This Is Paradise by Kristiana Kahakauwila Page B

collecting stones near the side of the road and placing them carefully in a red sand bucket.
    “Tourists,” he said.
    “They remind me of crabs. The color of their skin.”
    Cameron nodded in agreement, then realized he didn’t feel the same. He knew tourists by their choice of car, not their skin color. Locals didn’t drive convertibles; they drove trucks. With air-conditioning.
    They reached the bottom of one hill and began to ascend another. To their right, a narrow ravine cut deeply into the mountainside. The rock was hidden by the flat, feathered leaves of palapalai ferns, and two hundred feet above a waterfall surged over the cliff edge. The falls were white and slender, like the waist of a young girl. On the ground, the water streamed through the ravine and then beneath a narrow bridge, before being deposited into the ocean. Cameron pulled to the side of the road to let twocars headed in the opposite direction pass over the bridge first.
    “You had the right of way,” Becky said.
    “But they’re coming downhill. It’s safer to let them go.”
    She shrugged and looked out the window.
    He felt her drifting from him and struggled to find a way to draw her back. “So why is Hāna so important to the Hawaiian people?” he asked finally. They were high on a cliff again, above the harsh winds that made the water take on the wrinkled appearance of elephant skin. The sky was the same color as the sea, and only its smooth surface separated it from the ocean.
    “In ancient days, Hāna is a vacation spot for the Big Island chiefs,” Becky said. She always spoke of history in the present tense, which never failed to unsettle him. To him, history was not available for reintroductions and reliving but accessible only via careful and protracted study. For Becky, however, the past and present existed in the same moment. In her memory the two met, and through their meeting, she layered them, until the past and present were like ocean and sky, without noticeable boundary. “The chiefs paddle the channel between Big Island and East Maui, spending their summers in Hāna. They build second homes even. So when King Kamehameha and his armies want to conquer Maui, they land in Hāna first because they know the people won’t rise up against them. They will be torn between allegiances.”
    “And are they?” He corrected himself: “
Were
they?”
    “I guess. They tell the Maui chiefs that Kamehameha has landed, but they don’t fight him. I suppose they can’t. They are outnumbered. They don’t want to fight. East Maui has never been known for its warriors.”
    “How do you know that?”
    “Know what?”
    “That East Maui isn’t known for its warriors.”
    Her eyes lifted to the upper right corner of their sockets until he saw the fine, red veins at the outer corner. Finally, she said, “I suppose I read it somewhere. Wherever I read about the battle. Why do you ask?”
    “It just seems like an odd blanket statement. An entire portion of an island not being known for its ability to fight? That’s an era when everybody would have been trained to fight.”
    She threw up her hands and let them land with a smack on her bare thighs. He noticed how her skirt had edged up her legs, her skin smooth and brown, and he almost regretted challenging her. “This is how Hāna folks are known today. As farmers, not fighters.”
    “But what of then?”
    “What of then?” She turned her head toward him. He looked at her lips. They were lightly closed, not pressed together in anger, but closed all the same.
    “What are you thinking?” he asked carefully.
    She sighed. He could sense she wanted to tell him something but chose not to. Instead, she said, “I’m reminded of driving out here as a little girl. My dad is takingthe curves too fast and my mom keeps saying she’s dizzy. That’s how they always are. You drive much slower.”
    “I have to go slow. I haven’t driven this road as many times as your dad.”
    “I didn’t