Under the Blood-Red Sun Page 5

  “Let me see,” I said, tugging on Billy’s arm. The planes were almost to the boat.

  Just as the fighters reached us, the pilots wagged their wings, then pulled up. They climbed into the sky, circled stars under silver wings flashing down like lightning. The engines roared so loud, the air around the boat seemed to shake. The noise shivered through the decking, up through my feet and into my legs.

  “Hoo,” Papa said, shading his eyes with his hand as they headed past toward the island. “I wish this old tub had those engines.”

  The fighters faded toward the island landscape, gray specks losing themselves against the barely visible sugarcane and pineapple fields.

  “Probably heading for Wheeler Field,” Billy said, putting the binoculars back in the bag.

  “You see lots of those planes out here,” Sanji said. “Before, got one, two a week. But now, get maybe ten times that in one day. Bombye this whole island’s going be only army mens.”

  “It’s because of the war,” Billy said.

  “What war?”

  “The one in Europe, and China. That’s why we got so many ships and planes and soldiers here.”

  “But no more war here,” Sanji said.

  Billy frowned and looked back toward the island.

  The Crowded Sea

  We headed right into a swarm of seabirds circling and rising high into the sky, then falling to the sea, making small white explosions when they hit.

  “Those birds called noio,” Sanji said. “They feeding on those small fish you see flying from the water. But under them, is aku.”

  A school of flying fish the size of three baseball fields skipped over the sea in a frenzy, trying to escape the birds above and the feeding aku below. There were nine other boats already there, all Japanese sampans. Papa and the men on the other boats raised their chins to each other.

  “Aku?” Billy asked.

  “The haoles call ’um skipjack tuna,” Sanji said.

  Papa made a wide loop around the school and waited in their path. We would drift quietly toward them as they fed against the current. The other boats drifted, too, so they wouldn’t scare the fish down.

  When the action hit, flying fish started landing on deck. We could use them for bait if the aku didn’t go for the opelu we’d brought along. It was wild. I loved it when it got like that.

  “Tomi,” Papa said. “You and Billy use the buckets. We going use poles.”

  Sanji had cut the bait into raw strips while the sampan had chugged out to the birds. All you had to do was grab a chunk of opelu and stick it on the hook. When the fish were feeding like that you didn’t even have to worry about hiding the steel.

  Papa and Sanji grabbed the bamboo poles and tried fishing with no bait. Sometimes the aku went for the flashing silver.

  Bam!

  The aku hit.

  “Hooie!” Papa yelled. “They grab anything!”

  I ran for the two five-gallon buckets of line and gave one to Billy.

  “Put the bait on like this,” I said, stabbing a hook as big as my finger through a strip of opelu. I threw it over the side and let the sinker pull it down. “Maybe there are some yellowfins down there.”

  Something hit my bait within seconds, then sank like a boulder. The line whipped out of the bucket and I had to let it run freely. With a hand line there was just you and the line. No fishing pole to help you.

  Whatever had taken my bait was big. The line snapped out of the bucket. I couldn’t stop it. My hands were too soft, not thick and leathery like Papa’s. I grabbed a pair of canvas gloves.

  Billy dropped his bait over. Bam! Both our lines were popping over the side, going down, down … way down.

  “What do I do? What do I do?” Billy yelled, jumping around on the deck.

  “Get some gloves! Over there, by the mallet.”

  Billy got the gloves and yanked them on, then started slapping his hand down on the line. It wasn’t the way to stop it, but who cared. At a time like that you did what you could.

  I finally managed to get a grip on my line. The power on the other end was stronger than any twenty-pound aku. This one had to be more like a hundred, at least.

  The fish jerked away and the line ran through my gloves. It felt like it would saw right through and cut my fingers off.

  “Jeeze!” Billy said, the line leaping out of his bucket like it was alive.

  Again I managed to stop the run, wrapping the line once around my glove and hanging on, letting the fish know it was hooked, letting it calm down. Off to my right, I could see Papa and Sanji sailing akus over their heads like they were shoveling dirt. Papa’s wet arms bulged and glistened in the sun. There had to be at least thirty blue and silver skipjacks in the fish box and flopping around on the deck.

  “I can’t stop the line!” Billy yelled.

  “Just grab it,” I said. “Don’t worry, it won’t go through your gloves.”

  He had to stop it soon or it would take all day to haul that fish back up to the boat. The line made sawing sounds as it zipped away under Billy’s gloves. Finally he grabbed it, wincing. He was probably thinking about losing his fingers. That would end his pitching days.

  “Tomi,” Papa yelled. “Get the stick for Billy.… Put ’um in the side.”

  I kicked the Y-shaped stick over to Billy, a tough fork of kiawe wood worn smooth by years of fishing. “Put that in the hole in the side of the boat and wrap the line around it once.”

  Billy managed to get the line around the fork and stop the fish.

  “Criminy,” he said. “What’s on the other end of this?”

  “Something bigger than those things Papa and Sanji are catching,” I said. “Mine too.”

  While Billy rested, I worked at pulling my fish up, inch by inch, dropping the line back into the bucket. Even through the gloves I could feel its smallest movements racing like electricity up the line and into my fingers. I stared down into the blue-black ocean for a glimpse of silver.

  Nothing.

  Papa and Sanji were soaked in sweat and seawater, and still pulling up akus like they were picking stones out of a garden. They didn’t say a word to each other. Akus thunked on the deck behind me. Some slid over and flapped around my feet.

  Billy tried pulling in on his line, but had to rest every few minutes. “Whatever this is,” he said, “it weighs more than a truck.”

  It took me about ten minutes to get my fish near the boat. When I first saw it shimmering below, I thought it was small. But it grew larger as I pulled it closer. I could see flashing silver, and dark blue, and a bright yellow line.

  “I got an ahi,” I yelled over to Papa, who suddenly appeared at my side.

  “They gone,” he said, meaning the school. I looked up and could see the birds swarming off about a quarter mile. The other boats were scattered now, some following the school. I hadn’t even seen them leave.

  Sanji threw the akus into the fish box. Papa got the ones by my feet and tossed them across the deck toward him, then brought the hardwood mallet, the gaff, and a knife over by me. “When you get ’um close, I grab the line.”

  My fingers were cramping and about to fall off. Every time the yellowfin got close to the boat it jerked away, the line slipping through my fingers. It kept kicking, and bolting, taking about twenty feet of line every time. But I could feel it losing power.

  I finally got it to where it was just below the gunwale. Papa leaned over and wrapped the line around his bare hand. With the gaff in the other hand, he hooked the curved steel under the gill. The yellowfin went crazy, flapping in the water, soaking the deck. Papa’s face turned red as he pulled up on the gaff, trying to get the fish’s head far enough out of the water to club it. He let go of the line and grabbed the mallet and whacked down.

  Bok! Bok! Bok! Bok! Bok! Papa straining, water splashing and flying all over the place.

  My claw-shaped fingers felt like they’d never open again.

  Finally the yellowfin shivered and stopped slappin
g at the water. Power drained from its dying body. Papa threw down the mallet and grabbed the razor-sharp fish knife by his feet. In one quick motion, he cut a long slice under the tuna’s gills. Brilliant red blood streamed into the blue water. A dark cloud spread around the side of the boat. You had to bleed a big fish like that after a fight, so the hot blood wouldn’t burn the meat.

  Finally Papa dragged it on board. It flopped to the deck, still shuddering. The beauty of those fish always amazed me. Glistening silver sides with a blue-black top and brilliant yellow fins. Fat and firm, like a hundred-pound bag of rice. It was a shame to take them from the sea, but I never said that in front of Papa or Sanji.

  “Hoo,” Papa said, then whistled. “I think maybe eighty, eighty-five pounds.”

  Sanji threw seawater on the deck to wash away the fish slime. “Not bad, Tomi,” he said. “Someday maybe you going be good like your daddy, yeah?”

  I dragged the yellowfin over and shoved it into the fish box.

  “So what you waiting for? Pull ’um up,” Sanji said to Billy, who looked as sorry as a sick dog. I guess I would have felt like that, too, if my fish was that far down. The line in his bucket was almost gone. Billy looped it around his glove and tried tugging it up. It moved, but not much. I shook my head, but kept my mouth shut. He probably had a couple hundred yards to pull back to the boat. Billy inched it in a little more, then rested.

  “Let me feel ’um,” Papa said. He pulled on Billy’s line, shaking his head. “This one … chee … this one went straight down.” Papa looked over at Sanji and winked. “You think this boy can pull ’um?”

  “I don’t know.… He tall, but skinny. What you think, Tomi?”

  “Well …”

  Billy glowered over at me.

  “Shoot, yeah,” I said. “Of course he can pull it up.”

  “Okay,” Papa said, letting go of the line. “Bring ’um in … but no take all day, yeah? Plenty more fish to catch, still yet.”

  It took about five hours.

  It would have taken almost that long just to pull the line back up, even with no fish on it, because the pressure down there was so strong. Even for Sanji or Papa.

  The sun had dropped below the bright gold horizon by the time Papa and Sanji reached over the side and hauled Billy’s fish onto the boat—another yellowfin, almost twice the size of the one I caught. It was already dead, so Papa didn’t have to club it.

  But dead or not, Billy did it. And even though Papa and Sanji acted like they were irritated by missing out on more fishing, they let Billy finish the job. From the beginning they knew it would take that long.

  “That’s why you gotta stop the line,” Papa said. Billy looked like he was about to pass out. Papa grinned and ruffled his hair. “Put ’um in the box.”

  When it was all over, and Billy’s fish was squashing all the other fish in the fish box, Sanji reached out and shook Billy’s hand. “How you feel, haole boy?”

  “Like something Tomi’s dog coughed up.”

  Sanji laughed and said, “If was me, I cut the damn line, already.”

  • • •

  We laid sleeping mats out on the open deck, the Taiyo Maru rocking easily. Everyone was too tired to do any night fishing, so we decided to rest awhile.

  Papa broke out Mama’s bento, which means “lunch,” and it was extra good, because we had Billy as our guest. Musubi, sticky rice wrapped in seaweed, with ume inside. Ume, which is the best part, is a small red pickled plum. So good when you finally reach it in the middle. Even Billy liked it. In fact he ate three of them. And Mama had also put in some shoyu aku, marinated to perfection. And to top it off, she made tamagoyaki, which is grilled egg shaped like little square cookies. Put all that together with the cool, fresh drinking water and you had a feast. Billy was converted. He said that after a roasting day of hard work it tasted like heaven itself. For me, I could see the magokoro, all the love and attention Mama put into making it for us. For a moment, I missed her.

  The sea was quiet and smooth, with only long, slow swells moving under the boat. The deck smelled like fish and wet wood. Above, the night was loaded with stars, the dippers and planets that Mr. Ramos talked about in class. Some of them blinked and looked like they were on fire, even with a three-quarter moon rising.

  I drank about a gallon of water and fell asleep thinking about the universe, and wondering if anyone lived up there. Then I got to thinking about the pigeons and home and Lucky, and when she would have her puppies.

  I woke up around three or four in the morning to the sound of mumbling voices. The stars had lost a lot of their brightness, and the night air was cooler. But the moon was so clear and white it looked fake. It shot a bright reflection across the ocean, like a bridge to the boat.

  “Yeah, yeah,” Sanji said. “I can see ’urn.… Chee, I never knew had mountains.” He was sitting next to Billy on the fish box, studying the moon through Billy’s binoculars. Papa was asleep near the deckhouse.

  “Turn the eyepiece to focus it better,” Billy said.

  For a while, Sanji worked the eyepiece in silence. Then, still looking through the binoculars, he said, “You work hard today.… I thought you would only watch.”

  Billy didn’t answer.

  “Hey,” Sanji went on, putting the binoculars down. “You know what? You the first haole I ever talk to in my life.… Can you believe that?”

  “Really?” Billy said.

  “No joke.”

  “How come?”

  “I don’t know.…” He paused a moment, then said, “I never went school like you and Tomi … just played around the boats until I was old enough to work. I learn to talk English from one Portagee I was working with at Tuna Packers.”

  “Well, you’re the first fisherman I’ve ever heard say he’d cut the line with a fish on it,” Billy said.

  Sanji laughed. “I guess that’s the difference between Japanee and haole. I don’t fish for fun.”

  “You call what I did fun?”

  Sanji laughed again and slapped Billy on the back. “You okay—what you said your name was?”

  “Billy.”

  “Oh, yeah, Billy … like billy goat.”

  “Yeah.” Billy put his hands behind him on the fish box and leaned back.

  Sanji picked up the binoculars again and raised them to the moon. He and Billy were two dark silhouettes against a silver sea.

  “Chee,” Sanji whispered, still amazed by the big white ball he saw through Billy’s binoculars. “Chee.”

  The next day, on the way back to the island, we watched another fishing boat going out. It passed pretty close to us. You could see three men working around the deck. Billy waved at them, but they ignored him.

  “They not going wave at you,” Sanji said.

  “Why not?”

  “Hawaiian boat … they no like Japanee boat.”

  “Why?”

  Sanji shook his head. “Before, had only Hawaiian boats.… Now got mostly Japanee boats … and a pretty crowded sea.”

  When the boat passed by, Papa stared straight ahead, toward the harbor. He didn’t even glance at it.

  • • •

  Papa sold everything we caught, except for Billy’s yellowfin, which me and Billy put between us in the back of Sanji’s truck. Papa covered it with a wet burlap bag to keep it cool.

  When we got up to our house, Billy and I dragged it out of the truck, hauled it up the trail, and took it around back by the water tank. We set it down on a patch of grass. Billy wiped his hands on his pants and rubbed his arms. “No way that thing’s only a hundred fifty pounds.”

  “I know. Feels more like eight hundred.”

  Papa got his fish-cleaning knife from the kitchen and made a long razor-thin slit along the belly, beginning just behind the gills. The skin separated and guts started to spill out onto the grass. Sanji squatted on his heels and watched, waiting for a piece of tuna to take home.

  “You take some fish, too, Billy,” Sanji said. “Cook ’um wi
th lemon.”

  The setting sun burned through the trees and stretched long shadows across the yard. Everything that wasn’t in shadows was golden, even Lucky, who I had to keep pushing away from the guts with my foot.

  Papa was scraping out the stomach cavity when Keet and his father showed up.

  “Good evening, Wilson-sama,” Papa said, quickly standing. He bowed to Mr. Wilson, a smooth, polite gesture, one arm wet to the elbow with fish slime and bits of blood.

  Mr. Wilson half-bowed back. “That’s a mighty fine-looking yellowfin you got there, Taro.”

  “Unhhh,” Papa grunted in agreement. “Billy got this one.”

  “No kidding,” Keet said. “You really caught that, Billy?”

  Billy nodded with his shy grin. “Yeah.”

  “Mighty fine, boy, mighty fine,” Mr. Wilson said again, tapping Billy’s shoulder. He shook his head in amazement, then said, “Well, the boy and I are just out for a walk around the property.”

  Keet and his father started to walk away. Sometimes Mr. Wilson was okay, but you never knew.

  “Wait,” Papa said. “Come. Take some fish. Good, this kind, you know. I cut you some.”

  Mr. Wilson turned back and raised his eyebrows. “Well, that would be damn nice of you, Taro.”

  Papa cut away a huge slab and handed it to me. “Take inside, Tomi. Rinse off and put inside rice bag.”

  I took it into the kitchen and washed it while Mama rummaged around for a rice bag. She found one and wrapped the meat neatly. I took it back out and handed it to Keet.

  Keet reached for it with a slight smile, but averted his eyes. Maybe he was embarrassed for me to see him being like a nice person. “Thanks,” he said.

  “Sure.”

  Mr. Wilson put his hand on Keet’s shoulder. “Let’s go. Better get that in the icebox.”

  Keet nodded, then walked away backward, looking at me and Billy. He flicked his eyebrows and grinned. Billy waved and Keet turned, lifting the slab of fish to his shoulder on the palm of his hand.

  Papa winked at Billy. “You nice to give away that fish.”

  “No problem,” Billy said, and I laughed.