Visions of birthday parties with balloons and other little kids running through the house, visions of cake smeared grins and bare feet were dancing there behind her tightly closed eyes. She felt the heavy tug of history and time. Death sorted itself out from life, leaving the past behind for elderly daydreamers. She felt as if she were an old lady now, with no husband, no family, no son, never to play with grandchildren.
Adam was gently rubbing her back as she let her heart melt. She sighed heavily after a while and sat back, letting Adam wipe the tears from her cheeks. She had surrendered. She knew that her only son, James Madison was gone.
It was just at that point, somewhere over the island of Maui, directly over the mystical summit of Haleakala, in a C-17 some four miles above the ocean my message arrived.
Agatha caught her breath in surprise. “No,” she thought, “it's my grief playing tricks.” She applied her time honored tradition of cautiousness and skepticism. “I mustn't torture myself,” she said to herself. She looked up at Adam and smiled a little, thanking him silently for being there.
She turned back to her thoughts. “That was different,” she reasoned, thinking it must be a trick of her mind. “Never was it this clear,” she felt she might actually be losing her mind. She had heard about that happening to people in her situation.
How could such a burst of joy be an appropriate response to what she now knew to be true about James? She continued to analyze, tearing herself down, tearing her own dignity away in strips of self doubt.
As the military aircraft flew over the weathered northern point of the Big Island, over the village of Hawi and across to the eternal Hamakua coast our message, Poho and I, came through unmistakably.
“We are happy and we love you.”
~~~
Alice unlocked the door to the women's restroom and peered cautiously outside into the hallway. Seeing no one close by, she waved at Jack to follow her out. They were practically giggling, still high from the danger and the adventure.
“You animal,” she whispered loudly to Jack, who was right behind her.
“Lion tamer!” Jack answered back.
They almost rounded the corner into the operations room together, but at the last moment, Alice stopped, put her hand on Jack's chest and said, “Wait here, count to ten or something.” She smiled her best 'That was fun' but Jack saw only 'I'm done with you for now'.
“That's cool,” he replied, looking down at his feet for some reason.
Alice disappeared into the bright lights and action, someone immediately calling out her name.
Jack figured he could use a drink and turned to find the soda machine in the break room. He felt a little lonely for the briefest of moments. Sure, he thought, I'm a big stud. Yes, I just had sex in the woman's restroom, but here he was, again, by himself.
Being a middle aged single guy wasn't all it was purported to be, despite what the movies might suggest. Freedom? Of course, freedom to enjoy massive amounts of loneliness.
He pulled two one dollar bills from his wallet, remembering when a Sprite used to cost thirty-five cents. That was when he was a young buck, when it wasn't just desperate scientists in remote locations that found him attractive.
The can fell solidly into the slot and he waited for the change. A long silence followed. Looking up at the price, it had just changed from a few days ago of $1.50 to $2.00.
“Unbelievable,” he murmured, popping the top.
Tipping up the can to take a full mouthful, he gargled with the bubbling drink, like he used to in college. For some reason, he couldn't quite remember, it was supposed to freshen your breath better than Scope. Something about the scrubbing action of the bubbles...
“Wait a minute,” he stopped and thought. “Scrubbing action of the bubbles?” He thought about the viscosity of the magma, and if it had more dissolved gas then it might travel farther, scrubbing the old lava tubes. Less gas might keep it from traveling as far.
Excited to tell Alice about the idea and to see if they might get a sample from the field he walked briskly into the operations room. Several people were crowded around Alice's monitors. As he got closer some peeled away and went back to their workstations, shaking their heads, or pulling out their cell phones.
“Alice!” Jack said a little too loud. “Alice,” he said a bit softer, having gotten her attention now. “I've got an idea about the travel time of the magma...”
“Jack, wait,” Alice said putting up her hand. “Halema'uma'u has drained half of its volume in the last hour.”
“No way!” Jack exclaimed. “No way. That's what? Eleven million cubic meters?”
Alice nodded. She patiently waited for his obvious follow up question.
“Where the heck did it all go?”
“Kapoho. A large amount of magma has moved into the Kapoho tube system.”
~~~
Star and Janet were finished with what little cleanup they could do for the afternoon. It was getting dark quickly with the large vog cloud hanging to the west, blocking the sun.
Janet wanted to ask Star about the steaming cinder cone they had stopped at on the way in, but she could see from Star's face that now was not a particularly good time. She simply sat with her, at the edge of the Champagne pool, letting her feet gently stir the water.
Star looked over at her and nodded a silent thanks. Thanks for being with her now, at the scene of what Star thought might be her own eventual destruction.
“How are you feeling, Jimmie?”
Janet hadn't thought about it for a couple of hours now, but pretty good for the most part. She had a strong build and was young. Plus the pain pill she had taken at the cinder cone stop was perfectly matched. No pain, no side effects.
“Not bad,” Janet answered, trying to smile a little. “I want to say thank you, you know. Thank you for driving me there.” She put her arm around Star. “I know it wasn't something you wanted to do.”
Star bowed her head a little, trying to shut out the images of what she knew had happened there. She couldn't hold back the few insistent tears forcing their way out.
“Damn wheelchair nearly freaked me out,” she laughed slightly.
Janet looked at her, trying to remember. “All I remember was a lot of stopping and starting. Did you run over a curb too?”
Star laughed at that as well. “Two or three I think.”
They sat in silence for a while, watching the ocean tousle with the wind and the horizon. The guys could still be seen anchored out in the deeper water.
“Do you think there might be another tsunami?” Janet asked.
Star hung her head. Of course there might, she thought. They were foolish to be next to the ocean while earthquakes were happening. But, she had to be here, she had to stand firm on the last piece of land on this earth she could ever call home.
“Yes, perhaps.” Star took Janet's hand and pointed out several coconut palms close to the damaged fishing shacks. “See those trees there?”
“By the shacks?” Janet asked.
“Yes, see the wooden steps nailed into them, I think there are four or five trees that have them. If there is another earthquake, big, like you have to catch your balance. That big. If so, run over to one of those trees and climb it as high as you can.”
Janet didn't understand that. “Why wouldn't we just drive up the road, up to the main highway?”
Star tilted her head to one side and nodded a little. “You could of course. But, you probably wouldn't have time.”
“No way,” Janet whispered. “Really? That fast?”
“Sure, you can always look out to see if the water has receded. That is probably your last warning. If it's dark, you can try and listen for where the waves are breaking, or just climb the tree.”
That evening, in the warmness of her familiar surroundings Star slept soundly, despite the dozens of small barely perceptible tremors emanating from up the road, at the cinder cone.
Janet was up at every one of them, looking at
the ocean with her flashlight to see if it the water was pulling back. It never did. By dawn, she had been up half the night.
One of the fishing boats was on its way in, coming ashore, having seen their lights during the night. Star ran out happy to greet them and share some information about the tsunami and to get some fish from the guys.
Janet stayed back in the palms and watched Star explain she would remain here, despite the danger, and keep an eye on things. The guys gave her a big hug and a jug of water and made their way back out to sea and safety, trailing a baited hook with them.
Finally, around 10 in the morning she felt her eyes too heavy to keep open and blissfully drifted off to sleep in the hammock.
Star managed to get into Pahoa town, itself well within the evacuation zone, and found the grocery store owner still there, with a shotgun. “NO LOOTERS” was painted on the window covering what used to say “Pahoa Shop -n- Save”.
She picked up a week's worth of can goods, water and as many bananas as they had. He gave her the bananas for free.
On her drive back she stopped again at the cinder cone, steaming quite fiercely now, venting with a noise she could easily hear from the half mile distance. The ground wasn't shaking with earthquakes as much as it was continually vibrating. It reminded her of a trip to Chicago and how her friend had told her the vibration in the sidewalks was the underground subway trains.
As she climbed back into her Tercel, she caught a brief glimpse of a glow on the far side of the cone. She drove forward a little to get a possibly better angle. There, she could see a distinctive orange glow slowly spilling out of the top of the cone.
~~~
Adam and Agatha thanked their hosts for the ride over and walked across the deserted airport to the rental car booths. The airport was closed to commercial traffic, no one was around. Adam got on his phone to call a taxi.
“No, bruddha, I cannot take you to Volcano. You heard right? They stay evacuating the whole area!”
“Yeah, OK.” Adam looked around the rental car booths. “Too bad I can't rent a car myself.”
The taxi driver jumped out of his Buick Estate Wagon and pulled some keys out of his pocket.
“I can rent you one car right now,” and walked over to Billy's Certified Rentals, at the very end of the long line of rental booths.
“Great!” Agatha said. “How much?” she asked out of habit, even if Adam was paying for it.
“Well,” Billy, the apparent owner said. “Good deal this week, we call it the lava special, you know.”
Adam was expecting to get fleeced when the affable old guy said something quite unexpected.
“$100 for the week, but you gotta buy full insurance.” He looked back over his shoulder toward the ever darkening plume toward Volcano. “Bad mojo now, and I know you're headed that direction.”
“Deal!” Adam laughed, slapping down his AMEX Centurion Black.
Ten minutes later they were driving a late '90s Ford Fusion up to the roadblocks just outside of Hilo, on the road to Volcano.
As they approached it, there appeared a chaotic mess of cars trying to turn around all at once. A police officer with a flashlight in his hand was waving the world back, as another officer drug the barrier behind him, widening the evacuation area a little more. In the near distance a cinder cone was crowning itself with a glow of orange and yellow. Plumes of white smoke were pouring out of it as well.
“Looks like trouble,” Adam said automatically, half wishing he had not said it out loud. Turning to Agatha it was apparent she was now convinced this chase for her son, into the Volcano area, was a bad idea.
“They look scared,” Agatha whispered to herself.
“What?” Adam was busy turning the car around. “What did you say?”
She turned to look at Adam as he looked out the rear view window reversing in his lane.
“They look scared, Adam,” Agatha repeated loud enough to get Adam to turn around and look. He stared for a moment straight ahead.
“Yeah. They do.”
“They're too young...” she paused a moment before finishing, afraid she might offend Adam. She watched him twist around again, backing the car up. He could handle. “They're too young to be that scared.”
He laughed shallowly. “What? Are old folks the only ones that should be scared Agatha?” He scoffed a little at that as he got the car turned around, headed back toward Hilo.
She didn't answer right away, watching instead the jungle slide past her window. Adam had the radio on, but Agatha reached over and turned the volume all the way down.
“I have a friend with a nice house up in Pa'auilo. Great ocean view, horses, quiet. Let's go wait this out over there,” Adam suggested. “No lava out that way.”
They drove on in silence for several minutes, eventually crossing the Hilo river bridge and into the pastoral beauty of the Hamakua coastline. Here on the slopes of Mauna Kea, the land would never host lava again.
Agatha had her window down, her elbow out. Adam knew she was disappointed. He figured she would eventually say something, when she was ready.
Laupahoehoe was so spectacularly different from the area they had just left. Cobalt seas used their immeasurable skills to carve coves, rock beaches and cliffs into textures impossible to ignore. Agatha had never imagined anything like it. She could feel the natural beauty slowly peeling some of the stress from her skin. Warm hints of plumeria and ginger forced her uneasiness to surrender. Finally she reached over to find Adam's hand on his seat.
He squeezed back. That made him feel better.
“Agatha, don't be scared anymore.” He wanted to follow that up with some kind of reason or explanation, but dropped it. There really wasn't a reason or explanation to not be.
She was gazing at her hand, atop his. Both of them had weathered their own unique decades of life. Both of them, she knew, were well past their middle years.
“Those boys,” she began softly. “Back at the barricades...”
“The police?” Adam guessed.
“Yes,” squeezing his hand a little more. “They reminded me, somehow.”
Adam looked at her a moment and then back to the road. The scenery demanded almost as much attention as the driving. The road was diving into another valley of lush green worshiping its own waterfall god high up in the mountain reaches above.
“I am scared Adam,” Agatha admitted. “I'm scared of old age, of dying.”
“Oh, we have a long time to go before any of that,” Adam reflexively replied. He personally never gave it a thought.
“I'm not afraid that there won't be a place, an afterlife,” Agatha explained. “It's not that, not at all.”
Adam was slowing down to turn up Pohakea road, upcountry from the ocean view highway they had been on. Soon, he turned again onto Pa'aulilo Mauka road and began a slow beautiful climb through rolling pastures and the dark eucalyptus forests that watched over them.
“Adam, I'm just afraid that it will be so different.”
They pulled into an unmarked driveway that wound them through avocado and mango trees, and finally up to a broad veranda wrapping around a one story home. The ocean softly caressed the view far below as the gentle greens of pasture fell to it.
They both got out of the car slowly, soaking up the scene with the thirst of new explorers, of artists in a new museum of wonder.
Adam pulled Agatha to him, both of them sitting on the warm hood of the car. He held her tightly, his chin on her shoulder as they both breathed in the view.
“Agatha my dear, heaven can't be much different from this right here.”
18
From a distance lava always looks enchanting, almost hypnotic. Watching it on a television can even make it appear beautiful. Perhaps it could indeed be all of that, but not when it was in your own backyard.
Like most of nature's creative tools, it completely disregards human opinions and certainly ignores whatever dreams or wishes people have. It is a force that cannot be redirecte
d or delayed, negotiated with or compelled. Planetary forces rarely cut humans a break but at least Hawaiian lava gave them enough time to get out of the way.
This event was no exception. There were no surprises here. A continuous thirty year eruption at Kilauea had convinced the world that time had a whole other meaning here than it did to humans in general. Past lava flows demonstrated quite convincingly that what had been pristine pools and beaches could within weeks be covered in over twenty feet of molten rock. Earthquakes alerted everyone to a process that had started here on the Big Island of Hawaii some four hundred thousand years ago.
Yes, Hawaii could destroy and create but it never snuck up on you, it never surprised the observant.
Star knew all this. The history was clear. Yet her history was just as clear in her mind; the history she would maintain, the history she intended to live, here at her home by the sea.
It wasn't that she was fearless, no, not that at all. Hurricanes, tsunami, floods, earthquakes, lava. They all owned a little piece of her nightmares. It wasn't that she was crazy, she knew the risks and had balanced them with her pride.
Star was going to make her stand here, among the palms and the clear pools, the black rocks and the blue ocean. She was going to use all of her heart to do as her hippie mom had always told her, to create her own reality. And, if that didn't work, she would evacuate by sea.
Janet had slept the entire afternoon before, through the night and was only now just stirring two hours after sunrise. Star watched her like a mother might her hung-over teenage daughter, with a touch of contempt floating atop a large pool of compassion.
Despite her faults, Star found Janet a companion who was willing to share both her dreams and her fears, and most importantly, her papayas.
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