Island Boyz

by Graham Salisbury

  Willy and Felix are bug-eyed. They watch Rats as the truck cruises through town and drives out onto the pier.

  The harbor is still, the water glassy. A single lamp casts a yellowy glow down onto the hull of a fifty-foot sampan tied alongside the pier. Lady Luck is painted in black script across its transom.

  The boss shuts the truck down and the boys climb out and stand around with their hands in their pockets or tucked under their armpits waiting for the boss to tell them what to do. But the boss walks over to another boat to talk with another fisherman.

  So finish the story, Rats. What happened? They went out on a Coast Guard boat and got um?

  I feel sorry for you Jimmy, you so slow. If they went on a boat it would be too late, it would take too long, those sharks eat fast. Already it was probly way too late. Think about it. If you able.

  But if they didnt have a boat how they going save um?

  They didnt.

  They didnt even go out?

  No they went out. They got in a choppa—rescue choppa—they flew out looking for the sampan. They figure they could drop one rope and pull those guys up inside it. The storm was gone by then and the ocean was smooth as glass. But still it took um a while to find the boat. And when they did . . .

  Willy and Felix and Jimmy gape at Rats. Rats walks over to the edge of the pier and spits in the water. The three guys follow him.

  Jimmy cant stand it.

  What?

  Close your eyes.

  Close my . . . what for?

  Just close um.

  Tst . . .

  Okay. Now see if you can see this. When the choppa got close what they saw was the hull in the water. One shiny-wet hull. Thats all. But then they saw something else, something they never seen before and probly never going see again in their life. Hey I said keep your eyes shut. Okay imagine this: one after another, again and again, they saw those sharks come up behind that capsize boat and jump out of the water and sail across that hull. Ssssssst. Sliding across it, end to end. Sssssssst. All the way. Sssssst, sssssst, like that.

  Nobody says a word.

  Jimmy winces as he imagines what Rats is saying.

  Willy and Felix open their eyes.

  Rats looks at Willy first, then Felix, and he isnt grinning or laughing like it was all a madeup story to scare them.

  There wasnt one . . . guy . . . left.

  Jimmy opens his eyes.

  Thats the worst story I ever heard, Rats. The worst!

  Me too, brah. Me too.

  Then you not lying. Its true. Really went happen.

  Thats what I heard.

  Tst. Make me like quit this job I tell you. Who wants to go fishing now?

  Yeah but was one freak story, yeah, Jimmy? Probly never happen again, not in that way, not like that. So I aint scared of it. But you can bet I going keep myself on top this boat, oh yeah.

  You know whats bad, Rats? Those Hawaiian guys. They gotta live with it, with that memory.

  Yeah but lucky they Hawaiian.

  How you mean?

  Hawaiians know their roots. They know the ocean. They know the land. They respect it. And they believe in their aumakua and they dont offend them, like if they had shark aumakua then they dont eat shark. Would be like eating your ancestor, yeah? In the ocean life comes, life goes. They know that. Just how it is for them. And if they are good they got help from the spirit world. And anyways I bet a lot of those guys would rather take their chances with a shark than a man, specially with guys like you, Jimmy.

  Whatchoo mean guys like me?

  Haole.

  You got a real problem with haoles, Rats, you know that? You gotta get over it, man. Just cuz haole skin is white dont mean we different from you you know. We just like everybody else.

  You are? You just like me? You just like Hawaiians?

  Of course.

  You could fool me, man.

  Why?

  Would you swim through sharks like that?

  No.

  See.

  See what? You aint Hawaiian and you wouldnt swim through sharks.

  Yes I would, Jimmy.

  Tst. Liar.

  No. I would swim. I aint going sit around and die from sharks. I would swim, man. I would chance um, try for save myself. Sure I would.

  Even if you dont have shark aumakua?

  Maybe I do.

  Shhh.

  Maybe you do, too, Jimmy. Only you too white to believe it.

  You think?

  Yeah, maybe. You not a bad guy, most of the time. Shhh, the boss coming. Time for go catch fish.

  Hey! Dont say that. The fish going hear you then we never going catch um. Time for go hunt pig, brah. Pig.

  Yeah pig. We go hunt pig. Cuz we gotta. We go chance um!

  Rats and Jimmy tap fists.

  Willy and Felix look nervous.

  Rats reaches out his fist.

  Hows about you, little bruddas? You ready to get on that boat?

  Willy and Felix grin and tap fists with Rats, and the four boys jump aboard the Lady Luck. The Boss unties the ropes and tosses them on deck, then jumps on board himself. He pauses a moment and studies the boys standing before him. He shakes his head, then parts them with a dismissing wave of his hand as if they were chickens or goats or cows. He slips behind the wheel and fires up the diesel and slowly walks the boat out of the harbor.

  The sun is starting to glow behind the mountain now, and the sky is turning purple blue. Jimmy is coiling the stern line into a neat pile.

  Hey Rats. What finally happened to those Hawaiian guys?

  Nothing. They went back to work. Fishing. Thats what they do. Shoot, thats what we do.

  Yeah but it aint what we want to do.

  We aint rich enough to do what we want to do.

  You mean yet.

  Yeah yet.

  Fifteen minutes later the sun explodes over the mountain. The Boss sits at the wheel, squinting out over the ocean.

  Behind him on the stern deck Jimmy, Rats, Willy, and Felix stand facing aft, watching their quiet blue green island slip, slip away.

  Frankie Diamond Is

  Robbing Us Blind

  Call us the ShortBoyz.

  We’re sixth graders in Kailua, island of O’ahu—me, Willy, Rubin, Julio, one girl named Maya Medeiros, and boy, do we need help.

  Frankie Diamond is robbing us blind.

  And we just got to take it because he’s two years older than us and we’re all small guys, except for Maya, who’s taller than all of us. She’s Julio’s cousin, too, which is one reason we let her be in the ShortBoyz. But also we let her in because Willy likes her, and then because she has the opposite problem from us: too tall.

  Anyway, about Frankie Diamond. He’s getting worse.

  Last week we were walking home from school. My second-grade sister, Darci, was with us, too, because I have to take care of her in the afternoon until Stella, our live-in sort-of-nanny, gets home from high school. My mom sells jewelry in Honolulu, on the other side of the island, and is gone from seven to seven most of the time.

  Anyway, like most days when somebody’s got some money, we went to the store after school to buy stuff to eat. Willy and I had eight dollars from mowing the Thompsons’ grass, so we bought for everyone.

  We each had our own brown paper bag full of things we liked—Hershey’s, Butterfinger, li hing mui, crackseed, whole plum, cuttlefish, dried shrimp. Mine had two Ball Park mints, one peanut M&M’s, one jawbreaker, and a bag of salty-sweet dried shrimp.

  We were out in the middle of the big grassy field between Kailua Elementary School and the middle school. Just walking slowly, talking about whatever came up, with the sun boiling down and the cool ocean sitting out there waiting for us.

  It was perfect.

  Until Frankie Diamond popped out from under the bleachers at the Little League baseball diamond. And slinking out after him were the Andrade brothers, Mike and Tito, who I once saw in the backseat of a police car.

  �
�Aw, man,” Willy said.

  Frankie saw us and started heading our way with a grin on his face and Mike and Tito flanking him.

  We stopped in a clump.

  The Andrade brothers glared death our way, flopping toward us in their too-big camouflage army-fatigue pants, with no shirts and sweat glistening on their shoulders.

  Frankie walked tall, grinning.

  “Wow,” Maya whispered. “I’ve never seen him this close before. He looks like a movie star.”

  Willy scowled.

  Frankie was even taller than Maya. “Heyyy, liddle men,” he said, walking up. “Oh, ’scuse. I see you bugs got couple ladies wit’ you today.”

  Under a black peach-fuzz mustache, the tip of a toothpick peeked out in the corner of his mouth. His face was clean and smooth with no zits, and his eyes were so light you couldn’t stop looking at them, the color almost white. One was sleepy, the left one. Looked weird—brown-skin boy with white eyes.

  Frankie kept on grinning, standing over us with his muscular arms dangling like eels from his sleeveless white T-shirt. Like always he wore baggy jeans and black U.S. Army dress shoes spit shined to where if you looked down you could see your long, stretched-out face in them.

  Hanging off one shoulder was a beat-up black book bag that probably never had a book in it since the day he got it. One time he had a small orange cat in it. Its name was Squeaky and it belonged to Donna Ferris, a girl Frankie liked to tease. Donna didn’t think it was funny. Maya told us that.

  Anyway, all us guys and Maya lived on the same street as Frankie. But Frankie was new. He came from Palama district, on Honolulu side. We heard his mom kicked him out and he had to move in with his older brother, Darius, a policeman, who lived with two other cops on our street. Hard to imagine someone like Frankie Diamond living with three cops.

  One time me and Willy ran into him by accident. He was sitting cross-legged in front of his house, throwing a pocketknife into the grass. We didn’t notice him at first or else we would have cut through somebody’s yard.

  So I said, “Uh . . . you want to play baseball with us?”

  He gave us a long stare with his face pinched up, like he was thinking, Did somebody make a fut?

  I should have kept my mouth shut.

  So here we were out in the open field with Mike and Tito, the criminal brothers, backing up Frankie Diamond, who was looking down on us with his hands on his hips and that toothpick dancing in his mouth.

  A bird flew past, its wings whirring.

  Frankie looked up. Then back.

  “Whatchoo got in those bags, liddle men?”

  All of us tried to sneak our bags behind us, even Darci.

  Frankie’s grin grew, white teeth gleaming.

  “Hey, be nice,” he said. “I ain’t going bite you. And anyways, even if all you small folks jump on top me one time, I can still kill you, ah? Oh, did you meet my frens?” Frankie grinned without turning toward them.

  Mike crossed his arms. Tito stood stone faced, glaring at us. I wondered if Frankie knew just who he’d picked for friends.

  “So come on, show me those bags, ah?”

  We showed him our bags.

  Frankie looked inside every one of them except Darci’s, taking out what he wanted, making faces at what he didn’t. “Butterfinger? You like that junk?”

  From mine he took the dried shrimp and the jawbreaker.

  “Aw, man,” I said.

  Frankie tossed the shrimp to the Andrades and slipped the jawbreaker into his mouth. “It’s better to give than to receive,” he said, then wagged his eyebrows.

  “You got no right, man,” Willy said, kind of meekly, avoiding those white eyes.

  “Right, wrong . . . no mean not’ing to me, you know what I mean? Little bug?”

  When he was done robbing us, we started to walk away.

  “Wait a minute, what’s your hurry? Hey, you,” he said, looking at me. “You live my street, ah? I remember you. What’s your name? I forget already. No, wait. Let me guess. Starts with S, yeah?”

  “It’s Joey.”

  “No, no, no,” Frankie said. “Try wait.”

  He studied me with squinted eyes, his hand on his chin and my jawbreaker bulging in his cheek.

  “I got it!” he said, snapping his finger. “Shrimp. Yeah yeah yeah. That’s it.” He laughed, both eyes closed to slits.

  “I said it’s Joey.”

  “Nah, you wrong, brah. I just changed it. From now on you going be Shrimp.”

  “Shrimp?”

  “Like the bag of shrimp you just gave me, ah?”

  “Gave you?”

  Frankie looked at Maya. “You hear one echo?”

  “Echo?” Maya said.

  “You folks are freaks, you know that? All of you.”

  “Freaks?” Willy mumbled.

  Frankie’s sleepy eye woke up and looked all the way down Willy’s throat. The Andrades almost grinned, probably thinking, About time somebody going die.

  Willy saw that and quickly stared down into Frankie’s spit-shined shoes.

  Ho! I thought he was dead.

  But Frankie smiled again. “I got an idea. I going give all you liddle bugs new names, how’s that?”

  What could we say?

  We stood waiting so we could get it over with and go home. Frankie took his time.

  “Yours one going be Shrimp, yeah? I gave you that already.”

  Fine, I thought.

  He moved over and looked down on Willy.

  Willy, who’s kind of muscular and squatty, kept his gaze on Frankie’s throat, which, I noticed, had a silver chain around it. And on the chain was a small cross.

  “You going be . . . Mouse,” Frankie told Willy, nodding, pleased. He thought we were actually excited to get those names from him, like they were gifts.

  “You, what’s your name?”

  “Julio.”

  “Julio? You Mexican?”

  “No.”

  “Hmmm. I know. You going be Louse. That’s one lice, yeah? You know that?”

  Julio nodded.

  “Hah! Same-same,” Frankie said. “Mouse and Louse.” He turned and grinned at the Andrades, who grinned back.

  Rubin became Liddlebiddyguy.

  I laughed. I couldn’t help it. It was funny. Liddlebiddyguy. Rubin glared at me. I tried to stop but it came bursting back up. Like when you can’t stop a sneeze.

  Frankie towered over Darci. “Whatchoo doing with these ugly bugs, ah? Small kid like you. What you, firs’ grade?”

  Darci, eyes big as baseballs, stepped behind me.

  “She’s my sister,” I said.

  Frankie squatted down, ignoring me.

  “Hey,” he said softly. “I not going hurt you. Come out from there.”

  Darci did.

  Frankie smiled, face to face with Darci. “What’s your name?”

  “D-Darci.”

  He reached out to shake hands. Darci froze up. But Frankie waited patiently, smiling at her. Hesitantly, Darci shook. “Nice to meet you, Darci,” he said. “Lissen, anybody ever boddah you, I don’t care who it is, you come see Frankie Diamond, okay?”

  Darci nodded.

  Frankie stood and ruffled her hair. “You going stay Darci. I like that name.”

  Last was Maya.

  Frankie scratched his head, thinking about her. He scratched carefully, though, not wanting to mess up his perfectly greased-back hair.

  “What’s your name?” he asked.

  “Maya.”

  “Nice name, that. But gotta go, ah? Wouldn’t be right to make new ones for the rest of these bugs and not for you. Hmmm. What could you be? Tall, tall . . . I got it, you going be . . . try wait, it’s coming . . . Zulu! Like those tall guys wit’ the plate in their lip? Yeah yeah, Zulu. Bwahahahahahah!”

  His laugh was loud as a weed whacker.

  “Hey, Frankie,” I said. “This is fun, but we gotta go home now.”

  Frankie was laughing so hard he could only nod and w
ave us away.

  Tito, scowling, said to Frankie, “We go, already.”

  Frankie stumbled off holding his sides.

  “Idiot,” Maya said.

  “Got problems,” Julio added.

  Willy turned and spat, and Rubin slugged me for laughing when Frankie named him Liddlebiddyguy.

  “It was funny, Ruby.”

  He slugged me again.

  “Ow! No hit so hard.”

  “Shuddup, then.”

  “Kay-okay, but he’s funny, that’s all.”

  Everybody stopped and looked at me.

  “What?” I said.

  Willy looked disgusted. “Are you asleep? Are you even here? He just robbed us.”

  “You right about that.”

  “You right I’m right.”

  We continued on across the field.

  I looked into my bag to see what was left. Two Ball Park mints and the peanut M&M’s. Could have been worse.

  Willy said, “We could take him, you know. All us against him.”

  “Not if he got Mike and Tito with him,” I said.

  “I hate to agree, Shrimpy.”

  “Hey . . .”

  As we got closer to the middle school we could see there was something going on up ahead in the parking lot. A small crowd, mostly girls, was closing in around somebody who was almost screaming.

  We picked up the pace.

  “Stay behind me,” I told Darci.

  “Joey, I—”

  “Shhh.”

  “But I want to go home.”

  “Listen,” I whispered.

  Then I stopped and said, “No, don’t,” and covered her ears.

  Because what we heard was somebody letting loose a string of the nastiest words I ever heard in my whole entire life, and even worse was it was coming from a girl.

  We pushed through the crowd to see what was going on.

  Ho!

  The girl with the nasty mouth was facing off with a boy. She wasn’t scared of him at all. In fact, she kept poking him in the chest with her finger, and each time he slapped her hand away, saying, “I ain’t fighting no girl, I ain’t fighting no girl.”

  Finally the guy turned his back on her and walked away, and all the girls cheered.