“Malo e lei,” he cried softly as I looked down from deep Ha'atafu dreams.
“Isha goodah idea you go quickly — a tsunamis coming.”
“You go fast to the King’s hill.”
I didn’t go.
The old mango tree pregnant with fruit and night bats was ever my refuge, and so it would be now. The rickety child’s fort high up over the fale gave vantage through coconut palms to the coral. Pita hung about, his sense of loyalty overcoming instincts for survival and a dash for safety upon higher ground.
“We need rope, food, and drink; emi emi, hurry up, save what you can.”
We the people … we the church … we the Royal chosen few … the draft papers of a new democracy bundled together grabbed from a desk and stuffed in a kite without pomp or circumstance. Forbidden fruits nailed high in our tree and kept safe. A rich fruit fall for others to pick up.
Pita pointed out where the dawn wind was coming and he told of the storms that visit and their names and the currents and the way the whales go. And he spoke about the deep thoughts in the heart of a man. And as he spoke, we kept watch in that lonely place roped together high in the mango tree.
In one tight screaming circle the bats took flight; then whirlpools in the bay sucked out the reef and in slow motion the seawater rose up and up and up again into a great green wall and as we sang hopeful hymns the waves surged to where we two abided under lofty words.
Waves gone, we sat in the unbelievable stillness unwilling to leave. And we munched on a water biscuit and drank beer and listened to the church bells ring and believed in a new day ahead.