5.1   "A Flower for Her Hair" (cont'd)

Upon closer inspection, everything was in a state of disarray.

As you faced the front of Manu’s cottage, to the far left was a large stand of areca palms. Its clusters of thin yellow stalks and fine bracts of pinnate leaves formed a dense wall surrounding the outdoor shower. They’d been neglected for months, though, and the dead branches needed to be thinned out. Stink maile, an evil vine, was starting to snake its way through the haliconias and birds of paradise by the front stairs. The ‘ti beds surrounding the house were a mixture of large ovate green and purple ‘ti and smaller variegated ones, all of which were growing tall and gangly; it was time for some new underplanting to return a lushness to the beds. Moreover, the pigs had torn up the border over along the edge of the jungle, spilling rocks and digging holes that would make running the tractor along the perimeter a bit perilous for the blades.

“Amama ua noa,” Prudence tells herself.  So be it.

Years ago she had erected a little garden shed down by the ‘ohana. In it she kept garden tools and a hand-pushed lawn mower so she wouldn’t have to lug those things up and down the hill whenever she wanted to work in Manu’s yard.

She pulled open the shed doors and went inside and started gathering tools to work with. Hand-held clippers, industrial strength lopping shears, a pick axe and a machete all went into the rusted basin of the wheelbarrow. After spritzing herself with a bit of mosquito repellant, she wheeled the tools out toward the ‘ohana.

She spent the better part of the morning manicuring the yard around the ‘ohana, pruning and pulling far more green matter from the beds than she would have imagined. It was always that way, though, and it was always a surprise: things grow like crazy in Puna, especially those things you don’t want to grow. With the drought, though, growth had stalled, except among the evil weeds, who seemed to thrived under deleterious conditions. They were easier to see now, easier to pull, and aggravatingly prolific.

By the time she’d called the morning pau she’d accumulated a few big piles of debris, each nearly as tall as herself. Load after load she filled up the wheelbarrow and hauled the debris over to a shielded area of the jungle where she dumped it alongside other mounds of composting debris.

Each trip she made from the yard to the compost heap led her through the churned up lawn at the edge of the jungle.

Damn pigs, she grumbled.

As dusk approaches in Puna, fat, black furry devils frequently come out of the jungle and dig up the land, searching for worms beneath rocks. Young mango or papaya trees they’ll lop off at the tops with total disregard, or trample underneath their careless pig feet. They devour pineapples off the stem; unripe ones they’ll take a bite out of and then spit out. Your nice big mango trees they’ll gouge with their tusks just for fun. Worse, at night, they come up near the house, snorting like werewolves and breathing menacingly in the dark.

Prudence went over to the edge of the lawn to repair the pig damage. One by one she heaved the upturned rocks into the jungle and with the tip of her boot she flipped chunks of lawn back into the divets created by the pigs.

Pigs look better in a pit, she told herself. In an imu. Or carved in chunks, smoking slowly on a grill; then served with fresh herbs and a sweet lilikoi soy sauce.

Along the edge of the yard, in between Manu’s cottage and the beginning of the coconut lawn, there was a clearing in the jungle about thirty feet across. The entrance was marked by giant, prehistoric looking monsterra leaves on either side. The floor of the clearing was stone and broken down bits of leaves and branches and kukui nuts.  Wood stumps served as chairs and surrounded a firepit Manu had built by hand with lava rock culled from the yard and from within the jungle.

Soon after moving in, he had discovered this sheltered, open space. Over time he transformed it. The natural curve of the place he accentuated by clearing out a diameter of thirteen long paces and planting the circumference with kukui trees. In between them, low to the ground, grew red awapuhi ginger plants, green ‘ti, wild vines and various shade palms which he’d planted with a sort of piety and ease.

Overhead the kukui trees, which were by then thirty feet or more, grew into a broad canopy, never meeting, however, in the center. No matter how tall or wide they grew the very center remained open, as if the trees were holding hands and keeping clear a portal to the sky. In early summer the Milky Way covered this opening like a fresco, a glimmering purplish centerpiece of stars.

For Manu, the firepit was where the spirit of Lono resided; it was sacred. The god Lono is lord of the east, god of learning and the intellect. Here, he and his wife Laka, goddess of hula, sister of Pele, came to visit with extant beings in a union of spirit, sky and the elements.

In this rough clearing in the jungle, under the guidance of stars and moonlight, rituals of honor were held in Lono’s honor – hula, talk story, and the recitation of the creation chants. Manu presided over the events, or depending on who was in attendance he would yield. Nevertheless, Manu was the channel, vortex, the strange attractor. The firepit clearing was his version of Po, the empty darkness of chaos from within which Keawe drew forth the life spirit and cast it up into the sky.

Prudence entered the firepit clearing. It was solemn and shaded, a welcome respite from the sun-scorched heat of the open yard. The ground crackled and crunched beneath her work boots.

She looked around.

There was surprisingly little to be done in the clearing. There were stink maile twining up around the base of some of the kukui, of course, so she snipped them at the base and yanked down what she could of the vine.  Other slender vines had begun creeping around the awapuhi, and those kind-of-cute but gangly weeds with the fuzzy white tips that she didn't entirely mind were sprouting up in various spots, so she gave them a tug as well. Aside from these few interlopers, it was as if the jungle were keeping itself intentionally at bay.

Before leaving the clearing, she cut a few red cones of awapuhi from the low shrubs and held them gently in one hand, being careful not to squeeze the sweet-scented water from within.

She walked between the monsterra out into the fringes of the coconut lawn, where cocos of varying sizes grew low to the ground, thick and pregnant, or stretched up into the sky like slender giants. She walked the perimeter of the jungle and came across a pig path which the hairy werewolves were using to come into and out of the property. There was a lilikoi vine hanging from one of the junk trees: No wonder, she said aloud; the pigs love anything sweet, and passion fruit is one of their favorites.

She stepped into the jungle to see if there were any lilikoi within reach. There were none.

She walked a little further along the pig path: an avocado tree, another pig favorite, rose in the cramped quarters of the scrub jungle.

She continued on to see where the pig path led, watching out for pukas to fall into and keeping an ear out for the sound of approaching sows. They could be merciless if you caught them off guard with their piglets, especially if they felt trapped. Pru knew a woman who’d been gored in the leg by one. She knew of one guy who had to fend one off with a machete. And she could count on two hands the numbers of dogs she’d known of that had met up with the wrong end of a pig’s tusk.

She walked a little further in the jungle, estimating that she was still on her property. In the time the mosquitoes starting getting annoying – even in these parched woods, the bloodsuckers were still out, starving for a tiny meal. The pig path veered off downhill, just left of the sun, which meant it would take her closer to the coast and over her property line. Off to the right she heard a car not too far away and could almost make out a blur of red as it sped along beyond the trees.

Ohalani Road, she realized. 

And then it hit her: “Damn pigs. I guess you can be of use once in a while.”

Prudence reversed course and came out of the jungle with a smile on her face. In her left hand were the soft red awapuhi, slightly leaking water, and in her right a good looking avocado that had fallen to the ground. She was hot. She was sweaty. Two red welts were forming on her upper arms where she’d been munched upon by some nasty mosquitoes. Nevertheless, she knew exactly what she should do.

She walked to the back lanai of the ‘ohana and set the avocado down on one of the steps.

Around the side of the house she went, into the small clearing of the now-lovely, well pruned areca palms. A shower nozzle and handles protruded from the side of the house.  Near them was a small teak table where a lonely bar of soap rested. Prudence set her awapuhi down next to the soap.

She got undressed and hung her clothes and baseball cap on a towel hook that was attached further down the side of the house, out of splashing range.

The water that came out of the shower head was hot at first. Prudence let it run until it eventually cooled, and when it turned cold she added in just a hint of warm water and then stepped into the refreshing spray.

She rubbed the itchy jungle off of her skin with soap and let the water run over her. She grabbed an awapuhi and held it close to the top of her head. She squeezed it and rubbed its handful of liquid into her scalp. She grabbed another and emptied it into her hands. This she drew into the long wave of her black hair, stroking it in with her fingers.

The liquid from the third awapuhi she rubbed across her shoulders and chest. The little that was left got rubbed into her arms, where the mosquitoes had bitten her.

As she did all this she reminded herself that the yard looked good. The cottage was in decent shape. It was definitely rentable.  If she were to convert that pig path into a gravel driveway out onto Ohalani Road, the new tenants could have their own private entrance.

After all, everybody comes from somewhere. How wonderful it would be to be new to the island, or to have been looking around, casting a net, trying to find a place that was all at once magical, lovely and all your own. Although it was part of her property, the cottage, with its own driveway, could be as isolated or as familiar as the new tenants wanted it to be.

She herself had come from somewhere once, in search of a place of her own. She had found and built this place with love. Imagine if she could find someone who would cherish the opportunity to embrace Manu's cottage the way that she had embraced it, to have been able to share it with him – to learn from him, and to learn what it means to become a part of a place.

She rinsed herself off and stepped into the sunny backyard to dry off in the sun.  Whereas previously she couldn’t have fathomed the idea of anyone other than Manu living in  the ‘ohana, she was totally ready now. She looked around admiringly at the unadorned ‘ohana, all wood frame and wobbly windows and corrugated metal roof.

She plucked a small white hibiscus flower for her hair and sat down on the back stairs, looking out past the large bismarckia onto the coconut lawn and marveling at what lay ahead of her: this place; new beginnings: these origins of life.

Next Episode 5.2 »

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