The man who's pregnant with names

"Where's your camera?" asked the bolo head man with a white beard sticking from his chin. His grandchildren's names are tattooed on his arms (along with a heart that holds the words "Puerto Rican" in it). He pulls up his shirt over a big belly where the names of his children are inked. It's as if he's pregnant with names. He and his wife walk in Kahalu`u District Park in the mornings with their two dogs, a salmon colored pit bull named Kaimana, and a small white poodle with no name I can remember. (These days, I need a small notebook to jot down names, the places where I learned and then forgot them. Everyone remembers Lily. The woman remembered me as Sarah, which begins with an S.) Kaimana came from this park, a large grassy space with two football goals marking its near edges, a circular asphalt path behind which are woods and beyond that, Kahalu`u Stream where it opens up behind the Hygienic Store and flows into the ocean. There used to be a lot of stray dogs, the woman tells me, and people complained because they bit people.

 

I point to the area where Lilith and I found an encampment (a dirty sign about "dirty windows" squatting in the mud). "When the state came to sweep that area, they found piles of microwaves, mopeds, so much it took several truck loads to take it all away. They were in the woods tweaking," she said; "the stuff was all stolen." No one knows where they went, but the state comes more frequently now. The new guy who lives on a bench near the restrooms on the other side of the park is named Harry, she says. Always lying there asking for a cigarette. I tried to buy him a cup of coffee (yes to milk and sugar) yesterday at Creature Coffee Shop, but it was closed for Veterans Day, and besides, I'd left my money in the car. Only realized that later. The woman has no idea where he came from; she knows the others who stay near the restrooms with their dogs, and those who live closer to the Key Project, with theirs. As we talk, Kaimana and Lilith do a full protocol on each other, nose, ears, belly, butt, then separate. Lilith leads me where she wants to go.