1/16/10: Uncle G

There are many rice cookers in stacks beneath the stoves. They are sitting in high piles, rust flecked, bent and cold. Dishes are gleaning with grease, piled in the sink. Discordant ukuleles are pattering together, and thick tobacco smoke is sauntering through the air. Fragments of strange conversations are all I can hear, phrases like, "what is right is wrong." The man called G is leaving, and I do not even move to say goodbye.



This morning a hostel guest, Nathan, spread the possessions of the trunk of his car across our lawn. HE sought to give everything away, or barter it for camping gear. Inside I was cooking eggs. The man who cooked us marlin the night before stumbled in the back door. His colorful van was still parked in our backyard, and the fire ring was littered with plastic bottles and cans.



He was moderately short and fat. His face was pointed like turtle's beak, and wrinkled through and through. His skin was dark on the shoulders and neck, and his voice had a sharp rasp, like his lungs were lined with iron. He called himself 'G,' and sometimes 'Uncle G.'



It was hard to ignore his stories.

"You ever heard of the Madra?" he asked.

"You ever heard of the Men in Black?" he asked.

"You ever heard of Ardsley, Washington?" he asked.

And each questions was proceed by a story, so fantastic and pompous and filled with epic dimensions and mythic men that I was close to laughing at first. But then I realized that he was in earnest. He was lying in complete earnest. He was sincerely living in a twisted golden dream.



He told stories of Mafias and families and clans and powerhouses and weapons of mass destruction and government conspiracies. He told stories about Jews and Indians and Russians and secret agents, all tangled up in clandestine, black-robed combat and dealings with slim briefcases. And in everyone he was the hero. He was the leader of a primal war tribe storming a nuclear power plant, he was the one on the ship of uranium in the Swiss canal, stealing a Russian tanker. And the reason why we ignorant, basic, near-sighted University students had not hear of any of it was of course because it was completely classified and shielded from our eyes and ears. And here was the man, 'G,' wearing a ragged tank top tight over his gut, living in a van on the big island of Hawaii.



But he was very proud of his acquaintance with the island. He offered us a ride to the South Point cliffs, to pursue another day on the edge of the world. We piled into a van coated with stickers, spray paint, insignias, and scratches. The star of David was on one side, and the cross on the other. "Aloha," "Mana," and "Pele," all plastered in various places. "4/20," spray painted on the bumper. The back window was broken, and fishing tackle dangled out the end, over shards of glass clinging to the frame. Inside were stacks of cookware, clothes, lumber and all varieties of blades and hand weapons. I got a seat on top of a rough piece of driftwood.



But clouds overwhelmed the sky as we moved closer to South Point, and rain started falling. Our driver and navigator offered to take us instead to the Kona side of the island, where it was always sunny. There he promised us many grand adventures under his leadership. He knew the island well, and the island knew his van just as well, he claimed. At our first stop for gas it was clear how well the island actually knew him. He began talking to locals at their car, describing the "hoalies" that he was carting around the island. "Hoaly" is a slang label for white people on the island, used by natives. The men at their car chuckled and skirted their eyes from the bumbling and shirtless white man talking to them.



On the way to Kona he began narrating fabulous stories of Hawaiian folklore. Each sentence swas sprinkled with Hawaiian words, which he slowly stopped to translate for us. "Malka," he rasped, "that means mountain. Makai, that means sea." He returned once and again to his favorite Hawaiian word, "Kapu," each time sliding fingers across his throat like a knife. "No lawyers or trials," he rasped,"Just Kapu."



The first one we picked up was a grey and yellow man. He was waiting at a gas station, swigging a little plastic flask. "This is Uncle Rock," G rasped. "He's a local legend." He seemed only a legend of piss poor decrepitude to me. His face was pitted with wrinkles and his hair and beard were tangled into one dirty slick mass. He climbed in and silently glanced at the people around him. And he stayed silent for most of the ride except for spontaneous outbursts like, "I want to jump off a cliff!" Uncle G would chuckle and cackle, "I hear you bruda." The second one we picked up was a glamorous Hawaiian woman standing by the road. G swerved the van and waved excitedly to the hesitant woman, who asked to be dropped off, politely, as soon as we entered Kona. We left her and moved on.


The first stop was an ancient burial ground. A field of black rocks abutted the ocean. There were high piles and walls still standing, and trenches still lining the ground. Mounds of rock were arranged at the head of the field, now ancient tombstones. "This place has powerful Mana," he said, "That means spirit. Don't walk off the path or its Kapu."


G swaggered in front of us, shirtless, but with a scythe tied in to his belt. He rasped about the historic significance of this hallowed ground. I thought he would make a good park service guide, if he wasn't so disgustingly unpleasant. He gave snide greetings to a pair of tourists carrying beach chairs, who just laughed quietly.

The array of mind-blowing and mysterious sites he promised us unfolded in smaller dimensions than expected. Most of our destinations were simple, sand bays, beautiful, yes, but already busy with tourists. I watched Tyler and Stephanie's silhouettes move in the forefront of the falling orange sun, on the rocks of an ancient pier. Lee bumbled around beside me, picking up and examining pieces of coral. He walked in a clumsy way that seemed his wrists and ankles held his centers of gravity, dragging his body around in a jerking path.

On the way home G asked me for twenty dollars, to cover gas expenses. I had already given five, and I looked at Tyler and stephanie, who only returned sheepish stares, because they had no money. Lee and I agreed to each give ten. He put only enough gas in to push the needle above the empty line, and pocketed the cash.

We were still in Kona when he made the stop to buy weeed. "Wait here," he rasped, and left us inside the van in the parking lot of a yellow apartment. I watched him carry the cash I'd just given into the seedy palce. He began smoking in the parking lot and continued for the next half hour, holding the wheel with his knees. "Twenty five years without a DUI," he rasped. I was just glad the van was moving South, the direction of home.

His iron-lined voice scratched my ears most of the return trip. Tyler took over driving shortly , which only gave G greater freedom to assail us with gruesome Hawaiian stories. He insisted we stop at a McDonald's, then gas station after gas station, riding on a near empty tank and handing out the rest of the money on soda then licroice then burgers then candy. "You're a little skinny bruda," he turned to me, "learn how to eat like me and maybe you'll have some of these," he said, flexing his wrinkled and soft arms.

Then a song came on the radio that I liked. I watched the glowing red Hawaiian sun sink out the window, and felt the warm wind on my face. I hadn't heard music in a long while, and I let it wipe away all of G's rusty words.

We were finally home, and I rushed out of the stinking van. G followed us inside, but by now no one was acknowleding him. We let him stumble around, groping for milk and cereal, spilling carelessly on the floor. "What you cooking up, bruda," he asked, trying to peer around my efforts to guard the food from him. "You got a big chicken in the fridge man," he rasped, "maybe you should cook it up. It's goin to go bad by tomorrow."

Once he learned I was at Brown opened a scathing commentary. "They wanted me up there man, up at Phillips Andover," he rasped, " They wanted me up in the Skull and Bones, but I didn't want none of that," he rasped. I sat in silence, letting him dig into deeper and deeper tunnels of fury. "You'll never know how the real world works in school my friend. Let me tell you, I've moved so mouch money that it would make your head spin," said the man living in his van.

And he continued to excite himeself more and more, and I looked on in silence. "Do you know who invented the internet?" he asked. "Bill Gates, my friend. Ever heard of him? And he was a fucking dropout too. When he invtented MSDOS, the command system for IBM with Paal Allen, he signed a secret agreement with the FEDs. He would forever have backdoor keys to the internet, and in return for helping the government build weapons of mass destruction, they would make him the richest man in the world until he died. That's right my friend, I know these things." I kept trying not to laugh.

"So are you published yet?" I asked him. "Brother the shit I do never gets published. They had me working on Black Projects. They're like black holes- because nothing ever escapes. I'll give you something right now that will blow your mind," and he furiously began searching for pen and paper. On the back of a bus schedule in highlighter he scrawled:

[p squared x infinity = infinity x p squared]

"Know what that means?" he asked. "Poop?" I replied.
"Of course you don't. That's where Einstein had it wrong. This is thefinfinte perspective and possibility theory, which has helped me solve many unthinkeable problems," said the man living in a dirty van.

I went back to cooking in silence, laughing in my mind. "I would of held off on the cereal if I'd known you were cooking something up bruda," he said.

"Sorry," I said, "there's nothing left, brother," and fed the rest of my food to the cat.