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Big Island Story

Thread Status: Hello , There was no answer in this thread for more than 60 days.
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Come on stop leaving us in supenders!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!


finish it pppppppppppppppppppplease
 
Sorry for the long break. I'm surprised someone else didn't finish it. Dang, time sure passes quickly when life gets in the way. I changed user names, kbakery was my biz e'mail. Part of the reason my communique's ceased was I didn't know where to take our hero next. For years I've enjoyed putting down descriptions, anecdotes but always felt I lacked the story line. A good beginning, middle and end. A hook.

I just reread this and realized I had some of you on the hook good! You want to know what kind of a monster comes up out of the deep don't you. Don't we all? Isn't that why we fish? I'll get on this soon, got to go to work now.

Aloha,

Tom
 
I knew hunting, I knew we were hunting but this new landscape wasn’t even land. Nothing below me, really no visual points of reference accept for my new friends in the distance who appeared small and translucent little jelly fish maneuvering by my mask which appeared large. It was disorienting. The skin on my back was beginning to crisp like bacon. I inhaled and dove under. As I sank down the sound of the bubbles around my ears and the surface noise fell away and nothing remained but the cool liquid envelope. I looked up to locate the boat hull and the brothers. Seeing them gave me a sense of distance. The boat seemed further away than I thought. A degree of unease crept back in. Not only was the boat further away but I now had the uneasy feeling that my back was exposed. Yet I relaxed and gazing down at nothing quickly became a non-event for all the adrenaline I was suppressing. At first I wasn’t sure, it might have been a jellyfish thing close up or fluctuating rays of light wobbling down but a few more moments of focus revealed a dark diamond shape moving below me, ghost like.
 
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Moments passed and the dark shape took more form. It looked like a ray. A Manta Ray but small or far away. As I thought of kicking over to Kai and Ikaika there was a concussion noise. I looked around seeking a source. Nothing seemed different so I relocated the dark ray like object as I surfaced. Kai and Ikaika seemed to be diving one up one down yet every time I yelled as a snorkel popped up neither seemed to hear. On the surface and closer to the boat I glanced toward it. I seemed to be having another trick of perception, the boat hull had a spear through it and it was leaking a diffuse blood shaded fluid into the sea. This wasn't right yet in the current world I was in it took me a moment to realize. I kicked hard to the back transom and pulling my mask off lurched up between the motors. There was Spence lying wedged between the gunnel and the fish box coughing and spitting up blood. What the hell? I yelled at Spence and pulled myself onboard. Piling my spear and fins on the other side I reached over and touched his shoulder, he expelled a noise something like “fuck!”. Thank God. I said his name again, he opened his eyes. They wobbled and held a wavering focus. This time when I shouted for Kai it was with no regard for the silent open space of the ocean around us and his head popped up quickly.

Ikaika reached the transom first with his brother tailing close behind. Seeing me cradling Spence’s head in my hands and sopping up blood with a T-shirt and a large stainless steel spear shaft jutting out of the hull between Spence's legs his first words were, ‘You fucking guy! You speared my boat! Fuck!” He loosed the bands on his spear and climbed in. As he got set to put his gear on mine, cursing the entire time, he grabbed my spear and carefully disarmed it. Kai rolled onboard next expelling ***** ***** fuck’s as if he had a stutter. Ikaika took his spear and gear and laid it on the pile.
 
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I'll look for it. How's Kona? Wish I was there.
This story's called "Come stay go" :)
 
Kona has been real flat lately...great for diving. Vis in town is unreal underwater, once you get above water it's really bad. The vog's real thick right now can hardly see the horizon...i think i'll stay underwater this weekend motionless in space pretending to be a Mu.-ty
 
The motors whistled and clicked on. Ikaika turned and told Kai to pull the spear shaft most of the way up through the hull so the tip and cable wouldn’t foul the props. We began speeding home. Spence sat up a by himself and breathed pensively. “I think I broke a rib”. His breathing was still producing pink spittle but he was well enough to ask me for help. “Boss, grab me a beer eh?”. Kai looked at me grinned "Me too uh? ay, did you see that Manta? That was one big bugga, maybe sixteen feet wing to wing.”

The volcano on the horizon grew. I resolved that perceptions still needed adjustment for me here. I reached into the cooler for beer and but my head turned and I looked back at the big open space we were leaving.
 
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Chapter Two

“Where should we put him?” Spence asked with an grin. “The kitchen?” I looked down at the gurney with the sheet over the huge body. Sunday brunch had claimed another victim. Some poor guy on vacation, his old heart just waiting for retirement, gave up to the inevitable. It would be an hour before Popes Mortuary could make it up from Kona. The paramedics had another call immediately after trying to resuscitate the old guy. The wife was in shock and taken to her room. I was left with the body. Whether some guy keels over or not people are still hungry. My wait staff would have difficulty serving all the omelets with hollandaise, bacon, sausage and piles of waffles with butter and syrup if we hid him in the bus station. “Push Spence, they did this to him” The kitchen crew seemed a little uncomfortable with the idea but it was the best place, against a wall in the cool cement hallway of the butcher’s room.
 
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We got back to business, clearing and re-setting tables, pouring champagne. ‘What you do with the old man? “Emalani asked. The benefits of management, Ema comes to me with questions. I looked down into her innocent eyes and confessed we’d put him in the main kitchen next to the butchers door. Ema giggled and carried another bottle of Dom out to her eight top of bellowing Aussies. Although they were investors in our hotel they reminded me of a touring Kiwi Rugby team after a win. They seemed to be enjoying Ema’s creative way of presenting and serving 120.00 per bottle Champagne. She stood next to their table at the end of the floor over looking the palms and sand of the west facing Hawaiian shoreline. She daintily peeled the foil, untwisted the wire over the cork, braced the butt of the bottle on the upper half of her skirted thigh and with both thumbs pried up the cork and fired it half way into the ocean. I glanced around quickly to make sure our general manager was not a witness to this primitive display and made note to educate her on the finer points of wine service in the near future.
 
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Hotels are boring if you live in them for any length of time, even if it is a so called “Four star” establishment. I walked out to my company car through the late afternoon light. The breeze coming from the ocean, the island inhale, was only moderately comforting in the heat of the surrounding black top in that course lava landscape. It carried an ochre volcanic haze up from the still active southern flows. Opening the car door released an steamy odor. I resolved to add rinsing the borrowed wetsuit that sat putrefying in the back seat to my short list of the afternoon’s objectives; get away from the hotel. I rolled down the windows, turned left onto the highway and headed north over the lava back to Kawaihae, the closest settlement with affordable beer and perhaps someone to talk to.
 
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A wide shouldered local boy wearing Tattoos and surf trunks pushed out of the screen door of Doi’s holding a soda flat loaded with beer, a few bags of damp boiled peanuts and wrapped packs of dark dried fish. He held it open for me and said, “Pau hana already boss? Come in! Come in!” I smiled back and stepped in having no recollection of ever having met him. I walked down the narrow right isle to the back side wall and half lifted half slid open the handicapped old glass cooler door. The near freezing temperature inside belayed it’s apparent old age, I grabbed a frosty twelve pack and lurched the old door back tight. Carrying my case of beer toward the counter I picked up a small tub of Ahi poke, a delicious raw tuna and seaweed mixture, from the deli cooler on the way. At the counter I beat the cashier to a smile. “Howdy!” “Aloha! Anything else for you bruddah?” "That'll do, that and a good sunset"
 
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The rental car gave me away before I pulled onto the dusty crushed coral yard leading to the Kawaihai boat ramp and the thumbnail of sand where the canoe club launched their boats. The assumption that I was still just an imported hotel worker of the mainland variety was slipping away faster than I thought. But the car was a red flag amongst the numerous lifted trucks with dive and surf stickers plastered on back windows and bumpers and the odd day glow Street Racer cars cherished by the younger kids.
 
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A few people sat in beach chairs, their backs to the trucks and their feet in the sand facing west. The sun was nearing the horizon but was hidden up behind an ochre chalk stroke of distant clouds. It promised to slide down into that liquid horizon shortly. Fire and water. I pulled up next to Kai’s old truck. That big boat killer Spence stood at the bumper with his stomach and elbows draped over the hood, a beer in one hand, the other gesturing heroicly. I opened the car door and Spence lifted his belly stiffly. “Heh Boss! You like one beer? You can get it yourself. I can’t bend over, my rib's still sore.” “Thanks but I brought some too, can put ‘em in your coolah’ I never get one yet”. Spence laughed, “Ho! You can’t start talk’in like us yet, you just got here! You bettah hode onto that good mainland English for a while anyway. “
 
I was here in response to an offer of a six month food service management transfer. Life in Las Vegas had taken a turn toward feeling trapped. My whole life in one desert with one set of friends and shared relationships pleaded for something unexpected. I saw the notice on the board in the personnel office and four weeks later I was attempting to share a sunset with a bunch of Hawaiians who spoke such a loaded English I needed to be loaded to understand it. They seemed to turn it on a little thicker just for me. “eh, get da kine ovah dea fo da kine.” Da kine, da kine, da kine. I thought, am I suppose to be clairvoyant? What’s da kine? They turned it on so thick the other guy would say, “eh?” and the first would have to repeat himself. I said “eh, get da kine ovah dea fo da kine!” “eh?”
 
The cylinders of beer fell into Spence’s ice. I picked one back out, put the cover of the cooler back on tight and sat on the hood of my own car. A head with long black hair in a beach chair turned around. “You want to sit down? Here’s a chair.” It was Emma. Out of the tacky aloha print uniform her shoulders, the color of polished Koa were smooth and muscular. Her glossy black hair covered her bikini straps. Spence’s eyebrows arched in response to my opportunity as I was about to ask about his rib. “Sure Emma, thanks”
 
Sitting down and letting my feet fall into the sand out of my new three dollar rubber slippers I toasted to Emma and squinted west toward the sun. “Ho, you get some diakon legs there bruddah, you better get out the sun screen even after the sun sets!” Emma giggled, “You so mean!”. I looked over, the jibe had come from the gentleman who had held the door for me at Doi’s. Emma said “This is Ty, he’s my little brother” Ty reached an arm across. We fumbled the handshake, I deferring to the Hawaiian thumb grab style and Ty offering me the traditional haole’ style. We eventually ended up shaking both ways. Emma leaned back to get all the hand action out of her face. “What was that?”
 
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"Daikon?” “You were serving it all day with us, it’s that shredded white Japanese radish under all the Sushi. Before it’s cut it’s long, thin and white like these” She squeezed just above my knee. I sipped my beer and squinted back out to sea. Ty got up and walked to the Jetty separating the harbor with it’s Sanpans and Sport fishing boats from the little wedge of beach and the open ocean. He stood there momentarily in his trunks then dove in. “Here, try these” Emma handed me the bulky black sunglasses that Ty had thrown down into the chair. The sun broke through below the clouds and oozed into the ocean, elongating, stretching for the water, a brief moment of glowing orange magma and then it was gone.
 
Hi folks,

My computer kicked the bucket. Soon as I get a new one this tale will start shakin' again.

TP
 
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