yesterday i went down to do some laundry in Pukalanai, about 10 miles down the mountain and the closest town with a supermarket and laundromat. on my way back i hitched a ride with a mother and her two sons. i stopped for a while to try to catch a ride in front of a church because it seemed like a good place to pull of the road. this is one of the most fundamental rules of catching a ride, i'm finding. you have to be somewhere that is easy and encouraging for someone to slow down and pull over. i'd kind of forgotten it was sunday, or more accurately had forgotten the church-going significance of sundays, but needless to say, in front of a church on sunday is a great place to catch a ride.
the boys were in their early adolescence, that awkward, pasty, strange-toothed age that has moved beyond childhood and is creeping tentatively up to the door marked-the mysteries of manhood. with the shy pomposity of any true believer, she told me i was welcome to join them any sunday. i asked her what kind of church it was, said i hadn't looked too close. she said they were fundamentalist, paused a moment, Pentecostal, pause
"we believe in the bible."
the son in the front seat added "christian" to the mix during one of his mother's pauses. i said that my mother had gotten me two things before she sent me on my way. new underwear and a little bible. (this is not entirely true but i thought it sounded cool at the time) so i assured this transient mother figure that i cycled the good/god book into my nightly reading list, implying that i might happen to find something there one night that would bring me to their church some sunday morning. they dropped me off about halfway up the mountain. i gave them my best conan o'brien bow, feeling that i'd helped them fulfill their christian duty just by my being there for them to help. it was a nice transaction.
just a little ways up the road, me still radiant from the ride before, another vehicle slowed down. this one an old toyota or nissan SUV, the kind with the backdoor handles up next to the windows. she said she was going to mile mark 16, which was plenty far for me. she asked me if i was going to Paul's place. i didn't really have any way to relate to that, so i said she could just drop me off at Sun Yat Sen Park.
"oh. right on. there's a lot of good energy there."
i agreed for lack of a better response. she said she'd worked on some farms when she first got to maui and we both agreed that it was a wonderful way to get settled in. we got back to the topic of the park by some round about way that included the japanese.
"yeah, the japanese have been here for millions of years. well, not millions but..."
i nodded like i got the point, though i'm not real sure what it was. she mentioned something about how they had lost their land following WWI then switched back to a more comfortable topic.
"sun yat sen. yeah he was a really powerful emperor or something. and he came over here about that time and bought the land that you're living on now."
really?
"from the mountain all the way to the sea. that's how they bought up the land back then."
well, i said that i couldn't believe it, though this somehow communicated the contrary impression. she nodded with the serenity of a tenured historian and smiled. i said i figured it was kind of like MLK memorial parks throughout the midwest. just some arbitrarily selected monument meant to make the community look cultured or compassionate. i was really just thinking of the one i'd seen in a blindingly white college town called oxford, but i made it seem like i'd rambled all through the midwest. taking notes on parks.
after commenting, with an air of finality, on Sun's good taste, i mentioned a starkly well-kept little red cottage as we drove past it.
"yeah, it's Oprah's."
i laughed. i'd already heard that Oprah was buying up most of the island.
"and that's her house way up there. well, you can't see it now...it's a big white ranch house."
her sunglasses were striking, this woman. perhaps it was the contrast between her sunglasses and the human part of her head, but i couldn't keep my eyes off them. they were of a faux designer type, the kind of really big ones that connect cheeks to forehead. glued-on, diamondesque jewels swirled an incoherent pattern along the sides of the black glasses, which bear in mind, sat against a head of friendly, greasy hair pulled back into a sadistically tight pony-tail. all of this, the glasses and hair, combined with her tall, flat but shiny forehead and a rather sharp nose stretching above her thin mouth and chin, to produce the cartoonish impression of some kind of benevolent nocturnal bird.
i believed her when she said she had ridden horses for Oprah's horse corral. apparently a job necessitated by Oprah's not riding them for herself. supposedly it was Stedman's ranch, but i didn't really have any way to relate to that so i made a coy remark about how close she and Oprah must be.
"nah, man. i've never even seen her. she's never up here. maybe like once a year. and she might be the richest woman in the world but she only pays her employees 8 bucks an hour."
with this we were pulling onto the embankment overlooking Sun's park. i hopped out and got my backpack full of fresh laundry from the backseat and gave her a gracious thank you and peace sign through the back window. she returned with an aloha and drove away.
laughing as i started walking down the mountain, past the park and toward the farm, visions of japanese people roaming with the dinosaurs danced in my head. i looked over at the statue of Sun and wondered what he would make of these hippie birds.
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