Feral Chickens

by C. McGee

  “Yeah, he did,” my mom replied, transitioning to a happier tone, appreciative of my effort to lighten the conversation. “Your sister is really excited about your dad coaching her boys. You know she was always a little jealous that he coached your team as a kid but never hers.”

  “Yeah,” I laughed. “Well, hockey is a little bit more in his wheelhouse than cheerleading. I think he would have struggled to teach middle school girls how to do a herkie.”

  “Yeah, I suppose that’s true.”

  I could sense a smile coming from my mother’s end of the line, so I attempted to coax it out further. “Oh come on, you know it’s true, just imagine Dad trying to do a tumbling pass. He would have ended up on the floor; nothing but a big ball of broken bones and torn ligaments.”

  “Yeah, that probably would’ve been the case,” she laughed. “And, ya know, he’d have had a heck of a time coaching from the hospital bed.”

  We both laughed.

  “What are you ladies giggling about?” I heard my dad ask in the background, his voice sounding happy and thankful; pleased to see his daughter making his wife laugh at a moment when she needed exactly that.

  “Oh nothing, honey, just imagining you putting your acrobatic skills to work.”

  “Yeah, that would be quite a sight,” my father chuckled. Then, speaking in a louder voice, “Love you, Inga! Hope all is going well. Gotta run.”

  “Love you too, Dad,” I replied loudly into the phone.

  “He’s actually headed to coach the boys right now,” my mother said, returning the phone to her ear having held it up for my dad to speak into.

  “Well, that’s great. I can’t imagine a better coach for my nephews.”

  “Neither can I,” she beamed.

  We talked for another hour about a variety of subjects. It was comfortable and fun and the time flew. I think the conversation made my mom feel better. I know it made me feel better. Neither the resort nor the mongooses crossed my mind the entire time we were on the phone.

  As soon as we hung up, I went to bed. It was only seven thirty, but my hangover had yet to subside so sleep was appealing. My hope was that some extra shuteye would prevent it from becoming a two-day affair. The last thing I needed was a splitting headache accompanying a bunch of tourists and myself down the river the next day.

  The early bedtime paid off. I woke up before the sun feeling rejuvenated and industrious. Since the roosters had yet to crow, I decided to stick my head out the window and screech in my most grating voice. It was an attempt to give the rat-birds a taste of their own medicine, but it didn’t work. The feral chickens didn’t make a peep until sunrise, completely unfazed by my antagonizing.

  Deciding to make use of my early rise, I wolfed down a quick breakfast and headed off to work. Clients wouldn’t be there for another three hours, which meant I could spend some time out on the water by myself. It was a prospect that was very appealing. I hadn’t been kayaking on my own since Ace fell victim to the shark, and I missed it. Solo paddles have the rare ability to provide both calm and clarity, and I was in desperate need of both. The presence of illegal mongooses in my house had been impeding my relaxation, and the question of how to proceed with the resort had been weighing on my mind.

  The solitary excursion ended up having the wanted effect. The tension in my body washed away the second I slid the boat into the water, and with each successive stroke of the paddle so did my cluttered thoughts. Two hours later I arrived back on shore with an answer: I had to back out of the resort investment.

  Yukio was part of the reason I arrived at my chosen conclusion. He is a shady man, and, although I didn’t realize it right away, shadiness is not a desirable quality in a business partner. Koa, however, was the main reason. He was right, the island’s culture and traditions need to be preserved, and by getting involved in the resort, I would be helping to extinguish them. I couldn’t have anything to do with it.

  Having decided upon a course of action, I immediately took out my phone and called Lana. She didn’t pick up so I left a voicemail informing her of my decision to pull out of the investment. Admittedly, it wasn’t the best way to handle the situation but it was the quickest, and since I needed it to be done, I did it, right there in the middle of the river.

  Feeling lighter, freed from the burden of a decision, I paddled toward the riverbank, pulled my kayak ashore, and prepared for the upcoming tour. Paul arrived with the vacationers thirty minutes later and we all set off up the river. Five hours after that the tour concluded by returning to its inception point. Unfortunately, by that time I had returned to where I started as well.

  Chapter 36

  History Lacks Clarity or Hawaiian Hallmarks

  My certainty lasted about an hour, and it was wonderful. I soaked up the sun, engaged in lighthearted conversations with the tourists, and took in the astonishing landscape that surrounded me. That’s it, nothing else. No anxiety, no guilt, no worries over how to proceed. I was pulling out of the resort investment and that was that. Done deal.

  Then my boss, Paul, started talking. Actually, one of the vacationers talked, then I talked, then Paul talked, but whatever. Paul’s words were the ones that mattered, the ones that struck me, the ones that made me rethink everything.

  The tourist that asked the question was a slightly overweight white guy with a bad complexion and worse glasses. He sweated like a man that was out of his element and spoke with an accent that reminded me of home. Although I can’t remember his exact inquiry, I do recall that it had something to do with Hawaiian history, and that I responded with some of the knowledge that I had recently acquired from Koa. The bayonet constitution, the stripping of rights, the military backed overthrow of the Hawaiian Kingdom, all of it worked its way into my answer. I even managed to tie in some contemporary stuff about the Hawaiian Liberation Front and its mission to protect the island’s culture and address the wrongs of the past. I was thorough and entertaining and maybe (but hopefully not) a bit preachy.

  As soon as I finished, Paul chimed in with further comment.

  “True, true,” he said. “It’s fascinating stuff isn’t it? And well told by Ingrid.”

  “Thanks!” I replied with a smile. Paul always speaks like an avuncular philosophy professor. Intelligent, encouraging, and kind, you can’t help yourself from seeking his praise.

  “You know,” Paul continued, “the history of these islands is really quite remarkable, easily on par with the greatest epics history has to offer. The events Ingrid just described are but a few of the captivating stories from the island’s past.”

  “Oh, do ya have any more good ones?” Asked the chubby tourist, his Upper-Midwestern accent on full display.

  “Many,” Paul replied.

  “Well, go on then,” I said.

  Taken aback by the bluntness of my effort to encourage Paul to speak, the tourist glanced at me with a surprised/disapproving look. “Yes, please tell us more,” he added, emphasizing the “please.”

  “Yes, please do. Choose your favorite,” I added kindly, an attempt to placate the offended vacationer.

  “Well, it would be difficult for me to choose my favorite,” Paul said thoughtfully, while continuing his methodical paddle stroke. “There are simply too many fascinating tidbits. But I suppose the story that immediately comes to mind is that of King Kamehameha uniting the islands. I think it serves as a nice sort of prequel to the segment of history that Ingrid just discussed.”

  Paul spent the remainder of the trip up river describing the rise of King Kamehameha and his bloody campaign to unite the Hawaiian Islands. It was a hell of a story. There were familial betrayals, successful coups, mass killings, insults to the gods, squashed rebellions, clandestine assassination attempts—basically everything one could possibly want from an epic. By the time Paul was done the entire tour had been pulled into the tale, even people that looked like they didn’t give two shits about history. It was quite remarkable, a testament not only to the quality of the co
ntent but also the caliber of the storytelling.

  Upon arrival at our up-river destination (where we leave the watercraft behind and embark on a brief hike to a picturesque little waterfall), I hopped out of my kayak and began helping the tourists pull theirs ashore. Normally, people bombard me with questions as I drag them and their boat up onto the riverbank but this time they didn’t, choosing instead to discuss the highlights of Paul’s history lesson.

  “Or when Kamehameha’s guys pushed those five hundred enemy soldiers off that cliff,” a middle school boy said excitedly to his dad.

  “I can’t believe that Kaiana dude tried to switch sides. What an asshole.” Said some twenty-something to her girlfriend.

  “But hold on now, how did they find out that the Chief of Kauai was going to get poisoned?” Asked the wife of the chubby Midwestern guy.

  My captivation with Paul’s story was on par with the tourists, yet I refrained from joining in on their conversations. At that moment I was too preoccupied by my own thoughts to participate in any sort of discussion, let alone one in which I would have to remain amiable and entertaining.

  Primary among the thoughts dominating my mind was this: “What the fuck?” I had decided to back out of the resort investment because it had the potential to further injure the island’s culture, but now, having listened to Paul’s history lesson, I was unclear as to what exactly constituted that culture. What Koa had told me was true, but it wasn’t the only truth. Paul had made it clear that there was more, and the more made me realize that the Kingdom of Hawaii, prior to the involvement of the old US of A, was not the peaceful, cohesive, and constant place I thought. And by extension, neither was its culture.

  Looking to regain my bearings, I decided to sit down at lunch and compose a list of typical Hawaiian stuff. It seemed like a reasonable way to assess the conflicting information muddying my thoughts. This is what I came up with:

  Quintessential Hawaiian Things: A list inspired by Koa’s stories and my short time on the island

  • Respect for Nature

  • Outrigger Canoeing

  • Surfing

  • Boar Hunting

  • Ukuleles

  • Pidgin

  • Banyan Trees

  • Leis

  • The Aloha Spirit

  • Beaches

  • Shave Ice

  • Pineapples

  • SPAM

  • POG juice

  • Poi

  • Hawaiian Barbecue

  • Kukui Nuts

  • Coffee

  • Hula Dancing

  • Slippahs (aka flip-flops)

  Obviously, the list was neither comprehensive nor authoritative; a few months on the island had not made me an expert and I knew that. Nevertheless, it wasn’t a bad list. The things that populated it weren’t crazy off base. They were key components of Hawaii’s contemporary identity of that I was certain, and it was that certainty that troubled me. It troubled me because I was also positive that the list contained an array of items that were not actually Hawaiian, or at least not exclusively Hawaiian, or even primarily Hawaiian, and definitely not originally Hawaiian.

  Feeling that an insight was near, I picked up my pen and went back over the paper, pausing to scribble out my thoughts on some of the items it contained. Once I was finished, it looked like this:

  Quintessential Hawaiian Things: A list inspired by Koa’s stories and my short time on the island

  • Respect for Nature

  • Outrigger Canoeing

  • Surfing

  • Boar Hunting: I don’t think pigs are native to Hawaii. Actually, I don’t think any mammals are native to Hawaii. Maybe that Slut Bat. (Whore Bat? I don’t know. There is some sort of bat with a promiscuous name that’s native to the islands. I remember because it’s always on the endangered list and that always strikes me as ironic. Given its licentious moniker, I would have assumed that it would have no problems in the reproduction department.)

  • Ukuleles

  • Pidgin: A mishmash language developed by a mishmash of immigrants that came to work the sugar plantations. Hawaiians, Portuguese, Chinese, Koreans, Puerto Ricans, Filipinos, I think all of them contributed to its development.

  • Banyan Trees

  • Leis

  • The Aloha Spirit

  • Beaches

  • Shave Ice

  • Pineapples

  • SPAM: One of humanity’s greatest mistakes. Also a product of the Upper Midwest! When I was ten, my family went to the SPAM museum in Austin, Minnesota. It was the second worst vacation we ever took. My sister threw up in the van on the drive back home. That Chrysler Town and Country smelled sour until the day we traded it in.

  • POG juice

  • Poi

  • Hawaiian Barbecue: The definition of fusion cuisine. There is no way one culture can claim credit for this delicousness.

  • Kukui Nuts

  • Coffee: Glad it’s here but it’s definitely not Hawaiian. Middle Eastern, maybe? African? Heaven-en? (What do you call something native to heaven?)

  • Hula Dancing

  • Slippahs (aka flip-flops): Pretty sure flip-flops are Japanese. Positive flip-flops are worn all across the globe. Hawaiians, however, might be the only ones that call them “slippahs.”

  Ten minutes of critical analysis and one third of the list was gone. Perhaps “gone” is the wrong word. Amended might be better. Regardless, the list was further altering my understanding of the island’s culture, and, as a result, I was reassessing my involvement in the resort once again.

  Preserving Hawaii’s cultural heritage had seemed like a good reason to back out of the investment, but now I wasn’t so sure. What exactly was I preserving? Based on my list and on Paul’s history lesson, the culture of the islands seemed to be a product of fluidity, and if that was the case weren’t efforts to preserve it actually efforts to destroy it? Confusing.

  Seeking clarity and hoping that Paul could provide it, I walked over and handed him the paper. It was my sincere desire that he would look at it, smile, and then explain where I had gone wrong, detail how my list was off base. Unfortunately, that’s not what happened.

  “Interesting,” he said, looking down at my scribbled bullet points. Then, without another word, he took the pen out of my hair and began writing. Once he was done, the list looked like this:

  Quintessential Hawaiian Things: A list inspired by Koa’s stories and my short time on the island

  • Respect For Nature: A NUMBER OF CULTURES FROM AROUND THE WORLD DEMONSTRATE IMMENSE RESPECT FOR THE EARTH, OFTENTIMES EXULTING IT TO A DEITY-LIKE STATUS.

  • Outrigger Canoeing: DEVELOPED IN SOUTHEAST ASIA.

  • Surfing: EVIDENCE SUGGESTS TONGANS WERE SURFING AT LEAST A THOUSAND YEARS BEFORE HAWAIIANS.

  • Boar Hunting: I don’t think pigs are native to Hawaii. Actually, I don’t think any mammals are native to Hawaii. Maybe that Slut Bat. (Whore Bat? I don’t know. There is some sort of bat with a promiscuous name that’s native to the islands. I remember because it’s always on the endangered list and that always strikes me as ironic. Given its licentious moniker I would have assumed that there would be no problems in the baby-making department.) BOTH JAMES COOK AND EARLY POLYNESIAN IMMIGRANTS BROUGHT PIGS TO THE ISLANDS. THE BOARS THAT EXIST TODAY ARE A PRODUCT OF CROSS BREEDING BETWEEN THESE TWO.

  • Ukuleles: IMPORTED TO THE ISLANDS BY A PORTUGUESE CRAFTSMAN.

  • Pidgin: A mishmash language developed by a mishmash of immigrants that came to work the sugar plantations. Hawaiians, Portuguese, Chinese, Koreans, Puerto Ricans, Filipinos, I think all of them contributed to its development. PIDGIN SIMPLY MEANS A GRAMMATICALLY SIMPLIFIED VERSION OF A LANGUAGE.

  • Banyan Trees: INDIGENOUS TO INDIA. IMPORTED TO THE ISLANDS BY MISSIONARIES.

  • Leis: TAHITIANS BROUGHT THE TRADITION TO THE ISLANDS. HAWAIIANS POPULARIZED AND EXPANDED THE TRADITION.

  • The Aloha Spirit: TYPICALLY UNDERSTOOD TO MEA
N “LIVING JOYOUSLY IN THE PRESENT,” THIS LIFE PHILOSOPHY IS CLEARLY PROMINENT IN HAWAII, ALTHOUGH I DO NOT THINK IT IS EXCLUSIVE TO THE ISLANDS, NOR IS IT EMBRACED BY ALL HAWAIIANS.

  • Beaches: MOSTLY NATIVE BUT IN THE 1930S WAIKIKI BEACH WAS REPLENISHED WITH IMPORTED CALIFORNIA SAND.

  • Shave Ice: A JAPANESE FOOD BROUGHT TO THE ISLANDS BY JAPANESE IMMIGRANTS.

  • Pineapples: IMPORTED BY A SPANISH ADVISOR TO KING KAMEHAMEHA.

  • SPAM: One of humanities greatest mistakes. Also a product of the Upper Midwest! When I was ten my family went to the SPAM museum in Austin Minnesota, it was the second worst vacation we ever took, my sister threw up in the van on the drive back home. That Chrysler Town and Country smelled sour until the day we traded it in.

  YOUR SISTER MIGHT HAVE HAD AN ADVERSE REACTION TO THE BOUQUET OF PRESERVATIVES PRESENT IN SPAM. ADDITIONALLY, THE EXTREMELY HIGH SODIUM CONTENT PROBABLY MADE HER FEEL UNCOMFORTABLY BLOATED.

  • POG juice: PINEAPPLES, ORANGES, GUAVAS—NONE OF THESE ARE NATIVE TO HAWAII.

  • Poi: TARO, THE PRIMARY INGREDIENT IN POI, IS INDIGENOUS TO THE SRI LANKA AREA.

  • Hawaiian Barbecue: The definition of fusion cuisine. There is no way one culture can claim credit for this delicousness. JAPANESE, CHINESE, AND PORTUGUESE IMMIGRANTS ALL HAD A TREMENDOUS IMPACT ON THE HAWAIIAN CULINARY TRADITION.

  • Kukui Nuts: ORIGINALLY BROUGHT TO THE ISLANDS BY EARLY POLYNESIAN SETTLERS. ALTHOUGH THE KUKUI TREE IS THE STATE TREE OF HAWAII, IT IS NOT A NATIVE PLANT.

  • Coffee: Glad it’s here but it’s definitely not Hawaiian. Middle Eastern maybe? African? Heaven-en? (What do you call something native to heaven?) GOOD QUESTION. I DO NOT KNOW.

  • Hula Dancing: UNIQUE TO THE ISLANDS, ALTHOUGH SAMOA, TAHITI, AND A NUMBER OF OTHER POLYNESIAN ISLANDS HAVE SIMILAR DANCES.

  • Slippahs (aka flip-flops): Pretty sure flip-flops are Japanese. Positive flip-flops are worn all across the globe. Hawaiians, however, might be the only ones that call them “slippahs.” FLIP-FLOPS ARE JAPANESE. THEY BOOMED IN POPULARITY AFTER WWII.