The trail climbs up the mountain in red swirling curves. Everything is dry and desolate. Lava dust rises over the leeward hills, shrubs and trees bowing under the wind all across the deserted land. Down below, the ocean washes on the black coast, blending with the low rolling clouds in gray and silvery hues.
The village of Kanaio stands on a slope where acacias grow a little higher, providing shade to the local kids as they play their with dogs or chickens, laughing and shouting.
The man watches the smoke coming out from under a large tarp where a kalua pig is slowly cooking.
The sheds are for the most composed of corrugated steel sheet roofs, plastic barrels and two by four wood slats.
“There’s running water over here, at Paul’s house. Electricity comes from solar panels and generators.”
Car carcasses are piling up all over the place. Old Broncos and Highlanders rusting in the salty air, covered with plywood and empty beer bottles.
“I recently got a 36 inch TV. To watch Maui news.”
“Do you go to the city often?”
The man shrugs and finishes his beer.
“For work when contractors need help. They’re picky you know. Real picky. Cannot be late, cannot drink. But fuck them.”
“We’re off the line here. It’s a rough place to be, that’s why I like it. There’s nothing. We’re right at the end of the world.”
“The spirit. You won’t find it in the big city. You won’t find it on the beaches or in the lagoons. You can find it here though. Because it’s on the edge. People here, they’re already on the other side.”
“How did you come to live here?”
A young girl with a yellow flower in her hair runs past us, followed by a dirty old dog.
“Killer Dude, he’s called,” says the man.
“Yeah. Because he fights the others, you know. He’s a fighter. He looks like shit but he’s a badass inside.”
A woman pulls a cable from a pick-up truck and plugs it into an electric engine. A light turns on somewhere.
“I’ve been living in lots of places,” the man says.
“In Hawaii and the mainland. Lived in Alaska for a while. That’s where I got my crack addiction. I take herbs now. It helps sometimes. Sometimes it doesn’t. It’s like any medicine.”
“Did you build your house by yourself?”
“I used to live in the Happy Valley shanty town in Kahului until the developers came in and demolished everything. I left a couple of days before the eviction notice and carried my stuff up here to start rebuilding.”
“Hasn’t the shanty town relocated down the river?”
“That’s right, some people moved there. That’s a funny story, you know.”
“This organization came in one day, saying they would help us. Talking real nice and all, about how the US government had no authority on Hawaiian land because of how they occupied the islands back in the 1800s. How Clinton acknowledged it in ‘98 and all. Bunch of bullshit. But they talked real nice. Complicated words that people couldn’t even understand.”
“They called themselves the Kingdom of Hawaii or something. An independentist group. There was this supposed queen, Akahi Nui, and some shady dude from the mainland. They told us that they would help give the place back to kanaka maoli and that they were backed by big institutions overseas. Billions of dollars they said. All we had to do was giving them fifty bucks each for the paperwork. Of course it was a scam.”
“People in the shanty, they’re gullible. If you tell them you’re kanaka and you want to protect them from the US, they will believe anything you say. These guys managed to convince everyone to come to court meetings an all. Seemed really serious. So everyone gave a little money.”
“We believed in them. We wanted to believe they could help. Then the bulldozers came in, and the queen said the US government was at fault. Told us there wasn’t anything to do about it. I don’t know what they’ve done after that. Probably went to scam other people. But that’s how it is.”
“It’s better up the mountains anyway. We don’t see much visitors. There was a police raid once to bust a meth business but the cops didn’t find anything. It’s too remote. And tourists don’t want to see this part of the islands.”
“It is. It’s also raw, you know. It’s too real. No one wants to see it when it’s too real.”
A man comes to check on the pig under the blue tarp. He has a scar that runs along his left side from his hip to his ribs.
“Do you hunt for food?” I ask.
“A lot. I also eat canned stuff. And when there’s no game we go for the cows in one of the ranches around.”
“Don’t you fear getting caught?”
“They’re used to it. Can’t prove it’s us. As soon as it gets here, it’s eaten in a matter of minutes!”
We laugh together as the sun sets, lighting a fire in the sky.
“They’re haoles. They won’t say anything.”
“They know natives will come and loot their place if they raise the tone. That’s how it works. Haoles are often held responsible for everything. They’re bad for the land, bad for the spirit, bad for the culture.”
“Hawaii is different. Local people don’t like to mix. They give the stink eye to whoever marries a haole.”
“They don’t want to lose their history.”
“They’ve already lost a lot of it, that’s why they want the state to be sovereign. To avoid losing more.”
Two men are shouting at each other with beer bottles in their hands. A young woman comes out of her shed and starts shouting too.
Fighting roosters are clucking in their pens. A kid pokes them with a stick until his fathers slaps him on the back of the head.
“Most of the time. It’s the downside of living apart. Only dysfunctional people stay here. Druggies, alcoholics, former criminals, you name it.”
“You should never trust anyone in a community. It’s the same everywhere. But we know when to stick together, that’s what counts most. We’re like a big broken family.”
The scarred man comes back and removes the tarp. We help him pull banana leaves and unburnt mesquite wood from the hole before dragging the pig out on a large bed of chicken wire. It smells like Maui Wowie weed and diesel gas. I look at the last orange coals in the fire and at the sunset sky. The night is damp and heavy.
“This is called an imu. I bet you’ll never taste anything better.”
Three ATVs arrive from a trail up the mountain. Children gather around, making engine sounds and wide gestures. A fuse blows and a radio shuts off.
The quad bikes drivers are all young and half-naked. I hear them talk in pidgin as they come closer to see the pig.
“Plenty malahinis coming kau-kau all over the place. Some good fun going be for try get one space in the harbor,” says one.
“Traffic going be uka pila ugly the way they planning to have it run now if the new dock is right across from Maui Mall,” replies another.
“They should make the dock at Ma’alaea since most tourists stay Wailea or Kaanapali anyway. That way, no more additional pilikia right across the mall, because if locals huhu about all the cars crowding Puunene Avenue now, can just imagine da kine stink eye going get when peeps come on the ferry!”
White beards and bare skins with tattoos or old wounds, bracelets and necklaces made from lava rock beads, the bodies and blonde hair from Kentucky or Iowa girls who came here to forget things they cannot forget — mothers of five, babies, hippies playing ukulele, born-again murderers, every one of them huddled in the sweat and the dirt.
“Here, New York man. Have some rice and macaroni salad.”
Families start eating in complete disorder, some of them already drunk. We all take a piece of the kalua pig from the bathtub it has been placed in. The meat is incredibly tender.
“Brother dude, how goes it?” asks a man to my host.
He gives me a shaka sign, his thumb and pinkie extended from his close-fisted hand, waving low to the ground. I shaka back.
We laugh at my lack of tan and talk a little.
“Haoles are just part of the problem, you know. Asian people coming after the US incorporation did a lot wrong too. They bought agricultural land, upzoned the fields for development and sold them to promoters from the mainland or Japan so they could build golf clubs or hotels for massive profit. It ain’t all black or white.”
An older woman in a gray outfit sits near me.
“They all want the land for themselves. But I know how to take advantage of that, I tell you,” she says.
“I know one thing or two about banking, you see — I know you guys are laughing in my back, don’t you think I can hear you? I know you’re laughing. I’m trying to explain the city guy how my scam works. He’ll understand better than you all. Stop laughing.”
“Shut up and take a beer, Sally,” someone shouts at her.
“I know I could pull it off but you guys don’t believe me. You can all go fuck yourselves, that’s what.”
The women stands up and goes under a tree. Behind her, wilderness and sharp black volcanic rocks.
I stay where I am and listen to the others for a while. The night is getting chilly. The wind is up and makes paper towels fly over the tables.
“Tomorrow, I’ll show you the church down the road.”
“It’s quiet. The view is nice.”
Kids are running with BB guns in their hands. Teenagers dance in front of a flat screen TV hooked to a generator. Several cars are still running to keep the electricity on.
Abandoned cars, remnants of downed buildings, metal and rust, sagging wooden beams, lives tumbling down the mountain edge and climbing back to build everything again.
I watch the stars and it seems from where I stand that they could fall on us at any moment, in a flickering and graceful dive towards this end of the world.
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