The story then focused on her. The entire screen filled with her image, the one taken by the young man.
“This young woman was taken to Hilo Hospital where she remains recuperating from her horror with the destructive tsunami wave. Reports tell us that she was swept to within inches of the approaching lava and then back against trees, rocks and almost into the ocean. We haven't any news on her, but we are wishing Jimmie a speedy recovery.”
Janet immediately stood up to leave, as several in the cafeteria were clapping for her. Horrified she almost ran back to her room, except that it hurt to move too fast.
Here she was eating jello in the comfort of a warm place, one of healing and her friend was camped on a beach in a tent, being attacked by a volcano. She had to get back to Star, to stand as one with her, against the lava. There was something about Star, something quite incredible, even miraculous, that made Janet feel Star would win.
As she entered her room it was dark, her roommate there snoring behind her curtain. Janet turned on their shared television, but kept the volume off, as she tried to follow what else might be said about Star, and what, God forbid, might be said about herself.
She sat in the dark silence following the glow of the broadcast, now showing archival footage of the 2004 tsunami in Thailand. Comparisons were being made to the ones that had struck her and Star, and the entire coastline southeast of Hilo.
“It could have been much worse,” Janet said softly in her mind. “It could be worse...next time.” The thought of going anywhere near the ocean seemed...impossible.
Yet, there she was, on the television yet again, in her yoga pose, with the expression on the silent reporter's face telling the world what they were all really thinking: that this old lady on the beach was insane.
“She's trying so hard,” Janet said to herself, unaware she was talking out loud. It seemed easier to think that way now that the static had returned.
“Who's that, honey?” The curtain talked right before a boney hand pulled it back around and out of the way.
“Oh,” Janet said. “Sorry. To wake you, I mean, I was trying...”
“No problem, honey. No problem. I'm need to pee, anyhow.” She swung her half covered legs down perfectly into some furry slippers and stood up slowly, letting her bones find their balance.
Janet watched the old lady walk in front of her, coughing hoarsely a couple of times and cursing under her breath at something unseen. She thought she had the look of a career alcoholic, perhaps one of who had risen to president of her local drinking club.
For a moment, Janet saw herself, decades into the future, just like this dying woman. Liver shot to hell, struggling to walk and in a dark hospital room peeing in someone else's toilet.
Just the thought of such a fate made her strangely thirsty. If a single drink was offered, she would feel safe taking it, right now. If only one.
“Poor old broad,” Janet heard from the darkened bathroom doorway.
“What?” Janet said into the corner. “Who?”
The old lady moved awkwardly from the blue shadows of the television and back in front of Janet's bed. She waited to answer until she had completed the almost overwhelming task of getting herself planted again in her own bed.
“That poor lady on T.V.” she pointed at the screen. “That's who.” She turned up the volume with her own remote.
Janet watched a shot of Wally resupplying Star.
This time it was Fox News and the commentator brought up a question as to what kind of boyfriend would leave his girlfriend on the beach in such a situation.
Their Facebook fan page, the Heros of Kapoho, was displayed next with just such a question. Janet noticed 347 comments noted below.
“She's a good person.” Janet looked over at her roommate, ready to argue for her friend.
“Oh, I can tell that, too.” Propping another pillow behind her frail back she looked up at the screen and continued. “But, she can't stop that lava.”
Janet believed if anyone could it would be Star and she said so emphatically to this pessimistic old lady next to her.
“Ha!” She shook her head at the young woman's comments.
Janet was getting furious, the static rising up from the vast reservoir she must have. Holding her hands up to her head, trying to quiet the storm, she nearly spat.
“Star is a powerful force in this universe! She's a survivor! If the world has a scrap of compassion, it will let that poor woman alone on her little strip of sand.”
“I know, honey, I know. I went to school with that lady, know her well, I do. Starshine Aloha, I think that is her name.” She turned to look over at Janet. “Am I right?”
Janet nodded, her hands coming off her head slowly. “Yes.”
“Yes,” the old lady confirmed, looking back up to the television. The lava pool at Halema'uma'u was the center of attention for the moment.
“An eye for an eye, that's the only thing that will stop the damned thing.”
Janet felt a sudden sinking deep inside as the static began to get louder again.
“Yep, someone did something bad. Did it to the volcano they did. Ain't gonna stop until that is made right.” She looked directly at Janet now. “Eye for an eye honey.”
Janet found that idea distributing. She looked into the old lady's eyes. She looked so damned old, so sick, that maybe, Janet thought, she had been to hell, heard her murdered fiancé Jimmy's story and returned. Returned to torment her. She shook her head a little, trying to free that crazy thought so it would leave her head.
“Why?” Janet tried to ask, holding her head again. “Why would a volcano give a damn about...” Her head was pounding now with the static. “...anything?”
The old lady pulled her legs up to her chest, bringing her sheets and covers up and out from where they had been tucked nicely. She scooted herself up higher against the pillows.
“My old man, drunk bastard that he was, took my car one night. Didn't ask me or nothing. Just stole my keys and took my car. Sure as shit he ran into a tree and messed it up real bad. Messed himself up real bad, too.
“I was pissed at him, stupid drunk! My car was trashed! My only way to get around, gone. I didn't even care that much about him being in critical condition at the hospital, I was so pissed off at him.”
She was rocking slightly back and forth now, telling Janet something she had probably told no one else.
“My car was dead and in another two days, so was he.”
Janet mimicked the lady's rocking motion unconsciously. “Oh, my god! He died?”
The old lady stared at Janet. “Yeah,” she looked back up at the television. “And, you know what?” she asked without looking back. “I felt a lot better. Eye for an eye.”
~~~
The next morning shoved aside the darkness in its rush to flood the sky with some of the best light it had ever come up with. The air was pristine over the entire state with the passage of a frontal band. Freshly washed with rain and cool air the island literally shimmered in the early rays of orange and yellow.
The only blemishes on the battle for contrasting brilliance were the plumes of the Kapoho cinder cone and Halema'uma'u and a sea entry in the park boundary. Three boiling columns of dark gray pouring upward into purples and blue.
Star felt the eyes of a thousand cameras on her as she watched the sun crest the edge of the eastern sea. Her focus was now quite capable of ignoring the gawkers. The conviction that fed her now was stronger than ever. The little yellow tangs that swam between her feet, in and out of the gentle surf, looked brighter somehow.
However, the sound of the waves on the beach could no longer entirely drown out the sound of the crackling and popping a'a' lava mound as it slowly piled up higher behind her. Some fifteen feet high it was an approaching cliff eager to embrace the sea, eager to reclaim what the sea had been wearing down and then some.
Wally had moved his boat in close, to within fifty yards. He knew a breakout could happen at any tim
e, pouring liquid lava from beneath the wall of a'a'. Such a thing would give him only ten or fifteen minutes to get to Star and get her safely away.
Watching his woman, his love, attempt to do what he was sure no power on this Earth could was painful. It was obvious though that keeping her from trying or belittling her was infinitely more so. Besides something inside his fisherman soul, the one that saw wondrous things constantly, tugged his heart with a pull of confidence. She was a most powerful force of nature herself. She was, after all, a woman.
~~~
Janet was woken by her entire bed shaking and rattling. Sitting up quickly, eyes wide with the fear of yet another earthquake she saw the old lady.
“Wake up kid!” She shook the bed again, standing next to Janet and literally falling against it each time. “Got some uniforms downstairs asking about you.” Coughing and clearing her throat from so much effort she managed to add “You in some kind of trouble with military types?”
Janet shook her head twice, trying to shake off the static. Coffee might have helped, or maybe a beer. She looked at the old lady and grabbed her firmly by the shoulders.
“Get me outa here! Now!” She swung off her bed, pulled on her jeans and Hilo Hattie t-shirt and looked for her shoes. “Damn! Do you know...did you see my shoes?”
“Yeah, yeah, in the closet.” The old lady moved back into the hall and looked in both directions. “I figure you got about five minutes, maybe less.” She turned to look at Janet with a knowing eye. She too had had a few run ins with the law. “There's only two of them. I suggest we start with the stairwell across the hall. They'll be on the elevator.”
Janet pulled her second shoe on and demanded, “How do you know which way to go?”
“Yeah, right!” The old lady ignored the silly question. “Look, I've been here long enough to know where the nurses hide and where the doctors go to screw. Trust me.”
Janet ran out into the hall, pushing the old lady forward as nicely as she could. “Let's go then! They can't find me!”
~~~
Larry and Shirley had finally returned to their home. Amazingly, the only damage was to the windows facing the exploded propane grill. The yard had a couple of new rock features, but Shirley honestly thought they fit in nicely with her landscaping.
Halema'uma'u had calmed down quite a bit since they had fled by paraglider. Jack and Alice had returned to the Observatory, even as temporary repairs were being done. The big driver in everyone's optimism was the lowered level of the lava lake. What had only three days earlier been an overflowing pool of magma was now a pool a hundred feet below the rim.
Several Volcano residents had seen fit to sneak back in past the less than strict barricades and see if there were any cold beers at the Lava Lounge. There were.
Agatha Turner and Adam had managed to get a helicopter tour of the area. When they flew past Star's beach Agatha felt a strange connection to the woman, but the feeling passed. Adam agreed to stay on the island with her, at least one more week. He was enjoying Agatha's company, and the mangoes.
~~~
Janet and the old lady found their way down three floors and out into a rear parking area big enough to hold two dumpsters and some discarded furniture. The area was littered with big olomea tree leaves.
There was a quick moment of relief, having escaped, but immediately it was followed with the panic of “what now?”
The old lady stood stoically looking toward two mopeds parked up against the olomea tree. She raised her thin arm to point with her boney finger. Janet had a flash of an old movie where death was showing you your future. The moped was a good idea though.
“How do you start one of those?” Janet wondered out loud.
“That kind? Just roll 'em down the hill, pop the clutch. Off you go.”
Janet ran over to the first moped and found it chained to both the tree and the second moped.
“Shit, they're locked up.”
“Nah!” the old lady laughed. “Only fake. Try look, the chain doesn't connect.”
Janet pulled the chain away from the one moped and sure enough it was only looped on to appear locked. She pushed it forward enough to throw a leg over and to retract the kickstand.
“Good luck there,” the old lady waved. “You going to tell Star I said hi?”
“Sure,” Janet nodded, anxious to get going. “But, I never got your name.”
The old lady smiled at that. She knew she had never mentioned it to this brash girl. “Memitim. Tell her Memitim said good luck and all.”
“Memitim,” Janet murmured. She pushed forward enough to let gravity pull the moped along and then popped the clutch. In two puffs it was running on its own. Upon exiting the parking lot, she made her way through the back streets of Hilo out toward the barricades between her and Star.
~~~
Star was patrolling her increasingly smaller and smaller perimeter. None of her ahu rock and driftwood piles had been overrun yet, but they were uncomfortably close to the approaching a'a hill.
Her little island of sand and coconut trees had always been on a slightly higher piece of ground than several acres of jungle that had been behind her. That had protected them against the winter flooding that might have left her on many occasions with inches of mud and debris.
She looked over to where the vacation rentals had once been. They had avoided the flooding issue by building directly onto the lava. She knew that was tempting fate, and sure enough, they were gone now, burned and buried under several feet of fresh cooling lava.
Walking back to the water's edge she stood hands on hips and looked out at the dozens of boats offshore, the occasional helicopter tour and Wally. They all seemed to be watching her, and the approaching inevitability behind her. With the possible exception of Wally, she knew they were all, news people, gawkers, tourists, expecting her to eventually bail. How could an old lady stop lava? With her thoughts? With her prayers to some long forgotten hippie god of love?
Would she be another Harry R. Truman of Mount Saint Helens fame, dying a silly death in the face of certain destruction? She wiggled her toes deeper into the soft sand, flexing them in frustration and not a small amount of embarrassment.
She turned away from the sea and her fan club, a celebrity in doubt. The creeping hill of black was imposing and the occasional bursts of orange from still molten rock blinked on and off like a living monster winking at her.
“Soon,” she imagined it to say. “Soon I will eat all of everything, and you too if you test me.”
If only she had someone here, to talk her through her doubts. All anyone wanted to do was talk her onto a boat. Her only true supporter, Wally, from a long line Big Island people, understood that the volcano did this kind of thing. It was nothing to stop, but something to deal with, to live with and move on. Hawaiians had been doing that for centuries.
Her story, though, was quite different. Her mom and dad had arrived bright eyed and full of adventure from a place where snow and ice trapped you for six months every year. Where gloomy weather took a massive toll in suicides and mental health and where every teenager that could, got up and left.
Hawaii was a true paradise in that respect, warm, inviting and beautiful. A paradise not just for your skin and toes but for your mind and soul. People like her mom and dad, and herself, thrived here. They bonded to the new land like their own ancestors had done in North American when they had left Europe. This was home, this was quite beyond special. Leaving, and therefore failing, was inconceivable. Short of certain death she had to stay, even if it terrified her.
Star looked to the sky above her, to the swaying majesty of her protective coconut palms against the blue and wished. She wished for a miracle of the universe to save her one last time. The volcano could have this land, later, when she was long gone herself.
A sound of rolling and tumbling rocks from the southern edge of her perimeter caught her attention. The a'a pile had moved up to her ahu stack there, and as she watched in awe, it k
nocked it over, overran it and several steaming stones rolled over the sand and into the ocean.
~~~
The old lady found her way back to the elevator to ride back up to her hospital bed. In the lobby where she waited she watched the military policemen talk on their phones before looking over to her and the opening elevator.
They got whatever information they needed, and walked quickly over to ride with her to the third floor.
Four of them came into the small elevator, one of them nodding his head in acknowledgment of her, but none of the them talking.
“Where you boys headed to?” All of them had to be well over six feet tall, making them tower over her.
“Good morning, ma'am.”
The old lady waited for an answer but that was all she got. As the elevator arrived at 3 they rushed out the door, forgetting all about her. They rushed into her room, opened the bathroom door and as she finally made her way into her room, they were looking under both beds.
“Where is Janet Turner?” The leader demanded.
“Good morning sir,” the old lady responded with some indignity. She remained in her doorway while they continued to look in smaller and smaller places until there was no further place any human could have hidden in.
“Your roommate, ma'am, where is she?”
The old lady watched their eyes and saw deep wells of hate and anger. These men were hunters. She had a place for them too, just as she had for Janet.
Raising her thin arm, pointing out the window with her boney hand, one long weathered finger shaking slightly with the effort she simply stood still.
The four military policemen turned toward the window, one of them running over to look through the open glass and to the ground.
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