Aloha's End

Sunny Anderson: I'm Lau, Lomi Lomi and Poi'd out!!!

2008-06-16T06:31:00.000-02:00

Sunny Anderson: I'm Lau, Lomi Lomi and Poi'd out!!!

Waiting for the next chapter? Visit www.zangarijournalism.com for insight into the writing of "Aloha's End." Visit the zblog by paging down zangarijournalism.com to the link. Subjects: Aloha's End, Autism, Brain Machines, 9-11, Zangari's 1998 Anthrax Attack, Political and Personal history. The (until now) unending autobiorgraphy and chronicals of Michael F. Zangari.

Aloha's End, The Archives @ http://zangarijournalism. com and theZblog

2008-03-22T04:51:00.006-02:00

Aloha's End

2008-02-02T07:04:00.000-02:00

Aloha's End Chapter 36 Momi Looks Under The Hood

2007-12-28T06:56:00.001-02:00

2007-11-16T13:59:00.000-02:00

Aloha's End Chapter 34: Night As Deep As The Ocean

2007-11-09T07:36:00.001-02:00

Photo By zoomar on Flickr

Waiting for the next chapter?

Visit www.zangarijournalism.com for insight into the writing of "Aloha's End." Visit the zblog by paging down zangarijournalism.com to the link. Subjects: Aloha's End, Autism, Brain Machines, 9-11, Zangari's 1998 Anthrax Attack, Political and Personal history. The (until now) unending autobiorgraphy and chronicals of Michael F. Zangari.

Aloha’s End
by Michael F. Zangari
© 2007 with all rights reserved.

Chapter 34: Night As Deep As The Ocean

True West slips the grey burnoose over his head.
It’s too small. His hands and feet hang out of the bag of the robe big as balloons.
The sandals are too small on his Texas honkers. He goes for his boots but Father Oblivious stops him with an extended arm. He shakes his head “no.”
Benny Aloha looks him over from under his hood.
“The robe is too small” he says.
His is too big.
His hands, head and feet are out of sight.
He looks like a tumbled dried death without a scythe.
Father Oblivious is dismayed.
“We are not a poor order. We tailor” he says.
“At least I can wear my loafers” says Benny Aloha.
He joins his hands beneath the sleeves.
The sound of the key in the slot breaks attention.
Brother Stenky opens the door and comes in.
“It has begun” he says. He shakes with excitement.
Father Oblivious looks at him.
“Yes” he says. He looks at his vapor dispersing watch.
True West notices it right away. It is made of the same material as the Stealth fighters.
It dissipates the smell of the body into an unrecognizable mist of product and perspiration.
True West thinks to himself that it must be hell getting a “ha” from this guy.
The “ha,” the breath of life traded by Hawaiians and others at hello is diminished significantly. It is the human smell extended to others.
His humanity is traceless by smell and warmth.
The only smell is that of the incense on his robe, dull myrrh.
“No ha” says Benny Aloha, reading True West mind and Father Oblivious’ arm pits.
Father Oblivious looks at them. "In some native cultures, the individual smell of the warrior is disguised by dung and earth based paints to disguise the smell so the enemy can not psychically identify them or deplete them. We subscribe to the same notion. Be spare with the human exchange. We give nothing to the vampire like entities we deal with."
True West smirks. "I know some women who use the same tactics with perfume..."
True West and Benny Aloha are both perspiring freely already under the wool.
They feel like goats on a hot day.
They give smell.
“The ritual has begun?” asks True West.
“No” says Brother Stenky. “The hula show.”
Benny Aloha is concerned.
“It’s rude to walk in late” he says. “Especially if the Samoan’s are twirling fire.”
The flames are in Brother Stenky’s eyes. “Like juggling hell’s balls” he says. “I’ve researched it.”
“Yes” says Father Oblivious. “Hell’s balls.”
He is elsewhere.
“What concerns you, father?” asks Brother Stenky.
“Demons” he says.
True West looks at the obsidian dagger hanging from the priest’s belt.
“I’m confused” he says.
“We’ll talk on the way” says Father Oblivious.
He sets the motion detector on the floor by the bed, winding it like a clock.
It ticks like one too.
“Let us go” he says.
They file out.
True West puts the hood of his robe over his head so it drapes down over his face.
True West and Benny Aloha walk like they are going up the aisle of a church to get married. They are slow and sanctimonious.
Brother Stenky puts on his sunglasses.
Father Oblivious looks at him and vetoes it with a head shake.
“It is not the fashion that concerns me” he says. “It is visibility. You are my secretary. I need you to be aware of the surroundings and take notes.”
Brother Stenky takes the sun glasses off immediately and hooks them on his belt with his dagger. The palm pilot comes out of his pocket.
“Walk normal” says Father Oblivious to the Benny Aloha and True West. “I’m letting you two come along to witness. I do not want you to draw attention to yourselves. It might be dangerous for you.”
True West looks at him nervously.
“Demons?” he asks?
“No” says Father Oblivious. “Lonely monks looking for conversations” he says.
“Endless.”
True West tries to walk in a normal fashion, his West Texas oil field swagger gentle like he is walking desert with blisters in his boots.
His big bare feet and ankles stick out of the bottom of the robe like it he is wearing a granny dress.
He puts up his hood.
Father Oblivious looks him over.
“Good thing it will be dark” he says.
Benny Aloha reverts to cool stroll though it is hard to tell in the big bag he is wearing.
They wait at the elevator as Brother Stenky presses the down button.
Father Oblivious and Brother Stenky exchange excited smiles.
“I’m confused” says True West.
“Yes” says Father Oblivious.
“What does this have to do with Duck?”
Father Oblivious shakes his head.
“The psychic” says Father Stenky.
“No” says True West. “The psychotic.”
He regrets it immediately.
“He in fact has no chronic mental illness” says Brother Stenky. “That is pure fabrication. It is disinformation.”
“Do you really think he is the antichrist?”
“No” says Father Oblivious. “You’d think he was from the rumors. But no, he is not likely to be the devil. He lacks definition. But he probably knows him, most people do.”
Benny Aloha smiles cynically.
“Then why are you here?” Asks True West.
“We needed an excuse to convention in Hawaii, if you really want to know” says Father Oblivious. “We need the training.”
He pulls out his obsidian dagger from his belt and studies the blade.
“Soon there will be no more questions or investigations.”
“They say he is a prophet” says Brother Stenky. “That his predictions are remarkably accurate. There have been documented miracles around him.”
“Duck?” Asks True West Incredulously.
Benny Aloha nudges him with his elbow. He motions him to silence.
“It’s a miracle he is alive” mutters True West.
The hold silence together.
When the elevator door opens, True West gets the chilly peppers.
“Chicken skin” says Benny Aloha. “Very weird the stories.”
“Yes” says Father Oblivious. “One never gets use to the arcane.”
Brother Stenky looks down at his sandaled feet and newly clipped toenails.
“Pay attention” says Father Oblivious.
“Suspension of belief” is a useful psychological tool, in these cases. Act as if the stories are true” he says. “You’ll understand us and probably the Duck better.”
True West struggles with the internal journalist before acquiescing to an impulse inside.
He makes a decision to suspend belief. At least for a little while anyway.
Benny Aloha says “The islands are full of magic. It’s not unusual.”
True West notes it. “Magic” he says.
“Yes” says Benny Aloha. “Or at least, things that are normally beyond our beyond. Hawaiians are very accepting of the unusual. When you look at our history you understand this. Who would believe everything that has happened?”
“I understand” says True West.
He does.
“Life is weird” he says.
They step into the elevator.
The doors close.
They ride down the elevator tube of the hotel in silence.
The night is as deep as the ocean.

2007-11-03T06:58:00.000-02:00

Coming Soon to Aloha's End:
The Armageddon Club

Waiting for the next chapter? Visit www.zangarijournalism.com for insight into the writing of "Aloha's End." Visit the zblog by paging down zangarijournalism.com to the link. Subjects: Aloha's End, Autism, Brain Machines, 9-11, Zangari's 1998 Anthrax Attack, Political and Personal history. The (until now) unending autobiorgraphy and chronicals of Michael F. Zangari.

Aloha's End NEW CHAPTER 33 "Kick Ass"

2007-10-25T08:10:00.000-02:00

“If you meet the Buddha along the way, kill him” says Benny Aloha. “I know that one. It means that if you run into your desire, your illusions, your concepts of what a Buddha is, let it go. Cut the thoughts. Come back fresh to your experience. That’s where the religion can be found. You have run into an idea, not an experience. Buddhist are more concerned with the spirit found in the thing itself. Not an idea.”
“What does that mean to a Catholic?” Asks True West.
“Kick ass” Says Father Oblivious.

Slack Key Guitar

2007-10-18T12:46:00.000-02:00

Wish You Were Here

2007-10-17T04:17:00.000-02:00

NEW ALOHA'S END CHAPTER 32: To Be Omnipresent

2007-10-15T08:40:00.000-02:00

Aloha’s End by Michael F. Zangari
© 2007 With All Rights Reserved

Chapter 32: To Be Omni-present (A Slight Rewrite)

The doors to the elevator close.
Benny Aloha reaches out and pushes the button for the seventh floor.
“That’s my floor” says True West.
“I know” says Benny Aloha.
They look at each other.
Benny Aloha smiles up at him.
He’s not sure why, but True West is annoyed.
“Isn’t it a burden to know everything?” asks True West. “To be omni-present?”
“You don’t know the half of it brother” says Benny Aloha. “I’d rather be oblivious to most things. But I tend to be paranoid. Paranoids make great novelists and detectives. We don’t miss detail.”
True West smiles at him. “That’s what makes a great professional.” He says. “Paranoia and finesse.”
“You know, my mother was ethnically Japanese. Our family lost everything in World War Two. My family was interned in the Jap camps even though my father was ethnically Chinese-Hawaiian. ” He shrugs. “That influences your perspective.”
“I imagine so” says True West.
“One day I was listening to the radio and playing ball with my sister and the next day my family and I were corralled like cattle behind barbed wire with every one else of my race. Our home and our property were taken away from us and sold. We were terrified of being separated. The next thing I know some guy in green fatigues with a gun and bayonet was yelling “Banzai” at us at dinner time like we didn’t speak English. It was a very dark scene for a three year old rat packer” he said. “Bizarre.”
True West listens. He is wordless.
“We lived in barracks with some of our neighbors. Some others were missing. The Hawaiian neighbors hid them. My father was taken away and placed in solitary confinement for meditating in the commons. We weren’t allowed to practice our religion during the first part of the internment. ”
“That’s horrible.” Says True West.
“Dad said it wasn’t so bad. At least he could meditate in peace.” Says Benny Aloha. He smiles, showing teeth.
That’s a rare.
“You strike me as a mama’s boy,” says Benny Aloha, “No offense.”
True West has heard that before.
“You a real metanoid” he says. “Like you’ve been protected all your life.”
“A metanoid” says True West. “What is that?”
“It’s the opposite of paranoid” says Benny Aloha. “A metanoid believes the world is conspiring to them a favor.”
“I think my paranoia comes from the Japanese side of my family. They tend to be more protective and proactive. They survived by knowing things. There is an old samurai saying. It goes, “Fool me once, shame on you. Fool me twice, shame on me.”
“That’s a rough translation?” asks True West.
“Yes” says Benny Aloha. “It is.”
“I have notice that the Japanese have become experts on baseball and other American cultural facts since World War Two” says True West. “They are the largest audience in the world for Blues music and R and B. That wouldn’t have anything to do with the kinds of passwords the American G.I. used during the Pacific War to identify friends and foes in the jungle, would it? Like, “If you’re an American, who won the 1939 pennant.”
“How would I know?” asks Benny Aloha. “I’m an American.”
He looks at True West with his almond shaped eyes and double eye-lids.
True West is embarrassed. He reaches for a comeback but goes blank.
He becomes aware of the two monks at the back of the elevator.
They are looking up from under their hoods.
The monks stand close to one another in their grey wool burnooses with their hands in the sleeves of their gowns. They have on brand new beach sandles.
One speaks.
“It’s a lot like being a monk” he says. “Forgive me for listening to your conversation. Being in the camps must have been a lot like being in the monastery. Only in our order we are punished for our transgressions by removing us from our solitary contemplation. We are made to congregate and have conversations in the courtyard. It’s horrible. It removes us from our studies.”
True West and Benny Aloha look at the monks.
“And if you’ll excuse me, there is another, rather auspicious coincidence that has taken my attention.”
The second monk crosses himself and kisses the crucifix hanging from his waist on obsidian beads. The sliver links between the beads glow in the Florissant light.
“You see” the monks look at each other dramatically. “I am Father Oblivious.”
There is Shakespearean pause in his monologue.
True West and Benny Aloha clasp their hands at their crotch in a prayerful attitude.
“Holy cow” says Benny Aloha.
True West looks down and notices Benny Aloha in the same prayerful position.
“Must be reflex” says Benny Aloha.
He unclasps his hands and puts them in his pockets.
True West scratches his nose.
“You guys on vacation or what?” Asks True West.
“Yes” says Father Oblivious.
The monk standing next to him removes a tiny parasol from a long gone tropical drink from his sleeve.
“A souvenir” he says.
“This is my brother, Brother Stenky.”
“The drink was a Virgin Mary” of course” he says smiling.
A private joke.
The monks look at each other and barely suppress giggles. “We are allowed only wine in the monastery.”
Brother Stenky speaks. “We grow the grapes, stomp the little suckers into mush, ferment them and bottle the wine there. Then we drink it.”
“I see” says Benny Aloha.
He does.
“We are here for the annual meeting of the Armageddon Committee” says Father Oblivious.”
“Really?” Asks True West. “What do you folks do?”
“Our order looks for the Devil” says Brother Stenky.
“The antichrist” says Father Oblivious. “He’s due at anytime.”
“I’ll order a lei” says Benny Aloha.
“He may already be here” Says True West. “I thought I saw him doing the hula tonight with his shirt off at the bar.”
Father Oblivious whips out a little pad from one sleeve and is suddenly very lucid.
A pen emerges from the other sleeve.
He jots down the date.
His forehead goes up, pushing the hood back.
“Was his name Duck?” he asks.
True West looks at him startled. “No” he says.
“A man called Duck is the subject of the convention this year” says Brother Stenky. “We are told he has many of the traits of the antichrist. We are here to investigate.”
Father Oblivious nudges him with his elbow. “Shut up” he says. “Brother.”
“You folks are Dominicans?” asks True West.
“No” says Father Oblivious. “We are in fact scholars at a different level he says. Our order is not generally spoken of. We are still fighting the crusades.”
“What a coincidence” says True West. “So are we.”
“And you are involved in the End of the World” says Benny Aloha.
“Yes” Says Brother Stenky. “We take it personally.”
“I’m not exactly jazzed by it either” says Benny Aloha.
Duck, he thinks.
Benny Aloha does, then straightens up.
“I myself have witnessed his almost telepathic control over people. It is said he controls the weather and manifests miracles.”
“You think he could pay the check” says True West. “Sounds like a story I could sell.”
“He’s a journalist” says Benny Aloha.
“We know” says Brother Stenky. “We see him on the news when we are being punished.” He glares at True West.
“I’d like to cover the convention.”
The monks look at one another.
Father Oblivious produces a card from his sleeve.
“We meet at midnight” he says.
True West looks at his watch.
It is about a half hour to midnight.
“Where are you meeting?”
“It the convention center” Father Oblivion says. “In the Volcano room. Be there or be rather square.”
“I’m hip” says Benny Aloha.

New Chapters 16-23 For Aloha's End: But Not As Sweet As You

2007-09-20T08:19:00.000-02:00

Waiting for the next chapter?

Aloha’s End
by Michael F. Zangari
© 2007 With all rights reserved.

Aloha’s End
by Michael F. Zangari
© 2007 With all rights reserved.

Chapter 16: Like peanuts at honky-tonk happy hour.

True West waits at a bar on the beachside at Waikiki.
He sits outside on the lanai at a small table overlooking the beach. The umbrella over his head is cream colored like a big Stetson hat. He is lost in the moment, watching a red catamaran tethered in the water bump against the sand as the tide comes in. The blue-greens of the sky and the sea are as intense as neon. The ocean goes to the horizon where the sky takes over. The colors are as lurid as a dime store postcard with the brights turned way up. Diamondhead, the wet black volcanic crater is off to the left, as unchanging as the ocean and as present.
The breeze is nice. The trade winds flicker the palms.
It’s calm.
The waitress brings another drink and sets it on the table in front of him.
“Here’s another one for you Mr. Ku.”
He looks up and says thank you.
“Good timing” he says, “I’m just a suck away from rolling ice.”
She laughs.
True West looks her over. She looks good.
She’s blonde, in shape and looks good in her uniform, white shorts and a lime green t-shirt. She’s got the alignment of a dancer, tall, good shoulders and hips, and poised. She is comfortable balancing the tray in her hands.
“Continuity is important in your business, isn’t it?” she says smiling.
“Yes.” He says. “It is. In life too.”
She looks out over the beach. “I was talking to an optometrist from Chicago the other day” she says, “He was telling me that there is too much blue in the spectrum of light here. It’s bad for the eyes.”
“Too much blue” says True West considering it. “There’s too much of everything. It’s like a color wheel gone crazyspin.”
“My name is Sandy” she says, nodding down at the name tag that says Sandy. “In real life I’m a videographer.”
“Really?” says True West.
“Yes” says Sandy, “I’ve done some work here for ESPN.”
True West is interested and in.
“Really?” he says. “What do you do?”
“Reaction shots” she says.
True West thinks about that. “Reaction shots?”
“Yeah. When a player fucks up, the director usually cuts to a picture of his wife, girlfriend or family for the reaction shot. That’s my job. Bummer shots.”
“I see” he says.
“We don’t have to worry about that in the news wing” he says. “When you screw up they don’t cut home for the girlfriend smacking her forehead.”
“Good thing” she says.
True West does a reaction shot.
“Only kidding” She says.
Chapter 17: Like Peanuts at Honky-Tonk Happy Hour
True West talks to a little digital recorder he holds in the palm of his hand. He puts the silver mesh next to his lips as he speaks.
“Its late afternoon on the island of Oahu in Hawaii and I’m sitting bar side in Waikiki. We are way down in Hula town, in a Tiki bar called “Duke’s Dive” A little lanai set-up beachside of a swanky pink stucco hotel.
“I’m feeling a little stuccoed myself with all this suntan lotion caking on my nose. I’m toasted and rank with the smell of coconut oil and pina colada suntan lotion. It clashes with the Mai Tai on my breath. I am almost drunk.
The colors are so intense here they keep sobering me up. It’s a postcard from a daydream, blues and greens against the cream of the sand. Diamond Head, the crater of the big extinct volcano is off to the left. I can’t believe I’m here. Nothing prepares you for it. It’s surreal.
I had to drink through Happy Hour to dull my senses enough to be here.
My eyes aren’t use to this kind of color.”
He presses the pause switch and looks around.
True West notes the bartender and the busboy looking over at him. It gives him a sense of camera. He brings himself up to his full height like cobra.
He is feeling like a Dashall Hammet detective.
He releases the pause switch on the recorder.
“I’m completely overwhelmed and slightly snockered. I’m feeling the excitement of the place. There’s a crowd building for the band, local act that plays a mix of Hawaiian Reggae, Latin and H & B. Hula and blues. It’s a party atmosphere. People stand around dancing to each other’s conversation while the sun warms things up. There are lots of bathing suits and oiled up skin around here. It’s like a mud wrestling match at Virginia’s Secret. Only there are no secrets here.” True West nods to himself in irony. “At least not in the bathing suits. There are local people here and lots of tourists and honeymooners. It’s a happy place.”
True West bites into a piece of Mai Tai soaked pineapple and listens to the band tune up. ‘The only place you can hear falsetto singing like that with a steel guitar is the West Texas panhandle and Hawaii” he notes. “It sounds a lot like Tex Ritter, with big Hawaiian whammy twang. There's about the same amount of oil too between the skin and the pampas too. All that’s missing is the derricks.”
True West catches himself leaning into the tape recorder like a sports announcer at a football game with ten seconds left to play and the underdog with the ball on the ten yard line.
“The mystery of Aloha’s End haunts me. It’s been haunting me for years; ever since I began picking up the Duck’s late night broadcasts on the fillings of my wisdom teeth. His pirate radio station has cost me a fortune in dental work.
“I am now waiting for Duck to arrive after intensive searches for him.
“I finally tracked him down. I have confirmed what he told me yesterday morning, more or less. He is in fact called the Duck. I’m not sure why. It might be his butt or the way he walks pigeon toed into a room, like his feet have gone panorama to take it all in through the toes. He is relaxed, but hyper-vigilant. He is a man running from ghosts.
True West feels guilty about his hyperbole.
The guys almost been killed after all.
There’s been an all out effort to discredit him and his witness. His enemies have emptied his home and his computer. They pass out his medical records like peanuts at a honky-tonk happy hour.”
True West researched the situation for about a week. He couldn’t believe the amount of information made available.
“Why all this effort to discredit a guy wearing a rubber Duck beak? That’s the mystery and pull of it. You know something is going on. It all sounds like bullwhip to me. It’s like a tour package brochure.
“But it’s a great read but there’s something missing.’
True West thinks on it.
“According to what I’ve read, he’s guilty of every kind of crime possible for one man to commit since 1956, the year he was born of Alien and Russian parents. He’s a sociopath, a chronic liar, a manic depressive, a child abusing rapist and drug addict who has extorted and robbed his away from the Mainland way across the Pacific to Hawaii. He is said to be an uncomplicated man whose main motivation is mayhem. He is an unpredictable man with a penchant for wearing rubber duck noses. He has an almost pathological grudge against his sainted, community serving former employer. It goes on to say that the only reason he has not been arrested is because of the lack of volunteers and militia people needed for his arrest. He is a violent and sick man.”
True West knocks on the table like it is a door.
It’s the traditional knock wood for luck.
Only He’d have to travel a far piece to find some wood.
Everything is plastic and concrete.
“I’ve interviewed a few people on the subject of the Duck.
The people I talk with all say it’s probably untrue. He’s too tall for an alien. They say he is a nice guy you’d invite to a first year baby luau. In fact many have. He usually brings smoked fish. They say they’ll wait and see. But I sense they don’t. The Duck has been helped by some and hurt by some.”
True West tries to sum it all up.
“All in all he’s the kind of source for a story I dream of, a guy in a rubber duck nose who is pathologically intent on killing everything in his path.”
True West takes a big breath.
“He has Instant credibility.”
The bartender and beach boy are comply rapt.
They keep drying the same glasses over and over again as they listen to him.
True West looks over to the archway.
“That’s him now.”
The bartender and beach boy whip their attention to the left as the Duck appears and surveys the scene. He wears the famous Duck nose like a brand of Italian sunglasses. He smiles at True West. The sun gleams in the dark lenses of his real sunglasses.
True West looks down.
Duck slides through the oily, sun-baked crowd towards the table.
He is holding a woman’s hand.

Chapter 18: Ain’t No Luck, I Learned To Duck
The Duck stands tall head above the crowd, skimming the room with his eyes.
He is relaxed. He nods at people and smiles as they take him in. He takes off the rubber Duck bill and rubs his nose.
He has on a red and gold t shirt that says DUCK in big letters.
True West laughs.
Good advice from someone who has survived three murder attempts.
He struggles for a few moments, and then comes up with that Grateful Dead song, U.S. Blues.
The lyric line goes something like
Give me five, I’m still alive.
Ain’t no luck.
I learned to duck…
True West raises his umbrella and neon straw festooned drink to him and nods.
There is a woman standing behind Duck. She scooches up beside side him tight and hooks onto his arm. She is small, about 5 feet 2, with classic Mayan features and raven black hair. It is long and kinky. It springs out from a black baseball cap with a white “Z” on it.
She has dark sunglasses on with black shiny frames like lacquered chop sticks and big, flame red colored lips. Her skin is pale.
The Duck takes her hand and holds it up as if getting ready to twirl her as he comes through the crowd.
The Tiki bar is packed. Some clap.
“Aloha” says Duck and True West says it back to him. “Aloha.”
“This is the Z girl” says Duck.
He is wearing a matching black hat and sunglasses.
‘Pleasure” says True West taking her hand.
Z girl does a diminutive curtsy and smiles.
True West can see himself in the twin monitors of her sunglasses.
She takes them off.
Her big brown eyes are open and on him.
The Z girl furrows her forehead and looks at Duck from the corners of her eyes. She waits for his lead.
“She doesn’t always trust her English” says Duck. “Even though she speaks four languages.”
Z girl nervously turns a ring on her finger and looks around. Her lips pout out, as if she’s thinking hard about something.
“I notice that there aren’t a lot of people wearing Duck noses here.” says True West, “You two are easy to spot.”
“That’s the idea” says Duck. “Sometimes you need a disguise. On the other hand, this is Waikiki. Nobody notices rubber noses in this crowd. Look around. People dress pretty casually here, casual and bizarre, like a hurricane hit a paint factory and splattered the crowd.”
True West looks around and laughs at the tourists.
His new, silk, neon aloha shirt features an Andy Warhol like hula dancer riding a barracuda Brahma bull style. The images repeat itself across the chest and back. On top there is a garland of red flame flowers on an orange background. The cloth shimmies, creating the impression of motion when he breaths. Most people are wearing as little as possible or are upholstered like couches or sundeck chairs in light fabric and shorts.
Z girl stifles a laugh until it bursts out musically.
“Alright” says True West. He is self conscious in the day glow aloha shirt and matching shorts. He knows they don’t go with his cowboy boots. That’s why he took the boots off when he got there.
They stand independently on the table. ‘I need to gets some huaraches” he says. “Or maybe some flip-flops.”
He is very aware of his pale feet.
True West sips his drink.
“Happy Hour” he says. “Two for one.”
The other pineapple sits off to the side looking lonely.
Duck and the Z girl pull out chairs
Duck rests his hand on the back of z girl’s chair and scoots it in.
He flips his around and straddles it, duck style.
Duck puts his rubber nose on the table.
He’s all business waiting for True West’s first question.
He knows its coming.
True West rests his pen in the corner of his mouth and wrinkles his forehead.
“What’s up, Duck” says True West like Bugs Bunny.
Duck looks at him. “The sky is blue, man.” He says.
“I have to admit it’s hard to take you seriously with that rubber nose on. I mean, this isn’t a game show you are pushing. It is hard news” says True West. “Frankly, if you are under the influence of drugs or alcohol it cuts into your credibility.”
True West takes another pull on his drink.
Duck eyes the boots on the table.
True West flags down a waitress and orders another drink. “Want something?” he asks.
The Z girl orders a mineral water with an extra lime and Duck gets an iced passion flower juice.
“The only thing we are under is a gun” says Duck. “I mean, we got the nose and the hats, sure, but we’ve taken our duck test for drugs if that’s what you want.”
True West notes the duck humor.
He hopes there is not more of it.
Duck says “What do you want, hair? Blood? We are as sober as a judge that’s sober” he says. “You have to be. The world is wacked out.”
The stuffed mushrooms wrapped in bacon arrive with the drinks.
“Compliments of the gentleman over there in the balloon hat” says Sandy. Her hair looks blonder than before the first drink. The bartender has been generous with the alcohol.
Balloon guy squeezes the rubber sausage he wears around his head like a hoku and smiles. “Pou Pous!” he yells. “For the Ducks and the Cowboy.”
True West raises his mai tai in salute. “To your balloon” he says.
Duck and Z girl wave to scattered applause.
True West notes it. It’s the disaster guy in person. True Ku. The man with the news.
True West orders another drink before Sandy leaves, moving the other pineapple towards him. He figures it’ll be gone by the time she gets back.
He looks at Duck’s rubber bill on the table. It is luridly colored with the snake of string coiled next to it.
This guy is a goofy looking thing in that thing, he thinks, like he has to think about it.
Duck knows what he is thinking.
True West goes for his network interview style.
“I’ll give you the benefit of the duck, er doubt” he says. ”You’re really serious about all this RICO stuff?”
The Duck hesitates before answering.
He looks for something in True West’s eyes, perhaps some openness, some willingness to believe, some comprehension.
“I’m serious enough to wear a duck nose” he says.
True West can see that.
Duck squeezes the Z girl’s hand.
“We are in danger all the time” says the Duck.

Chapter 19: He Sucks the Pineapple Rind out of the Cracks of His Teeth

“Listen, if you’re in danger then I don’t want to have dinner with you. I’m on vacation” says True West, looking nervously around. “I don’t want any trouble.”
“Nobody wants trouble Mr. West. But it seems to find you anyway” says Duck. “That’s all you talk about on the news.”
True West shrugs. Yes, it’s true. That’s the news.
He looks around carefully again, casing the place for evil doers, peg legs and eye patches. The atmosphere is more balloon head, Hawaiian shirts and lava lavas. It’s a party, dude.
The smell of pineapple and coconut is everywhere.
It hangs in a cloud where ever people congregate.
On stage the band is tuning up.
The kick drum thumps a couple of times like a heart. The guitar player hits a couple of sevenths and runs a scale. The bass player looks off into space, holding his strings to keep them from vibrating. The crowd is restless and excited. The anticipation is thick and tense like the sound in the climb of a roller coaster car.
The drummer clicks his sticks in four time and the band kicks in together in a even paced, bobbling blues. “Sweet Home Waimanalo.”
“Come on, Baby, don’t you want to go, to that same old place, sweet home Waimanalo…”
True West smiles from ear to ear. He goes into the groove to the Robert Johnson Blues. It has changed a little to fit Hawaiian time. He looks at the Ducks and laughs. “Sweet Home Chicago” he says. “You know when Robert Johnson wrote that song he didn’t know where Chicago was. He had just heard about it. Out there on the Mississippi delta he thought Chicago was in California. It’s in the lyrics.”
“You mean it wasn’t written by a Hawaiian?” says Duck, smiling back.
True West looks at Duck. He is being punked proper.. He laughs again. “Isn’t everything?” he says.
True West looks off onto the dance floor as people take it. It’s everywhere, in the aisle, on the beach and in the line to the bathroom, this funky-assed monkey walk crossed with the limbo. The waitresses and waiters dance in place while waiting for their drinks to arrive at the bar.
Out in the center, in the sunlight on the sand, True West looks at and contemplates the famine form dancing skanky and free form in bathing suit and sarong. “How do those things stay on?” he mutters looking over the Balinese lava lava that is tied at the tits and split down the middle. The sarong over laps itself and opens at the thigh. The flower batique print is sensual and suggestive with big open flowers on it with stamens that hang out like tongues. The breast bob, recoil and settle.
The Z girl laughs. ‘The way you tie the cloth is what matters. Other wise it falls off.”
She talks slowly, distinctly, with her eyes doing emphasis.
It’s not duck quack that’s for sure. The accent is soft and sweet. It reminds him of home. But like everything here there’s Hawaiian in it. Her accent is sensual and warm. Like the island’s breeze.
She checks out True West’s eyes to see if he’s listening.
When he turns his head to look at her, into her eyes, she says. “It is an art form you know,” her eyes are the sparkle of the diamond when the box is opened in the sunlight. “Tying the knots that hold things together.”
True West looks over at the Duck. Frank.
He is even more relaxed. He watches the crowd. He is cool and amused.
True West moves his eyes back and smiles at Z girl. He tips his pineapple at her in toast and takes a drink, going slow to avoid sticking the bamboo parasol into his eye. “To the quality of your knots” he says.
True West is not entirely comfortable but he’s getting there. He has to remind himself who Duck and Z girl are. They are like Batman and Robin. They are in constant brouhaha, trailed by jealous and vengeful super finks.
That’s what happens in these cases.
You witness a crime and your life goes banana cream pie on you, with nuts.
True West got his windshield bashed in with a baseball bat once. His producer got a bullet through her parked car’s windshield on one RICO story she did a while back. It was the same old message. Shut up.
He’s not excited about working another one of these stories someone somewhere desperate to hide something. It’s complicated reporting secrets. You have to watch your butt. He’d rather watch someone else’s butt. He’s on vacation.
He likes human interest stories, stories with simple descriptions and emotions, stories of the heart. He is interested in Duck, but not Duck’s doo doo.
Duck’s into his drama, all right, some super RICO tale about whatever evil he has fallen afoul of. He wants to blab about it.
As if his situation is not complicated enough.
True West looks around for suspicious characters.
You can usually spot them depending on your prejudices.
He’s a little nervous
They usually sit at the bar and harass the waitress about her tattoos.
You know bad guys don’t tip, except for the Peter Lorrie type of no-goodnic. They are shifty-eyed, always look They are very self conscious. Tucking the handkerchiefs into their pockets and pulling them out.
The Peter Lorrie type thinks everyone is watching them.
True West looks around. He spots one and watches him.
Now several people are looking back at him.
They watch each other.
One guy lips form a kiss and smacks the air at him.
True West smoothes back his hair and sucks at his teeth to get the pineapple rind out from between the cracks.
“What a nightmare” he says to himself.
The Z girl is smiling at him, almost laughing. “It’s not that complicated” she says. “If you understand the situation.”

Chapter 20 Godzilla!

The Z girl’s eyes speak oceans. She looks at True West and then at Duck.
Duck smiles and settles back into his chair. Here it comes, The Z girl ahem, the Z woman’s perspective.
“Suddenly we have thugs.” She says.
Z girl is a linguist. “They are like bugs. You can’t get rid of them. So you get to know them. You name the cockaroaches names. You understand how they live and what makes them go. How they survive.”
“You know your roaches?” asks True West.
“Better than most” says Duck.
“You musta have compassion for their situation” she says. “you see?”
“No” says True West.
“It’s like Godzilla.” She says.
True West crinkles his forehead. “Godzilla?”
“Yes. Godzilla, a very big gecko monster with long pointy teeth and bad breath. His breaths fire.”
“He’s the anti-Barney” says Duck. “He walks on two legs like a tyrannosaurs rex. The flaps along his spine light up like party lanterns on a yacht when he gets mad. Yeah. Godzilla.”
True West nods. “I got it” he says. “Godzilla. Hangs out with King Kong and eats little Hula dancers”
The Z girl looks at Duck. Her forehead wrinkles. “Does he do that?”
Duck shrugs. “You never really know anything about anyone” he says. “do you.”
True West looks back and forth between the Z girl and Duck.
“You see the movie? I saw it in Mexico, when I was growing up. In Mexico City. It is in aSpanish.”
“Yes. I saw it in Texas, in dubbed English. It was originally in Japanese” Says True West.
The Z girl nods. “Yes” she says, the lips don’t work with the words.”
“Yes.”
“When ever he comes into town, people are afraid. They see him wade across the bay like he is walking through the shallow end of the pool. They see him coming from miles away. They scream and run.”
“Some don’t” says True West. “That increases casualties.”
The people scream his name. “Godzilla! Godzilla!” and many run away.” Z girl nods, drawing True West in.
He reluctantly leans in.
Her eyes speak in tongues. Little Godzilla flames arc out of his eyes and burn his.
“He is a monster” She says, her eyes getting big and round. “But at one time he was just a little lizard, dependent on his mother for food. I do not know what happened, but he probably a much abused little lizard at one time. Something happened. His mom was also grouchy like big lizards get.”
“Yes” says True West. “At least that’s how they are portrayed.”
“They get gas” says Z girl. “That’s why.”
Duck sips his juice and watches the door.
“The only time he heard his name was when his mom or step dad yelled at him. That’s how he knew who he was. Because they yelled his name. When he heard his name he knew he was going to get it. He knew he was going to get it. That meant he was in big trouble.”
“You knew Godzilla?” asks True West.
“Maybe” says Z girl.
“Z girl knows Godzilla.” sighs Duck. “He follows us around. She wants us to have him over for dinner. She’s a Buddhist.”
“Yes.” She says. “So Godzilla comes to town and what is the first thing that happens? They yell his name, and they scream. It reminds him of growing up. He goes crazy and eats a train.”
“I see” says True West.
“Imagine being enraged at the sound of your own name.”
True West sighs. “It’s a lot like being famous, ma’am” he says.
Z girl leans on the table on her elbows and nods her head. “Yes.”
She is sucking his soul with her eyes.
“Are you a social worker?” asks True West.
“More of a curendada” says Duck.
“No, no, I do no social work. I work in food services. I work socially.”
He looks at Z girl again.
“That is why I believe the men who follow us are hostile. They were abused little lizards. When ever they come around people get nervous and angry. People never say, “Hello, que pasa, how does it go? They never say how you are to them. That gets to them. They get piss off and pull guns, They run away. They shoot them in the air. People call them more bad names, because they have no names. They have no friends here. They are feared and hated. In Mexico, the police would hang them from their feet and skin them from the ankles down.”
True West blanches.
“Yes” says Z girl “They are about this big” she holds out her hands, she is talking about the guns again. “They go bang and you dead.”

True West involuntarily pushes back from the table.
“Relax” says Duck. “They probably won’t pull guns out in public, unless they want to make a point. We’re safe here. We can usually talk our way out of uncomfortable situations. If they wanted us dead we would’ve been dead a long time.”
True West understands. People in trouble are in a picnic egg toss.
“People are aware of us” says Duck. “It’s the rubber noses I think. We have a certain amount of community protection as a result.”
“I’m not comforted” says True West. “You should be wearing a rubber room. Why would anybody do this?”
“You’re the news guy. You got nose.” Says Duck. “You understand the motivation to inform and getting at the roots of things. Sometimes you can’t sit still and do nothing. You have to communicate, especially when there is a public danger.”
“This whole situation is nuts” True West says. “What am I doing here? He picks up the hollow pineapple that holds his drink and fishes out the cherry.
He offers it to Z girl before eating it.
She takes it and pops it into her mouth.
True West looks at his empty fingers dripping with cherry juice.
“I’ll get you another one” says Duck.
True West shakes his head. “It’s coming.”
“Being chased around by gangsters and thugs with guns what kind of life is that anyway? What in hell’s holy hootenanny pie cake recipe did you do to them?” he asks.
He doesn’t want to know.
“I’m not crazy, paranoid or delusional Mr. West’ says Duck, putting on and adjusting his nose “Several people have been killed.”
“Great” says True West.
He checks his notes. “You maintain that your medical records aren’t accurate” says True West, “And that they have been released to the public in a twisted up form to make you look bad”
He looks at Duck.
“According to you they are trying to discredit you as a witness. But the rubber Duck nose has helped.”
“Yes” says Duck.
“Good nose” says True West.
“It hasn’t done much for my social life” says Duck. “You think your medical records can’t hurt you. But there is a reason why it is against the law to share them without permission. There is a wealth of personal information and opinions in every box. They can be interpreted. They can also be falsified. Peoples prejudices are endless. In fact the records going around are not even mine.”
“Whose are they?”
“They are yours.”
True West lets that one sink in.
“Don’t mess with me Duck” he says. “I’m nervous enough.”
Z girl laughs.
“Just kidding” says Duck.
“Go on.”
True West considers this.
What is the impact of opening up someone’s medical history and life?
“Look, its island style. You can be killed with rumors. They call it “stink talk” around here. It’s a very small community.
“Stinky talk” says Z girl nodding.
Stink Talk thinks True West.
His mom talked stink about stink talk. How bad it was back in Texas on the pampas. Mom said that on the Big Island, when you talked badly about someone it was called “talking stink.” She tried to teach him compassion and discretion so he’d fit in better. Like Z girl, she preached compassion.
Stink talk almost always had negative consequences. He learned that early. He was a tattle-tail in school.
Some things never change.
He’s still a tattle-tale. He just gets paid for it.
Mom gave him stink eye too, a real “you’re in trouble plenty” kind of stare when he did something wrong.
“People talk stink when they are evil, angry and jealous” says Z girl. “It’s a small island. You never know who is related to who and how” she said. “You better watch what you say. You have to live with the consequences of your words.”
That’s island talk.
People stink in general, thinks True West.
“Once the coconut wireless starts to throb like a turbine it’s a hard thing to stop. The stone drums begin to sound. The strings on beer can telephones begin to unravel and hum. The rumors go round. The message goes out over the phone lines and comes through the open louvers. On the coast, it doesn’t take long for rumors to become facts in the minds of people. It becomes a telepathic ripple that goes tsunami.”
‘Telepathic?”
“That’s literal” says Duck. “If you live on Islands or are aboard ship you know this is true. Hawaii is an interesting place to live with the volcanic magnetism and the negative ions of the wind and the ocean. We are surrounded by water. The water produces a lot of negative ions.” Says Duck.
“Ions?” says True West.
“Negative ions increase the audibility of thoughts.” He says.
True West makes a note and squinches up his eyes up in thought.
“I heard that somewhere” says True West. “Where’d you get that from? Star Trek?”
“It’s from the Berkley study on negative ions” says Duck. “It’s no joke around here. You hear things. If someone is thinking about you, you get it. Once you really get it you never think again.”
“I didn’t think I thought in the first place” says True West. “I’m a down to earth sort of guy.”
Duck shakes his head sadly. The rubber duck bill drifts left than right than left again.
“That’s how lives and careers are destroyed, by cocktail innuendo, pillow talk and beach and back door gossip. It doesn’t take much. And when it’s done as an organized, intelligent tactic, it can be a lethal thing.”
“Duck” True West says, “The rumors about your sanity have merit.”
“On the islands that kind of rumor spreading is against the law and punishable by death. I kid you not. To accept money to destroy someone with rumors is a form or sorcery. The blood cash you get for it is called wai’wai’ko’ko’ola. Receiving it is still on the books as a capital crime in Hawaii. Its dark, dark sorcery.”“Sorcery?” asks True West.
“Yes, says Duck, that old black magic called propaganda. It brings about death by innuendo. It can be worse than gunfire into a crowd.”
Chapter 21: The Dog That Did It in My Yard
Sandy brings a bowl of macadamia nuts and sets it on the table.
‘We are in real trouble here” says Duck.
“What you mean we, white guy” says the Z girl, looking around.
True West smiles at the Z girl, amused.
He looks down at the bowl of nuts on the table and says “They look safe enough to me” he reaches into the bowl and gets one. He holds it up to the light. “Poison?” he asks.
Duck looks at the nut. “Who knows” he says.
True West pops it into his mouth and chews.
He swallows.
They wait.
True West shrugs his shoulders. He stirs around the bowl of nuts with his finger and chooses another one. “They’re good” he says.
He puts it in his mouth and chews again.
“Will Rogers said that the only people who should say “we” are editors and people with bugs. You guys are all alone in this, aren’t you.”
“We could not survive without help” says Duck. “The Z girl works and people help out.”
“I can’t get work. The people who give me work are harassed and strong armed. We are being squeezed like an empty bottle of ketchup.’ Duck says.
The Z girl squeezes Duck’s thigh.
“Yeah?’ says True West swallowing.
Duck smiles sadly. “I don’t think he’s getting it.”
True West shrugs. “That’s what happens to whistle blowers” he says. “It’s a grand Yankee tradition. It’s what caused the revolutionary war isn’t it? That’s what they said to King George. Don’t mess with the cash flow. I think it’s one of the devil’s Ten Commandments. It cuts two ways, like most devil law. Don’t bite the hand that feeds you. Even if it’s feeding you poop.”
“I’m not whining about this” says Duck. “It’s my choice. Still, it’s hard to watch your life being torn apart from the core. It impacts the family first. I may have to leave my wife and kids so they can survive. I wouldn’t do this if I didn’t think it was important. Believe me.”
“I believe you believe it” says True West.
The Z girl smiles sadly. “Duck is the dog that did it in my yard’ she says. “I am angry at him.”
She looks at him and shakes her head. “Life was very simple before this happened. Now things are very complicated.”
She turns the ring on her finger.
True West looks at the piece of cheap costume jewelry.
He appraises it.
Two bucks,
Duck smiles and cover her hand with his.
The fingers slip in twine like puzzle pieces making a picture.
“I gave Z girl that ring. It’s a promise to come through. It cost me a couple of bucks to get it out of the machine with the wheelie claws. I liked the color of the plastic stone. A dark ruby garnet. It’s for focus. This whole thing has been like grabbing at Teddy Bears with a mechanical claw anyway. I think it has meaning. It represents the things that keep dropping from our grasp inches from the trap door. And the things that don’t”
True West imagines Duck at the machine, entirely intense and focused, wheeling right and left before the drop of the shovel, nudging a little right and hipping it to shake things up. He imagines the claw and snagging the ring.
“I had planned to get her a better ring before all this happened.” He says.
“I like it” she protests, looking aside and down, then up again like she’s been caught at something. “It’s my hoodoo ring. I call the spirits in to protect.”
Duck is embarrassed.
“She twists it when ever she worries. Lately she twists the thing like the steering wheel of a hot rental car taking the curves on the way down the volcano to Hana on Maui.”
“He is obsessed with this thing” she says.
She looks at the rubber duck nose.
“He will not give it up or wait until we are stronger, until we have more allies.”
Duck crosses his arms across his chest.
“It’s a very old argument between us. He doesn’t have to do it alone. He should organize first.”
“I want justice” Duck says, with a little too much emphasis.
True West takes it in.
Very dramatic.
They are a good couple. They’ve been through a lot together.
He likes them.
He dips into the bowl for a handful of nuts. He tosses them into his mouth.
He drinks his drink.
“In Mexico, making love is more important than ideas” says Patita. “Ideas change.”
“Everything changes” says True West. “Unfortunately.”
“And fortunately” says Duck.
He looks aside.
‘You are a dog, Duck” says True West, “Get another kind of job, any job, and forget about this crap. It can’t be that important.”
Dick gets tight.
Another round of drinks comes.
The band returns to the stage. The second set is begins.
Z girl makes it obvious that she wants to dance.
She’s doing it in the chair, making both Duck and True West nervous.
“She’s got more joints than other people’ says Duck, looking at her move in the chair and noticing True West’s interest as well.
“Musica Latino” says Z girl. “Katchi katchi. I like the Puerto Rican conga player.”
The congas and timbales ricochet off one another, before going smooth polyrhythm. The beat is moving fast like hula drum rhythms.
“That’s Hawaiian….” Says Duck.
“Enough gibble-gabble” she says.
She grabs Duck by the shirt, then True West.
“You gonna dance?”
“Do we have a choice?” asks True West.
“No” says Duck.
Z girl parts the crowd on the dance floor like Moses at the Red Sea. She’s about five two, but assertive. She’s in there fast, stripping off her blouse to the pueo underneath.
She’s into a hot little skank before True West and Duck can straighten their shirts.
True West looks at the sway of her breasts under the pueo. “How does she keep that thing on?” asks True West.
“She doesn’t always” says Duck as his duck nose slips down.
Z girl looks at them like they are dirt and then smiles them down to smile again. She sidles up to Duck and bumps his butt with hers.
“Knots” she says. “You have to know how to make knots.”

Chapter 21: Fish Don't Moo

True West is sweating like a gin and tonic in a frosted glass. He’s a little skunked from the Mai Tais. Everything is a little delirious like a carousel ride on a wooden donkey. He watches the dancers scuffle in the loose sand on the beach dance floor. He feels the bass thump in his stomach with dull precision, like a stone breaker breaking stone. He eats macadamia nuts.
“Can we have some?” asks the Z girl.
“Huh?” says True West.
He is deep in thought.
‘You’re a real role monster” says Duck.
That stings.
True West pushes the depleted bowl of nuts over to Duck and Z girl.
Z girl says “thanks.”
The sand pit gets crowded around the P.A. speakers as the band churns up a groove, a funky little number with a soaring lap steel guitar.
The crowd extends back around the table. People undulate in groups of twos and threes all around him. Heck, everyone dances in Waikiki, even alone. They ride the humping bass like buckaroo-de-toot breaking mustangs on a ranchero down in Las Puchas. Everything drives down, syncopates and comes up again.
Sandy bumps through the crowd holding onto her tray of drinks.
The sun prisms on the clouds and sifts through colors and shades as it goes down over the ocean. The sun is a bright highlight in the Duck’s sunglasses as he nods his big orange and pink rubber duck bill in time with the music.
At sunset everything stops.
The crowd moves towards the beach and sits on the sand.
The sun is a great orange ball on the horizon sinking into a flame colored sea.
“When the sun drops completely into the ocean there’s a green flash of light before it disappears. It’s only there for a half a second or so, but if you see it you are granted a wish.” Says Duck
The sun goes off like a road flare as Duck speaks.
The sun settles on the ocean.
“Damn” says True West. They is a pistol shot of green light as it flashes on the horizon. It’s quick, but it’s there.
It is a mighty flash and mighty wishes are made on it, all across the darkening beach. The ocean itself says “wish” as it comes onto the beach and withdrawls.
“What causes that kind of flash?” asks True West.
“Probably pollution” says Duck. “A toxic layer in the ionosphere that suffocates the light and reflects it off the phosphorescent mushroom clouds forming as it burns off the ozone.”
The Z girl nods and raises her eyebrows over her dark glasses. She toasts the green flash.
The real flash is in her eyes.
Her forehead is strained and sincere.
“Salud” she says.
The last light dissolves into an orange and peach fizz against the clouds. The sun goes down like the Titanic.
The sky blackens and one by one the stars wink on.
There is an unmistakable chill coming in from the ocean as the waves break gently on the beach.
“I’m hungry” says Duck. “Let’s eat.”
They head back up the beach tearing themselves away from the stars.
Duck has his arm around the Z girl.
True West carries his bowl of nuts.
Their bare feet leave intertwined foot prints in the sand.
True West stays with the stars for a few seconds, his bare feet trolling at the sand, then he turns and follows the Ducks back to the table.
They settle in.
The palm trees over head rustle as the trade winds take them and shake them gently like pom-poms.
Sandy comes to the table with a couple of folders.
She hands them to the trio like they are menus.
They are not menus.
They are Duck and the Z girls dossiers.
The medical records and psychological records look suspiciously similar.
“I hope this helps” says Sandy.
She hands the supplemental medical records to the couple. “I thought you might like to look at these while the drinks come.”
She raises her eye-brows suggestively.
True West puzzles over the cover and introductory page.
“Where are the appetizers?” he asks..
“Told you so” said Duck. “They’re going all out to discredit me. Look at this trash. None of it is true.”
Z girl is already engrossed in Duck’s psychological profile. She looks up from the record she is reading.
She looks around.
She goes into her purse for her dictionary. She looks up the word she is stuck on.
Her forehead furrows.
She looks at Duck from the corner of her eyes.
Duck shrugs. “It’s not true” he says.
They get menus next. They tuck the medical files away.
The Z girl takes hers out again and continues to read.
She puts her finger on the page.
And looks at the Duck. “We will talk” she says.
“You haven’t read yours yet” says Duck. “It’s all race and sex.”
Z girl knows exactly what that means. “I am a puta” she says.
“Lets eat” he says. “We can worry over this later.”
Duck orders the seared ahi, a bowfin tuna with mango salsa when Sandy comes back with the chips.
“It’s a red fish” says Duck. “It’s a lot like steak, only better.”
True West looks skeptical. “Don’t talk to Texas about meat” he says.
True West pokes at the menu with his straw. “As long as it’s dead, I don’t care.”
“There is a saying” he says.
“If it moos, shoot it again.” He nods significantly to the Z girl and Duck.
“Fish don’t moo” says Duck.
True West thinks about it. “Right.” He says.
They eat the chips with a hot Hawaiian salsa.
It’s good.
“You don’t know the half of it” Duck says. “You should taste the ahi right out of the net, cut up on deck and washed down with iced beer. The salt of the water stays on the tongue as it goes down. It’s great.”
True West imagines the scene.
He fishes around the salsa and comes up with a tiny pepper.
It looks like a museum miniature.
“What’s this little pecker?” asks True West.
He holds up a chili pepper about the size of the tip of his little finger.
“Pathetic” he says.
“That’s Hawaiian” says the Z girl.
“Go easy” says Duck. “They are really hot. They grow in volcanic soil that steams in the mountains.”
True West laughs. “I’m from Texas” he says.
He pops it into his mouth.
His face goes red and purple immediately.
The paper umbrella in his drink almost goes up his nose as he grabs his drink to put out the fire on his tongue.
“Hot, eh?” says Z girl.
“Yes.” He barks out.
“The wild ones from the mountains are so hot they are psychedelic” says Duck. “It’s the truth. You pop one of those peppers in your mouth and you see God playing hacky sack in surfer trunks.”
True West is as close to God as he’s ever been.
It is several minutes before he can speak again.
After a while dinner arrives. The dishes go around the table.
The Mahi Mahi is fresh and stuffed with crab meat.
True West got the nod of approval from the waitress on his order.
Most tourists like that. The Mahi Mahi.
Z girl orders the bakala. The shark with lime on thick Puerto Rican bread, the cheese melted over the shark meat.
Everyone is polite for a few seconds then they dig in with an intense, ravenous hunger.
It’s a long couple of minutes before they surface from the meal again.
“Hey” says the Z girl
True West and Duck smile.
“Yes.”
They eat quietly, making pleasant conversation.
As the meal is ending, True West says “I suppose I should ask a few questions.” He looks into Duck’s eyes. “So I can write the meal off.”
Duck and the Z girl smile. Here we go again.
He gets out his tape recorder and sets it on the table.
“What do you want to know?” asks Duck.
True West pauses and looks at the Duck’s plate.
“I want to know if I can have the rest of your ahi” says True West.
Chapter 22: He Bites the fish
Z girl finishes her meal. She scrapes at the plate for the remaining bakala with her fork. She pushes the plate back and picks up her water glass, sipping at it, embarrassed. She looks over the rim of the glass as she sips with big dark eyes that spark like Fourth of July sparklers.
She holds a soft amused focus on True West who leans back appreciating her.
The Duck has his hand on her leg.
He squeezes it softly, feeling the familiar tingle of contact.
Z girl looks over at him from the corner of her eyes and smiles. It is a soft and full look.
Sandy returns sweating to the table. There’s sand on her cheek and her cloths are rumpled.
“So that’s why they call you Sandy” says True West.
Sandy takes a deep breath and smiles.
“What the heck happened to you?’ asks True West.
“Break volleyball” says Sandy. “We lost.”
“Break volleyball” says True West. “Sounds fast.”
Sandy says “It’s fifteen minutes of hard ball whapping and net crashing. It feels good. Usually. It got nasty tonight. There must be something in the air.”
She looks at True West.
“Can I take your plates?” She asks.
“You touch my plate and I’ll kill you” says True West with a little too much force. “And that’s a promise.”
He looks at Sandy and grimaces. “Yikes” he thinks.
“Must be magnetic tonight” says Sandy. “Thermonucular fueges.”
“Slow down Tex” says Duck. “You’re not being rousted. The tables being cleared for desert. Eat. Enjoy.”
Sandy smile a strained smile. “Not done yet, eh?”
“No” says the Z girl. “I think he’s still eating.”
Sandy says “I guess so.”
True West is embarrassed.
“Shaka” says True West, “really.”
He does the hang loose sign with his thumb and pinky extended from his fist. He shakes it a little.
“Shaka plenty, brah” says Sandy, tossing her blonde hair over her shoulder. “Never mind. Eat your fish.”
Sandy curtsies and moves back from the table raising her tray above her head like an umbrella. She twists around is gone again.
Duck brings his rubber bill down over his nose again from where it rests on his forehead.
The Z girl leaves hers on her forehead.
True West plays with his food with his fork before spearing it and eating it.
He chews happily feeling the sting of the blackening in his mouth.
“I’m going to try again to be a good little journalist” he says. He pushes the plate away.
He goes again for the tape recorder and slips the pause switch off.
“You worked with kids, right?”
“Yes” says Duck. “And teens.”
True West considers Duck.
“You should wear a dinosaur suit or something” he says. “The duck thing doesn’t quite make it.”
“He was very successful” says Z girl.
“I don’t know. It might help with your credibility problem” says True West.
Duck squeezes Z girl’s thigh again.
“Great idea” he says. The enthusiasm doesn’t quite catch. It spuds out.
“You’ve made a point of saying that there has been a big effort to destabilize and discredit you” says True West. “You’ve gone as far as to say that ‘they’ve” True West pauses dramatically here, “tried to kill you.”
Duck nods, the rubber bill going up and down slowly, seriously. “Gunshots, Anthrax and Poison” he says.
“Why would anybody go to all that trouble to harass an ex-employee?”
“Money” says Z girl. She is serious too.
“I had a feeling there were some Yankee doodle buckaroos riding around and hooting in the background” says True West. “Let me get this straight. The whole rig-a-ma-roll is about Saturday night on the town, I mean, somebody taking money earmarked for children and diverting it to other things. Primarily into someone’s pockets.”
Duck raises his eyebrows and smiles. He touches the tip of the beak with his finger. “Bingo” he says. “You got it right on the beak.”
“Where exactly did you work?” True West asks.
“The roller rink” says Duck.
True West waits for the rim-shot that never comes.
“The roller rink?”
“Yes” says the Z girl. “The Rolling Donut Hole.”
Duck smoothes his hair back and raises his eyebrows sincerely.
Z girl and Duck nod together.
Waiting.
True West slides the pause switch on again and thinks about it. The Rolling Donut Hole.
He shrugs, and pushes it back on. What the hell.
“That’s one part of it.” Says Duck. “How services are funded and how the money is delivered.”
“In a bowling bag” mutters True West.
“It’s not a bowling alley” says Patita. “That’s next store. That’s another story.”
“More to the point” says Duck “The place is toxic. Kids keep disappearing”
True West looks at the duckbill on the Z girl’s forehead.
What kind of obsessive and crazy love drives her to these depths for her man he thinks.
True West looks at the couple. “I’m just here on vacation” he says.
Duck adjusts his bill indignantly.
“There’s a lot of money missing” he says. “It’s that simple and dull. To some wild eyed accountant out there with a fondness for finding crooked figures, these books would be better than sex.”
Duck holds his anger.
True West spears his last piece of ahi with his fork.
“Human life is cheap” he says. “Especially if the people are kids.”
“Better than sex, huh?” asks True West.
True West considers this. He lets the kid talk slide for a second. “Well kids are smaller” he says. “It’s figures they are cheaper. Still, I’d like to see those figures before we talk any further.”
He picks up his fork again and sucks the fish off it and then he uses it to go for the last bit of fish on his plate. The piece of meat is still red in the center with the outside blackened and seared.
“Yeah” says Duck. “A little hard core pulp accounting gets them in every time.”
“Pulp accounting?” asks True West, “What in God’s holy horny toad is ‘Pulp accounting?”
“You know what it is” says Duck, “You kill a couple of figures here. You kill a couple of figures there. Strange figures appear and disappear. The lights go out. When they come back on a few more figures are missing. And still the rollers in the rink go round and round.”
“Embezzlement is really boring as stories go” says True West. “Even if someone is stealing the money from impoverished Hawaiian children. Even if the kids are disappearing into a whirling vortex of evil without a trace. It’s tedious.”
“The vortex is on Kauai” says Z girl. “Things come out of there.”
“It’s where the money is going that’s interesting” says Duck.
True West fork pauses in front of his mouth. “Not into the vortex.”
He’s getting interested. Damn it.
“Ok” he thinks. He bites the fish. “Where are the cash and the kids going?”

Chapter 23: But Not As Hot and Sweet As You

“Thank you Mr. West” says the Duck. “That was a great meal.”
“Call me Palani” says True West. “’I’m not paying for it. It’s on the magazine.”
He nods at the Duck’s glass “Drink up.”
“Gracias” says the Z girl, smiling shyly.
She picks up her glass and toasts the host.
“Saluda” she says.
“Saluda” True West and Duck say clicking glass and pineapple with hers.
The pineapple makes a hollow sound when hit, like a blow dark shot out of the blow tube at a tire.
“That was a treat” says Duck. “You know the ahi the yellow fin tuna, are disappearing from Hawaiian waters. We’re getting fished out by the Japanese trawlers. They bring in the big company boats to net fish just outside the boundaries of the islands. They lay huge nets out on the water and catch entire schools. A lot of the fish we get here are farmed.”
“The little fish from down on the farm” says True West. “It’s a lot like the buffalo disappearing from the prairie under the skinner’s guns, or harpooned whales in the waters off Lahina.”
The Z girl offers Duck the last bit of mango salsa. She scoops it off the plate with her fingers. She holds it out for Duck to suck off.
It’s as red-orange as the flame flower in her hair and the lipstick on her thick lips. Her fingernails are sharp and red too. As are her shoes. It hangs thick on her fingers like pomegranate pulp.
True West looks in the Z girl’s eyes as Duck goes for the jelly-like goo on her finger tips and nails. Duck is ecstatic, like a kitten at her mama’s tit. His eyes are shut tight as he sucks off the salsa. His eyes as he feels the sting of the cayenne and the pleasure of it on his tongue.
“See?” she says nodding. “It opens the senses and sings the blood.”
True West feels a little pang of jealousy.
He’s just out of his five year thing with his side-saddling paramour, the glitzier-dish, supermodel Shannon Bang.
The Big Bang.
Shannon was six foot two with long spindle-like legs, big bosom and Italian dressing. Probably still is, he thinks. She was all business, that one. Not much for philosophy or mango salsa finger fed to her man. She would have handed him the spoon. Image darling, Image.
Not like the Z girl at all.
He pangs for something more normal, more heated, and more needed.
The Z girl has her eyes open and is smiling as Duck takes her hand, palm up and kisses it. The rubber nose scrunches up as his lips mash into the hand. There is great fondness when their eyes meet, and unmistakable heat.
True West winces at it.
“It’s so hot and so sweet” Duck says.
Z girl is smiling, hot flashing a little herself.
“But it’s not as hot or sweet as you.” Says Duck.
True West hears a slow burning Mariachi in his head.
He looks the Z girl over, the big boobs on the table as she leans in to kiss Duck. The cleavage is deep and loose and shadowed, like a volcanic valley.
He waits for her them to break seal.
True West leans back in his chair.
He rubs his stomach and waiting for the Z girl’s eyes to settle on his and then says in his deepest broadcaster’s band, “Dulche y desa, brido para alguien, que nunca lo ha probado…” He engages his full chest and lungs and rolls his rs as he trills them with his tongue.
He toasts the Z girl back, subtlety and sips at his hollowed out pineapple, looking through the fruit and umbrella with sultry eyes.
His eyes flow straight into her maple-syrup eyes.
The long black lashes go down shyly.
“Como?” asks Duck, “What was that?”
“Hotter and sweeter still” says True West, “To one who has not tasted it before.”

24 Rough Riders

“Sorry” says True West. The senorita is a very beautiful woman.”
“Oh, I agree” says Duck.
The Z girl also agrees. Her smile burns a little darker. “Yes.”
“It’s the na-nas.” She says. “I have very big Boobs.”
She pulls her tube top up over the breasts.
It slides down again.
“You speak a Spanish?” says the Z girl.
“Yes” he says. “Way down Texas ways, it helps get you where you are going. I grew up with the language.”
The Z girl smiles and nods. “Accent” she thinks.
She is a little surprised. “You have an accent.”
“Habla un poco Espanol. Portuguese es su idioma.” True West says.
He looks at Duck.
“I speak mostly Portuguese.” He says. “I learned it from my mother. She was as pure a Portuguese woman as they come, from an educated family. They were among the first families brought to Maui as laborers. The rest of my family is Hawaiian, except my grandfather. He was as tar black a man as you’ve ever seen. His family was from Florida and Louisiana. They say he was so black he was purple.”
The Z girl laughs.
“He was a marine,” says True West, “He fought with the Rough Riders in the Philippines and Cuba during the Spanish American War.”
“Ah” says Duck. “They stopped in Hawaii on the way to San Juan Hill. They were on boats in the harbor when the seven families who plotted the overthrow of the monarchy took charge. The marines came ashore. The role they played in the overthrown of the monarchy in 1898 is often misunderstood.”
“I know a little” says True West. “I know a small group of marines stopped the massacre of Hawaiians after the revolutionaries stormed the palace. The Hawaiians thought the marines were there to support the revolutionaries. Its part of the reason the Queen chose not to fight. The marine’s presence was daunting.”
“Yes” says Duck. “To say the least.”
“I also know the Africans solders tended to bivouac separately from the white soldiers. The Hawaiians noticed this and called them po’polo. Outcasts. They hung out with the local people on the sly and traded music. That’s how slack key and the hula blues were born, out of campfire jamming and moon light hula. There’s a lot of southern folk blues in Hawaiian music.”
True West gets chills thinking about it.
“That’s right” says Duck. “You’re Hawaiian seed. Those soldier boys evidently did a little more than play hula blues. You know the slide and steel guitar that came into being in country and Hawaiian music is Chinese. It came to Hawaii with the Chinese laborers.” Duck says. “Everything that comes to Hawaii changes.”
True West smiles.
“Z girl and I were talking about the color of your skin while you were in the bathroom blowing steam. How beautiful it is. They say that the skin color is unique from island to island throughout Polynesia. Your African roots rose the darks of your Hawaiian blood” he says. “You have a beautiful skin color. You should use more sunscreen. You’ll burn.”
True West looks at his wet, sand colored hands. “I want to be as dark as possible” he says.
His amber eyes light up and flicker like candle light.
“You know Portuguese were not allowed to immigrate if they could read” says the Z girl. “They wanted to keep people ignorant and controllable.”
“Yes” says True West. “May family is very proud of our literacy. They love that I’m a journalist and on television. It means a lot to my mom.”
True West looks at Duck.
“I grew up in Texas” he says “My family couldn’t afford to live in Hawaii so we moved. My dad was blacklisted for being a union activist in the 1950s. We got threats and all of us could have been killed. So we moved. Mom and Pop never looked back.”
The Z girl furrows her brow and listens.
Her hands are folded prayer like in front of her lips, her elbows covering her breasts on the table.
“My father learned to speak English. He dropped his Hawaiian pidgin fast. That’s what he had to do to make it in Texas. When he reverted to it at home, mostly when he was yelling at me, it was a delight. As a result, I don’t sound very Hawaiian,” True West searches their eyes “Do I?”
“I’m not one to say what Hawaiian is and what isn’t” says Duck. “I’m Italian. You’ve got the blood. That’s what counts. The eyes. To some that’s everything, not the way you speak your pidgin. You know the Hawaiian race was reduced by 90% after the missionaries came. There is a time predicted when the Hawaiians will be uda pau-- gone” he says.
The Z girl laughs. “The population is up again” she says. “Everybody is hapai.”
“Not everybody I hope” says Duck.
The Z girl looks at Duck. She shakes her head no. “But no promises” she says. “Get a job.”
“My father said that you never really get the salt of the Pacific out of your blood. I had to come here to find out what the Pacific salt smells like. I want to separate things out. I had to come here. I want to know who I am out side of the network biographies and profiles.”
True West looks off into space. “I’m just coming to terms with the tragedy of the history. I want to join the struggle for nationhood, by being a good role model and a knowledgeable spokesperson on the news.”
“You need to move out to the country” says Duck, “Out to Pahenuinui where we live. You’ll taste a little Hawaiian salt out there” says Duck. “It forms on the lips in the summer.”
“It’s very salty” agrees Z girl softly to herself.
She looks up at True West and says “Ud habla un Espanol muey bien. Es un placer eschar Espanola.”
The Duck gets it. She is complimenting his Spanish.
Duck looks at the Z girl “My Spanish isn’t very good.” He says. “Z girl refuses to let me learn. She is convinced that if I learn it, I’ll use it to pick up Latina in Honolulu. She won’t teach it to me.”
The Z girl grimaces. “That’s right” she says.
“You should come to dinner tomorrow. It would be nice for the Z girl to get a chance to speak some Spanish. There are not many Spanish speaking people where we live. She misses it.”
“Thank you” says True West. “But I have a surf date tomorrow with a hot babe. Maybe I’ll come out later in the week?”
“I would like that. Gracias” says the Z girl.
“How about Thursday night” says the Duck.
“That sounds right” says True West.
The date is set.
True West sighs. “To me” he says.
He tosses the rest of the juice in the pineapple straight down.
The Z girl and Duck tip glasses and drink.

Chapter 24: Lover’s Telepathy

The waiters come for the money.
True West takes them in from the corner of his eyes.
Sandy is gone.
In her place are three guys lined up like bowling pins. They are wearing white jackets like kitchen staff. They come in like fighters in formation, one in front and two in the rear.
They lead waiter fidgets with the bill.
There two guys standing behind him are the size of line-backers.
They have rubber shark noses on their faces, little gray pug snouts with sharp pointy teeth sticking out of them.
They have towels over their arms that to cover the revolvers in their serving hands.
Conversation stops at the table.
True West looks at Duck. He points to the guns and then hurriedly rearranges the hair on his forehead..
Duck knows what he is thinking without turning around.
He slowly lifts and moves his chair out so he has room to maneuver.
True West blanches.
Z girl moves a fork into her lap.
True West takes an exaggerated deep breath and shakes off the tension. He takes out his wallet and removes his credit card.
“That ought to do it” he says.
Shark number one, the one with the lobotomy scar across his forehead takes the card. He looks like Frankenstein in Mary Shelly’s book, nasty-assed and mean, through no fault of his own. The second looks peaceful like a sumo wrestler after dinner. He even smiles self consciously.
He takes True West’s credit card.
He looks at the name.
Slowly, a smile spreads out across his face. It pushes up the shark nose.
“You’re on the TV” the shark says. “On The News in the rubble.”
True West is on familiar ground here, talking to a fan with a gun.
“Yes…” he begins to say.
The shark in front, the one that looks like a transgender aces him with his eyes. He or she is stark looking and thin.
His eyes are marbled like purple agate with little electric capillaries lightening out from the iris. He looks wired. He has light makeup on his face. His upper lip is black, the bottom one red. His hair is too short for a pony tail but it’s in one. The hair is ketchup colored streaked with yellow. He has a diamond broach on his kitchen jacket of a dagger.
He’s unhappy with everything, impatient and jittery. He is exasperated like the world is just too much to bear and everything in it just spices it with shit.
“What are you doing here?” He asks True West.
True West smiles his TV smile. “Eating” he says.
“You should be more careful who you associate with” he says. He looks at Duck and the Z girl like they are slugs in the soup. “These people are being deleted. They have no future. No Past. They don’t exist.”
True West is taken a back.
He hands it to shark number one. He tears the credit card in half and throws on the table in front of True West like he’s dealing stud poker cards.
“You aren’t here either.”
True West eyes the two pieces of his credit card on the table.
“Hey” he says. “That’s extreme.”
The sharks smile and move forward.
“Leave him alone” says Duck. “He’s here on vacation.”
The sharks move in on either side of Duck.
Duck looks over at the Z girl, who is frozen in place.
“The Duck pays” the big one says. “Cash”
He nudges Duck with the barrel of his gun.
Duck smiles. “Cash?” he says, “What else is there?”
“Relax” he says. “I’ll go sell the car.”
He moves his chair back and makes to leave.
The sharks are really pissed off now. They stop him.
Duck puts both hands in the air in front of his chest and elevates them from the wrist like he is practicing his tai chi martial arts moves. “Only kidding” he says. “I’m familiar with this shakedown. I’m just getting out my wallet out’ he says.
The purpled eyed shark reaches out and tugs on the Z girl’s ear.
“”We could take it out in trade” he says, his smile going up on the opposite side as Elvis’. ‘The boys like the Z girl. We’ve been watching her through the windows at the end of the day. She’s quite the cupcake.”
Duck looks straight into the Z girl’s eyes. She looks back scared.
Duck looks at her with intensity and mouth’s and says the word “no” in lover’s telepathy. He inflates like a puffer fish.
I’ll take of this.
The Z girl’s eyes flash panic as the line-backing shark puts his hands on her shoulders, letting one stray down into her tube top.
Her eyes shift around to the shark and come up on him like twin machine guns.
They are black as ink.
Duck says “uh oh” as they flash red.
Z girl turns, bring her hand up fast.
The fork disappears into the shark’s trousers.
She twists it savagely.
The big shark spins around yowling, knocking the other shark off balance. He grabs at his upper thigh as the blood gush comes through his hands. Z girl holds the fork and twists again.
His scream brings the band to a halt.
The whole restaurant is on its feet.
“I like you” says the purple shark eyeing Z girl like the last piece of devils food cake at the orphanage. “You and I will play again. Count on it.”
The big shark is bleeding with the fork lodged deep in his thigh.
Z girl twangs the fork and yanks it out.
She’s on her feet.
The shark screams in pain and retches.
He reaches out to strangle her.
Duck and True West stand up, kicking chairs back.
The purple eye one whistles. Down and up.
The two sharks turn and run like hell out of the restaurant. The wounded one limps leaving blood in his steps. They push through the crowd and down to the beach, knocking tourists out of the way as they push towards the water.
The concierge yells “Let him go.”
They have called the police.
The wounded one recovers sense quickly. He hot eyes the crowd. Then he trails off after the other ones dragging his leg with him as he goes. He is furious and stiff. Tears roll down his cheek in pain.
He is grabs his crotch and whimpers. He turns back to the table, making savage eye contact with the Z girl before he turns and leaves.
They lock eyes.
True West is now on his feet and has straightened up like he is news casting. He is no longer crouched like someone who has to pee. He watches the sharks run.
Duck grabs the Z girl by the shoulders.
She knocks his arms away and starts after the guys running down the beach. She pushes him away, panting like a cat in heat.
She starts for the big one.
The crowd holds her back.
“Z girl” says Duck loudly.
She gives Duck a double dirty look, she looks forks at him.
“I’m just on vacation” mutters True West to nobody particular. He smiles at the crowd.
They know.
“Let’s get out of here” says True West
“That’s probably a good idea” says Duck “When there is blood in the water sharks get grouchy. More Come. The concierge will talk with the police. They know the problem.”
Z girl grabs her purse and heads for the door. He’s still got the bloody fork in her hand.
“That’s it” she says.
Duck sighs. “I’m sleeping in the car tonight”
He goes after her.
She waits at the entrance of the restaurant for him.
Duck doesn’t touch her, but paces her out the door to the car.
True West looks around “Please,” he said, “Enjoy your evening.”
The music has already started up again. People are slow to go to the dance floor, but they are getting there.
True West pulls the sword out of the cherry in his pineapple drink and puts it in his pocket as a place marker. He’ll remember detail better when he pulls it out in the morning and takes notes.
“It’s real” he thinks. “Really real.”

Aloha's End Current Chapter" Chapter 31 God's Quiet Man Amplified

2007-09-04T00:37:00.000-02:00

Aloha's End Rewrites: The Surfing Disaster With Momi

2007-08-28T04:30:00.000-02:00

Momi holds the two balls of yellow and green lilikoi, the passion flower fruit, in front of her breasts and offers them to TrueWest. With her long black hair hanging down her back she looks like a different woman. The chop sticks holding the coconut oiled bun are out and her hair is unpinned. It falls freely from her head and down around her shoulders like a waterfall.
It blows softly into the trade winds.
She fingers her hair out of her face.
Her lips are full and dry, a dusty rose color.
With her burgundy blazer gone, she looks less small. Less compact. She is well muscled around her shoulders and arms. Her breast in the rind of her bathing suit are tight.
The tapa print pueo tied across her hips is a red dirt color.
It accentuates the color of the fruit. The deep red in the yellow hide.
Behind her the sky is blue and cloudless. The beach sand is white and glistening.
TrueWest moons at her.
She looks a lot like the pictures of his mother and aunts in the country in the family albums.
The black and white photos were taken in much younger, happier days on the Big Island. They are like post-cards from the early 1900’s, of lei sellers and hula dancers at the port. They are beautifully Hawaiian. The dark eyes bright.
TrueWest is dizzy with the smells of the flowers, the fruits and the oil in Momi's hair. She looks very Pacific Island.
Momi's seen the look on TrueWest's face before.
He's having Tahitian daydreams.
“Gauguin” Momi says, “Right?’
She freezes in a painting pose.
TrueWest laughs big. “Right’ he says.
She looks like a Gauguin virgin offering breadfruit.
“The lilikoi fruits make you relax.” She says. ”I hope.”
She looks down again at the valley between her breasts.
She smiles to herself.
”And it increases testosterone levels too.” She says.
TrueWest takes the fruit from her hands and holds on to them. He hand balances them.
They are the size of small grapefruit.
He looks at her like she is the wicked stepmother in Snow White offering him an apple with little brown needle marks on the skin, like if he presses his thumbs into the fruit, tears it open and sucks it out with it's juices, he will pass into a long drugged slumber.
He’s a little nervous at first.
“It boosts da kine..." says Momi. " neurotransmitters.”
She looks into his eyes and says. ”Makes you sharper.”
She looks down shyly. T
hen back up like a scamp, a wild one.
Her smile broadens then drops to serious. “Not that you need that Mr. West.”
I might. He thinks. “By all means let’s have a little breakfast” he says.
He can’t help smacking his lips a little.
“I like surf on an empty stomach’ says Momi.
"My name is Palani” he says.
She looks at him.
“You’re still Mr. West to me” she says.
She fingers the hair off her face. Then blows it off again when it comes back. She is laughing. “The hair is a pain in the okole” she says. I should cut it.”
TrueWest says ‘Don’t you dare."
Momi had to be growing the stuff for her at least ten years. It is thick and lush.
He feels a little nervous in his new surfer trunks.
They are a little large and hang low on one hip.
He digs his toes into the sand.
He has a t-shirt over the top, the one that says “Surf Texas” on it.
It’s red on grey.
“Where are we going?” he asks. “Sandy’s?”
Momi laughs again and shakes her head.
She feels like she’s at the courtesy desk again.
“No," she says. " That would be a little chancy: Most of the neck and spinal trauma cases at the Queen’s Hospital come from Sandy’s. You have to know the currents, the way the waves break and the surf patterns to survive the ride there. Or anywhere, really.”
TrueWest looks disappointed.
“I listened to the surf report this morning on Hawaii Public Radio” he said. “It’s pumping out there.”
“You are peddling” says Momi. “We’ll stay in Wai’ki’ki and see how you ride.”
“Don’t tell a cowboy how to ride” says TrueWest. “You don’t have to tell me how or where to get on or get off.”
Momi smirks.
She ties her hair back in a pony-tail, the purple elastic hair dooby in her teeth like a rose as she pulls the hair back from her neck and holds it up. She retrieves the elastic band from her teeth and secures the hair.
She lets the pueo drop to the beach.
“Ok” she says. “I’ll see you out there.”
She grabs her board from the beach and trots down to the wave line.
Out of the straight skirt she really has a butt.
TrueWest watches the waves rise as Momi dives under them and paddles out.
He gets out of his t shirt and runs after her, pulling up the surf trunks.
The water is warm on his stomach as lays himself out and begins to paddle.
His arms hurt already.

Entry for April 19, 2007 Chapter Twenty-Four The Pink Whites of His Eyes (Rewritten on 8/21/07)
Chapter Twenty-Four
By the time TrueWest paddles out to Momi, his arms feel like sun baked bricks and his chest aches. His hair is drenched and he leave a little rainbow oil slicks in the water where the sun makes it twinkle in the sea like colored tinsel.
His amber colored eyes are pale and diffuse.
They jitterbug in the pink whites of his eyes as he looks at the endless ocean tussle to the horizon. The water is choppy, throwing rags of foam to the tops of the endless runners.
Out to the right he sees Momi lying on her back on her board looking up at the sky.
She looks a lot younger with her hair down that way. She has pulled the thinger-ma-jiggy out of her hair and it floats on the water like a goodbye-lei. Her lashes are long dark and curly. Her legs are strong, shiny and wet, her breast full and heavy laying on her chest.
Her breathing is long and even.
TrueWest paddles and kicks his way across to her, splashing her as he approaches.
She’s up like a shot.
“Hey, not so close.” She says.
TrueWest is panting like a dog.
He awkwardly paddles around next to her.
She lowers her lashes and looks at him, half eyed.
“You paddle like a poodle” she says.
TrueWest is truly miserable.
“How come you are so far out?” he wants to know.
“I had a very groovy up-bringing” says Momi.
She smiles at him knowing she’s destroying all his hula girl fantasies with one brazenly hoale-kine sentence.
Out here she needs his attention.
“It’s a much longer ride cowboy”” she says. "You've got to make it worth while."
TrueWest lays his cheek on the board for a few seconds before coming up.
The water rocks the board under him. The waves are big enough coming in to cup the board up in handfuls of water and lay him down in the valley of the scoops.
The waves are getting bigger.
“High tide” says Momi.
The waves are going from five to seven foot and breaking right.
Momi points to the reef line and the currents.
TrueWest drops his flirt eyes and looks at the rocks in terror.
He sees the jagged ones on the left and the jagged ones on the right.
They look like shark teeth.
“We’re surfing into the mouth here, that tiny patch of beach down there.” Momi points to the narrow stretch of beach between the reefs.
She carefully describes what’s under water along the shore line.
TrueWest looks at her dully.
“My dad made me snorkel here before he taught me to ride” she says.
“Any undertow?” he asks.
“Plenty undertows” she says. “It’s strong current.”
TrueWest is nervous. “I hope I don’t wipe out down there.”
“No worrys” she says. “You won’t reach the beach”
She lifts her ass off the board with strong arms and flips down, “See ya” she says.
She pushes speed with fast kicking like a flying fish before launching into the wave she’s going on. It catches her immediately and throws her down the long sloping blue green yukio of ocean as it starts to foam up and break from the sea. TrueWest sees her rise from the board and ballerina on it on tip toes to see what’s around before dropping into a 70-30 position on the board with her arms just above her legs. She slashes right and left and takes it all the way in, bouncing it towards the beach, pushing foam all the way in.
TrueWest gawks at the ride, and her behind.
He’s terrified of the water and of looking bad.
He’s thinking about those first few times on the air during a national crisis. Especially the time he was on the air during the 9-11 crises. He remembers the unfamiliar butterfly of stomach muscles as he went over the details in the pillowed space of his mind.
What to say.
How to say it.
The casualty lists.
The impact.
The responsibility.
The producer’s assistant kept fiddling with his hair, spraying it down.
She finally messed it up a little. “You should look a little haggard” she said.
He was a little haggard, like Merle.
He got off the bus and went to his bird perch in the parking lot, the smoke billowing in the background, two fire-people over a third on the pavement to the right of him. Him averting his eyes and motioning the camera away from the spot.
The smoke aching his eyes, clogging his tear ducts. He coughed a little and wiped his eyes.
He stood silent on the green light the producer twirling his fingers like he was making cotton candy and then bowling his fore-finger to him. You're on the air.
He just looked into the camera and stepped out of the way.
The panorama of destruction rolling out like a machete mowed carpet in back of him.
The words stuck in his dry throat.
It's like that. He sees the wave coming, the big green one swelling like a small breach of a whale and slips into it, paddling to catch up.
He stands up like he’s doing the news and is torn into the maelstrom, flipping his board up and over into the air and his ass into the wave.
He is dragged under water. He fights and kicks until he gives up and floats embryonic up to the surface only to be slammed by another wave.
It conks him on the head like a Samoan war club and he’s under again with water up his nose and in his lungs.
He goes deeply under and dances in the open like a jelly fish.
TrueWest begins to drown.

Chapter 25 The Big Orange Balogna

TrueWest falls into current like a snowflake into a rushing mountain stream.
He comes up for air gasping and is smacked in the lower back by another on-coming wave Then it’s tumble dry in a big industrial dryer in a Laundromat in downtown Atlantis, head over heels, pinwheels straight down towards the dead reef at the bottom of the sea. A trail of bubbles coming out of his nose.
The snap of the wave has knocked him like a cue-ball into semi-consciousness.
He kicks and flounders in the water pumping frantically in place. The harder he kicks the less he moves. It’s like climbing the walls of a sand pit. The walls give in and collapse as he grabs at them. Instead of climbing he begins to sink like a lead sinker to the bottom.
He exhausts himself quickly.
Big man. Big voice. Big chest. Big lungs.
Bad swimmer.
The ballsy radio and TV voice is as silent. He watches himself delivering the news in his head, screaming lungless head and date lines.
Dateline: The blue pacific ocean. Drowning. Yes. The scream behind tight lips is underplayed by a calm, quiet voice that simply notes the glassy blue green water as it darkens and the sinking of his body.
Up above, not so far away, the surface gels above him.
The fight for the surface doesn’t last very long.
He gives up the fight as he looses consciousness.
A warm embryonic feeling pees around him in the chill of the water.
He feels good, relaxed and warm.
Drowning is good. Really good.
It’s like sleeping.
It’s like being carried around in the womb or in the top of his mother’s dress on the tits.
Its mother union.
He's the little Ku.
The anchor, before he was an anchor man, the anchor that held the family together in the foreign exile of the oil fields the pampas with derricks instead of palm trees.
The shade from oil derricks was stark and angular, not like the palm leaves bouncing in trade winds on the big island. His ear is next to his mama’s sighs on the heartbeat, like dessert. Mariah now, ghostly and high whined in his ears and his head as she is walking lunch to his dad on the days he forgot it. "You did that on purpose" she says, tossing the lunch bag to him.
Walking, behind his father’s casket awash in emotions of grief and tears.
TrueWest smiles.
He’s having a flashback as he loses consciousness. How about that.
Its typical and cliché of him.
On camera he pushes a little to get away from doing that, he’s always trying to do something new. Not repetitive. It's like trying to keep a West Texas Waltz fresh.
That old ballet in boots.
You have to go with intuition and emotion, and your best gal’s hips.
Drowning is a lot like doing a waltz, twirling now round and round and round with arms around and around and around his sweeter than sweet one, the belle of his ball, ya’ll. His girly friend. She is as tall as is. The girly girl is Gracie again, the one that used to get him in trouble all the time because of how light skinned she was, all that unsunned bone and white skin, blonde hair and eyes that sparkled like juiced cinnamon bark. A free willed looker. Not everyone gave them a hard time. But going into town could be a beast. And there he was with her on dusty plank floors, resting his head on her chest, nestling his head in the top of her dress.
Drift sound in echo. What she doing with that Mexican?
What’s it look like? (snickers all around.)
"Why don’t they find someone else to dance with?" she mumbles. "It’s last calling golden eyes. Last call. Had enough? Huh? You want another beer?"
"Mmmmmm?"
"Beer, another one? Had enough?"
Mmmmmm. (Just a dot of perfume.) At the top of the valley, then just a little bit of that female sweat smelling up and twisting into prairie road down the pike. That Frenchy smelling stuff from Ft. Worth her dad got her. A little import shop on the Dallas side.
Lean back and twirl, girl.
Then some wild hack is beating him on the back of the head with a two by four and calling him a Mexican. That is still annoying after all these years. “I’m Hawaiian” He says.
They smack him again.
“Makes no never mind to me” the hack says, winding back to smack him again with a big orange bologna.
Stop that.
They break surface.
He smacks him again.
Stop that!
“This one’s for Momi. He says. "for not paying attention to her.”
He slaps him again with the big orange Bologna.
“Quit fighting”
"I'm not fighting" TrueWest says covering his head.
"Then quit covering your head." He slaps him again.
The life guard is actually pretty pissed off.
He hits him again with his floater blimp.
“Ok. Ok.”
“Go limp. Or do I have to beat you silly to save you?”
TrueWest goes limp like a cat on a window sill.
The life guard grabs him and tows him like a wet cat from the surf.
As he gets to the shallows he stands up to walk but his legs buckle and he blacks out again, embarrassed.
Momi is standing up the beach with her hands on her hips and her long black hair blowing in the wind.
It’s all a dream, a dream, a dream…..
His cheek slaps the sand hard.

2007-08-22T07:25:00.001-02:00

Wai' wai' ko' ko' ola, That Old Black Magic

2007-08-21T12:54:00.000-02:00

Waiting for the next chapter? Visit www.zangarijournalism.com for insight into the writing of "Aloha's End." Visit the zblog by paging down zangarijournalism.com to the link. Subjects: Aloha's End, Autism, Brain Machines, 9-11, Zangari's 1998 Anthrax Attack, Political and Personal history. The (until now) unending autobiorgraphy and chronicals of Michael F. Zangari.
Here's some background on the next section of "Aloha's End."

TrueWest Reporting:

Federal Whistleblower Protection In Jeopardy

From the Honolulu Weekly, “The ten most censored stories of the year. Number 6:”
Federal whistleblower protection in jeopardy
Though record numbers of federal workers have been sounding the alarm on waste, fraud and abuse since Bush became president, the agency charged with defending government whistleblowers has reportedly been throwing out hundreds of cases—and advancing almost none. Statistics released at the end of 2005 by Public Employees for Environmental Responsibility led to claims that Special Counsel Scott Bloch, who was appointed by Bush in 2004, is overseeing the systematic elimination of whistleblower rights.
What makes this development particularly troubling is that, thanks to a decline in Congressional oversight and hard-hitting investigative journalism, the role of the Office of Special Counsel in advancing governmental transparency is more vital than ever. As a result, employees within the OSC have filed a whistleblower complaint against Bloch himself.
Ironically, Bloch has now decided not to disclose the number of whistleblower complaints in which an employee obtained a favorable outcome, such as re-instatement or reversal of a disciplinary action, making it hard to tell who, if anyone, is being helped by the agency.

The Stones of The Temple Of Peace
(A Reposting. Rewritten 8/21/07)

If I’ve taken a long time to set up what happened in Makaha, it is because it is important to me to set the stage correctly.
I want to be understood.
It’s a curse, wanting that.
The detail haunts me. That’s PTSD and debriefing from it. You dog the detail as you spin through time. All the detail is vivid and in every detail there’s a universe of information still unreeling.
The mind becomes “unstuck,” as Billy Pilgrim describes it in the narrative of Slaughterhouse Five, the novel by former American POW Kurt Vonnegut.
You see things in a different kind of kaleidoscope.
We know that the brain skitters wild in trauma.
Something happens to your neurochemistry. Your brain juices electrically and the way the neurons fire, changes. It’s like the opening spud of a roman candle before the fire balls shoot out. New patterns are created by the recoil of the cardboard tube in the Coke bottle.
The brain evolves whether you are ready for it or not and nothing is ever the same again.
One spring morning when I was in high school, I awoke to a thunder clap and driving rain. I was due at work as a school janitor in an hour. The sky was as dark and churning as devil’s food cake mix in a blender.
I climbed into the car and turned on the lights and wipers.
I drove through a heavy, tornado like, torrent to work. I must have been going slowly, like a canoe up stream when I started across the bridge. A truck zipped past me going the opposite direction on the highway. The big wheels threw up a wall of water that hit the car like a tidal wave. I was totally blinded. The car swerved to the right and jumped a guardrail. It flipped off the bridge like a bully board off a rip curl.
As the car launched into space, arced and went down my mind went into hyper-drive.
Everything went into ultra-slow motion.
I could no longer hear the radio.
I had time to breath and brace myself against the wheel. I remember thinking, “I might get killed.”
Its funny how you never think, “I might be permanently disabled or disfigured.”
It’s always death that comes up first, even though the second thought is much more frightening. What could have happened always is. It is a miracle that any of us survive day to day.
I had time to sigh again.
The nauseating crunch of metal and the sudden jolt of the car coming to a halts focused me fast.
The car had lodged on a tree in the shallows of the stream and I did not go into the river. It was not going to be a Huck Finn or Captain Nemo adventure.
I had survived, again.
Statistically trauma gets worse, the more times you’ve been traumatized. It seems to wear the system down. Defenses become weakened like the shield of the Starship Enterprise under Klingon attack.
The trauma in Hawaii was different than the trauma in Nebraska. It was more overt and wicked in nature. It required a deeper understanding of basic suffering to endure. As a trauma specialist I am trained in the subtlety of pain. Not only does pain hurt, but feeling pain hurts. It is what the Buddhists call “the pain of pain.”
The pain of it was a pain in the ass.
There was no stomach curdling metal crunch to mark an ending to this story.
In Hawaii the poisons at the clinic, the central nervous system destroyers, wafted at you like sick incense. It took tens years to fully impact the people inside. The cover up and the smell that came afterwards crept like a bug over things. Detail was increasingly hard to come by. The evidence evaporated like smoke. Then there was the anthrax from Nigeria, a completely out of context powdering of mind. It was followed by a couple more murder attempts. These things were rim shots to losing my career and my health. It was an increasingly bizarre series of events that lead me on a belladonna-laced bridge dive.
In debriefing from what happened my interpretation of events is heavily shaded by my training and experience. I can’t help what I do for a living or what I have studied.
In trying to overcome autism, hyper-somnia and ADD I have studied a lot of material on quantum behavior change, focus and the impact of sound on consciousness. I completed my B.A. work in Ancient History at the University of Nebraska with these interests in mind. I have studied the impact of religion on consciousness. I am one of those guys who liked Julian Jayne’s book The Origins of Consciousness in the Breakdown of the Bicameral Mind. I’m interested in how God talks to us through our experience and our biology. I believe in God in the flesh, so to speak, a God of information dissemination. After that, you’re on your own. I believe there are miracles. I believe they are all within understanding. I think we all get what we need in one way or another.
In setting this up, I have tried to put a cultural context to what has happened.
It is more than a story of a RICO oriented witness suppression.
Hawaii has more secrets that it does flowers.
The Hawaiians themselves are master story tellers and witnesses. They have learned to wait and watch things develop and transition. To take sudden action in a situation of overwhelming force was unwise, to say the least. They have had to learn to wait for a safe time to act. They are masters of increment. By layering in things in the oral tradition, you solidify them. History becomes fact in increment as well. It is a matter of survival.
In Hawaii, it was a police captain there that told me the single most important thing in any investigation is patience. He told me to learn to wait.
There was no written language in ancient times. The Polynesian culture is an oral culture. The people are really good in language creation and retention. I think the best broadcasters in America all come from Wai’anae these days, at least the most creative and most interactive.
One word in Hawaiian usually also means it’s opposite.
The sense of play and interplay is awesome. There is irony and humor in any real Hawaiian communication. A Buddhist would call the language “co-emergent” acknowledging that everything contains or indicates it’s opposite. They call that a “one taste” experience. The Hawaiian language is filled with sorrow and joy. It is filled with verbal turnaround, play and history. It is a language that predicts the future.
There is an enormous power in that. The language is alive. It has an internal and independent intelligence
It’s a lot like the angelic tongues documented in the bible.
An angel communicates in waves, or so they say. One word can mean volumes. When you hear the word, in the still, quiet of the mind, understanding dawns in the head of the listener, whole. You understand the completeness of the communication. All meanings converge and become one.
There is always power in any language.
It is how we cast the reality we live.
The word comes first after experience. Sometimes even before the experience. We describe the experience as it happens. In English we seldom feel the impact or the irony of the words we speak. We are a very concrete people. We are always describing something.
The late neurologist John Lilly has an experiment up at his Web site. It is a tape loop of a single phrase. You can duplicate it by simply saying a sentence into a tape recorder or repeating a phrase over and over again. As the words repeat you begin to perceive all the meanings contained in the words. They evolve into a deeper set of interconnected meanings. Then they begin to change. The mind hates repetition. Bored with the words that repeat, you begin to play with them. You hear them differently. Words that sound alike or are indicated by a like sound begin to play in your comprehension. The meaning of the phrase is in constant evolution because of the way the brain changes it. As I said, the brain bores easily.
At the same time, the brain likes sameness. It clings to the familiar like a statically charged camisole does to the body.
When the unthinkable happens you are in a quagmire to contain it. Let alone communicate it to others. There is no time for increment in a crisis.
I have said it before and will say it again, that the situation is much like that Smother’s Brothers Song, “Chocolate.”
What did you do when you fell into the vat of Chocolate?
I yelled “Fire!”
Why?
I yelled “fire”, because nobody would have come to help me if I yelled “Chocolate.”
I can’t get out of the vat of chocolate Tommy Smothers fell into out of my mind. My mind is molten chocolate.
It’s a lot like reporting to the FBI or police department about a crime. You want the investigating officer to understand the impact of what has happened as well as the details of the crime. You are reduced to childhood. You want someone to make it all better, to punish the bad guy. But through the blubbering of your tears you have to tell someone what happened.
The police would not be interested in the trauma; at least he or she would not admit it or spend time on it. It’s noted that’s all. It’s not the job they are assigned. Investigating the crime is.
“I fell into a vat of Chocolate” Tommy says.
In America, the officer would say, maybe out of a personal bias, “What were you doing near the vat of chocolate to begin with? How did you come to fall into it? What kind of chocolate was it? What did you do when you fell into the chocolate?”
I’m not going to go into that part again.
We’ve done the chocolate.
You do weird things in the middle of a crisis. You do weirder things trying to tell people what happened.
I remember a retired friend in Hawaii talking about what happened after a devastating tornado hit them in the mid west. The neighbors gathered in the ruble of their homes. They stood silently with each other, kicking debris.
One guy came out of the ruins of his home, happy as a clam.
In his hand, he carried an undamaged light bulb.
“Look” he cried. He had a treasure.
One of the other neighbors was inexplicably angry.
He grabbed the light bulb and smashed it to the ground.
“That’s what its worth” he said.
That’s the kind of compassion people get sometimes.
In trying to talk about things, you have to be specific when you describe anything. “Simple declarative sentences” my Pacific Business News Editor used to tell me. “Use simple declarative sentences.”
Hawaiian is a very poetic language, but it is even more specific than the engineering plans of a contractor.
English is about narrowing experience to pinpoints defined moment. It’s about containing things in the vessel of words. I
My Hawaiian language study makes me think that their language is more process oriented. It’s about movement and evolution. Every word indicates a historical antecedent, a context and a progression. The individual words are nouns, adjectives and verbs all at the same time. It oozes a desire to be understood. It contains the culture, the community pool of understanding and power and the elements of action and progression. It is in fact part of the experience itself and evolves into dance, the hula.
If you can’t dance it, it isn’t right.
No wonder the bandits that stole the monarchy tried to destroy the language. It negated their importance in time.
The power to inspire, to create context and pattern and the ability to organize things historically are enormously potent. Everyone is responsible for the cohesion of the language and continuity. It’s magic, the creation of culture.
That’s why they cut Hawaiian’s tongues out of their mouths if they spoke Hawaiian. African slaves suffered the same torture for speaking their African language.
It was the best weapon of control for those in power. To control the language that people spoke.
The revolutionary bandits wanted to cut continuity.
What is the first thing you do when you take over?
“Kill the storytellers” say the Zulu people in their folk tales of tyranny. Their culture and language is very similar to the Hawaiians. The power of the people is in the land, the word and the dance. Their power rests in the journey and in the word, and the people who carry it.
So it is here that we end today, at the very place where I began last week.
With the crime and consequence called wai’wai’ko’ko’ola.
If the language can redeem then the language can deceive and destroy too. It is recognized in Hawaiian law.
It’s an acknowledgement of magic, a bow to words and the way they can shape reality.
In witness destruction, the word is everything.
You can’t kill a witness and their words without leaving a trail.
That’s the last thing you want to do if you’re trying to beat the heat.
You have to destroy the evidence and witnesses at the same time.
You must wave red Noriega underwear, extort, intimidate, bribe and break the witnesses. You must destroy the evidence with smoke and debris. You must smash all remaining lightbulbs.
It is a fine bit of sorcery.
The New Hawaiian Dictionary defines wai’wai’ko’ko’ola as the wealth taken by an individual to cause by sorcery the death of an innocent person. This might include driving someone to suicide, creating stress related illness and death, the creation of rage so great that it results in murder, or creating a death causing distraction. Since Hawaiian society is very communal, it also involves destroying a person’s place in the community. It is a bout reputation destroying and rumor mongering. With out a place in the community, you do not survive.
To take wealth for this act of magic is punishable by the sorcerer’s own death.
The art of rumor and innuendo are not forbidden, but to do it for a profit motive is. A lot of Hawaiian humor is based on deception, or in group knowledge. This is a very subtle bit of humor.
I think of Paul Gauguin’s journals from Tahiti, the book called Noa Noa.
His Tahitian companions take him out fishing.
They tell him that if you catch a runny fish, it means your wife is cheating on you. They talked about the runny fish all the way to the fishing spot.
They insisted that Gauguin was the first to fish.
They insisted.
Guess what happened.
Gauguin caught a runny fish.
Wai’wai’ko’ko’ola also means payment in “live blood goods.”
It is the sex slavery or human sacrifice you get for doing your deeds.
It is the thirty pieces of silver.
Make no mistake about it. This is a dirty business.
The only dirtier money is wai’wai’ko’ko’pi’lau.
That is money or wealth taken to kill someone who has caused the death of a person who has “prayed others to death.” (New Hawaiian Dictionary.)
The crime is in taking the money not in saying the prayer.
You may not see the humor in this yet. But you will.
This story, my story, is about the former, the destruction of a witness for gain. The causation has yet to be firmly established.
The hatred and heated prayers come later. No charge.
I pray to over come that too.
Wai’wai’ko’ko’ola is blood money, it is filthy with betrayal.
******************
Ok then, on to Makaha on the donkey back of my inadequate language.
On through my memories of Nana’kuli and Wai’anae, past the poisons to the valley of Lono, the trickster God, the God of love and tears and agriculture and healing.
To his hei’au there in the mountains, a holy place.
It is there by the creek, rebuilt stone by stone by Hawaiian masons in the forest by the creek. The Tiki is there. It has been declared a state park in the middle of a gated community. It is surrounded by mansions. You have to get permission to go to the temple from the guards at the gate. But you can go there. If you follow the creek up the valley, like some local people do, you can sneak in at night and sleep in the drumming hut.
The creek and path to the hei’au ran past my condo. From my window I could see the service road that went up the valley in the hollow of the dry creek bed to the hei’au.
In a time of war, the temple of Lono became a temple of Ku. Ku is the god of warfare and technology. It was a time when they needed a Ku.
Sometimes you do.
The temple became a place of wai’wai’ko’ko’ola.
There were human sacrifices given and made there for cause, but ultimately the crime was the same one, the old one. Jealousy.
The hei’au is a war temple made from the stones of a temple of peace.
It was here in 1998 that I made my decisions to fight back.

The crime: Wai’wai’ko’ko’ola.
The law is still on the Hawaiian books somewhere, not in some dark archive section gathering dust.
The law is about sorcery for hire.
It’s about the darkest kind of sorcery.
The kind that can often results in someone’s death.
It is one of the few crimes in Hawaii punishable by death.
That’s relatively rare in Hawaiian law. Exile or ostracism is far more common. That can be deadly on any island. Without community support you do not survive.
It’s just that simple. The society is very interdependent.
Sorcery is the ability to change reality by using words to bring about a fundamental shift in perception. It is the ability to mold or shape public opinion for or against someone by the use of lies and rumors. It is used to create and replace reality, to create a group ken.
To really appreciate the power in this you have to spent time on an island.
It is a tight, interdependent community. Rumors rage out of control like wildfire. They passed orally from person to person quickly and have the strength of winter waves.
Imagine this: The coconut wireless. It is a near telepathic sharing of information that is greatly enhanced by the volcanic magnetism of the islands. The words stick. Mixed with the negative ions of the trade winds and the ocean they are positively reinforced by euphoria. It is a lush blanket that covers and condenses things into a real rut hut of intensities and pleasures. Senses are peaked. Ideas take on a sensual texture. All things become magical and real.
Polynesian culture is generally considered group oriented or communal. That indicates a responsibility to the whole community, not the eradication of individualism. People of skill are still valued as individuals, whether they fish or heal or are great warriors.
This is the strength of the culture, a strong interdependence.
But that is not what I'm talking about here.
I'm talking about a group mind, minds that fall into sync.
Timothy Leary and later the band of advertisers turned rock stars Devo, talked about this as well. They said it was something that inevitably arises when minds begin to mix in telepathic or close communion. It is a stage of evolution that returns us to where we began. It is a return to herd behavior. It is a shared consensus reality so intimate that it cause the population to herd like animals with the same union of mind that causes the gazelles to turn as one in synchronicity and beauty. It's the union that causes fishes to hover in schools and birds to vee and flip at the same time in perfect formation. It's the force that makes fashion, popular tastes, politics, religion and culture.
The 70-some year Berkley Study on Negative Ions says specifically, that an abundance of negative ions amplifies thought.
Does that mean that you can hear thoughts in a high density negative ion atmosphere?
On board ship it’s that way. Long time sailors talk about telepathy at sea. What about on an island?
The coconut wireless is a real thing.
Imagine this: A communal chat room somewhere on the internet of the mind. A place where people freely mixed based on like concerns and things in common, mostly in dreams. With time, this mixing crosses the thresholds of waking and dreaming, and becomes part of the mental chatter you hear every day. It's like hearing your name whispered. When you hear something that interests you, you pay attention. You tune in. You become aware of something happening and you track it.
I was out with a local friend once.
We went to a local talent show.
I was laughing about a performance, and she nudged me. "Don't talk stink" she said. "You never know who she might be related to that person in the audience."
I think I caught the runny fish.
My friend was probably related to the performer.
Stink talk. Not wise in a small community with telepathy.
I left the health clinic in 1998 and entered an almost total isolation, sick and unemployed. It was like a return to autism. I began to tack things together for myself. I began to document what had happened in a fanciful satire called “Aloha’s End.”
This was an episodic cyber-novel that I sent out as email.
On day I was flipping through the pages of the Hawaiian Dictionary like I often did, and the page fell open to the word "wai’wai’ko’ko’ola." The pages were filled with "wai" words, a word that generally means water. Double it to wai wai and it means money or goods for barter.
I looked at the word and considered it.
In the Judeo-Christian tradition the Ten Commandments are build on interpersonal boundaries, that is the sacredness of privacy. The "thou shalt nots" are based on minding to one’s own business. In maintaining an orientation away from jealousy, envy and comparison, one could keep to the sacred, an unwavering focus on God and self. You lived, and let live. Most of ancient law is the same way. As we moved away from herd behavior toward individualization the most important thing was to remain separate from the group mind.
Why are these ten laws held sacred above all other laws in the Judeo-Christian tradition? I mean beyond “God said so.”
To maintain a separateness from others seems to be the goal. It seems to indicate knowledge of what can happen when we mix our selves with other people. It’s about jealousy and pride, the cause of Lucifer’s fall. They warn us not to make Lucifer’s mistakes. They are set to retain the uniqueness of the individual that God had mandated. A uniqueness that was the reflection of the God head himself.
The sleeping prophet Edgar Casey talked about the same problem in island Atlantis. In that fabled city, the population had evolved quickly. They had built brain machines that eliminated interpersonal privacy. They were telepathy machines, like Patrick Flannigan's Nuerophone. You could read the thoughts of neighbors and put your thoughts into the heads of others.It was a lot like psychic blogging. Flannigan’s "amazing little telepathy machine" (as he called it) raised the same questions. The issues were simple and similar. What if people using the machines began running into each other on the same frequencies? There was talk of group etiquette. People talked about a protocol around having sex and private moments. About intrusiveness and ease dropping.
They also talked about an entity named Zarg.
Someone or something, an entity, had gotten so loud in his telepathy as to dominate those around him. Zarg had enormous presence and power to create reality.
As we use to say in radio engineering, the strongest signal dominates.
The loudest signal rules.
People were terrified of the power of Zarg.
Casey said that in Atlantis this was the reality that was quickly forming. When the interpersonal boundaries went down, so did the island. A single thought could destroy everything.
In my FEMA training one of the aphorisms is "Wide spread panic is a myth." I’m not always sure that’s right, but it's about rumor control. People feel out of control if they do not know what is going on. They begin to make things up to feel like they know what is going on. They respond to the created crisis in their minds. This can be dangerous.
As Allan Ginsberg use to say, the antidote to all this is to give information. "Candor defeats paranoia" he said.
FEMA agrees. Still. Rumors can kill.
In 1998, the lawsuit had begun and so had the wai’wai’ko’ko’ola.
There were efforts to discredit me as a witness, of course.
That's the name of the game, but the game was no game.
It got rough and tumbly quickly.
I remember what Monica Lewinski went through after one of her encounters with Bill Clinton became public.
Her computer was thrown open.
Her poems and journals were analyzed and published without her consent. Her health care history was ravaged for information. Never mind that confidentiality of medical records is guaranteed by law. Every innuendo in the book took on a level of reality that was far beyond any normal investigation that I could remember.
The spin doctors swarmed in like bees and buzzed.
It was a lot like Manuel Noriega’s red underwear in Panama.
When he was arrested, similar overkill was employed. He became suspect because he wore red underwear and had a ready supply of pornography “at hand.”
Never mind his documented crimes.
I remember the military liaison waving his red underwear at the press., literally. “He wears red underwear” he said.
“That explains it” I thought to myself.
As for myself in my own stinky situation, I felt ostracized and dirty like I was suddenly thrown outside the community. Everybody knew I wore red underwear, even though it was not all the time. The reds one, like M & Ms came mixed in the three packs. I had to wear them. Honest.
For the first time in decades I lived on an island. I had time on my hands. I had been working nonstop for 8 years. I did not have a single day of unemployment the entire time I lived on the island.
I was recruited to every profession job I held in Hawaii.
All of a sudden I couldn’t get work.
My apartment was broken into and so was my girlfriend’s.
Our homes were bugged. Our medical files were stolen or copied.
Our privacy was a thing of the past. Or maybe it never really existed.
All I know is that in the twinkle of a star, my whole life had changed and the devolution process had begun.
There was a linefeed into and out of my life.
I had entered the herd again, greatly amplified, Zarg like in my loudness.
My privacy was a thing of the past.
Remember This: If a willful act of black magic can destroy you in this tropical mind, then a willful act of common sense and good will can also save you in the tight community mind.

Aloha's End (A Fresh Edit) Chapter 28-30

2007-08-11T10:09:00.000-02:00

Monday, June 18, 2007

Aloha's End Chapter 28: Giving him "Ha"
Aloha’s End
© 2007, by Michael F. Zangari with all rights reserved. Rewritten on 8/14/07

Investigative reporter and television honey-boy Palani Ku, better known as reporter TrueWest, is walking beach-side down the main train of Wai’kiki.The street is crowded with tourists and locals. It’s constant festival.He boots pavement, taking long confident steps.On one side of the street the ocean is a translucent blue gel, squeezing out onto the beach. It foams a little before it slides back inside itself. On the other side of the street in the distance, the green mountains hump softly into one another with the city skyline of condos and businesses domino in front of it.The mountains are as green as emeralds against the sky blue sky.The Clouds catch like cotton on the bushes and trees and wisp into the creases of the valleys. They are low on the mountains. The valleys themselves broaden into the cityscape. It’s a busy little island, filled with pockets of people and the endless exchanges of the human kind.TrueWest stands out in the moving crowd of tourists like a cactus flower in the desert.He is one tall sun of a gun.His white hat hovers over the crowd like a UFO.His head is tall in his hat.He is over the jet lag of the Houston/Honolulu red-eye, the flight that took him into this postcard from a daydream. The trade winds loft every so often, cooling his sunburned face. His famous rose-gold sunglasses (the ones with the amber lenses) ride his dark russet red nose bareback. They never slip down. They are screwed up tight.He feels pretty good. It shows. Everybody looks pretty good. It is a happy place.He walks past the palm trees and trinket booths with his hands in his pockets. He cuts through the open market. He stops to through a rack of brightly colored silk aloha shirts on hangers. He pushes them to one side of the rack like beads on an abacus.His eyes catch on one.He admires the illuminated sun set clouds and Tiki on the shirt. The pineapples seem to dance on the beach. It is a lurid, but beautiful. The burnt umbers and the Florissant pinks cha cha cha on the silkHe makes a mental note to buy it later. He puts it back.He feels the arms coming around his waist from behind.He looks down to see the brown arms with the gold bracelets come around his waist and slip into the pocket of his sports jacket.It’s Momi, of course. But he wouldn’t be surprised if it were someone else.She presses her breasts into his back and pushes into him, warm and soft. Her perfume and heat come up around him like waves in ocean. He bobs in it.She’s’ on his hip bones with her hands, following the turn of his hips into her arms. He bends to except her. She brings her cheek next to his and exhales softly, bringing the full force of her presence into his. She exhales softly again, her ha, or the breath of her body, her life-force, exquisite, warm and sexy next to his ear.He give her his ha too, filled with the smell of peppermint and coffee, like he was taught to do at family reunions, the breath of life, the essences of his being given to her. It also smells like the cinnamon toothpick he’s been chewing. He has a complicated ha.“Aloha” he says.“Aloha Duke” she says.“Don’t start on me” he says.His shoulders are still sore from the mornings surfing. The burn has not turned on his skin.That was hours ago.Right now he wants to feel Momi's arms slip around him again. It is like getting tubed in heaven.Her ha is sweet with her perfume.“That was some ride” she says, her eyes sparkling.TrueWest grimaces and turns away. “Like riding a Brahma bull out of the shoot” he mutters. “And getting thrown and trampled.”“More better you should boogie board with the kids” she says laughing.TrueWest looks at her as sour as a lime.“I rode bigger ones in Texas” he says. “In Corpus Christie Bay after the hurricanes.”Momi looks at him skeptically. “Oh Yeah?” she asks.“Yeah” he says.She waits for the surf story.He tips his hat.“Ma’am.” He says.He looks at her smiling at him for awhile, surrendering completely to her presence. Damn he thinks.Her teeth and lips and eyes and hair, the fresh burn on her face and blush on her cheeks tumble together like waves. The fresh mountain ginger flower smells sweet in her oiled hair.He feels them old rut hut blues building in his belly place and below.Damn, he thinks again.A little butterfly flutters in his gizzards and moves down his organs like a lizard. Momi pushes him off and out of the hug.“That was offered only in the spirit of Aloha, of course” she says. “Welcome to Hawaii Palani Ku.”“Thank you for that” says True West. “My family left Hawaii in exile.”Momi smiles at him.“The Ku has returned.”Kalani Boys smiles back.“Yes.”“The restaurant is over here” says Momi.The pink neon crackles and fizzles over a fancy Thai restaurant with a big Gold Buddha sitting in front of it on a cell phone. The entrance is covered in flowers. It is busy. People come in and out.Momi turns him another half length. “Over here” she says. “The manapua truck.”The truck is parked close to the brick alley wall.The window on the side of a the small lunch wagon is open, propped open with a two by four. There is a menu painted on a sandwich board in front of it. “The New Wai’kiki Drive Inn” it says. “Shave Ice.”“Good Hawaiian Grinds.”TrueWest walks up to it and looks it over. “Chili and rice” he observes.“One or two scoops?” asks the short Filipino man in the window.TrueWest looks up.“What kind of hot sauce do you have?” he asks.“Chili peppa wata" he says. “Whatta you think?” he says. "Hawaiian chili peppa more hot. Make the creases steam outta your hat, Cowboy.”TrueWest mouth ejaculates saliva on that thought.He's hungry as an alley cat.Momi runs her finger down the menu to the Hawaiian plate.“I’ll buy” she says.TrueWest accepts.“Sure.” He goes for his credit card, but it’s no good at the New Waikiki Drive-inn. The proprietor pushes it away. “You got to be kidding” he says. “No can. Cash only.”TrueWest's face gets as red as his nose.“I haven’t cashed my traveler’s check yet.” He explains.Momi pays it out of her pocket with a tip.She is smiling broadly. It happens every single time.It takes awhile.The truck guy finally delivers a pair of lunch boxes.The bento boxes are tied in red string.TrueWest takes them and looks over to one of the picnic tables in the shade.“How about over there?”Momi vetoes. “Let’s catch sunset” she says.He has. It's in her eyes.

Rewritten 8/14/2007
Aloha's End
Chapter 29:There's No Such Thing As True West

TrueWest and Momi walk up the sidewalk to a twisted metal link fence. It is shaded by the palm trees and ka’awe bushes. A rabbit hole has been cut into the fence and the ends twisted up to form a passageway to the beach.“Here it is” says Momi. “The rabbit hole.”Its’ wire is bent up just enough to get ass under. Momi drops to all fours and scoots under. TrueWest watches the flowers on the tail end of her mu’u’mu’u rock gently through to the other side. He hands the bento boxes through to her. It’s quite a limbo for a cowboy man, even one used to ducking fences. He gives her his hat and jacket and gets down evaluating the situation like it is serious putt on the golf course.He decides to climb over it, rattling it like the baboon cage at the Honolulu Zoo as he goes over it. He dusts off his pants. Momi looks at him incredulously. “Why don’t you tell everyone we’re here” she says. The lights go on in the hotel windows across the street. TrueWest smiles helplessly. “Ma’am I don’t do anything small.”“Oh yeah?” says Momi, half to herself.That luscious, big lip smile of hers comes on again.She flashes teeth and eyes at him before both drop shyly into her soft grin.Her hair is kinks with the humidity. With her bun down, she does not look like the serious professional woman at the desk of the hotel, always worried about something, as self serious as a portrait of the royalty.She is much looser here, much much looser, and years younger. They sit on the beach as the sun drops into the water.It dissolves like a fizz tablet in the ocean bubbling color on to the clouds and across the water.There’s a double rainbow over the ocean in the silver path of the reflected sun on the water.The moon is coming up on the other side. The stars pop in flashes into the purple aura of it. It darkens quickly to a deep grape. Momi sticks a flash light in the sand and turns it on. It has a red, cone shaped mute over the bulb that glows softly like a votive candle. Momi pops the top on the bento boxes and they eat.The Lau Lau. The sweet potato and poi.The tomatoes and smashed salmon lomi lomiThe Spam musabi.The Kalua pork falls apart when the fork touches it.TrueWest spoons it into his mouth and presses it to the roof of his mouth until it melts. The crunchy sea salt asserts itself, spreading over the top of his tongue and into the taste of the pork as he swallows it.His amber eyes glitter with pleasure.The poi is fresh.He is delighted.It tangs his taste buds like a gong.He sucks at the plastic spoon like it’s a pacifier. He closes his eyes as he sucks.“It’s tangier” he says “then the purple stuff my grandmother used to send at Christmas time.” He says. "It's almost alive." “It is alive" she says. “Day old."It speaks to him when he swallows it in aftertaste.He eats intensely.The sound of the waves takes over, the endless washing of things; the wishing of things.It’s high tide.The water creeps up to them like a hungry dog on its belly.Momi moves TrueWest back quickly as the water comes in. “Don’t ever turn your back to the water” says Momi. “That's what the old Hawaiians say." He thinks on her words. He wonders what the young Hawaiians say about the ocean. “Surf’s Up?”The wind stirs things up. The air is heavy with salt and moisture. TrueWest holds Momi’s hand. “I am a simple country girl from a small island.” Says Momi. TrueWest looks at her hand.On her delicate wrist there is a gold Hawaiian heirloom bracelet. In the middle of engraved vines and flowers is her name, the first, and middle.“Momi Ipolani.”He looks into her eyes.They are dark as velvet, but bright as the stars. She looks at him in awe.TrueWest catches the look like a fast ball. “TrueWest" she says. “Oh no” thinks TrueWest. “I’m not on the network news anymore” he blurts out “I quit.”Momi looks confused. "But you are TrueWest" she says.A couple of days before the trip he had beaten his boss to the punch line in a nasty conversation about a story he was working on.He had quit before he got fired.Enough was enough.“On the news, I had to cover truly terrible stories, disasters. I was instantly recognizable walking through the debris of what was once on ordinary American town. I got my cow dude duds on. The boots, the western canvas shirt with the sleeves rolled up. The amber shades. I did my cool walk through the ruins, reporting on it. If that's TrueWest, then I was it,” he said. “Some reviewer said that I penetrated the news like the ghost of the American West. Bringing back the lone gun and the true heart. Something that never was and never will be again.” Momi strains to understand him.He is TrueWest.He has a great chest on him.And a nice ass on the true west end. Better than TV.“I started to wonder who I was.” He said. “You don’t watch the news?” says Momi, hiding a smile. “You the Ku.” “I came to Hawaii to forget that.” He says. “Forget it, den” says Momi. She squeezes his hand. She slips the other one under his sports coat into the waist band of his pants, just over the hump of his butt. She cups it gently. “You know where I got that name? TrueWest?” Momi shakes her head no. “You must be part Samoan” says Momi. "Fa'i" TrueWest looks up. He might be. “I got it from the writer and actor Sam Sheppard. He said in a Rolling Stone interview once that there was no such thing as a true west. Or True south for that matter. “True West” is the name of one of his plays. I got it from that.” “There’s no such thing as true west?” asks Momi.She squeezes his true ass. “What’s this?”“But that was the whole point. There is no true west. It’s made up. It’s fiction. Like the news. It’s all a matter of points of view and perspective. My presence may have added something, like food dye. But it was something personal and put on. It doesn't exist in reality” "That name made my email address the mesa and my name the open sky. People ate it up. I answered email. I was humble. I got famous. TrueWest is the product. I’m cowboy riding into town to get the news after a hard drive. I speak slow and sincere enough to be understood. I used simple language, like I was sitting by the campfire waiting for the beans to cook and the bacon fat to melt.All that was missing was the harmonica in the background playing the "Song of the Range.”Momi smiles. “There’s a great hula blues version of that.”TrueWest gives up the ghost writer in the sky.“I was just Kalani Ku” he says. “My momma’s boy.” “Yes” she says. ”That’s the guy.”"What a sham" says TrueWest, disgusted. “People like to dream and get distracted by images. Suddenly I am the lonely cowboy journalist. Never mind I have darker skin. I am out there on the lonely plains of existence, writing things down as they happen. I am responsible to the open sky and my heart alone. I tell true.” Momi is listening. “I am very popular” “I know” says Momi. “It got out of hand” he says. “People started talking about the code of TrueWest. They expected me to talk plain and tell the truth all the time. Nobody does that. They wanted me to be the good guy. And I started to want that too.” “You fucked it up?” says Momi. TrueWest stops cold.He thinks about it. “I wanted to have the same kind of trust that Will and Roy Rogers had. Them Rogers’s boys had a dusty kind of integrity. They were both Indians with a down dirt way of being that people identified with and liked.” He looks up. “A journalist longs for that kind of thing.” Momi forehead wrinkles. She nods to show she is listening. “You’re the star” she says. “I don’t know who I am” he says. His mouth snaps shut. They feel the wind on their faces for awhile. “When you are on camera, doing the news for a living, you are on, no matter what. It doesn’t matter how you are feeling or feeling about the story. The image on the tube has to be consistent, calm and accurate. I mean, I was on the air the day my father died.” He gets tight lipped again.“It’s a Zen kind of thing.” “Everything is a Zen kind of thing” says Momi. TrueWest considers it. “As a journalist, I still have the sensibility of a writer. In fact, I’d rather write. A writer can work in his underwear...” Momi likes this image. She snaps the band on his, gently. She can imagine him at her computer on the desk in her bedroom. Typing and breathing into his big chest, the crack of his o'kol'e just visible above the elastic of his bvds. She snuggles in.“A writer can slam the keys for emphasis. You can get pissed off or cry uncontrollably. That’s the kind of news caster he’d be if he had any choice. You have to be a real personality with lots of problems and opinions. I’d say things I regret. But that’s not the way it is. To be on TV you have to be a good liar. The two dimension archetype with the news.” Momi nods.“Whoa.” She thinks. “I talked with my producer before I left. He said, “Why don’t you go back to Hawaii and rediscover yourself if you hate the cowboy so much.”I told him I’d never been to Hawaii before. It’s no big deal. Most of what I know about Hawaii comes from movies like “Diamond Head” and “Blue Hawaii.” It’s just a place where Christmas packages come from. I’m from Texas. That’s home.” Momi feels irritated.‘Then what are you doing here then?” asks Momi. “Go back to where you came from” “I told myself it’s not going to be one of those smarmy, searching for roots trips” he said. “At least that’s what I told myself. I’m here on vacation. I thought I might look up the Duck to see what that was all about. That’s all. He’s on the watch list for downed American whistleblowers. A true cowboy.” “Duck?” Momi gets sad."That's a story that will never be told. It's completely Hawaiian. It has to be danced." “Duck” thinks TrueWest.Momi does.As the night darkens, the water starts phosphorescing.The glow is like candle light beside the bed.TrueWest and Momi get sleepy and dreamy and hold each other closer.The night is endless sighs.

Aloha’s End by Michael F. Zangari
©2007 with all rights reserved.
Chapter 30: When He Shut Up

Momi shuts the door softly behind herself and leans back on it.
She catches her breath.
Her plantation house in the mountains is quiet.
It is nestled in the bottom of the “S” curve on the edge of a crumbling mountain side. It is swamped in yellow ginger and orange flame bougainvillea, a small wooden house that needs a paint job. Its like an old life boat thrown into a sea of flowers. It has aged evenly and has a soft glow about it.

The windows are open. The curtains blow into the house with a wind that is as gentle as a baby's sigh. It is long and soft and permeate the air with the sweet fragrant ginger.

The air is tanged with it.

Momi heels off her flats one by one and rubs her feet.
So good, the cool wooden floor.
She pads through the dark and flops down on the couch bringing her legs up under herself. The cotton of the mu’u’m’u she is wearing is crisp, but softened by the damp night air and the sea mist of the beach.
She’s salty and sweaty.
The burgundy mu'u'm'u clings to her damp skin.
There’s nothing binding underneath.
She is glad to be home from her date.
So that was TrueWest she thinks.
Kalani. Pooboy she thinks. “Another tourist.”
A famous one, at that.
She savors the giggles of triumph that want to come up like bubbles in a bathtub.
Between the surfing and the Wai’ki’ki mooning, his facade went down like sheet ice on an iceberg.
Everything come out.
Like he’d been eating Korean Barbecue with peppa water.
The night beach does that to you.
After the negative ions in the air make you feel good, you feel real.
She tried to make it good for him.
Gave him a little romance. she listened attentively to everything he said. Like he was the only haole in the world. They all feel like they are anyway.
It's like magic dust. Listening. Momi has good Hawaiian ears.
The boy felt the aloha. She knows it.
She gave him a little bit of what the main-landers look for, the legendaryWiki Wacki Woo. The mysterious Polynesia love sickness.
The rut hut blues.
She made the wiki a little sticky and the wacky all together tacky, but the woo she pitched was pure woo, baby, woo.
They come to Hawaii from all over the world for two weeks in paradise.
They know they will only be here for a short while. They fall in love quickly. And live a legendary love affair in six days. That's the wiki wacki woo.
She can’t believe it she is thinking about it.
Pigeon Hawaiian.
The worst, thinks Momi. Wiki Wacki Woo for God's sake.
That phrase comes from old hula blues and slack-key records from the 1920s.
Like the 78s that Benny Aloha listens to on his grind box.
Scratchy, tinty and there in the grooves
Benny waves his hands in the air as graceful as butterflies at the parts he likes. He chair dances the hula, getting up to Sukiaki it a liitle as the phrases catch him. He likes to hand slap the rythms on his knees and stomach like the old Hawaiians and Japenese do and snaps at the rest.
He knows everything by heart and slide nuance.
He caught her grimacing at one of the songs he sang when he was tuning her ukelele for her in an open key. It had the wiki waki woo phrase in it.
She was piss off.
"Hey" he said. He reminded her to be grateful to some of the haole kine.
“The criminals who stole the monarchy tried to destroy the language, dig?
Never forge. You could have you’re tongue cut out for speaking the Hawaiian language after the take over. That's some kind of heavy censorship." He said.
"But it survived.
Like us."
He looked at her for understanding.
He laughed.
"I get piss off too when I think about it" he said. "But this song is about getting laid on the beach. The wahine says "quick and the haole thinks she says "I love you."
"You can still have your tongue cut out for speaking the language” Momi said.
Benny Aloha smoothed his hair back like he does, and smiled his smile, throwing light-rays from the corners of both his eyes.
“The haole used a lot of Hawaiian language in the songs. It's short pop poetry. That’s why some of the words survived. The conversational ones. You know, the most intimate ones. The common ones. The Hawaiians writing the songs did the same thing. There was a barter of sorts going on. The everyday poetry of life. You'll will find words in the hula blues that are not in the dictionary anymore. In fact, some of the words have not even been recovered or recorded yet. You know the Hawaiian’s brought them out like gifts to share with the visitors like the fish and the poi. Share the local akamai.”
He looked at Momi again for some kind of understanding.
She knew the kine.
"They are cutting words out of the dictionary again, to make room for the new Hawaiian language that is developing. Words like ipod. It is a tremendous loss to lose the old words." He sighs. "Another tremendous loss."
Wiki Wacky Woo is not one of those phrases Momi will miss much.
The wiki means quickie. It’s about sex all right. The wacki woo is another thing. It sounds goofy.
The haole like to talk about sex. More than doing it she thinks.
How strange to be a tourists, eh? In a strange and sensuous culture.
They get permission to be naughty when they come here.
To bare their bodys and do rude cartoon hula by the pool.
She thinks of Palani’s big amber eyes on her.
So sincere.
Hot as honey in the tea.
His eyes on her big lips. Her eyes. Her tits.
Exotic, yah?
The boy wants a little taste of something Hawaiian.
Better get him a pinapple basket and macadamia nuts.
She did not expect it.
She went to college in Oregon.
She remembers how uptight the boys were about sex.
The heat and humidity here speak it all the time.
It is second nature. Like all body intimacy.
It's in the way the trade winds blow and the islands volcanic magnatism expresses itself.
The island supports sensuality as much as the mainland suppresses it. She thinks.
She is used to being sexualized by the Japanese and the White tourists.
She sighs at herself. Playing the roles behind the desk at the hotel.
She thinks about the evening. she tries not to be so anylitical about it.
But it is her passion.
Details.
She reviews things.
She counts the thirteen sexes as they emerged over the course of the evening, like Chinese gem stone beads one after another. As Palani and her morphed roles in a tradition Pacific Island manner all evening long. All hula play and eyes.
When he shut up, that is.
She thought about her mai nei. The invitation to join her dance. The offering of it.
She flushes with the heat of herself.
She reminds herself that Kalani is blood Hawaiian.
But as white as mahi meat, she thinks.
Momi watches the curtains blow in for awhile before checking for messages on her message machine. The blinking red light gets her attention.
There are a couple of messages from her home in Wai'ana'e.
One from her mahoo brother wanting to karaoke over the weekend in drag.
Then there is one from Palani.
His voice is confident again, back down there in the broadcast range like he is doing liners for the evening news.
His voice is as deep as the fissures in the volcanic mountains, almost echoing, like in the volcano tubes of his chest.
She gets a little more heat from that. A therma nuclear reaction.
“That was really good” he said. “Really good. Thank you Momi. I'm going to sleep like a brick tonight.”
She smiles.
Yes. It was good.
For the most part.
“That’s a wrap. I’m going to bed after I shower the sand off my butt. It’s True West. And that’s News For True.”
He did that for her.
She gonna save that one.

Until Aloha Ends

2007-08-05T01:46:00.000-02:00

Notes on Aloha's End In 1998, with the intensities racing like dogs down the line for the rabbit, I started writing Aloha’s End. The truth made no sense at all to most people. I was at a loss to explain it to myself. The novel just poured out on the cyber battlefield that was coming to clash with more opposition everyday. The hacking was intense.
I wrote the novel on-line at the Web-site several times a day. I did not know I was on line. Some people thought it was a performance, an exhibition on writing and editing.
I had sent out email invitations and notices to the media. I had made FBI and police reports on the situation on-line. The vandalism was intense at the Web-sites. I had a resources page, an early blog, and several novel sites. The audience was increasingly law enforcement and media people trying to figure out what was going on. The rest of the audience were average people, and some amazing sys ops. I identified people on the Marshall Islands in the Tiki Bar there, Hawaiian’s and others that felt like I did. that the Hawaiian HIstorical archives were in danger and under attack. They supported the history at the site with debate and interest. There were island and mainland African Americans involved in similar civil rights cases. Some reaching awareness through the NAACP (because of the lawsuits against the condos where I lived.) There were international College students, tourists, mostly Japanese and German, people at the company I was suing in Federal Court and military personnel and dependents on board. There were family and friends of family.
My chapters were sent out as spam. I kept them short and funny. People resent them and Aloha's End ping-ponged around the world. It was a popular site, though I'll never know the final counts.
Because I didn’t know what was happening, I’d start out my day with live rewrites. As a result the chapters were constantly changing. And people were confounded and confused by this. They came on line when I wrote to try to follow the changes in the story. It was very interactive. I reacted to my audience and their criticism. I shaped it to the concerns of the people reading it. Then I would add new chapters.
People were freaking out because of a sense of time or interdimensional travel at the site. There was an aura of the mystic.
At the point where TrueWest walked into the Big Bean Coffee House, past the coffee drinking Tiki at the entrance, and into the dark bar, people said it was like passing through a tunnel. Everything changed at that point. Rereading the story put people in a completely different space. I heard this from more than one person. They seemed to pass into a trance, and an hour later would come out at a different point in the story with a sense of traveling into a different dimension. The continued power of the Hawaiian Gods or Hawaiian Coffee was evident in the imaginations of many.
All the while, chapters were being vandalized and stolen. Heavy viruses’ attacks destroyed most of my floppy disks. Break-ins had reduced my evidence files, and the main tactic to dissuade me from writing the novel seemed to be allowing people to plagiarize it and threats and indications that it was in fact pornography. People could not tell the difference between fantasy and fact. They began to believe the characters were not only real, but began calling my girlfriend "Patita." People became very emtional around issues of sexual assualt in the community.
I put out my last ditch call for help three months after I started, and with the Web sites going down. It eventually did go down. And every computer people gave me, about five or six in all was sabotaged. Eventually I moved to a word processor to write.
The novel survived because I made hard copies. People also archived the Web site.
Back at Aloha present. I restored the Web site in August of 2006.
There will new chapters to the novel coming up. I’m trying to get back on track after getting involved in more off line battles. This is not a game. It's real. All the funny lines are stillnes getting clipped from the on-line book.
I’m going back to the original style of writing to try and repair damage. That is, I’ll be doing rewrites before doing new chapters. In This way it becomes more interactive. Feel free to join in, by writing to me with your thoughts.
If the time warp appears again, I wish you safe travel and return until Aloha End.
May you cast your leis on the tides of the seas of time and dimensional drift, and may they return to shore, letting you know that you'll be back this way again.

To where it all began. At Aloha's End.

Aloha's End Chapter 26: Like Drops of Sweat. (A Rewrite)

2007-05-20T06:08:00.000-02:00

Rewritten on 8/20/07

Chapter 27 LIke drops of Sweat
The kiss is long, sucking and deep.
TrueWest nibbles at the lips, as thin and cold as fish lips.
The pinch on his nose is excruciating.
He pulls back in shock as the life guard whacks him hard again with the big orange bologna, “Stay down” he says.
TrueWest covers his head with his hands. The bologna comes down again and again until Momi hops up from her knees in the sand and stops the assault.
“What are you doing?”
“Cock-a-roach” the life guard says, his chest heaving.
He is cut.
His shoulders and upper body are huge. He free dives and surfs. His chest is dusted with white sand. It forms a sash across his red-brown body. He looks like Mr. Universe. His blue trunks hang on his hipbones. The stomach muscles ripple like the corrugated tin of a Quonsets hut.
TrueWest lowers his hands and looks pathetically up at the life guard.
His body is as tense.
His big orange war club hangs in the air like the Hindenburg.
He whacks him again on the legs.
“Next time listen to her” he says.
Momi grabs his bologna and shoos him away
“Shoo, shoo…” she says.
He stomps away.
“He’s ok” she said. “He got an adrenalin spike, that all.”
“I think I have a concussion” says TrueWest.
He checks his mouth for missing teeth and spits salty water into the sand before collapsing back, coughing.
“Man” he says.
Momi kneels beside him like she is paddling canoe. She has a great posture and dignity. She carries the weight of her breasts well.
She unscrews the top of a water bottle and hands it to him.
TrueWest gulps a little down and spits it out. They he drinks some more.
“How long have you two been dating” she asks, “You and da kine…Gregory? The life guard?”
“Not funny at all” says TrueWest. “I’m a homophobe.”
“Oh?” says Momi, looking at his swim suit for damage.
“When you are a celebrity everyone wants a little piece. Everyone touches you like you are public property. I hate getting man-handled.”
Literally thinks Momi.
TrueWest sits up with help from Momi. He feels her breast press against his side and arm as she helps get him up.
It’s like smelling salts.
He’s up, oriented.
He looks into her eyes, green as hell in the shaded sunlight.
They are as dark as bloodstone.
She has that serious look on her face, the one she wears at work. Like the job will never be done. Her thick eyebrows are furrowed over her intense eyes.
“In our culture, there were at least thirteen sexes” she says. “For Pacific Islanders, the mahoo, the gays, were no different than anyone else. Captain Cook wrote in his journal that the chiefs had male and female lovers. He said the Chief seemed to favor the male over the female. There was no homophobia because there was no homosexuality as such. It was just a shade of the possible.”
“Politics” mumbles TrueWest.
“The very female males were used as the battlefield nurses” she said. “They were very courageous.”
“I can’t imagine waking up to another hairy face” says TrueWest.
He shudders remembering the lifeguard hanging over him staring into his eyes breathing on him.
“Yick” he thinks.
“He saved your life” she says.
“What am I supposed to do, kiss him?”
“You did” says Momi.
“Yick” he says.
Momi pours cold water on his face.
He’s really up now, dusting the sand off his legs.
There is a little sandy load in the back of his suit.
He looks like he could use a change.
“Come” she says. “Let’s shower off.”
The sunlight plays hopscotch in TrueWest’s amber eyes at that thought.
He is coming around.
He likes being with her.
Even though it’s like dancing in the ring with a light weight.
For a second he lets it show.
His eyes soft sparkle at her as she speaks.
She feels a little heat rise at his attention.
Her nipples bead like drops of sweat.
TrueWest averts his eyes but smiles up at her again.
“Are you 100% Hawaiian?” he asks her.
“You want to talk blood quotient now?” she snaps back.
“Yes” he says.
“I have a little Filipino and little Chinese and a little Portuguese” she says. ”I’m also Italian.”
She looks him over.
“But I’m 100% Hawaiian.” She says. She looks around for the orange bologna to give one good false crack for asking.
“You know there is not even a word for what happened to our people after the missionaries came with their diseases. The population was well over a million. It was reduced to about ten per cent of that immediately. We were hit with biological terrorism” she says. “It almost wiped us out.”
“In my family, we were temple keepers. It goes back generations. My ancestors refused to convert to Christianity and as a result were all but wiped out by the diseases. You had to convert to Christianity to get medicine. My relatives were among those who hid the Tiki when they were piled up and burned.” He said.
Momi is impressed. “You know some Hawaiian history then.”
“Yes” says TrueWest, I’ve been reading Queen Liliuokalani’s History of Hawaii” and doing other net research.”
Momi dreams over for seconds, coming around to realizing again who she is talking with. Kalani Ku. The Ku man. He is TrueWest news guy.
A very famous man.
A Hawaiian man.
She becomes embarrassed and looks down.
He is very charming.
Unless he is drowning, spitting up water or kissing the lifeguard
She sweats when she thinks about this.
His eyes are like tigers.
He needs to shave.
But he is a famous man.
She is happy to spend time with him.
Even if he can’t surf worth a caca.
She is reminded again that he is famous when the camera man runs up.
The cinematographer sticks out his hand.
“Fantastic” he says.
TrueWest smiles.
Momi adjusts her top.
“You’re Palani Ku” he says “TrueWest.”
TrueWest looks down then up again. “Yes” he says simply.
“I got great footage of the wipe out” he says.
“What”
“Yeah, Yeah, we rushed it back to the station to get it on the air by six.
What a tumble,” he said.
I got some great close ups of you and the life guard too.”
TrueWest wants to be buried in the sand.
“Great” he says.
“It’ll be the lead story” the camera man says. “You know, a slow news day.”
The cameraman looks embarrassed. “Of course you know what that means” he says.
True West pinches the bridge of his nose.
“I have a headache” he says.
“Can I quote you” asks the camera guy.
“Could I stop you?” asks TrueWest.
“No” says the cameraman.
“I didn’t think so” TrueWest says.
Momi is again serious. For the most part.
There is a giggle playing like a dolphin in her throat and down her chest.
Her smile keeps coming up. She keeps pushing it down out of decorum.
The cameraman cocks the camera. “One more shot” he says. “For the archives.”
“Make it through the temple” says TrueWest.

Aloha's End: Chapter 26-29 Rewritten on 8/1/07

2007-05-03T17:01:00.000-02:00

Chapter twenty-three: Da Kine (Rewritten on 8/21/07)
Momi hold the two balls of yellow and green lilikoi in front of her breasts and offers them to TrueWest. With her long black hair hanging down her back, she looks like a different woman. The chop sticks holding the coconut oiled bun are out and unpinned, her hair falls freely from her head and down around her shoulders like a waterfall.
It blows softly into the trade winds.
She fingers it out of her face.
With the burgundy blazer gone, she looks less small. She is well muscled around her shoulders and arms. Her breasts are shiny in back of the offered fruit, the rind of her bathing suit, a soft dusty yellow.
The tapa print tied across her hips is a red dirt colored pueo. It accentuates the color of the fruit. Behind her the sky is blue and cloudless. The beach sand is white and glistening.
TrueWest moons at her.
She looks a lot like the pictures of his mother and aunts in the country in the family albums.
The black and white photos were taken in much younger, happier days on the Big Island. They are like post-cards from the early 1900’s, of lei sellers and hula dancers at the port. They are beautifully Hawaiian.
TrueWest is dizzy with the smells of the flowers, the fruits, the oil in her hair and her. She looks very South Pacific.
“Gauguin” Momi says, “Right?’
TrueWest laughs big. “Right’ he says.
She looks like a Gauguin.
“The lilikoi fruits make you relax.” She says. ”I hope.”
She looks down again at the valley between her breasts.
She smiles to herself.
”And it increases testosterone levels too.” She says.
TrueWest takes the fruit from her hands and holds them.
They are the size of small grapefruit.
He looks at her like she is the wicked stepmother in Snow White offering him an apple with little brown needle marks on the skin.
He’s a little nervous at first.
“It boosts da kine... neurotransmitters” She says. ”Makes you sharper.”
She looks down shyly. Then back up like a scamp, a wild one. Her smile broadens then drops serious. “Not that you need that Mr. West.”
I might. He thinks. “By all means let’s have a little breakfast” says TrueWest.
He can’t help smacking his lips a little.
“I like surf on an empty stomach’ says Momi.
My name is “Palani” he says.
She looks at him.
“You’re still Mr. West to me” she says.
She fingers the hair out of her face again. Then blows the rest out of her face, laughing. “The hair is a pain in the okole” she says. I should cut it.”
TrueWest says ‘Don’t you dare.’
She had to be growing the stuff for her at least ten years.
He feels a little nervous in his new surfer trunks. They are a little large and hang low on one hip. He digs his toes into the sand.
He has a t-shirt over the top, the one that says “Surf Texas” on it.
It’s Red on grey.
“Where are we going?” he asks. “Sandy’s?”
Momi laughs again and shakes her head. She feels like she’s at the courtesy desk again. “No, that would be a little chancy:” she says. “Most of the neck and spinal trauma cases at the Queen’s Hospital come from Sandy’s. You have to know the currents, the way the waves break and the surf patterns to survive there. Or anywhere…”
TrueWest looks disappointed. “I listened to the surf report this morning on Hawaii Public Radio” he said. “It’s pumping.”
“You are peddling” says Momi. “We’ll stay in Wai’ki’ki and see how you ride.”
“Don’t tell a cowboy how to ride” says TrueWest. “You don’t have to tell me how or whereto get on or get off.”
Momi smirks.
She ties her hair back in a pony-tail, the purple elastic hair dooby in her teeth like a rose as she pulls the hair back from her neck and holds it up. She retrieves the elastic band from her teeth and secures the hair.
She lets the pueo drop to the beach.
“Ok” she says. “I’ll see you out there.”
She grabs her board from the beach and trots down to the wave line.
Out of the straight skirt she really has a butt.
TrueWest watches the waves rise as Momi dives under them and paddles out.
He gets out of his t shirt and runs after her.
The water is warm on his stomach as lays himself out and begins to paddle.
His arms hurt already.

Entry for April 19, 2007 Chapter Twenty-Four The Pink Whites of His Eyes (Rewritten on 8/21/07)
Chapter Twenty-Four
By the time TrueWest paddles out to Momi his arms feel like sun baked bricks and his chest aches. His hair is drenched and he leaves little rainbow oil slicks in the water where the sun makes the rainbow twinkle in the sea drops.
His amber colored eyes are pale and diffuse.
They jitterbug in the pink whites of his eyes as he looks at the endless ocean tussle to the horizon. The water is choppy, throwing rags of foam to the tops of the endless runners.
Out to the right he sees Momi lying on her back on her board, looking up at the sky.
She looks a lot younger with her hair down that way. She has pulled the thinger-ma-jiggy out of her hair and it floats on the water like a goodbye-lei. Her lashes are long dark and curly. Her legs are strong, shiny and wet, her breast full and heavy laying on her chest. Her breathing is long and even.
TrueWest paddles and kicks his way across to her, splashing her as he approaches.
She’s up like a shot.
“Hey, not so close.” She says.
TrueWest is panting like a dog.
He awkwardly paddles around next to her.
She lowers her lashes and looks at him, half eyed.
“You paddle like a poodle dog” she says.
TrueWest is truly miserable.
“How come you are so far out?” he wants to know.
“I had a very groovy up-bringing” says Momi.
She smiles at him knowing she’s destroying all his hula girl fantasies with one brazenly hoale-kine sentence.
Out here she needs his attention.
“It’s a much longer ride cowboy”” she says.
TrueWest lays his cheek on the board for a few seconds before coming up.
The water rocks the board under him. The waves are big enough coming in to cup the board up in handfuls of water and lay him down in the valley of the scoops.
The waves are getting bigger.
“High tide” says Momi.
The waves are going from five to seven foot and breaking right.
Momi points to the reef line and the currents.
TrueWest drops his flirt eyes and looks at the rocks.
He sees the jagged ones on the left and the jagged ones on the right. They look like shark teeth.
“We’re surfing into the mouth here, that tiny patch of beach down there.” Momi points to the narrow stretch of beach between the reefs.
She carefully describes what’s under water along the shore line.
TrueWest looks at her.
“My dad made me snorkel here before he taught me to ride” she says.
“Any undertow?” he asks.
“Plenty undertows” she says. “It’s strong current.”
TrueWest is nervous. “I hope I don’t wipe out down there.”
“No worrys” she says. “You won’t reach the beach”
She lifts her ass off the board with strong arms and flips down, “See ya” she says. She pushes speed with fast kicking like a flying fish before launching into the wave she’s going on. It catches her immediately and throws her down the sloping blue green yukio of ocean as it starts to foam up and break from the sea. TrueWest sees her rise from the board and ballerina on it on tip toes to see what’s around before dropping into a 70-30 position on the board with her arms just above her legs. She slashes right and left and takes it all the way in, bouncing it towards the beach, pushing foam all the way in.
TrueWest gawks at the ride, and her behind.
He’s terrified, of the water and of looking bad.
He’s thinking about those first few times on the air during a national crisis. Especially the time he was on the air during the 9-11 crises. He remembers the unfamiliar butterfly of stomach muscles. He went over the details in the pillowed space of his mind.
What to say.
How to say it.
The casualty lists.
The impact. The responsibility.
The producer’s assistant kept fiddling with his hair, spraying it down. She finally messed it up a little. “You should look a little haggard” she said.
He was.
He got off the bus and went to his bird perch in a parking lot, the smoke billowing in the background, two fire-people over a third on the pavement to the right of him. Him averting his eyes and motioning the camera’s away from the spot.
The smoke aching his eyes, clogging his tear ducts.
He stood silent on the green light, the producer twirling his fingers like he was making cotton candy.
He just looked into the camera and stepped out of the way.
The panorama of destruction rolling out like a machete mowed carpet in back of him.
The words stuck in his throat.
He sees the wave coming, the big green one swelling like a small breach of a whale back, and slips into it, paddling to catch up.
He stands up like he’s doing the news and is torn into the maelstrom, flipping his board up and over into the air and his ass into the wave.
He is dragged under water fighting and kicking until he gives up and floats embryonic up to the surface only to be slammed by another wave.
It conks him on the head like a Samoan war club and he’s under again with water up his nose and in his lungs.
He goes deeply under the water and dances in the open like a jelly fish.
TrueWest begins to drown.
Chapter 25 The Big Orange Balogna
TrueWest falls into current like a snowflake into a rushing mountain stream.
He comes up for air gasping and is smacked in the lower back by another on-coming wave Then it’s tumble dry in a big industrial dryer in a Laundromat in downtown Atlantis, head over heels, pinwheels straight down towards the dead reef at the bottom of the sea.
The snap of the wave has knocked him like a cue-ball into semi-consciousness.
He kicks and flounders in the water pumping frantically in place. The harder he kicks the less he moves. It’s like climbing the walls of a sand pit. The walls give in and collapse as he grabs at them. Instead of climbing, he begins to sink like a lead sinker with feathers to the bottom. He exhausts himself quickly.
Big man. Big voice. Big chest. Big lungs. Bad swimmer.
The ballsy radio and TV voice is as silent as a producer’s assistant, the new interns who stand in rapture under the hot tin lights when ever he's on the air. It's usually a woman, clutching her clip-board to her breasts beaming solid. TrueWest is like that now, watching himself delivering the news in his head, screaming lungless head and date lines, right here and right now. Dateline: The blue pacific ocean. Drowning. Yes. The scream behind tight lips is underplayed by a calm, quiet voice that simply notes the glassy blue green water as it darkens and the sinking of his body.
Up above, not so far away, the surface gels above him.
The fight for the surface doesn’t last very long.
Bye bye birdie.
He gives up the fight as he looses consciousness.
A warm embryonic feeling pees around him in the chill of the water.
He feels good, relaxed and warm.
Drowning is good. Really good.
It’s like sleeping.
It’s like being carried around in the womb or in the top of his mother’s dress on the tits.
Its mother union.
He's the little Ku.
The anchor, before he was an anchor man, the anchor that held the family together in the foreign exile of the oil fields the pampas with derricks instead of palm trees.
The shade from oil derricks was stark and angular, not like the palm leaves bouncing in trade winds on the big island. His ear is next to his mama’s sighs on the heartbeat, like dessert. Mariah now, ghostly and high whined in his ears and his head as she is walking lunch to his dad on the days he forgot it. "You did that on purpose" she says, tossing the lunch bag to him.
Walking, behind his father’s casket awash in emotions of grief and tears.
TrueWest smiles.
He’s having a flashback as he loses consciousness. How about that.
Its typical and cliché of him.
On camera he pushes a little to get away from doing that, he’s always trying to do something new. Not repetitive. It's like trying to keep a West Texas Waltz fresh.
That old ballet in boots.
You have to go with intuition and emotion, and your best gal’s hips.
Drowning is a lot like doing a waltz, twirling now round and round and round with arms around and around and around his sweeter than sweet one, the belle of his ball, ya’ll. His girly friend. She is as tall as is. The girly girl is Gracie again, the one that used to get him in trouble all the time because of how light skinned she was, all that unsunned bone and white skin, blonde hair and eyes that sparkled like juiced cinnamon bark. A free willed looker. Not everyone gave them a hard time. But going into town could be a beast. And there he was with her on dusty plank floors, resting his head on her chest, nestling his head in the top of her dress.
Drift sound in echo. What she doing with that Mexican?
What’s it look like? (snickers all around.)
"Why don’t they find someone else to dance with?" she mumbles. "It’s last calling golden eyes. Last call. Had enough? Huh? You want another beer?"
"Mmmmmm?"
"Beer, another one? Had enough?"
Mmmmmm. (Just a dot of perfume.) At the top of the valley, then just a little bit of that female sweat smelling up and twisting into prairie road down the pike. That Frenchy smelling stuff from Ft. Worth her dad got her. A little import shop on the Dallas side.
Lean back and twirl, girl.
Then some wild hack is beating him on the back of the head with a two by four and calling him a Mexican. That is still annoying after all these years. “I’m Hawaiian” He says.
They smack him again.
“Makes no never mind to me” the hack says, winding back to smack him again with a big orange bologna.
Stop that.
They break surface.
He smacks him again.
Stop that!
“This one’s for Momi. He says. "for not paying attention to her.”
He slaps him again with the big orange Bologna.
“Quit fighting”
"I'm not fighting" TrueWest says covering his head.
"Then quit covering your head." He slaps him again.
The life guard is actually pretty pissed off.
He hits him again with his floater blimp.
“Ok. Ok.”
“Go limp. Or do I have to beat you silly to save you?”
TrueWest goes limp like a cat on a window sill.
The life guard grabs him and tows him like a wet cat from the surf.
As he gets to the shallows he stands up to walk but his legs buckle and he blacks out again, embarrassed.
Momi is standing up the beach with her hands on her hips and her long black hair blowing in the wind.
It’s all a dream, a dream, a dream…..
His cheek slaps the sand hard.

Aloha's End: Chapter 25 The Big Orange Balogna

2007-05-03T07:03:00.000-02:00

Painting by Bobby Freeman Three Palms Cocoa Beach, used without permission

Aloha’s End © 2007
By Michael F. Zangari
With all rights reserved.

Chapter 25 The Big Orange Balogna

TrueWest falls into current like a snowflake a rushing mountain stream. He comes up for air gasping and is smacked in the lower back by another on-coming wave Then it’s tumble dry in a big industrial dryer in a Laundromat in downtown Atlantis, head over heels pinwheels straight down towards the dead reef at the bottom.

He kicks and flounders in the water pumping frantically in place. The harder he kicks the less he moves. It’s like climbing the walls of a sand pit. The walls give in and collapse as he grabs at them. Instead of climbing, he begins to sink like a lead sinker with feathers. He exhausts himself quickly.

Big man. Big voice. Big chest. Big lungs.

The ballsy radio voice, the one from big lung and diaphragm push is as silent as a producer’s assistant in rapture under tin lights, clutching her clip-board to breasts and beaming. TrueWest is delivering the news in his head, screaming lungless head and date lines, right here and right now. The scream is underplayed by a calm, quiet voice that simply notes the glassy blue green water as it darkens. Up above, not so far away, the surface gels above him.

The fight for surface doesn’t last very long.

He gives up as he looses consciousness.

A warm embryonic feeling pees around him .in the chill of the water.

He feels good.

Drowning is good.

It’s like sleeping. It’s like being carried around in the womb or in the top of his mother’s dress on the tits.

Little Ku.

The anchor, before he was an anchor man, the anchor that held the family together in the foreign exile of the oil fields. The pampas with derricks instead of palm trees. The shade from them stark, not like palm leaves bouncing in trade winds on the big island, his mama’s sighs, like dessert Mariah now, ghostly and high whined in his ears as she walked lunch to his dad on the days he forgot it.

TrueWest smiles. He’s having a flashback as he loses consciousness. How typical and cliché of him. On camera he’s push a little to get out of it, do something new like a west Texas waltz as he drowns, the old ballet in boots
twirling now round and round and round with arms around and around and around his sweeter one, the belle of his ball, ya’ll. His girly friend. She was as tall as he was, Gracie, the one that used to get him in trouble all the time because of how light she was, all that unsunned bone white skin, blonde hair and eyes that sparkled like juiced cinnamon bark .A free willed looker. Nestling his head in the top of her dress What she doing with that Mexican? What’s it look like? (snickers all around.) Why don’t they find someone to dance with? It’s last calling blue bonnet. Last call. Had enough? Huh? You want another beer? Mmmmmm? Beer, another one? Had enough? Mmmmmm. (Just a dot of perfume.) At the top of the valley, then just a little bit of that female sweat smelling up and twisting into that Frenchy smell from Ft. Worth.

Lean back and twirl, girl.

Some wild hack is beating him on the back of the head with a two by four and calling him a Mexican. That is still annoying after all these years. “I’m Hawaiian” He says. “Makes no never mind to me” the hack says, winding back to smack him again with a big orange bologna.

Stop that.

They break surface.

He smacks him again.

Stop that!

“This one’s for Momi. She says for not paying attention to her.”

“Quit fighting it.”

The life guard is actually pretty pissed off.

He hits him again with his floater blimp.

“Ok. Ok.”

“Go limp.”

TrueWest goes limp like a cat on a window sill.

He is towed like a wet rag from the surf.

As he gets to the shallows he stands up to walk but his legs buckle and he blacks out again, embarrassed.

Aloha's End Chapter Twenty-O Da Kine

2007-04-01T03:33:00.000-02:00

Aloha’s End

© 2007 By Michael F. Zangari
With all rights reserved.

Chapter twenty-three

Momi hold the two balls of yellow and green lilikoi fruit in front of her breasts and offers them to TrueWest. With her long black hair hanging down her back, she looks like a different woman. The chop sticks holding the coconut oiled bun are out, and unpinned her hair falls freely from her head like a waterfall. Her hair flows into the trade winds.

She fingers it out of her face.
In it, on the left side, there is the purple passion flower, a complicated purple orchid-like flower with yellow stamen.

With the burgundy blazer gone, her breasts are like shiny hills in back of the offered fruit. TrueWest skims them with his eyes, and returns to hers. They are like rainbow obsidian, dark and reflective.

The tapa print on her red dirt colored pueo accentuates the color of the fruit. Behind her the sky is blue and cloudless. The beach sand is white and glistening.

TrueWest moons at her.
She looks a lot like the pictures of his mother and aunts in the country.
The black and white photos were taken In much younger, happier days on the Big Island. Like the post-cards from the early 1900’s of lei sellers and hula dancers.

He is dizzy with the smells of the flower, the fruits, the oil in her hair and her.
“Gauguin” she says, “Right?’
TrueWest laughs big. “Right’ he says.
“The lilikoi fruits make you relax.” She says. ”I hope.”
She looks down again at the valley between her breasts. She smiles to herself.
”And it increases testosterone levels.” She says.
Her eyes travel across her breast to her nipples.
“Right on time” she thinks. She feels the heat of her blush.
TrueWest takes the fruit from her hands and holds them, one in each hand.
They are the size of small grapefruit.

He looks at her like she is the wicked stepmother in Snow White offering him an apple with little brown needle marks on the skin.
He’s a little nervous at first.

“It boosts da kine... neurotransmitters” She says. ”Makes you sharper.”
She looks down shyly. Then back up like a scamp, a wild one. Her smile broadens then drops serious. “Not that you need that Mr. West.”

I might. He thinks. “By all means let’s have a little breakfast” says TrueWest.

He can’t help smacking his lips a little.

“I like surf on an empty stomach’ says Momi.

My name is “Palani” he says.

She looks at him.

“You’re still Mr. West to me” she says.
She fingers the hair out of her face again. Then blows the rest out of her face, laughing. “The hair is a pain in the okole” she says. I should cut it.”

TrueWest says ‘Don’t you dare.’

She had to be growing the stuff for her at least ten years.

He feels a little nervous in his surfer trunks. They are a little large and hang low on one hip. He digs his toes into the sand.

He has a t-shirt over the top, the one that says “Surf Texas” on it. It’s Red on grey.

“Where are we going/” he asks. “Sandy’s?”

Momi laughs again and shakes her head. She feels like she’s at the courtesy desk again. “No, that would be a little chancy:” she says. “Most of the neck and spinal trauma cases come at the Queen’s Hospital come from Sandy’s. You have to know the currents, the way the waves break and the surf patterns to survive there. Or anywhere…”

TrueWest looks disappointed. “I listen to the surf report this morning” he said. “It’s pumping.”

“You are peddling” says Momi. “We’ll stay in Wai’ki’ki and see how you ride.”
“Don’t tell a cowboy how to ride” says TrueWest. “You don’t have to tell me how to get on or get off.”

Momi smirks and ties back her hair.
She lets the pueo drop to the beach.
“Ok” she says. “I’ll see you out there.”
She grabs her board from the beach and trots down to the wave line.
Out of the straight skirt she really has a butt.
TrueWest watches the waves rise as Momi dives under them and paddles out.
He gets out of his t shirt and runs after her.
The water is warm on his stomach as lays himself out and begins to paddle.
His arms hurt already.

2007-03-16T20:51:00.000-02:00

Aloha’s End by Michael F. Zangari
© 2007 With all rights reserved.

Chapter Twenty-two

They come for the money.
TrueWest takes them in from the corner of his amber glass eyes. It’s a new guy. He fidgets with the bill.
The two guys standing behind him are the size of line-backers.
They have rubber shark noses on their noses, little pug snouts with sharp pointy teeth sticking out of them.
They both have towels over their arms to cover the revolvers in their serving hands.
Conversation stops at the table.
TrueWest looks at Duck. Duck slowly lifts and moves his chair out so he has room to maneuver.
TrueWest blanches.
Patita moves a fork into her lap.
TrueWest takes an exaggerated deep breath and shakes off the tension. He takes out his wallet and removes his credit card.
“That ought to do it” he says.
Shark number one, the one with the lobotomy scar across his forehead takes the card. He looks like Frankenstein is supposed to have looked in Mary Shelly, nasty-assed and mean.
He takes TrueWest’s credit card.
He looks at the name, slowly, a smile spreading out on his face under his nose.
“You on the TV” the shark says. “On The News.”
TrueWest is on familiar ground, talking to a fan with a gun.
“Yes…” he begins to say.
The other shark, the one that looks like a transgender female-male aces him with his eyes. The are as marbled like purple agate, with little electric capillaries lightening out from the iris.
He’s unhappy with everything. Impatient and jittery.
“You should be more careful who you associate with” he says. He looks at Duck and Patita like he wants to eat them.
He tears the credit card in half and throws on the table in front of TrueWest like he’s dealing stud poker cards.
TrueWest eyes the two pieces of his credit card on the table.
“Shoot” he says to himself.
Both sharks jump like they have hiccups.
Now they are really pissed off.
“The Duck pays” the big one says. “Cash”
He nudges the waiter with the barrel of the gun.
Duck smiles.
“Relax” he says.
He puts both hands in the air in front of his chest and elevates them from the wrist like he is practicing his tai chi martial arts moves. “I’m just getting out my wallet’ he says.
The purpled eyed shark reaches out and tugs on Patita’s ear.
“”We could take it out in trade” he says, his smile going up on the opposite side as Elvis’.
Duck looks straight into la Patita’s eyes and says “no” in lover’s telepathy.
Patita’s eyes come up on him like twin land rover machine guns.
They are black as ink.
Duck says “uh oh” as they flash red.
Patita turns fast and the fork disappears into the shark’s trousers.
He spins around yowling, knocking the other shark off balance.
The whole restaurant is on its feet.
“I’ll settle with you later” says the first shark eyeing her like the last piece of devils food cake at the orphanage.
The two sharks run like hell out of the restaurant and down the beach, knocking tourists out of the way as they push towards the water.
The wounded one trails after the other one dragging his leg with him as he goes.
He is grabbing his crotch and whimpering.
TrueWest is now on his feet like he is news casting.
He looks after them like they are pink UFOs.
Duck grabs Patita.
She’s panting like a cat in heat.
Patita knocks his arms away and stares after the guys running down the beach.
She gives duck a double dirty look.
“I’m just on vacation” mutters TrueWest to nobody particular. He scans the crowd.
They know.
“Let’s get out of here” says TrueWest.
“Good idea” says Duck. “That’s probably a good idea, when there is blood in the water, the sharks get grouchy.”
Patita grabs her purse and heads for the door.
The boys follow.

Aloha's End Chapter Twenty-one: But not as sweet as you

2007-03-08T13:11:00.000-02:00

Aloha’s End by Michael F. Zangari
© 2007 with all rights reserved.
Chapter Twenty-one: But not as hot and sweet as you.
“Thank you Mr. West” says Duck.
“Call me Palani” says TrueWest. “It’s on the magazine.”
“Gracias” says Patita.
“That was a treat” says Duck. “You know the ahi are disappearing from Hawaiian waters, we’re getting fished out by the Japanese trawlers, just outside the boundaries of the islands. It’s a really a treat when we get to eat them wild. Most of the fish are farmed.”
“Sounds like there’s a real vanishing fish story here” says TrueWest. “Like the buffalo disappearing from the prairie under the skinner’s guns, or harpooned whales in the waters off Lahina.”
Patita offers duck the last bit of mango salsa on her fingers. It’s as red-orange as the flame flower in her hair and the lipstick on her thick lips. The fingernails are sharp and red too.
TrueWest looks at Patita’s eyes as Duck goes for the jelly-like goo on her finger tips and licks it off.
TrueWest feels a little pang of jealousy.
He’s just out of his five year thing with his side-saddling paramour, the glitzer, supermodel Shannon Baang.
The Big Baang.
Six foot two with long legs out and the all business mind on box top and banter.
Patita has her eyes squeezed shut and is smiling as Duck takes her hand and kisses it. His tongue flicks out under the rubber nose and touches the goo. His mouth follows quickly, kissing and sucking the salsa off. There is great fondness when their eyes meet. Heat. “This stuff is almost as hot and sweet as you are” he says to Patita.
TrueWest hears a slow burning Mariachi in his head.
He looks Patita over, the big boobs on the table as she leans in to kiss Duck.
He waits for her them to break seal.
He leans back in his chair and says it in Spanish, “Dulche y desa, brido para alguien, que nunca lo ha probado…”
He looks straight into Patita’s maple-syrup eyes.
The long black lashes go down shyly.
“What was that?” asks Duck, “Como?”
“Hotter and sweeter still” says TrueWest, “To one who has not tasted it before.”
He tips the glass at Patita. “Saluda” he says.
Patita and Duck take their glasses and toast back.
Patita looks down embarrassed.
Duck stiffens up a little, and then relaxes.
“Sorry” says TrueWest. The senorita is a very beautiful woman.”
“Oh, I agree” says Duck. “Men like her.
Patita slaps Ducks arm. “Stop that.”
She’s embarrassed.
“It’s the na-nas.”
She pulls up her pueo.
“You speak a Spanish?” says Patita.
“Yes” he says. “Way down Texas ways, it helps get you where you are going.”
Patita smiles and nods. “Accent” she thinks. She is a little surprised.
“Habla un poco Espanol. Portuguese es su idioma.”
He looks at Duck.
I speak mostly Portuguese. He says. “I learned it from my mother. She was as pure a guese as they come, from an educated family that was among the first families brought to Maui as laborers. The rest of my family was Hawaiian, except my grandfather. He was as tar black a man as you’ve ever seen, from Florida. They say he was so black he was purple.”
Patita laughs.
“He was a marine,” says TrueWest, “He fought with the Rough Riders in the Philippines and Cuba.”
“That’s an interesting discussion” says Duck. “The role the marines played in the overthrown of the monarchy in 1898.”
“I know a little” says TrueWest. “I know a small group of marines stopped the massacre of Hawaiians after the revolutionaries stormed the palace. The Hawaiians thought the marines were there to support the revolutionaries. its part of the reason the Queen chose not to fight.”
“Yes” says Duck.
“I also know the Africans tended to bivouac separately from the white soldiers. The Hawaiians noticed this and call them po’polo. Outcasts. They hung out and traded music. That’s how slack key and the hula blues were born, out of campfire jamming and moon light hula.”
TrueWest gets chills thinking about it.
“That’s right” says Duck. “You’re Hawaiian.”
TrueWest smiles proudly.
“Patita and I were talking about the color of your skin. How beautiful it is. They say that the skin color is unique from island to island throughout Polynesia.”
TrueWest looks at his wet, sand colored hands.
His amber eyes light up and flicker like candle light.
“I don’t think about it much” he says.
“You know the Portuguese were not allowed to immigrate if they could read” says Duck. “They wanted to keep people ignorant and malleable.”
“Yes” says TrueWest. “May family is very proud of our literacy. They love that I’m a journalist on television. It means a lot to my mom.”
“I grew up in Texas” says TrueWest. “My family couldn’t afford to live in Hawaii so we moved. My dad was blacklisted for being a union activist in the 1950s. We got threats and all of us could have been killed. So we moved. Mom and Pop never looked back.”
Patita furrows her brow and listens. Her hands folded prayer like in front of her lips, her elbows covering her breasts on the table.
“My father had to learn to speak English without his Hawaiian pidgin. When he did it was a delight. I don’t sound very Hawaiian, do I?”
“I’m not one to say what Hawaiian is and isn’t” says Duck. “I’m Italian. You’ve got the blood. That’s what counts. To some that’s everything, not the way you speak your pidgin. You know the Hawaiian race was reduced by 90% after the missionaries came. There is a time predicted when the Hawaiians will be uda pau, gone.”
Patita laughs. “The population is up again” she says.
“My father said that you never really get the salt of the Pacific out of your blood. I had to come here to find out what the Pacific salt smells like. I want to separate things out. I had to come here. I am going to have to learn how to be Hawaiian now. It’s time. I’m just coming to terms with the tragedy of the history. I want to join the struggle for nationhood, by being a good role model and a knowledgeable spokes person on the news.”
“You need to move out into the country” says Duck, “Out to Pahanuinui where we live. You’ll taste a little Hawaiian salt out there” says Duck.
“It’s very salty” says Patita giggling softly to herself.
She looks up at TrueWest and says “Ud habla un Espanol muey bien. Es un placer eschar Espanol.”
Duck gets it. She is complimenting his Spanish.
Duck looks at Patita. “My Spanish isn’t very good.” He says. “Patita is afraid that if I learn I’ll use it to pick up Latina in Honolulu. She won’t teach it to me.”
Patita grimaces.
“You should come to dinner tomorrow. It would be nice to see Patita get a chance to speak Spanish. There are not many Spanish speaking people where we live.”
“Thank you” says TrueWest. “I will”
Then to Patita, waiting for her eyes to come up.
“Gracias”
“Da nada” she says back to him sweetly.

"Aloha's End" Chapter 20: He Bites The Fish

2007-02-27T14:45:00.000-02:00

Aloha’s End by Michael F. Zangari
© 2007 with all rights reserved.

Chapter Twenty: He Bites the fish

“I am gordita” says Patita. “Patita Gordita. She pushes the plate back and picks up her water glass, sipping at it, embarrassed. She looks over the rim of the glass as she sips with big brown eyes that spark like Fourth of July sparklers. She holds a soft amused focus on TrueWest, who leans back appreciating her.
Duck has his hand on her leg. He squeezes it softly, feeling the familiar tingle of contact. Patita looks at him from the corner of her eyes and smiles.
“You’re not fat” he says quietly. “Preciouso.”
The waiter returns sweating. There’s sand on his cheek and his cloths are rumpled.
“Can I take your plates?” he asks.
“You touch my plate and I’ll kill you” says TrueWest with a little too much force. “And that’s a promise.”
“Slow down Tex” says Duck. “You’re not being rousted. Eat. Enjoy.”
The waiter says “Not done yet, eh?”
“No” says Patita. “He’s still eating it.”
TrueWest is embarrassed.
“Shaka” he says, doing the loose hang loose sign with his thumb and pinky extended from his fist.
“Shaka plenty, brah” says the waiter. “Never mind.”
He curtsies and moves back from the table raising his tray above his head like an umbrella. He twists around and he is gone.
Duck brings his rubber beak down over his nose again.
Patita leaves hers on her forehead.
TrueWest smiles weakly as the waiter turns and leaves.
‘I’m not done” he says weakly to the couple.
“Got it” says Duck.
TrueWest plays with his food with his fork before spearing it and eating it. He chews happily. Still embarrassed.
“I’m going to try again to be a good little journalist” he says. He goes again for the tape recorder and slips the pause switch off.
“You worked with kids, right?”
“Yes” says Duck. “And teens.”
TrueWest considers Duck.
“You should wear a dinosaur suit or something” he says. “The duck thing doesn’t quite make it.”
“He was very successful” says Patita.
“It might help with your credibility problem” says TrueWest.
Duck squeezes her thigh again.
“Great idea” he says.
“You’ve made a point of saying that there is a big effort to destabilize and discredit you” says TrueWest. “You’ve gone as far as to say that ‘they’ve” TrueWest pauses dramatically, and continues “tried to kill you.”
Duck nods, the rubber beak going up and down slowly, seriously. “Anthrax” he says.
“Why would anybody go to all that trouble to harass an ex-employee?”
“Money” says Patita. She is serious too.
“I had a feeling there were some yankee doodle buckaroos riding around and hooting in the background” says TrueWest. “Let me get this straight. The whole rig-a-ma-roll is about Saturday night on the town, I mean, somebody taking money ear marked for children’s service being diverted and spent on other things.”
Duck raises his eyebrows and smiles.
“Where exactly did you work?” TrueWest asks.
“The roller rink” says Duck.
TrueWest waits for the rim-shot that never comes.
“The roller rink?”
“Yes” says Patita. “The Rolling Donut.”
Duck smoothes his hair back and raises his eyebrows sincerely.
Patita and Duck nod together.
Waiting.
TrueWest slides the pause switch on again and thinks.
He shrugs, and pushes it back on. What the hell.
“That’s one part of it.” Says Duck. “How services are funded and how the money is delivered.”
“In a bowling bag” mutters TrueWest.
“It’s not a bowling alley” says Patita. “That’s next store. That’s another story.”
“More to the point, the place is toxic” says Duck.
TrueWest looks at the duckbill on Patita’s forehead.
“Poison?”
TrueWest looks at the couple. “I’m here on vacation” he says. “Don’t you something softer to talk about, more human interesty?”
Duck adjusts his bill indignantly.
“There’s a lot of money missing” he says. “It’s that simple and dull. To some wild eyed accountant out there with a fondness for finding crooked figures, these books would be better than sex.”
He spears his last piece of ahi with his fork.
“Human life is cheap” he says.
“Better than sex, eh?” TrueWest considers this. He sucks the fish juices off his fork, then goes for the last bit of fish.”
“Yeah” says Duck. “A little hard core pulp accounting.”
“Pulp accounting?” asks TrueWest, “What in God’s holy turnpike name is ‘Pulp accounting?”
“You know” says Duck, “ You kill a couple of figures here. You kill a couple of figures there. Strange figures appear and disappear. The lights go out. When they come back on, a few more figures are missing. And still the rollers in the rink go round.”
“Embezzlement is really boring as stories go” says TrueWest. “Even when you are stealing the money from impoverished Hawaiian children and other roller skaters.”
“It’s where the money is going that’s interesting” says Duck.
TrueWest fork pauses in front of his mouth.
He’s getting interested. Damn it.
He bites the fish.

Aloha's End

Sunny Anderson: I'm Lau, Lomi Lomi and Poi'd out!!!

Aloha's End, The Archives @ http://zangarijournalism. com and theZblog

Aloha's End

Aloha's End Chapter 36 Momi Looks Under The Hood

Aloha's End Chapter 34: Night As Deep As The Ocean

Aloha's End NEW CHAPTER 33 "Kick Ass"

Slack Key Guitar

Wish You Were Here

NEW ALOHA'S END CHAPTER 32: To Be Omnipresent

New Chapters 16-23 For Aloha's End: But Not As Sweet As You

Aloha's End Current Chapter" Chapter 31 God's Quiet Man Amplified

Aloha's End Rewrites: The Surfing Disaster With Momi

Wai' wai' ko' ko' ola, That Old Black Magic

Aloha's End (A Fresh Edit) Chapter 28-30

Until Aloha Ends

Aloha's End Chapter 26: Like Drops of Sweat. (A Rewrite)

Aloha's End: Chapter 26-29 Rewritten on 8/1/07

Aloha's End: Chapter 25 The Big Orange Balogna

Aloha's End Chapter Twenty-O Da Kine

Aloh'a End by Michael F. Zangari (c) 2007 with all rights reserved. Chapter Twenty Two: Lover's Telepathy

Aloha's End Chapter Twenty-one: But not as sweet as you

"Aloha's End" Chapter 20: He Bites The Fish