Chapter Sixteen - Cockeyed Coincidence in Kaunakakai

After their morning coffee they climbed in Metro and headed east toward the leeward side of the island. There was a cloudburst dumping buckets of water ahead though the sun was shining right above them. They drove into the downpour and five minutes later drove out of it again.

“Just a little of that famous Hawaiian liquid sunshine.” Raven said.

They wound their way up the mountain road to Kualapu’u. At the summit, they made a right turn into a little housing project that sat all alone amidst mountain meadows and forest. Rudy stopped the car in front of a tiny beige house just like all the other tiny beige houses in the project.

“Wow, it looks a lot smaller than I remember but that’s the house we lived in.” he said. “It was military housing at the time.” Rudy smiled as the memories came rushing back. “Sure looks rundown now”.

“We used to have a pot-luck luau in someone’s carport once a month. I can still see Sgt. Yashima sitting in front of the hibachi fanning the charcoal for hours. For some reason, he refused to use lighter fluid and would sit there fanning the coals until long after the other grills were cooking up teriyaki frogs legs.”

“What was that about?” Raven asked.

“Beats me.” he said. “It must have been something about keeping the old ways alive, as if they bought charcoal in a bag in the old days. At our going away party, he said that the Davis’s were the only haoles he ever knew that he liked. Of course, Dad was a Captain by then so he had to say that.” Rudy laughed.

“Sounds like a great guy.” Raven laughed.

“For the most part it was nice. At least we were accepted here, more or less, not like at school, but I don’t guess I have to tell you what that was like.”

“Yeah. We already talked about beat up a haole day?” she said. Growing up my whole life on Kauai, I had a good circle of friends that insulated me, up to a point.”

“Over there,” he said, pointing to the playground across the street from his old house, “that’s where I learned to play basketball. I was a chubby kid and I had no idea that I had any athletic ability until I started playing pickup games with the neighborhood kids.”

“See the ravine behind the backboard? If you missed, you could be hiking for an hour to retrieve the ball.” Rudy laughed. “Shooting was always my best basketball skill. My teammates in later years wondered how I got to be such a good outside shot. It’s all about the proper motivation; I didn’t want to chase the ball.”

They walked to a grassy field at the far edge of the project where the neighborhood kids played soccer and football.

“The tree house is still there.” Rudy said, pointing to a little clubhouse that stood atop four telephone poles. There was a heavy rope hanging from a beam centered over a hole in the platform. It was the only means of entry.

“When I first came here, like I said, I was kinda chubby. I couldn’t get in the tree house for the longest time because I couldn’t climb the rope all the way. It was humiliating. I’d try and try and always end up sliding down and getting rope burns on my hands and thighs. Basketball is what changed that for me.”

“Once I realized that I actually did have some athletic ability I took an interest in becoming fit. Of course, the humiliation of not being able to climb the rope was a pretty good motivator, but I really dropped the weight by playing basketball pretty much every free minute.”

“By the time I left, I could do this.” He grabbed the rope and pulled himself all the way to the top using only his arms.

“Come on up.” He called down to her breathlessly. She pulled herself up with little effort but she did use her legs and her feet. When she neared the top he grabbed her arm and pulled her to her feet on the platform.

They went inside the little clubhouse and collapsed in a pile on the floor. “I had a crush on a cute little Asian girl down the street named Dawn. I desperately wanted to get her alone in here and do something like this.” he said, and then for the second time that morning, he made love to her.

They drove back down the mountain and stopped in Hoolehua at his old school. “Wow, looks like pineapple has been replaced by coffee now.” Rudy said “Back when I lived here, the island was nothing but pineapple fields. Dole was the main employer on the island and our little school here was surrounded by pineapple fields.”

When the pineapples were ripe, you couldn’t run on the playground with your mouth open or you would swallow pineapple bugs. The air would be so thick with them that we’d get on the bus after school and shake them out of our hair. I used to run my comb through my hair to get them all out.”

“That’s one problem we didn’t have on Kauai.” Raven said. “We didn’t have any pineapple fields, only sugar cane and coffee... plus a few other ‘cash crops’.”

They drove another half-mile down the road and stopped in front of two huge white wooden buildings. The sign out front said “1st Baptist Preschool”.

“This was the Mormon church when I was here. That was the chapel” he said pointing at one of the buildings “and that was the gym.” He said pointing at the other. The place appeared deserted so they got out of the car and walked around.

“I gather your family was pretty religious?” Raven asked.

“Oh yeah, staunch Mormons.”

“So, what happened to you, heathen?”

“I never did really buy into it. For a lot of years I thought that something was wrong with me. Everyone I knew was a believer and they would talk about their testimonies and talk about those who didn’t have one with pity. ”

“I’m talking about my family, all of my acquaintances, virtually everyone I knew growing up. They are all good people, the best people I knew. They couldn’t possibly all be wrong so it had to be me. I pretended to believe because I didn’t want to be pitied and I figured that at some point I’d get it, like someone was going to flip a switch.”

“Little by little, as I got older and thought things through, I started asking questions. I soon realized that there was no switch, that there was nothing wrong with me. They were the ones who were wrong and I’d been made to feel inferior and pitiable all of those years when it was they who couldn’t see that the Emperor had no clothes. I was very clear to me I just couldn’t understand why everyone else didn’t see it too. To tell you the truth, I still don’t understand why otherwise intelligent people can’t see it. I carried a lot of anger over the way it made me feel for a long, long time.”

“Have you made peace with it now?” Raven asked.

“Mostly. Eventually I realized that these were good people who very sincerely believed what they believed. I guess if you want to believe badly enough and if you need to believe badly enough, it’s real easy to see the Emperor’s clothes, though I can’t help but wonder how many of them don’t see them and just pretend, like I did, believing that something is wrong with them. Anyway, I realized that, like me, they are trying to lives the best they can, according to their own conscience. Isn’t that really all anyone can ask of any of us?”

He stretched out on the grass. “It’s kind of strange being here again.” he said. “The first time that I was truly struck by the ridiculousness of it all was right here. Probably, my mother still hasn’t forgiven me.”

“For what” Raven asked.

“I was in Sunday School and my Mother was teaching the story of Abraham. He’s the dude that God told to sacrifice his only son to prove his faith, right? So Abraham gets his son on the Alter, knife poised and God says ‘Only kidding.’“

“I don’t remember the words ‘Only kidding’ in the Bible.” Raven teased.

“I paraphrase, okay smarty? Anyway,” he continued, “It just didn’t make sense to me. I mean, this is the Almighty Omnipotent Creator of the Universe and he says that he’s a jealous God and he plays silly mind games with people for reassurance as to their fidelity? It doesn’t add up. If your sister’s boyfriend pulled that crap, you’d kick his ass.”

“So I asked questions that my Mother couldn’t answer to my satisfaction. I could see how horrified she was. I was putting her on the spot in front of the whole class and I knew that I should let it go but I just couldn’t. I felt awful and she hardly spoke to me for the next few days but I’d seen behind the curtain and I couldn’t pretend otherwise any more.”

‘I guess I’ve always been what you’d call agnostic but it wasn’t until then that I began to accept it. I just didn’t want anything to do with a God like that. It seemed so petty to me, even in the seventh grade.”

Raven had listened intently and seemed genuinely interested, which impressed Rudy. She wasn’t just waiting for him to finish talking so she could talk, like so many women he’d known in the past.

“I guess I’ve always seen things pretty much the same way as you.” She said finally. “I didn’t have that kind of pressure, though. My parents were big on letting us find our own way when it came to religion. Thank goodness because they’ve always been big on every New Age Mysticism fad that came along. I thought that was all a bit silly”.

“They got into the whole peace, love and understanding hippie thing in the sixties and never outgrew it like most did.”

“What’s so funny about peace, love and understanding?” Rudy said, quoting Elvis Costello.

“Nothing.” She said. “I guess I meant that as a metaphor for the whole hippie movement. At some point you’ve got to live in the real world. Somehow, my parents have managed to become pretty financially successful without living much in the real world so they don’t always have the same grasp of reality that most of their peers do now.

“Ironically, rebellion for me was going to the traditional churches. I went to church with a Catholic friend for a while. I checked out the Baptists and the Methodists. The Methodists were my favorite because they weren’t as harsh as the others. But in the end, none of it made much sense to me so I gave it up.”

“The way I see it now,” she said, “I don’t know what the truth is and I don’t think anyone else does either. But I am pretty sure that the secrets of the universe are not found in crystals or magic mushrooms. Maybe when we die we’ll find out, maybe not, but I don’t think the truth is knowable in this life.”

“I couldn’t say it better myself.” Rudy agreed. “You live your life the best way you know how and you’ll be okay.”

“Or not.” Raven added.

“Or not.” He agreed. “But it’s all anyone can really do.”

They tried the door to the gymnasium and to their surprise, it opened. “We had some great ball games in here. There were some Samoans and Tongans in our church that could really play.”

Rudy led Raven around behind the bleachers. “There used to be some loose floorboards right here. A friend of mine liked to steal his dad’s beer and stash it in there.” He pulled on the board and it came up, revealing a breadbox sized space in the floor joists.

“Well, what do you know, it’s still there.” He said with a smile.

“Damn. It’s empty.” Raven laughed. “I’m starving. Let’s go to Kaunakakai and get some lunch. I know a great little hole-in-the-wall with food to die for.”


“I always liked this town.” Rudy said as they entered Kaunakakai. “I remember it having more boardwalks than it does now. I’m not really sure if that’s changed or my memory is just faulty but it always felt like an old west town to me. While my parents were grocery shopping I’d walk around and pretend that I was on the set of a Western movie. To tell you the truth, everything here is bigger in my memory than it’s turning out to be.”

They parked in the shade and started across the street.

“Remember that old song by the Andrews Sisters, The Cockeyed Mayor of Kaunakakai?” Rudy asked. “We knew that guy. He was always around town and talked to everyone that crossed his path. He wore a white suit and a straw hat and he had a glass eye; I guess that’s why they thought he was cockeyed. I imagine he’s long dead by now.”

They opened the door and stepped into a room not much bigger than a walk-in closet. There were a couple of small tables in front of a steam table filled with food unlike anything Rudy had seen.

There were Turkey tails and sweet and sour pork and a couple of other things he couldn’t begin to name. He ordered sweet and sour something or other because it was about the only thing familiar. They took their food from the tiny Asian women behind the steam table and sat down.

“You weren’t kidding about this being a hole-in-the-wall” Rudy said.

“And you thought the fish counter I took you to was tiny.” Raven laughed. She handed him a turkey tail, “Here, try this.”

He took a bite and his face lit up. “This is incredible.” He said. “I didn’t even know Turkeys had tails.”

They enjoyed one of the gooiest, most wonderful meals that either of them had ever had. When they finished, they stepped up to the counter to pay. A red haired man with a flat nose, thick glasses and a large pot-belly stepped out of the store room.

“Honey, we need…” he stopped mid-sentence and stared in disbelief. “Rudy?”

“Holy cow!” Rudy exclaimed. “Wally freakin’ Wanker!”

Wally had been a regular at The Prankster ever since Rudy and Pete had met him back in the early eighties, on the way back from a water skiing trip on Lake Powell. A few years later he just disappeared and no one at the Prankster had a clue what happened to him.

“You two know each other?” Raven asked.

“Yeah.” Rudy said, still stunned by the amazing coincidence. “I guess it really is a small world, isn’t it?”

“Honey, come over here.” Wally called out. “This is an old acquaintance of mine from the Mainland. This is my wife, Soon-Li.”

They made their introductions and caught up for a while and then they decided to get together for dinner that evening.

When Rudy and Raven returned to their room they made dinner reservations for seven o’clock and then they made love until six o’clock.