An elf owl screeched at me, Well fought, Zachry the Brave! I yelled at the bird to shut up, but it screeched back, Or else? You’ll bust me like you bust them Kona? Oh, for the sake o’ my chicky-chick-chicks do have mercy! Up in the Kohala Mountains, dingos was howlin’, Cowardyyy-yy-y Zachryyy-yy-y. Lastly the moon she raised her face, but that cold lady din’t say nothin’ nay she din’t have to, I knowed what she thinked o’ me. Adam was lookin’ at that same moon, only two–three–four miles away, but for all I could help him, that could o’ been b’yonder Far Honolulu. I bust open an’ sobbed ’n’ sobbed ’n’ sobbed, yay, like a wind-knotted babbit.
An uphill mile later I got to Abel’s Dwellin’ an’ I hollered ’em up. Abel’s eldest Isaak let me in an’ I telled ’em what’d happened at Sloosha’s Crossin’, but . . . did I tell the hole true? Nay, wrapped in Abel’s blankies, warmed by their fire ’n’ grinds, the boy Zachry lied. I din’t ’fess how I’d leaded the Kona to Pa’s camp, see, I said I’d just gone huntin’ a lardbird into the thicket, an’ when I got back . . . Pa was killed, Adam taken, an’ Kona hoofs in the mud ev’rywhere. Cudn’t do nothin’, not then, not now. Ten Kona bruisers could o’ slayed Abel’s kin jus’ as easy as slayin’ Pa.
Your faces are askin’ me. Why’d I lie?
In my new tellin’, see, I wasn’t Zachry the Stoopit nor Zachry the Cowardy, I was jus’ Zachry the Unlucky ’n’ Lucky. Lies are Old Georgie’s vultures what circle on high lookin’ down for a runty ’n’ weedy soul to plummet ’n’ sink their talons in, an’ that night at Abel’s Dwellin’, that runty ’n’ weedy soul, yay, it was me.
Now you people’re lookin’ at a wrinkly buggah, mukelung’s nibblin’ my breath away, an’ I won’t be seein’ many more winters out, nay, nay, I know it. I’m shoutin’ back more ’n forty long years at myself, yay, at Zachry the Niner, Oy, list’n! Times are you’re weak ’gainst the world! Times are you can’t do nothin’! That ain’t your fault, it’s this busted world’s fault is all! But no matter how loud I shout, Boy Zachry, he don’t hear me nor never will.
Goat tongue is a gift, you got it from the day you’re borned or you ain’t got it. If you got it, goats’ll heed your say-so, if you ain’t, they’ll jus’ trample you muddy an’ stand there scornin’. Ev’ry dawnin’ I’d milk the nannies an’ most days take the hole herd up the throat o’ Elepaio Valley, thru Vert’bry Pass to pasturin’ in the Kohala Peaks. I herded Aunt Bees’s goats too, they’d got fifteen–twenty goats, so all-telled I’d got fifty–sixty to mind ’n’ help their birthin’ an’ watch for sick uns. I loved them dumb beasts more ’n I loved myself. When rain thundered I’d get soaked pluckin’ off their leeches, when sun burnt I’d crispen ’n’ brown, an’ if we was high up in the Kohalas times was I’d not go back down for three–four nights runnin’, nay. You’d got to keep your eyes beetlin’. Dingos scavved in the mountains an’ they’d try to pick off a wibbly newborn if you wasn’t mindin’ with your spiker. When my pa was a boy, savages from Mookini’d wander up from Leeward an’ rustler away a goat or two, but then the Kona slaved the Mookini all southly an’ their old dwellin’s in Hawi went to moss ’n’ ants. We goaters we knowed the Kohala Mountains like no un else, the crannies ’n’ streams ’n’ haunted places, steel trees what the old-time scavvers’d missed, an’ one–two–three Old Un buildin’s what no un knowed but us.
I planted my first babbit up Jayjo from Cutter Foot Dwellin’ under a lemon tree one a-sunny day. Leastways hers was the first what I knowed. Girls get so slywise ’bout who ’n’ when ’n’ all. I was twelve, Jayjo’d got a firm ’n’ eager body an’ laughed, twirly an’ crazy with love we both was, yay, jus’ like you two sittin’ here, so when Jayjo plummed up ripe we was talkin’ ’bout marryin’ so she’d come ’n’ live at Bailey’s Dwellin’. We’d got a lot o’ empty rooms, see. But then Jayjo’s waters busted moons too soon an’ Banjo fetched me to Cutter Foot, where she was laborin’. The babbit came out jus’ a few beats after I’d got there.
This ain’t a smilesome yarnie, but you asked ’bout my life on Big Island, an’ these is the mem’ries what are minnowin’ out. The babbit’d got no mouth, nay, no nose-holes neither, so it cudn’t breathe an’ was dyin’ from when Jayjo’s ma skissored the cord, poor little buggah. Its eyes never opened, it just felt the warm of its pa’s hands on its back, turned bad colors, stopped kickin’ an’ died.
Jayjo she was clammy ’n’ tallow an’ looked like dyin’ too. The women telled me to clear out an’ make space for the herb’list.
I took the died babbit wrapped in a woolsack to the Bony Shore. So lornsome I was, wond’rin’ if Jayjo’s seed was rotted or my seed was rotted or jus’ my luck was rotted. Slack mornin’ it was under the bloodflower bushes, waves lurched up the beach like sickly cows an’ fell over. Buildin’ the babbit’s mound din’t take as long as Pa’s. Bony Shore had the air o’ kelp an’ flesh ’n’ rottin’, old bones was lyin’ ’mongst the pebbles, an’ you din’t hang ’bout longer ’n you needed to, ’cept you was borned a fly or a raven.
Jayjo she din’t die, nay, but she never laughed twirly like b’fore an’ we din’t marry, nay, you got to know your seeds’ll grow a purebirth or sumthin’ close, yay? Or who’ll scrape the moss off your roof an’ oil your icon ’gainst termites when you’re gone? So if I met Jayjo at a gath’rin’ or bart’rin’ she’d say, Rainy mornin’ ain’t it? an’ I’d answer, Yay, rain till nightfall it will I reck’n, an’ we’d pass by. She married a leather maker from Kane Valley three years after, but I din’t go to their marryin’ feast.
It was a boy. Our died no-name babbit. A boy.
Valleysmen only had one god an’ her name it was Sonmi. Savages on Big I norm’ly had more gods ’n you could wave a spiker at. Down in Hilo they prayed to Sonmi if they’d the moodin’ but they’d got other gods too, shark gods, volcano gods, corn gods, sneeze gods, hairy-wart gods, oh, you name it, the Hilo’d birth a god for it. The Kona’d got a hole tribe o’ war gods an’ horse gods ’n’ all. But for Valleysmen savage gods weren’t worth knowin’, nay, only Sonmi was real.
She lived ’mongst us, minderin’ the Nine Folded Valleys. Most times we cudn’t see her, times was she was seen, an old crone with a stick, tho’ I sumtimes seen her as a shimm’rin’ girl. Sonmi helped sick uns, fixed busted luck, an’ when a truesome ’n’ civ’lized Valleysman died she’d take his soul an’ lead it back into a womb somewhere in the Valleys. Time was we mem’ried our gone lifes, times was we cudn’t, times was Sonmi telled Abbess who was who in a dreamin’, times was she din’t . . . but we knew we’d always be reborned as Valleysmen, an’ so death weren’t so scarysome for us, nay.
Unless Old Georgie got your soul, that is. See, if you b’haved savage-like an’ selfy an’ spurned the Civ’lize, or if Georgie tempted you into barb’rism an’ all, then your soul got heavy ’n’ jagged an’ weighed with stones. Sonmi cudn’t fit you into no womb then. Such crookit selfy people was called “stoned” an’ no fate was more dreadsome for a Valleysman.