Quaranteam - 808 State Ch. 01

"Evelyn Anuhea Leilani Kaleikaumaka Kopua, haole-boy, and Mitchell Kopua is my dad. You're on my property and you weren't invited. Get out of here before I shoot you." She looked to be a few inches shorter than him, and Mal didn't see a weapon on her, but with everyone in multiple layers, she could easily be carrying a concealed handgun. And if that were the case, her height was more or less irrelevant.

Mal spread his arms to show he didn't have anything in his hands. "Shit, woman. I'm not here for some stupid-ass pilikia -- there's already a serious problem -- your dad should have moved those cows days ago, and they're about to bust down the fence, they're so damn hungry. There's no grass left in the pasture!"

The woman paused. "Dad wouldn't leave the herd to go hungry. I haven't talked to him and Mom for a week, but the last time I did he said he was going to rotate them in a couple of days."

"Yeah, that's what I expected. I don't really know anything about cattle, but over the past few years, I've noticed when your dad rotates them in and out of the field behind me. He NEVER leaves them this long."

The young woman -- if Mal was remembering her correctly from the last luʻau, she was in her early twenties -- spotted Kat and Callie in Mal's car. "Oh, you're the haole guy who dad gave my useless pup Stormy to. Is that your daughter?"

Mal bristled. "Callie may not have been any good as a herding dog for cattle, but she's not useless. She's a Very Good Dog, and she is great at making sure her family is safe. Including my daughter - who she's very tolerant of and gentle with."

Evelyn's brow furrowed. "Sorry, that didn't come out how I meant. That pup, Callie? She was the sweetest puppy in her litter, and I loved her a lot. It killed me when she failed to respond to the basic commands -- I wondered if I'd coddled her too much, turned her into a pet. I'm glad she's well cared for, even if you changed her name."

"New name, new life. It's a lot easier for dogs than people. Look, I've rung the doorbell, knocked, and called on the phone -- you guys have cell service, even if I don't at my place. I heard the phone ringing, but nobody's answering. I was about to try and call 911 when I saw you driving up, cause there's got to be something wrong."

"Yeah, there's something wrong. I'm gonna hafta go in and kick dad's ass outta bed -- effin' lōlō makuakāne."

"Evelyn, wait! What about the pandemic? If your dad hasn't moved the cows, if you haven't been able to get ahold of him or your mom, if they haven't answered the door in all this time we've been out here? I think we should call 911 -- and I don't think you should go in there."

"Screw you. If my parents need help, I'm going to help them!"

"But what about the cows? If you get sick, who can take care of them? For all I know, they're already in my lot, and while it'll feed them for a while, eventually they'll need more -- and I don't want to live surrounded by five hundred cows and I don't know who else to call to make them move!" As Mal was pleading with the young woman, he was trying to keep himself between her and the house, while still trying to maintain a safe separation.

Evelyn was practically vibrating with tension -- a daughter's need to help her parents warred with the equally strong familial kuleana instilled to care for her family's herd and land. "Fuck!" The scream ripped from Evelyn's throat. The woman pulled a key off her keychain and wrapped it to a card with a rubber band. She tossed it to Mal as she half-sobbed while saying, "Call 911. Tell them there will be a key under the mat on the porch with my contact information. Put that there. I'm going to get the tractor."

She turned and started to walk toward the side of the house. She stopped and looked over her shoulder back at Mal. "And... Thank you."

Mal looked at the card -- it was her business card, listing her as the Chief Operations Officer of the Kopua Ranch LLC, along with her cell number. Mal took a picture of the card with his phone and then dialed 911 and when the exhausted-sounding operator answered, explained the situation.

The sound of a car window motoring down made him look up. "Daddy? Callie says she has to go potty. And I want a fruity-snack. Why did that lady scream before she walked away?"

Mal sighed, opened the door so the dog could jump out and relieve herself, and fished in the small cooler for a package of fruit gummies. "That was Uncle Mitch's daughter, Evelyn. She's upset because it might not be safe for her to go inside the house yet. She's going to go feed the cows, but we're going to have to wait here for a bit, honey. I want to make sure the paramedics come."

A diesel engine coughed and roared to life somewhere beyond the house. It continued to rumble, oscillating in pitch for some time, with Mal wondering what was going on. Callie finished her business, and nosed Mal's leg, looking for some pats, which she received. A few minutes later, Mal saw a tractor appear from behind the house with a solitary figure in the driver's seat, a round bale of hay speared on forks in the front. As it pulled up, the driver throttled the engine all the way down, so the roar became a (relatively) quiet grumble.

"Eh, haole-boy! Can you drive one tractor?"

"Maybe. I've driven a tractor similar to the one you're on a few times. But I'm not leaving my daughter here alone! And could you stop calling me boy? I'm probably almost twice your age -- you like me start calling you Auntie?"

"Good enough -- you should be okay on the hauler. It has an enclosed cab with passenger seats -- my kolohe cousins always ride in it when they come visit." Her face darkened for a moment. "Get your kid and my dog, and go get the other tractor. I already placed the bales on the trailer for it, but I need another driver, otherwise this will take me all day. We're gonna get the herd into the next pasture over. Problem is, that was the last one they were in, so there's not much for them to eat there. The lot they're in is at the end of a row, and the next one they should go to is about a day's walk away. I'll deal with that later, I just want to get them away from the fence, and get them some food."

"Two conditions. Number one: My name is Malcolm. I'll answer to it, or Mal, or Mr. Pilchard, or even Uncle Mal. Understand? Otherwise, I get in my car and drive home. If the cows end up in my yard, I'll call the sheriff and animal control. Parker Ranch would probably be quite happy to board a few hundred head and up-charge the owner for the transport and feed later."

"Fine." The girl then muttered something else under her breath -- Mal couldn't hear it, but based on context he was certain the phrase "effin' haole" was involved. "Mister. Pilchard. I thought you said you didn't know who to call? What's the second condition?"

"I don't know who to call to get them moved without screwing things up for your dad. I've lived out here for nearly a decade -- I know who to call for abandoned or unknown escaped cattle. Piss me off enough and I'll make that call. Hell, I'll drive to town to report it if I have to. Second condition: Callie is MY dog. Not yours. I want that to be crystal clear -- your dad didn't give her to me, I paid for her, but he wouldn't sell her until he was certain that I'd take good care of her. So while I get that you had a bond with her when she was a pup, that was then. This is now. My daughter is her Number One Human, although Callie isn't quite as single-person as most heelers can be." The girl's eyes began to widen as he made his statement, and she seemed to wilt a bit as he concluded.

Mal didn't intend to be so sharp with the girl, but she was really working to push his buttons. He didn't really care too much about being called "haole"; while some on the receiving end took it as a slur, and certainly, some who said it meant it as a slur, likely including Evelyn, it was how he typically described himself -- "local haole-boy from Kahaluʻu, over on the Windward side of Oʻahu" -- with the latter part only having to be added once he moved to the Big Island. It certainly confused mainlanders, who uniformly believed that haole was ALWAYS a racial slur, and didn't understand that there were "haoles" and "haoles" -- with the former mostly being those born and raised in the islands, and the latter tourists or transplants. Though if a latter-category haole lived in Hawaiʻi long enough, and made the effort to integrate well, they usually moved from the latter to the former.

Evelyn's attitude, and her backhanded referral to Callie as "her" dog was what really rankled him. She clearly had some complex feelings there, but fuck it, she wasn't his family, and while he respected her dad, Mal didn't have to coddle her. At the same time, he was pretty sure that her mom and dad were inside the house, hopefully just too sick to answer the door or phone, but probably not.

"Look, Evelyn. I'm sorry. I didn't mean to sound so harsh there. Let's get those cows moved, and then I'll go home, and hopefully when your dad feels better we can come and visit and laugh about you threatening to shoot me. Or, if you'd like, once we're on the other side of this pandemic, you can come visit Callie." Before Mal had even finished talking, Evelyn had throttled the tractor back up, leaving Mal uncertain if she'd even heard the offer.

As Evelyn backed the tractor up to turn it around, Mal motioned for Katherine to get out of the car. The little girl hopped out, and Callie immediately took a flanking position on her. Mal waited until the tractor moved a bit away, so he wouldn't have to shout to his daughter, and then told her that they were going to help "Miss Evelyn" with the cows, and that she had a tractor she needed someone to drive. "But it's sounds like it's a kinda big complicated tractor, honey, I think I might need help from you and Callie to keep an eye out for everything while I drive it -- Miss Evelyn said it has an enclosed cab, so it should be a bit quieter than her tractor, and we can all ride safely. Sound fun?"

"Let's go Daddy!" Katherine grabbed Mal's gloved hand and started pulling him in the direction Evelyn and her tractor had gone.

The trio walked around to the back of the house, and sure enough, there was a largish enclosed cab tractor set up to tow a hay-bale loaded trailer.

Mal found a spot where Kat and Callie could sit and wait while he could keep an eye on them and took a quick glance around the tractor-trailer combo, looking for any flat tires or dripping fluids, or other obvious signs of trouble. He then lifted the pair up into the vehicle's cabin and climbed in after them. Evelyn was right, the hauler's control console was straightforward, and presently Mal had the engine on and rumbling. The machine had plenty of power available, and the brakes seemed to grab well, but Mal made a mental note not to get too complacent -- he had some experience driving with a trailer, but that was on blacktop, and then typically backing down a boat-ramp. Off-roading with a trailer would be a new experience, and he didn't want to get in over his head -- especially not with his daughter in the cab with him.

"Buckle in, honey, and Callie, you hop up on the seat next to Kat." He patted the seat so the cattle dog understood.

"HRNK-HRNK!" The horn on the other tractor blared, and then Evelyn's voice crackled out of the dash-mounted radio. "Are you ready already? Can we go feed my cows?"

"We're ready -- I'll follow you, Evelyn, but please, not too fast. I haven't off-roaded with a trailer before."

"Understood. I'll try and keep us on the access roads. It'll be mostly unpaved -- but not too much across pastures."

The little convoy started off, and it wasn't too long before Kat had unbuckled and had her nose pressed to the side glass of the cabin, watching as the fields cruised by. "This is so neat Daddy! I can't wait to tell Mommy about this tonight! And we're going to go feed the cows! Can we take one home with us?"

Mal chuckled, "No, honey, remember, these are Uncle Mitch's cows, and I would really prefer that they stay on HIS land. Besides, think of how much bigger than Callie the cows are - do you really want to have to pick up giant cow turds out of the lawn?"

"Eewww, Daddy! That's gross! But they're cow PIES, Daddy, 'member? And no, I don't want to pick them up. Let's not take a cow home, after all." The little girl's brow furrowed. "But wait. The cow pies in the up-field pasture don't get picked up -- they just sit there and eventually get all dry and sorta fall apart, or when it rains, they turn into mud. How come Uncle Mitch doesn't have to pick them up?"

As they drove, Mal explained to his daughter how cow droppings helped the pastures grow new grass after the cows had eaten the old, and then had to convince the little girl that their lawn really didn't need THAT sort of improvement.

Presently, after considerable bumping and jostling over gravel roads and (as promised) not too many pastures, they arrived at the pasture next to the one adjacent to Mal's lot. Evelyn had him stop the hauler and wait while she unloaded the hay bales, then move along a way until she told him to stop again -- someone from above could have seen a very busy small tractor spearing hay bales and lifting them off the trailer before darting away to place them and return for another load.

Once all the bales had been unloaded, Evelyn left the hay forks on the trailer and directed Mal to take the hauler and trailer back through the gate to the access road, and to radio her when he was clear and the gate was shut. Mal left enough room for the smaller tractor to come through, and then closed the gate and let Evelyn know. During the offloading, the cows in the adjoining pasture had noticed the activity, and in particular the hay bales, and had come to the fence between the two. When Evelyn pulled the gate open with the tractor, the herd began to steadily press through, the hungry cows heading for the tasty alfalfa rolls.

Mal, Kat, and Callie watched from the fenceline as the entire herd moved from one pasture to the next. Well, to be fair, after about 3 minutes of watching, Kat began to wander around looking for curious rocks and other things of interest to a 4-year old. Sticks, grass, leaves, etc. Mal kept one eye on her and one on the activity in the field. Seeing Evelyn's tractor heading for their location, Mal called Kat over and lifted her and Callie back into the hauler. He waited by the pasture gate, and pulled it open as Evelyn approached, swinging it shut once she cleared it. She nodded to him as he headed back to his tractor.

Once he was in, the radio crackled, "Thanks, but you didn't have to wait for me."

Mal pressed the transmit button, "I figured you had it handled, but I wasn't too keen on retracing the route without you -- your ranch is big enough I could get seriously lost out here."

Evelyn laughed -- sadly -- over the radio, "Yeah, we had a lot more cattle once, but with the pandemic, Dad felt he needed to downsize the herd to what he could manage on his own. I hope it won't take us too long to build stock back up once they figure out a vaccine for this thing and we can all go back to living. I'm so freaking sick of online classes and not seeing anyone in person. You know, this is the closest human interaction I've had in months?"

"I know what you mean. Katherine and I have basically been living in a bubble since this started. Gwen -- my wife, Kat's mom -- is a pharmacist in Hilo, and since she's classified as "essential," she has to go into work every day. They have precautions, separated work rooms, wellness checks, staggered start and end times, no in-person contact between customers and staff, but because of the risk, she's been isolating in a separate part of the house this whole time. Sometimes, I have to drag myself to bed; I'll sit and stare at the door to her part of the house, wishing I could see her, hug her, hold her again. It's well past old now. There are days where I think about chopping down the door, just so it doesn't exist anymore. But then I remind myself that if Kat got sick, I'd never forgive myself."

"You know, I've been hearing rumors the pandemic is way worse for men than for women or kids -- I don't think Katherine or Gwen are who you should be worrying about, Mr. Pilchard. And I dunno about Gwen, but if I were in her place, and you went all Shining on the door to my part of the house, I'd shoot you, just on general principles."

Mal could hear some humor in her voice when she made the threat, and figured he could respond with a little teasing back, "We really need to figure out why you keep wanting to shoot me - I'm not sure what I've done other than help feed your cows."

"Yes, and thank you, mister haole colonizer. It's a little disconcerting, seeing one haole man standing in front of my parents house during a pandemic. I thought you might be casing the place, and figured I needed to spook you and make sure you didn't decide to come back later."

"Well, I'm not in the habit of breaking and entering other people's houses, and certainly not when my little girl is in the car."

"Well, I didn't see your little girl in the car at first, Mr. Pilchard. Was a little focused on the threat you posed. And, what's that about 'other' people's houses? Lock yourself out often, do you?"

Mal grin-grimaced. "Yeah, from time to time. Usually, when I'm just running into the yard to check on something -- I don't bring my keys, cause I ain't actually going nowhere, and then I twist the lock on my way out the door. I always realize it right as the door latch clicks. And then I have to break in, since leaving a key in an outside lockbox around here..."

"Hello, thieves, help yourselves! Hold up, my phone is buzzing."

Mal slowed the hauler and waited as Evelyn answered her phone. The woman spoke, then listened for a while, growing visibly agitated at what she was being told. Suddenly, she threw her tractor back into gear and sped away. Mal told Kat to buckle herself in and followed at as fast a speed as he was comfortable with. Fortunately, they were most of the way back to the ranch house, and even though Mal lost sight of Evelyn's tractor, he just followed the gravel access road, and ended up back where they had started.

He killed the engine, then got out and helped Kat and Callie down. "Honey, I want you to hold onto Callie's leash tightly, and stay right by me. We're going to go see what's going on, and then I think we'll be heading home."

"Okay, Daddy. Is Auntie Evvy okay? You guys sounded like you were having fun talking, until her phone rang. What's a colonizer? And we were "casing the place"? I thought we were here to talk to Uncle Mitch?"

Mal guided the trio around to the front of the house, answering Kat's questions as they went. "I dunno, sweetie, and you're right, we were having fun -- joking a bit with each other, I think. A colonizer is someone who moves somewhere else, where other people already live. And no, we weren't "casing the place", honey, we were here to try and see why Uncle Mitch hadn't moved the cows."

A pair of ambulances sat in front of the house, and Evelyn was talking with a hazmat-suited individual. As Mal came within earshot he heard Evelyn say, "... allowed in to see them?!"

"I'm sorry, Miss, but your parents are critically ill, and highly infectious -- we aren't going to be able to allow any visitors. They're being secured in mobile bio-containment units, and after the exteriors are sterilized, you can see them before we take them to the Hilo Pandemic Medical Quarantine Center. I have to warn you -- the disease isn't kind, and your parents are unconscious. Which is a blessing at this point."