Sunset Sanctuary

by R J Castiglione

  Auntie’s expression turned serious. She looked me square in the eyes, raising her sunglasses. “What did this woman look like?”

  I went on to explain in detail the woman in red, her long, dark, curly hair, and her Kahili fan. Even more, I told her about my experience on Big Beach and the Night Marchers. Auntie just sat and listened, hanging on every detail.

  “Are you sure it was a Kahili fan, and a pink lily?”

  I nodded. “Yes, but I’m sure it was all just a dream. I wasn’t exactly in my right mind at the time. You always used to joke about the Night Marchers. Perhaps being back to the island was bad for my imagination.”

  “Rubbish. You know who you’re talking to, don’t you? You want to know what I think?” she asked.

  She didn’t wait for me to respond. “I think you’re a true child of Maui, like me. You and I always shared a connection to the island, one your mother and even Tad don’t have. And I think Maui recognizes that.”

  “You talk as though Maui is alive.”

  “But he is, Makani! He is! Just look around you. Centuries of our people have called this island home. Our people have lived and died on this island. We’re born from him, and return to him when we die. I like to think Maui protects us by sending us our ancestors when we need them most.”

  “But stories of people seeing the Night Marchers are a dime a dozen.”

  “That they are, Makani, but this island is home to thousands of spirits, good and bad. Who's to say they’re real or not real?”

  “Science, for one.”

  “Bah! Fuck science!” Auntie pulled out her flask and took a swig.

  “Auntie, we’re outside the police station!” I was less shocked at her drinking than I was her unexpected cursing. She rarely swore, but when she did, it packed a punch.

  “So they can arrest me. I could do with a few nights of good sleep in a comfy jail cell. Are you going to keep interrupting me?”

  I gestured for her to continue, crossing my arms, grinning, and shaking my head.

  “I think you saw Princess Popoalaea.”

  “Who?”

  “Don’t tell me you don’t remember Popoalaea! Waianapanapa?”

  “Just keep making up words, and I’m sure I’ll remember.”

  “Bah!” she slapped the back of my head. “The legend of the Waianapanapa Caves, Makani, and the tragic Princess Popoalaea’s murder by her cruel husband!”

  Like Debbie… Almost like me…

  ”You remember the black sand beach near Hana?”

  “Vaguely,” I said. “It’s been a while.”

  “Well, when Calder gets that damn road clear, go over there with him and visit her cave. I’m glad you told me about this. I feel more comfortable now I know the spirits are watching out for you.”

  “Even if there are spirits,” Auntie moved to slap me again for heresy, “what can they do?”

  “What can they do, Makani? You know the Night Marchers. Just gazing into their eyes is enough to turn your fate to death! I remember a friend’s friend’s cousin’s boyfriend once saw the Night Marchers and ran off a cliff into a pond to be eaten alive by Moho! They never found his body.”

  “Now I know you’re pulling my chain. Moho?”

  “Yeah, Moho. The giant lizard spirit.”

  I laughed at the idea and wondered if Auntie made it up. But I liked the idea of Jeff also running into the woods in the hurricane, falling into a pond, and becoming giant lizard lunch. The thought did cheer me up.

  Auntie beamed at me a bright, comfortable smile. “It’s good to see you smile again. You’re so handsome when you smile.”

  She pinched my cheek, but I swatted her hand away, faking embarrassment. It felt good to feel good again. When I woke up that morning, I dreaded going to the police station. Having Auntie there made the entire ordeal palatable.

  The feeling didn’t last. After helping Auntie into the car and crossing around to get in the driver's side. I looked across the street and spotted her, the woman in red.

  I reached out to her, beckoned her to wait, but she stood motionless, her cheeks puffy from crying. A man walked by her, almost through her, and I realized what Auntie had said was true. She was a spirit, perhaps even the princess of Waianapanapa beach, Princess Popoalaea. She opened her mouth to speak, but her words were lost on the wind, sounding muffled, as though she were trying to talk through water. Even if standing next to her, I was sure I couldn’t make out her words.

  A bus went by. When it passed, she was gone, leaving nothing but a fresh pink lily on the sidewalk. Crossing the street, I picked up the flower and looked for her again, curious about why she appeared now, at this very moment. The hairs on my neck stood up. I felt like I was being watched, but not in a dangerous way. It was as though the island was watching me, the sense of it bombarding me from all directions. Maui was giving me a great, big, warm hug.

  I knew why she had appeared. Money. The inn. Calder. Missing my family. My father. Jeff. All these things weighed on me, spinning me out of control. Despite what I told Officer Lanna, I had considered taking what money I had and running away again, forsaking my entire life I had started to piece together, just to get away from it all. Seeing the Princess and feeling so close with the island set my mind straight.

  I joined Auntie in the car and sat there motionless, the gentle breeze from the downed windows drying my tears.

  Awash with emotions, I didn’t start the car. I leaned down and buried my head in Auntie’s lap like a little boy. I cried as I twirled the lily stem between my fingers. And I felt a fool for doing so, a grown man breaking down in front of a woman who might as well be my grandmother.

  She didn’t balk at me. She didn’t push me off. She whispered sweet words of comfort and stroked the back of my head, then started singing in a broken, aging voice, a soft, harrowing, relaxing song I remembered from my youth she always sang to me when I needed consoling. She, unlike most people in my life, always understood how to comfort me.

  14

  Afternoon 26

  Still overwhelmed by my experience at the police station, I didn’t know why I decided to go with Calder to Hana. Before the hurricane, I wasn’t sure I was ready for any sort of commitment, even a lighthearted romantic one. But I took Officer Lanna and Auntie’s advice to heart. If I were to gain any traction in my life, I needed to escape, to get to where Jeff wouldn’t think to look for me, and that was no easy task on an island as small as Maui.

  I was looking forward to the short trip, though. Despite nearly four weeks on the island, I hadn’t seen much of anything beyond Big Beach and Little Beach. I enjoyed the idea of visiting forests and beaches I hadn’t seen since I was a child. I always imagined there was something mystical and fantastical about the sites along the road to Hana, unlike any other place on the island. Most of all, I had to visit the spring where Princess Popoalaea was killed. I was too curious not to.

  When Calder asked me to join him I leaped at the opportunity, first checking with Jim to see if I could have a few days off from the market now that things were returning to normal.

  With windows rolled down, at around 1 p.m., Calder and I pulled out of the parking lot to join the queue of tourists headed for the reopened airport. In truth, I was glad to be rid of them. When tourists came to visit, they stayed for one week to ten days. Like the clouds perpetually lingering over the eastern cliffs of Pu’u Kukui, these tourists were like a force of nature. But when they remained longer, having endured a category five hurricane, I wanted them gone before we started to care about them. I didn’t want to miss tourists after they left.

  The traffic jam ended an hour later as we rounded the highway toward Hana, coolers in the back of Calder’s truck sliding back and forth every time we coasted around a sharp bend.

  I had hoped he would explain in detail every landmark we passed if only to refresh my memory, but he was single-minded at the moment. He had no mind for idle chat.

  I could tell he was nervous by the way he dro
ve, cold air blasting from the truck’s AC just to cool him down as he sped through Hana Highway’s narrow twists and turns. He was anxious, worried about his family, and with cell phone service and landlines still down, he hadn’t heard any news from them. All we did know was that the road was now open.

  We sat there for an hour, wordless. Occasionally, Calder released the steering wheel and held my hand for a moment, only to return his attention to the wheel at the next sharp bend, where he needed to pull over and wait for an oncoming utility vehicle to clear the bridge.

  An hour later, we took a break at a rest stop appropriately named “Halfway to Hana.” I imagined it would be packed to the brim with tour buses and rental cars on a good day, with a line wrapped around the concession stand of the tiny building. But it, like so many other properties we passed, was still boarded up from the storm.

  Calder didn’t say anything as he parked his truck, turned it off, and booked it over to the bathrooms. Pulling out his keyring, he unlocked the padlock on the men’s room and disappeared inside. I grew nervous and remembered Officer Lanna’s warning not to be alone.

  Now, in an empty parking lot, I was alone for the first time since my encounter with Jeff. Silence and solitude tugged at me, as though a spirit were pulling the hairs on my neck.

  I got more anxious as a car pulled into the tiny parking area. I could only see the shadow of the driver through the mid-afternoon glare and held my breath as the vehicle slid into the spot next to us. I relaxed when an older woman got out, finicking with her keyring the very same way Calder had.

  It seemed all the locals had keys to the bathrooms here, and it made sense. It was the only pit stop locals could use as they drove back and forth from Hana to the center of the island.

  Calder came out of the bathroom and spotted the woman. The two met halfway between the truck and the concession stand. As they chatted, I could sense his tension washing away. The Calder I first met in the county council parking lot returned to me.

  He embraced the woman before returning to the truck, but he didn’t turn it on. Instead, he leaned back and breathed a pleasant sigh of relief, taking my hand in his.

  “That’s my neighbor,” he said to me. “They’re all right. Not just my family, but everyone. There’s some property damage, but no one was hurt.”

  I tried to be happy for him, on the outside, at least. And I really was, but I was still coming up from the downer that was nearly a panic attack after being left alone. I didn’t want to burden him with my problems, so I leaned over and hugged him, if only to hide my face.

  A few moments later, we were back on the road after I assured him I didn’t need to use the bathroom, and as the afternoon drew on, the second half of the drive turned out to meet my expectations. With fun music blasting from the speakers, Calder told me stories about each and every stop we passed. The stories grew bolder and more adventurous as we approached Hana. He revealed the haunts of his youth for me in great detail. We both had a good laugh at him and his buddies, including Tad, getting caught skinny dipping by local police at night in a semi-popular swimming hole near Hana.

  I found myself regretting not having those stories. I was only a child when I moved to Atlanta. We had no beaches or swimming holes, or bamboo forests to get lost in. Compared to Calder, my childhood felt wasted by hours upon hours of television or video games or comic books. Even making friends in Atlanta was hard to do, especially when I began being bused to a school on the other side of the city.

  By the time I was in a position to make friends, I couldn’t develop close relationships because they all lived miles away from me in an urban landscape, not safe for a child to traverse.

  I wished I had what Calder and Tad had. Perhaps I wouldn’t have turned out so screwed up.

  After ninety minutes of mostly Calder telling stories, we pulled into Hana to the very same view we had in Lahaina, palm trees toppled over or ripped bare of their fronds. The ones that did remain standing leaned peculiarly to one side or the other, shallow roots loosened from the still muddy ground.

  We passed house after house, all showing signs of damage, from roofs wrenched from their walls to trees through windows. It seemed very few homes remained unscathed.

  I realized then that I didn’t know what Calder’s living situation was. Did he live with his family, like me, or did he have his own place somewhere in the tiny town?

  I gripped the handhold as Calder pressed his brakes and turned off the road into a single parking spot atop a muddy, downhill driveway, parts of it washed away to reveal bedrock. At the top of the driveway, a toppled fruit stand rested in shambles, a hand-painted pineapple sign sticking out of the pile of split timber.

  Calder beeped his horn a few times at a woman waving at him from the bottom of the hill, older than him with long, gray hair tied in a ponytail. I couldn’t make out her features from a distance, but the way she held herself and smiled suggested she was Calder’s mother.

  Calder jumped out of his truck and sped down the hill, slipping a few times in what patches of mud remained, where he embraced his mother, before pointing up toward me.

  A minute later, Calder’s entire family climbed the driveway to greet me.

  “It’s good to see you again, lad. How’s your auntie doing?” Gordon, Calder’s father, asked. I was grateful he skipped the part about seeing me sunburned to all hell wearing nothing but a skimpy, dirty towel. I blushed at the thought of two Wright men seeing my bare ass.

  As I answered Gordon’s question, Calder introduced his mother, Mary, and his little brother, Danny, and his little sister, Mason, both substantially younger than Calder. I guessed they were in middle school. All three were obviously siblings, with the same gait, smile, nose, and hair color, and the hint of ginger in their vibrant, brown hair.

  Unlike Calder, though, who was freshly showered and dressed, they looked a little worse for wear. I could tell by piles of broken trees and outdoor furniture, and some tarps blocking their front window, that they had been hard at work cleaning up from the storm.

  That didn’t stop any of them from being happy. Danny and Mason returned to a game they were playing, scrambling about the yard picking up fallen debris and dragging it into separate piles, competing as to who could make the largest.

  The inside of the house was immaculate. Every room looked like it belonged in Scotland, not Maui. They decorated with luxurious, red furniture and dark brown, patterned floors. They had way too many area rugs. I admired an oversized portrait of a much younger Mary and Gordon, her in a brilliant lace wedding dress and him in a kilt with high socks and a tuxedo top. And so much mahogany wood, like a dozen trees felled just to furnish their home.

  Sitting on the living room sofa with Calder, I sensed how relaxed he was, his feet kicked up on an ottoman that doubled as a coffee table, next to a stack of newspapers from the UK, the top one dated a few weeks ago.

  As Mary and Gordon joined us, both carrying an assortment of refreshments from lemonade to packaged cookies, I could tell by the way they looked at me that they were curious why I was there, only too polite to ask.

  I pretended not to notice when Mary sat next to Calder and jabbed him with her elbow, winking her approval at him in a corny, motherly way, and we sat in awkward silence until Calder saved us all.

  “Dad, I haven’t checked yet. How did the school hold up? When are students going back?”

  Gordon stopped nibbling on a cookie and shrugged. “The school got hit pretty bad, some roof damage in the offices. If we had anywhere to go, we would have evacuated when the eye hit us. The gym’s fine, though.”

  “Do they need any help fixing it?” Calder asked.

  “I don’t know. You two should drive over tomorrow. They might need some heavy lifting done by two strapping lads.”

  I chuckled a bit at the idea, never really being one for physical labor unless stacking boxes of cheap comic books counted as “heavy lifting.” A few minutes later, lemonade and cookies consumed, I was outside
with Calder dragging felled trees and branches, and any other non-plastic or metal refuse to a burn pile in the backyard.

  I wasn’t resentful of the work. I owed Calder after the way he helped us at the inn, and how he’d helped me in the last few days with my own demons. I felt liberated after four days of playing a prisoner in my own home. I desperately hoped that Jeff wasn’t able to track me to this side of the island.

  But seeing Calder with his family, with me as the odd man out, made me wonder about his motivations for bringing me here. Did he do so because he needed my help, or because he wanted to spend more time with me, or because he felt compelled to help me escape from Jeff?

  As I helped him and his siblings collect debris scattered across the yard, I thought about how I felt about Calder. Sure, he was a nice guy, both strong and gentle, and I was very fond of him, but the whole Jeff fiasco prevented me from feeling anything more.

  I was almost grateful when we were done with our work for the day. Calder led me inside to show me to a guest room. He left me there to clean up in a private bathroom to the sounds of a whole-house generator running outside. It suddenly sank in that their home was one of the more grand houses on the island that I’d seen. I didn’t know what Mary or Gordon did for work, but I knew the taxes on the land and property would be in line with some of the multi-million dollar homes elsewhere.

  I was surprisingly happy that I had my own room, feeling it would be strange to share Calder’s bedroom in his parents' house. I still didn’t know if Calder actually lived with them, or if he had his own house or an in-law suite in the current home.

  To be honest, aside from knowing he teased me as a child, that he was a gym teacher in Hana, and that he was handsome and kind, I didn’t know that much about him. We hadn’t really talked that much.

  After my first hot shower in a week, I lay on the bed in my towel, looking at my phone, hoping the cell signal would be restored soon. I needed to talk to my mother and sister. I wondered what they would make of all of this. In truth, they would probably order me back to Atlanta, something I would never do. I fully intended never to set foot in that city again.