Night of the Howling Dogs (13 page)

For the first mile we snaked barefoot through low bushes, brown grass, and weeds. Louie took the lead. We didn’t speak. The trail rose gently out of the sea-level bowl Halape sat in. It was easy going.

Until we hit the first lava flow.

The landscape turned to solid black rock. The trail was almost impossible to see, but you could make it out by following the
ahus,
or stacked stone markers that people had built to show the way. It was amazing that any were still standing after the earthquake. One stack led to the next, and to the next. The Hawaiians of long ago had come up with this idea. Reverend Paia said the common people weren’t allowed to travel through the lush highlands, where it was cool, where it rained and sweet breezes blew. The highlands were
kapu,
off-limits, set apart for royalty. If a commoner got caught up there, it was the end of the line for that traveler.

Seemed like the end of the line down here, too.

There were two kinds of lava we would have to cross—smooth pahoehoe, and a’a, like shattered glass. Boots could take it. But our bare feet would be ground to raw meat.

Halfway across the first flow we stopped and gaped at what lay ahead. We were at the top of a rise in the land, the sun climbing into the sky directly in front of us. It reflected off the pahoehoe and nearly blinded me, the smooth rocks glistening endlessly into the distance, mile after mile after mile.

“Holy Moses,” I whispered, shading my eyes and wishing I had a hat.

“Don’t think about it,” Louie said.

“Impossible.”

“Okay, then think about how each step is taking you more close to the road.”

“I might not live that long.”

Louie shrugged. “How you look at it.”

We limped on.

“How’s your feet?” Louie said, stopping a moment.

“Sore.”

“Going get more sore.”

“We need wings.”

I took the canteen from Louie. My tongue felt fat and dry. I took a sip and let the heavenly stink water sit in my mouth. The ocean to the right was blue, flat, and endless. Not one ripple marred its surface. When I turned and put the sun behind me, the color became even richer.

Then I remembered Sam.

And Reverend Paia’s broken arm.

Casey’s knee.

Lenny’s head, floating in the water.

Mr. Bellows.

And how that colorful ocean was a fake…it had tried to kill me. I turned to hand the canteen back to Louie. “Let’s move.”

But Louie had already gone. I had to jog to catch up.

Our luck ended at a lava flow that had raced down over a previous flow. It was the fast kind—a’a, the kind that would rip our feet to shreds.

Louie inched ahead, testing his steps.

He stopped and stepped back. “I don’t know.”

I crept out onto the sharp rocks. “Jeese! How are we going to cross
this
?”

“Your shirt,” he said. “Rip it in two, tie half to each foot.”

“But the sun will cook us.”

“No choice…’less you can think of one.”

I took my shirt off and tore it down the middle. My back was already fried. “No going back now.”

“Nope.”

Soon we had raglike T-shirt shoes. Looked like bandages. Louie took a step and grinned.

“While they last,” I said.

“Go easy.”

In less than an hour our shirt shoes were shredded and stained with blood. Louie stopped and pointed with his chin. Not far ahead the a’a ended. Smooth, sun-glazed pahoehoe lay like a carpet beyond.

“Yes!” I said.

But we both knew we hadn’t seen the last of the bad stuff. I was seriously beginning to believe we were dreaming if we thought we could walk over any more a’a with only the rags on our feet.

Louie slipped the canteen off and took a sip to wet his caked lips. He handed it to me. “We think of something when we got to.”

“All in the way you look at it.”

Louie grinned. “You catching on, haole.”

I drank a small amount and handed the canteen back. Louie shook it. “Going down fast.”

“It does that when you drink it.”

“You funny, for somebody going die of sunstroke.”

I grunted.

We inched across the last few yards of ice-pick rock to the smooth pahoehoe and sat. I peeled the rags off my bloody feet. “Man, that stings.”

Louie winced, his feet looking worse than mine.

The sun boiled down.

We rested, gazing at the desolation that surrounded us. Even the ocean looked desolate, because it couldn’t help us.

“Let’s go,” Louie said. “Sit too long, we going get stiff.”

“Stiff already.”

“See?”

We staggered on.

“Hey, Louie,” I said. “Did you hear those dogs last night? Before the earthquake?”

“No.”

“They were howling, just like the night before.”

He kept walking, then stopped and looked back. “They knew it was coming.”

“You think so?”

“They were trying to warn us.”

Could be, I thought. They’d howled from down the coast, and Masa said they didn’t howl for nothing, and we’d gone that way and found Sam and Mr. Bellows. I was becoming a believer. Spirits, ghosts, howling dogs. The strange coincidence of Fred showing up and staying with Sam and Mr. Bellows until they were rescued.

It was creepy.

Or maybe it wasn’t. All in the way you look at it, like Louie said. “Hey, you think that small white dog was Pele?” I asked.

“Sure.”

“How come?”

“Because if I say it wasn’t, then she going get mad and make my life miserable.”

“Didn’t she just do that?”

Louie snorted and kept walking.

We came upon a new flow, smooth, molten mud rock that had folded over itself, then dried and hardened.

We started out.

“Aiy!” Louie yelped, one foot breaking through the thin rock skin, then the other. He sat, then sank.

Vanished.

“Louie!”

He groaned.

I scrambled up and peeked over the edge of the hole. It was dark. I could only see the top of his head. I got down flat on the lava, hanging over the edge. “Louie! Are you okay?”

He’d fallen into a tunnel, or a tube, where air had been trapped when the hot lava dried.

“Pull me up.”

I reached down and grasped his hand. He was wedged in and had to wiggle his way out. I pulled him up. Blood oozed from a cut on his shin. “We need a stick so we can bang the rocks in front of us.”

“Maybe we’re not following the ahus.”

“What ahus?” he said. “Look…no more.”

He was right. Not one marker. We’d lost the path.

“Rest,” Louie said, looking for a solid place to sit.

I stayed where I was, afraid to move and break the crust. I wasn’t ready to visit the center of the earth.

The lonely coast wobbled in haze. Not one cloud sat in the endlessly blue sky. “It’s too far, Louie.”

He looked ahead, then back the way we’d come. “You think we halfway yet? Supposed to be eleven miles.”

“Hard to tell.”

We sat sizzling, bacon in a frying pan, our faces growing puffy from the heat. We were going to feel it in spades tomorrow. If there was a tomorrow.

I stretched my legs and massaged my calves. They were starting to tighten up. “Come on, we got to keep going.”

He didn’t move.

I shrugged. Who cared anymore? It was over. We had a thousand miles of broken glass to walk over on cut and bloody feet. We were done for.

I sat. In that heat it took everything I had left just to breathe. “We got two choices, Louie—get up and move on, or fry to death. Which one you like?”

He took a long time answering. “You think we going know it when we die? Or we just going fall asleep?”

I was still thinking about that when I heard the engine.

“Chopper!” Louie shouted, struggling to his feet.

We got up and hobbled over the slight rise of the bowl we were in. Nothing in the sky.

But the sound was getting louder.

“There!” Louie said, jumping, waving his hands high above his head.

Skimming low along the coastline, a United States Coast Guard helicopter thumped toward us, the pulse of its rotors pounding the air.
Whup-whup-whup-whup!

We leaped and waved and screamed, probably looking like fleas from the air. They could fly right over us and never know it.

“Here! Over here!”

“This way! Hey!”

They flew past. My heart pounded. “Come back!” My throat swelled with fire. Rescue passing us by was too much to take. “Wait…”

Louie jogged after them but soon gave up and stood watching them fade.

But the helicopter tilted and swooped in over the lava. “They saw us! Look, they saw us!”

The copter swung around and came back. For a moment it hovered over us, the pilot gazing down, talking into the mike on his helmet. I raised my arms, the wind from the rotors whipping up tiny bits of rock that stung my eyes.

Relief tumbled over me, a waterfall of everlasting love for the United States Coast Guard.

Whup-whup-whup-whup!

The sound was monstrous. I clamped my hands over my ears. The red and white colors of the coast guard never looked so good to me in all my life. The pilot hovered, searching for a place flat enough to land. The copter was huge, the size of two monster bulldozers. Red nose, white body, red tail. Three guys peered out the open side door.

I shielded my eyes as they crossed the blazing sun and came down smooth and settled on a patch of uneven rock.

We limped toward it, ducking into the wind of the rotors. A guy in an orange flight suit jumped out and jogged toward us. I nearly choked when I saw Dad in the doorway behind him. Never had that barrel chest and sea captain’s scowl looked so good to me. He shouted and waved, but I couldn’t hear over the roar of the rotors.

“Dad!” I yelled, overwhelmed to see him.

The man on the ground wore a helmet with a microphone in it so he could talk with the pilot. It said
Ramos
on his flight suit. “You boys from the Scout group at Halape?” he shouted.

“Yes! We need help!”

“That’s why we’re here!” He motioned for us to hunch down.

Louie and I followed him to the helicopter. The blast from the rotors was fierce. Pieces of rock pricked my skin, like in a sandstorm.

Dad and another coast guard guy reached out to pull us up. “Thank God!” Dad shouted, hugging me close. He pushed me back and looked me over. “Are you all right?” he shouted.

“We need help! Mr. Bellows…” I gave up. It was too loud to talk.

Ramos motioned me toward a seat, shouting, “I’m going to strap you in!” Dad sat next to me. Louie settled across from us. Ramos buckled us in. “Ready, Cap,” he said into his microphone.

Dad put his arm around my shoulder and hugged me again. I winced and he let go. “Bruises!” I shouted.

Dad nodded, deep creases in his face.

I glanced at Louie. “This is my dad! Dad, this is Louie!”

Louie nodded, then turned away. For the first time I noticed the gash behind his ear, the blood caked in his hair. Cuts and bruises raked his arms, legs, and face. Did I look as bad as he did?

“Hang on!” Ramos said. “We’re going up!”

The engine roared.

I clutched the base of my seat as we rose, tipped, and sped toward Halape, the door on the starboard side wide open. Endless miles of black lava flew by below. From this height you could see the thin trail we’d been following, a faint gray snake on an endless black landscape. Another world, another universe. And there below was the spot where we’d drifted off onto the thin-crusted rock. I could see the hole Louie had fallen into.

The air cooled quickly.

The other coast guard guy, whose tag read
McCreedy,
tossed me and Louie coast guard T-shirts that he dug out of a box. I pressed mine against my burned face, feeling the heaven of something soft, something not of rock and heat. I put it on. He gave us water.

We drank deeply.

My eyes welled with thankfulness.

“How’d you get on this helicopter?” I shouted at Dad.

“Friends in coast guard! Got home last night!”

“Mom all right?”

He nodded. “Epicenter off Halape!”

“There was a wave!”

Dad motioned for me to wait, pointed at his ears. “Later!”

“Mister!” Louie shouted to Dad. “How big was it!”

“Seven point two!”

Louie and I glanced at each other.

We rode on without talking.

Dad watched the island pass by. I felt numb. Louie kicked my foot and lifted his chin to the open door. The helicopter was out over the water and circling back, banking. Halape came into view and you could see our small group looking up at us. All around them, and over the whole of Halape, our gear was scattered like trash blown from a passing garbage truck. The small island offshore was mostly sunken, and the coconut grove grew up out of the ocean.

Louie looked back at me and shook his head.

I nudged Dad and pointed. “Some camped in those trees! I was in a shelter…. Gone now!”

We circled closer.

Dad studied the grove in the ocean, the crumbled shelters that had not been swallowed, the ragged survivors looking up at us like zombies. It was eerie the way they just stood there. Was something wrong?

Dad shook his head. “Unbelievable.”

Tears filled my eyes.

Louie saw, his face fractured by my cracked lens. He turned away, showing none of the emotion I felt rushing up out of me. I took off my glasses and swiped at my eyes with the bottom of my T-shirt.

We landed close to the water where the sloping land flattened out. Two paniolos were off with the three remaining horses, soothing them as the helicopter settled.

Masa started down to us. No one else moved.

The engine slowed, the rotors swishing. We jumped out and ducked our way uphill. Why did everyone look like standing corpses? Was someone dead?