Dawn Patrol

26

Boone stops off at The Sundowner for a jolt of caffeine and a delay in trying to explain the inexplicable to Petra Hall, attorney-at-law and all-around pain in the ass.

High Tide's there, his bulk perched with surprising grace on a stool at the bar, his huge hands clutching a sandwich that should have its own area code. He wears the brown uniform of the San Diego Public Works Department, in which he's a foreman. Tide is basically in charge of the storm drains in this part of the city, and with the oncoming weather, he knows he could be in for a long day.

Boone sits down beside him as Sunny looks up from wiping some glasses, walks over to the coffeepot, pours him a cup, and slides it down the bar.

“Thanks,” Boone says.

“Don't mention it.” She turns back to wiping the glasses.

What's she torqued about? Boone wonders. He turns to Tide. “I just had a conversation with one of the more interesting members of the greater Oceania community.”

“How is Eddie?” Tide asks.

“Worked up,” Boone says. “I thought you island types were supposed to be all laid-back and chill and stuff.”

“We've picked up bad habits from you haole, ” Tide says. “Protestant work ethic, Calvinist predetermination, all that crap. What's got Eddie's balls up his curly orange short hairs?”

“Dan Silver.”

Tide takes a bite of his sandwich. Mustard, mayonnaise, and what Boone hopes is tomato juice squirt out the sides of the bread. “Don't make no sense. Eddie don't go to strip clubs. When he wants all that, the strip club comes to Eddie.”

“Says Dan owes him a big head of lettuce.”

Tide shakes his head. “I ain't ever heard that Eddie puts money on the street. Not to haoles anyway. Eddie will front to Pac Islanders, but that's about it.”

“Maybe he's expanding his customer base,” Boone says.

“Maybe,” Tide says, “but I doubt it. Way it works, you owe Eddie money and you don't pay, he don't take it up with you; he takes it up with your family back home. And it's a disgrace, Boone, a big shame, so the family back on the island usually takes care of the debt, one way or the other.”

“That's harsh.”

“Welcome to my world,” Tide says. It's hard to explain to a guy, even a friend like Boone, what it's like straddling the Pacific. Boone's literally lived his whole life within a few blocks of where they're sitting right now; there's no way he, or Dave, or even Johnny can understand that Tide, who was born and bred just up the road in Oceanside, is still answerable to a village in Samoa that he's never seen. And the same thing applies to most of the Oceania people living in California-they have living roots back in Samoa, Hawaii, Guam, Fiji, what have you.

So you start making some money, you send some of it “home” to help support relatives back in the ville. A cousin comes over, he stays on your couch until he makes enough scratch at the job you got him to maybe get his own place, where he'll have another cousin crash. You do something good, a whole village five thousand miles away celebrates with pride; you do something bad, the same village feels the shame.

All that's a burden, but… your kids have grandmas and grandpas, aunties and uncles, who love them like their own kids. Even in O'side, the children go back and forth between houses like they were huts in the village. If your wife gets sick, aunties you never knew you had show up with pots of soup, cooked meat, fish, and rice.

It's aiga -family.

And if you ever get in trouble, if someone outside the “community” takes you on, threatens your livelihood or your life, then the whole tribe shows up over your shoulder; you don't even have to ask. Just like The Dawn Patrol-you call the wolf, you get the pack.

Back in the day, Tide was a serious gang banger, a matai -chief-in the Samoan Lords. S'way it was, you grew up in Oceanside back then, especially in the Mesa Margarita neighborhood: You played football and you g'd up with your boys. Thank God for football, High Tide thinks now, remembering, because he loved the game and it kept him off the drugs. Tide wasn't your drive-by, gun-toting banger hooked on ma'a. No, Tide kept his body in good shape, and when he went to war with the other gangs, he went Polynesian-style-flesh-to-flesh.

High Tide was a legend in those O'side rumbles. He'd place his big body in front of his boys, stare down the other side, then yell “Fa'aumu!” -the ancient Samoan call to war. Then it was on, hamo, fists flying until it was the last man standing.

That was always High Tide.

Same thing on the football field. When High Tide came out of the womb, the doctor looked at him and said, “Defensive tackle.” Samoan men play football, period, and because O'side has more Samoans than anyplace but Samoa, its high school team is practically an NFL feeder squad.

High Tide was where running games went to die.

He'd just eat them up, throw off the pulling guard like a sandwich wrapper, then plow the ball carrier into the turf. Teams that played O'side would just give up on the ground game and start throwing the ball like the old Air Coryell Chargers.

Scouts noticed.

Tide would come home from practice to stacks of letters from colleges, but he was interested only in San Diego State. He wasn't going to go far from home-to some cold state without an ocean to surf in. And he wasn't going far from aiga, from family, because for a Samoan, family is everything.

So Tide started for four years at State. When he wasn't slaughtering I-Backs, he was out surfing with his new friends: Boone Daniels, Johnny Banzai, Dave the Love God, and Sunny Day. He gave up the gang banging-it was just old, tired, dead-end shit. He'd still go have a beer with the boys sometimes, but that was about it. He was too busy playing ball and riding waves, and became sort of a matai emeritus in the gang- highly respected, listened to and obeyed, but above it all.

He went early third round in the NFL draft.

Played one promising season, second string for the Steelers, until he got locked up with a Bengals center and the pulling guard came around and low-jacked him.

Tide heard the knee pop.

Sounded like a gunshot.

He came home to O'side depressed as hell, his life over. Sat around his parents' house on Arthur Avenue, indulging himself in beer, weed, and self-pity, until Boone swung by and basically told him to knock that shit off. Boone practically dragged him back down to the beach and pushed him out into the break.

First ride in, he decided he was going to live.

Used his SDSU glory days to get a gig with the city. Found himself a Samoan woman, got married, had three kids.

Life is good.

Now he explains to Boone some of the intricacies of Oceania business protocol.

“That's why Eddie only deals with the ohana, bro,” Tide says. “He knows if he goes to a haole family with a debt, they say, ‘What's it got to do with us?’ Family's a different concept on this side of the pond, Boone.”

“Yes, it is.”

“Yes, it is.”

Boone eyes Sunny, who's very deliberately not eyeing him back.

“What's her problem?” he asks Tide.

Tide has heard all about the British betty from Dave. He slides off his stool, shoves the last bite of the sandwich into his mouth, and pats Boone on the shoulder. “I got work to do. For a smart man, Boone, you're a fucking idiot. You need any more anthropological insights, give me a ring.”

He pulls his brown wool beanie onto his head, slips on his gloves, and goes out the door.

Boone looks at Sunny. “Hey.”

“Hey.”

“What's up?”

“Not much,” Sunny says, not looking at him. “What's up with you?”

“Come on, Sunny.”

She walks over to him. “Okay, are you sleeping with her?”

“Who?”

“Bye, Boone.” She turns away.

“No, she's a client, that's all.”

“All of a sudden you know who I'm talking about,” Sunny says, turning toward him again.

“I guess it's obvious.”

“Yeah, I guess.”

“She's a client,” Boone repeats. Then he starts getting a little pissed that he has to explain. “And, by the way, what's it to you? It's not like we're…”

“No, it's not like we're anything,” Sunny says.

“You see other guys,” Boone says.

“You bet I do,” Sunny shot back. And she has, but nobody even close to serious since she and Boone split up.

“So?”

“So nothing,” Sunny says. “I just think that, as friends, we should be honest with each other.”

“I'm being honest.”

“Okay.”

“Okay.”

“Okay.” She walks away and goes back to wiping glasses.

Boone doesn't finish his coffee.