Issue 22

Eddie P. Gomez

Honolulu, Hawaii
October, 2010

We took a flight from San Francisco to Oahu on a balmy morning in early October, risking a small window of opportunity. In Honolulu, high rises poked at the sky in the distance as the taxi raced away from the airport. Steakhouses lined the avenues as sidewalks teeming with people and crowded beaches flashed past in Waikiki. Arcadio and I sat in the backseat. We occupied ourselves by making fun of Mom’s hat. Adorned with a blue parrot sticking out from a yellow velvet band, the touristy headwear had been her latest find at our local flea market. She ignored us until we pulled up to the Aston.

Inside our suite, the decor looked as if Paul Gauguin and Andy Warhol had come back from the dead to collaborate on a design awkwardly trapped between a colonial plantation motif and a decades-old attempt at something modern. Outside, the ebb and flow of the Pacific Ocean seemed to emanate from deep within Diamond Head. Without warning, a mass of black clouds huddled in the sky above Waikiki, stifling the breeze and releasing a torrent of water that drenched the southeast corner of the island. Just as fast as the miniaturized storm had appeared, clear skies returned. Within minutes, all traces of bad weather disappeared, so I stepped back through the set of French doors that led from the balcony into the suite.

I reached for my laptop and settled into the depths of a plush yellow recliner, next to Mom and Arcadio. They were both stretched out on one of the king-sized beds. Starting an online assignment, my thoughts settled more on the scene in front of me than the quiz on quadratic equations that was due the following morning.

As sleep overtook Arcadio, we started a fading conversation regarding his animals, one of the subjects in life about which he was passionate. His eyelids fluttered.

He asked, “You think Osito will be all right at the kennel?”

“He’ll be fine. I’ve known Dana ever since we worked at Amtex. She loves animals just like you do,” I responded.

“Is that the place that fired you for drinking on the job when they blew up the towers in New York?” he asked, closer to the edge of sleep.

“Yeah, but never mind all that,” I responded.

“What about the cats?” His eyelids drooped further down over his face.

“They’re fine. Go to sleep.”

Arcadio stirred one last time in the direction of Mom, who was staring into the space beyond the French doors. “I love you.”

Mom looked in his direction. “Love you too, mijo.”

For a long time, we’d known that Arcadio’s anxiety manifested in small but perceptible behaviors. Out of the blue, he would stop whatever he was doing in order to remind us how much he cared for us. These outpourings of emotion could take place anywhere, in such varied locations as a grocery store, dog park, or in the car on the way home from baseball practice, expressions of such exacting singleness that they left us frozen in place. Arcadio had long ago trademarked a positive outlook, especially in the pocket-sized moments of everyday life, so a foray in the opposite direction never caused us too much worry. We interpreted those gestures as his way of fighting back against the abandonment he felt after the loss of his real parents. If he reminded us of how much he loved us, we were less likely to suddenly vanish from his life.

Arcadio clutched a tattered Scooby Doo that I’d given him the Christmas after he turned eight, and a pillow propped up his reconstructed leg. Despite his awkward position, he fell immediately into a deep slumber, induced by his afternoon dose of morphine. His sixteen-year-old body exhibited four years of cancer-related trauma, contorted by major surgeries and treatments administered during his peak growing years. A foot-long scar crawled out from under his boxers. The wound ran along the outside of his left thigh, still raw-looking and warm to the touch.

Arcadio had passed briefly through remission. The short-lived reprieve was something that gnawed at me daily. We’d anxiously marked each day on the calendar, expecting to zoom by important milestones on the way to recovery. Unfortunately, an uncomfortable feeling in his chest earlier that year initiated the final diagnosis. It changed everything, including any plans Mom and I had of watching Arcadio grow up and raise a family of his own. As a result, the second chance at life that I’d been granted in order to raise my nephew felt like an illusion. The worst part was watching him suffer under a slow breaking down of the body, which proved a nearly impossible task away from the safe confines of Valley Children’s Hospital near Fresno. All these years later, the physical pain Arcadio endured during that last year is the one memory from which escape has never been entirely possible.

I eased the recliner back. The thought of mandatory overtime at work after we returned home from Oahu made me want to throw up. So did the idea that my life would continue its pinball-like existence, consisting of long transits between Modesto Junior College, Valley Children’s Hospital, and the sleazy cheese plant where a daily avalanche of political dramas left me emotionally drained and unable to keep up with life outside of the twelve-hour shifts. Watching Arcadio sleep while a virtual paradise floated on the horizon outside further filled me with anger. Fuck that cheese plant, fuck Modesto Junior College, fuck the universe, and fuck pretending everything is going to be all right when it’s not. The unpalatable finale was taking place in the present and not in some distant future that an education promises to make better.

The Wizard Stones of Kapaemahu recall the story of four powerful mystics who arrived on Oahu from Tahiti sometime before the sixteenth century, each with a special ability to heal those afflicted by illness. In the legend, the shamans eventually left the island, but before leaving, they transferred their curative powers to four stones. The folktale was almost lost to history with the withering away of the Hawaiian oral traditions. The cultural rebirth of recent decades helped rescue the four stones, which at one point had been propping up the foundation of an old bowling alley on Oahu that succumbed to demolition in the 1960s. Fortunately, the legend of the mystical healers has been given new life. The stones now serve as cultural artifacts watched over by a new generation of Hawaiians who practice their ancient customs. Interestingly, the shrine at Kuhio Beach that holds the stones ended up being right across the street from the Aston.

We’d passed through various phases where a miraculous healing of Arcadio’s cancer felt possible, even though the doctors had been clear about the progression of the disease. I wanted to believe in miracles, the type that are intrinsic to many of the world’s religions, even though their ideologies held little appeal. Understandably, we knew that the notion was far-fetched but clung to the dream of somehow regaining a normal existence. Often, I was reminded that faith is a sliver from which reversals of fate can spring against the darkest moments in a person’s life, so the legend gave us something to hold onto while on the island. A magical cure unleashed by a benevolent spirit or saint or even God himself. In some alternate future, we would look back and thank the heavens for rescuing us from the brink of losing a child and mercifully returning us to our ordinary lives in Turlock, California.

Sinking deeper into the recliner, a wave of guilt passed over me because we’d allowed Arcadio to walk to school during the previous fall. The cost-benefit analysis of having done so looked drastically different in hindsight. It was now obvious that the short walks to Turlock High School strained his hip in the place where radiation bombarded the original tumor, contributing to a shattered hip that left him bedridden during the summer of 2010. I also couldn’t forget how much walking to school made him feel like a regular kid. We nervously watched him leave in the morning only to have him return home beaming with pride, describing in rich detail the many moments of his day, including stories of all the dogs he’d encountered on the way and how his friends had drastically changed since the last time he’d seen them in junior high. Allowing him to walk the short distance to school with his friends felt like the right thing to do. In the end, that small success marked the high point of our remission. By spring of 2010, the downward spiral began. Tests soon revealed that Arcadio’s nagging cough was something more serious than a chest cold. His lungs were slowly filling with tumors.

In July of 2010, Arcadio’s hip ballooned to the size of a small melon. We rushed him to Valley Children’s Hospital in the middle of the night. His oncologists had gone home for the night, so a pediatric surgeon from another department arrived on the scene. He was the first to look at the results of the CT scans. The young doctor created a comfortable space between us, a rarity in a setting where the difference between God and physician often consists of a thin line, where inculpable doctors tell loved ones what they want to hear instead of the truth. Frankly, Dr. Morgan looked more like a graduate student than a capable surgeon. His light brown eyes radiated a warmth brought to prominence by a perpetual smile. Moments after meeting him, he shared a piece of gum with us and talked about his wife and kids. He mentioned that it was his last week at the hospital since he was leaving in order to fulfill a Christian mission that included performing surgeries in poverty-stricken villages throughout Latin America.

After Dr. Morgan exited the room, Arcadio peered down the hall from his spot on the bed, making sure the doctor had turned a corner. “I can’t believe they’re letting an eighth-grade-looking dude work on my leg.”

“Talk about baby faces,” I said. “Be careful, though. He might get mad if he catches us making fun of him.”

A few moments later, Arcadio spotted Dr. Morgan rounding a corner as he headed in our direction. “Here he comes, Uncle Eddie. Stop laughing!”

We could barely contain ourselves when the surgeon stepped into the room wearing an oversized coat and boyish grin. A nurse came to our rescue by asking Dr. Morgan complicated medical questions, allowing us time to regain our composure. Another nurse brought us two heaping bowls of rocky road ice cream. We stuffed big spoons piled high with ice cream into our mouths in order to muzzle the laughter, but it didn’t work. We even tried to avoid eye contact, but every time our roving glances met, we burst into howls of laughter. We laughed until tears ran down our faces, a situation created more by stress than anything having to do with the doctor’s appearance. Fortunately, Dr. Morgan took the situation in stride, indulging the awkward moments by sheepishly looking away and pretending to write on his clipboard every time hysteria overtook us.

Meanwhile, Arcadio’s leg got worse, so Dr. Morgan pulled me into a nearby room in order to explain the gravity of the situation. “There’s nothing left of his femur. The top is completely shattered. So is the hip socket. There’s no waiting. He needs emergency surgery right away.”

“The oncology surgeons can do it in the morning, right?” I asked.

“No. It’s more than we can risk. There’s a doctor in Fresno who specializes in this type of surgery. I’ve been trying to get a hold of him since they brought me the scans.” Dr. Morgan looked down and punched numbers into his cell phone. “We’ll need your permission to transfer him in the next couple of hours.”

Mom arrived from Turlock sometime after midnight. Just before sunrise, the three of us were loaded into an ambulance headed to Community Regional Hospital in downtown Fresno. Dr. Morgan and two nurses had stayed with us throughout the night, so we waved goodbye to them from the back of the ambulance. They waved back. One of the nurses called out to Arcadio and blew him a kiss, which made him smile and blush at the same time. We left feeling indebted to all of them, especially Dr. Morgan for arranging Arcadio’s surgery. The two nurses had always been extraordinary people. They were good to us for years, responding to our distress by adding kindness to a sterile environment.

In Fresno, a nurse named Sarah began the long process of preparing Arcadio for surgery in a room on the third floor. He made quick friends with Sarah as he did with most people. His ability to recite the twelve medications that he needed to take throughout the day undoubtedly impressed her. The number of CT scans contained in his files interested her even more. Although she never mentioned it, I could tell she took a liking to Arcadio. Sarah studied one image after another and cross-referenced them with the notes in his files, turning toward him in order to ask about past treatments. Sarah eventually tired of looking through Arcadio’s medical records and walked over to him.

She wiped at his brow with a small white towel and said, “You’re a brave young man. I hope your nerves aren’t acting up. Dr. Vashon does this surgery all the time. He’s the best.”

Arcadio looked up from the bed. “Thanks, but I’m not really nervous. Just need my leg to get better, so I can play drums with my band. We haven’t practiced in a week.”

A look of disappointment washed over Mom’s face as she down looked at Arcadio and warned, “Que band ni que nada, Arcadio. Forget about that right now!”

Arcadio looked up with his own scowl. “You’re no fun sometimes.”

I stepped between them and said, “I’m gonna go for coffee and something to eat. Take care of Mom for me.”

Arcadio waved his left hand from where it sat on the bed railing and quietly murmured, “I always do, Uncle Eddie.”

On my way out, I exchanged a worried glance with Mom who was standing in the doorway. En route to the cafeteria, I thought a lot about how lucky I’d been to spend my post drinking days with someone as full of life as Arcadio.

Stepping out of the elevator near one of the first-floor entrances, I yielded the right of way to a one-armed man passing in front of me on a single crutch. When our eyes met, the man suddenly stopped, ungracefully shifting his weight off the crutch. It felt like we knew each other, but I couldn’t place him.

After a long pause, the man tilted his head to one side and looked at me skillfully. “Qué pasó? You look a lot different than you used to.”

The air between us filled with the pungent aroma of cheap beer when it’s drunk early in the morning. His thick accent reminded me that we’d known each other in Modesto years earlier, so we talked for a while. My mentioning that things had changed for the better after I quit drinking made him slowly step back and look at me in awe, as if I’d just claimed the ability to see ghosts or part the Red Sea. After thinking about my response for a moment, my old friend smiled warmly and nodded his head in approval.

Life on the streets had taken its toll in the eight years since I’d last seen him. He looked much older. My friend’s once jet-black hair had turned a salt-and-pepper gray, hanging down over his forehead in ragged points as if he’d cut it himself with a dull razor. The dark skin around his eyes wrinkled like wet prunes every time speaking caused his eyes to squint. Oddly enough, I saw myself in him at that moment. His jaundiced, bloodshot eyes reminded me of my own pitiful battles with alcohol.

His smile turned into a chuckle when he asked, “You remember the time that army kid fucked you up over there in the Airport District?”

“Not one of my better days,” I responded. “Anyway, that was a long time ago. Besides, I had it coming.”

Eventually, my old friend stuck his hand out. “Chavez, remember? You just disappeared. What happened?”

“You know the story. I ran into a little bit of money, and there were suddenly better places to be,” I answered.

A few of us had gathered under a row of trees on a sidewalk down the street from the Modesto Gospel Mission. We knew each other casually, stopping in parks for long enough to talk and sometimes share some beers or a sip from a pint. A couple of the older men started talking about having served in Vietnam. One homeless man named Frank, who looked like a Norman Rockwell version of Santa Claus with rosy red cheeks, bushy white hair, and a long beard that poured onto the front of his overalls, described his time near Da Nang. He mentioned having been fortunate enough to miss combat because his two years in the country consisted of handling supplies in an airplane hangar or something like that. In doing so, Frank unwittingly set in motion the circumstances that led to my failed and short-lived career as a street fighter.

After chugging down a half pint of vodka and throwing the empty into some nearby bushes, Frank asked, “How about you? Ever been in the military?”

“Desert Storm,” I said as naturally as if it had been true. “Saw the worst of it.”

Having spent years mastering the art of embellishing the truth in bars, inventing stuff about serving in the military didn’t seem like a big deal, until a thirty-year-old drug user with inset, hazel eyes and greasy brown hair rushed forward in a burst of excitement.

“I was on an Abrams during the first wave,” he blurted out. “We fucked up the Republican Guard, lit their shit on fire—quick! Who were you with?”

“That happened a long time ago,” I shot back in a rough tone, which caused everyone in the small group to turn in our direction. “It doesn’t matter.”

The soldier looked at me accusingly. He began walking backwards, taking off his dirty gray jacket, tossing it on the sidewalk in the process.

Reaching the middle of the street, he yelled, “The fuck it don’t matter. You probably weren’t there.”

I took the last warm gulps of a twenty-four-ounce Budweiser. “You don’t know what the hell you’re talking about.”

I stuck to the lie in order to avoid being embarrassed in front of my friends, which further pissed off the stranger. Things might have turned out differently if he’d stopped calling my bluff, but he never did. Eventually, there was no alternative but to take off my own jacket and make my way towards the middle of the street after he called me out for the second time. I scrunched down, peering at him through my clenched hands, which caused everyone to crowd around us.

The stranger moved in slowly, dancing around cautiously like a boxer at the beginning of a match. I bobbed up and down trying to time his approach until he was close enough for me to unload a sweeping left hook. He managed to avoid the errant punch and spring forward, popping me square on the nose, which sent me sprawling to the ground. He quickly jumped on top of me, so I grabbed at his hair, pulling his head toward me so that he couldn’t measure the punches that he attempted to land on my face. Simultaneously, I shook my head from side to side and tried to grab hold of my opponent’s skinny wrists, even though my watery eyes partially blinded me. Every so often, his hands broke loose, and he landed another shot to my already bleeding nose, which caused more blood to flow in thick gushes.

In the distance, Frank yelled instructions in my direction from the same spot on the curb where the misunderstanding had started. He never bothered to get up.

The soldier made his own noises, grunting the same accusation repeatedly: “You weren’t there. You weren’t fucking there!”

I finally disentangled my right leg from beneath the soldier for long to pull his head down and knee him in the face twice. This slowed him considerably, but he remained on top of me, continuing to land glancing blows. I kept punching hard at the sides of his head every time his hands slipped out of my grasp. Eventually, he dug his elbow into my cheek until we were both too winded to fight, so we just lay on the frozen asphalt, squirming around and calling each other names. After what seemed like forever, some people stepped in and declared him the winner.

After somebody helped me to the curb, Chavez limped over on his crutch and consoled me. He pulled out a clean towel and a bottle of water from his backpack, which allowed me to wash my face. Chavez stuck around until the fog had cleared and walked me to a nearby bus stop. Fortunately, a severance check from Amtex arrived in the mail a few days later, so my days of wandering the streets ended. Eventually, I followed Mom and Arcadio to Turlock where sobriety found me a couple of years later, something that allowed me to play a bigger role in their lives.

I asked Chavez what he was doing in Fresno.

He tapped his crutch on the floor. “I moved here. A friend of mine works in the cafeteria. She gives me free breakfast and books to read. Y tu? You work here?”

“No,” I answered.

I told him about Arcadio. Afterward, he just stood there shaking his head from side to side while staring down at his shoes.

Once our reunion had run its course, Chavez leaned in and whispered, “I need a little push. How about a couple of bucks for a cold one? Tu sabes. It’s not easy out there.”

Chavez had been a real friend that day in Modesto. There wasn’t a need to think twice about gifting him the cash in my wallet, which totaled eighteen dollars. It was good, after all, to see an old friend from those sad months I’d spent in the parks near downtown Modesto after being fired from Amtex. His presence was like a bridge between my former life and my current one, a reality that felt priceless in the moment. After a moment of silence, I put the money in my friend’s only hand and shook it vigorously, reminding him to take better care of himself. He agreed to do so and thanked me profusely, turning away toward an exit in the direction of a city bus.

At two in the afternoon, a tall surgeon with green eyes and a dark complexion stepped into the waiting room. He made his way through the crowd in our direction, pulling down his surgical mask.

When he arrived in the corner where we’d been huddled for hours, the doctor looked directly at Mom and said, “The surgery was a success. Arcadio is an incredibly strong kid. His vitals didn’t skip a beat the entire time he was under.”

Mom let out a sigh and took a couple of steps in his direction in order to shake his hand. “Thank you, doctor. Thank you for helping us.”

Before the surgeon could turn away, I positioned myself directly in his path.

“Doctor, could you see the sarcoma? How fast is it spreading?”

“Arcadio will have full use of his leg once he heals up a bit,” he responded, unable or unwilling to answer my questions. “Give it time. You’ll have to excuse me. I have another surgery”

We finally made our way to the beach during the middle of the week, setting a blanket at the water’s edge. Arcadio beamed with excitement as he started putting on his snorkeling gear, an arduous task made easier by the presence of his wheelchair, which a stranger from Guam helped to drag across the sand. I held him firmly as he took the first tiny steps into the surf until he was waist deep and gently pushed me away. For the rest of the morning, he floated in the water without a care in the world, submerging himself every so often into the weightlessness of the vast sea. Arcadio was in a great mood.

Without warning, his head popped out of the water and he hollered, “Whoa! Look what I found. I think this used to be a dinosaur’s eyeball.”

I glanced up from East of Eden. “That’s nice, Arcadio. Toss it over here, and I’ll add it to your pile of rocks.”

“Hey! That’s not just a pile of rocks,” he yelled after removing the mask.

“I mean these rare geological samples collected by the Arcadio Aquatic Expeditionary Force: Pacific Region 2010.”

“Okay! That sounds way better. Catch,” he said, smiling and pulling the mask back over his face. “Don’t lose them. We have to show Mom.”

On our first Friday on the island, we pulled out the wheelchair and cruised the boulevard looking for adventure as we’d been doing since the universe brought us together thirteen years earlier. Kalakaua Avenue radiated a circus-like energy, which meant that we were in the right place. Bright lights or anything that suggested a party-like atmosphere fascinated Arcadio. Pushing the wheelchair along the raucous avenue reminded me of an episode that had taken place years earlier. We had driven by a big top without stopping. His sense of having missed something wonderful came gushing out as we tucked him into bed.

“What was inside of that circus tent, Uncle Eddie?” Arcadio asked. “I bet there were monkeys inside and cotton candy and stuff like that. Can we go see if it’s still there in the morning?”

“You can see monkeys on the National Geographic channel,” I responded.

“I wanna see real monkeys, not tv monkeys. They might make friends with us or throw poop on someone or something fun like that!”

The handiwork of dozens of artisans poked at us as we continued through the crowds. A wide variety of performers occupied the street corners along the promenade, which added a Vaudeville-meets-Hollywood-Boulevard ambiance to the already bustling neighborhood. I bent over Arcadio’s shoulder in order to check on him. He was quiet and slunk down in his seat, yet he returned a half smile. Certainly, he knew better than anyone else that his body was shutting down. An unusual aloofness was noticeable in the depths of his brown eyes. His deteriorating condition could no longer be mitigated by the glow of neon lights or photo opportunities with drunken pirates cleverly adorned with Spanish-speaking parrots on their shoulders.

We pushed on for a short distance until I pulled the wheelchair to a stop and kissed the top of his head. “We’ll never leave you, Arcadio.”

“I know that already,” he answered quietly as we passed a man in a tuxedo who was swallowing large daggers, which his eye-catching assistant set on fire.

At the end of the boulevard, we snapped a photo of Arcadio waving to Mom, who was resting at the hotel. Two Ferraris whizzed by in the background. A stretch limo followed, screeching around the corner and blaring club music, which temporarily drowned out whatever Arcadio was yelling in my direction. The limo was full of rich-looking drunk people. Gorgeous college girls in bikinis squeezed out of the sunroofs even though it was nighttime. They raised their drinks to the sky and toasted their good fortune. They also yelled obscenities and hilariously improbable suggestions in our direction: “Hey, handsome! You wanna do some coke and get lucky tonight?”

Arcadio ignored the clamor, but I turned and reacted from instinct, selfishly wanting to be carried away from what had turned into little more than a farewell vacation. “We’re at the Aston. The sixth floor. Ask for Eddie!”

At home, we’d talked about visiting Giovanni’s Shrimp Truck on North Shore after seeing it on the Food Network. On Saturday morning, the three of us piled into a rented Toyota Corolla and drove the long eastern route towards North Shore. We were surprised to find out that the famous venue consisted of little more than a cluster of canopy-covered picnic tables near a white, graffiti-marked food truck with red lettering that announced it as a revered hotspot of surfers and foodies alike.

As a result of taking THC pills to counterbalance the nausea caused by his medications, Arcadio giggled uncontrollably at everything as we sat down at one of the tables. He then proceeded to wolf down every variety of shrimp set in front of him as if he hadn’t eaten in a week. I had a more objective opinion of the overpriced crustaceans. They were, for the most part, a disappointment. My ambivalence towards them centered on the fact that they were still in their shells. They could have been the tastiest shrimp on the planet, I mentioned to Arcadio, but the messy and time-consuming effort of having to free them from their shells at the table put them in the same category as pomegranates and Dungeness crab. Foods that are without question some of the most delicious on the planet yet seem to go down better when the burden of freeing up their inner fruits falls on somebody else. I resented the fact that Giovanni had passed on the labor to us. Not to mention the price nor the fact that most of the garlic and chili sauces disappeared into the garbage with the shells.

Barely visible ocean views filled in the panorama as I sat listening to Mom and Arcadio talk about one thing after another. A feeling of being fully present in the moment washed over me. Still overwhelmed by the munchies, Arcadio chatted away happily during my epiphany, which further brushed the edges of the moment with a surreal admixture of hope and despair. Eventually, I stopped fussing with my shrimp in order to observe Mom and Arcadio discreetly, marveling at my nephew’s ability to lift himself out of the uncertainty of his vanishing life. The scene progressed in slow motion as I realized that Arcadio had already come to terms with the fate that he’d inherited. On the contrary, Mom and I couldn’t be sure of anything. My only thought was to cradle him in my arms like I used to do when he was little, because even the whispering of the wind suggested that we were nearing the unmerciful edge over which he’d soon disappear.

Wiping at the butter-and-parmesan crust that had formed on the sides of his mouth, Arcadio looked in my direction and said, “You better become a famous chef again, like the guys on television. You know more about food than they do.”

“I was never a famous chef. I was a line cook and a sous chef only once. Besides, that sounds messy. How about I start a food and travel show instead?”

“Okay, but you better buy Mom and Osito a big house in the country.” He smiled at mom, stuffing the last shrimp into his mouth as garlic sauce dripped from his chin onto his blue tank top. “Right, Mom?”

On the drive back to the Honolulu, Mom and Arcadio slept in the backseat as we meandered through small towns and moonlit coves silhouetted by palm trees swaying in the breeze. My mind raced into the future without Arcadio. I pushed the idea aside, but the impending doom that had been gathering on the horizon kept flashing in my mind’s eye like a fireworks display. A voice in my head echoed that something would have to give, that the center couldn’t hold, which caused the rest of “The Second Coming” to ring out apocalyptically in my mind. The clarity with which that uncompromising future manifested itself reminded me that the other parts of our lives also hung in the balance—our sanity, finances, and ability to go on as things got worse.

An idiosyncratic relief seemed to float in through the night as a series of songs on the radio disrupted the disheartening aura. “Time after Time,” “Darling Nikki,” “Sweet Child O’ Mine,” “Electric Avenue,” “Let the Music Play,” and “Lost in Emotion” played, one after another. The eighties music elicited dreamlike remembrances, rooted in a longing to return to my version of a less complicated time. The lens through which my generation viewed life as teenagers looms sacred, a place that feels safe against the postmillennial white noise that takes us further into old age and the unknown. In that fleeting moment of relief, the songs, each in their own special way, reminded me that God would meet us wherever the dark absence took us, that we would somehow cobble together enough acceptance to move on with our lives after he was gone.

I wondered what my friends from high school were doing at that moment, the ones with whom I’d first heard many of those songs. I thought of the parties. Every weekend during our junior and senior years we commandeered the houses of absentee parents, bringing to life parties that included kegs, drugs, and a general debauchery not shared with the uncool or anyone outside of our clique. Sometimes the cops showed up or fights broke out. The melees usually came out of nowhere, exploding into chaos that resulted in knockdown brawls, smashed television sets, and entire rooms full of furniture left behind in splinters. The poor host, usually some never-before-in-trouble underclassmen, was left to explain the aftermath to parents who were beyond pissed off and wanted names. I wondered how nobody had ever been seriously hurt and only a few ever arrested.

Mesmerized as much by the clear night’s glow as the soothing energy released by the songs on the radio, I pulled into a gas station on the outskirts of Honolulu in order to fill up. After realizing that my journal was back at the hotel, I reached into the glove box and began to write on the back of the Hertz rental agreement, wanting to capture the moment. The last line of several rambling paragraphs read: Remember how alive and out of harm’s way you feel right now, despite what’s going on.

The safe harbor of teenage memories eased my worried mind for a while, yet there always exists a specter of another past, a life-altering decision that took place in the heat of insanity. The nineties are reduced to one monochromatic, still unfathomable event. On a cold night in February of 1997, my oldest brother made a mess of our lives. Arcadio’s father pulled a revolver from a nightstand, stood over his wife, and pulled the trigger, before putting the hot barrel to his own head. That is why Arcadio went to live with Mom, his grandmother. For a moment all that had happened didn’t feel overpowering, so I stayed at the gas station, looking back, occasionally, at Mom and Arcadio who were still leaning against each other sleeping soundly. Singing along with each song, I tried to project my temporary ability to come to terms with the past onto the difficult days ahead.

We left the hotel early the following morning, finding a place to snorkel between Sunset Beach and North Shore where an outcropping of volcanic rocks form into a bowl.Arcadio had trouble climbing over rocks that led to the tranquil waters, so I located the path of least resistance into the bowl while he waited patiently on a rock. Eventually, he slid into the chest-high water after donning his snorkeling gear. Afterwards, I towed him into the center of the bowl using a rope borrowed from a rental shack. As he floated behind me, schools of wildly colored fish and other displays of sea life surrounded us in the sand-colored water. A fish adorned with yellow and orange stripes attached itself to him. The credit-card-sized creature never left his side for the two or more hours that we snorkeled, keeping just out of reach.

Arcadio came to the surface in order to send a message to Mom who was sitting on the beach along the intermittent patches of sand that marked the rocky edges of the bowl. He waved frantically and yelled in her direction, trying to make himself heard above the roar of the waves that crashed against the exterior of the bowl. He described his newfound friend. Mom waved back unable to hear the specifics of his adoption plan. It took my telling Arcadio that his new friend would die en route to California before he abandoned the idea and stopped begging me to take the fish captive.

After the sun started to set and we’d safely returned to the beach, Arcadio limped over to where Mom sat on a blanket. He curled up in her arms. She slowly rocked him back and forth, kissing his forehead and whispering sweet thoughts into his sixteen-year-old mind. Meanwhile, a breathtaking display of color painted the sunset in hues of fiery pink and orange as they held each other until the sun went down over the island. I walked up a sandy berm that led to the parking lot and began packing the car. They stayed wrapped in each other’s arms for a long time, saying whatever they had to say to each other. Eventually, I called into the darkness below, reminding them that it was time to head back to Honolulu.

On our second-to-the-last day on the island, Arcadio and I went to Kuhio Beach near the shrine that holds the four sacred stones. We rented a giant inner tube so that he could float on the water while I relaxed on the crowded beach. Every so often, he implored me to swim out to him. I waved back but refused to get in the water because an uneasy feeling came over me. I recognized it as the same dark energy that had trailed me around Valley Children’s Hospital for the years that Arcadio had been sick. The phenomena had long ago made its presence known, once manifesting as an aural phantasm of children at play on a crowded playground. I’d heard the sounds clearly in the middle of the night after going into the basement cafeteria of the hospital to grab something to eat during Arcadio’s first days of treatment. Later, I realized that a real playground existed in the darkness beyond a row of windows opposite the entrance to the cafeteria.

Eventually, I fell asleep and woke up inside of a dream. The scene was the same except that the beach sat empty and the row of high-rise hotels had vanished from the water’s edge. The presence of evil felt even more palpable in the dream. Glancing in the direction of Diamond Head, I began to make out a wicked face staring back at me from the layers of rock on the side of the ancient mountain. A creature’s face came into focus when a pair of fire-red eyes opened and its nostrils flared, solidifying a climactic, come-hither expression. The monster rose slowly from within Diamond Head and stepped into the sea. The beast’s body resembled a cyclops from one of the foundational texts of Western literature as it bounded away with giant strides. The monster stopped long enough to look back in my direction. He shook wildly, scratched at his chest, and howled crazily into the air, which jolted me out of the dream and left me panting on my beach towel.

After checking the horizon in order to make sure Arcadio was safe, I noticed a middle-aged biker stretched out next to his girlfriend no less than five feet away. A tattoo on his left arm came across as shocking as the dream. Three large sixes were arced over the top of an evil creature’s head—one that eerily resembled the one in my dream. The tattoo was old and faded, but the red eyes glowed as if they had been recently touched up. Below the monster’s face, a row of small letters arced up to embrace the face: Disciples of Satan. Jumping up, I began to gather our things and signaled to Arcadio to come ashore so we could leave.

The heartfelt moment in the rental car a few nights earlier came back to me, so I took a few deep breaths, attempting to access a place beyond the immediacy of the dream and its effect. I focused on the slow rhythms at work in the surf and felt the ocean’s cool breeze caressing my face, which helped me to make sense of the odd series of events. I reminded myself that the dream was just a dream and the tattoo a terrible coincidence. Meanwhile, Arcadio hung over the edge of the inner tube and peered into the depths with the help of a snorkeling mask. I watched as he steered the fat, round craft with his outstretched arms, oblivious to my suffering and caught up in another one of his moments of curiosity.

A round of meditation under some nearby palm trees soothed my disquieted spirit, displacing a good portion of the fear that had just held me in its clutches. Arcadio had floated farther out to sea, but I could still easily make out the orange dot of his life vest fifty yards from shore. Then, the moment continued to turn. A further sense of well-being replaced any lingering sense of dread. An indescribably deep sense of gratitude for having had Arcadio in my life for all of those years, again, cradled me its arms. The uncertainty of what tomorrow might or might not bring suddenly vanished. The day and that particular moment felt magnificently safe, and for a few fleeting minutes, it was enough. Turning in the direction of Diamond Head, I noticed that a newness of light had enveloped the mountain, a geographic beauty that I had failed to see during the previous week, something stunning rather than threatening.