Chapter 8 The Boat
The Boat
Mauna Kea: the highest mountain on Hawai?i; literally, “snow mountain”
Sometime in the night the surf picked up. Minnow could hear the water raking in over the rocks, pounding. But when she woke
in the morning, the waves were only shoulder high at their largest. On the south end of the rocky bay, a wave peeling left
broke in only a couple feet of water. Waves meant surfers in the water and she prayed for no more mishaps, for the sake of
both human and shark.
The sun was still behind Mauna Kea, and she walked out to the small pebble beach so she could get a better perspective of
the mountain. It was hard to imagine snow on any of these peaks, but she knew it happened. Her cheeks cool in the early morning
air, she closed her eyes and thought of her mother. Her long blonde hair and saltwater eyes, and how the light had never returned
to them after Minnow’s dad died. There were people who had lived this same horror in the past few weeks. Going about their
lives one minute—blissful under the Hawaiian sun, enjoying the white sandy beach or the balmy sea—and the next, experiencing
every person’s nightmare.
When she arrived at the pier, Nalu was already in the boat, fiddling with the engine, and had a yellowed surfboard propped up against the gunwale.
The harbor seemed extra quiet, and she realized it was because the crows and seagulls were absent.
The only birds around were doves, cooing softly in the nearby kiawe trees.
“Morning,” he said, hair wild and eyes bloodshot.
“Morning. Rough night?”
He’d either been partying or with a girl.
“Nah, all good.”
Girl, then, most likely.
“You planning on surfing today?”
“It crossed my mind. Why?”
“Where you going to go? Bird Rock?”
His face paled slightly. “That would be a negative. But there’s a break up north less exposed, shallow water. I figured if
we were in the area, may as well check it out.”
“I’d love to talk to any surfers we see up and down the coast, and fishermen too. See if anyone has seen anything.”
“Good idea. Any luck with Angela Crawford?”
“No, but I’ll go up there later today or tomorrow. The nurse stonewalled me.”
“Understandable. That kind of fame—and injury.”
Even with the swell, the ocean was mirror slick. They made good time, but still, driving so far burned a lot of gas. And time.
“What do you think about anchoring in the bay outside of Hale Niuhi? It was calm even with the swell. You could stay in the
other cottage if you wanted to.”
“Anchoring, yes. Staying there, probably not.”
“Not enough girls here?”
He shot her a look, a smile cracking his face. “Something like that.”
It was pretty obvious. With looks like that, he probably had half the girls in Kona lined up outside his hotel.
They came upon Bird Rock, and to her surprise four surfers were out. Three guys and a girl. Two were inside, two farther out,
where Stuart was ambushed.
“Brave,” she said.
“Or stupid.”
“Or they have no idea. Maybe we should tell them, in case they haven’t heard.” Though that was unlikely, given the hype in
the papers.
He slowed and pulled the boat alongside the guy farther out, twenty yards away, in deeper water. The other one had just caught
a wave, all the way to the shore.
“Hey,” Nalu called, “you hear about the shark incident here last week?”
“Yeah. They’re out here, man,” the guy said, scooping water with both his hands and showering himself with it.
“Were you out here last week?”
“Anytime there’s waves, I’m out here. Gotta get ’em while you can, this side.”
“He’s right. Maui blocks the swell,” Nalu said to Minnow.
“What about Wednesday?” Minnow asked.
The day Stuart and his dad were out.
“Who wants to know?”
A wave swung in and before she or Nalu could answer, the guy spun and caught it, leaving them hanging. But the other surfer
paddled into the lineup, giving them a nod. An older local, covered in what appeared to be tribal tattoos on his forearms
and chest.
“Brah,” Nalu said, “you heard about the shark attack out here?”
The guy shrugged. “Pretty sure everyone on the island has. It happened once. Chances are slim it’ll happen again in the same
exact spot.”
Not entirely true, but Minnow held her tongue.
“Have you seen any big sharks in the area?” she asked. “Or anything out of the ordinary—dead whales or carcasses of any kind?”
“Just a monk seal up at Kiholo last week, but it was lying on the sandy beach, fat and happy. You talk to Sly yet?” He nodded
toward the man who had just caught the wave.
“We tried. He caught a wave in.”
“He saw a fat shark out diving last weekend.”
“What kind?”
“White, I think?”
When Sly paddled back out, he came straight to the boat and held on to the gunwale. “Who are you guys?”
“We work for UH. Just looking into the recent attacks and trying to learn more about the shark, nothing more.”
“Yeah, we don’t want this place shut down or turned into a shit show. And there’ve been a ton of boats out here lately. Gawkers
and who knows what else.”
It seemed unlikely that anyone would be able to keep surfers out of the water along this coastline, rocky and remote as it
was.
She cut in. “No one’s going to shut anything down. We’re just trying to find out if it’s the same shark, and if so, why it’s
hanging around.”
“Then yeah, I saw it while I was spearfishing up in Opihi Bay last Saturday morning. The water was still turned up from the
dying swell, I was out at the point in twenty feet of water, poking around for tako in a hole, when I got a weird feeling I wasn’t alone. I spun around and saw a fucking submarine swimming by just at the edge
of my visibility, maybe thirty feet away or so. I thought it was a whale at first, it was so big, but from the silhouette
it became obvious it was no whale. It never slowed, never acknowledged me. Still, I climbed out on the rocks.” He held up
his hand and showed black in some of his fingers. “Got some wana in my fingers.”
“Could you see from the surface if it came back around?” Minnow asked.
“The bugger was just passing through. Never saw it again.”
“How big would you say it was?”
“Almost as long as your boat, maybe longer, wide as fuck.”
“And yet here you are,” Minnow said, curious.
In her experience, there were two camps of people. Those who let fear shrink their world and those who could quiet, compartmentalize
or block out the fear and keep doing what they love. But there were also a rare few who seemed to be missing the fear factor
all together. She’d met a couple of those, too, in this business. Not all of them were still alive.
“Surfing keeps me sane, and I don’t like crowds. So, I take my chances,” he said.
“Were you able to tell if it was a tiger shark or a great white?” she asked. When speaking with laypeople, she often reverted
to using great white.
“White. Hundred percent. No stripes, and that girth.” Another set rolled in and he eyed it. “Good luck, I have to head in
now.”
Sly caught the next wave, smooth as a bird. Once he was out of earshot, she said to Nalu, “Sounds like it could be the same
one.”
“Gotta be.”
White shark females were much larger than the males. Even as a young girl in Catalina, Minnow knew Luna was a female, she was so huge. This knowing was something she took for granted. She thought everyone was the same way
until her mother began chastising her for saying she heard the kelp singing or the laughter of pelicans as they flew in formation
overhead.
“You have quite an imagination, you know that, little fish?” she would say.
“I wasn’t imagining it.”
Her mother would roll her eyes and say, “Sure you were. But imagination is a grand thing. Artists and musicians and writers
all need vivid imaginations.”
Minnow didn’t argue. There was no point.
She tried to go about her days, telling herself she was imagining all of these things.
The very slow thud she heard as Luna swam past. A shark heartbeat.
The whoosh of butterfly breeze against her cheek.
Or the purring and grunting of the fish in the reef that no one else seemed to hear.
But in her heart she knew they were as real as the ground under her feet.
They continued up the coast, scanning for any signs of a surfboard, but they were hampered by the swell, which smashed against
the black lava. Once they passed the Kiawe, the cliffs grew higher and steeper, and they had to stay even farther out because
of the backwash. Twenty minutes later, they came upon a larger bay with a black sand beach, small waves on the inside and
a thick wall of stout coconut trees and a boat anchored at the far point. It looked empty and calm. No sign of dive flags
anywhere. As they neared, Minnow could tell the vessel was expensive just by looking at its lines and the shiny paint job,
dark hull.
Nalu whistled. “Nice boat.”
“Looks like a Robalo, top of the line. I see a few of them coming in and out of Santa Barbara.”
“I saw this boat anchored out front of the Kiawe yesterday.”
“I wonder if this is the owner of the hotel’s boat? The one Angela and Zach were on.”
“Nope. That was a Yellowfin.”
He cut the motor about thirty feet away, and they glided close to the boat, Minnow sitting on the gunwale in case they bumped
up against it. A shelf of clouds had blotted out the sun, turning the water from iridescent blue to gray. Again, they scanned
around for any signs of life but saw nothing.
“Whoever it is, they’re probably in the lagoon. You can’t tell from here, but there’s a narrow inlet you can swim through when the tide is high. It’s a safe haven for turtles, which is why you’ll also find tigers cruising.”
“Is this where you were thinking of surfing?” she asked, surprised at his choice of surf breaks.
“Yeah, on the inside, but it looks like the swell isn’t hitting here. Not enough west in it.”
Minnow did not surf. Put her under the surface, where at least she could see a predator coming and she looked less like a
turtle or a seal. For some reason, coming face-to-face with sharks did not scare her. It was the ambush that gave her nightmares
and had her waking up in cold sweats, feeling as though she’d just emerged from the inky depths, seawater in her bed.
“Something smells rank,” Nalu commented.
Minnow sniffed the air. “Smells like mackerel. We use it sometimes to draw the whites in for tagging. They love that oily,
fishy scent.”
“?Yeah, it’s probably ?ōpelu.”
“What’s ?ōpelu?”
“Mackerel scad. Baitfish.”
They were close enough now to the boat that she could see the fancy navigation and gadgets on the center console. She knew
there was money along this coast, and here was the evidence.
“What are you guys doing?”
The voice came from the water below and caused Minnow to lurch into the air. Nalu almost toppled over backward.
“Holy crap, you scared me,” she said, looking down at the man in the water.
He wore a tinted dive mask, so she couldn’t see his eyes, but there was something familiar about his voice.
Nalu opened his mouth to say something, but the man beat him to it. “Again, what are you guys doing so close to my boat?”
“Just checking to make sure everything was okay. We didn’t see any flags, and with what’s been happening around here, you
never know,” Minnow said.
No dive tank either.
“I was just setting my anchor. Nor do I need any help,” he said.
Not friendly, not unfriendly. Gold-tipped hair.
Recognition dawned. This was the guy from the Kiawe—the one with the newspaper. She wondered if he recognized her in her large
straw hat and dark glasses. He didn’t seem to, and for some reason she wanted to keep it that way.
“Nice rig,” Nalu said, eyeing his fishing reels.
For the first time she noticed they were gold and top of the line, just like the boat. There was also a large steel alloy
hook attached to a pole. It made her curious. Who was this guy and why would he need such a big hook?
She had to ask. “Are you alone?”
In one swift movement he hauled himself out of the ocean and into his boat. She could now see that, shirtless, his body was
tan and smooth like carved stone.
He glanced around. “Do you see anyone else here? And you still haven’t answered my question.”
“We’re scientists, looking into the recent shark incidents,” she said.
He stood quiet for a few blinks, then slid on a wet suit top and strapped a hefty dive knife to his leg. His back was to them,
as if he had moved on and their conversation was now over. “I’m here to hopefully find some dinner on the rocks,” he finally
said.
“‘Opihi,” Nalu said.
“Yup.”
Minnow remembered the large black limpets from the rocky islands off Kāne‘ohe, and how she had gagged when coerced into eating
one by her fellow students.
“Have you seen any white sharks around this past week? Or anything unusual or out of the ordinary?” she asked him.
“I’m not from here, so I wouldn’t know usual from unusual.”
He then grabbed a mesh bag from the center console, where Minnow spotted a fish-finder the size of a large computer screen. How nice it would be. Her fish-finder was duct-taped to the grab rail and barely worked, registering rocks more than fish.
“Well, good luck getting dinner,” she said, annoyed at how purposefully unhelpful he seemed. “And watch your back down there.
Sharks often approach from behind.”
“I have eyes in the back of my head, so no worries there,” he said, before sitting on the gunwale and falling back into the
water.
“Nice bloke,” Nalu said, as they watched him swim toward shore.
“Is it just me, or did he seem extra touchy?”
“Probably just some rich haole wanting a piece of paradise. No aloha, that one.”
Minnow wondered what exactly constituted “having aloha.” And did she?
“I saw him at the Kiawe yesterday morning, drinking coffee.”
“There’s your answer.”
“But he seems different than the rest of their clientele. At first I thought he might be a lifeguard or something, but those
reels. And that hook.”
With his tousled and amber-streaked hair and freckled skin, he had clearly spent some time in the sun. But it was more than
that. He had this undercurrent of confidence in the water, around a boat. He reminded her of her own kind.
Nalu was still watching the man as he scrambled up on the rocks, timed perfectly with the wash of a swell. “He’s definitely
a fisherman—of more than just ‘opihi.”