The Tattoo (8 page)

Koa stood up and put his hands by his mouth. “Eh, haole boy, you crazy or what?You look like one faggot insect. Put your clothes back on befo’ we go blind.”

The boy was too far away to hear what Koa was saying. I was laughing, then I felt Koa’s hand grab my arm. I stood up. “Hey Ken,” he said, “what da fuck haole boy doing now?”

I watched the boy swimming in the water. “Dey call dat da buttafly or someting,” I said.

“Da buttafly? I taut buttaflys was pretty. Fucka look like he having one seizure out dea. The fucka like drown or what?”

I shook my head, smiled, and sat back down. Koa looked over his shoulder. “Hey, look up dea.” He pointed toward the front of the tour bus. “We go steal dea shoes.”

“How can? Still get da tour guide in da bus. Besides, what about our boards?”

“Fuck da boards. No one goin’ take ‘um. And no tell me you cannot outrun dat tour guide fucka. You da fastest guy I know.”

“What about you, fat ass? You cannot run dat fast.”

“Yeah, but you forget someting.”

“What?”

“I no give a fuck.”

We stole the shoes and ran away laughing our asses off. The tour guide only chased us about ten feet before he stopped and the tourists just stood on the beach in a state of shock. We waited for the bus to leave, then went back and grabbed our shirts, slippers, and my book from the bushes. Luckily, no one stole our boards, too. I didn’t know it at the time, but Koa’s personal war against haoles was to escalate in high school. But until then, we did more surfing and harmless stealing. Sometimes we avoided the tourists, the landmark beaches, and went diving or hunting instead.

I always felt
safer in the water while diving. At least I had my three-pronged spear, and I could see under the water. I was still a little paranoid, though, because I knew the spear would be about as effective as a stick would be in warding off a hungry lion if a shark were to attack, and the tempered glass sucked onto my face by a rubber frame gave me limited sight into the ocean. I saw only about twenty feet in any direction. Sometimes I felt like I was walking into a huge, dark room armed with a flickering candle, moving in a tenuous bubble of light. I loved to dive, though. Taking the boat out to Chinaman’s Hat and diving the deep end behind the island. Spitting in the mask and wiping the glass to prevent fogging. Sitting on the edge of the boat, holding my mask down on my face, leaning back, and entering the ocean like I’d seen Jacques Cousteau do. The rush of cold water, the surfacing, spitting water out through my snorkel, acting like I’m a whale, the snorkel my blow hole. The sound of my breathing resonating in the plastic tube. Sounding like Darth Vader. Trying to talk like him. “The circle is now complete, I was once the student, but now I am the master.” The searching for prey under dark crevasses, the feel of the surgical rubber squeezing the knuckle of the index finger right before I released to take a shot. Nothing can compare to the feeling of going down about forty feet, holding my breath, seeing an
uhu
just before I have to resurface, deciding to stay down for just a half a minute longer, feeling my body shake from lack of oxygen, knowing that I have only one shot at him, knowing I’m risking a lot just to catch one stupid fish. Nothing around you matters, not even thinking about sharks, just struggling to get a clean shot at the fish before you pass out. It was like therapy.

Hunting on land was always shitty to me in comparison. Even though Koa loved it, I complained that it was like a long, fucking walk up a mountain just to get a few rounds off. We used to hunt illegally up at Kualoa Ranch, the only place left on the Windward side with a significant wild boar population. We always had to watch our back for ranchers who would bust us for trespassing. Carrying that damn thirty-thirty up a mountain, feeling it get heavier, feeling the moistness of your palms accidentally touch the metal, knowing that when you get down you’ll have to give it a thorough cleaning because of the mixture of sweat and salt. And God forbid if you actually shoot a boar and have to carry it on your shoulders down the whole damn mountain. Pig blood matting the hair on the back of your head. The huffing and puffing, the strain and stain on your back. It was like work. One trip I’ll never forget, or remember fully for that matter.

The sun was setting and I wanted to go home. Just as Koa and I started our descent, I saw one lying down under a tree. Like an idiot, without even thinking, I raised the barrel and fired. Like the unlucky asshole that I am, I hit it. I heard Koa cheer and I sighed. We walked down the ridge to the tree. I handed my rifle to Koa, put the boar on my shoulders, and we began to walk down.

It was getting dark. Suddenly we heard voices. Someone yelled “Hey, stop!”When someone yells this in your direction, it’s usually a good idea to haul ass. For me, it was like hearing someone fire a starting gun. Koa and I blazed. He was ahead of me because of the boar on my back, the biggest pigskin I ever had to carry. I watched as he ran straight through branches and tall bushes, much like a wild mountain boar does when it’s running. He was blocking, I ran through his wake. The blood was pumping and I began feeling like the hunted animal, fleeing with all of my strength, the adrenaline bravely fighting off exhaustion. Suddenly I noticed we were running down like a sixty-degree incline.

Every fifty yards or so, we’d fall flat on our faces and roll down about fifteen feet. For some reason, each time I got up, I’d re-secure the dead pig on my shoulders, refusing to leave it. Sweating with that weight on my shoulders, dropping it once in a while, scrambling for it like it was my arm I’d dropped or something, sniffing the wild smell of the dead animal, feeling my fingers dig into its coarse hair. We were determined to escape. It was a clumsy flee, but finally the voices faded with the sun. We kept on running just in case, not slowing down in the blinding dark. It was at least a mile. We were lucky we didn’t run straight off a cliff. Finally I saw the light of Kam Highway. Relieved, we slowed down.

When I reached the side of the street, I let the boar drop from my shoulders and paced with my hands on my hips, trying to catch my breath. Koa threw the guns to the ground, sat down, and leaned back. Every few seconds, his panting would be interrupted as he turned his head and spit. Suddenly, out of the blue, we both started laughing.

“Holy shit,” he said.“Fuckin’ ranchers was right on our ass.”

I laughed. “You fuckin’ nuts or what? You could see where you was goin’?”

His eyes got big. “Fuck no! I taut we was goin’ fall right off da mountain.”

We laughed so hard the tears rolled down our beet-red cheeks. As the laughter subsided, once more I said, “You fuckin’ crazy.”

We decided to clean the pig at my house because it was closer. I picked it up, Koa grabbed the guns, and we began walking home. This is where the trouble started.

When we got to my house, I hung up the pig while Koa went inside to wash up and grab a knife. I smelled the wild stench on me, crinkled my nose, and began taking my hunting clothes off. When Koa came back out, I finally noticed. His face was covered with lacerations made by the branches he’d run straight through. He read my shock and laughed. “You neva see?” he asked. “Shit, I neva even know too until I went in da house and looked in da mirror.”

I laughed, laughed in the cold, my underwear and some pig blood my only coverings, but then I saw he was holding the unsheathed katana in his hand, the sword my father inherited after his father’s death, and another kind of shiver emerged. I saw the crimson threads above and below his clenched fingers. The blade shone even though it was dark, greedily grabbing at any light it could reach. Moon, stars, distant street lights. It shone with its cleanness, its flawlessness. He sensed my nervousness.“Shit, I was goin’ grab da small one,” he said, “but I figured would be more fun wit’ da big one.”

He handed me the sword. It felt so much lighter than before, when my grandfather had first put it in my hand. But in a way, heavier, too. “Gut ‘um,” Koa whispered.

I looked around. My father’s truck was gone. I looked at the boar, smelled it, hated it for making me shoot it, making me carry it all the way down that mountain. I pretended it was my father. I let out a loud “Yahhh!” and lifted the blade over my head and swung down with a quick slice. Before I could even step back, the intestines dropped out of the boar’s belly and splattered on my bare feet. Steam rose from the bloody mess. I heard Koa yell, “Holy shit! Lemme try.”

I handed the katana to Koa, and without hesitation he swung at the neck of the pig. The whole pig fell from the force, and the head rolled a few feet away. I couldn’t believe it sliced cleanly through the thick spine. He began to laugh. “This fuckin’ sword is so cool.”

That’s when we heard the truck pull up the driveway. We were the deer in the headlights, unmoved, maybe longing to hear a loud cry of warning, a “Hey, stop!”

I heard the bloody blade drop from Koa’s hand.

No explanation attempted, no questions asked. He walked straight up to me and said, “Koa, get your ass home.”

I looked over and saw Koa take several steps back. Then before I could look back at my father, I already felt the fist hit the side of my jaw. My body spun, but I didn’t drop. Then I heard his voice. “You fuckin’ kid! You disrespect da sword, you make me hit you!” Bam, another fist to the head, this one on the temple. “And now you no drop! Who da fuck you tink you are!” Another one hit me on the jaw.

After I spun from that one, I looked up at his face and saw the crinkle in his forehead, the devilish arch of his eyebrows, and the enlarged whites of his eyes. I smiled. Gave him my best sixteen-year-old smile, and spit out fragments of teeth at him. Another hit. “So you lifting weights now, tink you hot shit, “ he yelled. “C’mon give me one shot! I fuckin’ kill you, you fucka!” I stood there with my hands down and stared at him. Finally he said, “Get da fuck outta here before I fuckin’ kill you!”

Actually, I don’t really remember any of this. It’s what Koa told me had happened the next day when I woke up in his room. I figured that was the way it went, though, considering I couldn’t talk for a week, and when I slid my tongue across my teeth, I cut it. I had to drink Slim Fasts all week long. I didn’t go home, I didn’t go to school. Koa picked up some clothes for me. His parents let him stay home for a couple of days to keep me company, and when he went to school I just read more because I couldn’t talk. After I got a little better, Aunty Nani stopped giving me pitying looks, and began teasing. “You betta start fuckin’ eating cause I not going give you any mo’ Slim Fasts. Bumbye you get even mo’ skinny.”

Uncle James stayed out of it. I suppose it’s a code that exists around the world: Never interfere with the raising of someone else’s child. You have no right. A week and a half later, my father picked me up and took me to an oral surgeon. Uncle James and Aunty Kanani stayed in the house while Koa shook my hand outside by the truck. My father nodded to Koa and drove off. Puana Castle got smaller and smaller. It was a quiet ride. The quiet rides I had in that truck. They always occurred, it seemed, when he was picking me up from someplace else and taking me home. I guess most quiet rides occur when you’re heading for someplace you don’t want to go. I looked toward the Koolaus and again thought that I had to get over the mountains, out of the Windward side.

This thing with the sword, it was the worst beating I ever got. That sword never did seem to do me any good. My beating was bad because I didn’t fight back, didn’t demand respect, a presence, but there was always something in me that refused to hit him back. I was trained well. On the bright side, to this day I have whiter teeth than anyone else I know.

The memory loss bothered me more than the physical discomfort. It was like losing a cursed heirloom that I didn’t want but felt I needed to have. I hate that frantic feeling when you lose something, know it’s somewhere around, but can never find it. He’d hit me before, but it was the first time I couldn’t remember. It scared the shit out of me. For days I tried to dig deep down in my mind and search for a shred of memory. It seemed even further away from my conscience than my mother’s last words to me.

My father and I never discussed what had happened, even when I returned home. I hid in the cradle of books my mother left me. I read about foreign places, places I wanted to go to, but didn’t think I’d ever see. Sometimes I’d put a book down and wonder why my great memory was not able to dig up such a huge corpse. I thought, if I blanked out once, I could blank out again. How could I lack control to such a degree? I probably wanted to find the memory because I didn’t want to believe it. How could I get so crazy that I didn’t care anymore whether I lived or died? It concerned me greatly that I could get to the point where I just didn’t care anymore, that I’d just give up, crawl under a rock and accept death. I wanted to be a fighter, to go out in a blaze if necessary. I did not want to be the kind of person who just accepts his fate with a defiant grin. I knew the grin was just a feeble attempt to save face. My behavior, the accepted futility that Koa had told me about, scared me. My attachment to memory is strong, but perhaps my desire to never go out quietly is even stronger. I like to slam the door.