Fluke, Or, I Know Why the Winged Whale Sings Read Online Free PDF

sea, and she'll kill you whether you liked her or not, which Clay did.) Doing what he wanted to do and his boundless affinity for everything made Clay Demodocus a happy guy, but he was also shrewd enough not to be too open about his happiness. Animals might put up with that smiley shit, but people will eventually kill you for it.
    "How's the new kid?" Clay said, trying to distract from the iodine he was applying to Nate's forehead while simultaneously calculating the time to ship his new monitor over to Maui from the discount house in Seattle. Clay liked gadgets.
    "He's a criminal," Nate said.
    "He'll come around. He's a water guy." For Clay this said it all. You were a water guy or you weren't. If you weren't… well, you were pretty much useless, weren't you?
    "He was an hour late, and he showed up in the wrong place."
    "He's a native. He'll help us deal with the whale cops."
    "He's not a native, he's blond, Clay. He's more of a haole than you are, for Christ's sake."
    "He'll come around. I was right about Amy, wasn't I?" Clay said. He liked the new kid, Kona, despite the employment interview, which had gone like this:
    Clay sat with the forty-two-inch monitor at his back, his world-famous photographs of whales and pinnipeds playing in a slide show behind him. Since he was conducting a job interview, he had put on his very best $5.99 ABC Store flip-flops. Kona stood in the middle of the office wearing sunglasses, his baggies, and, since he was applying for a job, a red-dirt-dyed shirt.
    "Your application says that your name is Pelke — ah, Pelekekona Ke — " Clay threw his hands up in surrender.
    "I be called Pelekekona Keohokalole — da warrior kine — Lion of Zion, brah."
    "Can I call you Pele?"
    "Kona," Kona said.
    "It says on your driver's license that your name is Preston Applebaum and you're from New Jersey."
    "I be one hundred percent Hawaiian. Kona the best boat hand in the Island, yeah. I figga I be number-one good man for to keep track haole science boss's isms and skisms while he out oppressing the native bruddahs and stealing our land and the best wahines. Sovereignty now, but after a bruddah make his rent, don't you know?"
    Clay grinned at the blond kid. "You're just a mess, aren't you?"
    Kona lost his Rastafarian, laid-backness. "Look, I was born here when my parents were on vacation. I really am Hawaiian, kinda, and I really need this job. I'm going to lose my place to live if I don't make some money this week. I can't live on the beach in Paia again. All my shit got stolen last time."
    "It says here that you last worked as a forensic calligrapher. What's that, handwriting analysis?"
    "Uh, no, actually, it was a business I started where I would write people's suicide notes for them." Not a hint of pidgin in his speech, not a skankin' smidgen of reggae. "It didn't do that well. No one wants to kill himself in Hawaii. I think if I'd started it back in New Jersey, or maybe Portland, it would have gone over really well. You know business: location, location, location."
    "I thought that was real estate." Clay actually felt a twinge of missed opportunity, here, for although he had spent his life having adventures, doing exactly what he wanted to do, and although he often felt like the dumbest guy in the room (because he'd surrounded himself with scientists), now, talking to Kona, he realized that he had never realized his full potential as a self-deluded blockhead. Ahhh… wistful regrets. Clay liked this kid.
    "Look, I'm a water guy," Kona said. "I know boats, I know tides, I know waves, I love the ocean."
    "You afraid of it?" Clay asked.
    "Terrified."
    "Good. Meet me at the dock tomorrow morning at eight-thirty."
    * * *
    Now Nate rubbed at the crisscrrossed band-aids on his forehead as Clay went through the Pelican cases of camera equipment under the table across the room. The break-in and subsequent shit storm of activity had sidetracked him from what he'd seen this morning. It started to settle on him again