Hero of Hawaii (5 page)

I sneaked her past Mom, on the phone in the kitchen, and took her out to my room. I dragged on a dry shirt and went back into the house. This time, Streak stayed in my room.

“I called Ledward again,” Mom said, hanging up the phone. “I don’t know what to do about this leak.”

Mom had put a bigger bowl under the drip. I looked up at the ceiling. It was like a bubble now, and about to pop. “Is he coming down to fix it?”

“It’s flooding. He can’t get through.”

“What do we do?”

Mom shrugged. “Catch water, I guess.”

“Can I call Julio?”

“Sure, I’m done. I’m going to get some towels.”

Mom left the kitchen as I picked up the phone and called.

“Hey,” I said. “What’s up at your place?”

“Nothing. My brothers are driving me crazy.”

“I bet the river’s broken over the sandbar down at the beach. It’s halfway up my yard.”

“It is?”

“I had to drag my boat higher.”

The river usually ended at the beach and never went out into the ocean because the sandbar blocked it. The water just sat there, rusty and warm.

“Hey, you want to go down to the beach?” I said.

“Yeah! But my parents won’t like it.”

“We can go out your back gate like we’re just going to Kalapawai.”

“Come on over.”

We hung up.

His mom and mine were the same. If we
asked them if we could go to the beach in a storm like this they’d say no. But they might let us go to Kalapawai Market.

I peeked around the corner into the living room.

No one there.

“Mom!” I called. “I’m going to Julio’s!”

She answered from down the hall. “Stay inside when you get there!”

“I will!” I said, then whispered, “For a few minutes.”

S
treak was happy in my room, so I left her there until I got back.

The wind and rain were fierce, but Julio lived only a few houses up the street.

I went into his garage and knocked on the kitchen door.

“Hey,” Julio said, opening it. “I saw you coming up the street. Kind of wobbly.”

“It’s the wind! It’s awesome!”

Julio looked over his shoulder. “My mom’s trying to keep my bozo brothers from tearing down the house.”

“Where’s your dad?”

“Watching golf.”

“Let’s go, then.”

“Hey, Mom!” he shouted. “I’m going with Calvin to Kalapawai.”

No one answered.

“Did she hear you?”

Julio shrugged. “Let’s get out of here.”

The wind had gotten worse. Trees were bent over so far they looked like they would snap. The noise was wild, hissing, roaring, swirling. Truly, unbelievably awesome.

We staggered toward Kalapawai Market. No cars were parked in front of the store.

“You got any money?”
I shouted, struggling to stay on my feet in the wind.

“A quarter!”

“What can we buy?”

“Nothing!”

We skipped Kalapawai and headed down the side road to the beach. When we got to the parking lot at the bend in the road, we saw a cop car. We backed into a hedge.

The wind at the beach was screaming. Words flew away the second you said them.

“What’s he doing?”
Julio shouted.

“Sitting there.”

“We can’t go out now. He’ll make us go home.”

We waited and were just about to give up and go back to Julio’s house when the cop car pulled out.

We ran across the park and up a rise to the ironwood trees that lined the beach. We hung on to the trees, looking out at the ocean.

“Ho!”
Julio shouted.

The bay, usually a clean turquoise blue, was gray and murky. As far out as I could see, there was nothing but whitecaps. The wind had churned the surface of the sea into high
jagged waves with tops that blew off and flew away in the wind. I felt seasick just looking at it.

“Look!”
Julio said, pointing up the beach.

The river had broken over the sandbar and was spewing dirt-brown water out into the bay.

We let go of the trees and raced toward it.

When the wind pushed at my back I ran as fast as a car. When it came back around and hit me in the face I almost had to get down and crawl.

“Yee-haw!”
I shouted when we got to the surging river.

Julio grinned.

The river was as fat as I’d ever seen it and
moving like a herd of angry bulls. The sand along its edges was crumbling and falling into the water, the river eating the land away.

Floating junk sailed past and headed out to be lost in the ocean.

The current was so powerful it was like the whole river was racing out and going down some giant drain, only the drain was the ocean. I didn’t see any boats out, but there was one crazy windsurfer way down toward the marine air base.

Looking down on the raging river, I could only think: Scary!

Bwoop!

Julio and I turned at the sound.

The cop car, blue light swirling. The cop got out and waved us over.

“Busted!”
Julio shouted to me.

The cop refused to let us walk home in that wind.
“Too dangerous!”
he shouted.
“You could get hit by something blowing in the wind!”

Julio and I slid down in the backseat as we turned onto our street.

“Can you just let us out here?” Julio asked long before we got to his house.

The cop kept going. “You’ll get soaked.”

“We’re soaked already,” Julio said.

The cop stopped just before Julio’s house. “Fine, but you boys listen; stay inside until this storm is over. Agreed?”

“Yeah,” I said. “We won’t come out until the sun does.”

“Which are your houses?”

We pointed them out.

“That one down at the end is yours?” he asked me.

“Yeah.”

“That pink car,” he said. “Belongs to Clarence Pavao. Am I right?”

“Uh … yeah.”

The cop chuckled. “So you folks know him?”

“Well … sort of. He’s … um, dating my … my sister.” No way I was going to call Stella my babysitter.

Julio looked at me. I ignored him.

The cop smiled. “Clarence is my cousin. Tell him Rudy said howzit.”

Me and Julio got out and Rudy the cop drove away.

“That was weird,” Julio shouted into the wind.

“Sure was.”

“No, I mean, how you called Stella your sister!”

“Would you call her your babysitter?”

“Good point!”

“Laters!”

We headed to our houses.

T
he wind wasn’t as bad at home as it was coming off the ocean. In fact, it felt like a vacation compared to the beach.

But the rain was still pounding down in buckets. It wasn’t possible for me to be any wetter. But the rain was warm, and that was good.

Streak barked. She was looking out my bedroom window, her nose pushing at the screen.

“Hey, girl!” I shouted.

I went into the garage and let her out. I took my shirt and shorts off, wrung them out, and got dry ones off the floor.

Streak followed me into the kitchen.

Clarence was emptying the bowl under the leak.

“Hey,” he said. “Where you went?”

“Where’s everyone?”

“Had to get groceries. Candles, too, case you lose power.”

“They went shopping in a storm?”

I peeked back out into the garage. Mom’s car was gone and I hadn’t even noticed.

“Watching the leak while they gone,” Clarence said.

Huh. Felt kind of weird to be home alone with someone I hardly knew.

Clarence must have noticed. He chuckled.
“They be back soon. So … where you went? Just curious.”

“Me and Julio, we went down to the beach to see if the river was going into the ocean.”

“Gotta be, ah?”

“Like a freight train.”

“Take you right out to sea,” Clarence said.

That was a scary thought.

“You check your boat?” he said.

“No.”

Clarence set the empty bowl under the drip. “We go. That river coming higher by the minute.”

We stood just inside the garage looking out. Raindrops splashed up over my feet and legs. The river was almost up to my skiff again, climbing the slope of our yard.

“How high do you think it will get?” I asked. “Could it reach our house?”

“Well, you pretty high up.”

Through the wall of rain I could make out the rickety old wooden golf course bridge that spanned the water just upriver. I’d fished off it
lots of times. There was a small platform out near the middle where you could sit. A few more feet and that platform would be under water.

“Let’s get your boat.”

We pulled the boat up to the top of the yard and left it bottom up. Back in the garage, we took off our soaked shirts and squeezed them out.

“Listen,” Clarence said. “I gotta go home. Watch that leak … and tell Stella I said bye, ah?”

“Yeah, sure … you coming back?”

“Tomorrow. Right now I got to make sure my moms and sister doing okay.”

“What about your dad?”

Clarence snorted. “No more dad. Like you, ah?”

“I have a dad.”

“Yeah?”

“He’s a singer. He lives in Las Vegas.”