Friday

At Kona the low tan blocks have been replaced by a-frame huts-- yes, huts-- with thatch roofs and low walls of volcanic rock and light grey mortar.  A surprisingly helpful luggage agent tells us that our bag did not make it and could he have our address so they can send it down?  He practically rolls his eyes when we tell him.  Apparently we are in the back country.  No matter, the bag is coming on the next flight and by the time we have our car-- a process that always seems to take way, way too long-- the bag is sitting in a row with some others just under the agent's right elbow.

The country round about is a terrain of jagged black rock sloping down from greenish uplands, whose tops are hidden by grey clouds.  The roads undulate over the piles of clinker and here and there show their age with great potholes and sections heaved up.  Pretty soon the rain starts-- as it does here every day in the late afternoon-- and a light drizzle turns to a heavy cataract, a thing that gives sudden, urgent meaning to the signs that warn you about certain low sections of road.  Gradually we climb out of the flatland around the airport and onto the shoulders of the mountains, through drooping coffee plantations and rusty steel roofs covered with what used to be green paint, light pink and aqua ranch styles set back behind trees of red blossoms like bursting star mines and great dangling pink trumpet flowers.  And at the foot of every driveway hand-painted signs:  "No Spray"; "No Spray- Mahalo".  Also faded signs for family mac nut farms and postage stamp plantations.

Sometimes there's a retail district of low, white lapboards and the rare 40s-era stucco block, perhaps a filling station, and all of it pleasantly down-at-the-heel as if it were abasing itself for the brilliant orange, red, violet, yellow and pink blossoms that seem to decorate every available space here.  Then there are the great, spreading trees with crowns the size of small houses-- banyans?  I expect to see Jupiter threading the gold bug through a skull, high in the black Os and Us under the leaves-- and the mangoes, with their spear-like leaves and clusters of delicate green/orange fruit.  

 There is a complex of modern, hard-edged buildings back of Kailua-Kona, with a Marshall's, Old Navy, McDonald's--but even these have to perch on the ridiculously steep parkways that seem to be the norm here.  And even the busiest intersections are decorated with wild tangles of pink blossoms and jagged yucca plants.

But in the rainstorm we have no colorful cabinet signs or green and white legends to guide us, so we nearly miss the turn for Ka'awa Loa Plantation.  The situation, too, is improbable-- there is a sign, and, apparently, a driveway on the side of a hill that seems so steep as to permit only a footpath-- and that a precarious one.  But there is a driveway.  We both fall silent as the car labors.  We are both thinking that we will simply tip over backwards and go crashing through the coffee bushes and mangoes and creepers and explode onto the road below.  A patch of moss on the steepest section underlines the point.

At the top there is a tight circular drive around a lush planting, all under a flat roof.  You walk under and through a pair of heavy screen doors and stand  in  a quiet entry with a white staircase climbing to your left and another set of heavy wood screens straight ahead.  To their left is a sitting room with overstuffed, modern couches, lots of tropical hardwood and prints of local scenes and artwork.  To the right of the sitting room and down a short hall is the kitchen.  We walk into this darkened entry, still unsure even of where we are.  For a terrible moment I think "My god, we're standing in someone's living room; we have the wrong house."  Then I hear a man's treble welcoming a guest in the kitchen.  It is vaguely familiar, as is his face.  He turns and holds up a hand while he talks.  I relax inside; we are expected after all.

This is Michael, one of the two men who run the plantation and minister to the guests' many needs.  On a shelf over one of the kitchen counters is a photo of him in tee and dogtags standing next to Robin Williams, a snapshot, I assume, from the production of the film Good Morning Vietnam.  He has a constantly sly look, as if he were hiding a secret that will please you and he's enjoying the anticipation.  Usually this is the case; we find that he's extremely well-informed about Captain Cook, Kailua-Kona and the island in general and seems to know just what you require before you require it.  He groans sympathetically when he learns we came from Portland and shows us our room, a charming, well-lit corner with big, soft bed.  A small room to one side, closed with shutters, is the toilet.  Then we come back downstairs and find fresh mango juice and hot brownies waiting for us.  Soft guitar and a man's falsetto, singing in Hawaiian, filters from the sitting room and we sit on the other side of that second set of doors.

On the other side is a lawn, backed by two immense mango trees.  At times, perhaps every ten minutes or so, something heavy crashes through the leaves and lands with a thud.  At first you are alarmed; then you realize that these are mangoes dropping.  "If you like mangoes, pick 'em up and eat 'em," Michael says.  "No extra charge."  Doves trill to each other in the upper branches and add their part to a chorus of metallic whirrs and growls and cries.  And you can witness this from a veranda covered by a  roof supported by graceful turned columns and served by not one, but three sets of heavy screen doors:  two into the sitting room, one into the kitchen.  You may sit at one of several tables with high-backed chairs, or take your ease in a rocker, or sink into one of a pair of deeply-padded wicker swivels.  At the far end of the porch, at the driveway end, is a teak couch with immense cushions and an end table.

You stay on the porch, not just for the handsome lawn and park-like stand of palms and mango trees, but what is beyond that back yard:  look.

Behind the mangoes, a rank of tall, graceful flowering trees, their tips orange and red blossoms like fireworks.  Beyond that, a screen of banana palms and tropical fruits rapidly disappearing, because remember we are on the face of a scarp, and far below, far, far below, so that the belt highway is a shoelace, a quilt of light and dark green, the stitches stone walls and narrow gravel roads.  And in the center of the quilt a white country church with red roof and steeple.  And beyond all that?  The measure of the vast Pacific, brilliantly blue and scratched with fine white lines:  the odd yacht or deep sea fishing charter.  And beyond that?  A pink haze and the heavy clouds of Hawai'i-- and perhaps Captain Kidd or Billy Bones or Squire Trelawney on another crazy junket.  Somewhere back of the clouds your waking ends and the dreaming begins.  Then the clouds seem to roll in and even up the mountainside and then...  Who's to say where the dreaming ends and the waking begins?  Jim Hawkins knows.  The Squire knows.  Long John Silver knows.  Billy Budd knows.  Tashtego knows.

By God I miss that place even now.