Waking Up in Eden Page 17

  CHAPTER NINETEEN

  A Kapu on the Garden

  LUXURY HOTELS, SHOPPING malls, fast-food chains, and movie theaters glut the western lobe of the figure-eight-shaped island of Maui. Mount Haleakala, the 10,023-foot-high dormant volcano, dominates the eastern half of the island with its cinder-dry moonscape, studded in spots by the giant silversword plant.

  Only the more adventurous tourists drive to the tiny town of Hana on Maui’s remote eastern tip, following a swerving two-lane road that zigzags through 617 curves, crosses 54 rickety bridges, and threads through jungle terrain that becomes increasingly empty of human habitation. The small settlement of Hana at the end of the road offers little to do but buy an ice cream at the old Hasegawa General Store. The largest remaining population of pure-blood Hawaiians scrape out a meager living here, many on welfare, housed in modern subdivisions that are a world away from the wealthy tourists luxuriating in the nearby five-star Hotel Hana-Maui. Movie stars, moguls, and other millionaires fly into the tiny airport to avoid the drive, then bunker down in mansions tucked in the surrounding hills. A little further out of town, a quiet cemetery holds the unadorned grave of aviator Charles Lindbergh, who ended his days nearby, seeking privacy and peace in a location as far from American society as he could go and still remain on U.S. soil.

  If you know where to look, a narrow dirt lane leads to Kahanu Garden, one of the five satellite sites managed by the National Tropical Botanical Garden. The Garden closed it to tours along with its other facilities after Hurricane Iniki. Kahanu doesn’t offer much as a botanical garden. Its lonely peninsula is surrounded by jagged lava rocks and crashing waves. A virus-infected palm collection slowly rots away. In one corner, a collection of breadfruit grows in rows.

  But all the local residents know about Kahanu and its vast, ancient Hawaiian temple. Elders stay away. The younger Hawaiians creep in after dark, on dares. Locals whisper tales of full-moon animal sacrifices and ghostly sounds of drumbeats emanating from thin air. Former Kauai mayor Maryanne Kusaka swears that when she was a young girl growing up in Hana, she and friends would sneak up to the temple steps and take photographs that, when developed, came out blank.

  The great Pi’ilanihale Heiau rises ninety feet from the flatlands, at once dark, brooding, heroic, Mayan in scale, intimidating, and amazing as an engineering feat. It is the largest temple ever built in Hawaii, perhaps in all of Polynesia. The Hawaiian equivalent of Chartres Cathedral. Begun in the fifteenth century, construction spanned two centuries. The structure consists entirely of serrated lava bits and pieces, all fitted together without mortar, like a jigsaw puzzle. When I visited Kahanu early in my tour of Garden properties, I ignored warnings not to walk on the immense platform, the size of two football fields. I carefully picked my way across it, imagining what it would look like filled with platoons of Hawaiian warriors, each a thousand strong. Archeologists say there is no real evidence that Hawaiians made human sacrifices here, but legends stubbornly persist. I believed them.

  And so when the kapu — Hawaiian for taboo — sticks appeared, they were just one more addition to a long history of strange doings at Kahanu Garden.

  That early summer day, the garden crew drove up to the gates and discovered two bamboo spears sunk savagely into the ground, blocking their way. Each spear bore an ominous head-sized ball, one covered with red cloth, the other black. Taller than a man, they leered threateningly. A sign in uneven hand lettering proclaimed:

  THIS SITE, PI’ILANIHALE HEIAU, IS TEMPORARILY CLOSED UNTIL PROTOCOLS ARE ESTABLISHED. SIGNED, ERIC KANAKOLE, HIGH CHIEF, HIGH PRIEST, KAHANU

  “Does this mean that the garden’s closed, or just that we can’t go through the gate?” asked Adam Rose, the newly hired director of Kahanu Garden as he nervously eyed the spears. Scrawny, bearded, and trained in English horticulture, Rose was only twenty-seven and in his second week on the job. He was hired to open up the site to visitors.

  “Kapu sticks,” pronounced Francis Lono, who along with his son, Arnold Lono, made up the rest of Kahanu’s workforce. “Taboo,” Francis explained, as the three men puzzled over what they should do. Francis shook his head. “Probably means don’t go in,” he said. Eric Kanakole had put up kapu sticks before. Francis knew all about Eric, his cousin, as many of the residents of Hana were related to one another.

  Arnold didn’t say a word. Like most of the young men of Hana, Arnold had warrior tattoos circling his biceps, and a long braid spilled down his back, almost to his waist. He merely nodded.

  The three men decided to go to work anyway. They simply went around the gate and jumped the fence. But Adam’s bewilderment began to intensify. Black magic, he thought. Island voodoo. What was supposed to be kapu — him? Or Dr. Klein’s idea of opening Kahanu to public tours?

  Later that day, Adam peeked under the cloth of the kapu sticks and saw that they were only coconuts wrapped in ordinary T-shirts. But he grew unnerved when he learned that in Hawaiian ancient ritual, red signified blood; black, death. His unease escalated into panic when he discovered more about Eric Kanakole, known more commonly as Ricky Waikiki before he started styling himself as a leader in the Hawaiian activist movement. Eric was a dark figure with tattoos, a long ponytail, and fierce knitted eyebrows. He and other activists harbored deep grievances about what they called a “government seizure” of family land that dated back to the bloodless coup, arranged in 1898 by the Big Five sugar company planters. The wealthy oligarchy ushered in U.S. troops to depose the last of the Hawaiian monarchy and annex the islands as a U.S. territory. They appropriated most of the native lands as well. During a 1970s renaissance of Hawaiian native music, hula, and other traditions, activists began talking about seceding from the United States and reinstituting the monarchy. The movement had no apparent leader nor stated goals, except for demanding some sort of reparations, and appeared to be going nowhere — Hawaii was so Americanized that it was doubtful that the population would ever forgo U.S. citizenship.

  All we knew at Garden headquarters was that somehow this century-old discontent was erupting at Kahanu Garden.

  We received bulletins from Adam in increasingly frantic phone calls. He pleaded for reinforcements. “The kapu sticks could be a precursor to more overt actions, perhaps violence,” Adam warned in a squeaky voice. “This guy Eric Kanakole is big and scary! We’re sitting on a bombshell that traditionally would have been resolved with physical force.”

  Dr. Klein promised he would fly over the next Saturday.

  No other Garden site would so test Dr. Klein’s diplomatic ability. Reviving a closed botanical institution in the middle of nowhere presented difficult, if somewhat graspable, problems. But walking into a blood feud and the wrath of Hawaiian activists demanded another set of solutions. He was a stranger in a strange land.

  LITTLE BY LITTLE, we untangled the brewing forces of revenge and anger that erupted in the kapu sticks. The story was as old as Cain and Abel. By the mid-1400s, King Pi’ilani had united all the warring tribes of Maui under his rule and began construction of his royal war heiau, a temple large enough to hold troops from the entire island. At old age and near death, he summoned his two sons to rule in peace, together as partners. One son, Kiha, did not arrive in time, so the king granted the kingdom to his other son, Lono. Inevitably, the brothers quarreled after a few years and went to war. Ever since, the descendants of Kiha and Lono have been enemies.

  The garden’s caretaker Francis Lono descended from the Lono line. His cousin, Eric Kanakole, the self-proclaimed high priest of Kahanu, descended from the Kiha side. They might live in modern-day subdivisions in Hana, but the native Hawaiians still knew their bloodlines. They were still fighting fourteenth-century feuds.

  The Garden had inherited the temple because no one else really wanted it. It lay abandoned and near ruin, all but disappearing under encroaching jungle. The death of King Kamehameha in 1819 had plunged Hawaii into spiritual turmoil. The king’s many wives seized the opportunity to turn their backs on his elaborate k
apu system that had forbidden women from eating pig and bananas, among other privileges. In one of the weird confluences of history, at almost the very moment that Hawaiians rejected their faith, New England missionaries arrived, preaching Christianity and rapidly converting the natives. All the heiaus were abandoned. Sections of walls crumbled at the great Pi’ilanihale structure. Cows from the neighboring Hana Ranch grazed on its platforms.

  The Kahanu family of Hana eventually acquired the property, but donated it in 1972 to the newly formed Pacific Tropical Botanical Garden. The Hana Ranch donated another fifty acres adjacent to the temple. The Garden bought another fifty, promising to all that it would restore the heiau to full glory.

  Regally tall, with mahogany skin and snowy white hair and muttonchops, Francis Lono seemed the perfect man to hire as caretaker. Everybody in Hana knew that Francis descended directly from King Pi’ilani. His father had been the last Hawaiian to live in a traditional grass hut. His royal bloodlines earned him the nickname Blue.

  Back in the early 1970s, Blue Lono set to clearing the heiau. Reports of it spread all the way to the western end of Maui’s gold coast of hotels and condos. Buzzing tour helicopters landed on the temple for champagne picnics, leaving behind corks and trash. The Garden Club of Honolulu donated funds to build a wood pavilion for visitors. Several wealthy Hana residents donated a new pickup truck. Another funded a restroom. In one of its worst public relations blunders, the Garden hierarchy shipped the spanking new truck to Kauai for use at Garden headquarters, and returned a clunker by barge to Maui. Garden leaders ordered a latrine hole dug but never installed the toilet. Although these insults had occurred more than two decades ago, the people of Hana still remembered. Bitterly.

  In Dr. Klein’s first step as the new NTBG director, he drafted conceptual plans for all of the Garden’s sites, including Kahanu. He hired well-known landscape architect Geoffrey Rausch of Pittsburgh for the job, and the two of them devised a plan to catapult the site from the fifteenth to the twenty-first century in one leap.

  General Patton–style, Dr. Klein unveiled his plan for Kahanu with a flourish at a Hana community meeting. He ticked off planned amenities: ocean-view cottages, swimming pools, and tennis courts. “If there was one plan guaranteed to unite the community against the Garden, this is it,” warned one speaker.

  Klein and Rausch deflated like pricked balloons. “We thought of everything but the people we were supposed to be thinking about, which was the community,” Rausch admitted. Never to be deterred, Dr. Klein warmed to the challenge. If told that something couldn’t be done, he rallied with a war cry: Why not?

  Dr. Klein decided to try a Hawaiian approach. This time, Dr. Klein and Rausch planned discreet locations, away from the heiau, for a traditional, thatched grass hut meeting pavilion, offices, exhibit space, classroom, and modest apartments for interns and visiting scientists. Dr. Klein waxed large: Kahanu Garden would serve as a gathering spot, bringing together heads of Pacific states for an agriculture conference to study traditional uses of plants for food, clothing, and shelter.

  To soften the blow that he was appointing a young haole, Adam Rose, to director, Dr. Klein decided to confer the ceremonial title of kahu, or spiritual caretaker, on Blue Lono. Dr. Klein gathered guests on the grass at the Maui property and passed coconut shells of fermented ’awa — a traditional numbing liquor made from ti roots. The ceremony attracted coverage by local newspapers, causing Eric Kanakole, perpetrator of the kapu sticks, to seethe. As a descendent of the Pi’ilani family, he exercised his rights to visit the temple, often escorting groups of kids there to explain ancient traditions. Several times Eric had asked Dr. Klein for a job at Kahanu Gardens, maybe as a tour guide. Dr. Klein had not responded.

  Then the organizers of an annual hula festival in Hana asked Dr. Klein for permission to use Kahanu Garden as the site for their opening ceremony. Adam Rose warned, Don’t do it! Hana’s Hawaiian traditionalists scorned the hula festival as a haole event. One of the Hawaiians wrote a letter of protest to Dr. Klein, asserting that the town’s Hawaiian elders would have to give permission to use the temple site.

  General Patton fired back: I don’t need your permission to do anything. The hula festival was on!

  And so, a few weeks later, a hundred guests, mostly haoles, gathered at the heiau at dawn as drums beat. The Hawaiians of Hana boycotted the event. A martial arts troop of out-of-towners who had come for the hula fest emerged silently from the jungle. Garbed in loose white loin cloths, they solemnly danced to the sunrise.

  ADAM ROSE WOULD call it “the Great Standoff.”

  Early the Saturday after the kapu sticks appeared, Dr. Klein flew to the tiny Hana Airport, then paced impatiently for several hours at Adam Rose’s cottage, waiting for Eric Kanakole to telephone and name a meeting place. Finally someone called. Everyone was waiting for them down at the heiau. Adam worried that the meeting had turned into a group confrontation, out of town and out of sight. Adam’s young wife, Lianne, dashed outside and quickly gathered bunches of shiny green ti leaves — the plant used traditionally to ward off evil spirits — and tied them to the four corners of Adam’s blue pickup truck.

  With the truck festooned like a parade vehicle, Adam and Dr. Klein drove down the dirt road to Kahanu Garden. The gate stood wide open — already an unusual sign. A massive Hawaiian woman, her black hair flowing like Medusa, stood sentry, as if she had reclaimed the property already. “Who are you?” she demanded.

  He responded with a booming voice, “I’m Dr. William Klein and I’m trying to find out what’s going on.”

  She said nothing but gave him the stink eye as they drove past. Heavy grass brushed the underside of the truck like cloying fingers. A plume of dust stretched out behind them as they passed a grove of breadfruit trees. Scattered fruit rotted on the ground, some with exposed white flesh that looked like spilled brains. A putrid smell of decay settled over everything. As the pickup rounded a bend, Adam and Dr. Klein could see ahead to a wide plain leading down to the peninsula. A dozen or so men lounged against their trucks, their backs to the heiau. They wore T-shirts, blue jeans, and cowboy boots, and most had long braids and tattoos. They looked pissed off.

  “Carry on, Adam,” Dr. Klein urged. “I’m here to find out what the hell is going on.”

  From out of nowhere, a pickup pulled out behind them. Then another. And another. Soon Adam led eight or nine big, high-rigged Chevys and GMC models that made Adam’s Toyota feel like a Tinkertoy. Adam looked over his shoulder and saw that the trucks, crowded with Hawaiians, had cut off their exit. He swallowed hard and started sweating. Dr. Klein looked ahead, seemingly unperturbed.

  Adam stopped with great trepidation. The Hawaiian brigade fanned out in a line behind the Toyota, blocking the road. Adam calculated how fast he could run but looked at Dr. Klein’s girth and worried that he couldn’t move very fast. The Hawaiians got out of their trucks and started toward them.

  Dr. Klein clapped Adam around the shoulders encouragingly and said, “Well, Adam, you may be the first Englishman since Cook to be eaten alive.” Then he swung open the truck door and bulled his way out, his chest and belly extending over his belt. He wore one of his green botanical print Aloha shirts and a wide white panama straw hat banded with iridescent pheasant feathers that gave him a slightly goofy look. With his wirerimmed glasses and fair complexion, Dr. Klein appeared very much the professor. He started toward the group, his face neither grim nor smiling, but seriously peering over his trifocals as if approaching a crowd of rare insects. Then he went face-first right into the bees’ nest.

  A big Hawaiian guy stuck a whirling video camera under Dr. Klein’s nose and demanded: “Did you or did you not see the sign at the entrance?”

  “Yes, I did,” Dr. Klein answered matter-of-factly.

  “Do you know what it means?”

  “No, I don’t, and that’s what I’m here to find out.”

  Taki Matsuda, a member of the Kahanu family that had donated the site to the G
arden more than twenty years ago, waited at the head of the group. Adam recognized the other men as Eric Kanakole’s hui, or gang. The high priest himself was nowhere to be seen. Suddenly, everyone shouted and talked at once, waving their arms. “Whose place is this? What’s going to happen here? Who’s protecting the heiau ? What are you gonna do about it?”

  Dr. Klein calmly repeated, “We’re from NTBG. I’m the executive director. I want to make things right. I want to involve you. Look, this is our place now. I understand you have cultural issues. I’m not trying to become involved with Hawaiian issues. I’m here to talk about what we’re going to do here. I’m open-minded to any possibility. Let’s talk about anything.”

  After thirty minutes of confusion, they all ran out of steam. Even the video man got tired and switched off his camera. No one seemed to know anything about the kapu sticks, what Eric wanted, or even where he was. Adam and Dr. Klein got back into their truck and followed a Hawaiian to a phone booth. The man made a phone call, then reported that Eric had left for Honolulu.

  The Great Standoff ended in a draw, although Adam declared it a triumph for Dr. Klein. “We didn’t get killed. We didn’t get lynched, so he did a good job.”

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