Friday, March 25, 2011

Tricks with Sticks

OK, so back to this Hawaii thing...


When last we left our hero, he was being sodomized by an alligator w/ a bad case of shingles. (How do you know if an alligator has shingles? Well, just climb up on his roof and look!)


Oh wait... That was where we last left the ghost of Oscar Wilde, who'd just lifted the vial of plutonium from AmWay's Worldwide Secret HQ. It was in a wall safe behind a painting that look just like Melissa Sue Anderson w/ a dick. She was runnin' down that fuckin' hill w/ Half-Pint and that fuckin' dog and alla that, but whereas usually, when her dresses flips up a little, you see bloomers-- here you get an eyeful of a a big, hairy shlong. (Fortunately, in this painting, she's herself as an adult, or this image would be pedophiliac, and that is not just morally wrong, but psychologically disturbing!) The painting was in a gilt frame, wrought in such a way as to look like scrolling with lil' tiny letters embossed in it that spell out: IF YOU CAN READ THIS YOU ARE TOO CLOSE. AND STUPID.


Yep. That's where we left Oscar Wilde. Except for that I never wrote that about Oscar Wilde. Hmm...


Oh well, see ya next time--whenever I update this thing again!



Oh but wait... We were talking about Hawaii! That's right... Hmmm... OK then... well... Let's see...



When last we left... our…well… uh… me… (can't call myself a hero w/ a straight face...) I was--and, OK, while this image is not nearly as overtly sexual as an alligator fuckin' Oscar Wilde, it is pretty surreal--looking through some strangers camera lens at a pool of molten liquid... Yeah. That's where I was when I last wrote about this…on December 9. 2008.


Hmm… well if you want me to do a "previously on," I just did. Or at least, that's the best you're gonna get. Because if I did a "previously on," I'd never finish an entry, and the next time I'd finish an entry would be around the next time Kilauea erupts, which it just did, by the way, in case you didn't notice. (Right after Libya, but right before the tsunami. What a world, what a world.) (Actually Kilauea is always erupting, but not usually boom pow! erupting. They had to close Volcano National Park. Thankfully, Hilo's OK though.)


But so, quickly: While on a missing persons job in Hawaii, I, Steve Forceman, PI, had been sidetracked into running a fellow lodger's 16 year old son, Niko, up to the heart of the Kilauea lava flow at Volcano National Park. I'd wanted to see the flow myself and had figured a brief stop off would do no real harm, but hadn't fore seen how the drive through the surreal volcanic scenery would lead not just to a short hike, but to a longer more rigorous trek over uneven volcanic rock. Along the way, Niko and I hooked up with his dad, Stefan. Niko and Stefan were Germans and experienced hikers, but you shouldn't hold that against them. We ran into a young shy couple, Natalie and her unnamed male companion who followed us but seemed not to want to engage with us much. They were lousy hikers. Just after dark, we ran across large, spectacular pools of molten lava. Around the same time, we met another lava seeker, a bearded, long-haired hiker named Mark, who loaned me his high-end video camera so I could gawk at the details of the flowing lava in the dark.


Huff puff… OK caught my breath… and… action!


I handed Mark back his camera, and, to the extent that I could, directed my attention away from the phenomena in front of me to get a better look at him. I'd said before that he struck me as a hippie sort. His long hair and scruffy beard suggested Dead before Zep and Zep before Sabbath and Sabbath before Slayer and so down the line. I think this was partly the earth tones and lighter colors he wore, but also how laid back he seemed. I mean, he was clearly awed by the lava, just like the rest of us--the same idiot grin stretched his face--but he seemed more sedate. Then there was the fact that he immediately projected this air of someone who enjoyed nature. I couldn't figure it out at first. To be fair, I was caught up in the blast furnace air and the intensely distracting presence of the lava. It was hard to make sense of why anything was the way it was. But then it hit me: a big part of his sylvan vibe came from the big, gnarled wooden staff he bore. I looked him in the eye. I pointed at it.


"Gandalf?" I asked.


He laughed and shook his head.


"You're not that other dude who everyone mistakes for Gandalf and who's really a prick?"


"Saruman?"


Thousands of people in Hawaii and I had to keep running into the Tolkien enthusiasts.


So this guy was named Mark, and he had coppery colored hair which seemed appropriate enough for a traveling companion under the circumstances. And the large stick he was carrying was not a trick of the light, had in fact been carved and polished and then purchased cheaply by Mark from one of the innumerable roadside salesman in Kona earlier that day.


"It was kind of a last minute thing. I have a regular metal type walking stick, but I forgot to bring it when I flew to Hawaii. Seemed like a good idea to bring something with me if I was gonna be moving over this kinda shit."


Looking around me at everyone else and their walking sticks, I nodded.


After that, we all moved around the lava for a while, just watching it. Tendrils extended from pools and became smooth formations of rock. Then after a while, the pools themselves disappeared beneath a solid sheet of stone. Then cracks of golden-red light would show somewhere in the rock, a tendril would crawl out, and a new pool would reveal itself. It all happened continuously, more quickly than you'd expect, but in such a mesmerizing way that it seemed slower than it really was.



The state of mesmerization was soon shattered though when Mark took the same exuberance with which he'd shared his camera and applied it to sharing his stick. Man was his stick hard and long. And wooden. His walking stick.


"Check this out!"


Mark was crouching several feet from the edge of a pool of flowing lava, leaning down so he could poke it with his walking stick. A small flame twisted around on the edge of the stick, translucent and pale. Mark poked the lava again and sparks showered in reverse, upward.


"Holy shit!" I probably said. Who knows what I said? I ran over toward him. "Lemme! Lemme! Lemme!"


It was probably the act of an idiot. It certainly seemed all the while like you were inviting disaster. But that wasn't what was fun about it. It wasn't a rock n' roll thing--stealing a car, say. It wasn't evan an adolescent thing--stealing some lipstick, say. What was thrilling about it had nothing to do with transgression. Though the sense of potential transgression was there, it was mostly incidental, like a the atmospherics of a Grimm Brothers story. The attraction was one of childlike mystery: get up close and personal with the Fire. The Big Fire.


Mark relinquished the stick, and a-pokin' I did go. Down there, close to the lava, the heat was terrible. I could see more details, but there was a shimmer of heat distortion. There was no resistance when I prodded the liquid stuff, so it was hard to tell if I was making contact, but then there were loud hisses, timed to my stabs, and the sparks danced past me. I poked at the lava some more, and could see bubbles of the stuff chasing after the stick when I retracted it.


I looked at the others and they were smiling and laughing. Niko was eager to take his turn, so I passed him the stick. In turn, Stefan, Natalie and her friend each tried it as well, though they each gave it a pretty rudimentary effort. By that time, the thing had lost a foot or more. I was surprised it wasn't even shorter.



Though it was all so beautiful and strange, I became aware of how late it was and of how long the trip back to Akiko's was. At this point, I was no longer sure of what I'd been drafted for, but I believed it still involved carting Niko back to the Bed & Breakfast that night.


I looked around me, and although I ain't Gandalf either--I thought I could sense a general flagging of energy among my companions. We'd been less mobile for some time, and I suspect that everyone's sense of wonder was starting to be sapped by the aching of his/her aching joints, tendons and whatnot. Not to mention that dry heat. It had cooled off a lot, but the wind still seemed hot, and the glow rising from the ground was still palpable. A gulp of water seemed to wet your tongue for only a moment.


I think it was Mark who suggested that maybe it was time to turn back. I took one look back up the slope of the mountain past us. We'd never really climbed up there. No need. I'm not sure I would've felt safe doing so, though I'd gone so far past the point of what I'd originally considered "safe," who can say? The jagged orange lines stretched back and forth up into the dark. It was with only a little regret though that I turned around. I'd seen more than I'd imagined I would, and besides, I was really fucking tired.


At this point, Natalie and her beau hovered on one side whispering conspiratorially, but Stefan cut in without hesitation.


"We are heading back! Will you be joining us?"


He waited, wearing a big shit eating grin, while they stared at him for a while. They appeared nervous.


"Um, sure," Natalie said.


"Nat!" said her companion, in a voice that was way too high for Prince Valiant, despite the groovy haircut he wore, "I think we should wait."


He surveyed all of us with an unfriendly eye.


Stefan grinned, waited. No one else said anything.


Finally MArk said, "OK. Let's go."


We began moving. Natalie and her friend did not follow.


Stefan said, "Should we leave them like that? They don't appear to be very experienced hikers and it can be somewhat dangerous out here."


Mark said, "If they don't want to come with us, we can't make them."


They looked at me.


"What do I know? Ask the kid."


They looked at me some more.


My Private Eye training kicked in and did the talking for me: "OK. Mark's right. Mostly. We can't make them go. I mean, what are we gonna do? Threaten them? I think the guy is just insecure about his woman and wants his privacy. But they're as tired as we are. They won't wanna wait too long, and I think even if they're sorta dumb they'd have to know it's safer to keep us in sight. I'm guessing they'll follow us, just at a distance."


Mark smiled approvingly, "I bet you're right." He looked at Stefan. "They'll be OK."


I had some misgivings about my own argument, and I think Stefan did too, but for the moment everyone accepted it. I figured if we really lost sight of 'em, we could mention it to the rangers or figure something else more noble out later. So the three of us stumbled after Niko. The kid already had a pretty good lead on us. No one was worried about him hopping around out there in the dark, but then, probably no one needed to be.


Remember all that stuff I told you about the trip out? How I'd stumbled over piles of irregular rocks, often finding it necessary to leapfrog back and forth between large angled slabs of stone for minutes at a time because there was no flat ground to be seen? Well, it was worse on the way back. The impact wore me down more each time, particularly my lower spine, and in the darkness, my landings grew increasingly sloppy. And every time I caught myself, my hands would get more scraped. I was cursing those assholes with their fucking sticks as they trundled down the slopes around me.


"Now now," said Stefan at one point. "Sticks and stones…" He giggled merrily.


I tested a rock about the size of a grapefruit for heft, considered the angle of his skull, but then remembered the asshole's kid was there, and besides, he was German. They can't help it. They've got that Schadenfreude thing.


And really, it's a good thing I didn't brain him, because at that moment, I realized two things:


1) Natalie and her beau were following, as I'd expected. Although they were stumbling difficultly around, they would've had a perfect sightline on my murder of Stefan. Almost certainly, I would've gotten Murder 1 as a result.


2) The enormous full moon was breaking free from the clouds--the brightest it had been all night--dousing all the dead brown lava with blue and hiding all the orange light. Suddenly, you could see everything a lot more clearly.