Blue Skin of the Sea by Graham Salisbury

Author:Graham Salisbury [Salisbury, Graham]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 978-0-307-51469-1
Publisher: Random House Children's Books
Published: 1992-08-28T04:00:00+00:00

Dad and Uncle Raz said they were going to stay in Hilo for a few more days to help out. Many people were still missing.

Grampa Joe fired up the Jeep I climbed into the seat next to him. Keo wanted to sleep in the back.

The old pockmarked saddle road was still damp, but the rain had passed, and patches of clear sky scattered acres of blue into the mist and low clouds of the high country. Dusk was closing in and the air swirling around us in the Jeep was getting cooler.

Just above Waiki’i, Grampa Joe pulled the Jeep off the road. It was dark by then, and cold. Keo was curled up in the backseat under a blanket.

“Want to drive?” Grampa Joe said. “Plenty dark. No police around here. No anybody around here.”

“ … Sure,” I said.

“Get over here then,” Grampa Joe said, hitting me in the arm. “Do you some good.”

My feet barely reached the floorboard when I stepped on the clutch. The steering wheel pulled in my hands, complaining about every crack and stone on the edge of the road. The warmth of the engine spread around my feet, radiating off the metal.

The clouds finally cleared and a zillion stars filled the blackness around me. I squinted over at Grampa Joe when I reached the stop sign at the junction where the saddle road met Mamalahoa. He was asleep, or just sitting there like Uncle Raz had been, with his arms crossed and his eyes closed.

I sat thinking at the stop sign, the engine idling and nothing in sight except the stars and the beams of light in front of me. I was twelve years old, driving my cousin and my grandfather home on the main road in pitch black; I’d seen a dead girl; I’d thought my father was dead. Somehow being behind the wheel felt right, as if I could control something in my life, if only for an hour or so. The soothing vibration of the Jeep pushing through the night, and the open spaces, on all sides and above me, endlessly into the stars, seemed to have the power to lift the weight I felt inside. Maybe that’s why Dad was a fisherman. Maybe that’s why he spent so much time alone.

I drove around Mauna Loa, across the island highlands, and all the way to Grampa Joe’s doorstep before he opened his eyes.

His face was white in the reflected glow of the headlights. He got out slowly, yawning and rubbing the stubble on his jaw, playing the part of an old man. “You okay, Omilu?” he asked.

“I’m okay, Grampa.”

He went into the house and closed the door without looking back.

1 drove down into the thick, black coffee grove as Keo climbed into the front seat, keeping the blanket around him.

Grampa Joe had called me Omilu, a term he used sparingly, and it meant a lot to me to be compared to the ulua, a fish that would give any man a tough, two-fisted battle.

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