“I’ve missed you too, George,” Rachel said warmly. “I’ve brought my family from California to meet you—my daughter, Ruth, her husband, Frank, and my mo'opuna, Don and Peggy.
“This is George Nua. He’s the grandson of my Auntie Haleola.”
* * *
They were all dumbstruck as George pumped their hands and told them how pleased he was to meet Rachel’s 'ohana. Ruth finally found her voice: “The feeling is mutual, George. We’ve heard so much about your grandmother that we think of her as part of our 'ohana too.”
“Mahalo. Come on up to the house, anybody want something to drink?”
“Do you have a—drink drink, George?” Frank asked.
“Got some home-brewed sweet potato beer. It’s warm, though—we got no electricity in the valley.”
“Warm beer is still beer,” Frank said with a smile.
George laughed. “Funny how the Kahekili Highway makes everybody who drives it thirsty.”
He led them up a dirt path and into the valley, which felt even more like stepping back in time. Serpentine paths wound their way through lush foliage—coconut palms, tree ferns, tall ti leaf plants, explosions of red torch ginger, thick groves of banana, mango, plum, and papaya trees. The air was sweet and fruity. Behind a stand of trees, a stream babbled to itself in the language of water spoken since before life began. Irrigation channels diverted water to terraced taro patches. There were homes up here too, even a few pili-grass houses, possibly abandoned. George led them toward his own one-story house, painted sky blue, its tin roof gleaming in the afternoon sun.
Inside it was comfortable and homey, with hand-crafted furniture made from local woods, and a small kitchen. George opened a cabinet and took out a bottle of unlabeled beer, popped the cap, and handed it to Frank, who promptly knocked back half the bottle.
“Delicious,” he said. “Mahalo.”
“If you think the trip from Lahaina’s bad,” George said, “try coming from Wailuku—that one’s a three-beer drive.” Frank laughed as George provided drinks to all of his guests.
“Didn’t your family—Haleola’s—come from Lahaina?” Ruth asked.
“Oh, yeah, long time ago,” George said, sitting down with a beer. “Grandpa Keo owned a general store on Front Street. They had three sons—Lono, Kana, and Liko—all almost grown when Keo and Haleola got sent to Moloka'i. My dad, Liko, was the youngest. Lono and Kana liked running the store, but Pop, eh, he had no head for business. And he hated the drunken haole sailors who tore up Lahaina Town when they made port. Back then there was plenty of sugarcane and cattle raised here at Kahakuloa. Pop sold out his share of the store, bought a homestead, moved his ‘ohana here. We’ve been here ever since; my sons live in the village. Most everybody here—like the Kauha'aha'a, Kekona, Keawe families—have been in Kahakuloa for generations.”
“Did you ever meet your grandmother, George?” Peggy asked.
“No, but my dad told me about her—family stories, how she was a kahuna lapa'au, a healer, at Lahaina—and when Rachel found us, she opened up the rest of my tūtū’s life to us.”
George hesitated a moment.
“I never met Haleola,” he said slowly, “but I did feel her presence once. When I was sixteen. My dad was teaching me carpentry, my hold on the saw slipped, I cut my left arm.” He held up his arm to show a nasty scar snaking from wrist to elbow. “It was a deep cut—I lost a lot of blood. My mom stitched me up with needle and thread—true story. But for a couple of days I was tired and weak.
“I slept a lot. First time I woke up, I saw this bird sitting in the window of my room. Small bird, bright red feathers, dark wings, like nothing I ever saw before. It just sat there, till I fell asleep again—but every time I woke up, there it was again! Then, once I was better, it never came back.
“When I told Mama, she asked me to describe it. I told her it was about five inches long, small beak, and made a funny chipping sound, like chopping wood. Mama was surprised. She told me, ‘That’s a kākāwahie. Their feathers were used to make cloaks for the ali'i, so they became very rare. They don’t live on Maui. There’s only one island where you find them: Moloka'i.’”
Ruth got “chicken skin,” the Hawaiian term for goosebumps floating up out of a dim corner of her forgotten childhood.
“My mother believed—like I do—that the bird was an 'aumakua. The spirit of my tūtū, Haleola, watching over me when I needed her.”
Don and Peggy looked dubious; the doubt was written even more plainly on Frank’s face. Rachel saw this and said, “Haleola once told me that Hawaiians live in two worlds. Life and death are not so neatly defined for us.”
“Especially in this valley,” George said. “Because this was a place of refuge, the huaka'i pō—night marchers—dwell here. Spirits of ancient warriors who walk the trails, sworn to protect the ali'i in this life or after.”
“Warriors?” Frank repeated skeptically. “Have you ever … seen them?”
“I’ve seen their torches in the distance, heard the sound of their drums, the blowing of a conch shell. It’s said they float a few inches above the ground, but I wouldn’t know. To get closer is to risk death—if any of the marchers see you, you’re make, dead, and you walk with them for all time.”
“I know how these stories sound to anyone who hasn’t grown up in the islands,” Rachel said. “But this is far from the only place in Hawai'i where the marchers of the night have been seen or heard.”
“Every once in a while some fool builds a house on a night marcher trail,” George said. “Last one woke up in the middle of the night, his house shaking like an earthquake. Wood and stone won’t stop the huaka'i pō, it just pisses them off. His crops died, his wife left him … he got the hint and moved.”
Frank remained unpersuaded.
“Whether you believe or not,” Rachel said, “this is part of who we are as Hawaiians.” She told George, “Ruth wants to know what it means to be Hawaiian. I couldn’t think of a better place to show her than Kahakuloa.”
“And now they think you’ve brought ’em to the home of a crazy man! Lolo George!” He laughed good-naturedly. “Ruth, the most important thing I can tell you is what my parents taught me: Aloha means to see the 'uhane—the living spirit, immortal soul, whatever you call it—in everyone you meet. I’ve done my best to live up to that.”
He stood. “C’mon. Let me show you how we live here.”
* * *
George guided them up the slopes past flourishing vegetable gardens and taro patches. “This is what our people have done for two thousand years,” he told Ruth. “Our ancestors came in canoes across thousands of miles of ocean to these beautiful islands, our Hawai'i Nei. They grew taro and pounded it into the poi that sustains us. Rachel, you okay with a little more walking?”
“It’ll take more than this to put me in the ground, George.”
“That’s my auntie! Everybody follow me.”
Rachel marveled at the thought: Haleola was my auntie, and now I’m her grandson’s auntie. It felt right, it felt pono. George continued:
“There’s an old saying: Make no ke kalo a ola i ka palili. ‘The old taro stalks are dead but survive in the offspring.’ Meaning we have a kuleana, a responsibility, to keep the taro alive as our ancestors did for us.
“Kahakuloa gets its name from a taro patch that grew here centuries ago. That’s how important taro is to us.”
George pointed into the interior of the valley, six miles deep, where a procession of green hills receded into the misty distance.
“Way up there’s a waterfall that feeds this stream,” he told them. “See how far back the valley goes? Now turn around and look out to sea.”