The Bodysurfer’s Shark Tales

CARIBBEAN. Once, Shirley told me, a man in town paid him to catch a little shark and bring it back alive. So he and Pert set out some bloody meat to trawl and flying fish which the seagulls love. Soon a gull took the flying fish bait and kept on flying. Pert flopped him up and down in the water where he made a lot of splash which sharks like a lot. In a bit sharks showed up with a little one in tow. The biggest shark grabbed at the meat while Shirley leaned over the end of the boat beating him off with a big stick. After some confusion beating off the larger sharks, the little one bit on the seagull. They didn’t want to pull the baby shark on deck, especially as they’d just painted the boat, so they spent some time trying to figure out how to get it back to town. Meanwhile the bigger sharks were still following them, so they were busy over the side of the boat with sticks, as they feared the bigger sharks, in a frenzy, might eat the little one.

When their nets tangled in the propeller blades Pert swam down to free them while Shirley hit the sharks with a stick, yelling into the water to scare them away. Pert laughed telling me about one big, old scarred and persistent shark with missing teeth, a younger shark who didn’t know what to do, the big, fat pregnant shark that pushed to the front. But they chased them all off, got the lines freed up quick and Shirley roped the small shark like a cow, towing it back to town.

We tried to figure out why this man wanted a baby shark. Later I discovered the baby shark in his swimming pool, when I delivered two paintings the man had purchased from me. The last time I saw the man he was driving way out in cane fields where I was walking home alone. He stopped me to ask me if I knew two girls who would make love to each other for him to watch.

Another time we drifted to a nearby island and camped in a cove hedged in thick by old coco trees about a mile from the village. Late one night, in the dark of the moon, we were wakened by flickering torches going past our camp down the beach. In the morning we saw bathtub-size tortoise shells gutted clean on the sand. They’d been caught by obeah fishermen, Seville, a local fisherman, told us. The villagers had come in the night for bloody chunks of illegal flesh and the rest tossed into the sea. When I went to swim and bathe later, Seville screamed at me saying the sharks out there smelling the blood and like a taste of me too.

I’d watch the sun rise over the Atlantic waiting for waves, next to surfers on beat-up boards, hunks of plywood or swimmers like me. They enjoyed harrassing each other, sometimes me, knowing I was afraid of sharks, laughing at me when a creature, big fish, turtle, dead cow would float by. They said, even though I had white legs which the shark loves, it was good thing I didn’t eat flesh or the shark smell and eat me. Or, they advised me, never swim near the river mouth after rains when the trash-loving sharks patroll through what comes dumped into the sea, never wear jewelry, earrings, no glitter or zipper in the sea. They were gleeful about the shark dream-food, turtle-belly-color of my camouflage-print bathing suit I found in a West Indies port for $2, and they were delirious that camouflage clothing had been declared illegal to sell or wear, by the government, following a nearby island revolution. They observed many things about life sitting on their boards in the early morning sun. Talking, gossiping, they permitted me to pass on good waves, as they lavished extra time in sun-bleaching their hair, to catch certain womens desirous of men with gold-tipped locks. I came to recognize hibicus-lemon-aloes mash in viscous clumps hanging from surfers’ roots as a sign of a temporary, spiritual, hunt-ritual retreat and a time when I could get a lot of waves. But few wanted to eat the flesh of the garbage eating dirty shark in those parts.

MEXICO. I was especially afraid of sharks after rains, in the river-rushing, toxic waters coming from the cities. There I found the shark, manta ray and jelly fish ride the cooler currents, when I saw the jellyfish on shore, I knew the manta was slipped just beneath the sand, spiked tail by my feet, or a shark nearby. The river mouth break which was an excellent shape in the rainy season always drew a hefty shark. I avoided murky waters, bloody fishing boats, bait. For certain, the more aggressive surfers’ call of ‘shark’ to steal a wave was an excellent way to invite the creature for a visit, claimed superstitious fishermen-surfers, who advised that to avoid any confrontation, never ever utter the word ‘shark’, especially in the water, or even think it. A Brazilian surfer wore a knife when he surfed, his friends claimed he’d killed two sharks in Mexico. They added he’d killed a tiger in a tree with his bare hands in a South China Sea Island fight over another surfer’s woman.

HAWAII. Led by a bodysurfing hula-dancer, three of us ran barefoot down a cliff-side path to bodysurf a remote cove. The hula-dancer said classically trained hula dancers of the past swam the sharky waters around the island as a final test. The shark was their god and friend. They didn’t fear him. After a year of purification, which included not eating meat, celibacy, not trimming their hair or fingernails, they ran the coast, swimming back calling to the shark the whole way. That very tall and big hula-dancer played a tiny ukele he called ‘bait’.

Around this time I was hired to paint a mural of a taro field on the island museum wall. The mural was for a commemorative celebration marking the return of sacred local artifacts from the main island museum. Hula dancers from the entire Pacific seas, Tahiti, Fiji, Samoa, and many mainland Indian dancers and musicians, including Spirit dancers and Buffalo dancers were invited and attended the three-day and all-night dance. The opening evening I confided in a local musician my relief to escape the vast discomfort emanating from the tiki on a pedestal in my work area. The musician rolled his eyes. He said the shark-god tiki was known for his ‘bad vibe’ because, the musician felt, and many agreed, the tiki had been taken, actually stolen from his home, this very island. The notorious tiki caused much bad luck everywhere, especially to anyone who touched him. But the musician said that was now all over, he could tell the tiki was happy to be home, because he continued, we all worked just feet away from him and nothing happened. Somehow I resisted touching the shark-god tiki carved of satiny, red-gold, koa wood, sinuous as a finned-snake.

SOUTH CHINA SEAS. I felt apprehensive dangling in the waters of Scar Reef, it seemed very sharky, it’s shadows murky, although the water clean and clear. But I did not speak the island dialect, could not rely on those who did, and fishermen smiled when I drew a shark in the sand. Being scarred on Scar Reef scared me more. Not the Australian surfers I was with who considered it an honor. They spent much time photographing their fresh wounds, later their scars, and jeering at each other racing out of the water before the blood-loving sharks arrived. Scar Reef was off a Muslim island, edged in bare reefs filled with mud-painted women in head-wraps gathering shellfish. Many people raised their sarong or wrap about them, and stopped when they saw us, as if in fear, and then coyly smiled. We were warned about pirates everywhere, against stopping for anyone, even the grinning, gold-toothed, pearl-farm girls who rode out in a boat to greet us. The pearl girls gestured for us to come aboard and drink, but they smiled perceptibly less when they saw women, and we passed by.

CALIFORNIA. In the North Coast waves are rough, the water is heavy with cold and nutrients, usually the sea is the color of jade or dried blood, and the only seashells you find are so beat-up you’d throw them away anywhere else. Shark breeding grounds can be seen from the beach parking lot where a surfer proudly showed me photographs of a shark attack on his board. The bite of the mouth was larger than the width of the board, teeth were imbedded in the unbroken foam core. The northern surfer said he was used to loco sharks where he lived and surfed, further up the coast. The previous week, he said, he and some friends were sitting on their boards in the water, waiting between sets, when a shark thrashed out of the water a few feet from them with a large seal in it’s mouth. They raced to shore and looking back they saw the shark again thrashed the surface trying to catch a low-flying seagull.