House of Many Gods (38 page)

As he talked more people gathered, for his voice was strong and deep, resonating like a striking bell. Ana saw how he touched them at their hearts, binding them all together.

“I’ve just been told that sheriffs and the National Guard have blocked the road starting at Kaneana Cave, cutting us off from our brothers on the beaches. They’re going to use a pincer movement. I saw it a thousand times in Vietnam. They’ll descend on the homeless from both ends of the beach and also the middle. They’ll come by land and sea and air. They’re going to squeeze them out. Anyone who resists, they will arrest.”

He raised his voice, looking over the crowds.

“We’re not going out there to start a riot. Don’t let them corrupt you into violence. If a cop strikes you … do not hit back. Remember, we’re not just marching for Mākua. We’re marching for our lives.”

A man shouted up at him. “Ey! Lopaka. Why listen to you? Your house is full of war vets, men who killed.
You
killed in Vietnam. So, who are you to talk about nonviolence? Who are you to stop the Army from protecting us?”

Ana saw his bodyguards move in. A chill went through her. She saw that same chill passing through the crowd. Lopaka was becoming a force strong enough to need protection. When he spoke even cops listened, though their faces registered contempt. For here was a man who moved
crowds. Ana saw how, without meaning to, he had been lifted to another level. He had become someone they looked up to, and would follow.

“Yes, I come from a family of soldiers, men who fought in every war. We tried to be honorable, to serve our country when it called. But in return, our country has not honored us. It is not serving us. If you are not with us, step out of the way. We will not be divided!”

A wave of excitement shifted the crowd. Sheriffs unsnapped their holsters. They had heard him speak before. Perhaps he didn’t know the power of his voice, how it seemed to touch a moral center. Today a crowd of only several hundred had gathered, but what if one day he raised his voice, inciting half the island to rebel? The sick, the unemployed, the disenfranchised. He had that kind of power now.

“Justice is all we are asking for,” he shouted. “We will march until we reverse this domination. And if they knock me down, someone else will take my place. Victory is just a two-day paddle home!”

The crowds pressed on until they saw the barricades ahead. Lines of police blocking them from further progress. Folks massed and stood there shouting as Ana worked her way forward, then stood paralyzed. Tactical-unit SWAT teams, state police, highway patrol. And almost every face, Hawaiian. Now half a dozen bulldozers made their way up the highway. The drivers, too, Hawaiian. The military and state were clever, pitting brother against brother so that, to the outside world, there was the impression of total disunity amongst the people.

Using her elbows to break through, she continued pushing forward, finally confronting a wall of men in full battle dress. Bulletproof vests worn over thickly padded shirts and pants. Holstered guns and gas canisters at their hips, and in their hands big rubber truncheons. Metal helmets covered their ears and necks, and attached to the helmets were dark, convex visors protecting their faces. They looked like man-size beetles. A killer species facing unarmed people.

Ana stared at the man before her. “How can you do this to your people? How?”

Through his visor, she saw perversely absent eyes. “Back!” he shouted. “All you folks get back!”

Ahead, bulldozers turned in at the beach gates where homeless women herded into police vans shouted as their men battled federal marshals and deputies. She felt crowds pushing up behind her, threatening to crush her. She didn’t think the cops could hold them back. A big brown arm flashed before her, something projectiled from the hand.

Then all around her objects flew, the sky suddenly full of rotting
fruit. A cop staggered back, his visor hit by a large exploding papaya. Another swiped at something yellow dripping down his chest. The wall of uniforms retreated, blinded by cataracts of garbage. The shouts of the crowd a wind-driven song. She saw a truncheon raised, a man go down. The crowd condensed in panic. The thud of hard rubber on soft flesh, the moans. Then sirens, choppers overhead.

She heard Lopaka shout, “Stay calm! Stay calm …”

She saw him grapple with a cop, his arm crutch kicked away from him. Then someone threw her to the ground. In an instant, the highway had become slick, the sky overcast by waves of papayas, exploding grapefruits. In slippery leather boots, the uniformed men could not find traction on the ground. They skidded back and forth like skaters, swinging their truncheons, their visors dripping with runny produce. Folks were knocked down, knocked out. The next wave of folks moved in, armed and aiming. It seemed to go on for hours. Then Ana heard the horns.

They came from a long way off and as they neared, folks pulled back, confused. The horns grew louder, and down the highway crowds began to cheer. She shaded her eyes, looking in the distance. Ten trucks speeding up the highway, blasting their horns. On the back of each truck stood old
tūtū
—grandmothers and great-grandmothers. Tiny, wrinkled women and some who were stately and huge.

In billowing, faded
mu‘umu‘us
, brown faces glowing with sweat, they stood with their gray hair flying in the wind. On each truck, half a dozen old women braced themselves, holding a flagpole steady as the Hawaiian flag flew over them, each flag flying upside down, the international signal for distress. In truck after truck, they stood firm, facing forward like the prows of ships, looking like harridans and angels of wrath.

Ana stepped back in shock, recognizing Aunty Pua, her profile immaculate and stern, hair flying out like a silver shawl as she sped by. Their horns blew and continued blowing, and in that moment Ana felt a tug, some memory she could not clearly summon. Folks began shouting again, running beside the speeding trucks headed to the barricades. As the drivers lay on their horns, demanding to be let through, a second and third line of SWAT teams moved in with German shepherds, blocking the trucks.

Federal marshals pushed forward, warning the drivers, “Back up or be arrested.”

The old women never spoke, they just stood there, wind lifting their hair and fluttering the flags as they stared at Mākua Valley, the desecrated bosom of their
‘āina
. SWAT teams stood patting their palms with
truncheons. Attack dogs strained at their leashes. Then one of the old women began to chant. A dirgelike chant that grew louder and louder, her voice vibrating until it seemed not a chant but a terrible portent echoing across the land.

The crowd fell back. Another
tū
tū
took up the song until dozens of them were chanting in unison. Eyes resting on the valley, their voices slowly rose, deep and terrible, like voices from the dead. Then slowly their heads shifted, their eyes came to rest on uniforms surrounding every truck.

One of the old women raised her hand and pointed her finger at a cop. His eyelids fluttered, he seemed to sway, and dropped his arm, his truncheon useless at his side. Still chanting, she pointed at a snarling German shepherd; the dog whimpered and lay down, its head between its paws. All around, the armed forces stood there dazed. And still the old women chanted, their voices a roar that bounced off the walls and ridges of the valley.

“Ē mau! Ē mau! … I Mau Ka Ea I Ka ‘Āina I Ka Pono … !”

We must strive! We must strive! So that righteousness will fill the land again.

And they continued chanting in Hawaiian. “Rise up! Rise up! Do not submit to insult and ignominy. Rise up until there are no more people left to rise. And when we all have risen, then the stones will rise! Then Earth will rise up with us, too!”

Along the highway, folks stood dumb. Three women went down on their knees. Federal marshals looked around, unsure. Out on the beaches, women still shouted from police vans, their men grappling with cops as bulldozers leveled their shacks and tents. Then, it suddenly grew quiet. Only the voices of the
tū
tū
were heard, calling to their gods.

They called on
Kāne
, creator of man, keeper of the earth. They called on
Kū
, god of war, of chiefs and chiefesses. They called on
Lono
, god of agriculture, of clouds and weather. And
Kanaloa
, god of the ocean, of the life therein. They called on
Hina
, first female god of the ancients, and on
Hi‘iaka
, goddess of healing, restorer of life. In those moments, no one moved, no one seemed to breathe.

It was then that the wind came, answering the old women. It blew soft as breath, stilling everything. It was
Makani Hau
, the cool wind from the uplands of Mākua issuing from deep inside the mountains. It blew the people calm, blew children sleepy in their parents’ arms. It blew the armed, uniformed men a sudden ease, so that they raised their hands, stifling yawns.

All along that troubled coast, everything was still. Brothers looked each other in the eye. Moments ago they were prepared to maim or kill. Now they just felt sleepy. And when
Makani Hau
was ended, people felt it lift away. And they felt the coming of her sister wind,
Makani Malu
, the wind of peace, and of protection.

And in that peace and quiet, came a voice. One so deep, so ancient and resounding even
t
?
t
? turned their heads, raising their arms as if surrendering. They listened and they heard.

“ ‘Olaaa … Nā … ‘Iwi. ‘Olaaa … Nā … ‘Iwi.”

The words repeated and repeated. An urgent litany echoing across the land.

“ ‘Ola … Nā … ‘Iwi …”
The bones survive.

People moaned. The hair stood up on Ana’s arms. Sheriffs covered their genitals protectively.
Mākua
, their Mother Earth, their parent, was telling them she knew. She saw. How the people were offering their
aloha
, their
mālama
. They were offering to take care of her. She saw they were prepared to die protecting her. For them, she would live on. Deep in the soil, and in caves where bones of their ancestors rested, she lived on. A woman knelt, stretched out, and laid her cheek against the ground. Many others followed.

Finally, as the voice died down, the old women in the trucks resumed their chanting, and people in the crowds composed themselves, prideful and determined. Ana set her shoulders wide, and as she watched, deputies and National Guardsmen holstered their truncheons and took a brother’s arm, asking them to go home peacefully. The marshals stepped back, gazing into the valley with wondering eyes.

On the beach, bulldozers resumed their destruction. Tents and shacks were razed, and some of the homeless were arrested for resisting. There were minor scuffles, injuries. But on this day, folks felt victorious. They had risen up, the land had risen with them. And so, too, had their gods.

And so it was that on a day when lives could have been destroyed, when brother might have maimed or murdered brother, people stood intact. For years, parents would tell their children, and their children’s children what they had witnessed here. How their gods had rallied.
Mākua
had rallied. They had been granted progress, not slaughter.

The trucks slowly turned around and headed down the highway, the old women silent, fierce-looking and triumphant. Cops ran beside each truck, trying to clear the way. But to Ana—watching how they gazed up at the old women with a kind of awe—it seemed as if they were running in support of them, ready to throw off their gear and join them. As
crowds slowed the progress of the trucks, people tried to clamber aboard. Several young soldiers hoisted themselves up, and stood protectively beside the old women and the flags.

In that moment, Ana remembered footage from Niki’s film, the fall of the Soviet Union. She remembered uncanny scenes of Russian soldiers capitulating, handing their rifles to the crowds, turning their backs on the Russian army forever. And she remembered old grandmothers,
babushki
, climbing aboard armored Russian tanks, young soldiers pulling them up, embracing them, as the tanks rolled into Red Square.

Ancient women who had known only slavery for generations had, in those moments, become the
symbol
of liberated Russia. As they passed through the crowds flooding into Moscow, they did not wave. They stood proudly atop the tanks, their faces sober and determined. Now, as old Hawaiian
tū
tū
passed in trucks, gray hair streaming out behind them, they seemed to see right through the world.

A
LMOST MIDNIGHT AS THEY CLIMBED
K
EOLA
R
OAD
. A
NA’S CHEEKBONE
hurt, she felt the beginning of a shiner. In the house, youngsters had gathered at Pua’s feet, seeing her with a new eye. She had a different air, one of quiet authority, as if she had been keeping her power a secret all these years, and suddenly unveiled it. No more the mixed-up aunty, one day quoting from the Bible, next day from the KUMULIPO. Now she had precision, like a blade-sharp stone. She marked each thing, each person with a glance. Ana saw what she had missed for years, that Pua was wisdom-full, that she possessed
hanohano nui
. Great dignity. In all her years of searching for truth, she had earned much
mana
.

She sat down and rubbed Pua’s dusty feet. “Aunty, so proud of you today. Watching you, I understood we’ve been getting it all wrong. Our future doesn’t lie with my generation, or the kids coming up behind us. It lies with you, our
kūpuna
.”

With a trembling and exhausted hand, Pua reached out and stroked her head. “So it has always been, child. We are old fools, but wise fools. One day it will be your turn.”

“Do you think we’ll win? Will we ever get Mākua back?”

“Oh, yes. Remember what Lopaka said. Victory is just a two-day paddle home. Meanwhile … 
Ē mau! Ē mau! I Mau Ke Ea I Ka
‘
āina I Ka Pono
.”