5
Beauty and the Beast
Koji had just finished changing his clothes when the tremors resumed. He waited for them to pass but they only grew stronger, so he ran to his truck and headed back down the mountain to Hilo town. What he had been dreading had finally arrived. Like all the locals, he understood that living on an island created by volcanoes meant accepting both the beauty and the beast. You couldn’t have one without the other. Koji bumped along the unpaved roads, passing fields of sugarcane, descending through huge stands of koa and hala trees with their thick, monstrous aerial roots, wondering which of the island’s beasts was rearing its ugly head this time. Suddenly his truck swerved as if he had a flat tire. Koji braked and stopped in the middle of a red dirt road, only to realize that it was the ground shifting his truck from side to side. He watched the ohi’a tree branches swaying, leaves falling to the ground in defeat. Koji was helpless to do anything but wait it out. Time slowed. Was it a minute or two or three before the quaking eased and the ground stilled? He waited a moment longer before he started up the truck and kept driving.
Hilo was a good forty miles away from the foothills of Mauna Loa, but they lived under the threat of the volcano while it slept—mostly forgotten—until something deep down ignited and the fire goddess Pele rose and roared to life. It must have been the tenth time Mauna Loa had erupted since Koji first set foot in Hawai’i. Some eruptions were barely a whimper, while others demanded attention. Given the months of tremors preceding it, this looked to be one of the big ones. If Mariko were still alive, he would have gone to the green bungalow first. While her spirit never physically returned to him, he often closed his eyes and felt her there, even heard her voice, but he never saw her. Instead, he headed directly to the fish market. Koji was running on adrenaline. Twenty minutes later, when he reached Kamehameha Avenue and turned the corner toward the market, a crowd had already collected in front. He was relieved to see that the downtown area looked almost undamaged. Koji parked and ran toward the crowd, wondering if Daniel had arrived yet. He stopped when someone yelled, “Mauna Loa! Long Mountain’s smoking like a chimney!” Koji watched with the crowd as great plumes of billowing white smoke surged into the sky.
He remembered seven-year-old Daniel once pointing up at a cluster of cumulus clouds with great excitement. “There’s Aopua’a,” he’d told Koji gleefully, “right there, you see, that’s the mama pig with all her piglets huddled around her. Uncle Samuel says it means a quiet day of good fishing with no storms.”
But Mauna Loa was not about to remain quiet today. In the next moment, Koji watched the piglets scatter as the bloated white cloud soundlessly spread across the sky. A sudden shifting underfoot shook the ground again, and the nervous onlookers stared at one another and then back up at Mauna Loa. Even the air seemed to pulsate with their helplessness. The great white plumes of smoke turned an ash-filled dusty brown before emerging white again, only to be chased away by a spewing red-hot curtain of lava that blew from the fissures hundreds of feet into the air.
“Pele using her fire to let us know who’s boss, yeah!” yelled a local in the crowd.
As soon as Koji saw Nori and the other aunties standing outside amid the crowd, he relaxed.
“You’re here, yeah,” Nori said, happy to see him.
“Any damage?” he asked.
“Just some broken bottles,” she said.
“What’s that?” He eyed the jar in her hands.
“Mango jam,” Nori said. “The mangoes from Mariko’s tree,” she added.
Koji felt something inside of him slowly dissipate, something hard in the middle of his chest. He wanted to reach out and hug Nori.
Instead he asked, “Daniel?”
“He hasn’t arrived yet.”
Another eruption colored the sky. Koji was captivated by the raw power of Mauna Loa. He knew all they could do was worry and wait. It was just the beginning; the real fear was the unstoppable flow of lava, the searing slow-moving rivers of fire that could continue to flow for months in any direction. Just nine years ago, memories of the 1926 eruption, which had buried the village of Ho’opuloa Makai on the other side of the island, still haunted—the lava that crossed roads and fields, setting trees, shrubbery, houses, and anything else in its path on fire with a chorus of popping and sizzling methane bursts, could now be heading toward Hilo.
As if she read his thoughts, Nori asked, “When will the geologists know the direction of the flow?”
“I’m sure they’re keeping a close watch, yeah,” Koji said. “It won’t be long now.”
Most of the locals stayed on at the market, waiting for word.
As darkness fell, fountains of lava continued to spew from the fissure. The air grew oppressive with the stink of sulfur, clouds of ash, and the red-hot beast that illuminated the night.
6
Homecoming
Daniel Abe stood on deck and watched as Hilo town slowly appeared in the twilight, watery and indistinct. Even from a distance he knew the town by heart, the paved road and railway tracks running the sixty-five miles along the Hamakua coastline for the trains that carried sugar from the plantations, or goods and passengers all the way from Paauilo through Hilo to Glenwood, stopping just eight miles from the Kilauea volcano. On the left he could just make out Reeds Bay, next to Hilo’s deepwater port, while to the right lay the crescent-shaped Hilo Bay. And directly across from Hilo Bay, running along Kamehameha Avenue, stood the rows of two-story clapboard buildings that housed the downtown businesses, including the Okawa Fish Market. Beyond downtown the sprawl of houses had inched closer to the foot of the volcanoes Mauna Loa and Mauna Kea.
The steamer engine droned on as the boat bobbed against the waves, dipping to one side and back. A door opened and closed. Most of the passengers had retreated into the main cabin. Daniel was almost home and he finally felt like he could breathe again. He leaned against the railing and watched the gulls circling above, tasting the salt spray on his lips, on his tongue as the warm wind picked up. He’d forgotten how simple, how welcoming it was as the steamer approached Hilo and lifted the weight of Daniel’s ten years away.
In grand succession, he had received his medical degree from the University of Chicago’s School of Medicine, followed by his residency, and the offer of a position at the University of Chicago’s Medical Center. Daniel had proudly accepted, knowing that so few Orientals were ever given the opportunity. He remembered the feeling of triumph, thick and warm, something he had strived for ever since he was young, watching his mother sew for others, scrimping to save, always half hoping deep down that his father would return to them. But he never did.
In Chicago, Daniel was a respected mainland doctor at a prestigious hospital, where many of his colleagues had no idea where Hilo town was. He was ashamed to admit how easy it was to leave his old life behind, embrace the new, and allow himself to believe he was special. When his mother was dying, he’d gone back home, but he hadn’t been ready to return to Hilo for good. At the time, he didn’t know if he ever would. Eighteen months later, it took one wrong diagnosis and a costly mistake to bring Daniel home again.
His life in Chicago had been fast-paced, filled with raucous city sounds: screeches and shouts, automobile horns and gunning engines, all to be replaced by the comforting echoes of his childhood: the buzzing of mosquitoes; the loud haw of the nene geese; the wind whistling through the banyan trees; the lapping of water; and the chirping, rustling, wailing sounds of the rain forest. Only then did he realize how Hawai’i remained an enduring spirit that had seeped into his body and flowed through his veins. “Might not be a fancy big city, yeah, but home comes from within,” his mother reminded him when he first left for the mainland. Her absence still stung, but his homecoming had also rekindled thoughts of his childhood, including his father’s distant voice that now returned to him like the constant buzz of a mosquito.