The rain had stopped; the land swelled with sunlight, alive now, limpid, dripping in the soft late-afternoon glow, a fattening rainbow arched in the cloudless sky over Hale‘iwa, its luminous stripes textured like tissue, or threadbare cloth spun across the town. Olive was at the wheel, Sharkey fixed in one of his silences, as they drove along the soaked and blackened bypass road, the big trees sparkling, their boughs still wet, the tall grass sodden, glistening from the purification of the downpour, the day washed clean.
And then a sudden ugliness. “The camp,” Olive said as they passed the tulip tree and the break in the roadside fence. “I don’t have the strength to face those people today.” She answered herself, as she often did these days, because Sharkey seemed numb and deaf. “Maybe some other time.”
But Sharkey was alert at the surf breaks. At Lani’s and Chun’s, and later at Leftovers and Alligators, he marveled at the storm-driven waves, ragged from the aftermath of the rain. The day was serene, but the chop still churned, an effect of the westerly that had dragged over the sea.
A solitary figure appeared at Waimea, and his darkness got Sharkey’s attention as they rounded the bay—a man, his back turned, but familiar, plodding down the bluff of sand to where it shelved and was undercut by the shore break. The man wore shorts but did not carry a board, nor did he hesitate to dip his toe first but walked into the low wall of surf and stepped into the sea and vanished as though into a hole.
Sharkey mouthed the words, “Gone under.”
At home Olive was talkative, seeming to reassure herself, her characteristic and chatty back-and-forth, the way she muttered when she was alone, thinking out loud, more slangy and British when she talked to herself—“Mustn’t grumble . . . Cuppa tea would do me a power of good . . . Get cracking”—all of it unintelligible to Sharkey.
She said, “That Chinese character tattooed on his arm that we couldn’t fathom—it was her name.”
The storm was still swirling in Sharkey’s head, the surf like wild applause. He was silent, but he was not calm; his brain was frenzied, needing relief, rehearsing the mute panic of being underwater, tumbled and struggling, caught beneath a wave. But instead of fearing it he saw it as a form of rescue—an answer, a painkiller.
“Maybe tomorrow, crack of dawn,” Olive said, still quizzing herself over the homeless camp. “Start as we mean to go on.”
The idea filled Sharkey with dread, the uncertainty of “maybe,” the horror of “tomorrow.” He felt punished by time; he wanted no more days of pain.
“I’m sure you’re as knackered as I am,” Olive said, speaking on his behalf, because he was lying on the bed, the last of the daylight dimming on his face, decaying to a shadow passing over his eyes. He had not spoken aloud since the police station, his “Gone under” had not been audible. But he was awake—more than awake, his body buzzed with anticipation.
And when, stimulated by his sleeplessness—Olive asleep and turned away and lightly snoring—he slid from the bed, left the house, and started down the hill.
Sometime in the night, in the twitch of a dream, yawning and rolling over, Olive threw her arm beside her and was woken when it flopped against the emptiness of the bed, her arm unexpectedly loosened by a missing body.
“Joe?”
The silence clarified her mind. She called again, dressed and quickly looked from room to room, and then dashed to the lanai, where Sharkey often sat, his legs extended, when he could not sleep. There she saw his phone on the side table. She picked it up, thinking, If he left it behind, he’s not coming back—finding something reckless and final in his leaving it, like abandonment.
On an impulse, because it was late, because he was forgiving and mellow and she easily found his name on the phone, she called Moe Kahiko.
“Yah.” His voice was phlegmy, clotted with sleep.
“It’s Olive from down the road—I can’t find Joe. Will you help me look for him?”
“What time is it?”
“Two, or nearabout.”
“Where he stay?”
Waiting for his laborious sighlike yawn, like a groan, to cease, she paused, then said, “I don’t know. Moe, that’s why I’m asking you.”
“Give me a minute. I put some clothes on and pick you up.”
Two-twenty by her watch as she slid the gate open; a moony night of stillness, the only sound the drone of surf from down the hill at Waimea, audible confusion, strangely mechanical but out of sync, like the stammer of a pump misfiring, a sequence of interrupted thumps, the waves.
The lights of Moe’s pickup truck entered the gateway, and she ran to the vehicle, the sound of the surf immediate in her consciousness. She said, “Let’s try the beach.”
“It come up big, the surf today night.”
She remembered her chuntering monologue, how Sharkey had said nothing, made no reply even to direct questions; how he had looked past her at the storm surf as they’d rounded the bay.
They were down the hill in minutes, the road silvered by the moon, and Moe ran the red light at Foodland, passing Rubber Duckies and Three Tables and then the overlook above the lava rocks of the bay. Olive strained to see Sharkey. That the beach was empty, the sand whitened by moonglow, did not reassure her. She thought, We’re too late—he’s gone.
Moe pulled into the parking lot, close by the changing rooms, where another car was parked aslant on the grass verge. Two people were visible inside, smoke trailing from a cracked-open side window, the mildewed aroma of smoldering pakalolo.
“Ask them if they saw him,” Olive called out.
But failing to get their attention by rapping on the car window, Moe pulled the door open. The man at the wheel said, “You a cop?” The woman beside him ducked, hiding her face.
“Looking for my braddah,” Moe said.
The man grunted and switched on his headlights, illuminating the beach, and at the ledge, in the slosh of the shore break, Sharkey stood facing the bay in water to his knees.
“Joe!”
Hearing his name, Sharkey plunged into the waves. He did not swim. He thrashed and fought the water, as though attempting to sink himself under a wave.
Moe sprinted to him and caught one of his flailing arms, while Sharkey protested, trying to yank his arm free, hitting Moe with his other arm.
“What you doing, you lolo?”
Olive approached, sinking in the wet sand, howling with a force that startled Sharkey, stalling him; and he surrendered to Moe’s embrace, looking defeated and ashamed as he was led to the car.
At the house Moe helped him through the door to his bed, Sharkey stumbling, and held him while Olive sedated him with two capsules, urging him to drink from the glass she tipped to his lips.
“What kine meds?” Moe said.
“Xanax.”
“We like snort it.” He allowed himself a cluck of recognition.
“He’ll be okay in the morning.”
Moe said, “He just flipped out.”
“Maybe he was afraid. We’re supposed to visit that homeless camp on the bypass road.”
“Kimo’s ohana,” Moe said.
“You know them?”
“I been there,” Moe said, sounding vague. “I wen’ sell some merch there.”
“Come with us.”
“Okay—you got it.”
She kissed him; he held her. He stank of dirt and sweat and seawater, and she began to cry, from the pent-up anxiety of the day—the police, the video of the funeral, the vanishing of Joe, and what she was certain was a clumsy attempt at suicide.
Over her sobbing, Moe said, “Smoke one joint, sister. Or maybe smash and snort one of them Xanax. You feel more better.”
“I’ll feel fine if you come with us tomorrow.”
“This my ‘aina. This my turf. I know the way.”
In the morning Moe whistled from the driveway, then called out on the stairs and on the lanai flattened his face against the sliders, wearing the same T-shirt and torn shorts as in the night, his hair kinked and mud-matted, a big dark dusty angel, the oily smear of his face on the glass.
“We go in my truck, crew cab. Your car, they think maybe you’re cops.”
Moe drove; Olive sat in the cramped backseat with Sharkey, her feet deep in clutter, one door wired shut, the upholstery fuzzy with dirt, the engine coughing as it labored up the road amid the hum of gas fumes and burned plastic, Moe grunting each time he shifted to a new gear. The sensations of these details reminded Olive of the night before, her panicked search for Sharkey in that truck.
Sharkey said nothing, and Olive wondered what she would do if he tried to throw himself into the road. She’d managed to restrain agitated patients, but never alone—it was usually a group on the flailing person, a nurse on each limb. But he sat next to the door that was fastened shut by thick twisted wire. He’d have to fight past her to kill himself now.
Moe said, “How you doing, brah?”
Olive took Sharkey’s hand, out of tender affection but also to test his mood. His dry palm, his slack fingers surprised her—his loose grip was not that of someone possessed by any urgency. It was like holding a child’s helpless mute hand.
“How am I doing?” Sharkey said. In the same searching whisper he went on. “I feel I am someone else. I just don’t know who.”
“You da Shark, brah.”
Olive tugged his hand to reassure him. They were passing Waimea Bay, near the entrance to the parking lot. They did not need to mention the drama of the previous night—the groan of the waves lamented it, the rip and ruck from the shadow zone of the far-off storm was like a feverish memory of desperation.
It seemed that Sharkey heard it that way, yet his voice was reflective, rueful, when he began to speak again, interrupting himself to start over several times, to make himself clear.
“I did it because I felt ashamed and guilty,” he said. “And now I’m bummed and more ashamed because I did it.”
What he’d done was understood. No one spoke, and after that pained confession, Olive thought, what could one say?
“Thanks,” Sharkey said. “You saved me.” He was studying the ocean; they were at Chun’s Reef now. “When I was a lifeguard I never had to save the same person twice.”
At the bypass road, Olive said, “Maybe park by the fence—near that big tulip tree.”
But Moe had slowed and turned and nosed the truck into a half-hidden driveway that led through the tall grass, and when he came to the broad scrawled sign—KAPU—he kept going.
“I know this place. I know these people.”
Then they were at the edge of the clearing, a dog barking and straining on his long leash.
“Aloha,” Moe called out, and strode to the man seated near the dog.
In a blue haze of smoke from a smoldering fire pit, the man was sprawled on the car seat set on the ground that served as a sofa, his baseball cap resting on his frizz of hair, the same T-shirt, ALOHA FUN RUN, on his torso. He got to his feet and crouched in a threat posture, but his look of ferocity vanished when he recognized Moe. He shouted, “Mr. Kahiko, mushroom man—what you got for me?”
“Anything you want, Jimmy.”
The two men hugged. Still in the hug, glaring over Moe’s shoulder, the man said, “Why these fucken haoles here?”
“My friends,” Moe said, disengaging himself and, with a little chivalrous bow, “And now your friends.”
A movement from beyond the barking dog—two women stirred, one scuttling on all fours like a puppy from beneath the shelter of blue plastic, the other unfolding herself from the old car’s backseat. Both women looked damaged, one of them fattish, her hair twisted in gray braids, the other squinting from under slatted lids, in a ball cap and apron. The one with the ball cap went to the fire pit and kicked the smoldering wood, sending up sparks.
“Where the kids at?”
“They got school, yah.”
“I know this guy,” the woman with the braids said to Sharkey. “I see you before.”
Olive said, “We paid you a visit about six weeks ago. We were looking for someone. You told us to go away.”
“My short-term memory is junk,” the woman in the apron said.
The other said, “I thought you was from Child Protective Services. Come to take my kids away.”
The big man approached Sharkey, who was scowling from the fury of the barking dogs. The man said, “Yeah—you. I remember.”
“We brought you some malasadas,” Olive said, presenting the woman with a cardboard box, the sides of the box stained by the grease from its contents.
“Still piping hot, the malasadas,” the woman with the braids said. She offered the box to the big man, who waved her aside, and then she took one out and began chewing.
“I’m Olive.”
“This Winona,” the woman with the braids said. “I’m Rhonda.”
“Kimo,” the big man said, extending his hand to Sharkey’s and gripping it. “Normally, like I always say, we the Foreign Legion—no names. But if Moe say you friends, we got names.”
“I’m Joe Sharkey.”
Rhonda giggled and poked Sharkey’s arm, like a small girl’s awkward greeting.
“The first time we were here we met a woman, Lindsey,” Olive said. “She claimed she knew the man we were asking about.”
“Lindsey a meth head,” Winona said. “She gone.”
“We didn’t know the man’s name then. Now we know. Max Mulgrave.”
“Max gone too.”
“You knew him?” Olive said, flustered by the sudden revelation.
“He stay here for a while.”
“I know the guy?” Moe said to Kimo.
“Sure. The guy you call Smack.”
“Smack,” Moe said, and turned to Sharkey. “I know Smack. Why you didn’t tell me you looking for Smack?”
“His name is Max,” Olive said.
“I sell him all kinds of merch. Pakalolo. Batu. You name it. That Smack is hardcore. How he get the name is he using smack, no needles—he smoke it and sniff it and sometimes eat it.”
“We hear he pass,” Kimo said. He turned to scream at the barking dogs, and the dogs whimpered and crouched in the dirt. “Someone run into him at Waimea.”
“That was me,” Sharkey said. “I killed him. That’s why we came here before. I didn’t know his name. I was trying to find out who he was. He wasn’t carrying an ID.”
“You the guy wen’ kill Max?” Kimo asked, and stepped so quickly toward Sharkey that Sharkey backed away.
Intimidated, weakened by the question, fearful of what might happen next, Sharkey said in a faltering voice, “Yes. I ran into him.”
“You can prove it?” Kimo was leaning at him, looking eager.
“The cops know it.”
“I mean, you can prove he wen’ make?”
“His body’s in the mortuary,” Olive said, to distract the man. “Ashes now. He was cremated.”
Kimo had turned to Rhonda and was nodding vigorously. Her expression was ambiguous, at first sorrowful and slack, and then a faint smile, with something like satisfaction, flickered on her cracked and sunburned lips, which made her reaction macabre.
“It was all my fault,” Sharkey said, strengthened by the sight of the two people silently communicating a sense of pleasure. He’d expected to be assaulted by Max Mulgrave’s angry grieving friend, but the man had turned away from him.
Olive took Sharkey’s hand. She said to Kimo and the women, “I don’t blame you for being upset.”
Kimo shrugged, wiping his hands on his T-shirt. “We hear he wen’ make, but where the proof?” He gestured to Sharkey. “You did a bad thing, mister. He was a good guy—he live over there with Rhonda for, what? Year or so.”
“More,” Rhonda said.
“He set up her kids in school. Those kids you saw before. Smart akamai kids. He organize a trust fund for them.”
“He had money?”
“Not much left. He spend most of it on drugs.”
“I never charge him much,” Moe protested. “Smack like a braddah to me. But the trouble was the batu. The cheap stuff, it can wreck you. But . . . was his money.”
Kimo said, “He put some aside for those kids, to give them one chance in life. The bank in Hale‘iwa got all the papers. They know he wen’ make?”
“Probably not,” Olive said.
“You can tell them—show them the death certificate and all that.”
“We’d be glad to do that. If it’s important to you.”
“Important for the will,” Kimo said. “Rhonda in the will. The keikis in the will.” He went to Sharkey and held him by his shoulders. He said, “I know you upset. But was an accident. Max was high a lot of the time. He fall off his bike, sometimes he half drown. He safe now, in heaven. No more pain.”
Hearing this, Sharkey feared he might cry, and he blinked away his tears. He could endure anger, but any expression of forgiveness made him weepy.
Kimo faced him, and although he was ragged and smelled of the smoke and the camp, he was precise in his instructions, saying, “Go to the bank today. Take the documentation. Rhonda need that will. The kids too. After probate they have a chance. Like the lottery, brah.”
All this time Rhonda had been smiling at Sharkey. At the mention that Max Mulgrave had been living with her—in the car or the blue plastic shelter, it was not clear—she’d assumed a sly expression. But now she raised her hand and poked his arm again, the small girl’s teasing face in her old woman’s battered features, her red eyes and gray braids fixed on their ends with tattered ribbons. She tugged his arm and then spoke softly, a braid in each hand, wagging her head like a coquette.
“Way back, you was one lifeguard.”
“Long ago,” Sharkey said. “I was a kid.”
“I was one of your girls,” the old woman said in the same low voice. “You fuck me on the beach at Waimea. You call me your seal pup.”
The other woman, Winona, had not heard. She walked over to Sharkey with the greasy box of malasadas and said, “Try one. They junk when they come cold.”
Standing under the trees, the smoke from the fire pit blowing past them, the dog lying in the dirt biting itself, Kimo and the others took turns hugging Sharkey and Olive, who promised to meet them again and to submit the death certificate to the bank.
“Maybe fix us up with a lawyer,” Kimo said. “And then you gotta come back and see the keikis.”
In the truck, driving away, Moe said, “I know this guy—Max, Smack, whatever. Long time ago, he want so choke pakalolo from me I cannot receive it in my mail can, because the post office they get more suspicious. So I do a bad thing. I send it to your mail can—and, shoots, it come lost.”
“I’ve heard that story,” Olive said, her hand flying to her face to cover her smile.
“Yeah,” Sharkey said. “You were supplying him?”
“Big-time—when he had bucks, and an insane spendy car,” Moe said. “Later I see him all over on his junk bike. All the time when the surf up we sit on the beach, smoking, talking story, tripping, watching you shred the monster wave. You his hero, Joe—he so stoked, seeing you surf.”