Agatha shook her head a little waking up. “Am I snoring again?” she asked, embarrassed a little.
“No,” Adam comforted her. “Not anymore.”
Agatha sat back in her large leather seat and found her feet up on the seat rest, another new experience as well. Looking out her large window, the ocean had a tropical color to it already, brushed lightly with the white of waves far, far below.
“Thank you so much for coming with me Adam,” she leaned over and kissed him on the cheek. “And for these excellent seats!”
Adam had considerable resources at his disposal. He had more money than he could probably spend on himself, plus he had connections throughout the military and defense industry. Finding lost people was a challenge, but one that money and intel could usually solve.
“My pleasure dear,” he lifted his guava, papaya smoothie up in toast. “My absolute pleasure.”
One thing Adam had forgotten about oceanic crossings – there was no Internet access. He would have to wait until they landed in Honolulu to get the emails he expected would tell him more about one Private James Madison Turner.
~~~
Star refused to fill out the paperwork in Dr. Zhung's office. She insisted Janet do it herself. That gave Janet the opportunity to lie about every single detail it required, except she matched her name with that of our shared debit card. Dr. Zhung was never going to check it anyhow, she could see that. After they had cleared the card charges it was all a done deal.
A nurse came out and took Janet back for a quick physical.
Star sat in her uncomfortable chair and watched the carpet. She felt that it at least would not offer up anything stressful. Her tears had slowed but still marched out, one by one, each carrying another drop of sadness from her soul.
Moving close to her I nudged her mind to open to me. She was one without many walls and soon she was daydreaming. There, in her memories, were the magic days of her youth, playing on the sandy beach by the ancient lava coves. She was smiling up at the birds above and the little fish below. Her mom was next to her, singing some sweet hippie love song, while her father was husking coconuts close by. The air off the ocean was warming her skin with tingles.
“Starshine,” I said with a voice she would remember as her mom's. “Did you feed the little fishes yet?”
Fully engrossed in her memory she looked to her feet and found the frozen peas in a plastic bag. The fish loved these, she remembered fondly.
“Go ahead baby, they are hungry,” I whispered. “Look how happy they are that you are here.”
Star sat quietly in her uncomfortable chair in Dr. Zhung's office lobby, dreaming. She remembered how the little fish darted back and forth in the shallow water snapping up the little peas long before they could ever sink the few inches to the bottom. Sixty years later she could see it in her mind as clearly as I was seeing it. This little moment, this memory was one of the most beautiful things either of us had ever felt.
“Good Star,” her mom's voice said to her. “You have shared some love.” One thing the hippies got right was love.
“Mom, can I keep some of them? Take care of them in a bowl?” Star asked, as she had no doubt asked so many years ago.
The light I had been watching for so long was now slipping inside the windows of the office, easily penetrating the canopy of the avocado tree. I felt it warming me as well.
“Star,” I said one last time in her mom's voice. “You must let them take their own path now,” a vision of her mom holding some sand in her hands filled her dream. “Let them swim where they will. It is, you know,” reaching over to tickle little Star, “what makes them free.”
Star stood up and walked to the door, opening it and moved down the stairs to her car. She suddenly felt good having helped out this lost kid Jimmie, had given her as much love as she could, sharing her Kapoho cabin by the sea. Jimmie was free though, she now felt, and would swim where she might.
I followed Star to the shaded spot in the parking lot where she sat, waiting. Here I would wait too.
I knew the doctor was now talking to Janet, counseling her on the options they both knew she had already rejected. I knew the nurse had entered the room now with a tray of tools and drugs. I knew Poho was awake and looking for me.
“Poho!” I sang to him. “Poho my boy!”
His laughter was infectious, even in this saddest of moments for me. He called out to me, “Let's play!”
I knew they now had Janet lay down on the table, her legs strapped down. I knew a second nurse had come in. I knew the doctor was wearing a mask.
“My Poho,” I asked. I needed to distract him somehow. “Have you ever seen a bird?”
He giggled a little at the strange idea I had sent him. When he felt the feathers with his little brand new fingers he laughed out loud again, forcing me to laugh as well.
I knew the doctor was injecting Janet with a drug now. I knew that one of the nurses was holding her shoulders. I knew that Janet was so full of static that the room she was in vibrated with it.
“Poho, my boy! Have you ever seen a fish?” The slippery creature fascinated him, especially when it wiggled right out of his grasp. He squealed with delight.
The light was coming closer to me. I could almost reach up and feel it. It felt so wonderful to have it so near. It felt so wonderful to know I could soon be with it. Yet, I resisted going to it. I needed to help Poho, help him get through.
I felt some confusion in him. His laughter had stopped, and I could sense worry.
“Poho, it's OK, my son,” I cried to him, trying to sound brave on his behalf.
I knew the doctor was telling Janet to push. I knew the nurse was pulling the tray of tools closer. I knew his little feet were kicking.
“Poho! Have you ever played in the ocean?” He immediately responded with a small whimper. “Poho, it is so warm, and the sun is bright. You can see the sky full of blue!” He hummed his approval but whimpered again.
I knew the nurse had handed the doctor his tool. I knew Janet was screaming and squirming. I knew the other nurse was holding her shoulders tightly.
The light was now just upon me and I could fight it no longer. I felt myself lifting into it, softly, with welcoming voices. Star seemed to look up a moment and then blinked when the branches let the sun through to her face.
“Poho, my boy!” I said one last time. I couldn't feel his presence there anymore. I searched and searched but I was moving deeper into the light, away from them. “Poho! Poho!”
“Yes, here I am.”
There next to me. He came close to me, both of us moving into the light. He was with me, at my side, smiling.
“Thank you for waiting,” he said as clearly and lovingly as anything I had ever heard before.
“Ah Poho,” I cried with joy. I looked ahead of us to the greatness of the universe, the immeasurable happiness. “Poho, have you ever flown through the sky?”
~~~
Jack was sitting next to Alice, the Lead Scientist at the Hawaii Volcano Observatories. He would have much rather been up in the air with Larry.
“Can you call him again? I need to know if he dropped the mothership yet.” She stood up quickly, pushing her chair back so quickly it fell over. “Damn it,” reaching down to pick it up, she mumbled loud enough for Jack to understand. “I need that data right now!”
“Roger that, boss,” Jack turned to walk outside so he could escape the steel roof of the building and it's perverse habit of destroying radio signals.
“Hey Larry, how much fuel you got left? Over.”
He listened for something to come through the static. Looking to his tuner he fidgeted with the frequency. It sounded like he was off frequency, bursts of low frequency hums were coming over his walkie talkie.
Holding it up to his mouth to speak again, he was interrupted.
“Howzit Jack. I've got another hour, easy. Over.” Larry's voice sounded hollow in the rising interference.
“Good. Great!�
�� Jack turned back quickly to see Alice pacing back and forth, glancing his way. “Look Larry, I don't mean to hurry you or anything, but Alice is anxious about that data. Over.”
A moment of silence followed, another burst of low growls of static, then some high pitched pops.
“Just dropped the soccer ball Jack. Damn Jack, I dropped the ball!”
Jack could hear him laughing above the noise of his engine and the static. He would have to tell that one to Alice. Tomorrow perhaps.
“Over.” Larry finally added.
“Thanks, Larry, we really appreciate it. All done over here. How's it look for landing? Over.”
A long, almost howling, mid tone raced through the static now, drowning out any human communication. Larry must hear it as well Jack figured, as he waited until it was done to attempt answering.
“Lot of weird static yeah Jack? Over.”
“Yeah, buddy, got an earful from all angles down here,” Jack looked at Alice now running to her workstation as the soccer ball mothership must have begun transmitting. “Over.”
“Looks like the cloud is dissipating. I'll just circle around and enjoy the view. Probably land at home in an hour or less. Over.”
Jack was only half listening to Larry as he began walking over quickly to Alice's computer screens. She was now standing up again, but this time covering her mouth with her hands.
“What ya seeing Alice?” Jack asked, glancing up to see Alice's eyes wide with fear.
She looked to her seismograph feed on the screen to her right, already bouncing wider and wider.
“I don't think...I never thought I ever would...” Alice stammered.
Jack moved next to her and put his hands on her shoulders to calm her. “What Alice, what is it?”
She stared at him blankly for a moment. Blinking she seemed to gain her composure and answered, “I never thought I could predict a major earthquake. But, I am now.” She sat down heavily into her chair, leaning her head against her desk.
“When? Come on Alice, you're freaking me out a little here,” Jack demanded. “When?”
Alice was shaking her head back and forth as she reached for her red desk phone. “Any moment.”
~~~
Shirley was back in her garden, taking advantage of the cool fog to get some especially hard work done. Checking her watch she figured Larry would get another check-in ten minutes from now. Her dogs were out in the yard with her, chasing imaginary mice or something similar.
The taro required a lot of hands-in-the-mud time which usually meant arms in the mud. She heard Larry and Jack talking and wanted to join in, but would wait until she was finished with the planting of the new roots.
She was reaching deep into the mud when she finally felt it at her armpits. The dogs were barking and running around in circles, something she had never seen them do.
“What's up, little guys?” Her hair fell from her bun and spilled into the mud. She might have cursed at that, but the dogs were really acting strange now. Frantically trying to dig into the ground, barking into the dirt as they did. It was the strangest...
It was just at that moment that she felt something moving in the mud. A rumbling far away, but strong enough to shake the mud like jello all around her arms. Terrified, she pulled her arms out just as she heard deeper rumbling coming from the slopes of Mauna Loa. She tried to stand up, but for some reason kept falling down, once, twice, until she saw the mud sloshing out of her taro patch and up into the air.
Her thoughts immediately said 'Earthquake!' Stay on the ground. At least she was outside. The dogs had quickly gone quiet and were running toward her. Shirley could have sworn she was hearing the earth growl low and powerfully as large rolling waves moved under her.
Large amounts of glass could be heard shattering, but when she looked back to the house, the windows were still there. They were flexing quite a bit, bending the increasing light from the sky as the clouds were breaking up. More shattering and then she figured out it was Larry's wine cellar built into the lava tube in the yard.
“Thank god I got his Haut Bailly out of there.”
~~~
Larry was circling higher and higher just in case he needed to make a run for Hilo, some twenty five miles away. His iPod was his only companion now that the walkie talkie was quiet.
8000 feet was plenty high enough, especially since it was getting downright cold. 41 degrees was beyond his comfort level, even with down flight gear on. He had checked in with Air Traffic Control, just to let them know where he was, in case some VFR student pilot in a rented Cessna decided to come barreling over his way. At least they would tell him, and the intruder, that there was traffic in the area.
The Brad Paisley song playing never seemed to have that much bass in it. Larry reached into his jacket to see if something was wrong with the iPod. He turned it off, back on, and then noticed something very strange. He turned it off again. The low bass rumbling was still there, and getting progressively stronger.
“What the...”
Looking down into the thinning soup of clouds far below he saw the entire layer of moisture vibrate back and forth quickly. Several times. Loud booms were flying up at him. The clouds were vibrating about as fast as an open beer would on his paraglider seat if the engine was running. That had been a mistake during that garage tune up. The beer had spilled.
As his turn took him toward Mauna Loa, he heard loud cracking and watched as a massive slab of snow avalanched down the brown lava slopes. It quickly split into a thousand fingers, spreading out twice as wide as it had been before slowly coming to a stop.
“Holy shit!”
Larry almost fumbled with the walkie talkie to the point of dropping it. His hands were shaking as he pushed the talk button.
“Shirley, Jack, what the hell is going on down there?” He completely forgot “over.”
He waited twenty seconds and asked again, this time with quite a bit more worry in his voice.
“Shirley, Shirley, can you hear me?” He looked down at the hand held to make sure it was tuned to the correct frequency and had the power light glowing. It was and did.
“Jack! Come in. Jack! Can you hear me? Over!”
Nothing but static for a full minute, and then as he descended, “Larry, Jack. Over.”
Larry wanted nothing more than to get down to a few hundred feet above ground level to see what was happening. He hadn't figured it out until he played it back in his mind. The snow mass shaking loose.
“Earthquake,” he said out loud to him and his audience of zero. “Big damn earthquake,” he whispered quietly, in awe.
“Jack, was that an earthquake?”
“Oh, yeah. Big. We've got damage here at HVO. Windows out, and it looks like some roof damage as well.” Jack was already outside, having fallen right out of the floor to ceiling window next to Alice's desk.
“How big, Jack, how big?” Larry asked, knowing what to expect at certain magnitudes.
As Jack tried to make his way inside the building, through tons of broken glass and shattered dry wall pieces, another big rumbler approached from the south. He could hear it coming about a second and a half before it hit them.
Something was moving inside the earth, something big. Jack held on until it passed and then quickly made his way over to the seismographs. The electricity was out, but the generators had fired up. That had to be some good luck.
The seismographs all sat on relatively earthquake proof independent columns of special material designed to keep them from moving relative to whatever building housed them. Their sensors were not in the column but outside the building. Naturally none of the scientists wanted false readings in what was probably their most effective measuring tool.
“Alice!” Jack yelled as he saw her on the floor next to the seismograph. Her arms were bloodied. “Alice, are you alright?” Obviously not, he thought. He pulled out his cell phone, attempting to dial 911 for the first time ever. As he held it up to his ear, he gently tried to rou
se Alice, pushing her a little. He felt her head out of habit, as if she might have a fever.
Nothing was happening on his phone. Looking at it for some clue, he noticed that he had zero bars. “Damn, the towers are down.”
Alice was moaning a little, coming out of her stupor. Jack instinctively began to move his mental train elsewhere as he saw that Alice was only lightly scratched. He stood up and went back to the seismographs.
They were still working and still recording hundreds of aftershocks, including the big one just a moment ago.
“Wow, Alice. That aftershock was a 6.1!” Jack was astonished. That was huge by any measure for an aftershock. He looked back at the paper record, to see if he could find the main quake.
Alice was standing next to him now, trying to wipe off the blood on her arms with her sweater. Her cuts were apparently from the same window Jack had fallen through.
“Where is it?” she asked Jack. “Where's the damn main?”
Both of them stopped just as it came off the role. Jack whistled for dramatic effect, even if it wasn't needed. “7.4 Alice. Not a bad prediction at all.” Jack patted her lightly on her good shoulder. “Good job.”
Another smaller aftershock rolled on underneath them, coming from the north and exiting out to the east.
“Jack,” Alice wondered out loud. “Where is all this magma headed?”
As if in answer the large lava pit at Halema'uma'u sounded as if it would do something dramatic any moment. It was rapidly filling with lava, being fed well from the now very active ancient lava tubes. Booms and cracking could be heard from a mile away.
Alice was back at her desk trying to get her computer back online but with little luck.
“I need a picture, I need some observers right now. Halema'uma'u, Kilueaua and the sea entry. All this lava is going to come out somewhere.”
“Larry. You still here?” Jack asked, turning back to his walkie talkie. “Over.”
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