Goats, Boats, and Killer Cutthroats

by David F. Berens

  “Well, just on a whim I pitched a story about Kona coffee to one of my food magazines.”

  “Alison…”

  “And they bought it. They jumped at it. My editor there said they want to do an entire issue on coffee because it’s getting so trendy.”

  “That’s great!”

  “No, it’s not. It costs a thousand dollars to fly to Hawaii. I looked.”

  “So get the magazine to pay for it.”

  “They’re not going to pay that. And certainly not for both of us. I still don’t know how you weaseled that out of my editor for our Montana trip.”

  “You want me to talk to this editor?”

  “No!” She answered that a little too quickly. “I’ve already sold two articles to this magazine. The editor likes me and said she’d like to work more with me. Oh, I never should have pitched this without thinking this through.”

  “You know, you don’t have to do this. There’s no—”

  “Yes, I do. I can’t back out of this now. I’ve just established her trust, and this article could even get me a regular gig with them!”

  “Then it sounds like it’s worth at least explaining your situation to her. Tell her that this is an unusual situation and you need some expenses covered. I’ll bet they’ll cover at least your flight. It’s worth trying. You’re the one who told me you can’t afford to take any more jobs that cost you more in expenses than they pay in fees.”

  “I know, I know.”

  “You’re a professional journalist, Alison. If you present yourself like one, you’ll be treated like one.”

  “You’re right.”

  “So figure out how much money you’ll need, and tell them.”

  “Okay. I will.”

  “So … why don’t you look happy? You’re selling an article.”

  “She turned up a corner of her mouth. “You want to go see the Ironman?”

  I learned more about Hawaii in my first hour at Volcanoes National Park than I learned about Pennsylvania in my entire eighth grade Pennsylvania History class. Here’s my condensed version: A volcano popped up from inside the Earth in the middle of the Pacific Ocean and created an island. That one is Kauai. The crust above shifted northwest, and another volcano island popped up where the first one used to be. That one is Oahu. This process continued until the easternmost island, Hawaii, a.k.a. the Big Island, was formed. So one single volcano source underneath the Earth’s crust stays in place while the crust above moves over every time an island is formed. Sorta like a conveyor belt underneath a Hershey’s Kiss squirter, except volcanic islands are squirted from underneath.

  Anyway, Alison and I came to Volcanoes National Park this morning, our first full day on the Big Island. This island is like nothing else on Earth. The land we drove our rental car across to get here this morning looked like Mars. Then we walked around on fields of lava—huge, thick fields. I’ll bet they were more than a mile wide. One of them even flowed right overtop of the road. And it’s still flowing here right now, but mostly underground. It’s like something out of a sci-fi movie.

  We stood at the top of a sea cliff made completely out of lava and watched the waves crash into the side. The power behind them startled us as the rock carried the percussion of the crashes a hundred feet up through the wall and into our chests. Everyone ooh’ed and ah’ed at the force we felt with each wave. And these were just your everyday good-morning ocean waves. I wouldn’t want to be in front of those big waves like you see in surfing competitions when they came crashing in.

  We wandered around the place all day, it was so fascinating. We saw the main caldera—the hole in the top of the volcano where the smoke comes out—and several side vents that were almost invisible where more smoke was coming out of the ground almost under our feet.

  The last thing we looked at was an underground lava tube. This is an underground horizontal tube the size of a train tunnel, almost perfectly cylindrical, formed from a volcano long ago. When lava flows, it cools and hardens on the outside first, so the inside keeps flowing inside its own rock skin. If the inside has a place to empty into, like the ocean, it leaves behind a lava tube. This one is huge, but I guess they can be any size. It’s fascinating to walk inside this thing imagining yourself as lava flowing through the Earth.

  I got a little silly inside the tube and imagined myself as a magician, as I like to do, and spotted an opportunity to practice my latest trick: disappearing and reappearing somewhere else.

  I saw what looked like a secondary path that the lava had taken, leaving behind a side tube, separated from the main tube by a thick column. I jumped ahead of Alison, dodged some fellow tourists, and ducked behind the column. She’s used to me doing crazy things in public and usually tries to ignore me to minimize her own embarrassment.

  Anyway, I snuck back around the column so I’d come up behind her. It’s not exactly the magician’s trick you see in a theater, but this is a vital element of it that deserves practice. After I gave her sufficient time to go by, I stepped back out into the main tube, hidden behind another couple.

  I kept an eye on Alison, and sure enough, she slowed down and started looking around. Finally, she stopped and said into space, “Okay, where are you?”

  I stepped out from behind the couple with a quiet “Ta-da.”

  She just grabbed my hand and said, “You’re worse than a little kid. Stay with me. It’s spooky down here.”

  I smiled in satisfaction. My trick worked, plus she was holding my hand. Two for two.

  By the time we finally left, it was getting dark, and the only hope for a restaurant nearby was a small town to the south, so we got into the car and headed that direction.

  We drove downhill on a very long, straight highway. Something about the town looked strange in the distance, and it wasn’t until we got there that Alison identified it. Every light in the town had a big hood over it. When we were driving down from the volcano, we didn’t see the streetlights like you normally would. All we saw were the relatively pale projections they cast onto the surrounding ground.

  After we filled our bellies, we headed back the way we came to get over to the other side of the island. Almost immediately, we started seeing lots of stars in the sky, and I mean lots of stars. Way more than I had ever seen before, and it wasn’t even totally dark yet. Again, Alison figured out that the lights in the town below were hooded to minimize light pollution. She had read that there were observatories on the two dormant volcanoes on this island, so it made sense that they would have to minimize any artificial light that would interfere with their viewing. About midway across the island, we passed a road that led to the observatories and confirmed Alison’s theory.

  By this time, it was really black outside of our headlight beams, and we could see the most vivid image of the Milky Way that I had ever seen in my life. I had to get a better look at it.

  I pulled as far off the road as I could and shut off the headlights. We got out and let our eyes accommodate to the darkness. There was no moon in the sky. Just many thousands of stars, split down the center of the sky by the Milky Way.

  I had always assumed that those pictures I saw of the Milky Way were enhanced or taken with telescopes or something. They never looked real. But now I was seeing this with my own unaided eyes. Two bright bands of star clouds with a dark jagged gap in between. It looked like a Star Trek scene where the edge of the galaxy had been ripped apart. We stared at this vision in awe for a long time before I even cared about getting out my camera.

  Eventually, I got over my astonishment and set up my tripod. I got some awesome shots that will definitely go on my website, and at least one of which I’ll probably enlarge and frame for my own wall. This was such an incredible experience that I wanted to remember it forever.

  2

  Dark Roast

  Hey there. This is Alison.

  Today was my coffee interview day. Kona coffee is famous around the world, and I wanted to learn what makes it so special. Through my re
search, I had already learned that it all comes from a group of small farms, mostly family run, all operating side-by-side within a surprisingly small region. There is no giant Kona Coffee plantation or Big Agriculture present in this business. I want to tour several companies while I’m here, but I had already decided to focus my article on one particular company.

  The King Kamehameha Coffee Company is slightly smaller than its neighbors. It’s a family business, and I had emailed back and forth with Jessica, one of the owners. She was very friendly, and she invited me to come see their entire production process.

  Jack and I arrived at 8:00 a.m. With the time difference from North Carolina, getting up early was hardly a chore. The bigger challenge was figuring out what to do in the morning when we woke up so early. But Jack had little trouble convincing me that just because we woke up early didn’t mean that we had to get out of bed right away.

  Jessica met us at the door. “Come in. This is our tasting room. We always start our tours here, but we usually have some samples prepared. I wasn’t ready for you this early. I’m sorry.”

  “Oh, that’s not a problem. Are we too early?”

  “No, no. I knew you were coming. I just wasn’t ready for you yet. But I’ll get some brewing for you. I’ll be just a couple minutes.”

  Jessica was clearly not a native Hawaiian. I was a little bit disappointed, even though I should have gotten that before from her name.

  She left the room, and I wandered over to an open window to look outside. A little, bright green lizard poked his head in; then scampered across the sill and halfway down the wall.

  I squealed and jumped back. Jack saw the object of my concern and laughed as he came over to my rescue. He reached for the lizard, but it scampered the rest of the way down the wall and across the floor, prompting another squeal from me.

  Jessica returned and said, “Malia will bring in the coffee samples. We prepare a selection that shows the range of tastes from different types of roasting. Step outside with me first.”

  Jessica walked us over to a short row of scraggly bushes about 5 feet tall. “These are coffee trees. You can see the different colors of berries on them. The green berries aren’t ripe yet. We don’t pick them until they’re red like these. When they’re red, we call them cherries.” She held up a small cluster of green and red berries that did look like small cherries. She picked a bright red one and handed it to Jack since my hands were occupied, taking notes.

  “The trees grow much bigger than these. Up on the mountainside, they’d grow thirty feet tall if we didn’t keep them pruned. That’s where the best growing conditions are.”

  A goat came wandering over. “This is Keanu,” Jessica said. “He’s usually up on the hillside doing weed control, but sometimes the guys bring him down here. He likes to give the chickens a hard time,” she said with a smile. Half a dozen chickens were pecking at the ground behind a fence where Keanu had just come from. “Everything we do is organic here. That’s true of all Kona coffee.”

  “What’s with these little bananas?” Jack asked her as he reached toward a small tree beside the coffee bushes. “That’s the second time I’ve seen these here.”

  “Those are apple bananas. Try one. They’re really good.”

  Jack picked off one of the short, fat bananas and peeled it back. He took a bite and said, “Wow, that is good. It doesn’t taste like a normal banana.” He peeled it back further and held it up to my mouth. “Try it. What do you think?”

  I took a small bite. “That is good. It tastes more like a grape, though, than an apple.”

  Jack shoved the rest of it into his mouth. “Yeah, you’re right,” he said while he chewed it up. You can’t take some people anywhere.

  “You’ve probably only ever eaten one kind of banana,” Jessica said, “but there are many varieties. A lot of them grow wild around here.” She stepped between Jack and the goat. “Let’s go back inside. I’ll keep Keanu from following you in.”

  There were now three carafes and a stack of small paper cups sitting on the table in the middle of the room. My little green friend wasn’t anywhere to be seen. “Now we’re ready for visitors,” Jessica said. “Have a seat.”

  She pumped out a small amount into a cup and handed it to Sam; then handed another cup to me. “This is a light roast. It’s often sold as a breakfast coffee because it’s tangier. If you slurp it, you can sense more of the taste.”

  Jack gave his a good ol’ loud slurp.

  “That’s perfect!” Jessica exclaimed. “Have you cupped before?”

  Jack gave her a blank stare in response. I laughed. I had never seen Jack at a loss for words before.

  “I don’t think Jack’s much of a coffee drinker,” I said. “Honestly, I’m not either, but I do enjoy a cup sometimes.” I sipped mine.

  “You’re supposed to slurp it,” Jack said. “She said mine was perfect.”

  I rolled my eyes.

  “Tasting coffee is called cupping,” Jessica explained. “When you slurp it, it aerates the coffee, and you get droplets across your entire tongue and up in your nose so you get a more complete taste sensation.” Then she looked at me and added conspiratorially, “But I’m with you. I’m a sipper.”

  Next we tried the medium roast, and then the dark. “I like the medium roast the best,” I said. “Not too tangy, and not too … burnt? Can I say that?”

  Jessica smiled. “We don’t even sell a dark roast, because it is burnt. The longer you roast the beans, the more flavor you drive out of them.

  “Kona coffee is among the best coffees in the world because we have the ideal growing conditions here. The soil is rich in minerals from the lava. The temperature and elevation are perfect. We get lots of rain, but we have good drainage because the ground is so porous and sloped. We have lots of sunshine, but good cloud cover every afternoon from the volcano keeps the trees from getting scorched.

  “For a dark roast, the beans are burned black, and they all taste the same, no matter where the beans are grown. With a lighter roast, Kona coffee has a much better flavor than other coffees.”

  “I actually like the dark roast best,” Jack said.

  I kicked him under the table. “They don’t make that here.”

  “Oh, we made all of these,” Jessica said. “We just don’t sell a dark roast. We’ll roast a small amount for samples when we need it. Would you like a cup of it? We should have some bigger cups out here anyway.”

  She went to a cabinet and brought over a stack of Styrofoam cups. She filled one with dark roast and handed it to Jack. “Would you like a cup of the medium?” She asked me.

  “Sure, thank you,” I replied.

  Now, I’m a southern girl, so I’m a tea drinker. And by tea, I mean sweet tea. Very sweet. Whenever I do drink coffee, I usually sweeten it a lot, too. That didn’t seem to be an option here, but I wanted to be polite.

  “Let’s go into the factory now,” Jessica said. “You can bring that with you,” indicating our cups of coffee. Jack saw my hesitation, needing two hands to take notes, and he picked up my coffee along with his.

  Inside the factory, Jessica handed us each a pair of earplugs and turned us over to her husband, Kekoa. He had the stocky build of a native Hawaiian. Kekoa greeted us warmly and walked us over to the first machine. It was pretty loud, and he had to yell for us to hear him.

  “The first thing we have to do with the cherries they bring in is remove the skin,” he said. “We do that in this mill.” A big drum was turning around like a cement mixer.

  “What happened to them?” Jack asked. “They’re all black. They look like raisins.” He swallowed the last of his coffee and set my cup inside his.

  Kekoa saw that he was looking at the next batch of berries waiting to go into the mill. “That’s what the cherries look like after they’re dried,” he explained. “Yeah, when they bring the cherries down from the hill, we have to dry them for two weeks. This is how they look after that.”

  “Cool,” Jack sa
id. He took a big swig of my coffee.

  Kekoa scooped up a handful of milled beans. “This is what they look like after the skin is removed. Each cherry has two coffee beans in it. Like a little walnut. They face each other.” He tossed the beans back in with the others and led us to the next machine.

  “This is the roaster. This is the most critical part of the process because it determines the flavor of the coffee. If you don’t get the beans hot enough, they’ll be too tangy, and if you let them get too hot, they get bitter. We have to monitor the temperature very precisely to get the right roast.”

  As he said this, he pointed to a teenage boy who was loading a big bag and then pointed to the roaster. “It’s okay,” the boy told him, but he walked over and looked at the dials anyway. He nodded to Kekoa. “It’s good.”

  “He’s in training,” Kekoa said to us by way of explanation.

  “If you screw up a batch, can’t you still sell it as a different roast?” Jack asked. I could have kicked him. He gulped down some more of my coffee.

  “We don’t screw up,” Kekoa replied. “We monitor our roasting very carefully. We have an excellent reputation for having the best coffee. People come to us from all over the world. We have a buyer coming to see us from China this week.”

  “I’m sorry,” I said on Jack’s behalf. “We didn’t mean any offense.”

  “It’s okay,” Kekoa said. “It’s a good question.”

  “Your coffee really is good,” Jack said, holding up his stacked cups in a salute, then downing the last of it.”

  “You can get some more after the tour,” Kekoa said.

  “Oh, I think Jack’s had enough coffee for one morning,” I said.

  “I feel great!” Jack said, beaming.

  “The final step is grinding.” Kekoa led us over to a smaller machine where a woman was holding up bags to a spout to fill them; then taking each bag to another machine that I guess sealed it shut. Another person stepped up onto a crate behind her machine and dumped a bucket of beans into the top. “The size of the grind is important so the water will flow through the coffee at the right rate to pick up the flavor. The operator fills each bag, then seals it and puts it in the box, and that’s it.”