Steps

Our house is so close we don't even need to drive to the falls but we do anyway, packing the bucket and rods, our tabbies and rain jackets. Descending the road that takes us to the stream, I protect my knees by landing on the balls of my feet. Iako puts his hand at my back when the asphalt stops and the hard slippery earth begins.

"Watch your step," he says to everyone.

"Daddy, remember the last time for Father's Day and we caught so many?"

"Daddy, the tourists left cans on the side of the road."

"Daddy, how many will we catch today?"

There are two of them, two of us, and more questions. I wait my turn. "I want to see another thrush," I say.

He answers, "the Shama Thrush is actually from Indo-China. It's invasive, but there's something about it that belongs here. Maybe it's because it sounds like a nightingale, even though there aren't any indigenous nightingales here. I dunno," he pauses. "They sound nice, I agree."

I am silent, listening instead for the song that will lilt and trill, resonating with something deep and fragile inside me. Instead I hear the whoosh of the stream washing over dull boulders, spilling into itself as it moves past the trees' arthritic knuckles, sweeping twigs and leaves from its banks.

Before I met Iako, I was married to someone else. So was he, but we could have been married to the same person for all the sexless nights and personality differences. And we both thought the mere strength of our love could transform them into what we needed. But that's the thing about love, it's sometimes confused with control.

At the stream, a great tree has fallen across the water; its roots are a heart burst open and frozen so that all the fragments are caught midair. The mass is taller than any of us, and we close in to study the dark lines where moss and ants shade the decaying underbelly.

"How long do you think it will take?" Alika asks.

"Ah, maybe a while," Iako answers. "The stream will probably wash it down before it's all gone. Then it will break into debris."

Ena has stopped looking, has walked to the edge below an arching Kukui tree, fish pole in hand. The rush of water running is different, cleaner, there.

"Daddy, I need bait!" she repeats until he obeys, crouching next to her. The boy squats next to him, studying exactly how it's done, asking to do it next time. Iako slices squid on a white styrofoam tray, disposable gloves keeping the stench of rotten fish from infusing into his skin. He ties the end of her line, and it's hard to tell his fingers from the fleshy stuff.

"Don't let 'em get you," he says with a laugh, handing over the pole. "Those pincers can snip a finger."

He takes the grayish gloves off when he's done, stuffs the slimed tips close to the bait.

Ena's bait swings close to her calf as she navigates the rocks peering down; her intense gaze studies the eddies and swirls and not her next step. Alika chooses the other side, crossing the path of jutting rocks with precision. That shore is smoother, less shaded, less slippery. Suddenly, he jumps in with both feet, looks back, beams a smile to my left.

The rocks clink behind me and Iako stands and smiles back. He hands a pole to me, then starts to walk across the same path the boy took. 

"Cray fish like being close to running water. Close, but not too close." He glances back to make sure I'm following. "See that deeper, lake-like area? You're not going to find any there. Look for protected places, but places where the water is still moving."

My foot slips, plunges in. I leave it for a second. The cool is wonderful, refreshing; it sucks the wetsuit material of my tabbies towards my skin.

He looks back. "You okay?"

"Fine," I say, pulling out my foot.

"Look for the red," he continues, turning back to the path. "But they're pretty smart, so you have to watch them. They'll definitely be watching you."

Ena dips her line gently, and the bait disappears for a moment. She waits like I've seen her wait before when she was trying to scare her brother. She reaches her head out slightly while keeping the pole still, retracts, then repeats about once every ten seconds. Suddenly, she yanks up with her entire body and smiles huge. At the end of her line a bright miniature lobster about two inches long sprawls, motionless with shock. It begins to twitch as it hangs.

"Daddy, Daddy," she dangles the line over the rocks, shaking it as she hops. There is no hook, but the cray has refused to let go.

"Convinced," Iako says as he deftly navigates the space between himself and her, "that someone will steal its food." He's there beside her so fast, gingerly placing the creature in the bucket. "Good job," he says, patting her head.

Alika is there, too, studying the small thing. "Last time we caught a bigger one," he sighs. "I'm gonna catch a bigger one this time, too." He goes back to his place and beyond, trolling for something that will beat his sister.

Everything is brown and gray but mostly green, and the sun filters through the vast canopy, shimmers and sparkles atop everything wet. I close my eyes when I hear the thrush. Her song is like drinking cool water, like dipping my feet in, like taking a clean, deep breath. She's perched close, I can tell, and I look for her.

"Daddy, Daddy," comes again. Ena has caught another and I lose the thrush, though I look back and catch the blur of her white tail feathers through the trees.

This is the first time I have cray fished, the first time I have waded in a stream since I was a girl. And it feels like I have been away from myself, like I'm returning to a familiar place where I almost belong. I'm bigger now, more awkward, less free. But I know Hapu ferns grow close to the banks, their spiraled brown fur blooms big and green and spidery. I know impatiens, bright pink and purple and orange, have bulbs that pop between my fingers and seeds that fly as the pod springs inside-out. I know them as I know myself, and for almost as long.

"I caught one!" The water is so clear, I can see everything. A plume of mud curls, swirling, and a small patch of firecracker red flashes: the tip of a tail. The intricate body tries to yank bait from my line with its disproportionately huge claws while it scratches the ground, kicking up more cloud. It tugs in the direction of a twiggy refuge that juts out from a crevice in the red rock. The bait is almost half its size, and I'm amazed at the sheer strength of small creatures, wonder how it will handle all that food alone. "What do I do? What do I do?"

"Just make sure it doesn't let go," Iako says, calm. When I bring my line up, his hand is atop my head and the bucket is at my feet. The cray is off my line with one fluid movement. "Good job," he adds, kissing my cheek and smiling.   

Alika brings the biggest one yet, his nine-year old hand only slightly smaller. "Last time, it was bigger," he sighs. The bucket holds almost a dozen crays in a few inches of water, and I wonder about recipes, imagine them simple: salt-and-peppered, then grilled with chili pepper water. I watch the smaller ones climb atop the bigger ones, trying to scale their way out, their claws clicking and sliding against the smooth sides. When Alika dangles his over the bucket, a few grab on, weighting his down. Finally, his slips then splashes onto the pile. And I think about how hard it is to be in that position, facing the consequences of not having let go in time.

"I want my wife back," my ex said when I'd ask him about which pieces of furniture he wanted. But I had made up my mind; there was no going back inside the bucket.

It's only been about thirty minutes, and no one is tired yet. No one has fought. We are still close to the broken tree, only about a hundred meters upstream when the sky darkens. No one really notices, though, because we're all intent on ferreting out the best hiding places. We talk about what cray fish like, how they sleep, what they usually eat when there's no squid being fed to them. We wonder about cray mommies and daddies, and why we never find families together, unless this entire stream is just one big extended family, and maybe we're walking through their house with our tabbies on.

When the rain comes, it seems from out of nowhere. Huge drops pelt through the leaves, past the branches, and splatter up from the stream so that we get wet from both directions. I run towards the toppled tree, taking refuge beneath a thicker-branched spot. I wave Alika and Ena to come, and they do, cowering on either side of me, clutching to my damp shirt.

"Don't forget the bucket!" I say to Iako, who turns back and grabs the wire handle, then up-ends its entire contents back into the water. Muddy brown intersperses with flashes of bright red that seem to gash through the falling water like a bucketful of entrails.

"Catch and release," he says to answer my stunned expression.

"Plus, the family stays together," says Ena.

"And the small ones get big," adds Alika.

  I nod, even though it occurs to me that this was all an exercise in futility, a way to pass the time. And although it's certainly memorable, I wonder about the time we spend entertaining ourselves, unable to let go of so many things that comfort us, even the bad stuff that gets us into trouble.

But the stream is soft and the small bodies disperse. The swirling mud sinks and settles like sand after a wave. Soon, there isn't a sign we were even here, except for the weight of our tabbies on the stones. It's as if our afternoon hasn't made the crays smarter, more wary of squid floating from stringed poles. Iako has allowed everything to go back to its rightful place, and for that, I admire and love him a little bit more.

We wait for the rain to subside before we make our way back, past the felled tree. "See," Iako points, "pieces have already broken off from the downpour." We join him on the other side of the tree and watch the debris wash down-stream.

Alika touches the core of the root, touches other-colored parts, too. "It's soft here," he says, pointing to the middle. "How is everything going to wash away when the outer parts are harder?"

"The water will get to the middle eventually," I explain. "Water is very strong, and it can break through anything."

"Dad?" he says with a slightly furrowed brow.

"Like she said, Son." 

"Oh," he says in a small voice, melting the furrow with downcast eyes.

We all walk back to the car completely drenched, remembering our raincoats are balled up on the back seat. The sun appears and steams the asphalt clean. When the thrush flies above us we all see her feathers that shimmer black-sapphire and brilliant white. She sings to us perched on a young strawberry guava tree that marks the end of the forrest and the beginning of the road. The lilt is familiar and sweet, we agree, like ice cream or a half-rainy day.