Читать книгу Aunty Pinau's Banyan Tree - Helen Berkey - Страница 7

Chapter 1

Aunty Pinau's Banyan Tree

Jo-Jo and Aunty Pinau lived in a kind of rackety brown house beside the road to Ilikai, a village whose name means "surface of the sea" in Hawaiian. It was an old style Hawaiian house with a sagging lanai (porch) shaded by wild morning-glories that climbed all the way to the tin roof. The road to Ilikai was like the house, kind of rackety too. It wasn't very wide, and it was full of holes and lava boulders and red dirt as fine as powder. When it rained the road was muddy, and when it was dry the wind stirred up clouds of dust.

One morning Aunty Pinau told Jo-Jo to build a fire under the old black iron pot in the yard and to fill the rinse tub with water. She was going to do the washing. Jo-Jo gathered ironwood and started the fire under the iron pot. Then he filled the rinse-tub full with rain water.

Aunty Pinau put the sheets and pillowcases into the pot to boil. She also put her quilt with the tree-of-life pattern in the pot. This was a very thick quilt, and Aunty Pinau poked it deep down into the suds with a broomstick. Soon the soapy water with the sheets, pillowcases, and the tree-of-life quilt was boiling gently.

It took Aunty Pinau all morning to do the laundry. At last she had hung the sheets and her best patchwork quilt on the line. The sheets and pillowcases were as white as the clouds overhead, and the colors of the tree-of-life quilt were fresh and bright.

"Whew! What a big job!" sighed Aunty Pinau with relief. "I'm glad that it's all done." She sat down on the lanai steps to rest.

No sooner had she spoken than something happened! The Little Wind came swooping out of the gap in the mountains. It was a wayward wind. It whirled and twisted itself about until it was just like a baby cyclone. It danced over the road to Ilikai and picked up all the fine dust it could carry and deliberately threw it against Aunty Pinau's clean sheets and pillowcases and her tree-of-life quilt. Then the wind whirled further on down the road to Ilikai like a dancing dervish, leaving Aunty Pinau's sheets, pillowcases, and tree-of-life quilt streaked and spattered with ugly stains of red dirt.

"Oh, no!" cried Aunty Pinau, stamping her bare feet angrily on the lanai steps. "That horrid Little Wind again. Look! It has blown dirt on my laundry, the laundry that took me all morning to wash. I can never wash out those red stains."

Jo-Jo looked at the sheets and the quilt, once so bright and clean and now so red and streaked. He put his arms around Aunty Pinau.

"I'll help you wash them again, Aunty Pinau," he said.

"And let that Little Wind come through the gap in the mountains and dirty my laundry all over again. I should say not."

"It's because of the road to Ilikai" said Jo-Jo. "That road is full of dust."

Aunty Pinau frowned thoughtfully. "There's only one way to stop that wind," she declared. "Jo-Jo, go into the house and telephone Manuel Gonsalves. Tell him to come and pick me up. I'm going to town to buy a wind-catcher."

Jo-Jo's mouth dropped open. "Aunty Pinau! What in the world is a wind-catcher?"

"Now, never you mind! Just call Manuel and tell him to hurry."

Aunty Pinau changed into a freshly ironed muumuu, put a necklace of polished kukui nuts around her throat, and set a lauhala hat with a blue pheasant lei upon her head. Under her arm she tucked her best pair of shoes and went out to the road to Ilikai to wait for Manuel to pick her up.

All day long Jo-Jo waited impatiently for Aunty Pinau to return. He kept looking up the road to Ilikai, waiting for her to come home with the wind-catcher. But it wasn't until sunset that he heard Manuel's car coughing and sputtering on the road to Ilikai. Manuel brought the car to a stop in front of Aunty Pinau's gate, and then he helped Aunty Pinau, who was carrying a large brown paper bag, to get out.

"She's got it! She's got it!" cried Jo-Jo when he saw the paper bag in Aunty Pinau's hand. "You've got the wind-catcher, haven't you? Let me see the wind-catcher."

"Wait, Jo-Jo," said Aunty Pinau. "Wait until I take off my hat and put my shoes away. Then we'll both look at the wind-catcher."

After Aunty Pinau had taken off her hat and had carefully laid her shoes in a box with tissue paper wrappings, she took the brown paper bag out to the lanai. Then, as Jo-Jo breathlessly watched, she put her hands deep inside the bag and lifted out a plant in an old rusty can.

"Oh, Aunty Pinau!"Jo-Jo said, overcome with disappointment. "It's nothing but an old plant. I thought you had a wind-catcher in the bag."

"Jo-Jo," said Aunty Pinau sharply, "this is the best wind-catcher in the world. It's an Indian banyan tree."

"What do you mean, Aunty Pinau? How can that spindly little plant be a wind-catcher?"

"This little seedling," said Aunty Pinau, "has the heart of a sleeping giant. It has the power within it to grow, and grow, and grow, so tall that if you stand beneath it you won't be able to see to the top. It will spread and spread until it covers as much as an acre of land. Each branch will sprout a root that will dangle down like a rope and fasten itself to the earth and become another tree. Its leaves will be thick and shiny green, and they will spread like an umbrella over the earth. Not a drop of rain will be able to get through its many leaves. It will catch the Little Wind and tangle it in its branches, and the leaves will catch and hold all the dust. All you have to do, Jo-Jo, is to water the little tree every day until its roots find the water level beneath the lava. Now, will you promise to water this plant every day before you go to school?"

"Okay Aunty Pinau, I promise—but how longwill it take for this little tree to grow into a wind-catcher?"

"By the time you are through grade school, it will be over twenty feet high, and when you are through high school, it will be sixty feet high and one hundred feet in circumference."

"But that's such a long time to wait," said Jo-Jo. "I'll be almost a man by then."

"It will grow faster than you, Jo-Jo. Don't worry. Let's go now and plant the tree at the edge of the road to Ilikai."

Jo-Jo went to the shed for a spade, and they went down by the road to Ilikai and dug a deep hole and planted Aunty Pinau's wind-catcher.