by Daniel Braum
Marika sprang to her feet.
“I’m here for the festival, San,” Marika said abruptly, as if brought on by the touch of the jellyfish. “I’m not going to stay. But I want you to come with me.”
San stared at her beautiful face. Squinting from the sun, her lips were parted in a slight, crocodile smile.
“And then what?” he asked. “What happens when you leave me and I am all alone in your country?”
“Have you been listening to them, San? Do you believe I’m an evil spirit here to lure you away? We never have anything more than the now. I’m just offering you the same without this island as your boundaries.”
It was easy for her to say, San thought. She had everything.
“How do I know you haven’t come here for your island fling, like they say?”
“Will you let me try to convince you otherwise?”
Her kiss smoothed the edges of his fears and brought him back to the moment. He knew the first step towards convincing her to stay was to truly have a string of wonderful moments, so he let the subject rest.
Late that night they returned to San’s hut and slept on the beach under the stars like they used to. As the last sliver of the moon shone down upon them, San dreamed of stirrings under the water and great tears in the net. He awoke with words eager to leave his mouth. “I can’t go with you Marika. My place is here. It’s just like last time.”
He thought she heard, but couldn’t be sure. He didn’t wake when Marika left just before dawn.
****
“There you are,” Tal shouted. “Sleeping late when tonight is the Jellyfish Moon. Lynden found tears in the net. Get up right now.”
San scrambled to his feet. Luckily Marika was gone, the only hint of her presence the imprint on the sand next to him.
“Any crocs get in?” he asked.
“None that we can see. Every paddler is out there searching, to make sure.”
Within minutes, San was in his dugout, paddling a load of tackle and wire to the nets.
The cave mouth of the temple was covered with nets and colorful banners. Red blindfolds had been placed over the two statues’ eyes.
San stopped by the buoy where Lynden was diving. The water was thick with jellies brimming with the energy of renewal. San could see the crocs on the other side of the net, their bodies weaving in the flow of translucent creatures. He could sense their hunger.
San wanted to see the world, but unlike Marika, it was a distant musing of some far away beauty. His place was here and he believed the world would come to him, eventually. But what if he was wrong and his place was with Marika? What then?
He took three deep breaths, filling his lungs, and rolled out of the dugout. With strong, swift kicks, he was ten, then twenty, then thirty feet down. He slowly released small bubbles from his mouth. The net had been ripped in several places and a stone anchor had shifted on the bottom as if something big had tried to break in. There was a lot of work to be done.
San stitched, very aware that only a dozen yards away, on the other side of the thin barrier, crocs swam among the jellies. They rolled and swirled erratically, like housecats on the herb. He reached for his knife then remembered it was gone.
He ascended and retrieved his tools, the tackle, and wire. With a glance to the shore he saw the beaches were already filling. He wished he was there, with Marika.
San took three breaths and descended again. Consciously keeping his heart rate slow to conserve air, he deftly tied the ends of the first tear together with the wire. Out of the corner of his eye, he watched Lyndon struggle to keep his stitching closed. He turned back to his work and found himself face to face with a big croc floating on the other side of the net. Its toothy mouth was open just enough to give the impression of a smile. San kicked for the surface.
“Did you see that big croc?” San said to Lynden.
“Where?”
“Down by my tear.”
Lynden ducked his head under the water, then came right up.
“There ain’t nothin’ there.”
“He was right there, staring right at me.”
Lynden ducked his head under again.
“Visibility’s perfect. Your eyes be clouded by that woman.”
Or too many days in the sun and salty water, San thought. Marika has offered me the world.
San went back to work. He and Lynden stitched and wired till it was late afternoon. Lynden didn’t have a friendly word. San didn’t see the big croc again, though he kept thinking it was just out of sight. The beaches filled with tourists and spa goers. The new-agers were out in force trailing incense and chanting, waiting for Tal and the elders to come to the beach for the festival blessing.
San wanted to go back to his place to wash off the salt of the day and get some needed sleep. But he had to see Marika. He couldn’t let her go without seeing her one more time. Then he would know what was right.
He tied his dugout to the dock and walked through the crowd to the Ruby Shores. The pavilion was almost deserted. Most of the vendors had taken their carts and wares down to the beach. He noticed Mr. and Mrs. Henderson pushing their cart away. They were talking to a tall pretty lady in a suit, holding a microphone, who was followed around by a man shouldering a big camera.
Big Rog’s son was working security at the hotel gate.
“I’m here to see my wife.”
“She ain’t here.”
“Let me in, I’m telling you she’s on the top floor.”
“I’m telling you, she’s at the festival. Left a half hour ago.”
The sun was low in the sky. He’d have to hurry and find her before the crowds and darkness made it an impossible task.
Rushing to the beach, San edged his way through rich families, well-manicured couples holding hands, and long-haired, wide-eyed young people adorned in croc tooth jewelry and bright colors that were supposed to mimic that of the nighttime jellies.
The smell of grilling fish, roasting pineapple and nuts made his stomach grumble, but he kept on looking for a glimpse of Marika.
He asked the cake man selling fruit brownies. Big Rog working his grill. He stopped to buy a pack of Marika’s favorite cigarettes at the Henderson’s stand. Mr. and Mrs. Henderson had not seen her, though Mr. Henderson smiled and clicked a mock photo of him with his hands. Sweaty and exhausted, San patrolled the two strips of beach.
He thought of the smiling face of the croc beneath the water and glanced up to the blindfolded croc-men statues. A female form moved in the shadows of the cave mouth. A slender arm rested on the leg of one of the croc-men. Marika? She couldn’t be in the temple. The thought was so absurd. It was irreverent. Exactly the sort of thing Marika would want to do. It was what she wanted to do last year.
The last bit of the sun sank below the waves, and a hush spread over the beaches. Deep drums sounded from the trees. Sparks of orange flickered through the bay full of jellies, mimicking the departed sun as the procession of elders appeared at the tree line. Marchers wearing big paper-mache croc heads of bright orange, yellow, and purple stepped in time. San pushed his way through the crowd. The pungent smell of festival incense wafted above the aromas of cooking food. Flag bearers carried poles trailing green, blue, and red streamers. San knew one of them was Tal. As if in response, the jellies in the bay ignited in a burst of color. Vibrant greens and oranges radiated through the bay like a million submerged fireflies. Bursts of primary reds and yellows and blues spontaneously appeared to the cheers of delight from of the crowd. New-agers edged closer to the shore, anxious for the blessing to be done and to be the first into the supposedly restorative waters.
San wished he were watching with Marika. The waves of color were hypnotizing, and it occurred to him he had never seen it from this vantage. But he raced to the pavilion and stole away unnoticed through the door leading into the heart of the temple.
The murmur of the crowd was muted inside the dim passage. The lights leading into the temple chamber were out, but he
hurried, his hand on the rusty rail, expecting to come upon Marika, sitting a few feet back from the mouth of the cave, smoking a clove, taking solitary delight in her privileged view of the bay. He would quietly slither up behind her and snake his arms around her…
The thrashing rustle of leather on stone met him. Guttural growls and heavy breathing echoed in the room. It was coming from the center. The altar.
“Marika,” he called out, and squinted, his eyes not yet adjusted to the faint light reaching in from the mouth.
He struck a match. In the sulfur glow he made out a monstrous form on the stone slab. A huge, ridged tail sprouted from the back of a man, thrashing side to side as he mounted someone on the altar. Two slender female legs wrapped around his mottled back.
The match went out. Was it Marika and one of the costumed men? The moans intensified. He lit another match. The woman had mounted the croc-man.
San stepped forward to see better, but he didn’t want to. As his match sputtered he saw Marika’s face. Her eyes met his and she smiled, her mouth full of huge, jagged crocodile teeth.
An animal roar filled the darkness mixed with Marika’s cries—no longer of passion, but of rage. San heard the awful sound of fists connecting with flesh, like a butcher tenderizing a fish. The croc-man roared in pain.
He didn’t know what kind of gods the outsiders had, but he hoped Harat was strong enough to wrestle with them and prevail.
San ran to the altar and fumbled for another match. He stumbled, dropping matches, screaming Marika’s name. He wasn’t sure if he should be rescuing her or stopping her. The moaning stopped and the rustle of clothing and footsteps replaced it.
Outside, the muted cries of delight gave way to a horrendous, unified scream.
San struck another match. The figures on the altar were gone. The room was empty. Was he feverish from lack of sleep? He inspected the altar. Dark, blue fluid, like crocodile blood, stained the altar.
He ran to the cave mouth and pushed through the nets and streamers. The new-agers who had waded into the bay were frantically pushing each other over to get out.
The entire bay was alight with rapid patterns of red and fiery oranges, the brightest he had ever seen. Three dark shapes weaved through the jellies. Crocs. Ripples of dark violet and blue jellies in their wake.
White froth splashed at the net line. Hundreds of others were pushing to get in. They breached the waves as if some invisible signal had them frenzied.
Then San saw the cloud of red. Blood. Someone had been bit. He knew he should run down and help, but he had to find Marika.
The apparitions in the Temple had to have been a delusion. But the blood, the ridges on the croc-man’s back were so real. Seeing Marika, he would know. The town bells were ringing. The fire alarm was blaring. He could hear the roar of panic from the bay. He ran for the hotel.
The gate to Ruby Shores was open and unattended. San darted in, dashed through the lobby and into the elevator before the lone woman staffing the desk could stop him.
The elevator rose slowly. San jabbed at the tenth floor button over and over. The doors slid open with a hiss. A teenage boy in a Ruby Shores uniform, someone’s son that he knew but whose name his frenzied mind couldn’t remember, sat in the plush sofa playing solitaire on the coffee table. He looked pleased to see San.
“Finally, you came,” he said.
“Where is she?”
“Easy, easy. She ain’t here.”
“I checked the festival. She’s not down there either.”
“Don’t kill the messenger, mon.” He shoved a thick stack of documents next to the playing cards towards him. “She left this. For me to hand to you and no one else.”
San ruffled through the papers. There was a passport with his name and picture inside. Travel papers. A valid visa. A plane ticket with all exit fees paid for. Everything was paid for. These items were so hard for a man like himself to obtain. He’d wished for them so often when Marika had left last year the memory of the yearning was like the touch of an old friend. He tore open the envelope beneath. It was full of US hundred dollar bills.
“Don’t worry. It’s all there,” the kid said. “She paid me well.”
****
Jellies evacuated the bay with the rising sun and the low tide. The reporter from yesterday spoke into her microphone while the cameraman panned the bay in the background.
Tents were set up under the palms. People scurried to and fro attending to the wounded and shocked tourists as best they could.
“News of this is going to be all over the world,” Tal said.
Charlie came barreling down the beach on an old bicycle. He hit San over the head with a rolled up USA today.
He opened it to a big picture of Marika at the Henderson’s cart.
“Stuff like this doesn’t keep people away for very long. Everyone’s going to want to come here now,” Charlie said. “You okay?”
San shook his head. “In the Temple, I saw…” He didn’t know what he had seen. His tired mind was capable of anything. Perhaps his desire for Marika had finally made him crazy.
“Listen,” Charlie said. “I thought I saw a lot of things in San Raphael. Your wife she come to have a taste of native life and then she go. That’s all it is. I’m sorry for you, but you’ve seen it happen all the time.”
“It was no costume or paper-mache,” San said. “The gods had come alive and had their way with her.”
“Or she with them,” Tal said. “She is a servant of the gods of the outsiders. Whether she knew it or not, and whether she meant it or not, she came to lure you away. Every one of us could be the lynch pin soul. The one, that if taken away will cause the rest of us to fall.”
San riffled through the stack of hundreds. It was more money than he could earn in two seasons. He yearned to see Marika. But if Tal was right and he left now, there might be nothing to come back to. Only another dirty, washed up San Raphael.
“She left me a plane ticket and a fistful of cash,” San said.
“Holy smoke,” Charlie said. “You gonna go?”
“If I’m gonna catch the plane, I have to head to the mainland soon.”
They watched the reporter at the edge of the messed up beach. Debris floated in the bay water.
“She’s already left a hole in us,” Tal said. “A hole big enough for an old toothy one to swim through. You can’t leave now.”
“Are the crocs gone?” San asked.
“Big man at the hotel say so,” Tal said.
“Which means there are probably dozens and dozens of them still out there,” Charlie said. “The nets are ripped up real bad.”
The hotel frameworks loomed over the grim scenes playing out on the beach. The shadows of the heavy crossbeams cast mottled shapes over the tents for the wounded. He could leave right now and never see the artificial landscape these skeletal giants would mature into.
“Goodbye,” he whispered, then threw a load of tackle and wire into his dugout and paddled for the nets.
Maybe someday Marika, he thought. Maybe someday the tides will bring you back to me. But for now, the moments we had will have to do.
THE NIGHT MARCHERS
The Big Island, Hawai’i
Steep cliffs rose from the jagged lava rocks that ringed Captain Cook’s Bay. Peaks of gray stone jutted from the lush green mountainside, the raw and exposed bones of the island itself. In the almost empty parking lot for the public dock, six Hawaiian teens stood around a weathered red pickup drinking beer. A few empty spaces away, a shiny rental car glared in the late afternoon sun. Across the lot, two younger boys sat on an old stone wall dangling their legs over the water. They faced out, towards the cliffs.
A sarong-clad woman stepped around the snorkeling gear on the dock trying to take a picture of a chubby man climbing from the water.
Max Ke Kumu watched them all as he walked into the lot. The sun shone on his bare back as if trying to coax life into his faded tattoos, angular tribal bars running fro
m the base of his neck all the way down his lean body. When the teens saw him striding toward them they put down their beers and did their best to pretend they weren’t there.
“Aloha, bruddah. Whaddsdascoups moke,” they nervously greeted him in pidgin.
“Aloha,” Max said.
He looked to the beers, then to the boys, then to the cliffs. The boys grinned.
“Hel-lo. Ex-cuse me,” the woman in the sarong called in a saccharin sing-song. “Could you take our picture?”
Instead of answering her, the teens turned to Max and wondered if today would bring another tirade or permission to make a buck or two?
The woman walked over and handed her disposable yellow camera to Max.
“With the nice mountains in the background if you can,” she said.
Max’s face remained expressionless.
“It’s going to be beautiful,” she said, sliding her arm around the chubby man’s waist.
“The bay is beautiful,” Max said, softly.
The couple held their smile.
“Its name is Kealakekua. Which means pathway to the Gods,” Max said. “It is the place where Captain Cook arrived.”
Max wanted to say Cook was also killed here, a year later, but the teens depended on these haole tourists for money. On any given day he had a hundred reasons to hate the haoles, and some of them good ones. Captain Cook’s gunboat diplomacy. The subjugation of Hawaii. That the best land, the royal land, was now mostly resorts for non-Hawaiians. But it was the presence of all these people swimming near the cliffs every day that burned him most. The bones of Hawaii’s chiefs rested in hidden caves in the cliffs and it was his charge to keep them secret and safe.
The man squirmed and the lady cleared her throat.
Max snapped the photo.
“Uh, there is a small monument to Captain Cook up the road,” he said. “The boys can take you there.”
The couple quickly gathered their gear and loaded their car. The teens watched and muttered to themselves. Max knew what they were thinking; even though he didn’t rant or lecture or scream this time he still managed to scare them away.