Fluke: Or, I Know Why the Winged Whale Sings

of his boat eating a breakfast of rice and octopus as the Maui Whale crew – Clay, Quinn, Kona, and Amy – passed by. He was a strong, compact Malaysian with long hair and a stringy soul-patch beard that, along with the bone fishhooks he wore in his ears, gave him the distinct aspect of a pirate. He was one of the black-coral divers who lived in the harbor, and this morning, as always, he wore his wet suit.
    "Hey, Tako," Clay said. The diver glanced up from his bowl. His eyes looked as if someone had poured shots of blood into them. Kona noticed that the small octopus in the diver's bowl was still moving, and he scampered down the dock feeling a case of the creeps fluttering to life in his spinal cord.
    "Nightwalkers, gray ones, on your boat last night. I seen them," said Tako Man. "Not the first time."
    "Good to know," said Clay, patronizing the diver and moving down the dock. You had to keep peace with anyone who lived in the harbor, especially the black-coral divers, who lived far over the edge of what most people would consider normal life. They shot heroin, drank heavily, spent all day doing bounce dives to two hundred feet looking for the gemstone-valuable black coral, then spent their money on weeklong parties that had, more than once, ended with one of them dead on the dock. They lived on their boats and ate rice and whatever they could pull out of the sea. Tako Man had gotten his name because on any given afternoon, after the divers came in for the day, you'd see the grizzled Malaysian carrying a net bag full of tako (octopus) that he had speared on the reef for their supper.
    "Hi," Amy said sheepishly to Tako Man as they passed. He glared at her through his bloody haze, and his head bobbed as he almost nodded out into his breakfast. Amy quickened her pace and ran a Pelican case she was carrying into the back of Quinn's thigh.
    "Jeez, Amy," Quinn said, having almost lost his footing.
    "Do those guys dive in that condition?" Amy whispered, still sticking to Quinn like a shadow.
    "Worse than that. Would you back up a little?"
    "He's scary. You're supposed to protect me, ya mook. How do they keep from getting into trouble?"
    "They lose one or two a year. Ironically, it's usually an overdose that gets them."
    "Tough job."
    "They're tough guys."
    Tako Man shouted, "Fuck you, whale people! You'll see. Fucking nightwalker fuckers. Fucking fuck you, haole motherfuckers!" He tossed the remains of his breakfast at them. It landed overboard, and tiny fish broke the water fighting for the scraps.
    "Rum," said Kona. "Too much hostility in dat buzz. Rum come from da cane, and cane come from slavin' the people, and dat oppression all distilled in de bottle and come out a man mean as cat shit on a day."
    "Yeah," said Clay to Quinn. "Didn't you know that about rum?"
    "Where's your boat?" asked Quinn.
    "My boat?"
    "Your boat, Clay," said Amy.
    "No," said Clay. He stopped and dropped two cases of camera equipment on the dock. The Always Confused, the spiny and powerful twenty-two-foot Grady White center-console fisherman, Clay's pride and joy, was gone. A life jacket, a water bottle, and various other familiar flotsam bobbed gently in a rainbow slick of gasoline where the boat had once been.
    Everyone thought someone else should say something, but for a full minute no one did. They just stood there, staring at what should have been Clay's boat but instead was a big, boatless gob of tropical air.
    "Poop," Amy finally said, saying it for all of them.
    "We should check with the harbormaster," said Nate.
    "My boat," said Clay, who stood over the empty slip as if it were his recently run-over boyhood dog. He would have nuzzled it and stroked its little dead doggy ears if he could have, but instead he fished the oily life jacket out of the water and sat on the dock rocking it.
    "He really liked that boat," Amy said.
    "Can I get a duh for the sistah?" exclaimed the dreaded blond kid.
    "I paid the insurance," Nate said as he moved away, headed for the harbormaster.
    Tako Man had come down the dock from his own boat to stare at the empty water. Somber now. Amy backed up into Kona for protection, but Kona had backed up into the next person behind him, which turned out to be Captain Tarwater, resplendent in his navy whites and newly Kona-scuffed shoes.
    "Irie, ice cream man."
    "You're on my shoes."
    "What happened?" asked Cliff Hyland, coming down the dock behind the captain.
    "Clay's boat's gone," said Amy.
    Cliff moved up and put his