They were big and brown and strong young men. They wore slippers and baseball hats turned backward. One wore a T-shirt that read: Kahuku. OIA Champions.
They were Jason Keo's friends.
An eerie silence hung over Hauula on this saddest of days. One of the close-knit town's boys was dead.
Turquoise waves lapped softly along the rocky coastline and misty gray clouds shrouded the Koolau Mountains in the background.
Keo, a 17-year-old former Kahuku High School football star, with a future as bright as the sun-splashed sea, was killed in a car crash early Sunday morning.
On Tuesday, the kids he grew up with, the guys he played Pop Warner football with, gathered at the site of the accident, in front of the aluminum shed that houses Cackle Fresh Eggs.
Their tears mixed with the sweat on their solemn faces, dripping onto the dirt and gravel, as the summer sun blazed overhead.
A sign tacked to the pole, beneath the spaghetti swarm of electrical wires, read: WE LOVE U. It was signed: HAUULA SISTAS. Also on the cardboard was a picture of Keo in his Kahuku uniform. He wore #20. And he was smiling, eyes flashing with pride.
A smoky tour bus passed the gathering, just a few yards away on the beautiful but dangerous Kamehameha Highway, which has claimed so many lives. A truck roared past in the other direction and the Circle Island bus driver nodded his head in reverence as he slowly drove by.
Then Jason Keo's friends held hands in one last huddle for their fallen teen-aged hero. They said a few words of the sincerest love you could ever hear, deep from the souls of the stunned young men.
"We lost a member of our family," said Auntie Jill. "These are all our boys and we love all of them very much."
"I miss him already - I want to blow him a kiss," said Auntie Zeni, trying to smile through the tears. "We came to say goodbye. We came to say we love you."
"Jason could be a rascal," said a woman who said she was just one of the Hauula moms. "But aren't all boys? He was a kind-spirited, wonderful child. He was ’xxx "
She turned her head and slowly walked away.
SEVERAL miles up the road, the Kahuku High football field was silent and empty, a single sprinkler shooting streams of water on the thick grass. The goal posts were down.
The old scoreboard there simply reads: HOME, VISITOR, TIME, DOWN, TO-GO.
But Jason Keo ran like the wind and scored touchdowns here. He became a champion on this field and he heard the cheers here.
Now he is gone and again we raise our faces skyward and ask: Why do our young people have to die?
Why?
There is a lesson, though, and as always it was delivered to all of us by a dynamic young person: Live every minute of every day to its fullest.
Pick up that football in the morning and run with it until you're ready to go to sleep at night. Then tuck it under your covers so it will be there to grab onto the next morning, when the first spectacular slivers of pink and yellow light appear above the ocean's horizon, when the day is filled with wonder and promise and the chance to raise your arms in triumph after crossing that goal line.
Life is as gorgeous - and just as fragile - as the sweet plumerias that were so carefully and emotionally placed on that telephone pole along Kam Highway.
"We have to go now," said Auntie Zeni, the tears welling in her soft dark eyes. "We're gonna take the boys home and feed 'em."