According to our missionary/journalist, William Ellis, I "governed Hawaii during what may in its chronology be called the Fabulous Age". . . until "(I) became offended with my wife, and murdered her; but afterwards lamented the act so much, as to induce a state of mental derangement. In this state (I) traveled through all the islands, boxing and wrestling with everyone (I) met. . . (I) subsequently set sail in a singularly shaped 'magic' canoe for Tahiti, or a foreign country. After (my) departure (I) was deified by (my) countrymen, and annual games of boxing and wrestling were instituted in (my) honor."
How's that for roots?
What?
Don't argue with me, Ralph. You come from a race of eccentric degenerates; I was promoting my own fights all over Hawaii fifteen hundred years before your people even learned to take a bath.
And besides, this is the story. I don't know music, but I have a good ear for the high white sound. . . and when this Lono gig flashed in front of my eyes about 33 hours ago, I knew it for what it was.
Suddenly the whole thing made sense. It was like seeing The Green Light for the first time. I immediately shed all religious and rational constraints, and embraced a New Truth.
It has made my life strange and I was forced to flee the hotel after the realtors hired thugs to finish me off. But they killed a local haole fisherman instead, by mistake. This is true. On the day before I left, thugs beat a local fisherman to death and left him either floating facedown in the harbor, or strangled to death with a brake-cable and left in a jeep on the street in front of the Hotel Manago. News accounts were varied. . .
That's when I got scared and took off for The City. I came down the hill at ninety miles an hour and drove the car as far as I could out on the rocks, then I ran like a bastard for the Kaleokeawe -- over the fence like a big kangaroo, kick down the door, then crawl inside and start screaming "I am Lono" at my pursuers, a gang of hired thugs and realtors, turned back by native Park Rangers.
They can't touch me now, Ralph. I am in here with a battery-powered typewriter, two blankets from the King Kam, my miner's headlamp, a kitbag full of speed and other vitals, and my fine Samoan war club. Laila brings me food and whiskey twice a day, and the natives send me women. But they won't come into the hut -- for the same reason nobody else will -- so I have to sneak out at night and fuck them out there on the black rocks.
I like it here. It's not a bad life. I can't leave, because they're waiting for me out there by the parking lot, but the natives won't let them come any closer. They killed me once, and they're not about to do it again.
Because I am Lono, and as long as I stay in The City those lying swine can't touch me. I want a telephone installed, but Steve won't pay the deposit until Laila gives him $600 more for bad drugs.
Which is no problem, Ralph; no problem at all. I've already had several offers for my life story, and every night around sundown I crawl out and collect all the joints, coins and other strange offerings thrown over the stakefence by natives and others of my own kind.
So don't worry about me, Ralph. I've got mine. But I would naturally appreciate a visit, and perhaps a bit of money for the odd expense here and there.
It's a queer life, for sure, but right now it's all I have. Last night, around midnight, I heard somebody scratching on the thatch and then a female voice whispered, "You knew it would be like this."
"That's right!" I shouted. "I love you!"
There was no reply. Only the sound of this vast and bottomless sea, which talks to me every night, and makes me smile in my sleep.
OK
HST
RAGE, RAGE AGAINST THE
COMING OF THE LIGHT
Skinner brought me some whiskey last night. He flew over from Honolulu with two girls from the agency and five or six litres of hot Glenfiddich Scotch, which we drank on the beach in paper cups with some ice I got from the Rangers. The moon was dim and the clouds were low, but we had enough light from my portable hurricane lamp to see each other's faces when we talked. The girls were not comfortable here, and neither was Skinner. "I'm sorry," he said later, "but it's too weird to laugh at."
We were sitting on the floor of my house in the City of Refuge, about thirty miles south of Kailua on the Kona Coast of Hawaii. The girls had gone swimming in the bay, and from where I sat I could see them splashing around in the surf, their naked bodies shining in the moonlight. Occasionally one of them would appear in the small doorway and ask for a cigarette, then laugh nervously and run away again, leaving us alone to our baleful conversation.
The sight of these long-legged nymphs prancing around on the black rocks outside my door made concentration difficult. Skinner could not see the girls from where he sat, and his mood was becoming so grim that I tried not to see them myself. . . Because I understood that this was not a social visit, and we didn't have much time.
"Look," he was saying. "We're both in trouble."
I nodded.
"And we will both end up in Hilo Prison if we don't put an end to this madness -- right?"
That got my attention. "Well. . . ah. . . maybe so," I agreed. "Yeah, you're probably right; it's Hilo Prison for sure. . ."
My mind flashed back to realities: fraud, arson, bombs, assault, conspiracy, harboring fugitives, heresy. . . all felony charges.
He shook his head and leaned forward to hand me a cigarette. We were both sitting cross-legged on the floor, each on our own tapa mat, with the dull glow of the hurricane lamp like a tiny campfire between us. . . and both our necks bowed with serious problems that could only be solved by serious men thinking serious thoughts.
A noise outside the hut distracted me and I glanced out the door. One of the girls was standing high on the rocks with her hands on her hips and her nipples pointing up at the moon like some ancient Hawaiian goddess curling into a swan dive all the way down to the Land of Po. . . and I was stunned by the sight of it, some elegant vision from a half-remembered past. . . with the sea lapping up on the rocks and the moon rolling over toward China.
"Never mind the girls," Skinner snapped. "We can always take them with us" -- he paused, looking up at me -- "if we can ever get you out of this place."
He was right. I shifted my position on the floor so I wouldn't have to see the girls, and tried again to focus on what he was telling me. . .
Sometime around midnight we ran out of ice and I had to use the bullhorn to call for more. Skinner was worried about waking up the natives across the bay, but I assured him they were used to it. "They love the bullhorn," I explained. "Especially the children. Every once in a while I let one of them use it."
"That's dumb," Skinner mumbled. "Stay away from children. They'll betray you by accident. Jesus," he muttered, "a bullhorn! Are you out of your fucking mind? These natives are nervous enough, as it is. If they decide you're a pervert, you're finished."
"But I never turn it on," I said, showing him the ON-OFF-VOLUME switch under a piece of duct tape on the handle. "The little bastards can yell into it all day and it won't make a sound. But when I use it," I said, "it sounds like this."
A terrible screech of feedback and distorted low-end rumble filled the heiau as I punched the sound level all the way up to 10 watts and aimed it out the door at the Ranger station back in the palm jungle. The sound was unbearable. Skinner leaped to his feet and rushed outside to calm the girls, who were screaming hysterically. . . But I couldn't hear them now; their voices were completely blotted out. And then, as thunder follows lightning came the strange crackling roar of my own voice -- saying very gently and calmly:
"ALOHA! ICE CUBES, MAHALO."
And then, repeated over and over again, like a voice from the Land of Po, "ICE CUBES, MAHALO, YES, ICE CUBES. . . ICE CUBES. . . MAHALO. . . ICE CUBES. . . ICE CUBES. . . MAHALO."
The relentless screech of the feedback rose and fell like wild electric music along with my words, bellowing across the quiet little bay like the voice of some monster coming out of the sea with a diesel
meat-grinder and a brain from another world.
"ICE CUBES! TO THE HEIAU! MAHALO."
I uttered one final wavering burst of oriental gibberish, then tossed the bullhorn aside as Skinner appeared in the doorway, his eyes the size of baseballs. "You crazy bastard!" he screamed, "now we'll never get out of this place!" He grabbed his Hobie seabag off the floor and began frantically jamming things into it.
"Calm down," I said. "The ice is on its way."
He paid no attention. "Fuck ice," he muttered. "I'm leaving."
"What?" I said, still not understanding his frenzy. He was crawling around on the floor like an animal frantic in heat.
Then he stood up and waved a sharp stick at me. "Fuck off, dumbo!" he screamed. "It's Hilo Prison for you! You're not even sane, man! You want to get us all busted!" He shook his stick at me again, as if to ward off a demon. "But not me, you bastard! I'm out of here! I never want to see these goddamn islands again! Or you either. Jesus," he said. "You're worse than crazy. You're dumb!"
"So what?" I said. "It doesn't matter here."
He stared at me for a moment, then lit a cigarette.
I opened another bottle of Scotch and scraped the rest of the ice out of the cooler. "We'll have more in a minute," I said.
Which was true. The night ranger -- probably my friend Mitch Kamahili -- was even now on his way along the path through the palm trees with a garbage bag full of ice cubes. In a moment I would see the bright beam of his flashlight sweeping the bay, and I would signal him back with my own light. . . and then I would walk carefully across the rocks to the old canoe beside the main heiau when I knew he would leave the icebag. . . and in its place I would leave my own bag. . . the one from the last night's delivery -- full of empty beer bottles, cigarette butts, dead batteries and crumpled wads of blue typewriter paper.
This was our nightly routine, and the rangers seemed to enjoy it. All they asked was that I stay out of sight during the daylight hours when the tourists were roaming around. That would be a flagrant violation of the main kapu.
The gravity of the situation had been explained to me more than once by Mitch, the young ranger who normally worked the graveyard shift. On some nights -- when he was sure I had no visitors -- he would bring the ice all the way out to the heiau and we would sit for a while, and talk about what was happening.
Or not happening, as he'd been very careful to explain to me. "You are not here," he told me. "The heiau is kapu. Nobody can be here."
I listened carefully, with all three ears, knowing in my heart that he was far crazier than I was.
I was dealing, night after night, with a U.S. National Park Ranger in full uniform who also believed, without question, that any shark he saw in the bay might be his uncle. . . in a different form, perhaps, but still family.
On some nights, as we sat there on the edge of the sea drinking beakers of iced malt whiskey and sharing a pipe of the local weed he would suddenly stand up and say, "See you later, boss. I'm going home for a while."
When he got in these moods, Mitch would roll a huge green cigarette and go off to sit by himself. I would see the glow of the cigarette for a while, and then I would hear a splash as he slithered over the side, leaving me to brood drunkenly in the dim glare of the hurricane lamp, hunched on the rocks like a stranded ape.
Over the side. Into the deep, blowing air like a porpoise as he slid away from the rocks and out to the open sea, disappearing into the ocean with the atavistic grace of some mammal finally remembering where it really wanted to be.
The Song of Waahia
O the long knife of the stranger.
Of the stranger from other lands,
Of the stranger with sparkling eyes,
Of the stranger with a white face!
O long knife of Lono, the gift of Lono;
It flashes like fire in the sun;
Its edge is sharper than stone,
Sharper than the hard stone of Hualalai;
The spear touches it and breaks,
The strong warrior sees it and dies!
Where is the long knife of the stranger?
Where is the sacred gift of Lono?
It came to Wailuku and is lost,
It was seen at Lahaina and cannot be found,
He is more than a chief who finds it,
He is a chief of chiefs who possesses it.
Maui cannot spoil his fields,
Hawaii cannot break his nets;
His canoes are safe from Kauai.
The chiefs of Oahu will not oppose him,
The chiefs of Molokai will bend at his feet.
O long knife of the stranger,
O bright knife of Lono!
Who has seen it? Who has found it?
Has it been hidden away in the earth?
Has the great sea swallowed it?
Does the kilo see it among the stars?
Can the kaula find it in the bowels of the black hog?
Will a voice from the anu answer?
Will the priests of Lono speak?
The kilo is silent, the kaula is dumb.
O long knife of the stranger,
O bright knife of Lono,
It is lost, it is lost, it is lost!
The Song of Waahia, A Renowned Prophetess
Waahia lived during the 1200s A.D. Although it is claimed that Waahia was of chieftain lineage, nothing is positively known, even of her parents. Through an almost undeviating verification of her prophecies, in time she became noted and feared by the people, not only as a favored devotee of Uli, the god of the sorcerers, but as a medium through whom the unipihili, or spirits of the dead, communicated. She lived alone in a hut in a retired part of the valley of Waipio, and it is said that a large pueo, or owl, which was sacred and sometimes worshipped, came nightly and perched upon the roof of her lonely habitation.
The Legends and Myths of Hawaii
by His Majesty King Kala-Kaua (1881)
END
The Curse of Lono Page 15
