Back at the pier, we hose off in fresh water. Then Tina goes aboard and changes into dry clothes. Then me.
Afterward we sit side by side in the dark on the roof of the Angel-Baby II, looking out to sea with stars popping out of the black night like silver ice. A slight breeze rises up and cools my face. Funny how small things seem so big in these moments. I don’t want any of it to end.
I have it bad. You don’t know how bad.
And that right there is my problem.
Because then Tina says, “Izzy?”
Then she waits, saying no more.
She waits for me to look at her. But I’m kind of scared to.
Finally, I do.
“Izzy . . . will you kiss me?”
Yahhh!
I have no words in me to answer that.
“Really, Izzy. Will you?”
Finally I say, “I guess so, yeah.”
“Good. Come with me.”
She stands and reaches down to pull me up. I follow her down into the cabin. “Wait,” she says, and goes down the companionway to the galley.
I stand alone in the aisle between the table and the bunk, thinking, Oh no, where am I going to sleep tonight? On the bunk? On deck? Or . . .
My hands start to sweat.
Then I hear music on the boat’s sound system—piano, sax, soft drums, guitar.
Tina pops back up the companionway. “My favorite musician.”
“Who is it?” I didn’t even have a clue.
“Houston Person. Kind of a weird name, but boy can he play that saxophone. Listen.”
It’s the kind of stuff you hear coming out of restaurants and bars when you’re wandering around the village late at night. I like it. For real. I really like it.
“Good, isn’t it?”
I nod. “Yeah, sweet.”
“What I want to do is this, Izzy,” she says, then pauses. “I . . . I want our first kiss to be one we’re never going to forget. I’ve been thinking about it. I came up with an idea.”
She waits, letting that sink in.
Well, it’s sinking in, all right.
I say, “And your idea is—”
“To kiss you from the first to the last note of my favorite song,” she says, butting in. “The song is called ‘But Beautiful.’ ”
You know what I say?
Nothing. Not one word.
Tina smiles and goes to put that song on. “Don’t run away, now,” she says, turning back at the companionway.
The song that was playing suddenly stops.
There’s a pause.
Tina comes running back. Her eyes sparkle, like diamonds, like stars, like the sun on a stream.
A new song starts, a warm, tender-note piano all by itself, and it’s real dreamy. Sweet, sweet honey in my ears. Tina with those deep, smiling eyes takes my face in her hands and pulls me up close, and I swear there’s a glow all around her, like sunrise.
Then when the sax comes in, she kisses me right when it starts. And, jeez, this makes me embarrassed, but her . . . her lips are so soft and smooshy they make my mind kind of go off, you know? Like peacock feathers, opening up and expanding into every color you could even imagine. I lose all my strength. And when I hear the deep bass and now the piano again in the background, my mind sails away like a lost balloon. I see lights and stars.
And . . .
And the sax plays on and on and on, so pure, so warm, so incredibly smooth, and all the time Tina’s kissing me and hugging me and rocking ever so slightly with the music like she did at the volcano, and it’s so good and so right and so real that something bursts inside me, like a door opening in a breeze, or a wave washing up on the sand.
Something.
And I wonder if I’ll ever be able to come back from this deep, deep place I find myself in.
Toward the end of the song a wave of perfect notes flings me way out over the ocean, only I don’t fall, I just keep on sailing out and out and out, and if there really is a place called paradise, or heaven, or whatever—I am there. I’m in that place, sailing out so far I can never come back.
When the song ends she pushes away from me slowly and dries my lips with her thumb and smiles with those eyes, and all I can do is stand dazed in the aisle between the bunk and the table, and I can’t speak or move or think or breathe, and anyway I don’t even want to.
“Izzy?”
Tina waits for me to come back, to say something.
But I can’t.
She says, “I know I’m not like . . . you know, like the most beautiful type of girl in the—”
I start to tell her how wrong she is, but she puts her finger on my lips. “Shhh. I know you and your friends call me an Amazon. It’s okay. I don’t mind it.”
“I never called you that.”
She cocks her head and says, “Really?”
“Okay, that one time. But that was way back and I was mad, and that doesn’t count.”
Her eyes flood, and tears spill out.
“Did I say something wrong?”
She shakes her head, then smiles and swipes a palm over her cheek. “No. I’m just . . . happy, you know?”
And I do know, I do. If I’ve ever known anything in my whole life, I know that.
We sleep side by side in our sleeping bags on the roof of the Angel-Baby II under the Milky Way and a billion blinking stars, because the storm is little more than a distant memory now, and the sky is as clear and deep as fresh water, and you can see into every corner of the inkiest, blackest, most mind-boggling, most impossible universe you could ever even imagine.
The next morning we get up at dawn and set out for Honolulu. As the Angel-Baby II hums past the breakwater onto the flat glassy sea, the sun peeks up over the saddle of land between the mountains. Color springs into the water, reflecting the cloudless sky.
I stand out on the stern deck looking back at the island, not thinking anymore, because thinking only messes me up. Forget thinking. The only thing inside me now is a feeling of freedom, as if I were some small perfect part of a much larger perfect whole.
I turn and peer in at Tina, sitting at the wheel.
She must feel me looking, because she glances over her shoulder and smiles at me, as if our being there is the most natural thing in the world.
I study her for a long moment, then smile back, then shake my head.
Angel-Baby.
She’s as perfect as perfect can be.
See my problem?
Man oh man oh man.
Hat of Clouds
My brother Randy got two things when he graduated from high school: a full day as skipper and supreme commander of Dad’s deep-sea charter fishing boat, Iwalani—and an invitation from his draft board to come on down and join up with the U.S. Army.
It was 1966.
Randy had been working on the boat with Dad since he was twelve, so he knew it every bit as well as Dad did. I knew the boat, too, but not in the same way. To me a boat was something that crawled around on the ocean while you watched the clock tick. To them it was a reason to live.
Like Dad, Randy was a fisherman. It was what he was going to do with his life. There’d never even been the slightest question about that. All he had to do now was do his time in the army.
But I had no idea what I was going to do with my life. “Jake’s still in his cocoon,” Dad joked whenever somebody looked worried about me. “He’ll find his wings one of these days.”
I was two years younger than Randy and still had time to figure it out, according to Dad. Mama wanted me to go to college, which would keep me out of the draft, and, of course, I could study veterinary medicine, something she thought I’d be good at. I did like animals. But vets sometimes had to put animals to sleep, too, so I wasn’t sure if it would work for me.
Anyway, a man named Chad Lewis chartered the boat the day Randy got his chance at the wheel. Dad gave Mr. Lewis a discount since he wouldn’t be getting Dad’s expertise, which is usually what you’re paying for on a de
ep-sea charter fishing boat.
Another man came along, too, a guy named Steve. Dad picked them up at their hotel and brought them down to the harbor. Randy and I had the boat ready and waiting at the pier.
“Mr. Lewis,” Dad said, “I can assure you that my son knows the ocean as well as I do, maybe better. He knows what he’s doing out there.”
“I don’t doubt that at all, Cal,” Mr. Lewis said.
He shook Dad’s hand, then climbed down onto the deck. Steve followed, grinning like a horse.
I untied the lines and pushed the boat away from the truck-tire bumpers on the pier, then jumped aboard. Randy throttled up and walked the Iwalani out of the harbor, the new morning sun glowing behind the mountain.
Dad stood with his arms crossed, watching us go. When I waved, he lifted his chin. I don’t think there was anything he could have done to give Randy a better graduation gift.
A couple hours later we were trolling off the Captain Cook monument, heading south. Other boats had seen a decent amount of action back up along the northern coast, but Randy had his secret spots, places on the ocean he could pinpoint from markers he’d picked out on the island.
He sat at the wheel, looking as right there as Dad ever did. It was kind of amazing, really, the way he had just grown into his skin like that. One day he was a kid in school and the next a seasoned fisherman.
He’d asked me to go along as his deckhand. “You green as bad money, bro, but I need the help. Think you can do the job?”
“As good as you, any day.”
He laughed. “You prob’ly right.”
Mr. Lewis turned out to be a pretty decent guy. He was from Denver, and wanted us to call him Chad. He and Steve were about the same age, thirty-five or so, and were both on vacation with their wives, who’d gone on a tour of the coffee farms up on the mountain.
Chad and Steve spent the whole morning sitting out in the sun, talking about places to put their money and watch it grow.
I wandered the forty-foot boat, trying to keep my mind from zoning out. I don’t know how Randy and Dad could do this day in and day out for their entire lives. It was mind-numbing.
We were running five rigs, three fifty-pound flat lines, and two one-twenties pullied up on the outriggers to keep the lines from tangling.
We had one strike early on but lost the fish after fighting it for only twelve minutes. Chad took the reel for that one and was pretty cool about having the fish break free.
The big hit came later. At 2:48 to be exact.
I was lounging on the gunnel half-asleep when the rubber band on the starboard outrigger snapped. The rod leaped to life, the reel screaming as line raced into the sea. The rig jumped and jerked and bowed out over the water.
“Yeeaah!” Steve shouted.
The Iwalani sprang ahead, Randy gunning it to strike the hook deeper. Smoke poured out the exhaust. The wail of the engine was deafening.
Chad and Steve staggered aft.
Randy throttled down. The stern rose in the rush of backwater.
Chad grabbed the fighting chair to keep his balance. “This one’s yours, Steve.”
“You sure?”
Steve stumbled to the transom and yanked the rod out of the chrome holder, hauling back on it, striking the fish in an attempt to sink the hook even deeper—once, twice, three good solid pulls.
I unhooked the safety cable, and Steve struggled back with the rod and fell into the fighting chair. “Woo-haw!” he shouted.
“Jake, come take the wheel!” Randy called, running aft.
I hurried forward and slid into the skipper’s seat, remembering how the last time I’d taken the wheel the boat hadn’t responded as quickly as I’d expected it to. You had to anticipate, be ready.
I turned and looked back over my shoulder.
Out in the stern cockpit Steve was leaning forward, hanging on to the rod with both hands, line still whirring off the reel a mile a minute. He tried to pull back and stop the run, but the fish was too hot, too strong, too angry.
Randy and Chad madly reeled in the other lines, both of them hunched over, heads bobbing, pumping as fast as they could. I couldn’t see Steve’s face, only the tension in his back.
When all the lines were in, Randy got the kidney harness and slipped it around Steve’s lower back, then attached it to the reel just as the fish showed—a blue marlin, a big one.
It leaped full out of the water, shaking its head, sword wagging in the sun. “Ho!” Steve shouted.
The marlin went under, line ripping off the reel. Steve pulled, trying to slow the run. But it was impossible.
Randy scooped a bucket of seawater out of the ocean and set it next to the fighting chair. He got a large sponge and watered down the reel, which was hot from the tension.
The fish finally slowed and held.
Steve pulled back, gaining nothing. Not even a half inch. “Good God, did I get snagged on a submarine?”
“Prob’ly over six hundred pounds, my guess. Just keep the pressure on, make him work, tire him out.” Randy sounded so much like an old pro it would have made Dad swell up with pride.
Just as Steve started making a few small gains, the marlin renewed its anger and burst away. Steve bent forward, shaking his head and fake-weeping at the great gulping yards wailing off the reel. From the angle of the line it looked like the fish was going deeper, down where the pressure was so great it made it twice as hard to pull a fish back.
Chad slapped Steve’s back. “Hang on, pal. You can do ’er.”
Randy stood nearby, frowning, probably worrying that the marlin would go straight to the bottom.
The back of Steve’s shirt was stained from sweat pouring down from his neck and hair.
“Cool him off with some of that seawater,” Randy said.
Chad soaked up a spongeful from the bucket and squeezed it over Steve’s head, then water-cooled the reel.
Randy got the gaff ready.
And the fish club and knife.
I kept my eyes on the line, keeping it behind the boat. I wondered if we’d even see the marlin again, let alone bring it aboard, the way things were going. Sooner or later Randy would have to give Steve his best advice. But, like Dad, Randy would let the angler test his own skill first. It was his charter, after all. It’s what he was paying for.
An hour passed.
For all the progress he was making, Steve may have been trying to pull up a fire hydrant. He swore every now and then, but that was about all the action happening on the back end of that boat.
Randy wandered into the cabin. Checked the horizon, looked at the clock. “You doing okay, little bro?” he said.
“Piece of cake.”
He humphed. “If that fish goes any deeper, he’s a goner.”
“What do you mean?”
“Pressure. Be like sitting under a steamroller if he goes down deep enough.”
“Well, what do we do?”
“I’m thinking about that.”
We both looked back out at Chad and Steve.
The line moved toward the stern, the fish going down, down. Randy reached over me and throttled the boat forward. Did it real easy, so smooth it didn’t even begin to bother me that he overstepped my part of the job. I was lucky. As brothers go, I got one of the best. We’d never in our lives been at each other’s throats like some brothers I knew.
Thirty minutes went by. Forty.
At times Steve rested, taking one hand off the rod, then the other, flexing his fingers. And my neck was killing me from looking back over my shoulder.
Six o’clock came and went. The sun was low on the horizon, turning the Iwalani a brilliant gold in its light. I envied all the other skippers and deckhands already back at the harbor chugging cold beers and swapping lies. Randy went out on deck, then paced back in.
The angle of the line told us that the fish was straight down under the boat. “Damn,” Randy whispered, then went back out on deck. I left the boat in neutral and followed him.
Randy nodded, trying his best to keep the discouraging comments I knew were in his head to himself. “Feel any movement?”
“Just my guts working their way up my throat.”
Randy waited a second, then said finally, “I hate to say this, guys, but we’re prob’ly dealing with a dead fish here. Or if it’s not, it soon will be.”
No one said a word to that. It was a sobering thought, after all the work Steve had put into it.
“So what do we do?” Chad finally asked.
“We could try to vector him up. But that could take hours, especially if it’s dead.”
“I’ll bring this thing up if it kills me,” Steve said. “Let’s do it.”
“All right,” Randy said. “You got it.”
Randy and I went back into the cabin. He radioed Dad and told him we’d be out a while longer.
“Got something hooked up?” Dad said.
“Yessir, we do. Problem is, he’s sounded. But we’ll get him. Take us a while longer, is all. Over.”
“We’ll be waiting. Over and out.”
Randy replaced the transmitter, smirking. “Kind of bent the truth a little, didn’t I?”
“Did you?”
“Well, sure. This ain’t going anywhere.”
I slipped out of the pilot’s seat, grateful to escape that job for a while.
Randy eased the boat ahead. The angle of the line opened and fell back. Moving slowly forward, he let the boat pull the fish up awhile, then brought the throttle down, reversed the engines, and started backing down on the line.
“Start reeling,” he said.
I went aft and stood by the fighting chair. Chad looked at me and winked. I think he was having fun watching Steve sweat.
Steve reeled madly, taking in all the line he could. When he felt the dead weight return, he signaled for Randy to pull ahead again.
Forward and back, forward and back. It was crazy, I thought. All this for a fish.
Island Boyz Page 15