Wolohu’s Sunday School: Part 2

Wahanui

Wolohu’s Sunday School. Read here, or buy at Amazon.

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Part 1

Part 2

Part 3

Chapter Eight

Hi’ilawe, 1963

A boy jumped in and swam for the coil of rope floating in the sunlit sea. He brought the line to the barge, where it was cinched up tight. Soon, the huge sacks of sugar came creaking and rumbling down the rope from the loading shed high atop the sea cliffs, and were loaded onto the wallowing barge that would take them on to Hilo.

Men were lowered from the barge into the heaving boat. They pulled on the oars, and the boat made its way through the chop to the old pier. Though it was late morning, the town was steeped in shadow, the sun still far from clearing the steep walls that hemmed in the valley of Hi’ilawe. Two men, Kaipo Wongham and his half-wit brother Herman, climbed aboard the old rattletrap to begin the long ride along the rutted road that led up the valley to the plantation.

The truck bumped along as it ascended the valley, and Kaipo squinted as it emerged from the shadow into the sunlight that flooded the upper reaches of the valley. Guava branches lashed the sides of the truck, their freight of ripe fruit spattering into the dust that swirled up and hung in a tawny haze in their wake. The heat rose with the sun. Kaopo mopped the grime and sweat from his forehead, and looked about as the keawe scrub gave way to brakes of emerald cane that rustled listlessly in the sun. An hour later, they pulled into the cluster of buildings and tiny houses and sheds and stores that was the plantation community.

The air was sultry and thick, brimming with sun and humming with dragonflies, whose blue pencil bodies hovered on wings of black lace. They darted and danced among great unruly growths of ixora and ilima, tendrils of white hibiscus, and clumps of lemon yellow crotons. Mango trees dripped piney sap that, in the cloying humidity, drew hordes of fruit flies to the smashed fruit lying about its trunk, and herb gardens thick with rosemary and creosote-scented rue drowsed in the heat. The tiny pineboard houses were identical, except for their paint. Some were painted forest green and others simply whitewashed. Most had roofs that were rusted red.

The two brothers went to the super’s office and sat down on the long wooden bench in the hallway. “Just keep it quiet with your damn stories!” Kaipo said.

Herman looked at him, pretending not to understand.

“They don’t care what kind big shot you are. They not hiring big shot! They hiring people for cut cane, that’s all.”

“Okay,” said Herman. “I won’t say nothing.”

“That’s right. No more stories. ‘Cause if you no can get one job for cut cane, you no can get one job for do nothing! And I’m going have to take care of you the rest of your life, you understand? So don’t even open you mouth, except for say ‘Yes sir!’ or ‘No sir!’ If you start telling stories, I’m going slap your head!”

“Okay. I’m not going say nothing. No stories.”

Soon a man came up to the window. “You guys here for work?” he asked.

“Yeah. Both of us. I’m Kaipo. This my brother Herman. They said you folks was hiring.”

They went in and sat down. Herman looked straight ahead, smiling sweetly.

“You guys have any experience?”

“Sure, get plenty!” Herman started. “When we was kids—”

“Herman, I going explain, okay? Nevah mind, okay? I going tell him!”

“Well, we used to go our auntie’s farm,” Kaipo continued. “We helped cut the hay, feed the horse. We did all kine odd jobs around the place. Nothing special, but all day long was hard work. I don’t know nothing about cut cane, but we like work outside, work hard.”

“Yeah, I don’t mind work hard… but I not going feed no hoss!” Herman said. “Last time you wen’ try feed da buggah, he wen’ kick you over here!” He pointed to his groin and agonized.

“Eh, shaddup already!” Kaipo said.

“Thas’ why you said it never work!” Herman persisted. “But you girlfriend too ugly, thas’ why doesn’t work!” He made a face, grimaced like a baboon, then drew his hands over his foolish grin.

“Shaddup!” Kaipo hissed. “He don’t wanna hear this kine crap!”

The super intervened. “Comedian, yeah?”

“Yeah. No,” Kaipo protested. “He’s a straight guy. Really. He won’t give you no trouble.”

The super looked skeptical.

“Well, we need men. It’s hard work. Sun’s hot. The pay’s lousy– ten cents an hour. But the beds are clean and the food’s pretty good– depending which dorm you stay. We take good care of our people. However, some of our people don’t take such good care of themselves. They drink. They make trouble. They get accident. But if you keep your nose clean, you can make some money, and you can save it. We feed you, we take care of you, we give you place to stay. You don’t gotta spend nothing. So maybe someday you can do something else. You want it?”

“Yeah, we want it.”

“Okay. But I don’t want no monkey business. If you guys do your job and no make trouble, then okay. But I’m going tell you once, that’s all. This place not some amusement park. You get up at five, you put in a full day. You eat supper at six-thirty. Then your time is your own, ‘til nine. Then lights out. No drinking. If you get caught drinking, that’s it, you’re fired! You understand?” They nodded their agreement. Herman stared vacantly straight ahead, said nothing.

“You understand?” the super repeated.

He snapped to, glanced at him, and nodded.

“Okay. Then Robert going show you guys where to bunk. Monday morning you report here six o’clock, sharp. I’ll introduce you to Masa. You going work for him.”

They made their way through the camp to a long, low building built on stilts, plantation-style, so the water wouldn’t flood in when it rained hard.

It was Saturday, and most of the men had just finished the last shift of the week and were either at their bunks or headed to the bath-house, and Robert looked around to find a couple of empty bunks. “Well, looks like this the place for you guys. Home sweet home. Eh, Joe! What mama-san going feed you guys for lunch?”

“Shoyu chicken… or who knows, maybe shoyu chicken.”

“Okay. There you have it, if you guys can hold out ‘til lunchtime. Joe, you can show these guys around, show ‘em where stuff is? Give ‘em the grand tour, okay?”

By and by they had lunch, just rice and shoyu chicken. But they ate plenty! After lunch, they put away what few things and clothes they had, and sat down on their beds.

“You guys like go look around?” Joe said.

“I like take one nap,” Kaipo said. “Herman, you go. Can tell me all about it later, yeah?”

The island of Hawai’i was being constantly reinvented, its long slopes buried and reburied under the flows of a’a from Mauna Loa. The flows snaked down the flanks of the great mountain, kicking up enormous clouds of steam as they poured into the sea, clouds that condensed and rained down on the lush farmland. The lava sprouted grasses, then grew shrubs and scrubby trees, and in time it was re-forested and then de-forested again to be planted in sugar.

It was sweltering, brutal work, hacking down shrubs and setting fire to stretches of dry pili grass that cast up clouds of sooty smoke that blocked out the sun and choked the men. They cut the cane by day, and burned the rubbish in cane fires that crackled and glowed in the sooty night. In the morning, they came in and picked up the unburned trash and loaded it onto carts, picking over the fields to make sure that every piece of cane was picked up and sent to the mill.

Amidst a backdrop of emerald cane fields, brown and black lava patches, smoking, foggy uplands, and the robin’s egg blue of sea and sky, the men who had come so far from their families still thought their surroundings dreary. Their aches and inner desolation made this place seem bitter. They slapped at mosquitoes and yellowjackets, sweated under the sun, choked on clouds of cane smoke and fly ash, and flailed away at cane brakes under the watchful eye of the lunas.

But nobody ever starved here. Come Sunday after church, when the people put on a real spread, there was just no end to it. Everyone from all different camps came– Koreans, Japanese, Filipinos, and so on. They each brought something that was special for them. This Sunday it was all laid out under the beach grape trees next to the ball field. The imu and the big kettle drum filled with charcoal were both going, and kids turned the chicken with tongs on the kettle drum. The smoke drifted through the needles of the ironwood trees at the edge of the ball field, where families sat around on beach mats under canvas tarps on poles anchored by guy wires, and old Japanese obaa-san milled around in the shade of a nearby trees, their great-grandsons strapped to their backs.

The imu, piled high with keawe wood charcoal and beach boulders, put out clouds of heat shimmer and steam from the banana leaves that lined the pit. Just that morning, they had led the hog out to the lava flats by the sea. There they had cut its vein. Squealing pitiably, the animal staggered and careened among the ropes of pahoehoe. After it collapsed, the last of its lifeblood drained out to be washed away by the sea spray. The men hoisted it onto the plank, gutted it, cleaned its viscera and packed it into a plastic bucket to use later for sausage casing.

They tied up its trotters and brought the hog, suspended from a bamboo pole, to the imu, and lowered it into the pit onto an underlying net of chicken wire. Chicken wire meat was the best, the kind that stuck to the wire mat after it was unrolled from the cooked hog. The hog yawned improbably over the rock in its maws, and other rocks were jimmied into cavities between its shoulders and neck. It cooked all morning, and the men gently raked the ashes of the keawe wood and turned the imu stones with long tongs and a spade.

For that one day, it was great, sitting under the trees, eating pig and drinking sodas, talking story, dozing, playing ball.

“Eh!” Joe said. “Let’s go!”

Herman looked up at him, not comprehending the nature or intent of the imperative.

“Go where?” Herman said.

“C’mon! I like show you one good place, for catch fish.” He winked, then jerked his head to one side.

They walked down past the end of the beach and onto the lava. It was broiling out there, under the glare of the sun and the sea. They found a place behind an outcropping of lava, next to the ocean, and sat down.

“Sure would be nice to have a beer right about now, huh?” Joe said.

“Man, I see you one and raise you on that,” Herman said. “Nevah mind the fish.”

“Well, no more beer, but I get the next best thing maybe, even if it’s not cold.” He pulled a pint bottle from his pocket. Herman’s eyes lit up and he cackled with glee.

That was the acid test, and Herman had passed beautifully. Joe was always on the lookout for someone to bend an elbow with, and he recognized in Herman the qualities of rascality and simple-mindedness that were essential to his purpose. Most were either too stupid, too honest, no sense of adventure, or no sense of humor, none of the things that the position required. But in Herman Ho’omalimalinuiloa Wongham, Joe had found his man. They passed the flask back and forth for a while, then climbed back up onto the ground above the lava and dozed off under the ironwoods. It was a good beginning.

In the hot sun and glare that poached his eyeballs, Herman could hardly stand up. It was like Dante’s Ninth Circle of Hell out there. His tongue was parched, his head ached, and he just wanted to collapse. Was one long day.

Actually, it never made much difference whether he worked or not. Most days were the same— not much got done. He just stood around, put one leafy top here, one there, one over there. Bees had their nests in the dry leaves, and boy did they get mad when those dry leaves had to be pulled off. They stung him good.

Four men were assigned to hoe that section of land. Three worked pretty steady, up and down, up and down. But Herman just dawdled. Mostly just stood there and smiled vacantly, or watched as the wasps chased the other men.

Kaipo was different, Masa noticed. Worked hard. But his brother Herman did nothing. “He’s not right in the head, is he?” he asked.

Kaipo shook his head slowly. “No.”

“Do you guys come as a team? I cannot take one without the other?”

“He’s my brother. I gotta take care of him.”

“You work hard, Kaipo. You don’t make trouble. You don’t hold things up. But this guy, different story. It takes him half a day to do what the others do in half hour. And even then, I gotta send someone back to do it over. The company’s paying good money… for what?”

Kaipo muttered something by way of acknowledgment.

“Tell you what. I’m going pull him off the line, so he doesn’t hold up the others. There’s a fence over in camp that needs painting. I don’t know how long it’s gonna take for him to paint it. By the time it’s done, gonna be old and weathered again already. You bring him to the yard tomorrow, then you go show him how to do it, okay?”

Next day they met Masa at the yard. They got paint and brushes, and walked over to the camp where the faded white fence ran along the backs of the little cottages where the families lived.

“Listen, Herman,” Kaipo said. “You wen’ make trouble already! You almost got us fired! You so slow!”

Herman looked up dumbly and smiled.

“It’s not funny, so wipe that stupid look off your face! This is serious! Masa going give you one more chance. You gotta paint this fence, make ‘em nice, no slop paint all over! You understand?” He showed Herman how to paint, dipping the brush into the paint can, squeezing off the excess, then steadily painted the boards up and down.

“You think you can handle that? You gonna be on your own, so I gotta depend upon you! No fool around! No stare at the clouds. No wander off and play with the kids! Just work hard, and after one week, I want this fence all done, okay?”

The job went well enough the first few days. With great deliberation, Herman painted one picket after the next. Mesmerized by the gentle sunlight and the easygoing, repetitive nature of the work, he painted every splinter, never spill one drop. So what if it took twice as long– at least was no trouble.

The kids came back from school, and started nosing around out back. They saw Herman painting, came over to him, asked if they could paint too.

“No! Go away!” Herman said. “Get outta here!” One of them touched a board, got paint on his hands. “Look! You wen’ mess up my work! Look at that now! Was real nice ‘til you got your hands on it!”

He looked at his handiwork… was pretty nice even so.

Another mango sailed through the air, thumped down onto the grass nearby.

“Hey!” Herman called out. “Who threw a mango at me?!”

Another one landed nearby. There was laughter from somewhere. Herman reached over, picked up the mango, threw it back in the direction of the laughter, yelling at the kids. Thus began a steady torment, and all through the rest of the afternoon, they circled around unseen, pelting him, then ran away, laughing.

When Kaipo showed up to get his brother, all over was mangoes, many of them nicked with paint. Just then, another mango sailed in and hit the fence. Laughter from somewhere over by the houses.

“Damn kids been throwing mangoes all day!” Herman said.

Kaipo caught site of an urchin, and ran over to him, grabbed his arm and scolded him. At the same time, the boy’s father came out onto the porch of the house.

“Eh!” he shouted. “What you doing?!”

“Eh yourself!” Kaipo said. “Why don’t you tell your kid to stop bothering my brother! He’s trying to paint the fence, and they keep throwing mangoes at him. Try look all those mangoes over there!”

“Well, it looks like your brother needs all the help he can get anyhow! Maybe the kids was throwing mangoes at him to remind him to get back to work!”

Was pretty huhu, the guy, this damn Portugee talking stink about lazy kanakas— was like the pot calling the kettle black.

Kaipo sat down in the skimpy shade of the cane brake. The sun beat down, and there wasn’t a breath of breeze to rustle the cane. Just hot and still. His supervisor Masa sometimes came out to the field during break, and today, for whatever reason, he came over and sat down next to Kaipo.

He asked how things were going and made small talk.

“What you got for lunch today?” he asked Kaipo.

He looked, was just the usual, shoyu chicken, rice, some slice radish.

“Hmm, you like trade? I got musubi, some kimchee. Here, you like mackerel? Trade you for chicken.”

They ate. He hadn’t had mackerel in a while.

“Hot day all right,” Masa said. “But you’re doing good, boy. Not like some of these other people.”

There had been trouble last night, Masa said. Somebody got hold of some swipe. Some guys got drunk. Was going up before the super this morning, soon as they sobered up. The super was going ask where they got the stuff, maybe give them one more chance if they fingered the guy they got it from.

“Did they find out who?” asked Kaipo.

“I don’t know. But that’s why we short-handed today. I need about a dozen guys like you, then maybe we’ll catch up. Otherwise, not much chance.”

It was an opening, but maybe not the time. But what the hell, you had to answer the door when opportunity kocked.

“Maybe this the wrong time for ask,” Kaipo said. “But… you got anything else available? I heard there might be one opening in machine shop.”

But was no surprise. Masa had already been thinking about something better for him. He was one of the few young men on the plantation he liked. He worked hard. Didn’t drink. Didn’t make trouble. Had a good head on his shoulders. Might make manager some day.

“I’ll look into it. I’ll let you know.”

Later that week, Masa told Kaipo to report to the super at the machine shop. But turned out there was a problem. The super in the machine shop was the guy Kaipo had had a run-in with when he chased after his kid, the one that threw mangoes at Herman.

The super stared at him, and his expression curled into a sneer. “You! You gotta be kidding! I wouldn’t give this job to you if you was the only person left on this plantation! I’d rather the locomotive break down, and I’ll go into the fields and carry the cane on my back!”

“Masa sent me,” Kaipo said. “You get job opening, yeah?”

“Like hell I do!”

“I’m not gonna argue with you. I’m just going back and tell Masa that you refused to give me the job. If you get job, then you should let me have it.”

“You buzz off! I don’t need your help here! You go tell him whatever you want! I don’t have no openings.”

Kaipo took his case to Masa, who called the super. He asked the shop super why he had a burn on for Kaipo, and the guy said Kaipo was giving him gas the other day, and then got into that whole story about Herman painting the fence, all week long already, spent more time throwing mangoes than working.

Masa just said well, those kids was tormenting Herman all day and maybe he had the wrong idea if Herman had to get up and chase them away half the time.

Masa asked him nice, said he didn’t want to get into an argument about it, and how about we just settle this hash and let the kid get to work, okay? After further cajoling and arm-twisting, the shop super said okay, but was no guarantee this kid was gonna like it.

Next morning, Kaipo was there at Masa’s office, six sharp. “Okay braddah,” Masa aid, “I wen’ step up to the plate for you on this one, okay? My good name is on the line. So I don’t wanna hear about no problems! You said you wanted this job, no matter you two was going scratch each other’s eyes out or what. So you got it. You know the rule: He’s the boss. He makes the rules, okay?”

“Thas’ okay,” Kaipo said. “I don’t need no special treatment.” No matter what I gotta do, he thought, I’m gonna do it so well that he’s gonna be ashamed of himself.

But the work was even worse than he expected. He couldn’t say it was just senseless work that was meant to harass him, like digging a hole and filling it up again. But the super went out of his way to make sure that he was miserable. He gave Kaipo all the worst jobs– climbing into the molasses tank to scour it, when it was ninety degrees outside and hundred ten in the tank. Then there was scouring rust on the equipment with steel wool, scraping rust from the locomotive brake drums, cleaning and de-greasing the shop floor.

That Portugee acted like he was real happy to have him, but there was a sneer about the way he said things. He seemed to enjoy coming up with ever more ingenious ways to make him miserable. But Kaipo did the work, and did it with a vengeance. It became an escalating contest of wills between the super trying to come up with worse and worse jobs, and Kaipo determined to do them better and better.

Kaipo never did talk back, never complained, just smiled at having gotten the better of the guy each time. He could see it was getting his goat. He even showed up half hour early, and stayed half hour late– even though it meant washing in dirty water in the furo and his dinner being cold.

But then the sonofabitch decided to play dirty pool.

Used to be, every time the auditor came round for check the gasoline, they always came up few gallons short.

“You four gallon short, Kaipo” the auditor said.

“I know. So what? The gasoline evaporate. Or the tank been leaking. It’s real old already!”

“Yeah, but short is short. Somebody gotta pay. You can’t expect the company to pay forever, can you? Not when you’re responsible for the gas.” Was nothing new. The others that handled machinery had this problem too. It was just that they factored it in as part of the cost of doing business. They always figured they was going come up short on gasoline.

“What you mean?” Kaipo said. “You telling me this the first time the gasoline evaporate? What about before?! What about everyone else that use gasoline around here? Everyone knows the stuff evaporate! You never charge nobody before!”

“That’s not my decision. That’s the shop super’s decision. He’s the only one who’s got the say-so for charge ‘em off.”

“Since when?!” Kaipo said. “That’s humbug already! So what, you going write me up for gasoline?!” He didn’t wait for an answer. He turned and stalked off to the super’s office, and didn’t wait for no invitation… just walked in the guy’s office, beard the lion in its den.

“What is this shit!” Kaipo demanded to know. “How come you tell the auditor charge me for gasoline when the tank leaking!”

“What can I say?” the super said, barely able to conceal his satisfaction. “You responsible for the gasoline. That’s not my headache. If you short, then you bought it. You better be more careful, and maybe the gasoline won’t evaporate.”

“Why don’t you get a new tank then! This one leaking, nothing I can do about it!”

“New tank costs money. Might be months before we get one in,” he said, smiling sweetly. “If you want this job, the it comes with responsibility for the gasoline. I can’t continue to absorb the losses for your carelessness.”

“What a bunch of malarkey! You’re full of shit!”

“And you better watch what you say and who you’re saying it to! One more peep out of you and I’m going write you up for insubordination.”

So that was how it was going to be. Okay, if so, it’s so.

Masa would ask him from time to time how things were going, and Kaipo never said much, because no matter what he said, he thought it would sound like complaining. So when he complained about the gasoline business, Masa knew it was serious.

Was so unfair, this shit about the gasoline. He had to pay, and it cost him real money taken out of his paycheck. But knowing what Kaipo was up against, Masa advised him to take the upcoming long weekend and dig up the gasoline tank and repair it himself. That was a big job, but if Kaipo wanted to win this one, that what he had to do. Masa said he would talk with the super to get the okay, since he would have to bust up the cement, dig the thing up, wash it out again and again and again and air-dry it, before he could weld anything. Then it had to be reburied and new cement poured.

The Portugee okayed the job, no problem braddah, haha. He even got a couple guys to help out. Herman was there too, but mostly just to watch, as usual. When the job was done, Masa was amazed. Kaipo worked like hell all those three days, sun-up to sun-down, never complained, and got the job done by the time the cane haul trucks were gassed up next morning. Masa knew that someday, he was going promote this young man out of these circumstances, as soon as the opportunity came along.

Herman smiled to himself. Nobody asked him to do nothing. It was an old plan that had always worked for him: if you demonstrated time and again that you couldn’t be depended upon to do the job right, eventually they gave up and stopped asking you, figuring it’s easier just to do it themselves.

But the day came when Herman’s privileged role in the scheme of things came under scrutiny. Somebody wondered out loud about the guy who was always out there painting a fence or something that didn’t need painting. Besides, wasn’t that a job that the people who lived in the camp were supposed to do on their own time? Seemed like a waste of manpower, they said.

“You understand the position I’m in, don’t you Kaipo?” Masa said. “It’s not my decision. In fact, I put my ass on the line when the manager came ask me about him. ‘Is he on payroll?’ they ask me. I say yeah. They say ‘Since when?’ Then I gotta explain that he’s the brother of one of my best workers, but he’s a bit slow, yeah? So they say, ‘We not going pay for that, this ain’t no free ride for the feeble-minded, you know.’ So we went back and forth on this thing ‘til finally they wen’ compromise and they said okay, you can keep him on, only at half-pay. ‘Take it or leave it,’ they said. My hands are tied.”

Joe came around after Herman got the bad news. “What you going do now?” he said. “You no more money.”

Herman shrugged. “Dunno.”

“I get one idea, one way for make money. You going need money, yeah?”

“Yeah.”

“Tell you what. I like set up one still, put ‘em out there in the cane. Thas’ good place for put ‘em, yeah? ‘Cause nobody never going find it out there. No can see nothing, yeah?”

“Yeah.”

“But I need someone for keep one eye. All we gotta do is figure out when those guys going come around for cut cane or do whatever. Then we just going move ‘em, to some noddah place.”

“What happens if they find ‘em?” Herman asked.

“Eh, no worry! If they find it, how they gonna know it’s ours?”

Being of like mind and rascal like him, Herman appreciated its elegant simplicity.

“Someone gotta keep one eye,” Joe continued, “let me know when they going come for weeding or whatevah. Would be nice to have one place for keep the stuff, too, after make ‘em.”

“Yeah.”

“You got the keys to that shed for keep the tools and stuff, yeah?”

“Yeah.”

“Nobody nevah go inside, yeah? What they get inside– just all kine junk, yeah?”

“Yeah. Some tools. Boxes. Stuff li’ dat.”

“Can put the booze inside, yeah? Put some stuff on top. They never going find ‘em, yeah? You the only guy going come in there, yeah?”

“I dunno.”

“What you mean, you don’t know?”

“Maybe I get one ‘noddah idea.”

Out in back of the storage shed was an ancient, rusted-out truck, overgrown with weeds and vines. The thing hadn’t moved in maybe twenty years, long since cannibalized for whatever parts could be had from it.

“What! You mean put booze in there?” Joe said. “In the gas tank?”

“I saw my brother do it,” Herman said. “Dug up one big gas tank, wen’ wash ‘em out, so can weld ‘em.”

“How can? The thing all rusted.”

“Maybe can get one ‘noddah gas tank, put ‘em in there,” Herman said.

“Maybe, yeah?”

They went to Hilo that weekend, and found another tank at a junkyard there. Looked the same, pretty much, and rusty and beat up and shit, but no leaks. Back in Hi’ilawe, they washed it out real good, so no more smell. Then they pulled the rusty old tank from the truck. Had to take it out in pieces, like some rotten tooth that broke when the dentist wen’ pull ‘em. Was a helluva job, but once they had the new one installed, it worked just fine, and nobody could see it, really, behind all the weeds.

They bought yeast cake for five cents, and hops for seventy-five cents one can. The molasses was easy to come by. And Herman found a crate of glass jars out behind the store, got some tubing, then poured the molasses and mixed the sugar with a shovel.

From molasses and water and yeast, it was ready in a week. The first batch they made, they took from the still to the gas tank in gallon shoyu bottles that Herman got from the shed. Altogether, the truck held a good twenty gallons. At a buck a pint, that was better than money in the bank.

They were lucky. Never had one single bottle blow up on them. Never poisoned anyone. They never sold to serious drinkers– that was asking for trouble. They’d make a scene, draw attention. But to their friends and to friends of friends, they’d sell.

They built the business nice and slow. Herman was a natural, and flourished in the camaraderie of men that did not distinguish between the self-impaired and the naturally impaired. Soon, he even found himself with some money, and he began to see that there was some kind of a future in his life.

Lani was twenty, an old maid already. Most of the boys married when they were eighteen maybe, the girls when they were fifteen or sixteen. Lani’s sister married when she was eighteen, and here Lani was at twenty, no husband. She felt like a spinster, and suspected that people were talking about her, thinking there was something wrong with her. You had to have a husband, or else people would talk.

It was amazing how such a girl like that could go for so long without being spoken for. She was bright, had a good sense of humor, and a smile that made you giddy. She was clean and smelled like soap, and her hair gleamed like polished koa wood. What’s more, her mother had taught her how to cook.

But Masa was sick and tired of fending off all these suitors for his daughter’s hand. Hardly a week went by without someone hitting him up with a proposition that, however thinly disguised, was always intended to somehow rope his daughter into a date.

That was one of the problems of raising a daughter on a plantation, the supply of men wasn’t of a sort that typically enjoyed the best prospects. Many were immigrants who spoke little English, the rest were rough characters with no education.

Kaipo had seen Lani before, following her dad to the store. The next time he saw them coming, he beat them to it, was there at the store before them, having run the long way out back. When Masa and Lani walked in, he fumbled around, pretending he was there to buy a soda.

She stood there, sipping her bottle of something electric-orange, looking straight ahead and occasionally darting her eyes over his way, and Kaipo just ate her up with his eyes. In that moment, something had taken root. There was no doubt about it, seeing her eye sparkle like that and a smile starting to form on her lips.

Masa lived just outside the plantation, not a hundred yards from Kaipo’s dorm, in one of those plantation houses all in a row. He was sitting on a stump by the stream out back, tying and baiting fishhooks. With his thinning hair done into a topknot, he looked like a Chinese sage.

Kaipo had something for him.

“Here, I thought you might like some of this.”

Masa looked at what Kaipo had brought. He furrowed his brow, wrinkled his nose, and a look of astonishment spread across his face.

“Where’d you get this?! Oh man, I never had any of this for long time!”

“Go ahead, try some,” Kaipo said. “Use your fingers, nevah mind– adds to the flavor.” Only a few of the boats made shiokara anymore. The fishermen still made it for their girlfriends, and they knew how to make it real good. They used the guts— the heart, the stomach or liver, the intestines, but especially the gills, because that’s what gave it real flavor. They rinsed them out real good, then chopped them small, salted them, and put them into a jar to keep. After a few weeks, it was edible. After a few months, broke da mouth.

Masa fished some out with his fingers and placed it on his tongue. His cheeks puckered. “Man, you gotta introduce me to this friend of yours who makes this.”

“Okay. But you gotta introduce me to your daughter.”

Masa looked at him archly, the kid smiling like that. Figured that was coming someday. But Masa was well practiced at being cagey to come-ons for his daughter– knew just how to look and how to act.

“Rascal, you! What makes you think this stuff is the equal of my daughter?!”

“Well, sir, I’m sure she smells better. Don’t know about the taste, though.”

“Cheeky buggah, you. How you think you can talk about my daughter that way?”, he scolded. But his sly look left little doubt the door was open.

“You better save your money so you can get out of this place someday, then maybe we’ll see.”

Next Sunday, Kaipo caught a big, thuggish-looking jack that had made a good living ambushing smaller fish from behind the veils of surf that broke along the reef. He took it to Masa’s house that afternoon.

Auntie Thelma, Lani’s mother, sat on the lanai in her rocker. A woman of serene dignity and deeply lined cheeks, she wore a dress decorated with palms, anthuriums, and Moorish Idols. Her hair was done up in a gleaming mass that was going to gray, and she wore no makeup or adornments apart from an orange poepoe-style ilima lei.

“Nice to meet you, Missus,” Kaipo said, and bowed in mock courtliness. “I’m Kaipo.”

She stared at this odd supplicant for a moment, then smiled. “That’s one big fish you got,” she said, “half as big as you!”

“Is Masa around?”

“He’s out back,” she said. “Go show him your fish.”

The garden bordered a sump where taro grew. A heavily-pregnant apple banana tree stood with a big stick jammed up against its trunk. Short and squat-looking, its leaves had grown tattered from the wind. Vines crept up the trunk, and a withered blossom dangled at the end at the end of its bunch of fruit, altogether more than a hundred or more of the stubby thumb-sized bananas. The tree had given all its energy to its fruit, and now it was exhausted, and its trunk would soon be added to the pile of banana logs nearby.

Masa was on his knees, rooting around in a tangle of sweet potato vines. He looked up at Kaipo, standing there with his enormous fish. “Well, look who’s here,” he said. “Who’s your friend?”

Kaipo held up the fish. “Big, yeah? He’s too much for me. But you get family, so maybe you folks can eat ‘em. Cut ‘em up, put some shoyu, some green onion, maybe put some chili peppah.” There were chilies at hand in Masa’s garden, was hundreds, already, like little firecrackers. “Then put some rock salt, and you got poki!”

That was the best ever way to eat fish, and everyone had his own recipe.

“You the one going clean this buggah right?” Masa said. He got up, led him over to a tree stump, and handed him a knife. “Here, have at it. Put the guts in the bucket over there.”

It was a pretty straightforward job, even with a big fish like this, one that he had done many times. When he was finished, he returned with the fish. Was enough for a platoon.

“Get shoyu?” he asked.

“In the kitchen,” Masa said. “Come in.”

Their home was sparsely furnished, with transparent white lace curtains and simple stands that held an amber glass lamp on an embroidered doily, and crockery painted with green vines. The room was covered with thick tatami and held a little shrine in its corner and a damascene picture of Mount Fuji on the wall.

That was what they had to show for their life lived among the fields of cane: some souvenirs of a homeland now three generations remote. The house wasn’t even theirs; it belonged to the company. And even after all these years, there still wasn’t much money at the end of the week. Still, you could get by if you didn’t waste money on food that you could grow.

Masa picked some chilies, pulled some green onion, and led Kaipo into the kitchen. “Lani!” Masa called out. “Come out your room.” The door of her tiny bedroom opened, and she peeked out.

“Try come,” Masa said. “Over here, in the kitchen.”

She stepped into the kitchen, looked at Kaipo and smiled. He went weak in the knees.

“You know how to make poki, yeah?” he was able to say.

She came to the kitchen counter and offered to take the knife, but Kaipo held back. “You know, gotta cut ‘em special way. Here, let me show you.” He took the knife, then deftly sliced the fish, cutting with the grain of the flesh. Was better at this than Masa thought.

“See… then you mix ‘em up.” From a big two-liter bottle, he dashed shoyu into the fish, then he chopped the green onions and chilies and added them to the mix. He tossed the cubes of fish, get sauce all over, then took one of the cubes and offered one to Lani, placing it on her tongue.

“Mmm… ono!” Lani was just dazzling when she smiled, and those eyes… that was so broke da mouth too, Kaipo thought.

They talked easily that afternoon, mostly about fishing. Lani wasn’t part of the conversation that first night, in fact not during any of Kaipo’s visits to their home after that. She stayed in the kitchen with her mother mostly, but some time he saw her out back. It was only after two or three months that she and Kaipo were given leave to sit with each other on the tiny lanai in front of the house and talk.

The wedding wasn’t no big deal, just family and a few friends. The money that was saved on the wedding was used to help them start up their new life together, to add on a third room of their own on to the house. Masa got the lumber and stuff for free, and he got some help on Saturdays by pulling a few men off their jobs in the field. Together they cut the planks, put up the roof beam, framed the room, slapped up the boards, then painted them a forest green to go with the rest of the house.

The room had its own entrance and the walls went all the way up to the ceiling for better privacy. Still, was hard to be quiet, and no matter how they tried, it was obvious, with only a thin wall between rooms.

And so it went. After a few months, Lani’s belly began to swell. She became heavy and awkward and finally miserable, until the day came when her water broke, and Auntie Thelma called the midwife.

Her back ached so much, and she cursed boys for causing so much more pain than girls. The midwife held Lani up by the waist, and the baby came out quickly then. She was thankful it was a boy, and healthy. For a first delivery, things could have been a lot worse.

The midwife was never paid in cash, but with a chicken, or with wine, or maybe some eggs, or sometimes material. Auntie Thelma had a gallon of good Portuguese wine, and a chicken already cleaned, a Rhode Island Red that she had slaughtered– just grabbed by the neck and slit it, then hung it upside down on the tree to bleed. Was so quick and nonchalant about it, just hang the chicken up like the wash.

She made a big pot of chicken soup for the new mother, and as soon as the baby was born, the new mother had some soup and some of that good wine. A new baby was never looked upon as another mouth to feed, but as an asset for the family. The more children you had, the better off was the family. That was true for everyone then– Chinese, Japanese, Portugees, whatevah.

At supper that night, they said grace, and a few words of thanks were offered for the new baby, Israel. They had meat that night, which was something of a luxury. There was always sausage, the kine they mixed with garlic and vinegar and chilies, then stuffed into a gut and smoked. But that night was roast pork, Portuguese-style.

Lani rested for a couple weeks, then was time to get to work. She took Izzy with her to the fields, and built a little lean-to for him out of cane stalks. But it was so hot in the fields, the baby got all sweaty, and the bugs were so bad that his face and arms and legs were red and swollen with angry red bites.

She went to the super’s wife and asked if there was something else she could do where she could keep the baby someplace cool, where there weren’t so many bugs. Wasn’t much better, but she got her a job picking up horse dung from around the stable. Izzy was starting to crawl, so she tied him up in the stable, and when she left him to pick up dung, he would just cry and cry. She could hear him cry wherever she was, and as hard as he cried, she thought she was more miserable than he was.

The super’s wife knew she was miserable, and offered her a different job, sewing. This was something she could do at home, and the super’s wife brought her the needles and thread and taught her how to do it. She got so she could turn out some nice pieces, tablecloths and napkins and things like that, but she wasn’t able to make much money at it, since it was piecework, and after she sold the first few pieces, there wasn’t much demand.

There was work available at the coffee mill. But it was a long walk along a steep, winding dirt road that stretched a mile or so along the cliffs high above the blue ocean, then downhill for another mile. She wrapped up the baby on her back, and walked along through land thick with guava and coffee shrubs.

Was mostly fussy old Japanese women who worked at the mill. Big burlap sacks of beans were stacked up to the roof, and they had to sort through every one of those sacks, one bean at a time. Lani got twenty-five cents for picking through each bag, bean by bean. If she missed a bean that had been squashed or split or crumbled, naturally the boss would see it right away, and then she’d have to pick through the whole bag again, even though she knew the chance was one in a thousand she’d find another bad bean.

It wasn’t so easy to get along, since the old women mostly spoke old-country Japanese and Lani— being local Japanese– didn’t know a word. It was hard going, the long walk to work, the long climb back up the hill and back into town, with her baby strapped to her back. It just didn’t make sense. So she quit, and that was that.

For Kaipo, wasn’t any easier, was one long hard day that started before dawn and lasted ‘til night. But he was gonna beat that Portugee sonofabitch no matter what it took. Times were tough, and he had a family now. If you put in your time, everyone could eat, which was better than could be said for some folks. And the plantation always took care of your basic needs. Nobody starved. Nobody slept out in the rain. Nobody stayed sick. But what kind of life was that?

He wondered where Herman got his money, though. He wasn’t making anything to speak of, but he always had money for gas for the car and cigarettes and candy and soda and stuff from the store. Herman said he saved it, but Kaipo sure didn’t know how.

Herman had gotten real good at timing things so that Joe could keep the still one step ahead of the cane cutters, and he had learned a lot from watching Joe distill the stuff. Was easy, actually, and by and by Joe let him mix some up. Was pretty good—at least, nobody complained, and they kept on buying it.

Went on that way for a long time, until the quality slipped, just that once. Made a bad batch, was poison. Some men got so sick they couldn’t stand up, just wen’ lie there and groan and twist in pain, retching their guts out. When the doctor came, he saw right away was bad alcohol. No one died, but that’s not to say they didn’t want to.

Kaipo heard from Masa that a bunch of guys was sick from swipe. Masa said they was pretty sure someone was making it, ‘cause they found the glass jars– was the kine from the store. The manager said they was going turn this place upside down, and if they didn’t find it, they was going fire every man that was sick. They had ‘til Monday, five o’clock. If nobody step forward, all those guys was going hit the road.

“Hey Wongham!” Someone had called Kaipo by his last name. That was never good, only happened when some damn luna was getting ready for boss him around. He looked around, but was just some guy.

“You talking to me?”

“Yeah. Hey listen, I no like tell stories out of school– you know what I mean? But those men, the ones that got sick?”

Kaipo’s eyes narrowed. He nodded.

“Well, I’m not going say nothing, but I’m telling you ‘cause you’re his brother.”

“Who, Herman? What about him?”

“Yeah. That’s the guy…”

“That’s the guy for what? Whatchoo mean?”

“He’s the one wen’ sell ‘em the stuff, wen’ poison ‘em.”

Someone could have pushed him over with a feather. “C’mon! What kine story is that! My brother… Herman?!”

“C’mon you! You should know him better than us! He’s not so stupid, you know! The buggah’s been making juice for long time already! And that’s okay with me, because nobody never got hurt. But now it’s different, those people going lose their jobs. But like I say, I’m not going say nothing. What you do is up to you.”

That night, Kaipo confronted him. “You know anything about making swipe, Herman?”

Herman just looked at him, guileless. “I never knew you drink, Kaipo.”

“I don’t, you jackass! But I hear you selling swipe!

Herman blanched.

“How come they say that about you?! When I been busting my hump trying support my family, you been raking leaves and running a damn still, haven’t you!”

“My friend run the still.”

“So what you doing?!”

“Nothing.”

“Whatchoo mean, nothing?! You stupid! So what?! You wen’ make everyone sick! And now they going get fired! And you for sure! Maybe me too, since you my brother! But what about my family?! I don’t care if you starve, but I get wife, get one kid!”

Was plenny mad, Kaipo. Went on and on li’ dat. But in the end, was nothing to decide. He would have to turn him in, his own brother. Going be hard enough, to tell Masa. But was worse, breaking the news to Lani. She had worked so hard to provide for the baby. Now was all for nothing.

“I got something to tell you,” Kaipo said to Lani.

“Yeah, I guess so. Looks like someone said you was going die.”

“‘Bout the guy was selling swipe. Herman’s the guy, you know.”

“Not!” she laughed. But she saw from his eyes that he wasn’t joking.

“It’s true. Buggah’s been making swipe! Or his friend did, so he says. Made some bad stuff, wen’ poison ‘em.”

“Oh my God! I can’t believe it! Are you sure?!”

“Yeah. Some guy from the dorm, he told me. At first, no can believe. But then I wen’ confront him. Yeah, it’s true. Used to think he was just standing around over there, raking leaves and cut the hedge and painting stuff. Boy, was I ever stupid— more stupid than him!”

“Then if that’s true, you gotta tell someone. Those people going lose their jobs, yeah?”

Nobody figured Herman was bright enough to boil water, never mind make swipe. Still, he was involved. They told Kaipo that since he came forward like that, he could stay. But only if Herman left.

But that wasn’t the last word. Later, at the machine shop, the Portugee said nobody asked him what he thought. Told Kaipo he couldn’t see giving him the job of brakeman after all. Had to be someone reliable.

“Whatchoo mean?!” Kaipo said.

“Well, all I can look at is the evidence. The tools was missing from the machine shop. They found ‘em at the still. The tools was your responsibility. So far as I see it, you screwed up! I cannot trust nobody who’s not paying attention to his own jurisdiction!”

“You’re fulla shit! You sonofabitch, thas’ my brother wen’ took those tools! I never did nothing!”

“Thas why I said! And right now, you saying too much! ‘Cause nobody goin’ talk to me li’ dat an’ get away with it. I’m gonna write you up and you not going have no job with me!”

Kaipo felt defeated. Nobody was going stand up for anyone involved with swipe. Especially when it made people sick. Especially when it was his shop’s tools, his brother. Anyhow, he was never goin’ nowheres with no Portugee li’ dat, no matter how hard he worked. Was sick and tired already. It seemed like no matter how hard you worked, was just the same. No way you was going make it li’dat.

That night, he decided. “Lani, I really like start one business. Maybe one store, or something.”

“What you know about running one store?” she said.

“What you need to know already?! You just buy low, sell high. What’s so hard about that?”

The super’s wife was understanding, and agreed to speak with her husband about it. He was against it at first. He didn’t think it would look too good for a plantation super to lend money to a man whose brother had been caught selling swipe. But Mrs. Wallace liked Lani, and she prevailed, and finally her husband agreed to lend Kaipo some money so they could start their own business.

They found a shack in Squattersville that had been used for drying coffee beans, and paid ninety dollars for it. The lot was little else but lava rock, no topsoil to speak of, mostly just an expanse of sandy scruff that trailed off down to the beach. Kids from the neighborhood used to hang around there, but other than that, the land wasn’t used for anything.

There were mangoes on the property, small monkey mangoes with sap that drew lots of nits. There was lots of keawe back in there growing among old coral heads that poked up out of the ground. If you tripped and fell on them, you’d get banged up pretty bad, and coral cuts were nasty. But this was the best they could do for the money, and its location was close enough to the plantation that people would come.

Kaipo had no choice but to remain his brother’s keeper. For a while after Herman got fired, he didn’t see him or hear from him. He got worried about him, knowing that he didn’t have any money or anyone to stay with. Then he heard that he was living up at the Sunday School.

When Kaipo went to get him, he found him sleeping in an old pew. Nobody had been inside, it seemed, for a hundred years. Nobody wanted to go there– the Hawaiians believed the place was cursed. He roused him, and they returned together to the shack in Squattersville.

“You already make plenty trouble!” Kaipo said. “You nothing but trouble ever since you was one kid! I’m going cut you loose if you make trouble again, even if you are too stupid for take care yourself! You smart enough for damn near ruin my life! I get one family to take care of, and now you gonna help me take care of ‘em, you understand?!”

“I understand.”

“Maybe you think, in your sly little head, that you’ve done all the damage you can do. Maybe you think we’re all on our own now, and we can do what we like. But you just remember, we’re still on plantation land! I don’t own this land. They give it to me to use, but it’s not mine. And what they say, goes. So, no liquor! You hear?!”

“I hear.”

“That means you got to pull your own load around this place. You’re not helpless, and I ain’t going let you stand around and rake leaves. You gotta work, and work hard!”

“Okay.”

Kaipo and Herman went to work busting up the coral heads and hauling them away, then hauling in loads of soil that was more sand than dirt. There were some old crumbling lava rock walls out in back of the property, maybe from an old heiau. They were no longer good for keeping the animals out, and the pigs roamed in and out at will, helping themselves to guavas that fell down.

They took all the old lava rocks and piled them up to make a wall for one side of the store, and that served to keep out the pigs out from the store. Once they had the wall up they attached a wood frame and put sheaves of pili grass on top so at least they had some shade while they put up a real roof.

They hauled in whatever scrap lumber and corrugated sheet metal they could scrounge from the plantation. But that was all they needed to get the house started on their lot. Was nothing fancy, but it had four walls, a roof, windows, and a tank to catch rain water, and rooms that were carpeted with thick Hawaiian mats that were cool and comfortable for sitting around and talking story, with the whole thing cobbled together from odd bits of lumber, baling wire, and canvas. Then they applied a coat of red paint that hid all the red dust that blew in from the cane fields. It was home, and all that God intended, Lani thought.

All they had in mind when they opened their store was a place where people could come to have coffee and bread. They loved that bread, especially the way they served it with homemade jelly they made from all the guavas lying around on the property. They sold a lot of bread, and a lot of fresh coconut pies as well. The coconuts were free, all they wanted. Kaipo stripped the husks off on a big iron spike, then put them in the oven until their shells cracked. It was that taste of toasted fresh coconut that made their coconut pies so good.

Since that was going good, they decided to make udon too. Kaipo made just twenty servings, rolled out the dough himself and hand-sliced up the big sheets to make the noodles, and when that was gone, that was it. By and by, word got around, and pretty soon was good business. Everything was so much better than the stuff the men got at the camps, especially when it was served with fresh fishcake and Chinese-style roast pork. Every day was sold out, and if it wasn’t, they never hung onto it, but fed it to the pigs out back.

In time, they came up with more and more stuff to sell: dry goods, denims and khakis, rubber boots. The Chinese were willing to pay for certain things they couldn’t get anywhere else around here, like salt fish and Chinese pork sausage that came all the way from San Francisco, bottled water chestnuts and bamboo shoots that they cut from up the valley and bottled themselves, bitter melon, even dry duck meat from China. Even though it was twenty-five cents a strip, it sold out on payday. Then it was back to what they usually lived on—for the Chinese it was just rice and salt fish, and for the Japanese it was udon, pickled plums and radish, and maybe mackerel.

They sold whatever it was that farmers hereabouts brought in, whether it was mustard cabbage, won bok, Chinese peas, some corn, or even rice they grew down where the stream emptied into the marsh. But when the poi came in, that’s when the Hawaiians showed up, and everybody brought their own container. Hawaiians never grew their own taro any more, even though you could still find some dryland taro growing wild up on the mountain, where it had been cultivated hundreds of years ago. And it still thrived in the crumbly old a’a and the trash from the tree ferns that lay round their great stalks.

But wetland taro was different story. That was real fussy, and hard work mucking about in the mud. Nobody did that kind of thing anymore, and most of the rich bottomland where they used to grow it was since given over to settlements where people lived.

Hawaiians came for the poi, but when they came to the store, they never had any money, and their credit was no good too. But Kaipo could not go and ask Hawaiians to pay, so Lani had to go try. But they saw her coming and they wen’ hide. Or else they was so drunk on swipe that they just didn’t care enough to go hide. So by and by, Lani took care of that part of the business, cash only, and Kaipo was stuck with making the udon, and baking the loaves of bread. That way was no more shame in turning his own people down.

Herman was useful in his way. They let him take Izzy to the beach and teach him how to catch fish. And he and Izzy would pick strawberry guavas for pies when they came in season, and eat many of them themselves. But they really didn’t trust him to do much else, like kneading dough and cutting udon or baking coconuts. Was the same old story: if people think you stupid, they never bother you for do nothing.

Izzy was a fast learner, and even during small-kid time he knew how to cut bait, catch fish, and clean them. Herman taught him to catch octopus using his look-box. Most mornings when no more school, they would walk along the dusty red road that went out past the plantation cemetery and past the jetty, past a clapboard shack with a rusted tin roof. A short, squat Samoan palm stood in the sandy yard with a wooden ladder leaning up against it, with a clothesline propped up by a piece of driftwood. An undershirt and an octopus would be pinned up on the line, its legs done up like one ballet dancer, some desiccated and some still pink and fleshy.

Herman taught Izzy everything he used to do as a kid. Like squid eye, how to push around the look-box along the reef looking for squid. The one with squid eye had to know the reef like the back of his hand– its hiding places, and every nuance of color and shading and camouflage you could imagine. He knew right away when anything was out of place, maybe a stone had been jarred loose from a certain pile, or there was a stone of a different color, or things had been scattered or overturned. That was the octopus at work— a very fussy creature that hated more than anything having things out of place.

When they caught one, then came the hard part. They had to take it home and beat up the octopus over and over again, so would come tender. Was hard work, but octopus was a treat. Was so good when you cut ‘em up and dip ‘em in shoyu, with hot mustard on the side.

One of Izzy’s friends had a boat and a barracuda that he had caught and trained to herd mackerel for him. And now that Izzy was growing up, nothing would do except for him to have his own boat. Kaipo didn’t know the first thing about building a boat, and Herman was clueless as usual whenever it meant work. But Masa once again came to the rescue, and found one of his men who knew something about it, and he gave the guy Saturdays off to come help build the boat. He also found the scrap lumber that began to give shape to Fish Hawk, a simple 20-foot skiff. Even had one pili grass thatch hut in the middle of the boat for shade.

When Izzy caught his first barracuda, he trained that fish to be his own. Out past the bay towards the seamount, was plenty opelu mackerel. Izzy drew his knife from the sheath, and tapped out a slow, steady drumroll on the side of the boat with the butt end of his knife. He looked out over the still water, and sure enough, after a few moments, there was his fish– he knew him from the unique pattern of stripes on his tail. He threw him some opelu, and his fish moved in, lined himself up with the bow of the boat, and meandered along in front, turning this way and that.

Sculling along beneath the thatch hut, Izzy peered overboard through the look-box. When he saw opelu, he let some bait overboard, a mash of roast pumpkin that dissolved and slowly drifted through the water. Opelu loved the stuff, and they came from all around into a big swarming ball beneath the boat. They were attracted by the barracuda as well, since they knew that wherever there was a barracuda there were bound to be leftovers from its meals. They knew the barracuda would leave them alone, since for some reason, opelu were not to its liking, and the barracuda was more than happy to betray them into the hands of his friend Izzy. Izzy and Herman and that fish worked the bay like that, going from one school to the next.

“That’s one smart fish, yeah?” Herman said. “Man, we got it made, get one fish for take care of us li’ dat.” Was one smart fish all right—some times they had more fish than they could handle, and they could make some money if could get one truck for take all that fish to Hilo.

Izzy and Herman scraped together the money to buy the truck– a couple dollars at a time from selling their opelu hereabouts. And the guy was willing to do payments. Was nothing fancy, a ‘41 Chevy with 79,000 miles on the odometer, since it only registered five digits. The chrome rim dials were nearly unreadable beneath the cracked glass, and inside was all cracked vinyl with sponge rubber stuffing crumbling and spilling out everywhere. They loaded the fish onto the truck. Izzy fastened the rusted chain that held the rear gate shut, started it up, and they began the laborious climb up the road that led out of the valley. The windshield wipers had stopped working ages ago, and its two simple blades were useless against the rain. Izzy stuck his head out the cabin to see out past the cracked windshield as it groaned up the road and at last gained the rim of the valley. After that, was mostly downhill to Hilo, sixty miles away.

They sold most of their fish at the market in Hilo, but some they sold roadside out of the truck at a better price. Opelu didn’t pay much money, but then they didn’t need a lot, living in the valley. Just money for beer and ice and for pay the gas. Lots of stuff in Hi’ilawe was bartered, or just given freely. But then again you knew it would always come back to you, too. Being generous was the best thing Hawaiians could say about you.

People here would give you the shirt off their back if they had it to give. When someone had pig, that was food for kings and company. Other times, maybe all they had was pipipi, those little black cone mollusks that clung to the rocks. Wasn’t much— just boil ‘em and pick ‘em out with little pins– but they were good enough for sitting around and talking story. Everything always tasted so good outside, in the salt air and the cool of the evening when the breeze flowed in from the sea. No matter if get pig or pipipi, folks here were wealthy in their way, from all that the land and the sea gave them.

Chapter Nine

After Pastor Bertram’s death in Hi’ilawe in the year 1860 at the hands of a madman, it was determined that the American Board of Missions held lawful title to the land in Hi’ilawe. It was assumed that the chief of Hi’ilawe, now deceased, had donated the land out of his gratitude for the good works of the church. The mission, like others throughout the kingdom, had been rewarded for its good deeds by those members of the royalty they served, with gifts of land.

The will had been signed by the chief of Hi’ilawe with his own mark, in the presence of Pastor Bingham’s wife Alva, a woman of irreproachable character who together with her husband had dedicated the best years of their life together to educating and Christianizing the Hawaiians of the valley, and a third party named Wolohu.

Pastor Bingham’s death occurred just a few years after Lord George Paulet had ceded the kingdom to His Majesty the Ruler of Brittania, partly to punish the kingdom for the failure of its courts to respect the devise of land by will, however spurious, to its Consul, Richard Charlton. And although the islands were once again a sovereign nation, the courts had been loath to arouse British or American animosities by once again embroiling in controversy the devise of land to their respective subjects.

No doubt this consideration contributed to the decision of the courts not to challenge the sworn last will and testament of the chief of Hi’ilawe. Pleased with the bequest, the Mission Estate was happy to let the matter rest.

By the terms of the will of Princess Ruth, the Mission Estate established a foundation to administer these lands. The foundation was to lease out the lands and apply the proceeds to establish and maintain a school for the education of children of Hawaiian ancestry.

It was now the year 1952, and at the Mission Academy in Honolulu, the souls and minds of a new generation of Hawaiians were being nurtured in an arid but improving regimen of Virgil, Euclid, and Latin. The masters stuffed their charges into starched collars and bent their heads to study in the Stygian gloom of the library.

Normally, groups of students would idle quietly amongst the pillared colonnades of ugly buildings clustered about a dusty quadrangle with its dour statue of Thomas Aquinas. But today, the buildings resounded with constant shouting and halloo-ing of acquaintances renewed, and with the confusion of the new arrivals. The crowd made its way down darkened passageways lit by candles and stairwells lit by dingy electric bulbs.

“Yoo-hoo, young man!” a woman called out. “Over here, please! Can you give us some help with these trunks?”

A proctor came over, and with bemusement looked at the small mountain of footlockers and suitcases and boxes, filled with the personal effects of young Henry Pratt and all manner of things that his mother had insisted he would need. The three of them, the proctor, Henry, and Mrs. Pratt, dragged them down the hall and into the dormitory, where they sat blocking the aisles.

“Where exactly do you want these?”

“I’m not sure,” Mrs. Pratt said. “Let me take a look at this, now.” She pulled a folded piece of paper from her purse and examined it.

“It says here room number twelve. Where is that?”

They located the room, and dragged the boxes and suitcases in. The dormitory’s cachet was not so much primitive as decayed. The draughts that seeped through the slats in the walls did little to alleviate the smell of unlaundered linen and unaired gloom. The rough bed was layered with a tattered thin mattress and a thin blanket and sheet. A worsted woolen horse rug lay on the floor beside the bed, beneath a chest that would hold books and papers, and a universal desk with folding leaves revealed an array of dusty pigeon holes and shelves for various supplies.

“Henry, I just don’t know where we’re going to put all your things!” his mother exclaimed. “Really, I would have thought the school would provide adequately for those who come such a long way from home! Imagine, a young man come all the way from Maui! He should be expected to bring more than the others!”

Henry’s father, Jonah Kewahanui Pratt, had been owner of the Haleakala Motors Chevy dealership, the first and largest auto dealer on Maui. He had died from heart disease, and Henry’s mother had raised him frugally on the modest proceeds of the insurance settlement, saving up every spare penny for his education.

Having been raised by his mother, Henry attached an unnatural weight to her opinion and counsel. She had fussed over him endlessly, prepared all his favorites to eat, read him stories each night, and saw to it that he was impeccably dressed for church.

He had a bad time of it in toilet training, and had soiled his pants until a very late age. He would scream for his mother to come wipe his bottom, and even though she might be eating her dinner, she would come. By age eleven, he had hardly learned to dress himself, but at last his mother had become adamant that he do so, saying that he could not attend his new school and meet lots of new friends unless he learned to dress himself. She rewarded him with a sweet each time until finally he successfully dressed himself.

How her young man would ever make do without his mother, who had doted on him hand and foot, she had no idea. She had made certain that Henry would forever depend upon her for his every need, and be unable to make the least decision without her guidance.

Mrs. Pratt was a devout churchgoer, with an immense amount of respect and affection for their minister, who had always been so generous and forthcoming in his counsel and advice in matters pertaining to her son Henry. Henry was meant to be more than a car dealer, the minister had said. She believed him, and from that time on she told Henry that she would regard it as a great honor to her were he to undertake divinity studies and someday return to a position with the church on Maui.

“Mom, can you please keep your voice down?!” Henry implored.

“Well, really, Henry! You’d expect your mother to be upset! Because I just won’t be here anymore to come running when you need me!”

“Mother!”

“Don’t ‘mother’ me! Now let’s make sure that you’re all set with the bathroom before I go. Did you go this morning? Are you constipated, dear? Because I’m sure I can get someone to bring some nice hot tea if you are. Just tell mother.” She turned to the business of sorting through the piles of luggage that had made it nearly impossible to move in the tiny room. She unpacked for the better part of the next hour, trying desperately to find drawer space to put things. At length, it proved futile. “Well this is just impossible! There isn’t nearly enough room here! I’m going to talk with someone this instant– we’ve just got to get you another room!” With that, she stalked into the hall to hail down another proctor to demand an audience with someone in charge.

Humphrey Merkin had brought his talents for school administration to Hawaii. He had left his previous position in California under a cloud, though they had promised to say “nothing adverse” if he just resigned and let them settle this thing without any further controversy. Anyway, nothing had been proved. It was all just crazy allegations from an impressionable young boy who had gotten the wrong idea entirely.

Careful to avoid any hint of scandal, he had even invented a nonsense about “his family”: “his kids” in school on the mainland–actually his nephews–and “Sheila” who some presumed was his deceased wife, the way he talked about her, killed tragically in an auto accident, he said. He had a picture of her and “his kids” framed and sitting on his desk. He seemed such a fastidious little man in his suit and bow tie, dressed like a Main Street haberdasher even in this climate.

Merkin beckoned Mrs. Pratt and her son into his office. They entered, and seated themselves. “You’re here to see me in the matter of, ah, other accommodations?” he said, mumbling into the folds of his double chin.

“Yes. I’m Mrs. Pratt, and this is my son Henry. I’m his mother. We’ve come all the way from Maui, and Henry is here all on his own, his first year at the Academy. It’s not like he’s got family or anyone here.” Her voice began to quiver. “Well, there’s hardly room to hang up his suit of clothes, and… and we’ve got footlockers and suitcases and boxes of things that I just don’t have the faintest idea… and he’s only twelve and I’ve used all of my late husband’s insurance money to pay for his way here.” She rambled on, distraught. “I tried to make sure he had everything I could give him from home so he wouldn’t have to spend money to buy anything, but—”

“I understand,” Merkin interrupted. “But Mrs. Pratt, we tried to make it quite clear to all the parents that our new admissions were to be economical in their personal effects.”

“Well. I can’t very well take all of these things back with me to Maui, can I?! Oh Mr. Merkin, I would be so grateful if you could find Henry a bigger room!”

Merkin couldn’t help but be struck by the boy. What a lovely creature, he thought. He felt giddy, but did not let that interfere with his magisterial mien.

“Ordinarily, Mrs. Pratt, none of the boys have their own rooms until their senior year,” Merkin said. “which, in Henry’s case, is some years away. Boys his age seem to derive a certain social benefit, and basic living skills, from having a roommate.”

“Oh dear, I just don’t know what I’ll do!”

“By the way, if money is tight… have you applied for work-study for Henry?” Merkin asked. “If not, I suggest that you do so, since I may have a certain amount of discretion as to the positions that might be available to him.”

He turned to Henry. “And what about you, young man? Would you like to be considered for work-study?”

“Sure.”

Merkin pored over his list of openings— and ruled out most of them as being unsatisfactory for various reasons. He didn’t want to rush it, lest his interest in this young man become obvious. “Perhaps we should think on it, yes? Why don’t you talk it over with your mother, and we’ll re-visit the matter tomorrow. I’m here until five. In any event, Mrs. Pratt, we’ll need another day to process the application, so why don’t we just have his things stored for now?”

Merkin hadn’t given it much thought ‘til now. But it all made excellent sense. That oafish kanaka boy Dexter, who had been his personal assistant over the past few years, had finally graduated, against all expectations. The boy had not even been able to apply a proper shine to his boots, and in time Merkin had despaired of asking him to do anything. He had thought him repulsive, not the least on account of his incessant farting that was loud enough to be heard from the other end of the short hallway that separated their rooms.

When they met again the next day, Merkin smiled at them in a way that said he had found an answer to the problem. “Mrs. Pratt, I do, as I said, have a certain amount of discretion, and I think we may be able to kill two birds with one stone, so to speak.” How fortuitous, he thought. “There’s a vacancy this semester,” he explained, “for a personal assistant to the headmaster of the Boy’s Lower Division– myself, as it were. It’s a live-in position, over at the cottage.”

“Which cottage, Mr. Merkin?”

“Mine. If your young man here wants the job, he’d have his own room, considerably larger, I might add, than those in the dorms. Lots of room to put things.”

“Oh, Mr. Merkin, I would regard that as a great personal favor! That works out perfectly! You see, Henry won’t have me to look after him anymore, and he needs an older man to look to.” Poor Mrs. Pratt smiled at him through tears of gratitude. “If I could depend upon you, Mr. Merkin, I would be ever so grateful!”

There just wasn’t enough time for formal learning. Early class on the Old Testament was from eight ‘til nine, then the boys assembled in the quadrangle to the sound of fife and drum, and sang the Academy song, a discordant dirge. After a breakfast of cereal, they were marched into classrooms that smelled of chalk dust, pencil shavings, and chloride of lime. There they bent their heads to each morning’s twelve lines of Ovid, did sums, and recited “The Presidents of the United States,” “The Monarchs of Hawaii,” and the “Nine Times Table.” Their ill-paid schoolmasters taught them to write from copybooks, and to obey their parents, teachers, and the law.

Henry whiled away his first two semesters in a cramped, splintery desk on rough pine flooring, by windows that were forever sealed shut against the sunlight and fresh air, and gazed about dully. The masters droned on woolly-mindedly about Theorems, Vulgar Fractions, Decimals, Logic, the Classics, and Etiquette, and the class jarred awake only when the chalk broke and their ragged nails screeched horribly on the chalkboard.

Each night, Merkin insisted that Henry bring him his completed assignment book so that he could go over his homework. They spent hours together some nights, but Merkin didn’t mind. He cherished the bond he was building with his young charge, and the opportunity to pat his thigh indulgently.

At the end of his first year, Henry’s mother visited from Maui again, and had dinner with Henry and Mr. Merkin in their cottage.

“I wanted you to see, Mrs. Pratt, just how far Henry’s come in this short while he’s been with us. Not only is he making straight A’s, but whether you realize it or not, your son has also prepared our dinner. Every crumb!”

“Really! My, that puts the shoe on the other foot, doesn’t it! It wasn’t that long ago, I remember, he used to call out for me when I was eating my dinner, ‘Mommy! Come up-dee-do me!’– meaning of course that he wanted me to come wipe his bottom after he went ka-ka. It used to make me so mad! But now, I look back on it and chuckle! And now, just think, he’s prepared my dinner! I hope he leaves me alone to eat it, won’t you Henry?”

The next year went by with nothing more between them than the companionship of doing homework together. Merkin was like a father to him, and made sure that all of his needs were not only met, but anticipated. Ever solicitous, he felt an ever-deepening affection for Henry. And never once did his affections become prurient, not even when he beheld his young man in the altogether in the course of supervising post-game locker room activities.

Merkin’s conduct remained impeccable throughout– however unrequited his desire for liberties with his young companion. But it troubled him that Henry, now fourteen, was fast coming upon an age when a young woman might seek to interpose herself in the companionship between men.

The spring cotillion presented one of the semester’s few breaks from the dreary routine of lessons and homework. Merkin attended as chaperone, and kept a watchful eye on things as the boys and girls mingled and canoodled. The dance was Henry’s first, and his social graces were, in Merkin’s estimation, hardly of an order to merit concern that they might entice unwanted entanglements.

He gave Henry leave to spend some time at the recreation room with his other friends, but now it was time for the boys to line up and face their partners for the dance. Henry’s partner for the dance was a girl named Nancy.

The dance frightened Henry. Taking hold of Nancy’s hand, he shuffled awkwardly about. But after the first go-round, he seemed to get the hang of it and as the momentum of the encounter gathered, Henry felt a certain giddiness, and even found himself contemplating what was unthinkable just hours before, that is, asking the girl if she might like some punch. Nancy liked him too, and they sat and talked, and that wasn’t so bad either. From across the room, Merkin watched as the encounter progressed, and the more he watched the more it seemed that this little slut was pressing her advantage upon his impressionable young Henry.

As it turned out, it wasn’t a one-off encounter. Merkin saw that something most untoward had taken root between them when he saw them walking together on the campus mall. That was bad enough, and he hoped against hope that nothing more would come of it. But one night, Henry informed him that they wouldn’t be going over his homework together. He was going to study at the library, he said. Nancy had asked him to join her there, where they might compare notes on history. Merkin knew then that things had gone too far.

“Henry, I’ve been meaning to speak with you about something.”

“What is it, sir?”

“There’s something that’s bothering me. As you may know, the school does not have an explicit policy regarding socializing between the sexes. We prefer to think that social development as such is best facilitated at the various school dances and other social occasions that are held in the course of the school year. Beyond that, we’re concerned that girls and boys should not become a distraction to one other.”

Henry didn’t understand. “Why should this be a problem, sir? I haven’t done anything wrong.”

“No, but I’m concerned that you might. I think it would be best if you limited your meetings with this young lady Nancy you’ve been seeing to the occasions when the school deems it appropriate.”

“But sir, that’s how I met her. Nancy’s just a friend, and we’re not doing anything wrong.”

“You’re only fourteen, young man, and I must be the one to decide, in this case, whether there’s any harm that might come of your conspicuous display of affection for this girl.”

“Huh? What did I do?”

“Let’s just say that I’ve had my eye on you, just as I have from the moment your mother entrusted you to my care. And I don’t like everything I’m seeing.”

“Don’t I have any privacy, sir? I think that some things are my business now.”

“Are they, now! Well, let me remind you that your mother knows what’s best for you, and she has entrusted your care to me until such a time as you are released into the world as an adult!” With that, Merkin knew that he had struck a nerve. The boy flinched, and began to stammer.

“I… I don’t care what you think!” Henry blurted out. “I have a right to be with my friends!”

“Henry, it’s true that you’ve done nothing wrong, per se. And ‘friends’ is one thing. But it’s not right that a young man who’s doing so well academically should fall in love and squander it all.”

“But I’m not falling in love! Nancy’s just a friend!”

“My dear Henry, what does a young man such as yourself know about love! Love is something that comes in the night, on cat’s paws. It’s insidious! You don’t know until it’s too late that it has you in its snare!”

“Even if it was love,” Henry said. “What’s wrong with that?!”

“Love with a woman has its complications, Henry, complications that you may not be ready for. I promised your mother that I would look after you and do the right thing you. I hope you appreciate the enormous sacrifices that she made to send you to this school. I would lose all of her respect if she was given any reason to think that I had betrayed her trust.”

Your mother knows what’s best for you rang in Henry’s ears. He knew he could not betray his mother. She had always known what was best for him, and his world hung upon her hatpeg.

Against his better judgment, Merkin allowed Henry to keep his date at the library that night. But in the future, he had cautioned, Henry must confine his studies to just the two of them, just as they had always done.

But the girl seemed to cling to Henry at every opportunity, whether on the commons, at lunch, or in the library. Seeing as much, Merkin took his concerns to the Headmistress of the Girls’ Lower Division, urging that the girl be brought more strictly to account for her academic work. She had distracted Henry to point where he was sure it was affecting his studies, and he was concerned that the girl’s academic performance might suffer as well.

But the girl’s grades, the Headmistress informed him, were unimpeachable– as, in fact, were Henry’s. Still, didn’t he have a right to be concerned? Well, that might be the case, she agreed, but until they began to see evidence that alerted them to a problem, it would be probably be inappropriate to concern themselves. After all, it was to be expected that young men and women would begin to socialize at this age, and she saw nothing worrisome about their spending time together studying in the library. So long as their other contact was otherwise limited to approved school functions and they were upholding their grades, she felt there was nothing that ought to be done about it.

Nancy thought that Henry was a bit too mindful of Mr. Merkin’s rules anyway. Sometimes he seemed like such a mama’s boy. He talked about his mother constantly, and planned every moment of his holidays around her.

In fact, with Easter recess upon them, the time was at hand for Mrs. Pratt’s spring visit from Maui. She would be arriving on the inter-island steamer Mauna Loa, she had written Henry, and would be staying at the nearby Little Piece of Heaven Lodge for a week. She so looked forward to their getting together, and wanted to catch up on all the news.

“I’d like to meet your mom, Henry,” Nancy said. “You talk about her all the time– she must be nice.”

Henry wasn’t sure what to say. “I’m not sure what my mother’s plans are. We usually have Easter dinner with Mr. Merkin.”

She looked away, crestfallen.

Sensing her disappointment, he tried to be helpful. “What are you doing for Easter?”

“My parents are on the mainland. They’re visiting my brother this time.” Nancy’s brother, Henry knew, was in his freshman year at Stanford University. “It’s his first year away, plus my dad has some business to take care of in California.”

“Are you on your own, then?”

“Yeah. Me and whoever else is gonna be stuck in the dorm.”

“I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to say you couldn’t come. I just need to check with my mother first.”

“No, that’s okay,” she hastened. “You don’t have to…”

“But I want you to come,” Henry assured her. “I’m sure it’d be fine with her.”

Merkin reminded Henry of the upcoming occasion. “We’re going to prepare a nice ham, Henry. I went to town last Saturday and selected one at Franson’s. It’s a Smithfield ham, all the way from Virginia!”

“Sir, I’m sorry that I didn’t tell you,” Henry began. “But I’m taking my mother out for dinner on Easter. I made reservations.”

“You made reservations! Where, for heaven’s sake?! And with what? You don’t have any money.”

“I saved it, sir. From work-study.”

Merkin stammered, stung at the realization that he was apparently being excluded. It was like being told by his own family that they had plans for Christmas that didn’t include him. “Well, I thought it might be nice if we all had dinner together here, just like we always do,” Merkin said.

“Actually, sir, I’m going to take my mother out to dinner on Saturday. She wants to meet Nancy.”

“You’re what?!” Merkin couldn’t quite credit the idea. “You’re bringing that girl to Easter dinner with your mother?” Suddenly he grew indignant. “I thought we had an understanding on that subject.”

“We do, sir. But my mother asked me to bring her.”

“Then you must have told your mother about her! I don’t like the sound of that, young man. Not one bit do I like the sound of that!”

“She asked me about my friends, sir. It wasn’t anything more than that.”

“But… where does that leave me? I mean, your mother’s only going to be here for a week. And of course, we really can’t do anything much during the school week.” He shook his head, puzzled and shaken over this brazen defiance. “We’ve always been together for Easter dinner, Henry. Is this what your mother wants? I mean, what does this girl have to do with us?!”

“She’s a friend, sir, and she hasn’t got anyone to be with over the holiday. Her parents are in California.”

“But what about me? I don’t have anyone else to be with, either! It would be nice if I had been consulted. It’s not as if I’m some kind of stranger, you know! I think your mother would certainly wonder what had become of dear Mr. Merkin!”

“I’m sorry, sir. I didn’t mean to leave you out. I just wanted–”

“But that’s exactly what you’re doing, isn’t it! And I think I’ve got a pretty good idea of what’s going on with you and that girl! You’re thinking I’ll tell your mother all about it, aren’t you?!”

“Sir, that’s not–”

Relentlessly, he pressed his attack. “Well, you’re quite right, Henry! Because, after all, I certainly do intend to take this up with her! I hadn’t thought to spoil our Easter dinner with any of this, but I realize now that she does need to know, and I hardly think she’ll approve of the way you’re carrying on!”

“I don’t care what she thinks!” Henry said. “I’m fourteen! I’m not her little boy or yours!”

“Excellent, then! Because I do intend to have a talk with her when she comes to visit! And don’t think that you’re going to keep me from doing just that!”

“Just leave us alone, will you?!”

“Henry, I’m the one that took you under my wing, and counseled you, and… and now you’ve gone and taken up with that foolish young girl! I have done my very best to make sure that you did the right things… and even if you didn’t like what I decided for you, I was always sure that one day you would understand, and appreciate all that I’ve done for you! I don’t think your mother— ”

“Leave my mother out of this!!” Henry said. His face was flushed, and his eyes filled with hot, angry tears.

Merkin looked at his young charge, so easily devastated by the prospect of involving his mother. Immediately he felt sorry for him. “I don’t mean to upset you, Henry,” he soothed. “It’s just that I’m… hurt when I see you straying from what I know is right for you! I care for you deeply, you know. More than you could know.”

He sat down beside Henry, and put his arm around his shoulder. Henry withdrew from him, and brushed away his arm. “Go away!” But the arm had established its own motility, and it reached up on its own, and went to boy’s cheek and wiped away a tear that had streaked down his face.

“Don’t cry, Henry. Don’t be angry with me,” Merkin soothed. “Please.”

His pulse pounded and his senses reeled. The hand ran its fingers behind the neck, and he drew the boy to him.

“I’m sorry, Henry.”

“Leave me alone,” the boy said, pushing himself away.

The hand snaked its way through the boy’s hair. No longer able to unable to restrain himself, Merkin drew the boy’s head to his chest and kissed the top of his head.

“You’re almost like a son to me, Henry,” Merkin whispered urgently. “You’re… you’re precious to me! I love you so much!”

“Sir! What are you—?!” Henry flailed, but his protests were those of prey whose struggle only tightened the python’s coils. “Let go of me!” he cried. Bewildered and disbelieving, he became paralyzed before the onslaught of this flushed red beast.

Henry hunched over the desk in his room. His heads and arms were in a tangle, and his heart was twisted into a Gordian knot. He didn’t know whether to cry, or just what to do. There was no one he could cry out to against this outrage, no one to turn to. He sat in his room, paralyzed with terror over his dilemma.

There was a knock on the door.

“Who is it?” Alarmed, he raised his head from his tangle, and stared at the door, his heart in his throat.

“It’s me, Henry. Open the door.” The beast had returned.

“Go away!” His heart thumped madly, then seemed to drop through his torso and seek shelter behind his kneecaps. “Leave me alone!” he cried out. “Go away!”

“Henry, you don’t have to be afraid. Open the door.”

“Leave me alone!”

“Henry, open the door. If you don’t open the door, I’ll use my own key. I’ve got a key, you know.” A long moment of silence ensued as Henry paused to consider his options. But failing to uncover any, he sat paralyzed, holding his breath. “I really think it would be much nicer if you opened the door all by yourself,” Merkin said. “Just so we could talk, okay?”

More knocks. Then silence. Henry listened helplessly as keys jangled, and one was inserted into the lock. The tumblers turned, and the door creaked open.

Swollen and red-eyed, Henry beheld his tormentor. “Leave me alone!” he said. “I don’t want to see you– you’re a monster!”

Merkin stood and stared at the boy, then turned and locked the door behind him.

“Henry, we must have a talk.” He walked over and put his hand on the boy’s shoulder. Henry offered no response, and cowered like a crippled bird beneath the gaze of a crocodile.

“A monster, am I? Is that all I am to you, a monster? Is ‘monstrous’ the summing-up of all my love for you? I have been more than a friend to you, Henry. I have been the father you never had. Your mother, bless her heart, knew this to be true. And she would be heartbroken to think you had turned your back on me.”

“I’m going to tell someone,” Henry said. “I’m going to tell the administration.”

“The administration?” Merkin snorted. “Young man, I am the administration. We in the administration are no strangers to silly accusations from embittered failures. In any case, your mother would hear of it.”

“Leave my mother out of this!”

“Oh, but I can’t, Henry. Your mother and I have invested so much in you. She would never understand.”

“Don’t you… ” He choked, and could not finish his sentence. Tears welled up, then breached the dam and coursed freely.

“That’s something that a person your age cannot comprehend, Henry. You don’t see the long stretch of years as I do, you don’t remember the countless affections and sacrifices that were made for you. Your mother and I understand each other, though.”

Henry sobbed now, and his shoulders shook.

“I’m so sorry, Henry. Love hurts, don’t you know? It’s been such a long time since I’ve loved someone. Nor have I been much loved, it seems. It’s a lonesome life. You can’t tell anyone how lonesome you are, or why.”

“I don’t want to be with you. What you did to me is a sin!”

“There is no sin in men loving each other, Henry! Even the Bible counsels its wisdom. With all the killing and brutality in the world today, what could possibly be wrong with two people loving each other?”

Merkin placed his hand on the boy’s shoulder. Henry raised up his hand and brushed it away. “Don’t touch me!” he shouted. “I hate you!” He lurched up from his desk and lashed out, beating his fist against Merkin’s shoulder and striking a glancing blow to his chin.

With this, Merkin’s pity and solicitude were transformed into a cold anger. The beast had returned, and it caught Henry’s arm in a fist that hardened into iron.

“You’re a sorry little bastard, aren’t you!” he hissed. He stood there, glaring down at Henry. He released his grip, and his shoulders slumped in exasperation. Then he turned and left the room.

Chapter Ten

“Henry,” she said, “a mother knows her own child better than the child knows himself. I want to know what it is that so troubles you that you want to take leave of your schooling– and your senses if you ask me!– to come home and twiddle your thumbs! Just what is it, Henry? Tell mother.”

The truth terrified him. The beast had returned, again and again. Merkin had visited his calamitous affections regularly on the boy, and had led Henry into a condition of helpless apathy and self-loathing as he grew into a young man.

Returning to his mother’s home on Maui for the summer of his seventeenth year, Henry wondered aloud how he might not go back for his final year at Mission Academy in the fall. He just didn’t think he could stand it any longer, knowing the beast awaited his return, and Henry more and more unable to do anything about it. Could he transfer, go to another school on the mainland even, and finish his studies there? No, his mother couldn’t very well afford that, and she’d never let him go in any event. It was too far away.

For her, no other school even existed. His career at the Mission Academy was all she ever talked about. He could never disappoint her. Maybe he could just say he was tired, and wanted a breather. She would understand that.

“Tell mother, won’t you?” she persisted. “Believe me, there’s nothing you could tell your mother that she wouldn’t understand.”

He doubted very much that she would understand.

“Mother, I’m sorry if I haven’t been forthcoming with you. But you see, I’m just tired.”

“Tired of what, for heaven’s sake?! You’re a young man, strong and healthy! And you’ve always been so good with your schoolwork. Nothing but A’s!”

“I just need to get away from it for a while and think things over. It’s nothing more than that, really. I just need some time to think. I’m sure I’ll return soon, maybe next year.”

Later that summer, a letter addressed to Henry’s mother arrived from Mr. Merkin. Though it was addressed to Mrs. Pratt, Merkin knew she would be anxious to share its contents with Henry.

He was so pleased with Henry’s progress, Merkin wrote. Henry had everything to look forward to, and he himself looked forward to seeing him back in the fall. He was writing, too, to let her know that he had been promoted. He regretted that he would be leaving his position as headmaster of the Boy’s Lower Division to become principal of Mission Academy, and the little cottage in which the three of them had shared so many happy occasions.

His new position came with larger quarters, and Merkin was sorry to inform her that all positions attendant upon that domicile were already filled, and that Henry’s position as his personal assistant would no longer be available. But he would have a word with his replacement to see that something else opened up for him.

Was Henry still interested in preparing himself for a career with the church? If so, he should consider enrolling in divinity school after he graduated next year. Merkin was certain that with Henry’s exemplary academic record, he could arrange things so that he might expedite the normal evaluation process and begin immediately.

His mother, of course, was enthusiastic, pleased beyond words that Mr. Merkin would arrange such an extraordinary opportunity for her Henry. Oddly, the idea held a certain appeal for Henry as well, now that his sordid affair with Mr. Merkin might finally be over. The prospect of divinity school, in the safety and company of other young men seeking solace and inspiration in the contemplation of the divine, was comforting, and he knew that he must make good on all that his mother had sacrificed for his education, sooner or later.

But Henry wasn’t sure he would welcome anyone’s camaraderie. He shared none of the usual aspirations for a steady job and a family. Most of all he just wanted to be alone. Whatever capacity remained to him for friendship had been sundered by the beast.

Henry returned to Mission Academy in the fall, praying that his nemesis would darken his door no more. But he knew that he must consult Mr. Merkin once more, as he promised his mother he would, to fill out his application for divinity school. He hoped it would be a quick meeting.

Merkin was now installed in a larger office on the top floor of the Administration Building. Above his oak desk hung an oil painting of God, the stern tyrant of the Old Testament. Merkin got up and extended his hand, smiling welcomingly. “Why, Henry my dear young man, what took you so long? I would have thought you’d have come by first thing! You’ve been gone all summer!”

Henry accepted the handshake, and Merkin walked over to shut the office door. Good God, Henry prayed, not here! But thankfully, Merkin didn’t lock the door, and he returned without incident to his place behind the desk.

“Henry, I hope there are no hard feelings,” he said. “I just want to be sure that we understand each other.”

“Sir, I just want to be friends! What we did was unnatural, sir, it’s a sin in the eyes of God. So, if there’s a place for me in divinity school next year, I’d like to enroll.”

“Henry, it’s a sin to commit a waste of affection. That’s what’s unnatural. Are you going to reject my friendship and guidance at last? You’re going to enroll in divinity school next year, and that’s fine. But it seems to me that you’re abandoning your friendship with me! I shouldn’t have to tell you that I’m in a very good position now to determine where your future might lie with the church! If you could overcome these doubts of yours, I should think that your future would be quite bright.”

“But sir, can we just be friends? If we can’t, I’m going to back to Maui tomorrow and I’ll just have to tell my mother why.”

Startled at this audacity, Merkin stared at him, then nodded slowly. Nothing had changed. It was the same ingrate as before that sat before him now. He turned in his chair, and looked out the window behind his desk.

“Very well, Henry, ‘just friends’ is what it will be. But by the same token, do not expect me to be there to help you or comfort you as a true friend might when you next find yourself in need! If ‘just friends’ is what you want, you’ll learn someday what it’s like to be without a truly good friend in this world. It’s a cold and unforgiving world without one.”

He paused for a moment to let his moment of picque pass.

“In any event,” Merkin continued, “I promised your mother a place in divinity school for you next year— notwithstanding the fact that the school ordinarily likes to take its time evaluating its candidates.”

“I appreciate that, sir. And I’ll do well by that. But the past is the past, and I’d like to say goodbye to all that, as a friend.”

Very well, Merkin thought, but you may well find that spleen is cold comfort indeed.

Chapter Eleven

The day came when the newly ordained ministers would be informed of their new postings. The dean extended his congratulations: “Henry Pratt. The church has reserved for you an assignment of unique importance!” he exclaimed. “It has been decided that the church must heed the cries of its flock in even its most remote jurisdictions, and after many years of dormancy, its mission at Hi’ilawe, on the island of Hawaii, is to be re-activated.”

The church at Hi’ilawe had been shuttered a hundred years ago, but it was still standing. Other missions on Kauai and Maui had been torn down to make way for an agricultural park or an office building or a tract of new homes. In re-opening the church at Hi’ilawe, the Mission Estate was less concerned with heeding the bleatings of its flock than with averting the scrutiny of the Internal Revenue Service.

Mission Estate had made a fortune in lands that were once duck ponds and were now hotels. Truthfully, more money was collected in rent than was spent on educating children of Hawaiian ancestry, and there was little connection to be discerned any longer with the old American Board of Missions. With all the money that Mission Estate was making in rents, and the many creative ways in which that money was being spent, the IRS wondered if the whole thing wasn’t just a big business. It seemed entirely possible that the tax-exempt status of the Mission Estate– and that of its vast land holdings– might come under official scrutiny.

Later, when the everyone was standing around talking, Henry button-holed the dean’s assistant, wanting more information. “I didn’t realize that there was a mission in… where did they say?”

“Hi’ilawe.”

“Is that in Hilo? I’ve heard of the church at Hilo.”

“It’s up the coast from Hilo,” he said. “Hidden away in a valley. It’s been there since 1860. It was Pastor Bingham’s church once upon a time. You’ll like it, once we get the place fixed up.”

“Why did they close it?”

“Well, it isn’t discussed in any official history,” the deacon said. “but it seems there was an incident. I’m not that familiar with what happened, except that Pastor Bingham met with an untimely death.”

“And because of that, they’ve kept it closed all these years?”

“Yes, well, as I said, Pratt, the particulars of the case aren’t known to me. I wasn’t involved in the decision.” His tone of voice, and the use of Henry’s last name, suggested that he wasn’t comfortable with this line of inquiry. “But all of us are pleased, as we know you are, that the calling of the parishioners in Hi’ilawe is once again to be heard.”

Pastor Henry Pratt arrived at his new posting one blue summer evening. As his skiff hove to at the jetty, he stepped ashore in the sun-rain lands of Hi’ilawe. Kaipo and Herman were there to greet him. Masa, now a general manager, had given the caretaker job to Herman. He would cut the grass, prune the hedges, clean up around the place, and assist the new pastor in whatever ways might be helpful. So long as he stayed away from the camps, he had the job.

“This is my brother Herman,” Kaipo said. “He’s going help take care of things.”

“Yes, hello,” Henry said. *How are you?”

“Good,” Herman said.

“He don’t say much,” said Kaipo. “But he’ll be around if you need him. He can show you where things are, show you where to buy food. Some days the fish lady come around. Other days, tofu guy… he get things from the store for sell, too.”

“Well, ah… yes,” Henry fumbled. “Will you be staying at the mission, Herman?”

“Yeah.”

They drove up the crushed coral road and pulled up in front of the old church. Getting out of the truck, Henry stared, and his heart sank to behind his kneecaps. He shook his head, his mouth opened, and his jaws seemed to work at something to say.

“They said I would like it.”

The mission was an unholy mess. The floors and roof alike had rotted through in parts and caved in. The basement was caked with several inches of silt, and the outhouse was a horror that overflowed with algaed muck. There were mice and frogs and centipedes everywhere. Most of the windows were broken, and mildew covered the walls and ceiling. Termites had eaten away at the pews and left little piles of wood dust everywhere. The iron stove was rusted shut, and it would take a great deal of banging to knock it open. Curtains and sea-grass carpets were moth-eaten and rotted. After its silence of a hundred years, the organ sounded a strangled chord, then wheezed and died.

“The bedroom’s upstairs,” Herman said.

They walked up the creaking staircase, gained the landing, and pushed aside cobwebs to make their way to a room at the end of the hall.

“Here it is.” The door creaked opened onto the bedroom, then broke and fell off its hinges, kicking up a cloud of dust. In the bedroom stood an ancient rattan bed, a bureau shot through with the borings of termites, and a small desk. A long porch, empty of chairs, overlooked the valley. Everything lay under a thick coat of dust.

“It does indeed look like nobody’s been here for a hundred years,” Henry said. In a moment of revelation, it became clear to him that he had been banished to this place.

The accumulated grime and dirt and dust of a hundred years was swept and scrubbed away. The mice and centipedes were banished, the rooms aired, the windows cleaned, and linseed oil was applied throughout. Lumber and glass panes and caulking and other building supplies were procured. The pews were restored, the rotting floorboards replaced, and the roof shingled. The living quarters and the kitchen were wired for electricity, fed by a generator. Pipes for plumbing were installed, along with a flushing toilet in a bathroom downstairs.

An organ tuner was summoned, but was never able to make it sound much better than as if the organist were stomping on cat’s paws. They brought in bedding, and stocked the cupboards with rice, flour, sugar, tea, and utensils. Kaipo contributed a few things from the store, and a couple of his coconut pies sat on the kitchen table.

Supplies were stocked in the basement, and when mealtime came, Herman disappeared downstairs and brought up rice, a tin of corned beef, and some onions, and then went out back to fetch greens from the garden. The garden had become unrecognizable as such, its ancient coffee shrubs spindly and its fruit trees wildly overgrown. But Herman weeded and turned over its soil, and put in lettuce, long beans, cabbage, corn, and some sweet potatoes. Henry gave him some money to buy fish from the fish lady, and pork from the butcher in town, and a few dollars from time to time for spending money.

In the fullness of time, order was restored to the little church, and Henry and Herman turned their attentions to preparing for the first services to be held in a hundred years.

“We’re all set to go,” said Herman. “Now we gotta have this place blessed.”

“It is blessed,” Henry said.

“Not just by God. Gotta have one kahuna come bless the place.”

“That’s bizarre!” Henry said. “Why should I let some old goblin come in and spread superstitious nonsense in my church?!”

“It’s not li’ dat. He’s one good Christian, like you and me. But you gotta have this place blessed, otherwise people never going come.”

“I don’t think that would set a very good example.”

“These people don’t know nothing about faddah, his son, and… and Santa Claus or whoever the guy—“

“The Holy Ghost, Herman.”

“Whatevah. They all the same, all roll up in one, no can make sense! All those bedtime stories… forget about ‘em already! If I was you, I like give ‘em the real low-down. Tell ‘em ‘bout Night Marchers! That way they going sit up and take notice. They going listen!”

“They aren’t bedtime stories, as you put it. But what about Night Marchers, Herman?”

“You’ll see! Sometimes so loud! Then when you get up and look, can see ‘em! Get torches!”

“What are they doing?”

“Marching around in the rain.”

“That doesn’t sound so bad. So what?”

The people that lived here, they see them.” The Night Marchers came out after dark, on one of the nights of the gods Ku or Kanaloa, on nights of heavy downpour of rain and mist, or heavy seas. You saw their torches, pillars of candlenuts that burned brightly even in the rain. The night was filled with the thud of drums and chants of names and deeds. From midnight ‘til dawn some nights, they marched. Some people followed them to see where they would go, but you had to be careful. For if the wind blew from where they were marching to where you were, something would happen. You had to be careful.

“Ever since they stole the bones,” Herman continued, “was like everything wen’ wrong with this place.”

“What bones? What are you talking about?”

“Used to be, was one heiau up the valley, where get the bones. Some say was the bones of Lono.”

“It that one of your pagan deities?”

“Lono was no whatevah-you-call-him. You better not say such things!”

“Well, I’m not about to subscribe to any nonsense about old gods,” Henry said. “Pastor Bingham should have put paid to all that mumbo-jumbo a hundred years ago!”

“All you people the same,” Herman said. “You no more respect. Why you think this place was empty?! That’s how the guy died, you know! Night Marchers! Found him on the beach road, stone-cold dead! You think all this stuff is nonsense. But I tell you, people here think this place belong to Lono, not Jesus Christ or Santa Claus! And they know get Night Marchers! Even get one were-shark walking around! If you no more respect, same thing going happen to you!”

Even in this day and age, the hearts of the Hawaiians of Hi’ilawe remained in thrall to Lono, not Jesus. The old church had become not a house of God, but the temple of a madman, and to this day, most Hawaiians would not set foot in the place. Perhaps Herman had a point, Henry realized. But with nonsense like Night Marchers and were-sharks still holding sway, what would Henry do for a congregation, and to whom would be preach… and what?

Against his better judgment, Henry went along with it. They hired the kahuna for ten dollars, and everyone watched as he walked around the perimeter of the church, muttering and shaking his ti leaves. He shouted up at the rafters and down into the basement and into the four corners of the building and everywhere where malign spirits might hide, commanding them to remove themselves in the name of Jesus Christ. That much was in English, but when he began ranting in Hawaiian, Henry couldn’t be at all sure what he was saying, or to which deity he was appealing. But he hoped that somehow it all made sense to people here.

The Monday morning after their first service, Henry and Herman sat at the table and discussed matters over breakfast. Herman had prepared tea and taro cakes.

“Do you think we’ll have a better turnout next Sunday?” Henry asked, listlessly.

“Maybe. If you no fall down first,” Herman said.

“Is it that obvious?” Henry said. All the work it had taken to restore the church, combined with the sleeplessness of the long nights, had tired him to the point where he hardly had the energy to compose a decent sermon, not the drivel he had mumbled through yesterday. What a fine first impression that must have made. “I can’t sleep at all,” Henry said, “and I don’t have any appetite. The nights are so hot and sticky. And the dogs howl all night.”

It wasn’t just the dogs. In the still night, the chorus of crickets became a roar. Every toss and turn caused sweat to bead, and from head to toe he reeked of soaking sweats gone dry. Tired from the long, sleepless nights, Henry could hardly lift the food from his plate. He took a bite and chewed.

“What is this, Herman?”

“Taro cake. With syrup.”

“Taro…” Henry mused. Well it’s unlike any pancake I’ve ever eaten. What is that you’ve put on it? Molasses?”

“No.”

“What is it, then?”

“I don’t know what it’s called. I make it. From ti root.”

“Tea? You mean like what we’re drinking?”

“No. Other kine ti. From up the valley.”

“How do you make it?”

“Boil the root. It’s real sticky, and sweet. Like molasses.”

“It’s not bad, actually. But I’ve had enough already. I just don’t seem to have any appetite. I’m so tired.”

“Maybe you should take some medicine,” said Herman.

“I haven’t got any medicine, Herman.”

“I have some medicine. I’ll give you some tonight.”

That night, Herman brought the medicine in an amber bottle, a portion of what he had cooked up in the still, not far from the ti patch in the narrows of the valley, from mash fermented in an old bathtub buzzing with fruit flies. He measured out two fingers into the glass, then stirred in some sugar and mixed in some water.

Henry swallowed a small mouthful and grimaced. “Tastes like spirits!” The blood rushed to his face, and he flushed hot. “Oh, it’s awful!”

“Well, you gotta drink ‘em all down. It will make you sleep, real good! You gotta take your medicine. Everyone knows medicine tastes bad. But it’s good for you. Going make you sleep real good.”

In Henry’s ragged, disoriented state of mind, the usual cautionary tales no longer applied. Nothing mattered except sleep. He was so tired, so dispirited these days, that his only purpose, as compelling as survival itself, was to sleep. He choked down the contents of the bottle. Then he sat, gazing out at the valley, feeling oddly tranquil and relaxed.

The next day, Herman needed medicine too. From his trip to the still that day, he came back soaking wet. He had caught a cold, and he gave the cold to Henry.

Henry’s fatigue made this an especially bad cold, lots of sneezing and congestion. But the medicine let him sleep. No longer did he lie awake, troubled by the caterwauling of the dogs and the heat and sopping humidity. The blessed release won from these torments quickly eroded whatever restraint might have intervened, and all that week, the two of them sat around in a daze, too sick to do anything but drink medicine, and too dazed to care.

Somehow, Kaipo and Herman cobbled together a congregation. There wasn’t much to work with. Most of the churchgoers in the community went to church up the road in Hamakua or even in Hilo, since that was their chance to go shopping and visit friends as well. But at least there was Kaipo and Lani and Haunani and Izzy and a few of their friends who had agreed to come as a favor, and of course there was Herman and a few of his friends as well. The women and their reluctant husbands and children were dressed in their Sunday best, and the congregation waited patiently waited while Herman dawdled on the organ, dreadfully and discordantly, and Godfrey sat atop the instrument, flicking his tail and gazing screwily at the assembled multitude, such as it was.

Herman had gotten the cat for the mice, and it had grown fat and sleek on goatfish heads. Goatfish abounded in these waters, and they harbored a toxic substance in the brain that induced dementia in those who ate the heads. Men who ingested the heads reported horrifying nightmares of being overwhelmed by enormous waves, of being chased down and torn asunder by dogs, dreams accompanied by sensations of electric shock, of lost balance, of the head being lower than the feet.

There were still lots of mice in the mission, but the cat ignored them. When the fishing boats returned to the wharf late in the day, there was Godfrey, awaiting his fish heads. Finding its behavior humorous, the fishermen fed the cat little except for the heads. Was one mean cat, they said. There were nights when Henry lay awake, listening to its enraged screams. Like some moon monster on a tear, it growled at dogs that ran off, disinclined to do battle. It growled at nothing half the time.

Presently, Herman got up from the organ and went upstairs and looked for Henry. There he was, in his armchair on the porch, his chin tucked into the folds of his neck, purring softly. His cigarette had burned down to a stub in his nicotine-stained fingers, its ash dribbled onto the floor where it had missed the ashtray.

“Wake up!” Herman shouted.

Henry looked up, his eyes poached in aspic.

“Pastor Henry!” Herman said. “Everyone’s waiting for you!”

“Send them home, Herman. I’m feeling ill, you know. I need some medicine. I don’t have any more.”

Herman went back downstairs to the waiting congregation. “Sorry,” he told them, “but pastor is sick today. Cold season, you know. Can you come back next time?” A cluck of sympathy came from one of the women, and she asked if there was anything she could do. The men looked relieved, and their faces brightened. The children were glad, since now they could play.

Another year passed, and Henry at last had no congregation at all. He wrote letters to the church, and pleaded for a different assignment. In response, a handwritten note had been included in his pay packet. Some functionary had written to remind him that as a servant of God, who had been chosen on advice “from the highest levels”, he should be patient. His was an opportunity that others didn’t usually have until later. Given the Hi’ilawe mission’s long history, he should be pleased, the only newly-minted minister with his own church. Most of the others in his graduating class merely assisted, and in most cases would, until someone retired and they at last took over the pulpit. The church was proud of him, the letter said, as was his mother. Now where had he gotten that?

And what did his mother think? She was indeed proud, her Henry, the only one from his class with his very own church already! She had been imploring him to come visit, but Henry had put her off, again and again. He would send for her, he assured her, as soon as the church was ready. But a year had gone by, and he couldn’t bear the idea of her seeing him in this state.

Chapter Twelve

Humphrey Merkin’s appointment to principal had capped a steady rise to heights undreamt of by a man whose career had long been that of a bureaucratic hewer of wood. When his supervisor Headmaster Wollard passed– called home to glory, they said– his own summons to glory came soon after, first to replace Wollard as Headmaster, Boy’s Division, then several years later, as vice principal and finally as principal of Mission Academy, for nearly thirty years now.

His nomination to fill a vacancy on the Board of Trustees of Mission Estate was the cherry on the icing of the cake. The vacancy had been created by the retirement of Dr. Kamuela Rice from the Board, a congery of old boys that handled most of the main items of business, and had rented out the Mission Estate’s holdings in Hi’ilawe Valley on a hundred-year lease to the Hamakua Sugar Company. And for a hundred years the Estate had raked in rents from the lands that grew the sweet lucre of sugar. Over time, rents always rose and sugar profits grew fat, and everyone was happy.

The appointment as trustee of Humphrey Merkin, a distinguished educator and head of the Mission Academy, underscored the Estate’s commitment first and foremost to education and the well being of its Hawaiian students, in accordance with the wishes expressed long ago by Princess Ruth in the devise of her lands to the church. Merkin’s appointment was hailed as a timely infusion of new blood and fresh thinking into what had become an old boy’s club.

Sclerotic bores to the man, the minions of the Mission Estate existed to collect rents, spend huge amounts of time pondering and processing leases and licenses, consulting with attorneys, developing three-page addenda to one-page documents, quoting regulations, and otherwise interposing themselves in processes and projects at every opportunity— when they weren’t busy with luncheons, that is, where they were usually occupied with idle palaver and baked chicken with tired peas and carrots. But today, a formal poi supper awaited.

Gathered in the banquet room of the Humu Hotel, the multitude mingled and picked at dishes of candlenut relish, Hawaiian red salt, chopped green onions, tiny red Hawaiian chilies, several kinds of fresh seaweed, and slices of dried fish and freshwater shrimps. They scooped up mounds of slightly sour day-old poi strewn with shreds of pickled salmon and cooked squid, and helped themselves to dishes of cooked sweet crabs or pieces of purple or orange or white sweet potato, and squares of coconut pudding. Fragrant flowers were strung on lei and as pompoms, maile was draped along the seats for the men, carnation and ginger for the ladies. Fresh fruit decorated the table, with watermelon sliced Van Dyke style and crowned pineapple, and the long table glittered with an array of long-stemmed crystal, polished coconut bowls, and crystal finger bowls adorned with slices of lemon and nasturtium leaves.

The limousine pulled up beneath the porte cochere, where sculptures of fish spouted jets of water into a seashell-lined fountain, and Humphrey Merkin and his entourage emerged into the limelight.

The procession filed into the banquet room at the Humu, and Merkin took his place at the head of a long table draped with fresh ti leaves and crowned with a centerpiece of lacy maiden hair, palapalai, and other mountain ferns.

The reverend took to the podium and offered a few remarks, and then it was time for Merkin to speak. The occasion of today’s banquet was the grand opening of the Hawaiian Cultural Park, and his speech would be presented to an admiring audience of social lions, business leaders, pillars of the community and functionaries of the Estate. It would be the Estate’s signature address of the season.

The Hawaiian Cultural Park was an inspired notion, Merkin declared, a community where Hawaiian students on scholarships given them by the Mission Academy could work to defray their tuition and showcase the heritage of their race. Hawaiians were dramatically fewer in number now, largely because of the white man’s microbes. But thanks to the Cultural Park, the whole world could be made to see the benefit that would accrue to the education of Hawaiians from the Mission Estate’s efforts to commemorate and celebrate their colorful but imperiled way of life.

Then, too, Merkin declared himself a great believer in work-study programs. These should require of the student honest hard work, not some cosseted arrangement such as that which Henry Pratt had once enjoyed. The Hawaiian Cultural Park would give them that kind of opportunity.

While Merkin pontificated, the musicians ate, and coffee and fresh coconut cake was served to the guests, along with haupia and fresh fruit. After the speech, the musicians took over again. They played slack key, and everyone watched the hula dancers, especially the old Hawaiian women who showed how it was really done.

Hula was very much on the mind of Kaipo and Lani’s twenty-year old daughter, Haunani. More than anything, she wanted to join one hula halau, learn the real old-style dance, and travel with the troupe to far-off places like Honolulu. She didn’t see much of a future in Hi’ilawe.

“I never going get married and settle down in this place!” she sulked, as she and her mother swept the lanai of their Squattersville store and Kaipo sat and listened.

“Your father and I got married under a mango tree,” Lani said. “And I was happy with that. Of course, those was different times. I was twenty like you, and people thought I was one spinster already! My daddy said none of those guys that came around for me was good enough. If Kaipo never wen’ come around, maybe I never get married.”

Kaipo nodded. “I feel the same way,” he said. “None of those guys is good enough.” He and Lani were mindful of the fact that their daughter was coming of age. But here was nothing but plantation men, and the plantation was their only future.

“So, what she going do?” Lani said, looking to Kaipo. “This place is her home. Was good enough for me. Should be good enough for her.”

“Haunani,” Kaipo asked, “what you wanna do?”

Haunani stared at the floor for a decent inerval, then looked up.

“I like join one halau,” she said.

“What! For dance hula?! I mean besides that. I mean like, go back to school.”

“But daddy, that’s what one halau is! For study hula! You go study under one kumu hula. You gotta study hard, not like in school. Maybe I can go Mission Academy. They study Hawaiian history and stuff and they dance hula, do shows and stuff for tourists.”

“Honolulu’s a long ways,” Kaipo said. “How about never mind go Honolulu. Get good schools in Hilo, I think.”

“Only get junk schools in Hilo,” she disdained. “I like go Mission Academy.”

“You’re not going Honolulu.” Kaipo said. “You too young for that!”

“Twenty’s too young?! Twenty not too young for Mom to marry you!”

Her resolve took root and grew, and Haunani applied to Mission Academy. She never thought about the money, never really thought she had a chance anyhow. But if it happened, maybe she could get one scholarship. She’d cross that bridge when she came to it.

The letter, postmarked Honolulu and embossed with the seal of the Mission Academy, arrived. Haunani opened it, read the first line, then broke into a broad smile. Breathlessly, she read more, and began jumping up and down, squealing.

But as she read on, her enthusiasm became muted. The Mission Academy had accepted her, which was nice. What’s more, they were prepared to place her in a scholarship work program to offset the expenses of her room and board. But tuition was her responsibility, all $2,000 of it.

Was plenty money, two grand. Her daddy didn’t have that kind of money, didn’t have a clue where she could lay hands on that kind of money. She wallowed in her quandary, downcast that opportunity had knocked on her door, and that she could not answer. More than for herself, she felt sorry for her dad– he worked so hard all these years, and still, money was so tight. She didn’t wanna talk about it with nobody.

Herman wanted to be helpful. “How come so sad?” he asked. “You was so excited, now get long face. I thought you was going school.”

“I don’t think I going nowhere,” Haunani said.

“What do you mean! You was accepted, yeah?”

“Yeah.”

“So what’s the problem already?”

“No more money. They want me pay tuition.”

“Humbug, already! I thought was free! How much you gotta pay?”

“Two grand.”

“Two thousand clams!? Hoooweeee! That’s plenty money!”

Next day, Herman came to the store. He sat down at the kitchen table, and took the roll of bills out of his pocket, big enough for choke one elephant. Mostly fifties and hundreds. He counted out two thousand dollars, as everyone looked on in shocked silence.

“People always tell me I’m no good,” he said. “But they never say my money’s no good.”

They went into town, and Haunani bought a cashier’s check. She enclosed the check in the acceptance form, and sent it in, formalizing her enrollment in the class of 1986.

Chapter Thirteen

The half-empty bottle of medicine stood beside him on the table. Henry jolted awake, his face beet-red and swollen, soaked with night sweats. Flaring so brilliantly that it hurt the eyes, the moon swam through a sky of smoky blue, across which drifted a few yellowish rags of cloud. Through the tepid air, the scent streamed from the plumeria trees like some intolerable compound sprayed from an atomizer. Seen through the tree’s naked branches, the moonlight crusted the earth like a rime of salt.

Henry beheld his old friend. It wouldn’t do to keep trembling like this. He needed a drink, just a nip, to settle down the nerves, to give him some room to breathe.

He upended the bottle and kissed the flow of sour mash, his relief deepening with each swig. He sighed, breathless after the first draught and immediately craving the next. After one swig, it was easier to have the next, and things came into perspective, less troubled by nettlesome abstractions of right and wrong. Trembling still, he re-applied the bottle to his lips, and drained it. Things were in focus now, at least as he was used to seeing them.

Now he could wander outside, smoke his pipe, and drink from the next bottle at a more leisured pace. But wait, what time was it? Two forty-five, his watch said. It was hot, and the mosquitoes found him and came whining after him.

Henry looked out at the garden. He relished its chaos and decrepitude, its wild spirit of unruly growth and rot. It suited his state of mind. The bougainvillea had entwined itself amongst the papaya trunks and flowered extravagantly. The moon hung like an old gray skull over the valley, flooding the garden with its pale light and lending a further nuance of decay to the garden, the moonlight, the mission, himself.

There was no longer any point. As more services were missed, fewer and fewer had bothered to show up, and the only people left now in his congregation were Herman’s friends. But his friends were boisterous, and he scolded Herman, saying that their conduct in church was inappropriate. It seemed to him that they came more to be entertained– and perhaps he had become an object of hilarity in their eyes. But if he was so tired that he could hardly keep his eyes open, did they find that so amusing? They seemed always on the brink of laughter.

He knew their attendance had something to do with liquor. Sunday was their day off, a good time to take care of errands or go fishing, not come to church. Something was up.

“Who are those men from the plantation?” Henry asked. “Why are they here?”

“You gotta take what you can get,” Herman said.

“You’re selling medicine to those men, aren’t you? And what is that awful smell downstairs, Herman?! Have you taken to burying our dead in the cellar?”

“I don’t smell nothing.”

“Oh, come now! Surely you can smell that! They can probably smell it in town when the wind’s right!”

No further response was forthcoming from Herman.

“You’re making medicine down there, aren’t you?”

“There you go again, putting your nose where it don’t belong,” Herman shot back. “I think your nose knows too much! Don’t worry so much about me,” he continued. “If you ask too many questions, I cannot do my job, I cannot take care of you! So if I was you, I would worry more about you!”

Herman had to explain to his friends that they could not come only to buy liquor anymore. They had to come so that Pastor Henry would have a congregation. Gotta sit nice and quiet and respectful, listen to the whole sermon. Then they get the stuff. That was the deal. Henry was grateful, in a way. Perhaps appearances were all that mattered anymore.

It was hard for Henry to accept his passive complicity in Herman’s basement moonshining. But not overly hard, since he was as keenly interested in the progress of the new batch as Herman was. At least it wasn’t necessary to pretend about that anymore. The two of them— three, if one included the cat— existed in a dark fairy tale, with Herman’s imagination populated by the likes of Night Marchers, menehune, and were-shark. Pastor Henry contended with the writhing creepy-crawlies in his own head, and Godfrey contended with God only knew what caused him to growl and hiss and scratch at thin air. It was as topsy-turvy as Alice in Wonderland, but the medicine made it all bearable and somehow comprehensible.

With Pastor Henry in his cups, Herman found himself increasingly in the chips, and at length he had accumulated enough money to buy a car. Festooned with yards of gleaming chrome fashioned into false air scoops and gun ports, quadruple headlight frames, and torpedo tail lights, the Buick was an automobile of distinction. With the car, his horizons had broadened, to Hilo, where on Saturday nights he checked into Violet’s, where there could be found cold beer, good Hawaiian music, and warm ladies.

There he made the acquaintance of a young woman of easy virtue, and after drinks and jollification, they consummated their relationship, however awkwardly, in the back seat of the Buick.

Dressed to the nines in his tatty vest and pomaded hair, the girl wondered if Herman was some kind of manager.

“You one pimp?” the girl asked. “You look like one pimp.”

“Naw, I just come from church,” Herman said. “This is my Sunday best.”

“Yeah, you don’t act like no pimp.” she said.

“Never get chance. No girls where I live.”

“Where’s that?”

“Hi’ilawe. Out past the plantation.”

“Oh yeah?! What do all those guys do for good time? Why don’t you bring your friends with you next time? I’ll cut you in.”

“Maybe I oughtta be one pimp!” he said. “How much action you going cut me in on?”

“Twenty dollah each.”

Two weeks later, he dialed her up. Said he was coming Saturday night, was going bring couple guys. Told her to get one room. Soon he was making regular trips. Business was good, but Hilo was so far away.

Maybe better he should bring the girl to Hi’ilawe, park the Buick somewhere out of the way, tell the guys come do their business in the back seat. He could probably get away with it, he thought. Give Pastor Henry his medicine, and he’d sit tight, wouldn’t know nothing.

Saturday nights, Herman always left Henry a little something extra. Didn’t make no big deal out of it, just left it there where he knew he’d find it. Henry thought that was generous of him, thought perhaps that they had reached an understanding. Perhaps it was Herman’s way of making up to him for the absence of his companionship on Saturday nights.

Herman brought the girl to Hi’ilawe, drove into the valley with the girl crouched down in the back seat. He parked the car out in back of the cemetery, and cut the lights. They waited and talked quietly for maybe twenty minutes.

“You sure those guys coming?” she asked.

By and by, they showed up… always late, these kanakas. They knew the rules— gotta be quiet. Was so quiet, only noise was the car springs. Made good money, never a problem.

But maybe it was too much to expect it to last. The girl needed to use the toilet.

“Just go outside,” Herman said.

“Not numbah one,” she said. “Numbah two.”

This presented a problem. “How come you never go before you come here?” he asked.

“Eh,” she said. “some of these guys like come in the back door– know what I mean?”

He thought about it for a moment, then decided he didn’t want to think about it anymore. “Yeah, okay okay,” he said. “I’ll take you. But you gotta be real quiet. No wake up nobody!”

They drove up the road to the mission. He cut the lights, and pulled in as quietly as he could, out back of the Sunday School. “Remember,” he whispered. “Be real quiet! I’ll show you where, then I’m going upstairs, look in on him.”

“Hurry, yeah? I gotta go, already!”

They got out, opened the door, and he pointed her down the hallway toward the bathroom.

Henry dozed liverishly, then awakened. The animals never let him sleep for long. They came back every night, and sat down at a judicious distance from where they knew the cat lurked, and barked as if to provoke the monster to emerge, to draw the dragon out of its cave so they could run it ragged. He sat there fuming, his head aching and his gut burning sourly.

He lit a cigarette, the sweat beading and dripping from his brow. God how he wanted a drink, and even the Saturday bonus ration had disappeared. Herman had the key to the storeroom, where he locked the stuff away. It had become a constant game about the medicine, and Henry had tired of it. It would have been so much easier if he could just help himself, instead of bothering Herman, off in Hilo again on his Saturday night revel. He’d have to see what was downstairs. He stubbed out the cigarette, saving it for later.

He heard the toilet flush. Ahh… Herman was home, just in time, he thought.

He got up, and walked to the stairwell. He thought he heard a door close downstairs, footsteps in the hall, then voices whispered.

He peered down the stairs. “Herman?”

There was whispering… a woman’s voice, he was sure of it.

“Herman?” Taking hold of the banister, he thumped down the stairs. “Herman?!” he called out.

A door opened, and Herman hissed at the girl to hurry up and get out the door ahead of the advancing footfalls. But it was too late. Arriving at the foot of the stairs, Henry stood and squinted in the unaccustomed light of the half-open door. Then his eyes widened, his jaw dropped, and he stared.

Cowering in the hallway, the girl grinned foolishly.

“Herman?” Henry said, as if to confirm what his eyes could not believe. “Herman, what in God’s name is a woman doing here?!” he demanded. “Who is she?!”

“She’s my niece!” Herman offered. “From Hilo. She had to use the toilet.”

“And what is your niece doing here of all places, Herman– in the middle of the night?” He looked at the girl, dressed in a skirt that rode several hands high of the knee, and with make-up to rival the hindquarters of a mandrill, he realized that his line of questioning was superfluous. “You don’t even have a niece, Herman. This woman’s a tart, isn’t she!?!” he said. “You’ve brought a tart here, haven’t you!”

Herman said nothing. His initial dissembling had given the lie to anything else he might wish to offer. The girl fidgeted, then withered beneath Henry’s glowering. Looking Herman dead in the eye, Henry resumed his interrogation.

“As if it isn’t enough that you’re selling liquor! Now it’s women, too, isn’t it?!” Incredulous, his gaze shifted from Herman to the girl. “So how’s business, my dear? Saturday night… must be pretty good,” he mused. It all made sense to him now. “So that’s what you’ve been up to on Saturday nights, Herman? Is that why you left the liquor lying around? My God, did you think I was that far gone?!”

But it seemed that he was talking to himself, answering his own question.

“You don’t have much to say for yourself, do you, Herman? Well just get out, then. Go on, get out… and take yourniece with you! Take her back to wherever you hired her, and you and I will talk tomorrow.”

Herman dropped his gaze and stared at his feet. Shit, he thought. Then he pushed the door open, and walked with the woman back to the Buick.

There wasn’t much discussion, as it turned out. Henry was unable to obtain from Herman anything more than silence and a deaf ear. Was hard feelings on both sides. Henry had turned him out with his bag of personsl belongings, his Buick, and his ill-gotten gains– amounting to five thousand-some dollars in an account at the Hamakua Savings and Loan, and several dozen bottles of hooch from the basement.

Kaipo knew something had happened now that Herman was coming around again. Why wasn’t he at the mission? He and Pastor Henry had quarreled, Herman said. It wasn’t long, though, before Kaipo learned the truth. Deprived of the medicine in the basement, Henry had been seen shuffling grimly down to the store for bottles of fortified wine.

It was evident that this was more than a passing spat, and that matters had reached a serious impasse. Kaipo pressed Herman for details, but few were forthcoming. Declining further comment, Herman left, and last Kaipo heard, he was living in the Buick, somewhere up the valley.

But it just wouldn’t do for Pastor Henry to be dumped like that. It was resolved, therefore, that Kaipo and his family would take up the slack. They stopped by every few days to straighten things up and cook for him and, at last, to provide him with something to dissuade his further venturing forth beneath the gaze of the community. At least that way it was controlled, or so they reasoned. Izzy swept up the trash from the plumeria trees and chopped back the unruly growth in the garden, and Kaipo and Lani cleaned up inside, dusting and mopping, changing the sheets and collecting the laundry to take back to the store.

Apart from sending along his pay packet, the Mission Estate had long ago put Henry Pratt out of its mind. At age fifty, he was afflicted with sores that he called mud-sores, but which were actually caused by drink. They left little pits in his skin that did not go away. His hands shook as he scratched the ears of his cat— his only companion now– as they sat on the verandah of the old Sunday School and passed the days, with Henry abandoning any further efforts at Sunday sermonizing. Whatever love he might have had for God had become a cold cinder.

Chapter Fourteen

Haunani had expected a tidy community of students dressed in neat uniforms on a pleasant campus where young Hawaiian people were studying to get ahead. But it looked like some kind of circus to her.

Busloads of tourists poured through the place, and students were sweeping up or tending stalls that sold souvenirs and pineapple juice. Even from the Administration Building you could hear the shouts and the drums of the performances, the cries of “Alooooha!”, and audiences applauding.

On sabbatical from the Sunday School, Herman had decided he’d like to come along and take in the big city. That made sense to Kaipo and Lani, too. He and Haunani would live together, in one of the school’s Family Housing units— a quadrangle of cinder block walk-ups hidden away behind the Dairy Queen and the stands selling lacquered blowfish and dyed conch shells along the highway. Was plenty noisy here at the Housing Office, women shouting at men, doors slamming, kids crying. But after waiting and waiting, Herman and Haunani were at last given keys and directions to their unit, a dowdy apartment with dirty jalousies and a cracked vinyl floor.

Next morning, Herman and Haunani filed into the auditorium. Some two hundred people, mostly Hawaiian-looking faces, waited for the proceedings to begin. After a long wait, the audience was restless and the children cranky, and finally, a fifty-ish woman dressed in a navy-blue suit and oversize glasses walked up to the podium. The microphone whined and squealed. She tapped it, then began speaking.

“Ladies and gentlemen…” The murmur died down. “Ladies and gentlemen. Members of the Class of 1986, and their families! It is with great pleasure that we welcome you here today to the Mission Academy, to begin what we hope will be a richly rewarding academic and life experience– one that will pave the way for the dreams of a new generation of Hawaiians to find fulfillment.”

She was followed by the Dean of Students, who briefed the assembly on the options available to them in the work-study programs at the Hawaiian Cultural Park. They would try to accommodate everyone’s interests as best they could, he said, but there were only a limited number of openings available in certain programs. Haunani was so excited. “Oh, I can’t wait, Uncle Herman! I’m going first thing tomorrow morning and apply! I’m going dance hula!”

The school’s Polynesian Dance Halau was a top draw for the Hawaiian Cultural Park, one of the best shows on the island. But there weren’t any openings this semester. Spaces were at a premium, and they usually went to the girls who had experience dancing. Or, if no experience, she found out, you had to wait, maybe a year for a spot, maybe longer.

The only work they could place Haunani in for work-study was housekeeping. That or cafeteria or maybe office assistant was where many of the first-year students wound up.

It seemed to Haunani that housekeeping was what her people always wound up doing. Was humbug already, shitty pay, just like the scholarships— fifty or hundred bucks or something li’ dat– was that tuition or lunch money? So she went with housekeeping. At least you were on your own, she thought, without some boss on your ass all the time.

It was impossible to save any money. The prices they charged at Student Union for stuff was just like the old company store scheme. She didn’t enjoy studying about dead white males anyhow, and there was no Hawaiian studies or nothing. Some students said it was just a big scam for cheap labor.

Most of her hours were on morning shift, but some nights she volunteered to help set up the stage and put things away after the hula show. She loved to watch the dancers, and wondered how long it would be before she would be offered a spot.

The show was a feast for the eyes, an assault on the senses. Drums crashed, torches blazed, and grass skirts swayed. Towards the end of the show, they always got some guy in the audience to come on stage, took him by the arm and led him onto the dance floor, and one girl would show him how.

One guy had been drinking, and he was game. Dressed in a cheap aloha shirt, plaid shorts, and sandals with socks, his stomach shook and jiggled and he let out a war whoop as he watched the girl cock her hips, sending the tassels of her grass skirt flying. He could barely stand up, the guy, but he danced hula– or what he thought was hula– shaking his arms, waving them wildly, shaking his massive stomach. When the dance ended, he didn’t want to go sit down.

The pink walls of the Humu Hotel, where the halau danced, were painted with a pattern of taro plants and coconut palms, and its rooms were painted sky blue and furnished with commercial-grade gray carpeting and walnut veneer particleboard furniture with sharp corners and edges. It was hard work, and Haunani had to make her quota of rooms every day, changing sheets, dusting and polishing, vacuuming. The worst was when the supervisor came and stuck her mirror down the crook in the neck of the toilet to see if it was clean up there. Was pretty gross, how sloppy some people were when they knew someone else was going clean up for them.

Even when they didn’t put the “Do Not Disturb” sign outside, they just told you come on in, even if they were sitting there in their underwear, smoking a cigarette. That’s what happened with one guy. He acted like he thought he was appealing, sitting there in just underpants and shirt.

“Housekeeping!” she called out.

“C’mon in!” was the response from within.

Haunani entered and looked at the guy, startled. “You like for me to come back later?”

“No, no, no. You come right on in. Don’t mind me.”

She was a bit nervous about this. She could smell sour mash, like vomit, and the guy was pretty drunk. She started to change the towels in the bathroom.

“Coulda been a nekkid man in there, you know!”

Now she was really nervous. He had gotten up and walked in his underpants over to the bathroom.

“Coulda been me.”

“Sir, maybe I come back later. We no like boddah people when…”

He jumped over to the door. Stood there and smiled sloppily at her, reeking of bourbon.

“You don’t need to go nowhere, sweetheart. I won’t say nothing– we’ll just pretend you was in here cleanin’ house.”

Haunani gasped, her hand on her mouth, and thought how to get past this guy and get out of here.

“I hear tell you Hi-Why-Uhn girls sure know how to show a man a good time!” he leered. “Why don’t you show me some of that aloha spirit!”

“Let me out of here!”

The man grabbed her, and tried to kiss her. She started to shout, but he covered her mouth with his and slobbered boozy wind down her throat. She bit him.

“Goddamn!! Feisty little bitch, aren’t ya!” He pulled her over towards the bed, while Haunani screamed and clawed at him like a tiger. “Goddam bitch! I’m goddam well gonna…”

Panic-stricken, she freed herself from his clutches, flung open the door, and ran into the hallway. The man started to give chase, then stopped and stood there at the door in his underwear, wiping blood from his lip and disinclined to give chase when a group of people emerged from their room into the hallway.

In tears, Haunani told the supervisor what happened. The super didn’t seem very sympathetic, and pressed her for details much as a rapist’s attorney might interrogate the victim for evidence that she had provoked the attack.

“We expect you to use your common sense, you know! How many times you been told: if the guest is still in the room, you come back later!”

“But he told me come in!” Haunani said.

“Then you should have seen what was coming. If we hadn’t told you a hundred times to come back later, it would be different. Honestly, sometimes I think the only way to teach you people anything is the hard way!”

“What you mean, ‘you people’! He attacked me! I was just doing my job already! What about him? What you going do about him?!”

“Dear, you really have to expect that when you’re intruding into a guest’s private room, there are bound to be some awkward moments. And we really can’t afford to have a scandal about every little thing– people would never come back! Imagine how embarrassing that would be for the school!” She had nothing but contempt for local girls—they all had the morals of alley cats, and they never learned.

“I think you people more interested in running a damn business than a school!” Haunani cried out. “You can take this damn job, and your damn circus!”

Herman was sitting in his chair in the living room, listening to Hawaiian music on the radio, when Haunani opened the door, stalked past him, and flung her bag and work clothes onto the kitchen counter. “Shit!!” she shouted, and slammed the door of her room shut behind her. There, she collapsed onto the bed and buried her head in the pillow and wept and wailed.

The door was unlocked, and after a moment, Herman came in. “Hey, what’s going on in here! Whassa matter you?!”

She cried and cried and wouldn’t say, but Herman kept prodding her, and finally, her body shaking with sobs, she told him. “One man tried to rape me!”

“What?! Cannot be! What happen?!”

She told him the story. “I hate this place!” she said. “They no care about me, they only like use me for clean the rooms and mop the floor! They never going let me dance in the halau! They was just using me! They no care about nothing ‘cept their damn business!”

Herman went that afternoon to the Administration Building. He told them what had happened, said his niece was going to withdraw that very day, told them she wanted her money back. They said they would look into it, and speak with the supervisor in Housekeeping. But they could not issue a refund until they had a chance to review the matter. It would be handled administratively, whatever that meant.

Herman and Haunani moved out that weekend, and went to look for an apartment, and Haunani decided to look for a job. But she couldn’t speak English the way they liked, and there wasn’t much demand for girls with no skills. Was only jobs in the hotels and the fast food joints.

With the refund from the Academy, they took a one-bedroom place in Chinatown. Was nothing fancy, not for $650. But it was close to bus lines, easy to get to Waikiki and downtown. Haunani decided that she really didn’t want to work right away– just wanted to take it easy for a while, stay home, eat plate lunch, watch TV. She had been through plenty.

She watched TV, and Herman went to Duke’s, almost every night. Open to the gentle salt air of the ocean, and lined with photos of Duke Kahanamoku from his beach boy days back in the 1930s, there was live Hawaiian music every night with a band that played on a small stage in the sand, surrounded by guttering torches.

There, Herman met a woman named Yvonne. Her hair was mostly gray and she had lost several of her front lower and upper teeth. She had also been incontinent on one occasion, and tottered down the hallway to the loo with the stain spreading and the stink everywhere.

But Yvonne loved a good story, and she was captivated by Herman’s storytelling as well as by his antics as he wheeled about the dance floor in a mock pas-de-deux, doffing his Stetson. Herman was such a gentleman, he always bought.

Nobody could talk story like Herman, and God only knew where he cooked up some of the stuff he told her. Long time ago, he said, he was cabin boy on the old China Clipper, and he had taken the young Senator Kennedy to a Kahala pig farm, where he soaked in a Japanese furo bath and had his ashes hauled by a farmer’s daughter. That had changed his mind about the Japanese, and swayed his vote for statehood. He had stayed at the Waldorf Astoria in New York, where he met Mrs. Khrushchev in the elevator. She winked at him, and later that night she banged on his door, wearing her nightie. Said she was lonely, said she and the premier didn’t get along so well anymore– they never had no affection in seven years, she told him. That was why he was so cross, wen’ bang his shoe on the podium at the U.N., wen’ make all the kine trouble with Cuba, was going blow up the world— all because he no more action.

Herman also confided that he was more than a cabin attendant, was one kahuna. Said Ronald Reagan came into town sometimes for treat his Old Timer’s Disease with Herman’s Hawaiian red salt. He told her, too, of the real reason why the Japanese wen’ attack Pearl Harbor. Was revenge, he said. Long time ago, on a trip to Japan, King Kalakaua had engaged the hand of a princess of the royal family, offering the island of Maui to the Japanese as part of the bargain. But he never delivered, and the Japanese was so pissed! Yvonne loved a good story… was no end of good stories with Herman.

Wasn’t that way with the money, though, there was clearly an end to that. Soon it was all gone on three-dollar beers and presents for Yvonne, who wheedled money for her sick auntie, or for a friend, or for fix her car, and a few other things.

Haunani confronted him one night with the ugly reality of their fiscal peril. “Uncle Herman, you go out every night, carrying on like one old fool! You gotta get serious. This been going on too long already! We no more money– how we going live? I gotta get one job, Herman– I no like go back Big Island! We gotta find a way to live here.”

From then on, Herman spent more time at home, drifting off in his rocking chair, listening to KCCN Hawaiian music station on the radio on the bookshelf, his plate of canned salmon and poi balanced precariously in his lap. He would come to, say he gotta go take a piss, and Haunani would help him into the toilet. Then he would come back into the kitchen, pop a can of Bud Lite, and shuffle back to his armchair.

She had no clue how to get a job. She started out with job agencies, where they made her take typing tests. She could hardly figure out the applications, and sat there cracking her gum and scratching her head and dawdling over the paperwork. All she had was some experience in housekeeping and in taking care of people like Uncle Herman. More and more, she had to conclude that the only line of employment open to her, like every other dumb Hawaiian, was housekeeping. But then again, she knew she could never again enter a stranger’s room.

Then she spotted an ad that made her re-think the idea. Was one company, Aloha Home Care, that was looking for “personal attendants”, a steady job with one client, that kine. The ad said the pay was good, so she applied.

Chapter Fifteen

Most evenings, Avery Bagwell came home from the Meridian Club to fix his own dinner. Home was a gated community that he himself had built as an exclusive enclave for the lions of Honolulu’s business community. Lately, though, most of the re-sales had been to Honkgonginese expats, some of whom had re-named themselves Worldster, Woodrow, and Kingsley in an effort to appear patricianly chummy and ingratiate themselves into Hawaii’s eclectic oligarchy.

For the most part, they were imperious sorts who had ensconced themselves behind high security gates with intercoms and expensive walls made from rare blue lava rock. The walls were everywhere. Outside nearly every other home was a little billboard: Sentinel Alarm, Honeywell Security, Alert Alarm, Security One, Central Security Systems.

The basketball court at the rec center didn’t seem to occupy the kids around here much. The net looked white and new and never touched. The tennis courts were empty. On the sign-up board were eleven one-hour slots for each of Monday through Sunday. One single, a “P. Yip”, had signed up. Apart from that, there was no one. The swing set made of distressed lumber was stylish, as was the tire– a new Pirelli– hanging on a chain from a tree. The cement picnic tables were seldom used– new residents came here to try them out once, for the sake of inaugurating the lifestyle.

Bagwell’s home, like most in the community, reposed beneath a ponderous, earth-tone Monier tile roof. A pair of verdigris Parisian lamps cast pools of light onto the artiste-designed driveway that led to a front door of etched glass and massive slabs of burnished koa.

Throughout all the sun-swept days, the lanais of the community, with their magnificent views of sea and sky and the mountains, remained mostly unoccupied. Nor were the homeowners stewing complacently in their brominated spas, glasses of white wine in hand. Where were they? Inside, watching television, like Mrs. Desiree Bagwell.

Bagwell poked through the kitchen cabinet at the cans of beef stew and tuna and dog food, and peered hopefully into the freezer. It was packed with leftovers, wrapped in unmarked aluminum foil, that Dez had stashed away ages ago. It was stuff that would never again see the light of day– meat that had been frozen ‘til it was gray, and Tupperware full of ancient and mysterious stews and casseroles, along with frozen dinners of Veal Parmigiana, Swedish meatballs, Lean Cuisine linguine with rock lobster sauce and wok stir-fry beef strips with snow peas and chicken alfredo.

He wondered how a man who had everything could feel sometimes that he’d trade it all in a heartbeat for a humble but brightly-lit home with a simple home-cooked meal prepared by a sober and friendly woman who was interested in knowing how his day went. He felt like he was the butt of a bad cosmic joke, that he had so busted his ass to build the good life for her, a life that any woman would just die for– and for which Desiree had no interest in apart from what was on TV and how much remained of the $6.99 fifth of Skovar.

She watched TV all day on her big-screen Trinitron, propped up on a pile of pillows with the bed at just the right angle and her remote in hand. If operating the VCR was just impossible, the electric bed confounded her utterly. The damn controls would shift first one end up into a hump, then elevate her end, then depress the center. She wound up in the most awkward position, scrunched up in a fetal position that just killed her back and tore the bedding loose, and her little dog Dijon squashed and kicking.

Her faithful companion reposed next to her now, his pompom tail wagging, his tasseled ears cocked to her every word, and his beady little black eyes flashing like its rhinestone collar. The dog returned her affections with compound interest, reciprocating her kisses by licking her furiously on the mouth—he was such a little sweetheart!– after having spent much of the day licking its ass.

Another day had gone by, propped up in bed, watching soaps, the dog at her side. Dez had dozed off, and the dog had buried itself the folds of the blanket, nuzzling its penis. “Dij?… Dijon?”

The dog uncoiled from its yogic tangle, lifted its head from beneath its haunches, and looked up.

“Oh there you are!” Dez exclaimed. “Precious, precious angel!” It licked her mouth madly, its tail whirring. “Precious lamb!” she exclaimed. “Precious angel!”

Men were all the same; they used you, then when they had their fill, they moved on. Their loyalties were vapid– they were so damned anxious to get on top of you when you were young and cute, but their ardor soon flagged, and then it was off to the club. They were just animals.

But her little Dijon had been her faithful companion for almost fifteen years, and never once did it fail to give her a tail wag and a kiss, never once did it miss a TV program with her. Why, he was so smart that he could beat most of the contestants on Wheel of Fortune! She even had to spell it out for Avery: O-U-T, or the dog would get so excited if he knew he was going out that he’d start to pee in her bed or on the floor– not that a few drops bothered her.

That dog was a precious lamb, the Lamb of God, as it lay there and nuzzled itself, just like in a Christmas manger. He was an old dog now, and Dez would tear up whenever she thought about it, that some day she’d lose him, and then she would have no one in the world at all! Dijon had lost most of his coat, and the vet had to applied ointments to keep him from chewing himself raw. The poor angel was cold without his fur coat, and Dez kept him warm, next to her under the blanket. Sometimes the dog passed gas, and it was the rankest, smelliest thing ever. But to Dez it was an announcement that he had to “poo.” “Another one!” she’d exclaim, and begin declaiming her imperatives on the intercom for Avery to come take him out.

Hearing Avery in the living room, the dog jumped off the bed, and sat now at the foot of the door, looking up expectantly. It looked back, gruffled and then scratched the door.

“Ave! Avery!”, and squawk boxes throughout the house resounded with the cawing summons. “Ayyvvve!”

At length, the sliding door cracked open, and Avery poked his head inside the chamber.

“Ave, take the lamb out for a poo.”

“Oh, Jeez, Dez, I’m making dinner.”

“Take the dog out.”

The dog wriggled past him and trotted off upstairs, where it waited for Avery for open the front door. Great way to begin a meal, he thought. He’d go out later to hose down the turds.

The dog’s business done, Bagwell let it back in, and it dutifully trotted back into its mistress’s lair. He then returned to the kitchen, where he had popped the Swedish meatballs into the microwave– a large “family portion” tray in case Timmy’d be coming home for dinner. This being Friday night, though, he’d probably be out chasing around with his friends until the bars closed. But then he’d be hungry when he came home from the bars. He usually made himself a brace of grilled cheese sandwiches, but Avery would leave some of this for him if he wanted it.

After the prescribed twenty minutes, the oven dinged and he removed the plastic tray. He prodded the meatballs, brought one to his mouth and tentatively bit into it. The microwave had done little more than shrivel the meatball on the outside and left it cold in the center. He returned them to the oven and forlornly set to work cutting up a salad. At last, he repaired to the living room with his meatballs and salad to eat his dinner, watch TV, and have a few drinks himself. Some nights Desiree never emerged from her bedroom to even acknowledge that he was home. He was afraid to go in and wake her, until she herself awoke and called out on the intercom for him to fix her a drink, fix the VCR, or take the damned dog out.

Poking at his meatballs, Bagwell wondered how she hold up at the party he was planning. He couldn’t imagine, really, it had been so long since they had been to one together. He had his doubts, to say the least. But all the lords of high finance and assorted grandees and gatekeepers that could make his dream come true would be there. His dream was the Aloha Tower Festival Marketplace, which he broached to his bankers as the deal that would put Honolulu on the map, right up there with Orlando.

For Avery Bagwell, Aloha Tower would be the crown jewel of a property development empire thus far distinguished by the Grand Pacific Mall, a luxury gated community, and a few strip malls. But Grand Pacific was struggling, and Bagwell needed the kind of shot in the arm that Aloha Tower could deliver big time.

The mall seemed endlessly textured– glass-walled elevators, tubes of parti-colored neon, bridges and balconies and vaulted skylights and clusters of people mesmerized, circulating in their mindless promenade through torrents of cold air pumped along to insulate them from the soaking tropical heat outside. Stores smelling richly of varnished oak flooring and gabardine wool carpets proclaimed the Best of Fall Fashions, or Jump Into Fall in a place where there was no such season.

Next to the mall was the parking lot, full of glare and cars and heat pouring off the asphalt. Women dragged their squalling infants along, ambling like game on am African veldt surrounded by a forest of signs across the road that proclaimed Home World, Territorial Savings, KFC, 7-11, Bank of America, Bank of Honolulu, Volvo Used Cars, Budget Furniture, Chevron, Shell, Anna Miller’s, The Pump. The sidewalks along the lot were plastered with black smears of gum, molten and bubbly like the asphalt. Above the sidewalks was a cat’s cradle of phone and power lines, in the middle of which rose a single palm, its fronds visible through the tangle of overhead lines. The lone palm tree belonged to the Shimada Watercress Farm.

Its serenity mocked the mall that Bagwell had built around it, a goddam spite strip that Bagwell had been unable to buy at any price, leaving the layout of his mall looking kapakahi and awkward. Shimada’s farm was an oasis from the rush of traffic and the whooping and bleeping of car alarms in the parking lot beyond. Its clear, cold water circulated in troughs through acres of dark green watercress. In the back of the farm, up against the mall’s monorail, was a thick wall of towering banana trees, coconut palms, bamboo, monkeypod, pandanus, and willows. Snowy egrets flapped their wings in the stretches of watercress, and a cool breeze flowed off the farm, rustling the plumeria and bougainvillea that lined the drainage canal.

Up front along the highway was a large cement driveway and a wall strung with nets and glass floats. On an adjoining wall were nailed a dozen or so tails of marlin, each of which had come in at better than 600 pounds. At a table nearby, Shimada’s daughter and her friends stood round the carcass of a big marlin, cutting away thick steaks. They whacked and hacked at the spine of the fish, filling up big plastic buckets with filets that they packed with rock salt to marinate overnight in the big refrigerated room before they were smoked the next day in the brick smoker out back by the rows of corn and chilies. The smoker handled up to three hundred pounds of whatever was brought in– marlin, ahi, spearfish, ono, mahi, aku, kawakawa, onaga, opakapaka, uku, sailfish, and ulua.

The reefer room was chilled by a vacuum cooler that had cost Shimada-san a quarter-mil even then, back in the 60s, and now it was filled with buckets of fish, and a rack that held bottles of shoyu, tomatoes, and big bags of salt. A well-fed cat leaned up against the metal door of the walk-in refrigerator and licked itself. The sign out back that said “No Fish Guts– Will Clog the Intakes” was unnecessary. The cat saw to that.

Shimada-san had all kinds of people badgering him to sell the property. Day in and day out there were phone calls. The mail brought daily entreaties, and agents stopped by, unannounced and uninvited, at least couple times lately while the women sat out there cutting fish on the cement slab.

They looked a bit foolish, climbing out of their sleek rides in coats and ties and expensive Italian loafers and Chanel belt buckles, the women in their six hundred-dollar designer fashions. They couldn’t avoid wrinkling their noses as they walked up to the women cutting marlin steaks, trying to act casual and friendly, but scarcely unable to contain their revulsion over the blood and marlin guts and fishy smell. They wanted to talk to the owner– they had a fabulous offer to convey.

Bagwell had tried. He had his attorney Wallace Fujiyama arrange a call with Shimada. He was prepared to make an offer of $10 million to buy out his lease from Mission Estate, way over market value, all cash, no contingencies, no bullshit. He thought this would just rock the old boy right off his haunches. But Shimada hardly reacted, just sat there on the speaker phone and smiled.

At this juncture in life, Shimada said, money wasn’t important. He had everything he wanted: a nice property with watercress fields, three daughters who were happily married— one to a doctor in Paris and one who was teaching in California and the other who lived here with her husband. Knowing that he had a captive audience, Shimada just kept on going on and on about his family, how it was when they were all kids, all the things they did, what was important to them— there was just no end to it. And Shimada knew this guy would just have to sit there and listen.

The Mission Estate, he went on, they owned the land, and they were a friend. Shimada knew that Mission Estate was going to renew the lease—another ten years, maybe even twenty, he said. After that, wasn’t much he could do, he’d be gone by then. He appreciated what Humphrey Merkin had done for the little guy. Like himself, Merkin understood the joys of a simpler time when there was land enough for all, when simple people could live a simple life doing honest work outdoors in the sunshine and fresh air.

Farming was good for Hawaii, Merkin had said. It was lovely, all those stands of emerald cane in the rich, red earth, rustling and nodding in the breeze like praying mantises. Over time, rainwater had filtered down through deep layers of volcanic basalt, and was brought back up after all these thousands of years as the purest, sweetest water imaginable. Shimada’s watercress farm had a good supply of that water– his son-in-law had even devised a sprinkler system for the farm that mimicked the effects of a nice shower, dropping the temperature of the watercress leaf by ten degrees and noticeably improving its quality.

Yep, Shimada-san was real happy with what he had: his three daughters, his fishing boat, and all those records it held for marlin, ahi and mahi. He hoped Mission Estate would never make him move, and someday his kids would take over from him, and grow watercress right in the middle of the mall. He had no intention of considering his offer, thanks, and then said he had to go out and check on his watercress.

Bagwell saw Shimada as just one more example of all the old futs he had to deal with around here, a stupid old man who just wanted to be shitty and waste people’s time, just like his pal Merkin, a couple of old turdcorns perfectly happy to stay stuck in the past while people like him were trying to move ahead and give people a better life. Go out and check your fuckin’ watercress, he thought– hope you drown in it!

Then, to make matters worse, Week-End just last week had published a precious little piece on Shimada’s farm, with its goddamned thatched hut and snowy egrets peckering around beneath the palms– a scene from yesteryear and all that crap. And there was Shimada, going on about how he wanted to keep the property this way forever so people would know what Hawaii used to be like. You could just hear him laugh, telling the reporter about the guy that had built the shopping center around his farm and all the others who wanted to buy out his lease, and starting up again with his same silly-ass shaggy-dog story. Merkin and his mud farmers were just the kind of entrenched old fucks that made it so hard to do anything around here.

But what was he thinking about before he got onto this tangent? Yeah, the party, Aloha Tower, his ticket out of the Two-Bit. Hunched over a TV table in the cavernous living room, he looked dispiritedly at his dessert, a Weight Watchers frozen yogurt, and thought of Desiree coccooned in her bed with the damned dog. He could hear the TV blasting even up here. He hoped to God she would behave herself, just this once. Then she could come back and settle into bed with the dog and turn on the TV and get crocked. She’d be just as happy not to go, but what would people think? He needed her to be there— all there.

Back in the day, it had been a carafe of wine for lunch, then a nap. But in time, the lunchtime bubble of Chardonnay gave way to a generous nooner of Wolfschmidt. Then she settled down for an afternoon of soaps. She added pounds, became more and more sedentary, more inclined to recline than get up and go out. As often as not these days she was non compos poopoo by the time he got home, leaving him to contend with Swedish meatballs and the microwave.

Avery put away the dishes, wiped down the kitchen counter, and retired. At least he slept well, for as long as she let him. Which wasn’t for long, usually. Somewhere in the middle of the night, the squawk box in his bedroom would shrill, and Avery would awaken from a sound sleep, summoned to take the dog out, put on a tape for her to watch, or get her a damned drink.

That night was no different. “Avery!!” the hated intercom demanded.

Ruefully, he got up, ambled downstairs, and shuffled down the hall to the master bedroom, where he slid open the door.

“Avery! I can’t get this VCR—”

“Oh Christ, Dez, you woke me up to come down here and fix your VCR?! It’s three o’clock in the morning!”

“Avery! I can’t sleep! Will you pulleeezz put on a movie?! Then you can go back and sleep all you want!”

Trying to rub the sleep from his eyes, Avery staggered over to where they kept the collection of videos.

“Whadda wanna watch?”

“I don’t know!” she said, exasperated. “You should know… just something.”

Finally they settled on Benji, the usual choice, it seemed. That’s what Dijon wanted to watch. Squinting at all those little buttons on the VCR, he did this and that and finally the movie came on. With the utmost weariness, he was given leave to return upstairs. He almost made it, anyway.

“Avery!”

“WHAT!!”

“Don’t talk to me that way!”

“What the hell do you want now?!?”

“Would you please get me a drink.”

Oh what else, he thought. He was as a rock worn down by water, each drip of which was another demand for a drink. His reward for complying was to be able to go back to bed, and the penalty for refusal, more harrying.

He was up to here with the damned dog, too. It shed doggy hair all over the bed, and had practically chewed a hole in its own hide, despite numerous visits to the vet and a whole slew of topical ointments and Happy Jack. Its mange had spread to expose its liver-colored pate, and it was forever chewing itself, throwing off fleas, real or imagined, and licking its damned lipstick. There was doggy hair on the blanket, doggy hair in the air conditioner filter, doggy hair in his dinner, and there was a musty smell like the dog had been out in the rain and mud and shit and had come in and merely evaporated itself dry.

The dog didn’t like Bagwell either. Dez got him as a pup and now it had been fifteen years on and it was an old dog with old dog problems. Every once in a while he had to take the damned thing to the vet to have its anal glands expressed, like some kind of a goddamned skunk with venomous hindquarters. It helped alleviate its rectal itch, the vet explained; otherwise the dog would continue to drag its ass along their expensive Chinese carpets, which it did. But that was fine with her. That was just another example of her fabulous housekeeping.

Several years ago, Bagwell had finally made up his mind that he wasn’t going to share the bed with the damned dog any longer. But it wasn’t only the dog. The AC was always on high and it raised hell with his sinuses. Why in the world did she need the damned air conditioning on all the time, when there were ceiling fans and gorgeous trades every day and night? Why would she disdain all that beautiful fresh air for refrigerated recycled doggy smell? It had to be something about the weird bodily chemistry of a drunk, he surmised. But more than that, he just couldn’t handle the damned TV being on full blast all night, with car salesmen shouting at him, even in his fitful dreams. With her it was different— she didn’t need to sleep. She just dozed in a fog that was never quite sleep, tossing and turning on a sour stomach that she dosed with Mylanta and vodka cut with milk.

He always got up at 4:30 anyway, no matter how tired he was, and he’d come home at the end of the day, dead tired. And all she’d say was “You sleep well enough to go out and play your damned Goof, don’t you?”

Goof was her constant complaint. “You don’t seem to understand,” Avery said. “You don’t seem to understand who or what it is that butters your bread around here. ‘Goof’ is where business gets done. It also lets me unwind from a helluva lot of headaches during the week! I don’t have the luxury of lying around in bed all day, going on about my back!”

“Avery! My back is. Killing me! If you don’t believe—”

“I’m not saying I don’t believe you! But maybe it’s about time you understood that I need a little relief too! Unless you think it’s a relief to come home to this– the damned dog shedding hair, the doggy smell… it’s like the it’s been sitting around all day licking its ass– which it has!– and dragging it all over the carpets– which it has! And you? What have you fixed for dinner?! What have you made me after a long day’s work? EZ Micro-Wave Shit on a Stick! Hell, your cooking’s as great as your housekeeping!”

“Don’t talk to me that way, Avery! Listen! I raised your on and kept house and cooked and cleaned for you… until my back…” at which point she began tearing up. Oh, bullshit, he thought. Her damned back had nothing to do with it. It was booze, that’s all. Nothing was permitted to breach her Chinese Wall of Denial.

It was a relief to get back to the office. With his feet propped up on his teakwood desk and with some time in between meetings, Bagwell was at last able to think. He went over the names that Karen had put together for the party coming up next weekend. Josh Bollinger from the bank was first on the list, then Wads Yoo from the Land Use Commission and Al Ferry from the Hawaii County Council and Dave Hamilton from City Planning. Not a single RSVP yet! Hats off to Karen on this one. If it all came off, there’d be a nice surprise in her Christmas bonus.

No expense had been spared. Karen had seen to that– French champagne (no Californian), the finest wines, rare single malts, real Russian vodka, and small-batch bourbons. A tent would be set up with a Hawaiian ensemble. The energy would be high, and flashbulbs would flash and fountains would splash as the guests meandered and mingled amongst a flock of peacocks that would be loosed on the events lawn of the Meridian Club.

The night of the party had arrived. Sitting in her boudoir before the mirror as she applied her makeup, Desiree seemed a bit flustered. Avery didn’t think she’d had anything to drink, but you never knew, it could be hormones in her system at flood tide, making her easily upset, alternately effusive and bitchy, a volatile mix that wouldn’t take more than a few drops of lighter fluid to set it off.

“Avery?”

“What, dear?”

“I think it would be nice if you got us a little drink, don’t you?” She peered at him in the mirror, her mask of red lipstick framing a hopeful smile. As with the baboon, lurid color was a warning sign.

“Dez, I dunno,” he said, apprehensive. “You think you should?”

“Avery, I really think a smaaaalll drink would be nice!” she said, her smile more insistent than importuning.

“Dez, I’m telling you. You better take it easy tonight.”

“Avery! Don’t be ridiculous! I’m fine!”

“I’m just saying, I can’t afford any problems tonight.”

“I said, I’m fine.” The hurt welled in her eyes, and she blinked back tears, angry. Seeing that his cautionary advice had quickly exceeded the point of diminishing returns, he relented.

“All right, all right!” he said, knowing that he was on the edge, playing with fire. Desiree returned to her make-up, powdering herself and applying perfume.

He got away with just the one. So far, so good, Bagwell thought. With the party underway, it was time for him to make the rounds and schmooze the sugar-daddies, trying at the same time to keep an eye on Dez. Here, he had only seen her with one drink, a martini that she seemed to be nursing along with whoever it was that she snagged in conversation.

It was a good catch, it turned out. He saw that Desiree was talking with Josh Bollinger, head of Island First Bank. He especially wanted to get in on that conversation.

“Hey Dez, hey Josh…” he broke in, patting his wife’s shoulder and smiling broadly. “Got room in this conversation for one more?”

“Avery!! Avery, this man… is the president of the bank! And you should listen to him! He says it’s time to buy! And I don’t want to let that beachfront get away from us!”

“Yes, dear. I know who Josh Bollinger is. Lemme grab a drink.”

“Get me one too, Avery, and I’m sure Josh here would like another drink.”

“Whaddaya have, Josh? Another scotch?” He flagged a passing waiter. “So, have you been selling my wife some real estate?”

“Hah!” he sniffed. “I doubt that she needs any convincing!”

Real estate was all the buzz, and everyone had a story about someone they knew who had been approached by an agent who had a Japanese who was desperate to buy, and an offer that was simply too good to believe.

“Ohhhhh! Well, then!” she crooned. “Do you think this is a good time to buy? Avery and I were thinking about another place. Beachfront, this time. Honestly, living up there on a mountain like that…”

“I don’t know how much longer it’s gonna last,” Bollinger continued. “I don’t think any of us have ever seen anything quite like it. But as long as Japanese money keeps pouring in, I guess so.”

“No wonder you’re president of the bank!”

“Well, chairman actually.”

“Oh, you are soooo smart!” she fawned. “And handsome, too!”

“Oh, Dez, you’re such a ham,” Bagwell said, embarrassed.

She had finished her third drink. Not wishing to be left without at this moment of sublime perfection, she buttonholed a passing waiter. He returned with the drinks, and she took one off the tray. The waiter left before she had a chance to polish off the old drink, and she stood there, holding one in each hand. Bagwell was mortified. Jesus, that says it all, he thought.

“Avery’s a bit slow on the uptake, I think,” Desiree said. “My father came here to visit us, and told Avery he should buy the very land on which they built the Kahala Hilton! My daddy told him to buy. But no! He held back! And the rest, as they say, is HIS. TOR. RY!” She stood there, scowling at Avery in mock reproach, making a hurt, scolding face.

“What Dez overlooks,” Bagwell offered, “is that I’ve got bigger fish to fry at the moment. Buying and building a private residence is not something I’ve got a lot of time for just now.”

“Well, you’ve got time for Goof, don’t you! Do you get that, Josh? That’s what I call his golf— Goof! Haw haw haw!!” She pinched the chairman’s arm, hard enough to provoke him to wince. Goof! she gushed, a veritable fountain of hilarity.

“She’s such a card,” Bagwell said, forcing a grin that felt to him like a snarl.

She slurped at her drink, then rose to the moment, a bit foxed, but still the Queen of Repartee.

“Haw haw! I’m a card, he says! Him and his Goof! Avery, help me with these!” She handed him the empty glasses. Bagwell looked around for a waiter, raised the glasses up to flag one down. He felt so foolish, so ashamed, as if he were advertising the situation to one and all.

Bollinger squirmed, but her audience was captive, and she went on.

“I’ll bet Josh here would like to play some Goof!” She looked at Bellinger and winked, her red lipstick framing a sloppy smile. The chairman looked down at his feet, fidgeting. Then she reached up and wrapped her arm around his shoulder. Card, my ass, Bagwell thought. She’s like a bull moose in heat.

“Dez…”

“Oh, Avery! Why don’t you get Josh another drink!”

“No, that’s okay,” Bollinger said. “‘Nuff for now, thanks.”

“Avery—”

“Dez, I don’t think Josh is quite ready for another drink.”

“Well, I am!!”

“Dez…”

“Just call the waiter, Avery! Just get me another drink!”

Flushing hotly and left with little choice but to respond to this imperative, Avery pretended foolishly to cast about for a waiter.

“Well,” said the chairman, “I see my wife over there, and she’s looks like she needs help. Avery, Dez, great to see you. Great party!”

God this was horrible! His main chance, his bluebird of happiness that had just come round and flown up his ass… was just about to fly out the window.

“Talk to you later, Josh!” he offered, helpless.

As Bollinger meandered off, Avery turned to his wife and grabbed her by the arm, a bit forcibly.

“Avery, you’re hurting me!”

“Dez, lay off the damn booze!” he hissed. “You’ve had enough!”

“Oh Avery, I don’t want to hear it! I want to go to the bathroom, my make-up’s just a mess!”

Which was fine, since it was a chance to get her off someplace where he could stanch the meltdown. “Well come on, dammit, let’s go.”

In the course of their perambulation back to the club, Desiree stopped suddenly, and stared at the band beneath the tent. Her mind swam as steel guitars swooned and slack key sighed.

Oh Avery, listen! That’s our song…” This is the hour, we’ve waited for… she began crooning, softly.

“Come on, Dez… never mind that!”

“Leave me alone!” she snapped, refusing to be rushed off anywhere. She wanted to listen. Then, as the band wrapped up its rendition of Hawaiian Wedding Song, she stood there and began clapping. “Oh my, that’s beautiful!” she called out to the band. “That’s our song!”

No one had ever just stood there and clapped before, but the band leader thanked her and smiled.

“Do you know ‘Going to a Hukilau’?” she asked him. The old chestnut needed no introduction, but she persisted. “You know, we are going… to a hukilau, a huki huki huki huki hukilau…”

Avery pulled at her impatiently, and motioned to the bandleader to get things going again. People were watching, and this was becoming cringe-worthy. “Dez, come on… let’s go!”

But no, she wanted to dance, she had decided. The band struck up the tune, and shaking off his imploring arm, she began a woozy hula, waggling her arms and rolling her hips and her eyes in an unintended and mortifying parody of the ancient dance.

“Dez!”

The lights swam and the music swelled, until dizzy with dance and drink, she lost her balance and fell. “Avery!” she squawked. Uncertain how she wound up on the ground, she sat and looked around, dazed. From a distance, Joshua Bollinger, Chairman and CEO of Island First Bank and Hawaiian through and through, watched and winced.

A hush descended, as Bagwell’s guests abandoned their chit-chat for the more captivating scene at hand. All eyes were on Avery Bagwell as he tried to right his discomposed wife.

“Avery! Let go of me!” she protested thickly. At last she staggered to her feet and regained a precarious balance. She brushed away his hands. “You’re hurting me!!”

“She’s tired, the poor dear,” clucked a woman nearby, offering to help. “She just needs to take a little time out.”

“That’s okay, I’ve got her, thanks!” Bagwell said. “Dez, let’s go for Godssake!!” he hissed. Her expression betrayed momentary confusion at this command, but in her befuddlement she acquiesced, and let him lead her over to a seat behind the stage. Notwithstanding the relative privacy of the back of the bandstand, every eye was fixed on the drama that was unfolding. Hot with humiliation, he glanced about, and every gaze he met with looked away in embarrassment for him.

Back at the clubhouse, Bagwell sat on the bench outside the ladies’ room, waiting for Desiree. He listened. She was throwing up, and after a long interval, he heard her again. Thank God no one was in there, it sounded like a Chinatown bar at four in the morning. What a goddamned disgrace, he thought. What should he do? Should he call it a night, and leave his own party early? Should he call her a cab– his own wife? Or should he just take her home and come back?

At last she emerged. “Dez… I’m gonna take you home, and you can go up to bed.”

“Avery…”

“Come on… home to beddie. And your dog.”

“My dog?!” She turned to him and stared woozily. “Where’s my dog?!”

Bagwell stood there stupidly beneath the porte cochere, Desiree clinging to him unsteadily, as they waited for the valet to bring the car. How in the world could he have gulled himself into thinking she could make it half-way through the evening without getting sloppy and causing a goddamned scene!

They’d be talking now, he knew. The tongues would be wagging madly, and with every wag of the tongue his stock in the esteem of the high and mighty of Honolulu would tumble another rung.

By the time he rejoined his guests, it wasn’t even nine o’clock and the party had begun to deflate and guests were already starting to leave. For his part, Avery Bagwell was left without a deal for birdseed, much less big bucks.

Chapter 16

Her head pounded with each breath, every thought, it seemed. She knew from the moment she began to wake up that something was wrong, and it had something to do with her. The shock of realization jolted her as her thoughts turned to the events of the night before. Something had burrowed underneath her Chinese Wall and threatened to emerge from beneath it and bludgeon her. An ugly troll that sat there and glared at her. She wanted to call out for Avery to come protect her, but the more she regarded the troll, the more she realized the troll was Avery.

A gap had opened in the Wall. She could not dismiss the troll or tell it to shut up and go away. She cringed, and in the manner of circling the wagons against invading Indians, she held her little dog so close that it began to kick for nearly suffocating.

She had committed some terrible trespass against her provider, she slowly realized, had committed the one great unpardonable sin of shaming him in his public capacity. There had always been an unspoken understanding between them that no matter how much of an ass she chose to make of herself at home, never would she do anything to cross over the line into his public domain. That was biting the hand that fed them both, and this she understood and respected.

It was Sunday morning, and there was no waiting until he left for the office. She was so parched and thirsty that her tongue seemed glued to the roof of her mouth. There was no getting around it, no summoning him on the intercom this time, she had to get up and go out to the kitchen.

“Well by God, you did it this time,” Avery said she emerged from her bedroom and walked into the kitchen. “You really outdid yourself! Thanks a helluva lot! You made a complete ass out of yourself, and a total shit-wit out of me! Thanks!”

Despondent, hung over, and disinclined to rise to the provocation, she held her aching head in her hands. “Avery, get me some orange juice.”

“Oh, was that ‘juice’ I heard you say? How about another goddamned drink?!”

“Avery… stop it,” she said in a small voice.

“Stop what? You mean you don’t remember? Well, let me refresh your selective memory! Don’t you remember coming on to the Chairman of Island First Bank?! The chair, no less, of the banking group that we’re looking to finance Aloha Tower with! ‘I’ll bet Josh would like to play some Goof!’ he mimed cruelly. “And then when I tried to sic you offa him, you stand there in front of God and everyone, like some kind of a goddamned lushingtonian, with not one but two empty glasses, one in each hand! and ‘Avery, just get me another drink!’ while my benefactor stands there and takes it all in!”

“Avery… why are you being so mean to me?!?”

“But wait, there’s more! We’re just getting started! Me and Josh weren’t discussing anything so important that we couldn’t take time out to watch the wife of Avery Bagwell dance a little hula, and wind up on her goddamned ass— great finish! Couldn’ta gone to the Bolshoi Ballet and seen anything that good! Great entertainment! Who the hell needs dancing bears and elephants when you got the whole goddamned Ringling Brothers all wrapped up in one silly woman— my wife, namely!”

“Avery, stop it!” she pleaded. “Get me some orange juice!”

“How about some coffee, sweetie pie?!” he hissed. “Maybe it’s time you woke up and smelled the coffee— you’re a goddamned drunk!! I brought forty of the most important people in this community together, so that we could all get comfortable doing business with each other! And what do they get but a goddamned command performance! Me and my drunky-ass wife! What a team! Great confidence booster! Just the kind of clown they’re looking to invest money with! A man whose wife can’t even restrain herself from mooning and slobbering over whoever’s unlucky enough to come along and fall into her clutches! Even if it is the chairman of the goddamned bank! Hell, you shoulda had your goddamned dog out there, too, humping on his leg!”

“Avery, stop it! I didn’t do any—”

“You’re so right! You haven’t done a goddamned thing! Everything I’ve done, I’ve done in spite of you! If you’re not going to be any help to me, then why don’t you get some help!?!”

With that, he rose from the table and stalked off and out the front door, slamming it on the way. She called out to him weakly. Then she broke down and wept. That’s when the Wall crumbled.

Maybe it was time to admit it. She was miserable: the hangovers, the swollen ankles, her sagging breasts, the weight gain and the rolls of cellulite. She was mortified. She had become a physical wreck, to say nothing of what was happening to her marriage.

That night, she came in to the kitchen and sat down across the countertop from Avery. “Ave?” she said, in that small voice that was so unlike her.

“What!”

“Ave… I’m sorry.”

Astonished, he looked at her. “Well you damn well oughtta be! I’m the biggest joke in the business now, thanks to you! I might as well become some real estate whore and twist someone’s arm for a listing. I think Aloha Tower’s a dead letter.”

“Ave, please. I’m sorry.”

“Well, what does it matter, I guess. The damage is done.”

“Ave, I’m quitting. Not another drop. I mean it, Ave. You can get rid of it all. Get it out of the house. Not another drop.”

Thus resolved, Desiree indeed drank not another drop, not all week. Instead, they talked. She could still be attractive to him, he said. He still loved her, and he would give up everything they had, would gladly return to the days when they were broke and she didn’t have this monkey on her back— any monkey but this! She wanted him to succeed with his dreams.

The road back, arduous that it would be, began with the first few stumbling steps. Falling just a bit short of any commitment to quit drinking himself, Ave put all the booze out in the garage and locked it up. She didn’t ask what became of it.

What might it be like, she thought, to get rid of the flab, burn away the ugly spider veins on her ankles, get a tan, get a tummy tuck and a breast lift– no, she caught herself, never mind that, she was going to do it the right way, and exercise it off.

She checked into a fat farm, and submitted herself to the care of counselors running around in white physicians’ robes. She bought their whole line of in-house meals, the microwave frozen dinners and the kind you dropped into a pan of boiling water, plus the complete line of nutritional supplements. Their objective wasn’t to sell food, they assured her, although this stuff was pretty expensive. But it looked good and it was fun to leaf through the glossy catalog and read the testimonials. It almost seemed that the more you ate, the more pounds you could lose! She was thrilled beyond words when after the first week she had lost six pounds, mostly water albeit.

She cleaned out all the old crap from the pantry, seeing for the very first time how awful it was, and she re-stocked the shelves with a whole new way of life. She laid in a stock of mineral waters and minerals and compounds and stuff from the Mother Earth store. She bought a running suit, a steady state suit, a warm-down suit, running makeup, a collection of sports bras, and the highest-tech running shoes. Avery was a bit put off by what he found to eat now, which was mostly health foods. People could get sick from eating that stuff, he thought. But what the hell, he had given up golf, and if he could do that, he supposed he could give up food too.

She even went to see a substance abuse counselor. Part of the program– an absolutely essential part of getting well, it was explained to her– was going to AA. Her counselor warned her that alcoholism could never be overcome if the Wall of Denial wasn’t regularly chipped away at, and that was something that no one could do without the support of others who were going through it too.

But Dez wasn’t sure she saw it that way. She didn’t need to demean herself in front of the whole world to get over it. This business of standing up in front of an audience of drunks, and declaring herself– that left her cold. That was some kind of New Age thing.

A month went by of good behavior. Then at lunch one day she broke the happy news to Bagwell. “I don’t need it,” she said when he asked if she had remembered to take her Antabuse.

“What do you mean, you don’t need it?” he said. “I thought you understood you had to take this stuff whether you need it or not.”

“Avery, I’m perfectly happy with a bottle of Perrier. I’m telling you, I don’t need it.”

“I don’t think that’s such a good idea, Dez. Alcoholism’s a cunning disease.”

“Ave, I resent that, really! I am not an alcoholic! It’s not as if I’m some kind of lush in the gutter!”

“I didn’t mean that.”

“Well, what did you mean? As far as I’m concerned, you and I had a problem— golf, maybe, I don’t know! And that’s how I dealt with the problem! Now the problem’s over, and I don’t need it. Avery… I still look good– you said so. So what’s the problem?”

This wonderful wilderness trail was right here in her own backyard. It was all mapped out for you. Ave had thought to install the World Trail so that residents— he never imagined his own wife would make use of it—would have a terrific fitness program that combined jogging with doing the exercises that were described on the signs along the trail. Dez took it by the numbers, and painstakingly went through the motions of each exercise.

It began with the Body Bend– three times for beginners, six times for advanced, and continued with the Quarter Squat: hands on hips, standing in the quarter-squat position ‘til the count of ten. Three times for beginners, and six times for advanced. She huffed and grunted and sweated, and dutifully progressed through the Leg Raise and Opposite Toes Events arenas, where she was instructed to Warm Up, Cool Down, Leg Raise, Body Curl, Achilles Stretch, Sit Up, Push Up, Chin Up, and Log Jump. At first, she thought that one would be a killer. But after a couple weeks, she had gotten better and better at it. With her feet together, she hopped over each log without even stopping between the logs, then returned from the end to the beginning. My God, Avery, she thought, what must you have been thinking– people came here to live, not to kill themselves! That was pretty funny, now that she thought about it. But you know what, she couldn’t argue with the results. Not even her back bothered her.

Today there was no one but her as she jogged along, all the while looking at the mountains and the sky. She never realized that she lived in such a beautiful place. Shadows drifted and played on the mountains, their cloak of hardwoods scenting the breeze. There were purple clouds and dancing butterflies, breathtaking beauty that left her just shaking her head in disbelief. The mountain-fresh air poured off the ridge, and cloud shadows rose and fell like great waves.

She chugged and heaved over the last of the obstacles before breaking into the quarter-mile stretch of cruising. She had reached that state of grace that came at last to the long-distance runner. She knew the joy of overcoming physical obstacles, knew that she was no longer constrained by her physical manifestation and its cravings, and had virtually freed herself from the earth plane. She felt one with the whirling cosmos overhead, and her essence drifted like the clouds as she surveyed the sky and sea and emerald mountains. Jogging along in her Lycra skintights and electro-luminescent inflatable Air-Glides, she stepped on a stone in the path, tripped, and broke her ankle.

Two weeks went by in bed. She lay there all day and all night under the influence of painkillers, watching glassy-eyed as the dog licked and chewed itself. She was miserable. She hadn’t regained the weight that she had lost, but she felt flabbier than ever. She was angry that good health had done this to her.

“What a lousy thing to happen!” Bagwell said.

Fuming, she said nothing.

“You were doing so well,” he said. “What a goddamned lousy thing to happen.”

“Well, Avery. At least you don’t have to pretend anymore.”

“What do you mean, ‘pretend?’ What have I been pretending? What on earth are you talking about?”

“Oh, just leave me alone!”

She had been doing so well. She was on the way to becoming a new woman. But the ankle put an end to all that, and there she was, back in bed, her ankle propped up, with Dijon beside her, licking his balls. The pain pills the doctor had given her were strong, but they just didn’t have that certain something.

These hadn’t been the greatest of days for Avery Bagwell, either. His deal for financing the Aloha Tower redevelopment had gone pretty much as he thought it would. The sentiment had changed overnight, he could feel it. Nobody was interested anymore, and the champagne had gone flat. Bollinger wouldn’t return his calls, but finally his vice-president had called, saying there were some concerns about credit quality, and some damned equity to debt ratio divided in turn by some stupid-ass formula or another that put him over the line. Sorry, but they had to defer.

Yeah, he had been slow with a few payments— and banks liked to be paid on time, he knew that. But that was just bullshit. In the old boy network, they worked with you if they liked you. Well, he guessed they didn’t like him anymore— no surprise there.

But when he came home one night, he knew that another battle had been lost. Dez had somehow hobbled out on her crutches to the garage with the key he hadn’t bothered to hide, and unlocked the cabinet and brought in the booze. He found her on the floor of the bathroom, dazed.

“Avery!! Avery!!!”

“Oh God, Dez! What the hell happened?!”

“Avery!! I can’t move!! Help me!!”

Drunk, she had caught her crutch on the baseboard in the bathroom, and come crashing down, wrenching her ankle anew. For most of the afternoon she had lain there, helpless on the bathroom floor, too drunk and in too much pain to get up. She had sat there in a fog, unable to move or do anything except bleat for Avery, while the dog gruffled about, whining. She had been there for hours like that, unable to get up. Her ankle was swollen and twisted.

“Oh my God, Avery!! I can’t get up!!” The dog yipped and whined and barked as it danced around its fallen mistress.

“Oh shut the fuck up!” Avery said, and brushed the animal aside. “Get out of the way!” He got behind her, and tried to lift her. But she was dead weight, and the first attempt failed, and as he lowered her to the floor, she screamed in pain. “AWWWWRHHHKK!!! My ankle!!! Oh my God…! No!!”

The dog bit him on the ankle. “Son of a bitch!!!” He kicked at it, and sent it clattering across the linoleum.

“My dog!!! What are you doing… to my dog!!”

“Son of a stupid fucking bitch!! Look, this isn’t going to work! You’ve busted your ankle again, sweetie pie! We gotta call an ambulance!”

“Avery! You have to… take the dog out!”

“Oh for Chrissake! Never mind the goddamned dog!”

“Avery!! Listen… to me! Listen to me… NOW! Take. The dog. Out!” The dog was back, pawing at her and barking.

“Get the goddamned hell—” he said, and pushed it away again.

“Avery! Dijon is trying to… tell you something!! You’re not listening to him!”

“Just forget the damned dog, all right?!”

“Don’t you talk about my dog that way!!”

He called 911, and after the longest while a siren was heard wailing its way up the mountain. The ambulance pulled into the driveway, and Bagwell opened the front door to admit the two paramedics. They came in, lugging a stretcher and their black box of equipment, and Avery led them down to the bedroom and into the bathroom. They checked her vital signs and examined her ankle.

“Avery!” she agonized, “what are they doing!!”

“Sir, she’s pretty agitated,” one of the paramedics said. “We’ve got to try to settle her down so we can move her. We can’t give her a sedative with the level of blood-alcohol that I think she’s got.”

“What are you doing?!!” she said.

“Desiree, be quiet! Look, we’ve got to get you into the hospital! There’s no other way.”

“Hospital?! What… are you talking about!?! I’m fine!! Avery… ?!”

“Ma’m, we’ve got to get you onto the stretcher here,” the paramedic said. “You can’t walk on that ankle.”

“What are you talking about?! I’m fine!! Avery—no! I want to go to my bed! I want my dog!! Avery! Where’s my dog!! No!! I’m not going anywhere! You get! Away! From! Me! NOW!!!”

She protested loudly, but in time they managed to winch her onto the stretcher, and with that, everyone left for the hospital.

After several days, Desiree was at last re-installed in her lair. The hairline fracture had become a compound fracture, a pretty serious break, actually. Those few days in the hospital were spent sober, though drugged, and now that she was home again, well and truly marooned in bed, she was helpless to do anything but bray into the intercom for booze and her endless other needs. Bagwell soon realized that he couldn’t possibly afford to stay home and care for her. He decided to look into having someone come to be with her.

Chapter Seventeen

“Good morning, Aloha Home Care. May I help you?”

“Yes, hi. I’m just looking through the Yellow Pages here, but I need someone to come in and care for my wife. She’s got a broken ankle. There may be some light housekeeping duties as well. Do you folks do that sort of thing?”

“Yes, sir, we do. All of our care-givers are experienced and bonded, and well-qualified for a wide variety of home care situations.” They discussed terms, delved into what his particular needs were, and so on.

“Well, that sounds okay to me,” Bagwell said. “When would you be able to send somebody out?”

The help showed up at at the house first thing the next morning. “Hello, Mr. Bagwell? I’m Haunani, with Aloha Home Care.”

Gob-smacked, Avery stared at her. Unreal! he thought.

Dazed, it took him a moment to recover his wits.

“Oh yeah, yeah. Come in.” They sat down at the table in the kitchen. “What was your name, you said?”

“Haunani, sir.”

“And you’re the, uh, housekeeper?”

“Yeah, that too. They told me you wife was sick?”

“Yeah, oh yeah… that.” This would never work, he thought. He’d never get away with it.

But he just couldn’t resist. She smelled like soap, and between the doggy smell and Desiree’s overwrought perfume, he thought that nothing smelled so nice as the scent of soap on these island girls… it just intoxicated him. They were like that, golden nymphs. But he never had the chance to experience one up close, until now. He answered her questions, and then took her on a tour of the house. He told her the story of each of the household gods, talked about anything that popped into view, just to keep from becoming tongue-tied. For he was smitten.

It was Haunani’s first look at real wealth, and for a girl from Hi’ilawe, it was an eyeful. She had never thought much about what it would be like to have money. No point. For her, the good life was just being with friends and going beach and pick opihi and drink beer. But this just dazzled her, and she oohed and aahed at everything he showed her.

Bagwell wondered if she sounded like that in bed. God, what a piece of candy, he thought. Beautiful bitch! For all his wealth and experience, he had become giddy as an adolescent, and he preened himself nervously. He was captivated by her shyness and the demure responses she made with lowered eyelids. He felt absolutely jelly-kneed in the freshly scrubbed presence of this delectable flesh-pup.

Amidst his reveries, he caught himself, and ice water suddenly coursed through his veins. He realized that he had yet to introduce her to Dez. He would never get away with it, he thought. But what the hell, there was nothing for it, and he walked over to the master bedroom, knocked timidly and slowly slid the door open.

“Dez? Dez?” He had awoken her.

“Sweetheart, there’s a girl here from the agency. You remember?”

“Well, does she have to come in?! Can’t you bring her back some other time?! I haven’t been able to sleep all night, and you came in and woke me up.”

“Sorry, but it’ll just take a moment. You don’t have to do anything but meet her. She’s here to start work. I’ve taken her around the house, shown her what has to be done, and where things are. I’d like to bring her in.”

He returned a moment later with Haunani. What the hell, he thought, it wasn’t his doing.

“Hello, Mrs. Bagwell? I’m Haunani.”

Her mouth dropped. “Who are you?!” she said.

“Her name is Haunani, Dez.”

She looked at him in dismay and shock. The old fox had let this little hen into her own henhouse? “You’re a housekeeper?!”

“Yeah. I used to work housekeeping. You hurt yourself, you husband said?”

“Yes, she broke her ankle, Haunani,” Avery volunteered. “It’s very painful.”

“How old are you?! Who sent you here?!”

“I’m twenty-one. The company wen’ send me.”

She shot daggers at him, aghast that he would have the temerity to do this, to take such advantage of her helplessness.

Looking back on it, he couldn’t believe it either. His judgment must have been addled by his infatuation. It was a cannonade across her bow, an act so audacious and unexpected that it made a mockery of any answer on his part. And the more he talked, the more foolish he felt. She had him dead to rights.

But why punish a poor local girl who needed the work, just for being pretty? He decided to put a bold face on it, tough it through, and dismiss her resentment as sheer nonsense.

“My, my, my!” she finally sallied. “That’s quite a good-looking wahine you’ve brought home to mama!”

“Look, Dez, don’t be silly. I called these people to send someone– and I didn’t specify who or what she looked like. I called them to send someone to do a job– nothing else! As far as I’m concerned, if she does the job, I don’t have a right to–”

“Oh, don’t be silly… darling! Of course it’s not your fault! I’m sure you’re being entirely objective! You always are! And for all that you consulted me about this–”

“Look, you’re the one who got so goddamned falling-down drunk that you busted your ankle! Or did you want to blame that on me, too!? I’m just picking up the pieces! Do you understand that?!”

“Goof! Do you hear me?! Goof!! Oh boy… why chase it around at the club when you’ve got it all right here at home!”

“What the hell do you mean, chase it around? I’ve never chased anything at the club, except a deal!”

“Don’t bother to explain yourself, dear! I understand completely! Your wahine’s a very lovely girl– unlike your old bag of a wife with… with her foot in a cast.” She started to tear up.

“Oh Lord, what am I supposed to do?! Seriously! What do you want me to do?!”

“That’s up to you, dear. As you can see… there’s not much I can do about it.”

“Whadda ya want me to do, get rid of her?! Good Lord, she’s just a girl that came here to do a job! Why don’t you just give her half a chance, and get off this idea that somehow I’m, I’m… chasing anyone!”

“You do exactly as you want!”

Haunani performed her responsibilities faithfully, sensing that she had to avoid giving the slightest reason for suspicion. She came to work every day, dependable as clockwork, and was meticulously solicitous of the mistress of the house as she dusted and cleaned around her all day. Mrs. Bagwell’s needs were few. Mostly she needed help with the VCR, needed her to take the dog out, needed ice for her icebag to keep down the swelling on her ankle, or ice for the plastic tumbler.

Such a good girl she was, cleaning, checking in with her to see if there was anything she could get her, or do for her, to make her more comfortable. In spite of herself, Dez almost wanted to like her. But ultimately, the only thing Haunani could do to make her comfortable was leave.

Bagwell was almost getting to enjoy the silent treatment, though the midnight summons had not let up. Okay, he thought, if that’s how you feel about it, I’ll show you, prove to you that you’re wrong, and make you feel as stupid as you’ve made me feel. See how you like it. He wasn’t about to be unfair to this girl, just because Desiree was being unreasonable about it.

But she finally broke the ice. “Avery! I want that girl out of here!”

“Why?! What has she done?!”

“I don’t care! I want her out!”

“Dez, you’ve always thought… for whatever reason, and I know what you’re thinking, and I have absolutely not even thought about this girl in any other terms than, is she doing her job! If she is, I think you should leave well enough alone!”

“Why are so being so protective of her, darling?!” she said. “You’ve fired your share of people before, without so much as an afterthought!”

“Yeah, if they weren’t doing their job! But why the hell do you have to take this girl’s work away from her, when she needs the job! She’s probably not making more than ten bucks an hour out of this, and—”

“My, you’re so considerate, aren’t you! Why don’t you have some consideration for me?! I’m the customer, okay? If I say she goes, she goes!”

And so she went. Bagwell called the agency that afternoon, expressed his regrets, saying that his wife felt that she was well enough now to get by without someone, sorry but thanks anyway.

After Haunani left, things went back to normal in no time. HomeKleeners came once a week after that, did their usual half-assed, over-priced, superficial job– nothing like what Haunani did– then left the house to quickly become filthy again with dog hair and doggy smell. Desiree’s leaden presence had re-established itself.

Left with only the memory of the sweetness and light this girl had brought into his life, Avery pined for her. Seen in contrast to his sad sack wife, he found her irresistible. It was a heady sensation, contemplating forbidden fruit, and he dared not seriously consider it. But he was powerless, and found himself impelled forward in spite of himself. That sweet innocence was as much of a come-on as an engraved invitation, so compelling was its attraction.

Chapter Eighteen

He called and left a message with the agency, asking that Haunani call him at his office number the next day. When the manager undertook to return the call, she scowled at the message, couldn’t read the phone number, and called the other number they had on record.

“Hullo?” Desiree answered.

“Hello, this is Susan at Aloha Home Care. Is Mr. Bagwell there?”

“No, he’s at the office, I think. What is it?”

“I was just trying to return a call from him. I couldn’t read the number on the message, so I thought I’d try to reach him at this number. It looks like 529-4375.”

“That sounds like my husband’s office number. Four-three-nine-five, actually.”

“Well, is there anything we can do to help? The message was for Haunani, actually, but Haunani’s on duty at another residence.”

“The message was for who?”

“Haunani. The girl that worked for you.”

There was a long silence. “I see.”

“The number’s 4-3-9-5, you say? I’ll give him a call at that number, then. Thanks. Sorry to bother you.”

Haunani returned the call. Bagwell was breahless… could he really bring this off?

“Hey, Haunani. Glad you called. The thing is, I just wanted to explain why your contract over at our place was ended. It had absolutely nothing to do with your work. You did a great job, took great care of things. But Mrs. Bagwell felt that she could get along well enough on her own now. Both she and I felt that you did a fine job.”

“Thanks.”

“In fact, the other reason I called is… well, we have an opening over here at company headquarters, in catering. It’s nice work, a pleasant place to work. And it pays pretty good. I’m wondering if you’d like to stop by and discuss the position.”

“What kine job is this?”

“Well, I’d have to tell you more about it when we have a chance to talk. Are you still off Thursdays?”

“Wednesdays.”

“Well, why don’t you stop by Wednesday, about eleven? You catch a cab, and I’ll have someone downstairs waiting for you, and we’ll take care of the cab, okay?

Bagwell wanted to show Haunani something that he had in mind for her, but he wasn’t sure what. The company had no catering department, so he called up a catering company and had them prepare a luncheon for two and deliver it to the executive suite. They set up the table and a pretty display of flowers, and laid out lobster club sandwiches and vichyssoise, along with a couple bottles of sparkling water. He thought about ordering wine, but he didn’t want to make it seem like a seduction– he’d have a hard enough time making this seem credible.

And credibility mattered. His office was furnished with leather-bound classics, Hawaiian antiques and curios, including a framed numbered copy of the old broad Liliuokalani’s song “Aloha O’e”— that had cost him a bundle! But the rare leather-bound books had never been opened, much less read. Nor had he ever dipped a quill into the antique crystal inkwell, or used the old English stand-up desk for penning inspirations in his less formal moments. But in the dicey business of developing, it was impressed upon him how essential it was to present an image of enlightened sensitivity to all things Hawaiian.

He would create a job for her at the company: Catering & Social Director/Personal Assistant, perhaps. He could decide the title later, whatever the occasion demanded. Actually, he had always meant to put in an executive lunchroom, thinking it would really impress the people he did business with. He might even put in a wine cellar, and teach her how to pronounce the varieties. It would be a project on par with Pygmalion, but once his clients got an eyeful of her, he knew she’d be as irresistible to them as she was to him. He even sounded out his secretary Frances on what it would take to set up an executive lunchroom.

“They don’t allow cooking on premises,” she said.

“How about cold cuts and cheese, or something like that?”

“Then what’s the point of having a lunchroom?” she shrugged.

But these were just details that would have to be worked out later. Some people had no vision, no inspiration. That’s why there were leaders and there were secretaries.

Haunani arrived, dressed in a simple white cotton shift that emphasized her simple sensuality. So simple, so clean. Smells like soap… delirious now. Discuss the position. What was he to say to this girl? They had nothing in common, came from two very different worlds.

“This is a nice place, Mr. Bagwell.”

“You can call me Avery.”

She screwed up her little nose, looked at him funny. “I dunno. If I’m going work for you, I no like call you by your first name.”

“Well, as you wish. I just want you to be comfortable.”

“Are you sure you like talk to me about some job? It looks like you going have lunch with someone. I no like boddah you.”

“Actually, I’m having lunch with you,” he said, managing a foolish grin. “Nothing much… just sandwiches. I hope you’re hungry… and I wanted to show you the sort of thing you’d be doing. Setting up lunch in some of the offices. Like this. Doing a little serving.”

“Gee, that’s nice. But don’t you already have people ‘round here for that… I mean somebody set the table here, yeah?” Her lilting patois teased him, and coming from such a sensuous mouth, he salivated. It made it hard to focus.

“Well… that may be true. But it’s important to have someone that… looks nice. I know that sounds funny. But that’s how deals are done in business. Impressions are absolutely all-important.”

She flashed him her prettiest, most dazzling smile. Such perfect white teeth… to die for.

“Like I said, it’s easy, pleasant work. Pays well. Twenty thousand a year. Plus benefits.”

She blanched. “What! Twenty grand?! For just that?! Unreal!”

Bagwell hadn’t discussed this with anyone at the company yet, which he thought was pretty ballsy. But he’d figure it out as he went along.

Frances walked Haunani over to Karen Webster– it was, supposedly, a job that fell under the purview of Public Relations. “This is Haunani,” Frances said. “She’s new here.”

“Nice to meet you,” Karen said. “But Frances, are you sure you have the right department? I didn’t request any new hires.”

“Haunani is here on special requisition as Mr. Bagwell’s personal assistant, and she’s going to apprentice as social coordinator,” she said, looking at her significantly. Karen was astonished. Where did he get this cupcake, she thought. God, what balls!

“She’ll be coordinating executive lunches with our catering company,” Frances explained.

Karen didn’t know what to say. What could this child possibly have to offer besides a pretty face?

“What experience do you have, Haunani?”

“I wen’ work housekeeping, and home care.” Dazzling smile.

From behind, Frances caught her eye, knitted her eyebrows and drew her mouth into a little frown that communicated her concern that she was saying too much.

“We’re very happy that Haunani is with us,” Frances said. “I’m sure she’ll do very well. And by the way,” she added. “Mr. Bagwell would like you to schedule Haunani for some wine tasting courses at the community college. It’ll be part of her new job.”

They would have to make up stuff for her to do. Why in the world did he hire such a nincompoop, Karen wondered– as if she didn’t know.

Whatever her responsibilities, Bagwell was pleased. There she was, in her new uniform, a stylish custom-made pants-suit with the Bagwell Development logo embroidered in gold on each cuff and a name tag that said Haunani. What a sweet name, he thought. “Well, my goodness… just look at this!” he exclaimed. “You’re beautiful–I mean, that looks really nice on you! What’s the caterer got that’s good?”

“Oh, I forget what they call ‘em. Some kine bake fish, in little pastry li’ dat,” making her thumb and forefinger into a circle. “Salad… wit’ goat cheese. Fancy sandwiches. How many people going come today… sir?” she asked.

“One will be joining me. You.”

“Huh?”

“Yes, just you and me. Just to see what you’ve learned. Next week we’ll fire for record.”

“You mean, this is practice, kind of?”

“That’s right. Do you have a wine list?”

“Yeah. I get ‘em.” She produced the wine list.

“Let’s see now, Bagwell mused. “How about a nice bottle of French Sauvignon Blanc?”

Haunani had tried to learn all these funny French names, but just pointed at the wine list. “This one over here?”

“That’s a Cabernet Sauvignon,” he corrected her.

She screwed up her face. “What?”

“Caber. Nay. Soh. Veen. Yon.”

She felt so inadequate. But Bagwell was prepared to be patient. Told her to just relax, she was doing fine. When she had a problem uncorking the wine, he helped her pull the cork. She poured, and he motioned for her to drink.

“I gotta drink this?” she asked.

“Sure. ‘Bout time you acquired an idea of what each wine tastes like. So you can help the guests decide.”

“I going get drunk already.”

“Don’t worry. We’ll take it nice and easy. You’re doing fine.”

The personalized wine tasting course continued through the next few days. As the lessons progressed, Bagwell gave her not just one to sample, but a second, and then a third.

But then she had had too much. She flushed, looked at him with that smile of hers. To die for. She giggled, then held her hand to her head. “Oh… dizzy, already,” she said, her head was spinning. She faltered a bit, and Bagwell took hold of her arm and steadied her.

“Why don’t you come sit down,” he said. “Over here.” He helped her over to the sofa. He brought the two wine glasses over and put them on the coffee table. He put his hands on her shoulders, and reached over to smooth her hair.

“You okay?”

“Yeah, just too much wine!”

“Is that a blush? Or is that the wine?” he asked as she stroked her cheek.

“Both.”

“Why? Are you still shy around me?”

“No, not really. I don’t think so.”

“You’re more than lovely to me, Haunani. I mean to tell you… I really, really like you,” and he kissed her.

This was the first time she had been in love, and the cares of the world took a distant second. She was walking on clouds, breathless, her eyes distant and dreaming, happy.

She wondered what it might be like to live with this man forever, to be lavished upon and ravished endlessly, even as she wondered how she could ever fit into his world.

Though Bagwell shared the exhilaration, it was tempered by other considerations. Haunani was naive in the matter of sex. Now that she was really enjoying it, her longing for it was becoming insatiable, and Bagwell was just worn out by her.

He never thought of asking her until their third or fourth time together like this. “Are you doing anything to protect yourself?”

“From who, you?”

“I guess you could say that,” he said. “You know what I mean, don’t you?”

“What, no like baby?!”

“I hardly think I want to become a father at age fifty-three. I really think we should do something.”

“You mean the kine… use rubbah?”

“Well, something like that.” He hated condoms. “Actually, I was thinking of the pill.”

“I don’t know nothing about it. I always thought, you know, if no more experience, no can come hapai.”

“Yeah, well, whatever that means. I think it’d be a real good idea if I made an appointment for you to go see a doctor.”

“See doctah?!” she said, alarmed. “What doctah going do?!”

“No, it’s no big thing. He just gives you a prescription, and you take a pill. Once a day, I think. That’s all.”

He made an appointment with a gynecologist and took her to the office. But he decided to wait outside in the car, ashamed of being seen as a dirty old man fixing up a young girl with contraceptives. He’d be up a little later, he said.

As he didn’t sit in on the consultation, he was not able to appreciate the depth of Haunani’s befuddlement at the pill’s use. The doctor had to go over it with her real slow— how they worked (she was clueless), and how to make sure she didn’t skip a day.

When it came time to settle the bill, they looked at him funny… he knew what they were thinking.

After he lost out on Aloha Tower, there wasn’t much to keep him occupied, apart from chump change jobs, some Chinatown public housing, the occasional strip mall and a custom-build home or two, commercial renovations and stuff. At that point, Bagwell began to think about actually leaving Hawaii– maybe going to Vegas, where things were booming, or maybe New Orleans, and build a riverfront casino.

But he’d been hearing a lot about the Big Island. The Japanese were buying some big-ticket items over there. It was a shame that he didn’t have access to the kind of money. Maybe what he needed was his own fat Nipponese sugar daddy. That would seem to have its advantages, including the fact that he wouldn’t have to go through all the bullshit with the banks.

He had his attorney Wallace Fujiyama put out feelers among other attorneys who represented the Japanese. But then again, Bagwell didn’t have the first idea about the Big Island. He’d need to go there for some due diligence. And who better to accompany him than his executive assistant, Haunani? She’d love to go, she said. She’d even take him to meet her family, she offered, in Hi’ilawe… wherever the fuck that was. He wasn’t so sure at first, but then he thought, what the hell, they would be there on business.

Kona, where the Japanese were buying, captivated him. It seemed to just drowse beneath its dense belt of forested uplands, and out there, the broad blue Pacific lay calm and glassy as a millpond.

She took him home to Hi’ilawe. It seemed like a helluva ways, sixty miles or so along a winding, pot-holed road, then along a road that wound down a valley wall so steep that, had he taken his eyes off the road for even a moment to take in the view, it would have been curtains. It was way out of the loop of everything else that was happening, but God it was beautiful! Of course she’s from someplace like this, he thought, how could it be otherwise?

What a surprise! Kaipo exclaimed, that Haunani came home li’ dat, right outta nowheres! They were so surprised, and when they found out that Haunani was one executive assistant for this rich haole guy, they just couldn’t believe it.

Bagwell was surprised he enjoyed himself so much that day… he wasn’t sure what her family would think. But it was all business. He was here to look at some development prospects, and he needed her to show him around. He enjoyed himself more than he had in a long time, in the company of these simple and good people. They loved to talk. It seemed to him they could sit there all day, every day, out there on the lanai of the old store, and never run out of things to talk about. He could almost get used to this, he thought.

Haunani told him all kinds of stories about the place, told him about the old whiskey priest who lived in the broken-down old church. “Uncle Herman said was some kine monkey business,” she laughed. “But Herman’s just as confused as the monkeys!” she said. He thought that was a hoot.

He just never imagined Hawaii was anything like this. Here was a valley filled with birdsong and waterfalls and rainbows, and as the sun broke through the clouds, the valley was lit golden, right before his eyes. It was like a dream.

It came to him in a moment that this was where his dream could happen! He had always imagined a place like this, a valley with waterfalls, with guests arriving by helicopter, with a championship 18-hole course and course-front homes and a clubhouse like the pleasure dome of Xanadu! It would be the playground of the elite, former presidents and corporate fat-cats— the rich and famous would become his captive audience!

He could even rename the valley to something that people could pronounce. But that would have to wait, since a project like this would demand planning, financing, and vision on a scale that he had never contemplated.

Chapter Nineteen

Mrs. Bagwell’s vision, on the other hand, was a bit blurred, and her designs were not so much of enrichment but of entrapment. The phone rang at Bagwell’s office.

“Hello, this is Frances, Mr. Bagwell’s secretary, may I help you?”

The voice on the line was slurred and surly.

“Is he there?”

“I’m sorry– is who there?”

“You know. My husband, Avery Bagwell.”

“Is this Mrs. Bagwell?”

“Yes! But I don’t want you to tell him so.”

“How may I help you, Mrs. Bagwell?”

“I just want to know. Is he there?”

“I believe he’s in a luncheon meeting. He asked that I take messages for now. May I tell him you called?”

“No!! Are you sure he’s there?”

“Yes ma’am. Quite sure. He’s in a lunch meeting with someone at the moment.”

“Who?”

“I… I really can’t say… I’d have to check Mr. Bagwell’s calendar.” Amazingly, this drunken woman had caught her, a seasoned executive secretary, off guard. Had it been anyone else, she would of course have summarily deflected this line of inquiry, but how was one to tell the wife of the Chairman and CEO of Bagwell Development to buzz off?

She recovered. “I believe it’s one of Bagwell Development’s clients, m’am, if that’s what you mean.”

“Who is it?!”

“Well, I’m not sure, exactly. I’d have to check his calendar to get a name. And I’m afraid that’s in his office, and he asked that he not be disturbed at the moment.”

“Ah hah!” she triumphed. “Well, let me let you in on a little secret. Not that I think it’s much of a secret to you. I’ll bet he’s having dessert!”

“I’m afraid I don’t know what you mean, Mrs. Bagwell. Would you like to call back later?”

“What I mean is…. he’s having something sweet, if you know what I mean!”

“I’m sorry, but—”

“He’s having lunch all right! With his… wahine! Go on, tell me I’m wrong! Prove it!”

This being the first such initiative on the part of Mrs. Bagwell, it had succeeded by virtue of its element of surprise. But then it happened again and again, and whoever answered the calls would be similarly engaged in Mrs. Bagwell’s inane cross-examination– whether it was Florence, Grace, or even Security, as when she blustered her way past the various gatekeepers to demand that someone check on Bagwell’s car to see that it was still there in the garage. They tried to remain polite, though the nuisance calls aroused considerable consternation. Yet, nobody wanted to tell Mr. Bagwell.

Finally, they decided to consult Karen Webster in Public Relations. She knew him as well as anyone, and perhaps she would know how to handle it.

“Avery,” Karen said. “I really need to speak with you… about Mrs. Bagwell.”

“What about her?”

“I’m sorry to have to bring this to your attention, but it’s gotten to the point where I must.”

“Well, what is it?!”

“Mrs. Bagwell has been calling here… constantly.”

“Why? What does she want?”

“Actually, these are calls you’re not even supposed to know about. She’s been calling Grace, calling Florence, calling Security– whoever she can get ahold of, several times a week, sometimes more.”

“Jesus Christ! Why?”

“I think she’s trying to find out where you are. And who you’re with— that kind of thing.” She paused, allowing a moment for her meaning to dawn. “We tried to keep it from becoming a problem for you, but it’s just gotten to the point where it’s out of control. I mean it’s your business, I realize that. But when it gets to the point where the whole company knows about it… I mean, it’s one thing that I get these calls,” she continued. “I can deal with that. But I don’t think it’s in my job description to be making excuses to the others all the time! Then when Haunani’s here, it’s almost a full-time job trying to keep her busy all day, and she’s always taking my time with questions… and situationslike this are just so embarrassing! I feel like I’m covering for you! I mean, I’m sorry I have to say this, but people talk!”

It wasn’t like Karen to be upset like this. This was serious.

“What are they saying?”

“It’s an open secret, sort of. But still, I’m the one that has to apply spin control. And I don’t want to see us get hurt by—” she searched for the word– “scandal?” Yes, that was the word. “We can’t afford that.”

“Yeah,” he said, reluctantly acknowledging the import of these confidences. “I guess I know what you mean.”

Bagwell’s cell phone rang. He answered. There was a panting noise on the line. “Hello? Hello?” he said, but he recognized the number. There was giggling. “Haunani? Is that you?”

“Yeah.”

“Oh Lord, you should at least say so.”

“What, you don’t know who I am by now?! Then you better come over, and we going get better acquainted,” she teased.

“I can’t right now. I’ve got a meeting coming up soon, in about an hour.”

“Well, get plenty time, then! Ten minutes for come. Ten minutes for go Holiday Inn. Twenty minutes for show you love me!”

God, he was almost tempted. But even if there was enough time, that would leave him just wasted and out of breath. It wouldn’t do for him to come into a meeting like that. He wouldn’t be able to follow what was happening. “Sorry. I really can’t.”

“Eh, the more you just t’ink about it, the more time you wasting! You busy, but I got nothing to do– ever since you wen’ send me home.”

That had been weeks ago. This whole thing, he knew, was just disgraceful. His relationship with Desiree had deteriorated into nothing but acrimony and accusations ever since the agency screwed up and gave her the message that he had left for Haunani. He tried to explain things to her, that she wasn’t being let go, certainly not after doing such a good job and all. She was “on retainer”, as he put it, with full pay.

“You make me feel like one whore,” she sulked, “sitting around waiting for you. So you better come treat me like one.”

“All right. I’ll be over– after the meeting.” He could still get home at a plausible hour.

He was a bit ashamed of himself. An older guy, carrying on with a young girl like this. He could hardly keep up with her. It was every damn day, some days, more than once, even. For a man in his fifties who was used to once a month or so, it was more than he could rise to. It was a nuisance, really, since there was business to attend to that wasn’t getting done.

Apart from the occasional teasing, Haunani didn’t really press him. “What you going do?” she’d say, “just keep me here?” But even that was just teasing.

“I hadn’t really thought about it,” Bagwell said. “Why, aren’t you happy?”

“Yeah, kinda. I guess so. But I keep wondering.”

“About what?”

She looked up at him and pouted. “You not supposed to say that! You supposed to say you love me… you want me… you like be with me.”

“But you know all those things.”

“You just come and go. Then I never see you for long time!”

“Long time? Whaddya mean… coupla days, at the outside!”

“Yeah, but I like be more than just your main squeeze! I like be your woman.”

“You are my woman.” He instantly regretted saying it.

“Not! How can?! You married.”

He drew his breath, looked around, and slowly exhaled. It pained him when she brought that up. He really didn’t how to respond. He loved his wife, but he also pitied her, knowing she could never survive a week without him. She’d become a a bag lady or something, pushing around a Safeway cart full of bags and rags and a bottle of booze tucked away in there somewhere.

“I can’t leave my wife,” he said. “She’s not well. She needs me.”

“Me too.”

He wondered what this girl really understood what it was like for him. He wasn’t in the position that she was, of being carefree and in love for the first time and excited about building a life on that foundation of first love. He wasn’t able to commit to that, and he was a bit irked that she didn’t seem to understand that.

Then there was his reputation–what was left of it, anyway. Could anyone in his right mind imagine this dumb Hawaiian girl as a society wife, entertaining government and business leaders? The idea was absurd, that this girl might be at all capable of conduct becoming a lady, wearing an expensive evening gown and sipping champagne from a long-stem glass, when she couldn’t even speak English! And here she was, mumping about a life together.

Still, Haunani was necessary to him, as a source of reliable, relatively uncomplicated sex. The heady impulsiveness– indeed, the madness– of their first days together had become tempered by discretion. From time to time, he took her to a nice hotel. And it was on just such an occasion that he found himself, lying in bed with her, exhausted from their lovemaking and woozy from the wine. After what he had told Desiree was a business dinner, they both had dozed off, and he hadn’t awakened ‘til eleven that night.

“Oh, Christ!” he said when he looked at his watch. “It’s eleven p.m.! Oh God, I’ve gotta get outta here!”

She jolted awake, stared at him through half-opened eyes. “Whassa matter?”

“Look at the time, for Chrissake! I dozed off, and oh God, how the hell am I gonna… oh, fuck! C’mon, we gotta go, quick!” He threw on his clothes, went into the bathroom, checked himself in the mirror to make sure there wasn’t lipstick or something. “Hurry up, will you?! We gotta go!”

They went to the lobby, and she waited as he went up to the front desk, gave the guy his credit card, told them to please hurry it up, they had a plane to catch. The clerk looked slyly at Haunani, standing there disheveled and dazed. A likely story.

Desiree was waiting for him, like a goddamned she-bear with its disgusting little cub right there in the living room. She snarled a war-whoop and launched into a “Well, well, well!! Here’s lover boy, coming home from another all-night business lunch!”

Bagwell was in no mood to engage. “Just go to bed, would you?!”

“Was she that good… darling?! That you had to stay out half the night with her?!”

“Just shut up, will you?! I’m tired. Go to bed!”

“Did you have a good time, old boy?! Oh, that’s right, I forgot! It was a business lunch! All work and no play! The poor boy must be so tired from all that work! No wonder he needed to lie down for a little nap!”

“Just leave me the hell alone, would you!”

“Then tell me, lover boy, how was it?!”

She followed him around the house, cawing at him, mocking his “wahine.” He just wanted to go to bed. But she kept following him, dogging him and stalking him from living room to kitchen to bathroom to bedroom, in an endless stream of snide invective.

She grabbed at him as he lurched into the bedroom, and hungover from the wine and more than a bit mean himself, he turned on her and, unable to restrain his hatred for what she had become, he slapped her. She fell back against the wall, then collapsed, shrieking.

At once he was horrified. He had never struck his wife before. Mortified that he had done such a thing, he couldn’t believe his own eyes, and he instantly despised himself as a beast. He fell to his knees, saying “Oh my God I’m sorry, Dez. I didn’t mean it!” He pitied her, sitting there in a pathetic muddle, sobbing.

“Get away, you monster!” she lashed out. “How could you do this to me! How could you hit me!”

“Oh Jesus! Dez, I didn’t mean it! I’m sorry! I’m so sorry!”

“Get away from me!” she hissed. “Just get away!”

Back and forth it went like that, until at last he mollified her with the promise of a drink. Her venom exhausted, she let herself be led back to her bedroom. They’d work this all out tomorrow, he promised her. Appalled with himself, Avery Bagwell went to bed.

He didn’t get up until around ten that morning. Having always gotten up with the sun, it seemed forced and unnatural for him to doze fitfully through the daylight. His head ached, he felt ragged and worn.

He dragged himself through the motions, brushed his furred tongue and teeth, then shuffled into the kitchen and pushed the button on the coffee-maker. He sat in the breakfast alcove, and regarded the empty kitchen with remorse. His ears strained, and he could detect no noise from the bedroom downstairs.

But then, the intercom came alive. “Avery! Bring the paper towels!” It was way past time to take the dog out. He went down stairs to her bedroom, and opened the door. The dog stood there by the bed, shivering. Shit, he thought, what a great way to start the day. It tried to make its escape, and Avery gave it a kick–not a kick, really, just a helpful shove with his foot, sending it skittering down the hall. It ran up the stairs to the front door, where it waited anxiously to be let out.

He returned to the bedroom and opened up the windows to air the place out. Desiree glowered at him, her face bruised and her lip swollen. “How could you kick my poor little dog! It’s not enough that you beat up your wife, is it?! No, the big man has to beat up my poor little dog!”

“Dez…”

“Don’t talk to me! You’re just a creep! You’re a wife-beater!”

“Dez, I’m really sorry.”

“I don’t want to talk about it! Do you hear me?! Just leave me alone! I’m going to talk to a divorce lawyer! So just get me a drink… and leave me alone!”

These days, he almost welcomed her demands for a drink. At least it was an entree of some sort, and he tried to open a dialogue. But all she said was the same old fix the VCR and take the dog out. As for anything else, she didn’t want to hear about it.

He felt as bad as he could possibly feel, he thought. This time it really was his fault. The only thing worse than being locked up with a scorned woman was being locked up with his own conscience. He would never be able to forgive himself, even if she did.

Haunani hadn’t called him for three days. He was less troubled by this respite than by the certainty that if he didn’t call her to ask why, she’d take it the wrong way. He wondered if this wasn’t a good opportunity to just let the whole thing wither on the vine. She’d find someone else, he knew. But then, he also knew that he didn’t want her to go away anyway.

Back at the office, he picked up his phone and dialed her number. “Hi!” he opened.

“Oh, hi.” She sounded subdued and dispirited.

“I haven’t heard from you. Everything okay?”

There was a pause. “Yeah.”

“Whadda you mean, ‘yeah.’ Sounds like you’re not so sure.”

“No. It’s okay.”

“I don’t think I believe you. What’s the matter, huh? Something’s the matter, I can tell.”

“I get something for tell you.”

“What’s the matter?”

“I’m hapai. Never get my period for two months already.”

Bagwell sat there, his heart in his throat. “Are you sure?”

“I just forgot, thas’ all! I wen’ mix up the days or something, I dunno!”

How could she be so forgetful? Then again, she couldn’t even count to ten on the fingers of both hands and feet, much less be depended upon to keep track of her pills.

What did she think was going to happen, anyway? Did he look like he was going to be the father of anyone’s kid?! Christ, he was fifty-three already… and married!

She was crying now, like a schoolgirl. “You said you love me.”

“Haunani, look, this is… this is just out of the question! We can’t possibly have a baby!”

“Why not! You said you was going leave your wife!”

“I didn’t say any such thing! Haunani, we can’t have a baby! We just can’t.”

“Then you lied to me! You don’t give one fuckin’ damn about me, do you?!”

This was just unreal. He just couldn’t not believe how stupid he felt for having knocked up a young girl with an IQ somewhere in the mid-range of the Richter Scale, for Chrissake. And now she wanted to have the baby. That was absurd. What right did she have to think she had any claim whatsoever on his world? She belonged with her own people. They had had an affair– it was fun, and so what?! Did she really think there was anything more to it than that? Didn’t she realize that he had his own family? Didn’t she comprehend the first thing about loyalty?

“Look,” he said. “This isn’t the best time or place to discuss this. How about I stop by tonight, say around six?”

The club was the only place, absolutely the only place, where he could get away from things and think. The whirling ceiling fans rustled the pages of the Wall Street Journal, and a Filipino waiter in gold-buttoned uniform brought him a beer.

Putting the paper aside, he groaned. Shit. How much would it take to buy her off? Would it work? Would she be quiet? He buried his knuckles in his eye sockets in a futile agony, then glanced at his watch. It was five-thirty, and he better get going.

The Meridian Club was a twenty-minute walk to Haunani’s apartment in Chinatown. He could smell the place before he could see it. Chinatown’s stores were redolent with anise, dates, ginger, garlic soaked in red pepper mash, rhizomes and tree bark and fungus, dry prunes and olives, boxes of dry shrimp and sides of salted fish. In glass cases beneath infra-red lamps, reddened ducks dripped grease among pans of white tripe.

He walked along Hotel Steet, where music pulsed and catcalls resounded. The front door of Hubba Hubba was open wide to the night, offering a sneak view of the girls strutting inside on the stage. Outside, they coiled themselves around lampposts like tawny cats, their eyes glowing like fireflies in the shadows.

Groups of tars on leave from Pearl Harbor lurched along under a marquee that proclaimed, “Moe Keale and His Hawaiian Jug Band Tonite!!!” In a dirt parking lot, bored Filipino cab drivers passed the time in rickety aluminum chairs, caring little whether they had a fare or not, and street arabs plied hands of apple bananas and bunches of white and red torch ginger from cardboard boxes.

Bagwell elbowed his way through a crush of cigar-brown faces, withered crones with their gray hair tied severely into buns, and young mothers carrying babies astride the hip. A pockmarked whore sidled up to him with a toothless grin. He averted her eyes and pushed past her.

Haunani’s apartment was on third floor. He pushed the button on the intercom, and waited. Haunani answered, and buzzed him in.

He sat down on the couch next to her. She looked at him, forlorn. Her cheap rayon mu’u looked like a maternity dress.

“Is he here?” he asked.

“Herman? He went out.”

Satisfied they were alone, he continued.

“We need to talk.”

“What for? I not going get rid of the baby.” The resignation in her voice meant that she had already made up her mind.

“Why won’t you?”

“Maybe you think you can get rid of me. But I’m not going get rid of the baby.”

“I’ll give you money, Haunani, and what you do with it is up to you. But I think we should just go our own ways.”

“How come you like give me money? You think that’s all I want from you?!”

“What do you want then?!”

“How come you hate me?!” she wailed. “How come you want me go away?! How come?!”

She was crying. “Nobody gotta know. I can stay here, with the baby.”

“Listen, Haunani,” he said. “I don’t hate you. You haven’t done anything… it’s my fault. Come on now, don’t cry.”

Without speaking, she got up and went into the bathroom for a moment, and came out with her face washed, and and dress smoothed. She was sullen, but composed.

“You just going leave me? Thas it?”

“Yes, Haunani. I’m sorry.”

“Then go.”

The letter arrived from the attorney. The funds enclosed were intended as a cash settlement for any paternity claims against Mr. Bagwell, it said, and her endorsement of this check constituted acceptance of that settlement. The check was for $50,000.

She had never seen anything like that. It had to be a mistake, all those numbers and zeroes. Was just like one of those phony checks that came with the cancer insurance ads in the Sunday paper, or from Publisher’s Clearing House— only you had to get cancer and die, or win the lottery to cash it. But this was one no-bullshit check for real money, and man, was plenty money.

She showed the letter to Herman, who hooted and cackled at the check. He tried to read it, then she snatched it back. She was being offered the money to just walk away. It was hers for the asking. All she had to do was take it to the bank.

“I feel like one whore,” she said, sadly. But then she grew animated: “It’s his baby! How come he treat me like one whore, think he can just pay me?! Whores make better money that that!”

“Don’t take his money!” Herman said. “Big shot like him, you know how much money he’s got? Must be millions! Don’t take his lousy fifty grand! You can do better than that!” She listened and slowly nodded. It was just the money, after all.

She sat on the living room floor with the Sunday paper, leafing through the classifieds. “Where we going live, Herman?”

“What you mean?”

“I like find one place, yeah? I like find one nice place for the baby.”

“What you mean? What did you do?”

“I wen’ cash the check, that’s why. Money’s in the bank.”

“How come you did that?!”

“I no like hassle, already. I just like to get on with my life, yeah?– make one nice place for the baby. If the buggah no like raise his own kid, I don’t want him around neither.”

Chapter Twenty

There were crowds everywhere, bumping and heaving and stepping around each other as yet more crowds disgorged from subways packed solid by pushers. They coursed through a byzantine maze of alleys in a city-scape of shades of gray: cement-gray, dirty street-gray, old wood-gray, sky-gray, rain-gray, suits-gray, brick-gray, mud-gray, holding handkerchiefs to their mouths against the 10 parts per million of carbon monoxide declared by the pollution monitor, grimacing from the steady blare of car horns, sidewalk loudspeakers, and crush of traffic.

Above were neon signs in English and Japanese in a hundred different plastic colors: Cutty Sark, Coke, Play Club, Los Angeles Club, jazz clubs where single men danced with themselves in front of full-length mirrors. Spoiled by the dearness of their country’s currency and the sweat of their father’s brows, girls sported Euro-snob handbags as they sat in coffee shops, drinking lattes.

Ugly cement buildings and houses of wood, tile, and bamboo jostled each other helter-skelter for precious inches of space. Washing hung from porch lines provided more shade from the steaming sun than did the occasional grimy tree.

On a hot day like this, with humidity and pollution thick as molasses, bathers were packed like Cape Buffalo in an African mud-wallow, hawking and blowing gobs of effluvia into water acrid with the smell of chlorine. A recorded voice emanated eerily from the pirate ship wreck anchored at the far end of the pool, warning of the mercilessness of the sea. At nearby Yokohama Chuo Cemetery, Hideo Hamamoto sat in a pew and watched impassively as a robot prayed over the soul of his dear departed comrade, Major Ishii.

The stress of business had taken its toll on Ishii at an early age. He was 73, older than Hamamoto. Men everywhere these days were keeling over from karoshi, a mysterious affliction ascribed to overwork.

It was hard for an old tiger to hang it up. But hadn’t he done all he had set out to do? Ingeniously and single-handedly, he had developed the only weapon that could deal effectively with China’s swarming anthills. If anything, it had worked too well, and he could not be blamed if incompetent higher-ups and over-zealous idiots had caused it to go awry.

The robot, a mechanical Buddhist priest with blinking eyes, convincing skin tone, and moving mouth, uttered its sutras for the departed, then disappeared on its platform back into the ceiling. Hideo hadn’t thought much about death, though so much of it had been inflicted at his hands. He should retire, he thought, before the mechanical priest chanted its prayers for him. But he couldn’t afford to.

The thunder of the Japanese Army’s advance evoked the long-dormant glory of the Great Khan. The Chinese fired obsolete and homemade rifles and rushed at the Emperor’s finest with their crude bamboo spears and sharpened kitchen utensils, knowing full well that their cause was hopeless. Even so, they killed and maimed Japanese soldiers.

A sniper would peer from around the corner, fire his one miserable round, and be annihilated for his audacity. But he had felled a Japanese soldier in the bargain, and the Japanese were obliged to punish this cowardice by punishing not only the perpetrator, but those who had countenanced the cowardice, as well. They shot and skewered old men, old women, and infants. Women were raped without regard to age. Some were defiant, and had to be bludgeoned into submission, while others lay still and stiff as statues.

Consumed with their vision of subduing the endless reaches of this dust-blown, primitive land and awakening its decayed torpor to a new era of Asiatic pride, the armies of Japan swept on. Out of this cesspool would arise a new China under Japanese dominion—no, a new Asia!

Kindergartens, women’s colleges, hospitals, and cemeteries all fell to the Imperial Army. In Nanking, the Japanese chose their targets with utmost caprice, and the city resounded with the lethal chatter of automatic weapons fire. Hundreds were lined up on the banks of canals and machine-gunned, and thousands more executed and buried in pits with their wrists wired together. When ammunition ran low, ordinary men were roped by the hundreds and doused with gasoline and burned alive. In all, some three hundred thousand men, women, and children– officials, teachers, laborers, soldiers, beggars and shopkeepers– were murdered in six weeks of mayhem. It was a prodigious effort, though not one that went unrewarded. Twenty thousand women were raped, and when the screams of infants annoyed their mothers’ rapists, the infants were bayoneted. Pregnant women were eviscerated, and fathers were ordered to rape their daughters.

Following the glorious capture of Nanking, the Imperial Army found its advance through central China increasingly hampered by perilously distended lines of supply. Food was not as great a problem as clean water, and only occasionally could the soldiers find it. They took to cooking in river and pond water, even drinking it. The soldiers became ill, stricken with diarrhea and cholera and typhoid. Without clean water, the Imperial Army could no longer move forward.

Hideo recalled his detachment to the endless frigid expanses of Manchuria, dun brown under a frosty pale blue sky. It seemed to him the end of the world, the farthest-flung reaches of the glorious Empire of Japan. After four days on the train from Pusan, he arrived in Harbin, the northern Manchurian city known as the Paris of the East, with its wide streets and many Russian-style buildings dating from the time of the czars. He had been ordered by the Imperial High Command to manufacture water filters in the reconditioned soy sauce brewery outside Old Harbin. He had first demonstrated his filters for the military, by pissing into one end of the device, and as a stream of clear water emerged from its other end, he handed it to a subaltern to drink, who in turn reported no discernable taste or impurities. His water filters had enabled the army to resume its advance, and his project achieved the favor and support of the high command. Now, it was deemed that a new facility, for expanded research into disease prevention, would be needed.

Hidden behind a high wall, dry moat and high voltage wires, Pingfan now had its own railway now, which brought freight by the hundreds. There was an incinerator and electrical utility with tall cooling towers, an airfield, an insectarium, a capacious headquarters building, an exercise yard, and a facility for keeping the rats.

The animal house roiled with thousands of them. The putrid stench of their urine was everywhere, and the storehouses of millet that were plundered to feed the rat colony resulted in prodigious quantities of droppings whose odor mingled with that of the urine.

The odor was everywhere at Pingfan. But its source was more than rat excrement. It was the germ factory on Ro Block’s first floor, where factory workers pushed trolleys along dimly-lit corridors, trolleys laden with bottles of cultures: plague and anthrax, botulism and tetanus, tick encephalitis and tsutsugamushi fever. Each day, the workers donned lightweight rubberized silk suits, heavy rubber boots, gloves, goggles, and gauze masks and waded through a trough of antiseptic phenol water to enter the production line.

There, they boiled up the culture medium of meat bouillon, and poured it into cultivators in high-pressure autoclaves. After the medium cooled, they swabbed the gelatin base of each cultivator where the cultures festered in optimal conditions of temperature and humidity.

In the labs, they injected cyanide, nitric acid, and strychnine nitrate into the rats to induce seizures, and endeavored to determine what animal of what weight had died in how many days after an injection of what strength. The heart, liver, kidneys, everything was removed, cultures made, and toxicity levels tabulated.

Apart from the rumble of the trolleys, the factory in Ro Block was deathly quiet, since the workers could communicate with each other only by hand signals, so as to avoid opening their mouths and inhaling the deadly bacteria that floated invisibly throughout the factor. Sweat dripped from their foreheads as they went about their macabre labors. They skimmed the slurry from its gelatin base and poured it into bottles that were then trucked to the storeroom, where sufficient stocks of plague germs were added each month to kill the entire population of China many times over.

But the harsh Manchurian winter hampered experimentation, and made it difficult to procure supplies and heating oil adequate to so much as keep the water supply from freezing. It was also hard to obtain from Japan any of the lab equipment that was needed. The only thing there was enough of in China was people.

“Ito, I am tired of rats,” Hideo said. “There are just so many things that can be done with rats. Headquarters must provide us with worms to study, not rats.”

“There are many worms underground, sir,” Ito said. “In the basement of the Kempeitai Headquarters in Harbin.”

“Then see if you can dig us up a few.”

Throughout Manchuria, the worms were unearthed by the Kempeitai– intellectuals and labor agitators, suspected spies and saboteurs, ideological criminals and drug addicts, pro-Soviet and anti-Japanese elements, disloyals, those of no fixed residence, or simply those who were otherwise undesirable.

Others, innocent and unsuspecting, were lured under false pretenses. Children, mothers, and pregnant women were trapped and held with the others in the basement of the Japanese Consulate in Harbin, to await collection and transport in windowless four-ton trucks as “special consignments” to Pingfan.

At Pingfan, the prison was a canvas from Hieronymus Bosch. Prisoners writhed and moaned, grasping limbs that had nearly broken through skin mottled and rotted by necrosis. Others were racked with coughs–pneumonia and bronchial fever. Some were disfigured with swelling, others wasted away to skin and bone. Some were blistered and had open and running sores. Some were held in isolation, and others were thrown in with others to see how fast their diseases would spread. In desperation, some of the prisoners would try to practice old wives’ cures, black magic, and shamanistic quackery to escape being contaminated.

Thuggish guards patrolled the corridors of the building, helping to restrain the prisoners as doctors drew blood samples and injected contagions. There was no point in resisting, since the germs could be sprayed, instilled into drinking water, or smeared onto chocolates, jam buns, melons and crackers.

Some of the research was carried out in a steel chamber the size of a telephone booth, where a fan in the ceiling drew hydrogen cyanide gas into the chamber. The prisoners became confused and dizzy within seconds, and lost control of their breathing. They gasped and convulsed as researchers coolly observed through the chamber’s reinforced glass windows. A young mother and her baby were put into this chamber, where she tried to protect her child from the gas by covering it with her body.

The thick glass window of the pressure chamber afforded the scientists a view of other procedures as well. Air was pumped into the chamber to evaluate resistance to pressure. Eyes popped out of their sockets, eye membranes ruptured, and blood was forced out through the pores of the skin. Others were given transfusions of horse blood. Some were sweated to death and mummified beneath dry heat fans that baked the subject of the experiment until all moisture had completely evaporated, and the corpse weighed only half of its normal body weight. Prisoners were electrocuted, boiled alive, pureed in giant centrifuges, and irradiated to death with x-rays in the name of research.

There was no possibility of escape, either from infection or through the ponderous steel doors that sealed off Ro Block from the rest of the world. But an incident occurred when a prison warder tried to give a prisoner lunch. The prisoner had cut off his wrist manacle and attacked the warder. Corporal Ito placed an emergency call to headquarters building.

“Sir! There has been a disturbance in Ro Block! One of the prisoners cut off his handcuffs, and attacked the warden.”

“Is the situation under control?” Hideo asked.

“Not yet, sir. The warden was injured, but he escaped. His keys were taken!”

“The fool! So what happened?!”

“Sir! The prisoner opened all the cells, and all the prisoners came out. There’s a riot, sir!”

“Are they still inside Ro Block?”

“Yes, sir. They have not been able to break down the steel door.”

“Then get the guards there immediately! Tell them to wear their gas masks!”

Hideo ordered a tank of phosgene gas brought, and a rubber hose was run up a ladder from the inner courtyard. He was patient. For nearly an hour they tried to reason with the prisoners, encouraging them to return to their cells peaceably. But his patience was sorely tried, and in the end, it took them only a few minutes to kill enough of them to convince them to return to their cells.

An example was to be made of the ringleader. “Everyone is to assemble in the courtyard at noon!” Hideo ordered. “Make sure the prisoners are handcuffed, and chain their feet as well! Station guards everywhere around them!”

This wouldn’t be the first time Hideo had taken a head. It was something an officer had to do. If he didn’t, the men would say, “He’s nothing but appearances.” Nobody wanted to have that said of them. Still, there was a lot of pressure, with everyone watching.

The thin, worn-out prisoner kneeled in front, blindfolded. Hideo unsheathed his sword, wet it down, and walked up behind the man. The prisoner didn’t move. He kept his head lowered, resigned to his fate.

Hideo drew his sword, a Sukesada, and took a deep breath to ensure his composure. He steadied himself, holding the sword at a point above his right shoulder, and swung down with one breath.

The head dropped to the ground, rolling a short way until it stopped, and the lifeless eyes of the prisoner stared. Blood spouted from the torso, and soon, the air reeked of it. Hideo washed the blood off the blade, then wiped it with paper. But a piece of fat stuck to it that just wouldn’t come off, and as he sheathed the sword, he noticed too that it was slightly bent.

Although his very first execution had been imperfect, he had felt something change inside him just then. He didn’t know how to put it, but he had gained strength somewhere in his gut. From that time, he had personally severed more than thirty heads.

His everyday sword was a Showa sword. His other sword was called Osamune Sukesada, which had been given to him by his uncle and which was more than 300 years old. The Showa was a sword made for fighting. It cut well, even if you had no talent, and was the kind that samurai appreciated. It was also the best implement for generalized murder. But the Showa wouldn’t always remove a head with a single stroke. The neck would be cut through, but it might not fall. On the other hand, heads fell easily to Sukesada. It was sufficient to draw it from its sheath and just draw it across the neck. It cut right through. You didn’t have to expend any real effort, or swing it from way up high.

Corporal Ito had grown tired of bloodletting. It was annoying to listen to them plead for life– whether their own, or that of their loved ones or friends. Some got down on their knees and grappled with his legs, tears streaming, and pleaded desperately for the release of their relatives. He kicked them away brusquely–they had nothing to offer but crude entreaty and baubles. Many brought but a ring or such, being all they had. He took the ring just the same, since he was under orders to give it to Commander Hamamoto so that he might impound the bribe and note its receipt in a special log book that he kept for the Imperial Army inspector.

But when someone brought him the carving, Ito was struck. “This is different,” he remarked to Commander Hamamoto. “Inspired, don’t you think? It is so ingenious, perhaps you should keep it as a remembrance.”

Hideo ran his fingers over the lacy jade carving. It was an album of twelve ivory leaves, called “Pleasures of the Months for Court Ladies.” On a leaf entitled “Search for Plum Blossoms on a Chilly Evening,” a blind eunuch held a lantern as he and his mistress engaged in illicit amours beneath two plum trees in full flower. The risen moon, illuminating the scene with reflected light from the white walls, was implied though not depicted. The ivory was accented, sparingly and judiciously, with painted gold on the hair, the collars, and sashes of the woman. Even the veins on the man’s cock were visible.

“This is unexpected,” Hideo said. “Who gave this to you?”

“Someone’s brother, sir.”

“Do we still have the prisoner?”

“Yes.”

“Then remove him from his cell. Put him on the labor crew. Tell his brother that the prisoner’s freedom cannot be bought– though with diligence it might someday be earned.”

Word got around, and their magnanimity was rewarded with other treasures, including a “Hundred Treasure Inlay,” a covered rectangular box of red sandalwood, in which a still life of lotus seed pod, persimmons, chrysanthemums, and bamboo leaves was rendered in mother-of-pearl, jade, and gemstones.

A twin-humped Bactrian camel, with still-lustrous polychrome glaze, was tendered. Slipped over the humps was a wool saddle cloth with ruffled border, and hanging over it were saddle bags decorated with tiger heads, one on each side, a length of folded cloth, a skein of silk yarn, a roll of bread, a leg of meat. And there arrived a wan bowl, made of pure white Xhotan jade from Xinjiang, described by the Chinese as resembling congealed lard. A gold-rimmed floral design of ruby flowers bore the inscription of the Qianlong emperor’s poem:

“The pink peach blossoms harbor raindrops of yesterday.

The green willow branches carry mists in the morning.”

When the time came that it would be convenient to turn them over, the treasures would grace a display case at Imperial Army Headquarters. But for now, it was inconvenient.

“Ito,” Hideo said. “the logbook, it is a nuisance. I don’t have time to keep track of every little piece of gold that families of the prisoners bring! I am tired of keeping such records. I am not a moneychanger! From now on, the logbook is your responsibility. I trust that the inspector’s curiosity will be satisfied– if and when he comes.” His meaning was unspoken, but understood: a judicious portion of the gold that came in might be withheld from recordation in the logbook.

“Another thing,” he said. “There are too many things here now that do not accord well with the atmosphere of a military research facility. You’re up for home leave in a few weeks. I want you to take them to Japan, and put them in safekeeping until conditions stabilize.”

He himself could not run the risk of removing them from the country. As an officer, he was too susceptible to the wiles of informants, and it would be awkward to explain such things to an officer of the Kempeitai.

That summer, Ito returned home by train to Shanghai and by ship to Nagasaki and then by train again, an interminable journey in creaking railway cars. The crate followed in the baggage car.

Back at last in his home village, he packaged the treasures of Pingfan in cedarwood boxes and entombed them in a pauper’s cemetery. He shoveled mud and gravel over the wooden crate and smeared it over with cement, added a choice selection of rusted metal, chicken bones, and rubbish, and defecated upon the lot.

That spring, carrier-based American warplanes had inflicted casualties when they had mistakenly bombed a school in Japan. The bombers had dropped their payloads and then flown on to eventually run out of gas over free China, and their crews had parachuted into friendly Chinese territory. General Shunroku Hata, Commander-in-Chief of the Japanese Expeditionary Forces in China, had ordered that the Chinese be punished for accommodating the pilots that had inflicted this humiliation upon the Sacred Soil.

Commander Hamamoto arrived at 13^th Imperial Army Headquarters, in a new uniform with new black leather boots and a bandoleer he had ordered. His brass pips were polished to a high gleam, his cap was sharply creased, and he presented the very image of spit and polish. He bowed to the correct angle to some, snapped off a diligently practiced salute to others, and strutted down the corridor of the Headquarters building, heels clicking smartly and the Sukesada sword jangling at his side.

He had given considerable thought to how to employ various agents in the various delivery systems that would best accomplish the stated purpose. He was certain of his data on the effective duration and range of the viral agents he would recommend, and confident of the specific tactics to be used to clear the campaign territory of populace.

Commander Hamamoto broached his plan. Units would spray germs in huts, and in wells and reservoirs in and around the towns, and bottles of contagion would be dropped from airplanes. Then, it was expected, Chinese forces would counter-attack and become engulfed in epidemic.

He was almost delirious with excitement over the prospect of the chaos that his weapons would create. The economy of the disease was such that a modest amount of plague virus diffused into a target population could wreak such havoc that entire cities and swaths of countryside would be devastated within weeks. Medical facilities would become overwhelmed with casualties, and vast populations would flee in terror, ensuring massive and widespread contamination. In China, where plague was an age-old animus, many might never suspect.

To manufacture his bombs, Commander Hamamoto explained, clay would be ground to a powder, mixed with water and then worked into a paste. The paste would be poured into a plaster mold and shaped like a shell. The finished bodies of the bombs would then be dried in special kilns. At the bottom of each shell would be a screw-threaded aperture, and a time fuse tube would be inserted into the aperture, with light explosives tamped into the grooves for the purpose of fracturing the shell.

The high-altitude balloons that would carry the bombs all the way across the Pacific to California would be made of four or five sheets of mulberry paper bonded with cellulose cement. When filled with hydrogen, the balloons would have a lifting capacity of about half a ton at sea level and about 300 pounds at 30,000 feet. The balloon would drop special drums that had been packed with plague fleas, and when the drums broke open upon impact, they would scatter the fleas to the four winds.

“Are you able to assure us of the results?” the colonel asked.

“There is no question,” he said. “We have tested our agents extensively. We know how effective they are, and for how long. There is a sufficient concentration of population in the campaign area to support an area-wide contamination, with a ninety percent casualty rate!”

“Seems almost too good to be true,” the colonel remarked.

Pingfan supplied the hundreds of kilograms of anthrax, cholera, dysentery, plague, and para-typhoid. Bottled and sealed with paraffin and cellophane, the cultures were packed sixteen bottles to a box marked “Water Supply,” and flown off to 13^th Imperial Army Headquarters, from whence they were deployed.

The contagions were dumped into reservoirs, wells, and rivers, and sprayed into huts. The Chinese losses that resulted were beyond reckoning. Worse, it was a calamity for the Japanese as well. Thousands of the Imperial Army’s finest had also been infected after Japanese regulars, who had not been informed of the operation, inadvertently overran a contaminated area. The victims were rushed, uncomprehending, to hospitals in the rear, where many died from the myriad contagions that had been loosed from Pandora’s Box.

Hideo was summoned to Headquarters, knowing nothing of this and expecting to be promoted and congratulated.

“You are a disgrace!” the colonel screamed. “How could you let this happen?!”

Shocked at this unexpected abuse, Commander Hamamoto stammered. “Sir… I had no control over our troops that overran the contaminated areas!”

“You had responsibility! You should have made sure that the risks were clearly understood! Obviously, there were many that did not clearly understand! If you cannot accept responsibility, you are not fit to be a Japanese officer! You are as great a danger to us as the enemy! I will have you beheaded!”

Confined to quarters, Hideo was left to contemplate his fate. An entire week went by as he listened with his heart in his throat for the approaching footsteps of his executioners. One morning, they came. The door flew open, and a junior officer stood rigidly at attention.

“Escort the prisoner!!” This is it, he thought. He hoped that the sword would cut cleanly. They led him away, but not to the edge of a pit. He was taken instead to the Harbin train station, where he was given a copy of his orders and a packet of money for expenses. He was being returned to Japan.

Reduced to the rank of sergeant, he spent the rest of the war working as an assistant in an army lab outside Tokyo. His pay barely allowed him and his wife to get by, and as the war effort became increasingly desperate, so did his own circumstances. In the days after the war, money and its equivalent were very hard to come by. Those who had gold or other valuables enjoyed an enormous advantage which, once attained, was never relinquished. As for the valuables he had entrusted to Ito, he had no idea. He wasn’t even sure where to find him. A village in Kyushu somewhere, and Commander Hamamoto had not been given the liberty of consulting his records on the way out.

Hideo and Gamera made bento that they took to a wholesaler in a pullcart, and they took them to movie theaters, playhouses, too, and to Shirokiya, a shop for passenger boats departing for Ogawa. When rice became unavailable, they changed their business to sandwiche-making. They would buy ten loaves of bread, slice them as thinly as possible, and fill them with ersatz whale ham.

When bread disappeared, then even whale ham, they had to give up the sandwich business, so they tried “army bread.” Since it was for the soldiers, they could get plenty of supplies and they could get creative. They could knead it, fill it with sweet bean paste, shape it into a tibe, bake it, and slice it into pieces.

Eventually their baking equipment was appropriated by the army because it was made of iron. They were paid nothing for it, only promissory notes that would never be redeemed, just like others who had been forced to contribute bracelets, dental gold, anything of value. Honest people like him contributed whatever they had to, without complaint, while the rogues in China made fortunes.

While Hamamoto’s life had been spared, everything else– all the shops along the street belonging to the fishcake-maker, the tempura-maker, the cabbage seller, the fabrics vendor, the owners of the general sundries store, the paper goods seller, and the shoji-screen shops, as well as the little home where he and Gamera had once lived– had all been leveled in the air raids.

Although their house was gone, they lived in the little shop they had cobbled together from whatever lumber they could scrounge. They even found some rice bowls and other household items, damaged but still usable, including a mixing bowl almost as big as a tub, in which they would take baths.

During winter they gathered straw rope to tie into charcoal bags, making the bags themselves. When summer came, they raised silkworms. They hardly bought any food, but ate what they were able to grow in the welter of pots at home. There weren’t any shoes. During the winter, when there was snow, they made sandals from rice straw. They picked fiddleheads and other wild vegetables in the hills above town. In those days, even a single apple was hard to get.

It wasn’t until long after the war that Hideo Hamamoto’s life began to turn around once again. But even as founder and president of the Yellow Cross Pharmaceuticals Company, business was sparse and life continued to be hard for many more years. His heart just wasn’t in it any longer… this was such a comedown from Pingfan. But it was a living.

At 73, he was tired. He wanted to retire, but even a lifetime of work had been insufficient to provide him with a comfortable retirement. For forty years, he had lived a frustrated life that wasn’t much better than that of the most commonplace salary man. He didn’t even have children, since Gamera was barren.

His comrades from Pingfan feigned to know nothing about the atrocities that had gone on there, and there was little communication over the years. Many had come to Pingfan from top schools, and had returned to positions of honor in Japanese medical circles. But there was an old-boy network called Seikonkai, the Refined Spirit Association, whose members, like himself, met from time to time to commemorate the passing of one of their own. But no one who had heard of Corporal Ito.

Hideo had given up attending those meetings, but this time, when the announcement arrived in the mail, he was saddened to learn that the bell had tolled for his old comrade, Major Ishii. This was one meeting he had to attend.

As he sat in the pew at the Yokohama Chuo Cemetery, his sorrow at the passing of Major Ishii was leavened by a fortuitous meeting. He thought he was familiar, there something about his eyes that even forty years could not obscure. Hideo introduced himself, and accepted a card in return. It read “Ito Minato, Chairman and Chief Executive of Golden Bear Gold Service” at an address in Tokyo.

He knew it! “Is it really you, Ito?”

“Commander Hamamoto! Ah! I cannot believe my eyes! It is as if the last forty years had overlooked you! I would have expected an older man!”

“Well if that is so, then it is because I have not been burdened by success. But I imagine you have become wealthy! It must be the best of all worlds, to become wealthy on golf!”

“It’s a bit like becoming wealthy on women,” Ito said. “who are once beautiful but become ugly and demanding. It keeps me so busy I can seldom enjoy the game myself.”

They drank, and they became drunk. They reminisced, and sang songs. What a great neck, Hideo thought drunkenly. Whenever Hideo met people, he appraised their necks and made a judgment. Would this be an easy head to take, or would his sword get caught up in the folds of the chin, or stuck in the bone? The best necks were neither skinny nor fat. Ito’s was an easy neck to cut, he thought. He hoped there would at length be some accounting of the treasure he had long ago entrusted him with.

Ito invited him for a game of golf. As chairman of Golden Bear, whose shares traded at phenomenal levels on the Tokyo Stock Exchange, Ito had leveraged their inflated value to borrow money from banks that was copious and nearly free, from banks who lent freely in the delirium of Japan’s bubble economy. Incredibly, now he owned his very own ultra-exclusive course outside Tokyo.

They played eighteen holes, and back at the clubhouse, ate wagyu beef sukiyaki and drank Scotch. Hideo could not imagine how it was possible to be so wealthy, until later, in the locker room, he encountered the tattooed man that had emerged from the furo and now stood next to him before the lockers, getting dressed. The man was missing the tip of his finger. Then it dawned on him: he was yakuza.

Golf clubs tried to weed out these flowers of evil, and in some cases, it was simple. Many of Japan’s gangsters were conspicuous, not just on account of their expensive cars and short, tightly curled coifs, but because part of the pinky on the left hand might be missing—a self-inflicted amputation to demonstrate their loyalty to their overlord. Then too, they always wore long-sleeved shirts in Japan’s soaking-hot summer to conceal lurid, polychromatic body tattoos. But in other cases, where the flower of evil owned the golf course, it was not so easy.

Hearing that Commander Hamamoto had been executed for his errors in the 13^th Army’s campaign, Ito had used some of the treasure to buy a large lot in the rubble of downtown Tokyo, where he stored and sold military surplus during the Korean War. His property had mounted in value to incredible, ridiculous heights.

Golden Bear Golf Service was begun later, as Japan’s economy mended and fortunes were made by buying and selling golf club memberships. Ito used the soaring price of memberships to lend money to his customers at interest rates as high as 54%, the usury limit in Japan.

But apart from the golf course, Ito’s acquisitions had been uncontroversial, and without glory. He had grown restless. As Golden Bear’s chairman, he wanted more than anything to emulate the glorious success, now legendary in Japan, of big boss Katsutami of Usutani, a Japanese golf empire that had acquired Pebble Beach in California for nearly a billion dollars! Or Sports Winko, whose big boss Kinoshita had been so taken with the fabulous course at La Costa outside San Diego that he decided to buy it on the spot, price no object. In another sense, money wasn’t the point at all, since the acquisition of trophy properties earned great face for the samurai who conquered them.

They talked and talked. Ito grew wistful, while Hideo wondered when the subject of his treasure might come up, or if not, how to broach it. “In Hawaii there are no gray days like this,” Ito said. “No gray streets in gray cities crowded with people in gray suits. It makes me want to trade it all for a golf course in Hawaii.”

“I look at you and wonder what it must be like to be able to have whatever you dream of,” Hideo said. “Even the simple dream of retiring has been denied me.”

“There’s a problem with wealth, my friend. The more you have, the more you want. You never seem to catch up to the point where you say, ‘I am satisfied.’ It is a compulsion and an obsession, a fire that consumes more and more until at last it burns itself out. But even then, it is not satisfied. It has merely consumed itself.

“Tell me,” Ito continued. “Do you remember the pillow-time storybook?”.

Hamamoto couldn’t help himself, and smiled.

“It reposes in a bank vault, wrapped in its cedar box. It is yours, of course. The other pieces were sold. I thought you were dead. But I want to compensate you.”

What could he say, Hideo thought. It wasn’t something he could name a price for, and bargaining with an old friend was unseemly. It was just something best left to Ito. Still, he was surprised at the check for two million.

Several weeks later, the phone rang. It was Ito, who wanted another meeting. At the club, Ito told Hideo that he had discussed the ivory album with a wealthy collector, who was keenly interested in acquiring it. Would Commander Hamamoto accept $10 million for it?

While this was indeed a windfall for Hideo, the greatest prize of all for Ito was a trophy course that would place Golden Bear Golf at the very pinnacle of the esteem of his fellow yakuza. But it was beyond his reach. It wasn’t because of the cost. Ito simply could not risk it, not even with the millions on offer from the banks. For a yakuza, golf conferred the one thing a gangster was unable to buy: prestige. And Ito could not buy it for any amount of money.

The problem, as he put it to Hideo, was that there was controversy over the activities of certain Japanese elements who were doing the buying. Then he confided in him. “Because of the sensitivity of my position, I regret that I cannot bring my dream to fruition. If things are not handled properly, if there is scandal, all that I have done here could come undone. My business would suffer. That is why I need someone.”

Chapter Twenty-One

There was money, so much of it! Was such a trip, Haunani thought, can live anywhere they like! But they liked Chinatown, and they knew all the good places to go for Hawaiian food, knew where to go for Hawaiian music and drink beer. Was just folks around here, and wasn’t so expensive.

They were so excited when they got the apartment, a two-bedroom in a brand-new high-rise on Smith Street for $1,725 a month. When they moved in, it seemed like they had a new lease on life. You could smell the new carpets, the new paint, new wood in the cabinetry. The microwave and convection oven and refrigerator, and washer/dryer were all brand new. Unreal, she thought. She had never seen anything like it. Didn’t even know what a microwave was, and all this stuffs just boggled her mind.

“Try look the toilet, Uncle Herman! Get one handbar for you. That’s for hold on tight when strain real hard! So if pass out, no fall in and drown!”

They went to Safeway and bought beer, bought poki and raw crab and ahi sashimi from the seafood counter. They didn’t have any pots and pans to cook with, no utensils even, just a pack of wooden chopsticks and they just ate it out of the containers, so much they was sick almost. But that was different from morning sickness.

No sooner did she tell him she had cashed the check, than Herman touched her for five grand. In her giddy state, Haunani gave it to him without hesitating, wrote him a check straight away like one big shot. Maybe that was why he never discouraged her from settling, so he could go on squandering money on that silly old woman Yvonne.

They burned through the money in no time. Bought one truck for nineteen grand, fully loaded with options like 8-track, wire rim hubs, and glass-pack muffler. Was so boss, the truck! She sent five thousand home to daddy, spent a few thou on furniture and stereo and a big screen color TV, and every night was KFC and plate lunch and beer and cigarettes, even though she knew she shouldn’t. And on it went for the next six months.

The baby came after ten hours of labor. But all that sweat and agony was made better by the happy, bright, congratulatory euphoria and sparkling clean hospital room. Was like staying in one nice hotel, with room service, although the food was so junk. Herman brought flowers, some poki, and a six-pack of beer that he poured into two plastic cups from the sink in the room.

She spent three days and two nights in the hospital. At home, there awaited a new crib, some toys, a large box of diapers, formula, everything that made things so nice for Isaac, her first-born. There were the usual hassles of learning how to do things, and getting up in the night to change and feed the baby. Mostly it was a joy. But then the bills started coming in, and their out-of-pocket quickly exceeded the $5,000 deposit they had paid the hospital up front. They just never ended. There were doctor bills, hospital bills, anesthesiologist bills. Was plenty, when no more insurance.

Isaac lit up Haunani’s life with a joy she had never known. But the joy was short-lived. He screamed and screamed all night long, every night, and pretty soon the building management came by to tell Uncle Herman that Haunani and the baby could no longer stay. Children were against the rules.

There almost wasn’t even money to move with. But with the money from their deposit, they did, and even had a few bucks left over. It was a boxy apartment with four bare cement walls in the Kee Wong Building, vintage 1922, a decayed structure of yellow brick covered with a scabrous coat of paint and festooned with rotted iron awnings. A banyan seedling had taken root in the façade. In the apartment, the walls were barren of any adornment apart from a filigree of cracks in the masonry, and the windows, papered over with old Chinese newspapers, served as a natural sunscreen, while admitting the aromas of leis and fermented fish paste from the restaurant downstairs.

Next door could be heard yammering and hoicking and the clattering of plastic mah jong tiles. Downstairs, a tattooed man took out a plate lunch of Filipino food from the New Cafe Dalisay, and Violet’s Lei Stand next door sold leis of cigar flowers, pakalana, white ginger, Hilo maile, and red carnation. Each time the door of the refrigerator was opened, their fragrance wafted out on a carpet of cool air. There were long strands of pikake and plumeria– in red and cream pinwheel and yellow and ivory– and tuberose hanging from the eaves over the entrance. They dripped water into a tin trough beneath them, and the cement floor was wet and littered with bits of blossoms. A rack of fluorescent lighting buzzed above the entrance.

On the street, a drunken whore in dirty denim shorts lurched down the sidewalk, sipping something out of a thermal mug. Every other woman on this block was crazy. They leered at you, bobbed and nodded their heads at you, and drooled and muttered and laughed softly to themselves. Some of them hung around the dives– Smith’s Union Bar, Swing Club, Two Jacks, and Hubba Hubba. Some of the women were men–tall, overgrown Franken-mahus with big flat luau feet. But there were pretty girls in Chinatown, too, pie-faced alabaster-skinned Chinese girls with tits that grew so well in a hothouse climate like this.

Whole year went by, and they had been current with the rent, never made no trouble. They had to sell the truck, and was such a hassle trying to sell it through the classifieds. All kinds of sharps came by to try to steal it from her, thinking she was some kind of dumb Hawaiian. They all wanted to take it for a test drive, but was still like new already, still get warranty. Well shit, if you like one new car with nothing wrong, you gotta pay new car price, yeah? But no, not them. Damn people always acted like they was entitled to something for nothing, ‘cause their money was more precious than yours. Finally, with the bills coming in, she took an offer, just took it so no more hassle.

But still was hassle. Was that damn landlord. She just couldn’t imagine anything worse than being behind in the rent with a Chinese attorney. Was always negotiating with the guy, was always calling her for the rent, and whenever she did give him money, he stood there and licked his fingers and counted it, one filthy bill at a time, then licked his fingers again and counted the bills again. Then he asked her when the rest was coming, trying to pin her down, Soon, she said. But after while, he called her again and again, and she just kept putting him off and falling farther and farther behind.

She had to go back to work, but do what? And who was going take care of Isaac? Herman? She didn’t want to go back to cleaning rooms. She didn’t want to clean up after messy haole people any more. It gave her a bad taste in her mouth. Maybe she would go to work in a bar round here somewheres.

The only thing that paid any money was hostess, but she was losing her looks already, had put on ten pounds from the baby that she couldn’t get rid of, and another ten from eating and drinking. She looked frowzy and weary and irritable, which she was most of the time. She had black bags under her eyes and her body felt leaden. She looked at herself in the mirror, at her swollen abdomen, stretch marks, and her drawn and haggard face. Her complexion was wan and pasty from not enough sleep and too much cigarettes and beer.

Only thing she could get was tending bar day shift, at Anchor Club. Didn’t pay shit, tips was junk, just a bunch of old drunks left over from the night before, hangin’ around nursing a beer, or falling asleep at the bar, their heads in their arms, and a few rowdies that had been up all night and had managed to hang in there through the couple hours interval between when their bars closed and something opened. Was like one flophouse.

What had happened to the days of wine and roses? Haunani didn’t know. Now was no more nice apartment with AC and nice thick carpet and nice furniture and color TV and a fridge full of beer and poki. Nobody called her and sent her flowers and candy and took her out to fancy restaurants for drink wine and eat lamb chop with fancy paper stocking. No more trysts at Royal Hawaiian Hotel in $200 suites with room service and champagne. And no more money. She was just one whore that had run out of luck, had one kid, and no one wanted any of that.

Was all dark and dirty, this place, and she was no housekeeper no more. Dishes piled up in the sink, and the ashtrays stank, and plate lunch boxes brought the roaches. The noise from boom boxes downstairs and all the traffic and yelling outside made it hard to sleep until real late, and some nights she only got a few hours before all that and the baby that started up again. Every night was her that got up. Then it was day, and it got so bright and hot that she couldn’t sleep no matter how tired she was, so she just sat there with the baby crawling around, watching TV and smoking cigarettes, then get plate lunch from New Dalisay downstairs and maybe, just maybe, take one nap.

She stood at the kitchen stove, watching the water boil for the formula bottles. She was so tired, and wanted nothing so much as a good night’s sleep. But Herman couldn’t even be trusted to watch the baby. He fed the baby Pepsi instead of formula, gave him gas and cramps. He was sleeping, too, when Isaac crushed and ate a Christmas tree ornament. Coming home, she could hear him crying and screaming from a block away, and Herman was sound asleep. She thought maybe it was just the baby had gone all day with shitty diaper, like before. Thank God it never wen’ swallow the glass, only cut his mouth a little bit.

Last night he dozed off again when she went out for bring plate lunches, and when she returned the plastic bottles in the stove-top sterilizer had melted into a slag, and the place was filled with the smell of scorched aluminum and burned plastic. She was so pissed, that damn thing cost good money, and now was no more bottles and the baby was screaming and the store wasn’t even open for buy new sterilizer. So she just heated up some regular milk on the stove.

The baby was all hers. He only slept for a couple hours at a time before he woke up and started screaming, his diaper soaked and heavy as a Persian rug with piss and shit. She got up, swollen, and changed him. Then he was ready to go, jumping up and down in his crib, happy as can be, but he soon de-stabilized and became cranky for want of attention.

For that matter, it seemed that the baby just screamed and screamed all the time, no matter what. Once, she stalked into the room, picked him up and shook him. “Shaddup, goddamit!” she screamed. “Just shaddup! I can’t stand it no more!” She half-threw him back into its crib, then collapsed onto the floor next to him, crying. The baby screamed louder than ever. With all the commotion, even Herman woke up, and came into the room.

“Hey, hey!! What’s going on in here?! Whassa matter wit’ you?!”

“I can’t stand it no more! He just cries and cries and I no can do nothing for make him stop! I get no help from nobody! I no can sleep, I got no money! I get no more nothing except this damn kid! Always screaming his head off!!”

Was no place for take him out, no park nearby except for A’ala Park where all the homeless and crazies were. The only time she took him there he screamed when he crawled on the pokey plants and got bit so bad by fleas, and its legs was all red with bites. More better stay home and watch TV, and more and more it seemed like that’s what the baby wanted to do. But then the cable company came by to collect or disconnect, and she told ‘em disconnect. Now, she only got the main stations and the reception was shitty. Was no more fun, watching TV li’ dat.

Finally, she knew it was true, she no more nothing. Was never enough money, always gotta buy diapers, formula, this thing and that—no more money for nothing except maybe plate lunch, then nothing left over for pay the rent. On the table was bills– second and third and then final notices from the electric company, the Board of Water Supply, the phone company. She even wen’ Welfare. They helped her with food stamps, but not money.

“Why don’t you call da kid’s faddah?” Herman said. “You way too easy on him, girl! The guy no can ignore his own kid! Call him, tell him you need money! You gotta do that much– if no try, then no can complain!”

“Plenny help you!” she said. “You more worthless than you damned advice!”

But her indignation over these dire circumstances and the injustice of it all ate at her, and the day came. She called the front desk at Bagwell Development. They put her through to Bagwell’s secretary.

“Will Mr. Bagwell know what this is regarding?” the secretary asked.

“Yeah. I think so.”

She waited, on hold. After a while, the secretary came back on the line.

“Miz Wongham?”

“Yeah?”

“Mr. Bagwell’s in conference at the moment. May he return your call?”

“Yeah. I guess so.”

She waited by the phone all day. No call. She tried again the next day.

“Oh, I’m sorry he wasn’t able to get back to you yesterday, Miss Wongham,” the secretary said. “Mr. Bagwell had to leave on some urgent business on the mainland. Shall I have him return your call when he gets back?”

She waited couple weeks, then tried again. More evasion, more delay. Her anger mounted. Her calls were never returned, always some bullshit excuse. Finally, they put her through to Karen Webster. They knew each other from back then. Haunani told her the whole story– about the kid, about how she no more money, no can take care the kid, and how Bagwell had to do something. Was his own kid, for chrissake! Karen wasn’t in much of a position to do anything until Bagwell returned. But as a single mother herself, she sympathized.

Bagwell wondered how long it would be before she hit him up. So typical of welfare queens— no matter how much money you throw at them, they throw it away even faster. But knowing it was his own kid, he had to be careful– this kind of thing could get out of hand. He thought he better talk to his attorney.

The phone in Haunani’s apartment rang. “Miz Wongham? I’m Wallace Fujiyama. I’m an attorney, and I’ve been retained by Mr. Avery Bagwell to represent him in certain matters, including the one concerning the settlement that he reached with you two years ago.”

“Who are you?! Whatchoo– some kind attorney?!”

“Yes. As I said, I represent Avery Bagwell.”

“Did he tell you to call me?! What you want from me?!”

“It’s not really a question of what we want from you, Miz Wongham. We’re more concerned about what you may want from Mr. Bagwell. Which is why he asked me to return your calls, and ask if you clarify some things.”

“Look! If I like talk to you, then I going call you! I like talk with him! About his own flesh and blood kid!”

“Yes, I understand, Miz Wongham. As I said, I do represent Mr. Bagwell in this matter, and I do need to ask you what it is that you’d like to discuss with him?”

“His own kid, like I said! And I no like talk to no fuckin’ attorney about it! The kid needs a nice place to live, not some shit place li’ dis! You should see him– all bit up on his arms and legs from those damn bugs! And he needs somebody for take care of him– day care, not Uncle Herman– the buggah no can take care himself!”

“I see, Miz Wongham. But I must remind you that all of Mr. Bagwell’s obligations in this matter were settled when you accepted the settlement of $50,000 that he paid you two years ago. And while I certainly understand– ”

“You don’t understand shit! You listen to me! This his own kid we talking about! And if he don’t help, going be plenny trouble, you hear!?!”

“Miz Wongham, I must reiterate—”

“You shaddup, you!! You tell him what I said, thas’ all! Then you shaddup!” She slammed down the phone.

Wasn’t right that he refused to even see his own kid. Wasn’t right that he would let that little boy suffer and itch from bug bites and couldn’t go pre-school like the other kids. Was so unfair, jerk her round li’ dat. She was so pissed!

The next morning, she took Isaac and marched into the headquarters of Bagwell Development. “I want to see Avery Bagwell!”

The receptionist looked at her, wondering just what sort of business this woman, holding a runny-nose child and clearly upset about something, could have with Mr. Avery Bagwell. “Is he expecting you?”

“Yep!”

“Do you have an appointment?”

“I don’t need no appointment, lady! Just tell him I’m here!”

“And who is it may I say is here to see him?”

“What is this, some kine entrance exam?!”

“I’m sorry, but I have a responsibility to tell his secretary who it is that would like to see him. He’s very busy.”

“Thas’ his problem! Too busy fuckin’ people over!”

She wondered if she should call security.

“Ma’am—Ma’am, I’m sorry, but what is your name?”

“My name is Haunani! He knows me… real good!”

The receptionist picked up the phone and placed a call. She turned her head away, spoke in a low voice with someone, and after a while, spoke with someone else.

“You know, I’m sorry, but I don’t believe Mr. Bagwell is available just now. If you’d like to have a seat, I’ll see if there’s someone you can speak with.”

“About what? Some noddah kine humbug story for get rid of me, right?!”

“Ma’am, please have a seat over there,” the receptionist said, returning to Haunani. “Someone will be with you in a moment,”

“All right, but no jerk me ‘roun! I know he’s there!”

Presently a woman emerged from the inner corridor, and walked into the lobby. It was Karen Webster. She smiled and greeted her. “Hello Haunani, it’s been a while, hasn’t it?!”

“I like see Avery Bagwell. Personal business.”

“Mr. Bagwell is out of town on business now. We don’t expect him back until next week.”

“You lying! Don’t gimme no story li’ dat!”

“Haunani, you can’t come just in here and talk to people like that!”

“I wen’ call and call and call, and every time the woman says he’s out of town, he’s in a meeting, he’s out to lunch! They lying! And now you come out and lie some more! The hell wit’ you people!” She swept past the woman and rushed into the corridor.

“Call security!” Karen told the receptionist.

Haunani ran down the hallway, clutching her screaming baby, and yelling out “Where you at, you fuckin’ coward– I going find you!” In a moment, the hallway filled with people who came out from their offices to see what all the noise was about, then around the corner came the security guards.

“She’s over there!” Karen said.

The guards ran after her, as she stormed down the hallway, little Isaac squealing like a dentist’s drill. “Where’s that son of a bitch!?!” she shouted.

When the guards caught up with her, she fought them like a lioness. “Get you fuckin’ hands offa me! Where’s that son of a bitch?! See this kid, eh?! Thas’ his kid! Thas’ right!” The guards took hold of her and bundled her off, and she screamed like a banshee. “Hey everybody, listen up!” she shouted on her way out he building. “The buggah wen’ made me hapai, wen’ give me this kid, then paid me money for go away!! Now his kid no mean nothing to him!!”

Outside on the sidewalk in front, her invective, and all the juicy particulars of her complaint, poured forth. A small crowd had gathered, and even people in the stores across the street came out to watch. Finally, the police came. They tried to settle her down, but she would not be mollified. So they led her away– dragged her, more like it, kicking and biting.

She spent the rest of the day in the cell block. They took Isaac away somewhere, and she wen’ beef with the sergeant over that.

“Where you took my kid?!” she yelled. “Where you took him?!”

“We’re just going to have someone look after him while you’re with us.”

“Who going look after him?! I’m his mother– I’m going look after him!”

“Don’t worry, the boy’s fine. This ain’t no place for one kid, lady.”

The sergeant was patient, and slowly she settled down and regained her composure. Was no place for one lady for sure, locked up like this with some hooker in the next cell and some drunk mumbling shit in the cell across the aisle.

She began to cry, and soon cried so hard and so loud even the drunk spoke up.

“Shaddup, bitch!”

“You shaddup, you fuckin’ asshole!!” she said.

“The fuck I’ll shut up, bitch! You shaddup, you whore!”

“Eh you fuckah! I not one whore! If I get my hands on you I going rip you tongue out! You no can talk to me li’ dat!”

“The fuck I can’t, you stupid bitch!”

“Eh, both of you shut up in there!” the sergeant shouted. “Both of you in here for the same damn thing– disturbing the peace! You ain’t going nowheres ‘til you both shut up!”

This was some kine hellhole, and beneath the white fluorescent lights that flickered and buzzed, nobody rested, and the row never ended. Haunani sat there and stewed as the hours dragged by, wondering where Isaac was. Probably in some place like this where all the kids was screaming and some sergeant-mother said shaddup! and nobody wen’ change his diaper and feed him.

She tried again and again to call Herman, but no answer. Down at Duke’s probably, dancing and bullshitting people, she thought. But maybe he wasn’t there neither, was pretty early for that, so maybe was just sleeping and not even the phone could wake him up. Finally, on her fourth call, he answered, and they talked, but wasn’t ‘til later that he finally showed up with bail. There went the hundred she was going give the electric company for keep the power on.

“What’s this, girl!?” Herman said. “How come you got arrested, already!? How come you in here?”

“Where you been?!” she accosted him. “Where you been while I been sitting in here all afternoon! I was calling and calling you, and you was sleeping!”

Bagwell was mortified. He hadn’t thought a week or so would make any difference in getting back to her. That’s how things ground along in the business world, it took time to get anything done and everyone had to get in on it and attorneys had to be consulted. So he had just put it on the docket and got on with other things that had to be done to make money, not give it away. The attorneys would take care of it.

He had almost lived down the last scandal. But now it came back to bedevil him, a hundred times worse. Good God, this she-bitch had actually come to his office and made this wild scene, shouting and telling the whole world about his love child and demanding money! It was as if a storm had sundered the industrious, buttoned-down atmosphere of Bagwell Development, and nobody could talk about anything but. Worse, it was on the brink of becoming a public relations crisis.

“Karen, I need help,” he said. “This is out of control.”

“I quite agree,” she said. “But first of all, are you sure it’s the same girl? My god, I hardly recognized her!”

“It is,” he said, nodding his head sadly. “What the hell can we do? I feel like a goddamned fool, and the company’s practically dysfunctional. I can’t believe that any serious work is being done around here, not when there’s so much to talk about!”

“We can deal with that,” she said. “But what we can’t afford is to let it get beyond this. If we lose our credibility, we’ve lost the game.”

“I know, Karen. And I’m sorry, more than I can say. But it’s beyond me, now, and I have to count on you to help clean up the mess.” Christ Jesus, he sighed. “Well, what can I say? No fool like an old fool, I guess. And I feel pretty damned old and pretty damned foolish.”

Bagwell had always been able to look to her for perspective. As Senior Vice President of Public Relations, Karen Webster was the keeper of the company image that had successfully positioned it as a kama’aina firm working for local people and sensitive to local traditions. He looked to her for advice and direction in all sorts of things.

Karen wasn’t mad at him anymore. She felt sorry for him. Avery Bagwell, she realized, probably needed nothing more than a normal, decent woman in his life. Not some drunken albatross, and not some twit whose affections he had sought in a moment of desperate loneliness.

Some women just didn’t appreciate having a nice home, and a husband that provided. She would never make a disgrace of a man who made all that possible… but that’s why she was a single mom. Her own husband—the jerk– had left her for another woman. Some men just had bad luck with women, just like some women did with men.

“It’s nothing that I don’t understand, Avery. Really, in a way, I’m very, very sorry.”

“About what? It’s my fault.”

“Not about ‘what.’ I’m sorry for you. I know how hard you’ve worked. I know how much you care for your wife. I know she’s not well. I just wish there was something more I could do.”

“Well, I appreciate that. The fact is, Mrs. Bagwell and I haven’t been able to talk to each other much lately. Any more than I can talk to that girl. Hell, she and I don’t even speak the same language. Sometimes I wish there was someone I could talk to.”

“There is, Avery.”

Karen was there for him— not just as a colleague and a confidante, but as a woman.

His attorney Wallace Fujiyama rang, this time to bargain another deal for Bagwell. He advised him that if he wanted to be sure of containing the damage, the best way was probably to pay her more money. Yes, the attorney agreed, that kind of thing could go on forever. But he reminded him that he had gotten off cheap the first time. Anyone else would have made it a lot worse.

It was agreed, then. The attorney called Haunani, and told her that Bagwell would give her fifteen hundred a month in child support. There was no sense in her going to court to try to get more, and as for any consideration, the lawyer said, she had already settled that, and had no basis for any further claim. What’s more, the deal came with a non-disclosure agreement. Any mention of any of this, any more public spectacle, and the deal was off. Mr. Bagwell had decided to draw the line, Fujiyama said, regardless of the consequences. If there were any further disturbances, any more demands, Mr. Bagwell would press charges against her for harassment. She should consider going back to the Big Island, he said, so that she and her son could have the support of her family.

Just now, Haunani had hit rock bottom. She had sold the last of the food stamps at fifty cents on the dollar for cigarettes and beer. With what was left over, she had bought one plate lunch from New Dalisay for share with Isaac. It was that bad. Earlier that week, she had gone to Health and Human Services on North King Street, a neighborhood of crumbling warehouses and sidewalks littered with used syringes and plastic crack bags. A bag lady pushed along a shopping carts full of rags and plastic jugs and shit, her bare feet blackened with filth, arguing with unseen antagonists. Haunani wondered how long it would be before that was her.

So, when Bagwell’s attorney called and offered fifteen hundred a month, there wasn’t much hesitation. “Tell him we start today! I like pick up the check today!” It would buy them a ticket back to a better life on the Big Island.