He ran up his mast, rigged the sail, and scooted out to sea on the breeze from off the hills in back of Honolulu. Even as the land receded, he could still hear the rumble of artillery off in the distance. It made him think about things in a way he hadn’t for quite a while. If his countrymen took over again, could he patent the sailboard? If he could, there was probably money in it. He’d done without much money for a long time. Having some might be nice.
He’d got out far enough to think about dropping his hooks into the Pacific when he spotted something floating on the water. It was too small to be a boat, and it wasn’t going anywhere, just bobbing on the swells. Curious, he swung the sailboard towards it.
He’d just realized it was a rubber raft when a head popped up out of it. “Hey, mac, what the hell you call that thing you’re on?” the head’s possessor asked in purest Brooklynese.
“A sailboard,” Oscar answered automatically. He had questions of his own: “Who are you? Are you okay? How’d you get here? Want me to help you get to land?”
“A sailboard? Ain’t that somethin’? What’ll they think of next?” The guy in the raft jabbed a thumb at his own chest. “Name’s Nick Tversky. Yeah, I’m jake-not a fuckin’ scratch on me. Sometimes you’d rather be lucky than good, ya know? Goddamn Nip flak tore hell outta my engine, but the shit all missed me. Can you get me ashore without letting everybody from Tojo on down in on where I’m at?”
“Uh…” Oscar paused. That would have been easy before the Americans came to Hawaiian waters. The Japs hadn’t been so antsy then. They sure as hell were now. “Don’t know for sure if I can sneak you in.”
“Okay. Don’t get your ass in an uproar about it.” The downed pilot sounded a lot more cheerful than Oscar would have in his little rubber boat. He explained why: “They got PBYs doin’ search and rescue. Figure I got a better chance of getting picked up than I do sneakin’ past the fuckin’ slanteyes. If I have to try it, I guess I can paddle that far.”
“Okay,” said Oscar, who was dubious. “You want me to give you a line and some hooks? You might catch something.” He’d been about to start fishing himself before he spotted the life raft.
“That’s white of you, buddy, but honest to God, I think I’ll be fine,” Nick Tversky said. He hadn’t been out here long. He wasn’t badly sunburned, and he hardly needed a shave. Plainly, he wasn’t too thirsty, either.
Oscar didn’t know what to do or what to tell him. Meeting a downed pilot was something he’d thought about now and again. Meeting a foulmouthed downed pilot who didn’t want to be rescued? That was a different story. “Awful good to see the USA coming back here,” he tried, adding, “About time.”
“Hey, I ain’t the brass. I can’t do nothin’ about that,” Nick Tversky said. “But speakin’ of brass, I figure we didn’t try it for a while after we screwed the pooch the first time on account of we wanted to make sure we had the brass knucks on.”
“I guess that makes sense,” Oscar said. “We sure missed you, though.”
“What can you do? Sometimes you just gotta stand the gaff.” Tversky obviously had no idea what Oahu had been through since December 7, 1941. On the other hand, Oscar had no idea what getting shot down in a fighter plane was like. Did the two balance out? He couldn’t have said, not like the scales of justice, but they probably belonged somewhere in the same ballpark.
“Good luck to you,” Oscar said uncertainly, afraid he was leaving Tversky to a fate much worse than the pilot imagined.
But then Tversky let out a whoop and pointed off to the east. “There’s my goddamn taxi, if I can flag it down!” Oscar looked that way. A speck in the sky swelled rapidly. It was a flying boat, all right. Was it an American flying boat? The Japs had ’em, too. Nick Tversky seemed in no doubt. He waved like a man possessed. He pulled out what looked like a pistol and fired it straight up. It turned out to be a flare gun. The flare was much less impressive than it would have been at night: a small red ball of fire. But either it or the pilot’s gesticulating-he damn near capsized the raft-did the trick. The flying boat swung its blunt nose toward him. He whooped again, louder and more ferocious than an Indian in a two-reeler Western.
The PBY, if that was what it was, splashed down onto the Pacific and rumbled toward him. Somebody leaned out of a hatch-Oscar was hazy on the right name-and yelled, “What’s this? Old home week?”
“He’s my buddy,” Tversky yelled back, and then, more quietly, “What the hell you say your name was?”
“Oscar,” Oscar answered.
“Oscar here’s good luck,” the pilot went on. “He shows up, and then you show up.”
“What the hell kind of a name for a Hawaiian is Oscar?” said the guy on the PBY.
“I’m from California,” Oscar said dryly. “I’ve lived here eight years or so.”
“Fuck me,” the flier said. They took Tversky aboard the flying boat. The engines roared back to life. The big, clumsy-looking airplane lumbered over the Pacific, graceless as a goose running across the surface of a lake to take off. When it finally got airborne, it didn’t seem so splendidly suited to the new medium as a goose. But it flew well enough. It kept on going in the direction it had been heading when its crew spotted the downed flier.
That left Oscar alone on the water with an empty rubber raft. “Score one for our side,” he said. He’d first set eyes on Tversky less than half an hour earlier. Now the pilot was gone. In a day or so if not in mere hours, he’d be back in the war. As for Oscar…I’ve got fish to catch, he thought, and sailed out a little farther before dropping his lines into the sea.
He’d hoped running into Tversky would bring him good luck, but it didn’t. His catch was average or slightly below. But you took what you could get. Maybe not for too much longer. Maybe things will get back to the way they used to be. He could hope, anyway.
He brought the sailboard back to Waikiki Beach with automatic skill he could hardly have imagined when he first thought up the gadget. As with anything else, practice made pretty darn good. Charlie Kaapu had been every bit as smooth as he was. What the devil had happened to Charlie? Oscar scowled as he took the sailboard over the breakers. Whatever it was, it wasn’t anything he could fix. He’d put his own neck on the line trying. That consoled him… not very much.
Some of the Japs on the beach actually applauded when he came ashore. He would have liked that better if he hadn’t been thinking about Charlie. He would have liked it better if he hadn’t had to cough up a couple of fat mackerel to keep their goodwill, too. Cost of doing business, he thought. That did console him-some, anyway.
When he got back to the apartment, he found Susie there. By all the signs, she’d been there quite a while. She was falling-down drunk; the place reeked of the horrible fruity stuff they called gin these days. She’d never done anything like that in all the time he’d known her. “What happened?” he blurted.
She looked up from the beat-up old sofa. Her eyes didn’t want to track him. “Oscar!” she said. “Thank God!” After a moist hiccup, she added, “It could’ve been me.”
“What could have?” he asked. “What happened, babe?” He wished he had some coffee in the place, but it was harder than hell to come by these days. He’d lost the habit.
“I was going to work. To work,” Susie repeated, maybe forgetting she’d just said that. “And these Japsh-Japs-at one of the barricades.” She had to try three times before she got the word right.
“These Japs, they had a girl down in the middle of the street, and they… They all…” She didn’t go on. Tears started running down her face. “It could have been me!”
“Hey,” Oscar said softly. “Hey.” He might have been gentling a spooked horse. I told you so, came to the tip of his tongue and died there, which was probably lucky for him. He’d heard that these sailor-soldiers did things like that, which was why he hadn’t been thrilled when Susie headed for work in the morning. He went over and cautiously put a hand on her shoulder. She flinched, but only a little. “I’m glad you’re okay,” he told her. She’d earned the right to get smashed, sure as the devil.