You look happy,” Olive said. “I can tell you’re much better.”
Crap. Sharkey, blank-faced, too tired from the return flight to speak, thought people said those empty words to sell their hopeful delusions and to be blameless.
He was not happier, he was not better, getting back to Hawaii on the long flight from anywhere was like a hangover, he still felt weak and alienated, like someone fighting the grip of turbulent water. The memory kept repeating. He’d been drowning in the outflung arms of Waimea Bay when they found him and hauled him to shore. But the fright had not abated, and now he knew that in such close calls, something much worse than he’d experienced before, the fear did not leave him, even in the clods of red dirt in Floristan: he went on drowning.
“Glad to be back here anyway,” was all he said after Olive prodded him.
He could not tell her why, though he knew. He never had the words for the images in his head and didn’t want to sound stupid trying to describe what he saw, the stifling sense of confinement he felt on the mainland, the chill on the sunniest days, how he craved the freedom he felt in Hawaii, the beauty of the light skimming on the ocean, the empty space most of all.
Everyone stupidly believed it to be the other way around—“the mainland’s huge, man”—the cities and long roads and distant hills in places like Nevada and Utah, or where they’d just been, in the bushy woods and low hills of Arkansas. Those places pressed on his head and imprisoned him with bad smells, the air thick with sour vegetation and decay, with diesel fumes that reeked of poison, the cities stinking with too many people. He had hated the dark woods on the drive to Floristan, the disorder by the roadside, the junked cars rusting in tall grass. In every crowded town he’d imagined witchlike faces staring from the windows of houses. The mainland was a place of muffled voices and intimidating buildings and overdressed strangers, all those baggy clothes and big shoes—you never saw flesh, never bare feet.
He could not rid his mind of the sense of failure he felt, trapped in mainland narrowness, suffering an obscure thirst, the dust like a disease. The mainland was a place of threat, of danger, of whispers—yes, the roads were long, but they were all dead ends, the mainland was an underworld of shadows and strangers.
Hawaii was huge and sunlit and sweet. It was not just the mountains and the cliffs and the green vertical pali, rising like organ pipes, under the sky-high arches of enormous rainbows—it was the water. The sea was also Hawaii, the sea was its world. The islands did not end at the shore. They were part of the luminous ocean, and the ocean was endless and life-giving and, just offshore, empty of people. No one on the mainland knew that. “Cali’s got waves,” they said, but the rest of California was jammed against all those other states, of wreckage and desert. Hawaii was a gorgeous green woman reclining on her side, sensual, sloping, allowing you to rest against her softness.
So he was where he wanted to be. Yet he knew he was fractured and feeble, stumbling at times like an old man who could not swim to save his life. And he was exhausted too—all that way to a dot on the mainland map, only to discover that the plot led to Wai‘anae.
Guessing at his frustration, Olive said, “We needed to go. We know him better now, because of that trip. We have something to go on.”
They were in Olive’s car, passing Chun’s Reef, barefoot grommets crossing the road, their boards slung under their arms.
Sharkey said, “What do we know.” It was not a question, it was an exasperated remark.
“That he was poor, and restless—you saw his sad face in the yearbook. That he wanted something better. That he was determined to leave. That he’s not the corpse in the mortuary now—he’s a man in motion.”
“That he got teased at school,” Sharkey said with feeling.
“You saw that he bought a big expensive house for his mum. He ended up with money.”
“He didn’t end up with money. He ended up drunk, on an old bike, in the rain at Waimea. He ended up dead.”
They had passed Weed Circle and the narrow track to Snake Road, which Olive took to avoid the traffic at Helemano. She cut through Schofield to Kunia Road, a ribbon of pavement across the lower slopes of the hills and the mountain, the old volcano, deeply scored, its tubes of lava cold and densely forested. Concentrating on the narrow road and avoiding potholes, Olive had not answered, so they were passing the plowed fields at the Ewa end when Sharkey spoke again, as though finishing his thought.
“And I’m dying too.”
“We’ll find him,” Olive said, in her hearty bucking-him-up tone.
“I used to drive this way to go to Wai‘anae and Nānākuli to surf,” Sharkey said. “I was strong. I knew I’d get hassled by mokes in the lineup, but I’d think, ‘Bring it on, brah.’ I earned respect.”
“I wish I’d known you then.”
“Good thing you didn’t.” He seemed cheered by the memory. “I was a dog.”
“Lucky me,” Olive said. But she thought how she hated the way men boasted of their stupid maleness, the way they thought that women were impressed by the boasts. But only other men cared, or laughed, while women concluded, Another reason not to trust you.
He was not a man, he’d become a child again, and she felt sorry for him, especially at those times, more frequent now, when he admitted he was afraid.
“It was all different when I came this way before,” he said. “Because I was different.”
“We’ll go straight to his house,” Olive said, to change the subject, because she knew that he’d talk about how everything was different, and that would lead to him talking about being old, then he’d talk about dying, and she hated that. She wanted him to understand that they were still on a quest and that a new life for him might be possible at the end of it.
“I’m staying in the car,” Sharkey said, suddenly deadened—the fear was physical. They had passed through Wai‘anae on the highway, the shops on the right—yellow walls, scrawled signs—the sea shimmering on the left, the waves like enemies, the thresh of water scooping at tree roots, toppling palms—they lay across the beach—and cracking cement revetments, tossing gouts of sand on the highway. The glare of sunlight exposed the squalor of Wai‘anae and made it sinister, the graffiti more hostile for being so visible, the detritus—driftwood, household garbage—like mayhem. The gray coconuts piled in the high-tide trash on the grassy dunes looked to him like severed heads.
Having turned into a side street, Kaulawaha Road, Olive slowed the car in front of a chain-link perimeter fence, a black dog head-butting it and making it rattle. The dog yelped and slavered, speaking to Sharkey in accusatory barks.
Industrial fencing and a guard dog, but the house was lovely, two stories faced in redwood, in contrast to the bungalows, small behind their faded paint, that lined the street near it, the big house like a symbol of a powerful man towering over the poor.
The fence was recent—shiny, out of character in the funky unfenced neighborhood. A covered lanai on the second floor faced the sea, allowing a view of the town, the ocean—sunsets, waves, the green flash.
“He lived here in the 1980s,” Olive said. “When he bought that house for his mum.” She slipped out of the car and, sensitive to Sharkey’s hesitation—the barking dog, his fatigue and anxiety—said, “Come on, mate. I need you.”
Just as they got to the edge of the fence, they saw a man striding from the house in the direction of the barking dog. He did nothing to calm the dog, allowing it to leap at the fence, making the chain links clang against the steel posts.
“You want something?”
He was dark, local, Hawaiian or Tongan, with black slicked-back hair and a wet jowly face, in a sweatshirt with cut-off sleeves that showed his beefy arms. He carried a thick wooden club in one hand. He wore shorts that came below his knees and flattened flip-flops on his tortured-looking feet. The dog gnawed at the club, coating it with slobber.
“Nice house,” Olive said.
But this pleasantry seemed to anger the man, and his anger was highlighted by the perspiration on his face. Still holding the club, he lifted the front of his sweatshirt with his free hand and mopped it, showing his belly, a four-inch appendix scar upraised like a purple welt.
“Nevvamine.” He flexed his big jaw; he had dog teeth and a scummy tongue. “You selling stuffs? Something like that?”
“We just have a few questions.”
“What department you from?” The man put his head against the fence, facing Olive.
“Take it easy,” Sharkey said.
“Eh!” The man’s grunt rumbled from his belly. “Bodda you?”
Olive said, “We were wondering about a previous occupant of this house, that’s all. Someone we’re researching.”
“I stay here ten-plus years!”
“What’s your name?” Sharkey said.
“Who wants to know?”
“Me—I’m Joe Sharkey.”
The man shrugged, and went on poking at the dog, goading it to growl and nip at the wooden club. “You don’t need to know any names, okay, haole?”
Sharkey stepped back, not because of the man’s rude reply but because the dog had tired of gnawing the club and had leaped, thumping the fence with his front paws and opening his mouth wide to bark.
“This house was once owned by a man named Max Mulgrave,” Olive said.
The man frowned. He turned away and walked a few steps, then he paused and called over his shoulder, “Time to go—I mean, for you.”
“Dead end, dead end, dead end,” Sharkey chanted as they walked back to the car.
Olive said, “No—another revelation. Look at this lovely house. He lived here. He looked out of those windows. He stood on that lanai and watched the sunset and the waves. Maybe he was a surfer. Why else would he come here?”
Sharkey could not match the dead broken man to a surfboard—he barely imagined him upright. But he was rattled by the visit for another reason. He took a deep breath, then said, “That dog freaked me out.” He was relieved to see that the dog had followed the man into the house.
“This is the address that was on the payment form—the one he signed,” Olive said. “This has got to have been his house.”
Kicking at the weeds by the roadside, Sharkey said, “I hate unfinished business. We don’t know anything.”
“We know masses,” Olive said. “We found his hometown. His photograph. His friends. We know where he came from—that’s crucial.”
“We don’t know enough,” Sharkey said, and gasped, feeling helpless and lightheaded and lost. “It’s making me worse, the not knowing.”
Drowning out his moan there came two blasts of a siren’s bloated buzz, a police cruiser heading toward them, stopping directly behind Olive’s car, blue lights flashing, its buzz dying. A burly policeman in a tight shirt got out and stood facing them, his thumbs hooked onto his belt—the belt weighted with gadgets, phone, Taser, cuffs, mace, and a thick black pistol.
“This is private property, folks. We’ve had a complaint.”
“We were just leaving,” Olive said.
“That’s good, because I don’t want to get involved in any paperwork.”
He didn’t blink. He kept his mouth open, teeth showing, as though to warn them.
“Paperwork,” Sharkey said, spitting the word.
Hoping to lighten the mood, Olive said, “We’re day-trippers from the North Shore, making an inquiry. We think a man named Max Mulgrave used to live here.”
The policeman brightened; he let go of his belt and stepped closer, smiling. “You know Max?”
“In a way,” Olive said. “Do you?”
“Everybody in Wai‘anae knows Max,” the policeman said—impressed, eager to oblige. “Rich haole. Good guy. Haven’t heard anything about him for quite a while. I know he took some hits.”
A crackling sound in Sharkey’s head kept him from speaking.
“So this was really his house?” Olive said.
“One of them. The first one, best one. The others were more worse. One was junk. But Max—he stay humble.”
“The man who lives in this house now doesn’t know him.”
“He from Maui—got money, got some food trucks. He know Maui things. He don’t know the Leeward Side. He buy this from another guy. He so lucky to have Max house.”
“What can you tell us about Max?”
“I can tell you he was bulletproof. I can show you his friend—he knows everything. They were buddies. But, hey, you gotta move your vehicle.”
“Where is this guy?”
“Follow me.”
In the car, following the cruiser, Olive said, “He doesn’t know. He thinks Max Mulgrave is alive.”
Sharkey sighed, as he often did hearing the man’s name, the name like an accusation; and he knew that saying he was dead would mean his having to admit he’d killed him. He resisted saying anything; his guilt burdened and weakened him.
“This policeman is taking an extraordinary route.”
The cruiser had moved through a neighborhood of small bungalows, along back streets of junked cars, to the highway, but instead of reentering the residential area the policeman headed to the beach on a service road patched with softened tar that ran parallel to the main road, past overflowing trash barrels and piles of litter—blue plastic, discarded tires, rusted bicycles, and shattered toys. They came to what looked from a distance like a campsite, a huddle of tents atop a steep sand dune, surrounded by windbreaks of canvas, and twiggy lean-tos wrapped with tarpaulins, the twigs protruding like bleached bones. A small Hawaiian flag flapped upside-down on a stick secured to one of the tent poles.
That was the foreground of improvisation and disorder; in great contrast the background was a forested ridge, the old twisted lava flow showing in its folded slopes, the green dignity of a Hawaiian mountainside, its sweet aromatic woods.
The policeman waved them forward, and when they drew beside his cruiser, he called out, “Ask for Frawley DeFreeze. Is his friend. He mention Max to me other day.”
Olive parked, and they walked up the ramp of sand and tussocky turf into the littered area of the tents, where three men were seated in beach chairs, facing the sea, the small waves flopping against the shore, rolls of scummy foam draining into the sand, some shrieking children kicking at it.
“Aloha,” Olive said.
The men leaned back, scowling, their chairs straining under their weight. Two were very fat, bulked against the frayed webbing of the chairs; the third was gaunt, holding a small flattish can under his chin. They wore dirty T-shirts and torn shorts and baseball caps. Now Olive could see that the gaunt one was eating, flicking food from the can to his mouth with chopsticks. At first glance they were like a trio of ragged clowns, harlequins in patches who at any moment might get up and dance and distract her with their foolery, but she saw they were inert and stubborn and colorless in their squalor.
“This whole area private property,” the fattest man said, gesturing with his cigarette. His face looked roasted by the sun, blackened and peeling in places, his lips cracked, but he wore a good pair of aviator sunglasses, which obscured his eyes. As though for emphasis, he canted sideways and spat into the sand. His hat was lettered LOCAL MOTION.
Sharkey said, “You guys surfers?”
“We look like surfers to you, haole?” The man plumped his belly with his hands, and the others laughed.
“Reason I ask is I’m a surfer.” He put out his hand. The others did not move to shake it. He said, “Joe Sharkey.”
“Here’s a stick,” Local Motion said. A bruised and chipped surfboard was jammed in the sand beside one of the tents. “Give me twenty bucks for rent. Go surf.”
Sharkey hesitated, digging his toe in the sand, hating the man for his hostility. “Not today.”
“Haole say he one surfer dude. Now he say he no want for try surf.” He nudged the man next to him, who obliged, expelling cigarette smoke with his laugh. The gaunt man went on eating, now making scouring motions inside the can with his chopsticks. The yellow label on the can said WAHOO. He stared at Sharkey, then opened his mouth wide to clamp it on the chopsticks. He sucked the fish fragments from them, then tossed the can aside.
“Frawley,” Olive said. “We’re looking for him.”
“He at the food pantry,” Local Motion said.
The gaunt man, dabbing at his lips, looked closer at Sharkey. He squinted and said, “Sharkey,” and chewed the word with his lips, because he had no teeth. “Sharkey,” he said again. “You was at Roosevelt. You was a Rough Rider.”
“Yeah. Long ago.”
“Old days,” the man said. He jabbed his thumb at his sunken chest, snagging it on a rip in his T-shirt. “Fonoti. I stay Roosevelt.”
Sharkey knew the name as one of his antagonists but could not discern the muscular wild-haired boy in this skinny toothless balding man squeezing his chopsticks with bony fingers and staring out of deep-set eyes with his mad monkey face.
“I was in da hui,” he said. “Wilfred Kalama and Bradda Jay and them.”
“Wilfred—what happened to him?” Sharkey said, remembering his tormentor.
“He wen’ make. Too much of drugs. Ice, he smoking.”
“Batu,” Local Motion said, as though clarifying.
“Vai and Nalani, they got grandkids. Nalani stay in Vegas.”
“You know this fucken haole?” Local Motion said.
“We was at Roosevelt,” Fonoti said. “Hey, good old Rough Rider days, brah.” He saw a fleck on one of the chopsticks and lapped at it. “So where you stay—what kine job?”
“Like I said, surfing.”
“Except,” Local Motion said, gesturing with a fat finger, “I offer him one stick and he back off like a panty.”
“He’s tired,” Olive said, provoked by the man’s mockery. She had kept a little behind Sharkey, listening to them, surprised by the sudden names and the reminiscence of school in the squalor of the camp, the flapping tents, the litter, the tossed-aside Wahoo can sunk in the sand.
Not tired but anxious, needing relief. The names had fluttered through Sharkey’s memory as distant and dark. He was looking at the sea, gazing beyond the men and the scattered camp and twists of paper and broken plastic as of shattered toys, easing his mind with the afternoon light on the water, the far-off waves, silvery corrugations at this distance. The sun was so low a fishing boat crossed in front of it and blocked it, winked it away for seconds. The incoming swell was a consolation, the ocean seeking him. He had known struggles in the water, but in the end the sea had always befriended him.
Clearing his throat, Fonoti struggled to his feet, staggering a little, then kicked past the two other men and approached Sharkey and straightened. In a strangely formal ritual, he opened his arms and hugged him, jarring Sharkey hard with the itch of his sweat-stink. He released him and beheld him, his dark eyes deep in their sockets.
Local Motion clapped his hands to his knees, a decisive gesture. “Me—I’m Frawley. What you want to know?”
He folded his thick arms across his shirt and turned his sunglasses on Olive, and she saw on his roasted face the pitted scars from chicken pox or acne.
“Max Mulgrave,” Olive said. “What can you tell us about him?”
“Max!” the man said. “Bradda Max,” and reached to bump fists with Olive. “He down on his luck now, but he one great guy.”
“When did you first meet him?”
“Early days—eighties—when he came here after the big buyout deal with his company.”
“That he sold?”
“Not to Symantec, though they made a big offer. He sell it to his employees,” Frawley said. And now, losing his aggression, he lost the lilt of pidgin and the gabble of synthetic English, becoming more grammatical as he gained in pride. “He did the right thing for his workers.”
“I take it his company made software,” Olive said.
“You don’t know?” The man laughed in a surprised, superior way, blowing out his cheeks. “Max came up with one of the first and best software programs for finding glitches in operating systems. Debugging was his thing. Bug fixes. Software patches.” He reached to scratch his blunted and damaged-looking big toe, then heaved himself back in his chair and went on. “He devised the Max Patch—you don’t know that, and he famous for it. Max had the formula. But he wasn’t satisfied, so he made the smart move. He sold everything and came to Hawaii.”
“For any specific purpose?”
“For the specific purpose every haole comes to Hawaii—to chill, to smoke pakalolo, to catch waves.”
The word “waves” woke Sharkey. “He was a surfer?”
“Maybe better than you,” Frawley said. “You know the Big Board Classic—Buffalo Keaulana’s competition? Max competed two, tree times.”
“So did I,” Sharkey said.
Lighting a cigarette, Frawley eyed Sharkey sideways, blowing smoke, the smoke swelling, seeming to represent the widening cloud of his doubt. “Max got major points.”
“I got points,” Sharkey said. “Did he win?”
“Didn’t have to win. Surfing for him was all the time fun. He was pono.”
Olive said, “How do you know so much about his business?”
The man next to Frawley, who had not spoken, poked him and laughed, and Frawley said, “I see what you’re thinking. Big fat babooze, living on the beach, dirty clothes, dog life.” He wagged his finger at her like a wiper blade and said, “I was senior accountant with the biggest firm in Honolulu, office on Bishop Street. I serviced clients from all over, high-end clients—Max was one. I had a nice house like Max, nice car, wife and kids. I was kicking ass. I’m not the buggah you see. Hey, I was Frawley DeFreeze, CPA. I had a life.”
“So what happened?”
“Internal audit. Forensic audit. Big shibai. Some downtime in O Triple C. Insolvency.”
Olive said, “Cooked the books?”
Scowling, Frawley pinched the dirty bill of his cap with one hand and lifted it. He scratched the scurf on his bald patch with his other hand, grubbing his scalp with his bitten nails, grunting, as though audibly reflecting. Then he smacked his lips.
He said, “Defalcation.”
“I’m not sure what that means.”
He settled his cap again. “Made some bad choices.”
“What about Max?”
“Made some more worse choices—went all hamajang with no receivables and no liquidity,” Frawley said. “But before that he did some great things—righteous things. Touched people’s lives. Ask anyone.”
“Tell me about his company, this amazing invention of his,” Olive said.
“You’re interested in his company that he sold”—Frawley puffed his cigarette in defiance—“and you don’t care nothing about the people he helped?”
“I’m just curious about where all the money came from,” Olive said in a subdued voice, to calm the man.
“Guess you’re not computer savvy—the whole fricken world knows about Max Integer. Kids at the high school here use the Max Patch—updated one. You got a computer, brah?”
Sharkey said, “Yeah. I don’t use it much. Just for Surfline or Windguru, to get swells and wave heights.”
“There’s books about his debugging. Real hybolic stuff. You read books?”
This challenge from a fat man wearing a LOCAL MOTION cap and a chewed shirt, sitting over his swollen belly in a twisted and slumping beach chair next to a stained and torn tent on a littered dune in Wai‘anae.
“Books,” Sharkey said. “Not much.”
“Go online,” Frawley said. “Big surfer, try surf the ’Net.”
“And we’ll find out about Max Mulgrave?”
“Not the Hawaii stuff—he was low-profile here. But you’ll find out what he created, the company he sold.” The man concentrated on his cigarette, puffing it, tapping ash. “But listen up. If you want to know what he did here you won’t find it on Google. You have to ask people in Wai‘anae.” He turned aside. “Fonoti—true or not true?”
“True, brah.”
“What about his wife?” Olive said.
“You ask all the unimportant questions.”
“What are the important ones?”
“About his kokua,” Frawley said. “You know kokua?”
Fonoti said, “It da kine, like help.”
“Alex?” Frawley said.
And the other fat man, who had been silent all this time, nodded a little and wheezed and heaved himself out of his chair. He stood unsteadily and said, “Not so, Fonoti. It mean more than help. It mean give everything, make sacrifice—you do something and want no more nothing in return. It mean unselfish, really caring for people, never ask for nothing.”
The man was passionate, almost preaching as he’d risen from his creaking beach chair, gesturing while Sharkey and Olive backed away. He was still talking.
“Some people Max kokua never know his name. But the people who matter, big people, they know him.”
“Alex, he know,” Frawley said as the man tottered and sat down again. “This is why I’m kind of surprised. You asking about him. Funny you don’t know all about him, asking these questions.”
“Like I said, we’re just making inquiries.”
“Computers to the high school,” Fonoti said. “Max geev ’um. Money to the community health center. Max geev ’um.”
“He give me these,” Frawley said, tapping the lenses of his aviator sunglasses. “These real high-end.”
“And plus,” Alex said, as the others joined in.
The competing voices, hectoring, growing shrill, praising Max Mulgrave, some of them strangely scolding, seemed to berate Olive for not knowing about all the good that Max had done. They went on listing his accomplishments, and the worst of it was that they did not seem to know the man was dead. He was still alive, spreading joy, uplifting the poor, easing pain. Each assertion of praise Sharkey took as an accusation, something physical in it, like a slap, turning him sideways, pushing him away.
He found himself shuffling down the dune of salt-bitten grass and cast-off beer cans. To rest his eyes he looked ahead to the shoreline, where the wash of waves lapping the sand caught the last of the sun, the fire on the sea, a flash on each small wave like the memory of light.
A fisherman stood on the beach, whipping a line from his long pole, casting it in successive slashes until with a scissoring sound it looped and plopped in the trough beyond the surf zone, where the water glittered like fish scales. Nearer the shore, small children pretended they were drowning, screeching for help, startling the plovers strutting at the edge, where the slop of the small waves seemed to speak to Sharkey in cautioning stammers.
Seeing the swirl of the bits of broken coral, Sharkey backed away. Rolled in the agitated shore break, the coral was smoothed and made small, knuckles chalk-white from the beating of sun and sea, sluiced together in a great mass, and not like coral at all but a gathering of sea-whitened bones separated from a lost body, a skeleton somewhere, and smashed and smoothed in the greenish stir of a tide pool, among sea blooms and the gray fur of algae on the slabs of lava rock.
It was a broken skeleton rattling in the black sea wrack of the shore break. Sharkey stepped away from it. The push of small waves beat a froth of bubbly spittle in a ridge that straggled along the dark sand near the chips and splinters of bone-white coral. Sharkey was startled by the accusatory sound of the bones in the water, lisping at him. The sea had always spoken to him, but never so severely, nagging with the monotony of malice.
“No,” he said distinctly, shielding himself with his hand. “Never.”
But the single syllables of the slop and the sight of bleached bones and clicking knuckles were inescapable. He stepped back from what he took to be the complaint of a broken man he vaguely knew, his corpse washed ashore, all his bones scattered.
“Joe, you’ve got to hear this,” Olive said as he approached the little camp from the beach.
“Going home,” he said in a haunted voice, and walked past her to the car.