Hawaii Nei (Part 2)

An ambulance careened by. Everyone on the street cupped their ears in irritation, and Sid waited with the rest of the people until the siren passed. Although he had become indifferent to urban noise, the feeling he got from this emergency was uncanny to the point that his ears rang with the phantom buzzing of invisible bees, upsetting his stomach. More likely than not, some tourist was hit by a car—that kind of thing was very common and he read about it in the paper more often than he liked. He decided that if he walked to the end of the strip to see for himself if the tourist survived, it might settle him and then he could eat in peace.
When he reached the end of the hotel strip he saw a wild scene. Beneath the expanse of Duke’s wide, welcoming arms a mob of tourists gathered around several police cars that had secured a broad area of turf. Flashes of blue and red stung the palms and the banyan tree behind them, which loomed ominously like an amphibious beast ambling out of the water onto the black sand. The ambulance was there. Sid saw a stretcher draped in a white sheet, and it was evident that someone had died. Leaning against the red and white truck, the paramedics conversed with each other impotently; there wasn’t much for them to do with a dead patient, so they had no reason to be in any hurry one way or another. Standing apart from the crowd was a fellow unfortunate he knew who, being uncommonly clever, punctually patrolled the streets each night asking for a modest contribution to his cause. He was called the Dollar Man. Sid approached him and asked what had happened.
“Colonel,” the Dollar Man said.
Now Colonel was a composite unfortunate, meaning he was both of the proud and the partial. As far as Sid could tell, he was bat-shit insane. Every spare cent Colonel earned, found, or stole, he spent on cigarettes, and he would drill shirtless up and down Waikiki every evening in a pair of fatigues and boots, smoking and occasionally pausing to shout in tongues at someone or something that wasn’t there. Sid didn’t know Colonel’s story, he only knew it ended—probably meth, or something like that. (Sid discovered later that the old man had died of an aneurism after he had gotten into a fight with an invisible enemy—maybe Jacob’s angel, maybe even the Holy Spirit Itself—and lost. Colonel had collapsed, mute and writhing in the sand.) Regardless of the circumstances, Sid had to turn his head from the fluorescent outline of the amorphous human heap surrounded by a gaggle of vacation-going gawkers. Rubbing his scalp, he silently bid farewell to the Dollar Man and advanced, the crowd dividing itself to escape him.
He lost his appetite after the events under Kahanamoku, and he sought a quiet place where he could be alone. He made his way through the end of Waikiki, past the bandshell, up Diamond Head Road, by the wrought iron gates at the end of the obsessively manicured lawns of the stuccoed seaside mansions, above the great ocean, to the neighborhood at the bottom of the hill. At the end of the road were the stairs leading to the shore. He approached the private place and nestled in the soft, damp sand at the foot of a great stone wall crowned with bougainvillae. He tried to relax, resting his head on the rock.

If Sid was troubled in the past he came to the ocean for guidance. When his father had died, followed by his mother, it comforted him. When he was betrayed by his friends and found himself living on the street, he unreservedly delivered himself up to it with bowed head, and it responded by extending to him its cool, white limbs, to embrace him and take him home. Now he felt it offered him nothing. Rather than murmur the promise of solace it seemed savage and dark, seething, roaring nastily, each wave crashing on the shore a hungry hell-mouth unharrowed.
He reflected for a long time on the old unfortunate’s death, a death he found unreasonably discomposed him. The lifespan of an unfortunate is an uncertain thing—Colonel’s had been long and its immanent end shouldn’t have been a surprise. Nevertheless, Sid wasn’t prepared. The longer he brooded on what he had seen, the more active and alive his thoughts became. A vision of the dead thing came into focus—a shirtless, sun-hardened torso haunting the sky over Sid’s mind. It said nothing, and did not acknowledge him, refusing to show him more than a profile of its reddened face. It merely asserted itself, an enceinte thunderhead before the downpour.
Spookiness aside, it was troubling that the essence of Colonel’s vision was more substantial than his body had been while it was alive; death had somehow given him an identity. Colonel wasn’t particularly unique, and for this reason he would not be missed. Hydra-like, another would rise in his place and join the multitude of unfortunate, faceless faces. Sid wrestled uncomfortably with this, the dissonance between his vision of the spirit and his memory. The corpse, exposed before the tourists, undid itself. It was the profound nonsense of that scene, and of the vision, of Colonel’s entire life, that made Sid wriggle in the sand like a charmed cobra.
Eventually, the ghost faded and vanished. The ocean, too, which had seemed minutes ago to roil, an army of monsters with a thousand legs in a hurry to do badness, metamorphosed into a single kind, old face, the foamy waves infinite white curls in its ancient beard. But Sid didn’t trust it; he lay exhausted and afraid of it like one who had just washed ashore from shipwreck. He turned and eyed suspiciously the two drain pipes at his back as they peeped eerily at him, a pair of giant binoculars he was trying to use through the wrong side. Fearing an unseen voyeur somewhere beyond the pair of man-sized sockets in the wall, or a turning of the fickle sea, he couldn’t sleep there on the beach as he might have done any other time. So, he trudged back to town. At dawn he approached his place on the pavement by the vacant lot, and slept among the familiar people.

Hawaii Nei (Part 3)

He woke the next morning to the piercing blip of another siren, this time from a police squad car that had stretched itself greedily across the right lane of traffic while its fat, ape-faced policeman tended the gate to the gravel property next to Sid’s strip of grass. “Everybody gonna have to clear outta here immediately,” the policeman declared, as if reading from a script.
Some of the residents, including the haole woman, argued with the policeman about the terms of the present law while Sid sat several yards away, puffy-eyed. It irritated him to hear them bicker—he was tired and wanted to return to his bamboo mat under the shade of his palm.This, of course, was impossible. He would have to pack again, and move, and the idea of it sickened his already empty stomach.

As he lay watching some of the more weak-willed already gathering their things, he noticed for the first time that all but one—including himself—had stolen shopping carts, most of which were laden to the point of dangerous instability, trembling trash bag skyscrapers full of personal fragments that for one reason or another, couldn’t be discarded. The Ala Moana apotheosis of this brand of packrat unfortunate was The Joker, a weird forty-something broken woman with a white Mona Lisa smile that, much like that notorious vampire, was immortal, illegible. Once on his way to buy a pair of replacement slippers, he had to pass her as she carted her broad, patchwork burden; in order to get by her he found he had to cross the street. Some nights he secretly observed her—she always seemed awake, sitting fully erect, eyes open, smiling, staring into the ground. It chilled his blood. Once or twice, after surrendering to the initial impulse to look at her he found himself captive against his will, unable to avert his eyes from her startlingly white teeth. When he was finally able to sleep, she visited his forgotten dreams as one of the lost Gorgons. Deep in his imagination, he felt the suffocating induration of his flesh, originating in the soft tissue of his central, pulsing organ, radiating outward as he beheld her and slowly perished.
With the hum of the argument in the background, Sid rummaged through his personal bric-a-brac as if driven by another’s will. He withdrew the plastic bottles, lining them on the sidewalk like little soldiers and emptying them, one-by-one. After returning the caps, he gave them to the recycling operator—a shirtless man with a tattoo of a lotus like a pair of wings from shoulder to shoulder—for some change.
His cart was still heavy with the rest of his collection, scraps that were physical manifestations of past days. He grasped the handle and instinctively began pushing west, when it seemed the cart refused to move. He checked the wheels and the undercarriage, and there was nothing wrong with them. Panicking, he began to kick the rusted, stubborn block before him as if it were Balaam’s Ass, but it still wouldn’t budge. He stood staring at it, scratching the itch on his head. His teeth clenched with frustration as he gripped the handle tightly and squeezed it until his hands turned white. Holding the unyielding handle with a fierce intensity until he couldn’t maintain it anymore, his grip softened into a gentle caress, and he released it.
Without knowing why he turned and crossed the canal, headed east. He felt a telescopic sadness, knowing that the others would soon scavenge his abandoned things like vultures stripping a dead heifer to her alabaster bones. Nestling his left hand in his pocket, he gently traced the wheel of that last small, inherited thing, and was comforted a little. His pace quickened. The vibrations of his rapid footfall on the pavement worsened the itch on his head and with the untrimmed fingernails on his right hand he gently tickled his crown.
Having no particular destination, he decided to return to the winsome shade of the banyan trees on the outskirts of Kapiolani Park. Resting there would be like a happy homecoming for him, and there was no harm in revisiting old memories. His present life—the life of a wanderer—may have overrun his former life, as a creeping, noxious weed will eventually smother the beauty of a once-well-cared-for garden, but he was coming to apprehend the gratuitous transience of his present for the good that it was, not for the empty rambling it seemed to be, that he shouldn’t mourn for the past, his home, his family, his life as he had known it, for the present was not only full of the past but also the future. The present was the only thing.
At the park he found that some of the unfortunates evicted from the old strip of grass were reclining in the shade under their favorite palms, mesquites, and banyans. Sid greeted those he knew. He also noted an unfamiliar and mysterious family standing nearby. The family didn’t, as many of the long-time unfortunates, smack of dejected poverty, as if they had been evicted from government housing in the west of the city. Neither did they swagger with a rare, imperious, bourgeois air, like those who might have once inhabited a great sea-mansion on the eastern cliffs of the island, angels fallen from manufactured Paradise. They were blank. Sid was curious and wanted a closer look, but didn’t want to be a nuisance or disrespectful of the privacy they likely had not yet realized they no longer had.
The family wasn’t big, in fact there were only three—a mother, a father and a child—the Three Bears. They were a curious bunch, oddly stitched together and not the stuff of children’s tales.
Mama Bear was very fat with a slight hunchback, and she was drenched in sweat although she was both still and in the cool shade. Her skin had a greenish taint like stagnant water, and on her face was a look of irritation coupled with nausea that seemed to deepen in the presence of her husband. Papa Bear, on the other hand, was gaunt and nervous, shorter than his spouse by several inches, and looked as if he suffered from extreme exhaustion, or extreme fear. His expression resembled a marathon runner—or maybe a bowler—that just came in last place.
Unlike his parents, Baby Bear didn’t look unhealthy but was sun-kissed and round, like a brown berry. His head was bald with a curly black shock of fuzz about two inches long at the nape of the neck left unshorn. He hadn’t begun to stink as his parents had. Perhaps this was only because he was still partially unripe with potential for growth into a perfect symmetry, and had not yet fallen from the tree to the trampled earth either to become food for worms or rot from the inside out—the hearts of the young are pure, and perhaps the smell of decay on old skin originates from our aging human center.
The child’s face was streaked with sputum and tears from crying. Sid’s impulse was to comfort him, although he didn’t know which of the child’s needs was more immediate. Hunger seemed obvious, so he reached into his pocket to give the child money, no matter if Sid himself was hungry. He pawed at the crumpled bills and they felt grimy, as if with some gross contagion—he didn’t want to give the child something like that. Also, he reasoned, how can a child know how best to use it? Money is such a potentially destructive thing. Finally, he worried that if the parents found out, it might hurt their pride. They would become angry and, following that, one can only imagine.
Sid then worried how he must look. He hadn’t seen his reflection in several days, and he hadn’t bathed in many more. The child, in a state of elevated exhaustion, might be scared by his ghastliness. All things considered, Sid decided he should leave the three alone to do as they would.
He made to turn and walk towards Waikiki when the child began to cry again. There was something horrible about the sound. It wasn’t the truculent screeching one might hear from spoiled vacation-brats. Rather, it was something like the howl of an animal in a trap, helplessly aware of the seizure upon its useless leg. The parents were exasperated and momentarily pivoted from each other and the child, like inmates in a chain gang pretending to be on a tropical island, free.
Sid stood still. From his left pocket he seized the last thing he owned—the beloved, useless gift. There was only a short distance between him and the child; the shadow of a meager palm marked a thin line on the grass from the spot where Sid clenched the heirloom in his hand to the hill where the child wept. He stole softly towards him and, kneeling, extended his fist, slowly opening it to reveal the plastic prize. The startled child silently gazed wide-eyed at Sid the Stranger for only a moment, and in that moment Sid recognized that the face mirroring his own had awakened to the significant role it was intended to play in this impromptu exchange of an otherwise irrelevant icon. Unblinking, the child delicately grasped the gift—its forefinger and thumb gently closed, the remaining fingers outstretched like three stubby cinnamon sticks—and lifted it from Sid’s hand with latent gratitude. As it was raised from his palm a powerful vertigo swept through him. He shut his eyes tightly, and fell; at least, he thought he had fallen for he felt no pressure on the soles of his feet. When he opened his eyes it was night, and he was alone.

Hawaii Nei (Part 4)

Under the omniscient, patriarchal face of the quickening Hawaiian Sun, Waikiki is a haven for the virtuous and the innocent, for blind young lovers, for fragile hula children dancing unknown lives lived long ago, for ukulele minstrels resuscitating ancient songs whose breath had grown shallow, constricted by the immeasurable weight of time. But the Sun daily descends into the infinitely distant boundary of the sea, and as the indifferent Moon arises with her back to the dynamic, nighttime world, the virtuous withdraw while the vicious emerge victorious from their dens, to reign. It had not always been this way— since the first sunset, night was the period of the gods, while day belonged to man. The world has, along the way, become twisted upside-down. Sid knew it and as a rule he avoided the darker places.

Nonetheless, he rose and found himself deep in a palm forest. He was groggy and confused, as if he were the old man from the well-known story, waking from an hundred years’ dream to an unfamiliar reality. A monkey howled somewhere in the darkness, followed by another and another until a frightening bestial choir ricocheted from every tree. He blinked in confusion and wondered for a moment if he was still on Oahu, or if he had been transported to some uninhabited Pacific island jungle. In the distance he saw the cold electric lights of the Waikiki pavilions and realized he had only heard the caged animals in the zoo across the street. He was relieved, and although he was not consciously afraid he wanted to leave quickly. Within him still was the vestige of a primal human fear, urging his instincts to carry him to safety.

With only such a vague destination, he stumbled toward the pavilions where, during the day, clans of seemingly carefree, unemployed Micronesians drink beer and grill government hamburger. From the outskirts of the forest, he made out a small gathering of unfortunates that appeared to be frozen under the flickering white light of the nearest pavilion, beneath the knotty hau tree. As he approached, he saw that the huddling mass wasn’t still, but throbbed and pulsated like a beating heart. He was compelled by the image to advance, until the swarm of bodies suddenly separated and dispersed, scattering like roaches exposed to the light. Sid recognized the faces of a few of these young unfortunates that would, after prolonged exposure to the night, find that their souls had slipped into the ether, or rather it would happen and they would never discover it, or else they would creak like worn, weak wood under the enormity of the fat man’s footfall, and snap beneath him. The fat man was Fatty Baldy.
The notorious behemoth Fatty Baldy sat at the table that had been the nucleus of the teeming cell, picking his teeth. The table at the pavilion under the hau tree was his home in that whenever one looked for him, he was certain to be there. By that logic, however, Fatty Baldy’s home might be anywhere. Sid knew him when he was a skinny, long-haired boy living on his street. Now, he lived downtown, he lived in Waikiki, he lived in the valleys. He was leeward, windward, mauka, makai. He was everywhere.
Fatty Baldy reclined at the bench like an aged lion, his dry, swollen feet stretched in front of him. Sid stopped a short distance away, and hailed him. After studying Sid for a moment, a smile cracked his wide, shiny face. A sharp gold tooth shone in his mouth.
“Ho, Kanoa! I tink thass you,” said the giant, recognizing Sid. “So what kine stuffs you need, braddah? Everyone come fo me dey need someting. I alway wen get um, too.”
Sid stood quietly, gently scratching the back of his head where it itched.
“You stay strange, brah, like you mento, someting,” he bellowed with laughter. “Howzit anyway? Me, I stay same as you know me from before. I guess some people dey can change. But you membah me from small kid time. Same same.”
Sid eyed the fat man dubiously, and the fat man knew Sid understood him well. Fatty Baldy chuckled like a braying ass and gave a great snort. Lifting his massive hands to his eyes, he wiped away his happy tears.
“Ya, you know bettah! No can fool you, you always plenny akamai I membah. I guess I stay akamai too. Thass what I mean. Heah, I wanna talk story wit you. You membah our street get no one selling coconuts still ya? Well someone see coconut stay missing. Dey start selling coconuts, den boom! people get happy. Bumbye dey get plenny coconut place but everybody membah dat firs guy. Thass how tings work—I membah dat lesson. If dat guy ain sell coconuts, some oddah guy going sellum. No question. Now, you see I sell my own coconuts. And da people get happy too. Dey muss get happy, dey come every night fo see me. And you know what, same kine ting from small kid time—if I ain sell coconuts first, anoddah guy sellum instead.”
Fatty Baldy paused and suspiciously eyed Sid, who still remained silent. After squinting one eye in appraisal for an uncomfortably long time, the fat man shifted forward in his seat and extended his hand, which Sid took and held weakly.
“Kanoa,” he said slowly. Still squinting with one eye, he shifted his attention to a passing cruiser, following it to avoid Sid’s gaze. His voice sounded hollow and flabby, like a soft balloon releasing the last of its air. “Kanoa, your old parents, dey good people. I nevah forget them. Thass why if you need help, come fo me. I no can go anywhere. I got nahting else fo do wit myself, an going nowhere. You know me, everybody know me. No can change, like I say. I tink, bumbye can go da mainland or any kine place, I gonna change. But I know we bote going stay heah. Hawaii Nei, brah. Nevah change.”
There was a rustling in the darkness, beyond the limits of Sid’s vision. Fatty Baldy cleared his throat and gently squeezed the other’s hand in his once more before releasing it. “Shoots den braddah. Maybe you hele now. I get tings need my attention. You membah what I say! Try call when you need me. I stay everywhere.”
Sid backed away from him and from a distance the shadows gravitated, as before, to the great figure, like tracts of light slipping one-by-one into the vortex of an imploding star. He then hurried away east, not knowing exactly why or where he would go.

Hawaii Nei (Part 5)

 

As he wandered the highway he contemplated what the fat man had said. He couldn’t understand why he had vulnerably revealed his inner mind to him, and how much of the revelation was truth. Homo ferox is not trusted and therefore cannot trust. That kind of savage enjoys profiting from the deterioration of fellow man, reveling in the business of the pain of pleasure; many—including Fatty Baldy—have evolved, and become this. Sid dreaded to think that this was what all men might one day become, evolution threatening to unseat humankind’s eminent wisdom and consequent potential for virtue. If evolving—changing—is inextricably fused, as it seems to be, to the essences of the universe and of humanity, the lesser universe, then what, he wondered, is its nature? Is it evidence of decay, or progress, or, in the end, is it a wash that leaves totality in tact, no worse or better than it always has been? And where does change come from? Perhaps it is not a part of the universal structure but rather a detached force of nature, separate from us and from everything, sweeping us along willy-nilly—a force that humankind may harness, like the damming of the waters, and with some difficulty use either to sustain itself or bring itself to ruin. Perhaps it is the absurd result of the combined characterless efforts of time and the elements, or conversely, perhaps it is a human technic, one of our designed crafts that can be manipulated by those that have mastered the pitch and tone and timbre of control. Finally, what if the fat man’s lie was honest, and nothing changes including men who inherit what they are from generations past beyond calculation? The itch at the back of his head surged and as he scratched, it migrated so that he couldn’t find the spot.
He followed the highway as it slowed and narrowed, and bearing to the left at the foot of the mountain, he then veered right into a sleepy suburban community. Climbing a steep hill, descending a narrow, slippery, pine-covered path, he met with a promontory overlooking the sea. He sat with his back to a thick gathering of naupaka at the highest point on the rocks, which commanded a view of the cliffs stretching north and south until their shadows, indistinct in the predawn world, twisted inland. To the east, the stygian brine and the sweet, gray rainclouds mingled and rolled beyond sight.
When the sun rises over that place, it is as if a black hole, an empty space with no thing in it at all, opens—or rather, it closes—and from somewhere in the dark, there is an inrush of substance, the stuff of the world. When taken in by one’s senses, the sunrise seems to happen quickly. Although the ostensibly permanent dark of night is so frightening that it threatens to deny day’s coming, day arrives suddenly and completely and one can’t remember suffering the total paralysis of night, deaf and dumb. In reality, as opposed to the sensory experience, measuring the sunrise’s elapsed time demonstrates that the process is a long one. The miserly sun allows only trickles of its light to diffuse the sky, and if one pays careful attention one can watch the stages, from first light to the sun’s entire circle above the sea. It is, perhaps, the slowness of the sun’s self-revelation—the bits of blue piercing the distant clouds, pink borders becoming orange, then yellow, then white, the world’s fire-lighting—the slowness of the process makes it beautiful, how the world gradually turns from pitch to pearl. Sid saw all of this from his high perch, observing the sun’s daily struggle to tip the horizon until it finally dominated the land, sea, and sky.
He was filled with the coming of the new day he witnessed on the cliff, and had forgotten about everything else: the unfortunates, his malformed childhood friend, the little boy in the park, the death of the crazy man, his parents, his own place on his own, only island. Slowly, however, those things he had forgotten seeped through, and the old feelings battled with his contentedness.
The ghost came again. Although the encounter had stayed in the back of his mind, the full distress of the Colonel’s previous night visitation hadn’t outlived the dawn; day has a way of banishing things like that, and making us question if they had ever been there to begin with. But the sun’s wide, far-seeing face affirmed that the ghost’s new incarnation was real, and that it would always be real.
This time the ghost wasn’t satisfied with an inert demonstration of its immortality. It rotated its profile, displaying its full face while extending gnarled, blackened claws towards the height of the promontory. Sid read what the phantom wanted—it wanted sympathy, it wanted him to lose himself in pity for the passing of the man. It was persuasive. Sid struggled with the hungry thing as it crept closer, until its nose nearly touched his nose, and the foul, dead mouth opened and he believed he could smell rot from inside it, and the mouth gaped wider so as to eat him where he sat.
When it seemed to the mouth that it had won, and it prepared to gobble its opponent as a powerful shark would a little seal, Sid resolved otherwise. At that moment he denied the thing its pity, and with its hold broken the spirit vanished through a fissure in a bright cloud.
Subsequently, however, Sid had other visitors—after the passing of the cloud that swallowed Colonel his parents were revealed, shining hazy and indistinct, gods in the halo of the sun. He held his hand to his forehead and gazed at them, squinting, waiting for them to offer him a sign. But, like Colonel’s fierce specter, Sid’s mother and father didn’t speak. They only smiled and, although they were two distinct entities, they returned to him a single, curious, sphinx-like gaze, until finally the father seemed to separate and, inhaling the distant clouds so that the sky was empty, he extended a fiery hand to the son.
As the great hand approached, it opened itself like a yellow bud, and Sid saw that his father was returning the gift he had given his son in life, that which Sid had given to the Baby Bear. Unlike the distorted outline of his mother and father, the gift was easy to look upon—it was so clear to him, and in focus, he didn’t doubt at all that it was before him. All you have to do is reach out and take it, my son, his parents’ smile whispered in unison, and our connection will remain—you’ll see us clearly, we’ll be here again. The temptation was great, and Sid wanted his parents’ promise to come true. But looking at the gift, he knew that promise would somehow be twisted, that it would deliver only part of its claim, or else it would deliver its full promise but with a hidden cost greater than its bounty. So, he released his want, and closed his eyes on the gift. After darkening that sense, the intensity of the others waxed, and in his chest he felt an acute pain, like the invisible touch of a lethal, microscopic jellyfish. That instant he reflexively opened his eyes to discover that the gift, his parents, and the phantom sting were all gone.

Hawaii Nei (Part 6)

Just then a powerful wind brought clouds in from the distant horizon and pushed them all together, eclipsing the sun and creating a shadow that stretched far across the ocean. The broad darkness drew a distinct line between it and the light, so that it looked on the surface of the sea and the land to be a hard, anthracite thing, a living blight. The waves responded to the shadow and grew wild, furiously battering the cliffs, sacrificing themselves on their high walls by the hundreds. Spittle jetted high into the air, pummeling the earth with supernatural force as it fell. Sid watched from above as the sea churned white and a whirlpool opened, within which formed a swirling black cloud.
Sid had one final panoptic vision, as if the string of time and everyone that had ever occupied a skein on it had been rolled into one knotty bundle, existing together, elbows touching, faces on faces, backs supporting fellow backs. In the black ocean beneath him he saw the swarm of forgotten dead. By their appearances he knew them all: the hotel workers, the bar girls, the plantation coolies, ancient farmers tending the king’s taro, open-air market stall owners, tweakers, and so on. The faces swirled about in a wet inferno, the souls of those taken by the machinations of other men. And in this one mass of chaos he also saw himself everywhere at once. He saw himself lead to safety those that had wandered along a treacherous path, comfort those that had sorrowed until his arrival, instruct those that had wronged another, lift up those who fell. And those that he had lead, comforted, instructed, and lifted up went on to do the same for others who also did the same for others, ad infinitum.
The pit in the sea rumbled, widening, as all those inside who were driven by nothing to nowhere forever reached out to Sid in a frenzy of desperation, and although he saw each individually with an immaculate crystal eye, he somehow was able to train the focus of his perfect eye on the murky horizon, so as to see with the same clarity it and every lost person with one precise glance.
It was then that Sid awoke to the clouds drifting easily out to sea. The sun cast his shadow long to his left, and on the far cliffs in the distance beyond he noticed a group of fisherman had erected a series of deep green tents. The emerald outline of one honu’s head, and then another, could be seen peeking above the white waves before diving again out of view. Sid surveyed the cliffs and the sea, his eyes wandering until they came to the edge of everything that there is, the unreachable end of the world. He stumbled to his feet and stretched his legs, arms, and back.
He noticed a solitary cloud passing overhead which had turned gold in the setting sun. It was unusually round, and seemed to wink at him like a mischievous, swollen head. Where he thought the mouth should be, a gap opened and for an instant the wind whistled so that to Sid it sounded like the cloud spoke. “Hawaii Nei,” it said in a voice he thought he recognized, but he couldn’t quite place. The voice was high-pitched and gentle, yet hoarse from disuse. Sid then found himself clearing his throat, and coughing a tiny cough. The cloud tarried in the sky and as he watched, it flattened itself into mist. When it was gone, he thought of what his old friend Fatty Baldy had said.
Sid stood feebly at the height of the promontory as the temporarily defunct form in the sky was whisked away by the trade winds. The itching on his scalp returned, and he softly scratched the place it bothered him most. Although he still wasn’t sure what to do or where to go, the sun was almost behind the mountains in the distance and he knew he couldn’t stay on the cliffs forever, so he summoned the impetus to twist his lean body away from the sea, toward the land. He then started up the pine-covered path, descended the steep hill, and turned left. Once on the highway he headed west, though he thought he might go any direction—he was hungry and wanted first to get himself something to eat.

About “Hawaii Nei”

 

Like “The Yellow Skirt,” “Hawaii Nei” could use a little explaining in order for it to make sense to the general reader. If you’re from Hawaii, I’d be interested to hear your impression of the story without my gloss.
First, I think the subject matter needs addressing. Hawaii has a big problem with homelessness. Part of the problem is the cost of living. There are actually public beaches on all corners of the island where you’ll find people have set up tents with TVs and little stoves, and they park their cars next to their tents and just live there. On the leeward side of the island, there used to be what seemed to me like a homeless army, with hundreds of tents and people. Then there are the homeless that crowd Waikiki and bother tourists, the state’s main revenue generator. Non-homeless people of course don’t like this and bother the legislature to pass a law to stop the homeless from living in whatever particular spot they live in, then the police come, scatter the homeless, but then they have to go somewhere so they find a loophole in the law and set up a tent in a new spot. For a while, they occupied a spot on Beretania Street as it enters Kalihi. Then they had a line of tents at Thomas Square. I don’t know where they are now, because it changes so much. But, on top of the local homeless problem, there have been reports that other states actually give their homeless a one-way plane ticket to Hawaii. You can imagine the results—overfilled and poorly cared-for shelters, elevated tax burdens on regular people that just live and work there, and a lot of the time there are fights between the homeless where one of them kills the other. This issue is something that, when representing Hawaii in writing, should be tackled somehow, so I tried to do it in this story.
This leads me to the title of the story, which by now you may have guessed is ironic. The phrase “Hawaii Nei” is kind of like the phrase “America the Beautiful.” It’s meant to invoke a feeling of pride in your country, and I am of the opinion that Hawaii is its own country. There is a notable dichotomy between what you’ll see if you drive out to Yokohama Bay or look over the cliffs at Portlock, and the scary stuff I’ve shown in the story about homeless and drug culture (I will write another story about drug culture in the future, although there are stories, such as Alexei Melnick’s Tweakerville which have dealt with the this already). It was my intent to make people who have seen how impossibly beautiful Hawaii is, particularly those people who live there, to think about what happens when you place these two realities side-by-side. I’m sure this is something that Hawaii State natives think about regularly, but I then added a third element to the story.
One of my thoughts when I pass all the homeless every single day is that, I wonder what they’re like on the inside? I finished reading Herman Hesse’s Siddhartha not long before I started writing this story and there was one image from the book that kind of haunts me, and that’s the final scene where essentially the entire universe orbits Siddharta’s mind, and it’s almost as if he’s in this weird whirlwind of humanity. With this image stuck in my head and my constant confrontations with the homeless, I asked myself if one of the homeless here could be Buddha, and if so, what would that person’s story be like? This provided me with the plot of “Hawaii Nei,” which is Kanoa’s quest for meaning in his existence on the island. But of course, there is a more positive underlying theme. I don’t want to say too much about the story because I think it’s better for readers to bring their own personal experiences to this conversation that I’m starting by telling the story, but I do want to finish by reiterating that, to me, Hawaii is paradise, and it is my home. Hawaii Nei.

The Yellow Skirt (Part 1)

Harriet’s Mama sat on a stool next to the gurney, holding her daughter’s hand. This was the first time Harriet had been to the clinic for anything serious, and Mama didn’t know how her daughter felt, or what she should say to her, if anything.
The two used to be best friends. As a child, Harriet always listened to her Mama. If Mama said, “Stay close to shore,” Harriet listened. If Mama said, “Dat Cabanting girl, she pilau,” Harriet listened. When she became a teenager, however, things changed. She became unpredictably moody, stubborn, and defiant. Mama accommodated these changes in her daughter by allowing her more freedom as a young adult. The result was as might have been expected. Mama sighed as the nurse entered the room and shut the door.
The nurse was an amiable, bulgy older woman with black shoulder-length curls, a round face, and a slight mustache. Smiling, she asked the young patient a few preliminary questions about her health and medical history, made some notes, and prepared her for the purpose of her visit. “Okay Harriet, now juss relax and breed slow. Dis going feel chilly one secon.”
Harriet did as the nurse said. The jelly felt cold against her skin and the shock made it momentarily difficult for her to breathe. She looked nervously askance at her boyfriend slouching against the white wall across the room, his hands impotently in the pockets of his board shorts.
The device probed her brown belly, giving her an unfamiliar tickle. The nurse was experienced in reading this type of image, and quickly told her what it was she wanted to know, what Harriet had already known for some time.
“You see here, dis da heart.” The nurse pointed to a white blip that resembled a wisp of cloud burning across the sky. A wave of hot discomfort originating in Harriet’s stomach vibrated with the pulse on the screen, making her fingertips and her ears tingle, and her forehead perspire.
“How far you tink?” inquired Mama earnestly.
“Look like eight weeks. Thass right on schedule. We get you set up with da docta, and you can come regla visits until da end, ya.” The nurse put her hand on Harriet’s arm. “Congratulations, you gonna be one mama!” As she turned to Mama, her broad, genuine smile lost its conviction. “Congratulations, Mrs. Ena.” She hesitated, and slowly began again. “Dis routine, but considah Harriet’s age, we going keep special watch. Can get complications, you know.”
Mama had also been very young when she became hapai, so she understood what “complications” meant. She had barely remained conscious during labor and had it not been for the care of competent clinical staff and her parents, she wouldn’t have survived convalescence. The infant Harriet was on life support, which fortunately the family didn’t have to cover. By some miracle, her daughter had survived and even grew healthy. Now, it was happening again. Harriet never knew this so she was excited, but anxious about motherhood and what changes it would bring for her.
The drive home up the highway was quiet. Clouds hurried over the pali and a mauka drizzle filled the air with a white noise. Papu, the boyfriend, was especially grateful for the aural distraction as he pretended to be busy staring out at the choppy sea. Mama switched the wipers on, streaking dust and moisture back and forth over the cracked windshield. Harriet picked at her dirty nails out of habit.
The truck entered the rusted chain link fence enclosure of the family’s bungalow onto the dun, balding lawn. Women’s laundry blew on the clothesline, nearly dry from the morning. Against the house, Harriet’s father had planted a melia tree, several heliconia, and a pikake bush. He had once seen the white flowers in a garden in the city and fell in love with their peculiar fragrance. He nestled the pikake beneath the kitchen jalousies, so he could enjoy its scent as he breakfasted. The trio sat at the kitchen table, and the odor reminded Mama of her absent husband.
An old television sounded indistinctly in the living room while the trade winds breathed through the darkened home, rustling the musty curtains. Papu traced circles in the red dust that had settled on the counter with his fingers. Harriet took a sip from her juice can. “Mama, me an Papu been tinking.”
“Been tinking what, Harriet?”
“Been tinking—we going marry.” Harriet tried to give her declaration the impression of resolve and finality, although she was a little afraid of how Mama might react. “We do not want notting giant, juss like have one small ceremony, small party. Me an Papu been see dis white dress in town I wanna wear. I—I juss wanna stay nani dat day, mama. I wanna have one nice wedding, den start tings wit Papu an keiki. Thass my dream.” She placed her palm over the soft folds of her belly. Papu steadied his focus on the red dust.
“I see,” said mama after a long pause. “How much dis dress going coss?” Harriet reached into her baggy shorts and retrieved a crumpled piece of paper, torn from a magazine. Flattening it on the speckled formica table, she slid it to Mama. The dress was worth the cost of her truck. Mama shifted her eyes from the dress to her daughter several times, finally knitting her brow in consternation. Then, she had an idea.
“You know Harriet, when fadda an I get marry, we young, we broke. But you tutu get one friend. Juss wait, I get someting fo show you.” She stood up, the screech of her aluminum chair on the linoleum echoing throughout the old kitchen, her bare feet thumping down the hall. She returned with a tattered cardboard box. She set it down on the center of the table, pushed her thick, graying hair back from her forehead and adjusted her faded blouse over her round stomach. Carefully removing the tape, which had lost its adhesiveness with age, Mama lifted an old picture album from the box with her plump fingers.
“Dis my wedding wit your fadda.” She placed her palm enthusiastically on the front of the book.
As they leafed through the yellowed pages, Mama was careful to identify Harriet’s grandmother, grandfather, and Mrs. Itoh, a tall thin woman with a square jaw, bold eyebrows, and a wide, sincere grin. “She wen make this.” Mama pulled from the box an opaque plastic bag large enough to fill her arms. With Papu’s help, she unrolled the bag and revealed a long skirt. The skirt was deep, bright yellow and was unusually heavy, which suggested it was of a fine quality. At a touch, it was difficult to tell the material; it was durable as wool, smooth as silk, and gentle as cotton. A simple geometric pattern was expertly woven in red and black at the hem of the skirt, recalling a feeling distant and almost divine. It was the skirt mama wore in her wedding pictures many years ago, although the pictures didn’t convey the beauty of the skirt’s physical presence.
“Harriet, we can get one place for your wedding, I can make plenny fo eat, all kine stuffs. We can get all da ohana togedda afta. But you know what, I wish you wear my yellow skirt instead dis kine white dress.”
Harriet pinched the skirt between her finger and thumb and frowned.
“Well, honey girl?” asked Mama, softly seeking her daughter’s manao.
“Ey, I tink so you getting makule!” Harriet bellowed. “It look like—like carpet or someting. You mento if you tink I wear dat ol ting! I wanna look pretty, not like one hotel pahforma!” Her cheeks grew hot with frustration, her voice cracking. “Mama, don’t worry! Papu and I—”
“Harriet, try listen. Your white dress stay beautiful, but da skirt, Mrs. Itoh tell she wen make um lucky. Honey girl, try listen. Try, even if just fo make me happy.”
“Mama, listen you! Me an Papu been see dat dress plenny times. We know thass what we want. We wen save up. I know it’s a lot, but—“
“How? You no can save dat, even in one year.”
“I wen save some. Papu, he wen get da ress.” Papu’s cell phone rang in his pocket. “Sorry,” he mumbled. He stepped outside and closed the door of his truck before he answered. Mama watched him closely for a moment, the back of his head like the shell of a fuzzy coconut. She figured she knew about Papu and felt a paroxysm of despair for her daughter.
“You no need Papu’s money,” she slapped the table. “I know you two going marry, but you no need him fo always take care you.” Regaining her composure, she tried being reasonable. “Look, dis my idea. I going help you plan da wedding. If we work hard, can get tings ready by da time your keiki born. You wear da skirt, you no need spend money on dat kine ting. Save your money fo take care your own keiki. Trust Mama, I like you stay happy.”
“Why you so press about me wear your junk skirt? Dat ting so old, nobody wearing dat stay alive still!”
Mama’s temperature rose. Her frustration with her daughter’s stubborn short-sightedness and youthful blindness to life’s impending difficulties lay seething beneath the surface for many months—since Harriet and Papu began seeing each other—until finally stirred to movement, resonating with a sour note in the youth’s thoughtless insult, ready to erupt.
“I stay alive! But no can forevah. But if I stay alive, thass because, I—I—I tell da dress is lucky!” She sputtered like an unsteady tongue of flame. “Why you tink so you one only child eh? I wen see da docta like hunna times, wen get tests but no can have anodda sista or bradda. I even have that Chinee stuffs, have everyting. But you know what, da night I wear this skirt, thass da night I come hapai, and you da best ting I evah do. In fact, you da only ting I do, thass true! If your fadda—” she stopped and turned toward the window. The Ena women smoldered in silence.
The door creaked and Papu swaggered through the kitchen. “Sorry,” he said curtly. “Frienna mine wen call me. I going fo see what he need.”