Moloka'i (17 page)

Rachel’s mouth opened in amazement.

They were standing fifty feet below the upper rim of an enormous crater, shaped almost like an egg, two thousand feet long by fourteen hundred feet wide. It wasn’t simply a barren, rocky pit, but a green thriving world bursting with color and life. The slopes and floor of the crater were thickly forested:
wiliwili
trees blooming with bright red tiger’s-claw flowers; ironwoods carpeting the ground with feathery needles; Chinese banyans and Christmasberry trees, the last of their ripe red fruit spoiling on the ground. Nearly the entire bowl of the crater was overrun with some sort of vegetation. A handful of houses clung to its upper slopes, each surrounded by terraces of taro, sweet potato, sugar, beans, whatever would grow. Most houses had a horse outside; a few, like Moko’s, boasted a cow grazing in a field.

In a hushed voice Rachel asked, “What is it?”

“Kauhak
. Used to be a volcano. Long time ago.”

Fearfully, Rachel said, “Is it gonna blow up?”

Moko laughed, a laugh that degenerated into a cough. “No, no, not any more. See, in here, we’re protected from the winds, the crops flourish. Lotta work, though.”

He stooped down again to look her in the eye. “Now, you remember what I told you yesterday? How you could thank me today?” Rachel nodded uncertainly. “Well, you can do it by helping me carry some water from my well to the house. Can you do that?”

“But I want to see my Uncle Pono,” Rachel said.

“You will. But first you do this for me.” When she didn’t respond he pointed down to the center of the crater floor, where hazy sun gleamed off the mirror of a small lake. “You see that lake down there? They say it’s bottomless, that it goes straight down to the center of the earth. Thousands of years ago the people who used to live here buried their dead in that lake. That’s how this part of the island got its name. Makanalua—that means ‘the given grave.’ ” He added, “And that lake is where they put little girls who didn’t do what they were told.”

Rachel gasped. She tried to imagine falling all the way down to that lake—so much more frightening than her little spill down the crater’s slope! Terrified, she meekly followed Moko to the well, quite a distance away. After he pulled up each pail of water Rachel dutifully hauled it back to the house, where she poured it into a cistern before returning to get the next bucket.

By the time she had carried back ten pails of water she was growing tired and thirsty, and Moko let her drink some of the water and decided they had enough of it. “Can I see my Uncle Pono now?” she asked, but the old man said, “Gotta eat first, don’t we?” and led her to a vegetable patch where he showed Rachel how to harvest taro by grasping the stems below the heart-shaped leaves and yanking the purple tubers from the ground. “Do you know how to make
poi?”
he asked. Rachel nodded, enthusiastic at the thought of eating some. “I watched my Mama!” So they spent several hours cleaning the taro, boiling it in a pot under a fire out back, then slicing and pounding the cooked taro. It was a hard work, and Rachel’s hand began to cramp from so much kneading.

But the
poi
tasted good, and when Moko asked her if she’d ever milked a cow, Rachel was taken with the novelty of the idea. It was fun for a while, but her hands were throbbing again at the end of it. She inquired again about Uncle Pono, but the sun had long since vanished below Kauhak
’s western rim and shadows were swallowing up the crater. “We go tomorrow,” Moko promised, and as the green slopes around them were consumed by darkness Rachel felt exhausted, confused, and a little bit afraid.

T

he old wagon’s right front wheel was mired in the mud again, and for the fifth time that morning Catherine and Leopoldina got out, rolled up their sleeves, and applied shoulders to the cart until it rolled free. Their backs ached and their habits were caked with mud, but Catherine told herself this was no less than she deserved. She had owned up to her unforgivable behavior to Rachel, and after a stinging reproof Mother had sent her and Leopoldina in search of the missing girl. All morning it had been like this: they would travel half a mile along Damien Road, the wagon would lurch into the muck, and they would have to get out and push the cart free. On those rare occasions they were actually moving, they scanned the roadside for some trace of Rachel. At one point they were forced to stop a few yards east of the small trail leading to Kauhak
Crater; then, after extricating their wagon wheels, they moved on.

They reached Kalawao by noon and went directly to Pono’s house; but before Leopoldina could knock, Catherine heard something like a gasp from inside.

She stayed Leopoldina’s hand, nodding toward a window. They approached it and Catherine took a quick peek inside.

Pono was in bed, his arms wrapped around Haleola, who lay moving atop him; both were as naked as the day God brought them into the world. Catherine flushed scarlet, but before she could stop her Leopoldina stepped up for a look—her eyes at once resembling silver dollars.

Pono’s color was not good, his gasps not entirely passionate. “I’m sorry,” he said between breaths, “just . . . just a—”

Haleola looked worried. “Pono, are you sure—”

“I
want
to,” he said, a desperate need in his voice.

Catherine yanked Leopoldina away from the window and back to the wagon.

“Well,” Leopoldina said.

“I didn’t see Rachel inside,” Catherine said, “so I see no reason to interrupt them, do you?”

“No no,” Leopoldina agreed.

“Maybe Brother Dutton can help us.”

They hurried over to the Baldwin Home for Boys, soon to be abandoned in favor of a new one under construction; scattered around the unpainted frame of the new buildings were dozens of eucalyptus saplings Brother Dutton had planted. The tall, bearded lay brother—come to Moloka'i to serve penance for sins he never spoke of, though it was said to involve alcohol and a failed marriage—quickly organized house-to-house search parties. One burly resident, apparently fearing discovery of his home-brewed liquor, refused the brother entrance to his home; Dutton stared him down calmly. “I dug graves for hundreds of men in the Civil War,” he told the man, “and I’ll likely as not bury you too. In the war I sometimes had to do a hasty job, and I imagine some of those old bones are still being gnawed over by dogs. I’d hate to be that sloppy again, but you never know, do you?” The man rubbed the bones of his wrist and stepped back to admit Dutton.

But there was no trace of Rachel anywhere in Kalawao, and Catherine finally had to relay that disturbing news to Haleola. Pono was too frail to be of any help, but Haleola joined the two sisters as they expanded their search to include the coastline. Catherine would make her way to the edge of bluffs and peer down at sharp lava teeth fringing the maw of the sea. Each time she prayed she would not see Rachel’s tiny body impaled on the lava rocks or floating on the raging surf. She didn’t, but by evening she was overcome with guilt and fear—the fear that Rachel lay injured somewhere, or dying, was perhaps already dead, and it was all her fault. Leopoldina returned to St. Elizabeth’s to inform Mother Marianne, but Catherine remained at Kalawao, spending the night at Baldwin Home, where she prayed fervently for Rachel’s safe return and then cried herself asleep.

M

oko made a hearty breakfast, frying some eggs from his henhouse and serving them with more ripe papayas. They were out of milk and so he asked Rachel to milk the cow again; when she was finished she asked if they could go to Uncle Pono’s now. Moko said soon, soon, but soon somehow never came and she spent the morning on her knees, picking and cleaning sweet potatoes, taro, and carrots from the garden.

By now Rachel was angry, and when Moko told her they would be washing clothes she refused and snapped, “I want to see my Uncle Pono!”

“After we do wash, okay?”

“No!” she shouted. “I want to see him!”

The old man’s gnarled hand lashed out and struck her across her face. Not a slap like Sister Catherine’s, but a blow that staggered her, sent her tumbling to the ground.

She lay there, blood trickling from her split lip, gazing up with terror at her attacker. “You forget what I said?” he barked at her. “About the lake, about what they do to little girls who don’t do what they’re told?”

He grabbed her by the scruff of the neck and, with more strength than she had thought he possessed, lifted her three feet into the air. He shook her roughly, pointed her in the direction of the gleaming lake below. “You want me to throw you down there? Would you like that?”

Rachel screamed and cried, begging him not to do it.

“How long you think it’d take for you to fall? Long time, I bet. Let’s see, eh?”

He swung her back as if preparing to cast her like a stone into the ocean.
“No! No!”
she shrieked.
“Please!”

But instead of hurling her to the crater floor he just tossed her aside—to land, messily, in the taro patch.

She cowered as he stood above her. “Ready to do wash?” he asked.

She nodded mutely.

She spent the next hour drowning Moko’s dirty old clothes in a tub of soapy water, then rinsing, wringing them out, and laying them down to dry in the sun. When she was done he inspected her work and with a sunny smile declared, “Very good! Nice job! You hungry?” Cheerful again, he gave her more
poi
and let her drain two glasses of milk, and after her midday meal it was time to hoe and weed the garden.

But the exertion of lifting and terrorizing Rachel had taken its toll on Moko; he seemed weak, fatigued. And as he sat in the shade of his house, watching Rachel work the garden, he actually dozed off.

Rachel stared at him, her heart pounding as she contemplated this sudden opportunity. She looked up at the rocky crown of the crater rim, only a hundred feet above her, and then at Moko, slumbering not ten feet away.

She flung down the weeds in her hand and ran.

The snap and crunch of leaves and vines being trod underfoot awakened Moko, who saw his unwilling servant dashing up the slopes of the crater and cried out, “Hey! Goddamn it!” He sprang to his feet and started after her.

Rachel scrambled up the slope, Moko no more than a dozen yards behind her. She slipped, fell, and in the few seconds it took her to right herself the gap between them closed even further. Panicky, Rachel grew even clumsier, falling and tumbling back down the slope several feet until she stopped her descent by grabbing hold of a tree root. Moko was now almost upon her, cursing, eyes ablaze. Rachel cast about desperately for some sort of weapon.

She lunged for a moldering tree branch as Moko called her a little shit and pounced at her.

Rachel twisted around and propelled the stick with all her strength into the old man’s throat.

Flesh tore; blood spurted. Moko gagged and grabbed at his throat. The stick had not penetrated too deeply, but it had obviously caused him considerable hurt.

Good, she thought, shinnying up the slope as fast as she could. She didn’t look back until she reached the summit: Moko was on his knees, moaning, holding his bloodied throat.