Sharks in the Time of Saviours

by Kawai Strong Washburn

  “How come you haven’t been coming to the room?” I say.

  “I just needed a break,” she says. She sips her coffee. So many times she’s done it I’ve followed the liquid through her body: around the pink warmth of her mouth, down her freckled neck, into her chest, spreading behind her navel. But now when she takes a drink it’s just a thing she’s doing while not looking at me.

  “My brother’s gone,” I say. “He went down into a valley and he hasn’t come back.” I don’t know why I’m saying this, except that it feels like it might bring her closer to me. Just a little bit. “Like, we don’t know how much food he has, or if he has a map or anything.”

  She jams a hand in her pocket. The skin pressed bloodless where it meets the jeans. “Sorry,” she says. “I guess we never really talk about our families, do we? He played the ‘ukulele,” she says. “I remember that.”

  “Plays,” I say. “Van, fuck, this isn’t helping.”

  “Sorry,” she says again. “I don’t know what to do.” She starts to move toward me, right? With this stiff and uncertain opening for a hug that makes me want to puke.

  “Quit it,” I say.

  She starts kneading her own neck with her free hand.

  I figure I might as well just say it, okay? I’m not delicate and can’t pretend it, especially not with Van. “Don’t act like you weren’t in the car with me coming back from the wine festival,” I say. “Don’t act like you haven’t been in the tent with me. Our dorm room.”

  I watch her. To see what she’ll do now. She keeps kneading her neck, then sets her mug down on the curb. She ties her hair up. She bends and grabs her coffee. “I was drunk at the festival,” she says. “I don’t know what I was thinking. It was just a thing. Connor’s such a douche and when I spit on him . . .” She laughs. “Everything after—it was just—I’m done with guys for now. But that doesn’t mean I’m gay.”

  And I think: Is that what we are? The sour-stinking nights crushed in dorm rooms and hallways with all the other coeds, five beers deep and spinning but always staggering off together. Right. Joking about other people, sharing our headphones and snacks, slouching into each other’s shoulder in front of the television. Then the rock climbs, the mountain treks. One of us leading on the sharp end with the rope dangling down behind. Up, up. Taking the long falls, right. Her coming out of the shower naked, us changing in our room with no hesitation all the times after. The way our bodies found their way to each other, again and again, that moment in the Creek when we dove into something hungry and basic. It’s not like I spend all my time thinking of Van’s body, our sex, the physical mechanics of us, okay? It’s how there’s a bright burst when I see her, how everything is all of a sudden coated in this anxious, hopeful warmth. We own each other. Gay? It’s just a word, a syllable, a checkbox. Whatever I am I don’t fit inside it.

  “I’m not gay,” I say.

  “Oh, Kaui.” Van smiles a sad smile. “It’s okay.”

  “It’s okay yourself,” I say. “Jesus, you should see the shit I’ve done with boys. Don’t act like you know me better than I know me.”

  “You’re probably right.” She reaches out for me, then stops. “Sorry,” she says. “I should have quit this all sooner. I don’t know. It felt good, because it was you, but it’s not—it’s not who I am.”

  I go cold all over. I rub my arm and turn away from her just slightly. “Fuck,” I say. Just the one word.

  “Kaui,” Van says. And I hear it all even though she doesn’t say it, right: Kaui, don’t do this. Kaui, you sound pathetic. Kaui, we don’t talk about love. You do that with someone else. You and me wreck the world, not the other way around. Kaui, get your shit together. I hear her say all that, but she doesn’t move her mouth.

  “Listen,” she says. She has a look on her face I’ve never seen before. It’s sad, and—and—

  Oh. Is it pity?

  My guts are about to unkink completely. I’m afraid I’ll shit or puke or both. I have to get away. I turn to go. One step. Then another. Then another. Don’t run, I say to myself. Don’t run. But get away.

  “Hey,” she calls out. “Come on, stop.”

  But I don’t stop or speak or turn. I keep going. Past the mission arches with their tall, swooping shadows. Past the yawning glass façades. The quads and sand and stairways. Sometimes you know when a day is going to stay inside you for a long time. And I feel the morning chill that is way too cold for the season.

  19

  DEAN, 2008

  Spokane

  Beat hits hard enough in the club after eleven, making my ears all fuzzed along with the dirty tilt I’m getting from my sixth shot, I think. Me and the boys at the bar, this one with its restaurant on the other side and the sports TVs, and in between the spinning color lights and a little stage and dance floor like the place can’t decide which one it is, bar or club or restaurant. Waiters trying for get around the few couples all grinding half faded on the dance floor.

  But the stuff coming out the speakers is good enough, and Travis and me and Billy-them been doubling down since the late happy hour, and soon enough that’s me doing the dumb grind on the dance floor with this Middle Eastern girl or something crazy mixed, hair like a lion and perfect lazy eyes. Her lids is halfway the whole time we’re talking and who even cares what the words is.

  Most the time we’re just with our hips so close we can feel the loose change in each other’s pockets. We rock and grind and sway and come apart, then back together, I’m pissing hoses of water into the toilet, lime-green walls all scribbled with tags, then shots at the bar with Travis-them, hollering hoarse at each other over the music, how the hell did it get louder. Then we’re back out on the dance floor and soon enough I’m telling my boys there’s this thing I got for take care of, her hands are in my back pockets, knuckles to my ass, and we head for the door, past her open-mouth-O friends and the red and pink glitter lights hitting the sides of the bar.

  We’re in the taxi and then back at the house, kicking aside the junk mail by the front door, then through the dark living room with last night’s dishes still around the television, and straight to my bedroom.

  She laughs just a little while I’m licking that space at the base of her neck, she’s saying, “You’re crazy, you’re crazy, this is weird, I never—”

  “It doesn’t matter,” I say. “Maybe you never, but I always.”

  She’s laughing again, only now we’re pressed against the wall with our pants dropped to our feet, trying to work our way around our underwear instead of taking ’um off, then there’s sheets tangled around our legs, us on the mattress, I got her calf up on my shoulder and she’s holding her other leg in the air and pulling me into her with her hand, we settle into a rocking rhythm, in and out, over and over and over and over and over.

  She’s still there in the morning, when my phone explodes with noise, it’s way early and it’s Mom and I’m like, Goddamn.

  The girl from last night’s hand limp on my ribs when I roll and answer the phone.

  “Sorry to call early,” Mom says.

  “I was just doing some push-ups,” I say.

  “Your voice,” Mom says. “You sick?”

  “Yeah,” I say. “A little, yeah.”

  “Well, I’m sorry I had to call, then.”

  “Call back?” I ask.

  “I can’t,” she says.

  Not long after I make the other calls I gotta make, airlines giving me a bereavement discount, up in the air and we’re almost done flying, because I can see O‘ahu below, Honolulu in the night. It’s funny, used to be I thought it was the big city, buildings taller than, like, ten stories was something special, streetlights and boulevards and all that, but now when I look down it’s small, lights crammed into one tiny little corner of a place that’s black with midnight water and hungry valleys. Doesn’t look nothing as big as Los Angeles or Seattle or even Portland, where the sparkling goes on so far you can’t see nothing but the bright.

  I don
’t wanna be in Hawai‘i. Last time I came back was so bad—it was just after I got released from the team at the university, when my scholarship was shut down—I kept running into everyone I knew and all they could remember was the newspaper articles and local news-channel sports coverage of the university, the tournament, local boy making it big on the national stage. Strangers remembered more about what I did in this or that game, all the way down to whether it was a crossover or a soft layup or a fadeaway or whatever. Every person had the same questions and I had to give them the same goddamn answers over and over: Yes, I remember that game; no, I don’t play no more; things didn’t go so well at Spokane; yes, my family is doing good.

  And now I gotta come back like this. Mom called telling me that Noa went missing while he was hiking on the Big Island, long solo trip like a walkabout or whatever. She said he’d seen some things and had to go figure ’um out, and he told her where he was going but not for how long, and then he was gone and then it was a week, another week, no word, and she went to the cops.

  The woman next to me’s been sitting down the whole flight. The haole-est of haoles: a weird white sweater-jacket and stretch khaki pants, a splatter of freckles in the sag lines above her titties, and this crazy upturned nose and accent like she’s from a farm or something. I can already see her burnt to a red sizzle in the Hawai‘i sun, forced to drink mai tais at another stupid Waikiki beachfront bar.

  She sees me looking at her. “Our first time,” she says.

  “I totally couldn’t tell,” I say.

  “Are you happy to be heading home?” she asks.

  “Of course,” I say.

  “I’ve got a question for you,” she says. She turns and looks at me, blinks twice. “Do you play basketball?”

  This question. Every time.

  The overhead announcement ding goes. We all lean back. The air outside cuts and roars and the plane shifts and falls to the ground.

  Uncle Kimo gets me at the airport with a face that’s closed and tired and might as well we’re going to a funeral. We sling my bag into the back of the truck cab and start driving for his place. The empty Big Island: it’s black out and the road is narrow, and up along the hill we’re going to climb there are large empty spaces with lights of towns all clustered in between. Uncle Kimo puts on some Bob Marley and lets it ride and we just go that way, windows cracked, us quiet, the island jumping out at us in the headlights as we ride.

  At some point Uncle Kimo turns down the music and starts talking about Noa and how from what he knows Noa came home to Kalihi all bust-up, same as how he was from when we was on the phone, after the pregnant lady died in the ambulance with him. I guess he seen something while he was on O‘ahu with Mom-them that made him want for come back to Big Island. When he came back, he didn’t come see Uncle Kimo or any of the other ‘ohana, and no one knows exactly what happened. Only that he was gone for too many days with no calls and how finally Mom went all 911.

  They been looking for him in the valley ever since. It’s dangerous since they never found him in Waipi‘o, or even Waimanu, the valley after, which they figure means he went past Waimanu, which is bad, because it gets serious after there. The trails get worse and worse and they’re full of savage animals and hidden cliffs and bust-up, dead-end side paths and they been looking for three days now, going as fast as they can up and down into each valley, hopping in Zodiacs to get around to Waimanu, helicopters and county search and rescue and everything.

  Uncle Kimo says it’s still good to see me, didn’t remember I was so tall. Then he turns back up the radio and stares straight out the windshield. There’s reggae songs on the station, about bottomless pits and pressure drops and rising up. It hits me: islands like Jamaica maybe know more about the way things are than half of this country. I keep thinking of the conversation me and Noa had on the phone—I can’t help it—our voices and what was underneath ’um, and Uncle keeps driving.

  “It’s good to see you again,” Dad says when we get to Uncle’s place. He’s been back up from the valley for a few hours. It gets dark down there and you can’t find your ass with both hands, especially since the clouds are almost always out and covering the moon. So he had to come back up. Dad’s body’s changed since I was here last, he’s got a little more thick to him, starting for get that old-football-player look where a solid packed lump starts to slide over the belt buckle. He’s letting his mustache grow and there are scars and lines on his face I don’t remember seeing.

  “Look who finally made it back to his home,” he says, and I’m like, Damn, Dad, getting right into it. I thought he’d wait but I guess he’s ragged from searching and a little pissed.

  “It’s a long trip,” I say.

  “How many years it been now?”

  “Shit, Dad.”

  “Tree,” he says, counting out three fingers. “Been tree years.”

  “Always you could have come to Spokane,” I say.

  “Like there’s money just lying around for that.”

  “I got nothing, either,” I say. “Just maxing out my credit cards with flights like this. Gonna be working one year at least before I can pay this flight off.”

  “Still yet,” Dad says, “I bet a guy like you can find something somewhere.”

  “No,” I say. We’re on the lanai, leaning against the railing. Out in front of us the land slopes down to trees clattering and a swaying and the ocean way down below the cliffs. A truck booms and rattles on the highway somewhere. “Only thing I’m rich in is haoles,” I say.

  He’s fully got a grin creeping up his cheeks. “Eh, you still shower at night, or what?”

  “Sometimes.”

  “I heard up there they don’t shower for days. Just rinse off when they feel like it. Shower in the morning.”

  “One of my roommates, his feet are so stink,” I say, “smells like dirty milk or something.”

  Dad finally cracks up. “Stupid-ass haoles. But you’re not showering, too, yeah? You shower in the morning sometimes, I bet.

  “Hey,” he says. “You wear your shoes in the house now, yeah? I bet you get a fanny pack.”

  He keeps going. He lists more, all the fantasies he’s got of haoles: oily faces, precise pronunciation, butter in their rice, them being all hurry-up about everything. Says that’s me now, too.

  “You like Frisbee. You throw Frisbee with your friends.”

  “Dad”—he’s really getting into it now—

  “You got sandals, yeah? You brought home your Tevas? You brought home your sunblock? You—” He lowers his head onto the railing, giggling I swear just like a girl. He has this high, silly laugh, and that thing catches you and grabs you, and I don’t know why I don’t laugh with him, but I don’t laugh, I just watch him laugh, and I don’t think he’s okay, something is wrong.

  This is the dying season, but that next day I don’t say nothing about it. Back in Spokane it would be starting, the leaves like pennies falling from the trees, the air bleeding-knuckle cold, and Hawai‘i doesn’t have seasons like Spokane, but either way I don’t want Noa to be a part of this time of year. We’re on the trail now and so cold and tired, all of us. This is the far side of Waimanu and us up on the trail leading out of the valley, a steep slope like all the others, but the trail is mostly gone, just a trickle of mud through all the mess of trees and bushes.

  We’ve got a county search-and-rescue crew with us, two of them with their sharp blue uniforms and buckle-covered backpacks with kits and maps and flares, then they’ve got their dog, and it’s out front now, snuffling and pulling us on.

  Dad and Uncle Kimo and the rest of them come next, me right along with them, all us muddy to our ankles and tired to our teeth and mostly just scared we’re going to run up on Noa’s body every time we can’t see in front of us.

  So we hack, and we walk, and we hack, we push the branches back from our faces and the leaves is running their itchy blades along our clothes and our feet slurp the mud. The slope steepens, so that we’re really h
aving to push up and lean forward with each step, and it’s hard to find good footing so that we don’t just slide back down after stepping up and pile more mud on ourselves. There’s a tangy sweet smell of overripe guava, and it mixes with the horseshit stink of the mud, coming on the cold wind. Clouds been pushing down into the valley all day, and now they’re really getting black and all brainy. The SAR crew stops and sits their dog. Everyone knows what’s coming.

  “We don’t have much light left, and it looks like it’s going to start raining,” one of the SAR crew says. She’s haole, her hair braided in a knuckled ponytail and her blue baseball cap pulled down low on her face. “I think we’re going to call it for the day.”

  “Fuck that,” I say. “There’s still light. I got a headlamp.”

  Dad is standing there, too. His eyes has these folds of skin under them with lines all sharp and broken. He leans against a tree and lets out a long breath. When I look at his hands on his thighs I can see they’re all shaking like he’s run through with electric current. I see it and I think again: Something is wrong.

  Uncle Kimo has his hat off and runs his hand through his thick black hair. His gray shirt is sweat-dark all across his chest. Everyone looks like they want to sit down, but there’s nowhere to sit because everything is mud and there’s just this narrow little trail.

  “We have to make sure we can make it back to the valley floor so the chopper can come grab us,” the SAR lady says. “And I’m not running Pomai all night.” She gives the German shepherd two good, whumping pats on the side.

  Then rain starts falling. First it’s just a few spitty drops, but it starts to pick up until there’s a tapping drizzle.

  “I’m staying,” I say.

  “We’re all going back down,” Dad says. He stands back up off the tree he was leaning against.