Night of the Howling Dogs
Page 13
Ramos and Louie lowered Tad, Billy, and Zach to the tarmac. One of the medics began checking them over. The bruises and the cuts and gashes that slashed their arms and faces made people gasp and huddle close to them. Sam’s mom squeezed toward us, looking scared to death over not seeing Sam get off.
Mike jumped out and helped his father down.
Sam, Mr. Bellows, Casey, Cappy, and Lenny waited in the hold. Louie, Dad, and I stayed behind to help. Three medics scrambled aboard and broke out their equipment.
Down on the tarmac I could hear Sam’s mother screaming. “Sam! Sam!” Reverend Paia caught her, saying, “He’s all right! Don’t worry. Let the medical crew do their work. He’ll be out soon.”
Dad and I helped Casey to the tarmac. The bandage on his knee was the size of a small watermelon. He limped badly.
The medics secured Sam and Mr. Bellows to stretchers and lowered them out of the hold.
Mrs. Bellows found Casey and hugged him. Casey looked over her shoulder at me and Louie, still in the helicopter. He wanted to say something but couldn’t find the words. Mrs. Bellows let him go and huddled over Mr. Bellows.
Casey hobbled back to us. “Listen,” he said, but didn’t continue.
“Your dad going be fine, brah,” Louie said, squatting in the cabin, looking down at Casey. “You better go. They taking him away.”
Casey limped to catch up as the medics rolled Mr. Bellows toward one of the ambulances. Casey’s sprouting red hair was as tangled as I’d ever seen it.
A medic climbed into the cabin and quickly checked me and Louie over. “You boys have these cuts and bruises cleaned up, all right? Go to your doctor or come up to the hospital. Today, soon as you can. You have to be concerned about infection.”
“Sure,” I said, but I’d almost forgotten that I had them. They didn’t sting anymore. Maybe tomorrow they would, but not now. Louie elbowed me and dipped his chin toward Zach, who was keeping close to Billy and Tad while they made their way to their parents. Being a buddy.
Dad put a hand on my shoulder. “You ready?”
“Yeah, sure.” I paused and glanced toward Louie, now with his back to us, staring out at the crowd. “Hey, Louie…you had enough of this?”
He turned and nodded.
“Let’s go, then.”
We jumped off and made our way into the crowd. Cameras flashed as the medics began rolling the stretchers to the ambulances.
Dad shook hands with Ramos, McCreedy, and the pilot. “Thank you” was all he could say.
“You saved us,” I added.
“That’s what we do, kid,” the pilot said.
We headed toward the crowd, Dad craning his neck. “You see Dana and your mom?”
“They were with Mrs. Bellows…over there, Dad.”
Mom looked up and I waved.
She squeezed toward us, Dana following. “Dylan!” Mom said. “Oh, honey!” She hugged me so tight I thought my bones would snap.
“I’m okay, Mom, I’m okay.”
Dana scowled at the cuts on my arms. She looked as clean as a marshmallow.
Mom pushed me back. “Your face, your glasses!” she said, tears streaming down her cheeks. “These cuts! Don’t you ever do this to me again!”
“Next time,” Dad said, “I’m going to tag along.”
I looked at him, then smiled. “Anytime, Dad.”
Louie stood nearby, looking up at the faces gazing out the terminal windows. He turned, nodded to me, then limped off.
“Mom,” I said, trying to break away.
Dad understood. He peeled Mom away from me and pulled her to him. “Dylan’s got something to do.”
“You come right back!” she said.
“Louie!” I shouted, dodging my way through the crowd. My feet stung, making me wince. “Louie, wait up!”
He ignored me, weaving away unsteadily.
“Louie!”
I caught up and grabbed his arm. “Slow down. We can give you a ride.”
He stopped and stared at my hand. I let go.
“I don’t need no ride,” he said.
“What do you mean? Look at your feet! Jeese, look at mine. We’re crippled. It’s just a ride.”
“I said I don’t need it.” He limped on.
I kept up with him. So stubborn. What happened to the new Louie, the good one? Now we had to go back to the old one? “Come on. Haven’t you beaten yourself up enough already? You can’t walk home on those feet and you know it.”
He kept going.
“Okay,” I said, a step behind him. “We’ll do it your way. Where to?”
That stopped him. “Whatchoo want, haole? Ah? Explain me that.”
“Nothing…I just…well, we just…”
He snorted and started limping faster.
Now I was getting angry. “You don’t stop, sucka, I going broke your stupid ugly face and mess you up good!” I held up my fists.
Louie turned back. He tried not to grin. Then it vanished. “Whatchoo care?”
I dropped my hands. “It’s a ride, big deal. To the doctor. And anyway…I know something about you now.”
“Yeah?”
“Yeah…I know you’re not the scary punk you want me to think you are.”
“Well, you still a four-eyed dork.”
I grinned. “So?”
Louie puffed his cheeks, looked down. Then up.
“You’re coming with us,” I said.
“Okay, fine…but one condition.”
“What?”
“We stop at the hospital, see Mr. Bellows.”
“For sure, for sure. And get our feet cleaned up while we’re there. Then buy some Band-Aids and rubber slippers.”
Louie leaned and spat, then bumped past me, heading back. “This don’t mean nothing, ah?”
“Not a thing.”
“Good.”
“Yeah, good.”
I walked behind him.
Ahead, Sam’s gurney rolled toward us, heading to the ambulance. Sam’s dad walked next to it. Louie hobbled over to them. “Sammy boy,” he said. “How you doing?”
Sam peeked up at him, barely conscious.
Louie grabbed his hand, thumb to thumb, man style. “I come see you tomorrow, little man. You more strong than all of us, ah? A survivor. You did good, brah.”
A small smile crept onto Sam’s face.
“While you sleeping I going check if the Boy Scouts got one Purple Heart badge.” He rested his hand on Sam’s shoulder. “Take care, ah?”
“Thank you,” Sam’s dad said. Louie nodded. The medics headed Sam over to the ambulance.
Louie glanced at me. “Whatchoo looking at? I thought we was going get slippers.”
“I got a question.”
“You wasting my time.”
“Remember that day you wanted to kill me?”
Louie hesitated, trying to figure out what I was talking about. Then it clicked. His eyes narrowed.
“Who was that big guy and what did you have that he wanted?”
Louie stepped closer. “You no like go there, haole.”
“Yeah…I do. That guy told me I should be scared of him.”
“He did?”
“He was spooky. He laughed after he said it.”
Louie studied the ground, his hand on the back of his neck. He shook his head and smirked. “That was Luke…my brother.”
“Your brother beat you up? Why?”
“I had his switchblade knife. I stole it from him. I wanted to be bad, like him. But he wouldn’t let me. That’s why he was beating me up…taking back that knife, making sure I didn’t turn out like him. He was watching out for me.” He looked off and added, “Still he does.”
Wow, I thought. Did I have that wrong.
“But he’s in jail right now.”
I let that sit a moment. “That’s…I’m sorry.”
“Yeah.”
I hesitated, then said, “You…you recognized me the minute you saw me in the Bellows’s garage, didn
’t you?”
He grinned.
“So how come you never said anything?”
He shrugged. “Why? That day was about me and my brother, not you.”
This was Louie Domingo talking?
“Listen,” he said, coming closer. “You know why I give you hard time?”
“Why?”
“Because you so stupid.”
I scowled.
“But I going stop giving you hard time now. You know why?”
I looked at him.
He stuck out his hand to shake, thumb to thumb. I took it. He squeezed, hard. “You got guts, that’s why.”
I gaped at him.
He dropped my hand. “We go, haole.”
“Wait…uh…are you…are you going to stay in Scouts? I know Mr. Bellows made you come.”
He smirked. “Nobody can make me do what I don’t want to do, punk.”
It took me a second to get it. “Good,” I said, nodding. “Good.”
“You was going buy me slippers, remember?” He grinned and walked away, motioning for me to follow.
What? I’m his dog now?
He moved through the crowd, shaking a hand, patting a back. Smiling.
An ambulance headed out with its lights flashing, and I caught a glimpse of Casey in the back window with his dad. Was Sam in there, too? I cringed, thinking of how we’d almost lost them. The luckiest thing Mr. Bellows ever did in his life was walk into that vacant warehouse.
I squinted at Louie Domingo through my mangled glasses.
And limped after him.
AUTHOR’S NOTE
Wave heights from the Nov. 29 tsunami ranged from as low as four feet off Waiakea Peninsula in Hilo to 20 feet at points in Ka’u…. There were at least five waves in the series produced by the strong offshore quake, the most intense in Hawaii in more than a century.
—Honolulu Advertiser, Friday, December 12, 1975
Night of the Howling Dogs is a work of fiction based on the true events of November 29, 1975. Six Boy Scouts and four adult leaders from Troop 77 of Hilo, Hawaii, had set up a weekend camp at Halape, a remote beach campground on the southern flank of Kilauea volcano. In the black predawn the Scouts suddenly found themselves caught up in an unimaginable fight for their lives. My cousin Tim Twigg-Smith was one of them.
Though the characters and personal situations in Night of the Howling Dogs are my own inventions, the geological events of that weekend happened as they happen in this book…and like Dylan, Tim in real life let go of his glasses just when he thought his end had come.
The magnitude 7.2 earthquake, the largest in Hawaii since the 7.9 quake of 1868, caused the south coast of the Big Island to drop nearly twelve feet into the ocean. The sudden sinking generated a tsunami that rushed inland over the campers an astonishing three hundred feet and rose fifty feet above sea level.
Though slashed, battered, and nearly drowned, Tim and his fellow Scouts survived. But one of their adult leaders, Dr. James Mitchel, was lost in the quake-generated rockslide from the cliff above. A fisherman, Michael Cruz, who’d ridden down to Halape on horseback from Keeau, was swept out to sea and never found.
Five years after that nightmare, I asked Tim if he would consider hiking back down to Halape to show me around and spend the night. I was fascinated by his story and wanted to see the place for myself, especially the coconut trees rising out of the ocean from where the old campground now sat—underwater.
Amazingly, Tim agreed.
A few months later, with Tim and his brother, Michael, I hiked down to Halape along the rugged eight-mile trail from the Hilina Pali trailhead.
Like Dylan in Night of the Howling Dogs, I was captured by the peace and pristine beauty of Halape. I swam in the crack, dodged stinging ants and flying roaches, sat on the rocks, and soaked in the cool blue ocean. I boiled and drank stinky catchment water and explored the rocky coast. I was truly amazed, and silently thanked Tim for having the courage to return again to camp under the looming cliff of Pu’u Kapukapu.
That night we unrolled our sleeping bags on the sand and slept under the stars, the ocean whispering not far away. The air was warm, and the Milky Way raced across the universe, as clear and bright as you could ever hope to see it.
But sleep didn’t come easily.
I couldn’t help thinking: What if…
An hour before sunrise the next morning we packed our gear, savaged down a can of peaches, saving one more for later, and began the long hike out to Chain of Craters Road, eleven sizzling miles down the desolate coast.
Two hours later the sun was trying to kill us. My feet were blistered and swelling in my boots. I stank of sweat. There was absolutely no shade. We stopped and sat in silence, too hot to talk.
Michael dropped his backpack and searched for something to eat. Tim squeezed into an eighteen-inch fissure, trying to escape the heat.
We got up and moved on.
Tim took the lead, setting a gruesome pace.
At one point Michael and I stopped to split a Snickers bar. That’s when I learned about the wasps, and how wild they could get over something sweet. We ran for our lives, swatting them away with our hats.
Tim was now a blip in the hazy distance. Michael and I had to hustle to catch up.
Eventually, mercifully, we made it to the road. But our prearranged ride wasn’t there. The road was deserted—no cars, no shade, no spigot of clear, cool water, no green grass to lie down on.
Rock and blacktop. That was it.
We sat; sooner or later someone would come.
Michael took out the last can of peaches and pried it open with his pocketknife. We divided it up.
Nothing.
Ever.
Tasted.
So.
Good.
Thank God for peaches.
For a second I thought about thanking Tim, too, for having the guts to return to Halape. But I decided to do that later. Right then all he cared about was water, shade, and maybe a cool breeze.
We were never near death that day as we sat dehydrating in the sun, but we were close enough that I could imagine it. Truly, that moment helped me appreciate what I am: a miraculous living being, part of all life around me. Everything fit together like a tight puzzle, and we had to take care of each other.
Just as our last drop of water ran out, our ride showed up.
The Scouts and leaders who camped at Halape in 1975 (left to right): Fal Allen, David White, Don White (David’s father), Dr. James Mitchel, Jimmy Kawakami (a Honolulu policeman), Leaf Thompson, Claude Moore, Michael Sterns, Tim Twigg-Smith, Noel Loo.
GRAHAM SALISBURY’S family has lived in the Hawaiian Islands since the early 1800s. He grew up on Oahu and Hawaii and graduated from California State University. He received an MFA from Vermont College of Norwich University, where he was a member of the founding faculty of the MFA program in writing for children. He lives with his family in Portland, Oregon.
Graham Salisbury’s books have garnered many prizes. Blue Skin of the Sea won the Bank Street Child Study Association Award and the Oregon Book Award; Under the Blood-Red Sun won the Scott O’Dell Award for Historical Fiction, the Oregon Book Award, Hawaii’s Nene Award, and the California Young Reader Medal; Shark Bait won the Oregon Book Award and a Parents’ Choice Silver Honor; Lord of the Deep won the Boston Globe–Horn Book Award for fiction. Jungle Dogs was an ALA Best Book for Young Adults; Island Boyz: Stories was a Booklist Editors’ Choice; and Eyes of the Emperor was an ALA Best Book for Young Adults and a Kirkus Reviews Best Book of the Year and won the Oregon Book Award. Graham Salisbury’s most recent book is House of the Red Fish.
Graham Salisbury has been a recipient of the John Unterecker Award for Fiction and the PEN/Norma Klein Award. You can visit him at his Web site, www.grahamsalisbury.com.
ALSO BY GRAHAM SALISBURY
House of the Red Fish
Eyes of the Emperor
Blue Skin of the Sea
Under the Blood-Red Sun
&nb
sp; Shark Bait
Jungle Dogs
Lord of the Deep
Island Boyz
Published by Wendy Lamb Books an imprint of Random House Children’s Books a division of Random House, Inc. New York
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.
Text copyright © 2007 by Graham Salisbury
All rights reserved.
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Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Salisbury, Graham.
Night of the howling dogs: a novel / Graham Salisbury.—1st ed.
p. cm.
Summary: In 1975, eleven Boy Scouts, their leaders, and some new friends camping at Halape, Hawaii, find their survival skills put to the test when a massive earthquake strikes, followed by a tsunami.
[1. Earthquakes—Hawaii—Fiction. 2. Tsunamis—Fiction. 3. Survival—Fiction. 4. Boys Scouts of America— Fiction. 5. Camping—Fiction. 6. Interpersonal relations—Fiction.7. Hawaii—History—20th Century—Fiction.] I. Title.
PZ7.S15225Nig 2007
[Fic]—dc22 2007007054
eISBN: 978-0-375-89087-1
v3.0