Over the Rainbow - Book One - 'The Gathering Place' (37 page)

Chris found his mother’s door ajar, the room
streaked scarlet and violet from the dark sky outside. Chris peered
nervously into the room, confused at the darkened interior, “Mom?
Mom- what's going on…?” He looked around the room, his confusion
deepening, “Where's Dad?”

A quavering voice answered him from the darkness,
“Oh, honey- He's gone...”

“
Gone?
Gone
where
?”

Abigail’s voice tightened, “He's- dead. Your father
is dead-! The ocean- took him.”

“
Dead! What? How? Are you kidding?
Holy shit!! Mom, what happened?”

Abigail turned on a bedside lamp, revealing a face
pale and drawn, the salty tracks of now-dried tears etching jagged
lines down her lovely face, “It was- it was an accident they said.
He was out- golfing... and, and- a wave, a huge giant wave, just,
just came out of nowhere they said, and- Oh, God... How can this
have happened! Why did he have to go out today? He could have just-
if I had just- he would still be... Oh- dammit, Walter!” And with
that final cry of futility Abigail collapsed into Chris’ arms, her
shoulders shaking as heaving sobs wracked her entire body, a fresh
flood of tears washing the stain of salt from her cheeks.

Chris held his mother in silence as his mind
whirled, numb from the shock of the news, still trying to
comprehend the suddenness of destiny turning, the shock of yet
another loss compounding so recently upon his abrupt and unexpected
departure from the world he felt he belonged, and merely held his
mother tightly in his arms as he rocked her on the edge of the bed
and said with hollow consolation, “It'll be all right... I promise,
Mom, I'll take care of things, it’ll be all right…” And yet deep
down inside he wasn’t truly sure that it would be at all, that the
shattered remnants of his entire world lying in pieces around him
would never be whole again, and at a loss for anything reassuring
to say he merely repeated, “I promise... It'll be okay… I
promise.”

This time the luxurious confines of the first-class
section of the 777 seemed cold and sterile, the amenities
uncomforting and cuisine unappetizing as the plane winged its way
silently into the early morning light. With Dido’s soulful ballad
‘Life for Rent’ playing in his ears, Chris looked morosely around
the cabin, his mind a miasma of conflicting emotion, when he
suddenly saw a young girl he hadn’t noticed previously, twelve or
thirteen by his reckoning, writing in her journal. As he took in
the girl’s elfin features his skin suddenly prickled with a shock
of recognition- she was the same girl from the night of the
turtles. Now mysteriously intrigued, his attention inexplicably
riveted to the girl’s actions for reasons he couldn’t fathom, he
gazed intently at the page and read, the young girl’s bright,
crystalline voice echoing in his mind like the chime of a bell.

“
...and the colors, all the colors
imaginable, every shade of green you can think of, everywhere you
turn- and the magic of it all, the peace and serenity, are like
nowhere else on Earth…”

Chris’ lip began to quiver as the floodgates of his
mind opened and he was inundated with an overlapping montage of
images from the recent days, a whirlwind of experience and emotion
that threatened to overwhelm his senses and cast him into a world
of despair and longing from which he knew he might never recover. A
blur of tears burned in his eyes, and he wiped at them futilely and
glanced out the window to his right, seeing the edge of the Big
Island of Hawaii disappearing behind him, a dim haze of smoke from
Kilauea drifting to the west.

As he watched the distant shore recede onto the
horizon, a strange, rippling sensation stirred in his gut- a slow
flood of cold and an odd tingling that felt like the dissolving of
some sort of- connection, one that carried with it a sudden final
rending of emotion, one that just as suddenly parted- and was
gone.

And with a sudden and profound sense of loss, the
enormous weight of the entire spectrum of emotion he had
experienced finally overwhelmed him, and his shoulders began to
shake as he finally broke down and wept.

Alani sat in cold, contemplative silence at her
bedroom vanity, her emotionless face reflected in the window, a pen
poised over a pad of embossed stationery, the top of the page
graced with the overlapping figures of a pair of green and gold sea
turtles. Looking back to the page, she sighed shakily, fighting
back another bout of tears and continued to write.

“
...and I will always cherish our
time together. I am truly sorry for your loss, and hope you can
someday move beyond your tragedy, and remember…”

The cold rain fell from a leaden, slate-gray sky as
Chris and Abigail huddled near the grave, bright rivulets of water
streaming from the umbrella that Chris held in one frigid hand. He
no longer felt the cold, his entire being shattered, its’ warmth
replaced with an icy, sharp-edged sense of overwhelming loss. He
stared with unseeing eyes into the distance as the litany of banal
and empty eulogies droned unintelligibly on and on, and he hugged
his mother tightly to him in a vain attempt to dispel the bitter
chill. Through the numb haze of despair he could feel his mother
softly shaking as she silently wept beside him, isolated in her
grief with her face hidden behind a lacy veil, and as he tore his
gaze from the solemn gathering and turned his face to her a single
frozen tear spilled from his eye and carved a burning course down
his unshaven cheek.

Buddy basked in the warmth of the early morning sun,
humming tunelessly along with the melody of the music that leaked
from his ever-present headphones. He perched precariously on the
overburdened ladder that leaned against the wing of the ‘Menehune’,
juggling tools and swapping them out in almost absent-minded
fashion as he worked on the starboard engine. His forearms were
covered with grease and a black smear stained his smiling cheek.
But his face was oddly pale, covered with sweat in the cool morning
air, and he blotted his dewy forehead with a dirty hand and drew a
long dark streak in a line across his brow.

As he worked almost mindlessly his thoughts drifted
at random through the sheaf of memories of the bizarre and
thoroughly unusual events from recent days. A sad smile tilted his
lips as he shook his head softly in sympathy for his sister’s loss-
it was the first time in forever when he could actually remember
her happy, and then he sighed gustily in empathic sorrow for his
new friend Chris, whose own loss was even greater still.

Damn, life sucks
sometimes
, he thought, and idly wondered
what it truly meant- for he knew, deep down inside that it all had
meaning, although precisely what was still an enigmatic mystery and
clearly not to be revealed as yet, so he resigned himself to
patiently waiting until revelation came.

The priest crossed himself quickly in a final
benediction and then flinched as his stole slapped him wetly in the
face, his attendants struggling mightily but ultimately failing to
hold the umbrella against the rising squall that now stiffened and
spat a frozen shower of rain almost horizontally at the gathering
beside the grave. As they huddled against the mounting storm,
queuing slowly one by one to deposit a final floral offering to the
uncaring remains of the late Walter Matthews, the bitter wind
suddenly gusted and violently rippled the awning and tents,
threatening to tear them from their moorings as a chair, and then
two more toppled over, scattering the remaining mourners down the
hill to the waiting safety of the retinue of coldly glistening
vehicles at its base.