The Ohana

by CW Schutter

  “That’s nobody’s business!” Karen bellowed, taking a step toward him, her hands now fisted.

  “Except the IRS.” George blew rings above his head. “You don’t file taxes, do you?”

  Karen blanched. “How do you know?”

  “I know a lot of things,” George smiled. “I know about your husband, for instance.”

  Karen slumped. “I was never married.”

  George took an old, yellowed picture out of his pocket. “Carmen Souza. Kohala. Her loving husband, Jack.”

  Karen dropped onto a sofa and put her head in her hands.

  “You’re good at covering your tracks.”

  “I was only fifteen when my parents made me marry him.”

  “You killed him.” George took another drag from his cigarette.

  “He beat me, kicked me,” Karen pulled her shirt below her collarbone and showed him an ugly scar about six inches long. “This is what he did to me.” She let the blouse snap back into place. “I got other scars. He liked carving me up. He used me as an ashtray sometimes.”

  “You killed him.”

  “You’re fishing. You can’t prove nothing.” She fumbled for a cigarette from an open pack lying on the coffee table. Lighting it, she threw back her head and took long, deep drags.

  “You shot him and burned his body in the cane fields.”

  “They say someone did.” Karen fixed her eyes on him. “That was the rumor anyway. The body was badly burned. It was unrecognizable.”

  George shook his head. “A jury would call it murder.”

  “Lots of people hated him. I wasn’t the only one.” Karen sprang up and paced; the cigarette dangled between her fingers.

  “You ran.”

  Karen glared at him. “Maybe he was the one who took off.”

  “What about your son?” George flicked his ashes into an ashtray with the words ‘Las Vegas’ and a picture of a pink Flamingo.

  Karen stared. A muscle in her cheek jerked. “Leave him out of it.”

  “He’ll eventually find out the truth.”

  “He thinks my sister is his mother.”

  George leaned forward and rested his elbows on his knees. “Look, I’ll be square with you. I have nothing against you.” George kept his eyes on her, analyzing every twitch of her muscles. “Your husband probably got what he deserved. I want Carlton Chun.”

  “Carlton?” Karen’s eyes widened.

  “I want something on him and I have a feeling you hold the key.”

  “Never.” Karen lowered her lashes and frowned. She ground her cigarette into an ashtray, it broke and she smashed the stub down flat.

  “Why not?” A flicker of a smile crossed his face. “He’s just a john. Besides, you like broads.”

  Karen pushed the ashtray away and looked up at him. “Carlton’s good to me. Yeah, he’s weird, but he’s always been straight with me.”

  “I hear your son is a lawyer.” George blew lazy smoke rings now. “You must be very proud of him.”

  Karen’s body sagged. “You wouldn’t…”

  “Why ruin the kid’s life? You got the money to take care of yourself. You don’t have to do this.” George waved his hand.

  “Maybe you don’t understand. Carlton picked me up on Hotel Street. With my looks, I didn’t do so well. He saved me.”

  “Why you?” George rested his chin on a fist.

  “I may not be a beauty queen, but I got my talents,” Karen smirked. “With my specialty, looks ain’t the main thing.”

  George straightened up in his chair. “Tell me.”

  Karen looked away. For a moment she remained quiet. Then she said, “I guess I got enough to retire.”

  “So, what is your specialty?” George asked.

  “What do you want?” Chun asked George when he came to his office. Carlton was sitting at his desk and George was at the door to his office surrounded by Carlton’s muscle. They had already frisked him before opening the door to their boss’ office.

  “I think we should talk in private.” George showed him the manila envelope in his hand.

  Chun looked at his bodyguards. One of them nodded and Chun waved them away.

  Chun pointed to George’s manila envelope. “So, what’s in there?”

  George took out photographs from the envelope and laid them on Chun’s desk. Chun’s yellow skin turned gray. His beefy hands tore the pictures into shreds.

  His opponent slammed his fist on his desk. “I could have you killed right now. Are you that stupid?”

  “I have more copies.”

  Carlton Chun stood. “Where’s the rest of the garbage?”

  George gestured for him to sit back in his seat. “You must really think I’m stupid. Let’s just say I left instructions that if anything were to happen to me, six drops will automatically be made to various hand-picked people. I don’t think you want that.”

  Saliva flew out of Chun’s mouth as he cursed. “What do you want?”

  “I want you to leave me and my people alone,” George replied.

  “What are you talking about?” Chun’s face was turned purple with rage.

  George looked at his fingernails. “Let’s just say I’m going into business for myself.”

  “You?” Chun snorted contemptuously. “You couldn’t even do a mule job right.”

  “Of course not.” George looked him in the eye. “I’m not the mule type.”

  “Yeah, so what type do you think you are, Yobo?”

  George smiled. “The boss type.”

  Chun laughed. “That’s a good one. I didn’t know you were a comedian.”

  “So I’ve got your word?”

  Chun shook his head. “You really are crazy.”

  George pushed the torn photographs toward his opponent. “Well?” His eyes never left Chun’s face.

  Chun leaned forward on his desk, palms flat down. “What do you plan to do?”

  “None of your business,” George answered.

  Chun pounded his desk with a fist. “There needs to be rules, an agreement between us.”

  “I make the rules, Chun.”

  “You come out of nowhere, show me a few pictures and think you can grab my whole operation? Is that what you want, Yobo? Who do you think you’re dealing with?”

  Now it was George’s turn to lean over Chun’s desk. “I know what you did to your partner, Hung Wo Dang. Back then you called yourself Daniel Wong. You got a new identity-so did Hung Wo. You ever wondered what happened to him after you ratted on him so you could take over his operation after he got deported back to China? Hung Wo went back to Shanghai, but he hasn’t forgotten you. Neither has his son. Funny things happen through the years, Carlton. Hung Wo became a big man in the Tong Gangs. After China fell to Mao, he found his way back to Hong Kong. Only, they don’t call him Hung Wo anymore. Hung Wo is the Big Dragon.”

  Chun looked like he was going to faint. “You’re bluffing.”

  “I never bluff,” George picked up a few pieces of the photographs and twirled them around with his finger. “You have no cards left to play. Quit while you have enough money to buy respectability. You’re out of the drug trade.”

  Chun swept the remaining pieces of the photographs off his desk with his hand.

  George smiled. “Pleasure doing business with you”

  A few weeks later, George read in the Honolulu Star Bulletin about a fire in Pacific Heights. The only occupant in the home at the time of the fire was Karen Rodriguez. Her body was burned beyond recognition.

  George sighed. He had warned her to leave the islands. Then, along with the newspaper, he put aside the momentary twinge of guilt he felt. If he worried about all the Karen Rodriguezes of the world he would never be able to build his empire.

  And that was exactly what he intended to do.

  Chapter Twenty-eight

  Han Chaul Roong felt his life slipping away. Death was a mystery to him. He hoped the end would come quickly and mercifully. He thought about the stra
nge experience aboard the ship that brought him to Hawaii. He realized he had been given the gift of life and his path was to learn how to live without the center of his universe. Now he was dying. He wondered if there was anything beyond physical life. Fear of the unknown was as real to him as the pain from the cancer eating away at his body. He wanted the pain to end, but he was afraid.

  He dreamed of dancing on Mount Jirisan. How young and hopeful he had been. Everything was possible then. Now he lived a world away from Mount Jirisan and was destined to die in a hospital bed without achieving his dreams. How sad to die in ignominy, his arms punctured with tubes and his frail body shrunken to the bone.

  Preachers and priests visited the cancer ward where Chaul Roong had been admitted after he grew too ill to be taken care of at home. One day, a slight haole with glasses and thinning hair came to see him as he lay gasping for breath, his lungs on fire. The preacher held Chaul Roong’s hand, bowed his head, and prayed. Suddenly, warmth flooded his body like hot liquid, relieving him of pain.

  “What you did?” Han gasped, trying to lift his head.

  “I asked the Lord, the Great Healer, to ease your pain through the blood of Jesus Christ,” the preacher took his hand.

  “Jesus?” Han asked, "the baby at Christmas?"

  The man smiled. “He’s the Son of God.”

  Han shook his head. “Can you tell me what you talking about?”

  For the next hour, the preacher talked to Han, telling him although he was unable to reverse the mistakes of his past, he could be set free from its bite. He prayed with the preacher and a great peace washed over Han. He now understood what to expect. Fear left him. The pain came and went, but now he was able to tolerate it better. He was going to a better place.

  The preacher came almost every day to help him focus on the positive by concentrating on the gifts God had given him in life rather than the disappointments. He talked to him and read the Bible. The lyrical prose and encouraging words calmed his restive soul.

  He told the preacher he had once loved as no man could ever love. The preacher nodded and told him God’s book said love was the greatest gift of all. When Chaul Roong heard the passage in the Bible called the love chapter, he realized God had always been with him and loved him enough to brighten his existence with a magnificent present.

  He had felt the ecstasy of passion and the exquisite pain of loss. He had lived with much hope and he had lived without any. But in the end, he decided it was better he lived life with love than without it.

  He grew so thin he could make out all the bones in his body. His sons avoided looking at him and his daughters cried. His wife sat his bedside for hours, blotting his face and arms with warm cloths. He regretted not loving her. All those years, he thought only of himself and didn’t think of her pain, her unhappiness. Chaul Roong asked God to forgive him for hurting Dok Ja and for killing the Japanese soldiers.

  Death no longer frightened him. When his daughters averted their eyes, he knew his time was near. So he closed his eyes and pretended he was asleep whenever they came to visit. He was tired all the time anyway.

  One day as he drifted between sleep and wakefulness, he saw a man with long hair and a close-cut beard. He wore a flowing gown and stood beside the ocean. His eyes were the color of the misty clouds around Mount Jirisan. The stranger beckoned with both arms outstretched. When he spoke, his voice was like the breeze. Chaul Roong felt it rather than heard it. “Chaul Roong.” The man smiled and Chaul Roong knew he was in the presence of God. “Come with me, my son.” A brilliant white light enveloped him. Chaul Roong was blinded for a second.

  When his vision returned, Chaul Roong saw Tae Ja standing before him wearing the festival gown of red over gold she had worn the day they first met. Her thick, black hair was caught up at the nape of her neck, and her skin was like heavy cream. Smiling, she floated towards him from a ship out in the ocean behind her. She held a letter from the marriage broker in her hand. It confirmed Chaul Roong Han was contracted to marry Song Tae Ja. Joy flooded over him.

  “You're here, too?” he asked her.

  “Yes,” she said. “Everything is as it should've been from the start.”

  He blinked at her for several moments before she moved closer.

  “Yobo.” She smiled and put her hand out to him. “Yobo, now our life really begins.”

  Chaul Roong reached for her hand. As he did, he drew his last breath.

  Mary felt empty after the death of her father-in-law. He had been kind and accepting of her and her child. He told her of a great love he once had. His eyes watered and her heart went out to him.

  “At least,” he said, “I knew love. I was lucky.”

  Mary thought of the two men who vanished from her life. Sometimes Mitsuo’s face flashed before her, rattling her peace. As for Sean, he was always with her because of Jackie. There were times when Mary was struck by Jackie’s resemblance to her father. She had Sean’s soft, wide eyes and narrow nose along with Mary’s mouth and color of skin.

  Mary liked to play the music box. The swirling figures and the music transported her to that magical romantic moment. The memory of their one night of unexpected passion was indelibly imprinted in her heart. They were passing ships in the night—except she ended up with baggage. Of course she loved her daughter and would not give her up for anything. She wondered why she drifted back to that brief interlude.

  Sometimes Mark reached out to touch her and she knew he felt her detachment. Frustrated, he took it out on Mary. She didn’t complain but accepted it as the price she had to pay for being faithless in spirit, if not in body. It was sad her husband loved her too much and she loved him too little.

  He often asked, “Was it the haole?”

  She shook her head. The chasm between them grew and she clung to her children. At times she felt like a baby factory with three kids and a fourth on the way. Her life became one of endless diapers and mopping up after crying babies.

  At least her husband was a good provider.

  Chapter Twenty-nine

  Honolulu: 1947

  Sean knew he had made the right move asking Katherine to the Governor’s Ball when she descended the grand staircase of the Ritchie mansion in a Worth gown of spun gold over emerald green satin matching her emerald necklace. She looked stunning with her red hair swept up in curls falling down the nape of her neck. Until that moment, he had thought of her as handsome, but not beautiful.

  The minute they walked into the ballroom of the Royal Hawaiian Hotel, Sean felt curious eyes on them. Katherine clung to him while greeting her friends and acquaintances. Sean put a proprietary hand on her. As her escort, he was treated differently. The Ritchies were the closest thing to a royal family in Hawaiian society.

  “People are staring,” Katherine snuggled closer to him.

  Sean bent his head with his lips were close to her ear. “Because you look so beautiful.”

  Katherine put her hand to her mouth and giggled. “I never thought of myself as beautiful. Meg’s the beauty in the family.”

  Suddenly realizing how difficult it must have been growing up in the shadow of Meg’s brilliant light, Sean patted her hand. “You look magnificent.”

  Katherine tightened her grip on him.

  It felt good to be treated with such high regard even if it was only because he was with a Ritchie. After his humiliating defeat in the Supreme Court to Diana Towle, he feared the kamaaina haoles would blame him because labor unions were now a reality they had to learn to deal with.

  When they danced, Katherine put her head on his shoulder. “Thank you for the most perfect evening in my life.”

  Sean stroked the small of her back. How nice to be chased for a change.

  Sean rose early the next morning and walked around his neighborhood to think. Asking Katherine to the Governor’s Ball had been a spontaneous decision. His real motivation was to get back at Meg for disappearing from his life. Her leaving had hurt him deeply. To complicate matters, at the end
of their evening together, Katherine claimed to be in love with him.

  Being with Katherine gave him tremendous status. The Ritchie name opened doors otherwise locked to him. Besides, she looked at him with such fierce adoration that he decided being with her wasn’t the worst idea in the world.

  Sean wasn’t amused when Katherine described her parents’ reaction to her announcement that she intended to marry him. She thought it was funny when her mother pretended to be overcome and dropped into a chair muttering her daughter was about to marry a Papist. Her father threatened to disown her. But to Sean’s relief, they both eventually gave in, just as Katherine predicted they would.

  It seemed the Ritchies took comfort in telling everyone in their social circle Sean was a Punahou grad and a lawyer. It made Sean somewhat acceptable.

  Her parents planned an enormous wedding at Central Union Church to launch their daughter’s marriage in a suitable fashion. The ceremony was to be followed by a reception at the Country Club.

  Sean was pleased. He would be a part of the kamaaina haole elite. His children would be accepted in the best circles. They would never suffer the degradation of his childhood. They would never know the Sean Duffy of Boston.

  That Sean died the day his brother Jerel died. He never forgave his mother or himself for leaving Boston and refused to visit his hometown again. Instead he shut out the depressing poverty of his youth with its memories of dark, crowded living quarters with walls so thin he could hear voices crying out incessantly. He once thought he'd never forget the stench of packed humanity and the streets filthy with human waste and rotting debris. But in time, even those memories faded.

  It was harder to forget the comforting softness of his mother’s arms and the cool, gentle touch of her hand stroking his forehead. At one time, pangs of homesickness for his mother’s feel and scent overwhelmed him. But he shut himself down and blotted out memories of his family. Anger consumed him when he thought of Jerel.