The newcomer came over and gestured as though to shake hands. Saunders grinned and reached out a large paw to suddenly find it filled with a paper. “My name’s Duncan Halberstram, attorney for the owner of this property. You’ve just been served with a special restraining order. You and your men are to leave the property immediately. The police,” he gestured toward a patrol car which had just pulled up and parked across the street, “have been instructed to enforce the order.”
“What in hell are you talking about? I bought this property from the county at a foreclosure sale.”
“Do you have the tax map key number for it?”
“Sure. Right here, somewhere.” He groped around in his coverall pocket and found the tattered paper he’d had with him on the first day. “See, here it is. 6-17-088-011. I wrote it down myself from the deed.”
The attorney inspected the grimy piece of paper. “I suggest you look at what you wrote a bit more closely. The number is 6-19-088-011. I would guess the lot you bought is about six miles from here as the crow flies, somewhere in the vicinity of Smitty’s Marsh.”
Saunders fished through his pockets, brought out his reading glasses and saw, to his horror, how the scribbled nine looked like a seven, at least without his glasses on. While he was shaking his head over the misread number, Santa Claus and his dog appeared, seemingly from nowhere. The dog growled and his owner said, in a low voice, “Quiet, Rudy, no need to show your temper.”
“Oh, Mr. Nicholas,” the attorney said in greeting. “I think the matter is finally settled. You now have your property with a house on it.”
“Wait just a minute,” Saunders croaked. “I was never notified.”
“But you were. Mr. Nicholas tried to tell you on the very first day you were here. You were served with court papers notifying you specifically. My office sent you three letters, two of them certified. Since we received no response to any of those notices, and you never appeared in court, the judge signed the order. You’re out!”
“But it’s my house.”
“I’m afraid not. What’s on this lot belongs to my client.”
“Just a minute, Duncan,” Mr. Nicholas interrupted. “Perhaps we’re being too harsh. After all, Mr. Saunders did build the house.”
Saunders began to see a glimmer of light ahead. “Right, but I’ll sell it to you. You can have it at cost. Ninety thousand dollars. I was asking ninety-nine. You can see in today’s newspaper. But I’m willing to write off my profit.”
“No. I’m afraid not. That just won’t do. I was in this business for almost forty years and never saw such shoddy construction in all of those years. If anything, it has severely diminished the value of the lot. I won’t have it there under any conditions. Anyhow, since you insist it’s yours, take it away. But it will have to be gone within two weeks. I’m sure Duncan can arrange a temporary suspension of the court order.”
Halberstram nodded in agreement, and added, “Mr. Nicholas contracted a year ago to have his dream house built on this lot. The contractor is scheduled to start on it within two weeks. If there’s any delay, it’s going to cost Mr. Nicholas additional charges. In fact the contractor could simply cancel out completely if he can’t get started by then. Yes—two weeks is the absolute maximum. Everything will have to be gone two weeks from today.”
Nicholas picked up where his attorney left off. “And, of course, you would have to restore the ground to its original condition.” As he spoke, he produced a color photo of the pristine lot with the boulder in the center. He pointed to it and said, “I had this piece of granite brought in special for my courtyard. It will have to be put back in place.”
Despite his panic, Saunders began to make some quick calculations. God knows how much the crazy woman would want for the rock, with it now being all covered with waterfalls and fountains. And tearing the house down would cost like hell. Salvage firms charged plenty these days, and he himself knew how taking buildings apart was a highly technical skill. The only company around with the right kind of equipment and know-how was Morelli Salvage, and the damn dago would charge him an arm and a leg—if he’d do it at all—since Saunders still owed him for trash hauling at an earlier site. Morelli and his crew were nothing but damn mafia!
Saunders knew if he did it himself, there would not only be the problem of getting rid of what would be mostly unsalvageable material, but there would also be the cost of tearing up the footing and concrete floor, and the bulldozer work to restore the lot to it’s original state. A quick mental estimate put the whole job, especially if done in a rush with all the necessary overtime (and counting the price of the damn rock—if he could even buy it back) somewhere in the seventy thousand dollar range. And his calculation was assuming a lot of luck, and only if the county didn’t close him down for working at night!
The alternative was to move the house. No alternative at all! Police escorts, enormous hauling trucks, electric company workers to raise or remove overhead wires. It was out of the question. And the way the house was constructed it would never stand moving to the nearest available lot, which might have to be his own, off at Smitty’s Marsh. Even if it did survive the journey, it would have to have a new foundation, and would bring only a fraction of what it would on this lot. And there was still the problem of the existing foundation to dispose of here, plus paying through the nose for the boulder. No. Moving the house was out!
Then a thought occurred to him. “Why don’t I just buy the property from you. You can sell it to me for what it cost me to build the house. I can produce all the material invoices, the workers’ time sheets and all the expenses. I’ll give you the full amount.” Saunders was sure he could come up with reasonable proof, with a minimal amount of cheating, to show the house had cost under twenty-five thousand. After all, Nicholas himself had called it shoddy construction. He might still come out with a profit. He tried not to gloat at the thought.
Nicholas seemed to be pondering the offer, then said, “Fair’s fair. Fine. I’ll sell it to you at cost. If I remember correctly, you told us your cost was ninety thousand dollars. My attorney happens to have the papers all drawn up. We’ll just fill in the amount and sign and seal the arrangement right here.”
Halberstram reached into his dispatch case, pulled out a contract, filled in the blank space with $90,000.00 and handed the papers and the pen to a thoroughly shaken Saunders. “Be sure to initial the amount before signing,” the attorney said.
MANA—A LEGEND
The Samoans and Tongans had done battle for many generations. Whenever their war canoes met on the open sea, the Samoans emerged victorious, but when the Samoan warriors landed on the Tongan beaches they were always driven off. It took only the presence of the Tongan chief with his mysterious power of repelling attacks and turning the invaders’ spears back upon themselves, to send the Samoans scrambling back to their homeland, pursued by terror of the unknown.
One day, the wife of a wise chief of the Samoans bore him a boy child whose birth cries kept the entire village awake the very first night. Luelu, as he was called, grew quickly. Before the sun had traveled its full course from its northernmost home to its southernmost one, Luelu had already begun to utter words. His mother smiled, and called him her little ‘talker.’ He talked, but he also listened.
The elders marveled at how quickly the growing boy mastered the genealogies, the wisdom of the people, the legends of the Samoans. And his peers listened with rapt attention as he wove fantasies to amuse them during games of tilu, or while they rested on the sandy beach, tired from swimming the waters of the vast lagoon.
As Luelu grew, his deeds rivaled his speech. In the games played by the young men, he soon became the invariable winner, whether in mock battles, spear throwing or vaulting. His father, the chief, could see Luelu would be not only a great warrior but would, indeed, be a leader of the Samoan fighting men. The eyes of the young, unmarried women followed the handsome figure, and his persuasive words swayed the hearts of many of them.
&n
bsp; Yet most of Luelu’s concerns were those of a warrior. Conscious of his growing strength, and impatient with the failure of the Samoan warriors to defeat the Tongans, Luelu one day proposed sending a massive fleet of war canoes to overwhelm the enemy. His father smiled at his impetuous son and said, “For countless generations we have tried the force of our spears against the Tongans. The results have been mounds of Samoan bodies. Only the discovery of their secret will bring success to the campaign you propose.”
“Surely father,” Luelu replied, “there must be some way to discover the secret of the Tongan chief. If we go there in overwhelming force, perhaps we can unlock that secret.”
Luelu’s father continued to smile at his handsome son. “How do we fell the giant koa when we wish to fashion it into a canoe? Do we go into the forest and hack away with our axes at the tree?”
“No,” the young man replied, “We carefully remove the bark at the base, allow the tree to die, and the wind topples it for us. By then it is properly seasoned and ready for the knives and chisels of the craftsmen.”
“How do we catch our fish when we hunger? Do we go out in the reefs and stab at the water with our spears?”
“No, father. Only children would do such a thing. We weave nets and drop them in the quiet pools. Then we wait patiently for the schools to swim over the nets and into their meshes.”
“How do we hunt the birds who provide flesh for our meals and plumage for our cloaks? Do we climb the tall koas and walk the slim branches to grasp them?”
“Never, father. To do so would be foolishness itself. Instead, we use the sticky sap of the breadfruit, and when the bird entraps itself we simply harvest our prey.”
“So now you see how futile it would be to flail helplessly at what we want when our goal is to be obtained by another, perhaps not so direct, but far smoother path.”
Leaving his father’s presence, the son was wrapped in his own thoughts. Planning, patience and perseverance seemed to him to be the gist of his father’s instructions. With those thoughts in mind he gathered his young warrior friends to discuss a new approach to mastery of the Tongan foe. Soon a scheme emerged.
Several days later a small and lightning-swift racing canoe set out for Tonga. Approaching those islands, the warriors spotted the tall cliff near the village of the Tongan chief. At sight of it, they dropped the sail, waited for darkness, and then silently paddled toward a sandy beach. Carefully lowering himself into the shallow waters, Luelu bade farewell to his companions until the next dark moon, waded ashore, then slashed his chest and arms with his knife and flung the weapon out to sea. Eating a small portion of the gall-bladder of the oopuhue, he sat on the beach, waiting for the poison to take effect.
It was shortly after dawn when playing children, as they ran the length of the beach, discovered the unconscious and wounded stranger. Elders from the nearby village answered their cries and the still figure was carried into one of the thatched huts. When Luelu drifted back to consciousness, he remembered to speak with halting and belabored words in order to disguise the tongue he knew the Tongans would recognize as the dialect of their enemies.
His rescuers were friendly but inquisitive. Luelu, recovering from his self-inflicted wounds and the effects of the poison, played on their curiosity. He told them a tale of a lost craft drifting for days, of a terrible storm swamping it and drowning the rest of the crew, of his long journey from a faraway western island and his last days guiding a crippled canoe with a splintered paddle, a broken mast and a shredded sail. His tale brought sympathetic sounds from his listeners. By the third day, the stories he wove brought suggestions for this spinner of wondrous tales to be taken before their chief.
It was the third morning after his arrival, when he was now able to stand and walk, that he was helped on the short journey to a neighboring village and into the presence of the Tongan chief. The way to uncover the secret occurred to him as he stood before the old man. It was a way he had never dreamt would be there, but he knew it would be a smooth path he could surely tread successfully.
Tupala had just come of age. Soon the slender, lovely woman, who had so recently been a girl, would marry. The chief of the Tongans was proud of this daughter, almost as proud as he was of Tupou, his only son. Allowing the stranger to stand in the presence of the royal family, the old chief, now blind and almost deaf, urged him to repeat his story and to speak it loudly.
Luelu remembered his father’s questions and the lessons he had learned from his own replies. As he recited his false tale in careful but hesitant words, he never once rested his eyes on Tupala, recalling how the path to his goal might best be an indirect one. Now he embroidered on his story. He made himself the eldest son of a chief from a distant land, his crew had been his attendants, his quest a search for the loveliest woman to be found in the wide ocean, a woman who would become his bride and return with him to rule over an island rich with fruit and fish. Already he had visited many islands in his unsuccessful search, only to have his journey cut short by the gods of the storm, of the sea, and of the wind.
The chief was pleased at what he heard and called for the evening meal to be served. Tupala retreated with the other women as the servants entered with mounds of food piled on ti leaves. The chief invited the stranger to sit with him and his son and to partake of the rich meal, urging Luelu all the while to tell him about his homeland, about the long voyage and the storm which had interrupted his quest.
Perhaps it was the fermented drink from the awa, or perhaps it was merely the knowledge how here he was sitting only an arm’s length from the mystery he had set out to solve, which loosened his tongue. Whatever the cause, Luelu began speaking fluently and carelessly. Tupou, the tall, powerful son of the chief wondered about this stranger, and the more the stranger spoke, the more Tupou’s eyes narrowed in suspicion. The chief, wrapped in the infirmities of his age, sensed nothing amiss. Instead, he enjoyed to the utmost the deft depiction of stars he had never seen, of customs he had never encountered and of places he had never heard of.
When the sun neared the end of its swift glide into the western ocean, the old chief invited Luelu to stay the night and sleep in the men’s house and to return the next morning to finish his tale. Luelu then noticed something strange. As the old man struggled to his feet, he tottered and almost fell. Yet no one came to his aid. Even his son stood quietly by. Only the use of his rod of state as a cane rescued him from the fall. Luelu not only took note, he also wondered.
The following day’s audience included the women, Tupala among them. Again, Luelu took no notice of the chief’s daughter as his story grew and grew, borrowing on the legends of his people, filling in the gaps with his fertile imagination. While he spoke, his eye fell on a barely nubile girl, a maidservant of the family, one with an open face whose features were now clearly showing her fascination with this strange and handsome storyteller.
When the chief, his son, and several of the male elders gathered for the midday meal, Luelu took the opportunity to inquire about the maidservant. The chief smiled at the question. “O’onane is a breadfruit tree ready for its first harvest. I can see no reason why you should not laugh with her. Your long journey without a woman should make you an eager harvester. I will see the word of your interest reaches the women’s house.”
Luelu smiled to himself as he saw yet another step in his scheme successfully mastered, but this time he was fully aware of Tupou’s stormy face which had darkened ominously on hearing Luelu speak of O’onane. Late in the night, O’onane slipped out of the women’s house. The sliver of a moon and the bright morning star was enough to show the smile on her face and her pleasure at finding Luelu waiting for her.
The days went by, and Luelu taught the young men of the island some of the craft of Samoa, new lashings for the outriggers, a different weave for the pandanus fronds to shed the tropical rains, and strange and humorous variants on their common legends. The nights went by filled with O’onane under the palms along the beach, beneath
a waxing moon shining down on their lovemaking.
When they were not laughing together, Luelu regaled his adoring partner with stories from his mythical homeland, but he also prompted her to tell him more about herself, about the royal family and about the aura surrounding the old chief. Reluctant at first to speak of the aura, O’onane slowly painted a picture even more strange than what Luelu had anticipated.
“He possesses mana,” O’onane whispered into Luelu’s attentive ear. “Not only will it turn the club or spear of anyone wishing him harm, it can also strike out against those who may touch him or even reach toward him.”
“Where did he get this mana? Where will it go when he dies? Can no one touch him without being harmed? What of…“
O’onane laughed softly as she put her hand to his lips to silence him. “Enough, enough,” she said. “I know so little about it, I cannot even answer the questions you ask and certainly not all the others yet to burst from you. Only the chief could answer your questions, or perhaps Tupou. The stories in the village are the chief will soon be passing the mana to him along with the feathered rod of state. It is all I know.”
It was in the night, while he felt the sleep breath of O’onane on his chest, when Luelu saw most clearly the next rung on the ladder and the size of the step he would have to take to attain it. The following day he took that step, when the young men had gathered and had begun playing the sports young men play. Luelu challenged one of the Tongan males to a contest of uma, an arm wrestling duel. Luelu had long practiced it with the strongest of his own warriors and had become the unchallenged champion of the sport.
The Tongan knelt on the ground, planted the elbow of his right arm firmly in front of him and opened his hand. Luelu knelt opposite him, and they joined hands. One of the other men counted and, at the third beat, Luelu easily pushed his opponent’s hand flat to the ground. Then others challenged him, and Luelu dealt with them just as swiftly.
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