Jack and Lily landed in Lihue with little in their pockets and nothing on the schedule. No jobs lined up, no place to stay, no black-tie driver holding a placard with “Wandering College Graduates” scrawled upon it. Just a young couple with hopes and dreams and other applicable Neil Diamond lyrics. They figured they’d figure it out when they figured it out.
Johnny and Kim knew they were coming, sure, but the latest correspondence between the two parties went something like this:
“Hey you should come visit this summer!”
“Sounds great!”
The $300 cash they shared was tucked away in various zippered- and buttoned-pockets on each of their persons. Jack hid five tens in Lily’s backpack and vice versa, each bill leading to the next; the last traces of their net worth spread about like cookie crumbs. The last tenner slept soundly at the bottom of Jack’s sack, folded intricately inside a road map of Oakland they’ll never use again with a note that read ARE YOU REALLY SURE? The rest they kept in a red canvas O’Neill wallet (velcro).
First order of business: find a cheap beater and track down Johnny and Kim. Second order of business: find jobs.
Bedrolls affixed to backpacks, surfboards tucked under arms and a hastily-rolled pinner burning quickly between them, Jack and Lily walked into their new life.
Half an hour later the sprawl of Oakland lay open in a Wal-Mart parking lot.
***
Athletics @ Astros Series Preview
Probable Starters
I find this strange: I have zero idea what Oberholtzer, Peacock or Keuchel look like. None. If you stood the three of them in front of me and slapped a jersey on each of their backs, I’d definitely get two names wrong. And while I’m at it, let’s work out that whole tv deal guys, ok? Just end this, please.
Thursday, Apr 24, 7pm, MMPUS
Scott Kazmir (2-0, 1.65) vs Brett Oberholtzer (0-3, 3.04)
Friday, Apr 25, 7pm, MMPUS
Jesse Chavez (1-0, 1.38) vs Brad Peacock (0-2, 6.14)
Saturday, Apr 26, 6pm, MMPUS
Dan Straily (1-1, 5.40) vs Dallas Keuchel (2-1, 3.38)
Sunday, Apr 27, 1pm, MMPUS
Tommy Milone (01, 4.24) vs TBD
***
The 1983 Buick Park Avenue was drivable, but that’s fairly generous. The driver’s-side door fought at its hinges above 25mph and the front hood stood at attention once you hit 40. There were no floorboards. Fred and Wilma and Barney and Betty could drive this thing and feel right at home, save for the sparkly-blue paint job (spill?) that coated every exposed inch of metal, chrome or rubber. The tape deck looped endlessly with a compilation of Essential Waltzes that was apparently welded in the feeder slot. The volume knob decided long ago that it, and only it, would crank it up or bring it down when it damn well pleased. Waltzes can be tricky.
The whole package cost exactly $250, and the beast’s previous owner, a local who just needed the cash, threw a few rolls of duct tape in the back seat out of either thanks or pity.
They drove north.
***
Uncle Johnny floated in and out of restaurants, trading his culinary degree for a bag of pot when he needed it. He owned exactly two pairs of shoes: blue rubber flip-flops and the brown leather flip-flops he wore at his wedding. Aunt Kim was a local who ran a highly-regarded real estate business with her mother, which is a very, very, very good thing to own in a place like Kauai. They had a happy marriage and happy daughters and a handful of chickens out back. And I can’t give you a single reason why they shouldn’t have all three.
Their two-story wooden house (which Kim secured for a steal) sat on its own bluff, where from the second story porch the Pacific stretched to the end of the earth. Humpbacks mated there in the spring.
***
Promotions
Thursday – $1 Hot dogs
Friday – Astros Golf Umbrella; fireworks
Saturday – Jason Castro All-Star bobblehead
Sunday – Dog day!
***
Hanalei, according to Google, translates syllable-for-word into “the most beautiful fucking place on earth.”
Johnny picked us up in a rusty green Toyota Tacoma and I voluntarily jumped in the truck bed for the hour drive up the Eastern shore. I grabbed leaves and berries when the road got slow, traced Red-Crested Cardinals’ paths from limb to limb. Gazed at the ocean. Saw a lot of goats.
I could hear my parents’ animated conversations muffled through the back window. The backseat window slid open as my dad mouthed to me: Jack and Lily never showed up. Johnny and Kim didn’t know they were here. They landed five months ago. My cousin was missing.
***
There had been no contact. Email was still a relatively new phenomenon and therefore completely unreliable as a means of communication. They had no phone number and didn’t write letters. Aside from the airline’s confirmation that yes, Jack and Lily were on the plane to Lihue, they left no trace.
We called the police, called their friends, called hospitals – all dead ends. Johnny and I spent each of the next three days combing highways and back roads, polling local businesses, flashing pictures in restaurants. Lily’s mother flew up.
The fourth day we found them. Johnny and I had been jolting and jerking our way through the thick of the jungle along a long-forgotten dirt road when I caught a flash in my periphery. A white-hot, neon-blue flash that glimmered in the sun. Almost…sparkly. A closer look revealed a very old, very blue and very broken Buick Park Avenue, tucked neatly under drooping ferns. Two surfboards duct-taped to the roof. Johnny stopped the truck.
***
Injuries
Athletics
Jacob Elmore – spotted leopard crotch flu
AJ Griffin – striped bass anal fissures
Eric O’Flaherty – miniature Chihuahua tooth ache
Jarrod Parker – bearded lizard beard lice
Fernando Rodriguez – strep
Astros
Jesse Crain – recovering from biceps surgery, due early May
Scott Feldman – bicep tendinitis, due early May
Alex White
Asher Wojciechowski – lat strain, no timetable for return
***
I recognized Jack’s surfboard immediately and hesitantly poked my head in the window. No signs of life, but the car was clearly dead. For some reason the floorboards were missing. The nearby banana and avocado trees seemed to have mistaken it for a nursery.
Johnny ventured into the jungle, eyes trained at the ground. Then, “Ow! MotherFUCKER!”
I ran to his side, then I felt it – like a paintball in the middle of the back from three feet away. “MotherFUCKER!”
We looked up together as Jack lobbed another avocado at us from twenty feet in the air.
“Heads up!”
***
They never made it to Johnny and Kim’s because they just never got around to it. They got lost on the way to Johnny’s that first day and the Buick died in a puddle that was deeper than it looked. Why they took the worst possible route to find the house was completely beyond their understanding or explanation.
Jack found a job cleaning old lighthouses while Lily taught dance to 4-year-old girls in town. Both jobs paid cash. Food was picked from the trees and the farmer’s market. The Buick became their pantry. And Lily was pregnant.
When asked what their plans were for the baby and why the FUCK they didn’t tell anybody what they were doing, Jack said, simply, “we figured we’d figure it out when we figured it out.”
They still live there, 14 years later. In a house. With a Buick.