Island Boyz

by Graham Salisbury

  After a few minutes I picked up my book.

  The gulf which separated the chiefs . . .

  The next day after school a huge mass of clouds swarmed in from the west and swallowed the islands. The whole sky rolled toward the earth and coiled down around the mountaintops. Shaggy beards of rain hung deep into the valleys, turning everything gray.

  Me, Willy, and Julio were out in the middle of our street. My hair stood straight up from all the electricity in the air. A gust of wind whipped up and flapped my shirt. A miniature tornado twirled in the dust along the side of the road, and cool earth smells of mud and iron rose from the ground.

  Just up the street Maya came bounding out of her house, and when she saw us she waved and shouted, “Bring it on!”

  There wasn’t one of us who didn’t love a good storm.

  Except Stella.

  “Look at her,” I said, glancing back at her looking out of our plate-glass living room window.

  “How come she don’t come out?” Julio said.

  “She’s worried. She thinks a hurricane is coming.”

  Willy raised his eyebrows. “Sounds good to me.”

  “Come out!” I shouted, knowing she’d rather be in a room full of furry spiders than in a hurricane. But this was no hurricane . . . yet.

  Stella ran her finger across her throat, meaning she was going to get me for making fun of her.

  I laughed.

  In a way I couldn’t blame her for being scared. She’d been in some bad hurricanes. She told me she once saw a stop sign stabbed halfway through a pine tree by the force of the wind. She told me about the ruins of houses along the oceanfront in Biloxi and Gulfport, most of them little more than tangled piles of sticks.

  “You have no idea what you’re even talking about,” she said when I told her storms were fun. “You’re just a stupid little boy and you always will be. Unless, of course, something wakes you up. Which would be a miracle.”

  “We’ve had hurricanes here, too,” I said. “And I didn’t see any of that. You’re just trying to scare me.”

  She smirked. “Someday you’re going to regret that you were born with such a small brain. You just wait, buddy.”

  Buddy.

  She liked that word.

  I turned back to Willy and Julio. “Anyways, what’s she so scared of? This ain’t even a hurricane. It’s just a regular old storm.”

  Later I was sitting on the grass with Darci where our yard started to slope down to the canal. I glanced over my shoulder when I heard a car pull up.

  Ledward spilled out of his canvas-topped Jeep and hitched up his pants, all dressed up for Mom. He wore a yellow-and-green Hawaiian shirt, hanging loose, Hawaiian-style. He even had on shoes.

  He saw me and lifted his chin, Hello, then walked over. He was so tall it hurt my neck just to look up at him. Darci leaned into me. Even though Ledward had been coming around for about six months now, his size still scared her.

  “Hey,” I said.

  “What you two looking at out there?” he said.

  I shrugged. “Nothing.”

  He looked up, scanned the sky. “Storm coming.”

  “You heard if it’s going to be big?” I said.

  “No. But pro’bly. Yeah, I t’ink prob’ly.”

  I nodded, hoping he was right.

  “You mine if I wait for your mama?”

  “Sit,” I said.

  He eased down and sat facing the canal with his arms resting on his propped-up knees. He peeked around me. “Hi, Darcigirl.”

  Darci moved back so he couldn’t see her.

  Ledward chuckled.

  We sat a moment, saying nothing.

  Then Ledward said, “We going Buzz Steak House tonight, me and Angela.” That’s my mom, Angela.

  I nodded. “I like that place.”

  A bufo croaked down in the weeds by the water.

  “Grass getting kine of long,” Ledward said.

  Dang. I’d forgotten all about the grass. But Mom wasn’t home yet. I could still do it, I guess. “Angela told me you had one centipede in your room.”

  “Yeah,” I said. Man, was there anyone she didn’t tell stuff to?

  “Still in there?”

  I nodded.

  “You got to cut ’um up, you know.”

  “Huh?”

  “Chop ’um into lot of small pieces. If you just cut ’um one time, no good. The t’ing come back as two.”

  Darci peeked around me at Ledward, but he was staring off over the canal.

  “What do you mean, come back?”

  “If you make two chops, then what you got is t’ree of them. Still alive, ah?”

  “For real? You’re not making this up?”

  “But if you make more chops, then you got ’um.”

  Was he joking?

  He turned to look at me, kind of half-grinning. Darci moved back out of sight. The look on Ledward’s face said You better listen up.

  “It could really grow into three centipedes?” I said.

  “Sure. Hard to kill those buggahs.”

  That night the wind grew stronger.

  Mom and Ledward went out to Buzz’s, leaving me home with Stella and Darci. But I stayed out in my room.

  I sat on the bottom bunk curling my dumbbells, with my heavy U.S. Army jungle knife lying next to me. I was thinking about what Ledward said about chopping up the centipede, how it could come back as more of them if you weren’t careful. The knife was gruesome, almost as big as a machete. You could probably kill an alligator with it. I was thinking maybe it might be too clumsy to cut up a centipede, with all the parts running away in every direction. But the thought of going after it with something smaller made me cringe.

  Sooner or later I’d have to deal with it.

  I put down the dumbbells.

  With the knife in one hand, I got up and peeked behind the frame, then checked the back edge of the counter, and the rock wall.

  Nothing.

  I got up on the counter and peeked into the dark crack where I’d seen it flowing out and down with its hundred shivering legs.

  Still nothing.

  I found a paper clip and bent it straight. But I couldn’t stick it in the crack. If the centipede was in there, and I disturbed it, it would come out lightning fast.

  Maybe it had gone back outside.

  And maybe not.

  I climbed up to the top bunk, taking the knife with me, then reached down and shut off the light with the point of the blade.

  I fell asleep listening to the sound of the wind knocking at my bedroom windows, the screens rattling in their frames.

  A while later the wind woke me up, a constant gust singing through the swamp grass and the ironwood trees out by the golf course that edged our street. I could see no lights outside my window.

  I got up and put my face up to the screen.

  Ledward’s Jeep was back.

  I tried the light switch. It didn’t work.

  The storm was growing, getting bigger and better by the hour. I lay back with my hands behind my head, listening to the sounds and dreaming of daybreak, when I could go out and roam the streets with my friends.

  A few minutes later I heard Ledward start up his Jeep, then drive off.

  Sometime past midnight the rains came. The downpour was deep, full, and heavy, pummeling the earth. By morning dangerous floodwaters would be raging down from the hills, sloshing past my house in the muddy brown canal.

  Just after dawn I was jarred awake by an explosion of thunder rumbling across the sky. Massive boulders—settling.

  I threw off my sheet and leaped down from my bunk. Looking out my bedroom window, I could barely see the canal. Everything was smudged by a silvery rain that now fell slanted in the wind. I could make out the golf-course bridge that crossed the canal, or the faint line of it anyway. But beyond that everything was a blur.

  “Yes!” I whispered.

  I tried my radio.

  The power was back.

>   I whirled the dial. The storm was for real, all right. And the radio said it was only the beginning. A powerful disturbance was bearing down on the islands from the west. It was going to be a big one, so tie everything down.

  Just before noon lightning began flashing through the cracks in the clouds. Then more thunder, so loud and so close it shook the house. Stella and Darci stood next to me at the big plate-glass window watching the storm swallow the island.

  The canal was now white with raindrops exploding on its surface, the water level rising fast, bulging seaward, climbing the slope of our yard.

  I was itchy to get outside, to run down and get Willy, and roam around in the storm. But first I wanted the lightning to stop.

  “You kids get away from that window,” Mom said. “What if thunder blows it apart and it shatters all over your faces?”

  We stood back. Could thunder really do that?

  When Mom left the room, I crept back to the window.

  Minutes later Ledward drove up in his Jeep, headlights on, wipers slapping on high speed. I could barely see him through the windshield. He parked as close as he could get, then got out and ducked into the garage.

  I ran into the kitchen, where he would come into the house, Darci at my heels.

  Ledward flung open the door, cursing the weather.

  Darci ran back out to the living room.

  “What are you doing here?” Mom said.

  Ledward shook the rainwater off his arms, then grabbed a dirty dish towel and wiped his face with it. “I wanted to make sure you all right.”

  “Oh, that’s so sweet,” Mom said, which Ledward brushed off with a frown.

  His T-shirt clung to his body. He couldn’t have been in the rain for more than three seconds, but he looked as if he’d just climbed out of a swimming pool. “Watch the canal,” he said. “It could flood.”

  A two-inch roach scurried across the kitchen floor. Mom took her rubber slipper off and whacked it before it went under the refrigerator. White guts oozed out along its sides. Mom got a napkin and wiped it up.

  “The rain drive ’um in,” Ledward said.

  No kidding, I thought. Bugs run this place.

  “Drives in the centipedes, too,” Mom said. “Isn’t that right, Joey?”

  Ledward turned to me. “You cut that t’ing up yet?”

  I shook my head.

  “How come? Scared of it?”

  “No.”

  “Come. I help you,” Ledward said.

  “Right now?”

  “This minit.”

  Mom and I followed him out to my room. He noticed my combat knife and picked it up.

  “I hate that thing,” Mom said.

  Ledward turned it over, felt the weight of it in his hand, set it back down. Then he took a small bone-handled pocketknife from his shorts and opened it. “So where is it?”

  “I . . . I don’t know.” I pointed to the dark space below the counter. “Probably under there somewhere.”

  Ledward squatted down and looked around.

  I stepped back, expecting the centipede to come racing out like before. Ledward duckwalked beside the counter, looking up under it. Then he grunted and sat back on his heels.

  He grinned. “Look.”

  I squatted down. There it was, sleeping on the rock wall. When Ledward touched it with the knife, it shot away, snaking up the wall at lightning speed, slithering through the crack behind the counter.

  I stumbled back, falling into Mom, who banged against the door.

  Ledward stood.

  He peeked over the mess on my counter, looking for the centipede’s hiding place. Slowly he moved a stack of books aside, the pocketknife ready.

  The centipede raced out into the open.

  Tick!

  He cut it into two writhing pieces.

  Tick! Tick!

  Four segments, curling, flipping, legs clawing air.

  Ledward wiped the blade on his shorts and folded it back into the handle. “No boddah you now,” he said.

  “Let’s go make some hot chocolate,” Mom said, sighing.

  Ledward winked and tapped my shoulder, then followed Mom into the kitchen, leaving me gaping at the centipede parts. What was I supposed to do now?

  A few minutes later Stella poked her head in my door.

  “What do you want?” I said.

  “Oh, nothing. I just wanted to see what you had Ledward do for you.”

  I stepped between her and the centipede parts.

  She grinned. “I just love watching you squirm.”

  “I’m not squirming.”

  “Oh?” Stella glanced behind her, then looked back and whispered, “Well, listen . . . how mad do you think that thing’s mate is gonna be?” She winked and backed away. “Bye, little buddy.”

  Stella, the thorn in my foot.

  I went back into the kitchen to tell Mom I was going over to Willy’s house. Stella was poking around in the fridge for something to eat. She ignored me.

  Darci was back, sitting at the table with a bowl of Rice Krispies and reading my Classic Comic of Tom Sawyer with milk dripping off her chin onto the pages. “Hey, don’t get milk on the pages, okay?”

  “I’m not,” she said, wiping the comic with her elbow.

  “Where’s Mom?” I said.

  “Looking out the window.”

  Maybe I should just go, I thought. She might say no.

  “Can I have it?” Darci said.

  “What?”

  She picked up the comic.

  “Yeah, sure, it’s all warped with milk, anyway.”

  I went into the living room. Mom and Ledward stood at the plate-glass window watching the wind and rain.

  “I’m going over to Willy’s house,” I told Mom.

  She looked at Ledward. “What do you think?”

  Ledward shrugged.

  Mom glanced back out the window. “Well, you stay inside when you get there, understand? Don’t go wandering around in this wind. And stay away from the canal. Don’t go near it, you hear me?”

  “Yeah,” I said, then bolted out to my room.

  I put on some jeans and rolled them up to just below my knees. Then I put on a sweatshirt and a hooded army-surplus rain poncho that was three times too big for me.

  Outside, the rain whapped down. The wind plastered the hood to one side of my face. I turned and walked with the wind hammering into my back as I staggered up the street toward Willy’s house. The road was warm under my bare feet. The rain was warm, too. I could have stayed out there all day, letting the storm shove me every which away.

  I thumped on Willy’s door. His mom answered.

  “My God, Joey, what are you doing out on a day like this?”

  “Is Willy home?”

  “Of course he’s home. Go around and come in through the garage. Leave that wet poncho out there.”

  “Heyyy,” Willy said when I poked my head into his room. He was playing with his lead soldiers. Battalions all lined up, two armies facing each other. He shot a man down with a rubber band, his long straight hair hanging into his eyes.

  “You want to go down to the beach?” I said. “Check out the ocean?”

  “I’ll get my poncho.”

  It was exactly like mine. We’d gotten them together from an army-surplus store in Honolulu. “Mom!” Willy shouted from the garage. “I’m going over to Joey’s house!”

  “It’s too stormy,” she said.

  We left anyway.

  We cut through Willy’s backyard and climbed the fence and fought the wind down the street to Kalapawai Market, where we bought Fudgsicles to eat in the storm. We were the only customers. In fact, we were the last customers. “I’m closing up,” the lady said. “Too dangerous outside. You boys go home.”

  “We’re going there now,” I said, peeling the paper from my Fudgsicle.

  “Good. You be smart boys, now.”

  We walked out and headed for the beach.

  The sand was gone, covered now with
a wild, frothy-white ocean that churned and boiled its way up over the beach and into people’s yards. I was glad we had ponchos, because the rain stung and the wind shredded palm fronds and tore olive-sized pinecones off the ironwood trees and machine-gunned them past our heads.

  I faced into the wind and opened my mouth. It blew my hood off and popped out my cheeks. I threw my Fudgsicle stick toward the sea, and it blew it back over my shoulder. Willy couldn’t make his go forward, either.

  “Let’s check the canal!” Willy shouted, his poncho snapping in the wind. He gripped it under his chin to keep the hood on his head.

  I yelled back, but the wind ripped the words right out of my mouth.

  We lurched over to a grove of trees that overlooked the canal. On a regular day it bogged up there. But today the water was alive and pulsing toward the sea in fat, muddy gulps.

  The wind nearly knocked me over. I had to spread my feet apart to stand my ground. I got this urge to go down to the edge of the water and feel its power as it raced to the sea.

  I glanced at Willy, then inched down the slope, grabbing ironwood roots where they were exposed in the bank. Clumps of wet sand broke away under my feet and slid down and were immediately eaten by the fast-moving water.

  “What are you doing?” Willy shouted, his voice flying away in the wind.

  “Going down to the water!”

  “Why?”

  I didn’t answer. Too hard.

  I studied the swirling mud-water gushing below me. It didn’t look so bad. I inched closer, so close now I could stick my foot in. I waded out a step, then another. Up to my knees. The heavy water tugged at my shins. I dug into the sand as it fell away beneath my feet.

  I looked up at Willy and yelled, “Yeee-haaa!”

  Willy grinned and started down the slope.

  Foop!

  The angry water ripped my feet out from under me and took me down.

  And under.

  The poncho clamped around me, blinded me. Pinned my arms back. I came up, went under, came up again, gasping as I sailed toward the sea. I tried to swim, but my arms were tangled in the poncho. My sweatshirt sucked up water like a sponge. I caught a glimpse of Willy stumbling down the slope, then racing along the shore parallel to me. I went under again. Gritty water scraped my eyeballs.