Hero of Hawaii (10 page)

Flat Island shrank behind us. Funny, I thought. I’d seen that island for years and had never been out to it. Never even thought much about it. But I loved it now. It had saved me and Willy … and Streak!

“What you going do when we get back?” Clarence asked over his shoulder.

“Get killed by Mom.”

“Killed!” He laughed. “For what?”

“Scaring her.”

Clarence rowed. The muscles in his back rippled. His tattooed shoulders spanned from one side of the skiff to the other. “Maybe you scared her,” he said, “but she won’t be angry.”

“How do you know?”

“No mama going be angry at a son with courage.”

“Courage? What if it was just stupid?”

“You call saving your friend stupid?”

“No, I meant—”

“You know what I going do?” Clarence said.

“What?”

“Go home. Take a hot shower. Eat.”

I hugged Streak close. She’d stopped trembling.

Yep. Mom was going to kill me.

C
larence maneuvered the skiff like an expert.

I looked over my shoulder at the beach. A small crowd was waiting: Mom, Stella, Darci, Clarence’s cousin Rudy the cop, the rescue truck crew, the boys who’d watched me sail out to sea, and some other people.

“Hang on,” Clarence said.

I turned back just as he dug the oars into the water and pulled hard, one, two, three times. Then, using the oars like rudders, we caught a wave and sailed in, all the way to the beach.

The bow thunked sand.

The crowd clapped and cheered.

The three boys ran up to grab the skiff.

Streak jumped out and ran up the beach. Clarence stowed the oars, and the two of us stepped out into the water.

Stella ran down and flung her arms around Clarence. “Whoa,” he said. “I not going anywhere.”

“I can’t believe you did that!” Stella said.

“What? Catch a wave with the boat?”

“No, silly, swim out to get Calvin and Willy!”

Clarence waved that off. “Pfff. Anybody do that.”

Mom and Darci crushed me with hugs as everyone crowded in around us.

Clarence put his big hand on my head. “This boy one hero.”

I looked down. I sure didn’t feel like a hero. I just felt tired.

Mom looked at me, her eyes shiny with tears.

What? Did I have blood on me or something? I rubbed my face and looked at my fingers. No blood.

“Mom?”

“Thank heaven you’re safe,” she whispered. “I’ve never been so scared in my life.”

“I’m fine, Mom, I—”

“Shhh,” she said. “Not now, Calvin. Just come home.”

She pushed me away and looked at me. “How’s Willy?”

“Fine, Mom. They took him in the helicopter. He swallowed a lot of water.”

“Oh, no … not that filthy river water.”

“Yeah.”

She winced.

I turned toward my skiff. Clarence already had it figured out. “We carry um,” he said. “You and me. Easy.”

I looked back at Mom. She didn’t want to leave me.

But she nodded, took Darci’s hand, and walked back up the sand. “Come home right now.”

“I will.”

Rudy the cop came down and shook with Clarence, local style. “Howzit, cousin?”

Clarence flicked his eyebrows. “I wasn’t speeding, Officer, promise.”

Rudy humphed, then turned to me. “I thought I told you to stay home … or was I just talking to myself?”

I looked down.

Rudy said, “I let you off this time, kid, but next—”

“I didn’t mean to. Really, I just—”

Rudy and Clarence laughed. “He only
joking,” Clarence said, shoving me gently with his big hand. “Ne’mind him. We got a boat to carry.”

Rudy smiled. “You two did good.”

Stella looked at me. “Were you scared?”

Had I been?

“No,” I said. “I didn’t think about it.”

But I prob’ly should have been, I thought. If you live near the ocean the first thing you’d better know is how to get out of trouble in the water. I was pretty good at it, but Willy sure wasn’t.

“What you did was brave.”

I couldn’t believe it. Stella had said something nice to me.

Clarence clapped his hand on my shoulder. “The hero of Hawaii.” He squeezed.

I looked up at Clarence. “I didn’t even know you could swim like that. I mean, that was a long way out.”

“He’s a surfer,” Stella said, kissing his cheek. “He does that all the time, don’t you?”

Clarence shrugged. “You live Hawaii, you live the ocean, ah?”

“True,” I said.

He tapped my arm. “The boat.”

Stella hugged him again. She gave my shoulder a squeeze.

I stood gaping as she ran to catch up with Mom and Darci.

B
y the time we got the boat home and Clarence drove off, the raging storm had blown away from the islands. Maybe it fizzled out somewhere over the ocean. Except for what me and Willy had just been through, it was the best storm ever in my whole life so far.

But not for Mom.

“I don’t want to see anything like that again for the rest of my life,” she said later in the kitchen. “If I could just take a bath and lie on the couch with my magazines …”

She sighed.

I was starting to doze at the counter when Julio called. “I heard Willy almost drowned,” he said.

I told him the story.

“Ho, man,” he said. “So he’s okay now?”

“Yeah, I guess. I’ve been trying to call him but no one answers.”

“Wow.”

“I’ll call you when I know something.”

“Yeah, good.”

We hung up.

I sat around yawning and rubbing my eyes while Mom and Stella went for Chinese takeout. Darci was on the floor in the living room watching cartoons. She didn’t seem to mind postponing her party.

I was asleep with my head on my arms when Mom and Stella came back.

“Wake up, sleepyhead,” Mom said. “We got your favorite … beef tomato.”

“Yeah … I’m awake.”

Plink
.

The leak bowl only had a little bit of water in it.

I looked up at the sagging ceiling.

“Ledward should be here any minute to look at that,” Mom said. “The flooding is over, thank goodness. He’s staying for dinner.”

Plink
.

“I’m calling Willy again.” I took the phone into the dining room.

He was home!

“Hey,” he said. “Just got back. What a day, huh?”

“You okay?”

He sneezed. “Thanks to you. That was scary.”

“Very.”

“I can hardly stay awake.”

“Me too.”

We let a few seconds of silence go by. I cringed, thinking about that wall of mud water at the end of the river. “Let’s not do that again, okay?”

“Fine with me.”

“Where’d that helicopter take you?”

“Somewhere like an airfield. Some guys checked me out, gave me some kind of pills and a cool space blanket. My parents came and got me.” He paused. “Boy, were they shook up.”

“Yeah, my mom, too.”

We were silent again.

“You going to school tomorrow?” I asked.

“Sure. I’m fine. Just tired. But all I want to see when I wake up in the morning is the big old sun. Forget that rain.”

“Like forever.”

“Hey, how’s Streak?”

“Asleep.”

Willy laughed. “That’s me in a few minutes. So, see you at school.”

“Laters.”

We hung up. I took the phone back in the kitchen.

“How is he?” Mom asked.

“Same old Willy.”

“I hope so.”

I looked at Mom. “What do you mean?”

“Well … sometimes a terrifying experience like that can affect us deep down inside. I just hope he doesn’t end up afraid of the ocean.”

“Afraid?”

“I’m not saying he will, Calvin. Just that it’s possible.”

That would be really bad, I thought. We lived on an island. The ocean was everywhere. It would be like being afraid of the air.