Land deals

He was a storyteller. His sentences moved from subject to object and the subjects then turned into pronouns and the pronouns got detached from their subjects until I realized I could never tell the story back. We met him at the top of the last hill; his small white dog ran at Lilith from a white Tesla whose logo bore a Santa Claus hat. He was an Apache from Texas who'd grown up with Mexicans. San Antonio, El Paso. Now lives near the shore off Kam Highway. And he was here to visit his grave plot. It was up for 60K, but he'd bought it for 40K because he's a fully disabled veteran. I walked to the plot with him; a small red flag marked the space, and he leaned over to pull it upright. He wants a tomb, with a statue of the Virgin Mary on it that he'll design himself. And yes, they keep calling to ask if he wants an upgrade.

 

I asked how he ended up in Hawai`i. The pronouns gathered like a rainstorm over the Ko`olau, while he communicated the story of how he and his wife came into a lot of money. Land deal in LA was at the center of it. "She" paid off everyone's houses, including his and his wife's, and they had a huge party near the graveyard in Culver City, and the other one, where the Jackson Five are. They did the rosary up there. He also inherited responsibility for a Catholic community that sheltered abused women. And he gives to St. Ann's here (later, he'd say that he needed "to go feed the poor at 11:30.") He's not a materialist, like the Mexicans in his family, but so much material came to him through his trail of pronouns. He arrived at how he'd gotten to Hawai`i, but by then all I could think of was Catholicism and land deals in California.

 

We returned to an earlier topic, the large number of transgender people he sees here. Yes, I told him, they're mahu, and I read him the definition of the word on my phone. They have an honored place in Polynesian culture (if not, alas, in the state of Hawai`i) as third gender persons. He said he supposed it didn't matter much, he was simply perplexed. We exchanged names and took photos; I sent him his as he wandered down the hill with his noisy dog. Also part chihuahua, also a hunter.