by Jake Halpern
GOODBYE OUR EAST COAST BUDDY
MAY THE SEASONS OF YOUR LIFE
HAVE FEW HURRICANES!
I stood there for a good few minutes, staring at the marquee, wondering who on earth had put this together. Finally another car pulled into the parking lot and a woman hopped out. It was Paula Smith—Smitty’s daughter—and I realized immediately that this was probably her doing. Ever since Hurricane Betsy, she had been arranging the marquees for her father’s businesses.
“Did you do this?” I asked her.
“Yes,” she replied.
“Thank you,” I stammered.
“I don’t know,” said Paula. “We just thought it would be a nice way to say goodbye.”
Epilogue
BACK HOME IN BOSTON, I finally settled down for a bit of rest. I moved out of my brother’s place and into an apartment of my own, where I was soon enjoying the pleasures of a relatively stationary life—storing my clothing in a dresser, hanging photographs on the wall, and watering a few potted plants. Yet despite my growing domesticity, I often caught myself thinking about the people I had visited.
As fire season drew near I wondered how the Deckers were coming along on their brush clearance. When tropical storms swept across the Caribbean I thought of Ambrose Besson. Strange as it was, these faraway dangers suddenly had meaning in my life. And as I went about my daily routines, in the comfort and relative safety of my quaint residential neighborhood, I couldn’t help but wonder: How close was the lava to Jack’s house? Was the Tar River cresting the dike in Princeville?
I’d barely been home nine months when my curiosity got the best of me. I packed my bags, bought a few cheap plane tickets, and set out to revisit each place for a few days.
As I drove across the Tar River into Princeville, I barely recognized the place. The old, forlorn ghost town had vanished. In its stead was a gleaming façade of new ranch homes, mostly doublewide prefabs that had been rolled in by truck and dropped off in almost the exact locations where the old houses once stood. With its new makeover, Princeville looked like a fledgling suburban development. There weren’t many visible traces of the old Princeville—just the rotting remains of the town hall, a few old houses back in the woods, and the great overgrown cemetery behind Thad’s house.
When I arrived at Thad’s there were half a dozen guests already there. Now that life in Princeville was almost back to normal, Thad was rarely without a visitor, and often he had several. Today they were gathered on his new front porch, which had replaced the carport as his favorite hangout. When Thad saw me, he rose to his feet, gave me a bear hug, and introduced me to his guests. There were several people from church, an old neighbor, and Dennis, Thad’s youngest son. Together we passed the afternoon, sipping water and talking over all that had happened in the last few months. Dennis told me that he had recently moved back into town. “It was because of my father,” he admitted. “During the flood we really got a chance to hang out. It made us closer.” Dennis wasn’t the only one who felt this way. In the coming days, I heard the same sentiment from most of Thad’s children and grandchildren. As his daughter Alvanie put it, “A lot of good came out of the flood.”
Thad himself seemed to be doing better. Before the flood he could walk only with the help of two canes. Now he was getting by with just one, and sometimes he didn’t even need that. “The flood gave Thad a new perspective on life,” affirmed his younger brother, James. “It definitely gave him more self-confidence.” As for his religious convictions, Thad remained an avid churchgoer, though attendance at his church seemed to be dwindling. “When the water was up the church was full, but when it receded the people went with it,” lamented Jesse Williams, the church’s pastor. When I inquired about Thad, Pastor Williams simply smiled and said, “We can always count on Deacon Knight.”
Princeville itself also seemed to be thriving. Thad’s eldest living son, Sam Knight, was the town’s zoning officer, and he could barely contain his excitement for all the new projects on the horizon. Celebrity donors like Prince and Evander Holyfield, along with non-profits like Habitat for Humanity, were making a big difference. “Right now we are getting ready to bring in a Boys and Girls Club, a recreation center, and a park that will have baseball diamonds and football fields,” explained Sam. “So trust me when I say we are coming out ahead of the game.”
But it wasn’t Sam Knight that I mistrusted—it was the dike. Flooding remained a serious concern for the town, and whenever it rained, people worried. Even Thad, who appeared to be doing so well, had a recurring nightmare in which water was crashing down on him. Six or seven times he woke in the middle of the night, short of breath, disoriented, and unnerved by the workings of his subconscious. Unfortunately, his nightmare wasn’t so far-fetched. Just several weeks before my final revisit, the Tar River had become bloated once again, and the nearby town of Speed was evacuated. Thad recalled the night well: “I asked Sam if we had to leave too. He told me he didn’t think so. So I stayed.”
“How was it?” I asked.
“It was a long night,” replied Thad.
From the airport in Anchorage, I took a small rental car with steel-studded snow tires and headed down the Seward Highway for about an hour until I reached the turnoff to Whittier. From there it was another ten miles to the massive mountain tunnel that led the way into town. As I pulled up to the tunnel and paid the fifteen-dollar toll, the attendant told me that I would have to wait. “An alarm went off somewhere in the tunnel,” he explained. “It’s just a glitch, you know, a ghost in the system.” I nodded, unfastened my seatbelt, and stepped out of the car to chat with the attendant. I asked a few questions about the tunnel: What was its front door made of? How many cameras did it have? Where were its safe houses located? The attendant gave me several terse answers, eyed me suspiciously, and then retreated into his booth. Roughly half an hour later, when I emerged on the other side of the tunnel, there were two cop cars with flashing lights waiting for me. Now it was my turn to answer some questions. Was I carrying any firearms? Did I have any explosives? How about anthrax? The list went on. Then it was time to search my trunk. Finally the cop returned to my window and gave me a very close look. “Wait a minute,” he said. “You’re that writer from Boston, aren’t you?” Yes, I replied. The cop laughed. “The guys on the tunnel crew thought you might be a terrorist. You know, everyone is still nervous from September eleventh.” The cop shook his head, returned to his car, and gave me a police escort into town.
When I got to Babs’s apartment and told her about my trouble at the tunnel, she began laughing. “That’s the best story I’ve heard all week!” she boomed. “Whittier has its very first terrorist, and he’s staying here with me!”
Babs brewed some coffee and I deposited my sleeping bag on her couch, where I would be sleeping for the next five nights. Then, without wasting another minute, she launched into a tirade on the new road. “That road is killing this town,” she told me. “It’s so easy to leave now, people are no longer spending money here. In the old days, everyone had to wait for the train and buy a burger from me. Now they just drive on out. The tourists, the fishermen, the locals, everyone. They don’t buy burgers here, they don’t wash their clothes here, they don’t use telephones here, they don’t rent movies here, they don’t do anything here. And that’s not my only problem.”
“What else is wrong?” I asked her.
“A girl opened an espresso stand next to my restaurant,” she said. “I used to get a lot of tourists in the morning and now they all get her froufrou coffee and muffins instead of coming to me. Business is down by fifty percent.”
“What’s going to happen?” I asked.
“I’m going to make some changes,” explained Babs. “I think I will offer a vegetarian menu for those kayak people that come up here. I don’t know.”
Babs and I talked through the afternoon, and after some time she finally remembered some good news. A private prison might be coming to Whittier. It wasn’t definite, but
with a little luck, there would soon be a 1,000-bed, medium-security correctional facility at the mouth of the tunnel. If everything went according to plan, a private company would come in to build and operate the prison; Whittier would finance the entire project with revenue bonds; and the State of Alaska would pay a fixed monthly fee for every man in custody. It was a foolproof business, insisted Babs.1
“Think about it,” she said. “Right now we have loads of Alaskans being shipped to prisons in Arizona. I say, we might as well keep them here. It’ll bring a lot of jobs to this town. We’d rent more movies, sell more burgers, get use of the prison’s medical facility, and even have the tunnel open twenty-four hours a day. I think it’d be great.”
“Would you have any worries?” I asked.
“Like a jailbreak?” said Babs. “No big deal. I’d just start packing my gun again. Besides, where are they gonna run to?”
Late in the evening, just before we settled down to sleep, I began to tell Babs about the other four home-keepers I had visited. All of them interested her, but Jack’s story seemed to sweep her off her feet. “Oh, I like that one!” she said. “He’s definitely one of a kind. I’d like to think that I am too. But that guy . . . he’s something.”
In the coming days Babs retold Jack’s story to at least half a dozen people in town. She then called her best friend in Seattle and told her as well. “The volcano man is in the chapter after mine,” she explained. When she hung up, I asked her again what she liked about Jack. “I don’t know,” she said. “His home just sounds like an off-the-wall and out-of-the-way place. The guy obviously doesn’t give a rat’s ass about anything. I’d have to say we’re probably on about the same wavelength. And imagine, all that red lava. I just might have to visit him.”
After landing in Hawaii, I headed straight for a payphone and tried calling Jack on his mobile. No answer. I knew it might take a few days to get in touch with him, and luckily I had a friend who was working on a coffee plantation in Kona, so I stayed up with him. Meanwhile, I continued trying Jack on his mobile, and on the third day I finally got him. “Hey, I’m in Hawaii,” I told him. “Can you meet me?”
“Sure,” he said. “I’ll meet you at the house.”
“Which house?” I asked.
“The one in Royal Gardens,” he replied. There was a brief, awkward silence. “You know the routine,” he assured me. “Just walk across the lava.”
A day or so later, when I arrived at the head of Jack’s access road, I discovered a large fence with a newly constructed tollbooth blocking my way. “What’s this?” I asked the tollbooth attendant.
“This is the County of Hawaii,” he replied smugly, “and you owe us five dollars.” Then he told me why: The County of Hawaii had set up a lava-viewing platform at the end of the access road and tourists had to pay five dollars a car. I tried to explain that I just wanted to park for a few days while I visited Jack Thompson, but the attendant quickly told me this was a bad idea and he wouldn’t allow it. All right, I told him. So I shifted the car into reverse, parked a mile away, and headed back on foot. Casually I walked past the attendant. Everything was fine until I veered off the designated path, past a few DANGER! signs, and on toward the kipuka. “Wait, you can’t go there! It’s not safe!” yelled the attendant. I didn’t look back.
My hike across the flats took about an hour, and luckily it was uneventful. I encountered smoke and some very warm rocks, but no fresh flows. When I finally arrived at Jack’s I was pleased to discover that the lava had receded, the helicopters had stopped swarming, and his house was still standing. “It’s really been pretty quiet ever since you left,” said Jack. “The only problem I’ve had is with those damn pigs. They’ve gotten worse. My front lawn and much of my garden has been eaten up. I tell you, they’re worse than the lava.”
“How is your friend Don Bartel doing?” I asked eventually.
“He’s fine,” replied Jack. “He was here not too long ago, and was looking to buy a house here in Royal Gardens.” Apparently, Jack had found him a place situated on its own little kipuka.
“Is he really going to buy it?” I asked.
“Well, I put him in touch with the owner, so we’ll see what happens,” said Jack.*
Later that evening, Jack and I grilled up two chickens that I had lugged with me. As we ate, I began to tell him about the other homekeepers. He was very curious, and as I described each place, he offered his opinions. I started with Babs. “She wants to visit me?” asked Jack excitedly. “Wow. I guess the grass is always greener—and at least we got grass!”
“Could you ever see yourself living in Whittier?” I asked him.
“Sure, why not?” he replied. “I’d go to Alaska just to get that sweetie back down here!”
Jack was adamant that he had a better deal than the Deckers. “Brushfires are unpredictable. The wind changes direction and it can kill you. With lava you just step out of the way.” Jack did sympathize with the Deckers when it came to running roadblocks. “Yeah,” he said with a sigh, “I’ve been running roadblocks for a long time too.”
As the evening ended, I told Jack about Thad Knight and the story of Princeville. He listened attentively, and when it was over, he just nodded his head as if it all made sense. “What are you thinking?” I asked him finally.
“It just sounds like another person who really likes his home and is willing to put up with whatever might come along with it.”
“What about his problems?” I asked. “How do they compare to yours?”
“It’s not about the problems,” replied Jack. “The problems could be whatever—drive-bys, wild dogs, pigs, hurricanes, lava, whatever—that doesn’t matter. It’s the home that matters.”
The day I arrived in Malibu, a strong Santa Ana wind was gusting in from east, and it shook my little rental car as I cruised along the Pacific Coast Highway. High above it all, in her snug perch in Decker Canyon, Millie was sitting in her living room amid the many deer heads. When I found her, she was making Christmas wreaths and enjoying the heat of a roaring fire. I said hello, gave her a hug, and then eyed the fireplace uneasily. “Oh, don’t worry about that, honey,” said Millie with a laugh. “It’s fine as long as it’s in here and not out there.”
We were soon making lunch and sharing bits of news. “Chip and Claire had a baby,” Millie told me. “She’s a beautiful girl named Helena.” I offered my congratulations and we talked about her grandchildren for a while. Then, rather suddenly, Millie announced: “We have to go to the insurance office tomorrow.”
“What for?”
“I have some questions about my fire insurance policy.”
“You have fire insurance?” I asked.
“I just got it a few months ago,” explained Millie. “I’m getting on top of my finances. I had to take out a new mortgage on the house, and the bank made me get it. Anyway, I got to go down there.”
So the following day we dusted off Millie’s old Lincoln Mark VII—and I mean we literally dusted it off, for it hadn’t been used in some time—and together we went down to the insurance office. After waiting for almost an hour, a woman named Maria came out and talked to Millie. I made it a point not to listen, but I did notice Millie shaking her head quite a bit. Afterward, Millie was still shaking her head as we went for a cup of coffee. “It wasn’t my idea to get fire insurance,” she told me rather bleakly. “That woman wants me to get liability insurance too, but I told her, You can’t get blood out of a turnip.’”
That evening as we sat in front of the fire, Millie inquired about the progress of my book. “Have you stayed with most of your clients?” she asked me.
“Yes,” I replied, and began to tell her about the other home-keepers. Immediately Whittier fascinated her.
“Everyone is in one building!” She gasped. “Are there sidewalks or just hallways?”
“Just hallways,” I told her.
“Well . . .” said Millie. She paused for a moment, as if she was considering the building’
s dimensions very carefully. “Now Mommy and Daddy used to have people living on the ranch, but they were in separate buildings and they came in and out as they pleased. That was different. All in one building, I couldn’t stand it. I’d have claustrophobia. Not that I go to town much—I hardly go into town, actually—but at least I’m not locked in.”
When I told Millie about Jack she was much more receptive. “I wouldn’t want to deal with a volcano,” she admitted, “but at least he gets to go to town once in a while.”
As the evening wore on, the once blazing fire sank into a pile of embers, the room grew dim, and the many deer heads faded into the darkness. In this cozy setting, I told Millie about Thad Knight, and as usual his story brought out a warm response. “That’s just beautiful,” declared Millie. “We have houses washed away in Malibu too, down by the ocean. And for some reason, they just keep building back.”
I found Ambrose just where I left him, sipping coffee with the gang at the Starfish. Within minutes of my arrival, Ambrose was heckling Bobby Santiny, his lifelong friend and storm-riding rival. “About the only thing that’s changed around here is Bobby—he’s about twenty pounds fatter,” said Ambrose. The gang laughed, Bobby mumbled bitterly, and the waitress poured more coffee.