Read 4 Kaua'i Me a River for Free Online Page B

that’s
from the old days. How about more recently? Did anyone see the movie, ‘The
Descendants’? Hanalei is where George Clooney tracked down the guy who was
having an affair with his wife.”
    The large-size woman in the back
picked up the mic. When she got it to work she said, “That woman should get her
eyes checked. You’d have to be blind to cheat on George Clooney.”
    We flew straight toward a thin
ribbon of waterfall streaming down thousands of feet from a dark green cleft in
the side of Mount Wai’ale’ale. As we headed deeper and deeper into the canyon the
pilot said, “Mount Wai’ale’ale is one of the wettest spots on earth. Its
reported rainfall is over four hundred inches a year.” At the last possible
moment he nimbly turned the chopper around and headed back out and I allowed
myself to exhale.
     We left the mountains and
skimmed over flat green fields on our way back to the airport. The pilot said,
“Anyone want to guess how fast we’re going?”
    I looked at the gauges and saw
one labeled “KIAS.” In airspeed the value is measured in knots per hour, not
miles per hour. In air marshal training we’d been given a rudimentary flying
lesson. They’d told us they never expected us to fly a jumbo jet or anything,
but they wanted us to at least be able to communicate with air traffic control.
I took the lesson seriously. It wasn’t that hard for me to imagine I might be
asked to land a plane someday.
    “Eighty miles an hour?” said a
guy in the back.
    “Nope,” said the pilot. He
looked over at me. “How about you? Care to take a guess?”
    I flicked on the mic and checked
the speedometer again. “Well, it reads one-hundred thirty knots indicated
airspeed. So, that would be about a hundred and fifty miles per hour.”
    “You’re pretty good,” he said giving
me a big smile. “Are you a pilot?”
    Hatch tapped me on the shoulder
and gestured for me to hand him the mic. “No,” he said. “She’s not a pilot;
she’s a wedding planner. She’s used to answering dumb-ass questions.”
    The pilot shot a look at Hatch.
Then he squinted in concentration and dropped the bird dead-center on the
landing pad.
    ***
    “Whew. That was great,” I said after
Hatch and I had gotten far enough away from the rotor wash that we could hear
each other.
    “Glad you liked it. Now let’s see
how much of this island we can cover from ground level.”
    We stopped in a few of the
funkier shops in Kapa’a and then drove up to Kilauea. At the lighthouse
overlook we peered through the binoculars and saw albatrosses and red-footed
boobies on the massive rock cliffs. On our way back to the highway, we turned
in at the historic Kong Lung shopping center and Hatch bought me a gorgeous
silk-screened kimono with flamingo-pink lotus flowers.
    “I think we should drive up to
Hanalei so you can check out where you’ll be going tomorrow morning,” said
Hatch.
    I agreed, but as we descended into
the Hanalei Valley from cliffs of Princeville I felt my heart rate increase and
my fingers turn to ice. At the one-lane bridge on the outskirts of Hanalei we
had to stop for road construction.
    “You okay?” said Hatch, reaching
over to take my hand. “You’ve been awful quiet. You know I’m willing to come with
you tomorrow if you want. I can poke around town while you’re at the lawyer’s.”
    “ Mahalo , but I’ll be
fine.”
    We crossed the bridge and made
our way into town. By the time we found the address of the attorney’s office,
my stomach was roiling.
    “You want to stop and check it
out?” Hatch said as we slowly drove past the brown two-story building.
    “No, thanks. But I sure wish
that lawyer would’ve told me what this was about. Being back here brings up a
lot of stuff I’d rather not think about. I remember thinking if I could hold my
breath long enough, I could die and go be with my mother. A suicidal
five-year-old. How sick is that?”
    “It’s not sick,” said Hatch.
“You were a