Lilith and the man with hard consonants

The man with the hard consonants drove his rented convertible white Mustang up the hill at the back of the cemetery, exclaimed at the beauty of the place. I congratulated him for finding the part of the cemetery I never see tourists in. He stopped his car at the top, got out to take photos of the bay, the mountains, the graveyard. Lilith and I asked where he was from. The Baltic, he said, "Croatia, Serbia, Slovenia, near Hungaria." He had no reaction when I said I'd been to Belgrade when it was part of Yugoslavia; he was more interested in this vista, and in finding what he should see. He asked after the Stairway to Heaven and I told him you weren't supposed to go there. "What, my stomach?" he asked, pointing to the paunch under his white shirt. No, I told him, but you'll know you're nearby when you see the NO HIKING signs.

 

Near the bottom of the hill, I remembered Laie Point. I stopped him on the way down; he was talking to someone on his phone. He googled Laie Point and found a map, said he'd go there after he visited the temple. It's good to get advice from a local, he told me, peering over the empty seat beside him to make sure he wasn't about to drive into Lilith. "God bless you," he said as he sailed off, having shrugged off my warning about the sun that roasts you like a chicken.

 

Later, we ran into walker Daniel (former military, former educator, purveyor of bad jokes) and I told him my friend Renee on the Big Island remembered working with him. He'd run a school there that started with 17 students, grew to 400 under his care, and then closed (only to pop up at different sites). He'd driven a van to pick up kids in the jungle, despite the angry dogs that surrounded their off-grid houses.

After walking for a ways with him, he indicated he was going to go back to his music. "Rocking with the Carpenters," he said. As Lilith and I crossed the street, I said I'd been listening to Stevie Winwood lately. "Youngest performer at Woodstock," he yelled. "Traffic, Spencer Davis Band, Blind Faith!!"

 

Sometimes moments make seas of joy, you know.