by Lynn Shurr
She leaned toward him from her rocker. “I would like that.”
But, one of the younger matai who took turns patrolling the village approached before she could deliver a forbidden kiss. He carried a little boy sporting a huge shiner that closed one of his round dark eyes. The child’s nose ran with snot down to a split lip.
“Malo, Adam. Raro Ulu got a little heavy-handed with his spare the rod and spoil the child beliefs tonight. Your family has plenty of room. Can you take him for a while?”
“Sure, my mother will see to him.”
The matai walked right in to deliver this unexpected guest. Winnie, wide-eyed, said, “Does this happen often?”
“Often enough. A parent can chastise a disrespectful child, but the child belongs to the village. The chiefs move them around or the child might go to another home on its own. Someone might just scoop him up and house him. Our friend, Lita, could move out and stay with someone else, but I suspect she enjoys embarrassing her sister no matter what the consequences.”
Winnie shook her head in wonder. “As a junior matai, Sammy Tau does this, walks around saving little children? Maybe I should have more respect for him.”
“Save your respect. I know Sammy too well. He was lazy in his football training, cut all the practices he could and still stay on the team. I’m surprised he had the ambition to steal Pala. When his turn comes to patrol, he most likely finds a hidden place to sleep.”
“I’ll go in and make sure the child has nothing broken.”
“I think you should. I really think you should.”
****
Tuesday, Winnie reported to the clinic early knowing Nurse Talo would be on her way to Pago Pago by now. Lua, the second nurse, thanked her profusely for the day off. Her courtship had progressed to the point of wedding planning, and Samoan weddings evidently put the biggest Hollywood bash to shame. Two gowns were required, one for the ceremony and one for the reception, and at least a three-tiered cake with side cakes for the important guests. Lua shared all the details until they were interrupted by the entry of Lila Tomanaga leaning on her husband’s arm. They arrived in the Jeep despite the short distance between the minister’s mansion and the clinic.
“Her pains began a couple of hours ago, not too strong yet,” Davita told them.
“We will take good care of her, pastor.” Lua steered the pregnant woman to an inner room and waved him back to caring for his flock.
“Do we call someone to take her to the hospital?” Winnie inquired.
“No, no. We have a birthing room. Women have been giving birth for a thousand years on this island—and without clean sheets and an IV drip. I have my midwifery license. We just keep her comfortable until the child comes.”
At first, they entertained Lila with wedding talk, and she recounted hers to Davita, a grand thirty-pig affair with a multitude of fine mats traded between the families. That topic ran thin around noon when Winnie took a short lunch break. Leaving the house, she nearly tripped over the battered boy playing happily on the Malala’s porch with another child, his older brother who had decided to move in as well. A little girl napped on Adam’s mattress. No explanation about her. At this rate, they would be up to the Lorena Ranch child count in no time at all. She went back to her duties stunned again by the ease and yet the deep responsibilities of the fa’a Samoa.
As Lila’s labor progressed, Winnie rubbed the rippling belly with fragrant oil and massaged the woman’s back to ease the pain. Some of Davita’s female relatives came to visit and talk above the tightening mound in the bed. They got in the way but did provide a distraction.
Dinner came and went with Lila existing on ice chips to suck. She progressed slowly into the night. Winnie stayed by her side. Lua showed her patient how to breathe as the pains intensified, but the last hour came punctuated with outright screams.
“Good, let it out if you need to,” Lua encouraged.
The shrieks did not comfort Reverend Tomanaga, haggard in the waiting area, but at last his eight-pound son came into the world at 2:35 a.m. He thanked Lua and Winnie, but his wife most profusely. The nurses cleaned up both the mother and baby and settled them in for the rest of the night. Lua intended to stay at the clinic until morning when she thought Lila could go home. She encouraged both Davita and Winnie to leave and get some sleep. They went out into the night together.
“Allow me to escort you to Adam’s house,” the pastor offered most gallantly.
“It isn’t that far and even the village dogs know me by now,” Winnie answered, seeing how wrung out the man was as if he’d gone through labor himself. “Besides, you have virtually no crime here.” Still, she let him walk beside her under that vast arc of the Milk Way through the silent village.
“Oh, we have quick-tempered men and domestic disputes, but rarely anything else. Still, I’ve heard rumors lately that a moetotolo might be on the loose.”
Winnie laughed at the strange word. “Is this like a loup-garou in Louisiana? A werewolf tale to keep children in their beds at night.”
“Hardly. The term does come from olden days when everyone slept in open-sided fale. The moetotolo is a night creeping rapist who molests young women in their beds.”
Winnie raised her eyebrows skeptically. “Seems that would be hard to do with an entire family sleeping in one room. Wouldn’t the woman cry out or at least report the rape after it happened?”
“Well, there used to be much more honor attached to virginity, so a girl might not want to report such a thing and spoil her chances at a good marriage.”
“Not so much today.”
They neared the Malala house where Winnie expected to see Adam snoring on his outdoor mattress for the sake of her own honor. The web of mosquito netting held nothing. He must have given up and gone inside for a better rest. She turned to thank the pastor at the foot of the steps when screams tore open the peace of the village and people ripped from slumber stumbled outside to search for the source.
At first, Winnie turned toward the clinic thinking Lila might be suffering complications, but no, the solid walls of the clinic would have muffled any such cries. The piercing shrieks issued from the direction of the beach. She and Davita ran in that direction with the rest of the crowd, not knowing what they would find. The screams stopped very suddenly leaving the rescuers without a direction. Several matai bearing clubs large enough to crack a skull shouted to the others to return home. They would search the beach.
Davita said, “We should leave this to them, Winnie. The matai handle most of the problems in the village without going to the police, and this might turn out to be nothing but the young people playing a prank.”
“I don’t think so. Adam is out there somewhere. Those screams belonged to a woman. He would have run to help and could have gotten injured himself. I might be able to assist medically.”
“Then, I will stay with you.”
In the distance, they saw the younger, swifter matai closing in on a distinctive clump of coconut palms slanting against the night sky and headed in that direction. Of all the senarios Winnie might have imagined, finding Adam crouched with a bloody coconut clutched in his hands over the still form of Sammy Tau did not number among them.
Chapter Twenty-Six
Adam Malala was a hero on the football field. He should have saved the girl and subdued the bad guy, not been found kneeling by the corpse of his former friend, murder weapon in hand. No, Winnie would not believe it.
“Let me through. I’m a nurse. I’ll check for vital signs.”
The blood-fouled coconut rolled from Adam’s fingertips as she knelt to dig for a pulse in the rolls of Sammy’s fat neck. No throb there or in his wrist. She could see the damage to the broad face, the nasal bone smashed with such force it must have penetrated the brain, and more blood from a contusion on the top of the head matting the short, curly hair. She’d seen enough accident victims in the emergency room to know Sammy Tau had gone to meet his ancestors.
“He’s not br
eathing.”
Adam made a motion, his big reddened hands crossed as it he would perform CPR on the flabby unmoving chest. Winnie shook her head. “Head trauma. He’s gone.”
The matai consulted. Finally, the two largest bearing clubs stepped forward to take Adam’s arms and raise him to his feet. Winnie knew with his size and spectacular physical condition, he could have thrown them off easily and run into the jungle. He did not take that chance.
“I found Sammy like this when I ran toward the screams. I was far down the beach. If I had been quicker…”
“No, you wouldn’t have saved him. The head injury was too severe.”
The guards hustled Adam away from the body, and Winnie followed back to the village where they led him to a storage building full of hundred-pound sacks of rice waiting for distribution. Passively, Adam arranged a few of the sacks into a bed and stretched out as the matai watched cautiously.
“Winnie, tell my parents where I am and what’s going on. Don’t worry. Get some sleep.”
The door shut behind the prisoner. A boy ran up to the guards with a flimsy lock to secure it. Winnie protested.
“Can’t you let him go home? I mean where is he going to run with no transportation? Adam is too famous to hide. This is simply ridiculous. He would never murder anyone.”
Suddenly, the men did not understand her English. They stared out into the night like carved wooden tikis on either side of the door. Pastor Tomanaga spoke from behind her. Spending too much time on writing his sermons, he seemed a bit breathless after running across the beach and returning.
“This is beyond the power of the matai. The police are being summoned; a group of men will stay on the beach to keep the crabs off the body and try to prevent the tide from taking the evidence. There is nothing we can do for Adam before morning. Rest, and thank you again for your help in bringing my son into the world. One soul enters. Another leaves. The ways of the Lord are mysterious, but I do believe Adam is innocent and will be vindicated.” Once more, he escorted Winnie home.
The Malalas sat waiting on the porch rockers. Ela’s chair creaked heavily beneath her weight. By the look on their faces, they already knew.
“Sammy Tau is dead, and my son will be taken away when the police come. More shame for our family.” Ela pushed up from her seat and went inside.
Noa remained. “Sit with me. We will wait and see.”
Winnie collapsed into the rocker, and without realizing it, rocked herself to sleep. She woke when a police cruiser and a coroner’s van passed on the lava rock and shell road in front of the house. The vehicles returned an hour later, one surely bearing Sammy’s remains and the other hauling Adam in the backseat. He raised his manacled hands, the dried blood rusty on them, and managed a brief, confident smile as he left for Pago Pago, not in his Jeep or by village bus, but in the back of a police car.
****
Ela set out a banana porridge made from the very fruit Adam has picked yesterday for their breakfast. The three children, now part of the family, gobbled it down, but Winnie could not eat.
“Shouldn’t we go into town to see if Adam needs any help?”
“The matai will take care of it.” Ela turned away
Not long after, the police returned to the village. Imposing men dressed in plain khaki lava-lavas with a matching uniform shirt of the same color complete with epaulets and heavy sandals on their feet, they stood by the old gas cylinder as a boy banged on it to get the attention of the villagers. Winnie joined the crowd along with Noa who hadn’t taken his boat out that morning.
One of the matai spoke up. “He is asking the woman who screamed in the night to step forward and give her story to the police,” Adam’s father translated. “Also a young man with feet much smaller than Adam Malala’s who was near the scene of the crime.”
“That’s good, isn’t it? They are looking at other people,” Winnie whispered.
But, no one in the crowd moved. One of the officers added details. Judging by the footsteps running away from the body, they sought a young woman still light on her small feet. The merry girls who had decorated Winnie with garlands huddled together like baby chicks when a hawk darkens the sky with its wings. None came forward. Because of the silence, all would have to be interrogated. The authorities set up a table and chairs in the church hall and began their interviews. The young women deferred to Winnie who had been herded into the hall along with them.
She told her tale of sitting up with the pastor’s wife, the unimpeachable truth of walking back to the house with the reverend and hearing the screams exactly like everyone else. Yes, Adam was missing from his bed on the porch. She saw him next, coconut in hand, by the body. He wanted to perform CPR, she added, but she’d declared Sammy Tau dead. Unable to stop herself, Winnie blurted out that she and Adam were in a relationship, and he had never hurt her despite his size. The cop nodded and sent her away. She needed to do more for Adam.
At the infirmary, Winnie questioned the returned and refreshed Nurse Talo about catching a bus into the city. “Very easy. Walk to the main road and flap your hand up and down when a bus approaches. They will pull over. Have correct change or else the stop will last forever as the driver tries to find change to return to you. One should be by around ten, more or less. All of Pago Pago is talking about the murder, you know.”
Lila and the baby had gone home. Briefly, Winnie thought about borrowing the Jeep, but driving it up that treacherous dirt lane to the main road and then surviving Samoan drivers made her stick to the bus idea. She went to the house and removed some cash and a credit card hidden in the lining of her suitcase. The new little girl in residence had helped herself to Winnie’s Sunday hat and paraded through the house with it atop her tight pigtails. Winnie traded her a length of lava-lava cloth for the return of the chapeau, which she hung on a high hook out of reach of the small, grubby hands. The boys, it appeared, had gone to school. For now, Noa watched his temporary daughter while Ela went on one of her missions. No fresh fish tonight. She doubted she would ever fully understand the fa’a Samoa.
Other than her Sunday clothes, she hadn’t brought much other than lava-lavas and puletasi to the village. The rest of her clothes remained stored at the hotel. She washed up quickly and put on a clean cloth and her shoes. If she hadn’t gone entirely native, her body had, now more tanned, the waves of her gold-streaked hair untamed in the high humidity. Her clear green eyes stared at this woman in the small bathroom mirror, the one who had wanted an adventurous fling with an easygoing Samoan hunk and now found herself willing to defend a complex and conflicted man from a murder charge. Adam might not have gotten past the point of having a casual affair, but she knew she’d gone far down the road to loving and caring what happened to him.
Wishing she had a good pair of athletic shoes instead of the stupid slides on her feet, she set off to climb the mountain road and arrived wilted at the top with fifteen minutes to spare. Then a half hour to spare, forty-five minutes, an hour. At last, one of the ’aiga buses tooled down the road blasting Samoan rock music and resembling in its many wild colors a hippie minivan from the Sixties. Winnie flapped her arm as vigorously as a blue-footed booby trying to take off into the sky. The outrageous vehicle already full to the point where a young man in the back sat on another young man’s lap stopped to let her aboard. An older man near the front offered Winnie his seat and lacking another space, simply stood in the aisle.
They bucketed along only a few miles when the bus stopped to load a granny with a small pig on a rope leash. Immediately, the man next to Winnie offered up his seat. As they jolted off, the pig sniffed Winnie’s feet and after nearly losing its footing to a dip into a pothole, sat on her toes with a contented porcine grin. As they lumbered on a few more miles, one of the men in the back rapped on the ceiling for the bus to stop. Everyone standing in the aisle got off to let him disembark. The bus reloaded, paused next to pick up two girls going into the city for a day, as they told Winnie when they stacked themselves
into one spare seat. The granny and her pig got off halfway down the mountain, though the beast showed some reluctance to leave Winnie’s feet, and she had to assist by shoving its curly-tailed hams from the bus. Great, now her hands smelled like pig, too. At this rate, the passengers would not reach the city before night.
Finally, they rolled into Pago Pago and most of the passengers got off one place or another. Winnie worked her way to the driver and asked about the nearest stop to the jail. She hesitated before adding, “The one where they took Adam Malala.”
With a broad grin, he said, “I hear about that this morning. I take you there. Go lotsa times.”
Not sure if he’d been in jail many times or simply dropped visitors there, she still appreciated this courtesy upon arrival at the building. “When will you be going back up the mountain?”
“I stay in Pago tonight. Maybe in the morning. You wave when you see me.”
Okay, vague enough. She thought she had adequate money for a taxi to the hotel and could simply put her room on the credit card. Right now, hot, hungry, and tired in mid-afternoon, she overcame the temptation to go there immediately. Adam must come first. The police had taken him bare-chested wearing nothing but the loincloth he used for sleeping. He’d need clothing, a lawyer, bail. She trudged up to the top of the steps only to be nearly bowled to the bottom by a man exiting in a gray business suit complete with necktie above and a matching lava-lava below.
“Tulou,” he apologized, grabbing her elbow to keep her from falling.
She looked into the man’s lustrous dark eyes and said simply, “Adam.”
“Winnie, how did you get here?”
“Bus, quite an experience. I thought maybe I could bail you out or bring you some clothes. I see all of that has been done.” He didn’t need her, not really.
“Yes, I called an attorney first thing. He brought my suit from the hotel. The team lawyers are on their way from New Orleans, too. News travels fast in the computer age. I understand my arrest is already up on Yahoo and Google.”
