Lilith walks in circles

 

Lilith has lost her linearity, or perhaps she's given up on mine. We walked at Kahalu`u Regional Park this morning, near where my colleague and friend, Ruth Hsu, lived. We did the big circle once, past the baseball diamond (a man was asleep in the "dugout"); past the "waste water absorption field" the other side of an encampment guarded by two chihuahuas; past a homeless camp in the woods, where a man walked by warning us that there were dogs farther up the path; past the field goals; past the restrooms where one person sat, another slept; past the bench where a man lay, his feet black with dirt, his beard black with a touch of white under his hood, a heap of drink containers underneath him; past the bitter smell of urine; past the trucks and their workers; past the woman who didn't want her photograph taken because she is a photographer. Then Lilith began to improvise. There were chickens, after all, other side of a rock wall. We walked partway up Waihee Road to the elementary school, behind which Sangha used to play Little League and I sat near the dads to listen to them talk da kine about keeping pigs out of their yards. She turned back downhill, wandered toward Kahalu`u District Park. I steered her to Creature Coffee, where I ordered a cortado, then waited beside a crew-cutted man, his wife, and their clearly military son. Someone had ordered a pecan pie, which suddenly seemed the right thing to do, but I did not, when I saw the price. Lilith and I sat on a wall nearby, while I sipped the coffee and she stared off into the near distance, with chickens. I tried taking her back around the big circle the other way, but we got only so far before she turned again. Back past the houseless folks, back past the workers, back past the intricately tatted woman who did not want her photo taken, and back to the white car. "Why isn't it red?" asked the Cubs fan I stopped a few minutes later to heckle about his team. "Just you wait," I said, "two years from now, the Cardinals will be in there." He pretended to take note.