Over the Rainbow - Book One - 'The Gathering Place'

by Robert Vaughan

  Before Chris could react, he was suddenly ambushed- Lei-lei placed a fragrant crown of Maile leaves on his head as the giggling Kei-kei fastened a cheesy tourist-issue grass skirt around his waist. As Buddy launched into the second stanza-

  The world around him suddenly shifted and changed…

  “Now we dance.” Leilani said softly, taking his hands in hers and lightly guiding them to the first position…

  As Leilani softly chanted, Jenkins closed his eyes and let the sounds take over his movement. As he swayed from side to side, his arms drifted almost languidly, waves and breeze, ships and trees flowing from his fingertips as he let himself be overcome by the moment.

  And then suddenly he felt it- a soft, glowing burn- a gentle warmth that flowed upward from the earth into the soles of his feet, spreading through his groin and striking his heart, then rushing into his mind and exploding through his crown. He felt the warmth spread throughout his entire being, filling his soul with a joy he had never before experienced, an ecstasy he had only imagined were possible in the realm of saints, not of mortal men- a connection to the divine that made him almost weep in joy. And all at once, he understood…

  …the dance was not merely a pagan ritual, not just a means of perpetuating a cultural heritage, or propagating a race. It was a profound form of worship, a unique and vibrant way to commune with the divine, and a flood of tears suddenly coursed down his face as he realized the absolute travesty of what he was sworn to do.

  He comprehended with absolute clarity that everything that he thought was true were merely stumbling attempts to define the nature of God, that the true nature of the Universe far outstripped the teachings in any of the books of man, that the essence of the divine existed far beyond the grasp of man’s hubris. And he suddenly shook with grief and fell to the ground as he realized his intended actions were mortal transgressions far worse than any notion of sin- he realized that he had been tasked with destroying these beautiful creatures connection with God.

  Chris’ eyes snapped open and he gasped as he stared into Alani’s, who smiled softly back at him with an almost painful look of acknowledgement, her eyes telling him that this time- she had been there too.

  She gently steadied him, and then released his hands and began to dance. Chris watched her in awe with a newfound appreciation, and again he felt the gentle warmth and stirrings of emotion he had experienced in the flower orchard flowing upwards through his feet.

  He began to move, slowly at first, fumblingly mimicking her motions as she stood opposite him, encouraging Chris with nods of her head as she demonstrated arms, hips and feet, smiling brightly when he got it right, frowning with mock-disapproval when he faltered. They danced what seemed to be forever, the movements and music blending into a seamless whole that caused the world to blur around him, his entire being suffused with a wealth of joy that caused tears to form in his eyes and sobs of rapturous laughter to bubble from his lips.

  Buddy eventually finished the song with a flourish, the entire group laughing as one, and he placed the tiny instrument on the bench as Lei-lei leaned in to Chris and whispered, “You are a good boy, you make my Alani sparkle!”

  Buddy stood, stretched, and hauled a huge boom-box from beneath the wooden bench, quickly scrolling through the playlist and setting up the next song. With a satisfied grin, he tapped a key and bellowed, “Awright, awright everybody, move it! Now it's my turn.” He strode to Chris and extricated him from the throng of surrounding women. “C'mon, I show you a 'man's' hula.”

  “There are guy hula dancers?”

  Buddy rolled his eyes, and then said to Chris, “Oh man, you might be cute, but you still one stupid haole tourist, you don't know nothin’- Come on. Watch me.”

  The music faded in, and Chris’ scalp crinkled as he heard the powerful drumming, stamping and chanting that he was now so thoroughly familiar with. The rhythmic vibrant tones resonated from the speakers as Buddy demonstrated a uniquely Hawaiian variation of the ‘Haka’, his motions dynamic and masculine. This time, Chris caught on quickly, imitating Buddy with relish, yelling and stomping with vigor, matching Buddy move for move, because now he knew with certainty- that he had done this before.

  On and on the men danced, dust eddies drifting up from their dirty feet as they stomped and stepped, arms moving powerfully and swift from one posture to the next. With a final “HA!” the song ended, and the ladies applauded loudly as Chris and Buddy panted in exertion, both smiling and sweaty, and Buddy gathered Chris up into an eye-popping bear hug, lifting him off the ground and then lightly dropping him back to earth. Buddy gathered up both the boom-box and ukulele into his massive paws, and with a smile and a wave, walked quietly back into the house.

  Abigail shivered as she walked into the chilly room, the cold light of a bare fluorescent tube flickering ever so slightly, almost as if trembling in empathy for her. Hashimoto crossed to the covered form of Walter with Abigail by his side, and he slowly pulled back the shroud. Abigail’s face fell, a quivering of lips and streaming of tears telling the silent Hashimoto all he needed to know.

  Alani led Chris around the side of the house, slowly meandering across the graveled drive as their shadows stretched long and blue in the moonlight. Chris stopped their promenade and said, “Alani, I don't know how to thank you, or your family, for inviting me this evening. It's been…” He smirked with the memory of their shared experience, “…unforgettable.” He took a long look around and continued wistfully, “I'm really not looking forward to this being over, you know? All of this- being with you, your family, your 'aloha'? For the very first time in my life, I almost feel like I’m somewhere where I finally belong, like I'm…” He paused, taking a short, choppy breath and choking back a tear, “…home.” Chris’ gaze drifted almost shyly to Alani, his usual self-confidence nowhere to be found, and he paused again, struggling with how to phrase the next, “Alani, I- I just want to say, to say that-”

  Alani interrupted, shaking her head in sorrow, avoiding the pain of the inevitable, “Don't. Don't say anything. Just- be here, enjoy the moment, while it lasts. Live Aloha...” She leaned in to still his lips with a kiss- a long, slow, tender kiss that melted them both, bringing forth a soft stream of tears that merged on their cheeks, both of them silently knowing that this kiss might indeed be their last and unwilling to admit that it was.

  The moment was suddenly broken by the dull crunch of gravel that preceded the arrival of a long, black limousine, its headlights freezing them in a pool of light as they pulled their faces reluctantly apart, squinting into the glare. The car approached silently, almost- ominously and stopped a few feet away, the solemn driver emerging and then quietly, reluctantly, addressing Chris, “Mr. Matthews. You are needed back at the hotel.”

  “What's up? Is something wrong?”

  The driver simply opened the rear door and gestured within, “Please, sir- if you would…”

  Chris hesitated, and then slowly climbed in, still holding Alani’s hand. “I'm not sure what this is about, but it can't be anything serious, if it was I'm sure I’d have heard something before now. I'll call you as soon as I sort this out...” Chris winked reassuringly to Alani and closed the door, and the car began to slowly move off.

  Alani stepped into the driveway that the car had just vacated, raising her hand in a wave of realized futility as she said to the night, “But you don't have…” And her hand fell limply to her side as she said dejectedly, “… my number.”

  Chris found his mother’s door ajar, the room streaked scarlet and violet from the dark sky outside. Chris peered nervously into the room, confused at the darkened interior, “Mom? Mom- what's going on…?” He looked around the room, his confusion deepening, “Where's Dad?”

  A quavering voice answered him from the darkness, “Oh, honey- He's gone...”

  “Gone? Gone where?”

  Abigail’s voice tightened, “He's- dead. Your father is dead-! The ocean- took him.”

  “Dead! What? How? Ar
e you kidding? Holy shit!! Mom, what happened?”

  Abigail turned on a bedside lamp, revealing a face pale and drawn, the salty tracks of now-dried tears etching jagged lines down her lovely face, “It was- it was an accident they said. He was out- golfing... and, and- a wave, a huge giant wave, just, just came out of nowhere they said, and- Oh, God... How can this have happened! Why did he have to go out today? He could have just- if I had just- he would still be... Oh- dammit, Walter!” And with that final cry of futility Abigail collapsed into Chris’ arms, her shoulders shaking as heaving sobs wracked her entire body, a fresh flood of tears washing the stain of salt from her cheeks.

  Chris held his mother in silence as his mind whirled, numb from the shock of the news, still trying to comprehend the suddenness of destiny turning, the shock of yet another loss compounding so recently upon his abrupt and unexpected departure from the world he felt he belonged, and merely held his mother tightly in his arms as he rocked her on the edge of the bed and said with hollow consolation, “It'll be all right... I promise, Mom, I'll take care of things, it’ll be all right…” And yet deep down inside he wasn’t truly sure that it would be at all, that the shattered remnants of his entire world lying in pieces around him would never be whole again, and at a loss for anything reassuring to say he merely repeated, “I promise... It'll be okay… I promise.”

  This time the luxurious confines of the first-class section of the 777 seemed cold and sterile, the amenities uncomforting and cuisine unappetizing as the plane winged its way silently into the early morning light. With Dido’s soulful ballad ‘Life for Rent’ playing in his ears, Chris looked morosely around the cabin, his mind a miasma of conflicting emotion, when he suddenly saw a young girl he hadn’t noticed previously, twelve or thirteen by his reckoning, writing in her journal. As he took in the girl’s elfin features his skin suddenly prickled with a shock of recognition- she was the same girl from the night of the turtles. Now mysteriously intrigued, his attention inexplicably riveted to the girl’s actions for reasons he couldn’t fathom, he gazed intently at the page and read, the young girl’s bright, crystalline voice echoing in his mind like the chime of a bell.

  “...and the colors, all the colors imaginable, every shade of green you can think of, everywhere you turn- and the magic of it all, the peace and serenity, are like nowhere else on Earth…”

  Chris’ lip began to quiver as the floodgates of his mind opened and he was inundated with an overlapping montage of images from the recent days, a whirlwind of experience and emotion that threatened to overwhelm his senses and cast him into a world of despair and longing from which he knew he might never recover. A blur of tears burned in his eyes, and he wiped at them futilely and glanced out the window to his right, seeing the edge of the Big Island of Hawaii disappearing behind him, a dim haze of smoke from Kilauea drifting to the west.

  As he watched the distant shore recede onto the horizon, a strange, rippling sensation stirred in his gut- a slow flood of cold and an odd tingling that felt like the dissolving of some sort of- connection, one that carried with it a sudden final rending of emotion, one that just as suddenly parted- and was gone.

  And with a sudden and profound sense of loss, the enormous weight of the entire spectrum of emotion he had experienced finally overwhelmed him, and his shoulders began to shake as he finally broke down and wept.

  Alani sat in cold, contemplative silence at her bedroom vanity, her emotionless face reflected in the window, a pen poised over a pad of embossed stationery, the top of the page graced with the overlapping figures of a pair of green and gold sea turtles. Looking back to the page, she sighed shakily, fighting back another bout of tears and continued to write.

  “...and I will always cherish our time together. I am truly sorry for your loss, and hope you can someday move beyond your tragedy, and remember…”

  The cold rain fell from a leaden, slate-gray sky as Chris and Abigail huddled near the grave, bright rivulets of water streaming from the umbrella that Chris held in one frigid hand. He no longer felt the cold, his entire being shattered, its’ warmth replaced with an icy, sharp-edged sense of overwhelming loss. He stared with unseeing eyes into the distance as the litany of banal and empty eulogies droned unintelligibly on and on, and he hugged his mother tightly to him in a vain attempt to dispel the bitter chill. Through the numb haze of despair he could feel his mother softly shaking as she silently wept beside him, isolated in her grief with her face hidden behind a lacy veil, and as he tore his gaze from the solemn gathering and turned his face to her a single frozen tear spilled from his eye and carved a burning course down his unshaven cheek.

  Buddy basked in the warmth of the early morning sun, humming tunelessly along with the melody of the music that leaked from his ever-present headphones. He perched precariously on the overburdened ladder that leaned against the wing of the ‘Menehune’, juggling tools and swapping them out in almost absent-minded fashion as he worked on the starboard engine. His forearms were covered with grease and a black smear stained his smiling cheek. But his face was oddly pale, covered with sweat in the cool morning air, and he blotted his dewy forehead with a dirty hand and drew a long dark streak in a line across his brow.

  As he worked almost mindlessly his thoughts drifted at random through the sheaf of memories of the bizarre and thoroughly unusual events from recent days. A sad smile tilted his lips as he shook his head softly in sympathy for his sister’s loss- it was the first time in forever when he could actually remember her happy, and then he sighed gustily in empathic sorrow for his new friend Chris, whose own loss was even greater still.

  Damn, life sucks sometimes, he thought, and idly wondered what it truly meant- for he knew, deep down inside that it all had meaning, although precisely what was still an enigmatic mystery and clearly not to be revealed as yet, so he resigned himself to patiently waiting until revelation came.

  The priest crossed himself quickly in a final benediction and then flinched as his stole slapped him wetly in the face, his attendants struggling mightily but ultimately failing to hold the umbrella against the rising squall that now stiffened and spat a frozen shower of rain almost horizontally at the gathering beside the grave. As they huddled against the mounting storm, queuing slowly one by one to deposit a final floral offering to the uncaring remains of the late Walter Matthews, the bitter wind suddenly gusted and violently rippled the awning and tents, threatening to tear them from their moorings as a chair, and then two more toppled over, scattering the remaining mourners down the hill to the waiting safety of the retinue of coldly glistening vehicles at its base.

  Buddy felt the searing pain tear through his chest, ripping his heart in half as it yielded to the valiant battle it had waged in tortured silence all these years. His tools tumbled to the ground and the world seemed to slow around him, a slow-motion spinning of the plane and the surrounding landscape swirling through his vision as his expression morphed from one of pain to that of surprise, and then from surprise to understanding, a slow smile spreading across his face as he hit the ground with a dull thud, slow-motion dust-eddies curling up from the terra-cotta ground.

  Walter’s casket, jet-black and glistening with beads of icy dew, was now blanketed in a heaping mound of white roses and pale lilies that were precariously anchored by a singular magenta orchid placed atop the sodden pile, flowers that now flapped and fluttered violently in the wind, a shower of white rose petals suddenly flying off into the leaden sky. As the coffin was slowly lowered into the grave, a few premature clods of muddy earth splashed onto it from above, staining the pristine flowers with dark brown smears as it disappeared into the cold, hard ground, isolated and alone at the top of the abandoned hill and its’ disheveled gravesite.

  Buddy lay still upon on the ground, both hands crossed over his chest, almost as if in repose, his burden lifted- a small, knowing smile etched onto his face as he confronted the afterlife. At the base of the hill below the plane, Alani trudged slowly up the path to begin anoth
er wretched day, her look of dejected apathy turning to one of frozen horror as she saw the still form of Buddy on the ground, breaking into a run that she already knew would be too late.

  The wind and rain whipped at Chris and Abigail as they approached the line of black vehicles that seemed to stretch to infinity, the nearly useless umbrella threatening to invert itself in the strengthening squall. The huge Polynesian driver held his hat in one hand and the door in the other, ushering Chris and Abigail into the car with a soft smile of condolence on his face and a silent nod to them both, as if offering them a solemn island of isolation from the cold, an implacable shelter from the gathering storm. Chris returned the nod with one of his own and cast a final emotionless glance back up the hill to the place of his father’s repose. As he ducked and entered the car, just as the door began to close, Chris suddenly stiffened as the hair on his neck bristled from something other than the cold- it was the unmistakable sound of the crystalline tinkling of wind chimes, strikingly clear and distinct above the rattle of rain and howl of the wind.

  Alani cradled Buddy’s massive head in her lap, now weeping openly, her tear-streaked face upturned to the bright Hawaiian sky. The sky replied in kind, a gentle sprinkling of huge, fat drops that fell on her upturned face, almost like a blessing from the benevolent heavens that watched her from above. A sharp, strangled cry caught her attention, and she turned to see her mother and father begin to run up the path, a hand flying to Noelani’s mouth as she realized with grim reality that the unspoken inevitability that she had so long dreaded had finally come to pass.