Moloka'i (16 page)

She waved at Sister Victor, beckoning her to come in too, but the older woman remained resolutely on dry land.

“Sister Catherine!” She sounded more than a little panicky. “Please, come back!” Catherine ignored her. She stared up at the sky and smiled. Haleola was right: for a while, at least, the ocean washed everything away.

It took Sister Victor half an hour to lure Catherine out of the water, during which time she disposed of the wine bottle by tossing it far out to sea. When Catherine finally stumbled out of the surf—pleasantly exhausted and still thoroughly besotted—Victor coaxed her back into her habit and veil. They sneaked into St. Elizabeth’s via a back door, only a trail of droplets betraying their passage. The water would dry up, but if anyone saw them—

Catherine started to giggle.

Sister Victor clapped a hand over her friend’s mouth and propelled her down the corridor and into her room. Once prone, Catherine collapsed into a dead sleep. Victor undressed her, tucked her in, and with the relief of one who had managed to stuff the genie back into the bottle, quietly closed the door behind her.

Catherine slept well, but woke badly.

She opened her eyes shortly after dawn, sunlight stabbing through the window curtains. She sat up. Her head throbbed as if it had been used as a croquet ball.

Oh my Lord, she thought as dim memories of the night before came floating back to her. She now realized with dismay that the only thing less decorous than a vomiting nun was a drunken nun.

For a time it seemed she might well be both, but somehow she managed to quell her nausea. It took half an hour for her to approximate her normal demeanor, and she was ten minutes late to Mass. In chapel Sister Victor scrupulously avoided her gaze; as Catherine knelt, she silently offered a prayer of contrition to the Lord. But as ashamed as she was of her inebriation, she couldn’t quite bring herself to repent the dip in the ocean.

Later, at breakfast, a slightly more composed Catherine noticed that Sister Leopoldina was missing her usual smile and good cheer today. “Something wrong, Sister?” Catherine asked as she poured herself a cup of black coffee.

Leopoldina nodded gravely. “One of the girls ran away last night.”

“Wilma? Hazel?”

“No. Younger. You know Rachel Kalama?”

Catherine felt the blood drain from her face, and without a word of explanation to Leopoldina she threw down her breakfast and ran from the dining room, to be sick.

Chapter 8

S

he had to see Uncle Pono. Something was wrong and no one would tell her what, so she’d just have to go see for herself, that’s all. And if nothing
was
wrong, well, the sisters would come for her and she would be punished—but she would still have seen Uncle Pono. It was only three miles from Kalawao to Kalaupapa; it couldn’t take more than an hour to get there on foot. Why, she’d walked farther back when she and her brothers would go to Waikiki to play!

True, the nuns peeked in with annoying regularity every hour, but that still gave her an hour’s head start, assuming they even noticed her absence before dawn. Rachel waited until midnight—when Sister Albina poked her head inside, satisfied herself that all was well, and withdrew—then sprang out of bed, dressing as quickly and quietly as she could. She stuffed her dolls under the bed covers; the lump they made under the blanket wouldn’t pass close inspection, but it was better than nothing. She opened the nearest window, careful not to awaken her roommates, and climbed up onto the window sill. She swung her legs over; pushed herself off; and dropped to the ground.

She was out.

It was as exciting as if she were stowing away on a boat to Hong Kong. Quietly she closed the window behind her, thrilled with her own daring.

But as she turned away from the window, she was startled by the profound darkness in which she now found herself. The sky was clouded, starless—as though an earthen bowl had been lowered over the peninsula—land, sea, and sky congealing into one great inky mass. She couldn’t even tell in which direction she was looking!

She fought off a surge of panic, remembering that the window looked down on the convent’s back lawn. And as her eyes adjusted to the gloom she began to make out a few flickering lights—oil lamps burning in nearby houses. Using them as faint stars to guide her, she hurried across the lawn—it was sodden and muddy, as her sandals rapidly became as well—and onto what the sisters referred to as “the Damien Road,” the road to Kalawao.

She was excited again; the darkness, broken by an occasional light on either side, was now a friend and conspirator. After a few minutes she looked back and saw only a faint glow from the convent behind her—and, thankfully, no sign of Sister Albina taking up the chase.

But the road was even muddier than the lawn, and the farther she went, the deeper her feet sank into it. The mud oozed between the sandal and the heel of her foot, weighing down the shoe as she tried to take another step; after five minutes she decided she’d make better time barefoot, so she slipped off her sandals and carried them.

Soon the last lights of Kalaupapa were behind her. On either side of the road she could make out faint impressions of tumbled rocks and spiky lantana scrub, but that was all. She had never been afraid of the dark, but then she had never known a dark like this before. It seemed as if the only thing in the world she could truly see was the wet, shifting ground beneath her feet.

And it was
cold
—as cold as mud could get without actually freezing. She saw now how a wagon wheel might become hopelessly mired in this, and wondered if Sister Leopoldina had been right—maybe this was why Haleola and Pono hadn’t come. Maybe she should turn around right now, hide her muddy clothes, and sneak back into bed; with luck no one would know she had even been gone.

She turned to look back, but now there was only a black void behind her; even the small length of road she had just traveled had been swallowed up by the darkness.

She told herself that if she went back somebody was likely to see her, or at least find her dirty clothes. She would be punished, and have nothing to show for it. If she kept going, she’d eventually get to Kalawao and at least have the comfort of a few hours with her uncle.

She felt the sting of Sister Catherine’s hand across her face, then turned and continued down the road.

After ten more minutes the mud was ankle-deep. Her feet were growing numb with cold and the wind was picking up, gusting like a blade through her light dress. She had “chicken skin”—goosebumps—and not the good kind you got from a ghost story. Each step took more and more effort; she was tiring already and hadn’t even covered that much ground. She picked up her pace. . . .

She slipped, pitched forward, and fell face down into the road.

She wasn’t hurt, but got a nice mouthful of mud. It tasted even worse than it smelled. She lay there coughing and spitting it out, then slowly got to her feet. Her entire body was plastered with mud; it covered her like a cold, heavy, foul-smelling suit of clothes.

She sank back down into the mud and started to cry. She wanted to go home. She wanted Papa to come pick her up out of the mud, she wanted Mama to yell at her for getting her clothes dirty. She wanted Uncle Pono! It wasn’t fair. Why couldn’t the nuns just let her live with him, why did she have to
do
this in the first place?

Then when she had cried herself out, she picked herself up and stumbled on.

She felt like a storm cloud so sodden with rain it might burst at any moment. She had no idea how much time had gone by: one stretch of road looked no different than the last. For one awful moment she wondered if she were walking in a circle; could she even tell?

And then up ahead she finally saw something other than rocks, mud, and bramble.

On her left a narrow trail, splitting off from the main road, cut through the lantana. Rachel rushed toward it, nearly slipping again in her haste; she stood at the trail head, looking up. . . .

Into more darkness. All she could make out of the trail was the next three or four feet. She tried to think: when they’d left Uncle Pono’s, she remembered, the wagon
had
traveled a little ways on a smaller road before turning onto the main road to Kalaupapa. So if this was that small road . . . it might lead straight to Uncle Pono’s house!

She stood there, trying to decide which way to go. The wind cut her, and it was starting to rain again.

Papa, where are you? You’d know which way to go!

She felt another lick of rain on her cheek . . . then turned onto the narrow trail.

After several minutes she realized the trail was sloping gently upwards, and the rain grew so heavy that she was forced to take refuge in the surrounding lantana scrub. The shrubbery did afford some shelter, but it also gave off a vile smell; the leaves were prickly and painful, and when the rain eased up after ten or fifteen minutes she was only too happy to continue up the trail.

The higher she climbed, the bigger breaths she seemed to take. Now she started to notice debris scattered along the trail: a broken calabash; a spent shell casing from a rifle; a bandanna, caught on the branch of a shrub, flapping like a flag in the wind. She stared joyously at the bandanna—just a few more minutes and she’d be safe and warm in Uncle Pono’s house, she knew it!

She trudged ahead. Then, all at once, she stopped.

It was still as dark as the inside of her mouth, she could barely see a foot in front of her . . . but some sense other than sight caused her to halt.

She wasn’t alone. Standing there, staring blindly into the dark, she heard the unmistakable sound of someone, something, drawing breaths from the same air as she.

Frightened, she spun around, probing the darkness for some glimpse of . . . what? She didn’t know, and something stopped her from calling out.

The breaths she heard were deep and ragged, and they were growing louder. Or maybe closer.

She didn’t move, but heard the rustle of lantana scrub and then the squishing of soft mud being trod underfoot.

She searched the dimness ahead . . . and saw, low to the ground, a pair of shiny little eyes flashing in the dark.

Rachel screamed.

The eyes jumped forward, out of the darkness.

She leaped aside as a wild pig three feet tall charged her, black and horrible. It snorted ferociously, its snout missing her by inches as it stomped past.

Rachel ran shrieking up the trail, her feet barely finding purchase on the slippery ground, her heart pounding as she imagined the pig snapping its jaws at her heel.

In truth the animal gave up the chase much sooner than Rachel stopped running. When she finally realized that the pig wasn’t pursuing her, she paused a moment to catch her breath—then for good measure kept on running.

She was startled when, a minute later, the trail suddenly came to an end: it sloped upward, culminating in a rocky lip of some kind. She had reached the top.

But the top of what?

Cautiously she climbed the last few feet of the slope and steadied herself on the edge of whatever it was she had found. She felt a little dizzy, as she had on Tantalus; she peered down but saw largely darkness.

Largely, but not entirely. Below and to the right, no more than a hundred feet away, there was a light.

A light burning in a house. And beside the house a horse was tied to a post, and beside the horse . . .

Rachel could barely contain her excitement. She charged over the lip and called out, called for help.

In a moment she needed it: carelessly she tripped over a tree root and went tumbling down a slope. Something sharp raked her left leg as she fell, and the thick trunk of a
wiliwili
tree rudely stopped her descent, the collision knocking the breath from her. She lay splayed against the tree, blood pooling beneath her leg, too dazed to even think about getting to her feet, and she wept out of humiliation as much as pain.

After a minute she heard the sound of leaves being crushed underfoot—the pig again? She was relieved when she saw the figure of a man towering above her, dim against the tangled darkness of tree limbs and night sky. Then he spoke, in a harsh rasp, like paper being torn: “What in hell?” Rachel wasn’t scared, she’d heard voices like his at Kalihi; the leprosy tumors sometimes grew in a person’s throat, giving the voice a husky edge.

He stooped down to get a better look at her. He was an old man, older than Haleola, his bald head brown as a coconut, his face a mass of tumors. “ ’Ey,” he said, “what do we got here?” He looked at her querulously and smiled. “How is it a pretty little girl like you comes falling out of the sky onto an old
wiliwili
tree?”

He moved closer. Rachel flinched and shrank back.

“It’s okay,” the man said, as gently as his raspy voice would allow, “I ain’t gonna hurt you.” He saw her injured leg, reached out and touched it tentatively. “Nasty cut,” he said. “I fix you up, all right?”

He slid his hands underneath her back. Rachel let out a little yelp of apprehension as he scooped her up in his arms. He didn’t seem very strong, though, and his arms quaked as he lifted her; Rachel was afraid he might drop her, but he managed to carry her over to the tiny grass house, lit from within by the flicker of a paraffin lamp. Inside, there wasn’t much furniture, just a mattress, a chair, a table.

Winded by the exertion, the man rested a minute, coughing a horrible racking cough. When he recovered he had her take off her wet clothes, all except her underwear; wrapped her in a dry towel; then had her step out of the underwear as well. He laid her on the mattress and said, “Now let’s take a look at that leg.”

Judiciously he examined the gash below her knee and then wet a rag with water from a jug. “This is gonna hurt a little.” It did. Rachel winced as he swabbed dirt and blood from the cut, then bandaged it with a clean rag.

Finally working up the courage to speak, Rachel said quietly, “Thank you.”

“You can thank me tomorrow,” the man said, a comment Rachel didn’t understand. “You got a name?”

Rachel hesitated, then told him her name.

“I’m Moko,” he said. “Get some sleep. We’ll talk some more tomorrow, okay?”

He covered her with a worn, dirty blanket and she suddenly realized how good it felt to lie down, to be warm and dry. She closed her eyes and fell quickly asleep.

W

hen she woke the lamp had gone out and hazy light filtered through the windows. The storm had passed, and she was alone. Her clothes, draped across the foot of the mattress, had been washed and dried in the sun. She slipped them on, and not long after, her rescuer entered the house, carrying an armful of papayas.

“You hungry?” The moment he said it Rachel realized she was ravenous. She consumed three whole papayas and washed them down with a big glass of milk. She thanked him for breakfast, then asked, “Do you know my Uncle Pono?”

The old man thought a moment. “Pono . . . Pono . . . he live in Kauhak
?”

She told him her uncle lived in Kalawao, and for a moment Moko seemed surprised. He rubbed his chin thoughtfully and finally said, “Pono . . . sure, I know him. He don’t live too far away.”

Rachel was delighted. “Can you take me to him?”

“Better see if you can walk first, okay?” At his urging she got up, and though her leg was bruised and achy, she was able to walk around the room without difficulty.

“Good,” he said. “Let’s go outside.” She followed him out the door and into the cool morning.