Razor nodded, then smiled. “We were just boys the first time, yeah. Remember? The ground kept shaking so they let us out of school. Thanked Pele all that afternoon, yeah.”

Koji laughed at the memory. They had tried to catch a ride up closer to the eruption, but no one would take them. Instead, they spent the afternoon playing baseball against the Sakata boys until it was dark. By the next morning, Pele had quieted and they reluctantly returned to school.

“This time’s different,” Razor said, “feel it in my bones. Pele’s not going away so easily. You wait and see, yeah.”

Koji didn’t disagree. Life on the island could change in a heartbeat. “I’ve been thinking about staying with Nori and Samuel down in Hilo for a few days after the harvest, spend some time with Daniel.”

His plan was to finish up the harvest in the next couple of weeks, do the last of the sugar train runs, and head down to Hilo to stay with Nori and Samuel during the lull. She’d asked him to stay with them several times after Mariko’s death, but he couldn’t bring himself to remain down in Hilo without her. Now, after two years, he needed a change of scenery. He also wanted to get to the bottom of what was bothering Daniel.

“Sounds good, yeah,” Razor said, as if he knew what Koji was thinking. “It’s about time, eh.”

Koji nodded. “Come in for a while?”

“Nah,” Razor said, “just wanted to say hello. Gotta get back.”

“See you soon, then,” he said.

Razor smiled. “I’ll be around.”

Koji watched his friend make his way back down the road and toward the cane fields before he headed back to his cottage.

* * *

Koji turned off the radio and finished cleaning up the kitchen. He looked around the small room, worn and scrubbed, an old table and two mismatched chairs taking up most of the floor space. On the counter were a coffeepot and a single mug. What Koji never told Razor was just how happy he was to have a place of his own after a lifetime of living with others. A few years after his family arrived from Japan, the plantation had prospered and the simple cane grass huts of their Kazoku Village were replaced by clapboard, tin-roofed houses, which Koji’s family shared with another family, eleven in all, living in the hot, cramped four rooms until his sister married and moved to the other side of the island, and his mother passed away. By then, his father had been dead for a lifetime, and Koji had been cutting cane for almost twenty years.

* * *