The End of the Dream (5 page)

“We had The Shire, we didn’t have to work more than a couple of days a week unless we wanted to. Almost everything we needed to eat grew on the property, and somebody had a potluck meal every night someplace.

We could swim and body surf and jump off cliffs into whirlpools.”

Landscaping “The Shire” wasn’t difficult.

Hawaii Plant Life had a contract to take care of all the flowers and bushes at the Kahala Hilton. The hotel specified that all their plants would be torn out periodically, and replaced with fresh vegetation.

Neither Scott nor Kevin could bear to see anything living thrown away, so they carted the rejected plants home to The Shire Plantation.

“Anything would grow there, “ Kevin recalled. “If you spit a melon seed off the porch, you’d have a melon vine flourishing the next time you thought to look. We threw a seed out from an acorn squash and it wasn’t long before we had two hundred squashes. We took so many squashes to the potluck suppers that we weren’t very popular for a while. If we planted some thing at ground level, in nine months we could reach our hand off the porch and pick the fruit. We had every kind of plant you could imagine growing on our property. Hibiscus and Birds of Paradise and orchids and tropical flowers. We planted coconuts and had a row of coconut palms.” (Twenty years later, when Kevin returned to Hawaii, he found that The Shire Plantation was no longer visible because the trees they had planted had grown so high around it. ) Scott and Kevin began to take great pride in the lush gardens they were creating. Sometimes, Kevin thought that the place must be blessed. He noticed one day when he was approaching The Shire by a winding road high above it that the peculiar conformation of timbers on the roof made a perfect giant cross.

It seemed fitting. The casual attitude of the tomato farm allowed workers to pick produce naked. Scott, of course, had grown up in a family that embraced nudity and Kevin had no problem at all with it.

The young women who lived in the big house and picked tomatoes or whatever else was in season had slender and perfect bodies too, and they didn’t balk at working without clothes. Shut off from roads and the stares of tourists by thick foliage, the pickers moved gracefully through the fields with little more on than the bandannas they tied around their heads. Their nakedness wasn’t so much sexual as it was free. “We called them the Earth Girls, “ Kevin said. “They were vegetarians, they didn’t shave their legs or under their arms, and their potlucks were always organic. They liked to come over to our porch, though, because we had the best sunset view. They taught us how to make perfect pizza dough with their bread starter. We made pizza out of everything even cauliflower pizza.” In truth, Kevin and Scott were living more of a hedonistic existence than the serene life of the Hobbits they chose to emulate. They were far more prideful and obsessed with their bodies. They attached rings to the telephone poles in back of the house and spent hours doing gymnastics, building their biceps until they had the definition of competitive body builders.

“We were show-offs, “ Kevin remembered. “When the Earth Girls called us for dinner, we did handstands out of our chairs.” The pictures they took of their finely honed bodies remain, Scott Scurlock, naked, lifting himself with only his hands gripping the arms of a spindly looking wooden chair, his legs straight out in front of him, and an insouciant, faint smile on his face to prove to the camera that it took so little effort. Thunderbolt and Light foot craved a certain amount of excitement, and they sought out adventures that were not that different from their early days in Reston when they raided the pie trucks and the milkmen. It didn’t matter that they had been thirteen then, and now they were twenty-one. They were grown men, bigger and far stronger than in the early days, but they were still full of mischief. One afternoon, they were driving the landscaping truck when they spotted a sign that read “Catholic Banana Farm.” They looked at each other and grinned, mouthing “Catholic Banana Farm? “ They had to investigate.

The next moonlit night, they drove through the massive and unguarded gate, and found acres and acres of ripe bananas. Cutting them would not do permanent damage, the plants left behind would regenerate. The temptation was too great. They worked all night, hacking off banana stalks as tall as they were, and loading them into the truck. “We had enough bananas for everyone we knew, “ Kevin Meyers remembered. “Maybe too many.

We’d show up for the nightly potlucks each holding a stalk of them, and people began to groan when they saw us. It was worse than the acorn squashes.” It seemed that the more adventures they had, the more Kevin accepted Scott as his “brother.”

“I loved him. He was the brother I’d been looking for. He always had time for me, and he never minded my being around. He always called me Bubba.” Although neither Kevin nor Scott recognized it, they were living out a magical time in their lives, one that could never be replaced once it was gone. One day melted into the next. They went to movies, and almost always preferred the films that were full of myth, swashbuckle, and romance.

They played chess and sang and strummed duets on their guitars. The two of them liked to impress guests by playing “Blackbird” as a duet.

Two decades later, Scott could still pick up his guitar and play “Blackbird” flawlessly. It was a haunting song, the words those of a man longing for his freedom. It was odd that Scott so identified with the lyrics, he had, perhaps, more freedom than almost any man alive.

Kevin felt some faint sense of urgency, he knew where he was headedhis life would be devoted to his painting. It might be five years or even ten before he could realize his ambitions, but he had no doubt in the world that he would be an artist. For the moment, he fixed up a studio in the basement of The Shire House.

Scott was less focused. He knew his dad expected him to get his four-year degree and find a well respected career, but he felt no particular time pressure about going to college. He was a prodigious reader and very intelligent. He had always been good at science, and he thought that one day he would become a doctor.

Scott made a pretty good living with Hawaii Plant Life, although he would have preferred to have made it as a model. He had a display on the wall at the Shire Plantation with photographs of himself taken at modeling jobs. He still greeted women at the airport from time to time.
 
His friend Marge Violette asked him once if he minded kissing the older women, and he shook his head and grinned. “Scott had no sense of age with women, “ she recalled. “He liked kissing young women and he liked kissing old women. The only difference was that he wouldn’t ask the older ones for their telephone number or which hotel they were staying at.” Marge Violette was a New Jersey girl, originally, but she had been born with a wanderlust. She worked at various desk jobs for TWA for a while in New York City. Then she was assigned to Hawaii, and was stationedhappilyin Honolulu from 1969 to 1975. When the company downsized and she lost her job as a reservationist, she decided to spend a year in South Dakota. She had always enjoyed a complete change in lifestyle, and South Dakota was nothing like Hawaii. Still, she had a great time there. But Marge missed Hawaii and she came back to visit her friend Bill Pfiel in the spring of 1976. She was in her middle twenties, slender and pretty.

She wore her thick black hair parted in the middle and caught up with two rubber bands. Hers was the ubiguitous look of the seventies, that long straight hair, a T-shirt without a bra, and either shorts or a long skirt. The extra rooms at The Shire Plantation were open to anyone who happened to be passing through.

They never knew who might move in next. Bill Pfiel told Marge he thought she would like the young men from Virginia who lived there.

Since she would be living with them, she hoped that she would.

Marge met Scott first, Kevin was away on a two week trip. Scott’s hair was naturally black, but it was sunburned almost blond in places, and came down to his shoulders. His face had been softer and more boyish back in Restonnow, it was a man’s face, chiseled and handsome. He had a short beard, and he wore a blue bandanna tied around his forehead.

He stood just under six feet and he was browned by the sun, with a washboard stomach and well-defined biceps. Marge noted that his voice was a deep, masculine rumble and that his grammar was perfect. On the first night she met Scott, Marge recalled that they walked down to the beach. They sat there and talked for four hours, “Until long after the sun set, “ she remembered. “The sky was black and we could see the stars. It was so pitch black that we could hardly see to find our way back.” She recalled being utterly mesmerized that first night. Scott was so interested in everything she had to say, and she found everything he had to say fascinating. He told her that he divided his time between The Shire and a house in Honolulu that he shared with four other men. He spoke of his modeling career and about his family back in Virginia. It was hard for Marge not to feel romantic about a stranger who poured out his heart to her in the velvet darkness of a Hawaiian night. She found Scott exciting and attractive. “I quickly became infatuated with him, “ Marge admitted. “Any one would have. We spent almost two weeks getting to know one another, but people kept telling me that I hadn’t met anyone until I’d met Kevin.” Marge Violette was bewitched by Scott, but she wasn’t in love with him, she soon realized that he would be emotionally dangerous. He was clearly not a one-woman man. Scott never promised fidelity and she never expected it. He would go off to his town house in Honolulu often. She had no illusions that he wasn’t dating other women.
 
She simply enjoyed watching him, listening to him, hearing him play “Blackbird” on his guitar. She studied his face in the firelight the way someone might watch a completely handsome actor in a movie. He was like quicksilver, impossible to trap or to hold. But the others who hung out at The Shire Plantation were right about Kevin. “When Kevin showed up, “ Marge recalled, “he stood in the doorway and he filled the room. He was even more intense, if possible, than Scott was.” The two men were so alike. Even their voices were so similar that, if she closed her eyes, she found it impossible to know which of them was talking. Yet, at the same time, Scott and Kevin were completely different. Scott was too handsome, too perfect. Any woman who truly fell in love with him was asking for a broken heart. It wasn’t that he was shallow. He wasn’t but he was ephemeral. She knew that one morning he would be gone. If not gone entirely, gone from her. Kevin was solid, a man who was deeply committed to his art. He seemed to be more of a jokester and hedonist than Scott was, but, underneath, he clearly knew where he was going. He was always looking for a job where he could use his talent, and his heart was in his little basement studio.

“It was Kevin I really fell in love with, “ Marge remembered. “I would have married Kevin in a minute if he’d asked me, but he didn’t, he wasn’t ever cruel, but he kept reminding me that he and I didn’t have that kind of a relationship. There were other women he wanted not me.

“ Kevin’s brown hair was bleached flaxen from salt water and the sun, and it blew in the sea wind. He was a little taller than Scott, and probably twenty pounds heavier.

Marge watched them together, and marveled at what close friends they

were. They laughed about the same things, remembered the same things,

and told hilarious stories about what bad little boys they had been back

in Virginia. “There was no leader and no follower between Kevin and

Scott. They were both so full of energy. They were intrepid and

unassuming, “ Marge said. “That could describe them both’intrepid and

unassuming.” The two men always signalled to each other with hawk cries,

and beyond their Light foot and Thunderbolt nicknames, Scott called Kevin

“Bubba.” Kevin called Scott a half dozen names, “Willy, “

“Willie boss, “

“Tarzan, “ and “Wilbur.” Scott liked “Willie boss” the best. He liked to be in charge. Kevin and Scott were dedicated, tireless hikers, and they explored Hawaii’s most isolated spots, stumbling across secret places.
 
They hiked from Lahaina to the Halekala Crater to the Seven Sacred Pools. They walked along pig paths, through jungles, and along the sea.
 
They could be tormenting almost sadistic about it, especially when they offered to lead friends on hikes. For them, the steep climbs and the tortuous crawls through overgrown pig paths full of thorns and sharp branches were easy. Their charges begged for mercy before the hikes were over and lived to rue the day they signed up, returning covered with scrapes, cuts, scratches, and bruises.

The buddies swam and snorkeled and body surfed. They found a cliff at Koko Head where the ocean churned violently seventy-five feet below.

Only the very reckless would leap from there, but Scott and Kevin cannonballed into the white surf below over and over again. From then on, they demanded an “initiation jump” from any visitor who came to stay at The Shire Plantation. On the way from the airport, they stopped beside the roaring ocean and refused to budge until their hapless visitors jumped. Only Scott’s parents were allowed to decline.

And Marge. “We got almost everyone else to agree to jump, “ Kevin smiled, remembering. “But they didn’t realize that was only part of it, once they were airborne, they had to figure out how to get out of the surf below and then find a way to make it back up the hill.”

“They could never make me jump, “ Marge remembered. “I told them that I was there to take pictures, and I couldn’t get the camera wet.” More menacing even than the precipitous drop were the sea caves in Shark’s Cove below.

Kevin and Scott found an underwater tunnel that they called “The Dragon’s Mouth.”

“You could barely see light at the end of the tunnel, and, if you held your breath and swam through, “ Marge said, “you were on the ocean side of the cove when you came to the surface.

“ When molten lava had hit the water long before, it had curled The Dragon’s Mouth into myriad stone fingers. Some of the tunnels even went far back into the cliff itself. Holding their breath, the two men trusted that they would pop up out in the ocean before they ran out of oxygen. Marge went with them once and almost drowned before she could find an outlet to the path she had chosen to take. Marge remembered one of the things Scott had told her on the first night she met him.