“There’s way more I can make, like coming out our ōkoles,” he said. “Whatchyou think about that?”
“I think Mom wants her only living son back,” I said.
He was quiet a long time. But he was there. I knew he was.
“Let me think about it,” he said. “Meantime, I keep sending money. Plenty more. I gotta go.”
I wanted to tell him no again. No more money, just him. That we’d be here, when he was ready. But he’d already hung up.
39
AUGIE, 2009
Waipi‘o Valley
Ah. Ha.
I feel the breath of life in the valley.
Ah.
Ha.
Four days and four nights we have been here where it started. Waiting. Malia doesn’t know for what but I do. All around is the blow and the hiss across the kalo and the stands of ironwoods and farther back the kalo that came up with the rain that drops every night from the clouds which have carried other rains to other places in these islands. No rain is coming this night and I can feel the clear moon like a mother watching me from a house that someday I must return to.
I am returning now.
Malia is here and Kaui is here and we are on the far side of Waipi‘o near the start of the trail that raised my son up to death. Our tent is set back off the beach the polyester zipping and clapping in the wind and I am outside the tent in the black air walking as I do now because of the voices. Stronger here in this part of the valley. They are growing in me every day the voices all these days since Nainoa left. They give the colors and the smells to my head colors only that I feel and know but do not have the words for. But I know we are waiting. Malia and Kaui do not know for what but I do.
It happens tonight. As it did those years ago. We have never been the same as we were when we left this place on those engines to go out across the water to O‘ahu with its concrete and its people all of them too many. We were once here with horses riding across the land and when they ran we ran and when they walked we walked and when they took in air and when they stank and when they sweated so did we and each of us was full or empty as the horse. I was once the sugarcane. I was the cane and the clacking and the sugar-sweet smoke of reaping the season when we harvested and started again after the ashes.
I am here on the sand now in the valley. The gray beach sand an open cupped palm on the edge of the trees and the ocean. The water dances in the black and tumbles to me in a wave then draws out and tumbles back again. The ocean is not cold. The sky is wheeling with other suns other histories already over. My feet are in the sand and the sand is in my feet. To my left is the valley wall and the Z-Trail rising up in the valley dark green and black and the trees and the bushes shining from the moon. The trail slashes back and forth across the face of the valley all the way to the peak of the ridge.
The voices are strongest up there I can feel it.
“Couldn’t sleep, babe?”
Here is my Malia. She is standing in her sweater with the hood up over her hair and her jeans and shoes. Her blunt nose is poking out from the hood her hair is one long thick curl sweeping down onto her chest. Her eyes are old and looking at me deep with worry.
I try to say what I am seeing. What comes out of me sounds like the kalo growing from the ponds sounds like the roaring of the waterfall sounds like lava sliding into the sea. Malia looks at me her eyebrows scrunched with worry and she says, “Slow down. You’re doing that thing again, where you talk crazy.”
I try to say again about the voices how they hum. She reaches out to touch me and I close my eyes and start to say again but I can’t get through my mouth.
“Babe,” she says. Her fingers are on my cheek and I feel each finger feel them all the way down her arm past the elbow and the bones and blood all straight into the hot center of her life. “What’s wrong?” she asks.
I try to say to her where I have to go. She stops talking she stops moving. Then she turns to face the trail that goes up the side of the valley does she remember the night when we made Nainoa when we were in the truck on the other side watching the torches rise across the ridge does she remember the night marchers?
“Up there?” she asks.
I nod my head. They are coming.
For me.
She looks at the trail and the moon and I reach and touch her hand which is still on my cheek and try again to say but not with my mouth and now she sees. We grasp each other’s hands and she walks back to the tent and I hear her talk to my daughter and then she comes back. All that time the breath of the valley.
We climb the trail in the darkness. Malia has a flashlight but once we break from the trees the moon is white and full and I can see it all. She must know because she clicks off the light. We walk those steps that Nainoa took. I am the centipede thrashing deep under the rocks. I am the burrowed bird tucked sleeping in the tree. I am the knot and flex of the trees. My hand is in Malia’s as we climb and climb and climb up the trail.
Faster.
“Slow down,” Malia says but she’s falling behind. Her breath. The valley’s breath.
But I know they are coming. We have to meet them I have to go. They won’t wait just for me this night and then I will have to come again. I will have to keep coming until I meet them so now I hurry.
Faster. Malia is gasping and we are running she is falling behind. I turn and grab her and we lift and move over the trail like the air does. I am the air. We are no longer on the ground we are moving above it. Passing above like a thought that thinks of the top of the ridge and I take us past the trees I take us over their shadows I take us to the top. Malia is clutching me and saying “Holy shit, we were flying, we were flying, Augie, what’s happening, we’re at the top of the ridge,” her asking if I saw what she saw but now when I want to say my words are the mosquitoes singing in the forest my words are the leaves shoving themselves up from the branches.
We are on top of the ridge. Down below us is the whole valley and wide away on the other side is the lookout and the road and the yellow lights of the houses and everything we left behind. Back behind us is the green night valley and wind stretching back along the top of the valley to the place where the ridges come together.
But the wind stops.
The trees go quiet.
Scrape all the sound from the sky and this is what is left. The sound of now. This is what we stand in Malia and I on top of the ridge of Waipi‘o.
Then they appear.
Malia’s grip twists down on my shirt. I feel my skin grow hot with blood just underneath. I try to say this is what we came for. I try to say that this is so good.
In front of us is the column of Kānaka Maoli each one of them dead. They are men and women and they are both and they are neither. They are dark brown and almost naked the skin all stitched with scars. Their hair is neck-long or longer and kinked like ours and their noses broad as our noses and their faces tight and proud. Over their shoulders are the yellow and red feathered capes. Some wear pounded tapa cloth across their legs. Some wear hollowed gourds as helmets on their heads with huge holes gashed out for sight. Their eyes are nothing but white light a light that goes like smoke.
Night marchers.
Malia says “Oh, God,” says it over and over and her voice is tighter and now she has no words and her voice is just quiet but she is still trying to speak and clutching me her heart like an animal that can’t swim suddenly in a lake and so I hold her. I hold her and stare at the night marchers and they stare back. Each one holds in their hand a clump of branches. All at once these branches boom and pop into flame. Each one goes like thunder and the flame crackles and sucks and sets. The torches burning bright now white spitting sparks that do not burn the branches.