Island Boyz
For all the guys I kicked around with in Kaneohe, Kailua, Honolulu, Kailua-Kona, Hilo, and Kamuela.
You inspire me still.
Bobby, Terry, Roger, Freddie, Dale, Dickie, Dougie, Mark, Gordie, Kenny, Mike, Charlie, Junior, David, Guy, Johnny, Keoki, Wayne, Spooks, Ata, Kit, Tommy, Curtis, Barry, Monty, Larry, Pini, James, Jamie, Jim, Jimmy, Sam, Ipo, Reggie, Robin, I.J., Gene, Robster, Vic, Ernie, Peter, Frank, Leland, Henry, Steve, George, Jerome, Robby, Tuck, Mel, Curt, Frosty, Tioni, Chuckie, Chris, Bill, Willy, DoveBeak, Koki, and Keo.
Island boyz.
Lucky us.
Island Boyz
we wore rubber slippers
and boroboro clothes
biked to the beach with
boards under our arms
surfed our brains out
hour after hour after hour
got out with useless rubbery arms
stole papayas
right off somebody’s tree
broke them open
savaged them into our mouths
hoping to calm our raging hunger
nothing could beat
papayas after the ocean
sometimes we bounced down
dusty back roads in
the bed of somebody’s
beat-up old pickup
joking and laughing or saying nothing
sitting back there on old tires
and crushed cardboard boxes
sometimes telling stupid jokes
or bragging about
whatever we could dredge up
or make up
nodding to the thumping
radio in the cab
and then when the sun
lay low on the sea
we wandered down
to the harbor
to drink from
corroded spigots on the pier
icy clear water
tangy like iron
swiping our dripping chins
on the shoulder of our T-shirts and
watching the fishing boats
crawl home with fish flags flying
deckhands standing cool
on the bow with rope in their hands
man-oh-man did I dream
of one day
standing like that
so cool
so important
often just after
the green flash of sunset
we spread out on the rocks
at the edge of the sea
with guitars and baritone ukes
and cold sweaty-canned drinks
talking low
feeling tall
dreaming of girls
of love
and nothing could possibly
have touched that
in the starry black night
we sat under palm trees
talking story
getting dizzy on punchy laughter
probably looking to anyone
who might have seen us
like some weird tribe
of little half men
poi dogs
haole
hawaiian
japanese
chinese
filipino
portuguese
korean
tongan
samoan
whatever
a strange brew mixed by sun
salt and seawater
idiots and geniuses
friends who stood by you
no matter what
yeah
and if luck paid us a visit
we lingered long on the beach
deep into the night
with girls we didn’t deserve
girls who smelled like plumerias
and spoke in whispers
that tickled our ears
whose soft cheeks
sent us reeling
and that was best of all
the girls
on the beach
at night
we drifted home late
one by one
waving
nodding
tomorrow brah
to houses ruled by
cock-a-roaches
centipedes
cane spiders
fat black flies
mosquitoes
and crawled blissfully into bed
to sleep like stones
hardly noticing the bugs
and anyway who cared
not us
no never us
island boyz
not boys
boyz
I would not have
traded places
with anyone
not even
God
The Ravine
When Vinny and three
others dropped down into the ravine, they entered a jungle thick with tangled trees and rumors of what might have happened to the dead boy’s body.
The muddy trail was slick and dangerous, especially in places where it had fallen away. The cool breeze that swept the Hawaiian hillside pastures above died early in the descent.
There were four of them—Vinny; his best friend, Joe-Boy; Mo who was afraid of nothing, and Joe-Boy’s haole girlfriend, Starlene, all fifteen. It was a Tuesday in July, two weeks and a day after the boy had drowned. If, in fact, that’s what had happened to him.
Vinny slipped, and dropped his towel in the mud. He picked it up and tried to brush it off, but instead smeared the mudspot around until the towel looked like something his dog had slept on. “Tst,” he said.
Joe-Boy, hiking down just behind him, laughed.
“Hey, Vinny, just think, that kid walked where you walking.”
“Shuddup,” Vinny said.
“You prob’ly stepping right where his foot was.”
Vinny moved to the edge of the trail where the ravine fell through a twisted jungle of gnarly trees and underbrush to the stream far below.
Joe-Boy laughed again. “You such a queen, Vinny. You know that?”
Vinny could see Starlene and Mo farther ahead, their heads bobbing as they walked, both almost down to the pond where the boy had died.
“Hey,” Joe-Boy went on, “maybe you going be the one to find his body.”
“You don’t cut it out, Joe-Boy, I going . . . I going . . .”
“What? Cry?”
Vinny scowled. Sometimes Joe-Boy was a big fat babooze.
They slid down the trail. Mud oozed between Vinny’s toes. He grabbed at roots and branches to keep from falling. Mo and Starlene were out of sight now, the trail ahead having cut back.
Joe-Boy said, “You going jump in the water and go down and your hand going touch his face, stuck under the rocks.
Hahaha . . . ahahaha!
”
Vinny winced. He didn’t want to be here. It was too soon, way too soon. Two weeks and one day.
He saw a footprint in the mud and stepped around it.
The dead boy had jumped and had never come back up. Four search-and-rescue divers hunted for two days straight and never found him. Gave Vinny the creeps. It didn’t make sense. The pond wasn’t that big.
He wondered why it didn’t seem to bother anyone else. Maybe it did, and they just didn’t want to say.
Butchie was the kid’s name. Only fourteen.
Fourteen.
Two weeks and one day ago he was walking down this trail. Now, nobody could find him.
The jungle crushed in, reaching over the trail, and Vinny brushed leafy branches aside. The roar of the waterfall got louder, louder.
Starlene said it was the goddess that took him, the one that lives in the stone down by the road. She did that every now and then, Starlene said, took somebody when she got lonely. Took him and kept him. Vinny had heard that legend before, but he’d never believed in it.
Now he didn’t know what he believed.
The body had to be stuck down there. But still, four divers and they couldn’t find it?
Vinny decided he’d better believe in the legend. If he didn’t, the goddess might get mad and send him bad luck. Or maybe take
him,
too.
Stopstopstop! Don’t think like that.
“Come on,” Joe-Boy said, nudging Vinny from behind. “Hurry it up.”
Just then, Starlene whooped, her voice bouncing around the walls of the ravine.
“Let’s
go,
” Joe-Boy said. “They there already.”
Moments later Vinny jumped up onto a large boulder at the edge of the pond. Starlene was swimming out in the brown water. It wasn’t murky brown but clean and clear to a depth of maybe three or four feet. Because of the waterfall you had to yell if you wanted to say something. The whole place smelled of mud and ginger and iron.
Starlene swam across to the waterfall on the far side of the pond and ducked under it, then climbed out and edged along the rock wall behind it, moving slowly, like a spider. Above, sun-sparkling stream water spilled over the lip of a one-hundred-foot drop.
Mo and Joe-Boy threw their towels onto the rocks and dove into the pond. Vinny watched, his muddy towel hooked around his neck. Reluctantly he let it fall, then dove in after them.
The cold mountain water tasted tangy. Was it because the boy’s body was down there decomposing? He spat it out.
He followed Joe-Boy and Mo to the waterfall and ducked under it. They climbed up onto the rock ledge, just as Starlene had done, then spidered their way over to where you could climb to a small ledge about fifteen feet up. They took their time, because the hand- and footholds were slimy with moss.
Starlene jumped first. Her shriek echoed off the rocky cliff, then died in the dense green jungle.
Mo jumped, then Joe-Boy, then Vinny.
The fifteen-foot ledge was not the problem.
It was the one above it, the one you had to work up to, the big one, where you had to take a deadly zigzag trail that climbed up and away from the waterfall, then cut back and forth to a foot-wide ledge something more like fifty feet up.
That was the problem.
That was where the boy had jumped from.
Joe-Boy and Starlene swam out to the middle of the pond. Mo swam back under the waterfall and climbed once again to the fifteen-foot ledge.
Vinny started to swim out toward Joe-Boy but stopped when he saw Starlene put her arms around him. She kissed him. They sank under for a long time, then came back up, still kissing.
Joe-Boy saw Vinny looking and winked. “You like that, Vinny? Watch, I show you how.” He kissed Starlene again.
Vinny turned away and swam back over to the other side of the pond, where he’d first gotten in. His mother would kill him if she ever heard about where he’d come. After the boy drowned, or was taken by the goddess, or whatever happened to him, she said never to come to this pond again. Ever. It was off-limits. Permanently.
But not his dad. He said, “You fall off a horse, you get back on, right? Or else you going be scared of it all your life.”
His mother scoffed and waved him off. “Don’t listen to him, Vinny, listen to me. Don’t go there. That pond is haunted.” Which had made his dad laugh.
But Vinny promised he’d stay away.
But then Starlene and Joe-Boy said, “Come with us anyway. You let your mommy run your life, or what?” And Vinny said, “But what if I get caught?” And Joe-Boy said, “So?”
Vinny mashed his lips. He was so weak. Couldn’t even say no. But if he’d said, “I can’t go, my mother won’t like it,” they would have laughed him right off the island. He had to go. No choice.
So far it was fine. He’d even gone in the water. Everyone was happy. All he had to do now was wait it out and go home and hope his mother never heard about it.
When he looked up, Starlene was gone.
He glanced around the pond until he spotted her starting up the zigzag trail to the fifty-foot ledge. She was moving slowly, hanging on to roots and branches on the upside of the cliff. He couldn’t believe she was going there. He wanted to yell, “Hey, Starlene, that’s where he
died
!”
But she already knew that.
Mo jumped from the lower ledge, yelling
“Banzaiiii!”
An explosion of coffee-colored water erupted when he hit.
Joe-Boy swam over to where Starlene had gotten out. He waved to Vinny, grinning like a fool, then followed Starlene up the zigzag trail.
Now Starlene was twenty-five, thirty feet up. Vinny watched her for a while, then lost sight of her when she slipped behind a wall of jungle that blocked his view. A few minutes later she popped back out, now almost at the top where the trail ended, where there was nothing but mud and a few plants to grab on to if you slipped, plants that would rip right out of the ground, plants that wouldn’t stop you if you fell, nothing but your screams between you and the rocks below.
Just watching her, Vinny felt his stomach tingle. He couldn’t imagine what it must feel like to be up there, especially if you were afraid of heights, like he was. She has no fear, Vinny thought, no fear at all. Pleasepleaseplease, Starlene. I don’t want to see you die.
Starlene crept forward, making her way to the end of the trail where the small ledge was.
Joe-Boy popped out of the jungle behind her. He stopped, waiting for her to jump before going on.
Vinny held his breath.
Starlene, in her cutoff jeans and soaked T-shirt, stood perfectly still, her arms at her side. Vinny suddenly felt like hugging her. Why, he couldn’t tell. Starlene, please.
She reached behind her and took a wide leaf from a plant, then eased down and scooped up a finger of mud. She made a brown cross on her forehead, then wiped her muddy fingers on her jeans.
She waited.
Was she thinking about the dead boy?
She stuck the stem end of the leaf in her mouth, leaving the rest of it to hang out. When she jumped, the leaf would flap up and cover her nose and keep water from rushing into it. An old island trick.
She jumped.
Down, down.
Almost in slow motion, it seemed at first, then faster and faster. She fell feet first, arms flapping to keep balance so she wouldn’t land on her back or stomach, which would probably almost kill her.
Just before she hit, she crossed her arms over her chest and vanished within a small explosion of rusty water.
Vinny stood, not breathing at all, praying.
Ten seconds. Twenty, thirty . . .
She came back up, laughing.
She shouldn’t make fun that way, Vinny thought. It was asking for it.
Vinny looked up when he heard Joe-Boy shout, “Hey, Vinny, watch how a man does it! Look!”
Joe-Boy scooped up some mud and made a bolt of lightning across his chest. When he jumped, he threw himself out, face and body parallel to the pond, his arms and legs spread out. He’s
crazy,
Vinny thought, absolutely insane. At the last second, Joe-Boy folded into a ball and hit.
Ca-roomp!
He came up whooping and yelling, “
Wooo!
So
good
! Come on, Vinny, it’s hot!”
Vinny faked a laugh. He waved, shouting, “Nah, the water’s too cold!”
Now Mo was heading up the zigzag trail, Mo who hardly ever said a word and would do anything anyone ever challenged him to do. Come on, Mo, not you, too. Vinny knew then that he would have to jump.
Jump, or never live it down.
Mo jumped in the same way Joe-Boy had, man-style, splayed out in a suicide fall. He came up grinning.
Starlene and Joe-Boy turned toward Vinny.
Vinny got up and hiked around the edge of the pond, walking in the muddy shallows, looking at a school of small brown-back fish near a ginger patch.
Maybe they’d forget about him.
Starlene torpedoed over, swimming under water. Her body glittered in the small amount of sunlight that penetrated the trees around the rim of the ravine. When she came up, she broke the surface smoothly, gracefully, like a swan. Her blond hair sleeked back like river grass.
She smiled a sweet smile. “Joe-Boy says you’re afraid to jump. I didn’t believe him. He’s wrong, right?”
Vinny said quickly, “Of course he’s wrong. I just don’t want to, that’s all. The water’s cold.”
“Nah, it’s nice.”
Vinny looked away. On the other side of the pond Joe-Boy and Mo were on the cliff behind the waterfall.
“Joe-Boy says your mom told you not to come here. Is that true?”
Vinny nodded. “Yeah. Stupid, but she thinks it’s haunted.”
“She’s right.”
“What?”
“That boy didn’t die, Vinny. The stone goddess took him. He’s in a good place right now. He’s her prince.”
Vinny scowled. He couldn’t tell if Starlene was teasing him or if she really believed that. He said, “Yeah, prob’ly.”
“Are you going to jump, or is Joe-Boy right?”
“Joe-Boy’s an idiot. Sure I’m going to jump.”
Starlene grinned, staring at Vinny a little too long. “He is an idiot, isn’t he? But I love him.”
“Yeah, well . . .”
“Go to it, big boy. I’ll be watching.”
Starlene sank down and swam out into the pond.
Ca-ripes.
Vinny ripped a hank of white ginger from the ginger patch and smelled it and prayed he’d still be alive after the sun went down.
He took his time climbing the zigzag trail. When he got to the part where the jungle hid him from view, he stopped and smelled the ginger again. So sweet and alive it made Vinny wish for all he was worth that he were climbing out of the ravine right now, heading home.
But of course, there was no way he could do that.
Not before jumping.
He tossed the ginger onto the muddy trail and continued on. He slipped once or twice, maybe three times. He didn’t keep track. He was too numb now, too caught up in the insane thing he was about to do. He’d never been this far up the trail before. Once, he’d tried to go all the way but couldn’t. It made him dizzy.
When he stepped out and the jungle opened into a huge bowl where he could look down, way, way down, he could see there three heads in the water, heads with arms moving slowly to keep them afloat, and a few bright rays of sunlight pouring down onto them, and when he saw this his stomach fluttered and rose. Something sour came up and he spat it out.
It made him wobble to look down. He closed his eyes. His whole body trembled. The trail was no wider than the length of his foot. And it was wet and muddy from little rivulets of water that bled from the side of the cliff.
The next few steps were the hardest he’d ever taken in his life. He tried not to look down, but he couldn’t help it. His gaze was drawn there. He struggled to push back an urge to fly, just jump off and fly. He could almost see himself spiraling down like a glider, or a bird, or a leaf.
His hands shook as if he were freezing. He wondered: Had the dead boy felt this way? Or had he felt brave, like Starlene or Joe-Boy, or Mo, who seemed to feel nothing?
Somebody shouted from below, but Vinny couldn’t make it out over the waterfall roaring down just feet beyond the ledge where he would soon be standing, cascading past so close its mist dampened the air he breathed.