Flame Angels

by Robert Wintner

  Yes, Ravid was scared, but whether Darryl knew that or not was of little consequence, because a man with sea time and a few thousand dives knows that the game is not lost till the last bubbles rise. He had only one tool, a blunt-tipped dive knife stashed inside his booty alongside the left ankle. He kept it hidden, because the worst of the macho-burdened tourists wore calf-wrap dive daggers, sometimes in the seventeen-inch Bowie style, as if Jaws VI would be theirs to bag. Seeing the dive leader with a knife only encouraged continuing folly. Most wore more conventional knives, most with points, so they could stab themselves or poke a hose inadvertently. It hadn’t happened yet, but seeing the worst of the knife guys had compelled him to hide his own knife, which he carried by habit to cut fishing line that had snagged on reefs, and to cut himself free of drifting gill net fragments invisible to the human or fish eye, like the one that nearly drowned him early in his career.

  But having a knife stashed alongside his ankle would have no value with his hands taped behind his back. So yet another idea emerged on a ray of hope, on a gossamer thread of maybe, just maybe: “Darryl,” he croaked.

  Darryl would not respond to the man who had caused him so much pain.

  Ravid continued, “I want you to know that...that in...in private times, Minna spoke your name. I mean, she called me Darryl. I asked her, ‘Who is Darryl?’ She said, ‘Darryl is a man I love. I mean, used to love.’ Darryl, she’s young. We meant no harm. If you...”

  Wait, wait, wait. Could you really expect this half-baked psychopath to see the light and turn back for the dock? To ease up on a haole suck no better than the rest, coming in here and taking everything? No, you could not. So don’t blow this one chance to survive, maybe not for long but for long enough.

  “Can I...have a cigarette?”

  Darryl called cousin Kevin by name, but Kevin shrugged, indicating da kine all wet. Besides, the wind was up with the waves. They’d never get it lit. That’s okay. Ravid didn’t smoke and knew enough of those who did to know that this wind and these waves were the best time to cut back on smoking and overeating. Still, it was a test, showing that mercy would be doled out in molecular doses.

  “Please, one last wish.” Nobody turned his way. “Can I scratch my nuts? Please? I’ve had this wetsuit on all day. I’m getting a boil. Please.”

  The request seemed ridiculous in that little tin boat on those boiling seas, where all hands were busy bailing steering or hanging on, and itchy nuts did not compute. On that note, a three-quarter moon rose from behind Haleakala, lighting the chaos of waves. In a few more minutes, Darryl hove to and put the engine in neutral, so the little boat quickly turned sideways to the wave and nearly hulied right there as another load of water sloshed aboard.

  The engine sputtered and died.

  Sliding down the face of the next swell, the little boat gained steerage when Darryl used the outboard as a rudder, steering and at the same time pulling the starter rope repeatedly to no avail. Winded from the effort but keeping the stern to the swell, Darryl mumbled malediction, as if the little outboard was also haole and guilty of theft. Never mind; the waves weren’t breaking, so the execution could begin — better to ditch the ballast, lighten the load and get the task over to better work da moddafockeen boat.

  Darryl kept an eye on the swell and maneuvered to keep the stern to it as the cousins struggled to lift Ravid to his knees. How could the haole resist? Of course: He grasped the drain plug till their efforts pulled him and it free, which nobody noticed because it allowed water into the boat in an easy flow rather than a splash. Ravid gripped the plug. Darryl handed a knife forward with a nod. A cousin cut the tape from Ravid’s mouth. “You no need scratch your nuts, haole. They stop itching pretty soon. You like sing one star tangle banner? Have at. I no like you sink wit da kine air hole tape up. Then you float too soon. I like you stay sink.” Darryl nodded again. They lifted Ravid’s ankles, yelling at each other to counter balance or they’d go kapa kai and maki. With his knees grinding into the bottom of the boat and his belly banging the thin tin rail, up and over and into Kealaikahiki Channel went Ravid Rockulz, a tired man who’d never felt quite so old.

  But this was no time for rest and reflection, not just yet. He sorely wanted to raise his voice in triumph with a friendly suggestion that the born and raised among them could take turns sticking their dicks in the drain hole. Well, maybe they’d figure that one out on their own. Meanwhile, it was up to a waterman and survivalist to dead man’s float, face down, turning up for a breath as necessary, easing the drain plug into a working grasp and hoping the metal tab was sharp enough to cut the tape on his wrists. This would take far longer than advisable, because he couldn’t feel his wrists and really wanted to avoid cutting them, because he wouldn’t likely have time to bleed to death before Mano and that gang got wind of the hoedown at the aggregation buoy. Or maybe the imagery of a feeding frenzy was only a panic reaction, so for the moment he followed directions as written in the manual.

  Drifting beyond the range of recapture, he looked up to breathe and saw the cousins watching him, apparently more taken by their sweet revenge than the peril surrounding them. Then the tape was cut, presenting another temptation of tossing the drain plug back at them. But no, what use could a pissing contest have at this point? So he let his arms loll in front, and in a slow subtle breaststroke pulled away into the darkness, from where he heard the little engine sputter on a few pulls of the starter rope and an urgent accusation: “Fockeen suck! Stole a drain plug!”

  How strange life seemed, awash in a rowdy sea at night, smiling at his own sweet revenge. Was this as good as it got? Or as bad? Well, no matter the motivation or the result, events still didn’t make him as bad as them. Did they? The engine sputtered and died. The odds on two beaters dying the same day were actually good, considering that beaters die every day, and one of these was doused with seawater. So he bent to the task of finding his knife and cutting the tape from his knees and ankles to better begin the next struggle, of pulling the top half of his wetsuit back onto his arms and zipping up the front.

  Another passing image was shooed away but crawled up his spine to nestle firmly in his brain. It was the scene where George Orwell wanted to know his prisoner’s greatest fear to better taunt him with it. It was rats, so a big rat in a cage was released onto the man’s face, and yes, it was scary. In his countless dives — day dives and night dives — Ravid Rockulz had never lost his fear of surface swimming at night. He avoided it — had been taught as much. He knew who worked this beat and what signals triggered a feeding. Which is not to say a man could avoid danger by knowing the signals, but that he should avoid the signals. One of the signals was fear itself, a unique electronic frequency emitted by the fearful person through the depths, maybe not so resounding as the bloody dinner gong, but then maybe so, if the fear stunk loud enough. So what could he do, stop the fear?

  No, he could not. But he could assure himself that few people anywhere were better trained and prepared for such dire straits as these — okay, better trained at any rate. Who could ever be prepared?

  What? As if on cue, the rueful faces of Basha Rivka and Skinny kvetched and mewed their scolding chorus, that only a fool would count himself better off than most, up shit creek with superior treading skills. Well, it should be to laugh, and sometime soon he would look back on this vision and laugh, God willing —

  What?

  Did you say God?

  Okay, like the man said, it was down to practicality or default to death. Control your breathing and thereby control the fear, or at least rein it in. Yet breathing too could ring like a chuck wagon triangle, since the only fish who breathed at the surface were injured, calling out for predatory dispatch. Or maybe his breathing would sound like a baby whale, or a monk seal. So he kept his breathing as quiet as he could, maintaining the most important cover of all: a slow, smooth, uninjured stroke — not a crawl, never a crawl, but a breaststroke, nice and easy, with minimal surface splashing, and don’t forg
et the rhythm. Oh, hell, the current would take him to the open ocean anyway, so what difference could it make?

  The fear surged to horror every minute or two, as it would have done in the strongest of watermen, till it subsided again to reasonable management.

  There.

  Fear filled the spaces between heartbeats till it seemed so steady as to resemble normal feeling. But how can a body sustain the highest levels of any emotion? It can’t, because a new baseline is soon established, and by the wonders of adaptation, things feel normal again.

  Then the fear spiked to new heights at the arrival of a surface layer of light brown scuz foam demarcating two different currents. One side of the foam line was notably quicker, the seas jumping higher as the wind bucked the tide. The other side could have been a reverse current, but that seemed unlikely. At any rate, a tide rip was the fishermen’s action zone, where the food chain worked from the bottom up, with the little critters trapped in the swirl and bigger critters attracted to the feed, on up to the apex predators who appreciated the selection and diversity of the menu along with the convenience of the buffet.

  With thoughts and images swirling and thrashing freely as a feeding frenzy, Ravid clung to the surest flotsam in the ink-dark sea, which was the twin visage of his mother and his cat. Both chided him for winding up like this, after all she’d given him, after all her love and teaching. But he was so bull-headed, just like his father, that bum. It was such a waste for a boy with so much advantage to end up like this, and for what, a little piece of babka? Go figure. Who knew?

  He laughed, wishing Basha Rivka could meet Skinny and wondering if they ever would but doubting it; it was so many miles, and Skinny was a cat, so she couldn’t travel out of Hawaii without facing mortal risk in quarantine on her return, and Basha Rivka was a kvetch, asking nearly audibly that very minute, “You want me to what? Travel halfway around the world to meet a vacocta cat?” He could see her click her tongue at the shame and waste of it all, could see the other one, the cat, staring at the immutable truth, emitting her silent meow. He wanted to tell them what a rich and creamy babka it was, it was. But he kept his mouth shut so the one could ramble while the other watched from atop the dresser as he pulled through the next two miles, which wasn’t too far at all, really, unless it was part of a four-mile swim. Because any waterman worth his salt can pull through two miles before his arms weigh a hundred pounds each and he can’t feel his legs, and then he has no choice but to slow down. And if it’s a four-mile swim, the last two become very far and worse.

  So it was that verging on first light, between a mile and two miles out, Ravid Rockulz, waterman, gave up in the water. Not by choice, because a survivor cannot choose to not survive, but by losing control of his arms and legs. He finally failed to answer the call for yet another stroke. Reduced again to a dead man’s float, he tipped his head sideways as necessary to lift the blowhole clear for another breath. Yes, a shark would be more attracted to a dead body than a live one, and with his half gram of energy remaining he focused on his intermittent breathing and lifeless-looking body as a graceful, deliberate and strong distance swimmer. He could not muster the oomph to laugh at this great joke on himself.

  But strength ebbing to zero, even in a man resigned to the end, can spike on a shot of adrenaline, allowing the man to rise a few inches for the better view. There only a hundred yards away was an outrigger canoe, soon accompanied by the rhythmic harmony of five old men chanting responsively in Hawaiian to a sixth old man in the stern.

  Ia wa‘a nui

  Ia wa‘a kioloa

  Ia wa‘a peleleu

  A lele mamala

  A manu a uka

  A manu a kai...

  Six old men? It was the Old Guys Canoe Club. Not that the Old Guys was their real name. They were called the Old Guys because they were so old: fifty-five, fifty-eight, sixty years old already, some of those guys. They had Uncle Walter Kanakaokelani and Keahou Lehuamoku, two old guys who had a pact with each other that each would paddle as long as the other one did. And Kimokeo Kapahulehua, formerly known as Bully because he was — in your face and stomping your feet — before he got discovered by his kumu, Kimokeo Manewanewa, who told him it was time to be Hawaiian with a Hawaiian name. But Bully said he had no name except for Bully, so Kimokeo Manewanewa said, “Here, take my name. Don’t mess it up. Don’t get it dirty. Represent.” The charter boat crews only called them Old Guys because Elemakule Mea Hoe Wa‘a was too hard to remember, and charter crews are simple by nature. The Old Guys garnered respect verging on reverence because they descended from the original watermen.

  The Old Guys were seen more mornings than not, and if not, it was because they’d taken to the open sea on their way to Ni‘ihau or Papahanaumokuakea hundreds of miles out — in an open canoe to demonstrate what real Hawaiians did and yet could do. Some mornings they could be seen on their return, when they would pick up the pace to show what men who weren’t so old could do. It wasn’t macho but manly, because they worked together and loved the sea.

  And here they were, moving way too slowly through the water on such a unified stroke — but the second glance told why when the little tin boat and its forlorn cousins came into view, bailing, in tow, riding low in the water.

  Well, the Old Guys could connect a few dots for themselves, so finding four boys in a ridiculous tin tub with a failed engine and no anchor — and no fishing gear and no drain plug — could be suspect. So the Old Guys looked disappointed and annoyed, because a return from Oahu was no sleigh ride. They’d crossed the Molokai Channel and backside of Molokai at night for easier wind and waves, only to ride the roller coaster across Pailolo Channel and work on around, past Lahaina, Olowalu, Ukumehame, McGregor Point and into Maalaea Bay feeling like pounded poi, only to find a boatload of bad boys adrift. Then they’d paddled a zigzag course to find Ravid, to save him from drowning while saving the bad boys from murder one.

  Whatever the motivation, it was a more merciful morning than yesterday’s. Ravid waved an arm and, in high falsetto to carry over the water, squealed, “Hoy! Hooooyeee! Hoy!”

  So the canoe veered and drifted close, till the helmsman told Ravid to duck under the ama, the outrigger. Ducking under was easy enough, though Ravid knew he could not lift himself aboard. That was okay, because he wouldn’t be coming aboard — not aboard the canoe, anyway. He would go aboard the little tin boat, to return to the land of aloha. So all the boys and men sat adrift, listening to Uncle Walter read his indictment of wrong behavior along with the pardon and reconciliation required by these lands and waters.

  “Our kuleana to care for the sea is no different than our care for ourselves. Our kuleana to our ancestors and our descendents goes seven generations back and seven ahead. We can have no kuleana without kokua, no responsibility without cooperation. We share responsibility as we share fish or bread, like Jesus guys, though we did it first. You guys. Shame. Shame. Shame. Shame. Do you hear what I say?

  “My hanai daughter is a hula kumu, even though she is mainland born. I am her kumu, and my family is hers. She came to me troubled. She heard bad things from people who may have been Hawaiian or something else. These things were mean-spirited. They hurt her. They went against what she’d been taught, and so I knew I had not completed her lessons. So I taught her that Hawaiian gods have a great sense of justice, besides righteousness and love of the land. These values take care of everything. If you are not Hawaiian, you can still live Hawaiian. You must trust the gods to take care of things, because it’s not your place to get angry and all huhu and swear at people. It’s not in Hawaiian nature to do that. By Hawaiian actions, you may live Hawaiian and know aloha. If you give way to anger, you allow rage and resentment in blood that is not Hawaiian. You will not see a true Hawaiian in a place of confrontation. You might see locals complaining. They have nothing to be proud of but being born here. We don’t consider this behavior Hawaiian. These people are often not Hawaiian, but we’re also aware of what’s been lost. We remember o
ur loss, but we have faith in justice. You will hear what a Hawaiian thinks and feels only by talking softly and listening...”

  He spoke in English and Hawaiian as the other Old Guys shifted in their seats, cooling off but not uttering the first groan because of the consequences at hand, just as it was on the morning when he, Uncle Walter, got picked up along with his friend Keahou Lehuamoku. Keahou sat one seat up as he’d pledged to do, but on that day long ago got saved along with Walter from another drowning and murder one. The details were long gone and mattered for nothing except to remember the responsibility of the people to the place and the people.

  “You. Bring him up. Take care of him. Show him what you know, so maybe he won’t call the police as he should but maybe won’t. Because if he doesn’t call the police, then you won’t be in prison for years. Unless you find another way to get in. Okay?”

  So Ravid Rockulz came aboard the little tin boat for the second time, hauled up like a balled-up ghost net, lifeless but for the spent flesh trapped in it. The three cousins’ best effort at aloha included no threats, no epithets, no hints of violence and no suggestion of bitterness or blame. Darryl’s head hung low, not rising for Uncle Walter’s sermon or Ravid’s coming aboard. He finally spoke when the motley tow party got underway again, with a crew of young, strong, but failed men riding free on the efforts of the Old Guys. The dishonor and disgrace grew as palpable as daylight, with the whole sky and ocean there as witness. The boat in the lead effused wisdom, fortitude and survival, crossing the Molokai and Pailolo Channels at night in an open canoe, while the boat in tow was derelict in attitude and buoyancy. Couldn’t even kill one fockeen haole.

  Looking feebly up, as if beaten in spirit, Darryl made his crowning concession to peace with a question: “So, when you...when you make da kine with my girl, she say my name?”