Authors: Everett Peacock
“
Yes,
perhaps.” Star took Janet's hand and pointed out several
coconut palms close to the damaged fishing shacks. “See those
trees there?”
“
By
the shacks?” Janet asked.
“
Yes,
see the wooden steps nailed into them, I think there are four or five
trees that have them. If there is another earthquake, big, like you
have to catch your balance. That big. If so, run over to one of
those trees and climb it as high as you can.”
Janet
didn't understand that. “Why wouldn't we just drive up the
road, up to the main highway?”
Star
tilted her head to one side and nodded a little. “You could of
course. But, you probably wouldn't have time.”
“
No
way,” Janet whispered. “Really? That fast?”
“
Sure,
you can always look out to see if the water has receded. That is
probably your last warning. If it's dark, you can try and listen for
where the waves are breaking, or just climb the tree.”
That
evening, in the warmness of her familiar surroundings Star slept
soundly, despite the dozens of small barely perceptible tremors
emanating from up the road, at the cinder cone.
Janet
was up at every one of them, looking at the ocean with her flashlight
to see if it the water was pulling back. It never did. By dawn, she
had been up half the night.
One
of the fishing boats was on its way in, coming ashore, having seen
their lights during the night. Star ran out happy to greet them and
share some information about the tsunami and to get some fish from
the guys.
Janet
stayed back in the palms and watched Star explain she would remain
here, despite the danger, and keep an eye on things. The guys gave
her a big hug and a jug of water and made their way back out to sea
and safety, trailing a baited hook with them.
Finally,
around 10 in the morning she felt her eyes too heavy to keep open and
blissfully drifted off to sleep in the hammock.
Star
managed to get into Pahoa town, itself well within the evacuation
zone, and found the grocery store owner still there, with a shotgun.
“NO LOOTERS” was painted on the window covering what used
to say “Pahoa Shop -n- Save”.
She
picked up a week's worth of can goods, water and as many bananas as
they had. He gave her the bananas for free.
On
her drive back she stopped again at the cinder cone, steaming quite
fiercely now, venting with a noise she could easily hear from the
half mile distance. The ground wasn't shaking with earthquakes as
much as it was continually vibrating. It reminded her of a trip to
Chicago and how her friend had told her the vibration in the
sidewalks was the underground subway trains.
As
she climbed back into her Tercel, she caught a brief glimpse of a
glow on the far side of the cone. She drove forward a little to get
a possibly better angle. There, she could see a distinctive orange
glow slowly spilling out of the top of the cone.
~~~
Adam
and Agatha thanked their hosts for the ride over and walked across
the deserted airport to the rental car booths. The airport was
closed to commercial traffic, no one was around. Adam got on his
phone to call a taxi.
“
No,
bruddha, I cannot take you to Volcano. You heard right? They stay
evacuating the whole area!”
“
Yeah,
OK.” Adam looked around the rental car booths. “Too bad
I can't rent a car myself.”
The
taxi driver jumped out of his Buick Estate Wagon and pulled some keys
out of his pocket.
“
I
can rent you one car right now,” and walked over to Billy's
Certified Rentals, at the very end of the long line of rental booths.
“
Great!”
Agatha said. “How much?” she asked out of habit, even if
Adam was paying for it.
“
Well,”
Billy, the apparent owner said. “Good deal this week, we call
it the lava special, you know.”
Adam
was expecting to get fleeced when the affable old guy said something
quite unexpected.
“
$100
for the week, but you gotta buy full insurance.” He looked
back over his shoulder toward the ever darkening plume toward
Volcano. “Bad mojo now, and I know you're headed that
direction.”
“
Deal!”
Adam laughed, slapping down his AMEX Centurion Black.
Ten
minutes later they were driving a late '90s Ford Fusion up to the
roadblocks just outside of Hilo, on the road to Volcano.
As
they approached it, there appeared a chaotic mess of cars trying to
turn around all at once. A police officer with a flashlight in his
hand was waving the world back, as another officer drug the barrier
behind him, widening the evacuation area a little more. In the near
distance a cinder cone was crowning itself with a glow of orange and
yellow. Plumes of white smoke were pouring out of it as well.
“
Looks
like trouble,” Adam said automatically, half wishing he had not
said it out loud. Turning to Agatha it was apparent she was now
convinced this chase for her son, into the Volcano area, was a bad
idea.
“
They
look scared,” Agatha whispered to herself.
“
What?”
Adam was busy turning the car around. “What did you say?”
She
turned to look at Adam as he looked out the rear view window
reversing in his lane.
“
They
look scared, Adam,” Agatha repeated loud enough to get Adam to
turn around and look. He stared for a moment straight ahead.
“
Yeah.
They do.”
“
They're
too young...” she paused a moment before finishing, afraid she
might offend Adam. She watched him twist around again, backing the
car up. He could handle. “They're too young to be that
scared.”
He
laughed shallowly. “What? Are old folks the only ones that
should be scared Agatha?” He scoffed a little at that as he
got the car turned around, headed back toward Hilo.
She
didn't answer right away, watching instead the jungle slide past her
window. Adam had the radio on, but Agatha reached over and turned
the volume all the way down.
“
I
have a friend with a nice house up in Pa'auilo. Great ocean view,
horses, quiet. Let's go wait this out over there,” Adam
suggested. “No lava out that way.”
They
drove on in silence for several minutes, eventually crossing the Hilo
river bridge and into the pastoral beauty of the Hamakua coastline.
Here on the slopes of Mauna Kea, the land would never host lava
again.
Agatha
had her window down, her elbow out. Adam knew she was disappointed.
He figured she would eventually say something, when she was ready.
Laupahoehoe
was so spectacularly different from the area they had just left.
Cobalt seas used their immeasurable skills to carve coves, rock
beaches and cliffs into textures impossible to ignore. Agatha had
never imagined anything like it. She could feel the natural beauty
slowly peeling some of the stress from her skin. Warm hints of
plumeria and ginger forced her uneasiness to surrender. Finally she
reached over to find Adam's hand on his seat.
He
squeezed back. That made him feel better.
“
Agatha,
don't be scared anymore.” He wanted to follow that up with
some kind of reason or explanation, but dropped it. There really
wasn't a reason or explanation to not be.
She
was gazing at her hand, atop his. Both of them had weathered their
own unique decades of life. Both of them, she knew, were well past
their middle years.
“
Those
boys,” she began softly. “Back at the barricades...”
“
The
police?” Adam guessed.
“
Yes,”
squeezing his hand a little more. “They reminded me, somehow.”
Adam
looked at her a moment and then back to the road. The scenery
demanded almost as much attention as the driving. The road was
diving into another valley of lush green worshiping its own waterfall
god high up in the mountain reaches above.
“
I
am
scared Adam,” Agatha admitted. “I'm scared of old age,
of dying.”
“
Oh,
we have a long time to go before any of that,” Adam reflexively
replied. He personally never gave it a thought.
“
I'm
not afraid that there won't be a place, an afterlife,” Agatha
explained. “It's not that, not at all.”
Adam
was slowing down to turn up Pohakea road, upcountry from the ocean
view highway they had been on. Soon, he turned again onto Pa'aulilo
Mauka road and began a slow beautiful climb through rolling pastures
and the dark eucalyptus forests that watched over them.
“
Adam,
I'm just afraid that it will be so different.”
They
pulled into an unmarked driveway that wound them through avocado and
mango trees, and finally up to a broad veranda wrapping around a one
story home. The ocean softly caressed the view far below as the
gentle greens of pasture fell to it.
They
both got out of the car slowly, soaking up the scene with the thirst
of new explorers, of artists in a new museum of wonder.
Adam
pulled Agatha to him, both of them sitting on the warm hood of the
car. He held her tightly, his chin on her shoulder as they both
breathed in the view.
“
Agatha
my dear, heaven can't be much different from this right here.”
18
From
a distance lava always looks enchanting, almost hypnotic. Watching
it on a television can even make it appear beautiful. Perhaps it
could indeed be all of that, but not when it was in your own
backyard.
Like
most of nature's creative tools, it completely disregards human
opinions and certainly ignores whatever dreams or wishes people have.
It is a force that cannot be redirected or delayed, negotiated with
or compelled. Planetary forces rarely cut humans a break but at
least Hawaiian lava gave them enough time to get out of the way.
This
event was no exception. There were no surprises here. A continuous
thirty year eruption at Kilauea had convinced the world that time had
a whole other meaning here than it did to humans in general. Past
lava flows demonstrated quite convincingly that what had been
pristine pools and beaches could within weeks be covered in over
twenty feet of molten rock. Earthquakes alerted everyone to a
process that had started here on the Big Island of Hawaii some four
hundred thousand years ago.