by Frankie Bow
Mary-Alice looked down to see a carpet of green jungle, studded by the occasional corrugated tin roof. The ocean foamed against a rim of black rocks. There wasn’t a golden beach in sight.
Chapter Six
The plane bumped gently down on the runway of Hilo Airport. Mary-Alice followed Fortune up the Jetway and out to a raised walkway open to the outdoors. Mary-Alice could see rain sweeping across the tarmac, but the air was warm and dense. Just past the security exit was an escalator down to ground level. This time, Fortune joined Mary-Alice on the escalator.
Fortune stepped aside at the bottom of the escalator, reached into her backpack, and pulled out a gray hoodie. She slipped it on, put on sunglasses, and then pulled up the hood. Mary-Alice thought it was too warm for a jacket, and wondered why Fortune needed sunglasses when it was so overcast and drizzly.
“Oh dear me,” Mary-Alice apologized. “I forgot to pack an umbrella. I suppose I expected Hawaii to be sunny. It surely was, in all of the photographs I saw.”
“I brought one.” Fortune pulled out a compact travel umbrella about the size of a corn cob, held it aloft, and pressed a button. It bloomed to the size of a golf umbrella, big enough to shelter both of them from the rain. Mary-Alice noticed as they hurried down to the taxi stand that she and Fortune were the only ones with an umbrella. Passengers stood around waiting to be picked up at the curb, and no one else seemed to care that they were getting rained on.
The taxi driver was a friendly middle-aged woman whose car smelled like old cigarettes. She started chatting as soon as she pulled away from the curb. She asked Mary-Alice and Fortune where they were from, and confessed she’d never been to Louisiana. She did go to Vegas a few times a year, though, she told them, and she’d flown to Nebraska when her niece graduated from Creighton University.
“My, Nebraska’s awfully far,” Mary-Alice said. “Why did she choose to go all that way, if you don’t mind my asking?”
“Lotta Hawaii kids like go Creighton. Never discriminate against the Japanese after Pearl Harbor, that’s why. Kept their doors open to everyone.”
“Are you Japanese?” Mary-Alice asked.
“Japanese, Hawaiian, Chinese, Podagee, Filipino, Scottish, German, an’ Irish.”
The rain thinned out as they drove out of town and up the coast. Fortune sat quietly in her hoodie and sunglasses while Mary-Alice marveled at the ocean view.
“It’s so unspoiled,” Mary-Alice exclaimed.
“Used to be all sugar plantations,” the driver said. “My parents both worked for C. Brewer. Back then, everyone worked the plantations. Get up at four, work by five. Lotta the old timers still talk about plantation days.”
“They used to have plantations too, where I’m from,” Mary-Alice offered. “Although I don’t believe folks recall them all that fondly.”
Mary-Alice had assumed that she and Fortune would be staying at a seaside resort. Her online research hadn’t turned up any other kind of accommodation. But the driver turned off the main highway and instead of heading down to the water’s edge, went inland and up a narrow, overgrown road. Mary-Alice almost felt like she was right back in the bayous. Kudzu climbed up fences and tree trunks. The only difference she could see was that the road was paved with blackish-gray dirt instead of crushed white oyster shells.
Fortune instructed the driver to drop them about a hundred yards past a cluster of cube-shaped, tin-roofed houses. She then handed the driver a fat stack of bills and stayed put until the taxi had disappeared back down the hill.
Mary-Alice thought the little houses looked nice and welcoming, with their broad front porches. She wondered which one they’d be staying in, and also why Fortune didn’t have them dropped off closer.
It turned out they wouldn’t be staying in any of them.
“Through here.” Fortune snatched Mary-Alice’s rolling bag and disappeared into the trees. Mary-Alice followed her onto a narrow hiking trail.
“My goodness,” Mary-Alice panted as she tried to keep up. “This is quite off the beaten path.”
Mary-Alice and Fortune emerged from the forest onto a road remarkably like the one they had left behind, with another cluster of little tin-roofed houses that looked slightly shabbier than the ones they’d left behind.
“Well now,” Mary-Alice exclaimed. “It certainly seems like we took the long way around. I do wonder why our taxi couldn’t have brought us directly here. If we need her again, I’m afraid she might not be able to find us.”
Fortune pulled her hood down, revealing her cropped hair, and pulled off her sunglasses.
“My family likes giving complicated directions,” she said matter-of-factly, as if picking through an overgrown jungle path were a perfectly normal part of traveling. She pulled out her phone and made a call, watching the houses.
“Will we be staying in one of these?” Mary-Alice asked.
“We’ll find out.”
The door of the dark-green house opened, and a vision in pale blue stepped out.
“Fortune?” the vision called from the porch.
“Nadia?” Fortune called back.
The woman made her way slowly down the front stairs. Her impossibly-glossy platinum hair hung like a curtain from under her powder-blue cowboy hat. She wore a matching blue western shirt, and bolo tie, skirt, and boots.
She looks to be in her mid-eighties, Mary-Alice thought. If my mother were still alive she’d be about that very same age.
But Nadia’s features did not look at all familiar, and when she spoke, it was with the clipped cadence of a Yankee.
“I’m Nadia Nygaard,” she said when she reached the bottom of the stairs. “You’re in the white house with the green roof. I’ll show you around. Make sure to take your shoes off before you go inside.”
The house looked small from the outside, but felt surprisingly roomy inside, thanks to the high ceilings and large windows. Nadia explained how the old plantation camp, as she called it, had been retrofitted with solar power and catchment water. Their community was “off the grid,” which was apparently a good thing. Mary-Alice was glad that Fortune seemed to understand what Nadia was telling them about maintaining the batteries and filtering the catchment water, and hoped they would never have to do those things.
Then Nadia led them over to the window, which had a view of a flourishing garden. In the corner was a white, wooden beehive, with a few honeybees circling nearby.
“Why, this looks lovely,” Mary-Alice exclaimed. “It’s like a victory garden.”
“We’re very proud of what we’ve done here, but it’s not a bed of roses, if you’ll pardon the pun. See that papaya tree over there?”
Nadia indicated a tree with a skinny trunk and bulbous green and yellow fruit clustered under a crown of leaves.
“I’ve never seen a papaya tree before,” Mary-Alice said.
“It’s a volunteer. Sprouted from our compost. Problem is, it’s a commercial engineered papaya, which means that the seeds probably came from one that someone bought at the supermarket. This has turned out to be quite a source of controversy. Some of our residents like ‘em just fine, others won’t so much as touch them. You ladies eat papaya?”
“I’ve never tried it,” Mary-Alice said.
“Tomorrow morning you can go out and help yourself,” Nadia said. Half of papaya with a squeeze of lime juice, it’s a nice way to start the day. And if you don’t have any plans for supper, we’re having a little neighborhood luau tonight. Come on out and join us when you’re up to it.”
A luau! Now that was more like it.
Chapter Seven
Mary-Alice had picked the smaller of the two bedrooms in an effort to be polite, but it was certainly large enough, and completely charming. The house had single-wall construction, so the walls were vertical white planks with a single horizontal belly band that gave the effect of wainscoting. The floor was a reddish-brown hardwood that Mary-Alice later learned was eucalyptus. She had packed light, just three pairs of white cap
ris and five flowered t-shirts to hang in the wardrobe. Mary-Alice panicked for a moment when she couldn’t find her tennis shoes, and then recalled she had removed them on the front porch.
The smell of brewing coffee lured her back to the kitchen. It was by then nearly nightfall, but the long flight had gotten Mary-Alice’s internal clock all out of whack, and the coffee smelled tempting. The kitchen, like the bedroom, was neat and simple, with white walls and cabinets and pale yellow linoleum floors.
“Well, this is quite an adventure,” Mary-Alice said as she entered the kitchen. “And we’re going to have a luau! Do you suppose they’ll have those men who twirl the fire around? I imagine Gertie would enjoy that. Miss Nadia seems quite nice. What sort of name do you suppose Nygaard is?”
Fortune perched on the counter and took a thoughtful sip from her mug. It seemed to Mary-Alice that she was still tense.
“Nygaard means new homestead or new farm. The name’s a little on-the-nose, if you ask me. Hey, good news, though. The kitchen’s stocked, so we don’t have to go grocery shopping.”
Fortune took down a mug from the cabinet, filled it with coffee, and handed it to Mary-Alice.
“You don’t think Nadia Nygaard is…Nadia Nygaard’s real name?” Mary-Alice asked.
“I don’t think it’s the name on her birth certificate, if that’s what you’re asking. Have you ever had real Kona coffee before? Try it. Kind of mild for my taste, but not bad. You even have an authentic cup there.”
Mary-Alice examined the white mug. 46th Annual Kona Coffee Cultural Festival, read the blue printing. Hawaii’s Oldest Food Festival. Mary-Alice was more of an iced tea person, but the coffee smelled enticing, and the taste was pleasant.
“I think you can expect a lot of that here,” Fortune continued. “This is exactly the kind of place people come to re-invent themselves. They leave their old selves behind, and take on names like Phoenix or DesertSpring.”
“Why ever do they do that?”
Fortune shrugged.
“Looking for a fresh start. And if you’re gonna start over, you might as well do it where the weather’s nice. You see the same thing in some parts of California too. Or you used to, before real estate got so expensive.”
“Well, that’s just awful.” Mary-Alice set her mug down on the kitchen table. “Imagine being so at odds with your family that you feel the need to change who you are and pick an entirely new name.”
“Yeah.” Fortune drained her mug and then emptied the rest of the coffee into it. “If I had to pick a name for myself, it sure as hel--, uh, heck wouldn’t be Sandy-Sue. You hungry?”
“Now Fortune, you’ve been working as hard as you possibly could be, getting us through all those checkpoints and all. You just sit yourself down and I’ll fix us a little something to eat, to tide us over until the luau. Oh my, are those tropical birds I hear?”
A shrill whistling noise sounded outside. Peep-PEEP! Peep-PEEP!
“I think that’s the infamous coqui frog,” Fortune said. “The whistling noises are coming from the males looking for mates. It’s going to get louder as night falls. They’re little frogs, about the size of a quarter, but they can make a big noise.”
“My goodness, Fortune, you surely have done your homework.”
“Well, when you’re looking at buying land, you want to do your due diligence. Sellers have to disclose the presence of coquis. That’s how much of a pest they are. Hang on a sec, I’ve gotta call my family and let them know we arrived.”
Fortune left the kitchen—the young lady did value her privacy, Mary-Alice thought—and Mary-Alice opened the refrigerator. She was relieved to find it full of familiar-looking food, although she couldn’t say what she had expected. She assembled eggs, butter, a yellow onion, and a nice andouille sausage (which was labeled “Portuguese Sausage” for some reason). She cut a lump of butter into the pan and set it to warming up, found a knife and a cutting board, and started chopping the onion.
“Is everything okay with your family?” Mary-Alice asked when Fortune returned to the kitchen.
“Uh huh.” Fortune seemed more relaxed now. “Wow, whatever you’re cooking smells great, Mary-Alice. It seems like everyone I’ve met in Sinful knows how to cook. I’m almost inspired to learn myself. Oh, yeah, see what I mean about the frogs?”
Mary-Alice realized that while the sausage and onions had been sizzling in the pan, the individual peeps of the Coqui frogs had swelled to a clamor.
“Well now, isn’t that something. All those little gentleman frogs peeping their hearts out for a chance at love. Fortune, I thank you for bringing me along on your travels. I suppose it’s always been in the back of my mind to visit Hawaii one day, and now here we are. I can scarcely believe it.”
“Hey, no problem,” Fortune said from inside the refrigerator. “Thank you for keeping me company. I wonder if they left us any beer. They did. This day’s looking better and better. Big Swell IPA. Mary-Alice, you want a beer?”
“No thank you, I’m just fine.”
Fortune emerged from the fridge, closed the door, and popped the cap off the beer bottle.
“So is it what you expected?”
“Well now, I’m not sure I knew what to expect. But so far it’s lovely, and the folks we’ve met seem very kind. It’s a lovely birthday present, and I thank you.”
“Glad to hear it,” Fortune said. “I know birthdays can be kind of a downer.”
“The last memory I have of my mother was at her 70th birthday dinner.” Mary-Alice kept stirring the pan and didn’t turn around.
“What happened?” Fortune asked gently.
“Well, the men had already left the table. My husband, Joe Arceneaux, you know, Celia’s husband’s cousin, he’d had more than enough to drink and I believe he was taking a little nap under the oleander hedge. My father had taken his walker and gone off to pester one of the young ladies who was doing the catering. My mama, Miss Thelma Rose, called for a toast. She declared that she was grateful to have been given her three score and ten, thanked everyone for coming to celebrate with her, excused herself, and walked out. None of us ever saw her again.”
Mary-Alice cracked the eggs in to the pan, one at a time.
“It was thought that she had died by her own hand.”
“Oh, Mary-Alice. I’m so sorry.”
“But do you know, about a month after that, I got a postcard from Hawaii in the mail. No return address. And it’s the funniest thing, I don’t know anyone in Hawaii. I suppose it could’ve just been a mistake. But I believe I recognized my mama’s handwriting.”
“Did you keep the postcard?”
Mary-Alice turned off the stove, slid the eggs and sausage onto two paper plates, and brought the plates over to the kitchen table and set them down. Then she went back into her bedroom, and returned with the postcard.
It was a photo postcard, showing a mound of black lava rock with a jet of orange-red lava spurting from the top and running down the sides.
Kilauea Volcano was printed across the front. And on the back was written, Having a marvelous time.
“Kilauea Volcano is on this island,” Fortune said.
Mary-Alice nodded. “I know. It’s quite a coincidence, isn’t it? It was most likely a mistake that it ended up in my mailbox. But it always gave me hope. That instead of passing away in despair, my mama might’ve gotten away somehow and spent her last days in Hawaii. Oh, Fortune, I see there’s some activity outside. They must be setting up the luau already. Want to go have a look-see?”
Mary-Alice whisked away Fortune’s plate and placed it in the sink with her own.
“Well I’m not hungry anymore, thanks to that delicious eggs and sausage, but sure. Why not? Might as well mix a little pleasure with business.”
Chapter Eight
The evening’s luau seemed to be nothing more than a small potluck for the residents of the little plantation camp. Someone had set up a grill in the unpaved common area at the center of the cluster of house
s, and people had brought out their own lawn chairs and blankets. Two large coolers held drinks and doubled as seating for people who didn’t have lawn chairs. Fortune and Mary-Alice were offered plates of grilled spam, rice, and potato-macaroni salad, but besides that no one spoke to them much. They sat side-by-side on one of the coolers (Fortune made sure to get a beer out first before they sat down on the lid).
“Fortune,” Mary-Alice whispered. “These folks all seem perfectly nice, but not a soul has come to introduce themselves or ask us our business.”
“I think this is just one of those places where people respect each other’s privacy,” Fortune answered. “I’m fine with it, to be honest. I barely have enough energy left to sit here without falling over, much less have friendly conversations with strangers.”
“Well it’s certainly a world of difference from Sinful,” Mary-Alice said. “Oh, it looks like we’re going to have music. How nice!”
A few of the older folks had brought out guitars or ukuleles, and someone had a sort of triangular thing that Fortune said was a “balalaika,” from Russia. How handy to have a librarian as a traveling companion! Mary-Alice didn’t know any of the songs except for “Over the Rainbow,” but she enjoyed the music all the same. Even when Mary-Alice didn’t understand the words. Next time she had to sit on a cooler, she thought, she’d bring a pillow. But despite the uncomfortable seating, she listened gratefully as the sweet harmonies blended with the chirping of the lovelorn coqui frogs.
Mary-Alice noticed a man sitting in a lawn chair on the other side of the dancer. She nudged Fortune.
“Do you see that man across the way?” she asked. “Wouldn’t you say he looks a little like your deputy sheriff Carter LeBlanc?”
“I don’t know. Maybe. I’m going to avoid men on this trip, though. Don’t forget what Ida Belle always says.”
“Being around men makes you muddle-headed. Well, I suppose I see your point. You want to be alert and clear headed if you’re going make a good choice about buying that property for your family.”