Project Namahana: A Novel

PROLOGUE

THE HAUL CANE road was a hundred years older than statehood. From the highway it was identical to the private roads that came before and after, its open gate lost in the guinea grass that overgrew the abandoned fields beyond. But it appeared on the old maps as an ancient trail, and it was still a public way, though neither the state nor county would claim it.

The road ran straight until it crossed Namahana Stream at a concrete spillway and began a twisting ascent into the hills, toward the center of the small island. When Jonah was a boy, his mother could drive it in her two-door Cortina. He remembered the hypnotic whip of green rows, black ash at burning season. He’d brought his own son many times to the sugar ditch high on the mountain. Now, the road was so washed out, he wasn’t sure his four-wheel drive Tacoma would make it to the dam.

Makana was beside him in the passenger seat, the boy’s two cousins sliding in the bed. They’d spent their lives in the backs of pickups, but that didn’t mean they couldn’t get flown onto a rock or under a wheel. At one deep hole, Jonah reached through his window and banged the door with a flat palm. The boys hopped out. The cab tilted forty-five degrees. Makana swayed into his father’s shoulder and let his warm weight rest there until the truck came back to level.

At the dam, the water barely reached the sluice that diverted the stream into the irrigation ditch. Plenty low the water, Jonah said to Makana. Go see if can.

Makana scooted down the mossy concrete blocks, shoved his boogie board ahead and flopped on, raising his feet, crossing his ankles. He gave a few practiced strokes. The water stay warm Dad.

Then no scratch your feet.

The ditch ran beside the road a hundred feet before swinging into the tunnel. Jonah would never forget how it felt to turn the bend and float in darkness until a tiny oval of sunlight finally blinked into view, slowly revealing the low, jagged walls blasted through the dead volcano.

He stood on the edge of the ditch, watching the boys float one by one into the tunnel. The pale soles of his son’s upturned feet faded quickly in the darkness. Dean and Kalani were right behind. Kalani did a slow 180 as he entered, flashing a grin and throwing a shaka with his thumb and pinky.

Jonah raised his hand and shouted, I see you at the pool!

Kalani nodded and floated backward into the tunnel mouth.

It was only eleven and already hot. The trade winds had died three weeks ago. Jonah had never seen the stream so low, or felt the water so high on the mountain be anything but biting cold.

He’d been on the West Side all week, helping his cousin finish a remodel, working through dinner the night before, then driving all the way home to Wainiha. He sank into the driver’s seat and closed his eyes. There was a rope swing at the end of the tunnel; the boys were in no hurry. The whole point was to get away from the heat.

The first drops fell in his dream. He woke in the roaring half-light of a downpour, water rapping the windshield. It took a moment to make sense of his panic. The boys in the tunnel. He checked his phone. Almost noon. The adrenaline subsided. Plenty of time to reach the pool.

The rain fell straight past his open window. Then it ended. Pale, tattered clouds settled overhead. Dark mist tumbled from the upper valley. Thin white ribbons forked down Namahana’s face.

Jonah left the car and started up the trail, climbing at a steep angle through a deep track. In the slick red mud, he grabbed handfuls of tall grass. His legs were stained to the knee. He left red prints on the stems as he passed.

The sun broke through as he topped the ridge. Hot vapor rose from wet leaves. The sky resumed its stern, tremendous blue. The path followed the ridge line a few feet then plunged into the next valley. In a forest of fire tree and strawberry guava, he passed a tumble of stones, an ahu marking an ancient boundary. For a moment, he saw the valley as it had been, unchoked by the invasive trees, the hillside staircased in curving terraces, green stalks of kalo mirrored in their sky-blue pools, pale smoke rising from a village, the sound of children’s voices.

With each step, Jonah expected to see the boys emerge from the trees, wet shorts clinging to skinny thighs. Gradually, expectation was replaced by something else. It wasn’t fear—the boys had been raised in the old style: there was nothing on the island they approached without humility—just an absence, or an ebbing. The world’s comforting predictability steadily drained until he sensed every flicker and rustle of the forest with the hollow precision he felt in the final moments of a boar hunt or in the glassy hissing stillness of a wave about to close above him.

Then he reached the pool.

He saw the stream coming down the valley and pouring over a low fall. He saw the tunnel at the base of the ridge, a fan of standing ripples where it met the still water. He saw the knotted rope hanging from the old mango tree. He saw the dam, collecting spinning leaves and smooth black water through its iron grate. He saw the boys, floating by the concrete lip.

He waded in, the water cool after the rain. Silky ripples rocked the surface of the pool.

The boys bumped against the iron grate.

Dean and Kalani floated face down. Makana’s eyes were open to the sky. The quiet pool had filled his mouth up to its level.

Jonah cupped each boy’s head as he rolled them over. Then he wrapped his arms around his own son’s narrow chest. He looked around the silent forest. He looked upstream and down below the dam. He looked up to the mountain. He looked for strength to bring his son to shore.

PART I

1

MICAH BERNT OBSERVED the beach park from the edge of the forest: a gravel road, a potholed parking lot, five ragged tents under sunworn tarps. From this height, the ocean looked completely still and very far away, a flat blue desert one shade darker than the cloudless sky.

He heard a truck and slipped the pack from his shoulders into the tall grass. The driver never glanced his way, but he felt the eyes of the teenager sprawled in a beach chair in the bed. Bernt’s father was a Missouri Rhinelander, his mother Filipino. In California, people assumed he was Mexican. Here he could pass for local, as long as he didn’t open his mouth.

Bernt nodded and the boy nodded back.

He waited for the teens to carry their spearfishing gear under the ironwood trees. Then he shouldered his pack and followed the edge of the field until he found a narrow path leading into the forest. The tracks of dirt-bike tires interlaced in the hard-packed dirt. When the trail crossed a stream, he turned and followed the thin flow of water between mud-caked boulders. In a few minutes, he reached a spot where it pooled deep enough to dip a bottle without stirring any silt.

He scrambled out of the stream, dropped his pack and sank into the ferns, drank a liter of water in two gulps. No birds called in the forest. The stream was silent.

From his rucksack, he pulled an eight-by-eight tarp, twelve carabiners, and three rolls of 550 cord. He staked out a simple A-frame, hanging the tarp over a line between two trees. He took the second length of 550, tied one end to a grommet in the tarp and stretched it to a tree ten feet away. He wrapped the line from tree to tree until he had a rough perimeter at shin level. He strung a second line a couple feet outside the first, then clipped the two lines together with ten of the carabiners at equal distances. He hung the last two carabiners from the line in his tent.

Finally, he unstrapped his sleep system and laid his patrol bag under the tarp. He forced his heavy bag into a stuff sack for a pillow and laid it below the carabiners, where he would hear them jingle if anyone tripped the cord.

It was easier to go through the routines than resist them.

He left camp before dawn each morning. There were always people up early at the beach park: GT fishermen with their elaborate gear, uncles stopping by to throw net for an hour before work, kids in the tents getting ready for school. Bernt would walk up the road to wherever he’d left his car—a different place each night—then drive south to Kealia and park at the restrooms.

On windless mornings, glassy sets rolled in at Kealia like ripples on a pond. One or two at a time, surfers would tilt onto a peaking wave, coast down the face with a few laconic strokes, stand high near the collapsing water. Bernt came to recognize a few who caught more than the others. One, a woman, was the best. Seeing her flash along a fast right then carve her board three hundred degrees to extend the ride a few more seconds before gracefully topping the wave and reappearing with her feet high in the air, her arched back accentuating the slim cut of her bikini against her brown skin, was the high point of Bernt’s day.

He used shampoo and soap under the outdoor shower, wrapped a towel around his waist to strip off his wet shorts and dress himself, propped a mirror on the hood to shave, ran a dollop of product through his hair. He had no illusions that the runners and dog-walkers on the trail, the surfers pausing to read the water before dashing down the beach, the handful of tourists up this early, didn’t grasp his situation with one glance.

If it was depressing to know the best part of his day was already over, he tried to take comfort in knowing this, the worst part, was almost over, too.

On his eighth day in the woods, Bernt interviewed for a job selling mowers and marine engines. The manager who interviewed him was barely out of high school. His grandfather had founded the shop. His great-grandfather had been an indentured laborer. Lining the walls above the kid’s desk were faded photos of families in crisp kimonos posing stiffly in front of plantation houses. Bernt asked the kid to drop the hourly by a buck fifty and increase his commission five percent, and he agreed. He’d catch hell from his grandfather when the old man found out.

That evening, Bernt drank a six-pack of Heinekens on a picnic table at Kealia. The waves were breaking cleanly, but he never saw the woman.

It was nearly dark as he walked toward the beach park. The parking lot was empty except for three ice heads lingering around a rusting pickup. He’d seen them before and given them little thought, beyond the operational concerns of the attention they might draw. He had a professional opinion on how they handled businesses—selling so blatantly and so close to the families in the tents—but this wasn’t his community. Anahola was a Home Lands area. He assumed their disrespect was noted. Someone would take care of it eventually.

He was moving through the shadowed tree line when a rusty van pulled into the lot, a wooden rack screwed straight into its roof, a pile of battered surfboards and random junk roped haphazardly on top, one rear window jammed askew. A bearded man unfolded from the driver’s seat, his head darting until his gaze froze on the baggie that flashed in an ice head’s palm. A woman watched keenly from the passenger seat, surveying them all with a vigilance bordering on hatred.

Haoles.

Just a short time on island and the word came automatically. Whether they lived out of a van or owned ocean-front property, they all reminded him of the outnumbered white kids at his high school: pitifully eager to fit in or resolutely oblivious to anyone outside their tiny circle.

He was about to turn his back and step into the forest when he saw the woman frown and twist in her seat, speak angrily to someone. A spark flared in his brain. In ordinary situations, threat assessment was automatic and unconscious. But an error—even as minor as the occupancy of a vehicle—set off alarms. He looked more closely. Then he stepped out of the tree line.

He reached the group as the bearded man was passing over the folded bills. Bernt caught his hand and threw the man’s fist back at him, easily causing him to stagger back toward the van. If I see you here again, Bernt whispered, I’ll keep the money. And I’ll cut you.

Anger boiled somewhere behind the man’s eyes. But only fear was strong enough to cut through his confusion. The woman was more collected.

Fuck you! she screamed. You need to mind your own fucking business. Who the fuck you think you are? You better get your ass up, Omen, and—

Bernt opened the door and shoved Omen into the driver’s seat. The man gave his woman a terrified glance and tried to bolt back into Bernt’s arms, but Bernt slammed the door on him.

Get the fuck out of here! he screamed, banging the van. It rolled forward, and for a moment Bernt locked eyes with the little boy standing between the two rear seats.

I never knew they had one buk buk superhero. You get one magic bolo knife or what?

Bernt turned. One of the ice heads was just a few feet away. His cheeks were hollow and his lips scabbed over, but he was still good-looking, vaguely European, with a deep tan and curly black hair. He wore work boots and jean shorts sagging from his skinny hips. His forearms were ropy with muscle. He had the hands of a carpenter. His hair was cropped close. A few Army tattoos, a few prison. Three inches on Bernt, at least.

I not going give you no humbug for harassing my customers. I never like that haole bitch. But you need finish what they started. He flashed the baggie in his palm.

No thanks, said Bernt.

The man turned to his friends. He was clearly the leader of their little gang. "No thank you. This Flip talk like one haole, an’ fresh off the plane, too."

Bernt turned to walk away, but the man stepped with him.

Where you from?

Kapaa, Bernt lied.

You stay Kapaa but you sleep in the forest? You must get trouble with your wahine.

Bernt said nothing.

Yeah we seen you. For an instant, Ice Man’s eyes turned keen and piercing. And we know you never like no pilikia. Just pay up. One hundred only.

He walked as he spoke, drifting right, making it harder with each step for Bernt to keep all three in front of him.

Nah.

Ice Man grinned, his teeth black stubs. So what then, you like spar?

All three were moving now, fanning out. The other two didn’t look like fighters, but they didn’t need to be.

Ice Man raised his hands.

In one motion, Bernt slipped the pack from his shoulder and lifted the heavy steel ASP from its sleeve. He let his wrist drop with the weight, flicking just enough for the baton to telescope and lock with a satisfying click.

The stranger grinned. There were plenty of nights Bernt would have been happy to see him pull a blade. But he was glad when Ice Man gestured for his boys to stand down.

After he’d watched the headlights bump across the bushes and sweep down the road, Bernt returned to his camp. He could bug out with his essentials in under two minutes, but he took the time to remove all trace. Then he walked deeper into the forest, through clearings cluttered with burnt-out cars, until he reached the ocean. He chose a small cove to wait out the night and settled into the moonshadow cast by a tall boulder.

It was always lonely, to be awake and alert in the darkness. But he was never alone.

At Benning there’d been a Weapons Sergeant who’d spent years living out of a van, climbing mountains. One night, waiting for a jump, he told a story about a time he had to down-climb a two-hundred-foot face without a rope. When someone asked how he didn’t panic, he said whenever he felt it coming on, he imagined the sound of a carabiner snapping shut.

Bernt didn’t see him again after Jump School. He’d heard the guy drove his van into the mountains after his discharge and swallowed a bottle of pills. But the click of the ASP always reminded Bernt of his imaginary carabiner. The sound of safety, he had called it.

2

MOMILANI AND CLIFTON Moniz lived in a one-story house with a metal roof and a long lanai overlooking the Anahola hills: blunt Hokualele and Kalalea tapering like a shark’s fin. A neighbor kept goats in the field on the hillside. There was a small orchard in the backyard: avocado, Meyer lemon, tangerine, breadfruit. An old mango shaded the ‘ohana house out back, a single spacious room they’d built for their daughter and granddaughter. It had a full bed in one corner and a wooden counter with a sink and propane stovetop. There was an outdoor shower and a toilet in a little stall against the wall, one side cut low to give an ocean view.

Bernt found the room through a note on the bulletin board outside the general store. The rent was reasonable. There were other applicants, but they offered him the lease on the spot. In hindsight, Bernt realized, this was a warning sign. His life ran relatively smoothly as long as he maintained clear boundaries. He preferred transactional relationships with officers, coworkers, bartenders, and landlords. But Clifton and Momilani were not that type of people.

For the first week or so, they gave him space. They’d told him he could help himself to anything from the trees, and they must have been watching closely enough to know he never had. On the tenth day, he found two ripe avocados on his doorstep when he got home from work.

The next Wednesday was Bernt’s day off. He was scrolling through a course catalogue for the island’s community college when he heard Clifton calling from outside.

Ho Micah, you like smoke meat or what?

Yes sir.

Today my birthday, and Momi like throw one small kine party. No need bring nothing, just come and eat with us.

Bernt had enrolled in college many times, but it still took him most of the day to track down all his transcripts and VA paperwork. It was late afternoon when he finally registered. He drove down to the general store and bought one six-pack for himself and another for Clifton. A few dozen people had gathered on his landlords’ lanai. Men tossed horseshoes in the yard. Clifton sat on a white marine cooler, tending a wok on a tripod above a propane burner.

Bernt sat on his own small cooler at the edge of the lanai. He smiled broadly whenever anyone addressed him or made eye contact. He resisted the urge to pull his sunglasses down over his eyes, except when he walked to the fence to smoke an American Spirit. The goats trotted expectantly forward, but he had no scraps to throw them.

When Kalalea’s long shadow reached the house, Bernt thanked Momilani and Clifton for including him. He drank the last two bottles in bed, watching videos on his phone.

The next evening, Clifton was sitting on the lanai when Bernt got home from work. He gestured at the cooler, and Bernt took a seat in one of the empty chairs against the wall. It was easy, sitting with Clifton in the dusk. On Friday, Bernt picked up a six-pack on his way home.

It became a routine. Often, they sat in silence. Momi would laugh when she came out to grab one of her Coors Lights. Now I see why he rather drink with you than me.

Sometimes Clifton was a few beers in by the time Bernt joined him. Then he told stories about his days as a fishing boat captain, if he was in a good mood, or what had happened that day in the fields, if he wasn’t. He worked for an international agrochemical company on a small test plot in the mountains outside Kilauea. He and Momilani had raised their kids on the west side of the island, where the company leased thousands of acres. The transfer to Namahana had given them the chance to move back to the family property.

One night, Clifton’s eyes were red and his voice hoarse. His boss had ordered a spray upwind of the field where he was working. "That young Japanee had try blame us, Clifton rasped. He thinks ’cause we been round long time, he can do things old school. He better watch out. Maybe we never file no grievance, but we know some pilau shit going on. We all seen it."

Bernt asked why he didn’t just retire and go back to fishing.

Clifton laughed—the sound of ripping Velcro—and popped another beer. "’Cause you cannot beat the benefits, ’as why. One day I get Momi show you my 401K. Mean, da buggah."

3

BENEVOMENT SEED HAD licensed distributors in seventy countries and corporate offices in Brussels, Basel, Lagos, Durban, Phnom Penh, Sydney, Beijing, Mexico City, São Paulo, and New York. But its headquarters were still in the hometown of the company’s founder, formerly a railroad stop outside the cities, now an outer ring suburb where an ancient glacier had dug deep kettle lakes marking the end of the boreal forest and the beginning of the prairie.

Michael Lindstrom’s second-floor office overlooked a swale of brilliant green turf ending at a row of ornamental pines. Beyond an overpass, two identical glass towers threw loops of setting sunlight from their upper stories. Lindstrom had been in this office six years, but the amber tint and cinematic dimensions of the windows still had the power to mesmerize. Pale brown clouds drifted across a golden sky. The cool whisper of climate control completed the sensation of standing outside the