Ultimate Sports

by Donald R. Gallo

  I thought so, too. But who had the guts to tell Coach Freitas?

  “Who cares, anyway?” Johnny said. “We ain’t got no crew… only you and me and Lanny. Butchie and Duck-Young not so hot. That haole punk ain’t gonna make no difference.”

  “What’s wrong with Butchie and Duck-Young? They’re good.”

  “Yeah, but Butchie only like fool around with girls. And Duck-Young too skinny… tough, but skinny.”

  I shrugged. Johnny had to be pretty upset to start bad-mouthing his own friends. I knew he didn’t mean it. Butchie was strong, and could work as hard as anyone. If he wanted to. That was the key—if he wanted to. I had more hope for Duck-Young. He always wanted to. He knew he had to work harder than us big guys and he was putting in the hours to prove it. He was lifting weights, and it was beginning to show. Almost every day Coach Freitas pinched his arm, flicked his eyebrows up and down, and said, “Sylvester Stallone, almost,” which made Duck-Young smile.

  So now Reggie Hoang was out and the haole was in.

  Coach Freitas put him in the fifth seat of our six-man crew. That was a powerhouse position—seats three, four, and five were reserved for the strongest guys. And number five was supposed to help the steersman in heavy seas. But Kona never had heavy seas, and all the other positions had demands that David Ford had no experience at. So number five was probably the only choice.

  In our crew, I was number one, in the front seat, the paceman. Then Duck-Young, who called the changes, was in two. Johnny, the strongest of us all, sat in three, the leader of the powerhouse. Butchie was four, middle powerhouse. Then David Ford. Then Lanny in six, the steersman and the captain. Lanny was an expert at that position. Nobody was better, in any age group.

  “Okay,” Coach Freitas said, holding his hands above his head. “Come.”

  All the paddlers—five crews of older guys, us sixteen-and-unders, and a herd of fourteen-and-unders—slowly walked down to the water from our patches of shade and parked cars and trucks. Coconut trees stretched along one side of the cove, and a concrete pier angled out on the other. Behind us on the sand, our three fiberglass practice canoes sat like barracudas, noses to the sea, blue with white trim, each long and sleek with a stabilizing outrigger on the left side.

  The air that day was thick and humid, making my arms sticky with sweat. I couldn’t wait to get in the water and sink down into it, then slip into the canoe and break my back for Coach Freitas. I liked doing that. We all did. Paddling was inside us, part of our heritage. It made you strong. Made you feel strong. Made you feel like a bull.

  “Who are we?” Coach Freitas yelled.

  “Kai Opua!”

  He started every practice that way. It was pretty dumb, but we all went along with it. Coach Freitas was a good guy. He actually liked us.

  “Who?”

  “Kai Opua!” we all yelled louder.

  “Who can beat us?”

  That was something new. Everyone mumbled, wondering what to say. We all knew Waikiki could beat us. Outrigger could beat us. And maybe Hilo. But who wanted to say that to the coach?

  “Hilo,” someone in back said as a joke, and everyone laughed.

  Coach Freitas glared at us. “Who can beat us?” he said again.

  “Nobody!” we all yelled.

  “That’s right. And don’t forget it.”

  Coach Freitas got one of the men’s crews going, sending them out to work on their starts. But for us, he had different plans. “You guys need to work harder than anyone,” he said. “You’re kind of ragged. But I know you can be good. You can even win, if you want to. But right now… you stink.”

  I stared at the sand with my arms crossed. A small, cool wave ran up and covered my feet. He was right. We did stink.

  “Then why you gave us the haole?” Johnny asked. I couldn’t believe he said that. I peeked over at David Ford, but if what Johnny had said bothered him, it didn’t show.

  “Mr. Bias,” Coach Freitas said. “Are you telling me you got a problem with the way I run this club?”

  “No—no,” Johnny said. “I just—”

  “You don’t know how happy I am to hear that, Mr. Bias. Now you guys get that canoe and carry it down to the water.”

  The first thing he had us do was paddle our brains out with the canoe tied to a coconut tree. Hard to do that. Jeez. My back muscles burned and my fingers felt like corroded door hinges about to fall off. A lot of people said that wasn’t a good way to train. But like always, Coach Freitas had his own opinions.

  “Reach out! Pull! Come on, let’s go,” he yelled from shore. The canoe jumped and jerked, going nowhere. Later, Coach Freitas made us do wind sprints on the open sea. He was a slave driver.

  After a half hour of sprints I felt like a car wreck. I could hear the echoing ring of the five o’clock church bell in the village. An hour still to go. I’d had it, already. I didn’t know if I would even be able to crawl home. I prayed Dad would show up and wait around to give me a ride.

  Johnny, though, when we got back to shore, got out and strutted around like he’d just taken a long, refreshing nap. But I knew that punk. He was beat. He just wasn’t going to let Coach Freitas—or David Ford—see his pain. Shee. Sometimes I wondered what made him tick.

  • • •

  A couple of days later, Lanny kicked up dust coming down our potholed driveway. “Hey, low rider,” he said, his brown Filipino-Hawaiian muscles glistening with sweat. “Let’s go already. Practice time.”

  I ran my hand over the smooth metallic blue paint of Dad’s police Camaro, which I’d just spent two hours waxing. Dad paid me five bucks a week to keep the salt off it. “You like my car?”

  “Yeah. Where is it?”

  “Funny,” I said, and Lanny laughed.

  Beyond, the surf thumped over the reef, sending a continuous wave of salt mist inland, mist that would settle on Dad’s car like microscopic termites. A mist that would make me rich.

  “Hoo, hot, yeah?” Lanny said, wiping his forehead with the palm of his hand. Dad came out of the house, with Mom following him. His silver badge flashed in the sun. He kissed Mom, then stepped off the porch and walked toward us. He was shorter than me now, but still stronger. By far. He looked kind of like a bulldog in a uniform.

  “Looks good, Mokes,” Dad said, checking out the car. “You boys want a ride to practice?”

  “Just to Johnny’s house,” I said. “We can walk from there.”

  Lanny and I squeezed into the front with Dad… and his radar unit, his police radio, his billy club, and his shotgun. We didn’t want to sit in back and look like freshly arrested criminals.

  The Bias place was an old paint-peeled shack of a house that sat back in a grove of thorny kiawe trees. The yard in front was dirt, dust, and a lawn full of weedy sleeping grass. Dad took a long, serious look around after he let us out. Then he drove away, slowly.

  Johnny’s father’s two mental-unit dogs spotted us and charged out from under the house. “Shet,” Lanny whispered.

  Lanny and I froze as the dogs snarled up to us. I eased my hand out to let them smell it, to remind them that I’d been there before. Like yesterday. And a thousand times before that.

  “Heyy,” Johnny said. “How you punks?”

  He was over near the trees with his lawn mower. I hadn’t seen him there. Sometimes that guy was like a ghost. “What you doing with that thing?” I said. “You no more grass for cut.”

  “So. Still got weeds.” Johnny kicked the lawn mower. “Stoopid thing won’t start anyway.”

  “We got practice,” Lanny said.

  “I know, I know.” Johnny spit on the lawn mower. “Wait, yeah? I going tell the old man, then we go.” He scowled, and added, “Tst…he going be mad.”

  Johnny headed toward the house. He ducked through the front door, which was propped open with a stone. On the porch, three mangy half-wild cats lounged in the sun under Mrs. Bias’s bird feeder. And beyond them, in the dirt, an old bike lay rusting its way back into th
e earth. James’s bike. From before he ran away.

  Yelling came from inside the house. An ugly sound. I felt kind of sick in my stomach, like when you’re spear fishing and see a shark. When Johnny came out he looked like he wanted to kill somebody.

  Lanny and I followed him out of the yard, silent as shadows. When the road curved away, and his house was out of sight, Johnny went back to being Johnny again. As far as I could tell, he wasn’t afraid of his father anymore, like he used to be. Not since James left.

  Now he was just angry.

  James, though, had taken off. Just ran away in the middle of the night. He ended up at his uncle’s place in Hilo, on the other side of the island. Dad had arrested James twice, both times for fighting. Once with an army guy from Pohakuloa, and once with his own father. Dad said James was okay, except for his explosive temper. Dad said to keep it to myself, but he was glad when he’d heard that James had run, because he was probably better off with his uncle.

  But Johnny was a fighter. He was angry, sure. Just like James was. But he also wasn’t the kind of guy to run away from his problems, no matter how bad they got. That’s another thing I knew about Johnny: He stood up for himself.

  • • •

  “Eh, shank bait,” Butchie said just before we started practice. “You forgot to shave your nose. You still got shaving cream on it.” Duck-Young laughed, and Butchie slapped hands with him. Lanny and I thought it was funny, too. Johnny just spit out sunflower seeds.

  David touched the white sun guard on his nose, but didn’t say anything. He was wearing his T-shirt again, like always. That first day without it had fried him. I felt sorry for him.

  “How come you no talk, punk?” Johnny asked. “You too good for us, or what?”

  David ignored him.

  “Hey, I talking to you.”

  “Cool it, Johnny,” Lanny said. “Leave ’um alone.”

  Johnny chewed and spit some seeds, then turned his back to David Ford.

  Coach Freitas made us paddle a half-mile course at full speed. Twice. Out on the ocean, even with all that cool water, my muscles felt like they were on fire. But it felt good. The pain felt good, and the hot sun on my back. And it felt good to rest afterward as the canoe glided back into the cove. All of us, except David Ford, rolled over the side and sank down into the shallow water. David, though, hurried up to the shade, and his towel. He dried his face, then put more sunblock on his nose and cheeks. He was the only one in Kai Opua who ever brought a towel, and he stuck out like an ambulance.

  One of the fourteen-and-under crews took over our canoe. “Watch those guys,” Coach Freitas called out to us from the beach. “Learn something.” We all gave a casual glance. For Coach Freitas. Who said we stink.

  “James called last night,” Johnny said. “He said the Hilo guys’ sixteen-and-under crew going cream us.” James, who used to paddle for Kai Opua, now paddled for Kamehameha, an enemy club in Hilo.

  “How he knows that?” Butchie said. “He never seen us.”

  “Yeah, but I told him our time.”

  “But that’s just practice time,” Lanny said. “When we get in the race, going be different, going be better.”

  “Yeah,” I said. “Come on, Johnny. Don’t believe that. James just trying to psych you out, man. We not that bad. We still got a chance.”

  “We could have a chance, you mean. If we were a true crew… if we had six guys who knew what they were doing. But instead, look what we got—five guys and that? Johnny pointed his chin toward the beach, toward David Ford.

  Nobody said anything. I didn’t want to believe that we were doomed like James had said. But maybe we were, if that was Johnny’s attitude. It was strange to hear him talk like that. He should have been saying, “No way no Hilo punks going take us, man… we going bury ’um.”

  “Hey, you sixteens,” Coach Freitas called. “Come out of the water. I want you boys to run down to Mokes’s place and back. You need to work on your endurance.”

  Butchie moaned and whispered, “The guy like kill us.”

  Lanny shoved him toward the beach. “Come on, let’s go. I want to get home before midnight.” We slogged out of the water, taking our time.

  David Ford got up and threw his towel over his shoulder, then headed toward his bike. “Wait,” Lanny called to him. “The coach said we gotta run.”

  David glanced back down at us, then pulled the towel off his shoulder. He bent down to pick up his bike, which had fallen over and was lying in the sand. When he started to push it toward the road, Johnny ran up and blocked him.

  “Lissen, punk. If we gotta run, you gotta run.”

  The rest of us circled around David Ford like sharks. David studied us a moment, then started to push the bike between Johnny and Lanny. The kid had guts, I could say that about him.

  “Hey!” Johnny said, poking his finger into David’s chest.

  David threw the bike to the side, just missing Lanny’s foot. He moved up face-to-face with Johnny. “Get out of my way. I have to get home.”

  Johnny put a hand on David’s chest. “You ain’t going nowhere,” he said, then shoved David back.

  David Ford staggered, then fell. Instantly, he was up and charging, fists swinging, blows glancing off Johnny’s shoulders, head, chest. Johnny raised his arms and ducked, trying to get out of the way. David kept coming at him, like a trapped boar. He threw himself at Johnny, and the two of them tumbled to the sand, grunting when they hit. The rest of us stepped back, gave them room. Johnny and David rolled over twice, locked together, white sand glued to their backs.

  In seconds, Coach Freitas stood over them, prying them apart, shouting, “Break it up.…Come on, get up!”

  Johnny and David let go and scrambled to their feet. Johnny’s chest heaved as he gulped air. David glared at him with eyes of ice.

  “Get outta here, all of you,” Coach Freitas spit. “I said to run, confonnit.”

  Johnny didn’t move.

  Lanny jogged away, and the rest of us followed quickly. I glanced behind me to see what Johnny was doing and saw him jog out onto the road behind us, staying back, keeping his distance. A car passed, and we ran in the stink of its exhaust, heat waves rising from the road. When we passed Johnny’s house, Johnny dropped out and went home.

  • • •

  A few days later, David Ford showed up at practice with an ugly swollen eye. As usual, he sat off by himself. The rest of us were standing around down by the water. We all turned and glanced up at him. He looked kind of sick.

  “Look like somebody wen’ slam ’um,” Butchie said. “Johnny, was you?”

  “Not me… but I wish it was.”

  Butchie touched his own eye, as if wondering how David’s felt. “Maybe he fell off his bike.”

  Johnny turned and stared out to sea, hands on his hips. A fishing boat cruised by, the hum of its engine muffled by distance. Johnny watched it until it disappeared behind the pier. Then he spit and headed over toward David Ford.

  We followed like fifth-graders to a sixth-grade fight.

  David sat with his head resting against a tree, eyes closed. The swollen one was just a slit. Johnny stood over him with his arms crossed, watching David Ford the way you watch a dog twitching in his sleep.

  “Shark bait,” Johnny said.

  David’s eyelids popped up like toast.

  “How you got that black eye?”

  David closed his eyes again. “Tripped,” he said.

  Johnny kept staring at him. A whole minute must have passed. David opened his eyes again, peeking up. This time, he held Johnny’s gaze.

  “Don’t lie to me, haole,” Johnny said. The muscles in his jaw rippled under the skin, his eyes fixed, stone-like.

  David said nothing. Didn’t even glance at the rest of us. Just stared at Johnny. And Johnny stared back, some strange river of unspoken words flowing between them, some strange thing I didn’t understand. David’s hands, I noticed, were dirty, like he’d been working on a car. Thick han
ds, working hands. Like commercial fishermen had.

  Johnny shook his head, then pulled a sunflower seed from his pocket. He chewed it and spit out the seed, which landed by David Ford’s foot. David looked down at it. Johnny turned and walked away.

  • • •

  Just before the next practice, Johnny was acting pretty strange, didn’t joke around with us like he usually did. Instead, he got a paddle from one of the canoes and took it over to David’s tree. He sat down there and leaned back, just like David always did. Lanny and I wandered over. Then Butchie and Duck-Young. “How come you acting so weird, Johnny?” Lanny asked.

  Johnny shook his head. “I don’t know, man.…I got something in my brain and I can’t get it out…about that haole punk’s black eye.”

  “What about it?”

  Johnny never answered that, because David Ford showed up just then. He looked confused when he saw us there, hanging around his spot.

  “Haole boy,” Johnny said.

  David leaned his bike up against a tree, then untied his towel from the handlebars and threw it over his shoulder.

  Johnny pushed himself up. He held the wooden paddle out in one hand. “You see this paddle? This is like your arm when you swim in the ocean. When you paddle, throw it ahead of you and bend close to the canoe, almost so your ribs touch the side. Sink ’urn deep and pull. Use your back, and your legs. The power is in your whole body, haole. Not just your arms.”

  David watched Johnny suspiciously. His yellow eye was still puffy, but getting better.

  “Hold it here… and here,” Johnny went on. “And pull like this.” Johnny demonstrated the technique, like Mr. Freitas had done so many times that you dreamed about it. When he was done, Johnny held the paddle out to David. “You try.”

  David pulled the towel off his shoulder and let it fall to the sand. Hesitantly, he took the paddle.

  “Listen to Duck-Young,” Johnny said. “He calls the switches. Mokes sets the pace. Follow those two guys… and listen to when Duck-Young says hut, hut. Follow that rhythm like it was your own heartbeat. Put your weight into the ocean and pull with everything you got. Power entry. Smooth pull. Whole body. And when you paddle, concentrate on only that. Your mind is just as important as your muscles.”