Author's Note: This is the third-person imagining of my scene.
The old man was enjoying his lazy afternoon fishing with his grandson. He had chosen to take the boy to a very special place on the island, South Point. A place very much dear to him, South Point was the place the old man went to when he wanted solace. Today, he was sharing that solace with someone very dear to him.
The two of them had driven all the way from their home in Kailua-Kona. They past South down the coast past the famous Kona Coffee plantations, past the quiet town of Captain Cook, and down the lonely ten mile stretch of road that led to South Point.
The road from the highway to South Point is one of a kind in the Hawaiian Islands. It feels more like a trip across Midwestern farm country, with the exception that the horizon is graced with blue ocean on one side, and Mauna Loa volcano on the other. It's slowly rolling hills, covered in grassy cattle pastures.
The boy pointed as they drove past one field, "What are those grandpa?" he asked.
"Windmills. The government put them here a long time ago, when Jimmy Carter was president," the old man answered, not taking his gaze from the road.
"Who's Jimmy Carter?" the boy quietly thought aloud, his grandfather not hearing him.
The two drove on, the old man's 1980's Nissan compact pickup creaking and groaning as they made their wave up, over, and down the endless rolling hills. Soon they were pulling up to the parking area by the cliffs. The old man looked at the boy.
"Stay close to me son. Don't go near the cliff until I have everything ready. If you fall in, it will be very bad," he cautioned his only grandchild.
"Okay grandpa. I won't," the boy complied.
As the two of them sat about removing their fishing tackle, the boy surveyed the new surroundings. He could tell that to one side of him was a massive set of cliffs that dropped off into the water. To the other side, there was rolling grasslands, with some dirt trails cutting their way across the landscape. He could see a peak rising in the distance next to the coast in that direction.
"What's over there grandpa?" the boy asked while pointing at the peak.
"The Green Sand Beach," the old man said. "It's almost a mile from here."
"Green Sand? I thought sand was black or white," the boy half asked, half stated to his grandfather.
The old man pointed way up the coastline to a black sand beach. "You remember how I told you a black sand beach is made?"
"Yes grandpa. When lava flows into the sea it cools down super-fast. When it does that it be hardens and breaks real quick," the junior geologist stated.
"Very good. I'm so proud of how smart you are," he doted on his grandson, "The Green Sand beach was made the same way, except the lava that made it contained a lot of olivine."
"Olivine? How do olives get in the lava?"
"Not olives, olivine. It's a mineral, a rock. But it's typically an olive-green color…"
"So, it shatters when it hits the water as lava, and becomes green sand?" the boy interjected.
"You are too smart!" the old man said, reaching down to pat the boy on the head. "Now lets go fishing."
The two anglers grabbed their long surfcasting rods, along with the rather large tackle boxes that the old man had kept in his shed for years. They contained the tackle that would only be used for this particular fishing spot. They walked to within ten feet of the ledge, and the old man nodded to the boy to place his gear on the ground there.
"I'll set this up, you just sit here and watch. Okay?" the old man instructed.
"Okay grandpa," the boy acknowledged.
The old man started pulling tackle from the boxes, and laying out on the ground before them. As he was doing this, a white Jeep pulled up and three men in their early twenties got out and walked to the cliff, about fifty yards away from the old man and the boy.
"Tell me the story about your grandpa again, please," the boy asked his grandfather.
"The one about the barracuda?"
"Yeah."
"Well, my grandfather used to come out here and fish out of a small boat…"
"How did he get it down there?" the boy interrupted.
The old man pointed over to where the three young men stood.
"Do you see that platform?"
The boy nodded.
"You see the pulley on the arch on the ocean side?"
Again, the boy nodded.
"He would lower the boat down using that pulley, then climb down the ladder to it."
The man continued working as he started in on the story. His fingers working delicately to bait hooks onto yard-long leaders.
"My grandpa would then paddle out just a little ways and tap his oar on the bottom of the boat three times. Sometimes he would have to do this a few times, but eventually a six-foot barracuda would show up.
"Grandpa would throw a little bit of steak or chicken into the water, and the barracuda would eat it. Then the barracuda would kill fish for Grandpa. They would float to the surface, and he would put them in his boat.
"When he had enough, he'd throw another bite to the barracuda, tap the bottom of the boat three times, and head back to the ladder and pull his boat out."
The little boy was wide eyed imagining this tale his grandfather was telling him. He thought it would be amazing to have a barracuda for a friend.
The boy's daydream was cut short when he heard a loud scream coming from down the cliff.
"AAAAHHHH!" the shortest of the young men was screaming and running for the ledge.
The boy cupped his hands over his cheeks and looked in shock as the young man soared over the ledge and down towards the water below.
"Geronimo!" the young man cried, right before he hit the water.
"Oh my gosh! What if the barracuda is down there? Will he hurt him?" the boy asked his grandfather as he turned to him frantically.
His grandfather didn't even look up from his job fixing his tackle.
"I wouldn't worry about a barracuda. That was just a fishing tale my grandfather liked to tell when I was a boy. It's not true. I don't know anyone who's ever seen a barracuda around here, " the old man said to the boy, trying to calm him.
"But don't we have barracuda in the water outside Kailua? Why wouldn't they be here? It's not far."
"Because, if a barracuda came down here, it would get eaten pretty fast," the old man chuckled.
The boy's eyes widened once again.
"Eaten? What could eat a barracuda?" the boy asked, completely bewildered.
"Well, Grandson, the waters off South Point are the biggest shark breeding ground in the entire State of Hawaii."
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