| |
“CAREFUL!” I YELLED.
“I’m always careful, Molly.” Emma accelerated around the battered Subaru that had been impeding our progress and veered back into our lane just in time to avoid going head-on into the lifted black truck hurtling toward us from the opposite direction.
“Geez,” Emma declared. “People need to learn how to drive.”
We were headed through a thickly forested section of unincorporated Kuewa, down to the Farm Lots subdivision to meet Art Lam. I was excited and a little apprehensive about conducting our first interview with a prominent farmer. Like most of the business owners I had met in Mahina, Art was outspoken and prickly.
The jungle around us looked deceptively calm. Only the top branches of the green canopy overhead flailed and tossed.
“I thought they said the hurricane was supposed to pass us by,” I said. “I hope we don’t get blown off the road. Donnie was worried about us driving down. If anything bad happens, he’s going to be all, ‘I told you so.’ Oh, he said to watch out for the antis.”
“You mean the eco-loonies? Pfft. What are they gonna do to us? All rickety, frail vegans, those guys.”
“I was a vegan for a few months in grad school. It didn’t make me rickety and frail. It made me fat and grouchy.”
“Oh, but Molly. Didn’t you tell Donnie this was for our grant?”
“He was impressed by my being a co-investigator on a federal grant until he realized it was going to mean extra work for me and no extra money. He was like, ‘Oh, so you’ll be even busier than usual, which means I’ll get to see you less. You’ll be more stressed-out when I do see you, and we won’t have any more money coming in. Tell me again why I should be happy about this?’”
“What did you say?”
“The only way I could explain it was, ‘This is who I am. This is what I do.’”
“Right on,” Emma said.
“I told him, ‘I ask questions. I find answers, and I help to advance knowledge. Even when it means driving through a hurricane to interview a grumpy farmer.’”
A blast of wind jolted Emma’s car and spattered her windshield with droplets. Emma swore and switched on the wipers.
“Having a grant keeps you mobile,” Emma said. “It looks good on your CV in case you want to go somewhere else. Especially in your discipline. I mean, how many business communication professors have grants?”
“I would never mention staying mobile to Donnie. He’s already paranoid about it. I don’t know why. He’s afraid maybe deep down I’m planning to leave Mahina and move back to the mainland.”
“It’s a pretty common fear. It’s the reason it takes us a while to warm up to you people.”
“You people?”
“Malihini. Mainland transplants. Immigrants. Invasive species. You move here. You make friends. You decide you can’t hack it here, and you end up leaving us.”
“I’m not going anywhere. Did you just call me an invasive species?”
“So what then? He’s gonna give you a hard time about the grant?”
“No. He said he still didn’t understand why I was doing it, but the most important thing was to have a happy wife. Happy wife, happy life.”
“He actually said, ‘Happy wife, happy life?’”
“I know. It sounds kind of condescending. But I don’t mind so much. It means he and I have congruent goals, right? I can work with that. Are you sure we’re going the right way? This road isn’t even two lanes wide anymore.”
“Speaking of invasive species,” Emma said. “All this stuff that’s crowding us on the sides of the road? This is all strawberry guava. And those trees overhead? Those are Albizia. They’re a menace.”
“The tall ones making a canopy over the road? They look nice.”
“They grow fast, and they’re top-heavy, but they have a shallow root system. So they’re the first thing to fall over in a high wind.”
“Good to know since we’re driving down a road lined with them on a windy morning.”
“I think I saw a couple on your property,” Emma said.
“Oh, Albizia. I knew the name sounded familiar. Donnie’s been after me to get those taken out. But if I do that, my carport and the whole front of my house won’t have any shade.”
“How long have you been married now?” Emma snorted. “You’re still living in your own separate houses?”
“Separate houses are the key to marital peace.”
“I bet that’s not what Donnie thinks. Well, here we are. Art Lam’s place should be up ahead.”
“Emma, what happened over there? Did the wind do that?”
Emma slowed the car and pulled over to the side of the road, where the patchy asphalt disappeared into the jungle. She got out, and I scooted over the center console to exit on her side. We approached the damaged area of the orchard. It looked uglier the closer we got.
“That’s not wind,” Emma said. “Those look like clean cuts.”
I pulled up my tablet and started to snap photographs. I could see the hacked-up vegetation used to be a papaya grove. The chopped trees lay askew, their clusters of bulbous fruit still intact.
“They left all of the papayas,” I said. “What was the point?”
“Not theft. Vandalism.”
I continued to snap pictures, turning in a slow circle. Even with the cloud cover, it was too bright for me to see what was on the screen. I’d have to trust I was getting what I wanted. Whoever was responsible for the destruction had started at the side of the road and made a small incursion into the papaya grove. Further in, the trees stood intact. Maybe the vandals got scared, or caught, before they could finish the job.
“Does this have to do with the biotech debate?” I asked Emma. “Are these papayas transgenic?”
“Probably. Pretty much all the commercially grown papayas in this state are. And have been, since the late 1990s. Funny how everyone’s getting upset about it now. Where were we supposed to meet Art?”
“In the house. I wonder if he knows about this.”
“Molly. Over here.”
I turned toward her, still taking pictures. To give the users an analog experience, the tablet’s designers had built in reassuring shutter-click and film-advance noises. Click, whir. Click, whir. Click—I lowered the tablet slowly.
Emma and I stared at a boot. Which was on the end of a leg. Which had been separated, recently and rather violently, from its owner.