rich bartel

volunteers

The plane bounces some when we’re landing and Mina picks her head up from my shoulder. She asks if we’re in Hawaii yet. I’m like, Hells yeah we are, baby.

 Our buddy Rob died last October and yesterday would’ve been his thirty-fifth birthday. Also, it’s almost my thirty-fifth birthday. When him and me were turning thirty, the three of us were doing Jäger shots at Brewhead’s like we did for every birthday and Rob told us about his idea for this big vacation. He had it figured out that all we had to do was save thirty-five bucks from each paycheck, for five years. After that, every other Friday when we got our envelopes, he’d remind us of our plan and he’d say, all grinning, We’re getting paid up to get leied up!

Later, after his treatments stopped working and he was laid up for reals in his mom’s apartment, he still kept on talking like he was going to be going to Hawaii with us. He’d tell us how he’d be hooking up with all these hot island girls in grass skirts and how we’d all go midnight surfing together in the ocean. Drink rum drinks from coconuts or a pineapple or something.

 You know it, man! I used to say to him when he talked like that, but I’d be frowning at Mina over his head the whole time. That was back when he was still able to talk; later all he could do was groan sometimes, and then the last few days he couldn’t do nothing at all. He’d just lay there in bed with his eyes closed—or worse, barely open—and breathing all low and cruddy and sinking deeper and deeper into his sheets. Mina and me and his sisters and his mom took turns watching TV beside him and we answered the questions from everybody when they came over to tell him goodbye. It sucked bad, but you had to do it. His vacation savings went toward the funeral and the party afterwards.

On the drive from the airport to the hotel, the sun is already going down. I guess the sunsets are pretty fast in Hawaii. I don’t know the science behind it; Rob was the one who’d looked it up. He was always telling us about all the stuff he’d read about, and he was always reading about something new. That’s how he got to be so smart, even though he said that the only reason he knew more than me was because he was three days older. Well, four days after he died I was older than he’ll ever be, and I can’t see when I’ll ever know as much.

Mina and me drop our bags off in the hotel room and go back out and walk around Kona, looking for a bar that’s not too touristy. Once we find one, we spread the map from the rental car place on the bar top and pull out our phones to look up stuff for us to do tomorrow. We decide that we’ll go to Punaluu, this beach that’s famous because it’s got totally black sand. Mina folds up the map and one of the TVs behind the bar has Home Video Fails on it, which was like Rob’s favorite show. He used to say that there’s nothing funnier than somebody getting hit in the dick with a baseball. I say that out loud and the bartender laughs. I don’t tell him that it’s kind of funny also because our friend Rob, who actually made up that joke, died from cancer of the balls, because that would be a weird thing to say. But it’s weird not bringing him up.

The next morning we’re all hungover. We do the free hotel breakfast, go back to our room to take a nap, and then drive the two hours to Punaluu. There aren’t any lifeguards, or even any of those lifeguard highchairs, but there’s these old people, a guy and a lady, in green vests, yelling at a crowd that’s standing around this big rock on the beach. Stay six feet back, the people in vests say. Six feet back!

We get up closer and see that it’s not a rock at all but instead a big old sea turtle that’s dragged itself up out of the water. All the tourists have their cameras out. I take some pictures with my phone while Mina crouches down six feet behind it so she’ll be in the shot also. We watch the turtle sit there for a long time, until it finally turns around real slow and crawls back into the ocean. We get to talking to the old people in the green vests some, too. They’re volunteers.

The sun is setting so we head back to Kona. Later, back at the same bar from last night, all drunk again, we scroll through our photos. On one of the turtle ones, I zoom in on its head. There’s some of that famous black sand on its eye. It looks like it would hurt. I remember Rob said that sea turtles can live to be like eighty years old and that they’ll swim thousands of miles in their lifetime. Damn. I’m, like, crying a little bit. The bartender buys us a round, but then he tells us that that’s it; he can’t serve us any more alcohol tonight. He says he’ll see us again tomorrow. Double damn. But that’s okay. Mina thanks him for the free beers and puts her head on my shoulder.

That’s a good way to cut somebody off, I tell him. Makes it seem fairer, somehow.

Rich Bartel has lived in Cleveland, New Orleans, Scranton, and Albuquerque, where he and his wife still reside. His work has been published in iQ and The Ear.