Moloka'i

by Alan Brennert

  They weren’t alone for long. Within half an hour David and his girlfriend Helen were at her door, inviting her to supper; she gratefully turned the offer around and insisted on making dinner for them, losing herself in the busy routine of cooking. Hokea showed up not long after and Rachel welcomed him too; soon she found herself eating among friends, grateful for their concern and their aloha. But there was still a bottomless hole inside her, and she began to think that there always would be.

  That night she fell asleep only after much difficulty, with Hku draped across her legs like a comforter.

  At two in the morning she suddenly woke, a shaft of moonlight lighting her bedroom like a beacon. She got up; went to the window; looked out at the house next door, its rolled shades exposing empty rooms that filled her with sudden rage. On impulse she pulled on a bathrobe, hurried out of the house and up the steps to Crossen’s. She pushed open the unlocked door. The living room smelled of stale beer and cigarettes; broken glass littered the floor. Among the glass splinters were red-brown spatters from Felicia’s injuries, but as Rachel turned she saw what she feared most, a dark red bloodstain on the doorjamb. Her husband’s blood. The blood of his life, of her life, dried and wasted. She felt her jaws clench and suddenly she was hurrying back to her cottage, turning on an outside faucet, dragging a quickly uncoiling garden hose back to Crossen’s house in time for the rush of water out the nozzle. She aimed the hard spray at the door, at the jamb, at the floor, blasting away at Kenji’s blood, a stream of water running red through the crack between door and lnai; and when that ugly stain had been erased from the doorjamb she turned the hose on the living room floor, washing away Felicia’s blood, the splintered glass, purging all traces of hate and madness from this house. When the water finally ran clear and the wounds on the wood had disappeared, she calmly shut the front door, took the hose back to her yard, turned off the faucet, and went back to bed; and slept soundly, if not peacefully, the rest of the night.

  U

  nder martial law, justice in Hawai'i was swift if not always sure. Crimes for which the punishment did not exceed five years in prison were tried in military provost courts by a single judge advocate, often decided within five minutes—and that decision was usually “guilty.” More serious felonies were tried by military commissions, and the members of one such commission arrived in Kalaupapa within days of Crossen’s arrest and imprisonment. Major Ballard, the trial judge advocate (TJA) prosecuting the case, interviewed Rachel promptly and thoroughly; he was sympathetic to Rachel’s loss and kept her abreast of the case’s progress. Crossen was arraigned on, among other charges, two counts of assault with intent to commit bodily harm, against Felicia and Rachel, and one count of manslaughter in Kenji’s death. Already Rachel was worried: she had assumed Crossen would be charged with murder. She didn’t like the way this was starting.

  The procedure of a trial before a military commission followed that of a special court-martial, and under those rules Rachel, as a witness, could hear neither the opening statement nor the testimony of other witnesses, at least not until her own testimony was concluded. She could only watch as the five commission members—a colonel, a major, and three lieutenant colonels—entered Kalaupapa’s tiny courthouse alongside Major Ballard and Crossen’s defense advocate. She waited outside closed doors as Ballard gave his opening statement, and when the courtroom doors opened an MP ushered in the constable who had arrested Crossen. His testimony was short. Felicia was next, and she was inside for close to an hour. Rachel knew what she must have been testifying to—Crossen’s many assaults on her, the broken ribs and bruised kidney she suffered in the last attack and how Dr. Sloan told her that any further trauma might have resulted in uncontrolled hemorrhaging and death. It frustrated Rachel that she couldn’t be in the courtroom observing the fate of the man who killed her husband, but soon enough it was her turn to enter.

  A subdued Crossen sat at the defendant’s table with his TJA, a white patch over his blind eye and the other scrupulously avoiding Rachel’s gaze as she headed toward the bench. If she was hoping to see him looking nervous and afraid, she was disappointed: he seemed calm, even confident. And as Rachel looked around at the room filled with Army and Navy uniforms, her stomach churned with the realization that Crossen, though discharged, was still among friends here. How eager, she wondered, would they be to convict one of their own?

  She put her fears aside as Major Ballard smoothly led her into her testimony. She recounted the many instances she and Kenji had called the police over Crossen’s disturbances, then how they’d been awakened last Thursday night by Crossen’s cursing and Felicia’s cries, which sent them to the house next door. “And when your husband intervened in the defendant’s assault on Miss Hernandez,” Ballard asked, “what did you hear the defendant say?”

  “He said, ‘You Japs are good at sneak attacks.’ ”

  “And had you heard other racial epithets from him previous to that?”

  “Yes. Many times.”

  “So even before this night you suspected that the accused harbored hostility toward your husband?”

  Crossen’s TJA objected. “Colonel, we’re at war with Imperial Japan. You’d be hard-pressed to find someone who hasn’t spoken such epithets.”

  “Sustained,” said the colonel serving as president of the commission. Rachel was shocked, and silently indignant. Sustained? This man’s bigotry and hate is sustained? She tried not to show her anger as they went through the rest of her direct testimony; then Ballard thanked her, reserved the right to redirect, and handed her over to the defense.

  Crossen’s TJA began, “So it’s your testimony, Mrs. Utagawa, that you and your husband entered the accused’s home without permission?”

  “We were responding,” Rachel said evenly, “to a woman’s screams.”

  “Couldn’t you have called the police?”

  “We’d tried that.”

  “So when legal remedies failed you, you entered his home illegally, and your husband provoked Mr. Crossen with a physical attack?”

  “It looked as if Mr. Crossen was already provoked when we got there.”

  “Please answer yes or no, Mrs. Utagawa. Did your husband initiate the conflict with the defendant?”

  Fuming, Rachel replied, “Yes.”

  “And then you yourself assaulted Mr. Crossen, didn’t you—deliberately gouging out his left eye?”

  “I certainly did! He was trying to kill my husband.”

  The TJA objected to this speculation on his client’s intent and the colonel sustained it. “Please limit yourself to what you know, Mrs. Utagawa,” he directed Rachel.

  “You deliberately gouged the defendant’s eye, hoping to inflict serious injury on him, did you not?”

  “Hell yes.”

  “And when your husband fell and struck the doorjamb—wasn’t that just an accident?”

  “He didn’t just stumble into it,” Rachel said, raising her voice. “Mr. Crossen hit him and he fell.”

  “But the defendant could hardly have foreseen that, could he? Mr. Utagawa struck the door accidentally?”

  Rachel snapped, “Accidentally while the defendant was trying to beat him to death!” This brought another, sterner admonition from the colonel.

  Both cross-examination and redirect were long and wearying, and as Rachel left the stand she began to see where this was going. It was Kenji who was being painted as the criminal, not the man who had killed him. She was blindingly angry, but what else could she have expected?

  At Ballard’s request Rachel was permitted to stay for the remainder of the proceeding, with the stipulation that she would not be called back for rebuttal testimony that could be tainted by her observation. Ballard didn’t think they’d need her anymore anyway—or did he just not care?

  The defense entered into evidence several affidavits by Crossen’s superiors on the Nevada, all testifying to his generally fine service record, but called only one witness: Crossen himself. The colonel advised
him that he was under no obligation to testify, and Crossen nodded. “Yes sir, I know. But I want to.”

  Quietly chagrined on the stand, Crossen admitted that he’d been drinking that night. “I had one too many, I admit that. And something Felicia said got me going. It was wrong, and I’m not proud of what I did to her; but it wasn’t really me, it was the liquor. I don’t hold my liquor well. If that’s a crime then I’m guilty of it.”

  Rachel seethed at his politeness, his sobriety.

  His TJA said, “And when Mr. Utagawa broke into your house and struck you—”

  “I defended myself.”

  “And when Mrs. Utagawa attacked you?”

  “I saw red. Last thing I ever did see out of that eye.”

  “Mr. Crossen, did you intend to kill Mr. Utagawa?”

  Crossen shook his head emphatically. “No sir, I did not. He broke into my home, threw a punch at me—I fought back. I guess one of my punches sent Mr. Utagawa into the doorjamb, but I didn’t see it—his wife half-blinded me, I couldn’t hardly see what I was doing.”

  “So you didn’t plan it that way?”

  “No sir; it was an accident. I regret that it happened, but I did not intend to kill Mr. Utagawa.”

  When it was his turn to cross-examine, Major Ballard asked, “Mr. Crossen, do you hate the Chinese?”

  Crossen’s TJA immediately objected, but Ballard pointed out that this question concerned not the Japanese, as was previously ruled on, but another Asiatic race with which America was not at war. The colonel overruled the objection and instructed Crossen to answer the question.

  “No sir,” Crossen replied. “I don’t hate nobody.”

  “Then why did you assault a Chinese prostitute in Honolulu on June 7th of 1940?”

  Crossen flushed red. “That was a personal matter. And again, I’d had a little too much to drink.”

  “The assault wasn’t racially motivated?”

  “No.”

  “You just like to beat up women.”

  Predictably Crossen’s TJA cried, “Objection.”

  The colonel sighed and sustained it.

  “You seem to be an angry man, Mr. Crossen,” Ballard noted.

  Crossen shook his head. “That’s not true.”

  “You’re not angry because of what’s happened to you?”

  “No,” Crossen said.

  “Didn’t you once tell Mr. Brady that you—quote—should’ve been on the deck of the Nevada instead of in this goddamn shithole settlement—unquote?”

  Crossen looked at him a long moment, and when he finally spoke his tone lost its polite affectation; for the first time a bitter melancholy seeped through.

  “Yes sir,” he said quietly. “I should’ve died on the Nevada when the Japs bombed her. It would’ve been a mercy.”

  For an instant Rachel glimpsed the young sailor who’d sat with her on the heights of Kauhak, and she found it harder to hate him. For an instant.

  “Nothing further,” Ballard said.

  In his closing argument Crossen’s TJA argued that the considerable amount of alcohol his client had consumed that night had compromised his judgment, and that Kenji’s provocation had precipitated “a sudden heat of passion” that led to “the terrible accident that claimed Mr. Utagawa’s life.” He stressed again Private Crossen’s exemplary service record, omitting mention of the attack on the Chinese prostitute.

  Ballard delivered a clear and concise argument against Crossen, but Rachel was only half-listening; all the talk about Crossen’s service record had convinced her that this was going to be a whitewash, that the United States armed forces were not going to come down hard on one of their own, much less one who had had the tragic luck to be infected with this disease of savages and sent here. The court adjourned for the five members of the commission to consider the verdict, and Rachel was not surprised when they returned after less than an hour’s deliberation.

  The president of the commission asked Major Ballard, “Have you any evidence of previous convictions?”

  Ballard presented the court with the record concerning the attack on the Chinese prostitute: Crossen had not been tried and convicted for the assault, merely disciplined. Then to Rachel’s puzzlement the commission promptly adjourned again and closed the courtroom.

  On their way out Ballard threw her a small smile.

  Not long afterward the courtroom was opened again and it was announced that “all the members present concurring,” Gabriel Tyler Crossen was hereby found guilty on one count of unlawful possession of alcohol; one count of disturbing the quiet of the night; two counts of assault with intent to commit bodily harm; and one count of manslaughter.

  Rachel’s heart leaped at the pronouncement, even more so when the colonel went on to specify the sentences: six months apiece for alcohol possession and disturbance of the peace, ten years’ imprisonment in the assault on Felicia, five years in the assault on Rachel, and twenty years in the death of Kenji Utagawa.

  Crossen sat there like a bird shot out of the sky.

  It was a grand total of thirty-five years imprisonment for Crossen—but imprisonment where? No prison on O'ahu would have, could have, taken him; and so Gabriel Crossen was sentenced to serve his term in Kalaupapa. Rachel would have preferred hard labor on a chain gang but the humiliation she saw in Crossen’s face when the commission rendered its verdict—he was now a leper and a felon—gave her some sweet, if scant, satisfaction.

  Unfortunately the Kalaupapa jail was not built or provisioned for long-term incarceration, and to Rachel’s dismay it was decided that the prisoner could serve his sentence in a room in the Bay View Home in what was already, after all, forcible confinement. Rachel was appalled. It was almost as though nothing had happened—as if this man had murdered her husband and as punishment they had merely given him another room—with an oceanfront view!

  But as she returned to the emptiness of her home she came to realize that the simple fact was this: Kenji was dead, and no degree of justice, no manner of incarceration, could bring him back.

  In the end Rachel merely avoided the intersection of Puani Street and Damien Road, where Bay View Home perched on a bluff overlooking the shoreline. And even as she had to suffer the presence of her hated enemy, Crossen, in her midst, the enemy inside her launched a surprise attack.

  _______

  W

  artime life in Kalaupapa was not too removed from its peacetime existence. Many residents already grew vegetables for their own consumption and now these tiny plots of land were proudly declared “victory gardens.” Poultry and hog raising increased to supplement occasional shortages of meat from Honolulu. Fresh milk was a memory—only powdered was available—and gasoline was rationed here as it was throughout Hawai'i. The only real hardship was the suspension of steamer service: sampans now carried all supplies and mail to Kalaupapa, but rough seas often forced the small Chinese skiffs to anchor at Kaunakakai instead. From there the cargo had to be sent down the pali trail, arriving days later. Mail and newspapers took much longer to reach the settlement’s residents, isolating them more than they had been in many years.

  By the end of 1943, as the world outside was sundered by war, Rachel found her body ravaged by a newly resurgent ma'i pk—Haleola would have said “emboldened.” After years of feasting merely on nerves, bacillus leprae now began making a meal of her flesh as well. Skin that had been blemish-free but for a few florid patches of skin now erupted in ugly purple bruises. Dr. Sloan explained that these were a result of the bacillus tearing down the walls of tiny blood vessels in her skin; as the tissues broke down, blood congested in purple welts. And because the blood was poorly circulated, the ulcers wouldn’t heal. “I thought the bug only liked to eat my nerves,” Rachel said.

  “I’m afraid its appetites have changed. Perhaps your resistance has been lowered by stress, or perhaps this is simply the course the disease would have taken in any event, but . . . it’s clearly becoming more lepromatous in nature. I’m sorry to say it
does happen.”

  Over the next twelve months Rachel’s body began to resemble, more and more, those of the friends and family she had lost over the years. Her skin became lax, losing much of its collagen substrate; hair follicles were destroyed in the process and her eyebrows fell out. Leilani in similar straits had simply sketched in a new pair with an eyebrow pencil, so now Rachel did the same, giving herself Carole Lombard’s brows one day and Katharine Hepburn’s the next. When her eyelashes were the next to go, she ordered false ones from a beauty supply store in Honolulu, but never had the nerve to wear them.

  The bacillus, summering in the cooler regions of her body, settled in the air-cooled tissues of her nasal passages, which swelled as if from a bad cold—a cold that never went away. Rachel found it increasingly difficult and painful to breathe through her nose, but when she breathed through her mouth the increased intake of air cooled her throat, and the bug prospered there as well. Her voice became chronically hoarse; ulcers on her tonsils had to be removed.

  She buried Hku in the spring of ’45, as she had so many other souls she had loved, even as the ulcers spread from her arms and legs to her chest and face. Sister Catherine insisted on dressing Rachel’s sores herself. Both women had seen hundreds of cases like this, but now it was happening to Rachel and in a way it was harder on Catherine than it was on her patient. Rachel had been the beautiful little girl who had grown up and never stopped being beautiful: in a garden of misery she was the rare bud that flowered, bloomed. Catherine now spent hours cleaning Rachel’s sores, applying fresh bandages, chatting away as she’d done with so many others over the years—and then upon returning to her convent room she would collapse into tears, as she hadn’t since her earliest days at Kalaupapa.