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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.
Chapter 2
The Happiest Thing that Ever
Every day Jo-Jo watered Aunty Pinau's banyan. The tree was sturdy and strong. It drank Jo-Jo's water thirstily, put out thick green leaves, and pushed itself up higher and higher. By the time Jo-Jo was through grade school, the banyan had grown over twenty feet. Its shiny green leaves made a canopy over the earth. When the rascally Little Wind came out of the gap in the mountains and blew the black rain clouds over the road to Ilikai, the raindrops pattered against the leaves and slid right off, and not one drop dampened the earth beneath the tree. It was a real umbrella, just as Aunty Pinau had said it would be.
Soon everyone on the road to Ilikai began to notice and admire Aunty Pinau's banyan. The banyan tree became the nicest thing on the road to Ilikai. The first to take advantage of the tree were the mynah birds. They made straight for the highest branches where the leaves were the thickest. They came in flocks and set up housekeeping at once. And what a fuss they made! They squabbled and scolded and squawked while they settled down for the night, and they fussed and quarreled before the sun came up. But even though time and again Jo-Jo stood under the banyan and looked up into the dark canopy of green leaves to try to see the birds, he never once saw a single mynah bird. He could only hear their rustling and squawking.
It wasn't long before the lei-women from Ilikai found that the banyan tree was the coolest place to sit and string their leis. On boat-day they came in the early morning with their baskets of flowers. They strung long necklaces of carnations, pikake, plumeria, orchids, tuberoses, crown flowers, cigar flowers, marigolds, and pansies and hung them fresh and beautiful from the branches of the banyan until their fragrance filled the air.
In the afternoon the watermelon-women came with pick-up trucks loaded with ripe fruit. They would split a few melons in half and cover the dark red fruit with waxed paper and display it temptingly under the banyan on the road to Ilikai. All afternoon they would sit upon mats on the ground and wait patiently, hoping for someone to stop and buy.
Then after the watermelon-women left, Mr. Matsumoto came with his pie-wagon and parked it under the banyan. He even brought a small table and two wooden benches and placed them under the tree too. When the children from Ilikai School stopped by on their way home, he was ready for them. In the cooler he had stored large cubes of ice. With a handy iron claw, he scraped and scraped the ice until it was like half-melted snow. Then when the children put their pennies on the little shelf of the pie-wagon, Mr. Matsumoto scooped the shave-ice into paper cones and poured thick raspberry syrup over them so that the shave-ice turned a lovely pink, delicious and refreshingly cool. The children took their cones of shave-ice back to the wooden benches where they sat quietly enjoying their after-school treat.
After the children had gone home, Mr. Matsumoto built a fire in his charcoal stove. At first the charcoal just smoked, then it crackled and flamed, and finally it died down into hot glowing coals. Mr. Matsumoto took an aluminum pot filled with broth and placed it on the stove to simmer. Beside the pot sat a bowl of cooked noodles waiting to be ladled into the broth as soon as it was heated. While the fragrant broth simmered, he chopped green onion tops with a long sharp knife. These he would sprinkle on top of the broth when the fishermen came from Ilikai.
At sunset, just as the sky turned pale pink and green and one evening star came out, the fishermen came from Ilikai. How happy they were when they saw the banyan tree! They were glad to hear the mynah birds squabbling in the branches and to smell the broth bubbling gently in the pot. Hot, tired, and sunburned, they threw down their bamboo poles and unfastened their damp knapsacks and let them fall to the earth beneath the banyan. They sat down on the wooden benches and waited patiently for Mr. Matsumoto to serve them a kind of broth called saimin. Before serving them, Mr. Matsumoto sprinkled the broth with the green onion tops and gave each of them a pair of red lacquered chopsticks. The fishermen deftly picked out the noodles with their chopsticks and lifted the bowls to their lips and drank noisily.
After the sun went down behind the mountains, the fishermen picked up their poles and left for home. The banyan tree was left alone with the complaining mynah birds rustling in the top branches to wait for the dawn of a new day when the lei-women and watermelon-women, and Mr. Matsumoto and his pie-wagon, and the school children and fishermen would return again.
