4:57 P.M., Monday, July 13, 2015

PLUR-MAkKikM, just outside Honolulu, HI

The day had started normally enough: Ted Michaels’ cousin Rosi and her fiancé John were staying for a couple of days and they had offered to fix dinner. Having fallen short of mangos, Rosi had asked Ted to go pick a few and John, charged with dessert, had added figs to nature’s grocery list. There were several spots on Ted’s land where he could pick mangos OR figs, but only one spot where they grew close together. So, still thinking of this as a perfectly normal day, the man had headed off to pick fruit. Then...

Then he had walked in on two children in the midst of love making, a nine-year-old boy had pulled a knife on him, and the little girl had offered him a blow job, which he declined. The offer had been in exchange for Ted letting them go and not calling the police.

“If I just walk off and don’t call the cops,” Ted asked, “where will you go? You won’t stay here, because you don’t know if I might call the cops after all. You can’t go home because ... I’m sorry, I don’t remember the details of your story.”

The little boy sneered. “You’re so smart, YOU tell us where we should go.”

“Well, I’m not sure.” Ted scratched his head. “Seems to me I’ve got three things I can do: one, I can call the cops right now. You’ll run off before they get here, of course, but at least they won’t be looking for you in California.”

The children looked appropriately worried, so Ted continued.

“Two, I can tell you ‘get off my property,’ and you will, to avoid the police, and I can just forget I ever saw you. Problem is, if I do that, I’m making it harder for you to survive; I could be sending you to your deaths. I wouldn’t feel good about that.”

“You talk a lot,” the girl pointed out.

“Several people have told me that I should go into either show business or politics,” Ted admitted.

“So, what’s the third thing you can do?” Paul asked.

“Three, I can let you stay here, at least for a while. You’ll be safe, and if I ever do call the police you can make a run for it then as easy as you can now. At least you’ll have time to make a plan.”

Paula and Paul looked at each other. When they looked back at Ted he was walking over to the hut.

“I didn’t even see this at first,” the grown man stated. “If you’d been inside sleeping or something I’d’ve walked right by and never known.”

“Please don’t tear it down,” the little girl pleaded. “We worked real hard on it.”

“Oh, I’m not going to tear it down,” the man assured them, “even if you leave. I think it’s remarkable.”

The hut was not quite five feet high (about 1.45 metres). It was about five feet long and nearly five and a half feet in the other direction (about 1.5 by 1.6 metres). It was covered in leaves and so blended into the forest that one could indeed walk past it by a dozen feet or so (3.7 metres) and never know. The roof was covered in overlapping leaves and...

“Are those grocery bags?” Ted asked. “Plastic grocery bags?”

“Yeah,” the boy answered. “It’s to make the roof waterproof.”

“Do they work? We had a downpour two nights ago.”

The little girl nodded. “It didn’t leak. But the ground was wet, so some got on us.”

The grown man looked at the hut again, and then at the two children.

“I’m really quite impressed,” he told them. “I have a friend who’s an architect, and I bet even he’d be impressed. How old are you two?”

The children glanced at each other.

“Nine,” they said together.

“I don’t know what you two want to be when you grow up,” Ted chuckled, “but if you wanted to go into construction, you’re off to a great start.”

“Well that’s nice,” the boy said, “but all we really want is to stay together.”

Suddenly Ted was on these kids’ side. A second ago he wasn’t sure there was a side to take, and if there was, he was probably on the side of parents who had to be scared out of their minds that their children were missing. He still had compassion for those parents, but lovers should not be separated against their will. That must be why they were running away. Well, maybe something could be worked out, but first Ted Michaels needed to know more.

“Who’s trying to keep you apart? Is it your parents, because they say you’re too young? Is it ... well I’ll shut up and let you answer.”

The little boy spoke first. “Our parents are in prison. Weed. And Child Protective Services ... well they don’t care if we love each other.”

“They want to adopt or foster us out,” the little girl added. “And they don’t care if the people live close or far or in different states or what!”

“How are we supposed to stay together,” the boy asked, “if one of us goes to some family here in Hawaii and the other one goes to some family in Minnesota or something?”

The kid had a point. If they were a brother and sister, perhaps they would only be fostered out as a package deal, but Ted had figured out already that these two were NOT brother and sister. Boyfriend and girlfriend ... well few adult authority figures would care about the romance of a couple of nine-year-olds. But Ted cared. They wanted to be together enough to live in the woods and sleep in the rain. Their love was a very real thing, because you don’t do that for just anybody.

And you don’t offer to blow a stranger for just anybody, either.

“Alright then,” Ted told the child-couple, “the most important thing is to keep you together. Usually I’d say the most important thing is your safety, but if you get split up, you’ll run away to find each other, so keeping you together keeps you safe.”

The boy lowered neither his guard nor his weapon, and the girl looked skeptical. It was the boy who asked an obvious question.

“Why should we trust you?”

“That’s a good question,” Ted granted. “I’ve got a good question too: who else do you have to trust? You’ll trust each other, naturally, but what if another adult discovers you? Any reason to think you can trust him any more than you can me?”

Paula had an answer for that. “Maybe we can’t trust him or you either one.”

“Maybe not,” Ted admitted, “but I’ve already found you, and the other guy hasn’t. You only have to worry about one adult.”

The kids looked at him narrowly; the man had a point, but that didn’t make him trustworthy.

“OK look,” the man told them, “your biggest fear isn’t that some grown-up will hurt you; your biggest fear is that some grown-up will rat you out and you’ll wind up back at Child Protective Services or juvenile detention or something. And you’re scared of that because, well you told me why: they might split you up.”

Both children nodded.

“And I could do that,” Ted continued. “I could rat you out. But I won’t. What I’m going to do is let you stay, hire a bunch of lawyers, and set it up so you can stay together. I’ll either find somebody to take you both, or you’ll stay here. And I’m not telling anybody you’re here ‘till we get something worked out.”

“Why would you do that?” Paula asked. “You don’t even know us.”

Ted smiled. “Because you’re in love. And I love love. If you two split up on your own, well that happens sometimes, but you should have every chance to make it work. You could break up tomorrow, or you could be together until you’re both past a hundred years old. But that should be up to YOU.”

“Do you really mean that?” Paul asked.