Fear, Loathing, and Aloha
I exited my Zoom room with Kamilah Long, Executive Director of Play On Shakespeare in Ashland Oregon. I was so pleased to have had an opportunity to share space in the deep end of the Shakespearean public pool so to speak, with such an amazing scholar and theatrical practitioner of color, “all without anyone calling the police,” I had said.
We laughed.
We were discussing a plan to save our country from what happened on January 6th by using Shakespeare and the Oregon Shakespeare Festival. It was a wonderful meeting. Afterward, I loaded up my shortboard, smeared on a ton of sunscreen, and drove off to catch a sunset surf session to celebrate. The swell was just starting to hit the east side of the island and I knew it would be nice and glassy down Honoli'i since the trade winds had already begun to die. As I reached the end of Nau Nani road, a police officer waved his arms overhead, signaling that I needed to stop my vehicle. Little Keoni ran over to my open driver’s side window. He’s seven.
“Uncle, the Po Po blocked off da’ street cause my uncle shot the haloe up there and now he stay trapped in the house with a bunch of guns and won’t come out!”
“Ho, fo’ real?” I said. “Boy, how you know all dat?”
“You no listen to your scanner, uncle? There’s an ambulance coming and a SWAT team.”
“I don’t have one scanner, brah.”
“Yeah, you need one scanner, Uncle. It tells you everything the police are doing.”
Sure enough, a SWAT team arrived and blocked off the end of my street. I got out of my car, walked toward the officer up ahead then noticed the grumpy old Haole guy who lives at the end of our street, lying face down on his dirt driveway, his head blown off by a shotgun. I crossed myself and said a prayer for his departed soul.
For context, I should probably explain where and how we live up here.
On the slopes of Mauna Loa, we live country, brah, very country, Hawaiian style 100%. Wild boar playing with the dogs until they're big enough to eat. Chickens laying eggs in your slippers on the porch. We speak Pidgeon, Hawaiian, and Japanese. English is for town. On Friday evenings, the canopies go up, monster trucks and Harley Davidsons line every inch of our one-way street and the block party begins. Music plays over speakers, Kanikapila, guitars, ukulele, Mo Illa Pillaz, Brother Walter...
Kanaka Maoli, tattooed bodies swaying to the groove, sip moonshine, Crown Royal, Truly seltzers (go figure), and Coors lights until the sun comes up. Local women with black hair and black ink dance the electric slide, the cha-cha slide, Hawaiian gold jewelry shimmering in the work lights as the rain falls. The smell of smoked meats and pakalolo fills the night air with pure aloha until the aloha finally runs out.
You can only push people so far.
Round three in the morning, it is not unusual to hear one of the white-haired uncles jump on top of some youngster, pin him down, and start giving him dirty lickings for disrespecting his granddaughter or some other disrespect he may have committed beneath his roof. Here, we always respect our elders, so no matter how “swole” or "yoked" the kid may be, he'll never fight back. I guess that’s my point - Respect. In Hawaii respect is everything, especially to a people who have been disrespected so egregiously by the people they have shown so much aloha to over the centuries.
Keoni’s uncle is 32 years old, a mechanic, dakine who is always helping everyone in the neighborhood out when their cars break down, without ever charging them anything unless he doesn't have a part and has to order it. His next-door neighbor is a retiree from the mainland, the only white guy living in the neighborhood. He hates the fact that Keoni’s uncle does bodywork in his auto shop by night. The weather is just better and because of it, they’ve had endless arguments across the fence, in the driveway, and in the street. The haole guy always calls the cops on him. They come, sometimes, and try to mediate and cool everything down. Same old same old.
“You need to back up over there brah,” the police officer told me.
The SWAT team was establishing their perimeter before they would make a decision of how they would attempt a breach. Watching them took me back to the Marine Corps. The Filipino neighbor across the street climbed out of his 4Runner shaking his head.
“I was on the phone with him when it happened. I told him to stay in his house, Kepano, but he kept talking crazy, cussing at everybody from the kitchen window. Then he walk outside. I told him Keoni’s uncle had a shotgun and he says, “Fuck you! I not scared of you. What you going to do to me?!” and he shot him, brah…”
Two lives, maybe even more, ended on Friday afternoon. The old man is dead. Keoni’s uncle surrendered to the police and is facing 2nd-degree murder charges. I haven’t had the stomach to go surfing yet for some reason. I’m just sick about the whole thing. I gave a shakka to his two sons, 8 and 12 years old I believe, as I drove by their house this morning. A blue pickup with a rosary hanging from the rearview mirror was in the driveway. Nearly half of the cars that are usually parked in the yard were gone, sold off, perhaps.
“Jumping out of a perfectly good helicopter in the middle of the night is not a natural act,” my jump school instructor once told us. “You will be afraid.”
Fear is natural. It protects us from getting ourselves killed.
“Bravery is not the lack of fear, Devil Dogs. That’s called stupidity. Bravery is feeling that god-given fear along with the gravity of the situation you are in, then doing what you were trained to do.”
Why was the old man not afraid of that shotgun? Why was Keoni’s uncle not afraid to pull the trigger? God only knows. All I know is that I’m definitely going surfing tomorrow and be it in the water, on the road, or in the country, I will always, always show respect.
Aloha nui loa,
SR
?? Voice Actor, Podcast Producer, and Accountability Coach ??
3 年Wow...that’s an intense story. Sad. And it makes me think of my childhood, because my grandparents lived in rural Wisconsin and had a police scanner because they were volunteer first responders. It was always on, day and night. So many sad stories they must have witnessed, like yours. ??