Blue Skin of the Sea Read online

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  FRESH GIRL, Jaïra Placide

  RED PALMS, Cara Haycak

  TAYLOR FIVE, Ann Halam

  DAUGHTER OF VENICE, Donna Jo Napoli

  THE CHOCOLATE WAR, Robert Cormier

  EVA, Peter Dickinson

  ALSO BY

  GRAHAM SALISBURY

  UNDER THE BLOOD-RED SUN

  EYES OF THE EMPEROR

  HOUSE OF THE RED FISH

  LORD OF THE DEEP

  SHARK BAIT

  For Robyn, Sandi, Miles, Ashley, Melanie,

  Alex, and Keenan. And, of course, Anno,

  Pato, Carol, Rex, and Loriann.

  “When you cannot find peace in yourself it

  is useless to look for it elsewhere.”

  La Rochefoucauld

  Many thanks to my good friends and

  mentors: William Melvin Kelley, Diane

  Lefer, Pamela Painter, Gladys Swan,

  Wendy Lamb, Emilie Jacobson, and

  Marian Biscay, with a special note of

  gratitude to Alex Haley, whose extraor

  dinary book, Roots, transformed me into a

  voracious lifetime reader.

  1 Deep Water (1953)

  2 Malanamekahuluohemanu (1956)

  3 The Old Man (1957)

  4 The Year of the

  Black Widows (1958)

  5 Get Mister Red a Beer (1959)

  6 You Would Cry to See

  Waiakea Town (1960)

  7 Uncharted Waters (1961)

  8 The Boy in the Shadow (1962)

  9 Blue Skin of the Sea (1963)

  10 Rudy’s Girl (1965)

  11 Islanders (1966)

  A noon-high Hawaiian sun poured over the jungled flanks of the Big Island, spreading down into the village of Kailua-Kona and the blistering metal bed of Uncle Harley’s fish truck. Keo and I sat across from each other on black rubber inner tubes that Uncle Harley, Keo’s father, had gotten for us at the Chevron station in Holualoa. It was so hot you could lick your finger and make wet lines on the tubes, then watch them disappear in a matter of seconds.

  I’d wanted to stay up at the house with Aunty Pearl, where it was cooler, and shoot cardboard boxes with Keo’s new BB gun. But Keo wanted to go down to the harbor with Uncle Harley and go swimming. “And if you don’t come with me,” he said, “HI never let you shoot the BBgun.”

  Uncle Harley pulled up under a grove of palm trees at the far end of the village, where the pier was. Before the truck had even stopped, Keo leaped out and raced through the trees to the small, sandy cove on the back side of the pier. He ran into the ocean until he fell, then swam out to deep water.

  I threw the tubes out of the truck and ran down behind him, but held back when the water reached my waist.

  Uncle Harley backed the truck out of the trees and started to drive out onto the pier. Then he stopped, and yelled. “Hey! You boys stay in the shallow part.” But Keo had gone under. The glassy water barely rippled where he had been.

  “Sonny,” Uncle Harley said, scowling down at me. “Tell him to stay in the shallow part.” He shook his head and drove away.

  I stared at the spot where I’d last seen Keo, waiting for him to surface. The wide rock and concrete pier stretched off to my left, then elbowed out toward open sea, just past a small boat landing on the cove side. Dad’s small skiff dozed at its mooring a short distance out.

  Keo finally popped up far from where he’d gone under. “Come on,” he yelled. “It’s fun out here.” When I didn’t move he made chicken sounds, yelling “buk-buk-bu-gock!” and pretending to flap a pair of wings.

  He knew I was afraid of deep water. At seven, Keo was fearless. Dad was like that, too, and I wanted to be like them so much my head hurt just thinking about it. It just came to them naturally, like breathing. I was chicken, just like Keo said. But why? I tried and tried and tried. I was six, only a year younger than Keo, and I still couldn’t swim.

  “Kay-o, Kay-o what do you say-o,” I yelled back. Uncle Raz sometimes said that, and Keo didn’t like it.

  I waded out to shoulder depth and copied the way Keo swam, like a dog, only I stayed close to the beach in water just shallow enough to kick the bottom with one foot whenever I started to sink.

  Keo swam in to shore and ran up to get the tubes, his glistening back several shades darker than mine, because his mother, Aunty Pearl, had Hawaiian blood. I was Portuguese-French.

  Keo brought both tubes back and ringed one out to me. I dropped it over my head and hooked my arms over an inner curve, then followed Keo out into the cove toward the small boat landing. With the tubes we were equals, and for the moment I splashed along beside him, forgetting Uncle Harley’s warning to stay in the shallows.

  “Hey.” Keo pointed to the opening between the pier and the end of the breakwater.

  Dad’s small, blue and orange sampan disappeared on the far side of the pier. Its old diesel engine tok-tok-tok-tokked slowly into the harbor, sounding slightly muffled when it slipped from view.

  My heart thumped against the tube. Even then, six years into my life, Dad was still a mystery, a quiet shadowy man. I saw him every afternoon when the boats came in, but I didn’t really know him. I didn’t even live with him because my mother had died when I was a baby. I lived with Keo and his parents, my Aunty Pearl and Uncle Harley.

  I started back to shore to go out on the pier, following Keo. Why had Dad come in so early? I stopped kicking and let the tube drift. If Dad had seen us in the deep part, I’d be in for it.

  “Wait,” I said.

  “What?”

  “Let’s go catch crabs on the rocks.”

  “What for? Let’s go to the boat.”

  “Naah, more fun to catch crabs.”

  Keo scowled at me, but he turned and kicked over toward the rocks anyway.

  A half hour later Dad buzzed into the cove in his skiff, his sampan cleaned and moored in the bay. He shut the engine down and let the skiff glide in to the beach, tilting the outboard up so the propeller wouldn’t scrape the sand.

  Keo slogged through the shallows and caught the bow. “Take us for a ride, Uncle Raymond/’

  “Not today, Keo. Sonny and I have something to do.”

  Dad smiled at me. “We’re going swimming.”

  Out of the corner of my eye, I saw Keo look over at me, but I pretended not to notice.

  “But Uncle Raymond,” Keo said. “Sonny can’t swim. He’s chicken” I glanced up at Dad, then looked away when our eyes met.

  “There was a time, Keo, when you were chicken, too,” Dad said. His words were sharp, like fishhooks. “Go play by yourself for a while—we’ll be back in an hour or so.”

  Keo stared at Dad, his mouth slightly open. Neither of us had ever heard Dad sound so angry. It took a lot to get him upset.

  Dad threw me the small orange life preserver I always wore in the skiff. “Put this on,” he said.

  I climbed into the boat and sat in the center seat. Dad’s fins and face mask were under the rear seat beside the glass-bottom box he’d made for me, my window to the ocean floor.

  “Keo, push us out,” Dad said.

  Keo gave the skiff a shove and watched it glide away from the beach. Dad lowered the engine, then pulled the cord easily and kicked it over in one short motion.

  As we moved out of the cove, I glanced back and watched Keo race out to the end of the pier. When we broke into the harbor Keo watched us like a puppy, pacing, then stopping, then pacing again.

  My father was a fisherman, as his father had been. And before him, Great-grampa Mendoza, who firs
t came to the islands from Portugal to work cattle on the north end of the island, but ended up working the ocean instead.

  And now Dad fished the same waters, day after sunbaked day with his sampan, usually without even a half day of rest in between. When the fish were running every boat in the harbor went out. When the fish were silent the pier was lazy with waiting fishermen.

  Once I asked Dad where the fish went when they weren’t biting.

  “They run in schools, thousands of them, all over the place,” he said, waving his hand out toward the horizon. “They follow the currents.”

  I pictured schools of monkeypod leaves shimmering in tree-top canopies, turning together in the trade winds.

  “When the currents hit the islands,” he went on, “they break up and swirl around the reefs. That’s where the food is, in the reefs. All kinds of fish come around—marlin, obi, mahimabi, ono, opakapaka.” Dad watched my face as I listened. Then he smiled and rubbed his hand over my head. “To know where to find them, Sonny—that’s the trick.”

  I whispered “opakapaka” over and over, until I could say it as well as Dad.

  I couldn’t remember the first time Dad took me out in the skiff. My memories of being bundled up in the life vest went back to a point, then it all got confusing, my thoughts always turning fuzzy, shadowy. They came to me in pieces, parts of a strange puzzle. I didn’t know if they were real or part of a dream I’d had a long time ago. I’d get these glimpses when I least expected it, but never enough to make any sense.

  I moved to the bow with my face to the sea, piercing the air as we moved through it. Dark blotches of giant coral heads loomed in the sand below. The sides of Dad’s wooden skiff hummed through my fingers under the buzz of the old, silver, ten-horse Mercury.

  He was taking me to a secret cove, I thought, somewhere along the coast, a place where only the two of us existed. I hoped it would be a shallow spot, a beach with no waves.

  The whine of the outboard echoed out over the empty harbor. Dad almost had to shout for me to hear him. “When I was a small boy,” he said, “your grampa made me and your two uncles jump off the end of the pier. We had to swim back by ourselves. Your uncle Raz was even younger than you are. Harley could already swim pretty good, but Raz and I couldn’t even dog paddle. Scared the hell out of me. But we learned to swim, all right. Or else he would have let us sink. He was pretty tough, your grampa.”

  I couldn’t remember much of Grampa Mendoza, only that he’d once made a nickel go through my head, from one ear to the other. He didn’t visit us very much. He and Tutu Mendoza had moved to the island of Oahu before I was born.

  “You’ve got to learn how to swim as well as you know how to walk,” Dad went on. He pointed out to sea with his chin. “Looks peaceful, huh?” I turned and blinked, the horizon low, and far away. “Well, it is—now,” he said. “But there will be times when it will try to kill you.”

  When we reached the farthest mooring from the pier, Dad slowed the skiff and pointed to the buoy. I grabbed the white, beachball-sized float as Dad cut the engine.

  “Far as we go, son …. It’s time.”

  I stared at him, and he studied me with his earth-brown eyes.

  “You ready?”

  I shrugged, and Dad laughed. The ocean moved through the thin wooden hull under my bare feet as I stood facing him.

  Dad removed my life vest and pulled me up next to him. Being in the skiff without the vest on sent a shiver through me. I searched for something to hang on to, but Dad’s arm was pliant and smooth, and not at all secure.

  “You can do it,” he whispered. Then slowly, working against my tightening grip, Dad lowered me into the water.

  My whole body surged with a wave of fear, my arms and legs shaking. I clawed at Dad, leaving red lines down his arms. A school of small gray fish that was gathered around the buoy turned in a simultaneous wave and rushed off. I raked the air and scratched at Dad and fumbled around the side of the skiff, but quickly gave it up to grab the float.

  I took short, shallow gulps of air that made me dizzy, kicking wildly and trying to climb up on the buoy. The ocean below felt a thousand fathoms deep. I could feel it sucking at me, reaching up, pulling down, pulling down.

  Dad took the oar and paddled the skiff off about twenty feet. “Swim to me,” he called.

  The buoy kept turning and popping out beside me. My fingers slipped and I grabbed the mossy chain that sank to the sand below. My legs searched frantically for the right moves, but my head kept sinking under. The salty ocean stung my eyes and filled my mouth.

  I yelled to Dad between gulps of air and water, but he wouldn’t come back for me. I caught glimpses of him sitting calmly in the skiff through my splashing and churning. He seemed so far away.

  “Relax, Sonny, don’t work so hard.”

  While he waited for me to settle down he dropped the glass-bottom box over the side and looked into it. Sharks, eels, and stingrays raced through my mind and gathered like ghosts around my legs. I pulled my feet up close to me, but had to let them down again to kick.

  I let go of the buoy and tried to swim to the skiff the way I pretended to swim in the cove with Keo when I kicked the sandy bottom. Now, my foot sank, and pulled me down with it. Water raced into my mouth and gagged me.

  I pulled myself back up and clawed the sea, arms and legs reaching, and finding nothing. I began to sink again, sucking for air and taking in large, painful gulps of water. I tried to scream but couldn’t. My legs and arms felt like dead rubber, my hands … my …

  Then I hit something solid.

  The oar.

  Dad had reached out so I could grab the blade. I pulled it close and climbed it hand over hand to the skiff, moving fast and deliriously. Dad reached out and pulled me aboard like a fresh-caught fish.

  I sat opposite him in the bow, shivering with adrenaline, muscles sapped and shuddering, dripping, and coughing.

  Don’t ever do that again, boy! Never! The sudden dream-.memory ran through my mind, settling nowhere. But coming from where? Don’t ever … Don’t ever …

  My jaw wouldn’t stop quivering.

  After I caught my breath I glanced in toward the pier. Keo was standing on the ruxxi of someone’s Jeep with his hand shading his eyes, watching. I was glad he couldn’t see my legs shaking and catch the fear in my eyes.

  Dad sat waiting, bent forward with his elbows on his knees. “You did fine,” he said. “Fake a rest.” He paused. “Your mother would be proud of you, Sonny. But she never would have approved. She called your grampa barbaric when I told her how I learned to swim. She was a good swimmer, though, better than me. And you would have learned a couple of years ago if she’d been around.”

  I tried not to look at Dad, wanting him to think I was still too tired to go back in the water. But he fell silent. When I peeked up and saw him staring at his hands I knew he was thinking about my mother. He had a habit of studying them whenever he thought of things that couldn’t be explained, or things that refused to be put to rest.

  Aunty Pearl had told me about my mother when I started asking why I lived with Keo and Uncle Harley and her, and not with my father in his house down by the ocean. She told me my mother had died just a few months after I was born. I understood that she was gone, and that I would never see her. But why couldn’t I live with Dad?

  “Your daddy is always out fishing,” Aunty Pearl had said. “What could he do with a baby, anyway. And I loved taking care of you.” She’d put her hand on my face. It was hot, but I liked it. I tried to picture Dad holding a baby, but couldn’t. Aunty Pearl was probably right about that part. “Oh Sonny,” she went on, “your mama was so beautiful … pure-blooded French, with skin as smooth as oriental silk. She made me feel like I was important to her—she’d look right into my eyes whenever we talked. We all loved her … But your daddy hurt the most. It’s the only time I’ve ever seen him cry. He would have done anything for her. Anything.”

  Dad paddled the skiff back to the buo
y, and again dropped me over the side. The ocean engulfed me, with only my head above the surface, from my chin up. This time I held the float and let my legs sink, feeling the smallest hint of confidence. I strained to find Keo on the pier, but he was gone.

  I shook away thoughts of eels or sharks below me in the water, and concentrated on Dad. Again I let go of the buoy and splashed my way through the placid afternoon sea, fighting the relentless downward pull.

  Dad made me swim to the skiff from the buoy over and over and over, until I had no strength left in me. Every now and then he would yell a word of encouragement, and always, when I reached the skiff, pull me aboard and let me rest.

  Each time, while he waited for my breathing to slow, he searched the ocean floor through the glass-bottom box. After what must have been my tenth trip from the buoy, he called me to take a look at the heel of an old green bottle he’d spotted sticking out of the sand on the bottom. Then he pointed out the faint thread of a trail, looking as if someone had taken their finger and traced a thin line in the sand far below.

  “Sometimes when you dig around the end of those trails,” he said, “you can find a shell.”

  Dad slipped into the water and appeared below me. He dove as effortlessly as a porpoise, as much a part of the sea as he was of the land. I tried to hold my breath as long as he did, but it was impossible.

  I held the glass-bottom box as still as I could and watched as he approached the trail from behind, slowly moving his hand under the sand, like slipping it under a sheet, searching for the buried shell.

  The sandy bottom around Dad suddenly exploded, turning into a cloud of undersea dust, rising upward, shooting outward. Dad struggled backward, frantically reversing himself, trying to get away. I saw a whiplike shape slash by his chest, narrowly missing him. From the growing cloud a huge, winged creature that had buried itself in the sand burst forth and shot away from where Dad floundered. It soared out, the fastest thing Td ever seen under water. Then it circled back in a wide arc, diamond-shaped, with two hornlike arms sticking out in front, and a thin tail flowing out behind. Dad rose to the surface, the dust cloud spreading outward below him, and moving beyond the corners of the glass-bottom box.