Under the Wave at Waimea

by Paul Theroux

  “Do you need a glass of water?” the man said, raising his voice because the dog was still yapping. Sharkey seemed to be choking. But it was a spasm of hilarity.

  Sharkey raised one hand, indicating no.

  “Take your declaration,” the woman said. “I’m not signing.”

  Sharkey sat on the sofa, he wiped his eyes—his laughter had produced tears. He was quieted by the woman’s refusal. He said, “The ashes are in the mortuary.”

  “They can stay there.”

  “If you don’t sign, they’ll likely be put in a common grave.”

  “Maybe that’s where they belong, with the other bums.”

  The man put his arms around her, but when he hugged her she seemed to stiffen and go sad.

  “Call him a cab, Cesar,” she said, and as she stood up the small fluffy dog jumped to the floor and frolicked at her feet. But she was unsteady, and, seeming determined to leave the room briskly—in her cold, uncooperative mood—she stumbled and had to grip the doorjamb to regain her balance.

  “Darling,” the man said. But she ignored him. He said to Sharkey, “You upset her!” Seeing that Sharkey had gone mute, he added, “I’ll call you a cab. Where are you going?”

  * * *

  In his hotel room he turned off the air conditioner; the droning died, the air went warm and stale, penetrated with the rank smell of sofa cushions. Sharkey sat on the bed, feeling helpless again. It was midafternoon in Hawaii. He thought of calling Olive, but he didn’t want to report another defeat, and besides, she was probably saving someone’s life in surgery. Then he remembered how, hearing “hairdresser,” he had laughed—great loud healing laughter—and he smiled at the memory. It had been a beautiful moment, and all the better for having those two people as witnesses. Yes, it probably spoiled everything, but it was wonderful, an assertive statement of belief. He was vindicated, knowing that his friends would have laughed, Hunter would have laughed, and he was sure that Max Mulgrave would have laughed.

  He flung open the French windows to the small lanai attached to his room and stood, considering the ocean—the familiar voice of water on the move, threshing the shoreline, and was soothed by its whisper, as though by a hit of weed.

  Then what he took to be an answering sound—the ding-dong of recognition—was the telephone by the bed.

  “Yes?”

  “I’m in the lobby.” It was a woman. Who? She sighed and said, “Bring the paper.”

  “Be right down.”

  She was standing by a pillar, wearing a long coat, probably to look inconspicuous, but all it did was make her stand out. It was pink, and her hair was tucked into a big blue hat. When Sharkey got near her, she reached out and clutched his arm and drew him closer. In this harsh lobby light she looked older, lines visible beneath her makeup. It seemed she’d been crying and the traces of the tears had aged her.

  “Let’s sit.”

  Beside her on a sofa by the wall Sharkey said, “Where’s your dog?”

  “I left Corazon at home.” She touched his nose, a teasing gesture. “You’re afraid of him. Funny. Max was afraid of dogs too.”

  “That’s good to know.”

  “I’m sorry,” she said. “I was a bitch to him. I was a bitch to you. Never mind Cesar. To him, Max was a freak. He doesn’t know I’m here. Where’s the paper?”

  Sharkey unfolded it and smoothed it on the arm of the sofa. “Here’s a pen.”

  She read it through, murmuring, “‘Shall be disposed of in the following manner,’” then signed it, adding her address and her phone number.

  “Where’s this place”—she put her finger on a line—“Waimea?”

  “A beach. A bay. A surf break. A wave,” Sharkey said. “Sometimes monster.”

  “And what’s the idea—scatter his ashes?”

  “Something like that, with prayers, with flowers.”

  She handed the paper back. She looked tearful, her lips tremulous. Her fingers were thin, the skin loose and crepey; her fingernails were long and lovely, pink, pearly, like polished shells, and she wore an enormous glittering diamond ring.

  “I didn’t mean those things I said.”

  “You were upset.”

  “I wasn’t upset. I’m a bitch.” She said it ruefully. “Max was kind.”

  “That’s what I discovered.”

  “All that trouble you took to find out about him,” she said. “Max would have done that.”

  “I don’t know what to say.”

  “Then kiss me,” she said.

  He leaned over to kiss her cheek, but she held his head and grabbed his hair and kissed him fiercely on his lips and forced them open and moaned hungrily into his mouth. When she was done, leaving the sweet creaminess of lipstick on his tongue, she rested her head on his shoulder and sighed.

  “You remind me of him—you laughed like him,” she said. “A free spirit, reckless as hell. But a good heart.”

  “Yes, I know him now,” Sharkey said in a tearful whisper. “I’m so sorry he’s gone.”

  * * *

  Sharkey woke buoyant, motionless, as though floating on his back, then with a whiff of the sea from the lanai realized where he was. He smiled at the ceiling. Remembering that his flight to Honolulu was not leaving until late that evening, he slipped on his board shorts and hurried out of the hotel, waving away the man in the white uniform and gold braids at the porte cochere who saluted and said, “Taxi?”

  “Not today, chief.”

  He crossed the main road and walked toward the pier, descending from the narrow cliffside park to the beach just beyond the pier. He kicked off his flip-flops to feel the heat of the sand rise from his soles to glow in his legs. The surf was hardly more than a foot, and yet it chuckled and beckoned as he flexed, preparing to enter the water at the break he knew as Bay Street.

  Stretching, canted sideways, he saw three small boys seated near him, watching the novice surfers, unsteady on their boards and toppling into the waves. The boys sat crouched in attitudes of exclusion, three explicit silhouettes, stark against the whiteness of the beach, a coating of sand sugaring their arms and legs.

  “Hi, guys.”

  The boys twitched at his voice and looked warily at him, as though bringing him into focus, but said nothing.

  “Why aren’t you out there catching waves?”

  One boy laughed, averting his gaze; another said, “That’s hard, man.”

  “You good swimmers?”

  “Pretty good,” the biggest boy said.

  “Then you can do it.”

  They all laughed and, still seated, swayed, showing indecision, then leaned away from him.

  “I’m Joe. Tell me your names.”

  The big boy was Junior, the boy next to him Matisse, the smallest whispered, “Tavious.” Their faded shorts and battered flip-flops, their torn T-shirts, their hair dusted with sand grains, made them seem like waifs.

  Junior said, “I want tats like you, man.”

  “Go for it,” Sharkey said. “But listen. Those kids out there are using the wrong boards. The waves are better suited to body boards, which”—he turned to glance back at the stalls at the margin of the beach by the cycle path—“you can rent.”

  “If you got enough bones,” Matisse said.

  Sharkey snapped his fingers. “I got the bones.”

  “Yo, cool,” Junior said, wheezing with admiration.

  Sharkey said, “Me, I’m the Easter Bunny.”

  This made them laugh, and they scrambled to their feet as he beckoned them up the beach to a stall with an awning and a stack of boards and swim fins hung on hooks. They were silent and watchful as he spoke to a deeply tanned man slouched in a beach chair.

  “I’m going to need four boards with leashes, and three sets of swim fins for my friends here.”

  Using the back of his hand, the man tipped up his ball cap and turned his beaky face to Sharkey, not saying anything but sniffing, interrogating him with his nose. He said, “You’re going to k
eep an eye on them?”

  “I’m giving them lessons.”

  “I mean my boards, man. I lose a lot of inventory to kids here.”

  Sharkey rocked slowly, flexing his toes to calm himself, considering his reply. The man’s nose was burned pink like a peeled shrimp. He said, “That’s harsh on my friends here.” He smiled at the boys, who straightened and smiled back. “But tell you what. I’ll pay you a deposit, and if the boards are cockaroached, you can keep it.”

  “These are quality boards,” the man said, heaving himself out of his chair, his sigh conveying reluctance. “I’m putting eight hundred on your card. If I don’t see the boards again, consider it forfeited.”

  Sharkey murmured “High finance” to the boys as he handed the man his credit card.

  Carrying the boards and fins down the beach, Sharkey heard one of boys say “Cockaroach” and giggle.

  At the water’s edge Sharkey said, “Put your board down flat and climb on top, your chest on the upper half. You’re a turtle, right? Now show me how you’re going to paddle.”

  They practiced paddling on the sand, scooping with their cupped hands, then holding the nose of the board, duck-diving, and for the wave breaking right, grabbing the left rail with their left hand, their right hand on the nose, and kicking with their fins.

  “Tryin’ to remember,” Matisse said.

  “Let’s boogie.”

  Sharkey led them into the surf zone, among low advancing sets, blue frothing to white, the sprawl of foam scooping toward shore. He showed them the moves again and then urged them on as they shouted and tumbled, flailing in the suds. But after five or six tries, they grew in confidence and balance and rode the waves, tumbling when Sharkey signaled, then heading back to ride again. Flattened on his own board, Sharkey watched with pleasure, thinking, There is nowhere I would rather be, and reflecting on how the day was transformed for him by the sight of the three boys gleaming in the sea, exulting, the small boy, Tavious, squealing.

  They continued until early afternoon, when Sharkey said, “Let’s eat, guys.” Passing the rental shed, Sharkey called out to the man in the beach chair, “We’re cockaroaching them!”

  He bought the boys burgers at an outdoor café nearer the pier. Watching them eat, he thought of mentioning Nick Gabaldón; but they were happy, they were hungry, they ate with gusto, and why remind them of their race?

  “You guys are good. Stay unsinkable.”

  Holding his burger, wiping his mouth with the back of his hand, Junior said, “You ain’t no Easter Bunny, man. Who you really?”

  “I’m nobody—average Joe,” Sharkey said. “Just passing through. But I want you to promise you’ll come back here again and practice. Take my board—give it to a friend. Hey, I don’t know what you feel like where you live, but let me tell you, in the water”—he lowered his head, he spoke fiercely—“in the water, you’re somebody special. Remember that.”

  13

  The Paddle-Out at Waimea

  A beautiful North Shore early morning, a sweet whiff of damp foliage that had the freshness of lettuce, and a gauzy veil of greeny-gold heat haze like a halo of pale light over the stillness of Waimea. A fuzz of reddish gnats and tiny jeweled flies stirred in the warmth. A troop of surfers, thirty or more, their boards under one arm, batted at the insects with their free hands as they loped barefoot toward the beach. There, the pale sprawl of bay glowed as smooth as a lake between the arms of spiky black lava on either side, the Leaping Rock on the left, the boulders at Pinballs on the right. One of the surfers muttered, “Total glass.”

  A few distant corrugations, the twitch of a ribbed swell toward the horizon, but near to, this dawn, the sea was a white whisper.

  In the parking lot, gilded by the sun striking through the haze, Sharkey reached to his roof rack for his board, Olive beside him, the surfers passing.

  “Give him a hand, guys.”

  “No, I’m cool.”

  His will was strong, yet trembled with the weight of the board when he clapped it under his arm. But he was determined not to be helped.

  Around him, in the lacework of sun-flecked shade, the surfers young and old, the young ones chattering, the older ones solemn and silent—Jock, Garrett, Brock, Ryan, the Florence brothers, and others on the beach sitting cross-legged, some pacing. Sharkey recognized Stickney and Wencil, Alex, Fonoti and Frawley, and from the kapu camp Rhonda, Winona, and Kimo, the schoolchildren gathered near them. Skippy Lehua had come with some of his grommets, and Sugar with her three children, May and her Chinese husband. All of them tense and tearful in their gaudy shirts. Moe was there. So was I.

  “Insane,” Sharkey murmured.

  As we gathered on the foreshore, three black-and-white HPD police cruisers drew up at the edge of the parking lot. Six officers got out and marched to the beach, where they stood in a line, at attention, and saluted.

  Onlookers too, early risers, rock jumpers, beachgoers, gawkers, tourists, crowding the surfers.

  A hoarse haole voice: “Some kind of Wayan ceremony?”

  The kahu had been waiting on the beach. He was wrapped in a priestly green gown and wore a lei of niihau shells, his long black hair under his crown of flowers drawn back and braided. He strode to a dome of sand and beckoned to Sharkey, who handed him the small green bundle, the ashes wrapped in sacred ti leaves. And then the kahu faced the bay and recited a chant in Hawaiian that silenced all the whisperers. It was not a lament—it sounded more like a plea for mercy.

  “Lehu kane,” he said when he finished, and sprinkled the green bundle with water from a coconut shell. A robed Hawaiian man stepped next to him, carrying a conch shell. He was also wearing a flower crown, and fastened to his neck a heavy russet cape. He blew a long sputtering trumpet blast on the conch.

  Sharkey accepted the green bundle and fixed it with a strap to the nose of his board. The plop of a small insistent wave snatched at a length of sand and turned it to a rim of gravel. A golden plover, its head down, strutted past, its beak lowered to stab at a sea bug, as Sharkey set his board in the fribble of the shore break.

  He flattened himself on it. He cupped his hands and paddled slowly into the whispering water of the bay, breathing the tang of the sea, liking the salt, the familiar taste of surfing. The surfers massed behind him and dropped to their boards and followed on them, staying together, a flotilla of them, stomachs pressed against the boards, rhythmically stroking the water.

  At the center of the bay they fanned out, making a great bobbing circle, an eccentric lineup, Sharkey in the center. And when he sat and straddled his board, they did the same. He picked open the leaf bundle, cradled it in his hands, and held it close to his eyes, improvising a prayer, asking forgiveness, muttering, “Max,” as though to a friend, and then whirled it, scattering the cloud of ashes. Acting as one, the surfers slipped the leis from their necks and flung these flowers into the center of the circle and slapped the water, a clatter of smacks and splashes, wrinkling the sea.

  In the silence after that, they parted the circle, like an entry break in a reef, allowing Sharkey to paddle through the gap.

  As he stroked alone toward shore, a thickening ripple from the incoming swell rose behind him, lifting him a little, and the next was a big enough bump, gulping under his board, to get his attention. He crawled to a kneeling position and rocked himself into the following wave, a small one, the sort he called a threshold, like the first wave he’d ever ridden, at Magic Island.

  He tipped his board into the wave’s shallow sloping face and got to his feet. Without effort, like a hero on a flying carpet, not tensed in a surfer’s stance but standing confidently upright, a fearless boy again. Hands on hips, he slid to shore, and to Olive, on the chuckle of a wave that was freaked with froth.

  About the Author

  © Zak Noyle

  Paul Theroux is the author of many highly acclaimed books. His novels include The Lower River and The Mosquito Coast, and his renowned travel books include Deep South and On the P
lain of Snakes. He divides his time between Hawaii and Cape Cod.

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