I stayed there once or twice myself over the years, and I never found it to be anything but a clean and decent and honestly run affair. Mr. Henry’s was one of the few places that allowed the emigrant railroad workers to visit, although he made it clear in any language that he could and would shoot a gun in defense of his women.
When Mr. Henry lost a woman, it was usually because he had married her off to some widower out in the hinterlands. If the woman wanted to go, the man would give Mr. Henry whatever he could in exchange. Sometimes money, sometimes labor. Mr. Henry had some of the best produce to be gotten in the whole of Kansas, what with the cattle drivers, the farmers, the railroaders, and the women themselves coming back to visit.
So, looking into the cold religious fervor of Esau Bandler’s prairie-blue eyes, I figured that Mr. Bandler needed a dose of what Mr. Henry’s place could offer. I walked him through the door and across the splinter-board sidewalk to where I could draw a proper map in the dry dust that then formed Stratford’s Main Street.
Bandler had been gone an hour when Arlen came back to the office. I told him what he’d missed by way of Esau’s story, and when I finished by saying Esau should be renewing his soul at Mr. Henry’s by now, Arlen bet me we hadn’t seen the last of Esau Bandler. I remember joking about how maybe I’d sent him to the wrong kind of house; since maybe his was the wife who’d joined the convent. Arlen said no, but not joking back. A wife running from Esau wouldn’t join a convent because living with Esau himself would be closer to the wrath of God than most women could ever abide.
If it wasn’t the next day, then it must have been the day after. One of Mr. Henry’s women rode in to tell us there’d been trouble and asked if Arlen could come back to the ranch with her. I told Arlen to stay — I’d take this one. That’s when the woman broke down enough to tell us that Mr. Henry had been shot dead and they wanted both him and Esau Bandler to have a proper burial in the Stratford Cemetery. No blown-away grave for their Mr. Henry.
Ordinarily either Arlen or I tried to stay within shooting distance of Main Street, but the day Mr. Henry died, we left the cowpokes and the card sharks to fend for themselves while we rode the sixteen miles to Mr. Henry’s place.
It was one of those unforgiving hot, dry days with too much sun and too little shade. I remember thinking, as we bowed to pass through the open doorway into Mr. Henry’s personal quarters, just how low Esau Bandler must have had to stoop to gain access. It was a sparse room, with two of its sod-caked walls canted to one side. The remaining walls stood relatively straight, being propped up by additional structures that were added over the years: a kitchen wing and a large space where the women slept around the perimeter, while leaving an open area in the center. The complex of rooms smelled heavily of burnt buffalo dung, which the women scoured from the plains in summer and stockpiled in winter. Mr. Henry’s two windows were covered with an oiled paper that contributed to the smoky air of mystery within his private space.
He was dead, all right. Shot neat and clean through the chest. Right beside him lay Esau Bandler, who had turned the gun on himself after firing it into the heart of Mr. Henry. There wasn’t much for me to do, nor for Arlen either. Mr. Henry’s women all told the same story and they had already bathed and dressed both bodies in what looked to be matching black suits. Only thing left was to bury the pair.
I helped Arlen load the two of them into his burial wagon, and since the women had already said whatever words they’d wanted over Mr. Henry, I rode alongside them to the cemetery and then returned to see if the longhorns had left the town in a standing condition.
Fortunately it worked out to be a quiet afternoon. I sat by the window in my office and meditated on how little I actually knew about Mr. Henry. Stratford had grown dramatically in the past two years, but looking out on the facades along Main Street, I saw that the real nature of the buildings behind them was barely disguised by the gaudy signs designed to draw in the miscellany who passed our way. If even the buildings had something to hide, then why not Mr. Henry? At first it occurred to me that Esau Bandler might have proposed something unacceptable to one of the women. Maybe he enjoyed inflicting pain. He didn’t look like a man who readily accepted no for an answer. But to kill for a yes? That didn’t explain why he shot Mr. Henry.
Maybe those two had some unfinished business left over from the battlefield. God knows I had experienced a few tense moments myself, in the fear that some newcomer to town might remember seeing me at the shooting end of a Confederate rifle. I tossed this off as unlikely; neither of them talked enough to confirm any suspicions on that score.
A religious problem? Perhaps Mr. Henry belonged to that religious sect that felt themselves entitled to marry all those women at his ranch. It wouldn’t be the first time some counterbelieving zealot like Esau Bandler decided to save womankind from a life of multiple wifehood.
Where in hell was Arlen? I sank back in my chair and nodded to the passing gamblers, with their finely groomed handlebar mustaches, cultivated to camouflage lips that might quiver while bluffing at the table. A pair of prospectors passed, wearing full beards: those two should be so lucky as to have something to hide.
By the time Arlen had finished the undertaking half of his job and come back to the deputy half, I’d run through a half-dozen other whys and wherefores on Esau Bandler that I wanted to try on him.
But all Arlen wanted was a drink.
He came through the door with a bundle under his arm, threw it onto the chair by the window, and waited while I unlocked my drawer and poured him a whiskey. Alcohol does funny things to a man who’s been an abuser but hasn’t tasted it for years. Arlen sank like a two-day drunk.
“I probably never told you this before,” he said, “but I had a wife once. She was a good woman, strong and fine and courageous. She made a better man than I did, and one day after I’d drunk half a gallon of cheap sugar rye, I got on a horse and rode until I hit the Kansas border. I hardly ever think of her anymore.”
“Doesn’t surprise me, Arlen,” I said. “I’m sure there are lots of men out there who have left a woman behind. Most of them manage to find someone else.” I wanted Arlen to feel good enough to talk but not so good that he couldn’t. I poured him a second glass of whiskey and capped the bottle. “What about Mr. Henry, Arlen?”
Arlen tossed down his second helping and pushed the empty back to my side of the table. “Something else I probably never told you is that I rustle the clothes off dead bodies.”
I knew about that, of course, but at the time it seemed to be one of his lesser sins. It certainly wasn’t a topic I wanted him to elaborate on at that moment. “Arlen, what about Mr. Henry?”
Arlen indicated his empty glass and waited until I poured him another. I held on to the glass until he shrugged and picked up his bundle. Finishing off this third drink, Arlen opened the bundle and laid four pieces of fabric out neatly across the floor. “Maybe you didn’t have time to notice the fine jacket and the fine pair of trousers Mr. Henry was laid out in. And this other set here, equally fine, came from the corpse of Mr. Esau Bandler. I mean, what undertaker in his right mind could cover clothes as fine as these with ashes and dust and corn-poor Kansas sod?”
“I guess not you, Arlen.”
“I guess not me, but I certainly will next time.” Arlen indicated his glass again.
After no more than a second’s thought, I set a container for myself next to his. “I’m losing patience, Arlen. Pretty soon you’re going to kill another half-gallon of whiskey. Tell me what you know about Mr. Henry and Esau Bandler.”
“I know I should have planted those two, side by side and fully dressed, just the way Mr. Henry’s women and the good Lord intended it.”
“Why, Arlen?” At the sight of Arlen’s puckered face, I poured myself another round.
“Because then tonight I wouldn’t have to go to sleep knowing that Mr. Henry, without his clothes on, was Esau Bandler’s wife.”
I just sat there as Arlen picked up my
bottle and put it under his left arm. “You mean . . .”
“I mean that when Mr. Bandler’s children died, Mr. Bandler’s wife decided that she had had enough of what mankind and nature had thrown her way, and she set out to become someone else.”
I had nothing to say.
“You know what I’ve learned from this?” Arlen reached across his chest and unhooked that deputy-marshal star from the side of his vest. “I’ve learned that a person’s secrets — a person’s past — ought to be respected whether living or dead.”
I remember feeling the effects of the liquor — similar to those I’d known when tapering off from the laudanum. I don’t know if I told him I agreed. I don’t even know if it took me a few moments to realize my agreement. The next thing I became aware of was watching Arlen Dexter walk out the door, across the boardwalk, and out into the street, where he unhitched the horse from his burying wagon, cinched up a saddle, and then rode slowly out into the world to become somebody else.
I don’t know why Arlen and I were shocked. It was no secret that a man could ride throughout the open plains and become anything he had the mind and the courage to be. Many of us had passed out of the nightmare of the War Between the States covering our wounds in whatever fashion might ensure survival. Who was I to cast that first stone? After all, would those kindly soldiers dressed in abolitionist blue have dropped me off behind Union lines if I’d been dressed in the Confederate brown of my own affiliation?
I don’t know how long it took me. Days, maybe. No more than a week or two. But I was always thinking. Finally, after I considered all the possibilities, it seemed to me that if the men could do it, why not the women? I do know that I got up one morning shortly thereafter, saddled up my own horse, and rode out to Mr. Henry’s place to see how I might help them begin anew. It turned out to be a good decision for me.
Oaths, Ohana, and Everything
By Diana Hansen-Young
James Lopaka let out his belt two notches. Discreetly. Quietly. But nothing slipped past Auntie’s eye.
She rose to her feet, whisked away his empty calabash, and replaced it with another helping of poi. “You too thin, James,” she said, adding more laulaus, ripe mangoes, and a square of coconut pudding. “You cannot do a good job when you so thin.” Her muumuu blossomed around her ample figure as she lowered herself gracefully onto the woven mat. She waggled a finger. “No one respect a skinny hapa police officer.”
James dipped two fingers into the poi. That was the last notch on his belt. If he kept eating, he would have to remove it altogether. How would it look to have slipping-down pants? Never mind that his belt held his holster, which held his gun, and what was a police officer of the Republic of Hawaii to do without a gun? He sighed and reached for the pudding. Maybe by tomorrow night, after the seven-mile ride back to Honolulu, he would be able to fit his belt. Meanwhile, he was home, and although the occasion was sad and did not call for a celebration, he was going to enjoy Auntie’s food.
James was slicing his third mango when the dogs set to barking in the yard. Chickens squawked. James set down the mango knife, unfolded his 241-pound body, and walked to the door of Auntie’s pili-grass shack. His little brother, Richard, slid off his lathered roan and staggered toward the house, kicking his way through panicked fowl.
Richard’s voice was slurred and angry. The smell of liquor rolled off him. “Mary’s at Bolo’s. Again, godfunnit.” He pushed past James.
“Watch your mouth.” Auntie’s face was grim.
“I kill him already,” Richard said.
“No pidgin English in this house.”
Richard kicked at the stack of empty calabashes waiting to be washed. Koa bowls rolled across the hard-packed red-dirt floor. “You hear me, Auntie? Bolo’s.”
“Take off your boots,” Auntie said, and started to cry.
“I kill him. Dead.” Richard grabbed the mango knife from the mat. “I swear.”
James grabbed Richard’s wrist and twisted, and his little brother dropped the knife onto the swept dirt floor. James planted his bare foot over the handle. “Who told you?”
“Silva got a phone call.” Silva was the Portuguese owner of the Homestead Store down the road, next to the Ewa stop on the Oahu Railway. Last year, when the train company ran the phone wire from Honolulu, Silva took the opportunity to hook up a line to his store. No one in Ewa said anything to the company about Silva’s free line. Everyone shared the phone. “I stopped for a drink. Silva told me.”
“Who was it from?”
“A woman,” he said. “A lady.”
Auntie rose from her cross-legged position. “One more time, James. Go and get her one more time. Please.”
“How many times is ‘one more time’?” James had retrieved Mary many times from Bolo’s. She promised to stay. They took turns sitting through her shaking and moaning, and when her head came clear, it would happen again. And again. James felt the familiar anger in his shoulders. “How many times is ‘one . . . more . . . time’?”
“No more ‘one more time.’” Richard scooped up the mango knife. “Pau already.”
“Give me the knife.”
“You gonna arrest me?”
“I made an oath.”
Richard kicked James in the shin and punched him in his stomach, one-two, right into the tight belt. James doubled over, and Richard lurched out the door.
“Boys, for the love of God, we’re ohana,” Auntie said, running after Richard, who was looking for his roan. He found the horse ripping into the grass by the outhouse. He was in the saddle when Auntie reached for the reins.
“Pray instead, Auntie,” he said. He kicked, and the startled roan skittered through the poultry.
James’s stomach hurt like hell. He sat on the bench by the door and picked up his boots from the neat row of slippers. He tried to pull them on quickly, but his belly was in the way. He stomped his feet into the boots. They stuck. He hobbled to the horse pen. Popolo was feasting on elephant grass. She would not take the bit. Richard put two fingers into the side of her mouth and rubbed her gums. She flattened her ears and opened her teeth. A gob of green slobber rolled out and onto James’s shirt and badge.
In the distance, James could see Richard on his roan, riding away faster than James could get Popolo saddled. Auntie brought out an armful of banana leaf–wrapped packets of food. “I’m sorry you have to go so soon.”
“I’m sorry too,” James said, unpinning his slobber-covered badge. He stuffed it in his pants pocket while Auntie stuffed food into his saddlebag.
“I thought you would be here two days.”
“I thought so too.” James had told his supervisor, Wong, that his mother was sick, and thus he must go to the country for two days. Wong knew the truth, of course, and so did his Chinese partner, Kam, and the Filipinos and Japanese: no officer with Hawaiian blood would report to work on August 14, 1898.
How could he get up in the saddle with his belt so tight? Enough already. He unbuckled his belt, wrapped it around his holster and gun, and tucked them next to Auntie’s packets. Auntie promptly put in three ripe mangoes and closed the latch.
“I’ll cook more food when you bring Mary home.”
James stroked her waist-length gray hair. “I have to hurry now to catch that brother of mine.”
“A hui hou,” she said. Until we meet again.
Popolo trotted sullenly down the road. The sun was low over the Waianae Mountains. Shadows of pandani and palm trees fractured the blinding light that covered the Ewa Plain. Richard had a head start. But Richard was drunk, and his roan was tired. With any luck, James would find his brother sleeping beside the road.
He turned in the saddle. Auntie stood in front of her pili-grass house and waved. James lifted his hand in response. He reined left, riding toward Honolulu, the setting sun at his back.
A FULL MOON was high over Diamond Head by the time James pushed his exhausted pony through Iwilei, where some of the rickety plantation houses had red lante
rns on the porch. He scanned the roads for any sign of Richard. Nothing.
Worried, he urged Popolo into the familiar Hotel Street district. Three years ago, James and his partner, a short, chubby Chinese man named Bo Sau Kam, had been accepted into a police force that was rapidly expanding under the marshal’s office. Both twenty-three, both rookies, they were assigned to Hotel Street and south Chinatown, and had been there ever since.
They knew every business, bar, and back room. They were on a first-name basis with merchants and ladies of the night. They moved the troublemakers along rather than arresting them. Sometimes they sent for a relative to fetch their drunken kin. Young men who dabbled in petty theft were returned to the harsh justice of their parents. They sent sailors back to ships and men to their wives and tourists to their hotels. Rarely did they bring anyone into the station house on Bethel Street. They had established an easy balance of commerce and peace, and in return, every meal was free, and new clothes stayed on uncollected tabs.
James looked in the alley behind Tongg Dry Goods. No Richard. Maybe it is time for a new belt with more holes, he thought. Popolo stumbled. James dismounted and led her down Hotel Street, lit, as usual, with torches and gas and an occasional electric bulb. James thought it had a merry look, like Christmas scenes in books. He realized that the street was nearly empty. Here and there, a few sailors wandered in and out of seedy bars: the Shanghai, Black Pearl, Paradise. What was going on?
He stopped in front of the Hawaii Bank, where he had borrowed money to buy his one-room bungalow in Papako¯lea, the Hawaiian community on the slope of Punchbowl Crater. As a police officer, he had a salary, and with credit, he could make the monthly payments. Nonlandowners could not vote, which meant most Hawaiians. To buy the house, he had to use his whole name — James Huntington Lopaka. The bank manager wrote “white” for race and left off his last name. As James Huntington, his mortgage would not be a problem. The manager smiled, and James left, his cheeks red with shame that he had had to disavow his Hawaiian part. But the pride in owning land outweighed the shame. Give to get, he thought. How could a Hawaiian get ahead if he did not own a piece of his own land?