Strong Like the Sea, стр. 32
As is, Mom’s instructions to help Uncle are the only thing in this world that could have gotten me this far.
“Paddle’s behind you,” Uncle says over the sound of the waves, and I give a jerky nod. I want to help—that’s why I’m here—but my traitorous fingers stay clamped to the sides of the boat like a starfish stuck to a rock at low tide.
Free of the waves breaking near shore, we slice through the swells. Dark patches of coral sweep beneath us and I hold on even tighter. Anything could be hiding in those shadows. Eyes open or closed, my nightmares won’t let me forget it.
The farther we go, the tighter my grip on the sides of the kayak. Every dip and rise leaves my stomach somewhere behind in the troughs of the waves. Seems like they always come rolling in three sizes. Regular, large, and supersized. Malia likes riding the supersized ones on her surfboard, always coasting along the front of a wave as it crests and rolls into a barrel behind her. Total confidence. Total control.
But me, in a kayak like this? A leaf on the wind has more control than I do.
A series of waves hits us from the other direction. The biggest splashes my face, and my glasses slip right off my nose. I tear my hand from the boat and snatch the lenses right before they drop into the sea. How could I forget my swim goggles? Nothing about my morning was planned, but still. I grit my teeth. I’d rather kiss a squid than have to tell my parents I lost my glasses again.
The waves calm down by Temple Beach and a smaller swell pushes us onto the sand about a hundred feet from the base of Laie Point. Uncle jumps out and pulls the kayak higher onto the beach with me still in it, useless as a sea slug. It takes me three tries to get my glasses back on with all the jitters bouncing around inside my head like someone’s sending Morse code over my nervous system.
I’m shaking—but not from cold. I haven’t let myself be that far out in the water since the day the sea tried to take me.
“Grab a vial from that box. I need a sample from the wash here.” Uncle pats a tackle box of sorts tied down to the floor behind my chair.
Graceful as a seal on land, I half flop, half roll out of the kayak to my knees in the sand and open the box. Inside, rows of little glass vials wait empty, and I hold one up for Uncle, but instead of taking it, he nods his head toward the point.
“If you’re not going to paddle you could at least learn how to do samples.”
“Coming. Sorry.” I hurry around a boulder and wait while Uncle studies the wash that leads back to the Foodland bridge.
“This part of the shoreline changes with the tide and storms,” Uncle says. “I’ve seen rough seas push sand up into the Foodland parking lot past the bridge down there, with saltwater all the way to the bridge. Sometimes it’s like now, where the sea leads a little way in, but leaves a sandbar before the bridge, and another pool of water after that. And sometimes the whole wash is dry.” He nods. “Pass me the vial, and follow me.”
I wade into the wash beside Uncle. His glasses must fit way better than mine, ’cause they don’t slip at all when he leans over and dips the glass bottle down into the water until his whole arm is under the surface.
“See here?” He pulls the stopper from the vial so air bubbles escape from inside, rising up quick to pop at the surface under his chin. “For this study, I don’t want samples from the surface. It needs to be more than a foot down.”
He slides his gloved thumb over the mouth of the bottle and stands up. “Then you cap it off . . .” With the bottle in one hand and the stopper in the other, he slowly moves them together. But the closer his hands get, the harder they tremble until water sloshes out of the shaking vial like a little sprinkler.
Uncle glares at the bottle, his mustache twitching, and he turns away from me before trying again. After a minute, he flourishes in triumph. “Got it.”
Less than half full, the little vial holds more air than water as he holds it aloft.
His elation fades as he follows my gaze and examines the bottle. He sighs. “It might be enough. Maybe.”
As he looks down, low waves roll through the wash, their reflected sunlight painting his face in flickering light. For one brief moment, his grumpy mask falters and I glimpse frustration and pain behind the disguise.
He wades out of the wash, leans against the truck-sized boulder of lava rock, and pulls a little notebook from his pocket. “It’s, uh . . . better to have more. But this’ll probably work. We have to record the date, time, depth, and location where we gathered the sample.”
As I watch him struggle to open his notebook, I can’t help but compare this man to the Uncle in Mom’s stories. The Uncle Tanaka she knew was full of laughter and loved adventure. I remember all her stories, everything she ever told me on our walks, and none of them—not one—mention his hands shaking.
Something changed with him, and when it did, it took his laughter with him.
Could this be why Mom wanted me to help him?
Uncle’s wavy black ponytail rests over one shoulder, and he scratches his short beard with the back of his hand before writing in his notebook with a quavering hand. “Wash at base of Laie Point . . .”
I look down at my hands—small, and a little pruny from all the water,