He didn’t know where Kanani was living down here. She had shepherded him into the valley and this shack, and then left him on his own. She said it had to be that way. He smelled barbecues and imagined that most all the people of the valley often gathered to eat together. He saw smoke coming from the black beach and heard drums at night and pictured a community luau with ukuleles and song and succulent roasted pig. But that was all right by him. The originals tolerated him but wanted no contact. He might be a danger to them, after all. He understood that. After those first couple days, no one appeared to stop and stare. He could sit for hours on this simple lanai and reflect and begin to understand.

This was his decontamination period. It was his purgatory and his purification. They had a tradition for it, he remembered—a place of refuge.

Kanani had visited him only a few times in those first two weeks, to check on him and to make sure that he had enough candles and was keeping his water fresh. She brought him food—pork wrapped in leaves, and poi made from the taro fields. A mango turnover pastry.

Each time Kanani came, she fed him more information, reporting in the measured tones of a sharp young sergeant returned to the CP after leading a critical patrol. She now wore thick old boots, threadbare denim trousers, and had a knife on her belt, too. She sat with him on the lanai, on one of his two mismatched wooden chairs.

“This is called the Valley of the Kings,” she told him. “The high ridges around us hold the mana of ancient Hawaiian rulers. But a great tsunami came and destroyed this valley. It was the bad one of ’46. Same one hit Hilo. Had one village down here, schoolhouse, post office, but the big water took the whole works. Ancient temples. Graves.”

“Did they all work for the plantations down here?” Lett asked.

“Many, yes. Before the plantations came, they had a mission church here. And those missionaries, they brought the plantation owners, and the plantation owners brought your military. That land grab of theirs needed defending after all.” Kanani shrugged. “Many native islanders above are scared of this valley. Oh—my grandmother grew up here, did I tell you? Tutu wahine. On my faddah side. Tutu wahine always said the tsunami was the gods’ anger at us, for what we were becoming.”

“You have family down here now?”

Kanani nodded. She fell silent. The shack creaked in the breeze.

“You never see the Territory of Hawaii flag down here,” she said. “That Union Jack, the red, white, and blue—that’s a flag of occupation, yeah? Many believe in restoring the Hawaiian nation, want to break off from being owned by the USA. Then we reestablish the sovereignty the haole plantation barons and politicians stole from us.”