The other thing I hear is that they are spraying germs all over everyone. Germs that make you bleed from your nose and choke to death. It’s called the plague, like the one we have here from the rats, and a few other names I can’t pronounce. That’s why they drill us so often. So we stay germ-free.
I try not to think about it.
I wanted to stay out of Jean and Zach’s business, so I decided I would make lunch for all of us. That way, we could get to town sooner. Midway through spreading mayonnaise on the bread, I heard a clucking at the door and a loud feather flapping, then a bang. I almost jumped out of my skin, remembering that Brownie was out. If we don’t put her in the cage, she always shows up on the lanai for lunch.
“Roscoe, no!” Zach was already at the door, which now had a big rip in the screen. Brownie looked down from the rafters, huddled and ca-cacking.
I was frantic. “Did he hurt her?”
“Good thing she can still fly, or we’d be eating barbecue chicken for dinner,” Zach said.
My frown said it all.
“Zach, that’s a terrible thing to say. Ella, Brownie just had a scare,” Jean said.
“Sorry, and I’ll fix that screen for you right away,” he said.
I didn’t blame Roscoe, though, since he was a lion and that’s what cats do. Eat birds. If they can. And I started to wonder about how weird and sad the world is. Why do animals have to kill other animals? Why do people have to kill other people? Mama says people who kill are broken, and I believe that. At least the animals use each other for eating.
After we put Brownie away, I finished assembling lunch. Mama’s apron was just asking to be worn, so I put that on, and stacked the bread high with sliced ham, cold pickles, tomato, lettuce and onion. Zach was so skinny, I pictured him turning into a skeleton out in the jungle. Maybe this would help.
I marched out with their plates and set them on the coffee table, like a real waitress at a diner.
“Ella, are you wearing lipstick?” Jean asked.
I could feel my face heating up. Smoothing down my apron, I backed away and then turned and ran into the kitchen. My cheeks ached like someone had put one of those fireplace puffers in my mouth and started squeezing. Why had I thought they might not notice? Why did I care?
“Come back out here, Ella. We don’t bite,” Jean said.
I wanted to but my feet stuck to the linoleum. A moment later Jean walked in. She bent down and looked me in the eyes. “I used to play dress-up, too. All girls do. It’s nothing to be ashamed of. In fact, it’s the most natural thing in the world.”
I swallowed hard and nodded at her.
Something about the soldiers made me want to be older. To have them notice me like they noticed Mama and Jean. It was the first time in a long time I had wanted to be seen, and I got to thinking. Life was trying its hardest to return back to normal. Still, there was a fatherless pit deep inside my stomach. Maybe that was the point. So I wouldn’t forget him. Ever.
Mainly, though, I wondered how I could live the rest of my life knowing what I know.
Chapter Twenty-Nine
Violet
Looking a thousand feet down to the valley floor, Violet felt dizzy. Someone was once crazy enough to carve a road into the impossible cliffs of Waipio, and this was her first ride down in a car. Riding mules posed problems, too. Namely, not being able to walk for days afterward. But at least she hadn’t had to worry about the brakes going out.
“It might have been better to blindfold me,” she said.
“And have you miss this view? No way.”
Parker had been tight-lipped about his mission. Only that they would be driving into the valley. Which turned her insides to one big mass of jelly. She hated heights almost as much as she hated war. Parker climbed out to fiddle with the wheels. After changing the jeep into four-wheel drive, he jumped back in. “Get ready for the most beautiful ride of your life. If you can stomach it.”
In fact, her stomach climbed into her throat as they descended. Parker glanced over at her.
“Keep your eyes on the road, for heaven’s sake,” she insisted.
“You planning on taking that door handle with you?” he said.
Violet realized she had it in a vise grip.
In the lowest of low gears, the jeep hacked and coughed down the hill. “The face can’t lie,” he yelled.
“I’m prepared to jump if I have to.”
In the end, she almost forgot about her apprehension and found herself grinning madly. A black-sand beach spanned the entire mouth, meeting with a gray and forbidding sea. Skies of the same color cast everything in a silver glow. In the middle of it all, a wide river split the valley. Rather than turning toward the beach, he veered upstream.
“Are you planning on telling me what we’re doing yet?”
He pulled the jeep alongside the riverbank and killed the engine. “We have two missions today. One is to fetch a load of that Hawaiian firewater for the boys. And don’t ask me to pronounce the name.”
“Okolehao.”
He nodded. “Since news of our departure circulated, tensions are high. I figured a little speakeasy in the camp might boost morale.”
Waimea was a dry town, which was why the soldiers all swarmed to Honoka’a, Hawi and Hilo on their off days.
“They’ll let you do that?”
He looked away, toward the slow-moving water and a hunched gray heron on the far side. “I’m not asking.”
Violet only knew of one man who sold okolehao in the valley. “Wait—don’t tell me we’re going to Bernard Lalamilo’s place.”
“That’s the one.”
A lump formed in her throat. “That may not be a good idea.”
“Why not?”
“For one, I’m told he hates haole people. And second, his name came up in regards to Herman.”
Parker looked concerned. “You mean as a suspect?”
She nodded. “A man I spoke to at the plantation said he always carries a gun and is happy to shoot at anyone who happens by. If you catch him on the wrong day, you could end up facedown in the river behind his house. For some reason, he thought Herman had been down there that day.”
“But he was never arrested?”
“Souza talked to him, but there was no evidence and no real motive and no witnesses. And the man swore that he liked Herman. So it dead-ended.”
“Well, I trust the guy who sent me down here. Says the old man is more bark than bite.”
Violet didn’t feel good about meeting this Lalamilo character and was about to suggest they turn around when Parker added, “My other reason for coming is purely selfish. I want to see that double waterfall in the back of the valley before we leave. Don’t ask me how to say the name, either.”
She tried not to think. But, of course, that only increased the speed of her thoughts. That slow way that he drew out his words. The shade of his burnished skin. Eyes the same gray as the sky. In the end, she decided to give him this day.
“You’re not selfish. You’re honest.”
They skirted the bottom of the cliff on the merest outline of a road. As they continued back, they crossed several shallow streams. There were no bridges. Parker drove with conviction, seemingly sure of where he was going. Violet kept her mouth shut and enjoyed the scenery. Moisture clung to every available surface—mossy trunks of kukui nut trees, undersides of the ti leaves, and lava rock. A place that swallowed houses and cars. The only people they saw were hunched over in the taro fields, knee-deep in water. Everyone waved.
At the next junction, instead of crossing, Parker turned into the stream and continued driving.
“Say, generally we drive on roads, not streams,” she said.
“This is really a road disguised as a stream,” he said.
Now that he mentioned it, Herman had said something of
the same sort after fetching a batch of okolehao years back. The lengths that men would go to for a little alcohol. Or, in this case, salvation.
When they pulled out of the stream road and onto a grassy patch, an old shack appeared off to the side. With a rusted tin roof and vines crawling through the cracked windows, it looked uninhabited. On closer inspection, Violet spotted boots at the front door, a stalk of bananas hanging from the eaves and a fat pig tied to a tree. Clouds of mosquitoes swarmed around her head as soon as they stepped out. A distinctly rotten smell filled the air.
“Hello?” Parker called.
Only the pig answered, with a grunt. They poked around and waited for Bernard to appear, but he didn’t come.
“We can talk to Lalamilo after the falls. I guess we leave the jeep here and hope it’s in once piece when we get back. You going to wear that?” Parker looked her up and down.
She had on a casual beach dress. “If someone had told me what we’d be doing, I might have dressed differently. I have my swimsuit underneath.”
He smiled. “Tell you what. I brought an extra set of utilities, small ones, so you don’t have to soil your dress.”
She wouldn’t be caught dead in marine utilities and would suffer mud and mosquitoes if she must. It was an old dress, anyway. “I’m fine.”
“Suit yourself.”
It turned out the going was easier barefoot, and they followed a leaf-padded pathway. Every so often they had to rock-hop across the stream. Picking the right boulder proved harder than it looked, and more than once, Parker had to hold her up. His arm span was as nearly as wide as the water.
About twenty minutes in, they reached a pool with steep walls on both sides. “We swim across this one,” he said.
“And then what?”
“I guess we scale up the other side.”
She dipped a toe in. The water sent a chill across her skin. Once wet, it would be hard to warm up. She looked toward the thin slice of sky, hoping for any sign of blue, but none showed. In the midst of a conference with herself on whether to say something, Parker began stripping down. His body was leaner than last time she’d seen him shirtless. With his backpack balanced on his head, he swam across. Violet followed, keeping her feet close to the surface in order to avoid the pinchers of prawns or crayfish or whatever else might be hiding in the murk.
“Have you heard the legend of these falls?” he asked, once on the other side.
For some reason, his question gave her the jitters. “No.”
“They tell me it was named for a young woman who vowed to never be separated from her lover, so she turned herself into a waterfall, and he ended up becoming the boulder that sits at the bottom.”
“I suppose it helps to be part God when you can’t have what you want. Anyway, where did you hear this?” Violet said.
“We have a local boy in our camp, the guy who told me about the okolehao. He’s a wealth of insider information,” he said.
At the far side, he pulled her from the water and they continued on. The contours of his muscled back made for good scenery. Then from nowhere, tears sprang up. What kind of an impossible situation had she gotten herself into? Wedged somewhere between a promise to Herman and the impossible hope that he might still be alive, and her own yearning. If only she could turn Parker into a boulder for the time being, maybe life would solve itself.
The farther they went, the narrower the valley. Twittering birds, bamboo and the echo of their voices bounced from wall to wall. As they drew close to the waterfall, its roar drowned out all sound.
They both stood with necks craned.
Parker whistled. “Would you get a load of that?”
The immensity threatened to crack her wide open. “Makes you feel small.”
One stray sunbeam lit up the face of the falling water for a moment, and then disappeared. The pond was at least a stone’s throw across, turquoise in the middle and deep green closer to the sides. Mossy vertical cliffs closed in around them, blocking out most of the sky.
“Humbling, isn’t it? If you ask me, man is a little too self-important for his own good. Look how the spray has carved the rock out behind the waterfall. Now, that takes patience,” Parker said.
“I can see why they made a legend about it.”
Even standing on the boulders at the far end, a fine spray misted them. Parker found a flat rock and laid out a moth-eaten towel. He looked almost ashamed. “Sorry, it was all I could find.”
He offered her a canteen while he searched through his backpack for their lunch. He’d offered to bring slop from the mess hall, but she insisted on packing a picnic. On such short notice, she’d resorted to Spam sandwiches, leftover red potato salad and chocolate honeycomb pie. Parker had not come empty-handed, and pulled out boiled peanuts and a bag of broken Saloon Pilot crackers.
Just as Violet was about to take her first bite, a foot-long red centipede crawled up the rock and over her foot. She shot into the air, causing Parker to yell and fall back. It took all her might to cling to her sandwich. After her heartbeat returned to normal, they looked at each other and burst out laughing so hard her face hurt.
“I’d rather face the whole Japanese army than one of those,” he said.
“You and me both.”
Parker swallowed his first sandwich in the same time she’d finished one bite. Fortunately, she’d made him two. They ate in an easy silence. Maybe it was the waterfall and the smell of wet leaves, or the undeniable closeness of the sky. The valley was weaving a spell.
“Can I ask you something?” he finally said.
“Anything.”
“If things had been different—your husband, the war—would I have stood a chance?” His voice and face looked a new kind of vulnerable.
“Oh, Parker, do you really need to ask?”
“I hadn’t planned to, but all of a sudden, everything has a new urgency. And sitting with you in a place like heaven, it’s taking every ounce of willpower not to reach over and kiss you.”
Yes. The answer was there on her tongue’s tip.
Rain began to fall at the same time the willpower he’d just spoken of ran dry. He leaned forward slowly. First he touched his nose to hers with eyes open. Then he kissed her. In spite of herself, she kissed back. His mouth was hot, his breath tangy. Right away, her lips burned. His hand touched her neck and ran down her back, leaving patches of heat on her skin. Eventually he pulled back.
“Damn,” he said, wiping his mouth.
“Maybe this isn’t a good idea.” Not that she really wanted to stop, but a panicky flutter had started up in her chest.
By now, they were both half drenched in rain. Violet was drunk from the heady combination of water and clouds and Parker.
“You’re right. That was the worst kiss of my life.” A stupid grin spread over his face.
She laughed. “Is that so?”
Without answering, he moved in fast. While the first kiss had been tender, this was desire and need and hunger all wrapped up in one. He pressed into her hip and ran a finger along her jaw. So this was how it felt to want something so urgently that you knew you shouldn’t have. Or couldn’t have.
By now, the rain wheelbarrowed down. A layer of black stood out behind the white puffy clouds.
“We better get out of here,” he said.
Violet had lived in Hawaii long enough to know about flash floods. He was right. They scooped the towel and food into the backpack. Everything weighed twice as much.
When they stood, he cupped her chin. “I apologize for my behavior. I’ll try to keep a handle on myself from now on. Let’s go!”
She had no time to answer.
Stones they crossed on earlier were now submerged and the stream picked up speed. At each bend, there were fewer and fewer rocks to cross. The first clap of thunder split the sky when they reached the swimming pond.
Even with the waterline two feet higher, they had no choice but to plunge in.
Parker yelled through the downpour. “I think from here on out we hang to the left and try to stay on higher ground. No more stream crossing.”
She liked his thinking. “You lead.”
They scaled a steep bank, pulling themselves up with ti stalks. There was no trail and the mud squished through her toes like pudding. Every so often a flash of lightning lit the dark underside of the forest. Violet counted the seconds until the thunder. Even with her hands over her ears, it deafened.
Unlike Herman, Parker seemed to have a good sense of direction. In fact, this situation was probably nothing to him, with all that time spent training in these very conditions. He turned every so often to offer a hand. Below, the stream roared.
Despite all of this, Violet could only think of one thing. The kiss.
Chapter Thirty
Violet
When they finally reached Bernard Lalamilo’s house, their real reason for being there in the first place, nothing looked the same. Their stream road was now a roiling mass of water and the yard had shrunk to half the size. A light shone in the window. The old man was home. Only when Parker tore off ahead did she notice the jeep stood up to the grille in water.
“Shithouse!” he yelled as he jumped in. He turned on the engine and pumped the gas pedal but it sputtered and died. Again and again.
Violet watched, feeling saturated. She was about to ask if she should go to the door when a shot rang out. Without thinking, she dived behind the nearest banana tree, biting her lip in the process.
“Who goes there?” a deep voice called out.
Daring to look out between two fat stalks, she saw a dark old Hawaiian man standing next to the house with a shotgun leveled at the jeep.
Parker raised his hands. “Don’t shoot! Gizmo Santos sent us. From Camp Tarawa.”
Island of Sweet Pies and Soldiers Page 20
