Death by Facebook

by Everett Peacock

  Hilo airport was normally a very quiet place. You could park your rental car, drop the keys, get your boarding pass and be at the gate in under 12 minutes. No tourists expected this and so everyone was always far too early. Waiting on a plane after that was a lot like waiting on a car ferry, there was a lot of time to waste, with few stores to explore.

  “Well guys, this year's adventure was outstanding!” Pat said. “And, thanks, Everett, for the blinking head lamps. I think we made quite an impression on the locals.”

  Everyone laughed at that, subconsciously reaching into their packs to make sure they still had their head lamps.

  “I know Dave sure made an impression on the locals,” John laughed. “They want to initiate him into their bloodsucker club!”

  Dave demurred to his friends humor, expecting a razzing all the way back to San Diego. “You know,” he added. “Another couple of beers and I could have overlooked the bleeding hands.”

  Tim shook his head and added “Now Dave, you know you've always said you would never go out with a girl that could out drink you - in case she decided to paint your toenails. Again.”

  “Hey!” Dave exclaimed. “That only happened once!”

  The airport bar was closed for some reason no one seemed to know. The lone security guard said it might be because it was Sunday. The five guys, friends since high school in Honolulu, watched their interisland plane land on a nearby runway and roll out of sight.

  “You think that guy Larry will ever figure out what that crazy Private Turner mess is all about?” Everett asked no one in particular.

  Pat shook his head no. “I doubt it. But, he did seem to light up a bit when we told them we first met her hiking out to Halema'uma'u that night.”

  “Oh, yeah,” Tim said. “That was definitely the same good looking redhead from the bar.”

  “I wonder what ever happened to that guy she was with that night?” John pondered. “We never did see him at the bar, did we?”

  Dave looked down at his shoes a moment and shook his head no. “That poor bastard must be the guy they're all looking for. Private Turner.”

  Their Hawaiian Airlines Boeing 717 finally taxied up to their gate and the rapid activity on the ramp began. The picture windows had a great view of Mauna Kea and her observatories, all topped with brilliant white snow.

  “Well Dave,” Tim said. “I think your record of never hitting on a married woman is still safe.”

  Dave looked at Tim with a confused look, begging explanation.

  “How's that Tim?” Pat asked.

  “She was already a widow when she showed up at the bar,” Tim said.

  “What?” Dave asked. “How do you know that?” John, Pat and Everett all listened in.

  “Easy guys,” Tim laughed. He sat down in a chair facing the far off snow. “This guy was last seen by who? Us. Where? Hiking out to the lava pit, at night, with no one else around. She had probably never planned on seeing even us, but fortunately for her we were just leaving.”

  “No way...” Everett murmured, thinking ahead.

  “Yep, she took him out to the lava, to Halema'uma'u and pushed him in somehow.”

  The Hawaiian Air gate agent called the flight for boarding of small children, their parents and any military members.

  “She must have fallen, or the guy fought her,” Tim continued. “That's how she got those hands that Dave was so attracted to.”

  “What a bitch!” Pat said. “Wait here, I'm going to go buy my wife a gift real quick.”

  “Yeah, but why try and pretend she was her husband?” John asked. “I mean cutting her hair like that and telling people she was him.”

  Tim shook his head. “I can't figure that out.”

  “Maybe,” Everett offered. “It was to buy some time, or to steal his money. The ultimate identity theft.”

  “More like just plain crazy,” Dave offered. “If she were calculating enough to do an identity theft thing, she would have left Volcano right away. The fact that she was a drunk monkey wanting me to lick up bloody wounds was nothing short of...”

  “Boarding all rows now!” The gate speakers bellowed.

  “Crazy!” Dave repeated. “Nothing else can explain it.”

  They boarded last, getting a few looks from some military police types but garnering none of the admiring female glances they used to a decade ago.

  Fifteen minutes later, their friend Captain Reid Emminger was taking them through fifteen thousand feet, carving a slow circle around the majestic peaks of the Big Island.

  Tim watched the spectacle through his window, the peaks of Mauna Kea and Mauna Loa appeared to be islands themselves, surrounded by their own ocean of clouds.

  These two magnificent volcanic peaks appeared different depending on how you looked at them. If from the ocean bottom where they really began, they were the tallest mountains on the planet. If from the coastline they were the familiar wonders everyone had grown up with. And, now, as Everett leaned over to look as well, peeking out from a mass of clouds the tops appeared as two small lost islands in a sea of gray and white.

  “There's another side to that crazy Private Turner story Everett. We're just not looking at it from the right angle,” Tim mused, still watching the mountains as they fell farther and farther away.

  “I hear that buddy,” Everett said, his head back in the seat, eyes closed. “I hear that.”

  ~~~

  Several outstanding mornings had drifted down upon Janet and her host Starshine Aloha. The weather had, naturally, been absolutely perfect. Warm days, but not hot. Cool nights, but never cold. The stars had been putting on a show and the moon slept in a hour later every evening, eventually so late that it graced the mid-morning skies.

  Janet had discovered a ravenous appetite for papaya and coconut, and the occasional sashimi treats the guys brought back from spear fishing. She swam in Champagne pools every day and in the open ocean at night.

  Star worried about her a little. Whoever she was and whatever her story was it was clear to Star that the young woman needed this place.

  Idyllic tropical splendor - well everyone needed some of that, or so went the theory. Star had seen many a visitor come, snorkel, throw a BBQ in a vacation rental and leave. Sunburned. Yet, there were always the few that might under different circumstances move here, and fit in just fine. They could be seen stopping to pick up a plumeria blossom from the path through the old lava, or leaving the salt water on their skin as long as possible before showering. Star had seen them sitting alone, sharing a papaya with the mynah birds, or shifting through the beach sand with their fingers, not really looking for a shell, but enjoying the textures.

  Those visitors, she could sense, almost felt that they must have been here before. How else could it seem so comfortable and so familiar? Familiar in a fashion that their hearts told them this was how they were meant to live, by the sea, under the moon, awash in wonder.

  Janet was one of those, Star thought. One of those most fortunate lost souls that had stumbled upon this place before it was too late.

  Too late came in at least two different flavors here. The first kind of too late was where a visitor or a tourist had become so jaded by the harshness of the outside world that they couldn't appreciate what Kapoho had to show them.

  The other kind of too late could be observed by simply looking across the small bay to the thirty foot tall lava flow that had covered one half of this pristine paradise back in 1960. Star's parent's house was under there somewhere, what hadn't been burned. They had lived right on a beautiful sandy beach, with a peaceful little stream flowing from a large pond to the ocean. Star used to catch little fish there as a child and release them up stream again.

  Her parents had never really recovered, emotionally or financially. They moved to Honolulu, soon divorced and eventually both fled to the mainland. Her younger brother had ended up in Flagstaff.

  Star found herself thinking about that too much for her liking and tried to redirect her thought
s. It was what it was, she figured. Mother had to destroy in order to create. As noble as that might sound, she thought as she chased a yellow striped butterfly fish, it was still painful.

  Star continued to watch Janet swim in the pools long after having climbed out to sun herself in the late morning warmth. No one else was around. No one else on the entire planet but Star, Janet, the baby and of course, me.

  ~~~

  I had been sensing the baby every moment I could. Janet was still clueless, but Star sure seemed to be paying a lot of attention to Janet and her situation.

  It was an enchanting situation for me. The baby could now tell when I was focused on it, well I mean him. I now knew a little bit more about him. He would always laugh when he felt me there, then would start his singing again. Of course he wasn't singing any words, so humming was probably a better analogy.

  The light above me, the one I figured I would eventually have to go to, was getting a bit closer. Now, with my discovery of the baby, I wasn't so keen on making my way there. I figured I could just hang out, maybe be one of those helpful souls that whispers into the ears of the living.

  Janet sure seemed happy; at least the static had been gone for many days now. Perhaps it was some of the baby's energy leaking into her emptiness that helped. As I moved slowly through the papaya trees following her, and the baby, I could feel them both changing. Janet was becoming calmer and the baby was now looking for me, seeking me out before I would come in close to focus. We were having a big time, and I was as happy as I could ever remember being.

  ~~~

  Star noticed Janet suddenly get out of the water, take a few steps forward, stumble and fall into the ferns. Immediately she jumped up and ran as best she could over the boulders lining the pools to where Janet was now vomiting.

  “Jimmie! What's going... Are you OK?”

  Janet looked up briefly, some fear in her eyes, before pointing her face back down to the moist jungle soil and heaving again. “I don't understand,” she managed to say.

  “What Jimmie?” Star asked, stroking her back until the convulsions stopped.

  “I quit drinking over a week ago...why am I still...” The spasms rocked her again, and then right before Star, she collapsed, unconscious.

  “Jimmie!” Star yelled, the nervousness in her voice quickly moving to fear. “Jimmie!”

  Two of Star's fishermen friends heard her and rushed over to help.

  Moments later Star and Janet were in the car, headed up to Pahoa town, fifteen minutes away. There Star had a doctor friend with a small lab. He was known to all who cared to ask, as a doctor who gave the uninsured a break. Cash and often barter of some kind could secure enough expert advice to keep everyone's low-rent lifestyle going.

  An hour later, with Janet comfortable and awake on a couch Star was called into his office.

  “Starshine,” he said in his booming voice. “This was no false alarm, you did the right thing getting her in here when you did.”

  “Really? I just met her a week or so ago, walking in the rain, on the run from some heavies. I just guessed she was strung out and detoxing a bit.”

  The good doctor looked up at Starshine and smiled. She would have made a great social worker, or a nurse. “Well, there is some confidential information I can only release to a relative.” He walked around his desk and sat on the outer edge. “Are you her mother?” he suggested.

  “Perhaps I am,” Star smiled. “I sure feel like it, anyhow.”

  “Good,” the doctor laughed. “Well, you're about to be a grandmother.”

  “I knew it!” Star exclaimed. “I knew it. How far along is she?”

  “Well, I must say her prenatal healthcare seems to have been not only non-existent but almost abusive. She is probably twenty pounds shy of where she should be at five months.” He went back to his desk and sat heavily into his chair. “Her blood work says she is nutritionally deficient on just about every point we measure.

  And, I would guess she has been doing some kind of drugs. Most likely alcohol.”

  Star shook her head. “You know doc, I don't even think she realizes she is pregnant.” She looked up at him to see just how crazy that sounded to him.

  “Yeah, well I wouldn't be surprised. She's not showing much, she was probably drinking like a fish I would guess, and she seems a bit disconnected. I asked her several questions, you know, about who is the President, what month it is. That kind of thing.

  In my opinion she is probably not competent to take care of herself, much less a baby.”

  The doctor leaned back in his chair, put his feet up on his weathered desk and asked “So, Star. Whatya doing for the next eighteen years?”

  Star laughed out loud, perhaps a little too loud. “I probably don't even have eighteen more years in me, Doc!” She looked toward the closed door separating them from Janet. “Why don't you give her the good news?”

  He looked down at his desk for a brief moment, not wanting to, but knew it was part of the job. “How do you think she's gonna take it, Star?”

  Star reached up to scratch her head and hunched her shoulders. Walking over to the door to open it, she mumbled. “Let's go find out.”

  ~~~

  Larry had his feet up on the small handmade bench he had crafted for just such a purpose. As such it was perfectly comfortable.

  “Shirley, if you wanted to get rid of something, forever, what would you do with it?”

  She looked at Larry for a moment longer than he had expected and with a bit of a frown she scolded him for asking such a thing.

  “Larry! First of all, I don't have such things that need to be disposed of forever. Second, what could you ever be talking about?”

  Larry didn't answer. He took a long sip of his coffee, hoping his silence would answer her question.

  “You were saying something crazy was going on at the cabins,” Shirley reminded him. “Is that what you're talking about?”

  Larry took another big scoop out of the pinkish red papaya and slipped it into his mouth as he looked over at his wife with a mischievous grin.

  She lowered her eyebrows at him and he raised his at her.

  “Well?” she asked, losing just enough patience for her interest in the story to wane.

  Sensing his audience about to leave, he decided to step it up a bit. “Look, Alex got a message from some Sergeant at Ft. Bragg. A soldier that was supposed to show up there didn't, because he was still registered at a cabin there at KMC.”

  Shirley took a sip of her coffee and watched him over the edge of her cup, half expecting him to say they found someone dead inside the cabin.

  “Well, this missing soldier, apparently, hasn't been there for a while, and a girl, some crazy redhead that was staying in the same cabin has been masquerading as this same soldier.”

  Shirley nodded a bit. “OK, this is interesting. What else?” She set her coffee on the table next to her and picked up her papaya and spoon.

  “This missing soldier was last seen, supposedly, by some tourists from the Lava Lounge...” Larry paused there, quite possibly for dramatic effect.

  “Yes, yes? Last seen...where?” Shirley demanded, now quite interested.

  “Last seen hiking into the Halema'uma'u crater restricted area, at night...” Larry continued, pausing yet again.

  “OK, what? What?” Shirley was leaning on the arm of her chair now.

  “Heading to the lava pit with this same crazy redhead, never apparently, to be seen again.”

  “No kidding?” Shirley sat back in her chair thinking about that one. “Wait though, I thought the Rangers kept a lookout on that kind of stuff. No one can get to the crater without getting spotted. Right?”

  “Yeah, well, it looks like they did. I was up with Jack in the Jagger the night those tourists spotted them. We were counting heads to make sure whatever insane people hiked in would also leave. But, the rain got heavy and we lost count.”

  Shirley shook her head a little. “Why are some people so inte
nt on tempting the volcano?”

  Larry stood up to get more coffee, and Shirley followed him inside to the kitchen.

  “I think,” Larry answered. “They don't have the same reverence, the same respect you have Shirley.” He poured a second full cup of the still steaming Kona magic.

  Shirley was putting her papaya shell into the composting bucket seemingly concerned about this story.

  “Larry, if this crazy girl did indeed throw this soldier into the lava pit there, at Halema'uma'u...” she paused.

  “What honey?” Larry prodded.

  She shook her head a bit. “The stories I've heard, from the ancient days anyhow, was that when criminals were punished, thrown into the lava pits in execution, the volcano reacted.”

  Larry looked at her closely, trying to read her obvious concern. He hadn't expected this story to bother her this much. “Reacted? How do you mean?”

  “Well, lets just say they quit punishing criminals that way.” Shirley walked back outside with a large glass of orange juice and a bagel.

  Larry followed her out with his coffee, anxious to find out more.

  “Why? Come on Shirley, tell me. Why did they stop punishing bad guys by pushing them into lava pits?”

  Shirley looked up at the magnificent summit of Mauna Loa, the mother of all the lower volcanoes of Kilauea, Halema'uma'u and no doubt dozens of unnamed ones from the distant past. Larry was watching her closely when she turned to catch his eye.

  “They got tired of losing their fishing villages to lava flows.”

  ~~~

  Ranger Jack Clovis had just received a phone call from the Hawaiian Volcanoes Observatories lead scientist. A rather frantic call as he would later tell his friends.

  “Look Jack, we need your friend. Larry is it? To fly his paraglider upslope from the vents and drop some sensors for us. We're kinda in a hurry.”

  “Sure, no problem Alice, Larry's usually up for that.” Jack confirmed. “Anything going on?” He knew something must be but tried to keep his voice slightly uninterested to coax an exasperated answer out.