Night of the Howling Dogs

by Graham Salisbury

  Slowly, he looked up.

  “This way,” I said, waving him over.

  He crawled out from under the air mattress and made his way to the hole. “Get down in here,” I said. “I can make better shade for you.”

  He eased down into the warm pool. Water had been trapped there. The whole coast must have been hit with the giant waves.

  “That’s good, Mr. Bellows.”

  I set the plywood over him, then collected rocks and raised it higher by making stacks under the corners. I took down his old air-mattress shelter and carried it over to make more shade for Sam. It helped.

  Sam slept; at least, I hoped it was sleep, not some kind of heat coma. I had to get some water into him. “Come on, Louie,” I whispered, looking up. Would there even be any water? Was the catchment still standing? I hadn’t noticed.

  I took the T-shirts down to the ocean and soaked them, then hurried back and untied the sleeves. I placed one shirt over Sam’s head and stretched the other across his back. I doubted they were doing very much to cool him down. But even a little was something. The sun had shifted. I hadn’t realized until that moment just how fast it moved. I adjusted the air mattress and slab of plywood to maintain the shade. It was all I could do.

  The sun was frying my back; I could almost hear the skin sizzling. Not good. I got up and searched for another watery hole, found one closer to the ocean, and scrunched down into it. Water, but no shade. The sun was too high. I splashed warm liquid over my back. In the heat it was like adding butter to a frying pan.

  I curled into a tight ball.

  Drifted in and out of sleep.

  Tired, so tired.

  I thought of Louie racing over the rocks to get help, and how when everyone was struggling to get to higher ground after the waves, he’d gone the other way, not even thinking that more waves might come to kill him, or more ground might sink and take him down. Had those thoughts ever passed through his mind, even casually?

  I shook my head. No…he’s not like that. He doesn’t stop to worry. He just does what he has to, like when he went to live in that warehouse. Louie has a problem, he works it out. He doesn’t waste time thinking about it.

  I slipped in and out of wakefulness.

  Memories. Crazy thoughts.

  Is this delirium?

  Louie.

  I half laughed to myself, thinking how I’d once been so terrified of him…him and the big guy smiling down on me with his foot on the wheel of my bike. You scared, haole? Louie in the dugout, beat up, crying.

  Why was I remembering this?

  I dozed and woke again to the same thoughts.

  “Water,” I croaked. My throat felt like sandpaper. I cupped a handful of warm salt water and brought it to my lips, licked at it and spat.

  The sun spun above me.

  And the big guy was there again, laughing, asking if I was afraid and saying, You should be. Then me, backing away, my pounding heart in my throat.

  Louie charging me, his contorted face. I’ll get you!

  I remembered it all, shivering in the warm pool. If he’d caught up with me that day, Louie would have beaten me to a pulp.

  My hand fell into the water. I let it stay there. It was so peaceful now.

  No!

  I slapped my face, tried to wake up.

  Then sagged back…and slept.

  “Senior patrol loser,” someone said.

  I peeked up. Louie and Mike were bending over the crevice, looking down.

  “Heyyy,” I croaked, then grimaced at the pain in my dried and cracked lips. I raised a hand to block the sun.

  Louie squatted and lowered a canteen down to me by its strap. “Drink…but not too much…it’s catchment water.” He grinned.

  So good to see that grin.

  I took the canteen and struggled to my feet. I rubbed a hand over my face, hot water dripping off me.

  Louie helped me get the cap off. “Forget the stink,” he said. “It’s water!”

  “Is it boiled?”

  “Nope.”

  It felt like liquid silk flowing down my throat. I drank deep. If it made me sick, so what? Better than dying. Louie took the canteen back and drank himself, then handed it to Mike. Mike sniffed it, made a face, and screwed the cap back on.

  “Give some to Sam,” Louie said.

  Louie grabbed my hand and pulled me up out of the hole. We went over and looked down on Sam and Mr. Bellows. “We ain’t the kind of help these two need,” he said. He thought a moment. Working it out. One step after the other. “Okay, listen. First, we get um back with the other guys. After that, I going for help, find somebody with a phone.”

  “A phone?”

  “Gotta be one somewhere.”

  “Be a miracle if there was.”

  Mike lifted the air mattress away and climbed down into Sam’s depression. He crouched next to him, cradling his head. “Sammy boy…wake up. Drink some water. We’re going home.”

  Mr. Bellows crawled out of his crevice, lifting the plywood away. I was so relieved—he was awake!

  “Nice shelters,” Louie said.

  “All I could find.”

  “Next earthquake I hope I camping with you.”

  “Next earthquake I won’t be anywhere near it.”

  Louie smirked. Mike handed him the canteen, and Louie took it over to Mr. Bellows.

  Mike and I got Sam out of his hole. “Hey, Louie!” I tossed him his T-shirt and pulled mine over my head, my back itchy with drying salt.

  Mr. Bellows folded the air mattress and held it to him as if it were a treasure. No way he was leaving it behind.

  What am I doing? I’m not the one who needs protection. I took off my T-shirt and pulled it down over Sam. It fit him like a dress. “Okay,” I said. “Let’s go.”

  Louie nodded and gave me a thumbs-up.

  We started the long, slow journey back to Halape.

  Louie, Mike, and I took turns carrying Sam. He couldn’t walk on his own. Thankfully, Mr. Bellows could.

  Masa headed down the slope the minute he spotted us coming around the point.

  We limped closer.

  “I sure am glad to see you,” Masa said to Mr. Bellows as we met. “We thought the ocean swallowed you.”

  “It tried to.” Mr. Bellows raised a hand to his head, then bent over. He put both hands on his knees. “Dizzy,” he said. “I hit something hard…when…when…”

  Masa put his hand on Mr. Bellows’s back and turned to Louie, now carrying Sam. “How’s the boy?”

  “Too hot.”

  Masa nodded and turned back to Mr. Bellows. “Can you walk now?”

  Mr. Bellows stood, grabbing Masa’s arm for support. “Casey—”

  “With us,” Masa said. “He’s okay.”

  Mr. Bellows closed his eyes in relief. “Zach?”

  “Your boy found him. Scared, but no broken bones. Lots of cuts.”

  “Where was he?” I asked.

  “Down the coast, opposite from where you went.”

  Good man, Casey, I thought. Especially with that knee. Wow.

  “Come,” Masa said, urging Mr. Bellows to keep moving. “We got a place for you. Everybody accounted for now. Nobody lost, nobody dead.” His gaze slipped down. “Except for two horses…one was mine.”

  “I’m sorry,” Mr. Bellows said.

  Masa lifted his chin toward the hill. “We go.”

  Mike took Sam from Louie. We limped uphill, passing just above where our camp had been. I felt like I was hallucinating, still unable to grasp that the coconut grove was now in the ocean. I stepped over pieces of our old lives, stuff strewn everywhere. It looked as if a camping-gear factory had exploded.

  “Wait,” Louie said.

  We stopped and watched as Louie leaped from rock to rock, heading toward the sea. He squatted to retrieve something, stood and squeezed the water out of it, then hopped back with Tad’s blue blanket crumpled in his hand. Gear was scattered all over the place—tents, backpacks, valuable
stuff—and he’d picked up Tad’s blanket?

  Billy wasn’t crying or shouting out anymore, but he sat apart from everyone. The silver chain around his neck glinted in the sun. It made me sad just looking at him. His parents and his brother, Jesse, were probably going crazy worrying about him. This was Billy’s first campout. I turned away.

  “Zach!” I said, spotting him near Reverend Paia.

  He looked up, empty-eyed.

  I lifted my chin. “Good to have you back.”

  He nodded, but he didn’t look so good. There was a long gash on his left upper arm. He didn’t seem to notice it.

  Mr. Bellows found a rock and sat on it bent forward with his head in his hands. Casey limped over on his stick cane and tried to hold a towel up to shade his dad. Mr. Bellows grabbed Casey’s legs with one arm and hugged him close.

  Louie and I squatted next to them, the blue blanket now draped over Louie’s shoulder. “How you doing, sir?” Louie said. It startled me to hear him say sir. That word had never come out of him before.

  Mr. Bellows looked up. He tried to smile. “Go help the others, Louie. I’ll be all right.”

  “We take care of everything,” Louie said. He glanced at me and jerked his head. We left.

  Cappy and two paniolos huddled around Lenny, joking with him, trying to keep his spirits up. Lenny was hurting. He needed help, and soon.

  Sam sat with a towel draped over his head. Masa was trying to make him a shelter with the air mattress. I bunched my lips. I should have hauled the piece of plywood back with us!

  Too late now.

  “Come,” Louie said. He pulled the blanket off his shoulder and folded it neatly. Tad was hunched in the stingy shade of a clump of rocks and some towels. He was silent, gazing at the dirt. “Hey,” Louie said, squatting down in front of him. “Look what I found.”

  Tad looked up, grabbed the blanket, and hugged it close. “Wet,” he squeaked.

  Louie grinned. “Sure is, brah, but you know what?”

  Tad looked into Louie’s eyes, his face cut and lumpy.

  Louie turned and squinted up at the sun. “See that fireball? Dry um quick…. You like me spread it on the rocks for you?”

  Tad nodded but wouldn’t let go.

  “’S’all right. Dry quick even in your hands.”

  Tad buried his face in the blanket. Louie put his hand on his shoulder and stood.

  We walked away. “That was nice,” I said.

  “He not going forget this day.”

  “Who will?”

  We found Reverend Paia lying in the dirt, his good arm crooked over his eyes. Mike sat beside him. Someone put a hand on my shoulder and I turned. “We need more water,” Masa said quietly.

  “The catchment?”

  “No more.”

  “It’s empty?”

  Masa nodded.

  “How much we got left in the canteens?”

  “Little bit.”

  Mike looked up. “How are we going to get out of here?”

  I glanced up toward the trail we’d come in on. No way. Back down the coast where we’d planned to hike out was too far. In our condition it would take a week.

  “The rangers know we’re here,” Masa said. “Somebody will come.” Masa had lost his hat. A small bald spot sat on the back of his head.

  “But when?” Mike said.

  Masa tipped his head toward the mountain. “Depends on what happened up there, I guess. If the volcano blew, they won’t be thinking of us.”

  “Someone will,” I said, cringing at the thought of white-hot, slow-moving lava oozing down over the cliff. Where would we go? Into the ocean? “Did anyone see a flash of light over the sea last night?”

  Masa nodded. “Looked like lightning.”

  “What was it?”

  “Who knows?”

  “It wasn’t stormy,” I said.

  “No.”

  We stood a moment, looking out to sea. Some things were without explanation.

  “I going get help,” Louie said. “What if nobody thinking about us?”

  “My mom is,” I said.

  Louie studied me, and I got the feeling that thinking of his mother had never entered his mind. “Maybe. But we need help.”

  “I’m going with you,” I said.

  He nodded.

  I grabbed a canteen, then thought twice. It was almost empty. I handed it to Masa.

  “Take it,” Masa said. “You need it in this heat.”

  “I can’t leave my dad,” Mike said.

  “Yeah, me too,” Casey said.

  “No need,” Louie said. “Zach,” he called. “You and Tad watch Sam and Billy, ah? Can you do that?”

  Zach nodded. He still looked dazed, but being around all of us seemed to help him unscramble his confusion.

  Louie glanced at me. “Enough water in that canteen for two?”

  I shook it. “A little less than half.”

  “How you going out?” Masa said. “Back up the trail?”

  We looked uphill. It would be a long hike over a bad trail that was probably far worse now, if it was even there at all. Louie swept his gaze back to the coast, shimmering with heat. “We go this way…. Better.”

  “It’s farther,” Masa said.

  “And safer,” I said.

  “Can’t argue with that, but you boys watch where you step. Some places the lava is thin…. You can fall through.”

  Louie turned to me and raised his eyebrows.

  “Let’s move,” I said.

  “You don’t have to go.”

  “I’m going.”

  Louie humphed. The old Louie was creeping back.

  We started out. But Louie stopped and hopped the rocks back to Masa. “One thing,” he said, looking Masa in the eye. “I was wrong, ah? To make fun of what you said about that shark.”

  Masa smiled and put a hand on Louie’s shoulder.

  Louie looked down, nodding.

  We started toward the rocky shoreline. To get to the road we’d have to cross eleven miles of unbroken rock. It might be dark by the time we got there. Would anyone be driving on that road? Maybe it, too, had fallen into the sea.

  Sweat rolled down from my temples. There was no breeze, and there probably never would be. This was a desolate place, made only for wasps and ants and roaches, creatures that could take a beating and survive.

  I gazed into the distance. The coast went on forever. The road was somewhere down there in the haze, beyond anything we could see, maybe even beyond anything we could endure.

  We’d find out.

  For the first mile we snaked barefoot through low bushes, brown grass, and weeds. Louie took the lead. We didn’t speak. The trail rose gently out of the sea-level bowl Halape sat in. It was easy going.

  Until we hit the first lava flow.

  The landscape turned to solid black rock. The trail was almost impossible to see, but you could make it out by following the ahus, or stacked stone markers that people had built to show the way. It was amazing that any were still standing after the earthquake. One stack led to the next, and to the next. The Hawaiians of long ago had come up with this idea. Reverend Paia said the common people weren’t allowed to travel through the lush highlands, where it was cool, where it rained and sweet breezes blew. The highlands were kapu, off-limits, set apart for royalty. If a commoner got caught up there, it was the end of the line for that traveler.

  Seemed like the end of the line down here, too.

  There were two kinds of lava we would have to cross—smooth pahoehoe, and a’a, like shattered glass. Boots could take it. But our bare feet would be ground to raw meat.

  Halfway across the first flow we stopped and gaped at what lay ahead. We were at the top of a rise in the land, the sun climbing into the sky directly in front of us. It reflected off the pahoehoe and nearly blinded me, the smooth rocks glistening endlessly into the distance, mile after mile after mile.

  “Holy Moses,” I whispered, shading my eyes and wishing I had a hat
.

  “Don’t think about it,” Louie said.

  “Impossible.”

  “Okay, then think about how each step is taking you more close to the road.”

  “I might not live that long.”

  Louie shrugged. “How you look at it.”

  We limped on.

  “How’s your feet?” Louie said, stopping a moment.

  “Sore.”

  “Going get more sore.”

  “We need wings.”

  I took the canteen from Louie. My tongue felt fat and dry. I took a sip and let the heavenly stink water sit in my mouth. The ocean to the right was blue, flat, and endless. Not one ripple marred its surface. When I turned and put the sun behind me, the color became even richer.

  Then I remembered Sam.

  And Reverend Paia’s broken arm.

  Casey’s knee.

  Lenny’s head, floating in the water.

  Mr. Bellows.

  And how that colorful ocean was a fake…it had tried to kill me. I turned to hand the canteen back to Louie. “Let’s move.”

  But Louie had already gone. I had to jog to catch up.

  Our luck ended at a lava flow that had raced down over a previous flow. It was the fast kind—a’a, the kind that would rip our feet to shreds.

  Louie inched ahead, testing his steps.

  He stopped and stepped back. “I don’t know.”

  I crept out onto the sharp rocks. “Jeese! How are we going to cross this?”

  “Your shirt,” he said. “Rip it in two, tie half to each foot.”

  “But the sun will cook us.”

  “No choice…’less you can think of one.”

  I took my shirt off and tore it down the middle. My back was already fried. “No going back now.”

  “Nope.”

  Soon we had raglike T-shirt shoes. Looked like bandages. Louie took a step and grinned.

  “While they last,” I said.

  “Go easy.”

  In less than an hour our shirt shoes were shredded and stained with blood. Louie stopped and pointed with his chin. Not far ahead the a’a ended. Smooth, sun-glazed pahoehoe lay like a carpet beyond.

  “Yes!” I said.

  But we both knew we hadn’t seen the last of the bad stuff. I was seriously beginning to believe we were dreaming if we thought we could walk over any more a’a with only the rags on our feet.