by T W Neal
Pop and the men found one of the babies, eighteen months old, miles down the stream. She was still alive, stiff and nearly unresponsive with shock, and caught in a cat’s claw vine studded with inch-long thorns.
“The baby was blue with cold.” Pop is heroic, fully alive like the night when he and Awa chased away the local guys at the Forest House. His eyes are bright green, unclouded by alcohol or the dark moods he gets, even though he’s shivering and wrapped in a towel next to the gas stove, whose door Mom has opened as a heat source. “She was barely breathing. A miracle she was alive. I helped untangle her from the thorns. One of the men put her under his shirt against his skin to warm her up, and we got her back to her mother. She’s going to be okay.”
The other baby, naked and drowned, was found on the beach the next day.
I dream about the drowned baby. I see its pale limbs among the wet driftwood on the shore, its face bluish and eyes open and glassy. Other times I dream about the baby hanging in the thorns above the water, alive but trapped and dying.
Bonny tells me she dreams about the babies, too, and we get in bed together when either of us has a nightmare.
After the flood and our part in the rescues, everyone greets us by name and waves when they drive by. People are saying it’s the worst flood in Wainiha in fifty years, and by living through it and helping others, we’ve earned a place in that rugged valley.
Chapter Seventeen
River Camping
Tent in Wainiha with Bonny, Mom, and me
Age 9, Wainiha River vacant lot, 1973
The flood’s gone down, but now Mom and Pop are arguing about money. Bonny and I go out in the yard to play with our kittens, and Mom gets picked up by a friend to drive into town to “get some space.” Pop goes into the garage area to work on one of his fix-it projects.
Bonny and I are still playing in the back yard when Mom is dropped off in front of the store about an hour later.
“Help.” She staggers toward us down the little path beside the house.
I run to grab her because she’s hunched over and bleeding. She smells of booze and pakalolo, and there are hundreds of tiny glass cuts in her face and an oozing bump on her forehead.
“I’m okay,” she says to our exclamations. “I was in a little accident, but I got a ride home. I’m okay.”
“Mom was in a car wreck!” I bellow, fear making my voice too loud as she leans on me. Pop comes running out and helps her into the cottage.
He half-carries her into the bathroom and sits her on the toilet where the light from a bulb and the window are good. He’s murmuring and talking to her, dabbing at her face with a towel. “What happened?”
“My friend was drinking. She ran the car into the cement abutment at the Hanalei bridge.” Mom’s eyes are shut and her face is pale except for the bleeding marks on it. I can see glass gleaming in the cuts. “I didn’t have my belt on.”
“Why didn’t you get help in town?” He’s trying to dab at the blood, his big hands shaking and clumsy.
“No insurance. And I told you, she was drinking. I didn’t want to be around when the cops came. A guy gave me a ride home.”
Bonny and I mill around anxiously in the doorway. “Should we call someone?” I ask. We don’t have a phone, but we can go across the street to the Kaipakas’ and borrow theirs. Never far from any of our minds is how much an ambulance will cost, and that we don’t have health insurance.
“I think I can get this glass out.” Pop pulls open the drawer in the sink, digs around. Mom lists sideways and rests her mashed, bloody head against the wall, shutting her eyes.
“Where are the tweezers, kids?” Pop demands.
We were playing with them outside, under the back steps, doing one of our pretend games. I think it was my idea to take the tweezers from the Medical Kit, a zippered bag that’s strictly off-limits. Bonny and I glance at each other, horrified.
“WHERE ARE THE TWEEZERS?” Pop’s turning red and scary.
Bonny and I turn and run outside. On our hands and knees in the dirt, we crawl around under the house, looking for the tweezers. Looking and looking, as Pop yells and rants overhead. Finally, we find them, and Bonny runs back in—she gets along better with Pop. I’m terrified of what’s going to happen that we took something from the Medical Kit and didn’t return it—one of the family rules that must never be broken, and now I understand why.
Pop is at it for what seems like hours, picking slivers and shards out of Mom’s face. She yelps and cries and Pop growls and snarls as Bonny and I take turns hovering in the doorway. Finally, he puts her to bed, covered with Band-Aids. We’re all so traumatized that Pop forgets to punish us for taking the tweezers.
But Mom still doesn’t feel well. She isn’t getting better, and lies around a lot feeling queasy. Eventually she goes to Dr. Goodman in Kilauea, who takes cash and trade—and she returns bright-faced with excitement. “I’m pregnant!”
Bonny and I are super excited and dance around the kitchen. “I know it’s a boy this time,” Mom says. They’re not naming him James Theodore the Third. It’s part of their rebellion against Grandpa Jim and Gigi, and I’m happy about that. I’m still trying to be the quiet, brave, rugged James Theodore the Third that Pop wants.
After some weeks and a lot of discussion, Mom and Pop decide to name the baby Francis, after Saint Francis of Assisi, who they feel a spiritual connection to.
“Francis. That’s going to drive my parents nuts,” Pop says with a grin.
Bad news comes to us just as the rains are tapering off. The Olonolong family wants to rent the Wainiha Store, restore it, and open it for business again. Our landlord gives us notice.
Mom and Pop can’t find another house. There are no rentals on the North Shore that we can afford. We set up tents to live in across the street from the store, in a vacant lot behind Mom’s friend Ricky’s house.
Ricky lets us run a hose from her house to our campsite. Bonny brings her kitten, Macadamia Nut. We both had kittens until recently. Mine was an orange-striped one named Tommy. A neighbor’s dog, loose off his rope, ran into our yard and snatched Tommy right out of my lap. He whipped the kitten back and forth and broke his neck before I could even stand up. Macadamia Nut, Bonny’s kitten, had the presence of mind to climb on top of Bonny’s head out of reach of the dog, and our screams brought the neighbor before the dog knocked Bonny over to kill Macadamia Nut, too.
The two of us get one tent that we share with Macadamia Nut, and Mom and Pop are in another. Pop builds a clear plastic roof that connects our two tents and protects our cooking area, which is a board nailed to a couple of Java plum trees to hold the Coleman stove. Pop sets up a sneaky trail, winding between the trees, so that no one will see us come or go from our illegal campsite.
The plan is that we park our car on the shoulder of a nearby road, and wait until no cars are coming. Then we run across the street and enter the jungle when no one can spot us. On the way out, we hide behind a big tree and then dart across the street when the coast is clear. If someone drives by, we try to look like we’re just out for a casual walk.
Doing this whole plan while transporting our stuff from the store cottage to our jungle camp is not easy, and Pop decides it’s not enough. We need to dye all of our clothes green so we’re camouflaged. “We can’t draw attention to ourselves. We have to lay low.”
I sincerely hope we find another house to live in before school starts in another two months because Mom’s already told us she doesn’t feel healthy enough, being pregnant, to do homeschooling. I reluctantly surrender my stuff to the dye bucket, and stand in my panties with Bonny as Mom pushes all of our clothes down under the dark green dye water with a stick.
Mom giggles as she stirs the clothes with the stick, stuffing them down as they try to bubble up. “I feel like a witch, stirring my brew. This is ridiculous.”
Pop gets mad at her laughing. He swells—it’s like he expands with heat inside that turns him red, and he’s really very b
ig already. The colors of his eyes break into the parts that are blue and yellow as he opens them wide. He breathes deeply through his nose, his big surfer arms flexed. “Sue,” he growls, and he sounds just like scary Grandpa Garth when he says her name like that.
Mom stops giggling and focuses on keeping all the clothes submerged.
“We’re trespassing,” Pop says, after she’s being respectful again. “Whatever helps us blend in is worth doing.”
One of Pop’s dark moods is coming on. During those times, he doesn’t want to be around people, and thinks they’re all out to get us—but the people who live in the valley already know where we’re camping, especially since we had to have Ricky’s help, and she isn’t the secretive type. The whole dye thing is stupid, but I don’t want to get hit for saying so.
The dyed clothes turn awful mottled shades between green and brown, streaky and patchy and altogether horrible. Going to Hanalei School for fourth grade in homemade camouflage clothes is going to be social suicide—as if my red hair and freckles haven’t doomed me enough.
“This will help us hide,” Pop says as Mom hangs the clothes on a line to dry out. We don’t say anything. Staring at the sad sight of the ruined clothes dripping onto the grass, I suspect that we’re pretty weird.
I’d forgotten this, since we left La Jolla, because I haven’t had to be in school. Embarrassment and disloyalty at the realization make my stomach hurt.
After we complete the move out of the store house and into our secret camp, we withdraw from all of our friends in the valley, pretending we aren’t squatting in a jungle-covered vacant lot in the middle of town.
The very first week we’re in our camp, the Tai Hook family goes by on the river next to us, fishing from their dinghy with its little outboard motor. We duck into our green tents in our green clothes, dousing our lamps in the waning light of evening.
“Eh, howzit! We know you’re in there!” one of them singsongs in pidgin. “You silly Wilsons, you think you hiding!”
“I told you it was ridiculous,” Mom whispers to Pop as we wait for their boat to go by in the gloom of the tent.
It’s the beginning of summer when we move into our camp, which is pretty in Wainiha Valley and not too rainy. Pop builds a canoe out of a piece of aluminum roofing tin folded in half. He crafts a floaty hau bush outrigger to stabilize the canoe, and a couple of seats from boards. He finds most of the materials at the Hanalei dump, and it looks homemade—but it makes the river our playground. We can roam anywhere now.
To try out the canoe and explore a river we’ve always wanted to see, our whole family, with Knight along for the ride, puts our canoe on top of the Rambler with its surf racks, and drive to Kalihiwai, a deep valley just south of Hanalei.
The Kalihiwai River is wider and deeper than Wainiha, but no one lives in the valley lined with hau bush, buffalo grass, and a few gigantic shading albizia trees. We’ve only ever seen the river from way above on the graceful bridge that spans the magical-looking valley, or at the mouth of the river, where we love to jump in and ride the rapids on inner tubes into the ocean, haul them out, and do it again.
Quiet drifting and absorbing the sounds of nature in a meditative way are usually the only way Pop likes to do things, but having Knight along infuses an unusual degree of noise and excitement into our family adventure. Knight, Mom, and I paddle with mismatched paddles, Bonny sits in the bow, and Pop steers in the stern. We are able to make good time up the river, and our humble tin canoe glides easily through the water.
White egrets fly overhead, and blue herons stand like sculptures in the shallows. A shama thrush sings a liquid song, punctuated by mynahs scolding. The skin of the river seems solid, like jade-green Jell-O, until my paddle strikes it and breaks the surface. Watching the sun gild water striders sliding across the surface, and the way the water turns gold as my paddle slices into it, I get distracted and lose the pace Knight is setting.
“Hup, ho!” Knight grins, white teeth flashing over his tanned shoulder like we’re a real Hawaiian canoe team. I laugh and we get back in rhythm, speeding up.
We slide under the high span of the bridge, cars overhead a distant whir, and on and on out of view of it. Pop heard there’s a waterfall at the end, but none of us have been there, and it seems like we’re the river’s first explorers as we paddle on.
The channel gets narrower and shallower, hau bush clotting the banks with twisted, reaching branches. Pop steers us around protruding logs and clumps of pili and buffalo grass, and finally the canoe, loaded with people and riding low, runs aground on the muddy bottom. We all get out, and working together, haul the canoe up onto the overgrown bank.
We proceed on foot, finding a faint cattle trail dotted with manure that runs along the river. The valley narrows between steep green cliffs, makes a turn, and it gets even more overgrown. We walk for a mile or so, pushing through heavy buffalo grass and brush alongside the river which was now a stream—and then, around a clump of concealing trees, we find the Kalihiwai River’s headwaters.
An eighty-foot silver plume of falls pitches in levels off a fern-covered cliff into a beautiful pool. A rainbow arcs above the splashing water. The swimming hole is sheltered by Java plum trees covered in dangling vines, and wild ginger sweetly scents the air. We stand, taking in the beauty, and it seems like we are the first people ever to find this place.
Knight climbs up onto a boulder and gives a Tarzan yell, beating his chest, and leaps into the pool in a cannonball.
I glance nervously at Mom and Pop, but they’re both smiling—they like Knight. His energy and boldness are such a part of him and, by association, Darren, whom Pop admires. Since Knight is noisy and getting away with it, Bonny and I whoop and holler, jumping off the rocks into the pool.
There’s nothing quite like being hot and sweaty and leaping into a cool mountain stream after such effort to get there. I love the feeling of plunging into the water, the way the chill smacks the breath out of me, and all the shades of green there are to be seen when I open my eyes underwater.
We climb up the cliffs and jump into the pool from higher and higher, and Mom and Pop swim below us, taking turns dipping under the waterfall and watching and cheering us on. Happiness bubbles inside me, so strong that I’m afraid of how I’ll feel when it’s over.
After an hour or so of playing, we’re ready to go. “Can we swim back down the stream to the canoe from here?” Knight asks. “It’s shallow, just sliding over the rocks.”
“That’s fine,” Pop agrees. “We’ll walk back on the trail and meet you kids there.” Another miracle.
I’m not sure if it’s because Bonny almost drowned, or Mom had her accident, or even something about the flood—but these days, Pop doesn’t like us to take chances doing new things. He’s cautious and paranoid, like making us dye our clothes.
The three of us slip ‘n’ slide downstream, slithering over algae-covered rocks as we follow the river between its narrow, overgrown banks, ruining already worn-out bathing suits. We bump, bruise, and shriek with glee, catching freshwater prawns with our hands and throwing rotten, waterlogged guavas at each other as we make our way down shallow rapids to eventually reach the canoe.
This adventure would never have been the same without Knight. Side by side, sliding over the rocks and laughing, I forgive him for the death of the toads.
Chapter Eighteen
Camping Days
Wainiha camping
Age: 9, Wainiha vacant lot, Kauai, 1974
I make friends while we’re camping that summer with a girl named Tita. Her mother, Bunny, lives way back in the valley with a surfer friend of my parents. Tita and I are crazy for horses, and our favorite games involve pretending to be horses, keeping elaborate horse society rules.
We can’t talk. We can only speak in horse, snorting and whinnying. We take turns being the stallion or the lead mare, galloping along the shallow water of the river inside the sand bar beside the flood debris, kicking up water with our hoov
es. We become mates, an ordeal involving a good deal of biting and snorting as we act out pictures from The Big Book of Horses, growing mold from the damp in my tent.
I’m terrified that someone will see us neighing, tossing our manes, or rolling and pawing the sand. Somehow, that never happens.
We lie on our stomachs near the hot sand of the sandbar, legs floating in the lazy green river just down from the sun-bleached mountain of flood debris. We’re playing with handfuls of tiny black tadpoles, herding them into pools hollowed into the sand bank. “Do you think we’ll ever get real horses and be able to ride?” I ask.
“Definitely,” Tita says. “I’ll do anything to get a horse.” Tita has round green eyes, long curly black hair, and a pointed, triangular face like a cat. I don’t think she knows how pretty she is, and I’m afraid for her. Beauty like that just means someone might take you to the bushes and make you do sex things with them.
I suspect Tita already knows about sex, which Mom and Pop told me about after Mom got pregnant. It seems gross and weird to me, and I can’t understand why grownups like to do it.
Tita won’t talk about home. I’ve spent the night at Tita’s house and heard her mom fighting with her current man. I wish Tita could come live with us in our camp on the river.
I chase a few more black tadpoles with my hands into one of our little ponds. Unlike thumb-sized, green frog tadpoles, these tiny black ones stay small and emerge as perfect little toads when they’re ready, the size of a pinkie fingertip.