The House at Sandalwood (30 page)

Shortly after, I found the turn-off leading to the burial site of the Hawaiian family. On a small, flat, stone marker was carved simply: KALANIMOKU. I could catch glimpses of the sea on the west beyond a strip of coco palms, their fringe in the path of the wind, fluttering exactly as they did on picture postcards. I turned my back to these and headed east and north, where the path began to rise. The wind hit stronger as I climbed. I was sure I had seen Deirdre somewhere along here, but she was nowhere in sight now. I studied the ground, thankful that the rain squalls hadn’t hit this area yet.

Then I came to a fork in the steep, climbing path over very black earth. I didn’t know what to do here until I had studied the ground. On the higher climb there were several footprints that looked fresh. Small feet, like Deirdre’s. But could I be sure? I took a few steps between the prickly, unknown vegetation on the upper trail and saw a tiny pink knitted ball dangling from one of the bushes. The waistband of Deirdre’s pink shorts was decorated with these miniature balls of yarn. It was a sign impossible to ignore, so I started to climb. Almost at once the trail closed behind me.

By the time I had walked for ten minutes, tearing away the interlacing growth that also crawled around thick tree trunks, I began to wonder if I would be able to find my way back. I no longer saw any signs of Deirdre. I had gradually entered a swampy area that was heavily forested, with much of its mossy growth rotting. I remembered that this mountain and one on Kaiana received four hundred inches of rain a year. This was said to be the highest rainfall registered in the world.

Hearing the ripple of water, I was about to turn back when I saw another of those pink balls of knitting yarn on a half-log that formed an uncertain bridge over this sector of the Ili-Ahi river. Although the water flow was heavy here, and raindrops had already begun to penetrate the canopy of immense vegetation overhead, the river at this point was still narrow. Within this jungle world the air was hypnotically thick with flower scents. It was not sweet, but, rather, was compounded of a strange, almost bitter perfume of the flowers’ aromas plus the wet earth and the smells of millions of crowded, scrambling tropical growths, almost all unknown to me. The river tumbled past me at this point and downward from some collecting pool near the mountain peak. Then it wandered across the island to the falls beside Sandalwood and on into the sea near the landing for the boats that crossed Kaiana Bay.

Seeing the tiny pink ball on the log bridge, I decided I had been right. Absurd or not, Deirdre was either playing a joke on me, leaving tracks for me to follow, or perhaps, subconsciously, she wanted me to follow. Either way. my spirits were considerably raised. She must mean exactly what she said in the note, that she was no longer angry with me. She would surely have stopped somewhere around here. I was worn out, and I considered myself a strong, healthy woman. I crossed the bridge, which wobbled and shifted under my feet. It was not very stable and had been laid over boulders and on top of a huge, fallen tree trunk coated with lichen and green slime. Lianas trailed everywhere from the trees and foliage overhead that enclosed me. Sweaty and wet all over, I felt as if I were in a bathhouse whose walls were rapidly smothering me.

Bird sounds were faint and far away, but there were rustlings close at hand, so close I could hear, or perhaps sense, the little sounds above the noise of the stream rushing down past me, beneath the trembling log that seemed barely to support my body. Across the log, on slippery, moss-covered ground that seemed to sink spongelike underfoot, I could not even find the continuance of the trail. I must have wandered in this strange, uncomfortable Eden for some minutes before giving up and making my way back toward the log, using the sound of the river as my guide.

If Deirdre had tired by now—and I myself was exhausted—she simply could not have gone beyond this area. I called her name several times but the result was an eerie sensation, as though the sounds of my own voice were sucked in by all the Ili-Ahi swamp’s unseen denizens. Then I reached the river at a point a little above the improvised bridge, which was masked from me by a huge banyan tree, at whose feet anthuriums grew, looking artificial as they always had to me, Stiff and shiny, a gorgeous red that was softened with pink, but never quite real. Brushing aside the tangled vines, I heard my name called. Thank heaven! It was Deirdre sitting there across the river, her back against a boulder, her sandals beside her, and her feet splashing in the foam that lingered as the waters rushed by. She waved to me while I wondered how I could have missed her when I was on that shore of the river. Where had she hidden?

“Hi! Led you a chase, didn’t I?”

“You led me a chase, all right. Honestly, Deirdre!” I raised my voice. “Why? Don’t you know you could have killed yourself?”

Deirdre was looking mischievous but even at this distance her young face appeared strained and very white.

“I know, wise old auntie. Why don’t you come and stop me?”

“What I ought to do is spank you.”

“Try!” It was a curious challenge.

I made my way around endless tentacles belonging to the banyan tree, its roots everywhere, and reached the point opposite where Deirdre sat, the point from which I had crossed on the log bridge to this side. The bridge was gone.

Twenty

I thought I had miscalculated the place. I moved out as far as I dared on the slippery ground and looked down the path of the river. It descended rapidly about twenty yards beyond this spot. I couldn’t be mistaken about the bridge. It had been here. I could identify each boulder, as well as the big, dead tree where the log bridge had rested. Long ago, several cleats seemed to have worn away from a wooden contrivance that fastened the bridge securely at this end.

Deirdre called suddenly, “Be careful. You’ll fall in.”

Even though I remembered her many moods, I was surprised at the concern in her voice now. Whatever trick she was playing, there was nothing malign in it, since she obviously wished me safe now.

“What happened to the bridge?” I asked calmly.

“There.” With her wet, bare toes she pointed to the river’s edge just beyond her feet. The long bridge had come to rest against the shoreline and bobbed there, looking as if it might float away and down the stream that bubbled and foamed below us.

I studied it, wondering what on earth I was going to do now. I called to Deirdre, “I hope there’s another way to get down off this mountain.”

“I don’t see how,” she shrugged. “It’s all a swampy mess behind you. The trail up to the burial ground runs from this side.”

“Now, look here, Deirdre, if you saw that the bridge was going to come loose, why didn’t you call out and warn me?”

“Can’t hear you!”

I raised my voice, then realized she heard me quite well. She paddled her feet vigorously in the water as she informed me that Stephen had called her late last evening and told her he would be home in the morning. “He said he explained to the hospital why I left. He said you would take care of me, and if I behaved I wouldn’t have to go back.” She added in a sudden, querulous impatience, “He thought of you. Always you! He even said at the end: ‘Tell Judith when I will be back.’ ”

“Of course he did, Deirdre. I am acting as housekeeper. I should know how many people will be at dinner, if nothing else. What has all this got to do with that log falling?”

Sulkily, she kicked at it. “I did that. It hurt, too. It was heavy. I just slid it off the rocks and let it float right here.” She looked up. “Judy, I’ll let it go against those boulders and you can step on it easy from where you are, if—”

“If!”

“Darling auntie,” oddly enough, she seemed to be sincere in calling me that. “Please promise to go home to California. Or China. Or someplace else. As long as you are here, where Stephen can see you doing everything right, everything better than I can do it, I’ll lose Stephen. Won’t you promise me, Judy? Please?”

It was heartbreaking that she had felt it necessary to go to this much effort just to get rid of me, especially since I was leaving anyway. She must have planned that I should follow her, knowing I would be trapped by this stream.

“I promise, dear. I meant to leave when Stephen came back from Honolulu.”

“Oh, Judy, darling! Swear.”

“I swear. Now, do be careful. Don’t exert yourself too much.” But she was already on her feet, scrambling over the slippery ground. She knelt by the center of the log and began to free it from its entangling vines and the debris washed against it.

“Take it easy,” I called, watching anxiously.

“I got it off those upper rocks. I can get it back on these rocks a little farther down. I can do things too, you know.”

“Yes, dear. Very clever.” But she worried me to death. She was trying to boost the log over against a boulder and looked as if she was exerting tremendous energy. I shifted my foot along the river’s edge, tried a rock about two yards out in the stream. The torrential force edged my foot off the rock and my leg plunged into the cold, rushing water. While I was recovering my balance on the shore, Deirdre got the log jammed between a boulder and the fallen tree trunk. She cried out and I waved to her to stop.

“Take it easy, Deirdre. Easy! I’ll get across. Don’t worry.”

She was weeping now in her panic. “It’s got to go across. It’s got to!”

I ignored this, and ordered her to stop and take it easy while I followed the river bank upstream, climbed around the banyan roots, and examined the river at this level. It certainly wasn’t deep, but its power was frightening. I could swim, but hardly in rocky water only a few feet deep. The real danger would come from being washed off my feet and getting a few bones broken, or, even worse, being washed downstream, no doubt cracking my head in the process.

My decision was made for me. I heard Deirdre call out sharply and then, in an agonized voice, cry my name:

“Judy—!”

The inevitable seemed to have happened. Her nervous excitement and her exertions had triggered one of her attacks. I stared downstream, frantic at my helplessness. Deirdre had dropped the end of the log and was kneeling beside a big tree trunk, her fists pressed tight against her chest.

“Be very quiet. Don’t move!” I called and then stepped out on the rock again, but slipped as before. I tried to confine my thoughts to this one task. Forget Deirdre. Forget that once I reached her, there would still be the problem of getting her out of this claustrophobic Eden. She cried out again. I forced myself not to look her way. There seemed to be more panic than pain in her voice, but I could not be sure. I considered the area downstream where the log bridge had been propped on boulders and on that rotting tree.

I returned to the area I had been afraid to test. With Deirdre across from me, panicky and crying, I found this area more possible now. I had to make it. There was no alternative. It was like a ghastly chess game played with my life and perhaps Deirdre’s life. I chose a flat boulder that appeared to be securely anchored in the stream. The heavy run-off from the mountain peak above poured across the rock, but I felt I could better manage the current than one of the dry but highly dangerous rocks that might possibly overturn under my weight.

I stepped out, planting my foot firmly. It was lucky that I had been firm, because Deirdre screamed in terror as she saw me, and the sound cut through my very bones. That and the current nearly swept me off the boulder, but my toes dug into my sandals and somehow those flat soles fastened upon the boulder. One of the reasons for my choice of this boulder was that the next seemed firm and steady as well. Confidently, I set one foot upon that stone. My confidence—and my foot—were misplaced. A heavy tree limb, twisting and turning as it rushed downstream, cracked so hard against my thigh that it numbed my leg for a minute and I went down under the impact. I was soaked hip-deep but at least I hadn’t been washed away. I put one foot after the other, clinging to the soggy, moss-covered log which had helped to support the original bridge.

Deirdre reached out, trying to help me, but I ordered her back. The only good thing in this ridiculous mess was Deirdre’s surprising recovery at this moment. I told myself the mysterious “palpitations” would never have let her move about like this, trying repeatedly to touch and help me. There were still signs of her panic. Her face was twisted and tears stained her cheeks but she stood her ground, shaky as she was, so close to the water. I was grateful for her outstretched arm after all. I grasped the tree trunk again only to break off a handful of decayed wood and a hideous, crawling white mass. Maggots? Worms? I screamed, louder than Deirdre had ever screamed. I splashed on toward her outstretched arm and fell against the riverbank. As she bent over me, shaking me and calling my name, I muttered, “I’m all right. Don’t worry.”

We looked at each other.

“Deirdre?”

Shivering, she whispered, “I’m so sorry...”

I tried a smile. It wasn’t much but it reassured her. “I couldn’t have made it without your help. You did it. You saved my life.” It seemed to me at that minute only a slight exaggeration. Her hand had been exceedingly welcome.

Deirdre smiled back at me. She leaned against the
ohia
tree, pressing her knuckles into her chest and closing her eyes, but she did not seem to be in the great pain that had struck her earlier. Perhaps the pain—if it was real and not psychosomatic—had subsided with her panic. She repeated proudly, “I really did save you, in a way. Didn’t I?”

I straightened my back and pulled myself up against the tree. I was badly shaken but felt very much myself. It was Deirdre who suffered, and she had added to that suffering by her attempt to help me. The old, childish Deirdre might have collapsed in tears, suffered severe palpitations or worse. I remembered that when her mother died, she had gone into a kind of childish stupor, and she had never grown up since. But today something had taken place that might be more important than all the memories between us. She had overcome fear and pain, whether self-induced pain or real, in order to help me. She had grown up.

I touched her hand lightly. “I’m so proud of you! How are you feeling?”

“Pretty good. It hurts. My chest hurts, but—” She took several short, sharp breaths. “Honest! Not as bad as it was.” She looked around at this overgrown jungle, and I thought her voice was fainter. “Do you think we can get going without help?”

“Just give me a few minutes.” I tried to rub my foot and leg, but the touch sent stabs of pain through my leg. I knew from past experience that this was merely a muscle spasm and would go away in a few minutes, but it was unpleasant enough now.