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My Kind of Town Don Chapman |
Girls and guns
>> Above Kahuku
There are women who, when going on a romantic picnic, might balk a bit if the guy wanted to bring along a hunting rifle. Might stage their own little anti-violence, pro-PETA, just-what-kind-of-swine-are-you! demonstration right there. Raydean Gonsalves was not among them.
When Lono Oka'aina pulled a cooler, a quilt and Remington from the back of his Durango, Raydean smiled. There were so many things to like about this man. "It'd be fun to do some target shooting again."
"Uh-huh." Actually, Lono was thinking he might need it for self-defense. He wasn't supposed to be anywhere near his Rockin' Pikake Ranch. According to the contract he signed with the hunt club, he was supposed to vacate the premises, stay away and never breathe a word about it to anybody ever for the rest of his life. And here he was with Raydean. Partly it was his own curiosity to see what kind of exotic species the club was hunting, partly it was the way she asked to see the ranch.
"This is the old Smith place," Lono said as they hiked across a pasture. "Japanese bought it, never did a thing with it."
Soon they were crawling through a wooden cattle fence. "Welcome to the Rockin' Pikake. Where we're going is just over that ridge. My little bomb shelter."
"Bomb shelter?!"
"Not really. Small cave, hidden under a rock outcrop. I keep it stocked with water and beer and some food and other things. Once in a while I camp up there. Has a nice view of most of the property."
They heard gun-fire then, two shots. "I guess," Lono said, "the hunt is on." His cell phone rang. It was Sherlock Gomes, checking in.
Down at Lono's little bomb shelter, Sen. Donovan Matsuda-Yee-Dela Cruz-Bishop-Kamaka peered from the shadows behind the rock outcrop and kept an eye on the guy dressed in bush cammies and floppy cap. In the cave, Shauny Nakamura, dressed now in an XL UH T-shirt she'd found, used a large screwdriver to pry the electronic dog collar off the neck of Imelda the Manila street kid, who wore a Dallas Cowboy's tee. The senator leaned into the cave, whispered, "We got company. Two guys on ATVs."
Shauny heard the cackling motors coming closer. "Wait here, Sweetie," Shauny said, stepped outside, handed the screwdriver to the senator. "Quick, get this thing off me. And give me one of those guns."
"You shoot?"
"I used to date a sniper."
By that logic, Shauny could have done a lot of things, from performing open-heart surgery to putting out high-rise fires to flying a 737 to quarterbacking in the Pro Bowl. But the senator handed over Victor Primitivo's rifle.
Don Chapman is editor of MidWeek. His serialized novel runs daily in the Star-Bulletin. He can be e-mailed at dchapman@midweek.com