Braving Home: Dispatches From the Underwater Town, the Lava-Side Inn, and Other Extreme Locales by Halpern Jake

Author:Halpern, Jake [Halpern, Jake]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Travel
ISBN: 9780618446629
Amazon: 0618446621
Goodreads: 298765
Publisher: Mariner Books
Published: 2003-07-01T07:00:00+00:00

As Don was preparing to leave, I asked Jack if he minded my sticking around for a few more days. I felt as if I was just getting into life on the volcano, and besides, I wanted to see how things developed with the lava. I was a bit uneasy about infringing on Jack’s privacy, but when I finally summoned the nerve to broach the subject, Jack didn’t bat an eye. “Sure,” he said, “you’re welcome to stay for a while longer.” So while Jack escorted Don back across the flats, I stayed on the kipuka.

After Jack’s return, with just two of us in the house, life grew decidedly quieter and I began to get a better sense of Jack’s daily routine—the early-morning radio dispatches to the helicopter company, the midday hours of reading biographies and other nonfiction, the afternoons spent working in the garden or mowing the grass, the dinners on the front deck, and the evenings of watching the lava and listening to blues songs like “Nagging Woman,” “A Hard Night on the Planet,” and “I’m Going to Kill My Buddy.”

One evening, as we sat on the porch, the subject of Jack’s ex-girlfriend came up. Her name was Patty and she had lived with Jack for almost ten years. Initially the volcano wasn’t a problem in their relationship, insisted Jack. Both of them enjoyed the isolation that it created. “Patty used to spend hours on her shortwave radio, talking to people in Australia and Brazil,” he recalled. “And we also worked on things together, like growing coffee beans and sending them out as Christmas presents.” Yet according to Jack, the isolation ultimately made Patty unhappy. “She missed being able to visit her friends, or the beach, or the local store,” he explained. “She wasn’t enjoying herself anymore, and I can’t blame her.”

“When exactly did she leave?” I asked.

“In 1991, shortly after the earthquake,” said Jack. “That whole earthquake episode was really hard on her. She felt like her home was violated. It was never the same for us after that.” Jack paused to look out at the lava, which was forming a sizable pool on the flats below. “But what can I do?” he asked finally. “It’s all a tradeoff, and I chose to live up here.”

“Was it hard after she left?”

“Sure,” said Jack. “She left her shortwave radio here and I had to put the thing away in the desk drawer. Suddenly she was gone. A woman’s touch was just gone. Yeah, the first few months were pretty hard to take.”

“Do you ever think about calling her?” I asked.

“No,” he said quietly. “Not anymore.”

“What about you?” asked Jack. “Do you have a girlfriend back in Boston?”

“Yes,” I told him.

“That’s good,” he replied. “Living alone can get tiresome.”

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