabbed the other just as it began to wash shoreward in the foaming surf. He slung it over his shoulder, set off down the reef again, and turned to Paratak. “We only have room for one more passenger like that and little time to waste, so let’s find another big one or leave the rest for another time.”

  They headed off in earnest, soon realizing they indeed had no more time to look for others. The weight of their catch was a struggle, and the prickly legs poked through their woven baskets and scratched their arms and shoulders. Ḷainjin noticed Paratak glancing nervously from time to time at the moon as it rose toward the spot where Ḷainjin predicted they could no longer walk in the sweeping tide. Finally, they decided it was best to drag the baskets through the deeper surf and let the water absorb their weight as they half floated behind them.

  Shortly thereafter, with the sounds of the reef in chorus, Ḷainjin broke their silence with the piercing cry of a spirit-raising chant as they trudged through the surging rollers. It was like the one he and Liṃanṃan had earlier used to muster the strength to heave their heavy canoe across the lagoon shore. This chant, however, seemed without end. It was more like a song that he may have composed and memorized on long journeys between the islands, and it went on and on without refrain, as though its intention was to record or log events as they passed.

  Cut into surf onto

  east reef of Pohnpei.

  We sing. Stones ring! Jebu beat! Waow!

  We shake up! We wake up the

  men of this western quay.

  ‘We have come back at last!’

  We drop sail. We tide wait. We

  shout out to our host to

  tell which way he wants us to turn.

  Do we tideway our way north? Do

  we tideway our way south?

  We fear not the bold lot foretold today,

  our last cast forecast Brave Sky!

  Stones ring out and sing out,

  plaything thing of Et-a-o.

  We drink. We fling our senses astray.

  So, what does Konak say?

  ‘Cries cut coconuts!

  Go dig taro!’

  They scramble, they

  gang up, they gather.

  They dig up that island,

  bring food to our boat and

  then he stands and smiles from on high

  to end the day and teach his way.

  ‘Trade cast is last till you return our way.

  We wish you forever to cast Brave Sky!’

  We heard him. We left.

  We sail. We look back.

  We see mountain. We beat sharkskin.

  We embark on a course to death.

  Our final task, our last cast — ‘Do we die today?’

  Ḷainjin screamed this last line in a hair-raising pitch to emphasize the end of the first verse of his mother’s endless chant — it incessantly recounted the names of swells, sailing directions, seamarks, and other characteristics of the surrounding archipelago used for navigation. Each verse recounted island after island as they plodded through the rising tide toward their destination.

  Paratak would have understood few of his words, but the mention of his homeland must have drawn his interest, and the power of the verse was uplifting. It seemed to strengthen the spine, to make a man stand upright and muster the spirit to attack rather than accept his apparent fate, and that seemed to be just the posture their circumstance required. He was still chanting nearly a quarter of the night later when they reached Kōkkālọk’s island. His timing, as always, was prescient, for by the time they made shore, the tide had reached the beach. Paratak looked exhausted by the adventure. His shoulders and thighs w
ere scratched by the sharp and broken antennae that poked through his heavy basket, but through the course of that night he must have come to realize, as had each of the jekaro boys, that he nevertheless had much to gain in forming as close a friendship as possible with this extraordinary man they called Shark.

  The next morning, Ḷainjin found the boys all giggly over what had occurred the night before. Likōkkālọk had taken advantage of Paratak’s absence to pleasure Etre. At her insistence, he had brought two companions. They had stealthily crossed the passageway in the moonlight. Per the story that passed between the boys, she had hovered over him “like a seabird squashing its nest.” Apparently, she was renowned for tickling the very tip of her partner’s manhood as she squatted over him, nuzzling it agilely between the wet lips of her womanhood until he cried out in agony and then, still hovering, plunging her squid down upon him, irresistibly provoking his seed’s release. His mistake had been to bring the companions, who had secretly witnessed it all from a discreet distance yet could not keep his secret. The boys endlessly teased him, calling him “man rooster” over his quick, bird-like release.

  Ḷainjin was still wondering why Kōkkālọk would choose to seduce his shy friend and insist he bring witnesses to their tryst. Later that afternoon, after practice, the giggling continued as the group enjoyed the lobsters that Kōkkālọk’s workers prepared for them, and he heard talk pass of which boys she might test next and who would last the longest. The group sat out of the sun in a circle beneath her stilted, thatched house, and the lobsters were served bright, steaming red from the earth oven, where they were baked next to ripe breadfruit wrapped in leaves and served in a coconut-leaf basket. During the meal, as she passed a second round of fresh coconuts, she stopped — on her knees — before Etre for a moment. She innocently punched out the mouth of his drink with her nail before passing it to him and smiling coquettishly, first at him and then the others, as she touched her tongue with a bit of the coconut custard that she had freed in the process. “Did she not realize what a dangerous game she was playing?” thought Ḷainjin as he watched. Later, in overheard conversations, the boys seemed to agree among themselves that it was more than her physical ability that drained a man’s seed so quickly. It must be the sensuality of her person — some said her smile and others, her look of desire. Others said her feel or her smell or the combination of all these things, or maybe it was just her inexorable passion to vanquish her opponent quickly that caused her partner to precipitously succumb to her enticement.