PUNAHELE


Favored Child


WAI'ANAE COAST, 1964

Morning, the air astonishingly clear. The sky so unblemished and wide, there is divinity in the light. Sun and heat already strong, the shapes of all things are revealed. Old roosters crowing, shopkeepers yawning, rolling back iron window grilles. The absolute poise of women with blood-leaping grace walking dusty roads to market.

In shanty houses, in rumpled beds, the piping cries of humans waking. A dozing father's muscular, copper-colored arm falls from a bed to the floor. An infant crawls across the floor, picks up the father's hand, and drools. The hand scoops up the child, cupping it like a well-loved toy. It lifts the child up to the day. Here is the still life. The sudden, static poem of being.

Down no-name roads, children stare from windows of abandoned, oxidizing buses, like little clusters of roe. Fresh from sleep, their faces are lovely to behold. Some windows have curtains, there is even a tilting mailbox near the road. A boy appears in a doorway, shaking out a sleeping mat. He rubs his eyes and stares as if in deep remembrance. An old man waters his taro patch, whispering to heart-shaped leaves that it is morning.

Life is not weary of these folks. They have held on to ancient rhythms in this world that was bequeathed to them . . .


This was the wild place, the untutored place, where the Grand* Tutu of the coast, the rugged Waianae Mountains, watched over the generations. Here, thirty miles west of Honolulu, were the rough tribes of Waianae, native clans that spawned outcasts and felons. Yet their towns had names like lullabies--Maili, Nanakuli, Lualualei--until up past Makaha and Makua the coastal road ...