Boat

by Michael Baughman

  By the time she’d finished talking to us the cook was at work in the kitchen, and customers were coming in for breakfast.

  I was drawn to Sally in a way I didn’t understand. When she told us about her boyfriend’s death, I knew I loved her. I never told her that, because I felt that telling her would somehow be an insult. I knew she liked me, and I stopped by the cafe to talk to her at least once during every shift she worked, day or night, the whole time we stayed on Marathon. Sometimes we took long walks along the beach at night, after she finished work.

  Sally was there when I called Boat, at three in the afternoon on a Sunday. The cafe was empty, except for Sally and me and the cook back in the kitchen.

  With a smile and a kiss, she opened a door and led me into a small office with a glass-topped wooden desk, two chairs, and a gray metal filing cabinet.

  She left the door wide open when she walked back into the cafe. Then she sat at the far end of the counter and read a paperback book while Boat and I talked. She pretended to read but I knew she was listening in.

  “Boat here,” came the booming voice. “Who you?”

  “It’s Mike.”

  “Mike! I heard you quit Boston. Heard it on the coconut wireless. Where the hell are you now?”

  “Camping on a beach in the Florida Keys.”

  “What the hell is a Florida key?”

  “It’s an island. A small island named Marathon a little ways south of Miami. Doug’s with me. We’ve been here a while.”

  “You spearing fish? You surfing? How’d you get all the way to this Florida key place? Talk to me. Good to hear your voice!”

  “There’s no waves here but there’s fish. How’s it going at Waikiki? Good surf?”

  “This week, no. Last week, okay. Going good enough at Waikiki. Last month Mongoose passed. You knew Mongoose. We took him out to Makapuu. Had to wait for a flat day. Remember how he loved that bodysurfing? We had the party right there on the beach after we took his ashes out. The next day I drove back out there and took him his beer. Mongoose is good out there. He’s happy. Tell me about that Florida key.”

  “What happened to Mongoose? He wasn’t that old. A heart attack, or what?”

  “No heart attack. He had a nephew, thirteen years old. That nephew isn’t quite right inside his head. The nephew liked the professional wrestling. A big fan of Bomber Kulkovich, The Red Scorpion, all those guys down at Civic Auditorium Saturday night. So Mongoose played wrestling with the nephew all the time. One night when Mongoose and his wife were watching the nephew, Mongoose drank too much okolehau and went to sleep on the floor and that nephew pretended he was a pro wrestler. He thought Mongoose was playing wrestling like he always did, so he jumped up and down on top of him. He jumped off a chair and then off a table like he was Bomber Kulkovich, jumping off the top rope, and he landed on top of Mongoose. Plenty times he landed on top of Mongoose. That nephew is a big boy and something inside Mongoose broke. Something broke inside his body. That’s what happened to him. Mongoose is okay now. Now you tell me about that Florida key.”

  “We spear some fish. Mostly we go for the lobsters. We get plenty to eat. There’s even more lobsters here than at Laie. The same kind as Hawaii except no Australian rock lobsters.”

  “In old times that’s what it was all about, bruddah— finding enough to eat.”

  “There’s plenty of frigate birds here too. Iwas in Hawaiian.”

  “Iwas is right. The iwas fly free like people should.”

  “Every time I see one I think about you. There’s some really big morays here. That reminds me. Here’s one thing that happened: We took the bus here but we stopped a few times. One day we saw a beautiful snake—red, black, and yellow, about a yard long. When it tried to get away we grabbed it and picked it up and looked it over. We never knew what it was until we described it to somebody and they said it was a coral snake, the deadliest snake in North America, the deadliest snake on the whole mainland, and we were damn lucky we didn’t get bit. If it bit us we’d be dead. That snake was the only thing we saw worse than the goddamn hillbillies.”

  “That’s one reason I stay right here in Hawaii, Mike. I hate the snakes. I never saw one but I do. No snakes in our islands, but they scare me worse than the morays.”

  “Where we are now, Marathon, is a pretty lonely island. But I met a wahine. Doug and I make some money getting lobsters for rich people on yachts. We don’t need much money, but a few days ago some people on a big yacht told us they’d pay us five bucks apiece if we’d get them two dozen lobsters. So we got them, two dozen nice ones in half an hour. They said they didn’t have any small bills, that they’d pay us the next day after they met some friends and came back. They never came back.”

  “Never paid you?”

  “Never paid.”

  “Tell me what these rich people looked like.”

  “Three old guys with three young wahines.”

  “Okay, Mike. I tell you what those old men looked like. They had potbellies and spindly little white legs and bald heads. Maybe two bald heads, maybe three. Maybe one bald head had a wig on top.”

  “Two bald heads. How’d you know, Boat?”

  “Easy. I see those kind right here at Waikiki. I see plenty. I know what the wahines looked like. Everybody knows that.”

  “What I really called for—what I mostly called for— was to tell you what we did on the way here. I keep thinking about it. I can’t get it out of my mind.”

  “Some good things or bad ones? Tell me, bruddah.”

  “We hitchhiked all the way down here from up north. We got a long ride with three black boys who just got out of the army. Everybody gave us dirty looks all the way through the South. One time we stopped for gas and a cop was parked there at the gas station with a dead wild turkey on the fender of his car. He’d shot its head off when it crossed the road. He told the three black boys we were with he’d shoot their nigger heads off too if they didn’t get their sorry black asses out of his sight. After that right here in Florida we saw another cop who shot a panther out of a tree. That’s what it’s like around here, Boat. So here’s what finally happened . . .”

  And I told Boat about thrashing the Georgia hillbillies and stealing their car.

  ‘Are the hillbilly cops chasing you?”

  “They couldn’t be,” I said. “It happened way north from here, hundreds of miles away. I keep thinking about it though. Maybe we shouldn’t have done it. Tell me what you think, Boat.”

  “What I think? What you did was right is what I think. You did good. Be proud. That’s what I think. Just so you don’t get caught.”

  “But it’ll make the four hillbillies worse than ever. I mean, after what we did they’ll be even worse around black people than they were before.”

  “How the hell could they be worse? The hillbillies got to be worse than coral snakes. Snakes can’t help what they do, but hillbillies can. We all can. The hillbillies got the lesson they needed.”

  “If that’s the truth I kind of wish you’d been with us.”

  “It’s the truth. But no way those four hillbillies would stop on the road if I was there. Not if they saw me.”

  “That’s true.”

  “If they stopped if I was there maybe they be dead now.”

  “You think it’s okay to kill bad people?”

  “No. What I think is, accidents happen. If I hit too hard. I say you did the right thing. You heard me say I stay in Hawaii because this is my place. You heard me say it plenty times. Maybe now you understand why I say it. Why I do it. Why I stay.”

  “So you don’t kill anybody?”

  “So I don’t kill anybody is half the reason. The other half is so they don’t kill me. I know what the haoles do down there where you are. You know what happens when a Hawaiian goes to the mainland, maybe to play football? Everybody treats him like a papolo. The haoles do. Right now you got Al Harrington at Stanford playing football. You know Al. You played with him at Punahou. You know his r
eal name was Al Taa until he got adopted by haoles and they changed it. Plenty people there by Stanford treat him like a papolo. They would even if he didn’t have a haole name. You got Gilbert Ane playing football on the mainland, in California, and when he went to Texas for a game he couldn’t stay in the same hotel with the team. I heard all about it on the wireless. You played with Gilbert at Punahou. Your friend Samuel, he’s playing football in California now too. I know about the mainland, Mike. All Hawaiians know about it. We know about the south where you are now . . .”

  While Boat talked and I listened, Sally looked up from her book and smiled at me, and I smiled back.

  “. . . You know what the rich haoles say when they see us Hawaiians setting up the barbecue, hauling out the tubs with the Primo, sitting out in the yard with our ukes and guitars? They say, ‘Look at those lazy fucking kanakas.’ We like to have a good time. Our way of life never was sitting on our okoles in some room all day, in some office, kissing somebody’s okole so we could make more money and then sit in some new big office kissing somebody’s else’s okole. These are mainland haoles that come to the beach here at Waikiki. Only a few haoles who live here ever come to any beach. What they like is sitting in those big fancy offices. They like making jokes about lazy kanakas ...”

  A car pulled up out front and two heavy, red-faced middle-aged men walked into the cafe and sat on the first stools they came to. Sally smiled at me again as she walked behind the counter to wait on the men. They looked and acted at least half drunk. One of them leered at Sally. The other one laughed loudly and slapped the counter with the flat of his hand.

  Sally handed them menus, turned her back, walked away, and sat back down.

  The men watched her walk away and looked at each other and smiled. Then they looked at me. I gave them what Hawaiians call the “stink-eye.” They looked at each other again, and after one of them muttered something they both got up off their stools, walked out ignoring Sally, climbed back into their car and drove off, heading south.

  Boat had changed the subject. “Tell me what that Florida is really like,” he said. “Is it warm like Hawaii?”

  “It’s warm enough,” I said. “One thing wrong is, it’s totally flat. No mountains anywhere. It’s like a giant pool table covered with green felt.”

  “I like the mountains. Tell me. Who’s paying for this telephone call?”

  “The wahine I met that I told you about.”

  “She ono?”

  “Yes.”

  “Is she there where you are?”

  “Yes.”

  “So you telling me she’s not a hillbilly?”

  “Nothing like one.”

  “Good people live everyplace. I understand that. There must be good hillbillies too. There’s plenty good people in offices. There’s bad Hawaiians. I understand that. You going to take your wahine along with you when you go?”

  “I wish I could.”

  “Why the hell can’t you?”

  “Maybe I can come back someday after I know a lot more about my life. Where my life is headed.”

  “How long you going to stay there in Florida?”

  “We don’t know for sure yet.”

  “Tell me one more thing.”

  “What?”

  “I always wondered, how come they call them hillbillies?”

  “I don’t know. One thing for sure is they can’t live on hills here in Florida.”

  “Maybe the Florida ones started off living on hills someplace else.”

  “Sure, up in Georgia.”

  “Sure.” Boat laughed. “The Florida hillbillies started off up where you thrashed those bastard hillbillies, the bad ones. Now listen one more time, Mike. I understand what you mean about your life. Us Hawaiians are lucky. If we stay in the islands we are. We know where we belong. You, you started moving around all over way back in small kid times. Where was it you lived before you came to Hawaii?”

  “Pennsylvania.”

  “No difference where it was. Someday you’ll find your place. Maybe it’s Hawaii. Maybe someplace else.”

  “You think I’ll know it when I see it?”

  “You got to be lucky to get there. If you get there you know it when you see it. You know the right wahine when you see her. I believe that. I know that. It can’t be any different with places. You know the right place. Waikiki is the right place for me. Too many hotels now, and more coming, but it’s still right. Always will be. It still has the magic for me. When you go spearfish, and you see forty fish, fifty, a hundred fish on the bottom, right away you know the one to spear. The right wahine and the right place is the same. You know.”

  “I hope so, Boat.”

  “Punahou didn’t win a championship in anything since you went away. St. Louis looks good. St. Louis and Kamehameha. Roosevelt too.”

  “They have ulua here, Boat. That’s not what they call them—I forget what the name is here—but I speared one, the biggest fish I ever speared.”

  “How big?”

  “Too big. Most of it spoiled before we could eat it. There’s some big fish here, but since that ulua we only spear ones the right size to eat. I wish we had your powerboat here. Your boat and you both.”

  “You know who Emmett Till was, Mike?”

  “I do.”

  “Maybe you think I wouldn’t know about Emmett Till, but I do. Those hillbillies down there murdered him. In Mississippi state. I figure that’s close by Florida. It happened right when your senior football season started at Punahou. They took that Emmett kid, fourteen years old, they beat him up, they gouged his eye out, they shot him, they tied some kind of weight around his neck, and tossed him in a river. They tied the weight on his neck with barbed wire. The reason was they say he looked at some haole wahine. The hillbillies said that. I wouldn’t go to anyplace where hillbillies do that to kids. No. I’d only go if I could get the hillbillies who did it. Then I’d go. You been in that Mississippi, Mike?”

  “I think we’ll pass through there on our way back west. I guess we have to. I have an aunt and uncle in Dallas.”

  “Are your aunt and uncle hillbillies?”

  “No. My uncle works in a bank. I guess he sits in an office and kisses okoles. And I guess people kiss his. But I don’t think he’s a bad man.”

  “That’s what it is. You kiss some people’s okoles and then other people kiss yours. How can he live that way?”

  “I don’t know. Maybe I better hang up pretty soon. I’ll call again.”

  “You call anytime. Don’t fight unless you have to, Mike. If you have to, then win. You know that. Don’t make trouble unless you got a damn good reason. Next time you stay someplace long enough and have a phone you tell me the number. Then I call you. I can pay. You did the right thing for sure there in Georgia. You did the best thing you could do, but don’t grab any more snakes unless you know for sure what the hell they are.”

  “Aloha, Boat. Thanks.”

  “Aloha, bruddah.”

  Sally served me two hamburgers and half a cherry pie after I hung up.

  She had two more hours to go on her shift and I drank coffee, read her paperback book, and waited for her. The book was Anna Karenina, a worn copy with very small print she’d told me she was reading for the third time. She liked it mostly because it took her into a new world with people she could easily understand despite their strangeness.

  Occasional customers came in, fishermen heading south to Key West by the looks of them, and while Sally waited on them I sat at the end of the counter nearest the office and read the long horse-racing scene when Vronsky falls from his mount with Anna watching.

  When Sally got off we walked down the road and through some trees to the beach. Soon it was dark. We found a secluded place. I loved her in the moonlight, and I wanted to tell her I loved her, but I didn’t.

  By the time I got back to our campsite at midnight Doug was fast asleep.

  Buicks and Blondes

  Two days later Doug dove for lobsters for a
woman on a large yacht—a schooner—whose husband was off somewhere fishing in a powerboat with a friend.

  When Doug delivered the lobsters she invited him aboard.

  The husband arrived back at the yacht an hour later, apparently ahead of schedule, and discovered them together. Doug, naked, scrambled up to the deck and dove overboard while, behind him, he could hear the wife begging her husband not to shoot him.

  Doug made shore safely, and minutes after he reached our camp we were on the road with our duffel bag.

  We were lucky. Soon after we reached the road we got a ride from the first car to come by, a fisherman driving north, an elderly man in a shiny yellow Buick Skylark.

  I didn’t get to say good-bye to Sally, and I hoped I’d see her again, but of course I never did.

  We hitchhiked through Alabama, Mississippi, and Louisiana, into Texas. Many truck drivers gave us rides, and some businessmen, and some single young men not much older than Doug and me who were traveling from job to job, town to town, state to state, hoping for more than they had.

  In Mississippi a dignified gray-haired homosexual gentleman picked us up in an expensive car. As soon as we’d introduced ourselves and told him where we were headed, he began offering us cigarettes and whiskey. His name was Conrad. He wore a white silk suit, a gold watch, and diamond rings on both hands. In his strong Southern accent, Conrad told us he was going all the way to Gulfport, with reservations at the best hotel in town, and he offered to share his room with us, and then, in the morning, buy us breakfast and bus tickets all the way to Dallas. He told us matter-of-factly that he had an oiled leather strap he used to hone his straight-edged razor, and we could whip him with it if we wanted to.