The shriek of the brakes as we pulled into each station unnerved me, and the drumbeat of the train along the tracks took on a pounding, reproving tone. No escape on my part, it seemed to say, could bring back my daughter-and nothing else seemed important. I sat there wondering what her voice might have sounded like … tried to imagine the shape of her smile, or how her eyes might have caught the morning light. I tortured myself with all the infinite lost possibilities until at last I felt the train slow and heard the conductor call out, “Next stop, Honolulu!”-the end of the line, nowhere else to run. I got up and disembarked the train. Outside, clutching my suitcase, I stood blinking for a moment in the shade of the gabled railroad depot. Now that I was here, where was here? I found myself facing a commercial street crowded with storefronts, ordinary but for what loomed behind: the spent volcano crater known as Punchbowl. It looked a bit like one of the many hills surrounding Pojogae, but with its summit disturbingly lopped off, as if by some giant’s blade.
