Chapter 11 The Host
The Host
Nalu: wave, surf, full of waves
Not a stitch of wind on the water. A throbbing foot and residue of the memory made Minnow restless, and she couldn’t just
lie around all day. After sharing cheese and pickle sandwiches with Nalu under the hau trellis and taking a quick catnap, Minnow insisted they go for a boat ride. Without the onshore breezes they’d had the past
several afternoons, today burned brick-oven hot. A layer of sheen clung to every part of her body, and all she could think
about was submerging herself in the cool blue.
Nalu thought the recent surf could have moved any surfboard or other parts up onto dry land and suggested they motor in along
the rocky shoreline. The waves had dropped significantly, though a small surge still smashed white against the black lava
rock. Nalu navigated the boat south, and soon a high layer of clouds laced themselves over the sun. Minnow sat up front, foot
on a cooler, and kept an eye out.
“It would be hard to hide a surfboard in these parts, you’d think,” she said. “They’re so buoyant, and once it was on the
rocks, it would stand out.”
“Not necessarily. The waves were good size that day, and there are underwater lava tubes everywhere. It could have easily been shoved under, especially if it was broken in two.”
Current lines snaked across the oil-slick surface, reminding her the ocean had its own conveyer belts that could move something
far away from its original location. When they had gone far enough north without any luck, Nalu turned them around and headed
back the other way. As they sat together in silence, Minnow kept trying to conjure the memory from the morning back to the
forefront of her mind.
Why had she been standing in the shallows? Her mother had said she’d been out in the water, near her father, when it happened.
They motored past Koholā and Bird Rock, and he kept going south, farther than she would have, but she was grateful for the
time just to sit and take in the land. To rest her foot and come up with ways to rid the house of cane spiders and centipedes.
Though with all the ripped screens, gaps in the wood and cracks and crevices, that seemed impossible.
“Is there some local secret you know of to keep the centipedes out of my bed?” she asked Nalu.
That was when her eyes registered something foreign wedged between the pinnacles of rock.
“Look! In there, do you see it?” she said, hopping up and grabbing the binoculars.
Nalu backed off to an idle. “Could be a board, for sure.”
He brought them as close as he could, up to the edge of a rock-filled inlet. It was definitely a surfboard. An orange one.
Minnow dropped the binocs and pulled off her shirt. “I’m going in.”
“Hang on there, Doc. I’ll go. The last thing you need is wana in your already messed-up foot.”
“I need to get in. I’ll be fine.”
They were about forty feet away, and Minnow hopped in the water with her mask.
She put it on and did a slow three-sixty, taking in her surroundings.
She was at the edge of an opening. Behind her the bottom dropped away fast. In front of her there was a coral-covered wall of rock teeming with fish.
She swam through a break in the rocks, and when she reached the rocks where the surfboard was, she had to search for a place free of the black spiny urchin Nalu warned her about, where she could gain a foothold with her good foot.
The small surge kept knocking her off, but eventually she managed to hoist herself up.
The surfboard had buckled in the middle and a giant bite had been taken clean out of it. Minnow carefully inspected the board
for any teeth that might have lodged in the foam. There were none. But that didn’t stop the chills from forming down the back
of her neck. This shark was giant and the chances of there being two sharks this large in the area were almost nil.
Nalu remained stone-faced when she returned to the boat and handed him the board. “An orange Brewer. What Stu was riding.”
As if there were any question. “Any teeth?” he asked.
“No. But when I get the tooth from Angela, I can see if it’s a match. I can already tell you it’s going to be.”
“Same shark in both incidents. That’s not good.”
“No, it’s not.”
Back at Hale Niuhi, Nalu left her with the ice from the cooler, and Minnow iced her foot while writing up her notes from the
day. Her leather-bound journal, which she had refilled with paper more times than she could count, was sacred to her. Covered
in water stains from the last ten years, it had seen more miles of ocean than most people had. Writing in it religiously was
part therapy, part creative outlet, part science. Sometimes she was convinced these little notepads contained her soul. Drawings,
poems, musings and meticulous observations.
She was writing notes from Angela’s story and every new detail they’d gleaned so far when she heard a car engine.
She sat upright and listened. It was definitely getting closer, and soon she heard the loud crunching of wheels on rock.
The low sun had turned everything golden, and Minnow went outside to wait for the visitor, who she guessed would be Woody, and maybe his wife.
A few minutes later, a beefy Dodge Ram rolled up.
Minnow waved, staying on the paved walkway with her sore foot.
Woody jumped down and came over, taking her hands and studying her face for a moment. Warmth from his palms flowed into her.
“Look at you, all grown up and gorgeous. You have your father’s eyes, sure as the sun. How’s it been here so far?”
Minnow felt herself wobble at the mention of her father. Here was a man who had met her father and whose memory she had yet
to mine for stories. “It’s been perfect. I can’t thank you enough for letting me stay here.”
“My pleasure. The house likes to be enjoyed. She gets lonely otherwise.”
His words were nuanced with pidgin, and his eyes bore into her, turquoise like lagoon water. Sixtyish, tall and wafer thin,
there was something comforting about his presence and his low, sandpapery voice.
“Can I help you unload?” she asked, stepping toward the truck, ready to brave the pain for him.
He looked down at her foot. “What happened to you?” Then shook his head. “Wait, wait, wait, don’t tell me. Wana or centipede?”
“Centipede.”
“Damn, we had rain down here on the coast last week, and those buggahs find their way inside where it’s nice and dry and toasty.
I should have told you to put your bed legs in the water buckets. No guarantee, but it helps.”
“It’s fine. The swelling is actually down a bit.”
No way was she going to tell him she went to the ER.
“Think of it as initiation. A warm Hawaiian welcome,” he said with a smile.
He had two heavy coolers, a duffel bag, a ukulele, and boxes of food, which Minnow helped him unpack. There was enough beer
for an army.
When he moved out of the kitchen and into the main section of the house, he opened his arms, inhaled and said, “Ah, home sweet
home.”
The place had been growing on her. The roughness and remoteness, and how in the wee morning hours it was so silent, she swore
she could hear the stars singing—something her father used to say and, as a young girl, Minnow believed to be true. Even now
she listened for the sounds when she woke in the night. The biggest stars have the deepest voices, and the small ones chirp like songbirds.
“And don’t you worry, I’ll be sleeping on my cot out by the water. I snore, so Anna—my wife—banished me years ago and it stuck,”
Woody said.
“Will she be coming down?” Minnow asked.
He frowned, shaking his head. “She’s at Volcano for the weekend with her friends. An artist hui she’s part of. You ask me, it’s a good excuse to drink wine and get a little crazy without any men around.”
Minnow laughed. “I like her already.”
A line on the horizon burned orange beneath the clouds, and Woody grabbed them both a cold beer and led her outside onto the
seawall. Walking behind him, she noticed a tattoo of triangles around his ankle.
“Cheers,” he said. “To our blessed manō. The sharks.”
She tapped her bottle against his as he scanned the ocean with an expression that strangely reminded her of a contented dog.
“So tell me, what have you learned since you’ve been here?”
Minnow went through the days with him, leaving out Angela’s identity, and how based on what she’d seen so far, the two incidents were likely the same shark.
“I seen the news today before I came down. Sounds like Lum might move up the shark hunt to next week. Sawyer and Warren, head
of DLWA, was on there making their cases. Spring break and the roughwater swim,” he told her.
All the air blew out of her. “What?”
“Nevah mind we the people are the trespassers.”
“But he told me two weeks,” she said.
“Politicians can be slippery. And anyway, what you hoping to prove that’s gonna stop them?” he said, then emptied the last
of his beer down his throat. Minnow had only managed one sip.
“Well, I was hoping it wouldn’t be the same shark, or the same species of shark, and maybe we’d find that whale carcass or
fishermen chumming or . . . something, I don’t know.”
“You found any of that yet?”
“No, but these large sharks usually cover a lot of ground, so to go out and indiscriminately fish is just slaughter. It’s
pointless.”
“You’re preaching to the choir, girl. And what if you found out this guy that disappeared was nailed by the same shark, then
what?” he asked.
She had thought about that herself. “We may never know. And hypothetically, if it was the same shark, I would be certain something
weird was happening. It’s simply not in their nature to hang around and bite people.”
Woody watched the water closely, his eyes catching fire in the last light.
“The first thing you need to know is that the area to the south of us is known as Kalaemanō, literally ‘Shark Point,’ but it refers to waters all along this stretch of coast because of the many tiger sharks here. Places were named with great care and for good reason. Now, suddenly you get this fancy development, a resort and an open-water swim right in the middle of our tiger shark pupping grounds, and boom, recipe for trouble.”
“But these attacks were not tigers. At least the two we have evidence from.”
He crouched down and sat on the wall, feet hanging down to just above the pebble beach. Minnow joined him.
“My grandfather built this place, which used to just be a small fishing shack. This whole area was important for pa‘akai—salt—and he collected and traded it, along with his fish. But he named the house Hale Niuhi, not for the salt or fish, but
for the niuhi that swam these waters. The giant man-eating shark. Most people just call it Shark House.”
Minnow had never been a fan of that term—it was misleading on so many levels, but she remained quiet out of respect. Had it
been anyone else, she would have corrected him, but she knew Woody was on her side.
He continued. “My gramps knew the old ways and the new. Where to find the best salt, how they fed and trained the ?ōpelu to stay in the area, and how to recognize and care for our family’s ?aumakua—the shark.”
“And so your ancestors called the tiger sharks niuhi?”
He shook his head. “Not just tigers. My grampa and those before him knew of the sharks that came from across the sea, who
came back year after year. They knew of the great whites.”
“So the niuhi is a tiger shark or a white shark?” she asked, fascinated at this glimpse into the history here, of which she could tell
they were just dusting the surface.
“Both. Any shark longer than twelve or so feet.”
She nodded toward his ankle. “Is that what your tattoo is? Shark teeth?”
He held up his smooth, almost hairless leg. “Yup.”
Someone like Woody would surely have his own opinions about what was going on under the surface, but so far he hadn’t offered much. Sharks were in his blood, as they were hers. She could feel it in the spaces between his words and see it on the lines in his face.
“What do you think is happening?” she asked.
“She’s been here before, this one. Couple times, but only passing through. I’m curious what got the swimmer, because if that
was a white shark, then we’re treading in new waters. But my na‘au tells me there’s something going on to knock things out of balance,” he said, resting his hand on his lower stomach.
Having him here gave her a new measure of hope.