The next morning Frank, Don, and Peggy were out the door by seven for a diving trip to Olowalu. After breakfast Ruth told Rachel and Sarah that she would like to pay her respects to their mother, as she had on her previous trip to Maui. They seemed quite moved by this, and soon Ruth was driving them to the little red-clay cemetery at the southern tip of Kā'anapali. Ruth gazed down at the simple stone marker that read DOROTHY KALAMA 1861–1933 and thought about the grandparents she had never known, the loving stories Rachel told of Dorothy’s courage and Henry’s devotion.
Rachel was gazing up the coastline at the adjacent Kā'anapali Beach Resort: a thousand acres of green rolling golf course, man-made lagoons, and a three-mile strip of lovely white sand. So far the only hotels on the beach were the Kā'anapali Hotel, the Royal Lahaina, and the Sheraton Maui, the latter’s buildings perched almost impudently atop the high lava outcropping now called Black Rock but once known as Pu'u Keka'a—a leina a ka 'uhane, where the spirits of the dead were said to have made the leap into the next world.
Ruth noticed her distraction. “Rachel? Something wrong?”
“Oh, I was just thinking about the history of this place. Centuries ago the ali'i—Hawaiian royalty—would come to Kā'anapali for recreation. Sugarcane and taro was grown here. Then, after the missionaries arrived, they planted prickly kiawe trees to keep the kanaka from holding their so-called ‘pagan’ rituals on the beach.” Sarah, a devout Christian, rolled her eyes. “Up until six years ago, there was a lush kiawe forest here,” Rachel said. “Today it’s a golf course.”
“Kiawe trees are ugly and thorny,” Sarah said. “Things change, Rachel.”
“I suppose so. But Mama wanted to be buried here so she’d always be in sight of Moloka'i. Now she also has a fine view of the eighteenth hole.”
Sarah took Rachel’s clawed hand and cupped it tenderly.
“She can still see Moloka'i,” Sarah said. “But she doesn’t need to, because you’re here to visit her every Sunday.”
Ruth smiled at them, at the obvious love between the sisters despite their differences.
“Mama managed to hide my leprosy from the authorities for months after she discovered it,” Rachel told Ruth. “I last saw Mama as I was taken aboard the boat to Moloka'i—I saw the love and heartbreak in her face. That’s why, when my brother Kimo came down with it, she hid him upcountry in Kula. To Hawaiians there’s nothing worse than breaking up the 'ohana. If a family member becomes sick, you care for them, you don’t abandon them. That’s why Hawaiians called leprosy the ma'i ho'oka'awale—‘the separating sickness.’”
Moved by this, Ruth said, “Rachel—Mother—there’s something I’ve been wanting to ask you. I know what it means to be Japanese because my parents taught me about honor, courtesy, filial piety, hard work. But—what does it mean to be Hawaiian? What should it mean to me, being Hawaiian?”
Rachel considered that. “It’s more than just bloodlines, though that’s part of it. It’s a way of life, a way of looking at life.”
Surprisingly, it was Sarah who turned to her sister and suggested, “Kahakuloa?”
“What’s that?” Ruth asked.
“A small village on the windward side of the north shore,” Rachel explained. “A few dozen families live there, all Hawaiian. They live according to the old ways—doing their own farming, fishing, getting all they need to live from the 'āina. It’s probably the closest thing to Old Hawai'i that’s left on Maui.”
“Can we go?”
“I have a friend there, and I’m sure he’d welcome us, but it’s a bit of a rugged trip. The highway narrows to one lane along the cliffside and turns into a bumpy dirt road for long stretches.”
“Sounds like an adventure,” Ruth said with enthusiasm.
“Well,” Rachel said, smiling, “that’s one word for it.”
* * *
There was no shortage of scenic views on the way to Kahakuloa, so Rachel and the Haradas packed a picnic lunch and got an early start. Frank drove past Kā'anapali and, farther north, through the pineapple fields of Kapalua. The highway narrowed to two lanes and began a slow ascent into the mountains, winding along sea cliffs overlooking Mokulē'ia Bay and its neighbor, Honolua Bay. They stopped to watch the surfers riding Honolua’s wavebreaks and to take in the beauty of its turquoise waters. Later they did the same at Honokōhau, where surfers climbed like billy goats over the boulder-strewn beach to get at the big waves rolling in.
A few miles past Honokōhau, the highway abruptly ended, turning into a rough, unpaved road—County Route 340, also called the Kahekili Highway, after the last king of Maui. The road shrank to a single lane clinging to the side of a cliff, with no guard rail on the driver’s side, just blue sky and a sheer hundred-foot drop. Frank took it slow and in stride—until a big Ford pickup truck suddenly appeared from around a blind curve.
“Jesus Christ!” Frank blurted as he slammed on the brakes.
Ruth’s breath caught in her chest.
The truck came to a stop just a few feet away in front of them; then it just sat there and idled, waiting. Ruth began breathing again.
Frank turned to Rachel in the back. “What does he expect me to do?”
“On these roads, the bigger vehicle has the right of way,” she said calmly. “He wants you to back up.”
“Back up? We’re on the edge of a goddamn cliff!”
“There was a turnout about three hundred feet back,” Rachel advised. “Just back up very slowly until you reach it. Drivers here do it all the time.”
Seeing his family’s terrified faces actually bolstered Frank’s nerve. “Okay, boys and girls,” he said, turning back, “here goes nothing.”
Frank backed up a foot at a time, white-knuckling the wheel. The truck squeezed past them with only inches to spare. As he passed, the truck driver smiled and waved, as if this happened every day, which apparently it did.
Driving no more than fifteen miles an hour, Frank negotiated one hairpin turn after another. The scenery, he was told, was spectacular—deep valleys, breathtaking waterfalls, the thunderous waterspout of the Nākālele Blowhole—but Frank kept his eyes fixed on the zigzagging road ahead.
He was relieved when the road descended to sea level again and they saw a sign: KAHAKULOA. The car bumped along a dirt road leading to an idyllic little village on the pebbled shores of a horseshoe bay. Amid groves of coconut palms and monkeypod trees were a scattering of modest, tin-roofed homes. Neatly trimmed lawns carpeted the town from road to sea. There was a New England-style church painted a Hawaiian green with red roof and white trim, a schoolhouse, grazing cows, and an occasional horse crossing the road.
Majestic green hills sheltered the bay, in particular the six-hundred-foot Pu'u Koa'e—Kahakuloa Head—standing like the tip of a spear on the south side of the bay. “King Kahekili lived here,” Rachel said, “and legends say he dove from the top of Pu'u Koa'e just to prove his courage. He was also said to have built houses out of the skulls of his enemies.”
“Tell me your friend does not live in one of those,” Ruth said.
Rachel laughed. “No. And if it makes you feel better, this also used to be a sacred place—a pu'uhonua, or ‘place of refuge,’ where those who violated a kapu could find sanctuary and be absolved by the gods of their crime.”
Frank parked near a fruit stand tended by a young girl, no more than ten. “Aloha,” she greeted them, “you like buy papaya? Mango? Liliko'i?”
Rachel got out of the car, opened her purse, and said, “We get all t’ree, okay? Keep da change.” She handed the girl a five-dollar bill, and the eyes nearly came out of the girl’s head.
“Honest kine?” When Rachel nodded, the girl ran behind her stand and scooped up three, then four, then five pieces of fruit as she saw how many visitors were emerging from the car. She politely handed one to each of the Haradas, who thanked her.
“’Ey, keiki, you know Old George?” Rachel asked.
“Yeah, sure.”
“You go get him for us?”
“Sure!” She was off like a shot.
Minutes later, a tall Hawaiian man in his sixties, with chestnut-brown skin and a white fringe of hair, came down out of the valley. The little fruit girl straggled behind, still eagerly clutching her five-dollar bill. The man embraced Rachel in a big bear hug. “Rachel! Been too long!”