Over the Rainbow - Book One - 'The Gathering Place' (17 page)

Chris paused in reflection, taking in the idea as he
regarded Noelani with warm appreciation, an affection of a son
toward a mother, not so much a maternal one, but an Earth mother,
one who was benign and benevolent and caring. He smiled slightly,
dimpling on one cheek and shook his head in introspective
contemplation.

“
Ohana, wow. There's certainly not
much of that where I come from. You'd think that New York City
would be the center of the universe, but Manhattan- It's a lot like
your island, just a lot more desolate.”

Noelani smiled wistfully and looked at Chris with a
slight frown of acknowledgement, “I wish ‘Lani could hear what you
just said. It would help her understand her place. And you. She's
got what we call 'rock fever'.”

“
'Rock fever'?”

“
It's the feeling of being
trapped- Caged, like a tiger, pacing, always pacing, constantly
looking for a way out, and never finding one. You'd have to live
here all your life, like Alani, to understand. All she ever sees-
the tourists, TV, movies- is the world away from here. Her friends,
most of them go away, and most come right back home. But ‘Lani, she
doesn't see that- all she knows is that she wants something more,
and she’s convinced that she isn't going to find it
here.”

Chris replied, “She doesn't know what she'd be
missing... I mean- if I could choose, I would easily trade what
passes for my 'family' for this- all of this; your ohana, your
sense of community- your way of life. I don't have any of that
where I come from, or where I’m going. I envy her, and you.” Chris
extended his hand, and then the other, this time taking both of
Noelani’s in his as she had done with him. “Thank you so much for
your time. I hope Alani finds her way back.”

After a brief pause, each of them looking deeply
into the others’ eyes in contemplation and silent understanding,
Chris broke away, fishing a small business card from a pocket.
Hastily scribbling a single word on its’ back, he handed it to
Noelani with a wistful smile. “Give this to her, please, in case I
don't see her again before I leave?”

“
I will. And thank you, for saving
Buddy.”

“
You're welcome.” Chris raised a
hand in farewell. “Alo- Good-bye.”

As Chris pulled open the door, it tinkled magically
again, and Noelani leaned on the counter and addressed him one
final time, “I hope- perhaps maybe I will see you again before you
leave- okay? Anyhow, you have a nice visit here. Aloha. And Mahalo-
for everything.”

The Jeep flew along the deserted road, Alani staring
stolidly ahead, her lips pursed tightly, almost painfully holding
back the volumes contained within her mind.

Sonny held on for dear life as Alani wove and
swerved violently on the damp, twisting road, finally speaking as
they nearly clipped a rusty mail-box with the passenger-side
mirror, “Hey! Careful! What the hell you so pissed off about?”

Alani replied with a tight tension edging her voice,
her words lapsing into a smattering of pidgin and English as the
emotion boiled over into her speech, “I was watching you, from the
store- and I saw you buy that dope, right there on da beach…”

Sonny scoffed in feigned indignation, “Girl, you
dint see nothin'. All I was doing was surfin'. And why you watchin'
me anyway?” His eyes widened in realization, and then he continued
smugly, trying to turn the tables, “Oh, okay, I know what you were
doin'. You were checkin' out the Haole tourist, huh?”

“
Quit changing the subject! I'm
talkin' about you! Why you do that, why you smoke that
pakalolo?”

“
Yo, you serious? You askin’ me
about dat now?”

“‘
Dammit, Sonny, it’s one t’ing fo
you to buy from Reg, one t’ing fo you to smoke like wit’ ohana, but
now you gotta go an’ buy from that pig Manolo? In public? You wanna
get arrested? That happen, you gonna go to jail an’ your life will
be over. If the coaches ever find out you smokin’…”

“
How they gonna find out, you
gonna tell them?”

“
If I have to- yes! Dammit, Sonny,
you got a chance, a real chance to get out of here, go anywhere you
want. You gonna throw it all away for some stupid weed?”

“
What's the big deal? Mos' guys I
know, we all smoke, an’ we do just fine.”

“
Yeah? For how
long? Tell you what- nex’ time you're wit your gang, you take a
good look at them and try to see them in five, ten years- Where
they gonna be- anywhere? Or dey still gonna be stuck at the bus
stop, watching life pass them by?” Sonny stared silently into the
distance, his lips pursed tightly together, and Alani continued,
“You decide. But I tell you this much- I ever catch you doing that
again, I'll tell Buddy, and let
him
deal with you.”

Chris started the car, the engine rumbling to life.
As he slowly swung around and merged onto the street, he took in
the village with a slow, sweeping gaze, committing the scene to
memory; the beach, now considerably less crowded in the late
afternoon light; the store; the various small businesses and random
houses huddled among the green. With a saddened frown of
disappointment, he punched the gas, rumbled back across the
vine-encrusted bridge, and disappeared down the road in a gently
roiling cloud of soft, red dust.

Chris drove slowly down the nearly-deserted road,
almost as if unable to let go of the day, the car humming, the
radio silent, his mind whirling with the flickering images and the
echo of words of what had been a full and almost overwhelming
adventure.

Rounding a tight, blind corner, he suddenly
screeched to a stop, a dirty and mud-spattered ‘Detour’ sign having
inexplicably materialized right before him. As he looked past the
sign to the road beyond, he saw a bustling road crew with back-hoes
and front-end loaders busily cleaning up what was obviously a huge
mud-slide that was still blocking the whole road in either
direction. Looking to his right, he saw a narrow, muddy track and a
small sign hanging slightly askew from the barricade. Without
giving it a second glance, he turned and hit the gas and the
Mustang disappeared around a bend, the sign swinging slightly in
the breeze as it passed. And if Chris had bothered to read it, he
would have noticed the now-familiar words and their
still-mysterious implications…

For the sign read- ‘Menehune At Work’.

The ribbon of russet was muddy and
slick and the powerful car slipped and slewed along it, growling
and spraying fans of bright red mud onto the towering walls of
green that lined its course. As he twisted and turned along the
narrow path, Chris pondered in silence the strange events, and the
even
stranger
side-bars that had comprised his first day in paradise. He
had had strange dreams before, but never with the odd clarity of
his visions in the ‘Menehune’. He thought back to that moment, and
for an instant could even smell the whiff of cordite from the
artillery, feel the shock of heat from their blasts and the sudden
cold of the night air rushing over him as it flooded the damaged
craft. And then his thoughts shifted again, to the bizarre event in
the glider, the sound of the thunder still ringing in his ears and
the lurching fall from the sky reminding him dimly of another time,
another place, all fractured and lumped together kaleidoscopically,
images of bright color and smeary half-tones overlapping and
jumping without focus or direction.

And the of course… Alani.

Granted, it
was
a small island, and his first
reconnoiter had merely been an accident.
Or had it?
He wondered, almost
aloud. He had always been a bit of a believer in the mystical
underpinnings of the Universe, no doubt a by-product of his mother,
to whom these things were almost mundane, but to encounter her
again so soon? And it wasn’t even the randomness, or lack thereof,
of the two chance meetings, it was that same strange, nagging
feeling of-
familiarity
, that he felt, somewhere deep within, whenever he looked at
her, and almost, somehow-
remembered
.

Chris shook the distracting ramblings from his mind
and concentrated on the road. Looking about to gain his bearings,
he furrowed his brows and frowned. No luck, it all looked the same.
Just as he resigned himself to being lost in a dense, tropical
forest of green, the muddy path suddenly ended, rejoining the
curving asphalt track he had been forced to abandon earlier.

Chris slowed and stopped, forced with a left or a
right, and thought it slightly odd that there were no other
tire-tracks leading onto the road to give him a choice of
direction. Shrugging his shoulders in resignation at this new and
unexpected adventure, he punched the gas and turned to the right,
fish-tailing the bright red car and flinging the remaining mud from
his tires as they gained purchase and rocketed him forward,
propelling him onward towards his unknowing destiny.

As he wound his way back around the island, bits of
ocean peeking through the tangled mat of green, he fumbled with the
radio, silently cursing himself for not bringing an auxiliary jack
for his phone, and out of the corner of one eye nearly missed the
rusted yellow sides of an all-too-familiar Jeep standing seemingly
abandoned along the side of the road. He slammed on the brakes, his
heart racing and his mind spinning on the timeliness of yet another
coincidental meeting, and he backed the Mustang up quickly to stop
beside the Jeep, tires chirping on the wet asphalt as he did.

Alani looked up at him with a murderous gleam in her
eye as she turned and glared at him. As she pulled out from under
the hood of the recalcitrant vehicle, Chris could see why she was
pissed, and this time, not even at him. Her long dark tresses were
tangled and dripping and her thin white plumeria-printed dress
clung to her like a wet sock, dirty and grease-stained from obvious
hand-wipings after what were clearly several futile attempts at
reviving her antique vehicle.

She pushed the sodden cowboy hat
back onto her head, revealing sparkling jade- and hazel-flecked
eyes that now narrowed in suspicion at Chris’ appearance, and she
said with slightly more than a hint of malice, “What the hell are
you doing-
stalking
me?!”

Chris rolled his eyes skyward with a slight shaking
of his head, a lopsided grin denting his face and replied, “If only
it were that simple…”

Abigail wagged her club over her ball, her tongue
again peeking out of her lips as she looked down-range in
concentration.