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“Just one,” Brett said. “Have you lost your fucking mind?”
Mac shrugged. “Probably.”
CHAPTER 67
Palace Theater, Hilo, Hawai‘i
The loud, fiery town meeting that Hilo residents had demanded Henry Takayama call had been going on at the Palace Theater on Ha‘ili Street for an hour.
The theater was a grand centerpiece of the town, roughly a hundred years old, and it did look like a palace inside, with its ornate walls and red velvet seats. Lono watched from a seat in the very back as people lined up in the center aisle, waiting to walk onstage to the microphone set up next to the one in front of Mr. Takayama. Like all of them, Lono had come because he wanted to know what was going on with his town. Mac hadn’t returned his calls for a couple of days. School was canceled because the gym and cafeteria were being set up as evacuation shelters. The one time Lono had tried to go to HVO, he had been turned away, told that only “essential” personnel were allowed inside the buildings.
So he watched and listened to all the shouting, like this was a different kind of show at the theater. Like one of those Housewives shows his mother liked to watch.
As soon as someone new stepped to the microphone and began talking about how they were all in the dark about what the army was doing without their consent, the place would be thrown into an uproar all over again. Even though there was no debate tonight; they were all on the same side.
Us against them,Lono thought,when it’s really supposed to be us against the volcano.
A short, white-haired native man made his way slowly up the stairs to the stage.
“I was born in this town and I will die in this town!” the white-haired man shouted into the microphone. “And no stinkinghaoleis going to scare me away, whether they are wearing a uniform or not!”
The crowd raised the roof in approval, making the old hall shake as if another quake had just rocked Hilo.
“Sometimes I worry about these men with their white faces more than I worry about Pele!” the man said.
Lono knew that Pele was the goddess of volcanoes, and her legend was as much a part of this town as the volcanoes and all the danger inside them.
The old man quieted the crowd with his hands.
“This is ourfakacity!” he shouted in conclusion, and the crowd cheered again.
A woman in a flowered dress was next, also elderly and just as feisty. “We cannot let them violate our graves!” she said, shaking her fist. “These men have no right to do that!” She turned and pointed a finger at Henry Takayama. Lono saw the man flinch, even though the old woman was half his size.
“Are you just going to stand by and let them do that?” she asked.
Lono watched Mr. Takayama, the boss of his best friend Dennis’s mother. In that moment, he looked as if he wanted to be anywhere other than this stage, this theater, even if it meant moving closer to the heat and danger of the summit.
Takayama rapidly shook his head: No, no, no.
Then he leaned into his own microphone and said, “I will always stand with the people who live in our town.”
“Then you start proving that, Tako Takayama!” the woman said, spitting out the words.
Even at his age, Lono knew how sacred these burial sites were, sites that his mother said had preserved the spirits of thekupunafor thousands of years. He had been raised on these legends, steeped in them, and he had strict orders from his mother to tell her if he ever found out about anyone, even his friends, violating these sites; she would call the police.
“This is why our people did not trust thekeafrom the beginning,” the woman said.
Kea.Another word for “white.”
Sometimes the ones using it made it sound like a slur.
The people in the theater were back up, stomping their feet, raising their fists in defiance, some waving their arms in the air and swaying, as if to music.
Lono had never seen anything like this. And he’d never loved Hilo more, as scared as he was.
Lono was about to go outside and call Mac again, tell Mac about what he had seen tonight, when the soldiers came through the double doors. More appeared in front of the first row of seats.
Lono ran.
