Harry Turtledove - Days of Infamy

Oscar had been brought up bourgeois. Every so often, he wondered what the hell he was doing with his life. But all the doubts flew away when he rode along at the crest of a wave-or when he rode one of the girls he’d taught to kneel on a board in the wahine surf near the Moana Hotel in Waikiki. He was having a good time: that was what he was doing. Who needed anything more?

He snagged a lot of lessons toward the end of 1941. He’d been short on cash, and winter brought the tourists out from the cold parts of the country. But when his latest girlfriend threw a vase at his head after he didn’t ask her to marry him the night before she sailed back to Los Angeles, he decided the time had come to get away from it all for a little while.

He loaded his board into the Chevy. With him rode Charlie Kaapu, a large, smiling, half-Hawaiian fellow who also lived for the surf and a good time. Charlie’s surfboard was six or eight inches longer than Oscar’s. They tied a red rag to the back of it to keep cars behind them from running into them, then took off for the north coast and whatever they found there.

“Peace and quiet,” Oscar said, more plaintively than usual. “I told that Shirley it was only for fun, but she didn’t want to listen.” He took a hand off the wheel to touch his right ear, the only part of his anatomy the vase had grazed. Four inches to the left and he would have been very unhappy. As things were, he wouldn’t be able to go barefoot in his apartment till he swept up all the broken glass.

Charlie Kaapu laughed at him from the back seat. “Women hear what they want to hear. Don’t you know that by now?”

“I ought to,” Oscar said. “I mean, she was fine for a week or two, but forever?” He shook his head. “She’d drive me nuts. Hell, I’d drive her nuts.”

“They put out for you, they think it’s gotta be for life,” Charlie said, and then, philosophically, “She’s gone now. You don’t gotta worry about it no more.”

“Yeah.” Oscar spoke with a mixture of relief and regret. He was glad Shirley’d got on the liner and out of his hair-no doubt of that. But he still wished things had gone better. He didn’t like ugly scenes. They weren’t his style. A kiss on the cheek, a pat on the fanny, a good-bye from the pier as the ship headed back to the mainland… That was how he liked things to go, and how they usually went.

He got out of Honolulu, went past the back side of Pearl Harbor, and drove up the Kamehameha Highway toward the north coast. The drive wasn’t so pleasant as he would have wanted. He got stuck behind a snorting convoy of olive-drab Army trucks chugging up to Schofield Barracks. Not only did they slow him down, but the exhaust made his head ache. He hadn’t had that much to drink the night before… had he?

Pineapple fields stretched out along the right side of the road, pineapple and sugarcane to the left. Most of the time, he would have smelled the damp freshness of growing things. Diesel stink made an inadequate substitute.

They rattled past Wheeler Field, off to the left of the highway. Charlie pointed to the planes drawn up in neat, tight rows on the runways. “Pretty snazzy.”

“Yeah,” Oscar said again. “Nobody’s gonna get at ’em or do anything to ’em.” He drove on for a little while, then asked, “You think anything’s gonna come of this war scare, Charlie?”

“Beats me,” Charlie Kaapu answered. “Everybody’s pretty stupid if us and the Japs do start fighting, though.”

Oscar nodded. He said, “Yeah,” one more time. The trucks pulled off to the left, the way to Schofield Barracks. He stepped on the gas. The Chevy went a little faster: not a lot, since the only way it could have hit fifty was to go off a cliff. But he was glad not to have to breathe fumes any more. Smiling, he lit a cigarette and passed Charlie the pack.

The Dole pineapple plantation north of Wahiawa was one of the biggest in the world. Most of the workers in the fields were Japanese and Filipinos. Having put in some time there himself, Oscar had seen enough to feel sorry for them.

He stopped for gas in Waialua, just short of the ocean: eighteen and a half cents a gallon at the Standard Oil station. That made him grumble-Hawaii was more expensive than the mainland. Up at Haleiwa, on the Pacific, he had to stop his car just short of a narrow bridge buttressed by double arches of steel. Another convoy of trucks was heading to Schofield Barracks, these diesel snorters loaded with men who’d been enjoying leave on the north shore.

Even before the last truck came through, Charlie Kaapu was doing some snorting of his own. He pointed north, past the last of the olive-drab monsters. “You see that, Oscar? You see, goddammit? Ain’t got no fuckin’ surf!”

“Could be better,” Oscar agreed. “Could be worse, too. I figure-what, five-six feet?”

“Something like that,” Charlie said, still disgusted. “Hell, I can piss higher’n that. I wanted some big waves.”

“Maybe they’ll come,” Oscar said hopefully. “Maybe there’s a storm up north blowing like hell. Maybe they’ll be twenty or thirty feet by tomorrow. And besides, this still isn’t too bad.”

“Ha!” Charlie Kaapu said. “We could do this out by Diamond Head. You gonna tell me I’m wrong?”

“No.” Oscar couldn’t, and he knew it. “But we’re here, so we might as well make the best of it.” He’d been making the best of it ever since he got to Hawaii. He saw no reason to change now. “Tell you what-I’ll go on to Waimea Bay. It’ll be better there than anywhere else along this coast.”

“Okay, go ahead,” Charlie said. “We’ve come this far. What’s another few miles? Anyway, looks like we’ll just find more soldiers if we stay around here.”

He wasn’t wrong about that, either. The Army used Waialua Bay as a place to give its men rest and recreation. It looked to have taken most of them back to Schofield Barracks in the truck convoy that had blocked the bridge, but not all the olive-drab tents had disappeared from the beach here. The trucks would have to come back for the rest of the men.

When they got to Waimea, though, the surfers had things to themselves. Oscar parked the Chevy across the road from the beach. He and Charlie pulled their surfboards out of the car, stuck them under their arms, and carried them down toward the sea. Oscar’s toes dug into the sand. It was softer than any he’d known on a California beach. He knew he’d feel that more on the return trip, when he was going uphill. Now…

Now he didn’t want to think about the return trip. Easier to get out into the ocean when the waves weren’t so fierce. The surfboard went into the water. He lay down atop it and paddled with his arms. Ten feet away, Charlie Kaapu was doing the same thing.

After Oscar had paddled out far enough, he turned the board around. The swells pushed him back toward the shore. He scrambled upright on the bobbing, tilting, darting surfboard and rode the crest of a wave all the way up onto the beach.

He looked around for Charlie. There he was, separated from his surfboard, which washed ashore without him. “Surf’s not too easy, is it?” Oscar called.

His friend gave him the finger. “This shit can happen down by Diamond Head, too,” Charlie said. He wasn’t wrong about that, either; he’d lost his front teeth within a couple of miles of Waikiki.

They surfed all day. Oscar wiped out several times himself. He’d known he would, and didn’t worry about it. When the sun sank down toward Kaena Point, they put the boards back into the Chevy and walked into Waimea. A chop-suey house there gave them a cheap, filling supper.

“You don’t want to drive back in the dark, do you?” Charlie Kaapu hinted.