The Project Gutenberg eBook, Joe Burke's Last Stand, by John Moncure
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Title: Joe Burke's Last Stand

Author: John Moncure Wetterau

Release Date: February 9, 2004  [eBook #11004]

Language: English

Character set encoding: US-ASCII


***START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK JOE BURKE'S LAST STAND***


Copyright (c) 2003 by John Moncure Wetterau



Joe Burke's Last Stand


Every Story Is A Love Story






John Moncure Wetterau







(c) 2000 by John Moncure Wetterau



Library of Congress Number: 00-193498

ISBN #: Hardcover 0-7388-1663-9

ISBN #: Softcover 0-9729587-2-X



This work is licensed under the Creative Commons
Attribution-NoDerivs-NonCommercial License. Essentially, anyone is free
to copy, distribute, or perform this copyrighted work for
non-commercial uses only, so long as the work is preserved verbatim and
is attributed to the author.  To view a copy of this license, visit

http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nd-nc/1.0/ or send a letter to:

Creative Commons
559 Nathan Abbott Way
Stanford, California 94305, USA.


This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are
the product of the author's imagination or are used fictitiously. Any
resemblance to any actual persons, living or dead, or to any events or
locales is entirely coincidental.


Published by:

Fox Print Books
137 Emery Street
Portland, Maine 04102

207.775.6860


foxprintbooks@earthlink.net






Thanks to Larry Dake, Christopher Evers, Bruce Gordon, Majo Keleshian,
Jane Lowenstein, Sylvester Pollet, and Nancy Wallace for valuable
suggestions and invaluable support. Gino's poem, "Aesthetic," is by
Sylvester Pollet and is used with his permission.



Cover print: copy after Ogata Korin, 1658-1716.





This book is for Rosy








Joe Burke's Last Stand




1


"My rig's a little old, but that don't mean she's slow--Batman--that
don't mean she's slow." Joe Burke was singing, driving south. His rig
was a blue Ford pickup with a battered cap on the back. Batman, all six
inches of him, was propped upright on the dash.

Joe followed signs to the Weston Priory, climbing through woods and out
onto an open plateau. A cluster of wooden buildings stood near a pond.
A monk was raking leaves from a path that curved around the pond like a
trotter's track. Joe got out, stretched, and entered a gift shop by the
parking lot. A middle aged woman seated next to the cash register
closed her book.

"Where is everybody? Rehearsing?" She smiled slightly and remained
silent. "Lovely day," Joe said.

"Yes, isn't it."

He bought a cassette made by the monks. "A bit stagy, Batman," he said
climbing into the truck and closing the door. "We must continue to seek
truth and contend with the forces of evil." Batman stared resolutely
ahead.

Joe cut over to the interstate. When he reached the highway, he played
the cassette: resonant voices and a single guitar, encouraging.
"Sappy," Ingrid had declared impatiently. Joe smiled. She was free of
his taste in music now--had been for a year and a half.

At Brattleboro, he turned off the highway, rented a motel room, and
walked into town. He found a brew pub where he sat at a corner table
with a pint of ruby brown ale--cool and fresh, the malt veiled with
lacy astringent hops. He had another and watched the bartender talk on
the telephone, her elbows and breasts on the bar, a vertical worry line
dropping between her eyes. She was about his daughter Kate's age. The
room began to fill, the nasal sound of New York mixing with flat New
England tones. The Connecticut River valley narrows in Brattleboro, a
gateway to upper New England for New Yorkers. He was going through in
the other direction, trying to figure out what to do next. What do you
do at 52 when the kids are grown? The same things all over again?

He took out a notebook and remembered the drive--the blue sky, the red
and gold ridges, small fields tilting greenly in their arms. On such a
day, one could almost be forgiven, he wrote.

A blonde woman with a wry smile, an experienced charmer, sat down at
the next table. He considered having another ale, making friends with
her and starting a new life in Brattleboro or over the mountain in
Bennington, but he knew that he was fooling himself. It was too
familiar; he might as well have stayed in Maine.

"Gotta go," he said to her sadly. She raised her eyebrows,
acknowledging the human condition, and he walked back to the motel. At
the edge of town, trees were dark behind a body of water that was
platinum and still. Fish broke the surface with soft slaps in the
centers of expanding circles. Ansel Adams might have caught the many
shades of silver just before the lights went out.

The next afternoon Joe was across the Hudson, driving through the
mountains on roads that were more crowded than he remembered. There
were many new houses and the trees were larger. He stopped on the hill
by his grandparents' old house in Woodstock. Captain Ben had retired
during the depression to that rocky hillside and made a homely paradise
of gardens and fruit trees. A slow silent job. Emily was beside him,
canning, cooking, and mothering. They said you couldn't grow pears
around there. We ate a lot of pears, Joe thought. And plums, apples,
rhubarb, strawberries, asparagus . . . The house smelled of geraniums
from the solar greenhouse that his grandfather built onto the dining
room long before anyone ever heard of a solar greenhouse.

Captain Ben was a son of an old Virginia family who in better days had
owned Monticello. _Lee's Lieutenants_ lined a living room shelf.
Noblesse oblige came with mother's milk. You are born privileged; you
have an obligation. He had a company garden when he was serving in the
Philippines--men who got out of line did time weeding and afterwards
ate fresh vegetables. Once a year he would go to town and whip the
touring chess master who was playing 20 people at once. "Pawn to King's
four," he taught Joe, "control the center." Joe opened with pawn to
Queen's knight four, bringing a smile. "Learn the hard way, huh?"

He died when Joe was in seventh grade, and Joe spent his high school
years with his grandmother, well cared for, but living more or less
alone. She remarried about the time Joe graduated. The new husband
moved _Lee's Lieutenants_ to the attic and Joe moved out. The house
that Joe remembered had disappeared inside a gaudy renovation, but the
mountains hadn't changed. What is it about land, Joe wondered. It gets
inside you, deep as your loves, maybe deeper.

He ate dinner in town. He saw Aaron Shultis across the street, but
Aaron didn't recognize him after twenty-five years. Joe drove back into
the hills and parked by a narrow lane across from the one room
schoolhouse where he had gone to fifth grade. He fell asleep in a
cradle of memories: fucking Sally in this very spot . . . apple fights,
BB gun fights, the sound of the schoolhouse bell calling them out of
the woods after a long recess.

A steady rain was bringing down the leaves when Joe woke up. He drove
over to Morgan's house and pounded on the door. When Morgan opened, Joe
could smell breakfast cooking.

"Joe, well, well. What brings you out in the rain?"

"Hey, Morgan, bacon! They say you're cooking bacon."

"They're right. Come on in."

"Remember that time you were hitching to Florida and you met those guys
heading for Georgia because they'd heard that a Salvation Army cook was
serving meat?"

"Some trip that was." Morgan was grayer but still powerful. "So, what
are you doing?"

"Starting over. I've been saving since Ingrid and I split up. I put a
bed in the back of the truck, got rid of a bunch of stuff, and here I
am."

"When did you leave? You want some eggs?"

"Three days ago. That's affirmative on the eggs," Joe said. "I've had
it with computer programming. Jamming all that stuff in your head
messes you up. You wake up at two in the morning and start working."

"Good money," Morgan said.

"For good reason."

"Did you sell everything?"

"Just about. Kept my tools, a couple of boxes of books, some clothes.
Kept the cat, Jeremy, but he jumped ship on Deer Isle at my father's.
Oh yeah, my notebooks, a footlocker full--I was wondering if you'd
stash them for me. I'd hate to lose them; they go all the way back."

"Sure. Maybe you'll write a book one of these days."

"I don't know; all I ever do is look at things and try to describe
them. Should have been a painter like my father. No talent, though.
Anyway, after I took off, I went up to see him and Ann on Deer Isle. He
gave me a painting for Kate."

"How is he?"

"Going with his boots on. Just before I left, he gave me a drink from
his stash of Laphroiag in the barn. We had a country music toast.
'Younger women, faster horses, older whiskey, and more money,' he said.
I asked him if 'children, old dogs, and watermelon wine' wouldn't cut
it."

"Tom T. Hall songs," Morgan said.

"Right. My father just laughed. I think he was trying to tell me
something but didn't know how."

"Hard to communicate at this point, I suppose," Morgan said. "What's
next?"

"Drive out and see Kate. Me and Batman--he's riding on the dash." Joe
gave Morgan the cassette from the Weston Priory. "Try this some stormy
night."

"O.K.," Morgan said. "The damnedest thing . . . I bought a tape of
Chesapeake Bay sea chanteys a while back. One of the voices was
familiar. I looked on the picture of the group and there was Jason! I
hadn't even noticed."

"Best banjo player I ever heard," Joe said. "He disappeared into the
world of big biz. What a waste. I thought he'd given up on music."

"Why don't you take it? I'll pick up another."

" Good deal, a trade. So, how's Daisy doing? I was thinking of dropping
in and saying hello."


"She's in France. She's fine." Morgan took a piece of bacon. "She and
Wes have stuck together. Of course it helps if you can nip off to
Provence whenever you feel like it. Their daughter, Yvonne, just got
married. Jake is in New Zealand, I think. Nice kids."

"New Zealand? That's where Max is, Ingrid's son." Joe hesitated. "I
remember when Daisy was choosing. She said, 'I feel happy and excited
when I'm with you, and I feel warm and safe when I'm with Wes."' Joe
shook his head. "Knowing what I do now, about women that is, I'd say
she made the mainstream choice. She'd have had rice and beans with me."

"Red beans and rice aren't bad," Morgan said.

"True. We could have gone the distance, though. Strange how you know
these things . . . Not that I haven't had good relationships since. I
mean, Sally and I had Kate, and then I had the chance to be part of
Maxie's life. I wouldn't trade that for anything, but . . . So, how's
your love life?"

Morgan's eyebrows raised. "Prospects are bright," he said.


"Prospects, plural?"

"Singular," he said.

"Yok, excellent. And the book, how's that coming along?"

"Slowly. My publisher's annoyed, but he's used to delays."

"And _The Houses of the Hudson Valley_ aren't going anywhere."

"I wish that were true," Morgan said. "They're going downhill. On the
other hand, if they weren't, I wouldn't have any work."

"Rot," Joe said, "your enemy."

"Neglect," Morgan said.

They finished breakfast and hauled Joe's footlocker to the barn. "I'm
going to have a book shop when I retire," Morgan said.

"The fortress and the cork," Joe said, putting down one end of the
footlocker in a room filled with books. "Two good strategies: strong
walls or travel light, bob up and down in the heavy weather."

"You always did travel light," Morgan said, "but you probably don't bob
as well as you did." Joe hopped on both feet to demonstrate his
buoyancy.

"Thanks for the reminder." Departures required gallantry. "Good eggs.
Listen, if you get a chance . . . give Daisy my love. Tell her
nothing's changed." Morgan nodded and they walked out to the truck.
"Take care of yourself," Joe said. "Hang in there."

"Good luck," Morgan said.

Joe drove down the mountain in the rain. When he reached Route 212, he
turned towards Phoenicia. His old high school district covered a
thousand square miles; half an hour later as he crossed its western
boundary, he felt a twinge of nostalgia and relief. It was like
graduating again; his mind was free to drift forward.

At tech school in the Air Force, he used to spend Friday and Saturday
nights in the BX with a guy named Shannon. The BX was always jammed
with G.I.'s drinking cheap beer and eating French fries. One man tried
to keep up with the empties and the dirty dishes. He was bald, slow
moving, friendly, and particular. His cart was organized to hold as
much as possible on each trip. It seemed like the original dead end
job, but he did it well, never flustered, taking pride in his cart and
the tables that were clean for moments. He told Joe once that he was
saving money to buy tools so that he could help in his friend's garage.

As Joe drove, the rain and fog lifted, revealing lonely bays and wooded
hillsides. Route 30 curved endlessly along the banks of the Pepacton
Reservoir. Joe had the highest entrance score they'd ever recorded in
that Air Force tech school. Sergeant Quimby told him, reading it,
unbelieving. Joe was an athlete, a most likely to succeed guy; yet
there he was every weekend in the BX with Shannon, fascinated by the
aging bus boy loading his cart. And Shannon? He was from Ten Mile
Creek, south of Pittsburgh; what had happened to him? Joe decided to
cut through Cat Hollow and over to Roscoe on Route 17. He followed 17
west, taking his time, enjoying the October colors. He had lunch in
Hancock and stayed overnight in a motel outside Painted Post.

The next afternoon he was in Ten Mile Creek, coal country. A black hill
in the distance, the highest point around, turned out to be a slag
pile. Containers suspended from cable were hauled up the pile, tipped
over, and returned upside down. The top of a silo, last sign of a
buried barn, waited a few feet above a spreading shoulder of slag. The
air was gritty and had a sulfurous tang.

He stopped outside an American Legion hall and walked into a dimly lit
bar. In one corner a fat man sat upright before a video poker machine.
Only his right hand moved as he inserted quarters, one after another.
Joe sat at the bar, three stools down from a short guy who was staring
over the top of a half empty glass of beer. The bartender moved a step
in his direction and waited.

"I'll have a beer," Joe said, putting a five dollar bill in front of
him. The bartender was about forty. He had a blonde crew cut and a face
like a poker chip, Robert Redford run into a door. He set the beer
down, made change, and resumed his position. It was oddly as though he
hadn't moved at all.

"I was in the service--with a guy named Shannon. Long time ago. Said he
was from around here." Silence. Friendly place.

"Which service?" Shorty didn't turn his head.

"Air Force."

"That'd be Bobby," Shorty said.

"Yeah," Joe said, "Bobby."

"Jacky, he went in the Navy."

"Bobby was a good guy. He around?" Shorty glanced at the bartender.
They had a committee meeting.

"California," the bartender said.

"California," Shorty confirmed. "Stayed in and retired. He's out there
cashing checks with eagles on 'em."

"Shit," Joe said. "Would'a liked to seen him."

"Two more, Floyd." The gambler said, putting a twenty on the bar.

The bartender laid two quarter rolls soundlessly next to the bill and
asked, "You come around just to look up Bobby Shannon?"

"I, ah, well, got sick of working. Had some money saved. Thought I'd
take a break, look around." Shorty shook his head. "I mean, what do you
do after . . . " Joe meant, after you'd done pretty well, at least
compared to these guys.

The bartender said:



  "Beware of gnawing the ideogram of nothingness:

  Your teeth will crack. Swallow it whole, and you've a treasure

  Beyond the hope of Buddha and the Mind. The east breeze

  Fondles the horses ears: how sweet the smell of plum."



"What!?"

"Mitsuhiro, 17th century," the bartender said. For an instant his eyes
came at Joe like horses jumping the gate.

"Who are you?" Joe asked.

"Pretty Boy Floyd," said Shorty. "Best athlete ever come out of this
town." There was a blaze of sound from the poker machine followed by a
crash of quarters. Shorty turned his head. "I'll take some of that,
Earl."

"Can't win if you don't play," Earl said.

"Used to pitch for the Pirates," Shorty said. The bartender's
expression didn't change. Joe noticed that he stood balanced on both
feet.

"Why aren't you teaching in a university somewhere?" Joe asked him.

"You know Bob Dylan's line about the difference between hospitals and
universities?"

"No."

"More people die in universities. Also . . . " He did a quick soft-shoe
shuffle. "I drink, so be it." A trace of amusement crossed his face.
Mitsuhiro, Dylan, and Mr. Bojangles; one, two, three. A silent ump
pumped his right fist. Joe was gone.

"Let me buy a round," Joe said. About four beers later he got into the
truck, blinking. "Jesus, Batman, Ten Mile Creek, hell of a place!" He
made it to a motel and called it a day.

The next morning he had a big breakfast. The grip of the Northeast was
loosening. Driving all day was beginning to seem natural. "Roll 'em,
Batman," he said, "Bach first. Then, we'll move on to Gabby Pahinui,
get into Willy Nelson, and The Grateful Dead. We've got a delivery for
Kate." The truck was running great. Traffic was light. Ohio went by,
and Indiana, like a dream.




2


Madison, Minneapolis, Fargo, the long run over to Missoula, Spokane,
Seattle, finally. Joe parked by Ivar's and stretched, tired but
satisfied. He was meeting Kate for lunch where they could look across
Puget Sound.

A few minutes later, Kate appeared from behind a group of tourists.
They had a reunion hug.

"How was the trip, Dad?"

"Pretty good. Took the northern route, right straight across. Let's
eat." They were in time to get a window table.

"So, long drive," Kate said.

"I was up for it. It's nice to see the country that way once in a
while--you forget how big it is. Those high rolling plains in Montana
are something else. They'll have snow in a couple of weeks. I could use
some new tapes and a book or two."

"You know the place: Elliot Bay Book Company."

"Yeah, I thought I'd check it out this afternoon. I'm going to get a
room at the Edgewater and be Mr. Luxury for a couple of days."

"You could stay with me. Audrey's on a trip for a week; it wouldn't be
any hassle."

"Thanks, but I don't want to be in the way . . . I'd take some home
cooking, though."

"How about tomorrow night? You could meet Jackson."

"Sounds good. What happened to Rolf?"

"Oh, Rolf. We have lunch. I love Rolf, but he doesn't really want to
live in this period. That's what he calls it, 'This period.' He's
happier in bookstores reading about early Scandinavian immigrants."

"I was just reading about a Swede who was making cider with a hand
press he bought for a quarter when he was 12. It was in the paper this
morning. He'd been married 50 years. Said his wife was Norwegian but
she was taking pills for it." Kate laughed, a full wraparound laugh.
She had her mother's coloring--chestnut hair, light brown eyes, and
rosy cheeks.

"You'll like Jackson; he's very different."

"I'm sure I will. I liked Rolf--he was appealingly gloomy."

"Jackson's an artist. He gets mad when I say that; he says he's a
craftsman. You should see the things he makes: jewelry, furniture--he
can make anything."

"Speaking of art, your grandfather gave you a painting. It's in the
truck."

"Oh! Is it good?"

"I like it. I don't know if you will."

"Oh, Dad! Don't be such a parent. If you like it, I know it's good."
The fish sandwiches arrived, and Joe watched the toddler with an ice
cream cone in Honolulu, the girl veering her bike into a Maine hedge,
the teen-ager leaving home, the Seattle executive as she took a large
bite. "Mmmm," she said with her mouth full, "mmm--Ivar's."

"Have you heard from Maxie lately?" she asked.

"Not for a couple of months. He's still in New Zealand."

"I had a card from Auckland in August," Kate said. "Sounded like he was
having a good trip."

"How's your mom doing?

"Fine. She's got a new job working for a mineral exploration outfit.
Have you seen Ingrid?"

"Not recently," Joe said. "She's doing well, at least she was the last
time I saw her. She's been selling her jewelry, and her classes keep
her busy. Same as ever. She has a new boyfriend."

"Oh good. I love Ingrid. She always sends a Christmas card and tells me
how Maxie's doing." Kate had known Max since he was eight. They had
become brother and sister even though there was no blood relationship.
They had been especially close when Kate lived with Ingrid, Max, and
him during her high school years. Kate had been lucky, Joe thought, to
have had two mothers, or a mother and a half. His own mother had died
when he was seven. It was long ago, but he could remember well enough
that he'd never liked her very much.

After lunch Joe watched Kate walk with long strides toward her office,
hair bouncing on her shoulders. Strong, he thought proudly. He checked
in at The Edgewater, lay down on the bed, and didn't wake up until
four.

The days were getting shorter. A salty breeze drove layers of cloud
across the sound as Joe walked down Alaskan Way to the Elliot Bay Book
Company. The ocean was to his right, but he was headed south instead of
north as he would have been on the east coast. It took days in Seattle
to stop thinking that he was going the wrong way.

The bookstore was well lit and cheerful. A tall woman with dark hair
and hammered silver earrings was browsing in a corner. She wore a
caramel colored T-shirt that showed a black elongated figure above the
name "Caffe Ladro." Her shoulders were wide; the cotton draped
comfortably around high flat breasts and fell a distance to her hips.
She appeared to be in her forties. Joe hoped that she didn't have blue
eyes.

Two types of women got to Joe immediately. One was black Irish, blue
eyed. He looked into those eyes, something slipped, and he was calling
for fire, night, and Vikings to ax. The other was blonde with
translucent skin, full breasted and silent. The blondes were anima
projections. When he was 24, he'd had a disastrous affair and
afterwards discovered the explanation in a book by Jung. A man loses
touch with his female side and then sees an unlucky woman who resembles
the inner image of his lost self. POW, he is on her, has to have her.
Irrational trembling, dry throat, pounding heart, out of control-it's
an anima projection. Women do it too, of course, the other way around.

"Yes?" the woman asked. She had brown eyes.

"Oh, God," Joe said. "Excuse me. I was thinking about anima
projection."

"Psychology's in there." She pointed to another room. "This is
cooking."

"Ah, yes, well . . . " Joe turned away. The floor was slick with banana
peels. He made it around the corner and took a breath. Too old for
this, he said to himself.

He drifted through several rooms and found _Economics in One Lesson_ by
Hazlitt, a book he'd heard about for years. He was interested in the
economy because his small savings were mostly in the stock market. He
picked up a copy of _Trader Vic -- Methods of a Wall Street Master_ by
Victor Sperandeo. By the time he chose a tape of slack key guitar by
Cyril Pahinui, Gabby's son, it was dark. On his way out, he averted his
eyes from the cooking section, but he needn't have; the woman was gone.

The Edgewater Hotel bar has floor to ceiling windows on the water. Joe
ate a sandwich and watched huge ferries slide through the night,
brilliant against the black water. They made the Portland, Maine
ferries look like life boats. Joe went to bed early, slept fitfully,
and spent the next day walking, reading, and exercising. His back
wasn't what it was--too many years in front of a computer monitor. If
he kept at the yoga exercises, it didn't bother him, but a real day's
work would be the end. For a long time he could do whatever the kids
could, and then he couldn't. It made a divide between them and even,
sometimes, between the past and present. Memory was suspect; did he
really do that?

"You did, Dad, you really did." Fortunately, Kate was there, confirming
the past, regaling Jackson with stories from the old days. They were
eating seafood linguini in her apartment. Jackson listened as he
twirled pasta with his fork and spoon. He was tall and thin, pleasant.
His hair was dark, pulled back into a short pony tail. He drank a lot
of wine without seeming to be much affected. His eyes got brighter.

They considered Kate's new painting which was propped up on a side
table. A young woman stood in a barn door looking out at a rainy
morning and an apple tree in full white bloom. Her hair was long and
brown; her bare feet interacted with paint splattered floor boards. She
seemed to dance without moving.

"Lot going on," Jackson said.

"Lot of life in there for an old guy," Joe said. "What do you think for
a frame?"

Jackson considered. "Simple, but with relief--to give it a little more
depth, be more inside the barn."

"Definitely simple," Kate said.

"I see what you mean," Joe said. "That will be my part, Kate--getting
it framed."

"I could do that," Jackson said.

"Hey, great. Let me know what it costs . . . "

Jackson lifted a hand. "No problem. I've got a friend with a frame
shop."

"That's quite a chess set," Joe said, pointing to a low table by a
bookcase. The pieces were hand carved and had a warm waxed shine. They
were slightly larger than usual and looked as though they were meant to
be handled.

"Jackson made those last winter," Kate said. "He just makes this
stuff--like knitting or something." Jackson looked embarrassed. "Dad,
how long are you going to be in Seattle?"

The question had been floating in the back of Joe's mind. The answer
crystallized, "Not long." They waited for him to continue. "I don't
know what I'm going to do, really, but I'm feeling jumpy. I'll let you
know. You've got my e-mail address; I'll check in every so often." He
wanted to keep his uncertainty away from Kate. It wasn't so much that
he wanted to shield her, but more that he needed to confront the future
unhindered by old patterns of relating and response.

"Stick around," Kate said. "The longer the better."

Jackson smiled neutrally. A good time to leave, Joe thought.

"Very nice to meet you, Jackson," he said. He hugged Kate and left,
feeling that they were a good match.

On the way off the hill, he noticed the Caffe Ladro and remembered the
woman in the bookstore. The next morning, he thought about checking out
of the Edgewater, but he had no plan. He registered for another night
and drove back to the Queen Anne district. He had a latte and a bagel
in the Caffe Ladro and bought a T-shirt. He was hoping the woman would
come in. Her name would be Moira; they would have an animated
discussion which would reveal his fate. She didn't show. Must have been
busy, probably making a lemon meringue pie.

He went back to the hotel and stared at the ceiling in his room.
Filson's was in Seattle, he remembered. He looked for the address in
the phone book and found that it was a short bus ride away. He had a
wool Filson jacket that he'd worn for 12 years. Every so often he sewed
a button tighter. Filson stuff is understated and invincible; it would
be like a visit to the temple.

A temple angel, slim with long blonde hair, asked if she could help.
"Not just yet," Joe said and wandered down aisles of tin cloth pants,
wax impregnated jackets with wool liners, vests, and virgin wool
sweaters. He stood a long time in front of the duffel bags and assorted
luggage. He was tempted by a carry on bag with a heavy leather handle,
but in the end he bought a bag that reminded him of his Air Force AWOL
bag--flat bottomed with a humped top and a single massive brass zipper.
The canvas twill was doubled around the sides and bottom; the handles
and the shoulder strap were made of dark bridle leather; it was the
Fort Knox of AWOL bags. While he was at it, he bought a belt made of
the same heavy leather. "Might as well have the best," he said to the
angel, repeating the Filson motto.

When he was back in his room, he unsnapped the new belt buckle and
replaced it with the one he had worn for twenty years. The words he had
scratched on it with a Dremel power tool were nearly rubbed away:
"Eating a plum, hearing/ the roar of centuries--Kokee." Once a year,
the islanders are allowed to pick plums in Kokee, in a park on the rim
of a deep canyon. The trees are old with thick limbs. He remembered a
young Hawaiian woman on a low limb, stretched out, reaching for
plums--brown skin, black hair, dark green leaves, fruit, the ocean gray
and blue for thousands of miles in all directions. Echoing silence. It
was like being in a shell or a giant's ear.

Joe put on his new belt and went down to the hotel bar. He ordered an
ale and watched a boxing match on a large TV. Pit Bull Salvatori was
wearing down a fighter named Fanatuua. He was sagging, his body
blotchy. The bell rang and Fanatuua collapsed back against a padded
corner post. A trainer squirted something into his mouth and rubbed his
chest while his manager talked in his ear. Fanatuua nodded once.

The bell rang again, and Pit Bull was on him, lefts, rights, uppercuts,
trying to end it. At some point in life, Joe thought, how people lose
becomes more interesting than how they win. Fanatuua wouldn't go down,
seemed calm, almost as though he weren't there. He was covering up,
weaving slowly from side to side. Maybe he was fighting the clock, not
the man. Maybe if he made it through eight rounds he would have earned
his money. Maybe he was out on his feet. The Philly crowd yelled for a
knockout; the referee watched closely.

Fanatuua stepped forward, moved Pit Bull back, threw a combination that
did no damage. Maybe he was fighting for his family, Joe thought. Maybe
he was married to one of the Samoan women who come to Hawaii to work in
the Polynesian Cultural Center and study at the Mormon school in Laie.
They walk slowly across the grass, books in their arms, flowers in
their dark hair. He ought to make fifteen or twenty thousand from this
fight. Maybe he'd give it to his father, the Chief, who was proud of
him, who would know what to do with it. His hands dropped. Pit Bull
drove him into the ropes with an overhand right. The camera zoomed to
Fanatuua's face, sweat, a small cut. His eyes were bright. His mouth
was set in a slight smile. He was not afraid.

Pit Bull smashed him four times. The ref jumped in and separated them.
TKO. Pit Bull ran around the ring, fists in the air, and hugged
Fanatuua. Fanatuua tapped him twice on the back and walked to his
corner. Maybe he was thinking that Salvatori won, might be the champ
soon, but couldn't knock him out. Maybe he was thinking about home.

Joe leaned back in his chair and remembered his new bag. He pictured
himself packing it and realized that he was going to Hawaii. That was
why he bought the bag, although he hadn't known it at the time. There
were complications: the truck, what to bring, what to do when he got
there. But that was where he was going.





3


As the plane banked over Diamond Head, green at that time of year,
tears came to Joe's eyes. Hawaii is so beautiful, so far out to sea,
that he felt lucky just to be there.

When he stepped from the plane, the light perfume of plumeria and the
warm breeze were like old friends. He had credit cards and a few bucks
in the market, but he might have been thirty again, driving a cab,
hoping for a load to the Kahala and a big tip. He rode the city bus
into Waikiki, the Filson bag on his lap, and rented a room for a week
on Kuhio Avenue--a concrete block room with a four foot lanai, a tiny
refrigerator, and a hot plate.

An hour later he was beneath the banyan tree at the Moana beach bar.
Gilbert was still tending bar. "Gilbert, you haven't changed a bit."
Gilbert was from Honolulu, medium sized with dark hair and dark eyes.
He could have been from anywhere. His square features were
professionally neutral; his smile was quick and ironic, under control.

"Your eyes going," Gilbert said.

Joe ordered a mai tai for old time's sake. Sunset is a three hour show
in Waikiki. Joe stayed until the end--the last high smudge of crimson
snuffed out in darkness, the Pacific reduced to the sound of waves
collapsing along the beach.

On his way back to the hotel, a woman in a mini skirt asked if he
wanted a date.

"Not tonight. But if I did . . . "

"I'll be here tomorrow." She had large teeth, a big smile. He didn't
want a date, let alone that kind of date, but he felt a rush of warmth;
it's hard not to like someone who is willing to hold you, even if only
for money. The warmth followed him into bed and softened the sounds of
car horns and distant sirens.


In the morning he had a solid hangover. He trudged out of Waikiki to
the shopping center and ate breakfast in a coffee shop that served the
best Portuguese sausage on the island, made, he was told, by an elderly
couple whose identity was secret. He bought a bus pass valid for the
rest of November. The Honolulu bus system reaches around the island,
across the island, up the ridges, and deep into the separate valley
neighborhoods. Workers and students commute by bus. Kids give up their
seats to the elderly.

Joe quartered around the city like a hunting dog. Twenty-five years
earlier the State bird was said to be the crane. Now, it was an
endangered species. The city was quieter. He found himself returning to
Makiki, a neighborhood of low rise apartment buildings and condominiums
on a steep hillside, half an hour's walk, in different directions, to
the university and to the Ala Moana Shopping Center. It was beautiful
there at night, the buildings lit above and below each other like
modern cliff dwellings. A week after he arrived, he rented a one
bedroom apartment on Liholiho Street, telling the realtor that he had a
degree from the university--which was true--and that he was retired,
which didn't sound right. "Semi-retired," he amended.

It was a bare bones apartment on the third floor with a lanai that
faced mauka, toward the mountain. Joe bought a plastic chair, a round
cafe table, and an hibachi for the lanai. Batman made himself
comfortable on the table. Joe constructed a table in the kitchen/dining
room from pine boards and milk crates. He bought a foam camping
mattress, sheets, a light comforter, a pillow, and a reading lamp for
the bedroom. For the kitchen, he bought a toaster, a tea kettle, a pot
for cooking rice, and a wok. He set up a minimalist home: one plate, a
bowl and a mug, chopsticks. He splurged on an eight inch chef's knife.
After a week of moving the plastic chair in and out, he bought a
straight backed wooden chair for inside. He bought an exercise mat
which he left spread out in the main room.

It was fun to start over in this way, owning only what he needed for
his new life, whatever that was going to be. After some consideration,
he bought a compact sound system and a TV for news and sports. He ate
rice and fish, bought vegetables at the farmers market, and walked on
the beach. The beach belongs to the people in Hawaii; it cannot be
owned or sealed off. He bought a few aloha shirts and spent days at the
university, the main library downtown, the shopping center, and
occasionally, Waikiki. In a month he had a tan, and his pidgin had come
back. Kate had learned to talk on the island; she spoke pidgin from
deep down. Joe's pidgin was only half way there. If the locals are in
doubt, they will ask anything in order to hear you speak--in a few
words they know how long you've been around. Joe didn't mind the test.
Usually he got points for trying.

Kate wanted him to visit during the holidays, but he decided against
it. He was just getting used to the island and he didn't feel like
traveling. The day after Christmas, he was at the Moana leaning back
with a beer and thinking about Sperandeo's book on stock trading when
someone asked, "Caffe Ladro?" The woman he'd seen in Seattle was
standing a few feet away, looking at his T-shirt.

"Ah, Moira." he said, standing up. She was trying to place him.

"Winifred," she said.

"I saw you in The Elliot Bay Book Company," he said. "Last month. Moira
was a guess."

"Oh, yes . . . something funny . . . you had a projection."

"Very funny," Joe said. "Winifred, my name is Joe, Joe Burke. Why not
come sit? Talk story . . . "

"I've given up on men," she said to someone listening in the banyan.

"Very sensible," Joe said.

She hesitated and sat. "I love this tree," she said, placing her sun
glasses on the table between them.

"Didn't someone write about it? Or under it?" he offered.

"Stevenson," she said. "Or was it Mark Twain?" Her eyes were intensely
brown with radiating streaks of garnet.

"It's a literary banyan," Joe said.

"So, what brings you to Hawaii?"

"I used to live here," Joe said. "I stopped computer programming, and I
stopped being married--again. It seemed natural to come back."

"Hawaii gets to you," she said. Winifred lived in Manoa. She was a
photographer. Joe would have bet that she was some kind of artist; he
found them wherever he went. Her sister lived on Queen Anne Hill in
Seattle, close to Kate and the Caffe Ladro. Her father, Arthur Soule,
was a professor, retired in Vermont.

"Lot of Soules on the Maine coast," Joe said. "And a Coffin clan. The
line is: 'For every Soule, there's a Coffin."'

"So my father has told me."

"Win, Winifred . . . what do you prefer to be called?"

"Either works. 'Winny' is what horses do. My father sometimes calls me
Freddy."

"How about Mo?"

"No one calls me Mo."

"Excellent! I shall be the first." She had large features, a wide
serious mouth that turned slightly up or down at the corners. Down in
this case. "I thought of you as Moira," Joe explained, "mysterious
Celt, born for the luck of the Burkes."

"Born to be bad," she said. "You can think of me any way you like, Joe
Burke. I must be going. Bye." She twirled her sun glasses, smiled once,
and left. He watched to see if she would swing her ass a little for his
benefit, but she didn't. Her eyes stayed with him--large and sensitive,
clear. She was nearly six feet tall and broad across the shoulders. Her
hands were as big as his. Not the happiest of campers, he said to
himself.

He went back to thinking about Victor Sperandeo's book. As a teen-ager,
Trader Vic made a living playing cards in New York. Then he moved into
the big casino on Wall Street. His book was straight exposition,
written without pretense. Joe had read other books about the market.
There were many different approaches and specialties: day trading,
intermediate and long term investing, stocks, bonds, currencies, and
commodities. Sperandeo was someone he could relate to personally, a
maverick.

There were other market gurus who made sense to him--John Train and
Warren Buffett, especially. They espoused a long-term strategy: think
before you buy, and then, once having bought, continue to buy on dips
and hold unless the company changed fundamentally for the worse.
Sperandeo was more of a trader. Joe was torn between the two
approaches. Discount brokerages had just become available on the
Internet; one could trade without having to actually live in New York.
On line discussion groups argued about stocks 24 hours a day. He
decided to buy a computer.

Three hours later Joe paid the cab fare and carried his new system up
to the apartment, one box at a time. He had it working in an hour and
went to bed pleased with himself.

The following day he opened an account with a service provider for
Internet access. There was an e-mail message from Kate waiting at his
old address in Maine. Joe had agreed to pay Kate's mechanic $30 a month
to store the truck and had asked him to go over it, change the oil, and
do whatever needed doing. Joe replied that the check would be in the
mail and wished her a Happy New Year. The Internet is amazing, he
thought. The message was in Maine; Kate was in Seattle; he was in
Honolulu and could be anywhere.

"Damn, Batman, we're global!"

On impulse, he found a number listed for W. Soule and called her on the
old fashioned telephone. After a recorded message and a beep, he said,
"Mo, this is Joe Burke. I'm having adventures. Want to have lunch?" He
left his number and hung up. When he returned from a walk, the red
message light was blinking.

"Joe, thanks for asking, but, no . . . I'm not an adventure." She made
an amused sound. "Call me again sometime when you've grown up." Click.
Joe called back immediately.

"Hi, I grew up," he said when she answered. "A woman on TV just
explained it to me. You have to transcend the grieving child within."

"Hmmm," Mo said.

"Pie," Joe continued, "what's the name of that place on Hausten Street
where they have great pie? The place with a fish pond. The Willows.
Back in time."

"I'm afraid you'd have to go back in time to eat there; they closed two
or three years ago."

"Damn. How about Keo's? Tomorrow, 12:30 or thereabouts?" His best
offer. You'd have to be seriously repulsed by someone to turn down
Keo's.

"Ulua with black bean sauce--I'm going to regret this," she said.

"Great. No. I mean, we'll have a nice lunch. See you there," Joe bailed
before she could change her mind.




4


Joe put down his fork. "Lemon grass," he said with satisfaction. Mo was
eating rapidly; she raised her eyebrows.

"So, what have you been up to?" she asked, breaking off a piece of
spring roll.

"I bought a computer."

"Ughh."

Joe laughed. "I hate them, really. But they're good tools--I bought it
for the Internet, so I can trade stocks."

"I'm remembering," Mo said between bites, "what they say about how to
make a small fortune on Wall Street."

"How's that?"

"Well, you start with a large one."

"Ha, ha. That's one method I can't use."

"I should have eaten breakfast," she said. "What is the damned Internet
anyway?"

"Mo, I have to warn you--the last ten people that asked me questions
like that are lying face down."

"I can take it," she said.

"It's a way of moving information around," Joe said, "that doesn't
require a dedicated phone line. The telephone system works like a
string stretched between tin cans. Two people monopolize the string
until they're done. The Internet is different. Info is coded and split
into small packets. Each packet is numbered and addressed; it heads
toward its destination by any route that is open; it doesn't have to
travel with its sister packets. A program at the receiving end collects
the packets and reassembles them correctly. No need to dedicate one
string to one conversation at a time." Joe paused for breath. "The
Internet is a lot of fat strings with packets zipping through. Each
year the strings get fatter and the packets zip faster."

"Where did you learn this stuff?"

"Right up the road at the university. I actually have a degree in it."

"You don't look the type," Mo said.

"You say the nicest things. The Internet is here to stay. Twenty-some
years ago, when I was a student, I typed an algebra equation into a
computer; it was beamed from an antenna on top of the engineering
building to a satellite and then down to an antenna at MIT in
Massachusetts. A few seconds later, blak, blak, blak, the answer came
out of the printer, back from MIT. That was state of the art, a marvel.
Now, my God!" Joe paused. "I'm going to make money on it."

"Is that what you want to do, Joe, make money?"

"Some, anyway."

"What do you really like to do?" Mo took a mouthful of rice. Her eyes
were wide open, looking directly at him.

"Uh . . . I like to write about things."

"Aha," she said.

"How do you get by?" he asked.

"I do all right with photography, commercial work. I teach a couple of
courses. When I get the chance, I do my own stuff; I have a show every
couple of years if I can."

"The only photographer besides Ansel Adams and Cartier-Bresson that I
can remember is the Hungarian guy, Kertesz." Mo looked at him sharply.
"His pictures of New York are so still," Joe said, "like etchings, but
they're awake. There is always something--tracks in the snow, a falling
leaf, something that echoes time."

"Wonderful," she agreed. "I love his early Paris shots. You know about
Kertesz? You're full of surprises."

"My father is a painter."

"So you grew up with it?"


"Actually, I was raised by my grandparents. My mother died when I was a
kid. Did you ever hear of Franz Griessler, the painter?"

"Yes, I've seen some of his work."

"I met him once. Want to hear about it?"

"Sure. How about dessert?"

"Absolutely." They ordered.

"I used to drive a Charley's cab. A woman flagged me down in the
shopping center one day. She was holding a flat package in both hands,
wiggling her fingers. She was slim, intense, in her late thirties, with
high coloring and black hair pulled into a bun. She was damned good
looking--hapa--Asian, French maybe. She lived nearby, just behind The
Pagoda, but the package was clumsy to carry. It was a drawing of hers.
We got to talking, and she asked if I'd ever modeled."

"Had you?"

"Nope. She talked me into it. The next day I drove her to Franz
Griessler's studio, way up the mountain on Round Top Drive, and sat for
her drawing class."

"What was he like?"

"Short. Square. Close cut gray hair. Powerful guy. Lili--that was her
name--told me afterwards that he was 82. Hard to believe. I was very
tense at first. I thought for a few minutes that I couldn't do it,
couldn't just sit there with people looking at me. Drops of sweat
started to form over my eyebrows. I wanted to run away. But something
happened. I began to enjoy listening to the charcoal scratching and the
small noises people made as they concentrated. The sweat disappeared. I
felt part of a tradition. I felt that I belonged."

The waitress brought dessert and cleared the table.

"At break time, Franz showed me his studio. He was working on a
portrait, a seated matron--silver hair, a lot of greens, sage, purple
lilac colors. Her hands were partially sketched, folded in her lap. A
diagonal grid of pencil lines mapped the unpainted portions of the
canvas into large diamonds.

"'Ach, the jewelry. Always the jewelry. I hate it.' Franz said, looking
at indications of bracelets and rings. 'Ach.' I asked him what the
pencil lines were for.

"'Structure. Composition. Always I start with them."'

Joe stretched and finished his coconut banana dessert. Mo looked
thoughtful. "What became of the babe?"

"I saw her across the street, a few weeks later. I don't think she
noticed me. Every so often I look at the mountain and remember that
studio, especially at night. You can see a couple of lights way up
there. You know what I keep seeing?" He answered his own question.
"Those diagonal pencil lines."

"Mmm . . . " Mo pushed her plate away. "Thank you, Joe. It was a nice
lunch." As they left the restaurant she put a hand on his arm. "When
the going gets tough, the tough get going, right?" She was looking at
him as though he were a sixth grader.

"Right," he said, and they went in different directions on Kapahulu
Avenue.

Joe took the long way home, around the zoo and through Waikiki. He
didn't know what to make of Mo. She was a good listener. She didn't
seem to be involved with anyone. It was a shame to let that body of
hers go to waste.

Joe had started the day at 4 a.m. to catch the market opening on the
East Coast; by the time he got back he was tired and already
anticipating the next day's trading. Precious metals were hot. He was
making money. He had made the acquaintance in cyberspace of Claude
Ogier, a knowledgeable gold bug from Quebec who issued a constant
stream of communications about the latest mining developments. Claude
was preparing to launch a newsletter, working into it. Joe was up $3000
in six weeks by following his advice.

Southwest Precious Metals was attracting a lot of interest. They
claimed an area of desert basin that was filled to a depth of 400
meters with material eroded from an adjacent range--a mountainous area
that had been mined for gold in the last century. The deposit, known as
'desert dirt,' contained gold, silver, and platinum in small
concentrations. Small, that is, by the ounce. By the square kilometer,
Southwest was sitting on the find of the decade. The problem lay in the
extraction. There's a lot of gold in the Pacific, too, in the salt
water, but no one has figured out how to extract it economically.

Arguments raged on the Internet. Gold and platinum are rarely found in
the same deposit. Conventional fire assay methods are ineffective on
desert dirt. The samples could have been fraudulently salted. A
prestigious independent auditor was engaged to evaluate the deposit.
Various explanations were advanced to counter the objections. Seasoned
investors said that these companies were scams nineteen times out of
twenty, so why bother at all? Optimists brought up investor resistance
to heap leaching, an extraction method that had made fortunes in the
80's. Several mutual funds bought big positions after sending their
mining aces to investigate first hand. The price was beginning to rise
on larger volume.

The day after Joe had lunch with Mo, he bought 1500 shares of SPM at
$4.75. The next morning, the price was $5.75 bid / $5.94 asked. A press
release announced that an experimental extraction technique had yielded
results that were higher than expected. Tests were continuing with
larger samples. Joe jumped on the ask and bought 1500 more shares.
"Damn it, Batman! We've got a live one." The price spiked to $6.75
before profit taking knocked it down. It closed at $6.25 after heavy
trading.

For several months the price continued to move up, as larger samples
processed with the new technique yielded consistently higher results.
He bought 1500 more shares at $10.50. When the price rose over $11,
Claude shocked the online bulls by selling most of his shares. "But
Claude," Joe wrote, "if the extraction method is as cheap as most
people think it will be, shares will go to $100, easy." ($450,000 to
him.)

"Don't worry, mon ami," Claude answered. "I still have a position if
that comes to be. I have my original investment returned with a profit.
And my heart keeps the normal beat."

Joe thought about buying more but held back. One detail bothered him.
The CEO, a thirty year mining pro, claimed to have a degree from an
obscure college in the Northwest. Several investors had tried
unsuccessfully to verify this. Joe e-mailed the company to inquire but
received no answer. Kate had an academic friend in Seattle who checked
and was unable to find a record of graduation. The closest any one
could come was to determine that he had gone to school there for at
least three years. The college had gone through many changes over the
years. Degree requirements were different. Records had been moved many
times. They failed to pin it down.

Joe didn't care whether or not someone had a degree. It is what one can
do that matters. But he cared if someone lied about it; lying is a bad
sign. SPM stock broke above $14 and began to correct. The short sellers
piled on, selling borrowed stock, driving the price down in order to
frighten investors into dumping their shares. The price held in the $10
range for a few weeks and then quickly fell to $8 and then $7. The
short position grew larger by the day. The bulls argued that all those
borrowed shares had to be bought back sooner or later and that the
upcoming positive mining audit would trigger a massive short squeeze
that would quickly put the price over $20. The company continued to
release good news.

When the audit report was finally released, it verified only the
original assay results, a year old, and made no mention of the
extraction yields. The company made bland assurances about ongoing
efforts to improve the extraction technique, but there were no hard
numbers and they were running out of development capital.

Trading in SPM was suspended. When it resumed, the stock cratered to
below $3 in seconds. Joe waited for a bounce, clamped his jaw, and sold
out at $3.25, just below the high of the day. Over the next few months,
the price dropped to a nickel and the company went bankrupt.

Joe was in shock. He had lost $17,160 plus commissions, half his
savings. As he thought it over, he realized the mistakes he'd made.
He'd broken the primary law of diversity. You should never have all
your eggs in one basket. Secondly, he had wavered between the attitudes
of the trader and the long term investor, ignoring the safeguards of
each approach. If you are trading, you must wait for good entry points
and you must exit immediately if the price moves against you. Gains
more than compensate for losses, if the losses are strictly limited.
Furthermore, Victor Sperandeo had cautioned never to give back more
than half your profits--they are too hard to come by. At one point Joe
had been $32,000 ahead. It hurt to remember.

If you are a long term investor, on the other hand, you must know that
the company is sound. Joe failed to follow through on his investigation
of the CEO. He had been too cheap to go to the annual shareholder's
meeting where he would not have found the qualities he looked for in
management.

He had been neither trader nor investor. He had been a loser. Not only
that, he had spent months staring into his monitor, living on the
Internet, reading the Wall St. Journal every day and Barrons every
weekend, and dreaming about how he would invest $450,000. He asked
himself how he could have been so stupid, so inept.

He went to a Korean bar. Gorgeous women paraded continuously past his
table. When he tired of sitting with one, the next slid in against him
and put her hand on his leg. "Buy me drink? You want pu-pu's?" The
music was loud, hypnotic, non-stop. They danced. They accepted
MasterCard. Joe staggered home with further losses.

He was in deepest day-after shambles when the phone rang.

"Ugh, hlo?"

"Hi, Joe."

"Max! How ya doin', buddy?"

"Fine. I'm at the airport."

"Great! Come on over, or are you just flying through?"

"I thought I'd stay a couple of days. Kate told me you were here."

Half an hour later, there he was. "Max, you look terrific . . . growing
up, man, getting stronger."

"Thanks, you don't look so great," Max said.

"Nah, long night, never mind. A walk, rice and eggs, it will all be
history." Max put his pack down in a corner. "That's not the lightest
looking pack."

"It has everything I own in it. Carried it all over New Zealand."

"Yeah? Both islands? What do they call them?"

"North and South," Max said, smiling.

"Right, right. Always wanted to go there, supposed to be a great
place."

"The Kiwi's, man . . . awesome!" Max was short with wide shoulders and
large dark brown eyes. He had filled out since his school days, but he
had the same earnest expression. Max had gotten through the University
of Vermont, studying this and that, anthropology mostly, but he'd gone
walkabout instead of buckling down to graduate school. Joe had been
glad at the time, and now he could see why: Max was calmer, more sure
of himself after a couple of years of knocking around.

"Let's go get some breakfast."

"Lunch," Max said.

At the coffee shop on King Street, Joe asked, "Remember that week we
spent on Kauai? That was a good time."

"Yeah, the Na Pali coast," Max said.

"Some place," Joe said. "The whole damn island should be a world park."

"I remember that story you told us about the leper who wouldn't go to
the colony."

"Koolau," Joe said. "He defeated the British Navy. They couldn't get
him. He warned them, too. One sick guy with a rifle against marines and
cannon--he killed, what? . . . three of them before they gave up? He
wasn't doing anything, just he and his lover in the valley."

"Yeah," Max said.

"One of the great love stories," Joe said. "Made for Hollywood. She
stayed with him until he died and never caught leprosy. A few years
later, she climbed back over the pali and started all over again, lived
a long life. If I were a drinking man, I'd propose a toast to her--and
all women like her."

"Women," Max said, just like a grown up, holding out his coffee mug.
They clinked mugs.

"So, what next?" Joe asked.

"I've been thinking . . . look at this." Max reached into his pocket
and pulled out a little wooden box, deep red with a dramatic black
grain. He removed a rubber band, placed the box on the table, and
lifted off the top. The box was rectangular with an oval center; a thin
piece of stone lay in the oval, tawny and flaked. "It's an arrowhead.
Found it in Vermont." Joe put the arrowhead in his palm and looked at
the indentations near the base and at the rounded but definite point.
The slight weight of it shocked him. Whoever made it had felt the same
weight; it had been in his or her palm as well.

"I carried it around in my wallet, and then when I was in New Zealand I
made the box out of Kauri wood."

"Beautiful wood," Joe said. "The oval is perfect for the arrowhead."

Max nodded. "I'm going to make things," he said. "That's what I want to
do. Furniture, maybe."

"Good idea!" Joe put the arrowhead back in its box.

"I'm going to stop and see Kate when I get to the mainland," Max said.

"Check out her new boyfriend, Jackson. He's into working with his
hands. Nice guy." Joe had an idea. "Look, Max, why don't you take the
truck?"

"Truck?"

"My truck. It's at Kate's, at Kate's mechanic's. I'm not using it. I
don't know how long I'm going to be here on the island." Max was
starting to look excited. "It's registered and the insurance is good
for another six or seven months. Here." Joe found the registration in
his wallet and gave it to him. "Just take this. That way all you have
to do is put gas in it and go. When it expires, I'll send you a bill of
sale. Or you can mail it to me and I'll sign it over to you. It's got a
bed in the back, too."

"Really?"

"Sure. Keep the tools. Just leave my clothes at Kate's." Max sat back
and considered. He stretched his arm forward and slowly slid the
arrowhead across the table.

"Swap," he said.

"Oh, Max, I can't."

Max shook his head. "That's the deal."

"Well . . . O.K." Joe put the top on the box, wrapped the rubber band
around it, and put it in his pocket. They walked to Waikiki and hung
out for another day before Max caught a plane to Seattle.

At the airport, Joe thought of Mo and asked Max if he'd ever had a
professor at Vermont named Soule.

"Soule . . . Sounds familiar. An old guy? Yeah, Soule. He gave a couple
of guest lectures in an economics class. I remember now--he was steamed
about the Romans. They had tax laws that screwed everything up. Then
the currency collapsed. He was interesting about that."

"His daughter lives here. I met her by accident." Max's flight was
announced for boarding. "There it is," Joe said. "Sorry to see you go.
But you're headed in the right direction. That's a joke. You'll see a
cookie fortune taped to the dash in the truck; that's what it says. But
you are, actually. Listen, that truck has two gas tanks--there's a
switch--you'll see it."

"O.K. Joe, thanks. Take care of yourself, man."

"You too, Max." And he was gone. That's the way it is with kids, Joe
thought.

"Damn it, Batman, " he said when he got home much later that day. "You
and me. They don't have a chance." That night he dreamt of a campfire
and coyotes calling in the night.




5


Two girls with clear Asian faces and long black hair were waiting at a
bus stop on King Street. One was about fourteen, carrying school books;
the other was several years older, heavier. Joe stopped at Coco's,
ordered coffee, and tried to describe the girls in a notebook. They
were so beautiful, so similar, sisters maybe . . . yet different. The
older was a woman, really. Hours went by like minutes as he searched
for the right words.

He wandered into Waikiki and sat on a bench by the beach. A woman with
smooth brown skin walked into the water. Her body was like a torpedo in
a blue one piece suit. She went out a few yards, waited, and dove
quietly under a three-footer, bobbing up on the other side. The locals
live in the water, Joe thought, they don't fight it. He remembered a
story in The Advertiser about a sampan that sank in the Pacific. A
fisherman, rescued twenty-four hours later, was asked by a reporter,
"What did you do all that time out there with no life jacket?"

"Wen' sleep when I got tired," he said. He was one of those big
laughing Hawaiians who float like buoys, heads up out of the water.

Joe strolled through the zoo. The gorilla was famous. He sat near the
front of his cage mugging at tourists, carrying on, drawing them closer
as they took pictures. Locals grinned from the sides. When enough
people had gathered, the gorilla would sneak one hand behind and below
him and without warning blast the tourists with a shit ball that hit
the bars and scattered for maximum effect. He would leap to his feet
mightily pleased, as the crowd screamed and the locals bent over
laughing.

The elephants were patient and knowing. Joe trusted elephants. And
dolphins. Sometimes he walked all the way to the Kahala to watch the
dolphins zoom around their salt water pool. They came right to him at
the edge of the pool, wiggling, excited as puppies.

He walked up Kapahulu Avenue and stopped at Zippy's where he had a bowl
of saimin and worked on the description of the two girls. At home, in
the mail, there was a card from Mo announcing a show of her
photographs. The print on the card was deeply silvered. It showed the
base of a banyan tree by a bus stop: high roots radiated out and sank
below the sidewalk; a man was asleep, cradled between two roots, a
lunch box by his waist, one arm stretched out along the top of a root,
fingers dangling, the angles of his knees and elbows blending with the
bends in the roots.

"Not bad, Batman," Joe said. "Next Friday."

The days before Mo's opening passed quickly. On Friday, Joe walked down
Ward Avenue to a gallery and camera shop, and, for once, he wasn't
early. Empty wine bottles, a few pupus on bare trays, a glass punch
bowl, paper cups and napkins were scattered across white tables.
Conversation hummed and collided around the room. A blues guitar kept
time in the background. Mo was smiling down at a bearded professorial
type.

"How do you do?" A young Japanese man shook Joe's hand.

"Thanks for the invitation," Joe said, flashing the card.

"Are you a friend of Winifred's?"

"Yes. Joe Burke."

"Wendell Sasaki."

"Nice place you have here," Joe said. A well-dressed couple entered,
and Wendell excused himself. Joe drifted along a wall of Mo's
photographs. There were several of old sugar mill buildings and one
taken of the sky through the branches of a koa tree. There was a large
one of the city at night, lights running high up the ridges. His
favorite showed two young women walking toward the camera on Kalakaua
Avenue. The light was gray, pre-dawn. One had her arm around the
other's shoulders. They were bent forward laughing. Their bodies and
clothes were used and tired, but their faces were innocent, flooded
with relief; the night was over.

Most of the subjects were conventional; it was the detail and the light
on them that was interesting. They were all black and white but one--a
close-up of bamboo stalks and leaves. "What do you think?" Mo asked
from behind him.

"I like it." Joe turned partially. "How come it's the only one in
color?"

"I have problems with color," Mo said. "It's always off. But in this
case, there are really only two colors, bamboo and that tender green.
They're both off in the same way, so the relationship works. And the
color is so much of the story . . . " Wendell Sasaki called her over to
confer with the well-dressed couple.

Joe stood in front of the picture of the young hookers, if that's what
they were. Looking at them seemed more helpful than talking to anyone.
Mo worked the crowd. After a time, Joe thanked the owner, waved at Mo,
and left. All artists love light, he thought, walking up Ward Avenue.
Mo was no exception.

The next day, he called. "Mo? Nice show."

"Thanks."

"You have won the Joe Burke award--excellence in photography."

"Why, never did I dream," she said in a Southern drawl.

"Lunch!"

"Joe, honey . . . " She dropped the drawl. "I'm busy today, let's see .
. . How about Tuesday? I want to check something out on the windward
side. We could eat over there."

"Good deal."

On Tuesday, she picked him up by the sandbox on the lower level of the
shopping center. As they drove toward the pali, Joe said, "I'm
sentimental about that sandbox. Kate used to play there." He was
surprised to see pain flicker on Mo's face. "What's the matter?"

"I had a child, once. He died--when he was two--from a condition my
husband forgot to tell me ran in his family. His nerves didn't work."

"How awful."

"I don't think about it much," Mo said. They were silent for a few
minutes. "So, what have you been doing?"

"Losing money. I got completely involved in the market. I made a major
mistake, but I learned a lot."

"I'll show you where I took the bamboo picture," she said, turning onto
the old pali road. She turned again and stopped by a weathered concrete
bridge. They got out and walked to the other end of the bridge where a
tall grove had grown from the bank below. Mo put her elbows on the side
wall of the bridge, and leaned out, midway up the grove. Joe leaned out
beside her. A breeze stirred and they were enveloped by melodious
knocking, a hundred percussionists set free.

"Wow!" Joe said. "A bamboo orchestra. I've never heard that before."
They listened for a few minutes and then drove through the pali tunnel,
emerging high over Kaneohe Bay--planes of pure light green, turquoise,
dark blue. "Just another day in paradise," he said.

"Kailua isn't paradise, exactly. I've got to stop a moment in town and
then we'll go over to Kaneohe."

"Sure." They wound down off the pali, and Joe waited while Mo
accomplished her errand. She drove along Oneawa Street past the Racquet
Club. Joe pointed. "See that hedge? I planted it!" A tall oleander
hedge curved along the club drive. "A hundred small bushes," Joe said,
"took me almost all day."

"Your roots in Hawaii?"

"Yok. I used to live there with Sally and Kate. I was the manager."

"How old is Kate?"

"Twenty-seven. Hard to believe. Where are we going?"

"Tops."

"That's pretty exciting. We can eat breakfast again."

"I hope she's there--a picture I'm thinking about." Mo pulled into the
Tops parking lot and they sat at the counter. Joe didn't need to look
at the over-sized plastic menu; he'd read it dozens of times in the Ala
Moana Tops. A tall woman wearing a cook's apron stood in front of the
grill. Her black hair, gathered behind her head, was held by a tortoise
shell comb. Her face was long and utterly calm. Eggs, homefries, and
burgers sizzled in front of her. She dropped slices of bread into an
industrial toaster, flipped and scrambled, stirred and buttered, served
and cleaned with untroubled movements of her arms and hands.
Occasionally she turned or moved a step sideways without changing
expression. She was like a reflection of herself in a still pond.

"Something else," Joe said.

"How am I going to get a picture of that?" Mo asked.

"I don't know."

Mo swiveled on her stool. "I've got to stop staring."

"You could ask her to model."

"I suppose so, but then . . . You mean in some other setting?"

"Yeah," Joe said, "naked in a waterfall--I'll help."

Mo ignored him. "Part of it is the contrast with the grill. But there's
all this other clutter."

Joe shook his head. "How can she be so busy and so serene at the same
time?"

"I don't think I can catch it," Mo said. "But I'm going to try."

"Jade Willow Lady," Joe said on the way back over the pali. "That's
what I'd call her. I have to admit, Mo, I like looking at things. Why
don't we go over to Kauai some time? Day trip. Catch an early plane,
drive around, look at things, and be back by dinner? Mo pursed her lips
and considered.

" I have a client over there; I could write it off. It would be nice to
see the canyon. I have to go to the mainland next week. How about the
week after, say Friday? That would give me time to get something done
before we went."

"Sounds good. Closest flight to seven o'clock, two weeks from Friday?"

"Which airline?" Mo asked.

"I don't know--Aloha?"

"O.K. It's easier for my books if I get my own ticket," she said.

"Great. If I don't hear from you I'll see you at the terminal. Good
luck with Jade Willow Lady." Mo dropped him off at the shopping center
and drove into traffic without looking back.

He took the escalator to the upper level and walked into Shirokya,
drawn by Japanese muzak and pretty packaging. The Japanese were
incapable of bad design, he thought. It was in their genes or
something. Or maybe it was just that they cared. He almost bought a
porcelain doll to keep Batman company on the lanai, but he decided that
might be pushy. He called Aloha and bought a ticket for the 7:10 flight
to Kauai. He and Mo hadn't agreed on a return time, but the 5:45 seemed
most likely.

It was nearing pupu hour at The Chart House. He walked over in time to
get a table by the open windows, ordered a Glenlivet, and stretched out
to enjoy the view of masts in the marina. The trade wind kept up an
aluminum chatter, not as nice as the spirit of the bamboo grove, but
pleasant in its own way.

At the next table, three boat owners in their thirties were drinking,
talking story, and laughing loudly. As the first group of well dressed
office women came through the door, one of the men leaned back in his
chair. A grin spread his mustache across his red face. "Bogeys, three
o'clock," he announced.

The squadron adjusted for combat. Most would become prisoners of war,
Joe thought. He'd been one himself, not unhappily. Perhaps it was the
habit of being coupled that was pushing him in Mo's direction. She
wasn't as natural as Sally, his first wife, or as cheerful as Ingrid;
she was more independent, focused, more like him in some ways. Too bad
about her child--that explained some of the seriousness in her face.
She wasn't bowled over by the great Joe Burke, but she was interested.
He pulled back on the stick and began to climb.





6


If a globe is turned in just the right way, nothing can be seen but the
Pacific and the far off edges of continents. The Hawaiian Islands are
specks in the middle of this immensity. Kauai is a hundred miles from
Oahu, practically next door. The Aloha Airlines jet climbed and then
descended into Lihue before Joe had time to finish a glass of juice.
Green sugar cane and red earth swept past lowering wings. A bump, a
screech of tires, and they were down, taxiing to the small terminal.

Mo put away a small day planner in which she had been making notes.
"Canyon first?" she asked.

"Banana pancakes? Hard to explore on an empty stomach."

"I brought some fruit," she said. They rented a Toyota sedan, and Joe
drove into Lihue.

"Too early for saimin," he said. "Too bad. There's a great
place--Hamura's--biz people from Honolulu have been known to fly over
for lunch to cure their hangovers." He parked by Kenny's. "O.K., this
won't take long." They ordered breakfast.

"When I lived here," Joe said, "there was only one traffic light on the
island, and it wasn't on a highway; it was in the middle of a cane
field, for the trucks."

"It's changing fast," Mo said. "Too beautiful not to be discovered."


"If they stop the sugar subsidies, it's all over." Joe pushed his empty
plate away. Mo was wearing a black sweatshirt, tan jeans, and running
shoes. He had on his Filson bush jacket, Levis, and his all purpose
Clarks shoes. They looked good together, he thought, Mr. and Ms.
Competent.

"Did you notice the Kentucky Fried Chicken place on the way in to
Lihue?" he asked.

"Yes."

"I helped landscape it. Me and Whistling Ed Swaney. He was a sheriff in
L.A.; he quit after the Watts riots. He had a whistling show on a radio
station over there, fifteen minutes a week."

"Really?"

"Yup. He was a mighty muscle man--thirty years older than I was. I
could barely keep up with him. The good thing about Whistling Ed was
that he didn't talk much."

"Giving you free rein . . . "

"Yok. No. I didn't talk either, so we got along well. Anyway, we went
from one posh house to the next, cutting grass and trimming trees. The
owners treated him with great respect. I finally figured out why--he
was always sweating. I gave it a name: Swaney's Law. If you're
sweating, they can't shit on you."

They drove down to Nawiliwili Harbor and along a back road through cane
fields that followed a line of mountains. Narrow green valleys cut into
the mountains, mysteriously shaded. There was a sense of two cultures,
of a border at the edge of the sugar cane that was crossed cautiously,
if at all.

They came to the Poipu resort district and then headed up to the canyon
rim where Joe had picked plums. They stood at the lookout, above a
three thousand foot drop and ten miles of rugged red and gold walls
flecked with green. Mountain goats, bits of white, chased each other up
and down vertical slopes. "Incredible," Mo said, focusing her camera.

"It looks like they're playing tag," Joe said. "So free."

They drove to the end of the road and peered into the mist obscuring
Kalalau valley where Koolau, the leper, remained buried. Clouds swirled
and lifted, revealing glimpses of tree tops, steep ridges, and once, a
small curve of beach far below. "I almost like it better this way," Mo
said, "when you can't see it all at once. Brrrrr!" They piled into the
car and drove back down to the sunny fields on the leeward side. They
passed through road cuts, hundreds of yards of flaming bougainvillea on
both sides, and by small plantation houses painted green, corrugated
roofs rusted to the same red tones as the soil. "Stop!" Mo commanded
from time to time. Joe stretched while she took pictures.

They drove through the built up area between Lihue and Kapaa and parked
outside a medical complex. "Five minutes, ten maybe," Mo said. "The
client," she explained when she returned. "Rob Wilcox. He's a fan, buys
my stuff for his clinic and for his own collection."

"Great," Joe said. "Is there a Mrs. Wilcox?"

"No." She flushed slightly. They parked by the beach in Anahola, ate
bananas and an orange, and decided to stretch their legs. Mo walked
strangely on the sand, holding her shoes in one hand. Her pelvis tipped
back; she shifted her weight stiffly from one leg to the other in an
exaggerated prance that said, "You should be so lucky as to even look
at me." But no one else was on the beach. She didn't seem conscious of
the change. Joe looked away. Three-footers curled peacefully along the
beach as far as he could see.

They sat on the soft sand, and Mo took off her sweatshirt. Joe lay back
with his head on his shoes and admired her breasts, high and shapely
beneath a gray T-shirt. Steady, he said to himself, the woman barely
likes you. Who was she, anyway? She took good pictures; he knew that.
He fell asleep for a moment.

Mo took over the driving. They were well around the island, past
Kilauea, when Joe asked, "The Tahiti Nui, do you know it? In Hanalei?"

"A restaurant, bar?"

"Yup. With a porch. I want to have a beer on the porch." Mo looked at
her watch. "Plenty of time," Joe said. "Which flight are you on?"

"Four-thirty," she said.

"Mine is quarter to six . . . We still have time. Maybe I can get on
the early one." They drove over a stream that curved through sparkling
green rice paddies. Shortly afterwards, they stopped by the Tahiti Nui.

They sat on a wooden porch and looked across the humpy patched blacktop
road to a steep hillside, densely green and silent. "Happiness," Joe
said, touching Mo's glass with his. "By some accounts, Hawaii is the
most isolated land mass in the world. Kauai is the farthest out of the
inhabited islands, and here we are at the end of the road. It stops
right over there, can't make it around the Na Pali coast." He drank his
beer and waved at the view. "Isn't it great, Mo? End of the road. Can't
go any farther. How relaxing can you get? Nowhere to go but back--when
we feel like it."

"At three o'clock," Mo said. She took a picture of the road and one of
an orange cat curled on an old sofa next to the table.

"I had a cat like that once--'Jeremy,'" Joe said.

She turned and took one of him. "Joe Burke, at the end of the road,"
she offered in explanation.

"A long way from where I started."

"You were from Woodstock, right?" Joe nodded. "Were you at the
festival?"

"No. I was running a laundromat that year. I leased it from an old
friend whose wife was sick of cleaning it. I couldn't get away. It was
no big deal. There had been little festivals for years--'Soundouts,' we
called them--music all night, sleep in a field. I had no idea it was
going to be so huge. And anyway, it wasn't actually in Woodstock; it
was about forty miles away. Did you go?"

"I couldn't," Mo said. "I was in Vienna in a convent school. My father
was on sabbatical. It was awful. My sister Beth was already in college.
I wish I could have heard Jimi Hendrix's _Star Spangled Banner_."

"A major moment," Joe said. "When Hendrix died, the hot radio station
in Honolulu scheduled that piece for twelve noon. They asked everyone
to open their windows and crank up the volume. That was when I was
driving a cab; you could hear Hendrix blasting all over the city."

Mo looked at her watch again. "It's that time, Joe."

"Damn shame," he said. They said goodbye to the cat, and Mo drove them
back to Lihue where Joe had no trouble changing his flight.

"Fun day," he said as they parted in Honolulu.

"Bye, Joe." She smiled.

"I'll call you."

She lifted a hand in acknowledgment. Thanks for the warmth and
commitment, he thought.

He had given up chasing women some time after Sally and before Ingrid.
A kind woman had taken him in hand after a heartbreak and explained:
"Joe, you can't earn love. Love is free. Someone loves you or they
don't . . . God knows why." She had been so sad and so earnest that he
knew it was true. Shortly thereafter a flashbulb went off. If you can't
earn love, then, if someone doesn't love you, there's nothing you can
do about it. What a liberation!

He wasn't going to run after Mo. A relationship might be around the
corner. Or not. He wasn't all that sure he wanted one, anyway. He'd
call her in a couple of weeks.




7


Joe was going to run out of money--in less than a year. He began
reading the Sunday classifieds, an experience that made him sweat and
put a knot in his stomach.

On a Monday, two weeks after the trip to Kauai, he followed up an ad
for a programming job at a downtown insurance company. The offices were
bright and modern; the staff was energetic. He left depressed. He could
have done the work in his sleep, but he couldn't pretend to want to be
"on board." The woman who interviewed him was too decent; Joe couldn't
bring himself to try and con her. He knew that if he were hired, six to
twelve months later he would be out on the street again, unable to keep
his head down and his mouth shut.

The next morning as he was taking a shower, replaying the scene at the
insurance company, he bent over for the soap. Something split in his
back. It was like being hit by an ax. He managed to get out of the
bathroom and lower himself to the floor. He lay still for half an hour,
getting his breath.

On his side, drawing his knees up, he pushed himself along the floor a
few inches at a time. He made it to his mattress and slid under the
comforter. Changing positions was painful, he could sleep for only a
few minutes at a time.

By evening he was too thirsty to stay where he was. He pushed himself
to the front of the kitchen sink and got to his knees, gasping. Holding
on with one hand, he reached for his mug with the other and filled it
with water. He drank and then refilled it and placed it on the floor.
He opened the cabinet under the sink and pulled out an old pie plate.
He lowered himself to the floor and rested before he pushed himself
back to the bed, dragging along the water and the pie plate. He was
able to pee into the plate while he lay on one side. He made it through
the night, moving as little as possible.

Music would be nice, he thought in the morning. Forget it. It was all
he could do to lie still and not panic. "It's all right, Batman," he
called to the lanai. He thought about crawling to the telephone and
knocking it to the floor with the broom, but who would he call? When
the pie plate filled, he inched along the floor, dragging it into the
bathroom, spilling some, but managing to reach up and pour most of it
into the toilet. He shoved himself into the kitchen for more water.
Holding to the chair by the table, he was able to reach a bunch of
bananas. Two bananas and water got him through the second day.

On the third day, hanging on to the bedroom door frame, he pulled
himself slowly to his feet. He was able to limp to the bathroom,
supporting himself with the sponge mop. He took aspirin and shuffled
back to his mattress with bread and a piece of cheddar cheese. He ate
like a king, wishing that he'd turned on the radio.

The pain was less intense in the morning. Aspirin had helped him sleep
for four or five hours. He was able to stand up slowly, turn on the
radio, and reassure Batman. He leaned against a wall and stared at a
shaft of sunlight falling on the carpet. He remained there motionless,
without words. Pain had emptied him completely.

The disk jockey played a Cyril Pahinui cut. Familiar notes cascaded
into the sunlight, ringing and humble, celebrating and accepting the
only life we know. It's all right, Joe thought, as his isolation broke
down. "For thine is the kingdom," he said to a presence in the
sunshine. Thankful tears rolled down his cheeks. Three days later he
made it down the hill to the store and back.

He exercised regularly and began to feel stronger. His walks were
longer. From time to time he drank too much, but he was generally under
control. Fortunately, he had a little time before he ran out of money.
He had no idea what to do, but he knew that he wasn't going to program
computers for an insurance company. The back pain hell was a clear
warning not to repeat his old patterns. In the past, he would drift
around trying to write things, run out of money, and then abandon the
writing in a rush to join a work group, pay bills, and pretend he was
like the others in the group. It never worked out. He had to find
another way.

Late one morning, he was at the Wailana Coffee Shoppe when a young
woman sat down across from him. She was blonde, lightly tanned; her
face was composed, nearly immobilized, with eye shadow, liner, and rich
red lipstick. She had an air of sadness that was at cross purpose to
her youth and to the perfection of her makeup. She ate breakfast and
left, untroubled by Joe's attention.

For the thousandth time he wished he could draw, but words were his
best tools. It was more than the woman's appearance that he wanted to
capture; he wanted to know how he felt about her. Writing was a way of
finding out. For the rest of the day, as he walked in the city, he
fiddled with words, starting over and over.

The next morning he returned to the Wailana. The beauty wasn't there,
but he could remember her well enough to keep writing. A woman sat next
to him at the counter. He paid no attention until she asked him to pass
the ketchup. She was having home fries with her eggs. "Nothing like
home fries," Joe said.

"Stick to your ribs," she said, blushing slightly. She had nice ribs,
large breasts pushed against a white blouse. "What'cha doing, if you
don't mind my asking? You look so intense."

"I was trying to describe someone."

"Are you a writer?"

"No," Joe said.

"My name is Alison, Alison Carl. Have you been here long? In Hawaii, I
mean."

"About six months . . . I used to live here." She had short sandy
colored hair, a blunt nose and a wide mouth. No makeup. She chewed
toast with a satisfied expression.

"I'm doing post graduate work at the East-West Center. I saw the Dalai
Lama yesterday."

Joe sat straighter. "No kidding? What was he like?"

"Cute. Like a little rock." She was compact, a high energy type.
"What's your name?"

"Joe Burke." He took evasive action. "Alison, I'm too old for you." She
looked downcast for a moment and then raised her eyebrows hopefully.

"Can you walk?"

"I can."

"There," she said winningly, taking a large forkful of potatoes. "What
you mean, I think, is that you think I'm too young for you. It's a
compliment, really. Men have trouble saying what they think,
sometimes." She seemed pleased, like a teen-ager.

"What are you studying?" Joe asked.

"Buddhism. I have a doctorate in comparative religion. I was a pastor
for a while and then I worked at a seminary. I was canned."

"Fired?"

"Yup. They were hypocrites," she said sadly. "What do you do?"

"Nothing right now. I used to program computers, design software. When
I lived here I did a lot of stuff: drove a cab, delivered newspapers,
managed a tennis club . . . I ended up going to the university." Alison
sipped coffee.

"Let's get this over with," she said, "I'm forty-four. How old are you,
Joe?" She noted his surprise with equanimity.

"Fifty-three."

"You see," she said. "You're one too: a younger--than--you--looker."

"Alison," he said more firmly, "it has been nice to meet you, but I
must be going. Much to do."

"Goodbye, Joe. Thank you for talking to me." He didn't want to wait for
change, so he left a large tip and walked up Ala Moana Boulevard,
relieved, but with the odd feeling that he was walking toward her
rather than away.

At 4:00 that afternoon, the phone rang.

"Hi, Joe, it's Alison. I was bad this morning; I'm sorry. I don't know
what got into me."

"What do you mean?"

"You were busy and I bothered you. I've been lonely, I guess. I didn't
realize. I don't meet people like you very often." That was flattering.
Joe made a soothing noise. "How about dinner, Joe? Dutch treat?"

He was surprised. "Uh, when?"

"Tonight, of course. I want to be high in the air and look at the city
lights. I've never been to the Top of the I. Come on, Joe . . . You can
tell me stories about the ancient old days. I will wear a skirt. We'll
be normal for a couple of hours."

"A long stretch," Joe said, but then he felt bad. "Why not? O.K." They
agreed to meet at 6:30. He ironed a pair of pants and an aloha shirt,
mumbling to himself about what a pain in the ass it was, but by the
time he stepped off the elevator he was feeling better; it was nice to
be liked.

Joe was overly punctual and used to waiting for women. He forgave them;
it was a genetic condition associated with the willingness to walk
slowly in front of onrushing traffic and also--somehow--with the
inability to have money ready at checkout counters. Alison was waiting
for him.

"You're supposed to be late," he said. She smiled prettily. She was
wearing a teal colored silk tunic over a chino skirt. Her hair was
brushed back; a small opal swung from each ear; something glittered
around her eyes. "You look terrific."

"Thank you." They sat at a table with a view of the mountains. "I don't
drink much," she said as he ordered a Glenlivet and water. "I do know
about Glenlivet. I'm Scots and Swedish."

"Single malt--wonderful stuff," he said.

"I'll have a glass of Chardonnay. So, Joe, tell me about when you used
to live here."

"I was married and Kate, our daughter, was young. I've been married
twice." Alison did not appear surprised. "Sally and I were happy to be
out of Woodstock."

"Woodstock, the Woodstock?"

"Yes, a small town. It was so great to be in Honolulu where we didn't
know anyone. My feet didn't feel the pavement for a year. But we had a
hard time. Food stamps and all that, even welfare for a while. Things
settled down when I started driving a Charley's cab and Sally cleaned
houses. Cleaning houses isn't bad work--cash--anybody gives you a hard
time you just go somewhere else. Here's looking at you." They touched
glasses.

"Sally had a couple of steady gigs where she liked the people and knew
what she was supposed to do every week." His mind was moving back.
"Some amazing things did happen . . . "

"Oh, good," Alison said.

"One afternoon I went over to Kahala to pick up Sally at a cleaning
job. She was disturbed. Sally was a sweetheart, but she didn't talk
much; after six years of marriage I knew I had to ask if I wanted to
know what was going on.

"She described a scene between her boss, heiress to the Cannon towel
fortune, and her boss's daughter. The daughter told her mother that a
nice man had come into her room during the night, had sat on her bed
and talked to her. The mother explained that dreams sometimes seemed
real. The daughter said that it wasn't a dream. They argued. There were
tears, and the daughter ran upstairs."

Joe paused. "Sally thought that the mother had handled it badly."

"What did you think?" Alison asked.

"What did I know? Anyway, time flew by. I got nervous; I thought maybe
I would never do anything but drive a cab. I got a job managing a
tennis club on the other side of the pali--a good job--a house, a
truck, a pool in which Kate could learn to swim, acres for her to run
around in.

"Sally operated the snack bar; Kate went to kindergarten. Mornings, I
walked into Kailua to drink coffee and write."

"Just like this morning," Alison said.

"Yes. I was trying to understand Honolulu . . . as though it could be
grasped and set, presented, like a pearl." Joe sipped his whiskey. "I
became friendly with a regular at the Rob Roy Coffee Shop, an
ex-machinist who had fled Chicago to start over in Hawaii. 'You gotta
meet Mike,' he told me one day. 'You guys would get along.' I asked him
about Mike. 'Mike's the cat burglar. You know, the one they're always
writing about in the paper."'

"I didn't want any trouble with the law, but, as usual with me,
curiosity won out. Several nights later Mike and I were seated at a
table in Crazy Horse, a topless bar that catered to Marines. He was
short and stocky, intense. After a couple of beers, I said, 'So, I
heard you were the cat burglar. That right?'.

"'Guess so,' he said. I asked him how that had happened.

"'It's so damned easy,' he said. He had been adopted by a well-to-do
couple. The relationship hadn't worked out as they had hoped. He told
me about robbing Aku over and over. Aku was a radio personality. Mike
said he couldn't stand him. Mike had never been caught, even though the
cops, by this time, knew. The island is small; word gets around.

"'One time,' Mike said, 'I was going along an upstairs hallway and I
looked through a door: a little girl was sitting up in bed watching me.
I didn't want to scare her--you know how they are, big eyes and all--so
I went in and sat on her bed. I told her not to worry; I was just doing
my job, looking for things at night. I told her that her job was to get
a good sleep, have good dreams, and be ready to have a great day when
she woke up. She settled back down and smiled, you know . . . I patted
the bed and left. Some kind of bird let go with a giant scrawk, and I
got the hell out of there, down over the lanai in back.'

"'You're not going to believe this, Mike,' I said. I told him about the
six foot bird cage in the atrium of that Kahala beach house and the
little girl who stuck to her story."

Alison bounced in her chair and clapped. "Good for her!"

"That was twenty years ago," Joe said. "Mike got caught. The girl
probably has her own children now."

"You must tell her," Alison said. "She should know. The truth is
important." Alison had a point. Joe had felt guilty about that before.

"The house is still there," he said. "Maybe I'll see what happened to
them."

"If they've moved, maybe you could find out where and send a letter."

"Aha," Joe said as dinner arrived. He had gone crazy and ordered steak.
Alison bent over her scampi and inhaled deeply. "Garlic," she sighed.

"Garlic!" They touched glasses again. Dark ruby light circled and
glanced through his Cabernet Sauvignon. By dessert, Alison had told him
that she was from a small town near Madison, Wisconsin, that her father
had been an inventor, that her mother was still alive, aging and in
need of care.

"My father was hurt in an accident at work. I had to take care of him
when I wasn't in school. My mother always had other jobs. He was
strict. I couldn't go out like the other girls. I was taken in by our
church; they gave me a scholarship."

"So you went from home to the church life--and you never got married?"

"Never met anyone willing, Joe. Anyone right, that is." She bent over
the table and lowered her voice. "I'm a virgin--can you imagine?"

"What!?" A head turned in their direction and Joe lowered his voice to
match hers. "How on earth?"

"I believe in the sacrament of marriage, Joe. Technically, I'm not a
virgin because of something that happened a long time ago. But,
actually, I am one." He blinked several times as she continued, "I had
a boyfriend for five years. He was divorced. He was afraid of
commitment, Joe." Joe took a large swallow of wine. "We used to fool
around. Nothing below the waist," she added.

"Gurmpph." He cleared his throat. No one seemed to be paying any
attention. Alison was still leaning forward. His eyes were fixed on her
swelling breast and the curve of black lace that rose and disappeared
behind her blue-green blouse. "Coffee," Joe said. "We must have
coffee."

It had grown dark gradually, and Alison had her wish to look at city
lights. Honolulu lies on a narrow plain between the mountains and the
Pacific. Sharp ridges descend toward the water. The ridge faces have
been developed; at night they are like jeweled fingers, reaching high,
separated by vast darknesses. "Beautiful." Joe swept his hand toward
the window.

"Even nicer than I hoped," Alison said. "I didn't mean to embarrass
you, Joe."

"I'm not embarrassed. It seems like a waste, that's all."

"That's sweet." They had coffee and took a cab to her apartment, not
far from the university. "Was it so bad being normal?" she asked.

"No," he admitted. She leaned over and kissed him quickly on the cheek.
He felt like Uncle, thanked for a birthday present.

"There," she said and got out. "Night, Joe."

"Goodnight, Alison." The cab driver remained silent. "Oh, yeah," Joe
said. "Liholiho Street."




8


The young beauty with the makeup was not at the Wailana the next
morning. Joe ate a waffle and stared across the counter at the seat
where she had been. As he reached for his notebook, he realized why she
was sad. She was a perfect twenty-two, frozen in time; she would never
be younger, more beautiful, or more beautifully made up to answer a
man's fantasy. And it wasn't enough. We must begin again, he said to
himself, identifying with her--begin again without shame. Sometimes you
have to start over, even go backwards, in order to go forward in a
different direction.

He wrote the words down and nodded. It was a poem. He imagined someone
reading his words, someone he didn't know. It was a good feeling. Lost
mail--that's what a poem is, he decided. He made up his mind to submit
it to the university literary publication. He had tried before to be
published, without success, but he'd not put much effort into it. He'd
written for himself, really.

He walked home, prepared the lost mail, and left a message for Mo,
"Let's have lunch."

An e-mail from Kate was waiting for him.

"Dad, the big step! Jackson and I have decided to get married. We've
rented a house on San Juan Island to be a central gathering place, the
week of Sept. 14-21. The ceremony will be Saturday, outside at the
county park, followed by a dinner at the yacht club. I'm hoping
everyone will come--Mom, of course, and Ingrid and Maxie. The island is
beautiful. I'm making a packet with maps, ferry schedules, and info on
places to stay. More later. I wanted to tell you right away. Love,
Kate."

"Big news, Batman!" It was a good marriage, but nothing would ever be
the same. Sally and Ingrid on the same island? Yikes. He didn't have
anything to wear.

Joe reeled around the apartment and then e-mailed back,
"Congratulations! I'll be there. More congratulations. Love, Dad." He
pulled an electric broom from the back of his closet and began pushing
it back and forth across the carpet. Jackson was a good fellow. Kate
was happy. He had never met Jackson's parents. He was going to have to
be respectable. Where was San Juan Island, anyway? Reservations? The
last dust crumb had disappeared into the electric broom when Joe
stopped pacing. He put the vacuum cleaner away and decided that the
sensible thing to do was to take a walk.

The phone rang.

"Hi, Joe."

"Uh, hey there." It was Alison.

"I enjoyed dinner last night."

"So did I."

"Joe, would you come exploring with me? I'm going to rent a car and see
some of the island."

"Well, sure," he said, "but I've got a lot to do."

"Me, too. It will be fun, Joe. I'm thinking about the end of the week,
maybe Friday or Saturday."

"Saturday would be good," he said, pushing it ahead.

"I'll pick you up at ten. How do I get to your place?" He gave
directions and then suggested that she meet him at Tops instead.

"That way I can get some writing done early, and it won't matter if you
get held up."

"Tops--near the Ilikai?"

"Yes."

"O.K. Ten o'clock. Joe, have you written down the story about the girl
and the cat burglar?"

"No."

"It's your responsibility,"Alison said.

"Mmm. My daughter's getting married! I just heard."

"Wonderful! You can tell me all about it, Saturday. What kind of car do
you like to drive?"

"Something heavy . . . with a machine gun."

"Oh, Joe."

"If they're out of those, get the kind with the bumper tires lashed
around."

"O.K.--if they have them," she said. "See you Saturday."

Joe put a new notebook in his back pocket, and left for the second walk
of the day. He found the San Juan Islands in an atlas at the main
library. They were small, off the northernmost coast of Washington. He
strolled to the Columbia Inn and ate a Reuben sandwich. It would be
good to see everyone and to meet Jackson's family. All he had to do was
show up in shape and not drink too much. He would buy an outfit that
could travel in the Filson bag. A camera. The Edgewater, he thought.
Stay there Thursday, stay on the island Friday and Saturday nights, and
then go back to the Edgewater on Sunday--that would break up the trip.
He made a list, and then he began to write about Mike and the little
girl.

The message light was blinking when he got home. "Joe, are you there?"
It was Mo. "No? I'm afraid lunch will have to wait. My sister has
talked me into going on a retreat with her. I'm going to combine the
trip with work, and then we're both going to Vermont for my parents'
fiftieth wedding anniversary. I won't be back until Labor Day." She
paused. "Maybe we can get together then. Bye." Damn. Joe had been
hoping that she would be a buffer against Alison's attention. He made
tea, sat at the computer, and began to enter the cat burglar story.

The next days were filled with writing and shopping. His money was
draining away, but Kate's wedding was important. How could he skimp?
The San Juan Islands would probably be cool in September. He bought a
silk and wool blend jacket--olive, gray, and brown in a quiet weave. A
pair of lightweight wool pants, neutral gray green, a silvery tan
Italian dress shirt, and a dark brown tie complemented the jacket. He
bought an Olympus camera that had a sliding lens cover and would fit in
a pocket. His shoes had been re-soled twice and were ragged. He bought
another pair, the same style, trusty Clarks. The outfit was expensive,
but he wanted to dress honestly.

"I want to feel like myself," he told Alison on Saturday.

"I'm sure your daughter will be proud of you," Alison said.

"The clothes should last--if I don't climb a tree or fall into a vat of
red wine." They were headed out of town toward Nanakuli. It was raining
on and off; the weather was likely to be better on the leeward side.

"How's your course?" Joe asked.

"Interesting. Zen is so different in its practice--from Christianity, I
mean. It makes me want to go to Japan and visit the monasteries, find a
teacher. You need a teacher to learn what counts, to become one
yourself."

Alison was so positive that Joe found it hard to imagine her having had
job troubles. "Why did you get fired, if you don't mind my asking?"

"It was troubling. I did my undergraduate work at a bible college, but
I'm well educated, Joe. I have a masters in communication from Columbia
and a PhD. The students were trained to go out and do the Lord's work,
but they were only getting one point of view in their education. The
books in the curriculum dealt with science from a fundamentalist point
of view, presenting arguments as though they were objective and
unbiased. The students graduated thinking that they were educated when
they really weren't. It made them confident and more able to face the
work, but I didn't like it. The Lord is not afraid of different points
of view, Joe."

Joe had not met any one on such comfortable terms with the Lord. She
was absolutely unaffected. "It's funny," she said, "what triggered the
final blow up was an editing job I did on an article for the school
publication. The writer--one of the trustees--insisted on capitalizing
the word 'bible' in places where it was not appropriate."

"Good heavens," Joe said.

Alison giggled. "Really. In the light of eternity, what difference does
it make?"

"I think they lost a good person," Joe said.

"I did my best," she said. "I brought lunch."

"Great!" They drove up a narrow rocky valley and ate by the side of the
road in the company of two horses. Alison had packed a bottle of wine
to wash down sandwiches of red peppers, goat cheese, and watercress.
"You went to a lot of trouble," Joe said. "Terrific sandwiches."

"I should have brought glasses for the wine."

"We're roughing it," Joe said, pouring more into his paper cup. "I
wrote the cat burglar story," he remembered.

"Oh, good!"

"Yeah, I took it to the house in Kahala. An old guy answered the door
and told me that the family had sold him the house and moved to
California. He was nice. He gave me their address, so I sent the story.
You were right; it was my responsibility. It felt good to drop the
letter in the mail. Hope it gets to her." Alison clapped her hands. The
horses ears picked up. "I used to work with someone who lived around
here," Joe said. "The horses reminded me. Her name was Lovena. Her
family took care of horses."

"Where did you work?"

"In a warehouse. She was slim, like a boy, with short black hair and
brown skin. She was strong--beautiful, really. I was falling in love
with her, but I was married." Alison sighed.

"Lovena was great, very shy and quiet, hard working. Sometimes she
talked to me when the orders were packed and shipped. She talked about
horses and barracuda and manta rays. I guess there's one time of year
when mantas come into shallow water to mate or lay eggs or something.
People can step on them by accident and get hurt." Joe paused,
remembering. "When Lovena said 'manta' or 'barracuda,' the words
weren't just names; they were respectful. A 'bar-ra-cu-da' was
important, important as any life."

"What happened to her?"

"Don't know. I quit. I hated to say goodbye. In fact, the last day
there, I asked if I could come see her. She was feeling bad, too. She
looked me in the eye and said, 'Yeah--and you bring your wife and that
pretty little girl with you."'

"Good for her," Alison said.

"Mmm."

"It looks like the rain might be stopping. Let's find a beach," Alison
suggested.

"Yes." Joe corked the wine and called to the horses. "Say hi to Lovena
for me, will you?"

Alison drove out to the highway, and they spent the afternoon poking
around, reaching the end of the road and turning back. Neither was in a
hurry to return to the city. At the end of the day, they were standing
in a beach park as the sun slipped toward the horizon.

"I think a front just went through," Joe said. "Wow!" A dark cloud
layer caught fire, lit from below by the setting sun. Purple and
crimson flares rolled across the bottom of the ragged sky. Two hundred
yards away, a painted flagpole split the clouds with a brilliant white
line. It was like a crack in the universe, a glimpse of the beyond.

Alison moved closer and they stared at the energy that seemed to pour
through the crack.

"Too much," Joe said.

"Oh, Joe." They walked to the rental car in the parking lot and got in.
He reached for her. It was spontaneous and all wrong. Alison was not
the right woman. They hugged, their bodies twisting awkwardly in the
small seats as they tried to get closer. As they clung to each other,
ordinary as cloth, as dogs in a parking lot, Joe was unexpectedly
transported with relief. He was a tiny speck in a universe of stars and
specks and emptiness. Nothing kept happening to him like a tap in the
head, like shells falling away. He could have howled with laughter or
cried in utter gratitude--if it mattered.

"Would you drive?" Alison asked.

"Sure." They rode in silence back to Honolulu. Joe stopped by his
building and got out of the car. Alison opened her door and came around
to the driver's side. Joe put his arms around her, and she settled her
head against his chest. They stood for a moment. "Bye," Joe said. She
turned her face up. He took her shoulders in his hands, kissed her
quietly, and turned away.

"Bye, Joe."

He waved and walked slowly inside. _Something is happening here but you
don't know what it is, do you, Mr. Jones_ . . . The Dylan line echoed
in his mind as he climbed the stairs. It was true. Something was
happening. It didn't feel like love, exactly. Or sex, exactly. He was
still shocked by the freedom and relief that had overwhelmed him in the
parking lot.

Three days later, Alison cooked dinner for them in her apartment. They
were sitting on her couch when Joe tried to describe what he had felt
during their hug by the beach.

"Sounds like what the zen people call 'little satori,"' she said.

"I don't know," he said. "I think I've been messed up." His eyes were
fixed on the front of her blouse.

"Help yourself," she said comfortably.

He undid four buttons, slid down on the couch, and laid his hand on her
breast. His mind began to sign off as her nipple responded. Slow spasms
moved up his body, stopping his breath and tightening his stomach
muscles. Alison tuned right in, moving with him, sighing. In a few
minutes they were lying on her bed, marriage considerations and the
below-the-waist rule suspended. She came easily and gratefully. They
were like two thirsty people sharing a glass of water.

Alison got up some time later. Joe was lying with his eyes closed, arms
outstretched, when he felt a washcloth gently but firmly applied. He
jumped. "Just cleaning up," she said cheerfully. "Go back to sleep."
Joe pictured his apartment. He rolled over on his side.

"Alison . . . " he said.

"Yes?"

"You take to this like a duck to water."

"It must be the Swedish," she said seriously.

"Alison, that was wonderful, but I have to go home."

"Oh." She was disappointed. "Are you sure?"

"Yes."

"O.K., Joe."

He dressed, hugged her, and stepped outside. Widely separated
streetlights cast circles of blue light; hedges and trees were dark
green in the shadows. He was only forty minutes from home and he wanted
to walk in the cool air. Alison was going to make up for lost time. She
was in love with him and linking fast. He didn't want to hurt her.

"Complications," he told Batman, on duty at his post on the lanai.
"Nothing we can't handle." But he wasn't so sure.




9


The following Saturday, Joe was on Alison's couch again. Her need to be
coupled was stronger than his need to be alone. She must have known
that a future together was unlikely, but she didn't care. She was in
love. Joe couldn't bring himself to disappoint her. Besides, he enjoyed
her company and the small mole below her left ear and her smell which
reminded him of a field after rain.

They began eating dinner together every other night, but Joe continued
to go home afterwards, often in the early hours of the morning. It was
a compromise. He wanted to wake up in his own bed, stick to his habits,
take his notebook to a coffee shop and keep at his writing.

The weeks sped by as he wrote a longer story based on Mike, the cat
burglar. It was not successful. When he strayed from the facts as he
remembered them, he felt false and uncertain. He had the uneasy feeling
that he didn't know what he was doing. One afternoon toward the end of
August, he and Alison rode the Nuuanu bus to the end of the line and
walked to the bamboo grove that Mo had shown him. They stood on the
bridge and listened to the rhythmic hypnotic knocking.

"It's so romantic, Joe." Alison leaned against him.

"Yes."

She said, "You know I've got to go home."

"Mmm."

"My flight is Wednesday."

He sighed. "So soon?"

"Are you going to stay in Honolulu, Joe?"

He sensed the proposal behind the question. It was tempting to follow
her, to merge lives, to be a normal husband and give up his frustrating
search for something he didn't understand. He spoke slowly. The words
formed themselves. "For the time being," he said. "This damn story I'm
writing isn't any good."

"You mustn't give up." She looked at him seriously, a hint of tear in
each eye.

"I can't," he said. "I think it's who I am." He meant: I'm not going to
come with you and be your man.

"Oh, Joe." Her tears came and she put her arms around him. They held
each other as the bamboo played. "Won't you be lonely?"

"Yes." He squeezed her. "I'll miss you."

On Wednesday, a version of _Aloha Oe_ poured down from invisible
airport speakers. Joe placed a pikake and ginger lei around Alison's
neck. "I love that song," he said, pulling away. "Even Muzak can't ruin
it. Did you know it was written by Queen Liliuokalani? Can you imagine
any of our politicians leaving anything as good?"

"Joe, will you come see me in Wisconsin? You'd like it. Madison is very
cultural." Alison was going to try until the end.

He hesitated.

She bit her lower lip. "Don't say no, Joe. Just don't say no."

He hung his head. "Take care, Alison." It had been a good time. Sex had
continued between them as straightforward and trusting as the rest of
their relationship. But Alison needed to be in Wisconsin taking care of
her mother, and she needed a husband, not his part time attention. "You
aren't sorry, are you?" he asked.

"Oh, no. You are my lover man. And . . . " She smiled because it was a
joke between them, "In the light of eternity, what difference does it
make?" She threw her arms around him, then turned quickly and left for
her departure gate. He went directly to the Moana.

"I need a drink, Gilbert."

"You in the right place."

For the first time since he'd landed in Hawaii, Joe was lonely. Alison
had given him something, and he missed it already. What was it? Her
directness. It was how to be, a gift. He watched the young and the not
so young prowl along the beach, bodies glistening with tanning oil.
None were for him. Morgan was coming through for a night, he
remembered. And Mo was due back soon. He could talk to them, anyway. He
trudged home anesthetized, wished Batman a good sleep, and lowered
himself onto his mattress.

The next day his poem was returned in the mail, rejected without
comment. The day after that, he reached Mo on the phone.

"Hi, there."

"Oh. Hello, Joe."

"Welcome back. How was your trip?"

"Exhausting. Got some good shots of the boundary waters area, though.
And my parents' anniversary--what a scene."

"Alcohol consumed?"

"Lord! It was touching, really, my folks and their old friends toasting
each other and their fallen comrades."

"Ah," Joe said.

"What's new with you?" she asked.

"Oh, you know--rejection and solitude." Alison's face flashed before
him; he apologized silently.

"Why don't I believe you?" Mo asked.

"It's chromosomal; you can't help it. Anyway, I was rejected. By Manoa.
They didn't like my poem. They didn't even say they didn't like it,
just sent it back."

"Builds character," Mo said.

"Listen, Mo, now that you feel sorry for me, how about dinner next
week? An old friend of mine is coming with his new lady; I think it
would be a good time."

"Hmmm . . . what day? I'm free Thursday and Friday."

"Good, they're coming Thursday."

"Fine," Mo said. "Give me a call. If I'm out, leave a message telling
me where to meet you."

"Will do."

The following Thursday, the lei stands at the airport were busy. Joe
made it to the arrival gate just in time. There was Morgan with a new
haircut, looking somewhat larger than life in a short sleeved shirt,
wearing chinos rather than jeans, striding along with a small blonde
woman. She saw Joe approach and flashed a thousand watt smile. "Aloha,"
Joe said, hanging leis around their necks.

"Aloha," Morgan said. "Edie, this is Joe."

"Edie Rowantree," she said through the dazzle, extending her hand.

"Joe Burke. How was the flight?"

"I hate flying," she said. "We encountered turbulence in the middle of
the ocean. I asked Morgan if there was any hope. 'There is always
hope,"' she imitated.

"Baggage claim," Morgan said. A short time later they were in a cab
speeding toward Waikiki.

"I thought we might have dinner with a friend of mine, if you aren't
too tired."

"Oh, good," Edie said. "We spent last night in San Francisco to break
up the flight. We aren't tired, are we Morgan?"

"Certainly not. Where are we?"

"Passing the old cannery," Joe said. "That's where Alphonse showed me
the right way to drive a fork lift."

Morgan explained, "Joe was too--what was it--delicate?"

"Careful," Joe said.

"Maybe you could write a story about it," Edie said. She made it sound
completely possible, like--why not have it done by dark?

"Maybe I will. Good choice, the Moana, by the way."

"A friend told me that they have windows that actually open," Edie
said. "I want to hear surf. Then we're going to the other islands."

"Some of the other islands," Morgan said.

"Molokai, and Kauai, and Maui." They swept up to the front of the hotel
and arranged to meet at the banyan bar in an hour and a half. Joe
called Mo.

"The eagle has landed. Can you make it, 6:30 at the Moana? I'll
probably be there a bit before."

"See you there."

He went over to the International Marketplace and lost himself in
wandering groups of tourists. A balding caricaturist with rimless
glasses bantered with a line of haoles waiting to be drawn.

"Hobby? What do you do on weekends?"

"Golf." A few pen strokes and a driver curled around the subject's
neck, the ball untouched on the tee.

"Tennis." A racquet appeared with strings burst by an opponent's serve.
Two or three minutes and he was done, asking each person's name,
titling the drawing beneath its over-sized head, signing it and
wrapping it in clear plastic. He was magician and entertainer, eyes
blue and shrewd, working hard, keeping the crowd alive. It was six
o'clock before Joe realized it. He scooted back to the Moana.

"Glenlivet and water, please, Gilbert."

Joe raised his glass in Gilbert's direction. "Here's to friends."

"Oh, you have some?"

"Yok, Gilbert." Mo appeared. "See?"

"See what?" she asked.

"Sorry, I was talking to Gilbert. You are my friend, aren't you?"

"How long have you been here?"

"Two minutes."

"Very pretty friend," Gilbert said. "Too good for you. May I get you a
drink?"

"Lillet on the rocks, please." Mo was wearing linen slacks and an open
weave cotton sweater. She rarely used make up; touches of eye shadow
made her seem especially dressed up. Morgan and Edie walked down the
wide back steps of the hotel and across the courtyard beneath the
banyan tree. Joe waved.

"More friends," he said. They moved to a table. "Did your window open?"

"Oh, yes," Edie said, nodding. "It was very satisfying." Her face was
open and cheerful; her eyebrows curved; her cheeks curved; her mouth
curved widely around and up at the corners. Beneath the curves she had
a strong head.

"So, Morgan . . . Waikiki, Diamond Head . . . " Joe stretched out his
arm.

"Yes," Morgan said in his most approving manner.

"What do you do here?" Edie asked Mo.

"I have a small photography business."

"How wonderful," Edie said. "I am talent-less." One corner of Morgan's
mouth twitched. Mo sipped her Lillet.

"Me too," Joe said. "I paid twenty-five cents for biology drawings in
high school. My worms looked like accordions."

"I understand you are a builder and a writer," Mo said, turning to
Morgan.

"I suppose so," he said.

"Damned good one," Joe said.

"What is your book about?"

"Houses of the Hudson Valley." Mo smiled broadly. That's Morgan, Joe
thought. He states the title of his book, a simple fact, and manages to
imply that the universe is a lunatic misunderstanding, that we are all
waiting at the wrong bus stop.

"Have you been working on it long?" Mo asked.

"Nine years."

"I could eat a mahi-mahi," Edie said.

They ended up at the restaurant, John Dominis, at a table with too many
glasses, sea bass, snapper, and mahi-mahi, salads, desserts . . . No
one wanted to stop. Morgan told a long story that began with a knock on
his door one winter afternoon. A Jehovah's Witness had wandered up the
mountain to proselytize. Morgan was so glad to see someone that he
invited him in and had a conversation about the Bible.

"Given their assumptions," Morgan said, "I thought I might discuss
their conclusions." The following week the witness returned with help.
Pots of tea, hours later, the witness and his help left, baffled,
promising to return with an elder. By spring, much of the church's
energy was directed at rebutting the doctrinal challenge from the
mountains. Morgan was invited to headquarters where an informal truce
was reached. "They are an efficient organization in many ways," Morgan
said grandly.

"Poor bastards," Joe said. "Morgan is difficult in debate, Mo. He got
out of the draft by writing so many complicated letters questioning
selective service procedures that they finally figured it would be
easier to classify him, 1Y."

"A successful campaign," Morgan said.

"Better than mine," Joe said.

"Could have been worse," Morgan reminded him.

"True." Joe explained to Edie and Mo that he'd enlisted in the Air
Force and decided, midway through his hitch, that war was wrong, that
people shouldn't kill each other. "Vietnam was heating up. The colonel
at my courts-martial listened to my speech, smiled at two lieutenants
who were doing on-the-job legal training, and said, 'Airman Burke, you
may persist in your attitude and I will sentence you to one year at
Fort Leavenworth Federal Penitentiary and a bad conduct discharge, or,
you can keep your mouth shut, serve the rest of your enlistment, and I
will sentence you to thirty days in the stockade, a five hundred dollar
fine, and reduction in rank to Airman Basic. What will it be?'

"He raised the gavel, the son of a bitch. I was twenty; I was stubborn;
I had no idea what a federal pen was like. I opened my mouth for
another statement of principle, and a voice sounded in my head--that's
only happened to me twice. It said: 'you asshole, people kill each
other. They have always killed each other. What do you think you're
doing?' The voice saved me. 'Thirty days,' I said. The colonel smacked
his gavel and read the sentence for the record.

"'Yes, sir.' I said. 'My car is at the BX; I'll just park it behind the
barracks.' Two AP's took me by the elbows and marched me to the
stockade."

"A near thing," Edie said. "It was a senseless war."

"It sure was," Joe said. "And it was the poor boys from Kentucky who
died in it."

"And the Vietnamese," Mo added. They were silent.

"It wasn't so bad in the stockade," Joe said. "We got to watch TV for
an hour each afternoon--Perry Mason. The guys were always yelling for
longer sentences at the end of the show. One of the guys was doing
ninety days for swearing at an officer's wife. Stockwell, his name was.
He was a bag boy, and she used to give him a hard time at the
commissary. He called her a bitch one afternoon and she complained to
her husband. Ninety days! They add it to the end of your hitch, too."

"So you had to serve thirty extra days?" Mo asked.

"Twenty-five. I got five days off for good behavior. It cooled me down.
I got through the rest of my hitch without any problems."

They settled the bill. Joe put half on his credit card, and Morgan
asked what he was doing for money. "Nothing," Joe said.

"You can't spend more than you earn, forever, you know."

"Good point. I'm not quite broke; I'll figure something out."

"Morgan says you're a computer expert," Edie said helpfully.

"Was, Edie. The technology changes every couple of years and I'm sick
of learning languages. It was something I did just to get by. I've
given it up."

"Oh, good!" she said.

He drew them a map of Lihue showing the way to Hamura's Saimin. "Don't
miss it!" They made their way back to the Moana and said goodbye. Mo
dropped Joe off at Liholiho Street. Just before they parted, he thought
he saw her hesitate. He went to bed and dreamed that she was naked,
turning away from him in bed to another man. He touched the base of her
back where it curved toward him and rubbed a few small farewell circles.




10


Morgan was right, of course. Sooner or later he was going to run out of
money. Things weren't going well. He wasn't satisfied with the cat
burglar story, and he was lonely. He decided to write a story about
Alphonse and the cannery.

Alphonse was a slim, dark, middle aged Filipino with a thin straight
mustache. He had watched Joe stack empty pallets with a yellow Hyster
and then he'd motioned Joe out of the seat. The forklift engine roared;
his hands blurred; pallets leaped into perfect piles, ten feet high.
Alphonse cut the engine and climbed down, eyes bright. He was somewhere
between ten and a hundred times faster than Joe. The cannery whistle
blew. Coffee break. Alphonse smiled, nodded, and turned for the
cafeteria. Joe followed.

Alphonse was Joe's trainer. Wherever they went in the cannery, people
called to him. He lifted a hand, smiled, and kept going. He was
universally popular, but he rarely spoke to anyone; he focused on the
work--how to do it better, how to do it faster. Joe was in a welfare
job training program. He hated the whistle that told them when they
could stop and when they must start. He hated the gray industrial paint
and the numbing future--less work for someone else's profit.

Alphonse had no future. Not only that, he was twenty years older than
Joe. He worked Joe into the ground every day, and when he waved with a
small smile and walked away at the end of the shift, his head was high
and he seemed untouched. Alphonse had his own standards, his own
integrity, and somehow he was stronger than the whole gray clanking
cannery. Stronger than profit, stronger than loss, Joe wrote.

But the story wasn't any good. It was true, as far as it went, but it
wasn't--a story. What is a story, anyway?

Joe realized that he didn't know.

When Maxie was about fifteen, Joe used to quiz him on "Joe's Maxims."

Joe: "Women?"

Maxie: "Uh, women, women . . . All women are pear shaped!"

Joe (handing Maxie a quarter): "Very good, very good. And now, for a
dollar, grand prize--an educated man?"

Maxie: "Damn. An educated man--umm--knows what he doesn't know."

Joe: "Right!"

Joe's position was that educated people know at least one subject well
enough so that they realize (by comparison) when they don't know
another. This was heavy for fifteen, but Max was game. "The idea is to
know when you don't know what you're doing; then you can go ask someone
or buy a good book and find out," Joe explained. Maxie nodded
agreement, winnings crumpled firmly in one hand.

So, go find out what a story is, Joe told himself. He began reading
books on fiction, but they weren't much help. For a change of pace, he
looked up Arthur Soule on the Internet and discovered that a book he'd
written on Roman taxation was still available. Joe ordered it, and when
it arrived he found it interesting and clearly written. There was a
small picture of Soule on the book jacket--patrician with a large jaw
and thinning hair. Mo was a chip off the old block.

A few days before Kate's wedding, the phone rang as he was heading out
the door.

"Hi, Joe."

"Mornin', Mo . . . That's a snappy opening," he said. "Maybe we should
have a radio program."

"But it would have to be in the morning," she said. "When I work."

"Me, too. Good point."

"O.K., that's settled, no show. I was wondering if you might want to
come over for lunch."

"Sure."

"I have an ulterior motive--two, actually. Leaky faucets."

"Say no more. I was born to plumb."

"See you around noon, then?"

"Yup. Wait a minute, where?" She gave him directions to a small street
on the Ewa side of Manoa Valley. "No problem," he said putting the
phone down. "Trouble in Gotham, Batman. Lady needs help." He rubbed his
hands together. This was a test, no doubt about it, a dragon to slay.

He had left his slayer channel-lock pliers in his truck, however, along
with the rest of his tools. They now belonged to Maxie and were
somewhere in New England. He walked to the shopping center and bought a
toolkit cased in aluminum with foam cut out for each individual tool.
It looked like a briefcase. He went to Sears for a package of faucet
washers and some thread sealer.

"Joe Burke, executive plumber," he announced at Mo's door.

"Well, come right in." She looked rested. He took off his shoes and
advanced into a clean living room furnished with a long couch, an
armchair, a wooden rocking chair, a gray rug, several expensively
framed photographs, and two floor lamps. Orchids hung by a large
window. Lush greenery rose steeply behind the house.

"Nice, mighty nice." The house was small, built above and behind a
separate garage that fronted the street. Steps led up to a porch and
the door through which he'd entered. The air was cool and quiet. The
house seemed to breathe in a wooded space just large enough for it and
for the walls of vegetation on either side that separated it from its
neighbors. A sense of privacy lay in the living room like an expensive
gift.

Mo led him into a neatly organized kitchen. "I know who he is." Joe
pointed at a photograph of her father that hung above a table.

"Ah yes. My father. Do I look so much like him?"

"Very similar in the eyes and mouth." What else was there?

"Professor Soule," she said.

"I read his book," Joe confessed. "Pretty good writer." An expression
both arrogant and helpless flashed across her face. "Clear," Joe added.

"Yes. He's a worker." Her expression neutralized. Joe put a hand behind
his ear.

"I don't hear any dripping . . . "

"Let me show you. The kitchen doesn't drip all the time; the bathroom
is the worst." Joe leaned over the bathroom sink, thumped it, and
listened to its heartbeat.

"Operation iss required." He opened the aluminum case.

"Snazzo, so shiny," she said staring at the tools. "I'll fix the
salad."

Joe shut the water off and began dismantling a faucet, eventually
reaching the washer, held by a brass screw. He replaced both washers in
the bathroom and bot