Shark Dialogues by Davenport Kiana

Author:Davenport, Kiana [Davenport, Kiana]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Scribner
Published: 2010-03-23T00:00:00+00:00

It was evening, they had been on the lava all day.

“Come,” Pono said. “We have honored Pele. She will do what she will do.”

Joining lines of cars locomoting the highway back to Captain Cook, Toru stopped for Cokes, bags of barbecued pork rinds, and Okonomi Mame. Passing the bags back and forth between them, he idled the engine until Pono’s Jeep was lost in the ruby-strung necklace of tail-lights far ahead.

“Want to show you gals something.”

After eight or nine miles, he turned the truck off the highway at a sign for Pahala. Jess grinned, recognizing the old sugar plantation town, rows of flaking blue and yellow shacks, corrugated tin roofs, splintered steps of each house studded with zoris, oxidizing coffee cans sprouting orchids. Elderly Japanese and Filipinos leaning on their fences puffed cigars and waved, one man holding a vicious-looking fighting cock, its red comb ruffed, a boiled claw.

Toru made a sudden turn, then flew down a red dirt road, canyoned left and right by waving sugarcane. Jess suddenly recalled how, as teenagers drunk on Primo and ‘ōkolehao, they had drag-raced down these roads, gunning motors, flatbeds whining side by side. Nights of cane-burning, it had seemed they were racing through a hell of boiling molasses, masked cane cutters running with their forks, little nightmare devils black against the fires.

Toru accelerated, racing them back to a time when they were innocent and whole, wrestling, bullying each other in the careless way of those who loved, not noticing how life was gaining, how much of what was innocent would be discarded. The women whooped and yelled, as tires spun and skidded, the truck bouncing them like melons. Then Toru turned onto a wooden bridge crossing into a sudden rain forest, an oasis out there in the cane. On a muddy path, he slowed, inching along.

“Oh, my God,” Vanya laughed. “Jade Valley Monastery!”

They stopped before a large Oriental-looking building, its green-tiled, wing-edged roof like a great mythic bird about to fly. Koa bark walls, rosewood doors, stone lions grinning at the gates. All around, the ancient, penitential smell of incense. Broad steps were scalloped with the passage of monks, acolytes, meditating down the years. Toru pushed the door open, motioned them inside. Imprints of pews, statues, a seven-foot stone Buddha, all moved years ago to a new location. It was like an empty warehouse.

Vanya looked down at mummies of joss sticks gone to dust, flowers rotted into shadows. “Remember how we’d steal the offerings and neck behind the pews? Me and Chicky Gomez, French-kissing in the Buddha’s lap!”

He played a flashlight across the room, sleeping bags, lanterns, lauhala mats piled neatly in a corner.

“People still coming on retreat?” Jess asked.

“Nah,” Toru answered softly. “That’s our gear. Me and the guys. Sometimes we come on weekends, you know ... sushi, Primo, poker ...”

“That’s a long drive from Kohala.”

“... some of them were born round here, down South Point, Miloli‘i way ...”

Vanya looked at him steadily. “That what you guys talk about ... problems at Miloli‘i?”

“Why not? They’re plenty pissed off.

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