
	Copyright © 2002-2003 LeeAnn Heringer

Chapter One: Aloha

I flatter myself that I don't travel well like champagne doesn't travel well. After all, in both cases, you have contents under pressure that should be kept out of the reach of children. But that sounds far too elegant for the wrinkled mess that was pulled out of bed at 6am to be dragged through cold pounding rain and dumped onto an Aloha Airlines flight, Oakland to Hawaii. The plane filled with screaming kicking children and Dean trying to force coffee and juice and reading material on me, which I kept shaking off. Ah, the beginning of a trip, that special moment when you can't remember why your bags are so heavy and why your nice, soft bed is so far away.

But then you get off the tin coffin of a 737 and it's Hawaii. The sun is shining, the breeze is warm, the coconut trees sway. Even other people's children become magically amusing, outside under the open sky.

the rental car

two of us on the bench
under the awning,
two women outside
with the breeze & the luggage.
hers showed up first.

a big grin in a
red convertible,
low slung & reflecting light.

when he got out
you noticed he was 65
thin white hair,
pants belted below his belly,
& the limping shuffle
of hip problems.
she refused to get up.
she refused to get in.

there'd been a mistake.
they'd given him the wrong car.
he needed to go back &
fix this.

me & him, grinning at each other,
as he loaded the bags.

Hawaii.

in a red topless go-car
& she was going to have to
deal with it.

he laid down rubber
leaving the lot.

12/14/2002
Kona Airport, Hawaii

We had rented a guest house on a coffee plantation in Honaunau (pronounced "hoe-now-now"), south of Kaliua-Kona on the big island of Hawaii. We spent the afternoon, drifting from Costco to Walmart to Safeway, buying the supplies to fill up the refrigerator and shelves. Arriving at the farm just before sunset. We were not disappointed to find out that because it was past the farm's coffee picking / processing cycle, we would be completely alone. The caretaker in the apartment below had gone back to Scotland for his daughter's wedding. The couple who rented the other house were in the midst of moving out the last few boxes to their new rental much closer to town.

Just us and the feral chickens.

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