Chapters (54)
And the next morning he was gone. Uncle Sunshine seemed to understand when Sharkey’s father was away. He was more attentive, he made an effort to watch him, he urged him to surf Waikiki, the breaks at Pops or Queen’s, where he could see him more easily. But Magic Island had saved him, and he usually had Bomboras to himself, and he always went home exhausted and happy, and shut himself in his room away from his mother’s drunken talk, saying, “Homework”—another escape.
He heard his mother scream one of those evenings, her voice carrying to his room. Looking down the corridor, he saw his mother’s back turned to him, a man at the door, in black, a chaplain.
“No, no, please,” the man said. “It’s not what you think. Your husband’s alive, but he’s been in an accident. A helicopter—a hard landing. Colonel Sharkey is being flown home. He’ll be at Tripler tomorrow.”
His mother was clutching her ears and whinnying with such force the chaplain had stepped away. But he kept repeating the message and said, “He’s in good hands,” and finished by saying, “This must be your son,” which silenced his mother for a moment, and then she sorrowed again, an agonized gagging, in a voice Sharkey had never heard from her before.
They found the Colonel behind a curtain at Tripler, yellow-faced, a tube in his nose, another in his arm, mouth open, his lips dry, in hospital pajamas. He was asleep.
“He’s got some pretty serious internal injuries, from the force of the crash,” the doctor told Sharkey’s mother. “But he should be out of the woods in a few weeks.”
“We’ve noticed some improvements,” another doctor said the next day. But the Colonel was still asleep, his hands on the sheet, palms up, making him look helpless. “We’ll call you if there’s a change. Go ahead, talk to him. I’m sure he can hear you.”
Sharkey’s mother pressed her face to the Colonel’s and sobbed. When she was done, Sharkey leaned over and spoke into his father’s ear, saying, “I’m getting better. I’m hanging ten,” and tearfully, “I love you, Dad.”
When the call came, the phone rang in darkness, the sound filling the house in Manoa, and Sharkey knew that a call at that hour of the night had to be bad news. He covered his ears as his mother began to scream.