Torch Ginger by Toby Neal Page B

shouted.
    “I said, if you can’t get across the bridge tomorrow, you can go out to Ha`ena and canvass the park dwellers,” Jenkins yelled over the roar of the rain. “They’ll all be snug in their tents.”
    “Sounds about as fun as a root canal,” Lei said. “Wow, this rain is coming down.”
    “Kaua`i does have one of the highest rainfall counts in the world,” Jenkins said. “Guess we get to see it firsthand.”
    “I better go talk to my landlady about what they do when it floods. I know it happens every year, so they must have it figured out.”
    “Hope you make it in tomorrow.”
    “Me too. There’s not much we can do now. Keep in touch.” Lei closed the phone. She turned to her father, who was cleaning off the stove. “I better go talk to the Abacans about flood control.”
    “Good idea.”
    Lei went out the front door and found her rubber boots, banging them upside down to scare out any insects. Sure enough, a cockroach fluttered away. Roaches and centipedes tended to hide wherever it was dry in the islands. She stuck her sock-covered feet into the clammy boots and took a clear plastic rain poncho from a hook on the door. She threw it on over her robe and squelched across the saturated grass to the neighbors’ house.
    Lei knocked on the door, but the rain on the roof muffled the sound, so she pounded. Charles Abacan, Mrs. Abacan’s son, opened the door. He was a tall man for a Filipino, with a basketball belly that strained his undershirt and chin whiskers like antennae. Lei averted her eyes.
    “Where’s Mrs. Abacan?”
    “Come to talk about the flooding? Mama doesn’t know anything more than I do, which is that it looks like it’s going to flood.”
    Lei looked at him with dislike. He was in the midst of a divorce and had come home a few weeks ago, bringing children who clustered behind him, staring at her. Alcohol fumes wafted her way—and it was pretty early in the morning to be drinking.
    “Well, what do you do to get ready?”
    “Mostly the river floods below us. We’re on a bank above where it flattens out and curves at the bridge. That’s where it floods, spreads out over the taro fields and just flows through the valley till it hits the ocean. But every three or four years it comes up under the houses. You see the pylons your house is on?”
    He pointed with a dirty forefinger. She looked back through the pouring rain.
    “Well, that’s the flood control. Comes right up under the house but won’t wash you away.”
    “Great,” Lei muttered.
    He cupped his hand around his ear. “What’s that?”
    “Nothing. Think I’ll move my truck though.” They both looked at where it was parked in front of the house in a low area off the pavement. Mrs. Abacan appeared, wiping her hands on her apron.
    “Why don’t you come in, dry off?” she asked.
    “No, thanks. I’m fine.” Lei wasn’t about to stand around in her robe in front of Charles. “Good to know the house is flood proof.”
    “I wouldn’t call it flood proof, more like flood prepared,” Charles said. “Come on over if you want company.”
    “Thanks, but we’re fine.” She retreated off the porch to move her truck, and parked it on the opposite side of the road against the elevated bank. She made her way back to the cottage. The rain continued to thunder down.
    She sloshed through the yard and toward the river. The chocolate-brown water had risen several feet and lapped hungrily at her lawn.
    “Everything okay?” her father called from the back porch.
    “We’re going to have a flood. Other than that, terrific.” She climbed onto the porch and hung up the streaming poncho, and pried the wet boots off her feet.
    Wayne handed her a towel and she rubbed her disordered curls into an even more riotous mess. She hung the towel up on the back of the chair, went into the bathroom, and squirted some Curl Tamer into her palm. She walked back out as she squished it into her unruly hair. Her father watched this with