I drove around Mauna Loa, across the island highlands, and all the way to Grampa Joe’s doorstep before he opened his eyes.
His face was white in the reflected glow of the headlights. He got out slowly, yawning and rubbing the stubble on his jaw, playing the part of an old man. “You okay, Omilu?” he asked.
“I’m okay, Grampa.”
He went into the house and closed the door without looking back.
1 drove down into the thick, black coffee grove as Keo climbed into the front seat, keeping the blanket around him.
Grampa Joe had called me Omilu, a term he used sparingly, and it meant a lot to me to be compared to the ulua, a fish that would give any man a tough, two-fisted battle.
I drove Keo home to Aunty Pearl, and watched as his mother took him in and gave him a long, surrounding hug. The blanket still covered him, half of it hanging down the porch steps. Then Aunty Pearl smiled and pulled me into her arms next to Keo.
Someday Dad would tell me. I would make him tell me. To him, and to Aunty Pearl, my mother was Crissy with her hand on Dad’s chest, not just an old photograph in a picture album. Once she was as alive as my jumping heart.
Who was she? I would make him tell me.
Dad’s sampan rolled gently in the low swells as it idled alongside the pier at five in the morning. The black sky held only the faintest hint of sunrise, a light sketch of midnight-blue behind the mountain. Keo and I sat on the stern transom watching Dad and Uncle Harley stow their gear.
Dad glanced over at me. “You can still change your mind and come along, Sonny.”
“No, that’s okay. I’ll stay and keep Keo company.”
Dad nodded and went forward to the hold.
Keo scowled at the deck, his arms crossed. Missing a chance to go on an overnight fishing trip to South Point was about as low as it got for Keo. And all because a girl was coming to visit.
Uncle Harley put a couple of cases of soda pop and beer into the ice chest. “Don’t look so miserable,” he said, glancing over to Keo. “Raz will be around if you need anything. You can come along next time. Of course, South Point could be hot this trip, could catch forty or fifty ono, never can tell.” Uncle Harley smiled, but Keo didn’t think it was so funny.
“Let’s go,” Dad said. “It’s gonna be a dynamite day. I can feel it in my bones. Eh, Keo, you didn’t hide any bananas on board did you?” Bananas were bad luck of the worst kind.
Keo smiled at that. “Maybe I did.”
“Scoot, you two rats,” Uncle Harley said. “Throw the lines.”
Keo and I pulled the stern closer to the pier and climbed up the truck tires, then untied the boat and tossed the lines down onto the deck. Dad pulled the Ipo away and headed out into the dark harbor, the old diesel tokking smoothly. Uncle Harley stood in the dim deck light looking back at us, curling the sternline into neat loops in his hand.
Within minutes the Ipo was nothing more than a small yellow light shrinking south.
It was quiet in the harbor, and cool. As much as Keo loved being on a boat, I loved being on the pier that early in the morning, a time when Kailua-Kona stood still, with only the anticipation of the day to come rustling around in the air.
But Aunty Pearl had plans for us. Keo and I began the long walk back up the hill to his house.
“Tutu going bring Melanie up here from the airport,” Aunty Pearl said. “I want you boys to show her Kailua. This is her first time on the Big Island.”
Keo stared out the window. We sat at the kitchen table waiting for the arrival of Melanie McNeil, Keo’s mysterious Honolulu cousin. Neither of us had ever met her before. In fact Aunty Pearl had only seen her once many years ago. But, of course, since Melanie’s mother was her cousin, Aunty Pearl knew everything there was to know about her. She sounded pretty flashy to me—her baole father owned a radio station; her mother was a dancer at the Moana Hotel in Waikiki; she went to private school; and to top it off she was fifteen, a year older than Keo, and two older than me. “Her mother says she can sing like an angel at sunset,” Aunty Pearl said. “She has a very, very rare gift.”
I wondered what a rich, half-Hawaiian, fifteen-year-old girl who went to private school and could sing like an angel was like. What were we going to show her, anyway? How to fish? How to clean boats? How to shoot BB guns at the dump?
“This is going to be great,” Keo said flatly when Aunty Pearl had gone out on the porch to see if anyone was coming up the driveway. “Poor little thing. A whole week without her mommy and daddy. Probably never even been away from home before.”
“Keo, Sonny, they’re here,” Aunty Pearl called. Keo looked like he wanted to spit.
We went out just as Tutu Max and Grampa Joe pulled up to the house in a cloud of dust. The door on the driver’s side flew open and Tutu Max pushed herself up out of the car.
Grampa Joe got out and opened the back door, just like at a hotel. When Melanie McNeil stepped out into the sun I nearly went speechless.
She looked more like a woman than a girl, dressed up like she was going to church or to dinner at Kona Inn. She was about as tall as me and twice as beautiful as any girl I’d ever seen in my life—dark, silky skin, and eyes as clear as a freshwater pond.
“Aunty Pearl?” Melanie said, looking up to the porch.
“Oh, little baby, you are so grown up.” Aunty Pearl said, truly surprised.
Melanie smiled and walked up to hug her like she owned the place.
“This is your cousin, Keo, and his cousin on his father’s side, Sonny.”
Melanie looked at us in a funny way, as if we were children or the yardmen. “Hi.”
Aunty Pearl and Tutu Max gathered Melanie up and shooed her into the house. Grampa Joe came up behind them carrying all four of her suitcases.
After she said good-bye to Tutu Max and Grampa Joe, Melanie followed Aunty Pearl into her room, Keo’s room, and closed the door. Aunty Pearl stayed there with her. We could hear Melanie crying, and Aunty Pearl soothing her. Neither of us could make out what she was saying.
We had to wait on the porch. “Don’t you go anywhere,” Aunty Pearl said to Keo. “She’s just tired from her trip”
“Big trip,” he said when Aunty Pearl went back inside. “One hour on an airplane.”
“I’d cry if I had to stay in your room for a week, too,” I said.
Keo flicked his fist over and punched me.
“Okay, okay! But you gotta admit, she’s darn good-looking, and way too fancy for anything we got going,” I told him, rubbing my arm.
Keo stared out into the dusty yard. It was so quiet you could hear the flies buzz.
“I don’t know if I can last a week of baby-sitting her” Keo said. “That’ll be about as much fun as scraping barnacles off a boat.”
A soft, female voice came from the doorway behind us, like a sudden breeze. “Oh?”
Keo leaped to his feet and turned to face Melanie. “I … I mean … ”
“That’s okay, kid,” she said. Keo frowned.
She’d changed into a long blue muumuu that looked like it had just come from the store. Her face was flawless—green eyes under sharp eyebrows, and thick brown hair that fanned out over her shoulders. But all Keo saw was the look in her eye.
It said, “Don’t get in my way, buster, if you want to live to see tomorrow.”
Keo whirled around and stomped over toward the pigpen. I got up and said, “Excuse us,” and followed him.
As I walked away I heard her whisper, “Morons.”
Keo spent the night down at my house. He told Aunty Pearl I had to feed the dogs and keep an eye on things while Dad was away, and we might just as well stay there for the night. At first she resisted, but caved in when Melanie came through for us and said, “Let the boys have their slumber party, Aunty Pearl. That’s okay.”
“Now listen, boys,” Aunty Pearl said the next morning. “Take Melanie down to see Kona Inn and let her walk through the shops in Kailua. Here’s some money to buy lunch for
the three of you.”
She held a five-dollar bill out, but Keo hesitated.
Melanie grabbed it and stuffed it into a large canvas shoulder bag. “I’ll keep that, Aunty Pearl. He’ll probably just lose it.”
Melanie wore a bright new yellow dress and white leather sandals, and sunglasses. I felt almost naked standing there barefoot in a pair of shorts and a T-shirt.
Keo was steaming. Aunty Pearl pushed him toward the door. He shrugged her hands away and took off down the long, rock and dirt driveway to Hualalai Road without turning to see if Melanie was following.
“Uh … you ever been to Kona before?” I asked.
Melanie narrowed her eyes and glared at me, then followed Keo down the driveway without answering, the large bag bouncing off her hip.
I looked up at Aunty Pearl. She shook her head and said in a sighing tone of voice, “I don’t know, Sonny, I really don’t know.”
The three of us marched silently down toward Kailua in single file until Keo stopped a little ways up from town. “I got something to show you,” he said looking at Melanie, “that is, if you don’t mind getting your feet a little dusty.”
She let the bag drop from her shoulder and looked Keo in the eye. “Kid, there’s no place on this planet that you could dream of going that I couldn’t go as well.”
Keo’s eyes pinched down when she said kid.
“Follow me, Queenie,” he said.
They stared at each other with machete looks.
Keo bolted off into the dry grass and scrub-tree jungle alongside the road, bending low to squeeze through the middle strands of a barbed-wire fence that separated the road from a tangled cow pasture. The grass was mashed down between the trees so I knew there were cows around, and maybe bulls.
Melanie pulled her dress up high, halfway up her thighs, and bent through the fencing. I followed, watching out for thorns and bulls.
She kept pace with Keo, stride for stride, both of them moving through the trees much faster than necessary. We climbed over old stone walls covered with brush and vines, walls built hundreds of years earlier by the old Hawaiians, and picked our way over outcroppings of sculptured black lava rock frozen in shapes of oozing mud.
Keo stopped when we came to a low depression in the ground, like a dry pond the size of a small, empty swimming pool. A pile of flat stones lay in a small heap in the bottom. Keo called me down into the sink and I helped him lift them away, revealing the entrance to the old lava tube that Uncle Harley had shown us years before. It was one of only two or three places where the underground tunnel came to the surface. Uncle Harley had told us that you could go from near the top of the mountain clear down to the ocean inside the tube, and pop out under water somewhere off Kailua Bay. But I’d never heard of anyone who’d done it.
“Lava tube,” Keo said, smirking. “Too bad you can’t go in and take a look around.”
“Think again, kid. Turn around and don’t look until I tell you.”
Keo glanced at me.
Tempting as it was, neither of us turned around until she gave us the word. When we did, she was standing there in a blue T-shirt and jeans, barefoot. An inch of yellow dress poked out of the top of her bag. “So what’s holding you up?”
“Well … ” Keo stumbled a minute. “We can’t go in very far without a light. Watch out for spider webs and centipedes.”
Melanie set her bag down and gave Keo and me a look that said, “So move it.”
Keo lowered himself into the hole in the ground, and I knew it must have bothered him to do so without first sticking his head down into the opening and flashing a light around to see what was there.
Melanie brushed by me to follow Keo into the hole. The faint smell of soap lingered for a second or two after she passed. Her hair shone in the sunlight. She grabbed it and curled it around as she dropped into the pit.
I followed, as close as I dared. The tube went downhill for only a few feet before the light from the opening nearly disappeared.
“Can’t go any farther without a light,” Keo said. “Besides, there are so many offshoots you could get lost in here and never get out. One boy went into a lava tube down near Kau, and never came out again.” The thought of dying alone in utter blackness made me cringe.
“There are bones in here, too,” I added. “I think this was used as a burial cave.”
Melanie wasn’t impressed. “Let’s go deeper. Just till there’s no light at all. I want to see pure blackness.”
“Not smart,” Keo said, passing Melanie and me, and crawling back to the mouth of the tube. “Too easy to get lost.”
“What? You afraid?”
“No, just smart.”
I agreed with Keo, though I liked Melanie’s idea. When we’d been in before we had flashlights and hadn’t thought to turn them off. It would be something to see.
“How about you?” Melanie said to me.
“Keo’s right, it’s not a good idea.” How could I not take Keo’s side?
“What a bunch of panties,” she said.
Neither of us said another word to her until we got down to Kona Inn, and then only because we had to. Keo strode out ahead of us, leaving me alone with her.
She didn’t show any particular interest in Kona Inn, or Kakina’s, or even Emma’s Store with its freezer full of fudge bars, but she perked up when we ended up down at the harbor.
The Optimystic rocked easily alongside the pier, with Uncle Raz sitting in the sun in the fighting chair stripping old line off one of his big reels. It was a hot, full, blue-sky day, and the water sparkled, diamonds glinting on green and blue.
“So,” Uncle Raz said when we pulled the stern in and stepped aboard, “you must be Camille’s girl.”
Melanie gave him a sugary-sweet smile.
“Make yourself at home,” Uncle Raz went on, meaning Melanie. Keo and I sat on the stern transom and watched him work while Melanie went into the cabin, then down into the forward hold for a look around.
“You got a nice-looking cousin there, Keo,” Uncle Raz said.
“Nice rotten cousin, you mean.”
“I don’t think she likes us very much,” I added.
Uncle Raz laughed without looking up from the reel, the line piling up in a heap at his feet. There must have been a half mile of it.
“You wouldn’t want to take her for a boat ride, would you?” Keo asked. What a brilliant idea, I thought. Very good.
“Don’t you boys get enough boat rides?” Uncle Raz said.
“Not us, Uncle. Her.” Keo pointed his chin toward the cabin.
Uncle Raz glanced up at Keo, then back down at the reel and started chuckling and shaking his head. “Too much for you, eh?”
Keo sat there with his arms crossed over his chest.
Melanie was gone about five minutes, then came back out into the sun smiling as if something was going on that only she knew about. She bent down and grabbed a handful of the old fishing line on the deck. “Can I have this?” she asked. Uncle Raz gave her a sure-but-what-the-heck-for look and said, “It’s yours, take ‘urn.”
After Uncle Raz had stripped all the line off the reel, Melanie took the pile up on the pier and spread it out. Then holding one end in her hand, she began looping the line around her elbow, like a man or a boy would do, not a girl.
Keo finally looked up When Melanie had the entire mass of line neatly looped around her hand and elbow, she tied it off in the middle and folded it into her bag, which was beginning to seem like it had no bottom.
“Hey,” she said to Keo and me. “Let’s go.”
Even Uncle Raz looked up at her.
“You follow me this time,” she said.
Keo rolled his eyes, and Uncle Raz patted his shoulder. “Go on, boys,” he said, looking as if he were having a great time. He took the dock line from the stern cleat and pulled the boat closer to the truck tires. Keo and I climbed up onto the pier. I could tell that we were going to hear this story from Uncle Raz again and again.
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br /> When we got to the beginning of the seawall, Melanie stopped and turned to us. “This is boring, but I have an idea.” She looked at us with wide eyes, waiting for one of us to say, “Yeah? What is it?” But neither of us did.
Melanie frowned at our lack of enthusiasm. “Okay,” she said, “I’ll go back into the cave myself.”
Keo perked up. “It’s not a cave, it’s a lava tube, and it has a thousand branches inside it. And what do you want to go back there for anyway?”
“I want to go way in, where it’s dark.”
“That’s dumb, just dumb,” Keo said.
“Anyway, we already did that,” I added.
“Okay,” she said, “okay. You panties stay here, but that’s what Vm going to do.” She spun around and started walking toward the palace, right down the middle of the road. Then she turned, and walking backward, yelled, “Pantie, pantie, pan-tie!”
Keo yelled back, “Queenie, queenie, queenie!”
She stared, as if surprised. Keo glared back. Then Melanie turned and stormed away, canvas bag bouncing.
Keo picked up a rock on the side of the road and threw it out into the harbor, and to show that I wasn’t going to take it either, I threw one myself. Even so I couldn’t help sneaking a peek down toward the palace to see how far she’d gone.
“Your mom’s not going to like it if we don’t keep an eye on her,” I said.
“Let’s go down to White Sands and go swimming.”
“Okay, but I hate to think of what would happen if she really does go into the lava tube, and gets lost.”
We started to walk toward White Sands Beach, the same way Melanie had gone. The beach was a long way down the coast and normally we would have tried to hitch a ride. But Melanie had us all tied up. And I was beginning to think she knew it.
“We can’t let her go in there alone,” I said, grabbing Keo’s arm when we reached the intersection.
“Why not? She doesn’t need us. We could be down at South Point catching ono by the hundreds right now if it wasn’t for her. Anyway, she called us panties.”
Blue Skin of the Sea Page 11
