My Kind of Town
My Kind of Town
A day to kill
>> North Shore
Lono Oka'aina had money in his pocket and a day to kill after turning over the Rockin' Pikake Ranch to a private hunt club for two weeks. Although the contract -- rich enough that he could pay his back land taxes and set up the commercial stable he knew would make the ranch profitable again -- called for him to vacate the property, Lono's curiosity was getting the better of him.
He had to see just what exotic species were they'd be releasing on his land. And he'd need the cover of darkness to get to the place where he could be comfortably out of sight but still observe, what, lions? Bears? Elephants?
Driving down from the ranch, Lono wasn't certain what the heck he'd do until nightfall until he heard on the radio that The Eddie was happening at Waimea Bay -- 28-footers were predicted for early afternoon. He'd gone to school with Eddie Aikau way back when, admired him. The differences in these two Hawaiians was fascinating. Lono was a man of the 'aina, Eddie of the kai. Eddie was at home surfing waves that were ridiculously big and dangerous. Lono was at home in a saddle, astride a horse galloping through rocky scrub forest after a runaway steer, also ridiculously dangerous.
With nothing else to do, Lono decided he'd mosey over to Waimea and watch The Eddie, maybe see some of their old school friends. The big waves weren't due for a couple of hours, so Lono stopped to visit Caleb Kalai, one of the two paniolo he let go almost a year ago when he sold off the last of the cattle, and was now working at the Turtle Bay stables.
They had a good visit, Lono asking questions about operations, filing away Caleb's answers, and at the end saying he'd come upon some money and wanted to start his own commercial stable, and would Caleb be interested in coming back to the Rockin' Pikake.
"They get pretty good benefits over here," Caleb said.
"Mm." It wasn't just that Lono had never been able to afford things like medical insurance even for himself. It was the idea that paniolo, the last of the independents, were now expecting 401Ks. Lono couldn't blame Caleb, but there was still something kind of sad about cowboying coming to this.
After leaving Caleb, Lono drove over to the hotel, valeted the Durango and headed to the Palm Terrace, where he was seated with a lovely view of the crashing surf and an interesting couple, a distinguished looking haole in his 50s, a stunning Japanese woman in her mid-20s. They both did a lot of smiling. When she got up to visit the lua, Lono thought he saw him put something in her pink wine.
Don Chapman is editor of MidWeek.
His serialized novel runs daily in the Star-Bulletin
with weekly summaries on Sunday.
He can be e-mailed at dchapman@midweek.com