Sonny grabbed Ella’s hand and led her over. His hand ran along the mare’s rump. “That one is Pontiac, and this beauty is Waipio. Want to ride her?” Without waiting for an answer, he hoisted Ella up and sat her on Waipio’s bare back. From the look on Ella’s face, she was alive in heaven.
A man like that could be trusted to know his horses.
While everyone watched Ella ride in circles, Parker said, “I got an audience with Riggs last night, by the way.”
“That was fast. How’d you manage?”
“On Saturdays, he’s been known to sneak that god-awful Hawaiian hooch into his office, and indulges. You might say I caught him with a little extra give.”
Just then, a rickety truck careened up the dirt road, skidding to a stop and kicking up dust on the far side of the holding pen. The men who poured out howled with laughter. Some kind of loud banging rocked the truck.
“I didn’t get a lot out of him.” Parker glanced at the truck, then squeezed her hand. “We’ll talk later. I’ve got to deal with this.”
Sonny scooped Ella off the horse, set her down and ran around to the back of the truck, where all the men had crowded. A gut-shaking roar erupted from their midst. Anywhere but Hawaii, and Violet would have thought it a bear. In a flash, one of the men released the truck bed, while the others, each with a rope in hand, dragged a cage out and dropped it into the pen. No one moved to open it.
“All yours,” one of the men said to Parker, patting him on the back.
“Take a gander!” Jean said.
“These guys are nuts. As if anyone is going to be able to grease that thing,” Irene said.
The wild boar was about three Roscoes molded into one black, wire-haired monster. The minute one of the men opened the cage, it beelined to the bronco standing in the middle. With ears flattened, the horse blew hurricanes out his nostrils. The situation was not liable to end well, but none of them could look away. The boar charged, while at the same time the bronco spun and connected a back left hoof to its snout. With a screech, the boar fell back.
“Get that boar away from my horse!” Sonny yelled.
All the paniolo had ropes in hand, even Parker. But the boar was in such a craze, no one could lasso the thing.
Jean jumped up and down, clapping. “Forget the bull wrestling. Anyone that snags that boar is the real winner today.”
“My money is on Stone,” Zach said, with a shadow of concern on his face.
With a few more well-landed kicks from the bronco, the boar turned its fury on the cage. Within minutes the entire cage was reduced to a twisted metal ball. Parker stood out in his military-issued clothing, but his roping ability looked authentic. In the end, it was Sonny who landed the boar. It took every last man to drag it to the pen opening.
“They better not let it loose out here,” Violet said, looking around for the nearest escape.
Once the boar sensed freedom, he bolted toward the hills, dragging the men behind him. Eventually they loosened the rope and let go.
Parker returned, caked in dust and sweat. “Mean son of a bitch. Good thing they had the forethought to clip his tusks before bringing him in.”
“I’m half-suspicious that boar was Japanese, with all that fanatical resistance,” Zach said.
If that’s what the Japanese soldiers were like, the American boys were in trouble. Violet only wished people could handle their differences with words rather than weapons.
* * *
Back at the main corral, they watched a far less thrilling version of roping. This time on calves. Next up was the bulldogging, and then the bronco riding. The weather couldn’t make up its mind, with a light sideways rain one minute and bright sun the next. Once again, Violet found she was blindsided with joy. Thundering hooves, the cheer in the crowd, and watching Ella stuff a foot-long hot dog into her tiny mouth. All of it.
Her prediction proved true. The paniolo rode circles around most of the leathernecks. But not all. A handful of real cowboys from the Southwest were close to equal in roping and riding. Flair was another matter. The Hawaiians sat on their horses with an extra helping of swagger. Most had probably started on horseback before they could walk.
When it came time for the bronco riding, the crowd tightened in. Herds of men gathered around the newly constructed chutes. Parker and Zach were somewhere over there, but Violet couldn’t make them out.
“Look, that bronco has giant horns,” Ella said, her voice barely audible over the escalating roar.
When Violet focused in closer, she saw that Ella was right.
“If that’s a bronco, I’m Franklin D. Roosevelt,” Jean said.
A horn blew and the bull twisted and kicked out of the gate, ridden by a stocky paniolo. The man lasted all of three seconds, but when the bull tossed him, the rider contorted his body midair, so he landed standing. The crowd erupted.
“Looks like the ranch hands thought bull riding would be more fun than broncos. I just hope no one gets killed,” Violet said.
After a few more paniolo, a gawky leatherneck rode out on the meanest bull yet. All four of its feet left the ground, if that was possible, as it twisted to the side with an arched back. The ring fell silent and Violet whispered an abbreviated prayer. But the man moved like water, and it seemed his upper half was not connected to his lower half.
Jean’s red nails dug into her arm. “Mother of God, it’s Zach!”
She was right. His bull appeared to be an expert in spinning, but by some miracle, Zach held on for another four seconds, barely making it to eight. Jean exhaled enough breath for all of them when it was over and Zach stood safely outside the ring. His turned out to be the longest ride so far.
“How do they know who wins?” Ella asked.
“At this rodeo? Who knows? They seem to have their own rules, but usually the rider has to stay on for at least eight seconds to even qualify,” Violet said. “Then it depends on how well he controls the bull and how difficult the bull is. Uncle Zach should do well because his bull was so crazy and he made the time.”
What she didn’t say was that every last one of these men in the bull riding had a death wish. Either that or they were exercising their right to pack in as much living as humanly possible. A different set of rules applied to these men.
Parker rode last.
Whoever picked the bull must have wanted to see every bone in his body broken. It was twice the size of the others. With braided rope in hand, Parker lurched as the animal bucked and reared and kicked around the corral. His free arm waved around like it belonged to someone else, but he stayed on. Violet held her fingers over her eyes and peeked out between them. The ground thundered.
“Five one thousand, six one thousand, seven one thousand. Oh, no!” Ella cried.
The bull now stood violently still. Twice he pawed the red dirt before hanging his horns and charging the rock wall. Everyone began yelling their two cents. Jump! Don’t jump! Hang on to your hat! Violet saw the look on Parker’s face at the same time the breath froze in her lungs. There was no way this would end well.
At the side of the corral, spectators fled in all directions. The open grassy patch would have been perfect for landing, if not for the gnarled ohia tree in the middle. A scream rose up in her throat, but nothing came out. Violet forced herself to watch as Parker leaned forward. Time turned sluggish. Somehow, she had enough time to think that maybe she needed to make a decision. Or maybe it was too late. Parker unstirruped his boots and swung a leg over. With both hands, he pushed up on the saddle and shoved himself backward and into the dirt. She had never seen a body sail through the air like that, as though he had come straight from a howitzer M1.
Violet felt his fall between her shoulders, a searing pain. When the bull slammed on his brakes, Parker still lay on the ground unmoving. Men poured into the ring from all directions, and two paniolo, Zach and Tommy hauled him away
. Even from a distance, she could see he was limp.
“Is he dead?” Ella asked.
She had no answer.
There was much buzzing around the huddle of dusty men. In the few minutes that it took them to make their way around, a bank of low clouds arrived, spinning the air white and oddly metallic. She could still hear the thud his body made as it hit the ground like a sack of wood.
Her resolve was unraveling. “No,” she said to no one in particular.
No, he won’t be broken. No, I will not feel this way.
Violet tried to make Ella stay back with Irene, but both ignored her. Loud voices floated out and she heard fragments. “Alive...broken...lucky.”
The temptation to run overwhelmed her. She wanted to see for herself. Without care for manners, she nudged her way to the front of the crowd, with Ella, Jean and Irene hanging on to her dress. The only recognizable part of Parker was the eyes. Other than that, he might have been dipped in red dirt, clothes and all. He sat holding a cloth to his head, very much alive. Zach perched on a rock next to him.
When Parker spotted Violet, he reached his arm out and then winced. “There you are. Had a little trouble there at the end, but what’d you think?”
Zach shook his head and chuckled.
Violet regarded his swollen cheek and pinched eye. “What I think is that you are lucky your friends dragged you out in time, and you weren’t skewered on the tips of those horns.”
When she looked closer, she realized there was a glaze over his good eye. Something was wrong.
“That wasn’t luck. That was finely honed skill. Luck is when you finally kiss the one girl in the whole wide world who refuses to look your way,” he said with a light slur. A lopsided grin spread halfway across his face. Then his head wavered and he fell back into the soft grass.
“In the whole wide world”? Some nerve.
* * *
Aside from being more worried than she ought to be about Parker, Violet was confounded, disconcerted and alternately flattered. Those feelings followed her around all day Monday and into Tuesday. Why did he have to go ahead and speak his mind, in front of everyone, no less?
“He wasn’t talking about me, silly,” she said to Jean on the way home from the rodeo.
“If you believe that, you’re dumber than I thought.”
On Tuesday afternoon, when Ella was outside reading stories to the hens and Violet had her arms elbow-deep in the wash bin, the phone rang. She was expecting a call from Macadangdang on the next coconut delivery so had a towel lying on the counter nearby.
“Violet?”
“Yes, this is she.”
A pause. “It’s Parker. I’m told I owe you an apology.”
She barely managed to choke out, “Oh?”
“I don’t remember much after hitting the ground, but Zach filled me in. I imagine it must have come across as pretty arrogant, and if I made you uncomfortable, I’m awfully sorry.”
The thing with arrogance was that it carried a certain appeal. If measured out right. Violet had encountered men with too much and men with not enough. She was still trying to determine where Parker fit in on that scale.
“With the sense knocked out of you like that, who can blame you? Plus, you could have meant anyone,” she said.
“You believe that?”
She kept quiet.
“Anyway, you’re stuck with us until we ship out. But that’s not the only reason I called. We never finished our conversation Sunday.” He cleared his throat.
Riggs. Japanese school. No way he would risk talking about it on the line, would he?
“Yes, I’ve been wondering,” she said.
“They are going to hold off shipping the cattle to the mainland. While they look into what might be causing their disease. So that might ease everyone’s worry, for the moment.”
“Good to know. I’ll tell our neighbors.”
Finally, a small crumb of good news. She couldn’t wait to tell Setsuko.
“It’s not much...”
She cut him off. “It’s something. And by the way, everyone around here wants to know how your head is.”
“On the mend. The swelling’s gone down and I can see out of both eyes now. Doc said I have a concussion, and my company kept me awake all Sunday night. Now, there’s a good form of torture. Every time I nodded off, someone clapped in my face.”
She laughed. “Dreadful, but they need you alive, Sergeant. They care about you.”
We all do.
Parker sounded like he was in a busy room, with radio static and voices barking orders around him. The line went silent for a moment and she thought she’d lost him, but his voice came through a second later. “That rodeo was something else, wasn’t it? Seeing all the boys cut loose like that. Earned me a new level of respect for your paniolo, too. Even if they are hell-raisers.” The smile in his voice slipped through the wire.
“Men will be men.”
Again a pause, as though he was debating what to say next. “Speaking of men being men, there’s a dance next weekend at the USO, and I’m supposed to drum up women,” he said.
Violet immediately pictured Parker with the girls down at the beach. “They put you in charge, huh? Why doesn’t that surprise me?”
“I only know four women on the island. I swear,” he said.
“Sure you do.”
* * *
Setsuko and the twins were in the habit of eating dinner with Violet, Jean and Ella several nights of the week now. Strength in togetherness was something you could feel deep in your bones. They all knew it, as well as knowing there was an unfillable space in her heart.
“The kids need normalcy,” Setsuko had said, and Violet wondered how different she would be without the kids to be strong for.
In the past month, Hiro had mastered the fine art of coconut husking, and now he and Ella and Umi sat on the porch in an assembly line. Hack, husk, crack. Sun filtered through the trees, covering them all in gold. Brownie supervised, dressed up in her sweater.
The kids were buried in their work, so Violet pulled Setsuko into the kitchen and sat her down. “I have news. Parker called, and he couldn’t tell me directly over the phone, but it sounds like Takeo is staying put for the time being,” she said.
Setsuko’s hands flew to her cheeks and tears pooled in her black eyes. “How does he know?”
“He was talking about cattle, but I knew what he meant. He said they weren’t shipping the cattle to the mainland while they investigated what was causing their disease. I’m guessing while they look into the planted letters.”
A look of sheer relief fell over Setsuko. “Oh, Violet. You have no idea how much this means.”
“I have an idea, being that I see you almost every day. It’s hard for me to watch you living only half a life.”
“I could say the same for you. But you seem better lately.”
Without another word, Setsuko stood and wrapped her arms in a tight squeeze around Violet. Her hair smelled like sugarcane and coconut. They were still hugging when Jean walked in.
“Please tell me this is a happy hug. I’m about done with bad news.”
Violet told Jean about Parker’s call. She almost left out the part about the upcoming dance. It might be simpler. There was no way Setsuko would go, and equally no way that Jean would not go. Her own feelings were somewhere in the middle. Hordes of very young soldiers, girls of every shape and size, and roaring music. But she’d yet to attend one, and December had already arrived. This might be the last one.
Jean turned the radio up, grating and chopping to the music. “Better start moving those hips, Coco Mama. When was the last time you danced?”
“No idea.”
“We’ll have a practice night, then, before this weekend. Get you primed.”
Violet contemplated saying no
outright, but settled on maybe. “I haven’t said I’m going yet.”
“Oh, you’re going all right.”
Saying no to Jean rarely worked. Maybe it would be enjoyable. If Ella didn’t mind staying with Setsuko for a few hours.
* * *
With the music off, crickets filled in with their own night songs. Coldness drifted down from the mountain, and Violet wrapped a shawl over her shoulders. The Hamasus had gone and Ella was in bed. Her sleep had been improving lately. Whether from time or the influx of new friends and activity, Violet couldn’t be sure.
Jean left the kitchen and returned with a box of floral stationery. “Time to send Mr. Bud Walker a letter. What do you say?”
“You sure about this?” Violet said.
“His actions can’t go unattended.”
In her book, liars were the lowest sort of person. People came up with excuses and reasons for lying, but it all boiled down to one thing. Lack of guts. People who told big lies were missing courage to tell the truth. Either that or they had an empty conscience. But a small part of Violet felt for Bud. Poor man believed he was going to die in the war and Hawaii was his last bus stop in life. He had voiced it on more than one occasion.
“What’s the game plan?” Violet asked.
Jean rubbed her stomach. “Hmm. I think I’ve come down with a bad case of pregnancy. Maybe that, and I am on my way to Texas with all my belongings?”
“What about his wife?”
“She’s probably suffered enough. I’m just going to address the letter to Bud and seal it.”
They used scratch paper first. Violet threw out ideas and Jean scribbled them down. Jean laughed and then she cried, leaving blotches of tears on the paper. She whispered, “I thought I loved him.”
“Listen, Honey Jean. Love happens, and once it turns on, you can’t just turn it off. The way he wooed you, you didn’t stand a chance,” Violet said.
“Tell me, did you ever suspect he was married?”
“Lord, no. Not a once. But that’s the thing. Us trusting folk just have to go on trusting.”
Island of Sweet Pies and Soldiers Page 18
