Blue Skin of the Sea

by Graham Salisbury

  At ten minutes past ten, Mick Pierce’s voice spat over the radio, his words broken by heavy static.

  “ … the Opti … stic, callin … the Op … ystic … ”

  Uncle Raz grabbed the transmitter. “Optimystic back, over … ”

  “I foun … th … boat … about fifteen mil … northwest of … airport … I’ve circ … twice, but don’t se … anyone aboard … she’s running, though … head … away from the island, but slo … maybe … couple of knots, over … ”

  “He could be down in the hold,” I said to Uncle Raz.

  “Mick … can you see if the hold door is open? Look by the wheel, over … ”

  Continuous static rushed over the speaker. No one spoke.

  “The door … open, but ther … sn’t seem to be anyone in ther … from here … over.”

  Uncle Raz held the transmitter to his mouth but didn’t say anything. Had Dad somehow fallen overboard?

  “I’m on my way,” Uncle Raz finally said. “Can you stay in the air until you see me coming … just long enough to give me a bead on the location? Over … ”

  “Roger … I can give y … twenty min … s, then I have t … back, over … ”

  “Hang on, Mick,” Uncle Raz said. “Optimystic out.”

  Uncle Raz swung the boat around and blasted up to three thousand RPM. Still in the lee of the island, the ocean was smooth, and Uncle Raz’s boat skimmed over it like a flying fish.

  Mr. Pierce had located Dad’s sampan miles from where he usually fished. Why? And the boat was under way with no one aboard. Was he sick? That was it, he was sick and sleeping in the hold out of the sun. Too sick to crawl out when he heard the plane.

  Shelley put her hand on my chest. “Sonny … ” she said softly.

  “We’ll find him,” Uncle Raz said. “If we have to search from here to New Zealand, we’ll find him.”

  Keo took Uncle Raz’s binoculars up on the roof. He’d been quiet all morning. What would we find on the sampan? Would Dad be inside?

  For the first time in my life I was afraid to climb aboard Dad’s boat.

  When Mr. Pierce spotted the Optimystic racing out toward Dad’s boat, he called to tell us we were right on line. “ … Still no sign of life … ” he added. “Maybe he fe … overboard.”

  Uncle Raz answered slowly. “We’ll take it from here, Mick … You alert the Coast Guard.” Uncle Raz paused, then said, “ … I’ll buy you a beer when we get back … out.”

  “ … You’re on.”

  Uncle Raz turned the static down. He didn’t say anything. But I knew what he was thinking. If Dad was in the water, he was going to be hell to find.

  Dad’s sampan appeared and disappeared in the growing swells, slowly making headway to the northwest. Probably on auto pilot, Uncle Raz said. It was holding a steady course. Looking at it through the binoculars made me feel strange inside, hollow, like I wasn’t really there but was dreaming about it.

  We caught up around two-thirty. The deep-sea swells had risen noticeably, though the wind hadn’t picked up.

  “Keo,” Uncle Raz called, sticking his head out the window and shouting to the roof.

  Keo dropped onto the stern deck and came into the cabin.

  “I’m going to pull up next to it,” Uncle Raz said. “I’ll ride alongside until you can jump over.”

  “I’m going with him,” I said.

  “No. I need you here.”

  “But … ”

  “Just wait a minute,” Uncle Raz said.

  Uncle Raz slowed the Optimystic and crept up to Dad’s sampan. The swells were choppy, and Uncle Raz had to keep eight or ten feet away because the sampan could veer into us unexpectedly. There was always a good deal of play in an automatic pilot device.

  The Ipo looked eerie as we rode along her port side. On deck, Dad’s gaff slid one way and then the next with the movement of the hull, the pilotless steering wheel roaming around and back on its own.

  The door to the hold stood open, slapping against the bulkhead. If Dad was on board, he was in there. My legs felt weak and started to shake.

  Uncle Raz inched closer. The sampan’s diesels tok-tokked over the quiet gas engines of the Optimystic, the exhaust gurgling from the pipes when the stern rose out of the water in a swell.

  Keo stood on the gunwale holding onto the grabrail with one hand. Waiting. When both boats dropped into an easy trough between swells, he jumped.

  Keo hit the deck behind the fish box and tumbled down against the gunwale on the other side of the boat. He jumped up quickly and made his way forward to the hold.

  When he reached the controls he put the boat in neutral and glanced over at us. Uncle Raz nodded and Keo ducked down into the hold. Just a berth and a lot of junk—life jackets, emergency food, fishing gear. I could see it all as clearly as if I were there myself.

  Keo scrambled out. “He’s not there.”

  “Pull closer,” I demanded.

  Keo and I searched every inch of the boat for a sign, a clue. We found a seventy- or eighty-pound tuna in the fish box, and Dad’s T-shirt on the deck near the wheel, but everything else was as it always was.

  Except the net.

  “The hand net is gone,” I called over to Uncle Raz. Shelley watched from the gunwale, standing as Keo had before he jumped.

  Uncle Raz frowned back at me.

  “Check the gas,” he called.

  “It’s okay,” Keo yelled back a moment later.

  “Sonny, jump back, and Keo, you bring the boat in to Kai-lua. Call Harley and tell him what’s going on. Tell him we’re going to stay out and search the water.”

  Keo put the sampan in gear and inched it closer to the Optimystic. “Jump when you’re ready,” he said. He stared at me as if he wanted to say more.

  As the sampan pulled away, Keo almost looked like Dad. Scowling at the water like a fisherman. Standing at the wheel, swinging it around and finding his course. Balancing on the rocking deck like he’d been born there.

  I watched the Ipo shrink away, no longer feeling sick, or worried. I was numb.

  I even forgot about Shelley.

  When the sky turned black we gave up and aimed in toward the harbor. Even in full daylight finding a man at sea was like trying to find a fishhook in the sand. At night it was impossible.

  Keo radioed and said he was just off the lighthouse near Thurston’s Harbor. He could see lights on the pier. “Something’s going on, there,” he said. There was a long pause. Then he added, “Sonny … Uncle Raymond is a good swimmer … if he fell off the boat, he could make it to shore … ”

  My jaw ached from jamming my teeth together. Making it to shore was one thing. Sharks were another. And what if he hadn’t fallen overboard? What if something else had happened? The vision of Dad’s boat sinking below the horizon suddenly came back to me, then disappeared. Then the old dream-memory, the haunting unexplainable memory. Don’t ever do that again, boy! Never! Calm down, now … it was nothing …

  I stared into the black water. My throat began to burn. Shelley stood behind me, her arms around my stomach. I put my hands on hers, and could feel her head resting on my shoulder.

  The village lights from the sea at night had always been warm and welcoming. But now they looked strange, almost foreign.

  A group of fishermen mingled in the stale light falling from the fish hoist. Dad’s sampan was tied alongside the pier. No one spoke as we docked behind it.

  Uncle Harley jumped down onto the boat. “Anything?”

  I shook my head.

  Uncle Raz came aft, bags under his eyes. “Now what?”

  “All these men will go out in the morning,” Uncle Harley said, tilting his head toward the pier. “We’ll cover a mile of coastline each, and zigzag out as far as we can go.” He turned and glanced up at Shelley’s father, who was waiting on the pier. “Mick will look from the air. And the Coast Guard is sending a search and rescue boat. It’s on its way now.”

  Uncle Harley put his hand on my
shoulder. “Come stay with us tonight, Sonny. We can’t do any more until tomorrow.”

  I told him I had to go home first and feed the dogs, and that I’d be up later. I’d take Dad’s Jeep But what I really needed was time alone, to think.

  “Can I ride with you?” Shelley asked.

  I nodded and she followed me. When we got to the Jeep, I didn’t want to get in. I started pacing back’and forth, feeling sick again, thinking about Dad being alone in the ocean in the night, swimming—if he could, if he was alive—or sinking from exhaustion, lungs filling with water, gagging. Its okay, boy. Calm down, now … You’re not a baby anymore … I was in the water, under water, breathing the sea, raking and clawing, trying to scream … something slammed into my back, ripped at my back …

  ”Dad!”

  “Sonny,” Shelley said, her eyes wide. “What is it?”

  Then I remembered.

  I remembered!

  I must have been one or two years old. I was in the skiff with Dad, sitting up on the bow in a life vest that was too big for me. Dad was going fast, the boat bouncing. I leaned my face out over the water, feeling the air rush into my nose, feeling it run around me. Then we hit something, a chop, and I fell overboard. I went under the boat and was pounded in the back, pounded by the propeller, my life vest shredding. I tumbled around trying to scream, sucking in water. It was suddenly all there. The memory. The panic. Then Dad was pulling me aboard. Don’t ever do that again! Never! he said. I screamed and he shook me. Calm down, now. You just got wet. It’s okay, it was nothing. Then he hugged me. I remembered his arms shaking. You’re not a baby anymore, he whispered. It’s okay, it’s okay …

  Shelley kept quiet, watching me. It’s okay, he’d told me. But it wasn’t okay, it wasn’t nothing. It was everything.

  I slapped my hand on the hood of the Jeep, and it started to throb.

  Shelley stood back, watching me. I jumped into the Jeep and started it, gunning the engine, hard. Then I let up and sat staring straight ahead. “Come on,” I whispered.

  Shelley waited a moment, then got in. Still silent.

  I drove through town fast, with my eyes riveted on the road ahead, cold anger gripping me. I went two or three miles like that until Shelley spoke.

  “Stop the Jeep. I want to get out.”

  I pulled off the road onto a stretch of dirt and slid to a stop Dust surrounded us.

  “What is it? Why are you so angry?”

  I squeezed the steering wheel, my jaw tight.

  “I don’t know,” I finally said. “I’m mad, that’s all. I’m mad at Dad. I’m mad at myself.”

  Shelley reached for my hand.

  The instant she touched me my throat got hot and closed, my eyes on the verge of flooding. Shelley moved closer and put her arms around me.

  “What if he’s dead,” I whispered.

  “Then we’ll deal with it.”

  I laid my forehead on the steering wheel and started shaking. Dad—who I knew but didn’t know, who could be dead now. He’d always kept his life to himself, shut himself away, even from me. And I had always been afraid to break in, afraid to even try. Chicken. Pantie. Punk … afraid of the ocean.

  Gradually, my shaking stopped, and I felt drained, and strangely relaxed. I drove Shelley home slowly, and didn’t want her to get out of the Jeep when we got there.

  “Whatever happens, Sonny,” she said softly, “we have each other … we’ll always have each other.”

  When I got home, Grampa Joe’s car was parked on the grass. Heavy shadows shrouded the trees under a clear, moonless sky. I turned off the engine.

  The dogs poured down the stairs from the porch. Grampa Joe was sitting on the top step in the dark.

  “You okay, Omilu?” he asked as I climbed up to the house.

  “Yes, Grampa.”

  He stood and stretched. “Nice night.”

  I studied his ghostly shape. “Come inside.”

  He followed me in, squinting when I turned on a light.

  “Hey,” he said. “You still got that cat?”

  I pointed back toward the screen door. Grampa Joe opened it and let Popoki in.

  “Shee,” Grampa Joe said. “That’s one lucky cat. Whatever happened to that boy who wanted you to shoot it?”

  I shrugged. “He went back to the mainland. Probably selling cars by now. He could talk you into anything.”

  Grampa Joe chuckled.

  Why was he here? What did he want, anyway?

  “Hah,” Grampa Joe went on. “Remember the tidal wave?”

  I frowned at him. What a time to bring that up.

  “We saw the red truck in the mud and thought they were goners.” Grampa Joe stared at the floor, shaking his head. “Raz and your daddy sure fooled us, didn’t they?”

  I waited.

  Grampa Joe raised his eyebrows. “Well … ” He started to leave.

  “Grampa … Can I ride with you?”

  He threw me the keys, then waited while I fed the dogs.

  Grampa Joe slid over behind the wheel when I got out at Keo’s house. The headlights threw a sharp-shadowed light over the porch.

  “Omilu,” he said. “An old man learns some things in his life about living on an island. I’ve been watching you a long time, all the time hugging the shore, keeping close to the land … and that’s all right. The land is right for a man, just like the ocean. But your daddy’s different … the ocean is his life, his friend … even if it hurts him … even if it hurts you.”

  Grampa Joe paused a moment, staring at the steering wheel. He looked back up at me and nodded once. “That’s all.” He backed away and drove off into the night.

  Not long after Keo and I had fallen asleep Uncle Harley shook us awake. I jumped when he touched me.

  “We’ve got to get down to the pier,” he said.

  We stumbled to the kitchen.

  The phone rang, and Uncle Harley answered before the second ring, then listened, staring at Aunty Pearl’s fish tank. “Was it Raymond?” he asked.

  Silence. Keo and I watched Uncle Harley.

  “I’ll call for an ambulance. We’ll be down in twenty minutes.” Uncle Harley hung up and hurried over to the ship-to-shore radio he kept in the kitchen. Static spit from it when he turned it on to listen.

  My stomach tightened.

  “That was Raz. The Coast Guard picked up a call from the sailboat that was here a couple of days ago, the one from Tahiti. They have a man aboard … found him in the water just before sunset … probably Raymond. Raz said the Coast Guard was still a couple of hours out. They told the Frenchman to put in at Keauhou.”

  I stood up “Is he all right?”

  “Raz didn’t know.”

  The ambulance had beaten us. Two men in white shirts were waiting in the dark on the long, wooden pier. The small harbor was black except for a few yard lights from the houses along the shore. The running lights of the yacht bobbed in the distance, closing in on the mouth of the bay. I squinted out at them. It was just after midnight.

  The Moineau anchored off the end of the pier.

  The man on the sailboat threw in a line and Uncle Harley pulled the stern close to the pier. The woman stood on the bow, the chain rattling through the hawsehole as she let the anchor out just far enough for someone to board.

  I jumped on first, with Uncle Harley and the men from the ambulance following.

  The Frenchman led us down the companionway into the dimly lit cabin.

  I crept forward.

  Dad.

  He lay still, bare-chested with cuts all over the upper part of his body. And on his arms and hands. His right knee was red and swollen to the size of a giant mango.

  The Frenchman bent down and put his hand on Dad’s shoulder. For a moment nothing happened.

  Then Dad opened his eyes and rolled his head to the side. He tried to smile when he saw me and tried to lift his arm. But a few inches was all he could manage.

  The men from the ambulance pushed by and went
to work on him, taking his pulse, whispering. Uncle Harley pulled me away, and together we went out on deck. Keo squatted on the pier, watching.

  The Frenchman came up from the cabin with a large, barnacle-covered glass ball about the size of a small buoy. He pointed back down into the cabin. “Man … ” he said, then wrapped his arms around the glass ball and held it to his chest. He handed it to Uncle Harley along with the net from Dad’s boat.

  Uncle Harley studied the glass ball, turning it around, picking at the barnacles.

  He shook his head slowly.

  I skipped school the next day.

  I drove down to the pier in the morning and sat around in the Jeep until about ten o’clock, watching the charter boats take off and dozing. I’d told Dad I’d let him get some sleep and that I’d come up to the hospital in the afternoon.

  I couldn’t stop thinking about the dream-memory, how I’d somehow blocked it out of my mind. Why hadn’t Dad ever talked about it? And I couldn’t stop thinking about what had happened to Dad. Being left at sea, alone. Uncle Harley managed to piece the story together after we’d taken Dad to the hospital.

  Dad was fishing in a school of porpoise, the tuna below. The school shifted and he put the boat in gear, on automatic pilot, and let it follow the school while he went aft to prepare his bait. While he was cutting a slab of opelu, he saw the glass ball that the Frenchman had given us just off the starboard side of the sampan. Dad ran for his net and reached out to scoop the ball from the water. He reached too far and lost his balance, fracturing his kneecap on the gunwale as he tumbled overboard. The boat moved on, slowly. But Dad couldn’t reach it with his knee exploding in pain, so he pulled himself back to the glass ball and hung on to it. The hand net was still around the ball, and Dad kept it there. He said he would have been a shark’s dessert without it. A big one came nosing around, but shot off when he poked it with the handle of the net.

  He said he spent the night and all of the next day in the water before he spotted the Frenchman. “I was lucky I had the net … I waved it at the sailboat,” Dad said. “At least the water was warm. That damn ocean doesn’t care who you are or what you’re doing. You’re always on your own out there. Lucky for me that Frenchman came by … and lucky he wasn’t afraid to sail at night … it was almost dark when he found me.”