December 8, 1941
With every mile closer to Volcano, the fog thickened, until they were driving through a forest of white gauze with the occasional branch showing through. Lana considered turning the truck around no less than forty-six times. Going back to Hilo would have been the prudent thing to do, but this was not a time for prudence. Of that she was sure. She slowed the Chevy to a crawl and checked the rearview mirror. The cage with the geese was now invisible, and she could barely make out the dog’s big black spots.
Maybe the fog would be to their advantage.
“I don’t like it here at all,” said Coco, who was smashed up next to Lana, scrawny arms folded in protest. The child had to almost yell to be heard above the chug of the motor.
Lana grabbed a blanket from the floor. “Put this over you. It should help.”
Coco shook her head. “I’m not cold. I want to go home. Can you please take us back?”
Goose bumps had formed up and down her limbs, but she was so stubborn that she had refused to put on a jacket. True, Hilo was insufferably hot, but where they were headed—four thousand feet up the mountain—the air was cold and damp and flimsy.
It had been over ten years since Lana had set foot at Kīlauea. Never would she have guessed to be returning under these circumstances.
Marie chimed in. “We can’t go back now, sis. And anyway, there’s no one to go back to at the moment.”
Poor Coco trembled. Lana wished she could hug the girl and tell her everything was going to be okay. But that would be a lie. Things were liable to get a whole lot worse before they got any better.
“Sorry, honey. I wish things were different, but right now you two are my priority. Once we get to the house, we can make a plan,” Lana said.
“But you don’t even know where it is,” Coco whined.
“I have a good idea.”
More like a vague notion.
“What if we don’t find it by dark? Are they going to shoot us?” Coco said.
Marie put her arm around Coco and pulled her in. “Turn off that little overactive imagination of yours. No one is going to shoot us,” she said, but threw a questioning glance Lana’s way.
“We’ll be fine,” Lana said, wishing she believed that.
The girls were not the real problem here. Of greater concern was what they had hidden in the back of the truck. Curfew was six o’clock, but people had been ordered to stay off the roads unless their travel was essential to the war. Lana hadn’t told the girls that. Driving up here was a huge risk, but she had invented a story she hoped and prayed would let them get through if anyone stopped them. The thought of a checkpoint caused her palms to break out in sweat, despite the icy air blowing in through the cracks in the floorboard.
On a good day, the road from Hilo to Volcano would take about an hour and a half. Today was not a good day. Every so often they hit a rut the size of a whiskey barrel that bounced her head straight into the roof. The continuous drizzle of the rain forest had undermined all attempts at smooth roads here. At times the ride was reminiscent of the plane ride from Honolulu. Exactly two days ago, but felt more like a lifetime.
Lana’s main worry was what they would encounter once in the vicinity of the national park entrance. With the Kīlauea military camp nearby, there were bound to be soldiers and roadblocks in the area. She had so many questions for her father and felt a mixed ache of sadness and resentment that he was not here to answer them. How were you so sure the Japanese were coming? Why the volcano, of all places? How are we going to survive up here? Why didn’t you call me sooner?
Coco seemed to settle down, leaning her nut-brown ringlets against her sister’s shoulder and closing her eyes. There was something comforting in the roar of the engine and the jostle of the truck. With the whiteout it was hard to tell where they were, but by all estimates they should be arriving soon.
Lana was dreaming of a cup of hot coffee when Coco sat upright and said, “I have to go tinkle.”
“Tinkle?” Lana asked.
Marie said, “She means she has to go to the bathroom.”
They drove until they found a grassy shoulder, and Lana pulled the truck aside, though they could have stopped in the middle of the road. They had met only one other vehicle the whole way, a police car that fortunately had passed by.
The rain had let up, and they all climbed out. It was like walking through a cloud, and the air smelled metallic and faintly lemony from the eucalyptus that lined the road. Lana went to check on Sailor. The dog stood up and whined, yanking on the rope around her neck, straining to be pet. Poor thing was drenched and shaking. Lana had wanted to leave her behind with a neighbor, but Coco had put up such a fuss, throwing herself onto her bed and wailing and punching the pillow, that Lana relented. Caring for the girls would be hard enough, but a hundred-and-twenty-pound dog?
“Just a bathroom stop. Is everyone okay back here?” she asked in a hushed voice. Two low grunts came from under the tarp. “We should be there soon. Remember, be still and don’t make a sound if we stop again.”
As if on cue, one of the hidden passengers started a coughing fit, shaking the whole tarp. She wondered how wise it was to subject him to this long and chilly ride, and if it might be the death of him. But the alternative was worse.
“Deep breaths...you can do it,” Lana said.
Coco showed up and hopped onto the back tire. “I think we should put Sailor inside with us. She looks miserable.”
“Whose lap do you propose she sits on?” Lana said.
Sailor was as tall as a small horse, but half as wide.
“I can sit in the back of the truck and she can come up here, then,” Coco said in all seriousness.
“Not in those clothes you won’t. We don’t need you catching pneumonia on us.”
They started off again, and ten seconds down the road, Sailor started howling at the top of her lungs. Lana felt herself on the verge of unraveling. The last thing they needed was one extra ounce of attention. The whole idea of coming up here was preposterous when she thought about it. At the time it had seemed like a good idea, but now she wondered at her sanity.
“What is wrong with that dog?” Lana said, annoyed.
Coco turned around, and Lana felt her hot breath against her arm. In the smallest of voices, she said, “Sailor is scared.”
Lana felt her heart crack. “Oh, honey, we’re all a bit scared. It’s perfectly normal under the circumstances. But I promise you this—I will do everything in my power to keep you out of harm’s way.”
“But you hardly know us,” Coco said.
“My father knew you, and you knew him, right?” Lana said. “And remember, if anyone asks, we tell them our story.”
They had rehearsed it many times already, but with kids one could never be sure. Not that Lana had much experience with kids. With none of her own and no nieces or nephews in the islands, she felt the lack palpably, smack in the center of her chest. There had been a time when she saw children in her future, but that dream had come and gone and left her sitting on the curb with a jarful of tears.
Her mind immediately went to Buck. Strange how your future with a person could veer so far off course from how you’d originally pictured it. How the one person you swore you would have and hold could end up wreaking havoc on your heart instead. She blinked the thought away.
As they neared Volcano, the fog remained like a curtain, but the air around them brightened. Lana knew from all her time up here as a young girl that the trees got smaller as the elevation rose, and the terrain changed from towering eucalyptus and fields of yellow-and-white ginger to a more cindery terrain covered with red-blossomed ‘ohi‘a trees, and prehistoric-looking hāpu’u ferns and the crawling uluhe. At one time in her life, this had been one of her happiest places. Coco reached for the letter on the dashboard and began reading it for the fourth time. “Coco Hitchcock. It sounds funny.” The paper was already getting worn.
Marie swiped it out of her hands. “You’re going to ruin that. Give it to me.”
Where Coco was whip thin and dark and spirited—a nice way of putting it—Marie was blonde and full-bodied and sweet as coconut taffy. But Lana could tell even Marie’s patience was wearing thin.
“Mrs. Hitchcock said we need to memorize our new names or we’ll be shot.”
Lana said as calmly as she could, “I never said anything of the sort. And, Coco, you have to get used to calling me Aunt Lana for now. Both of you do.”
“And stop talking about getting shot,” Marie added, rolling her eyes.
If they could all just hold it together a little bit longer.
There was sweat pooling between her breasts and behind her kneecaps. Lying was not her strong suit, and she was hoping that, by some strange miracle, they could sail on through without anyone stopping them. She rolled her window down a couple of inches for a burst of fresh air. “We’re just about here. So if we get stopped, let me do the talking. Speak only if someone asks you a direct question, okay?”
Neither girl said anything; they both just nodded. Lana could almost see the fear condensing on the windshield. And pretty soon little Coco started sniffling. Lana would have said something to comfort her, but her mind was void of words. Next the sniffles turned into heaving sobs big enough to break the poor girl in half. Marie rubbed her hand up and down Coco’s back in a warm, smooth circle.
“You can cry when we get there, but no tears now,” she said.
Tears and snot were smeared across Coco’s face in one big shiny layer. “But they might kill Mama and Papa.” Her face was pinched and twisted into such anguish that Lana had to fight back a sob of her own.
“We’re Americans. They would never kill them—or us, for that matter,” Marie said with pure confidence.
A split second later Lana blinked several times to make sure she was seeing straight. Her foot pressed hard on the brakes. Up ahead were two guards standing in the middle of the road with rifles aimed at the truck. Shrouded in fog, they looked like ghost soldiers. All along the side of the road were sandbags piled high with what appeared to be machine guns set up behind them. The sight quieted Coco right down.
“Oh hell,” Lana muttered.
She rolled down the window and waved, wondering if she should get out or wait for them to come to her. “Hello, there,” she called. “Just a woman and two girls here.”
Outside, the world seemed very small, pressing in from all directions. The way her heart was skipping along at two hundred beats per minute, Lana wondered if she would even be able to talk in complete sentences. She let out a big breath and opened the door.
One of the men moved toward them. “Civilians are not supposed to be out driving around, ma’am. What’s your business here?” he said.
She stood up and forced a smile. “We just need to get home. We were trapped in Hilo for the past few days after a trip to O‘ahu, and I got clearance from the head of the Territorial Guard to come back up here and stay put.”
With limbs he still needed to grow into, the guard looked to be no older than eighteen. He came and stood just to the left of the truck. “You have proof of that?”
She handed him the letter, signed by one Deputy Chester Ho’okano, a neighbor and friend of her father. Chester was in the Territorial Guard but certainly not in charge of it. He’d scribbled his name so it was nearly unreadable.
A low growl started up in the back of the truck. Then a cacophony of honking and strange hissing followed.
The man craned his neck. “What the dickens you got back there, ma’am?”
“Just a dog and two nene geese. I couldn’t leave them behind. My friend was watching them while we were away,” she said.
He hooked his fingers in his belt loops and seemed to contemplate her story. She noted his name tag said Pvt. Smith. After a moment the animals settled.
Cigarette smoke wafted over from the other guard, who said, “Everything okay, Jimbo?”
“Appears to be,” Jimbo said as he leaned down to glance into the cab.
The two men had probably been standing out here for hours with nothing to do. Now they had a diversion to keep them occupied and seemed in no hurry whatsoever.
“Hey, ladies,” he said to Coco and Marie.
Marie and Coco both said hello in unison, their hands folded neatly in their laps.
Lana gave him her license. “There was no room for us at my friend’s house. We were all sleeping on the patio with the cockroaches and mosquitos, and we were told we would be much safer up here.”
The soldier raised a brow, his eyes lingering on Marie. “These your girls?”
As it turned out, Coco was eight but looked five, and Marie was thirteen but could have passed for seventeen, and was a real stunner.
Lana felt like she was swallowing a huge wad of gum. “Yes.”
“You look young enough to be their sister, and funny, they didn’t get that dark skin of yours...at all,” he said.
His boots crunched on the cinder as he stepped back to assess them. He seemed half nervous teenager, half authority figure, and Lana couldn’t figure which one to appeal to.
Lana faked a laugh. “My husband and I adopted them when they were wee little things. Long story. Look, Private Smith, the girls are cold and scared, our dog is shivering in the back and we would like to get to the house before dark. If you wouldn’t mind letting us be on our way?”
He paused for what felt like an hour. “Where is your husband?” he finally asked.
“He stayed on O‘ahu for business and now he’s stuck there.”
“Shame. Where’s the house?”
“Just up ahead at the edge of the village.”
By now the other guard had sauntered over to participate in the questioning. He was as compact as the other one was gangly. “Just the three of you ladies, all alone?” he said.
This one felt more dangerous.
“Just the three of us, and a dog and two geese. I am perfectly capable of taking care of us, if that’s what you mean?”
“You know there’s a lot of Japanese farmers in the village. You own a gun?” Private Smith said.
That was when she heard a muffled but distinct cough coming from the back of the truck. Not a whole string of coughs, thank heavens, but one was bad enough.
The second guard, Private Lowry, cocked his head and motioned toward the rear. “What was that?”
Lana’s cheeks heated up, and if the guilty looks on the girls were any indication, they had heard it, too. She waved it off. “Oh, those nene geese, they make all kinds of peculiar noises.”
She said a silent prayer to the goose god. Now would be a good time to start honking and hissing again. Please! Lowry walked around to the back, keeping a wide distance. Sailor had sat down earlier when she realized she wasn’t getting out and continued a low-pitched whine, but now she stood up and glared at the man.
“What’s under the tarp?” Lowry said.
“Supplies. Food, clothing, blankets and some gardening supplies. We’re going to work on planting more edibles.”
“Mind showing me?” he said.
He struck her as the kind of man who once he got on the scent of something, would follow it to the ends of the earth. It seemed at that very moment the sky around them condensed, turning four shades darker and making it hard to see one’s own feet. She was trying to figure out which side of the tarp to pull up when Coco climbed out and started wailing. As if on cue, the geese started up again and Sailor turned her snout to the sky and let out a gut-splitting howl.
“Auntie, if we don’t go now, I’m gonna wet my pants,” she sobbed. While she had hardly allowed herself to be touched by Lana earlier, she now wrapped her arms around Lana’s waist and pressed her face into the side of her chest.
Lana pulled her in and smoothed her hair. To Lowry, she said, “Forgive us, since the attack, she’s been having night terrors and a bad case of nerves.”
Amid all the commotion Lana thought she heard another cough. If they didn’t get out of there soon, the men would surely uncover the extra cargo, and who knew what would happen then. Lana felt the weight of the impossible promise she’d made to Mrs. Wagner, the girls’ mother. Of course she had said yes—what else could she have said? But with so many unknowns, the yes was as good as a lie.
She let annoyance creep into her voice. “Fellas, please just let us pass,” Lana said. “It should be obvious we are no danger, and once we get home, we’ll stay put. I can promise you that.”
Smith shrugged and glanced at Lowry. “What do you think, Skip?”
Coco was now tugging at Lana’s arm, trying to pull her toward the open door.
Lana gave it her last shot. “Our tarp is tied down to keep our belongings dry, and if I open it, everything will get wet.”
Lowry threw his cigarette stub down and stepped on it. She thought he was going to demand to inspect what they had in the truck bed, but instead he said, “You ladies need an escort?”
She slipped onto the wet seat behind Coco before he could change his mind. “I would never impose on you like that. We’ll be just fine.”
The engine roaring to life was about the sweetest sound she had ever heard. They rode in silence for a full minute before Lana said to Coco, “You were brilliant back there—you even had me fooled.”
Coco gave her an inch of a smile, which was more than she had seen in all the time she’d known her. “It was Marie’s idea.”
“I like how you girls think. Watching each other’s backs is exactly how we’re going to get through this.”
Maybe there was hope for them after all.