Blue Skin of the Sea (2 page)

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 first 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 buoy, 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.

He pulled himself into the skiff. My heart thumped in my chest like waves whomping at the seawall. He’d been
bit!

“That one … got by me … ” Dad said after he caught his breath. “Caught him … while he was asleep … Didn’t even know he was there.”

“What
was
it?” I asked.

Dad let his breathing slow and didn’t answer right away. I searched his body for a cut, a sting, but found nothing.

“Manta ray,” he finally said. “They don’t bother people … but they can sure scare the hell out of you.” Dad began adjusting the strap on his face mask, his breathing still heavy.

“I want you to come down with me,” he said as if nothing had happened. He put the face mask on my head and pulled the glass down over my eyes. “Come on, let’s go take a look.”

I ripped the mask off and he put it back on again.

“But … but the
manta ray
… ” I said.

The vision of Dad backing away from the whip stayed with me—the explosion, the Hashing tail, and the plume of dust billowing outward. The image kept repeating: explosion, Dad reeling, explosion, Dad reeling.
Don’t ever do that again, hoy!

“Don’t worry about him,” Dad said. “Rays don’t bother people, they’re peaceful. And besides, he’s probably half a mile down the coast by now.”

I pulled the mask off again and peered into the glass-bottom box one more time. The ray was gone. Dad patiently put the mask back on me and told me to breathe through my mouth. He looked fuzzy through the glass. I felt like I was peering out into a world where I didn’t belong.

He dropped over the side of the skiff and held his arms up for me, barely moving, his fins sustaining him, as if he were standing on the bottom. I held on to the seat. If Keo had been there he’d have jumped in on his own, and I’d watch him from the skiff, wobbling his way down to the bottom. He wouldn’t quite make it, but he’d tell me he did.

“Don’t try to swim,” Dad said, “just take a big breath and
hold it. Then sink down with me. Don’t worry, I’ll bring you back up”

The world went silent as we sank. The mask pushed in on my face and small streams of water dripped in at my temples. The ocean filled my ears and pressed in painfully. We floated in an air of watery space with a crackling, snapping, buzzing sound all around us. A small puddle began to gather in the mask, below my nose, nearly panicking me.

But for a moment I looked beyond the puddle, amazed at the islands of coral that broke the sandy ocean floor. Silent fish circled and hung in small schools far beneath my feet, their backs dark and bullet shaped. A huge parrot fish nibbled at the edge of a mass of coral, then suddenly darted away and sailed to a stop farther out.

Off toward even deeper water, where everything turned fuzzy and shadowy blue, the long, ghostly chain of the buoy sank to a grayish slab of mossy concrete.

Dad turned slowly, so that I could see all the way around. The undersea world seemed to rush at me, like a towering wave slamming the shore and racing up the sand.