Chapter Seventeen - Just Get On Boat

The restaurant was practically deserted when they arrived but they still waited nearly twenty minutes for their table. Reservations were strictly required though it was hard to see the reasoning behind that policy, especially on such a laid-back island.

Once they ordered, and with a little prodding from Rudy, Wally reluctantly gave them the rundown on the whole Glen Canyon Dam / Hayduke episode of his life.

“I guess you could say that I was a little confused at the time.” he began. “I really and truly believed that I was Hayduke and I really and truly believed that one boat load of fertilizer and diesel fuel was going to blow the whole damn dam to smithereens.”

“I don’t guess it would have done the environment much good if I’d succeeded.” he said sheepishly. “A lot of things were going wrong in my life at the time and it was just so easy to get confused. Looking back on it now, what frightens me the most is how it all made such perfect sense to me at the time.“

Rudy picked up the narrative and told how he and Pete had found him on the banks of Lake Powell that day and soon the table was hooting with laughter at Rudy’s comical, if somewhat embellished rendition. Wally took the good natured jesting in stride.

“So how did you end up here?” Rudy asked when he’d finished the story.

Wally said that he had become increasingly paranoid following “the incident”. One of the regulars at the Prankster was a Detective with SLCPD and some of the other regulars enjoyed circulating rumors that the Detective was closing in. Even as an adult, Wally couldn’t escape being the object of ridicule.

Finally the paranoia got the better of him and he decided to disappear. He wanted to go as far away as possible without need for a passport so he wound up in Honolulu, where he met Soon-Li.

Soon-Li had worked in a fortune telling shop on Hotel Street in Honolulu’s Red Light District and that’s where they met. Wally walked in one night, looking for relief from his paranoid worries. He and Soon-Li had connected almost instantly.

After they got together they decided that they needed to lead a quieter life away from the noise and confusion in Honolulu. Since Soon-Li was the best cook Wally had ever known, opening an eatery seemed like a natural.

“My wife has a gift, you see,” Wally said.

“Oh yeah, your food is incredible.” Raven agreed.

“No, I mean she can see things in the future. Sometimes in the fortune tellers shop she saw things she didn’t want to; awful, horrible things. We had to get her away from that.”

“Is that true?” Rudy asked. “You can look into someone’s eyes and see their future?” One nut job marrying another, he was thinking.

“Not exactly.” Soon-Li said. “I can’t always see things. Most of time, I don’t but sometime I just know things. That what get my family out of Laos.”

“How so?” Rudy asked.

“My brother’s Hmong rebels, fighting Communist government. Hmong work with U.S. until they abandon us in ‘75 and communist take over Laos and enslave my people. You know, Laos have secret mountain made of gold and many people want it.”

Rudy rolled his eyes toward Raven, who kicked him under the table.

Soon-Li continued. “Many people resist, many killed. Some betray friend and neighbor who fighting for freedom. I see close friend of family one day and I look at him and I know. I just know he betray us. That was first time I sure about my gift.”

“So how did you get out?” Raven asked.

“We run to Thai border while government chase. Two brothers shot so we carry them over border to Thailand.”

“How did you get from Thailand to Hawaii?” Raven asked.

“We get on boat.”

“So you worked in Thailand until you could save enough money for your passage?”

“No, we get on boat.” Raven looked puzzled.

“Just get on boat.” Soon-Li said.

The table was silent for a few minutes while it slowly dawned on Rudy and Raven what she was saying.

“My God!” Raven exclaimed. “We heard about the boat people at the time but I guess I never stopped to think about what that really meant. I mean, you see the footage but it doesn’t seem real until...”

Raven blinked to keep her eyes from welling up. “What a courageous thing to do.”

“It not take courage when nothing else.” Soon-Li said.

“You’re wrong about that.” Raven said. “I’ve seen a lot of things in my day and I can tell you that it often takes more courage to live than to die.” Rudy wondered what she meant by that, or for that matter what an Army Dental Assistant would know about such things.

“She cooks a pretty mean turkey tail, too.” Wally said, trying to lighten the mood.

As the evening wore on, they all gravitated through the French doors that were open to a large dance floor. The ballroom was enclosed in glass on three sides and was open to the sea breeze. There was no mainland blues band here, just a very large Hawaiian woman at a synthesizer singing Hawaiian love songs in a remarkably clear, strong voice.

The place was empty except for the foursome and a white haired couple that looked to be in their late seventies. On a less dramatic night the whole scene might have seemed a little hokey but they luxuriated in it tonight.

Rudy felt Raven’s warm breath on his neck as they danced.

“Look at that couple.” She said softly into his ear. “Wouldn’t you love to know their story?” Her hot breath in his ear was driving him wild.

“I mean, what respect you must have for each other after forty or fifty years together. All the trials and tribulations of a lifetime, everything you go through together so many years and now here they are, dancing their twilight years away, more in love than ever.”

“Yeah, or they could have met at the Senior Center last week.” Rudy said.

She gave him a playful slap and nuzzled in closer.

“Do you think there’s a chance that could be us someday?” he asked.

They stopped dancing and he felt foolish for asking a question like that to a woman he’d barely known for a week but it was impossible not to let his feelings run away with him.

Raven pulled away just enough to look him in the eye and stood there silently searching for the right words. “I think... there’s a chance.” she said at last.

She laid her head on his shoulder and they resumed the dance. “I think there’s a chance.” She whispered again.

Rudy was thirty-six years old that day in 1992. Up until that moment he had loved only one woman and she had chosen someone else. He had never met anyone named Raven before and he had never met anyone like Raven before. He closed his eyes and breathed in her scent and lost himself in Raven.


The clock on the nightstand said 5:05. Rudy climbed out of bed carefully, so as not to wake Raven, pulled on a pair of shorts and slipped out the door barefoot. The sun wasn’t up yet when he walked along the path from their bungalow to the rocky shore.

He stood above the shore and listened to the waves explode onto the rocks below. A stray cat stared at him from the thicket of ground cover below the sidewalk. Across the water, the lights of Honolulu were an eerie glow against the cloud cover above the city.

He remembered a camping trip back in 1967, somewhere close to this very spot, long before there was a Kailuakoi Resort. He remembered sitting cross-legged on the grass outside his tent listening to KPOI in Honolulu on his little transistor radio and staring across the water at that same glow. He’d been so bored with this sleepy little island, so trapped by its geography. He dreamed about a different life in the big city just thirty miles across the water. That’s where the action was; certainly not on this dead little island.

It occurred to him that he had spent most of his life looking across the water, dreaming of other places. Wherever he found himself he always felt that there was something better somewhere else. Places where life was more interesting, more exciting.

Now he had come full circle and he was standing on the very soil he’d so wanted to escape all of those years ago. For the first time in his life there was nowhere else that he wanted to be. There was nothing he’d rather be doing.

And the was no one he’d rather be doing it with.