Riptide

by Paul Levine

  Lassiter laughed again, a wild laugh, and Keaka studied him silently. Lassiter looked him square in the eyes. “What’s the matter, King Cantaloupe, do you find this a puzzlement?”

  And then Jake Lassiter began singing. And dancing. Hands on hips, feet splayed east and west, he pranced around the clearing and belted it out, an old show tune filling the jungle half an octave off-key, Lassiter describing the King’s “confusion in conclusions he concluded long ago.”

  “What about it, Keaka?” he asked when he was done warbling. “Will you fight to prove what you do not know is so?”

  Keaka self-consciously took his hands off his hips. It was working, Lassiter thought, a distraction from what Keaka wanted, which was for him to grovel and beg for his life. Forget it, Lassiter thought, he would die first. Then a rueful smile. Yes, that’s exactly what he would do. But for now he was onstage in the clearing, a space about the size of the area between the bench and the bar. He had performed there before for judges and juries. Now Keaka was the court of last resort, and Lassiter was acting for his life.

  Lila knew what was happening, was laughing and applauding. Lee Hu looked confused, and Keaka was sullen.

  Lassiter kept up the patter. “What’s the matter, Keaka, don’t you like Rodgers and Hammerstein? Too bad, they’re my favorites. When I was in college, I played Jud Fry in Oklahoma! Hey, you’d be good in that role, it’s the villain, but I guess you’re not into Americana. Wish I could remember the last verse of the king of Siam’s song, maybe you could join in, something about doing his best to live just one more day.”

  “Shut up, haole!” Keaka barked. For the first time his eyes betrayed doubt, fear that he was the butt of some joke.

  “No, I’m going to keep talking. And you can shoot me if you like. If that’s what great warriors do — strike down shivering, unarmed men. Will that impress your wahines?”

  Keaka crossed his arms in front of his chest to make the biceps stand out and said, “You deserve to die. You miserable haoles stole our land and diseased our women and — “

  “Don’t look at me,” Lassiter said with a shrug, interrupting the diatribe. “I don’t even own a condo and my urologist will testify I’ve never had crotch rot.”

  Keaka raised his voice. “You made kala, money, your god. You are descended from pigs and goats — “

  “There you go again,” Lassiter said, “insulting my ancestry. Reminds me of a trash-talking tackle from the Jets. Yo momma this, yo momma that.”

  Lila Summers was laughing again, signaling Lassiter that this was the right approach: show no fear, mock the king. Lassiter wondered how long he could keep this up, when would Keaka end it with a short burst from the Uzi?

  “Whadaya going to do, Keaka, kill me? I can see the headline, JUNGLE MUSICAL CLOSES; ENRAGED CRITIC KILLS STAR.”

  “Haole, you think you are so funny.” Keaka’s eyes were black slits. “Do you want to die laughing?”

  “Sure, laughing or screwing,” Lassiter said, and Lila roared. “A dying man gets one last wish and Lila knows what mine would be. You don’t have any red satin sheets in your tepee there, do you, chief?” It was going so well Lassiter planned to come back in another life as a stand-up comic.

  Keaka scowled. “Lila, you like the haole‘s jokes, maybe you’d like to die with him.”

  “If that’s what you want, it’s your gun,” Lila Summers said without a trace of fear.

  Turning to Lee Hu, Keaka said, “The slut is only half a woman. She has no soul, so she cannot reach climax. Li’a, Goddess of Desire, hah. She is without desire. She is dead inside.”

  “Hey, pal,” Lassiter heard himself saying, “if you can’t cut it in the sack, don’t blame her. When we played hide the sausage in Bimini, I had her lit up like a slot machine hitting jackpot. The birds fell from the trees and the fishes leapt from the sea. I’ll tell you, Keaka old buddy, when that woman comes, she registers a ten on the Richter scale, shock waves all the way to Pasadena.”

  Lassiter was running out of tales, but he didn’t want to stop. Somehow, he thought that Keaka wouldn’t shoot a babbling man. “I’m not one to kiss and tell, but that’s the way it is. And from what I hear, you’re just a little quick on the trigger. Slow down. You’ll enjoy the scenery more.”

  Lila picked up the cue. “Keaka always thought it was my fault that he couldn’t satisfy me. Jake, you’re the most exquisite lover a woman could ever want. In Bimini, I thought I would die from the pleasure. What do the French call it… petit mal, the little death.”

  “Liars!” Keaka fumed, but his voice exposed doubt, and his manhood dropped a bit. Lassiter decided against making a crack about that. It was a fine line he was walking — one insult too many or too deep and the Hawaiian’s confusion could turn to rage. But it was working, Keaka’s mind occupied, thinking of the shame of the haole unlocking the mystery of his wahine, while his warrior’s body betrayed him.

  Jake Lassiter used the time to size up the situation. As long as Keaka had the gun, there would be no chance. Even unarmed, Keaka would be the odds-on favorite to retain his title as king of the jungle. When’s the last time he had even hit anybody, Lassiter tried to remember, figuring the grief-stricken sergeant in a carpeted conference room didn’t count. Then there was the bearded guy in the bar, big guy with a big mouth. Should have figured he was a cop, needed a friendly judge to quash the assault charge. And how many years since he had hit a blocking sled? Latest physical contact was shoving around a paunchy bank lawyer, not worth any points here. Still, hand-to-hand was his only chance.

  “C’mon, Keaka. Drop the gun. You’re a tough guy. Show the ladies how tough, just you and me, mano a mano, like in the swamp in Miami.”

  Keaka looked puzzled. “The swamp?”

  “He was my friend. Berto.”

  A look of confusion gave way to recognition. Keaka smiled a cruel grin. “The Cuban in the swamp.”

  “That’s right, tough guy. Why don’t you try to strangle me like you did him?”

  Keaka lowered the gun barrel to think about it. Finally he laughed and said, “You haoles haven’t gotten any smarter in two centuries.”

  Lassiter didn’t know what that meant, but no matter because he was busy measuring distances. Keaka stood fifteen feet in front of him. Lila had moved, a step at a time, closer to Keaka, almost in the line of fire. What was she doing? Did she think he wouldn’t shoot her? Was she trying to give Jake a chance to make a break into the jungle? Keaka still held the Uzi lightly by the clip, the shoulder strap carrying most of the weight. Lassiter wondered how long it would take — what millisecond of time — for the great athlete to turn the barrel toward him and squeeze off a rapid burst. And how long would Lassiter need to take two steps forward and dive at Keaka, knocking him into the fire? Too long. Keaka would catch him in midleap with a fusillade through the chest.

  Lassiter saw it then. How could he have missed it? Six feet away from Keaka was a machete jammed into the exposed stump of a banana tree, handle angled up, blade glowing orange in the light from the fire. He could dive for it, the stump would give some protection. If only Lila would take one more step toward Keaka, he could leap behind her, two pass receivers on a crossing pattern. Okay, then what? Hit the ground and roll, yank it free from the stump — young Arthur about to be king — then come up swinging.

  Keaka glared at him. “Are you ready to die, haole?”

  “Not till I answer the pressing questions of our time. In the song Moon River, who the hell is ‘my huckleberry friend?’”

  Can I do it? Is he too quick for me?

  “And if a train leaves Chicago heading west at eighty miles an hour, and another leaves Los Angeles heading east at ninety miles an hour, which one gets to Omaha first, and why not stop in Kansas City, instead?”

  “Are you through?” Keaka asked.

  “No, I’d like to consider the question of how the iguana evolved over several million years on the Galapagos Islands when the islands themselves are only two
million years old.”

  No choice in the matter. Die either way, at least there’s a chance if…

  “I am going to kill you now,” Keaka said, calmly.

  “Some geologists think there are older islands that disappeared into the sea, and the animals drifted to the Galapagos on rafts of driftwood and seaweed …”

  Waiting for the moment, a diversion.

  “Isn’t that something?” Lassiter continued. “Just like your ancestors paddling canoes from Club Med or wherever to Hawaii.”

  “You will suffer pain such as you have never known.”

  Lassiter tried to dry his palm on his trunks but they were still wet. His feet ached from the cuts and his legs were concrete pillars. And Keaka was talking again. “Lila, you have offended me and you should be punished. I could let you stay with Lee Hu and me, and both of you could service me. Or you can die. The choice is yours.”

  Lassiter worked up a laugh. “Isn’t there a third choice. Like a week in Philadelphia?”

  Out of the corner of his eye, Lassiter saw the machete blade. Visualized it now. Two huge steps, the dive, the roll, the grab.

  Keaka glared at him. “I am talking to the wahine. In a moment, I will deal with you, haole.”

  “Take your time,” Lassiter said. “I charge by the hour, and my next lunatic doesn’t come in till noon tomorrow.”

  Wrap your hand around the wooden handle, then a tight, compact swing to the gut.

  “I choose to live,” Lila said, taking a long step toward Keaka, as if enlisting in the Army. It was a signal, Lassiter thought, and he bolted to the right, took two steps, then leapt toward the tree stump and the machete. He’d never had any speed — 4.85 for the forty on a good day, and that before knee surgery — but he didn’t have far to go. He would have made it, too, if his legs hadn’t buckled as he tried to launch, just plain gave out, and he sprawled in the brush, his mouth full of dark brown sand, briars scratching his forehead. The machete was five feet — a million miles — away.

  Keaka watched without excitement. He swung the Uzi to his left, hefted it to just below shoulder height, and waited until he had a clear shot at Lassiter’s back. He never saw Lila’s hand come up hard, an uppercut, her fist full of a blue fiberglass fin, sharp as a saber, slashing upward. It caught him right below the navel, and with one fluid motion she slid the blade through his belly, a clean incision, luxuriating in the feel of the smooth tear, placid as a housewife trimming a pie crust. As the point dug in, Lila twisted upward, tearing muscle and tissue and organs, and the fin came to rest stuck in the bottom of his sternum. Keaka dropped to his knees and the Uzi fell to the ground. He stared in disbelief at his wound, blood pouring from his abdomen, staining the sand. Lee Hu gasped, then turned and ran into the jungle.

  Lila picked up the gun and tossed it to Lassiter, who was still on all fours. “Take care of this,” she said, turning her back to Keaka who lay on his side, nearly in the fire.

  Slowly Keaka came to his knees, keeping his innards from coming through the tear by pressing his hand hard over the wound. From deep within himself, from a thousand years of warriors and chiefs and steel-backed men who paddled canoes across raging seas, he blinked through the pain.

  Lila took two steps toward the jungle in the direction Lee Hu had run. Lassiter turned and saw Keaka, a grotesque figure, hunched over, approaching Lila from behind, one hand pressed to his abdomen, the other high over his head holding a heavy log. In the light of the fire, Lassiter could see flames spurting from the log and could hear Keaka’s flesh crackling. Lassiter raised the Uzi but Lila stood between him and Keaka and he could only yell, “Lila, behind you!”

  The warning was a second too late, and the flaming club began its descent, but then Keaka cried out and the torch fell harmlessly to the ground. Now the hand that had clutched his stomach was holding the elbow, the swollen tendons that had lasted so many hours in so many oceans, thickened and brittle, snapping like old guitar strings.

  Catlike, Lila sprang to the tree stump and dislodged the machete with one hand. She brought her arms back, and with a left-handed swing, a slight uppercut — Ted Williams in his prime — she brought it around, right foot stepping forward, and Lassiter heard the air rushing by the thirty-inch steel blade.

  The machete neatly sliced Keaka’s ear in two, the top half falling to the ground like a banana slice. Then the jungle exploded with the sound of a coconut axed in two, the blade fracturing Keaka’s skull. The machete broke, the blade lodged in his temple, the wooden handle still in Lila’s hands, a broken Louisville Slugger. The two of them stood there for a moment, Keaka’s eyes glassy. Then he crumpled to the ground.

  The king’s greatest wish had been granted. He had died a warrior’s death and would join his ancestors for eternity.

  CHAPTER 30

  Pu’uo Maui

  Ho’oheno Li’a To Cherish Li’a

  “Auhea ‘oe e ka ipo pe’e poli, Listen, lover with a hidden heart,

  ‘O ke anoano waili’ula. Overpowering mirage.

  A he lei mamo ‘oe no ke ahiahi You are evening’s lei of saffron flowers

  E ‘uhene ai me Li’a i ka uka Exulting with Li’a, Goddess of desire, in the forest.

  “Me ‘oe ka ‘ano ‘i pau ‘ole,v “With you an unending desire,

  A nei pu ‘uwai e ‘oni nei Here in the beating heart

  Mai ho ‘ohala i ka ‘ike lihi mai Do not thrust away the glimpse

  Pulupe ai maua i ka ua noe Of our drenching in the misty rain.”

  Jake Lassiter and Lila Summers spent the night — what was left of it — at Keaka’s campsite. Lila slipped out of her wet swimsuit, a one-piece yellow number, and dried off on a lauhala mat of woven leaves in the hale. Lassiter removed his trunks and put on one of Keaka’s loincloths.

  Lila stifled a laugh. “You look good in that, Jake. It was Keaka’s favorite. He shot a wild goat for the skin.”

  “If my partners could see me now, a deep-carpet lawyer in a goatskin jockstrap.”

  They found some poi that Keaka had stored in gourds and mixed it with smoked fish. Lassiter started eating with his fingers. “Think you could make this stuff in Miami?” He knew what he was saying, sort of asking what she had planned for the rest of her life.

  “Get me some taro, the Hawaiian staff of life,” she said, “and I’ll make poi till it’s coming out your ears.”

  Jake Lassiter squatted on his haunches in the little hut and sliced several passion fruit, sucking at the tart jelly inside the skin. Lila studied him in the light of a kukui nut candle and said, “You’re starting to look like you belong here, Jake, like you fit in with the land and the sea.”

  Now what did that mean, he wanted to ask but didn’t, that she was going to stay on Maui but that he could share her hale anytime? She had to know that now — after killing Keaka and with Mikala still around — she’d have to leave the island too. Lila slid back on the mat, making room for him, and then she patted a spot that must have had his name on it. She was sitting there in the flickering light, inviting him to partake of her after the poi but Jake Lassiter was strangely empty, devoid of desire. Lila cocked her head, studying him, her full mouth in its perpetual pout. She leaned back, bracing her arms on the ground, her breasts thrust forward. Her eyes glowed, and her cheeks were flushed.

  “Maybe one of us should stay outside and keep watch,” he said, gesturing toward the door with the Uzi.

  “Jake, we’re alone here, trust me.”

  “What about Lee Hu?” he asked.

  “It’ll take her till sunrise to get to Pukoo, if she can get out of the jungle at all. She’ll call Mikala, but he can’t get his helicopter in here so he’ll go after the boat he keeps at Maalaea Bay. By the time he gets there from his home upcountry, we’ll be long gone. When the sun comes up, we’ll take two of Keaka’s boards and get back to Maui. Until then …” Lila gestured again toward the mat, but Jake Lassiter shook his head. Still no fire in his loins, not on this night.

  He crawl
ed under the low door of the hale and walked to the fire, now just a cluster of hot coals. Strange that he wanted to be alone just then, strange that he was down. He had won, had survived. Sometimes after winning a trial, the battle over, depression would set in, too. Maybe that’s what life was all about, the conflicts full of fury yet joyful, the lulls a quiet despair.

  It shouldn’t be that way, he decided, trying to will himself into better spirits. He had the girl. Why wasn’t he happy? What was wrong? Tubby’s dead, that’s one thing, he knew. He hadn’t thought about Tubby since he’d put the board in the water at Honokahua, had been too worried about his own hide. But it came back now.

  Keaka was dead, too, hard to forget that, his twisted body pitched headfirst in the clearing only inches from the fire, the machete blade still jammed halfway through his skull, blood from his gut blackening the sand. Lila Summers had done the job, expertly and efficiently, with no wasted motion.

  Or emotion.

  Had done what he couldn’t do. Now she wanted to thrust and parry on the very mat where she and Keaka had made love to celebrate their triumphs over the haoles.

  Lassiter’s mind was playing Ping-Pong with a moral dilemma. The body’s still warm and she’s got her replacement lined up. Not even a momentary pause for mourning her dead lover. The sight of the butchered carcass draining the old libido from me, maybe stirring hers up, Lassiter thought. He summoned a rationalization: She’s just different from me, nothing wrong with that. He ducked his head back into the hale. “I think I’ll sit outside for a while. Doubt I’ll be able to sleep after all this.”

  “It’s okay, Jake. I understand. Tomorrow, though, IH demand your attention. And I want to tell you how wonderful you were out there, the way you threw Keaka off-balance, the way we worked together to defeat him.”