Palisades Park

by Alan Brennert

  “Like I said—action,” Sal said.

  “What, like gambling?”

  “Hell no! Girls.”

  Oh shit, thought Eddie.

  “They got some great gals here,” Ernie went on. “Mine’s named Lucy. Cutest little blonde you ever saw.”

  “Jenny’s my girl,” Sal said. “Brunette. Sweet. But a real ball of fire.”

  “You two sound almost like you’re married to these gals.”

  “Yeah—married for three minutes, twice a week. You can’t beat that!”

  Eddie’s eyes widened. “You only get three minutes with them?”

  “Hey, it’s long enough to get your business taken care of,” Ernie said.

  Eddie stepped out of the slowly moving line.

  “Well,” he said, “last time I looked, I’m married twenty-four hours a day, seven days a week, so I’ll give it a pass.”

  “So friggin’ what?” Sal said. “Your wife’s never gonna know.”

  “No, but I will.”

  “Don’t be a pussy, Stopka, everybody here does it. For every woman on this goddamn rock there’s at least five hundred horny, homesick men. The only way to get laid in this town is to pay for it.”

  “I’m married,” Eddie repeated. “That means something to me, okay?”

  “It just means you’re a goddamn pussy,” Sal shot back.

  Eddie’s temper finally flared.

  “Fuck you,” he snapped at them. “Go fuck your three-minute whores. Don’t blink, you might miss it.”

  Eddie stalked off, rejoining the crowds thronging Hotel Street. It had been a long while since his last night with Adele, and he was as frustrated as any man in this war. But what else could he do? He loved her, he didn’t want to go back home and have to live with a guilty secret forever separating them. He wasn’t going to be like his mother, who took up with another man so soon after Pop’s death—he was going to stay faithful to his wife, damn it.

  He passed a pinball arcade and the dinging of its bells suddenly brought a smile to his face, bringing him back again to Palisades, Adele, and the kids, reminding him of what he had and what he didn’t want to lose. And then, unexpectedly, he was brought up short by a sight quite unlike anything he had ever seen in a carnival showcase.

  In front of a curio shop on the corner of Hotel and Maunakea Streets a huge wooden idol glowered down at him: a genuinely fearsome-looking face with big glaring eyes, a splayed nose, and an open, scowling mouth crowded with sharp teeth. Eddie stopped, fascinated by it—it was made of some dark wood, not mahogany but with a hint of red in it, and was polished to a fine gloss. The woodworking was impressive. It looked foreign, exotic, and despite its fierce ugliness, somehow alluring.

  “You like buy?”

  He turned to see a heavyset woman, dark-skinned, wearing one of those long, flowing Mother Hubbards so many women here seemed to wear. “What is it?” he asked.

  “A ki‘i,” she said. “Sacred carving.”

  “Like from a church?”

  “Heiau,” she corrected him. “Temple. In old days, kahunas made ’em out of special trees—asked for a god’s blessing, carved his face and prayed his mana, his power, would fill it. This one’s Kū, god of war.”

  Eddie smiled and said, “If this is a good likeness, I wouldn’t want to screw with this guy.”

  She laughed. “No screw with Kū. Good advice.”

  “What kind of wood is this?”

  “Ah, that’s koa. Very expensive. This one not for sale, but I have others. Ovah heah.” She showed him a gallery of similar carvings hanging on a wall. Some were no more than faces stacked atop a kind of totem pole; others had squat bodies and troll-like legs. Their wooden visages displayed a range of features, from long noses and big oval eyes to headdresses of elaborately carved ridges cascading down their backs. Unlike the idol outside the shop, these looked to have been carved out of palm trunks and stained a dark brown. “This one,” the woman said, pointing to one with owlish eyes, grimacing mouth, and protruding tongue, “only five dollar.”

  “This may be a little big to take on my ship,” he told her. “You got anything smaller?”

  “Sure.” She showed him to a table full of coral necklaces, shell bracelets, and small charms similar to the large ki‘i. “You got wife? She might like, ’ey?”

  Eddie took one of the necklaces in his hand. “Is this also Kū?”

  “No, that one Lono. All different. These a buck and a half each,” she said. “You buy t’ree, I t’row in fourth for fifty cent.”

  “It’s a deal,” Eddie said, and handed her a five-dollar bill.

  Eddie left the shop with his souvenirs, telling himself that Adele and the kids might like them, but if not, the ugly little gremlins would look good above the French fry counter. He stood on the corner, wondering what else Honolulu had to offer other than trinkets and whorehouses. He still had at least five hours of daylight before curfew—where to go?

  The answer came in a cloud of exhaust fumes, as a Honolulu Transit bus rolled to a stop a few yards away, a single word emblazoned on its metal brow—exotic yet familiar—entrancing him like some occult sigil of Kū’s:

  WAIKIKI.

  * * *

  Waikīkī Beach in 1943 was an uneasy alloy of prewar leisure and post–Pearl Harbor defenses: soldiers and sailors sunned themselves in lounge chairs or swam in the surf, as tourists did before the war, but now a tall fence of barbed concertina wire bisected the beach, separating loungers from swimmers, running from one end of the sandy scythe to the other. Eddie bought a cheap pair of bathing trunks from a shop on Kalākaua Avenue, changed in one of the servicemen’s dressing rooms on the beach, then headed for the water. One of the armed sentries standing guard checked Eddie’s ID, then opened a gate in the barbed-wire fence so he could pass through. Eddie’s feet were soon burning from the hot reflection of the tropical sun on the sand, and he quickly dove into the surf. It was warm as bathwater and as salty as the Palisades pool. But the waves here were real, though gentled enough by the encircling coral reefs that their lapping touch felt merely playful. Toni would have loved this. Eddie swam out near the first wave break and floated there a moment, looking back to shore at the hotels—the Royal Hawaiian, he’d heard, had been taken over by the military as an R&R center for returning troops, especially submariners—and, beyond them, the lush green mountains and valleys behind Honolulu and, farther down the coastline, the brown slopes of Diamond Head. The trade winds shuffled the waters like a deck of cards, carrying the scent of plumeria, jasmine, and coconut oil (wafted upwind from the sunbathers).

  Eddie had not seen any place as beautiful, as soothing to his soul, since his first visit to Palisades Park. Hawai‘i was beautiful in a wholly different way—a tranquil, natural beauty, though not without its carny charms—but the drone of patrol planes overhead and the presence of sentries with rifles provided an undercurrent of tension and urgency, like a somber sustained chord in an otherwise sunny song.

  The only other thing that bothered Eddie was the surprising, and distressing, number of Japanese faces he saw around him, even more evident in Waikīkī than it had been on Hotel Street—not just vendors but pedestrians, hotel doormen, even policemen. He found himself recoiling a bit, each face reminding him of that grim day in December and of the Japanese atrocities he’d read about in the news. While waiting for the bus with another Navy man, Eddie noted quietly, “Lotta Japs here, aren’t there?”

  “Yeah,” the sailor agreed, “too many for my lights. Hell, I’m sure some of ’em are loyal Americans, but—still gives me the willies, you know?”

  The only Japanese person Eddie knew was Koma Komatsu, who operated the string game at Palisades, and Eddie had to remind himself that not every Japanese was the enemy. But he still couldn’t help looking with a certain suspicion at the somehow sinister-looking faces around him.

  Back at the base, Sal and Ernie staggered in shortly after Eddie. Sloppy with drunken camaraderie, Sal apologized for
his “ribbing” of Eddie: “S’help me God, buddy, I wuz only kidding. Whatever you wanna do is okay by me. Uz swabbies gotta stick together, don’t we? Huh?”

  “He’s juz sick about this,” Ernie added helpfully, “honest t’God.”

  They were both so besottedly sentimental that Eddie couldn’t hold a grudge and herded them over to the prophylaxis station—the “Clap Shack”—where he handed them a couple of Sanitubes and told them to apply liberally before their peckers fell off.

  His next day off Eddie took alone, signing up—for two and a half bucks—with the Navy’s Recreation office for one of their bus tours of the island, one of the many “wholesome activities” cooked up by the Navy to alleviate servicemen’s “island fever.” It carried Eddie and a couple dozen other sailors from Honolulu up the windward coast of O‘ahu. Their tour guide was a big, affable Native Hawaiian named Oscar, who recounted the epic battle won by King Kamehameha’s army at the Nu‘uanu Pali, showed them the majestic fury of the waterspout known as the Hālona Blowhole, and related the history of the sugar plantation at Waimānalo.

  Eddie thought it the most spectacular scenery he had ever seen, but the majority of men on the bus did not seem impressed—or wouldn’t admit it if they were, since the received wisdom among soldiers and sailors alike was that Hawai‘i, far from being Paradise, was a dull, hot, overcrowded Purgatory.

  “Sure, it’s all very pretty,” one sullen GI said, “but what the hell do you people do on this rock?”

  “We live,” Oscar replied simply. “This is our home.”

  “And where,” asked a sailor with a thick Bronx accent, “are all those little grass shacks and sexy hula dancers we see in the movies?”

  “I dunno,” Oscar said with a twinkle in his eye. “Same place all those Indians in New York wen go, maybe?”

  Eddie was one of the few passengers who laughed at that, which earned him a smile from Oscar.

  The price of the tour included a picnic lunch of sandwiches, Coca-Colas, and the local home-brewed beer, which, while not quite as bad as the gin and rum, still fell far short of Bunty’s beloved Ballantine Ale. It was after seeing Eddie blanch after a few sips of beer that Oscar leaned in and advised him, “Listen, brah, you want real booze, forget Hotel Street—try go Trader Vic’s ovah on Ward Avenue, I hear dey just get shipment of real Bacardi Rum from mainland.”

  “Thanks,” Eddie said, surprised. “I will.” Lowering his voice, he added, “Don’t mind these jokers, this is a beautiful place. You’re lucky to live here.”

  “T’anks. I grow up Maui, too bad you GIs can’t go neighbor isles.”

  “Maybe I’ll come back someday after the war,” Eddie said hopefully.

  But the pleasant day ended on a jarring note when, back at Pearl Harbor, a troop ship just returned from fighting in the Solomon Islands sent its passengers ashore in launches—and one of the soldiers, a haggard-looking GI, became suddenly unhinged at the sight of a Japanese-American MP standing guard at the dock. In an almost rabid rage he tore into the MP, screaming, “Goddamn fucking Nip! Fucking Jap bastard!” as he pummeled the man’s face, splitting open his lip in a gusher of blood. The dazed MP finally slammed back with the butt of his rifle, but he looked pained to do it. Other MPs came running and pulled the GI away, still shrieking epithets.

  Eddie must have looked stunned, as another onlooking sailor explained, “Some of these guys have come from places like Tarawa where they’ve seen the most brutal shit imaginable. Assigning that poor bastard to the guard post today was a major snafu on somebody’s part—most of the time the Navy tries to keep these guys as far from the local nisei as possible.”

  The sight of an American serviceman, even one with Japanese features, being beaten and bloodied by another soldier, sobered Eddie, reminding him of the young colored man he had watched being beaten in the South for simply walking on the wrong side of the street. After this incident, Eddie found that the presence of so many Japanese-Americans on the streets of Honolulu was no longer quite so distressing to him.

  * * *

  Hunkered on the corner of King Street and Ward Avenue, Trader Vic’s looked like something out of a Hollywood movie about Hawai‘i: a low wooden structure with a grass-thatched roof spilling over the sides like a bad haircut, surrounded by tall palm trees and lush tropical foliage. Curiously, at least three of the thirty-foot Royal palms actually appeared to be poking through the roof of the building itself. A glowering ki‘i idol greeted Eddie, Sal, and Ernie at the entrance. “That’s Kū,” Eddie said off handedly. “Kū who?” Sal asked. “Kū’s on first,” Ernie joked. “He’s a god,” Eddie chided, opening the heavy wooden door. “Show some damn respect.”

  Stepping inside Trader Vic’s was like crossing the Equator: the restaurant might well have been a South Seas trader’s hut, decorated as it was with rattan chairs, bamboo dining tables, walls covered in tapa cloth, and net-covered lamps hanging from the ceiling like fishing floats. Most remarkable of all were the ringed trunks of palm trees that were, in fact, growing out of the floor and straight up through openings in the thatched roof, the building having apparently been constructed around them. Whoever built this place, Eddie decided, was a real showman.

  At the door an affable host asked, “Aloha, gents, table for lunch?”

  “Yeah, the liquid variety,” Ernie told him.

  He laughed. “I think that can be arranged. Heave to and follow me.”

  “Are you Trader Vic?” Eddie asked.

  “No, I’m the manager, Waltah Clarke.” He led them through the dining room, where pork chow mein and almond duck were being consumed by both civilian and military clientele—local residents and mainland war workers, NCOs and enlisted men, Army and Navy. Waitresses clad in the sort of colorful sarong that Dorothy Lamour wore in the movies weaved gracefully among tables, carrying an exotic array of drinks in fancy glasses.

  Waltah showed them to an outdoor patio, or lānai, a tropical garden of hibiscus, orchids, plumeria, and other fragrant blooms. Eddie and his friends walked past the cozy tables shaded by palm-like umbrellas and eased up to the bar. “Are you Trader Vic?” Ernie asked the man behind the bar.

  “Nope, I’m just the bartender. What’s your pleasure, sailors?”

  “We, uh, understand you just got in a shipment of Bacardi rum from the mainland,” Eddie said, sotto voce.

  “Yeah, and it’s going fast too. Here, take a look at this and choose your poison.” He handed them a drink menu listing “grog” with names like Skull and Bones, Kona Swizzle, Dr. Funk, Fog Cutter, and Singapore Sling. Eddie liked the sound of that last one, exotic and dangerous.

  “What the hell are they drinking?” Ernie asked, nodding toward a table of non-coms sipping, through long straws, from a huge ceramic bowl decorated with images of palm trees and hula girls.

  “Ah, that’s a Scorpion. Got a nice little wallop. Serves four.”

  “Three enlisted men are the equal of four NCOs any day,” Sal said. “We’ll take one of those.”

  They watched as the bartender mixed together brandy, some kind of French liqueur, orange and lemon juices, mint, and, most important, a very liberal helping of Bacardi Superior White Rum. He blended it, poured it into one of the gigantic ceramic bowls, garnished it with a slice of orange, stuck three straws into it, and slid it over to the men.

  “There you go, gents.”

  They each took custody of a straw and began sipping, as if they were sharing a milkshake. The Scorpion was delicious as well as potent—there was no mistaking the taste of real, honest-to-God rum. Within minutes the three had drained the bowl, which earned an admiring nod from the barkeep: “Well, you made short work of that.”

  “Man, oh, man,” Sal said, “I can’t remember the last time I had real booze. Set us up with another one.”

  Eddie, nicely buzzed, said, “I’ll try one of these Singapore Slings.”

  “Those are usually made with gin,” the bartender said. “I can substitute rum if you want, but I can’t
guarantee it’ll taste the same.”

  “I’ll take that risk,” Eddie said.

  “We are men of the United States Navy,” Sal added. “We fear nothing.”

  The bartender obliged, mixing an ounce of rum and a shot of grenadine in a cocktail shaker, shaking well, then straining the contents into a tall glass with a bas-relief of a hula girl on it. He filled it with club soda, then floated a dash of cherry brandy on top and handed it to Eddie.

  It was smooth and sweet—almost like lemonade, or fruit punch. Didn’t seem that potent, but it was damned tasty and went down real easy. Eddie ordered another, even as Sal and Ernie ordered a Zombie and something called a Pondo Snifter, allegedly from the North Coast of Borneo.

  By the time Eddie had finished his third Singapore Sling it began to occur to him that either the earth had begun rotating differently or he was very, very drunk. Apparently Sal and Ernie’s drinks were no less potent, because the two of them were as potted as the plants around them. When they tried to order a fifth round, however, the barkeep reminded them that all bars in Honolulu had a four-drink limit and they had reached it: “Sorry.”

  With a chorus of cheers for Trader Vic—whoever the hell he was—they lurched outside and onto a crowded city bus bound for Hotel Street. As they approached their destination, Ernie announced: “I wanna get laid!”

  “Grade idea!” Sal said with enthusiasm. “Lez go!”

  Eddie swore. “Jeez-us! Not this again!”

  “Aw, stop bein’ a pussy,” Sal said.

  “Stop callin’ me a pussy,” Eddie snapped.

  “Chrissake, Eddie, thiz war might last years!” Ernie said. “What’re you gonna do, be a friggin’ monk for two, three, four friggin’ years?”

  “Stopka, I take it back. You ain’t a pussy.” Sal grinned. “You’re pussy-whipped—scared of your wife!”

  Despite feeling as if he’d been run over by a Mack truck, Eddie jumped to his feet, grabbed Sal by the collar of his shirt, and jerked him up off his seat.