East Wind, Rain

by Caroline Paul

  It was not cooler inside, but it was darker because all the windows were shuttered, and this tricked the body into believing (such deception being unseemly, Ella would in a few moments think, for a good Christian church) that the temperature had dropped with the light. Soon Ella would be sweating again but now she lifted her head and walked, slightly refreshed, to the back pew. She knew just how stooped she was getting when the space between being seated and standing to sing the hymn got smaller and smaller, until she wondered if she should bother to stand at all. But today there was no service, and so she sat with no intention of bobbing up and down but to stay seated like this, shoulders pitched forward, head down in what was finally, in her old age, the perfect meeting of comfort and worship. Here was some quiet time for her to sit and think. She glanced around to see if anyone else was there, hunched perhaps in one of the pews before her, like a solemn he‘e nalu on some dark shore-bound wave. Satisfied she was alone, she let the floating figure of Jesus on the cross above the lectern come slowly into view, first as a thin, rising cumulonimbus cloud, then as a misshapen, ragged-winged gull, and finally as the doomed Son himself, bleeding from the waist and the wrists and the feet. Though this she couldn’t see in the dusk of the interior, she knew the blood drops by heart, so fascinated was she as a child by this stiff reenactment of a violent end and the careful, loving rendering of the blood spots, complete, upon closer inspection, with errant brush hairs.

  It was unusual to have a crucifix in a Protestant church; this particular Jesus had been acquired from a Catholic parish on Kauai, back when “popery,” as Eliza Sinclair had called it, had a bigger hold on the islands. Mrs. Sinclair had disliked the drama of Catholic worship, which bordered, she’d thought, on pagan ritual. All those robes. That swinging incense. The foreign incantations. She especially didn’t approve of the way the savage nature of Jesus’s death was exclaimed on walls and in stained-glass windows. But she had been a practical woman. She’d realized that if the predominantly Catholic Niihauans were to convert easily under her new ownership, she would have to make some concessions. She bought the wooden crucifix for more money than she liked, from a priest who’d found it in the basement of his church. Catholicism was scrabbling for a foothold on the islands and badly needed the cash, and Mrs. Sinclair regretted that she might be funding its spread. But she threw a burlap sack over the crucifix so she didn’t have to look at it, and at the first opportunity it was boated across the channel and then nailed to the old church wall without fuss. Every so often the wooden Jesus was carefully painted, the blood drops renewed, the beard darkened. His skin was also redone with care, but at some point over the years, the paint color went from its pinkish brown to a startling white, so that He glowed incandescent at times when the light was right. The color had been used on the outsides of old farmhouses in the East, picked for practical reasons rather than aesthetic ones: it was cheap. It was the kind of white not qualified by any adjectives in the paint store: off white, white oak, bone. This was simply white white, and it had been imported by the Old Lord’s father for exterior walls. In an unconscious, perhaps divine, symmetry, Jesus actually matched the outside of the church and all the apiaries and houses on Niihau. Unbeknownst to His followers He was also guaranteed to weather well under the unfortunate but unlikely scenario that He was left in the open for any length of time. The Robinsons said nothing about the ongoing care of the Catholic symbol. Quietly, imperceptibly, the bloody crucifix became part of spiritual life here, and the plan to dispense with it when the time came, in favor of a simple cross perhaps, was put aside or just forgotten.

  Below Jesus was the lectern, a small shelf nailed onto a thick plank and used at an earlier date as a ship’s navigation table (something that, if Ella had known, she would have approved of, feeling that Christianity was a sextant on seas that got rougher and higher as one aged), and now only a dark shadow. The pew itself was cushionless, and when Ella went to her knees on Sundays, it was sometimes with the padding of her husband’s hat. Otherwise the pews were comforting without being comfortable; even in the dim light she knew that each one was shiny with the constant sway and shift of her neighbors’ buttocks over the years, bright with the sheen of hot fiddling hands. Now she put her palms together and brought them to her forehead, simultaneously rapping prayers awake and taking her familiar place among Christians everywhere.

  Ask and you shall receive. She knew this to be true, but it was as if the plane had scooted her head clear of everything but a whirling, heaving koolau wind. What sins did she need to have cleansed because of the plane? Covetousness? Disobeying her husband? Worshiping false idols? Greed? This last one appealed to her, it sounded right. She was greedy, not just for the baubles of the plane but for its secrets. She asked the Lord to forgive her for this and to guide her thoughts elsewhere.

  And yet there they hovered, like one of Niihau’s insistent flies, above the twitching plane (in her mind it was always moving, or about to move), which looked less threatening now, less strange. God, she assured herself, would not have let such a thing drop onto their peaceful island if it was something bad. She raised her head slightly to look at Jesus again, who always seemed in an eternal state of bafflement himself, as if his naive, trusting heart couldn’t quite believe he had been trussed up on the cross by his flock. But it wasn’t Jesus up above the lectern, it was the outline of the plane itself, and the image gave her such a fright she cried out and then slapped her hand against her mouth as the shape became Jesus again, emaciated, drooping, covered in blood.

  She hurried out of the church. The door shut with a derisive hoot, and this spooked her even more, as owls had been holy beings for ancient Niihauans. She was receiving signs everywhere, but she had no idea how to interpret them. There was only one thing to do and she did it now: she headed for the plane itself.

  She made a wide circle around the Kaleohano house and approached the plane from its far side, so that Puuwai showed up behind, with its houses like sparse, mangy trees, the lava walls around each dark shadows, the cereus blooms that crawled up their sides just visible as tiny blood spots (another sign). Even in the full light of midafternoon the area around the plane itself gave the unmistakable impression of a graveyard, its headstones fallen and in disarray. Even with the red-brown dust softening the dark metal skin, the sharply angled, toothlike edges where parts had been violently sheared off upon impact or, she thought, by the intrepid sawing of one of her neighbors’ knives, were frightening. And though the plane as a whole sagged into the ground, it was less the posture of a relaxed guest next to an imu than that of a predator animal snugged and motionless, ready to move in for the kill. The diaspora of parts was silting over too, so that it seemed as if they would melt right into the ground, and Ella thought that if the rains didn’t come this year, the bits and pieces would surely disappear completely, claimed by the mythic Pele for her very own. Pele’s first step on the Hawaiian Islands had been here on Niihau, and it was said that she built her fire pits from Kaluakawila to Puulama, and though she eventually went to Kauai, and then on to the island of Hawaii, her spirit, the elders said, always remained here on Niihau; it would not be beneath her to snatch such strange and lovely gifts from the island that was first her home.

  The red circle on the plane’s side, which had earlier been bursting with color, was now dull and faded. This was what Ella wanted to touch first, and she was picking her way toward it when suddenly a movement by the kiawe tree startled her. She froze and instantly forgot her practiced excuse, the auguries and omens that had led her here, the red circle itself. But it was only a mynah bird, which squawked its familiar greeting and cocked its head at her. She tried to shoo it away. When it did not leave, she squatted and watched the plane carefully. Then she shuffled one hand in the pocket of her mu‘umu‘u. She carefully pulled something from its depth and looked around quickly to make sure that no one was watching. Slowly, she put a cigarette to her lips.

  She didn’t smoke much, and what she did smoke w
as often the remains of what Howard Kaleohano carelessly left behind when he talked in the yard with Ben. She had only been curious at first, but then found she actually liked it—the way the tobacco calmed her even as it sharpened her focus, the ritual of taking the butt from her mouth and blowing into the air. Once or twice she smoked with Mabel, who sometimes confiscated a cigarette from her husband when she was angry, and the two of them shared it over gossip and shell sorting. Mabel was no good at smoking, though. She coughed violently upon inhalation, and usually just let it burn down between her fingers. Now Ella squinted at the plane through her smoke, watching that red circle. When the butt was too small to hold any longer, she kicked sand over it and stood up. She glanced once at the mynah bird, which had not moved.

  -Keep watch, little friend, she said, and walked toward the plane.

  Later that afternoon Ella ran into Mabel and Hanaiki Niau’s wife, Hannah, on the way to the Main House and the store that Irene Harada ran there. Hannah was the schoolteacher, known for keeping a pencil in her pocket at all times, as if writing things down was a common practice on the island. When she saw that Ella was pale and breathless, she asked what was wrong. Ella waved her hands and said nothing.

  Mr. Robinson had not wanted a store on the island. The Niihauans have all they need, he insisted. But Irene was quietly, vehemently persistent; the women waited too long for thread and there had been talk about canned goods after one had found its way from another island a few years before, unbeknownst to the Old Lord.

  -Possessions take us further from Him, Robinson had huffed.

  -And Makeweli Ranch? Irene asked innocently. None of the people there have access to such things?

  Mr. Robinson had turned beet red then, caught in his own hypocrisy. Of course they had such things: his workers had access to the Piggly Wiggly and sometimes the airfield canteen. Even he shopped at the Piggly Wiggly, though he disliked doing so. But it was convenient. Finally, he’d grudgingly relented.

  The store had been an immediate success. One shelf was lined neatly with cans of green beans. The second contained short, squat containers of condensed milk. On the floor was a barrel of flour and another of rice. Sometimes Irene even managed to get candy. The hard, round sweets fared the best, but even these suffered in the Niihauan heat; they stuck together so that you had to hit the tin a few times against a wall to separate the pieces. But no one seemed to mind this extra effort. Long after the candies were gone, the pretty tins remained, full of sewing thread and needles or in one case baby teeth, perched on the corner shelves in some of the Puuwai houses. They were dented at the edges but still shiny, as if the women often took them down to look at them.

  Shoppers were eager to show Irene that they were grateful for all the supplies she got for them. An item would go down the line of curious hands like a new baby and inevitably end up on the far side of the store from where it had been originally placed, cock-eyed, on a different shelf. Irene would pick up the object carefully, and with a grim set to her mouth, return it to its rightful place, which the Hawaiian women thought might mean that she wanted them to examine it again, which they then did. It was Ella who had figured out that they were actually annoying the young woman, and though now they kept a respectful distance, Irene was never the friendliest person. Still, the women wanted her to feel at home and often burst into the store laughing and greeting her loudly, whereupon she seemed to shrink into a far corner, nod her head, and smile faintly.

  Today the beans had been pushed together to make room for Christmas ornaments—winged angels, large tin stars, red balls. The three women entered, the red dust shimmering in the air and then falling behind them.

  -Aloha, they greeted her. Hele mai ai.

  One by one they blinked at the shiny glint on the upper shelf.

  -Ooh, cooed Mabel. She squinted and leaned forward to get a better fix on the source of the brightness.

  -So pretty, said Hannah.

  -Christmas nonsense, said Ella gruffly, pleased. There had never been such a display before, the store’s hot wooden room now alight with color. Irene smiled shyly at her neighbors’ pleasure.

  -Two cents for each ball, she said. The stars are three cents.

  -You’ve outdone yourself, Mrs. Harada, Ella said. And the boatman didn’t break any?

  -A few. But I told him they were eggs, so he was extra careful, though I think he thought I was crazy.

  The women laughed. There were chickens for every family here on Niihau; eggs were the last thing they would ever ship in.

  Later, after each woman had held a few of the ornaments in her hand, Mabel spoke:

  -Look, she said.

  She shuffled around in the bosom of her mu‘umu‘u and then withdrew, with squinting concentration, a shiny, silver bauble. It could have been one of the Christmas ornaments for all its gleam, except that it was as small as a cowry shell. She held it pinched between two of her large fingers, as if it were the neck of some temporarily subdued but dangerous creature, and the other women leaned in close to see.

  -What is it? asked Ella. She reached with her fingers as if to touch it, but lost her nerve and left them lingering in the air near Mabel’s elbow.

  -Comes from the plane.

  Every woman suddenly reared back, as if the small, metal animal had lunged.

  -Plane? Hannah clucked and frowned. Nervously she withdrew the pencil from her pocket and began to lace it through her fingers.

  -It came from the…place with the chair. Where all the maka were. Mr. Kaleohano brought it home for me. Looks like onohi. Eyes. Like haoles’, round and made of silver. Must be the way the plane sees its way across the sky.

  -No, said Irene. That’s an instrument panel. She said the last two words in English, not knowing the Hawaiian translation. The kaula waha. Reins of a horse. The driver pushes and pulls the buttons to get across the sky.

  She didn’t know how she knew instrument panel. Living on Kauai, she supposed that military jargon had seeped into her vocabulary. Also, she had seen the dashboard of a car, which had buttons that looked similar.

  -You should put it back. Bad luck, said Ella slowly.

  -Bad luck? It landed on our island, so it’s a gift, insisted Mabel.

  Hannah looked back and forth between the two women. Since she was the schoolteacher on the island, she was used to arguments among the children, and she began to prepare to intercede. She knew that Ella was easily irritated and that though the two women liked each other, they scrapped like siblings. She pursed her lips and raised her pencil.

  -A mea ka ‘aine ‘e boat dumped a casket of bad water into an island harbor one hundred years ago and with it came the mosquito. Just because it arrives doesn’t mean that it’s a gift, Mrs. Kaleohano. But, Mrs. Kanahele, surely it doesn’t hurt for her to get a small souvenir.

  Ella puffed up her chest and put her hands on her hips. Her chin stuck out and her eyes narrowed. The women leaned back slightly.

  -That plane has disturbed the spirits, she said loudly. See how it lies like a big hammerhead on the sand? I had a vision when I returned to it this morning and approached the wings.

  -You approached the wings?

  Ella blushed.

  -Yes. And I had a vision, she continued, but with less vigor. That plane is evil.

  Mabel nodded, but her mouth was set in an angry line. She looked away to the Christmas ornaments.

  -Throw it in the sea, advised Ella.

  -For the spirits, Mrs. Kanahele? said Mabel. That’s ancient nonsense. I wouldn’t want Mr. Robinson to hear you talking like that, it’s downright heathen. Well, I’ll talk to my husband. He walks to that plane a lot. So it’s his to make right, to your shark goddess or to your plane.

  Ella flinched and forced herself to remain quiet. If it was not a vision from the spirits that she’d had that afternoon, surely it was a very bad case of the willies. It had started when the mynah bird would not leave, its dark, raggedy shadow jerking in her peripheral vision. Nevertheless, Ella had c
limbed carefully on the plane’s wing and peered into the cockpit. She had touched the leather seats, but they were too hot to explore for long, so she pulled free a long, canvas strap with a metal ring on the end. The ring was dull with red dust, but a few swipes against her dress began to bring out its old gleam. By now the skin on her spine had tightened and begun to prickle. She ignored it. She rubbed the ring a little more but a few dark places remained. Stubbornly, she continued to rub it, determined to restore the ring to its original luster. Still the dark stain persisted. Finally, she spat on it. The cloth of her dress went dark red, and she realized what she was cleaning off—blood. She dropped the ring onto the seat, her heart pounding. Then she caught sight of the machine gun’s spidery legs. It was too much, seeing that. Ella thought of herself as a peaceable woman, a Christian, averse to violence in any form. She lowered herself from the wing quickly and took a few steps back, staring at the plane. Suddenly it was clear to her—the way her skin jumped, the way her stomach dropped—that the spirits were profoundly disturbed here. She had fled as fast as her fallen arches allowed her to.