5.2   "A Jungle Path" (cont'd)

It was a difficult sell.

Who would want such a place? A small, lonely storefront at the intersection of two roads surrounded by three or more feet of solid black lava. A business whose customer base had been dislocated.  A ceiling that leaked cinder ash and a parking lot that overlooked the ghosts of so many memories.

Unfortunately for Takoda-san, not many people were interested in buying his store. In the long months after the eruption, Takoda-san sold as much of his inventory as he could from his carport and from the back of his truck, driving up and down Red Road, or into Kea’au and the neighboring towns, until he’d gotten rid of most everything. However, for four years Takoda Farm & Feed sat languid, forgotten, eroding slowly into the land on which it stood.

Then one day Takoda-san received a phone call at his new place up in Pepeekeo. On the other end of the line was a firecracker of a woman, a Filipina he gathered, sounded about 40 years old. She had a 10 year old daughter and was looking for a business opportunity.

“How much for the store?” asked the woman.

Takoda-san quoted her a price.

“I’ll call you back.” She hung up.

Source: http://www.allhawaiinews.com

The woman on the phone was Corazón, Tita ‘Aina’s mother. The two of them lived further south in Ka’u District, on the wooded outskirts of the hillside town of Pāhala. Corazón had heard that a new set of vacation homes were going to be built in Kapoho over by the ocean. The development, called Vacationland, had been in preparation stages when the eruption began. Half of the lots had been taken out by lava; the remaining lots were now going to be finished and put up for sale.

The way Corazón saw it, there would be a whole new customer base moving to the area. While she had no interest in a farm and feed store, she did envision a small café and general store to replace, in whatever small way she could, what was lost when Kapoho town was wiped out.

Takoda-san, who was working part-time at the Garden Exchange in Hilo,  knew nothing about this so-called Vacationland. (Nor did Corazón mention it.) A large part of his heart still resided in Puna, and he missed having the store, and he missed the Red Road, but he had to move on. More necessary than right, he was accepting of this new phase of his life. He had a job at the bustling Garden Exchange in Hilo and, if truth be known, the feed store hadn’t been the same after Setsu died. He’d kept it afloat but that was all; it was the people he missed, most of whom had to relocate, like him. Better to leave the ghosts behind, he decided, and take with you the good memories instead.

If the foreign-sounding woman on the other end of the line would offer him even a slim portion of what the store had been worth before the eruption, Takoda-san would sell it to her.

And she did offer. And he did sell.

So at 10½ years of age, after a deep cleaning of the store by her mother, some structural rehabilitation and the installation of a kitchen, the young girl called ‘Aina  began her long reign, alongside her mother initially, at the newly christened Four Corners General Store.

Coming up the few short stairs of the general store was Kaiulu, a middle aged fisherman. He was carrying a white cooler in his hands and his baseball cap was turned backwards to shade his neck.

“‘Aina?” he called.

Tita ‘Aina came out from behind the counter and perched herself on the front door stoop, casting a quick glance at the two patrons sitting down at the end of the lanai. She looked at Kaiulu. “Hello, Uncle.”

“Got some good fish,” he told her. He set down the cooler and tilted open the lid. “Got some nice ono, a chunk of ahi, and a big awa.”

“You got awa?”

“Hm. Milkfish.”

“Oh yeah, I know what it is, uncle.” She looked into the cooler. “That’s fantastic. Almost never can get it.” ‘Aina looked pleased. She drew her hand across the air for effect:  “Dinner special tonight: Paksiw na bangus. Milkfish in vinegar.”

“You want all the fish?” Kaiulu asked.

“Yeah yeah, come inside. I’ll pay you for it.”

The Rinpoche was still recounting­ his story of redemption when the unmistakeable roar of Kam’s pickup truck caught Mimi’s attention. She turned around and waved at him as he pulled into the parking lot. Then she remarked to the Rinpoche, “He’s here.”

“Yes,” the Rinpoche replied curtly, his story having been interrupted. “I’m aware of that.”

Lau hala tree. Source: http://www.hawaiipictureoftheday.com

Prudence took a shortcut down the hill beneath her house to the clearing where the ‘ohana was. It was a buggy, stumbly, dense patch of low jungle that she normally stayed out of. But she was eager to see the new driveway so she did it.

When she emerged, the back of her right arm was burning and bleeding. In her trek through the thicket she’d seen a few young hala trees sprouting up at shoulder length and more. She managed to avoid most of them, but one of them, with its elongated, curved leaves lined with thorns, like a rough hand saw, snagged the flesh above her tricep as she skirted under a branch.

Once she arrived at the cottage, she rinsed her arm in the outdoor shower then pulled a ti leaf off of a nearby plant and pressed it on her arm to suppress the bleeding. Inside, she rummaged through the kitchen drawers and found a dish towel, which she wrapped around her arm and secured with a few loops of packing tape.

Looking like a wounded safari-goer, she went back outside to the coconut grove. As she crossed it she could see the beginnings of the new road up ahead. There was now a gaping hole carved into the jungle, not unlike the one in her arm.

Approaching the edge of the clearing, she was still excited to have a private road for the ‘ohana, but suddenly she wasn’t so sure about its execution. It had slipped her mind that when you create a road through a jungle you actually first have to remove a wide swath of said jungle. She observed the corpses of trees and shrubs, and the upturned rocks that formed a low mound along both sides of the new path. Smaller kin to the earthen berms from the 1960 flow, they would eventually break down and ease back into the ground. But at the moment she realized that she had denuded the place. In lieu of a private portal to a special world, she’d created a gash in the planet.

“What happened to your arm?” asked Warren, the real estate agent.

“Hala,” Pru told him.

“Ouch.”

“Mh-hm.”

After walking the length of what Kam had cleared, Prudence returned home, showered, and bandaged her arm properly. She then went into town to begin the hunt for tenants.

She handed Warren a few flyers she’d printed up that morning. “I was thinking you might know somebody reliable who was looking to rent, or—”

“No hardcore Punatics, though,” he interjected.

“No. They must bathe and they must pay their bills like responsible adults.”

He scribbled some notes. “So no white dreds or crocheted baby slings. No meth addicts. What about toothless hippies?”

“No.”

“Hawaiians, of course.”

“Yes, of course. No big partiers, though.”

“Mainlanders—?”

“As long as they’ve come here for East Hawaii, not Cleveland by the sea. That’s mainly the reason I thought I’d come see you. Maybe one of your clients who’s moving and hasn’t found a place, or is looking to buy or build might need a place for three or four months.”

“Makes sense. Now…gay men, of course.”

“Responsible. Not flightly.”

“No no. We have a strict admissions policy these days.” He winked.

“Lesbians?”

“Warren, stop. I really don’t care, as long as they’re good people. Or a good person.”

“Fine.” He stared across his desk at her. “What about Federal Witness Protection program? You might get a small stipend from the government.”

Street scene source: Google maps. Effects: JH.

In Hilo town, as Prudence walked from her truck to the Garden Snack Club, she took a detour and stopped by the bulletin board at the Natural Foods store. Pinning a flyer to the corkboard, she mused, “This will be interesting.”

She waved hello to Reason, the girl at the cash register.

“Oh!” the girl pointed to Prudence's arm. “What happened?”

“Hala.”

“Ouch!”

“Mh-hm.” She pointed at the flyer. “I’m looking for somebody reliable.”

Reason joined her hands and raised her fingertips to her forehead. She dipped her head in respect.

At work, I’ilani said she would ask around her “family and whatnot.”

“What about Kamoku? Any chance he’ll move back to the Big Island?”

“Oh, sister, I wish. There’s a tiny little part of me that is crazy to have him back. But that tiny little part doesn’t want him 45 minutes away.” She moved her head side to side and her long black hair swayed as if in slow motion. “No way. Nearby or not at all.”

“I’d live there,” offered Solia, “it’s beautiful. Except it’s too far from work. Oh! Speaking of—.  Norbert and I are going to the mainland. It’s a quick trip to see his family. Any chance you can pick up my shifts? Not this coming week but next. Just Monday through Friday lunch. I can do Friday night.”

“Definitely,” said Pru. “It will help pay for a gate.”

Then: “Oh. What happened to your arm?”

Source: http://fi.yelp.fi/biz_photos/the-fish-market-maui-lahaina

‘Aina made quick work of scaling and gutting the milkfish. The ono that she bought from Kaiulu was already filleted in three large pieces. Damian, her coconut carver and all-around helper, was making burger patties according to instructions she called out to him. The table of three out front wanted a salad (for the girl), two burgers (for the near-giant with the long beard), and a “fresh fish sandwich would be wonderful – one of the ono he just brought in, preferably” (for the guy in the tunic and long pants).

Mind you, a chunk of slender, slightly greyish milkfish looks nothing like the firm white flesh of an ono fillet. That a skilled and experienced cook such as ‘Aina could confuse the two is improbable, to say the very least.

Nevertheless, the universe, as we know, operates in mysterious ways. And as the telescopes on the mountaintops can attest, the further and further we peer back into time, the stranger and more incredulous the behavior.

(To say nothing of the present day.)

Source = http://thegraphicsfairy.com/instant-art-printable-download-fish-skeleton/

Unlike milkfish, Tita ‘Aina didn’t have a malicious bone in her body. It was therefore somewhat of a surprise – although from a karmic standpoint not entirely – that when she set the food down on table number four out front, and after she said ‘Enjoy’ and walked away, that as soon as she passed through the screen door of the Four Corners General Store there was a loud commotion out front; a flailing of hands; muffled shrieks. Suddenly the Rinpoche was on his feet, spitting the contents of his mouth out over the railing into a flower bed.

Milkfish, you see, has to be small enough and be slow-cooked in vinegar in order to make the bones edible, kind of like a big sardine. When the fish reaches a certain size, though, the hundreds of fine bones that line the layers of flesh have to be plucked out with forceps before cooking, otherwise they have the consistency of filaments of glass.

The poor Rinpoche had taken a large bite out of his sandwich and was greeted with a mouthful of milkfish bones and fish. He felt as though he’d just licked a cactus. Leaning over the railing, he plucked fine bones from between his teeth. Countless ones had pierced the roof of his mouth and he pulled those out with trembling hands. Several had surreptitiously lodged themselves just beneath the tongue, near the back of his mouth, ready at an instant to slip into his throat and do untold damage to his stomach or get lodged in the tender lining of his esophagus, so he took his forefinger and wiped the insides of his jaw clean.

“My god!” he cried, once he’d cleared his mouth of the bones. He hacked once or twice for good measure, like a cat trying to cough up a fur ball.

The cinder workers having lunch inside looked out the windows then over at Tita ‘Aina. She turned around and stepped back out the screen door. “What on earth—?” she started, and went outside. Inside, the men began laughing at Rinpoche the Not So Magnificent. 

Next Episode 5.3 »

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