“ Enough. Don't worry.”
“ What're you saying? Situation normal, all fucked up, or have you simply gone beyond worry stage? Exit left or no exit left?”
“ Awai will do right by us. I've had assurances from friends on the island that he's okay, that he's a man of his word.”
“ Friends?”
“ In law enforcement.”
This didn't quell her fears, especially when she saw one of the other crewmen glaring unashamedly at her. This was followed by more mumbling between the crewmen and more icy stares.
“ What're they saying?” she asked Jim.
“ Can't make it out. Something about how pretty you are, I think.”
She gritted her teeth. “I don't feel entirely right about sticking our necks out so far, Jim.”
“ Hey, come on, you don't want a blind crew, do you? And they'd have to be blind if they didn't see how beautiful you are. As for sticking our necks out, I tried, if you remember, to leave you behind.”
She frowned, paced the small deck of the fishing charter and wrapped her hands around one of the thick ropes of hemp. “Yeah, you did warn me of the risks. But now we're actually out here, sailing away from all contact with the outside world… I mean, anything could happen out there on Kahoolawe. We have no jurisdiction, our badges are worthless. What if we have to fall back on our weapons, Jim? You and me, we could end up on the wrong side of the law very easily.”
“ Kahoolawe law, yeah, quite easily.”
“ Just how much do you know about the people on the island? Are they as feudal as they sound?”
“ They're made up of people who chose to return to a completely traditional way of life, all of them cultists in a sense-”
“ Great, sounds more and more like we're stepping into a David Koresh situation without backup.”
“ Cultists in the sense they embrace the old ways. They've come to Kahoolawe only recently, actually, appearing from all over the other islands, Molokai, Maui, even Oahu and the big island of Hawaii itself. They're not much different from the American Indians who're trying desperately to hold onto their culture in the States, and they enjoy the same kind of immunity from governmental pressures as do the American Indians. Sure, we could storm the reservation, but the political repercussions would cause a ripple effect that would be felt all the way back to D.C.”
“ And the already widening rift between the peoples of the island would be opened wider?” she added. Old scars, she thought, ripped to bleed as never before, something neither side wanted.
He put an arm around her and squeezed her shoulder firmly as the boat slipped its moorings and backed out under the power of its relatively quiet motor. “We just have to play this one by ear.”
'Tell me everything you know about Kahoolawe.”
“ I already have!”
“ Everything, Jim.”
“ Hmmmm, well, there's no way your prophet on the mountain, Lomelea, could be right about the so-called legend of Lopaka Kowona's having seen his brother killed.”
“ Why do you say so?”
“ If it happened, it happened on Molokai, but records there indicate that there was no brother, that Lopaka in fact is and always has been the only son conceived by Chief Kowona, and this with a white wife who died of cholera when Lopaka was quite young. She was pregnant with a second child at the time, but no brother was bom. That is according to a rough census taken.”
“ The old chief could've lied.”
“ Perhaps… perhaps not. I don't know a hell of a lot about psychology but I do know that killers lie, and very often they lie to themselves, to rationalize that which cannot be explained away in any other manner, if you get my drift.”
“ That would only prove Lomelea wrong factually; symbolically, for the killer, he did have a brother who was destroyed by his father, even if that brother was his alter ego.”
“ Yeah, well, that's best left to the shrinks.”
“ If it ever comes to that.”
“ Anyway, it was only in the early nineties that the U.S. Government returned Kahoolawe to the Ohana.”
“ The Ohanal Isn't that Kaniola's newspaper?”
“ No, no, the PKO-Protect Kahoolawe Ohana. Ohana means family, but the PKO, which came into existence in '76, has turned Kahoolawe into the principal symbol of native Hawaiian consciousness. Native Hawaiians made it clear they wanted Kahoolawe back.”
“ But you said there's nothing there, no resources or riches.”
“ Still, it's been the most hotly contested piece of real estate in the islands, primarily because land is so limited and scarce in the islands-any land, even land with hundreds of unexploded U.S. Navy shells lying about.”
“ There're live shells all over the island?” she asked. “That's a real comfort, Jim.”
“ Any rate, the PKO's become a powerful political group in the islands. Hell, unless I miss my guess they were behind Ewelo's kidnapping of Oniiwah, and Kaniola's Ohana newspaper makes the perfect mouthpiece for them.”
“ Now I understand better your attitude toward him.”
“ Their big push on is to restore as much island land and sacred temples and burial grounds as possible, and there are some prime archaeological sites on Kahoolawe that they have their eyes on, which fortunately escaped as targets of the U.S. military over the years.”
“ I can see their point of view,” she said, staring out toward the black mound of the island in the distance. “They've been so disenfranchised by us over the years.”
“ If we were to go over the island in Lee's chopper, Jess, you'd see just how desolate the place is, how awful the results of the years of bombings have been, not to mention the goats.”
“ Goats? Yeah, you mentioned something before about goats.”
“ The only thriving creatures on the island since the bombings, save for lizards, insects and maybe some mongoose.”
“ Mongoose in Hawaii?” she asked.
“ Imported but thriving and remarkably prolific, and the goats too have been allowed to roam free and wild, and have overpopu- lated and devastated the topsoil on the slopes over much of the island. There needs to be a serious effort to decrease their numbers, but the PKO and the U.S. Government can't seem to agree on how it should be done; consequently, nothing's been done.”
“ Sounds sadly typical and political.”
“ You got that right. Anyway, from overhead, in the air, Kahoolawe is a uniquely Hawaiian anomaly.”
“ What?” she asked, turning to look into his eyes.
“ An ugly, undesirable piece of property. Not supposed to be any such thing in Hawaii. Seven miles off the coast of East Maui, we come across a barren, windswept island inhabited by goats and cultists.”
“ Maybe you're being harsh to call them cultists, Jim. Maybe they're just what they say they are, native Hawaiians who want to live as their forefathers lived.”
“ Yeah, maybe I've got my prejudices, sure. Some people in the islands just see them as fools. There's barely enough vegetation on the island for shade much less raising livestock, and streams around the island dry up in the summer. Mt. Haleakala on the bigger island just about squeezes all the rain from the clouds before they reach here. The only thing Maui sends over are the dry, cold Makaniloa winds off the slopes of Halekala. Kahool- awe's hot and humid during the day, and cold at night. Much of the red-soil landscape is lunar in nature.”
“ Add to that fifty years of poundings by naval artillery and airforce bombers,” she inteijected. “Maybe it's become such a symbol for native unity because it most represents what Kaniola would call blatant haole disregard for his homeland? I can sympathize with the desire to see the land returned to civilian control.”
“ In an island state, land of any kind is valuable, Jess. All that the PKO knows is that one day Kahoolawe will be worth a fortune, and if they can squat on it… well, squatters' rights, you know. Hell, Jess, as a practice bombing site for the Navy and Airforce, it was perfect.”
