The Year of Broken Glass (22 page)

“Open the fucking door!” Francis shouts, lunging at Tito, who lifts a small handgun from his side and presses it to Francis's oncoming forehead. Francis freezes, then eases back into his seat as Tito guides him with the end of the gun still pressed firmly between Francis's eyes. Tito looks at Miriam, who settles back, too.

“Look,” he says. “I'm sorry we have to do it like this. But it's just the protocol we have to follow. We're not here to hurt you. Quite to the contrary. If we were going to cause you harm we would have done so a long time ago. Now, Mr. Sunimoto is waiting. It is supposed to rain later this afternoon, and if it does, it won't be safe around here any longer. Please Mr. Wichbaun. For everyone's sake, just put the blindfold on and we'll proceed.”

Miriam leans over and takes Francis by the hand, then looks to Tito to indicate he should back off. Tito takes the gun from Francis's head and recoils to his seat. “We have to trust them,” she says to Francis. “There's no other way to do it. We're in this now for better or for worse.” She takes the cloth from his lap and folds it over several times, then lifts it before him, leaning in. “We'll make it through this,” she says to him. “We've made it this far, haven't we?” She places the cloth over his eyes and his sight goes black, then she reaches behind his head and ties it off tight.

Francis listens as she ties her own over her eyes, Tito and the driver sitting silently up front, waiting. He'd like to ram that gun up Tito's ass. He doesn't take well to intimidation, but he knows there's no winning in this scenario. Miriam places her hand on his leg. It's warm and loving, the way she holds his thigh, and he allows himself to drift back into the concussive dark of her bunk and their slow, feverish fucking. She's taking him inside of her, all of him, as the SUV pulls back out onto the road.

The Tears of the World, II

UNEASY
OR
NOT, they're both thinking more or less the same thing as they step from the vehicle to the cobblestone driveway: what
does
a twenty-thousand-year-old man look like? Of course, there's been no clarification as to whether this Sunimoto man is indeed the guy, or is even standing in for the guy, but much has been insinuated by Tito, and so much might be assumed. And it still stands that neither Miriam nor Francis is wholly sold on the whole Mu thing, though it is undeniable to both that the evidence is mounting. “I am so sorry about the blindfolds,” Tito says to them, handing Francis his tote. “Please follow me. There is very little time to spare.”

Sunimoto's house sits backed against a high cliff of rock in a small clearing surrounded otherwise by trees. There is a black helicopter parked on the lawn behind a house much more modest in its size than in its detailing. It's octagonal in shape, like Fairwin' Verge's treehouse, but the similarities end there. There are posts of ornately carved teak and wide windows, some inlaid with stained glass patterns of vine and leaf. A two-tiered glass pagoda rises up from the centre of a copper-shingled roof. There are three doorways to pass through, two separate vestibules, before entering the living area of the house. At each vestibule Tito punches in a code on a security pad and the next door slides open. Francis is wondering if PINEAPPLE is what he's keying in, and thinking so sparks enough of his sense of humour to relax his shoulders a bit and unlock his jaw.

Tito leads them into the centre of the house, the living room, above which the pagoda rises, infusing the house with daylight. No men with guns. No shadowy corners. Not what Miriam and Francis were expecting following their blindfolding. “Please, sit down and be comfortable,” Tito says. “I will bring you cold drinks and inform Mr. Sunimoto you have arrived.” He leaves them both to seat themselves on the triangle of couches at the centre of the room. Miriam sits down and looks to Francis to do the same. “I'll stand,” he says, stiff-lipped.

“Relax, Francis,” she implores him.

“We're not safe here. Something's not right Miriam. I don't like this place.”

“You're overreacting. Come sit down.”

A middle-aged Japanese man strolls toward them. He has silvery hair and smooth skin. A bright face. “Welcome,” he says to them. “Miriam and Francis, I'm Minoru Sunimoto.” Again, not what either of them was expecting. No arthritic, hobbled wrinkle-face, this Sunimoto. He shakes their hands and seats himself opposite them on a blue leather loveseat. “You've had a long journey. I can only imagine. It's been a long time since I've been to sea.”

Tito brings them drinks and seats himself beside his boss. He looks up to the pagoda above. “We need to move this along. The rain is starting.” They all look up and watch the thick drops begin to pelt and stream down the glass. A sound like distant thunder can be heard approaching. The sucking thump of helicopter blades. Tito stands, as they all cast their gaze skyward, wondering.

Before they can react further, the pagoda explodes in a shower of tempered glass. They tuck into themselves as it rains down upon them. When it stops, Tito is the first to spring from his curl. The helicopter hovers above as thick lines of rope unspool into the house. Two figures fall from the helicopter, rappelling toward the hole in the roof. Francis and Miriam are uncurled now too, stunned. When Tito pulls his gun from his jacket and starts to fire, they bolt for the doors.

One body, then the other, drops from the sky to Tito's feet. One lands on top of the tote holding Francis's float still within it. Francis wants to retrieve it, but Miriam holds him back and Tito waves him off.

“Go!” he hollers. “Go to the truck.” He fires more rounds through the hole in the roof, then tucks Sunimoto under his arm and runs toward the back of the house as bullets start bursting through the hole onto the floor.

An entourage of armed men approaches the front entranceway and the doors slide wide open. All but one of the men race into the house past Francis and Miriam. The one who stops yells at them to run for the SUV over the racket of gunfire and helicopters. There are now three hovering above the property, disgorging machine-gun fire and rappelling lines. The army of men who have emerged from the forest perimeter return the fire, thwarting any attempts by the attackers to rappel to the ground.

“It's fucking raining bullets out there,” Francis screams back at him. “No fucking way.” The armed man hurls Francis into the driveway, sending a spray of bullets toward the two helicopters within firing sight. Then he does the same with Miriam.

They're both out in the open, exposed in the torrential downpour now dumping from the thick clouds overhead. “Run,” the man screams, sending more bullets skyward. Francis and Miriam both make it to the white SUV and dive in, Francis at the wheel, Miriam in the back seat. The key dangles in the ignition. Francis turns it over and slams the vehicle into drive, spinning around on the wet cobblestone and flooring it down the driveway. Miriam watches out the rear window as the man who hurled them toward the SUV falls to his knees, then his face.

One helicopter spins out of control into the cliff-face behind the house and explodes as Sunimoto's lifts into the sky. One of the two remaining ambushing helicopters pursues it. The other hovers while three men rappel successfully to the ground, then it spins and propels itself through the air in pursuit of Francis and Miriam as they catapult down the long, slick driveway. A cluster of bullets slams into the SUV, shattering the window glass Miriam looks through just as they pass into a tunnel of overhanging trees.

Francis is a single thought in every aspect of his mind and body:
Drive
. “We've got to stop. Stop the truck Francis,” Miriam yells at him. He doesn't respond, pushing his foot further to the floor. “They can't see us right now through the trees. Once we're out from under them, we're fucked. Stop the truck Francis.” But he hardly hears her inside his focused fear. She leans over and puts her hand on the wheel. “You have to stop the truck Francis. When we come out from under these trees, we're fucking dead.”
Fucking dead
, and her face thrust beside his gets through.

He looks at her, then up to the trees. “Okay what?” he asks, pulling the truck over. “What do we do?” He's panicking, she can see that. She files through their options in her head, all of them the shits, then she decides. “We've got to get into the forest,” she says. “We can't stay in this truck.”

Miriam leaps from the SUV without another word or thought, running, then nearly free-falling down an embankment reminiscent of the one that leads to her beach of homage to the ocean, or did, before the tsunami washed her vast collection of glass floats, and the rest of her life, out to sea. She's a woman untethered—her two girls launched into their own lives and so more or less estranged—sliding down a rain-washed bank with nothing but her survival to run for. Nothing but her survival and her love for the man now falling into the forest behind her.

The Lahars

LAVA
FLOWS
AT differing speeds, depending on its composition and viscosity, and of course upon the degree of slope down which it slides. The lava spewing from the Mauna Loa and the Mauna Kea is basaltic, and has been, until now, creeping slowly down the two neighbouring mountainsides. The Mauna Loa is a continuously active volcano, having a major eruption on average every twenty-five years. As a result there are fixed channels, the hardened flows of the past runnelling down its various faces, which the fresh lava moves over or between, unhindered. The Mauna Kea hasn't erupted in 4,500 years, and so it is more consistently forested below its barren alpine slope. But this upper slope is nearly twice as steep as the Mauna Loa's, so the flows, though obstructed by the forest, have enough momentum to keep pace with those of the Mauna Loa. Now, with the rain dumping over both these flows, the water is thinning their viscosities and slickening the earth over which they descend, mixing the lava with mud to form lahars, lava-heated slides building in breadth and velocity. Hilo is the wettest city in the United States, and one of the wettest in the world, measuring over two hundred inches of rainfall per year. When it rains in Hilo, it pours.

Francis and Miriam are trudging down the northern bank of the Wailuku River, through thick groves of unfamiliar trees. For three hours they have alternately bushwhacked thick brush and traversed open riverside fields, neither of them knowing where they are, only that the river will lead them to the shore, and on that shore will be, hopefully, the
Princess Belle
still tied to the dock in Radio Bay awaiting them. They are both soaked, fearful, hungry and exhausted, the river flowing full in a torrent of white beneath them. It grows louder and louder until they find themselves at the top of Rainbow Falls.

If either knew the geography of Hawaii they would know they were less than two miles from the boat. But instead they're both feeling lost, dusk is falling, and Francis is the first to assign blame. “I told you it didn't feel right Miriam. For Christ's sake. Now what? Even if we get to shore and figure out where the boat is, who is to say they won't be waiting for us there?” They're standing on a large outcropping of black pyroclastic rock above the falls, the rain relentlessly pelting down. At the edge of the rock, an eighty-foot drop into an emerald pool of water, the falls roiling the water to white at its high side. They yell to be heard above the swollen, raging waterfall.

“It's not like we had any choice, Francis. You think if we refused to get in the truck with Tito he would have just left us with the float? Not a chance. Evidently someone wants it bad enough they're willing to kill to get it.”

“I'd say they have it by now, wouldn't you, Miriam? Don't you think maybe it would have been smarter to stay home and wait for them to come to us?”

“Wait for who? Sunimoto's boys with their machine guns, or the guys in the helicopters? What makes you think we'd be any safer at home than here?” When she says this the thought of Anna and Willow flashes through his mind. Jin Su and Emily, too, and he realizes how stupid he was to come here, to this foreign island, where he's at the mercy of things he has no resources to control. Where he can do nothing to protect his family, both his families, and he again feels sick to his stomach. He turns from Miriam toward the forest, readying to retch, when he sees the grey-black liquid running out from beneath the underbrush. It streams in thin rivulets down into the river.

“What the fuck's that Miriam?” he asks, turning to her. The rivulets widen, and widen, until there is a continuous flow spilling from the forest, steaming and hissing as it enters the river.

“It's lava,” she answers. “That's a lava flow, Francis,” she says again, comprehending what's suddenly upon them. She swings her head around, scanning their surroundings while Francis watches the dark liquid gush just beneath their slightly elevated perch. “We have to jump, Francis. We've got to get under the falls.” Francis looks down into the pool below, still green though the white froth of the falls is starting to blacken with the infusion of the thickening lahar now risen to within inches of their feet. “We have to jump!” Miriam yells as she grabs his arm and, running, pulls him over the edge into the air.

In the Cave of the Goddess of the Moon

“I'M
COLD, FRANCIS,” she says, shivering. It's his turn to hold her body still now. On any other night the fall's white water would be illuminated by the moonlight, but tonight the Wailuku River runs black, a cascading curtain across the cave mouth, so Francis and Miriam huddle in a darkness thick as that in Fairwin's fort. They've both stripped off their drenched clothes and are sitting side by side on a low rock shelf at the back of the cave. Exhausted and disturbed beyond the prospect of sleep, they both stare silently into the roaring dark, reliving the day, bewildered.