Silversword

by Phyllis A. Whitney

  “He manages what’s left of the ranch for me now,” she told me. “And he still has red hair. So you’ll recognize him. He gave you your first ride on a horse, sitting in front of him in the saddle. I depend on Tom around here. Though I don’t raise as many horses anymore. But I have to warn you that he doesn’t approve of your coming.”

  There was no time on the phone to ask why, so I let that go. It didn’t matter anyway. All that mattered was that my Grandma Joanna wanted me and I was on my way. All the questions could wait. I tried to shut out completely the grim suspicion Grandmother Elizabeth had planted in my mind about my father.

  Before I left I called to tell her my plans. She sounded subdued, even a little anxious, and there was no point in being angry with her. I promised to write, and we said goodbye stiffly. She didn’t mention either my father or my mother.

  There were pleasanter things to think about. My childhood, for one. The Kirbys had not lived on Grandma Joanna’s ranch. My father and mother had bought a large house a mile or so down the road. It was an awesome house built years before in the Italianate style with tile and marble, huge high-ceilinged rooms, and a winding staircase at one side of the entry hall. I remembered the stairs because of all the times I’d watched my mother drift down them in her long dresses, always with a flower in her pinned-up blond hair, and bubbling laughter on her lips.

  Now, with my eyes closed, I heard, not the sounds of the plane, but the musical notes of her laughter. Did she still laugh like that? What had the sudden and apparently simultaneous loss of her husband and daughter done to her all those years ago? I remembered the teasing little jokes that I’d loved her for, and the way she’d teased my father too. Though not always. I seemed to remember that there had been little laughter during our last months on Maui before the accident happened. Even as a small child I’d sensed that something was wrong.

  My memories of my Aunt Marla were hazy, but affectionate. She’d have been about nineteen or twenty then, younger than my mother. She’d seemed fond of me, and sometimes she’d read me stories. Mostly I remembered her eyes—large and very bright and quick-moving, as though there was so much to see in the world that she could never take all of it in fast enough. Grandma Joanna hadn’t mentioned her on the phone, so perhaps by this time she had married and lived elsewhere.

  Lunch on the plane was standard fare, but with a few Hawaiian touches—macadamia nuts and tiny orchids on our trays. I watched clouds and ocean drift by beneath a wing. We flew ahead in space, but backwards in time. It was earlier in Hawaii than in San Francisco. The movie didn’t interest me, so I read a little, and slept a lot, having lain awake so long last night in anticipation.

  When I opened my eyes the cabin was stirring and we were coming in to land. Green islands floated on rippled blue water, but I had no way of identifying what I saw. Then one island grew in size until I knew it was Maui, even though the mountains were diminished from the air. Eagerness quickened in me. There was still the long drive up Haleakala before I would be with Grandma Joanna and my mother, but at least I was here. Once more I wondered why Tom O’Neill didn’t want me to come—I’d probably find out when he met me. No one on Maui was real for me yet, except my grandmother. Not even my mother, who was only a hazy, troubling memory. What color were her eyes?

  With the other passengers I gathered my handbags and light coat, filed down the aisle, exchanging alohas with the attendants, and hurried off to Baggage Claim.

  Tom O’Neill was waiting for me, and I had no trouble recognizing him. He was probably in his mid-fifties now, his skin tanned to a leathery brown from all those outdoor years with horses, and his eyes a faded blue. His hair was certainly as red as I remembered, and only a little grizzled at the temples. He wore work jeans and a short-sleeved green shirt that hung outside his pants.

  When I walked over to him he dropped a pink plumeria lei over my head, though he skipped the customary kiss on either cheek. “From your grandmother,” he said. Its fragrance enveloped me—the frangrance of plumeria was Hawaii!—and I felt the special welcome these islands held for me. Tom O’Neill had little to say, but he made an odd remark as he waited for my bags.

  “You don’t look like her,” he said, and I knew he didn’t mean Grandma Joanna.

  “My mother?”

  “It’s your hair, maybe. Dark. And her eyes aren’t as dark a gray. You’re taller, too.”

  It was a strange, coolly delivered inventory, as though he added me up in some way that carried a hint of accusation—as though I had no business not resembling my mother. I held back any questions in the face of his disapproval.

  When we’d caught my bags off the carousel, he led the way outdoors into bright sunshine. It was October now, but my San Francisco clothes were immediately too warm, even though the sun of late afternoon was dropping down the sky toward West Maui. At once the breeze caught at me, blowing my hair back, whipping my skirt—a familiar wind that carried an island scent of sea and flowers. These were the trade winds that blew so much of the year in Hawaii and kept the climate moderate.

  Tom strode ahead with my bags, not looking back as he led the way to the jeep that was to take us up the mountain. When we’d stored my luggage, he opened the door for me.

  “Your gramma said I could bring her car, but I like this better.” It wasn’t an apology.

  “This is fine,” I said, and pulled myself up into the front seat.

  Away from Kahului Airport, we turned onto Haleakala Highway, and started up those slopes that began in some places at sea level. I looked for the mountain the moment we left the airport, and my heart lifted at the sight of it rising steeply ahead, high above us, blue-shadowed now, with afternoon clouds filling the unseen crater, spilling fluffy white cotton over its rim.

  This I remembered. The mountain spoke to me as it had done when I was small, touching my spirit and my imagination—always a place of mystery and magic. I knew that it held a tremendous power—House of the Sun! Hawaiians called it that because there was a moment at dawn when, from certain places on Maui, the sun seemed to rise from the very crater—born every day in the heart of the mountain. There were legends about the demigod Maui—how he had trapped the sun in his net and slowed its course because it was traveling too fast to dry his mother’s tapa.

  Haleakala, with its more than ten thousand feet, dominated all of East Maui, casting its great shadow across one sea in the morning and another in the afternoon. Off to my right as we drove, were the mountains of West Maui beyond the flat isthmus where the airport was located. I had pored over maps when I knew I was to return, and the strange human shape of the island of Maui was clearly in my mind. It had been likened to the head and upper body of a woman. The head showed clearly in profile, the isthmus formed the neck, and all of East Maui the larger body. Once Maui had been two islands, but volcanic eruptions had sent lava down the slopes to fill in the channel between to form the plain that connected the two sections.

  Today there were no more eruptions. The mountain had lain dormant for more than two hundred years. One referred to the “crater” of Haleakala. The word “volcano” was used for the active mountains on the Big Island of Hawaii. Beyond the lower, more jagged mountains of West Maui lay the “Gold Coast,” with its hotels, beaches, surfing—all major attractions for the tourist. This side, I hoped, would be like the old Maui, not too much changed since my childhood.

  Cars on the other side of the road were coming down, some of them from the summit, and I knew the road up near the top was a mass of switchback turns that slowed all travel. I had never been inside the crater, though I’d listened to all the stories about it as a child, and had longed for the time when I would be old enough to be taken down into what had once been Pele’s home. My mother had loved the crater. She’d said it was full of spirits and sorcery because it was the home of the old gods—something my father had called nonsense, but my mother was born on Maui and had grown up listening to her mother—Joanna.

  “How is my mother?
” I asked out of my thoughts.

  Tom glanced at me, and then looked back at the road ahead. “Just about the same,” he said curtly.

  I wanted to ask, the same as what? but I didn’t care. I recognized dangerous ground, and knew I’d better stay clear until I saw my grandmother. Yet I wanted to talk because of all the questions swelling inside me—there was so much I wanted to know and was impatient to learn.

  “At least tell me about my grandmother,” I said. “You can talk about her.”

  He caught the reproach and ignored it. “Sure. What do you want to know?”

  “Is she well? What does she do with her life these days?”

  “She’s as healthy as they come, except for one knee she hurt in a fall off a horse last year. And a good thing she’s strong, with all the loads she’s had to carry.”

  Again there seemed a hint of accusation, as though I might be one of her burdens. I moved to a safer topic.

  “She said she still raises horses, and that you manage the ranch for her.”

  “It’s not like it used to be. She breeds a few, and keeps some studs. Sometimes we rent our horses for parties going into the crater.”

  “Grandma Joanna told me on the phone that you gave me my first ride on a horse.”

  “Look,” he said, “I’m not much on chitchat. I’m not sure why you’ve come here now, but I hope you won’t add to Joanna’s problems. She can handle what she has to handle, but she doesn’t deserve any more. She told me you’d been divorced. So now you’ll probably throw all your troubles on her!”

  He was making me angry. “That’s not why I’m here. She warned me you didn’t want me to come. Will you tell me why—aside from the troubles I don’t mean to throw on her. I’m trying hard to handle my own.”

  “You’ve stayed away too long. You won’t be what she expects.”

  “How could I be? From six to thirty-two is a big jump. She’ll expect that. You might hold off judging me until you know me better.”

  “Okay, I can wait.” He sounded as though he wouldn’t change his mind, and I didn’t need to convince him of anything.

  “What about Aunt Marla? Has she married?”

  “No—though she should have. She still collects local kids at the library in Makawao and tells them stories of Hawaii. She’s even put some of her stories into books for kids. Though, mostly, she looked after your mother.”

  I caught him on that. “Why does my mother need looking after?”

  At once he was evasive again. “You’ll find out.” He grinned a bit cynically, as though I wouldn’t like what I found out. “What do you do for a living these days?”

  There was no use pressing him, no use being annoyed. “Right now I don’t have a job. Which is why I could come to Maui.”

  “What do you do when you do have a job?”

  That was a question I always found hard to answer. “I’ve worked at a lot of things. Sometimes I do research for writers. And I worked for a couple of years helping teachers of handicapped children. I’ve tried real estate, and I’ve been a salesclerk. I don’t seem to have any special talents.”

  “Kind of drifting around like your father? He sure wasn’t much of a rancher.”

  I didn’t want to discuss my father with Tom O’Neill, and I tried a counterattack. “What about you? Do you have a family?”

  “I have more sense than to get married,” he said shortly, and gave his attention to driving, shutting me out.

  There was no way to be friends with Tom O’Neill, and that was all right with me. I didn’t know what was bothering him, and I didn’t much care. The scent of the lei around my neck had grown too sweet and heavy. I was sure that plumeria—frangipani—wasn’t the flower my mother had liked to wear.

  “We’re getting there,” he said after miles of silence in which I watched the sparsely populated hill country slip by, with the road always rising, though we were still far below the switchbacks that led to the summit. Eventually we turned off the highway to Makawao and drove through that little ranching town, where the business section boasted false fronts, and looked like a street in America’s old West. Except for the banana plants and other tropical foliage.

  A country road lined with flowering hedges led up the mountain, and now I glimpsed larger houses set back among trees, some with ornamented gateposts and long private driveways leading to their seclusion. Always there were flowers, along the road and in the gardens.

  “Will we pass Ahinahina?” I asked.

  “Where your parents lived?”

  “Yes. It means silversword, doesn’t it—that plant that grows in lava soil in the crater?”

  He nodded. “You remember quite a lot, don’t you? That’s the house now—back behind those monkey-pod trees. It’s used by an art society these days.”

  I could see only a high red tile roof. Perhaps I would visit the house while I was here—just to explore a few more memories.

  Stone gateposts marked the entrance to Manaolana, and we followed the narrow drive back through trees and vegetation that grew wild until a final clearing made way for house and lawn.

  Tom stopped the jeep and got out. “I’ll bring your bags. Go on ahead—your gramma’s waiting for you.”

  I climbed a few stone steps that led to the lawn from the side drive, and passed the great champhor tree that I’d loved to swing from as a child. Across the wide spread of grass was the house I’d so loved as a little girl—low and very wide, with sloping roofs that overhung the deep porch that fronted it. Though here, of course, the porch would be called a lanai—which meant an open living space. Comfortable rattan chairs were set about, and plants grew abundantly in large and small pots. All this seemed familiar as I took it in at a glance, though it also looked much smaller than I had remembered.

  It was the woman who held my full attention. Grandma Joanna stood in the wide doorway, and she looked almost the way I remembered—a little chunky, with broad shoulders and tanned hands that could handle any horse. Her face was round and brown from the sun, and the strange thing that sometimes happened to older women had taken place—a sort of melting of the features, so that former strong lines were lost in more recent, looser creases. Only her straight beak of a nose held its own, unchanged. Most of all, I remembered her eyes, still a pale gray-green that was almost the color of silversword leaves. Above them, her hair was no longer brown, but thick and gray—carelessly cut as always, and short so it wouldn’t get in her way. She probably chopped it off herself. Now she wore a long, pale blue muumuu with a white lace yoke at the top. A concealing garment, which nevertheless lent a certain grace, even to my sturdy grandmother.

  For a moment she stood looking at me, questioning. She must now rid herself of the memory of a small child who had crawled so often onto her knees, and replace that picture with someone new and strange.

  The deep lanai was only a step or two up from the lawn, and I walked across it hesitantly, suddenly unsure of my welcome. Then she opened her arms, and I ran into them as the child had done so many times. She hugged me hard, and I felt her strength flowing through me, just as I remembered. There was still power in Joanna Docket. But there was need now, as well—perhaps even a hunger that I could respond to as I hugged her back.

  “Carol” she said. “I can’t really believe it yet—that you’re here. I’ve needed you.”

  Tom waited on the lanai with my bags, and she stepped out of the doorway. “Thanks for bringing her, Tom. Will you take Caro’s things upstairs, please? I’ve put her in the room where she used to stay when she visited overnight. Do you want to go up right away, Caro honey?”

  No one else had ever called me “honey.” My father had given me funny nicknames that constantly changed, and my mother had called me Linny. Grandmother Elizabeth never called me anything but Caroline.

  “Not right away,” I said. “I’m too excited over seeing all this again. May I just look around downstairs for a few minutes?”

  “Of course. We’ll be having dinner i
n an hour or so. Marla isn’t home yet. She’s gone to Wailuku with a friend.”

  “What about my mother?” I asked.

  Grandma Joanna hesitated, and her warmth toward me seemed to diminish just a fraction. “Sometimes she prefers to eat by herself in the kitchen, since strangers make her uneasy.” She broke off apologetically. “Not that you’re a stranger, Caro, but this may be difficult for you both. It’s been so long … you’ll need to prepare yourself for a change. Now I have something cooking and I’d better see to it.” She was clearly anxious to get away, to postpone any talk of my mother.

  “Have you told her I was coming?” I asked, uneasy lest for some reason she hadn’t.

  We’d stepped into the long living room that ran the width of the house, except for a room or two at the far end. Grandma Joanna turned in the direction of the kitchen. “We need to talk soon,” she said, evading my question. “Just wander around inside, if you like, and I’ll be with you in a minute.”

  From the first I’d known that something was wrong about my mother. Something difficult for my grandmother to reveal. Was it possible that my mother had believed I was dead? I wanted to run after Grandma Joanna, and ask her to tell me the worst right away, just to lessen my anxiety. But she was gone quickly, and I knew I mustn’t follow.

  I began to picture some terrible disfigurement of my mother’s face, or crippling of her body that had destroyed her beauty, made her want to hide from strangers. But I wouldn’t care. I was ready to pour a child’s love to her again—a love that had had nowhere to go for so long.

  Tom came downstairs and I thanked him for meeting me. He nodded curtly and went off toward a side door, his indifference clear. For a few minutes I stood looking around the lamplit room, its pools of light shining on polished wood, on bookcases lining an inner wall, catching the reflection of brass hearth fixtures, and the jewel colors of a cloisonné box. Teakwood chairs stood at the far end of the room, and I remembered how my small fingers had loved to explore the open fretwork of their carving.