Chapter One-Part Two
(Please read Chapter One-Part One first)
It was probably some junk that had been dumped into the bay. Maybe old clothes or a sack of garbage. He tugged on his thirty foot line. Whatever he had snagged was coming his way and, squinting into the sun, he saw that it was big, as big as a small surfboard. He pulled again. Sure enough, he had snared some clothes. Maybe there would be a shirt or a pair of pants that would fit him. The cotton shirt his mother had patched and mended chafed against his arms. He pulled harder on his line. These clothes were heavy and waterlogged, sure, but he was struggling harder than he should have. The clothes must have caught on something heavy and Ka’eo wondered what it could be.
“Hey kid!”. The Truent officer, Mr Morris was walking briskly down the pier toward Ka’eo. Ka’eo was at the very end of the pier. There was nowhere to go. He jumped into the harbor and began swimming for the far shore, away from the pier. Ka’oe, like most Hawaiian boys was an expert swimmer and felt confident that he could evade the Officer. He glanced back toward the pier. Mr. Morris hadn’t called him by name so Ka’eo must have been too far away to be recognized. When he swam away from the pier, his shoulder brushed against something hard. He turned and saw his fishing line still hooked into the clothes—it was a white jacket. No time to gather it, so he pushed it away with a flattened palm. The shirt felt solid, like a fish. A shirt on a fish? He kicked with his feet and backstroked away from the pier. Then he saw the wet dark blond head of hair, the arms outstretched as if to say, ”Stop!” A seagull landed on the white dinner jacket and walked tentatively toward the man’s head and pecked once, then pecked again.
