Embry and I rented a car and drove to Liduduhniap Falls near Kolonia on Pohnpei. Not that near actually, it was up a long dirt road that was hard for us to find. The guidebook had said there was a store at the end of the road by the falls, and that you should pay a dollar to the storekeeper to use the falls. So we get up there, and there's not a soul in sight, a pair of rudimentary Micronesian buildings, though none of them looks particularly like a store. There's the sound of a radio or TV from one of the buildings, we walk over there, and there's a bare-breasted brown-skinned woman asleep on the ground. No matter how low you set your expectations of formality, the Micronesians continue to slip under it. We went swimming in the waterfall pool, which was great, exciting to have the water beat down on you, a feeling of healing there, the two old boys together in the swimming hole.
When we came back up it was raining and we ran under a kind of pavilion across the street from the house where the woman had been sleeping on the ground. Standing in the open pavilion we realize its a house. There's a raised U-shaped concrete platform, with tree trunks set into it holding up the slanting roof of corrugated tin. Along one side is a counter holding pots and pans — a kitchen. On the rear side is a mattress. The sleeping quarter. This is a house. Some people come out of the house across the street, and now the sleeping woman is up and at 'em. She's pulled her elastic-waisted flower-printed skirt up a bit to cover her breasts. (These skirts are what all the women wear, very brightly colored, usually with a zigzag edge at the bottom, made in the Philippines. I ended up getting two of them, one actually locally made by the cousin of the girl I bought it from.) We give her the two dollars, she's friendly. Her son lives in Arlington, Texas, she says. I don't have the heart to ask if he's in the military, who seem to scooping up so many of the Micronesian youths. It's maybe one of the only ways out into the wider world for them.