Blue Skin of the Sea (24 page)

We walked along the road out of town to Shelley’s house, ducking into the bushes whenever a car approached. Shelley limped most of the way, her feet cut up pretty badly. I tied palm fronds around them to ease the pain.

When we finally got there she stood with her arms around my neck and hugged me a long time, hanging on as if it would be the last time we’d ever see each other. I closed my eyes and slid helplessly into the blissful trance of closeness.

A light went off in her house. I pulled away. I hadn’t even met her parents yet. They’d always been asleep by the time we’d walked home. I didn’t want them to see Shelley with cut feet and tangled hair and wonder what I did to her. And worse, her jeans were still stuck under a rock at the cove.

“Be careful,” Shelley whispered as I moved away into the darkness. “I’d die if anything happened to you.”

I walked the mile more down the coast to my house, the dream of Shelley flickering, a slow-building dread gnawing at me.

The dogs trotted out to me. I knelt down and scratched their ears and let them lick my face. The light from the kitchen window flickered in their eyes.

When I stood, they spread out and returned to their sleeping spots, one of them leading me up the steps to the porch. Popoki sat at the top. She pretty much ran the place. She stood and stretched when I whispered her name.

Dad was sitting at the kitchen table with a small pile of papers and his checkbook, a cup of coffee steaming near his right hand. His wavy hair curled around his ears. Streaks of gray were beginning to mar the deep brown above his forehead.

In his thick, callused fingers the thin ballpoint pen looked out of place.

I sat down across from him, still damp and itching from the drying salt.

Dad leaned back in his chair and crossed his arms. “You’ve been pretty busy lately,” he said.

I nodded, and said, “Busy’s too slow a word.”

He smiled. “What’s going on?”

I hadn’t realized how much I’d been keeping to myself since I’d met Shelley. It all started pouring out. I told him about the paddlers and Rudy and Shelley, then what had happened down at Thurston’s. “It’s like I’m going crazy or something. She’s all I can think of anymore. But Rudy. What do I do about him?”

Dad sat back, thinking, staring at the table.

“I wish my mother were here,” I said, then suddenly realized what I’d said.

Dad looked up.

“ … I mean … maybe she would have understood about Shelley and Rudy.”

Dad stared at his hands, playing with the pen. He always seemed to know about people like Rudy, about how they think, and how to deal with them. But Shelley. Could he even guess at what she might be feeling?

“She probably would have,” he finally said. “She was like your Aunty Pearl. She had a big heart.”

Dad frowned. “Do you think this girl has been leading Rudy on, and maybe you?”

“No,” I said, his words cutting me. “She’s not like that. She’s new here and just got mixed up with him because she didn’t know anyone, that’s all.”

Dad stared at me. “It seems pretty clear to me, son. You can live in fear of this boy or meet him face to face. If you want to be with her, there’s not much else you can do.”

“I know,” I said. I knew it the minute I started liking Shelley.

I went outside and took off my clothes. The dogs sat watching while I hosed the salt off my body. The night air was warm, and the rubbery taste of hose-water gave me a moment of peace. I was at home, with Dad and the dogs, and Popoki the queen, safe, for the moment, from even my own mind.

The next day when I came in with the glass-bottom boat, a crew of boy paddlers stood waist-deep in the water by a canoe. Rudy lounged under the trees, his arm hanging loosely around Shelley’s neck. As the cat glided up to the sand, Shelley glanced down at me, but quickly turned away. Her knees were drawn up to her chin, and her arms wrapped around her legs.

“Eh! Shee-shee pants,” Rudy called to me.

I ignored him and started cleaning up the boat.

“Eh, I talking to you.” He jumped to his feet along with two of his friends.

A wave of fear ran through me.

On the other side of the cove Dad was just sitting down on the wood rail that ran along the edge of the pier. He must have cut his fishing day short. He peered down into the water, as if watching for crabs. He never looked directly at me, but I knew why he was there.

I turned toward Rudy, but ignored him. “Shelley,” I said.

Her mouth opened slightly, as if she thought I’d gone clean out of my head. Then her eyes dropped.

Rudy stepped between us, blocking her from view. The muscles in his jaw rippled as he glared at me.

I walked closer, starting around Rudy, and reached out my hand. “Shelley, come with me.”

Rudy slammed his hands against my chest, pushing me backward toward the cat. His two friends moved to each side of me, just out of reach.

Rudy grabbed my T-shirt, but I knocked his hand away with
my arm. One of his friends circled around and grabbed me from belhind. Rudy raised his fist, but held back when his friend suddenly backed off and tipped his head over toward the pier where Dad stood with his arms crossed, staring over at us.

“You’re dead meat,” he said, then flew at me.

“Rudy stopr
Shelley ran toward us. Rudy’s friends grabbed her and held her back.

I fell backward when Rudy slammed into me, landing hard, rolling into the water. He jumped up quickly and sat on my stomach. Water washed over my eyes and into my mouth. He punched at my face in rapid jabs.

I heaved up with my stomach and rolled to the side, throwing him off. He swung as he fell, wildly, and I punched back. I dove at him, getting too close to swing. We wrestled in the water, gasping, each of us trying to drown the other. I must have swallowed a couple of gallons of salt.

I got one more punch in that made his mouth bleed. Then I felt hands on my shoulders. The coach stepped between us.

“Rudy! Get the hell out of here. You ain’t paddlin’ for me today!” The coach glared at him. The rest of the paddlers pressed in, a hundred eyes, waiting.

Rudy scrambled up, a little wobbly. He wiped his hand across his mouth, smearing the blood. I was on my knees trying to catch my breath when I saw him coming and fell to the side. He missed me completely and sprawled into the water. I jumped up with my fists clenched and backed off a couple of steps. The coach reached down and grabbed Rudy from behind, by the hair. Rudy got up on his knees. He whipped his arm back at the coach, thinking it was me. The coach surrounded Rudy’s chest with his other arm and lifted him up. Rudy flailed back, but the coach held him until he stopped swinging.

“Go home and cool off.” He let Rudy go.

“You dead, fahkah, you dead, you
dead!”
he spit at me, then glared at Shelley and stormed off toward town.

Over at the pier Dad strolled away toward the boats. I bent over with my hands on my knees, trying to catch my breath.

Rudy’s friends let Shelley go and she ran into the water. She knelt next to me, crying. “I’m sorry, I’m sorry, it’s all my fault … ”

“It’s okay … ”I said between the gaps in my breathing. “It’s okay … ”

My face throbbed, and my legs felt weak. Inside, my heart pounded like racing pistons.

Shelley helped me pull the cat up on the sand and stake it down, then bathed my face with fresh water, waiting in silence for me to settle down.

We spent the rest of the afternoon alongside the pier on Dad’s boat, together for the first time in open daylight. The ropes creaked as wide swells passed under the hull, lifting us, then dropping us down gently.

My face stung, but the sun felt as good as it ever had at anytime in my life.

“What happened
to you?”
Keo asked when I saw him the next day.

“Got in a fight with Rudy.”

“For what?”

“Shelley.”

“I hope it was worth it.”

“I’d do it again if I had to.”

I stayed jittery for the next couple of weeks, thinking Rudy would suddenly appear with two or three of his friends, especially somewhere along the road to my house where there were long stretches of nothing but grass, weeds, and trees.

Free of Rudy, Shelley was a new person. We went everywhere together, and at any time of day. I even met her parents.

“Sonny,” her mother said, pausing, as if wanting to remember my name. “Nice to meet you.” She had some kind of mainland accent. She shook my hand like a man would, with a strong grip, and pulled me into the house before letting go. “You look like you just walked out of an Edgar Rice Burroughs book,” she said.

“Huh?”

“You know, Tarzan.”

I liked her instantly.

Her father was an inch shorter and just as friendly. He had a thick blond mustache.
No
one I knew had a mustache. Uncle Raz said only pansies had them. But Shelley’s father didn’t seem like a pansy to me.

“You like machines?” he asked.

I shrugged. “I guess so.”

“Good. Then you’ll like what I’ve got in the garage.”

I glanced at Shelley and she rolled her eyes, then smiled. We followed him out to the garage. Carefully, he pulled away a blue canvas tarp.

“Sweet, huh?”

I stared at the small black Alfa Romeo. It had a wooden dashboard and wooden steering wheel. I’d never seen anything like it.

From then on Shelley’s father picked me up on the road whenever he found me walking home.

Shelley quit paddling, and stayed away from the cove until each practice was over. I tried to schedule my charters so that I’d be out most afternoons.

But before summer was over I ran into Rudy again.

The first time, Shelley and I had just finished putting the glass-bottom boat up for the day and were walking back through town on the island side of the road. We were holding hands and talking. Suddenly Shelley fell silent.

Rudy was slouching against a rock wall with four stone-faced
boys, all of them staring at us. I felt the skin on the back of my neck start to crawl. But he said nothing as we hurried by.

The second time I was up the hill at the barber shop sitting on the bench outside with my eyes closed, waiting for Dad. The air was cool at that elevation. It was so quiet I could hear a car coming up the road four or five minutes before it passed by.

“Mendoza,” someone said, standing to the side so the sun streamed into my eyes. It was the first time Rudy and I had ever met alone. He laughed and said, “No worry,
baole.
I no like fight.

“That makes two of us,” I said, squinting up at him and shielding my eyes from the sun.

Rudy smirked. “The barber, my grandmother’s cousin—the old buk-buk got me working his coffee.”

I studied him. Rudy acting like a normal person? What was he getting at?

He nodded and started to leave. “No move when the old man uses the razor, eh? He getting pretty old.” He laughed and went on down the road.

He seemed like a different person without his gang around. I could almost like him.

As the days rolled on, I could tell by the way Dad treated me that I’d climbed a notch in his eyes. And though Rudy had dragged my summer down, Shelley gave it wings, and light, and sky, and hope for the future. We worked the glass-bottom boat together, me running the boat, and she talking to tourists and leading them down to the cove, then diving for coral and shells, bringing them up under the glass and carefully replacing them for the next group

I did two things the rest of that summer—learned almost all I know about shells, fish, and coral, and fell deeper and deeper and deeper under Shelley’s spell.

Family.

I should have thought of a thousand things to say when Shelley asked me what mine was like. But all I said was, “It’s just me and Dad. We’re on our own, pretty much … ”

That sounded so empty.

We were on the point off Thurston’s Harbor watching the sun go down and talking about the future. Shelley wanted to study hotel management at the University of Hawaii in Honolulu. She wanted me to go there, too. Just the two of us, getting jobs and going to school together—living our own lives, like Aunty Pearl and Uncle Harley.