Night Diving

The lapping of the ocean’s waves, curling gently onto the sand, fills the black night. It resonates above the breeze coming across the water, sprinting up the sloping dunes, and into the bushes beside me. I crouch near the naupaka shrubs with their round, broad leaves, using the light of the moon to find a couple of thick, light green leaves. I use the leaves I’ve plucked to scrub the inside of my divers’ mask against the glass to keep it from fogging up while we’re in the water. I don’t know who figured this out—or why it works—but it’s better than spitting into my mask like some of my friends.

My brother is already sitting at the edge of the ocean, crushing his handful of leaves into his mask and watching the white wash push his fins side-to-side. His mammoth fins look like the backs of a pair of beached monsters, dorsal fins swaying above the water. Lindsey plays college football—defensive tackle. Everything about his hulking body, broad shoulders winged by mountainous triceps, makes him look larger than life. As if he were one of Conan the Barbarian’s friends.

I walk down to the sand toward him, mask and snorkel in one hand and fins and spear in the other. I didn’t have the flashlight; he did. He hadn’t turned it on yet because we were afraid the batteries in it were low. We’d be sharing the light tonight. We did on most nights because diving lights were pretty expensive, even for the cheap ones. They also usually held either four to six D batteries or one of those big block batteries. Both expensive for a kid without an allowance or job and a college kid working through the summer. We were lucky to put gas in the car.

Sitting at the edge of the ocean with the stars dipping below the horizon, we dangled our legs into the edge of eternity. When you’re sitting at the ocean’s mouth past midnight, there’s no difference between the black of space and the depths of the ocean. They’re equally terrifying and magical. It takes a stupid kind of courage to pull my mask over my face and my snorkel into my mouth, looking out over the expanse of black. We look at each other and nod before I watch my brother heave his mass into the water and kick up a few frothy splashes of water. A flicker of light below the surface of the waves flashes as he kicks off into the black.

I follow him quickly, so I’m not left in his wake. The light on the sand is like following a fuzzy halo under the water that slices through the night’s ocean and illuminates a solid path. The flashlight is its own type of magic, one that gives you the courage to move forward as if the beam is pulling you into deeper depths just for having been there. Little sparkles in the sand and coral reveal luminescent creatures, tiny, fluttering in the water, and reflecting the light. The world of night under the water begins to open as we cross over shallow reefs for the deeper coral islands that lie submerged below the surface. Here, small translucent fish dart in and out of my brother’s light as he casts it about in a slow arching motion, hunting for light blue u’hus or flashy red veki’s. These are our favorite fish to spear. They rarely swim in the shallows, and they’re tough to catch with just a Hawaiian sling, but at night, they sleep. Who would have thought fish slept at night? I was always under the impression that fish just swam constantly, roaming around in the water. But no, they sleep. Some are nocturnal, like the translucent minnows, but u’hu sleep beneath reef cliffs and in jagged holes near the sandy bottoms.

This is what forces my brother to submerge and dive down toward depths the halo of his light barely illuminates. A reef island has a clear overhang from the top and could easily shelter sleeping fish or some crawling crab, lobster, or shrimp below it. His light descends, and the silhouette of his bulky body sinks under the pressure of his fins, driving him to the bottom. Dark water closes above his form as he reaches the reef overhang, and he pushes his spear and torso under it with the light in his other hand.

Suddenly, I’m floating at the top of the universe as his light is eclipsed beneath coral and seaweed, leaving me in darkness. I could be floating in space or in the ocean; it doesn’t really matter with the black engulfing me, leaving me blind with only my other senses to rely on. With my face pointed down into the abyss of water, my ears submerged in the sound of my steady breathing passing back and forth through my snorkel. The muffled sound of the water rolling and the little high-pitched popping sounds that come from water equalizing in my ears. The taste of salt constantly coats my tongue and mouth—and I can’t rely on my nose for anything. The chill of the water embraces my whole body as it jostles me back and forth. Floating in oblivion leaves you with nothing but the sense of constant movement and frightening realization that you don’t belong in this voided part of the world.

Suddenly, my brother’s light comes back like a meteor in the night as he ascends to the surface. He’s moving fast as he pounds his finned feet against the dark behind him. When he breaks the surface and clears his snorkel, he breaks his head above the rolling water.

“Hey! There’s something down there! Le’s go down and hit it. It’s big! I think we both need to hit it to bag it.”

“What is it?”

“I don’t know, like one tuna or somethin’ t’at got caught inside da reef when the tide when roll out. Come, we go!”

He slips his snorkel back into his mouth and dives back under. With the light descending, I have no choice but to bend at the waist and throw myself down as well. Follow the light. Need to follow the light down and into that hole below the reef. If I stay here, I’ll just disappear back into the dark, and I don’t want that. I don’t like sitting in the dark for too long. Better to stick together and ride that beam of light wherever it takes me.

Fifteen, maybe twenty feet down, my brother flattens out his body parallel to the sandy floor, drifting slowly to the overhang’s entrance. He’s already adjusted his grip; thumb looped through the rubber attached to the backend of the spear and stretched taut with his hand all the way to the base of the three-pronged spearhead. His fingers locked on the electrical tape that he wrapped around a cord to provide a better grip.

He holds the flashlight in his other hand below his chest, silhouetting his body in the deep as I glide down to meet him. I rotate my body from my head down dive to flatten out beside him as I descend the last few feet, my eyes following the light into the dark underbelly of the reef. The formations loom like teeth lining a craggy throat. Less coral crevice, more watery hell mouth. Just as I reach his side and stare down the rocky barrel of the reef, light refracts off an eye embedded in gray scales further in the darkness. My brother immediately kicks, pushing himself, spear in hand and light racing away, deeper beneath the reef.

The light is swallowed almost immediately as I feel his fins pulse past my arm and head. I’m alone in the dark again. My heart racing because I don’t know what I just saw—but it was big. My lungs heave and contract, communicating that oxygen is in short supply. My brain is silently sounding internal alarms, trying to make sense of what I’m doing in the dark twenty feet below the surface. Meanwhile, my soul is channeling a war cry, urging me to pursue the hunt with my brother.

Turn back! Push forward! You need air! Spear that thing! Surface! Follow the light!

I’m frozen at the bottom of the ocean.

Go back!

The black is paralyzing.

Follow his light!

The void does not leave me motionless. I drift.

Come back!

I float. Surfacing. Alone between the universe and the ocean once again.

I really need to buy my own light.