Just got back from Hawaii. Magic. I read Steve Martin’s novella, “Shopgirl” on the plane. It’s a very good film and the book was enjoyable. Interesting to read prose from a renaissance man like Martin.
Earned Kern Valley IHC’s “Best New Guy” award. Pretty proud of that. New Suite album coming soon. New Video of the Hawaii adventure nearly done. Off to Berkeley to visit with the Padre this weekend. Life is good.
My knees hurt in the mornings. But the pain isn’t so bad. I get out of bed slowly and try not to put much weight on the left one. Sometimes I walk with a cane, but sometimes not. The sun comes up softly here, and darkness still fills my small window. My window overlooks an alley and some garbage cans, but if I look hard enough to the south I can see the hills, and I don’t mind the alley so much anyway. Once a year I go to Hanauma Bay to see Manny’s photo. Today is that day.
Manny’s photo hangs in the museum next to the gift shop. It faces a wall next to some toy sea turtles and a sign that tells people where the bathroom is. People tell me I could look at it on the internet whenever I want. But I don’t care for computers much. I woke up early today because the bus takes a long time to get to the bay.
I turn on the lamp next to my bed and splash some water on my face. I shaved and showered last night so I would be ready. Also, the water makes me cold in the morning. I dry my face and go to my closet. I used to have more clothes in my closet, but I got rid of most of them. I put on my only suit and my good shoes. I haven’t worn any of it since last year when I went to see Manny.
I was 16 years old when the Tsunami hit the island. It was 1946 and the war had just ended. The world had been in complete chaos throughout my teen years, but somehow I never seemed to notice. I suppose I was concerned with other things, though the warships and carriers still dominated the harbor even after the war was over. I knew some older guys who had served. One of them even died at Pearl Harbor. I didn’t understand the war. Maybe that’s why I didn’t think much about it.
My hand shakes a little bit as I lock the door. I don’t like that it does that, but I suppose I’m old now and that is what old people’s hands do. I put my keys in my pocket and they feel strange in my suit. I usually wear shorts and sandals, but sometimes it’s nice to dress up. My skin is brown and wrinkly. It hangs on me like a sack, so maybe it’s good to wear a suit.
The walk to the bus stop can take a while. But I don’t mind because the mornings in Hawaii are peaceful, and the streets aren’t so crowded. As I walk down the street I see the cockroaches scurrying across the sidewalk. Even after all these years I can’t believe how big they get. When I round the corner I turn toward Waikiki and the canal. The hills behind me are now starting to turn gray in the morning light, and soon the sun will start another day. I reach the canal and I enjoy the silence. The water is still except for the splash of a fish that jumped. Younger people are jogging or walking along the canal. They usually don’t notice me. But I don’t mind.
I was working at the dock loading and unloading ships that day in 1946. Manny Quizon was the dock foreman. He didn’t talk to me much. He was always busy making sure the schedule was being followed, that the ships came in and out and got loaded and unloaded when they were supposed to. I guess I was afraid of him a little bit. He had a deep voice and his hands were hard when I shook them. He was never mean to me though. Even the time that I loaded two thousand pounds of ammunition onto the wrong ship. He just laughed and asked me how I was planning on fixing the problem. I never worked harder in my life to fix my mistake.
I reach the bus stop and take a seat. A young woman is sitting on the other end of the bench. She’s looking at her phone and nothing else. I used to say hello to people, but I learned that when they’re looking at their phones they don’t want to talk. The bus stop is on the ocean side of the canal, and the tourists are beginning to come outside to move their rental cars. I don’t have a car. I can walk to the beach, and the bus can take me to the bay or the east shore or anywhere else I want to go. I’m not in a hurry, and I don’t really need to go anywhere.
There is a school close to the bus stop. As I wait for the bus I can see children being dropped off by their parents to go to school. Usually they don’t look sad. But sometimes they do. They have to wear uniforms, and they seem well behaved. But I don’t really know about that. I’m 89 years old, but I’m still glad I don’t have to go to school anymore.
The ship I was loading that day was the SS Brigham. It was a Navy transport ship full of bombs and explosives that B-52s carry. The Brigham was packed to the rafters with bombs. I remember thinking that I had never seen so many bombs in my life. I also remember thinking about the killing power that was inside each shell. The bombs were big, and they bulged at the sides with whatever it is that makes them explode. Just one of those shells could turn a large house into a sand hole. There had to have been 800 of them on that ship.
The bus arrives and hisses to a stop. Everyone clamors to get on or off and is in a big hurry. The silence of the morning is broken, and I stand back and let them all sort it out. I don’t want to get in their way. They seem to have a lot on their minds and be very late to something important. Once everyone is done moving, I get on the bus. It takes me a second and I need to grab the hand rail, but I make it up just fine. There are no seats available, so I stand. I’m surrounded by people looking at their phones. They have white headphones in their ears but I can’t tell if they’re listening to music. When I listen to music I like to move or smile or cry. They don’t have any expression at all. But I am happy my knees aren’t hurting, and we start rolling through Waikiki toward Kapiolani park and Diamond Head.
Manny once told me that I was a good worker. I was happy to hear that from him. Even though I didn’t really care about loading ships, I could see that it mattered to him. He expected me to work hard and do my job, and he believed in me. The dock always ran on time, and that was because of Manny. I don’t know how old Manny was. He was much older than me, because his hair was grey in places and he had some fat on his stomach. But I know he was plenty strong because I saw him pin one of his workers to the ground with one arm once.
The worker had a reputation as a fighter and often bragged about beating people up. I stayed away from him because he had twitchy, lifeless eyes that made me nervous. He showed up drunk one day and tried to fight Manny. He said that Manny owed him money. I know that was a lie, because Manny always paid us every penny we earned. The younger man swung and caught Manny with a glancing blow. Manny absorbed the punch and gathered himself. He drove his shoulder into the younger man’s gut and drove him into the ground. I remember hearing the air leave the man’s lungs from the force of the shock. He squirmed on the ground, helpless. I wanted Manny to crush the sockets around his twitchy eyes with one of those hard hands, but he didn’t. He just held him on the ground until he had no more fight in him.
The drunk worker eventually limped away and didn’t come around anymore. Me and the other workers were all standing wide-eyed looking at Manny.
“Nice job boss,” one of the workers said.
The rest of us just nodded in agreement. I thought Manny would be happy like the rest of us, but he wasn’t. His face was serious and he didn’t seem to want to make eye contact with anyone. He looked at his watch and wiped the sweat from his face.
“Let’s get back to work boys,” he said softly.
Once the bus cuts behind Diamond Head it rises up into the dry side of the island. Scrub brush covers the hillsides and the road becomes windy. Hanauma Bay is not far now. I haven’t been up this road in a year, and it’s nice to see the surfers out at Lighthouse getting some waves. I used to surf. I had a long board and surfed waves at Lighthouse. But now I’m happy to just swim.
The bus pulls into the parking lot and I can look down into Hanauma Bay. It looks just like it did last year. It’s a pretty bay, and before all the destruction and the war the reef was beautiful. Now it’s brown and dead. Maybe it’s still alive out past the breakers. I stand up and make my way off the bus. It’s not a long walk to the museum now. The rest of the tourists buy tickets and funnel into agitated lines waiting to get in to the bay. I think they have to watch a safety video now. That’s probably a good thing.
A man tells me that I’m going the wrong way, but I tell him that I am going to the museum and he lets me pass. The museum doubles as a gift shop, and is usually filled with salty people making their way back to the parking lot. They always take pictures of themselves. I’m not sure why they do that, but I guess it doesn’t hurt anybody. Manny’s picture is in the back, so I start moving that direction.
The Tsunami hit so much faster than anyone could have imagined. It’s not like today where computers tell everybody when an earthquake happens and to get to higher ground. Nobody knew what was happening until the ocean started to disappear. It was the strangest thing I have ever seen. At first it was like somebody had pulled the plug in a giant bathtub. I was confused. That feeling of confusion changed to terror when I realized the sea wasn’t draining, it was being sucked into a tidal wave.
The realization seemed to hit everyone at once, because people started screaming and running away from the ocean. Every person that I saw was in a dead sprint away from the beach, past the street, through the town and up into the hills. Everyone was scared and everyone was running… everyone except Manny.
He was walking up the pier to where the SS Brigham was docked. He was carrying an ax in his hands and I didn’t know what was happening. Then I remembered the bombs. The Brigham was a giant floating warhead, ready to destroy our town and everyone in it when the wave finally hit. The ship would get washed ashore and explode right in the middle of town. Everyone who was fleeing would be killed. There was no way we could outrun that explosion.
The sea was pulling hard at the thick ropes that held the Brigham in the harbor. Manny began swinging the ax at the ropes. I didn’t think those ropes could be cut, I could barely lift a few feet of one off the ground and they were as thick as my thigh, but Manny cut through the first one in three mighty swings. He quickly moved to the next rope and cut through that one in four swings. A woman ran into me as she was fleeing, completely unaware of what was happening behind her. In fact, I believe I was the only one who had noticed Manny at all. Everyone was scared and running, and I understood that. But it also made me mad. I ran across the sand and back onto the dock. I didn’t know what I was going to do to help but I had to try and do something. I reached Manny just as he cut the third rope. He was doused in sweat and breathing hard.
“What can I do?” I shouted.
I must have looked silly standing there with nothing in my hands, completely unable to help in any way. Manny looked at me and flinched, like I had startled him. I thought he was going to scold me but he didn’t. His eyes got soft and he smiled.
“You need to run. I can handle this,” he said.
I felt the dock shift under my feet. It made a horrible groaning sound and I nearly fell over. I started to run. The Brigham was now only held to the dock by one rope and the ship was twisting away. I reached the sand and looked back in time to see the final rope snap, and the dock crumbled into the sea. Manny went down with the dock. I thought he was dead right there. The mess of wood and steel that fell into the ocean would have surely crushed him.
The speed that the ocean sucked the Brigham out to sea was staggering. The ship twisted and turned in the churning ocean and cleared the harbor entrance in less than a minute. The current pulled around the point and the ship disappeared. That’s when I saw the wave.
The photo is exactly where it was last year. Next to the toy sea turtles and the bathroom sign. I thought Manny died when the dock collapsed, but he didn’t. I remember when I first saw the photo, I was shocked. And even now, I’m still shocked. I thought I was the only person who saw what Manny did. But somebody took that photo. Somebody else saw it, and that makes me happy.
The photo is of a figure, but I know it’s Manny, standing among the wreckage of the dock and the exploding chaos all around, calmly watching as a 40 foot wall of water and debris is about to destroy his body and end his life. His arms are crossed and he looks casual, like he isn’t scared or even concerned. Nobody is around, nobody is there, it’s just him and the ocean.
He saved my life that day. He saved all of our lives. I wouldn’t be an old man now if not for Manny. I wouldn’t have gotten to fall in love with my wife, rest her soul. I wouldn’t have gotten to enjoy riding waves at Lighthouse all those years, or turn wrinkly and brown wearing sandals. And I wouldn’t have gotten to enjoy the peaceful mornings, when the sun rises softly and the canal is still except for the jumping fish. He saved an entire town.
“Why is he just standing there?” I hear a voice say.
It’s a young man who has found the picture. He takes out his phone and takes a picture of himself standing by Manny’s photo.
“That fool be dumb,” he says and walks away.
THE END
* This story is inspired by the heroics of Tony Aguiar, whose photo hangs in the Hanauma Bay museum to this day.
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