“ That doesn't inspire confidence. Isn't there something like six hundred curves?”
“ Six hundred seventeen, mostly hairpins, with fifty-six one-lane bridges, but in case of emergency, go toward Hana Town, not away. There's a small hospital there.”
“ And I'm sure they're equipped with the latest in decompression chambers, sure. Where's the nearest phone?”
“ We're not totally isolated. I've got a CB radio in one of the packs, and you saw the village of Hana as we came over, a few cattle ranches, and if things get too rough, we can always hike up to the Hana-Maui, only six hundred dollars a night to stay in the lobby's john,” he joked.
She wasn't laughing.
“ Come on, Jess… there's a dirt road pull-in the other side of the helicopter pad. We could have visitors tomorrow, and our pilot's due back by noon. In any case, it's not quite as impregnable as it looks from the air, not if you're willing to make the trek.”
“ Do you really think Lopaka Kowona used this place as he did Koko Head on Oahu?”
“ It's worth a look-see; that's what I think. Drop one of those tanks here.”
“ What?” she gasped, a little out of breath.
“ We go down sharply from here. I don't want you losing your footing. It's only just wide enough for one foot at a time, and if you fall, it's a straight plunge into the sea.”
Protesting, Jessica said, “Only the other day I was using a cane, remember.” She did as he suggested, placing one of the heavy air tanks on the ground. When she did so, she saw a place where they might climb out over the cliff ledge and stand over the Spout, which continued to blast water into the night sky like a powerful Chicago fire department boat she'd once seen battling a blaze from its moorings in the Chicago River just below the Michigan Avenue bridge.
Seeing her stare off in the direction of the Spout, he said, “Quite a sight. See what I mean?”
The ocean water roared here, a fierce lion, as it was pummeled and forced through the underwater tunnel and out through the whale-like promontory of rock at the spoutlike egress. The thunder it created was deafening, the water reaching them in a light spray even here. “Yeah… yeah, I do.” She was beginning to feel like Fay Wray in the frightful kingdom of King Kong.
Below them, lava rocks jutted from the frothy foam, forming gargantuan sea monsters that seemed perched on the waves, readying for any morsel to fall into their demonic jaws. It might be insane and impossible to dive here. It was anything but the peaceful underwater crater she'd dived in on the opposite side of the island before she'd ever met Jim Parry. Here the current and the dragon rocks would make it a precarious and risky venture, an underwater Dungeons and Dragons, filled with every sort of obstacle and demon, she surmised from the murky surface.
“ Tell me about the village… what you know of it,” she called out as they continued toward the black beach.
He was some ten feet ahead of her now, his form a large shadow, his profile a silhouette against the gray- green foliage.
She checked cautiously for her footing now each step of the way. It was treacherous. “Fifteen yards or so more now,” he called back, having not understood her, his voice seemingly out of place in this wild land of sea and jungle. She could see that he'd reached a leveling-off point now ahead, laying down all the equipment he'd hauled. He then rushed back up toward her.
He'd taken the big knife from its scabbard and he held it high over his head now, and she felt her heart rise in her chest as the blade came down, tearing and hacking at some entangling branches that crossed the trail.
“ Man, this stuff has no respect for people,” he joked.
She breathed deeply and brought up a lopsided grin, feeling foolish, but not daring to tell him why. He sank the long knife into the earth and lifted the air tank from her, returning to the black sand and the other equipment, and there he gently placed it. He turned to find her twirling about the diamond-studded black beach, her shoes torn off.
“ Owww! Ouch! Oh, I cut my foot, damnit.” She was hobbling a bit now. “I wanted to feel it, but it's so coarse. Why didn't you warn me? I expected it to be like a white sand beach, but it isn't.”
The beach glittered beneath them. “It's made of obsidian volcanic glass, for God's sake, not sand pebbles or granules, sweetheart. I was gonna warn you, but you're too fast for me, I guess.”
“ Don't explain too much; you'll spoil the fun.”
“ You did well getting down, Jess. Look, you get set up here, rest that foot, and I'll return for all the rest of our equipment.”
“ No way,” she disagreed.
He stared into her eyes a moment, seeing some hint of her earlier fear.
“ There's nobody here but us, Jess. I promise you.”
Nobody but us, she thought, so why've I developed such a massive case of the creeps? Can't stand isolation because I've never had it before? Need my city lights, hum of a million volts around me, what? Is it the graveyard and encampment above, the dead? Such places don't normally scare me…
She saw that Jim was staring, waiting. Finally, she said, “All the same with you, Jim, I… I'd prefer we stay together.”
“ Fine, fine.” He nodded. “Sure, just as well.”
He started back up. “Wait,” she called after him, trying to get her shoes back onto her feet, the cut stinging and dripping blood on the onyx beach.
22
In a dark time, the eye begins to see.
Jessica was exhausted by the second trip down to the lovely beach, after which Jim proposed a romantic interlude coupled with some serious business the following morning, the dive below the Spout. As for the romance, he'd thought of everything, including a tent, which he efficiently assembled. Very soon they had a fire going, and the enormity of the sky and ocean seemed closed out for a time by the circle of their flames, which sent little fireflies off in the trade winds which slapped at the tent continuously, the noise adding to that of the nearby geyser and the ocean's music.
She'd made coffee and warmed some of the canned food he'd brought, hash and beans, and they ate hungrily from tinware with small camping utensils. Nearby their diving gear and tanks stood silent sentinel to their camp. “Jesus, it's like beyond Deliverance here,” she softly complained. “So what's really going down here, Parry?” she asked firmly, after finishing her meal.
“ Just a little excursion, so to speak.”
“ Unauthorized?”
He frowned and looked out to sea, his thoughts seeming to go in and out with the tide. He looked a bit annoyed that his ruse hadn't lasted any longer than it had.
She got up, walked to the nearby water's edge and said, “Great to have a ready-made sink to clean up in.” She dipped her utensils and tin dish under the current, getting her feet and pants leg wet in the bargain, a little unnerved by the black emptiness of the water below her. Given the color of the bottom, the bay here was its own controlled little abyss.
“ Leave it to you to call the Pacific Ocean a sink,” he called out.
“ Well, for our purposes, for the moment, that's what it is,” she playfully parried, splashing water in his direction, sending it cascading skyward from her tin.
“ Hey, cut it out!”
“ So, you going to come clean, Parry? I'm here, I'm with you, I'm on your side, and I've been known to
