Waking Up in Eden Read online

  “Morning,” he said with a grin, sticking his head under the water. There was something intimate about showering with a stranger, even if we were outdoors and wearing swimsuits. “Fine way to start a day. Fine way,” he said. I primly agreed and turned off the water.

  “That’s a real antique you got there,” he said, eyeing my black snorkel mask, bought for a Caribbean trip fifteen years ago.

  “I know,” I said. “But I have a small face, and it’s the only one I can find that doesn’t leak.”

  “You just keep on using it.”

  The islands attracted lots of these guys, who had come for the surfing and now drifted from job to job, woman to woman. Would an erotic plot twist be worth it? Kauai was the smallest of small towns. Kansas in the middle of the ocean. People noticed where your car had been parked and knew if you drove to Lihue, or stopped at Koloa Landing to snorkel the deep water. At the botanical garden, grounds workers learned about plans to renovate my little plantation cottage almost before I made them. The coconut wireless, they called it. How long would it take to get around that the Garden fund-raiser was having a fling with a surfer?

  I could see in his eyes what he registered in an instant: mutual sexual attraction. An animal behaviorist would see it as a scenting, an atavistic response to a receptive mating partner.

  BACK IN THE CAR, I drove through the back streets of Old Koloa Town with its little wooden houses, remnants of a plantation camp. Jumbles of potted orchids and fountain-like red and green ti filled the cottage gardens with gaudy color. Japanese stone lanterns stood in many of the tiny yards. Other gardens pressed tires, buckets, even an old bathtub, into use as planters. Gardens on Kauai fell into two categories: the Polynesian Adventure landscapes at the big hotels, or these mixed-up plantation cottage gardens. I had come to prefer the hodgepodges that festooned the small cottages.

  Down the road I passed the Koloa Fire Station, which like all volunteer brigades on the island maintained cribs of small boxes for lost shearlings. At breeding times the night birds become disoriented by the electric lights on the island and land on lawns. People pick them up and deposit them in the fire station boxes, so forest rangers can return the birds to a beach, to head back into the wind.

  After passing the New England–white steeple of the Union Church, I entered Koloa Town proper — three blocks of ramshackle, one-story wooden buildings on dusty streets. After one unsatisfactory experiment in high-rise resorts that allowed a six-story hotel, now the Marriott, to be built in Lihue back in the 1960s, the people of Kauai insisted that no building could rise higher than a coconut tree. Thus, the Koloa tree tunnel of eucalyptus trees and the lines of Norfolk pines trimmed by the hurricane into tall bottle brushes gave the lowland coastal landscape its only high points.

  Spreading monkeypod trees shaded a dozen Koloa Town tourist boutiques, two surf shops, Fathom Five Divers, Kauai Fish Market, a handful of restaurants, and two grocery stores. At the corner under a purple jacaranda tree stood an almost naked man, bare gut hanging over baggy shorts. He wore “rubba slippas,” as the locals call their ubiquitous flip-flops. People walking around nearly unclothed had startled me at first. Now I joined them, wrapping only a sarong over my wet suit to go into the grocery store.

  To pick up some milk for breakfast, I parked in front of the Big Save, the catch-all grocery that devoted an entire aisle to fishing gear and suntan lotion. I nodded to the clerk at the cash register, gestured to another acquaintance. We locals hardly noticed the tourists. It was as if we put on special sunglasses that screened them out and made their rental convertibles disappear.

  That initial, alarming encounter with local food at Sueoka’s market on my first weekend turned out to have been a good introduction to island food, with its mixture of six great culinary traditions: Japanese, Chinese, Korean, Portuguese, Polynesian, and Filipino. Most meals, either in highbrow restaurants or at private parties, featured samples from several cuisines. Luckily, dishes bore no resemblance to what I tasted as a teenager in West Hartford Center’s South Seas Village, with its pupu platter and deep-fried chicken in sweet-sour glop studded with pineapple and maraschino cherries.

  Even so, I mournfully passed the produce sections of the large grocery stores those first months. Fresh fruits and vegetables were mostly shipped in from the mainland and were extraordinarily expensive and often poor quality: peaches like sawdust; red bell peppers with astronomical prices; pallid tomatoes. While the islands may be the extinction capital of the world for the plant and animal kingdoms, it’s a fruit fly’s paradise. Scientists have identified more than one thousand species of fruit flies proliferating in Hawaii, ready to attack fresh produce before it can be harvested. Only truck farmers fussing over small quantities of fruits and vegetables can keep the flies at bay.

  Though the produce section disappointed, I exulted over the fish counter with its ahi, mahimahi, and occasional opakapaka, all flakily fresh. I tried them all. Next door, the Kauai Fish Market’s glass cases offered an even more dazzling array, including its daily lunch plate specials with choice of fish, rice, macaroni salad, and greens. Per capita fish consumption in Hawaii is twice that of mainlanders; the consumption of tuna ranks second only to Japan. Hawaii’s unique contribution to raw fish cuisine is poke, small chunks of rough-cut raw fish mixed with Hawaiian salt, chopped seaweed, and roasted, ground kukui nut. Fish stores offer a half dozen or so styles, perhaps tuna, marlin, or swordfish with seasonings that might include scallion, shoyu (soy sauce), onion, sesame oil, and chili peppers.

  At Garden headquarters, Clarissa and Evelyn in the finance department brought in more strange and exotic foods: dried plums dusted with a hot Japanese spice; pickled green mango slices; squishy mountain apples with their creamlike white flesh; manapua, white buns stuffed with pork; and the Hawaiian snack Musubi — a mini-meal that can be bought at convenience stores for a dollar. Of Japanese origin, its rectangular bar of sticky rice is wrapped in nori seaweed and contains a slice of SPAM or egg.

  SPAM continues to hold an unfathomable but revered place in Hawaii’s diet. A condensation of the words “spiced ham,” so named in a 1937 contest sponsored by the Hormel Company, it reigns as a holdover from pre-refrigerator days when canned meat was prized as a sign of wealth. Grocery stores sell out of SPAM. People hoard cans during wartimes. Locals mix it with Chinese fish cake, make SPAM wontons and SPAM tempura, or fry it with rice or eggs. All this means that Hawaii’s population eats three times more SPAM than any other state of the union — and suffers a high rate of obesity, diabetes, and heart disease to go along with it.

  Not until I discovered the Monday Koloa Farmers’ Market did I start to realize the full culinary possibilities in Hawaii. At precisely noon, the official and strictly enforced starting time, the market grand master drops a rope barrier and lets the crowds in. “Walking only,” he calls to little avail, as shoppers rush to several dozen vendors hawking fresh-picked, foot-long beans, bouquets of local Manoa lettuce, yams, purple potatoes, radishes, Maui onions, bay leaf, pineapples (yellow and sweet or the pale white low-acid variety), grapefruit, cucumbers, even corn on the cob and beefy tomatoes.

  I marveled at the dozens of foreign fruits such as bitter melons, which resemble pale green cucumbers with warts, giant papayas, and avocados the size of cantaloupe. One vendor whacked ice-cold coconuts in half with a machete and offered them to customers. Some locals prized the spoon meat, a thin, gelatinous layer of slippery flesh that lines immature coconuts. A bag of tangerines was so cheap that one could squeeze them for juice — nectar of gods!

  On my first trip to the market, I purchased a nosegay of deep purple orchid sprays circled with maidenhair fern, then grabbed bunches of tall red heliconia stalks and periwinkle blue agapanthus blooms. A pickup truck displayed barrels of white calla lilies. I bought a dozen. The vendor presented me two for free. A full armload of tropical flowers for practically nothing!

  On the mainland I had despised anthuriums for their glossy red elephant ears and
dangling pistils. Here, I grew to love the lime-green varieties, or those of bubble-gum pink. Even the deep-red ones soon appealed to me, as their loud colors seemed at home in the tropics. Most of all, I adored the large, transparent blooms shaded from palest whisper pink to greenish white. Called obake, Japanese for ghosts, they grow so thin you can see light through them. Some extend to a foot long, and more. I became a connoisseur, searching out the largest and most transparent.

  As I edged closer to local life, I experienced for the first time what it was like to be a minority, as Caucasians accounted for a mere 11 percent of the population in Hawaii. Most of the residents had a mixed ancestry of Chinese, Japanese, Korean, and maybe a dash of native Hawaiian or Portuguese. The state attorney general announced that she couldn’t comply with a federal order to track hate crimes because there was no standing majority. I had heard tales, mostly from the mean streets of Honolulu, that locals shunned white people. But on Kauai I never experienced any such discrimination except for the hazing at the office, which I attributed to general suspicion of outsiders and fear of competition. The people of Kauai prided themselves on what they called “the Aloha spirit,” of welcoming. One guidebook said that Kauai locals were so accommodating that they stood by the side of the road, waiting to yield.

  When Alexis de Tocqueville visited frontier America in 1835, he observed that the national characteristic was the propensity to form associations “of a thousand kinds, religious, moral, serious, futile, general or restricted, enormous or diminutive.” This trait endured on small-town Kauai in a way not often still evident in the continental United States. On any given weekend, Boy Scouts and soccer leagues, canoe clubs, high school bands, and an orchid society organized car washes, shaved-ice stands, hot dog sales, walkathons, and countless other activities.

  MIKE FAYE AND HIS CREW had finally finished their work on the cottage, allowing me to move in. A huge container filled with my household goods and furniture from Philadelphia arrived. I had brought Sam the stray cat over from the Kleins’ ohana, and, in record time, he took command of the large yard, wormed his way into the house, and now slept every night on my bed. As I dressed for work one morning, I heard the clanky sound of an approaching car chugging up the long bambootunneled drive. James the caretaker. Twice a week he showed up early in the morning to mow the lawn or tend the bromeliads and orchids. James and I had come to an accommodation — I didn’t ask him to change a thing, and he maintained a wary distance. “You not going to work today?” he called from outside.

  “Yes, I’m going. I go in later,” I answered through the bathroom window. If I hadn’t left by 8 a.m., James regarded me as appallingly late. Garden groundsmen observe plantation hours, reporting to work at seven.

  Getting dressed here meant throwing on a pair of khaki pants, a white linen shirt, and a pair of sandals. My hair dried itself. Makeup now consisted of a few swipes of color. I went out to the front porch. James put down his rake and sputtered with anger.

  “The pigs are back,” he said indignantly. “Ten of them — momma, poppa, and eight little piggies. They’re rooting around, ruining the grass. Digging up my plants,” he snorted. “Making a mess.”

  I only half-believed him. Oh, I had heard about the wild pigs that roamed the interior mountains of Kauai. Hunters stalked the tusked boar as big sport. Some carry only a knife and a sewing kit — the knife to slit the pig’s throat and a sewing kit to sew up their dogs if they got gored. But surely the wild pigs didn’t dare come so close to civilization.

  Just after sunset that night I drove to the end of the cottage drive. Under the big mango tree stood what looked like a large German shepherd. Then a pack of smaller animals appeared, some coal black, others slate gray. The pigs. I counted seven little ones, as well as the big he-boar. He looked more wolf than barnyard pig, standing on tall legs, staring at me from tiny eyes that glittered devil-red in the headlights. I steered the car over the lip of the driveway and onto the lawn, stepped on the gas pedal, and charged, honking the horn. The pigs scurried around in a panicked circle, then disappeared down the ravine.

  The next morning I found signs of their rooting in the newly seeded grass, not ten feet from my parked car — practically on the doorstep! Over the next weeks, I saw the pigs from time to time as they grew older and bolder. Their manes ran stiffly down their spines just like a razor. Pigs are mean, a new friend Diego the Texan warned. “They can kill you. Then they’ll eat you, too,” he said. “They’re meat eaters.” Some people like the pigs, which reputedly make good pets. One Garden employee confided that he and his ex-wife used to sleep with their pet pig, all two hundred pounds. The pig had her own pillow.

  I had grown oblivious to the countless roosters, hens, and broods of chicks that wandered in and out of the yard. But I’d be damned if I would share the place with pigs. James also grew more and more infuriated. Finally, I gave him the okay to invite his friends in to hunt. I didn’t see the pigs anymore, although once or twice I heard a far-off gun crack.

  CHAPTER TWELVE

  Alien Species

  PIGS WEREN’T THE only pests on Kauai. For the past week, Kauai’s radio stations broadcast public announcements seeking volunteers for “Operation Sweep.” About fifty of us mustered in the Anahola Valley. Our mission: to repel a vicious invader, the ivy gourd plant. This innocent-appearing vine had crept across Oahu and the Big Island, consumed hundreds of acres, smothered utility poles, and buried whole valleys. It stole sunlight and ground space from other plants, until all that remained was a thick carpet of pale green ivy. Ivy gourd could grow a foot a day. And now it threatened Kauai.

  Many volunteers showed up outfitted in heavy footgear, protective hats, and T-shirts with yellow letters stenciled across the backs: Pest Action Control Team. Thirteen young sailors from the frigate USS Crommelin had volunteered a day of shore leave to pull weeds while their ship was docked in Nawiliwili Harbor. “There would have been more of us,” explained the ship’s recreational officer, “but last night they went ashore and some didn’t feel too good this morning.”

  The idea of weeding the jungle seemed impossible. But the crowd reverberated with hope that they could take back the island from the eight thousand or so invading alien plant species that were ruining it. Jimmy Nakatani, Hawaii’s chairman of agriculture, flew in from Honolulu for the sweep to see if, for once, his soldiers could make a dent. “There’s a good chance we can wipe out ivy gourd,” he boomed over a portable sound system. “In the case of Miconia,” he explained, “we waited too long to do something. In this case, we decided to do it. Just do it.” The megalomaniac Miconia, an invasive tree from South America introduced to Hawaii in 1969 as an ornamental species, was Public Enemy Number One. So far nothing could stop its explosive growth, not biological warfare with imported insects or fungi, nor weeding, nor pesticides.

  A short man with a canvas duck-hunting hat pulled low over thick glasses milled around the fringes of the crowd, throwing off energy even in repose. He introduced himself as Guy Nagai, the Agriculture Department’s noxious weed specialist. He had been patrolling Kauai’s backwoods when he discovered a wall of ivy gourd behind a hollow of houses — the first sighting of it on the island. “Today’s objective is not complete eradication,” Nagai said as he took the mike. “We’re looking for annihilation of the plant at its one-acre core.”

  Most enterprises in Hawaii begin with an appeal to the gods, so we gathered in a circle, locked hands, and bowed our heads. A burly volunteer dressed in a sleeveless T-shirt gave a long, lyrical blessing: “Thank you, Lord, for helping us to do this work for the good of the community and to get rid of this noxious weed that we don’t need. Thank you for the people who came from land and sea. Let them work in safety as they go into uncharted territory in the valley.”

  My team headed down a road walled with giant, spiky agave and morning glory, another pest vine that long ago had spread over Kauai. Our division leader, a volunteer named Ed, stopped and pulled back a green leaf curtain. �
��This is what we’re looking for,” he said, tugging on an inch-thick vine dangling from a host tree. He pointed to another gnarled vine, as thick as a man’s forearm. “And this is what we call the mother of all mother vines.”

  “We’re at ground zero,” Ed announced when we reached a settlement of three wood houses, built in a vaguely hip, California style. Our man Nagai had discovered that a woman from Thailand had occupied the third house. She had apparently bought some shoots at an outdoor farmers’ market and planted them in her garden. Thai grow ivy gourd for its sweet, young leaves, which when steamed taste like a tender spinach. The woman moved back to Thailand three years ago, but her garden continued to flourish. The ivy vines produced thousands of little gourds, which spilled open, releasing untold millions of seeds into the immediate vicinity and beyond.

  We broke open boxes of sawtooth machetes, quart bottles of pesticide spray, and cases of burlap gunnysacks. Our team spread out along the base of the hill and started pulling. So delicate, so harmless seemed the tendril-like shoots. Larger vines with thick, woody stalks put up more resistance. We felt as if we were trying to uproot small trees bare-handed. In a few minutes I had filled my gunnysack. It was dirty work. The troops revolted. Too many vines, too few gunny sacks. We resorted to a new tactic, which was just to cut at the root and spray the stump.

  By lunchtime, we quit. But our commanders were happy. Nagai estimated that we had killed 70 percent of the plants in the one-acre core. “We did a lot of damage,” he announced happily. Agriculture and Fish and Wildlife personnel would later arrive for serious spraying. Nagai planned to rappel down cliffs at the far end of the valley to clean out the ivy there. In another three months, he predicted, all known ivy gourd on Kauai would be dead. He and his troops would continue their monitoring, quickly zapping any new growth.