The Preserve

by Steve Anderson

  The sun set, Mauna Kea blending into evening sky, their skin losing glow, going blue.

  “They’re trying to lock us in, get our exact coordinates,” Lett told Kanani.

  “What about those Quonset huts? See anything? Any kine activity?”

  Lett shook his head. “Too far off. Soon it’ll be like being in a cave, but outside.”

  Their pursuers could even be using the new night vision glasses. Lett didn’t tell Kanani that. He didn’t have to.

  “We gonna cross that damn road,” she said, “and we’re going soon.”

  ***

  It was pushing seven o’clock; darkness was falling. The wind had calmed, bringing an eerie void of sound, like in a tunnel. The temperature was sinking faster, causing their sweat to cool clammy on their skin. They waited behind the mound, going over the plan, letting their eyes adjust. The sole good news was that the moon was out, only half a sphere, yet it would help light the terrain.

  “It’s shorter distance than a football field,” Lett told Kanani. They would stay close, holding hands, and would have no choice but to take their time or they might trip. Lett would lead and Kanani would step where he stepped, like in a minefield.

  They took deep breaths. They grasped hands and squeezed.

  They scrambled out from the mound, crouching. The moonlight did help. Lett stepped here and there, bounding forward, and Kanani followed, lunging and wobbling, in what must have looked like two winos doing the bunny dance.

  “Wait. What’s that?”

  Shouting sounded, from west of them. They lowered onto all fours, the lava poking at their stomachs. Lett fumbled for the binoculars.

  More sights, sounds. Lights were flashing, then came what sounded like someone on a bullhorn. But this was from farther off.

  Kanani planted the binoculars on Lett’s eye sockets. “Some kind of alert,” Lett said.

  Beams of light shot into the sky.

  They pushed on, scrambling along like spooked lizards. Lett banged his shin. Kanani tore her overalls.

  Headlights glared along Saddle Road, coming their way. The black panel truck. Flashlights flickered on then off, from the lava just west of them.

  “That’s Lansdale’s crew, getting on top of us. Keep going.”

  Lett stumbled. Kanani landed on him, but they rose as one and kept moving.

  More headlights were coming up the road, pursuing the panel truck’s headlights. A spotlight arced around.

  “That’s louder than a truck,” Lett shouted. “A big scout car maybe.”

  They hit a stretch of flat ground and sprinted.

  It was a big military scout car, armored, six wheels, mounted machine gun. The scout car gained on the panel truck.

  “Look, look!” Kanani panted.

  More headlights, a spotlight. A military jeep was coming from the other direction—from the east. It crossed Kanani and Lett’s path and soon halted sideways, filling the narrow road.

  Cutting off the panel truck.

  Lett and Kanani were less than fifty yards from Saddle Road. Dust from the churned gravel made a fog, but Lett could see the flat and brown opposite side, where the lava ended, glowing blue in moonlight.

  On they went, scrambling, one eye on the cluster of headlights. The scout car had pulled up behind the black panel truck to box it in—blocking its escape with a roadblock. The truck slowed, stopped in the road. Men jumped out of the scout car and from the jeep. From the headlights, Lett could make out their utility uniforms with USMC markings.

  “Go, Marines, go,” Lett blurted, and Kanani squeezed him as they hurried along.

  The Marines surrounded the panel truck, creeping toward it, crouching. Men exited the truck’s rear, their arms up high. They wore dark gear. Then the sideways jeep’s lights illuminated the land where, Lett could see it now, other Marines were marching back other men in black, their arms up.

  Another mound of rock, then the road. They hurried on and huddled at the mound, catching their breath, peering out. “Jock there?” Kanani gasped.

  “Don’t know. Can’t tell.”

  “Lansdale?”

  “Nope. Don’t see him.”

  The Marines lined up their prisoners along the side of the road. Flashlights illuminated their faces white and Lett recognized some from the lava tube, from what they did to the commando. From his cell. Gear was at their feet, goggles and small packs, and grease guns and pistols. The Marines had their weapons aimed. Thompson guns.

  “Saw some of them at Frankie’s,” Kanani said, squeezing Lett’s hand, their hot sweat flowing as if from one.

  “Go.”

  Out over the road they rushed, as low as they could, their thighs pumping. A narrow stretch of the lava field lined the other side—the smooth, ropy pahoehoe, so flat it shined in the moonlight. They crossed it and their feet hit the grass and it was like carpet. Sprinting now. They were heading toward a dark line, what had to be a gully. Kanani was leading.

  Lett had to look, one more time. “Wait . . .”

  He pulled at her, and they turned and crouched.

  At the rear end of the jeep nearest them stood a silhouette, glowing red from the taillights. Only ten, fifteen yards away. The silhouette wore no USMC gear except for a bucket hat.

  It was Jock. Jock was watching the Marines frisking the pursuers in the road. And he was watching for Lett and Kanani, making sure their route was secure.

  For a moment, Jock turned to them. Their eyes met, locked. He waved them on, pointing, directing them onward. Go, go, he was saying. All clear. Now or never.

  Lett nodded. Jock nodded.

  Off they ran. Kanani pulled at Lett’s loose coveralls and they made it to the gully where they dropped and turned to the road, lying with arms and legs intertwined, panting and wheezing, sweat splashing on their hands.

  Lett drew the binoculars. Down at the roadblock, their pursuers were squatting in a circle out on the gravel, the other Marines guarding them. But Jock? He was nowhere to be seen.

  Had they really seen him? It didn’t matter. Lett now knew that his soldier friend was both a ghost and an angel.

  48.

  Lett could not think of a more wonderful spot to contemplate how far he’d come—yet still had to go. His open lanai looked out over a sparkling gurgling stream that ran down to him from a spring far away and high up on Mauna Kea. Beyond lay a field of tall, moist, and thick grass that was lined on either side by lush tropical forest. Like all the few structures here, his simple shack was built from debris. Planks and beams and corrugated metal made up his lanai and one-room domain. Thick vines cascaded down on all sides, helping to conceal the rust and graying wood.

  The soft, lush basin around him had to be the most remote valley on the island. It ran along the bottom of a steep gorge that plummeted thousands of feet from the fertile plains above. Up there along the Hamakua Coast, the sugar plantations still held onto their iron rule. Up there might as well be Alaska. Inland from Lett’s shack, the canyon stretched and snaked and narrowed for a couple miles at least, as far as he knew. No matter the spot, the summits and cliffs high above basked in sun long after the shade and dusk had cloaked them down below. In the other direction from Lett’s shack lay a stretch of new taro crops and palm trees, then a compact beach of black lava sand, and finally, the vast Pacific Ocean, the sea softly lapping up.

  Only one road led down into this valley, a twisting, rutted, plunging track that few jeeps or their drivers could handle. At first Lett feared one of those four-by-four vehicles would bring Lansdale, or a team of sunburned CIC men, or even CID detectives grouchy from a long journey. But they never did come. He got used to seeing the occasional local or rare haole adventurer. He hadn’t gotten used to witnessing the wild horses cross his stream now and then, and he hoped he never would. Same went for the mango and avocado trees and especially the secluded waterfalls he heard. On the whole, it was like the Earth before man, the child before the disease.

  Lett and Kanani had rea
ched this valley two days after fleeing The Preserve. After Jock saved their lives, they had marched around Mauna Kea. In the dark, the scrubby grass had given way to shrubs and then a ragged forest of short dry mamane trees. Lett’s hand was cut from the loose jagged ’a’a lava, and Kanani cleaned and bandaged it. It grew cool and they could’ve used a fire, but Lett didn’t want to risk the smoke and light and Kanani agreed, adding that mamane were rare Hawaiian floras. They slept on soft underbrush, spooning. Too tired to talk, too relieved to worry.

  In the morning, low fog cloaked all within yards. But as they moved on, it lifted, and bright green fern-like plants soon began to replace the mamane trees, filling every gap in the forest, perky and shiny like children come to play. Reddish-pink clover spread over the black gravel like the brightest area rugs. So near a volcano, this was the Earth itself starting over again—what the whole planet must’ve looked like, Lett thought, before even the first wiggling creatures began to rise up from the water and the soft mud.

  They hiked north toward the Hamakua Coast. They passed through rain forest and navigated many streams. They saw waterfalls. They crossed plantation lands, including one Kanani had lived on as a girl. They passed through a couple small junctions with mom-and-pop stores offering homemade dried fish, fruit turnovers, and ice shaves. Kanani went into one for water and food, and Lett meanwhile spied a family of touring mainlanders staring at her, as if to say, just look at that dirty island woman.

  She then led him north along the coast. She knew the exact way now. They followed a winding road and she stopped at a hillside cemetery. She went quiet and walked away from him, passing among the tombstones. Most were sooty and crumbling, but one was a glossy new gray. She stood before it, hands clasped at her waist, head bowed. Lett thought he heard her speaking and moved to her, but she waved him away.

  “My faddah,” she said afterward.

  And they had marched on, following the coast road.

  It seemed like he’d been in this valley much longer than two weeks. It took him the first week just to get his strength back, recovering while holed up in this shack that Kanani’s people had given him. Like everyone down here, he had no electricity or mail service. No addresses existed. He boiled or purified his water, and his light was candles. The first couple days, the valley dwellers had passed to stare at this outlandish haole with his pink skin and sandy blond hair wanting to curl after an afternoon rain. Old Samoans, the skin hanging off their once-corpulent bodies. Wiry Asians in cast-off plantation work clothes. Dark-skinned paniolos in worn riding hats. Even a white couple with leathered faces, salt-and-pepper longish hair, and knives on their belts. Some must’ve wondered if he wasn’t plainly lolo, or worse yet, dangerous.

  He didn’t know where Kanani was living down here. She had shepherded him into the valley and this shack, and then left him on his own. She said it had to be that way. He smelled barbecues and imagined that most all the people of the valley often gathered to eat together. He saw smoke coming from the black beach and heard drums at night and pictured a community luau with ukuleles and song and succulent roasted pig. But that was all right by him. The originals tolerated him but wanted no contact. He might be a danger to them, after all. He understood that. After those first couple days, no one appeared to stop and stare. He could sit for hours on this simple lanai and reflect and begin to understand.

  This was his decontamination period. It was his purgatory and his purification. They had a tradition for it, he remembered—a place of refuge.

  Kanani had visited him only a few times in those first two weeks, to check on him and to make sure that he had enough candles and was keeping his water fresh. She brought him food—pork wrapped in leaves, and poi made from the taro fields. A mango turnover pastry.

  Each time Kanani came, she fed him more information, reporting in the measured tones of a sharp young sergeant returned to the CP after leading a critical patrol. She now wore thick old boots, threadbare denim trousers, and had a knife on her belt, too. She sat with him on the lanai, on one of his two mismatched wooden chairs.

  “This is called the Valley of the Kings,” she told him. “The high ridges around us hold the mana of ancient Hawaiian rulers. But a great tsunami came and destroyed this valley. It was the bad one of ’46. Same one hit Hilo. Had one village down here, schoolhouse, post office, but the big water took the whole works. Ancient temples. Graves.”

  “Did they all work for the plantations down here?” Lett asked.

  “Many, yes. Before the plantations came, they had a mission church here. And those missionaries, they brought the plantation owners, and the plantation owners brought your military. That land grab of theirs needed defending after all.” Kanani shrugged. “Many native islanders above are scared of this valley. Oh—my grandmother grew up here, did I tell you? Tutu wahine. On my faddah side. Tutu wahine always said the tsunami was the gods’ anger at us, for what we were becoming.”

  “You have family down here now?”

  Kanani nodded. She fell silent. The shack creaked in the breeze.

  “You never see the Territory of Hawaii flag down here,” she said. “That Union Jack, the red, white, and blue—that’s a flag of occupation, yeah? Many believe in restoring the Hawaiian nation, want to break off from being owned by the USA. Then we reestablish the sovereignty the haole plantation barons and politicians stole from us.”

  Two wild horses emerged from the forest and drank from the stream, their hooves kneading at the mossy rocks. Lett loved how shiny their brown coats were in the wild. Kanani smiled at them.

  “You’re not going back, are you?” he said.

  “No. I had orders to join a new intelligence office of theirs, in Honolulu. Never again. I learned that from you.”

  ***

  As Lett sat on his lanai one evening, watching the stars, Kanani appeared on the other side of the stream. She crossed the water and took her chair on the lanai, and they looked out. For minutes they sat, saying nothing. When he’d arrived in Kona Town, he could’ve never sat like this. So damn patient.

  “At first, the others left me alone down here, too,” she said. “They left me to think about what I had done and want to do.”

  “Place of Refuge,” Lett said.

  “Pu’uhonua, yes. That’s exactly right.”

  High in the black sky, the lights of an airplane passed, a comet in slow motion.

  “We’re gonna get you back home,” Kanani said.

  “To Heloise? To my boy?”

  “Yes. We’re gonna find a way. When you’re ready.”

  “Thank you. Wait—you said we.”

  “Yes. We.”

  ***

  One afternoon in the Valley of the Kings, Kanani burst out of the forest and marched across the stream and found Lett up on the lanai. Her hair was down and wet in her face. She pushed it away. She looked as white as he. Her eyes were red. Tears.

  “I was up above, in a store.” She handed him a rolled-up Honolulu Star-Bulletin.

  On the bottom of the front page was a headline: MURDER BURSTS KONA RACKET. According to the brief story, former US Army Lieutenant Colonel and reputed AWOL Charles Selfer had survived a violent encounter with known Honolulu gangster Francisco “Frankie” Baptiste. Lieutenant Colonel Selfer was allegedly running a smuggling ring for high-priced valuables plundered from Asia during the war, with Baptiste as his partner. They had a dispute. Selfer killed Baptiste in the fight and was in serious condition. Local police had handed Selfer over to US military authorities, who transferred Selfer to a high-security prison on the mainland.

  Lett saw no mention of Jock Quinn, of course. He could assume Jock had already returned to his beloved Marines on Oahu. The Corps had surely taken him back, another troubled wayward son, and hopefully given him a nice promotion. And Jock, for his part, wouldn’t want to risk any further exposure—to himself or to Lett.

  Lett should’ve felt something for Charles Selfer but nothing came to him—no remorse, no sadness, no maxims
about reaping and sowing. He felt about the same as one did seeing an ant unlucky enough to scurry into the path of a boot heel. He asked Kanani to keep checking the papers and radio, but the story never returned. He didn’t expect it to. He imagined Selfer in a cell, possibly a psych ward, raving about a secret camp for which he was only a tool, and no one would believe him. They might brand him a dipsomaniac, a Commie, an assassin, anything that suited their machinations. Perhaps they’d experiment on him with their new drugs. The new agency called the CIA would certainly need fresh guinea pigs.

  ***

  Another afternoon, Lett jolted awake on his cot in his shack and feared his nightmares had returned. But it was something outside. He shuffled out to his lanai. Across the stream, between two bushes flowering red, stood a Chinese woman. Kanani stood behind her. They pulled back when he looked their way.

  Lett was sure it was Miss Mae. But Kanani wouldn’t admit it. She’d surely made a vow.

  ***

  The next time Kanani reported to him, she told him the camp compound they’d known as The Preserve was completely cleared away. She’d had locals she could trust check it out. The front gate was still locked but had no guard, only an older wartime off-limits sign. They’d spied on the place from the perimeter fence. Eventually they found a way in and walked through the compound. It was a ghost camp, like so many on islands here and throughout the Pacific after the war. It was as if none of them were ever there.

  ***

  The last time she came, she had another flower in her hair, this one pink with long petals.

  “You’re ready,” she told him. “It’s time you go back to your wife.”

  Lett nodded. “How?”

  “We’ll send you there. I told you.”

  “It’s Miss Mae, isn’t it? Miss Mae is arranging this. Don’t tell me she’s not because I saw her, and don’t tell me I didn’t see her because I did.”

  Kanani lowered her head. “Okay. Yes. She was here.”

  “Why? I understand why Miss Mae would. But why would you help me like this?”