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My Kind of Town Don Chapman |
Eh, nice ballet, brah
>> Off Kona
Daren had been washing off all the loose hairs after shaving off his beard. He wore only a mask, snorkel and fins, and carried a spear gun in one hand, his favorite nylon neon lime swim shorts in the other with a big chunk of ahi in the Velcro-close side pocket. That's when the shark appeared in the moonlight.
As it charged, he dangled the shorts from the end of the spear gun like a matador teasing el toro with a red cape. He saw the shark's jaws open and, just before they chomped down, with a flick of the wrist let the shark bite his shorts in half and yanked the other half away. Happy for the moment with a mouthful of fabric and meat, the shark dived out of sight.
Daren was swimming quickly back to his boat when he heard two other voices in the water, saw two men swimming away from a sailboat. They'd board his boat, they'd agreed, lie in wait and kill him, and then share his millions with Sonya. They wouldn't make it nearly that far.
>> Kona
The sleepy little harbor erupted with activity as wave after wave of fishing boats from floating bastions to barely flotsam arrived, pretty much in that order. The fleet's entrance and progression through the harbor to individual slips, to the scales at the fish auction house on the other side of Mrs. Tamura's shop and to the Arco dock beyond that had a rhythm, a pulse, at first glance chaotic but always with direction. As Cruz walked along the dock toward Mrs. Tamura's, fishing boats and their crews seemed to perform a boisterous ballet. George Balanchine could have done the choreography.
Fishermen shouted from one boat to the next, calling greetings, gesturing wildly to express the bounty of the sea, flashing the shaka sign, sometimes just whooping and cheering indecipherably, and smiling and sweating with satisfaction as they off-loaded their catch.
Of course, you probably wouldn't want to tell a Big Island fisherman to his face that he looked like he was in a ballet.
Cruz was looking for Mano but mostly tried to stay out of the way until a 25-foot Boston Whaler slid toward the dock and a young Hawaiian man on board called "Eh, bruddah!" and tossed him a rope. He reversed the engine slightly and the worn and bristled nylon line pulled taut in Cruz's hands. He strained against the boat. The young fisherman killed the engine and leaped to the dock. "T'anks eh, bruddah," he said and looped the line around a post. "Mah frien' nevah come on time, so I wen' solo, huh?"
Cruz was rubbing his hands gingerly when a breathy little voice behind him called: "Good work, sailor."
"Sonya!"
See the Columnists section for some past articles.
Don Chapman is editor of MidWeek. His serialized novel runs daily in the Star-Bulletin. He can be e-mailed at dchapman@midweek.com
