A Bird in the Hand

by Lynn Stansbury

  “You are very kind.” Sakiko smiled, dropping her gaze. McGee had offered his hand. She touched it briefly, as a bird might reach out a wing. Ann watched them thinking, this is backwards; the cobra has been enchanted by the bird. The man’s overwhelming virility seemed to dim at the touch of their hands, like a star concentrated into a golden bowl.

  The Samoan toddler was suddenly swept up by an older sibling, and Jenny rocketed off on her own. Before either Sakiko or Ann could move, Han appeared from around the high plinth of the guest house and scooped Jenny up into his arms. To Ann, he looked thin, raw-looking, as if coming out of an illness. His expression, just a flash as he looked at Sakiko standing next to McGee, was startling: still and flat, the wariness of one who may know quiet for a time but will never again know peace. Sakiko smiled again and reached out, but the smile was for the child, not the man. Ann drifted away from them, around behind the guest house.

  Away from these small foreign disturbances, the day flowed on with traditional decorum and the corporate pleasure in things done well. The senior party was seated in the cool shelter at the far end of the guest house. Sa’ili was there, looking somehow both urbane and pleased as a child with a treat. Also, Welly Tuiasosopo, vaguely mussed but at least clean, and Sa’ili’s sister and Ioane’s auntie, looking like evenly matched dowager duchesses or at least small, well-armed battleships. Seated at the center of the party, back to a center pillar, was a long-limbed, broad-shouldered old man, his white hair cropped close on his square head, inevitably making one think of Mount Pioa, the Rainmaker, just visible on the horizon beyond the village. This was Sasa, the Old Man, Paramount Chief of Manu’a and Chief of Police. Having gotten clear of McGee, Sakiko, and Han, Ann sat on the cool stone foundation of a smaller house, watching the group with a kind of loving detachment that was all she could manage just now. Her own wonderful, unbelievable, magical, emeritus-professor-of-anthro-pology aunt was seated beside Sasa. Particularly next to him, she was tiny, bird-like, elderly, with silly and defiant dyed red hair under her white straw hat. She and the Paramount Chief of Manu’a were being charming to each other, and were obviously enjoying themselves immensely.

  Suddenly, Han was standing beside Ann, with a small white sack, like Chinese take-away, in one hand. He rested one foot up on the foundation. The pose was casual, but if Ann had tried to get away from him, the movement would have been noticed by Sasa and the others. Han nodded to the group in the guest house.

  “D’you know your aunt knew my family Oakland?” Ann smiled vaguely and nodded but didn’t speak. Finally, Han said, “Sasa’s decided he wants to reorganize us into a real C.I.D. Says Ioane can be my first Detective Sargeant, if that’s what I want.”

  Still without looking at him, Ann said, “Good. I was afraid he was going to reward Ioane by sending him off to be the officer on Ta’u or something. Would have broken Pua’s heart. Or he’d have decided to quit ICU nursing and move over to Public Health so that he could be transferred to Ta’u.” She grinned up at Han in a not-quite-successful attempt at impishness. “And I’d never get a full night’s sleep again.”

  “Little birdie tells me that’s not going to be an issue for you much longer.”

  “Let me guess. Little birdie called Welly Tuiasosopo. He’s so pleased for himself. I guess you can’t blame him.”

  “Actually, he didn’t mention that. He going too?”

  “Oh, yes. The eagle has landed. Or the albatross is taking off. Mr. Wellington Tuiasosopo, Royal Austral-Asian College of Surgeons, back in his beloved En Zed at last. He’s got contacts at the med school in Dunedin and in Christchurch. Said he’d look out for something for me.” She shrugged.

  “That what you want?”

  “Who knows?” She glanced at him again, the smile feeling a bit off center now. “But it’d be a job and out of here and not back to the States. So it’s what I need.” She looked back out across the green. “If you had taken Grayson, could you have convicted him?”

  “Not sure. Fucker’d all but sterilized Sa’ili’s Land Rover. At least to the degree we can tell short of shipping the damned car to Honolulu. He…there was…jew-elry, something that maybe connected them. But you can’t hang a man for too clean.”

  “Was the baby his?”

  “McGee’s buddies in Honolulu say probably not. So the only connections are circumstantial. Couple of classes together at USC; knew some of the same people; his name’s in the address book she’d left with stuff at her parents home.”

  “That doesn’t…sound like…what she told him. Or what he said she told him. About the baby, I mean. Or what she believed herself. What about Pedersen?”

  “Again, just circumstantial. The two old ladies Ioane found who probably witnessed Pedersen’s murder did pick out Grayson’s picture. They also picked out pictures of McGee, Poulsen, Ivor and even Pedersen himself.”

  “Helpful.”

  “Welcome to police work. With a little nerve and a good lawyer.. “

  “So Justice.or what I guess we have to believe is justice.in the end.is served by vodka and the CNS toxicity of fluroquinolone antibiotics.”

  “I’ve seen worse,” Han said. She knew he was watching her, saw the edge of his wry, cat’s tail smile slowly fade. Finally, he held out the little white sack.

  “This, I think, belongs to you.”

  His hand rested on her shoulder for a moment, and then he walked away. Her eyes followed him until he moved into the shadow of the guest house to join the official party. She looked at the sack. Inside was something swaddled in newspaper. She slid the object gently into her lap and unwrapped it. It was a vase, small, hardly bigger than her cradling hands, with a rough, burnt-dark glaze. The shape was actually rather masculine, slightly flattened, wide at the shoulder, sloping to the base. Her fingers found the small defect in the lip. And then found and traced the almost invisible lines across the body where it had been glued back together.

  Author’s note

  Over the thirty-five years that my family has known American Samoa, the doubling of population and three major hurricanes have shorn and remolded the islands’ landscape. The canopy forest of the Tafuna plain, the twists and dangers of the old shore road, the grubby, small-boat tuna fleets are all gone, and the layout of certain villages and their principle buildings have changed. How much of that appears in these pages are to some extent a writer’s convenience; some, the necessary protection of people’s privacy—or, in Samoan terms, their community. For all that, Samoa is, as it will always be, Samoa mo Samoa.