The bank had a new poster in the window. A Negro woman in a hula skirt (although James wasn’t sure of that, as he’d never met a real Negro woman) was in the arms of a white man in a business suit. The red, white, and blue caption read married at last!
Was that the haole view of the annexation of Hawaii? James wanted to drive his hand through the window, rip out the poster, and throw it into the dirt. Move along, James. You have bigger fish to fry. Besides, you made an oath when you got your badge.
Fifty feet away, two groups of sailors squared off. On one side, a half-dozen haole boys with sandy hair; on the other, two Filipinos, recruits from the Spanish-American War. They all wore the caps of the USS Philadelphia, anchored in the harbor. They were all drunk.
James sighed. He reached for his holster and then remembered it was on his belt, in the saddlebag. Where was his badge? Pocket, he thought, fumbling for the tin octagon embossed with the coat of arms of the Republic.
“Hey, Flips.” The haole boys had mainland accents.
The Filipinos stepped forward. “Who you calling Flips?”
The groups joined in combat. “Let’s move them along, Popolo,” James said. He pulled his pony directly into the melee. She doled out a few kicks, and the sailors fell back, swearing and cursing.
The two Filipinos had taken the worst pounding. Blood streamed from broken noses. The Filipinos picked up their hats and limped down the street, but the white boys weren’t through.
“You Hawaiians like Flips better than haoles. Is that right, kanaka?”
James held up his badge. The drum beat in his head, but his voice was soft. “Honolulu police, boys. Move along.”
“Honolulu police tonight, but tomorrow, you kanakas are gonna be American.” A freckle-faced sailor tossed a red, white, and blue carnation lei at James. It fell in front of Popolo. She put her head down and ate it. The sailors saw the look in James’s eye and moved down the street.
James pinned his badge back on his green-stained shirt. He wanted to kick the sailors as they walked away. Oath, James thought. When his anger boiled up, he reminded himself that he had made an oath on a Bible when he got his badge: Ua mau ke ea o ka ‘aina I ka pono. The life of the land is perpetuated in righteousness.
James imagined all the things he would have done to the sailors had he not made the oath. Deep in thought, he nearly missed the ramshackle bar at the end of the street: the Western. The roof sagged from termites. Timbers propped up the second-story porch. The building was rotten, like its owner.
He heard voices and glass-clinking. He looped Popolo’s reins around a timber and walked in. The glass-clinking stopped. “Where’s Bolo?”
“Not here, bruddah.” Kimo, the bartender, was Hawaiian. Kimo’s wife was sick, and Bolo paid well, but Kimo was ohana. He raised his eyes toward the second floor.
The yard behind the building was bright with moonlight. Popolo’s ears went forward. Richard had tied his roan under the banyan tree. James tied Popolo’s reins to the saddle and let her go. She trotted to the roan.
A wooden staircase led up to the back porch. The risers and railings were all hammajang, sticking out this way and that. James started up the stairway. He put his hand on his gun , but there was no gun—it was still in the saddlebag, holster and belt. Never mind the gun; he had to find Richard.
A broken spindle snagged his pants. Without his belt, his pants started to slip down over his okole. He yanked at them. He heard them rip. Cursing quietly, he walked up the last four steps and turned the corner, and there was Richard, sprawled on the landing.
James forgot about the pants rip. He knelt and heard ragged breathing. Passed out, not dead. James left him and walked toward the closed door. Was Mary inside? If so, how would he get both of them home?
James turned the knob, pushed the door open, and stepped into a cloud of smoke. Coals glowed at the end of the hookahs. He smelled unwashed bodies, sex, and urine under the opium and hashish. Patrons smoked or lay in berths that lined the walls. A woman raised her head and offered him her pipe. “You don’t have to pay me.” She giggled. “Paradise is free.”
He pawed through tangled clothing until he recognized long black hair fanning out on stained sheets. Mary? He rolled her over. His little sister’s head lolled to one side. Her ribs protruded below slack breasts. Her breath was foul, her lips caked with dry spittle, but she was alive. James pulled her away from her male companion, who flailed his arms at James. James put a boot to the man’s face. Something cracked.
He hoisted Mary over his shoulder and headed for the door. Where had she been? How long had she been back in Honolulu, in this opium parlor, on his beat, under his nose?
Bolo, in cowboy hat and boots, blocked the doorway. His deformed left hand was tucked into a pocket. “Put her down, Lopaka,” he said, his voice thick with phlegm.
“Move along, Bolo.”
“I pay you plenty.”
“You pay me nothing.”
Bolo spat mucus. “I pay your boss at Bethel Street to leave me alone.”
James was ashamed that Wong had taken money. “I owe you nothing.”
“Put her back. She’s working off a tab.”
James tightened his grip on Mary and prepared to hit Bolo, but as he stepped forward, Bolo sagged against the doorframe and slid to the ground. Behind him, James saw his little brother, Richard, pull the mango knife out of Bolo’s back, roll him over, and slit his throat. Blood sprayed everywhere.
Richard looked at James. “You found Mary? Good. I found Bolo.”
He ran. Carrying Mary, James stepped over Bolo’s body, unable to avoid the bloody spray. He followed Richard, who was oh, so light on his feet, the feet that were leaving prints in blood on each step. James looked down. Bolo’s blood covered his pants and boots, and his footprints covered Richard’s.
James ran after Richard. “You killed him.”
Richard reached the roan. “You gonna arrest me?”
“I made an oath.”
“He deserved to die.”
Richard lifted Mary from James’s shoulder. Together, they placed her facedown over Popolo’s saddle. James unpinned his badge again, put it in his pants pocket, took off his green-stained shirt and arranged it over Mary’s naked back and buttocks.
“Got a tie-down?” Richard said.
James opened the saddlebag and reached in for his belt, holster, and gun, now covered with mashed mango. He stuck the gun and holster in his waistband and wiped off the belt. Together they passed it around Mary’s waist and buckled her to the saddle horn.
When they were through, James took out his gun and pointed it at Richard. “I have to arrest you.”
“You’re not gonna shoot me.” Richard seemed amused.
James considered. Even if he could get Richard to take the gun seriously, there was the practical problem of taking Mary home and Richard to the station. Besides, he couldn’t get up in the saddle without help, with Mary lying there, while holding the gun and reins. On the other hand, his brother killed a white man, and James was involved. Ohana? Oath? Could he sort it out later? “Hold this, and help me up,” he said. He handed the gun to Richard, who pointed it at James.
“You won’t shoot me,” James said.
“We’re going different directions, big brother.”
On the porch, a woman screamed. Shouts came from the bar. Men ran up the stairs. James hauled himself up on the back of the saddle. Mary was wedged in under his ample belly. Popolo groaned.
James held out his hand to Richard. “Move along if you want, but give me the gun.”
Richard handed the gun to James, who jammed it into his waistband and kicked Popolo into a sullen canter across the yard. Hotel Street was empty except for the two Filipino soldiers sitting on a hitching rail. They stared at James as he rode past. What was the Hawaiian officer doing with a half-naked woman on his saddle, long black hair fanning over bloody boots?
Behind him, he heard shouting. Were the men from the bar following? Ju
st then, he saw the mango knife in his mind’s eye, lying next to Bolo. For the love of God, no one had picked it up.
He heard more shouting and looked back. It was his little brother, Richard, on the roan.
THEY LED THE horses for the last little way before James’s bungalow. Here, houses were set far back from the road, partially hidden by banana patches and papaya trees. A dog barked. Here and there, a curtain opened and closed.
“They see us,” Richard said.
And no one would say anything about the Lopaka brothers bringing Mary home.
They carried her into the tiny room and laid her on the bed. James covered her with the breadfruit-pattern quilt that hung over the koa rocking chair. Emma, his natural mother, had made it when she was the housekeeper and common-law wife of his natural father. On James’s fourteenth birthday, his father asked Emma to leave the Waikiki house because his new bride was arriving from San Francisco. Emma took the quilt and her three children and went to stay with her auntie Leimomi. One afternoon, while the children ate laulaus in the pili-grass house, Emma sat under the mango tree, drank kerosene, and died. Auntie was childless, and in the Hawaiian tradition, James, Richard, and Mary became her hanai children.
Richard drew fresh water from the cistern and started a fire in the outdoor pit. They changed, and James carried the bloody clothes and boots out to the shed. He gave the horses timothy grass and water, and then, in the moonlight, rubbed gun oil into the boots and saddles, scrubbing in circles until the blood blended into the leather. Satisfied, he put on his boots and dropped the bloody clothes into the outhouse, using a stick to push them down into the muck.
He was carrying Richard’s boots to the house when he became aware of someone standing in the shadows. He smelled pikake and fresh-washed hair and lilac starch. He stood absolutely still.
She stepped into the moonlight. She had on a dark cloth cloak and a black lace scarf, draped over her head like those of Spanish women he had seen in books. Her voice had a faint pidgin lilt under a cultured British accent.
“James?”
Who was she? What did she want? How could he have been so engrossed that he had missed her arrival? And where was his gun? Inside the house, with his belt and holster. His badge? James groaned. It was inside the pocket of the bloody jeans he had just thrown into the outhouse. For the love of God, he thought, I will have to retrieve my badge.
It was at that moment he recognized her, remembering memories all at once, the four of them running through the parlor, which was against the rules, breaking the blue-and-white Chinese vase and dropping the pieces down the outhouse, where the man who brought the lime discovered them. No swimming or surfing for a week as punishment, but they still sneaked out to play with the peacocks on the lawn of Ainahau, the estate that really belonged to her, Princess Victoria Kaiulani, and not to her father, Archibald Cleghorn, who was James’s neighbor and best friend of his natural father.
She had grown tall and slim. A blue ribbon held her long black hair away from her face. Under her simple blue muumuu, her feet were bare and dusty.
“Vicky?” he said.
“Yes.”
They hugged each other, and twelve years melted away.
VICKY DID NOT flinch or ask questions when she saw Mary on the bed and the gun on the table. James needed to retrieve his badge before things got worse in the outhouse. He left Vicky washing Mary with water that Richard heated.
James stripped to his knickers, smiling. He moved the lime bucket and opened the trapdoor. He used the stick to fish out his pants. He smiled as he wrapped his hand in oilcloth, retrieved his badge, and returned the clothes. He could not remember being so happy as he dropped the badge into a tin pot to boil and washed his hands with Lava soap.
Inside, Mary was scrubbed clean, her hair braided and bound with Vicky’s blue ribbon and her body wrapped in Vicky’s cloak. The quilt was back on the rocking chair. It is like old times, James thought, with the four of them together. After his father sent them away, James kept track of Vicky in the newspapers: her education in England, her visit to the White House to plead against annexation, her unhappy return home. All that was in the past.
Inside, James set out his Hilo Saloon Pilot crackers and made strong Chinese tea. Vicky dipped dainty fingers into Auntie’s poi and ate four of her laulaus and two sweet potatoes. They talked of old times. Remember the day Vicky and Mary took the canoe without permission, and James and Richard had to paddle out past the reef on their longboards to bring them in? Remember riding the trolley to Tongg’s to spend James’s birthday dime on hard candy? Remember the book about Indians and blood oaths? And remember, behind the banyan tree, when they drew blood and pressed fingers together and swore a sacred oath of allegiance?
“One day, you were gone,” Vicky said. James told her about Emma. Vicky cried, and then they could no longer speak of the past.
James went out to get his badge. He dumped it onto the grass. It cooled, and he put it into his pocket. When he walked back into the house, he saw Vicky as if for the first time: her Scottish heritage in her cheekbones and her Hawaiian heritage in her dark eyes. She was an adult woman and a princess with sadness in her eyes. She was the last hope of the monarchy, and in a few hours there would be no Hawaiian throne for her to inherit.
Vicky patted James’s empty chair. James knew he would now hear what she had to say.
“Auntie Liliu asked me to come.”
James was surprised. It may be “Auntie Liliu” to Vicky, but “Auntie Liliu” was Queen Liliuokalani to her subjects. The queen was secluded in Iolani Palace tonight, sitting vigil for the death of her kingdom. How did she even know James existed?
“Are you going to the annexation ceremony?” asked Vicky.
“Of course not.”
Richard slammed the table. “No real Hawaiian would go.”
“Auntie Liliu and I will not attend,” Vicky said. “But she has asked that you be there.”
James did not hesitate. “No,” he said. Say no to the queen? “No.”
Sobering up had not diminished Richard’s anger. “Don’t ask him to go.”
“By our blood oath,” she said, “I’m asking you to go.”
How would it look for James to be the only Hawaiian at the ceremony? Consider the shame of standing at attention while their flag was lowered and presented to the new haole governor. It would hang over his desk, a symbol of subjugation for the world to see.
Auntie Liliu did not want the last flag of Hawaii to become a wall hanging. She wanted an officer of Hawaiian blood to accept the lowered flag and switch it for a new one. The real flag would rest in honor in the secret caves behind the Ewa Plain, next to the bones of Kamehameha the Great, until it could fly again over a free Hawaii. The governor would have the flag-without-a-meaning.
But no Hawaiian officer planned to be present. She sent for the roster of officers’ names, studied them, and asked: Who has knowledge of these men?
“I saw your name,” Vicky said. “I told Auntie that if I found you, you would honor your blood oath to me.”
James’s head was swimming in oaths. Too many oaths, he thought. They were pulling him into pieces.
“I went to the station. Your partner said you went to Ewa to your family, all except Mary, who had disappeared. I used the coconut wireless” — and here she smiled — “and found Mary. I called Silva and left a message. I knew you would return immediately.” She stared steadily at James. “I’m glad you found her.”
She knows about Bolo, he thought, and Bolo is irrelevant. Vicky had given Mary back. Even if there had been no blood oath, he owed Vicky.
“Where’s the new flag?”
“I left it with Kam.” Vicky looked at Mary. “Go ask your father to send Mary to San Francisco, to a clinic. It’s her only chance.”
Richard exploded. “Never. Never.” He punched the wall of James’s bungalow, one-two, until the windows rattled in their frames. “Rather Mary die than ask my father, the bastard, may h
e rot in Hell.”
“The Celtic sails in the morning,” she said. “It’s your father’s ship.” She pointed a slender finger at Richard. “Little brother goes with Mary.” Vicky walked to the window and pulled aside the rice-bag curtain. Outside, there was a small trap with a single horse and driver.
James’s head swam with questions. When had the carriage arrived? How had he not heard it? How had Vicky known to leave the new flag with Kam before she saw him? How had she found Mary so fast? How could he ask his father when he had sworn an oath to himself that he would never speak to him again? What would happen to Mary if she didn’t go to San Francisco? To Richard? And when they found the knife, what would happen to him?
His calves tingled, but it wasn’t out of anger or shame. It was the same feeling he had had once on his longboard, when he had paddled out beyond the reef and the biggest wave he had ever seen rolled toward him, and he had realized there was no way to outrun it. The only way to survive was to catch it and ride it in to shore, before it caught him and smashed him into the rocks.
Mary lay on the bed. Richard sat in the corner, knuckles bloody and raw.
“Don’t ask your father,” Vicky said. “Tell him.”
JAMES ACCEPTED VICKY’S offer of a ride to Bethel Street. Before he could go to his father, he needed to talk to Kam. How could he and Kam make sure James would stand in the honor guard by the flag? What happened with Bolo?
Squeezed into the small carriage beside Vicky, James was acutely aware of her as a woman. He tried to make himself small, but they were touching anyway. Wisps of her hair fluttered across his cheek, sending tingling to lips, and lower.