Driving no more than fifteen miles an hour, Frank negotiated one hairpin turn after another. The scenery, he was told, was spectacular—deep valleys, breathtaking waterfalls, the thunderous waterspout of the Nākālele Blowhole—but Frank kept his eyes fixed on the zigzagging road ahead.
He was relieved when the road descended to sea level again and they saw a sign: KAHAKULOA. The car bumped along a dirt road leading to an idyllic little village on the pebbled shores of a horseshoe bay. Amid groves of coconut palms and monkeypod trees were a scattering of modest, tin-roofed homes. Neatly trimmed lawns carpeted the town from road to sea. There was a New England-style church painted a Hawaiian green with red roof and white trim, a schoolhouse, grazing cows, and an occasional horse crossing the road.
Majestic green hills sheltered the bay, in particular the six-hundred-foot Pu'u Koa'e—Kahakuloa Head—standing like the tip of a spear on the south side of the bay. “King Kahekili lived here,” Rachel said, “and legends say he dove from the top of Pu'u Koa'e just to prove his courage. He was also said to have built houses out of the skulls of his enemies.”
“Tell me your friend does not live in one of those,” Ruth said.
Rachel laughed. “No. And if it makes you feel better, this also used to be a sacred place—a pu'uhonua, or ‘place of refuge,’ where those who violated a kapu could find sanctuary and be absolved by the gods of their crime.”
Frank parked near a fruit stand tended by a young girl, no more than ten. “Aloha,” she greeted them, “you like buy papaya? Mango? Liliko'i?”
Rachel got out of the car, opened her purse, and said, “We get all t’ree, okay? Keep da change.” She handed the girl a five-dollar bill, and the eyes nearly came out of the girl’s head.
“Honest kine?” When Rachel nodded, the girl ran behind her stand and scooped up three, then four, then five pieces of fruit as she saw how many visitors were emerging from the car. She politely handed one to each of the Haradas, who thanked her.
“’Ey, keiki, you know Old George?” Rachel asked.
“Yeah, sure.”
“You go get him for us?”
“Sure!” She was off like a shot.
Minutes later, a tall Hawaiian man in his sixties, with chestnut-brown skin and a white fringe of hair, came down out of the valley. The little fruit girl straggled behind, still eagerly clutching her five-dollar bill. The man embraced Rachel in a big bear hug. “Rachel! Been too long!”
“I’ve missed you too, George,” Rachel said warmly. “I’ve brought my family from California to meet you—my daughter, Ruth, her husband, Frank, and my mo'opuna, Don and Peggy.
“This is George Nua. He’s the grandson of my Auntie Haleola.”
* * *
They were all dumbstruck as George pumped their hands and told them how pleased he was to meet Rachel’s 'ohana. Ruth finally found her voice: “The feeling is mutual, George. We’ve heard so much about your grandmother that we think of her as part of our 'ohana too.”
“Mahalo. Come on up to the house, anybody want something to drink?”
“Do you have a—drink drink, George?” Frank asked.
“Got some home-brewed sweet potato beer. It’s warm, though—we got no electricity in the valley.”
“Warm beer is still beer,” Frank said with a smile.
George laughed. “Funny how the Kahekili Highway makes everybody who drives it thirsty.”
He led them up a dirt path and into the valley, which felt even more like stepping back in time. Serpentine paths wound their way through lush foliage—coconut palms, tree ferns, tall ti leaf plants, explosions of red torch ginger, thick groves of banana, mango, plum, and papaya trees. The air was sweet and fruity. Behind a stand of trees, a stream babbled to itself in the language of water spoken since before life began. Irrigation channels diverted water to terraced taro patches. There were homes up here too, even a few pili-grass houses, possibly abandoned. George led them toward his own one-story house, painted sky blue, its tin roof gleaming in the afternoon sun.
Inside it was comfortable and homey, with hand-crafted furniture made from local woods, and a small kitchen. George opened a cabinet and took out a bottle of unlabeled beer, popped the cap, and handed it to Frank, who promptly knocked back half the bottle.
“Delicious,” he said. “Mahalo.”
“If you think the trip from Lahaina’s bad,” George said, “try coming from Wailuku—that one’s a three-beer drive.” Frank laughed as George provided drinks to all of his guests.
“Didn’t your family—Haleola’s—come from Lahaina?” Ruth asked.
“Oh, yeah, long time ago,” George said, sitting down with a beer. “Grandpa Keo owned a general store on Front Street. They had three sons—Lono, Kana, and Liko—all almost grown when Keo and Haleola got sent to Moloka'i. My dad, Liko, was the youngest. Lono and Kana liked running the store, but Pop, eh, he had no head for business. And he hated the drunken haole sailors who tore up Lahaina Town when they made port. Back then there was plenty of sugarcane and cattle raised here at Kahakuloa. Pop sold out his share of the store, bought a homestead, moved his ‘ohana here. We’ve been here ever since; my sons live in the village. Most everybody here—like the Kauha'aha'a, Kekona, Keawe families—have been in Kahakuloa for generations.”
“Did you ever meet your grandmother, George?” Peggy asked.
“No, but my dad told me about her—family stories, how she was a kahuna lapa'au, a healer, at Lahaina—and when Rachel found us, she opened up the rest of my tūtū’s life to us.”
George hesitated a moment.
“I never met Haleola,” he said slowly, “but I did feel her presence once. When I was sixteen. My dad was teaching me carpentry, my hold on the saw slipped, I cut my left arm.” He held up his arm to show a nasty scar snaking from wrist to elbow. “It was a deep cut—I lost a lot of blood. My mom stitched me up with needle and thread—true story. But for a couple of days I was tired and weak.
“I slept a lot. First time I woke up, I saw this bird sitting in the window of my room. Small bird, bright red feathers, dark wings, like nothing I ever saw before. It just sat there, till I fell asleep again—but every time I woke up, there it was again! Then, once I was better, it never came back.
“When I told Mama, she asked me to describe it. I told her it was about five inches long, small beak, and made a funny chipping sound, like chopping wood. Mama was surprised. She told me, ‘That’s a kākāwahie. Their feathers were used to make cloaks for the ali'i, so they became very rare. They don’t live on Maui. There’s only one island where you find them: Moloka'i.’”
Ruth got “chicken skin,” the Hawaiian term for goosebumps floating up out of a dim corner of her forgotten childhood.
“My mother believed—like I do—that the bird was an 'aumakua. The spirit of my tūtū, Haleola, watching over me when I needed her.”
Don and Peggy looked dubious; the doubt was written even more plainly on Frank’s face. Rachel saw this and said, “Haleola once told me that Hawaiians live in two worlds. Life and death are not so neatly defined for us.”
“Especially in this valley,” George said. “Because this was a place of refuge, the huaka'i pō—night marchers—dwell here. Spirits of ancient warriors who walk the trails, sworn to protect the ali'i in this life or after.”
“Warriors?” Frank repeated skeptically. “Have you ever … seen them?”
“I’ve seen their torches in the distance, heard the sound of their drums, the blowing of a conch shell. It’s said they float a few inches above the ground, but I wouldn’t know. To get closer is to risk death—if any of the marchers see you, you’re make, dead, and you walk with them for all time.”
“I know how these stories sound to anyone who hasn’t grown up in the islands,” Rachel said. “But this is far from the only place in Hawai'i where the marchers of the night have been seen or heard.”
“Every once in a while some fool builds a house on a night marcher trail,” George said.
“Last one woke up in the middle of the night, his house shaking like an earthquake. Wood and stone won’t stop the huaka'i pō, it just pisses them off. His crops died, his wife left him … he got the hint and moved.”
Frank remained unpersuaded.
“Whether you believe or not,” Rachel said, “this is part of who we are as Hawaiians.” She told George, “Ruth wants to know what it means to be Hawaiian. I couldn’t think of a better place to show her than Kahakuloa.”
“And now they think you’ve brought ’em to the home of a crazy man! Lolo George!” He laughed good-naturedly. “Ruth, the most important thing I can tell you is what my parents taught me: Aloha means to see the 'uhane—the living spirit, immortal soul, whatever you call it—in everyone you meet. I’ve done my best to live up to that.”
He stood. “C’mon. Let me show you how we live here.”
* * *
George guided them up the slopes past flourishing vegetable gardens and taro patches. “This is what our people have done for two thousand years,” he told Ruth. “Our ancestors came in canoes across thousands of miles of ocean to these beautiful islands, our Hawai'i Nei. They grew taro and pounded it into the poi that sustains us. Rachel, you okay with a little more walking?”
“It’ll take more than this to put me in the ground, George.”
“That’s my auntie! Everybody follow me.”
Rachel marveled at the thought: Haleola was my auntie, and now I’m her grandson’s auntie. It felt right, it felt pono. George continued:
“There’s an old saying: Make no ke kalo a ola i ka palili. ‘The old taro stalks are dead but survive in the offspring.’ Meaning we have a kuleana, a responsibility, to keep the taro alive as our ancestors did for us.
“Kahakuloa gets its name from a taro patch that grew here centuries ago. That’s how important taro is to us.”
George pointed into the interior of the valley, six miles deep, where a procession of green hills receded into the misty distance.
“Way up there’s a waterfall that feeds this stream,” he told them. “See how far back the valley goes? Now turn around and look out to sea.”
His guests did as they were told. Ruth was struck by the peace and tranquility of this little time-lost valley; all she heard was the sound of water flowing over stones, the trilling of birds, and the distant lapping of waves on the beach, as she might have heard a hundred years ago.
“In the old days,” George said, “this was called an ahupua'a: a pie-slice of land stretching from the mountains to the sea. That pie-slice provided a family with everything they needed to live: water; earth to grow taro and other food; and the ocean, to fish from. We repaid that debt with aloha. Aloha 'āina—that means to be devoted to the land, to nurture it.”
Don quoted, “‘The land is the chief, man is its servant.’”
George smiled. “That’s right. Nurture the land and the land nurtures you. Your tūtū tell you that?”
Don nodded. “It’s why I do what I do today. I’m an oceanographer. I study—learn from—try to preserve—the oceans.”
“And that’s one big part of what being Hawaiian means,” George said.
“'Ohana is another part,” Rachel said, “and Ruth, you have the strongest sense of 'ohana of anyone I know. Maybe because you so longed for one when you were little. I wish that could have been otherwise. But it’s shaped you into a loving daughter, a loyal sister, and a wonderful mother.
“And in your love for animals, you see the living spirit in all the creatures of the 'āina. It’s what I most love about you.”
Ruth was touched beyond words.
“And Peggy,” Rachel said, turning to her granddaughter, “your love for animals has led you to become a healer, like Haleola. I know that somewhere she’s as proud of you as I am.”
There were tears in Peggy’s eyes.
Don went to Rachel, wrapped his arms around her, and said, “I love you, tūtū. We all do. Mahalo for everything you’ve given us.”
“It’s just a fraction of what you’ve given me, mo'opuna.”
“I like your 'ohana, Rachel,” George said, smiling. He turned to Frank. “Frank—it gets dark way early here, and trust me, you don’t want to drive that road to Wailuku at night. Stay for supper—I’ll have my sons and their 'ohana come up from the village, we’ll talk story about Haleola, you can stay the night and get a fresh start tomorrow morning.”
Frank didn’t hesitate in speaking for his family. “We’d be honored.”
* * *
It was a glorious night: George’s sons and their wives put together a feast of grilled ono, vegetables, poi, fish pokē, and more. One son brought a guitar and strummed beautiful Hawaiian meles. Rachel spoke devotedly of Haleola and the love she had lavished on a little girl cast up on the lonely shores of Kalaupapa. George spoke to Ruth about their people’s history, loss of sovereignty, and traditions sacred to Hawaiians, as Don and Peggy raptly listened along with her. When the Haradas at last retired to their bedrooms it began to rain outside, and Ruth drifted asleep to the comforting staccato of raindrops on the tin roof.
Sometime during the night, a sound awoke her. At first she thought it was raining harder, because the plink-plink-plink on the tin roof was now sounding more like the beating of a kettle drum. She sat up—Frank was fast asleep after a long day—and glanced out the window.
With a shiver Ruth realized that the drumming was not coming from the roof but from farther away. The percussion was distant but distinct, with an irregular rhythm she intuitively knew was made by human hands.
Or perhaps … not quite human?
“Mom?”
Peggy, lying on thick quilting on the floor, spoke but made no move to get up. “I hear it too,” she whispered. “Should we go to the window?”
Ruth listened to the distant beating of drums but did not move. “You first,” she whispered back.
“Hell no. You know how much I hated being in a marching band.”
They lay there, suspended in the magic and mystery of the moment, until the drumbeats faded at last into the deep recesses of the valley.
Ruth was beginning to suspect that there might be more to the universe than any one religion could explain.
“Never tell your father about this,” she whispered. “He’d think we’re lolo.”
Peggy smiled and closed her eyes.
Ruth lay back, listening to a silence more eloquent than words, feeling connected to the 'āina of her birth in a way she could never have imagined.
Chapter 21
1969–1970
At eighty-three, Rachel had expected to live with some aches and pains. But she had not anticipated the constant discomfort—muscle cramps, aching joints—that kept slumber at bay despite the sleeping pills her doctor had prescribed. She woke today before dawn after only a few hours of sleep, feeling like a bell that had been rung all night long. These were the kind of pains she had experienced twenty-three years before, when she had lain abed at Kalaupapa, dying of Hansen’s disease—until miraculously she was granted a reprieve by the sulfa drugs that reversed her condition and reduced the bacilli to noncontagious levels. But it was not Hansen’s that was inflicting these pains on her now; it was the very thing that had saved her life and granted her freedom.
As it turned out, there was a high price to be paid for that freedom.
She lay in bed a moment, dreading what would be required of her today. She glanced over at Sarah’s bed, where her sister still slept soundly. Quietly Rachel got up and padded into the kitchen. She put on a pot of coffee—her only defense against the fatigue that ruthlessly stalked her each day. Everything she ate had a metallic taste to it now, and her stomach was easily upset. She set about making Sarah’s breakfast: bacon, eggs, and toast. Cooking it was torture, especially the smell of bacon sizzling in the pan, but she had to restrict her protein consumption as well.
She slid the bacon and eggs onto a plate beside the toast and took it into the bedroom.
“Sarah? Time to wake up. Breakfast.”
Sarah’s eyes opened. “Oh.” She pulled herself up to a sitting position as Rachel placed a tray in her lap. “But I’m not hungry.”
“You need to eat. You’re going on a trip today. To see Ellie.”
“I am?”
“I’ll be back in a few minutes to get you washed and dressed.”
Sarah thought a moment and asked, “Why?”
“Because you’re going on a trip.”
“No—why do you do all this for me?” Sarah asked, a fog in her eyes. “I don’t even know you. Who are you?”
The question wounded Rachel as deeply as ever. But she answered it the same way she had for the past year: “Someone who loves you very much.”
That made Sarah smile, as it always did.
For Rachel, getting dressed had never been easy with only one functional hand, but now the fingers of her left hand, her good hand, were plagued with a tingly numbness not unlike the neuritis of Hansen’s itself. This, too, was part of the price she had to pay. An hour later, Ellie—Sarah’s oldest daughter, who was sixty-two—arrived. Rachel met her at the curb. Her pretty, scarcely lined face broke into a smile. “Hi, Auntie.” She greeted Rachel with a hug. “Is Mom ready?”
“Yes, though I’m not sure she understands what’s happening.”
“It doesn’t matter. She loves Makawao, she’ll be happy there. I’ll do my best to take as good care of her as you have.”
“I know you will.” Rachel’s voice grew soft. “But I’ll miss her.”
“Auntie, the offer is still good for you too. With the keiki gone, we have two extra bedrooms. You’re welcome to join us.”
“Thank you,” Rachel said, touched. “But I’ll get by. I appreciate your letting me stay here in the house as long as I need to.”
“That’s no problem at all. How are you feeling?”
“Like I’ve gone four rounds with Muhammad Ali,” Rachel quipped. “But that’s better than yesterday, when I felt like I’d gone five rounds.”
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