Red Sky Over Hawaii

by Sara Ackerman

  Lana turned on the shower, and a few pipes banged. She held her hand under the water. It never got warm. Cold air and cold showers were not a great combination.

  “Where are we going to sleep?” Coco asked.

  Five people, one mattress. The odds were not looking good.

  “You girls take the mattress. Benji and I have our sleeping bags,” Mochi said with his hand over the light so they were back in darkness again.

  At least the mattress looked new, but three of them on a double? Mochi led them back out to the truck, where they began unloading by moonlight. They moved the geese onto the porch, and Coco fed and watered them and Sailor. They honked in protest at being stuck in the small cages. If anything, the Japanese would be led right to them from that god-awful noise. Lana would be happy to set them free in the morning and let them fend for themselves.

  Unable to light a fire, they huddled together at the table around a basket of crackers and sardines, corned beef hash, and mandarin oranges. Lana had long given up trying to keep her skirt clean. They had placed a lantern on the table with a shirt over it, so the room glowed blue. Mochi unwrapped tinfoil with strips of dried ahi. Coco would have none of it, although Sailor circled around them waiting for something to drop.

  “You have to eat something,” Lana said.

  Coco shook her head, then held up a handful of sardines to the dog, who swallowed them whole and then hovered, waiting for more.

  “Don’t feed her our food!” Lana said.

  “But she’s hungry.”

  “She just ate.”

  “Not enough, I guess.”

  “This may not seem serious to you, but we have no idea how long we need to ration our food for, no idea about anything, really. So we need to be careful with what we have now and not waste anything. Even if you don’t like something, you may have to eat it,” Lana said.

  “She likes peanut butter. Maybe some of that on the crackers?” Marie said.

  Mochi spoke up. “The girl will eat when she’s ready. Won’t you, Mausi?” He looked at Coco.

  Her eyes grew wide. “How do you know my nickname?”

  He smiled. “We share the same field and rock wall between our houses. Maybe you haven’t noticed me out there. I have a way of blending in.”

  Coco stared at him as though her little mind was making a determination. Good guy I can trust, or crackpot? “My mother calls me that because I always bring home baby mice who have lost their mamas.”

  “You must have a good heart, then,” he said.

  “It beats pretty hard, I know that.”

  Lana had to laugh. “He means you seem like a caring person. I notice you always put the animals first. That’s a wonderful quality that shows you think about others. And I didn’t mean to get on your case for it—it’s just that things are different right now and we have to be careful with what we have.”

  Mochi rested his hand on her knee. “This place has a good feeling about it. I think you can relax a little, Lana-san.”

  Funny, she had felt the exact opposite. At the moment it felt far away and cold and lonely. A different planet from where she had been three days ago. After they finished eating, they outfitted the mattress with sheets and blankets and Coco’s stuffed owl, Hoot. Along the opposite wall Lana lay down two pillows end-to-end on a towel and spread out her father’s plaid flannel blanket, which still smelled like him. That blanket had been around. It had seen them through camping trips all over the island and been a bed for stargazing countless times. Having it there brought a warmth that couldn’t be manufactured.

  They said good-night to Mochi and Benji, who posted up on the floor of one of the other rooms. Lana hated to think of his skin and bones on the floor, but he had insisted he would be fine.

  Bone tired as she was, the minute Lana settled into her nest, she felt painfully awake. Every cell in her body was on edge, and the blunt force of the wood beneath her did not help. She got up to put on another sweater and fold another towel under her lower half. She guessed the temperature to be somewhere in the low fifties, and it was likely to get a whole lot colder.

  “Good night, girls,” she said.

  A sniffle. Whispers. The sound of a dog panting and then licking. Giggles. Then wretched sobbing. What did someone do in a situation like this? Lana felt woefully unprepared.

  “Things will work out. You’ll see. Try to get some sleep,” she said. Though the minute the words left her lips, she knew how unconvincing they sounded. The girls might be young, but they were not dumb.

  More sobbing. The choking, full-bodied kind. Lana sat up. A pale moonlight poured through the window, outlining the lumps on the mattress. Marie looked to be spooning Coco. Something about their sisterly bond tore open a wound inside Lana. She had always wished for a sibling, secretly hoped her father would marry again, but he never had, young as he’d been. For some, one great love is all you need, he used to tell her.

  Over the years with Buck, Jack’s words would spontaneously pop into her head. Especially when things had begun to spiral downhill. Had Buck been her one great love? It certainly didn’t feel that way now. In fact it felt like a one great love was completely out of her reach. Spinsterhood was more likely.

  “Mrs. Hitchcock?” Marie said.

  “Yes?”

  “What are we going to do tomorrow?”

  Coming here had been the wrong thing to do, Lana realized now with perfect clarity. She found herself unable to say, I made a mistake. What do you say we head back to Hilo as soon as we wake up? The hideaway house was a romantic notion at best, a nice idea but implausible when she really thought about it. In the middle of nowhere, unfinished, ill equipped and full of pigs. They would leave first thing in the morning.

  Instead she said, “Let’s talk about it tomorrow. I’ll fix a nice breakfast and we can all decide together. How does that sound?”

  “Okay, I guess.”

  She didn’t sound convinced.

  “We are safe. Your parents are safe. Trust me,” she said, hoping it was true.

  * * *

  In the morning Lana’s neck felt as though someone had tried to saw it off in the night, and her left hip was tender and throbbing. She opened one eye. Across the room the lump of the girls had doubled in size, and when she propped herself up to get a better look, she saw that Sailor was tangled in between them. All peacefully asleep.

  She unfolded her stiff limbs and tiptoed out of the room, down the hallway and out to the porch. The fog was so dense she could taste it on her tongue. And it was cold, but at least the moisture trapped some of the heat, and it wasn’t as icy as the volcano could sometimes be. The whole world seemed to still be sleeping, even Gin and Tonic, who were snuggled together, with their necks turned back and their heads tucked onto their backs.

  “Good morning.”

  Lana jumped and looked to the far end of the porch, where Mochi sat cross-legged on a pillow. “You scared me half to death,” she whispered.

  “How did you sleep?”

  “Terribly. You?”

  He looked awfully serene for someone who had slept on the floor all night. “I slept,” he said, shrugging.

  A typical Mochi response. He was, one might say, in tune with some higher power.

  “Coming here was a mistake, but I don’t know how to tell the girls we need to turn around and go back to Hilo. It was such an ordeal getting here,” she said.

  “Why go back?”

  Tears threatened. “Because the house isn’t finished and we have no furniture. I should have thought it through more carefully, but I was scared and feeling desperate.”

  “First reaction, best reaction.”

  “I suppose that means you think we should stay?”

  Mist settled around him, blurring his lines. “A wall can be built, furniture found. We came up here for a reason. Let’s not
give up so easily,” he said.

  “I’m not giving up—I’m being rational. Who’s going to build the wall, and where will we get the wood? We aren’t exactly in Hilo anymore, and Volcano has no stores that sell furniture, last I checked.”

  “You know people here, don’t you?” he said.

  She immediately thought of Mr. Spain and his dahlias, or the Holzmans, who sold plums and mulberries at their roadside stand. “Maybe, but most of the people I came up here with only lived here in the summers.”

  “Go into town and see.” He started up a coughing fit, then once it had passed, he continued. “We can put together a list.”

  “Mochi, how bad is it?” she asked. She remembered him with a cigarette hanging out of his mouth most of the time. He didn’t have one now.

  The purple smears and puffiness under his eyes looked worse this morning, and she feared having him up here, so far from any medical attention or hospital.

  “It is neither bad nor good. It just is. I cough blood and my bones ache, if that’s what you want to know,” he said.

  “Even more reason for us to go back. I’m going to start packing up,” she said, spinning to go back into the house, surprised to find Coco standing there wrapped in a plaid wool blanket.

  “Sweetie, I didn’t hear you get up,” Lana said.

  She wanted to take the girl into her arms and give her a warm hug but sensed a wall of resistance around her, solid enough that she could have knocked on it. Coco’s ringlets had been mashed and matted in the night, creating the appearance of a bird nest on her head, which Lana was sure Coco actually would have loved to have on board.

  “We’re going back to Hilo?” Coco asked.

  Lana glanced back at Mochi, whose face was unreadable. “Right now we’re going to get this fire going and then start fixing some breakfast. I could use your help.”

  “I’ve never lit a fire.”

  “That’s no problem. You can just help pick out what you want to eat and set the table.”

  Coco pulled the blanket in around her neck. “Maybe you can go back to Hilo and pick up our parents and bring them here,” she said, her voice so small and earnest.

  Not what Lana expected to hear. “Why do you say that?”

  “So we don’t get hit by the submarines. And Mama and Papa will be safe.”

  How much could Coco know about submarines? Though of course talk had been everywhere in recent months. Those damn subs made everyone jumpy. In fact they should turn on the radio and find out the latest news, if they could pick up a signal this far out.

  “I would drive back and get your parents in a heartbeat if I could. But right now we have to wait until they’re done being questioned. I’m sure the FBI has them in a safe place, though.”

  Coco’s whole face scrunched up. “I hate those men that took them.”

  “I can understand that. But those men were doing their job. Once they find out your parents are not dangerous, they’ll let them go. You’ll see.”

  “Today or tomorrow?”

  “Maybe.”

  “How will you know?”

  “We can call them.”

  “But we don’t have a phone.”

  “I’m going into town later,” Lana said, realizing that her answer implied they were staying. At least for the moment.

  Once everyone was awake, Benji got the fire going, Marie and Lana fixed breakfast, and Coco tended to the animals. After much debate they decided to turn the geese loose. Coco sat down and had a long talk with Sailor about not harming them, emphasizing that they were part of the family and not to be eaten. The matter-of-fact way she spoke to the dog came so naturally that Lana half believed the dog understood every word.

  Thank goodness the kitchen was well equipped, with stainless-steel countertops, an industrial-sized sink and a wood-burning stove with an oven drawer. There was a small basket of chopped wood, but they would need to gather more. With no electricity there was no point to having a fridge, but her father had built a large wooden icebox lined with tin. Fortunately the Wagners had had an extra icebox outside full with blocks of ice, and Lana had confiscated as many as would fit in her Coca-Cola cooler. Kerosene lights were placed strategically around the room, but a lot of good they’d do now.

  When Lana and Marie came out to the picnic table, Mochi and Benji had pulled it closer to the fireplace and were warming themselves. Lana set down a plate of scrambled eggs, grilled spam and salted rice balls.

  “Have a look at those wooden shutters,” Mochi said, pointing to the walls.

  In the black of night they hadn’t noticed, but to the side of each window was a thin rail with a big piece of plywood attached.

  “It slides over and clips on,” Benji said, getting up to demonstrate.

  “Well, I’ll be,” Lana said.

  “Jack would have thought of everything,” Mochi said.

  “Everything but a wall. A lot of good these will do with a gaping hole on one side of the room.”

  Mochi rubbed his back. “He had planned on coming up here long before he got sick. Death snuck up on him. He knew about me and my situation, and we had even planned on where he and Benji would scatter my ashes if I didn’t pull through. Out beyond the breakwater. I never thought he would go first.”

  “None of us did,” Lana said.

  Coco hurried in, her cheeks flushed pink. “I found something interesting out back,” she said.

  Lana and Marie followed her around to the rear. The sun was out there somewhere, behind the thinning fog, turning the landscape a fuzzy gold. Spindly vines climbed the trellis but had made it only halfway up. The grass felt like spongy carpet under their feet, and lava rocks littered the area. Lana heard it before she saw it. A hum that filled every square inch of air around them, a purring in the trees. At first she thought it might be airplanes and grew panicky, but the pitch was all wrong.

  “What is that?” Marie asked.

  Coco led them along, past a covered enclosure with a shower and what appeared to be a heating contraption. Lana was buoyed by the sight. Sailor was at her heels but then sat down with her tongue hanging out and a concerned look on her face.

  “Come on, girl,” Coco said.

  But the dog was planted like a black-and-white rock. Up ahead several honeybees floated about, and then Coco pointed into a eucalyptus tree. Hanging from one of the branches was a dripping, oozing honeycomb and a swarm of bees the size of a whiskey barrel. The vibration of thousands of tiny wings, all beating madly with their own specific job. Beneath the tree was a row of hive boxes, Jack’s design.

  “I’m not going any closer. Bees always seek me out and like to sting me for some reason,” Marie said.

  “Have you ever seen bees swarm before?” Lana asked.

  Both girls said, “Nope.”

  “They’re not interested in us, as long as we stay down here and mind our own business. The other part of the equation with bees is that if you approach them with love, they leave you alone.”

  Marie turned away and led Sailor back toward the house, and Coco stood staring. “I think they’re happy we’re here,” she finally said.

  “Oh?”

  If believing that made her feel better, Lana was all for it.

  “At least, they don’t mind it,” Coco said.

  “Not in the least.”

  Lana envied Coco her ability to be distracted and her youthful innocence, but she knew all too well that the sadness would show up again with a vengeance.

  They continued around the house. Her father had done a beautiful job in the construction. Lap siding with wide planks, and window trim painted a rusty red. A lava-and-concrete foundation that gave the house a very solid feel. If someone had the time and money to outfit the place, it would be lovely, if isolated. A refuge from the outside world. Lana realized how accustomed she had become to a
busy social life and all the comforts of a modern home. Along the far side of the house, under the eaves, they found a big wood pile, presumably for the wall, and an area set up with tools.

  “We should have Benji and Mochi get to it right away,” Marie said.

  “Mochi is in no shape to do any building. But we can help,” Lana said.

  Marie looked at Lana as though she were crazy. “I think I would be more hindrance than help. I’ve never built anything in my life.”

  “I’m sure there’s plenty of other stuff we can find for you to do. Let’s go see if Mochi has the radio working.”

  Back on the front porch, Benji was carrying firewood up and stacking it neatly, while Mochi fiddled with the dials on the radio. Jack was a radio buff, and they had brought his Zenith with them. There was a lot of crackling, some bursts of music and then a familiar voice booming through the space. Everyone stopped what they were doing, riveted.

  “... Japan has therefore undertaken a surprise offensive extending throughout the Pacific area. The facts of yesterday and today speak for themselves. The people of the United States have already formed their opinions and well understand the implications to the very life and safety of our nation... No matter how long it may take us to overcome this premeditated invasion, the American people, in their righteous might, will win through to absolute victory... The fact that our people, our territory and our interests are in grave danger... I ask that the Congress declare that since the unprovoked and dastardly attack by Japan on Sunday, December 7, 1941, a state of war has existed between the United States and the Japanese Empire.”

  Lana looked at Coco and Marie, whose faces were five shades whiter than they had been a minute ago. We are at war, all bets are off. No one had seen Pearl Harbor coming, at least not as such a violent surprise. If the Japanese navy was capable of pulling that off, what did they have up their sleeves next? Being trapped on an island only made it worse. There was no place to run.

  To Lana’s relief, Mochi spoke up first. “This means we stay put. At least for another few days. If we get another air raid, Hilo won’t be safe.”

  “Do you know any of these people, who attacked us?” Coco said to Mochi.