Page 4 of Eruption

“What did I do wrong, Mac man?” fourteen-year-old Dennis said as he came out of the water.

“Well, to start with, that wasn’t even your wave, it was Mele’s,” Mac said.

The two of them stood at the end of the exposed reef beach. Honoli‘i was known as a good beach for local surfers, mostly because the strong currents kept swimmers away and the kids had the beach to themselves.

The last one out on the water was Lono.

Lono Akani, who had grown up without a father and whose mother was a housekeeper at the Hilo Hawaiian Hotel, was sixteen and Mac’s favorite. He possessed a natural talent for this sport that Mac only wished he’d had at his age.

He watched Lono, into his crouch now on one of the Thurso Surf lancers Mac had purchased for each of them. Even from here Mac could see him smiling. Surely someday this boy would find fear in the ocean. Or fear would find him. Just not today as he flawlessly rode the inside curve of the wave.

Lono paddled in, put his board under his arm, and walked to where Mac waited on the beach. “Thank you,” he said.

“For what?”

“For reminding me to always see the sets coming,” the boy said. “It’s why I was patient,ya,like you tell me to be, and waited for the wave I wanted.”

Mac patted him on the shoulder.“Keiki maika‘i.”

Good boy.

They heard the rumble from the sky then. Heard it and felt the beach shaking underneath them, making them both stagger.

The boy didn’t know whether to look up or down. But John MacGregor understood what had happened—he knew a volcanic tremor, often associated with degassing, when he felt one. He looked up at the sky around the Big Island. All the kids were doing the same. It made Mac remember something one of his college professors had said about volcanoes and “the beauty of danger.”

When the earth quieted, he felt the phone in his pocket buzzing. He answered and Jenny Kimura said, “Mac, thank God you picked up.”

Jenny knew that when he was coaching his surfers, he didn’t like to be disturbed with minor details from work. The press conference wasn’t starting for another hour, so if Jenny was calling him, it wasn’t about something minor.

“Jenny, what’s wrong?”

“We’ve got degassing,” she said.

No, not a minor detail at all.

“Ho‘o‘opa‘o‘opa,”he said, cursing like one of his surfer boys.

CHAPTER 2

Mac’s eyes were drawn to the twin peaks again and again. They were like a magnet for people who lived here.

“Where?” he asked Jenny, feeling his chest tighten.

“At the summit.”

“On my way,” he said. He hung up and called out to the surfers, “Sorry, boys, gotta bounce.”

Dennis whooped. “Bounce?” he said. “Never say that again, Mac man.”

“Well,” Mac said, “I need to haul ass and get back to work—how’s that?”

“Rajah dat,” Dennis yelled back at Mac, grinning. “You go grind, brah.” All the boys occasionally slipped into pidgin; it was part of the teenage pose.

Mac walked toward his green truck, and Lono caught up to him, board still under his arm, wet hair slicked back. His eyes were serious, troubled.

“That wasn’t Kilauea, was it?” Lono said, referring to the smallest volcano on the island, keeping his voice low.

“No,” MacGregor said. “How do you know that, Lono?”