In every town of every island, thousands marched, demanding return of their lands, financial reparations for the past one hundred years, Hawaiian sovereignty making them a separate Native Hawaiian nation. Locals were calling the 1990s the Decade of Decision: they were prepared to march right into the twenty-first century. They were ‘onipa’a.
Certain groups of wealthy haole laughed, calling Hawaiians lazy do-nothings, seeing their all-night vigils as a form of entertainment, their demonstrations a joke. This would pass, haole said, and Hawaiians would go back to their Primo beers and ‘ukulele.
Then, a man wearing a black hood with eyeholes appeared on TV. “Wake up, haole. This revolution been going on for years. You know how many airline stewards piss in your drinks? Restaurant chefs wipe their armpits with your steaks. How come your pets are missing? How many haole tourists mugged? How many sailors disappeared?”
A reporter interviewing him said this was harassment, not revolution.
The man nodded. “Yeah, we know this is small-time, so we gonna’ step it up. Now we entering the big-time, our Libyan brothers teaching us the fine art of . . . plastiques. Hey, brah! Welcome to the war zone!” He made the Shaka sign, waving his thumb and little finger in greeting.
The reporter was arrested for refusing to divluge the man’s identity.
Hearing of the newscast, Simon shook his head. “Just what we need. A bloody publicist.”
They were sitting at Jade Valley Monastery, going over plans, bombs set to go off simultaneously at a hotel and a geothermal plant. Men argued with Simon, wanting the bombs to go off on the exact date of the overthrow of their monarchy.
“Listen carefully,” he said. “Bombs went off yesterday in a bowling alley near Kaneohe Air Force Base. Kānaka left their calling card. ‘HO‘OMA-NA‘O LILI‘UOKALANI.’ By January 17, things will be popping on every island. Police, the National Guard are already tripling forces. Security will soon be so tight you won’t be able to get near a hotel.”
“He’s right,” Vanya said. “There’s been so much coverage, everyone from here to Botswana knows it’s our Centennial and what was done to us. Sympathetic groups are faxing messages from round the world. One came yesterday from Northern Ireland. Another from Latvia.”
“It’s got to be soon, very soon,” Simon said. “I figure early morning, New Year’s Day. National hangover. Most people still in bed. You’re not out to kill. You just want to make a statement. Right?”
He was tense and it gave his nasal voice an edge, an arrogance that put locals on the defensive.
“What you sayin’? We gotta stay sober, sittin’ in dis dump on New Year’s Eve?”
“You want a revolution ... or a fucking lū’ au?” He stood up, knocking men aside.
Vanya stood beside him in the dark, staring at the sky.
“The funny thing, the absolutely hilarious thing,” he said, “is that I volunteered for this.”
“You’re still the enemy, Simon. It’s clever men like you that stole our lands.”
“All due respect, sweetheart, doesn’t take much cleverness. Well, that’s a bit unfair. These men are smart, they’re tough and angry. But, something holds them back. Goes back to your ali‘i days, kings, chiefs, that whole caste system, someone over them, always telling them what to do.” He paused. “And what about Toru? Still doesn’t know he’s out, does he?”
She shook her head. “He’d kill me.”
In the distance they heard rumblings. Pu‘u O‘o Vent of Kilauea was flowing off and on again, boiling along new paths, burning small forests. At night cars drove up and down Volcanoes National Park, hoping to see Pu‘u O‘o spew its fireworks in moonlight.
“We’ve got two nights left,” Simon said. “The night before we’ll transport the bombs to holding sheds, each group moving closer to their target. One heads up the west coast toward the Halekūnani Hotel. One up the east coast toward the geothermal plant at Puna. Then they sit tight in those sheds all night.”
“You didn’t tell them that just now.”
“I don’t want them all together. Men going into combat have an odor. Smells like flesh burning; adrenaline sizzling through the veins. You get a group like that squeezed in one place, invariably one of them blows. I’ve seen it time and again. They can’t swallow, can’t spit. Someone coughs, they go berserk, start shooting guns off.”
She tilted her head, looked up at him. “How are you feeling?”
“I’m fine, sweetheart. Just plowing on.”
“After this ...”
“After this, I’m taking you on holiday. Denpensar. Find a bungalow with real curtains. Lie in hammocks sipping drinks.”
She laughed disdainfully. “Holiday. That sounds so . . .”
“Watered down?” He studied her. “Vanya, do you absolutely need to grab each day by the throat? Don’t you ever want to sit quiet, see what life blows your way?”
She tried to imagine it, a quiet, settled life, and it was like seeing herself buried neck-down in wet sand, some huge obscenity sprawled beside her licking her face.
“Is Simon on medication?” Jess asked.
“For what?”
“Vanya. I’m a physician, remember?”
She looked down, frightened. “He says its from Agent Orange in the war.”
Jess closed her eyes. “Dioxin. Without medication it destroys the human organism. Liver, central nervous system. The skin. I looked at him and thought of ...”
“. . . Grandfather. He says it’s similar, Jess. He’s not sure the medication’s working. As soon as we finish our project, I’m taking him to a specialist in Honolulu.”
Jess looked down at her hands and they were shaking. “Vanya. You can’t go through with this. You can’t.”
“It’s too late.”
Jess took her by the shoulders. “Something’s happening. Ever since Pono died, I have these dreams, visions . . .”
Vanya shook her off. “We’re all spooked. It’s in the air. People are thinking. Really thinking.”
“It’s more than that. I’m frightened.”
“Don’t you think I’m scared? I’m terrified. You have to hold up your end, take care of the farm. It’s why you came home. Don’t you understand, Jess. You were called.”
She hesitated, then pulled from a pouch the large black pearl, glowing and precious and rare. “Take this, Pono left it for us. It was our great-great-great-grandmother’s. Sell it if you have to, to keep the farm going.”
Jess held it in her hand, the beauty, the weight of it a sudden burden. Looking close, she was made dizzy by a hundred human images leaping at her from its blue-black depths, or was it light refracting? She felt momentary fright, felt intense heat from the pearl threatening to scald her nerves to a climax.
She pushed it back at Vanya. “I could never sell it.”
“Jess, we haven’t time for sentiment!”
She placed it in its pouch, placed the pouch in Vanya’s palm. “Keep it, keep it with you. Grandfather said we should each own something small and beautiful, remember? Later, we’ll decide.”
Vanya embraced her, feeling they were girls again. They held each other silently, held and seemed beheld in shafts of sunlight going dim and dusty, like messages from a god who had begun to vacillate. In that moment Vanya galvanized herself into exclaiming what was truth.
“I love you, Jess. I always did. You’ve got to hold our world together. So much of it has slipped away.”
Then exclaiming what she wished were truth.
“And I promise, when this is over, no more bombs. I’ll go back to a safe bureaucratic life. I’ll help out on the farm. We’ll be a family.”
Jess watched her leave the room reluctantly, hand brushing old koa chairs, a warped teak desk, her passage dignified and melancholy, as if she wanted to pick things up, hold them to her breast.
All day Run Run’s face was flushed, her movements quick, irregular.
Toru sat in the kitchen braiding a rawhide bullwhip, watching h
er. “What’s wrong with you? Slow down, slow down.”
“What for, slow down.” She moved close, stroked his sleek, handsome head. “Pono always say slow-motion vulgar.”
He put the whip down, studied his calloused hands. He finished a quart of guava juice straight from the carton, then spoke in half Pidgin, his boyhood argot.
“Tūtū. I never tell you this, why, because I know you know. But, sometimes, good to hear.”
“What. What.” She raced round, flinging fresh squid, ink splashing up her arms.
“Everything I do, for you. To make you proud. You understand?”
She closed her eyes, crossing herself. Grandson. Forgive me what I gotta do.
“Okay! Okay!” She tossed a bag in his lap. “Good kine crack seed.” She pushed him toward the kitchen door. “Now, out da way, till I pau makin’ suppah.”
At dinner, Jess kept her head down, unable to make eye contact with anyone. At the same time she wanted to stand up and shout at them.
Vanya. Love! Be brave. It will make your life a richer thing. Forget bombs and revolutions. We’re here for such a short while. Toru, turn around. Look! Your youth is passing. Stop aiming at yourself, you’re not the target. Life is the target. Live!
Slumped over her plate, she felt her shoulders hunch. Rachel had departed days ago. If these two left Jess would be alone. Middle-aged-alone. Since Pono’s death, Jess felt youth had closed and locked a door, a shot and rusted bolt. She saw it in her mirror, as if someone had draped older skin across her face in sleep. Funny, it happened when I wasn’t looking, and yet I was looking. It was so subtle, the way day becomes night in a plane.
Throughout the meal, Run Run rattled back and forth table to kitchen, hand clutching her apron pocket. She seemed unable to sit down. Now she cleared dishes and carried in a tray of finely etched shot glasses.
“Yoah tūtū’s crystal, time you use. Everybody going out tomorrow night, we celebrate New Year’s Eve now!”
Simon sniffed at his little glass. “Smells like first-rate brandy.”
“Good kine,” Run Run said. “Friends bring when Duke come home from Kalaupapa.”
They lifted their shot glasses, “‘Ōkole Malunal” threw back the brandy.
Run Run circled the table, instantly refilling their glasses. “Hau’oli Makahiki Hou!”
This time she didn’t drink. She just stood tense, holding her glass while the others threw theirs back. Toru swallowed, smacked his lips, and motioned for another. Then his expression changed; he squinted, as if trying to focus underwater. He grunted twice, and tried to stand. His head rolled, he fell face-forward on the table.
“Mot’er God.” Run Run wept as she picked his head up, looking at the others. “Okay. You help me tie ’im up, den everybody pau, I do da rest.”
Simon stared at her, then Vanya, then it all fell into place. “Right. Now, how do you plan to keep him out for thirty-six hours?”
Run Run pulled a bottle from her pocket. “Knockout drop. He wake up too soon, I give him moah. Keep ’im out for weeks, if got to.”
The four of them struggled, dragging him upstairs to Pono’s big four-poster.
“Why this room?” Jess asked. “We’ve kept it clean, untouched.”
The old woman wept bitterly, as they tied Toru’s wrists criss-crossed in front of him, rolled his body in a sheet, bound the sheets tightly with rope.
“He sleep wit’ smell of Duke and Pono, by and by dey enter his dreams. Dey hold him like a child, speak wise. Maybe he wake up kind. No ho’omake me for what I done.”
Early New Year’s Eve, Vanya watched men leave the monastery, gym bags cradled in their arms. Carefully, as if the bags held infants, they placed them in their cars. Two cars carrying bombs, and two escort cars. One car and escort would head up the west coast, spend the night in a deserted garage outside Kailua. At five A.M. New Year’s morning, they would make the forty-minute drive up the coast to the Halenani Hotel, where Kito, the gardener, would be waiting. Another car would head up the east coast, hole up in a deserted airplane hangar, and at the same time tomorrow morning, drive to nearby Puna, where a contact would be waiting near the geothermal plant. Simon, Vanya and a driver were in the escort car headed east to Puna.
Now Simon looked round the monastery, stripped bare of everything, even walls washed clean of fingerprints.
“This is it, then,” he said. “I shouldn’t come back if I were you. They’ll be looking in every niche, bringing in dogs. You get caught back here, they’ll smell it in your hair, your clothes. A trace of explosives powder, those Dobermans ejaculate.” He shook hands. “All the best. You’re a good bunch of mates even if you despise me!”
Vanya hugged each man, wanting in her heart to cry.
“Kōkua Hawai‘i!” she whispered. “Huli!”
“Aloha ‘Aina! Huli!”
They drove without headlights through the woods until they reached the paved road. One by one, they hit their lights, accelerating softly, each car keeping distance from the next. Three miles down the road, a big flatbed lumbered toward them, its single headlight a bouncing eye.
Simon flicked on his two-way radio. “Eeeasy, boys, eeeeasy. Just a sugar truck.”
“How do you know?” his driver asked.
He flicked off the radio. “I don’t. You play the odds.”
The truck passed, swerving slightly. They drove on quietly for several miles until they reached Highway 11. The first two cars turned right, headed west toward Captain Cook and farther on, Kailua. Simon’s car turned left following the lead car up the east coast. After ten minutes, he rolled down the window, eyeing traffic, people driving into Volcanoes National Park hoping Pu‘u ‘Ō‘ō Vent would be active that night. The park was open round the clock, and people drove in at all hours, heading down toward the sea, watching for volcanic fireworks.
Another ten minutes passed. The driver, a wiry Hawaiian-Chinese named Lloyd, looked at Vanya in the rear-view.
“So, Vanya, what happened to Toru? He plenny sick?”
“Plenty,” she lied. “Food poisoning. He’ll catch up with us if he can.”
Simon scratched the rash beneath his ear, turned on his radio. “Simon here. Carl, how’s the west coast contingent?”
The radio squawked, a husky voice came through. “A-OK! Light traffic. Boys ahead are fine.”
He turned off his radio, leaned back, and felt his metabolism change. Overhead, the sudden Wup! Wup! Wup! of helicopters. He spun round, looking at Vanya; she saw panic in his eyes.
“Park rangers, Simon. Keeping a night-watch on Pu‘u ‘Ō‘ō Vent.”
He looked up, saw their outlines circling like locusts, zooming far, then close. Wup! Wup! One of them seemed to hover directly over the car. Simon felt his wrists sprout sweat, smelled the jungles of ’Nam and Laos, excrement on punji sticks. His skin trembled all over, like something ill-fitting he had borrowed for this journey. A journey that was side-tracking, veering dangerously.
“Suppose they’re not rangers. Suppose we’re being tracked . . . that truck back at the monastery, too coincidental.”
“Then why didn’t they arrest us?”
“Maybe they don’t know who they’re looking for. Maybe they just got the tip.” He turned on his radio. “Carl? How you boys doing? Anything behind you?”
Carl’s voice again, crackling, distant. “Nothing, man. All clear.”
They drove in silence, except for the chopper that seemed to be keeping pace with them. Simon cursed as the lead car suddenly braked and pulled over, signaling them.
He was out of his car before it even stopped. “What’s up?”
“Spooky, man. Why dat buggah followin’ us?” The driver of the lead car studied the chopper, then he pointed down the road. “Somet’ing wrong, Simon. Pile up. Look like accident maybe.”
Simon moved ahead of him, eyes straining in the dark. He walked on for several minutes, stood very still, then came back half running.
“Bloody roadblock.”
He slid into his car, clicked on the radio. “Simon here. Carl, listen. Where are you boys approximately? What town?”
“Hey! Not far from my folks,” Carl squawked. “Six, seven miles down da road, turn-off for Miloli‘i. Five-mile roller-coaster road take you right down da sea. Paradise, man!”
Simon’s voice turned clipped and harsh. “Listen carefully. Signal the car in front of you. I want you both to turn off at Miloli‘i. Got that? Both cars. Turn off at Miloli‘i.”
“... What’s happenin,’ man?”
“Get rid of your cars, hide them.”
“But . . .”
“It’s your village. Borrow other cars. Tomorrow morning, everything according to plan.”
“Simon, what da fuck ... ?”
“They’re on to something. There’s a chopper cruising us. They’ve set up a roadblock. Maybe that truck from the monastery is tracking you. If we lose touch, hear me, if we lose touch, you boys are on your own.”
He turned off the radio, sat there thinking. “We’ve got to ditch these cars.”
“You’re panicking,” Vanya cried. “Those choppers are park rangers.”
Overhead, the chopper seemed to momentarily veer off, heading toward the roadblock.
“Shut up, Vanya.” Simon turned to Lloyd. “If we head into the park, we’re cornered, right? There’s no where to go except the sea.”
“Right.”
“They wouldn’t expect us to do that.”
“Who is ‘they’?”
“Dunno. That’s what bothers me.” He turned on a flashlight, studied a map. “Tell those boys ahead what’s happening. Leave nothing in their car.”
Lloyd stared at him, confused. “Dey’ll find da cars.”
“Right. And assume we outsmarted them, finessed their roadblock in pickups.”
“But, where are we going?” Vanya asked.
“We’re going to hitch-hike, sweetheart, into Volcanoes Park. Join the crowds ogling the lava flows.”
Shark Dialogues Page 51