A Novel by Kawika A. Stafford

Chapter 25

“Daddy what is that?” Little Raye asked. The little girl struggled to close the car door. “I got it little lady.” Sonny Ray smiled as he took his daughters hand. After a short walk from the empty and quiet parking lot, Sonny Ray walked to his father’s grave. Sonny Ray noticed something unusual as they were approaching his dad’s headstone. Then he realized his daughter had asked him a question when they were at the car. “I’m sorry honey what did you ask daddy earlier?”

“Oh it was just a big bird flying around. Did you see it daddy?” little Raye asked, looking upwards with her right hand above her eyebrows. “No baby, I missed it I guess.” Sonny Ray and his young daughter stood at the foot of his dad’s resting place.

Sonny Ray stood solemnly, as his only child leaned in close, sensing her father’s sadness. He turned his attention to the inverted cone – shaped pit at the base of the white marble headstone of his father. It was an unusual location to see one. It was perhaps a foot in circumference. Every grain of sand was in place. Sonny Ray smiled.

Now he remembered.

As a kid living in Waimea, his mom and aunty Winnie would take him, his cousins, and his brothers and baby sister down to Kawaihae Harbor to swim and play. All the local kids used to catch ants and drop them into the sand lion pits they would come across. The kids at the beach would gather around to watch with grave intent, as the ants would disappear, soundless into the abyss of sand lion death.

Unexpectedly, little Raye had asked her father for permission to pick a few wild flowers growing near the fence of the cemetery. After explaining cemetery etiquette to his five year old, little Raye went on to embark on one of her first solo adventures.

Sonny Ray turned his attention to the sand lion pit. He started to fill it in with his foot when he noticed a slight movement at the bottom of the pit. A little more sand moved, and then again. He began to scan the immediate area around his father’s grave and began a search for a hard working, blue collar, custodian of the earth type of ant. Finding one, he gently plucked it from the grass. “Sorry partner but you have been selected to be the next contestant on; escaping the sand lions lair,”

Sonny Ray said in his best game show host voice ever.

He spoke at a volume slightly above a whisper so as not to have his daughter question his cognitive stability at a later date.

Sonny Ray carefully placed the ant on the edge of sand lion country. The ant, though perhaps being the hardest worker on the planet, was not necessarily overly keen to the concept of situational awareness. It promptly walked down to the bottom of the pit to face a certain and prescribed end. There. He saw it again.

The dance of death had begun.

Little grains of sand began to move with incidental stir; as the sand lion tied his apron, and began sharpening its sickle-shaped mandibles. The end for Mr. Ant was eminent. Sonny Ray focused his attention to the bottom of the sand lion arena, not wanting to miss a thing.

The sand suddenly began to move violently, as the face of Sonny Ray’s father emerged from the bottom of the pit. Sonny Ray heard himself gasp, as his father’s face; blackened and ashy, was clearly seen. He looked around wildly for his daughter. She could not be found.

A shadow crossed over his father’s grave.

Sonny Ray raised his eyes upward, and saw a large black eagle circling in a slow tight spiral.

He again looked into the pit of the sand lion. Sand continued to cover his dead father’s eyes, but his mouth began to speak. “No he’s not Sonny Ray, no he’s not, I am,

I am Sonny Ray.”

Sonny Ray’s eyes opened suddenly. He was confused and disoriented. Nothing was adding up. Sonny Ray was becoming convinced that as a result of his father’s death, he must be experiencing

some type of psychotic break or episode.

He needed some answers.

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