For the next two days I just stayed in bed.  I was depressed and full of dread about the future.  At one point I cracked the curtain open and bright sunlight came streaming into the room.  It took my eyes a little while to adjust.  When they did, I saw a bald-headed, shirtless freak making his way towards the hostel.  When I wanted to use the bathroom, someone had locked themselves in.  All I could hear was the crinkling of a plastic bag.  It must’ve been the tweaker from the day before. 

It was time to move into a regular dorm room for the remainder of my trip.  I went down to the lobby after check out time and the woman working at the desk set me up in a room on the top floor.  Someone had just checked out so a bottom bunk was open.  I stashed my things on it and went down to the park with my ukelele.  So far, I had played it on the south side of Oahu and both the east and west coasts of the Big Island.  The next day I would take it up to the North Shore to make sure I got all four directions in.

There was a picnic table beneath a banyan tree close to the zoo that had become my spot.  It was off the beaten track so rarely occupied.  Sometimes people would pass by and flash me a shaka sign, meaning hang loose, or right on.  Though I hadn’t made many connections and considered the trip to be a failure in a lot of ways, almost everyone had been generous when they saw me sitting there playing a ukelele with no ulterior motive.  It was what I was born to do, come hell or high water. 

That evening I was still in the park, when I heard some loud music coming from the sea and walked over to investigate.  It was a hula group, two drums and an electric ukelele, practicing their dance in the diminishing daylight.  There must’ve been fifty dancers, slowly fading from sight in the enveloping darkness.  It felt like I’d stumbled across a procession of night marchers, the ghosts of Hawaiian warriors and ancestors.  According to legend, they begin their march at sunset and continue until sunrise.

You can identify the night marchers by the sound of conch shells and the sight of torches that grow larger as they draw closer.  There is also supposed to be a foul odor that accompanies them, that of death.  To run into them is deadly.  Barriers cannot stop them.  The only way to be saved from a violent death is to prostrate oneself on the ground.  There is a chance too that one of the marchers will recognize you and call out to spare your life. 

I was born in Hawaii and had a ukelele strapped to my back.  Did that mean I was one of them?  No.  I had missed out on too many formative experiences when we’d moved to the mainland.  Would I ever be considered an honored guest, however.  Perhaps, that day would come.  Hawaii might recognize me yet.