Fluke or I Know Why the Winged Whale Sings - By Christopher Moore Page 0,35
days." Kona had slipped his fanny pack full of pot and paraphernalia to Nate before he'd been taken away.
"Character? If he starts with his native-sovereignty speech stuff in there the real Hawaiians will pound him."
"He'll be okay. I'm worried about you. Don't you want to go get checked?" Clair had taken Clay to the hospital to get a CAT scan and have his scalp stitched up.
"I'm fine, Nate. I was only shaken up because I was worried about Clay."
"You were down a long time."
"Yes, and I went by Clay's dive computer. We decompressed completely. The worst part was I froze my ass off."
"I can't believe you had the presence of mind to decompress with Clay unconscious. I don't know if I would have. Hell, I couldn't have. I'd have run out of air in ten minutes. How did you manage - »
"I'm small, Nate. I don't use air like you. And I could tell that Clay was breathing okay. I could tell that the cut on his head wasn't that bad either. The biggest danger to both of us was decompression sickness, so I followed the computer, breathed off of Clay's rescue supply when I ran out, and nobody got hurt."
"I'm really impressed," said Nate.
"I just did what I was supposed to do. No big deal."
"I was really scared - I thought you - You had me worried." He patted her knee in a grandmotherly fashion, and she looked at his hand.
"Careful, I'll get all sniffly over here," Amy said.
They led the surfer into the holding tank, where everyone was wearing the same orange jumpsuit that he was. "Irie, bruddahs," Kona said, "we all shoutin' down Sheriff John Brown in these Great Pumpkin suits, Jah." They all looked up: a giant Samoan who had beaten an Oldsmobile to death with a softball bat when it stalled in the middle of the Kuihelani Freeway, an alcoholic white guy who had fallen asleep on the Four Seasons' private beach in Wailea and made the mistake of dropping his morning business in one of the cabanas, a bass player from Lahaina who had been brought in because at any given time a bass player is probably up to no good, an angry bruddah who had been caught doing a smash-and-grab from a rental car at La Perouse Bay, and two up-country pig hunters who had tried to back their four-wheeler full of pit bulls down a volcano after huffing two cans of spray paint. Kona could tell they were huffers by the glazed look in their eyes and the large red rings that covered their mouths and noses from the bag. "Hey, brah, Krylon?"
One of the pig hunters nodded and briefly lost control of the motion of his head.
"Nothin' like a quality red."
"I hear dat," said the pig hunter. "I hear dat."
Then Kona made his way to the corner of the cell, the guard locked the door, and everyone resumed looking at his shoes, except for the Samoan guy, who was waiting for Kona to make eye contact so he could kill him.
"Ye know, brah," Kona said to him in a friendly, if seriously flawed fake Jamaican accent, "I be learning from my science dreadies to look at tings with the critical eye, don't ya know. And I think I know what the problem with taking a stand against da man on Maui."
"Whad dat?" ask the Samoan.
"Well, it's an island, ain't it, mon? You got to be stone stupid going outlaw here wid nowhere to escape."
"You callin' me stupid, haole?"
"No, mon, just speaking the truth."
"An' what you in for, haole girl?"
"Failing to give a humpback whale the proper scientific handjob, I tink."
"Goin' ta fuck ya and kill ya now."
"Could ya kill me first?"
"Whadeva," said the Samoan, climbing to his feet and expanding to his full Godzilla proportions.
"Thanks, brah. Peace in Jah's mercy," said the doomed surfer.
Forty-five minutes later, after Nate had filled out the requisite papers, the jailer, a compact Hawaiian with weightlifter shoulders, led Kona through the double steel doors into the waiting room. The surfer shuffled in, head down, looking ashamed and a little lopsided. Amy put her arm around his shoulders and patted his head.
"Oh, Sistah Amy, 'twas heinous." He put his arm around Amy, then let his hand slip to the curve of her bottom. "Heinous most true."
The jailer grinned. "Had a disagreement with a big Samoan guy. We stopped it before it got too far. The holding cells are monitored on closed-circuit video."