Honolulu (33 page)

Charlie, meanwhile, was constructing a rather elaborate sand castle, in which I now recognized some disturbing shapes-not just the familiar pailshaped towers, but a kind of cupola with suspiciously similar proportions to a rice bowl I had brought to the picnic. I now discovered that while my attentions had been focused on Grace, Charlie had ransacked the picnic basket and dumped the rice into a sandy grave, along with the kimchi I had packed in a tall jar that he used to make an admittedly impressive sand-tower.

I made my displeasure known, and only after I had finished scolding him did I suddenly realize that someone was missing. Where was Harold?

My annoyance with Charlie was quickly replaced by panic over Harry. He was a good swimmer, but even so I anxiously searched the rolling surface of the ocean for some trace of him. I looked up and down the beach, toward Diamond Head in one direction and the Moana in the other, but still no Harry. I told myself to remain calm, trying to think of where he might have gone; and then I noticed again the pile of surfboards stacked up beside the Moana. After placing Charlie and Grace in my husband’s care, I hurried down the beach.

The Moana Hotel was a large, modern white building with plantationstyle verandahs facing the sea. On this autumn day the beach was populated mainly by local residents, surfers, and a handful of Moana guests: pale flabby haoles gleaming with coconut oil, looking and smelling like haupia pudding as they sunned themselves in beach chairs. I saw no sign of Harry on the grounds of the hotel. I looked seaward, where a handful of surfers wearing dark tank tops and trunks were serenely gliding atop cresting waves. When a surfer with skin as bronze as a new penny came ashore with his board, I went up to him and asked, “Excuse me, but-have you seen a little Korean boy? About four years old?”

The surfer looked over my shoulder and said, “Is that him?”

I turned to see another surfer riding a low swell in to shore, a small boy perched on the prow of the long board like a hood ornament on a Model T.

“Mama!” Harry called out, never happier. “Look! I’m surfing!”

I ran to him as the surfer beached the board and told him, “Uh-oh, jig’s up. Everybody off.” Harry obediently jumped off, into the shallows. I gathered up my son in my arms, so happy to see him that I barely chided him for going off alone. “Harry, you nearly scared Mama to death!”

The surfer on whose board Harry had been riding-a broad-faced Portuguese-Hawaiian with a few front teeth missing from his smile-looked at me, then at Harry and said, “Kid, you’re a spitting chip off the old block.”

In all the years I was to know this man, I was never sure whether his scrambled metaphors were accidental or intentional clowning.

“Sorry,” he apologized, “my fault. Your boy came up, asked if I could teach him to surf, so I offered him a ride.”

The other surfer grinned and said, “See, the keiki follow Panama around ‘cause they know another keiki when they see one.”

Panama expressed mock indignation. “If that ain’t the Tarball calling the kettle black!”

“Hey, I may be short,” the one called Tarball said, “but Panama’s so short, other day he got beat up by some kid smaller than Harry here.”

“She was not,” Panama shot back, and they both exploded into laughter.

I soon learned that these amiable watermen with the colorful names were among a select group known as “beachboys,” who served visitors to Waikiki in a wide variety of capacities: surfing instructors, outrigger canoe pilots, island tour guides, drinking companions, and occasionally companions of a different sort for mainland wahines who could not help but be impressed by their charm, athleticism, and exotic good looks.

But this was, as I say, the off season, and the beachboys at Waikiki today were here to surf, spearfish, or just enjoy a good time with their friendsamong whom Harry and I were quickly counted. Soon two more came ashore: the genial “Steamboat Bill” and a tall, handsome figure of bronze who Tarball introduced as “my brother Paoa, the world traveler, finally home for a few minutes.”

I gratefully invited Panama and the others to join our picnic, where we offered them cold noodles, rice, and fire beef, and in return Steamboat offered us ‘okolehao-distilled ti-root liquor. “Guaranteed,” he promised, “to knock you on your ‘okole-and how!”

Jade Moon, fresh from chasing down two of her roving children, was quick to accept the challenge.

“We shall see about that,” she said, quickly downing a shot of “Hawaiian moonshine,” then requesting another.

“Whoa, I think I’m in love,” Steamboat announced.

“I am a married woman,” Jade Moon demurred. “But this one is single.” And she mischievously pointed out Beauty, standing shyly nearby.

Beauty blushed in mortification and tried to hide behind me, but Panama’s eyes lit up. “Now, now, don’t go hiding your bushel under a tisket,” which made even Beauty, who didn’t fully grasp the absurdity of what he’d said, giggle.

The one named Paoa seemed quiet and unassuming, but now I noticed that although his brother called him Paoa, the other beachboys referred to him as “Duke.” This was also not lost on Wise Pearl’s ten-year-old son, John, who approached him and asked in a hushed tone, “Are you the Duke?”

“Well,” Tarball’s brother said, “my father was also named Duke. He’ll al ways be `the’ Duke to me. That’s why my brothers started calling me Paoa, to distinguish me from my dad.”

“But you’re the one who went to the Olympics, right?”

Duke nodded modestly. Jae-sun and I looked at each other with surprise. That Duke?

“Are your medals really made of gold?” John asked in awe.

“Sure thing. But let me show you something.” The great Duke Kahanamoku-Olympic medalist, world champion swimmer, legendary surfer-took in the dazzling sweep of the ocean and told John, “This is worth your weight in gold. And it’s all ours.”

For the next few hours we all ate and joked and talked as if we were old friends. Steamboat strummed a ukulele and Panama showed Beauty’s daughter, Mary, how to make a coconut hat. “Why do they call you Panama?” Mary asked.

He pointed to the big gap between his front teeth. “You heard of the Panama Canal? Looks kine like this.” He took a big gulp of drinking water, then blew it out through the toothless gap in a gusher. Mary squealed in delight; Beauty laughed, too. Panama may not have been the handsomest of the beachboys, but I could tell Beauty was smitten.

Tarball, whose real name was Bill, took Harry out for another ride on his board and Duke offered to do the same for Grace-who backed away in horror at the idea. I explained Grace’s fear of the water and Duke just nodded thoughtfully, then excused himself and headed back down the beach to the Moana Hotel.

When he returned a few minutes later, it was with one of the glass boxes that guests of the Moana used to view reef fish-the precursor to today’s snorkeling masks. He asked Grace, “Have you ever seen how people throw coins off the big cruise ships when they come into the harbor?”

“They do?”

“Yeah, sure, all the time. Young boys go diving down looking for them, but they don’t always find them all. I happen to know for a fact there’s a quarter buried in the sand around here somewhere. You want to try look?”

He started her searching on the dry sand and just when she was starting to get bored, I saw him slip a coin out of his pocket and bury it into the sand. When Grace found it a few minutes later, she cried out, “Look! A dime!”

“Well, that’s swell,” Duke said with feigned frustration, “but I know there’s a quarter a little farther out.”

He showed her how to use the glass box to view the sandy bottom of the shallows, pointing out frightened little puffer fish burying their heads in the sand and tiny sand crabs skittering sideways like tipsy spiders. Grace began to brave the deeper water without even realizing she was doing it. Duke turned her toward a school of silvery needlefish, slanting below the surface like a torrent of silver rain. When the water grew too deep for Grace to wade in, Duke picked her up in his big hands and gently floated her on the surface. She peered through her glass box at the schools of yellow tangs, blue-green unicorn fish, and black-and-white butterfly fish swarming around the pink coral heads. Grace was so entranced by this colorful undersea world that it didn’t even occur to her to be afraid. And Duke didn’t forget, as they came ashore again, to have her look again for that quarter in the sand-which, of course, she triumphantly discovered.

Grace was never afraid of the ocean again, and from that day on, Duke Kahanamoku was as much royalty to me as Lili’uokalani had been.

As the sun slid below the horizon our new friends invited us over to the gazebo at the end of the three-hundred-foot Moana Pier, where they were joined by Hiram Anahu, another beachboy as well as a talented painter and composer of popular songs. In the limelight of the newly risen moon the beachboys played ukulele and steel guitar, and sang both traditional Hawaiian standards like “Kalena Kai” and hapa-haole songs like “Honolulu Moon.” Their voices were the sweetest I had ever heard, falsettos blending together in angelic harmony. This was a Sunday night tradition I would be lucky enough to experience again over the years-but I will never forget that first night out on the pier, listening to songs of moonlight and romance, and to the sigh of the tide as the moon tugged on it, its light scattering like daydreams on the waves breaking across the reef. I rested with my head on Jae-sun’s shoulder; Beauty gazed adoringly at Panama, strumming his ukulele; Jade Moon cradled her youngest child in her lap as she looked up at the stars, sprinkled like sugar across the black bowl of the sky. These young men with their music and their magical voices were the very embodiment of aloha, of the spirit of the islands; but the true measure of their magic was that as we listened to them, we were not so much transported as transformed. Because for as long as we listened, reflected in the sweet light of their songs, we were all, every one of us, Hawaiian.

Sundays were always over too soon. The next morning Jae-sun would be up before dawn to make his daily pilgrimage to the O’ahu Fish Market, where limp stacks of bonito, skipjack, yellowtail, and ono, all fresh off the fishing boats, were piled high for inspection. Battalions of restaurant owners and chefs swarmed over the mounds of dead fish, checking for color and texture, hefting for weight and size. I went only once with Jaesun. The place reeked of brine and seaweed, and the sight of so many deceased fish staring at me with open eyes reminded me unpleasantly of the butcher shop next door to Aunt Obedience’s. Jae-sun was always frustrated that he could never find anything resembling mudfish-small minnows that live in the muddy mouths of rivers in Korea. These fish were but three or four inches in length, thin as pencils and usually dark with ingested sediment. Jae-sun knew an old recipe for a soup with stuffed tubu-soybean curd-that called for mudfish. First, he said, you placed the fish in brine, which made them-let’s say “eject”-the mud, after which they shined like newly minted coins. They were then tossed live into a heated skillet filled with tabu-where, in an effort to escape the heat, the poor things would dive into the soybean curd, obligingly providing a stuffing for the tubu before expiring.

I never wished to see this in practice, much less partake of it, but Jae-sun had a yen to cook it and none of the local fish markets bothered to stock something as small and unprofitable as a minnow.

Then one day he came home triumphant from his morning pilgrimage, proudly showing me not only twenty pounds of fresh skipjack, but a large bottle filled with water and teeming with tiny live minnows. “Look!” he cried out. “They are not mudfish, but they will do.”

“Did you find these at the fish market?”

“No, I finally used my head. I went down to the docks yesterday looking for a fisherman who would sell his catch to me directly, at a lower cost. I found a man with a small boat who said he’d be willing, if I committed to buy a certain amount each week.” He opened the brown butcher paper covering a three-pound bonito. “This is of excellent quality, as you see.”

“And you asked him to catch you some minnows?”

“He uses them for bait, so he gave me a jarful with his compliments. I can’t wait to cook these up for a luncheon treat!” He took out a large skillet, which would shortly become the instrument of doom for the tiny wriggling fish.

“Ah,” I said, “as it happens, I am having lunch with Beauty today.” This was a lie, of course, but one I could make true easily enough.

“But this is a rare delicacy, and delicious!”

I slipped out of the kitchen before the butter greased the skillet.

While Jae-sun feasted on bait, Beauty was happy to share some fried rice with me at Sai Fu’s Chop Sui House on Hotel Street. Panama Dave had swept her off her feet with his wit, romantic soul, and gentleness toward Mary, and she had fallen quickly and hopelessly in love with him. I was happy for her-Heaven knew she deserved some romance and laughter in her life-but when she began telling us at kye meetings about what “they” would do once they were married, Wise Pearl tactfully inquired whether Panama had actually asked for her hand.

“Not yet,” Beauty admitted, “but I’m sure he will.”

Now, months later, Beauty was fretting that the proposal still was not forthcoming. I suggested, as gently as I could, that perhaps Panama was simply not the “marrying kind.”

“Oh no, you don’t know him, he’s so sweet,” she protested.

“A man can be sweet and loving and still not be interested in marriage.”

“He loves Mary. You see how good he is with her. He loves children.”

“He has a childlike spirit, it’s true,” I said delicately, “and I’m sure he cares for Mary. But that does not necessarily mean he wants to be a father, or husband.”

Beauty fell into a sullen pout and I elected to change the subject.

I returned to the cafe, where my husband was extolling the savory flavor of his tubu soup. He had saved me some, and I had to admit that it was tasty, as was the other fish he had purchased. We served it spiced and barbecued for bulgogi or grilled in a miso sauce. Thus began a long, fruitful business relationship, with our weekly order increasing steadily. After perhaps six weeks, Jae-sun came home with thirty pounds of bonito, yellowtail, and albacore, and with a certain diffidence he told me, “I’ve invited our supplier to the restaurant with his family. He only purchased this boat last year and I believe they struggle to make ends meet. I thought they might appreciate a taste of the fruit of his labors.”