"And I love you too, Makani. I always will." She let go of my hand, pushed the sandwich plate closer to me, and got up from the table. "Now eat your lunch. You have some cleaning to do upstairs. If you need me, I'll be in here getting dinner ready."
"I don't need dinner tonight. A guy at work invited me to Big Beach for a cookout."
"That's great, dear! I didn't want to cook tonight, anyway. I'll just heat some leftovers and go to bed early."
"Are you sure? If you want me to, I'll stay with you."
"Don't be silly. Go out with your new friends. Maybe you'll meet a nice Hawaiian boy while you're out. It'll certainly stop you from moping around here all day long."
"You wouldn't mind? If I brought home a nice Hawaiian boy?"
"Certainly not! And if you want to impress him more, why not take my old room instead of that closet you have now?"
"Thanks, Auntie. I could do with some more space." My stomach rumbled loudly. I realized I hadn't eaten anything other than a cereal bar all day. Auntie laughed when she heard it and glared at my uneaten sandwich, silently ordering me to eat it. On her way to her bedroom, I could tell she was still shaky and wondered what it might mean to save the inn. The day when she could no longer manage it at all was approaching.
I thought about what that day might be like while I ate my meal in silence, lulled into a sense of peace and complacency by the sounds of the ocean waves breaking only fifty feet away. Was the Estate Inn without Auntie still the Estate Inn?
6
Evening 7
Late afternoon traffic made me late for the cookout. It was 5:30 when I pulled into a half-empty parking lot on the edge of Big Beach. Disappointed revelers sauntered back to their cars with dry towels and dry bathing suits. Some towed upset children behind them who begged not to go.
As I parked my car and approached the beach, I spotted the reason for the mass exodus. A woman in a navy blue shirt and white shorts struggled to put up a giant red flag with a "No swimming" sign and a "Marine Stingers" sign affixed to the pole.
I stood at the entrance to the beach, my towel slung over my shoulder, looking for a red canopy tent. I wondered if Jim and the others got alerted ahead of time. I didn't see them and had no text messages.
The older woman working on the sign spotted me standing there.
"Local?" she asked me.
"More or less."
"The water's littered with man o' wars. You can use the beach. Just don't go swimming. I wouldn't even go near the shore if I were you. Some have already washed up."
"Thanks for the warning," I said.
She nodded and got back to work as I continued toward the nearly deserted beach. Some locals lingered, having nothing better to do, but all the tourists cleared out.
I spotted a group of guys climbing down a hillside on my right. One had a wet towel pressed to his arm. He cringed and hissed. I guessed he had an unfortunate encounter with a stinger.
They climbed the hill from Little Beach, the island's “most official unofficial” nude beach. Mom never let me go there as a kid. Understandably. We were raised by a Catholic father who insisted we adopt all of the rules and regulations and prudishness that came with it, from baptism to confirmation. I never got confirmed, though. My dad left us by then, despite the Church’s stance on divorce.
I wondered what to do next. I could walk the whole length of Big Beach looking for Jim or I could throw caution to the wind and hike over the steep hill to Little Beach and lose my inhibitions. Mom would hate the idea.
"Don't go over there! It's littered with dirty hippies," she had once said to me when I was a child.
I didn't mind as much now, though. Dirty hippies seemed like they would be a fun bunch. It took me five minutes to climb through the steep, rocky ravine. I regretted showing up in slippers. The hike required sneakers, at a minimum. When I crested the hill, the walk down was a bit easier. I found myself at a much smaller beach, only a few hundred feet across.
The place looked nearly empty. Closer to the entrance, a few young women still lay on the sand, topless and without a care in the world. They shared a large bottle of beer between the three of them.
The girls ignored me as I walked by. Midway down the beach, an older couple packed up their things. They tried their best to put their clothes back on while minimizing the amount of sand that ended up in their trousers. Both of them smiled at me as I walked by.
"Don't go in the water. Too many jellyfish," the woman said to me.
Passing over her mixing up jellyfish with the Portuguese man o’ war, I thanked her and continued to the far opposite end of the beach, now completely deserted. I spotted figures in the trees of hulking, naked old men perched in one spot or another hoping to cruise their way to a hookup. One of them noticed me and pursed his lips. I did my best to ignore him, hoping he might go away.
I admired them for their courage, though. What they attempted to do was certainly not in the Little Beach spirit, but that didn't stop them from cruising all day long. Illegal? Yes. Brave? For sure. The man ogling me got the hint that I wasn't interested and slipped back into the woods.
With him gone, I felt blissfully alone. I dropped my bathing suit, kicked off my slippers, and tossed them aside. After slathering some sunblock on my unmentionables — that part of me had never seen a moment of sunlight in my entire adult life — I lay back on the sand and basked in the late afternoon sun.
The waves, the brisk breeze, and the warm sand against my bare skin lulled me into a surprising sense of repose. I felt relaxed, more relaxed than I had ever felt in Atlanta. I closed my eyes and breathed deep the salty air, wearing nothing more than a lanyard with my keys around my neck.
At some point, the trials of the last week caught up with me, and the tranquil paradise around me soothed me to sleep. When I awoke again, the sun had set. I felt the sharp sting of sunburn setting in. It took me a few minutes to come to my senses.
How long was I asleep?
I felt my keys against my chest, the cold metal against my hot skin. For a few seconds, I was too groggy to move. I wondered if I was actually awake. I managed to sit upright and rubbed my eyes, careful not to get sand in them, then began searching for my swimsuit, towel, and phone. They were nowhere in sight. I struggled to my feet and combed the beach, thinking they blew away or were washed away by the approaching tide, but the sand around me was bone dry.
"Fuck," I muttered after realizing I had been robbed. I didn't care about my suit or towel, of course. I only had twenty dollars in my pocket for food and a few gallons of gas. My cheap phone wasn't much of a loss, either. My outburst was more like, “Fuck, I’m naked, in the dark, and a quarter-mile from my car.”
I hoped no one set up camp on Big Beach or lingered in the parking lot, though. The last thing I needed was to be picked up by a cop for indecent exposure.
"Fuck!" I said again, this time louder. I stumbled as I walked further along the beach, looking for anything to cover myself. I even searched the treeline for any lingering cruiser who might lend me a towel. It was too dark to see. The new moon didn't help either. Absent its silver visage, all I saw were stars in the sky, too many stars providing too little illumination.
I covered myself with my hand as I walked to the cliffs to climb back over to the main beach. Without shoes, the climb up was challenging. Every few steps, my foot either slipped or stabbed into rough and jagged stone. I cursed with every painful step, recalling how easy this kind of climb was when I was a rough-footed youth on the island who ran around everywhere without shoes.
It took me ten minutes to crest the hill and climb back down. I scanned the beach for any sign of life. Midway down, I spotted firelight and wondered if I would find sympathetic locals willing to clothe me.
I knelt beside a boulder to get a better look, rubbing my hands against my battered knees. My palms suddenly felt moist. I’d scraped my skin on the climb enough to draw blood.
As I watched the fire from a distance, I realized it
approached closer and closer. Then I heard drums and an odd chanting, I wondered if my eyes played tricks on me. I rubbed them some more, seriously questioning whether or not I was dreaming.
It wasn't a beach party, that was for sure. A line of figures, some holding torches, walked along the beach. No, they didn't walk. They practically glided. I counted ten figures in all, some banging on drums.
"What the hell are they doing? A reenactment?" I said as I sneaked along the sand to get a closer look. Only when I approached, I realized they weren't locals. They weren't tourists. Dozens of torches lit up, casting an orange glow across the sand. I estimated roughly thirty to forty people marching in a procession. Their eyes glowed ruby-red, and they carried bamboo spears and rudimentary weapons, most of them wearing nothing but loincloths, cloaks, and warrior helmets.
I knew then that it wasn't a joke. This was no reenactment. The stories my mom told me when I was a child came to mind. She always tried to frighten my friends and me with scary tales of the huaka'i pō, the Night Marchers, and their death-gaze. I did what any islander would do. I lay flat out on the beach with my bare ass in the air, covered my head, and squeezed my eyes shut as the marchers approached.
They surrounded me, I guessed. The beating of drums vibrated in my entire body. I trembled in the sand as they chanted a sorrowful, frightening battle dirge in a language I didn’t know. The noise they made felt deafening, as though I were in the center of a tornado howling around me.
I felt sand cover my back and wondered if it was too late. Were they merely kicking sand on me as they marched? Or were they trying to bury me alive? Were they claiming me as one of their own, doomed to parade the island beaches and jungles for all eternity? I didn't dare look. I tried to control my breathing, but inhaling, even through my mouth, carried with it a death-like odor that made me gag. My heart raced. I started to whimper, then scream, just to hear something other than the pounding of drums around me.
Then it all stopped. The smell faded, the drums ceased, and the chant ended. All I felt was something cold prodding against my back. I struggled as I felt cold hands grab me and kicked and screamed, eyes still shut.
"Is he okay?" I heard a voice ask.
"Is he on drugs?" another chimed in.
“If he is, I want what he’s having!” a third voice joked.
Figures around me lifted me to my feet. I felt weak, but they held me upright while I covered my hands with my face, still frozen and shocked.
I felt someone wrap a towel around my waist. The voice of a man called to me, comforted me.
"It's okay, braddah," a man said.
"Are they gone?" I asked, my hands still covering my eyes.
"Is who gone? You the only one here."
"The huaka'i pō. They surrounded me."
I heard multiple people gasp and suddenly felt embarrassed. I swallowed my fear and slowly opened my eyes. Five people stood around me, two women and three men. Two of the men still held me up while another, the oldest among them, stood right in front of me. He looked kind and spoke to me as though he had known me my whole life.
"No huaka'i pō here," he said. "We heard you screaming from the parking lot. Thought you were some shark bait swimming at night."
He handed me another towel to wrap around my shoulders.
"Thanks, Uncle," I said, making sure to be kind and respectful to the man.
"You actually saw huaka'i pō?"
I nodded, still somewhat out of breath, and proceeded to tell them everything I witnessed, from the drums to the smell to the clothes the marchers wore. I was still frazzled, though, and the group of them helped me back to my car. They told me to keep the towel around my waist.
Under the dull yellow overhead lights in the car, I closed my eyes and massaged my neck. I began questioning whether or not I experienced any of it or if, in a dehydrated stupor, I imagined it all. If I told Auntie what had happened, she might believe me. Tad, though, would laugh it up and slap my sunburned skin as a joke.
The air felt hot and stifling. Even with the windows rolled down, it felt more like summer in Atlanta than the chilly Maui evenings. As I leaned forward to put the key in the ignition and turn on the air conditioning, I winced. My skin peeled off the leather seat and sent jolts through my body. There was no avoiding what I had to do. I stepped out of the car and arranged the towel to cover the driver's seat and climbed back in.
"If I get pulled over, at least I'll have time to cover myself again," I said to no one. The car's engine sputtered a bit as I turned the ignition, before settling into a gentle rattle.
The digital display on the radio revealed the time. It was already 10:00. I had slept on the beach for four hours. Looking down at my junk, I knew the next few days would be uncomfortable. I looked like a cooked lobster. I cringed at the thought of skin peeling off certain areas of my body but knew there was no avoiding it. I was glad I didn't have to work the next day. Pushing carts with sunburn like this would have sucked.
With the roads empty, it didn't take me too long to get home. I made sure not to go over the speed limit. I didn't want to round out the night in a psych ward after telling the cops the Night Marchers stole my trunks. With the radio quietly playing pop songs from the mainland and the wind ripping through the car, I finally started to feel back to normal again and began tapping my fingers against the steering wheel and singing along.
I pulled into the inn an hour later and parked the car some distance from the house.
"Crap," I muttered to myself. There were about ten cars in the parking lot and lights on downstairs. Auntie, it would seem, decided to have a party instead of turning in early, the first since my arrival. I climbed out of the car and wrapped the towel around my waist, peering around the parking lot, looking for Tad's truck. He always kept it unlocked and last I checked, had some changes of clothes in the back. Only Tad wasn't there.
I crept closer to the house until I could look through the windows. I spotted clusters of people in the front parlor, some lingering in the hallway, and heard signs of activity from the back of the house. There was no graceful way to do this, so I bunched up the over-sized beach towel around my waist, making sure I couldn't trip over it and marched across the parking lot like a proud, barefoot, semi-nude dunce.
Just pretend nothing’s wrong?
The front door squeaked a little too loudly and drew the attention of all the guests inside.
"Adam's home!" I heard Auntie say from the kitchen as she noticed me. With her cane leading the way, she walked into the front foyer. She stopped dead in her tracks after she saw my sunburn. "Oh, dear."
With everyone eying me, twenty to thirty guests in total, I panicked, apologized, and tried to scurry upstairs. Tripping on the towel only halfway up, I lost my balance and slammed into the steps. The towel fell loose and exposed my pale backside, the only part of me that seemed spared from sunburn, to the entire room.
I blushed, only I doubted they could tell. Any blood rushing to my cheeks matched the already deep red tone, and I scampered the rest of the length up the stairs, leaving the towel behind, until I was safely in my tiny room with the door slammed shut behind me. Sliding to the ground with my back against the door, I covered my face.
"This night can't get any worse," I muttered as I knocked my head into the door a few times. I reached down for my phone only to remember I lost it on the beach. I was just glad I didn't have too much money with me at the time.
I sighed as my stomach gurgled, lifted myself off the floor and found some clothes, wincing as I pulled on my loose-fitting gym shorts. Sitting on my bed, I closed my eyes and tried to slow my breathing. I could hear folks laughing from downstairs, having a good old time after I interrupted their party. Floorboards creaked in the hallway, then came a knock on my door.
"Go away!" I yelled.
"Don't give me that lip, Makani. Open up!"
Auntie's voice surprised me, not because she was checking up on me, but because she hiked upstairs to help me out.
I reached over and turned the latch to unlock the door. It swung open to reveal a winded Auntie with a man next to her, holding onto her arm.
"Thanks, Gordon. I can take it from here," Auntie said. The man didn't say a word. He just looked at me, bemused, and shrugged, heading back downstairs to join the others.
Auntie came in with one hand guiding her cane and the other clutching a tub of aloe gel. She didn't look angry or upset. Instead, she smiled as though everything about the last few minutes was the highlight of her day.
Sitting on the bed next to me, she struggled to open the jar, passing it off to me to unscrew. "You want to tell me what happened? How my wonderful nephew left a few hours ago only to return as a sunburned nudist?"
"Not really," I mumbled.
Auntie scooped out a generous amount of aloe and started rubbing it on my shoulders. She slathered some on my hand as well so I could work on the front of my body.
"Let me guess. You found yourself at Little Beach at the end of the day and thought you'd take a nap under the sun? Then someone, most likely a beach bum, stole all your stuff?"
I nodded. I had nothing else to add. Auntie had an uncanny ability to get to the truth of things very quickly. I hissed through my teeth as she rubbed some aloe on my back. Her palms felt like ice against my flaming skin.
"You know, the same thing happened to your mother when she was your age."
"You’re kidding?"
"No. Only she didn't have a car. She had to hitch a way home with some palm fronds to cover herself. Papa was furious. He didn't let her leave the house for a month."
"That really happened? She always told me she never went to Little Beach. She hates even the idea of it."
"She never told you why she hates it there?"
I shrugged.
"Because that's how she met your dad. He was the one that helped her get home."
"Seriously? " I couldn't believe it. Mom always told me they met at a party, not because he picked her up naked on the side of the road.
"It’s true. She told me all about him when I helped put aloe on her, the same way I'm helping you now."
Sunset Sanctuary Page 6
