The parafoil above them fluttered again, in the presence of a burst of wind, from where Larry could never guess. But, it was enough to clear the rock by some small immeasurable amount and they sailed a bit sideways, still climbing slowly and now clear of the rocks.
“Go, Larry, Go!” Shirley started chanting. “Go, Go, Go!”
They were some twelve or fifteen feet off the ground now, Larry figured, and needed another ten to clear the now approaching Ohia forest that began the jungle canopy for the next several miles. As they got within fifty feet, Larry knew they did not yet have enough altitude and he turned sharply to the right. They swung around back toward their house staying in the small opening of theirs and a neighbor or two worth of clearing.
“We need more altitude, Shirley!”
She just hugged the dogs closer to her body.
Larry circled another time, still needing more room to climb. But, the engine was not giving them anymore for now. They were just too heavy.
They were high enough, though, to see the plume a little better.
Both of them could see the glowing rockets rising within the smoke and falling out to the side.
Shirley turned as best as she could to see Larry.
“Can we climb anymore if we keep turning?”
“I don't think so! I think we are too heavy!”
Shirley looked down into her lap and sighed. The two little dogs were squirming, excited to be flying, but quite a bit apprehensive about the fact that their little feet were dangling in space.
As their next turn pointed them directly at the plume, both of them watched as another huge lava bomb rocketed up and out of the smoke, this one headed their way.
Larry tried to pick a line that would steer them clear of the missile, but he had to keep turning to stay out of the tree tops. Hating to have the plume at his back for more than a few seconds, he turned early this time, to spy the approaching rock.
As it did he saw it was going over their head, by a few feet. They could hear it crackling, pushing the tropical air out of its way, rushing to crash into the edge of the clearing and bombing into the edge of the Ohia trees there, knocking one over.
“OK, OK, Larry!” Shirley yelled over her shoulder. “I know we're too heavy.” Larry leaned forward to kiss her on the back of her head, then looked over at both little dogs with a heavy heart. Turning again, he kept an eye on the plume as he knew Shirley was making one of the most difficult decisions anyone could. The dogs, after all, were part of their family.
At that moment, he felt the paraglider lurch up at least ten feet, released of some significant weight.
“Whoo hoo!” he yelled, knowing they could now clear the downhill side of the tree line. Above his own shouts he could hear the dogs barking. It was enough to bring tears to his eyes.
“Larry!” Shirley was shouting. “We're climbing!”
And, the dogs were still barking! Larry looked down and there they were, still nestled tightly in Shirley's arms.
Larry was incredulous. How could that happen?
“What did you drop?”
Shirley twisted around, a little sadness embedded into the happiness that they were now clearing the tree tops.
“My backpack!”
Larry nodded. Whatever that was, he thought, it must have weighed at least twenty or thirty pounds.
“What was in it?”
Shirley was quiet a moment, but when he asked again, she had to say it.
“All the Bordeaux. And the 1945 Haut Bailly.”
It was enough to bring tears to his eyes.
~~~
Even as Star was urging Janet to climb higher, she herself was about as high in her own tree as she could go. The last nailed in board stopped just shy of the first fronds. From that height she looked back to the cinder cone for a moment. It was vomiting lava straight up into the air uncaring as to where it splattered, uncaring of the vast mess it was making of her little slice of heaven. Her smaller and smaller slice of heaven.
Janet was obviously injured. Her shoulders looked to be bleeding but the lighting was sporadic, depending on outbursts from the cinder cone. The little moon there was could only tell Star that Janet was now half way up the tree. Her moans as she pulled herself higher told everything the light could not.
Another wave, a bit larger, was sweeping under them now, splashing on Janet but safely below her. Despite what comfort that might have given anyone, Janet was terrified. Terrified of heights.
“Star!”
“Jimmie! Are you OK?” Star had to repeat herself over the noise of the water rushing furiously below them. She watched as large parts of what must be her cabin roof swirled around the area just below them. The second wave was now retreating back to the sea.
“Star! How much higher?” Janet begged, hoping not another inch. Even as the sight below her was horrific, it was far below and her dizziness was overtaking her.
“All the way! Up to the branches Jimmie!” Star was finding her voice getting hoarser. “All the way up!”
“Oh, my god,” Janet murmured, trying desperately not to look below her. Her ears were painting a scary enough picture. Rushing water below her, strange booming sounds out in the bay followed by cascading crashes of water and the deep rumble of the cinder cone behind it all.
The fact that it was dark helped Janet make her way up into the fronds themselves where she wiggled her way into a spot she could sit. Her legs were bruised and her feet were aching, bleeding from a thousand little cuts. Her hips were sore, to the very bones it seemed, from whatever she had bumped into while being swept around in the first wave.
As a third, even larger wave moved beneath them, some eight feet deep, they both felt the trees shaking in the turbulence.
“Are they falling, Star?” Janet screamed from her perch at the top. With the wind and the shaking from below she clutched the crown with a baby's grip on a parent's hair.
“No way!” Star guessed. She was thinking what she would do if they did indeed fall. The roots needed something to hold on to. More waves would surely sweep all the sand away, from all the trees of the connected grove.
“If it does Jimmie, stay with the tree, don't let it go!”
She looked out to sea for the first time, trying to see the fishermen in their boats, safely in the deep water. Once or twice it seemed she saw a dim red light, or two.
She could hear Janet crying now, sobbing in the tree next to her, hidden in the top. For some reason, she realized, she had not herself collapsed. With the loss of her cabin, and her car it seemed all the things that had supported her in this sanctuary had abandoned her.
Except the trees.
“Please, hold on,” she whispered to her tree, hugging it tightly. “Please stay with me. Please stay here.”
As the most recent wave seemed to continue rushing in for over three minutes now Star thought she heard a new sound, in the direction of the cinder cone. Was it a bubbling sound, or after listening to it a bit longer, was it more like a sizzling sound?
The waft of steam that reached her confirmed it was a boiling sound. The last tsunami wave had cleared all of the remaining brush and low bushes from behind where her cabin used to be. Star could now see an advancing line of glowing rock replacing that which the ocean had attempted to stop.
“What's that smell?” Janet managed to ask, a shivering in her voice.
Star shook her head in amazement. The ocean, as destructive as it might be, was trying to hold back the volcano, the lava, by assaulting it head on. Memories of her favorite Japanese creature films came to mind, something like Godzilla versus the Sea Monster. The movie trailer played out in her mind: In the dark tropical night, two desperate women hide from a marauding sea on one side watching lava approach from the other, the tops of coconut trees their only hope.
“Star!” Janet yelled weakly. “What is it? What is that smell?”
As shock finally settled into Star's mind, she retreated into the comfortable fantasy of her
memories. She wasn't sure which monster would save them, Godzilla or the Sea Monster. The first light of dawn, some hours away, would tell. Hopefully, she wished, it would be the winner.
“Jimmie, it's the smell of battle.”
~~~
The Pacific Ocean a half mile away from the fountaining cinder cone was just as should be, pacific. Light winds and small swells gently rocked the flotilla of five boats anchored in the deep water as the darkness slowly moved west.
Wally was scanning the coastline with his binoculars, a few minutes evidently before there was enough light to do so. He turned to the east to see if clouds were obscuring the sunrise. None were, just the earth.
“Come on!” he said to himself, knowing the sun would never listen.
His son, in the next boat anchored near his, was pulling in another aku on a hand line. Wally watched his strong young body flex and bend and win the battle. The teenager reminded him of himself, on a good day.
It was a proud moment in a pool of doubt, doubt about not insisting his girlfriend Starshine come with him. It was something he had been used to for many years, the conflict between his local practicality and her hippie wishfulness. Those contradictions are probably what complimented their one similarity.
“Ready Dad?” The young man was looking to the coast as well.
Wally was shaking his head, then looked back into the binoculars.
“Why she gotta be so damned stubborn?”
Both of them, on their respective boats watched the cinder cone near their cove, their home, continue belching fumes high into the air. Wally scanned the coastline looking for something familiar, Star's cabin, or her car. He couldn't even find the vacation rentals on the opposite side of the cove.
His son had his binoculars out now and quickly saw a debris field uphill from where the two story rentals had been.
“Dad, the vacation houses!” He lowered his binoculars a moment to confirm with his own eyes, then brought them back up again. “They're gone!”
Wally looked at him, then back again.
“What the hell?” He stared for a moment, whistling.
“I don't see any lava there, so, they never burned down or anything?” His son was pulling out his cell phone to call his Auntie Star.
“Another tsunami?” Wally whispered. Turning to his son he said it quite a bit louder, worried. “Another tsunami? Must have been one during the night!”
Both of them searched for signs of Star on the beach or near the cove. They searched in a silence that spoke loudly of their common fear, that Star had been swept away during the night.
“Her cabin is gone too, but I don't see her car.” Wally noted. “Maybe she left before it came?”
“Dad, check Champagne pool, the car is there, upside down.”
Wally swung right to look at the pools, where he and Star had spent many a magical evening. There, impaled on some underwater ledge, tires up in the air like a dead cockroach, was Star's Tercel. Wally tossed his binoculars onto the seat cushion.
“Come on, son! She might be holding onto some flotsam.” He fired up his twin 250hp Yamahas to idle and pulled up his anchor.
His son was drawing up his anchor as well, retrieved his fishing lines and started his engines.
“Headsets, Dad?”
“Yeah!”
“Guys,” Wally said to the other three boats on the CB radio. “Tsunami looks to have swept our area clean. Go south a mile or so, with the current. Star might be hanging onto something. Might be more people, too.”
All five boats got moving immediately. Both father and son were soon full throttle toward the beach, drawing beautiful white arches behind them in the blue water.
“Check, check.” Wally asked, testing his headset.
“Got you five by five,” his son answered.
“Good, look, you stay offshore about two hundred yards. Keep an eye out for any wave activity, any more damn tsunami signs. OK?”
The young fisherman wanted to be on the front line helping, but if he had to be lookout he would, for his dad.
“Sure, got it.”
“Thanks, I'm going up to the beach. If you see anything, I mean anything that could be a person, hit your air horn.”
“Got it.”
Wally was closing in fast when he had to quickly slow down for rubbish in the water. Floating logs, plywood, plastic and a big propane tank bobbed in the otherwise pristine water.
“I'm going to blast my horn son. Three times. Anything after that means I need your help.” Wally moved cautiously through the debris field, avoiding anything that might damage his boat, looking at every piece that floated. He also knew that if the worst had occurred, he would also find Star this way.
~~~
Exhaustion is a very effective agent of compromise. How else might the top of a thirty foot coconut palm seem actually comfortable?
Star was stirring with the increasing light of dawn. She had followed Janet's lead by climbing all the way up into her own tree where she might rest without having to hold onto anything. She could hear her injured friend switch between snoring and moaning in pain.
Somehow she had managed to move into a position between the rising fronds that kept her safely inside a little nest. From here she could still see the cinder cone inexhaustibly continuing to pour lava in a steady march toward the bay. She could also see that the lava had surrounded her little enclave now with slow moving fingers approaching the beach to the south. To the north she looked for the vacation rentals but couldn't find them. The tree tops were obscuring the view in that direction.
Below, the sand was swept clean, shimmering in the pink light flowing in from the east. No coconuts on the ground, no leaves, no sticks, no home and no car. Nothing, nothing but sand.
Wondering if it was wise to climb down she tried to remember if there had been any earthquakes during the night, after they had climbed up into the trees. Nothing she could remember, she thought. Yet, it might be safest to remain in the trees for a little while.
The tsunamis from the night had swept through around 10 P.M. and it was now somewhere around 6 A.M. Surely it was over by now. Still she remained in her tree, wondering what to do next.
The three loud blasts of an air horn, coming from the sea, answered that question. Turning to look she saw one of the fishermen's boats motoring in slowly. Rescue!
“Jimmie! Wake up! We've got us a ride!” Star was yelling as she gingerly tried to make it down to the top step. The tree top had not seemed so high up in the air, with its protective shield of fronds, but the top of the trunk, where her feet were now, seemed precarious.
Her legs were sore and her arms had a few cuts she had not noticed until she hugged the tree on her way down the next several steps. Looking up to Janet's tree she saw nothing of her.
“Jimmie! Come on! You wanna stay up there all day?”
No response.
“There's a boat coming for us! Let's go, girl!”
Some rustling in the tree told her Janet was at least alive.
“I can't move, Star,” she said too softly to be heard. “My legs are not moving...”
Star looked up at Janet's tree, just as high as hers was and then down to the approaching boat. It was Wally!
“Wally! Wally!” she yelled, waving at her boyfriend, looking all the white knight on a horse.
She saw his head tilt up to find her in the trees, having been scanning far lower for something. He hit the air horn again, as he waved wildly now.
In a moment he had beached his Boston Whaler on the clean sand, jumped out with his bow line and an anchor, and then run to Star's tree.
“Babe! What? Are you OK?”
“Am I glad to see you!” Star exclaimed, still gingerly moving her stiff legs down the last few steps of the coconut tree.
“Hey!” Wally said into his headset to his son. “I've got Star! She was up in the trees!”
Reaching up to guide her down, he marveled at how smooth her skin felt, how strong h
er legs must be and how lucky she was.
“Tsunami. I guess you saw it all, Star.”
“Not good, Wally. Not good. Jimmie nearly got swept away.”
Wally looked around. “Jimmie?”
He forgot the question for a moment as Star hugged the breath right out of him.
“Thank you so much! Thank you for coming to look for me!”
Wally laughed a little shaking his head.
“You're one crazy wahine, Starshine Aloha! Surrounded by lava on one side and tsunami on the other. But, I love you no matter.” He kissed her hard and squeezed a little too hard.
“Ouch,” she moaned, still kissing him back. “I'm kinda sore. The beds here at Hotel Coconut are a little hard.”
Wally pulled back a few inches and looked at her smiling. “Yeah, but they sure are convenient when you need them.” He and his fishermen crew had installed the steps years ago, never thinking they would ever get used.
“Help, please.” A weak voice from the trees pleaded.
Wally looked up confused. “Hey, who is that?”
“My friend, Jimmie, she got swept away in the first wave, but made it to the tree when it started sweeping back to sea.”
Wally looked at Star for a moment, incredulous that anyone could manage such a feat.
“I think she's injured Wally.”
“No doubt!” Wally got on his headset and called his son into shore to help while moving up to the tree to climb it.
“Hold on there...” he turned to Star from the second step. “What's the name again?”
“Jimmie.”
Wally looked up in the tree and then back to Star. “Our Jimmie? The girl you picked up hitchhiking?”
Star nodded as she watched Wally move higher into up the tree. She could see Jimmie's face, bruised and dirty staring down like a scared monkey.
“Hold on, Jimmie, I'm on my way up.”
Star noticed Wally's son rapidly approaching the beach in his boat. The ocean was a deep azure in the low morning light, smoothly textured in the light trade winds. She watched as he beached his Whaler close to Wally's on the beautifully swept sand, as beautiful as she had ever remembered seeing it. If you didn't look behind, toward the cinder cone and it's lava progeny, if you looked only to the brilliant tropical sun filtering through the pristine skies into the equally magnificent waters you might think you were in the lap of heaven. You could wander into the compelling shade of the coconut palm grove, climb into a hammock and easily be persuaded that this was indeed one of the planet's little known gems.
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