Tommy laughed. “Sergeant Stone, married?” His mouth was full and he nearly choked on his bite.
Zach slapped his knee, which was almost level with the tabletop, and laughed out loud.
“Fellas, cut me some slack here,” Parker said.
“He’s on his best behavior here, but...”
Parker cut Zach off. “But nothing. Am I going to have to make you do an extra hundred push-ups tomorrow?”
Violet turned to Ella, who had finished eating and was watching the men’s banter with her mouth hanging open. Surely there had been nothing like this in their house before. Herman had been a straitlaced family man. Once in a while, he and Luther would have a few beers on a Saturday, but there was never this kind of loose conversation and maleness.
Out of the blue, Ella spoke. “Do you think the Japanese are going to bomb your zoo?”
“The Japanese will never get close enough to bomb my zoo. Rest easy. We’ll be taking care of them long before they ever get near California.”
“What about here? Miss Ferreira says that you guys are here because the Japanese submarines are sneaking up on us. And we should move back to the mainland before it’s too late,” Ella said.
Where had Ella gotten this information? “Darling, you know not to believe everything Miss Ferreira says. She tends to exaggerate.” Violet would have to have a word with Miss Ferreira, sooner rather than later.
Zach cleared his throat and Tommy stared at his corn, but Parker addressed her concern. “You bring up a good point. A lot of unexpected things happen during war. But I can promise you this—the animals are safe, and you’re safe, so quit your fretting.”
Over Ella’s head, he winked at Violet.
“I wouldn’t want to leave anyway,” Ella said. “Without my papa.”
Silence dropped onto the table. Jean had probably mentioned Herman to Zach, but Violet had no idea what the others knew. Everyone in town knew the story, so she never had to explain it.
“Nor should you have to,” Parker said.
Jean mouthed the word “Sorry.”
“Thank you for your confidence in our safety, Sergeant. You may or may not be aware that my husband disappeared a year ago,” Violet said.
Ella folded her arms and looked into her lap. There was that word again. Disappear. Violet was conscious of the difference between disappeared and died. And how she always chose the former. The likelihood of Herman coming back was slim to none. That much she knew. But without a body, would she ever be able to draw the line? Would she grow old wondering with an ache in her soul? There was no easy way to talk about it, but people needed to know. These men especially, if they were to be sharing meals with them.
The truth was the truth, and the sooner everyone knew it, the better.
“Did it have anything to do with the war?” Tommy asked.
“Unfortunately, we don’t know. There was a search and an investigation, but they turned up nothing.” Violet told them her practiced version of the story while she rubbed Ella’s shoulder, at the same time tasting bile in her throat. Talking about this had that effect. Maybe having the men over hadn’t been such a good idea.
Parker didn’t seem to have a problem talking about it. “Either way, I’m sure that you loved him and he loved you. And that will never go away. Not knowing’s got to be hard.”
She nodded. By now, the whole house smelled like baked coconut and Violet excused herself to check on the pie. “Ella, I could use your help.”
Ella scooted in with her. The pie still had another minute or two before browning. She sat Ella down at the table and looked into her eyes. “Sweetie, we both want your father to still be alive. More than anything. But we’ve been over this before.”
Ella bit her lip like she was holding back tears. “I know, but sometimes it helps me to pretend.”
“Oh, Ella.” Violet hugged her in tight as the burning in her gut intensified.
If only it could be that easy. She could pretend forever that Herman was out getting milk, that he was just around the corner. That she would wake up to him snoring next to her, filling the whole room with his sounds. She had to hold back a laugh at the thought of their first night together, and how she had woken in a panic, certain that a tornado was pulling off the roof. But it had only been his god-awful snoring. She caught herself. This was happening more lately—thinking about him without tears. Where are you, Herman?
Violet sliced up the pie with freshly polished silver, and she and Ella carried out double slices to the soldiers. Living on the farm, especially in her later years, her folks had been so poor, meals were about staying alive, not about pleasure. But since moving to Hawaii, and especially since living with Jean, all that changed. In Hawaii, crops grew year-round and in such abundance, you could pluck the fruit off a tree whenever you pleased. Fruit designed for baking outlandish desserts.
* * *
A late-afternoon shower drizzled down outside, adding steam to an already muggy day and chasing the mosquitoes away. Violet and Ella set plates down in front of each man and you could have heard a pin drop. Then forks began clinking on china.
After taking a whole minute to chew his first bite, Parker was the first to speak. “So, which one of you is responsible for this?”
“Why, that would be Violet,” Jean said.
“Don’t blame me. This is your recipe,” Violet said, not wanting credit, or any marriage proposals.
Tommy put his fork down. “Zach was right. I think I’m going to have to marry you.”
“Me, too,” Zach said.
“Is there a reverse word for polygamy?” Jean asked.
“Polyandry,” Zach said.
Jean looked confused that her brother would know such a thing. “And you know this, how?”
He shrugged. “No idea, but it sounded interesting.”
All this talk of husbands made Violet nervous, but she knew they were teasing. Then Parker said, “The whole war would be worth it if I knew I was coming home to this.” She felt her body go motionless and her heart pick up speed.
He put another piece in his mouth and chewed, all the while staring into her as though she were some kind of conundrum.
She wanted to be clear on one thing—she wasn’t up for grabs. There were more important things to worry about. Not that Parker would ever be interested.
“Well, that is awfully kind of all of you. And, Sergeant Stone, I have no doubt that you will find what you’re looking for. We have no shortage of lovely single women on this island.” Her eyes couldn’t help but flicker to Jean as she said it.
Even then, he didn’t look away. Eventually Violet had to turn to look out the window, at the sun-laced trees and the town below.
“Please call me Parker, ma’am.”
“How about this. I won’t call you Sergeant if you don’t call me ‘ma’am’?” Violet said.
* * *
After dinner, Parker stayed true to his word and inspected Brownie’s wounds. They brought her into the kitchen, and she squawked at first but settled down when he tucked her tightly under one arm. The arm in question had sharply defined biceps and a ropy forearm.
He pointed to where her right wing attached to her body. “This one here looks like it needs some care. You have any kind of healing salve?”
“I have drawing salve,” Violet said.
“First I would use a honey ointment to prevent infection. You got any honey on hand?”
Jean climbed into the conversation and laughed. “Do we have honey?”
Violet explained. “We have more honey than we know what to do with. Mr. Keko’olani keeps bees. He feels sorry for me, so he brings us honey once a week.” The jars were piling up, but he kept coming. Kind of like Mr. Macadangdang with the coconuts. Anyway, Mr. K. kept thirty-eight hives at his place and had another zillion spread out in the woods and ne
arby farms. Honoka’a was a perfect place for beekeeping. The bees loved the honeydew from a certain grasshopper that fed on the sugarcane, and the forest was abundant with ohia-lehua blossoms.
“I have a few jars of salve back at camp. I can bring some next time, but it’s easy to make, too,” he said.
Herman would have probably just cut the chicken’s head off and asked Violet to stuff it for supper, so this was a surprise. Tommy and Zach lost interest quickly and retreated to the porch.
Darkness was almost here. They needed to leave, but Parker seemed so genuinely concerned for the chicken that she let him continue.
“Olive oil, comfrey, marshmallow root, witch hazel bark and honey,” he said. “You put that on Brownie, she’ll be good to go in no time. Ella, maybe you can help your mother make the salve. It would be good for your cuts and scrapes, too. I use it all the time.” He lifted his forearm to show a long pink scar. “I got in a scuffle with Roscoe. He didn’t mean it, of course.”
If Ella had any doubts about these soldiers, they would be blotted out by now. “Zach said we would meet Roscoe. Where is he?” Violet asked, unsure about meeting anyone who inflicted wounds like that.
“Roscoe is otherwise occupied, but you will. I promise.”
Chapter Ten
Violet
Back in Badger, Minnesota, Violet’s family had always gone to church, even in the bitter freeze of winter, when it was risky to breathe outside. They would bundle in worn-out blankets and extra layers of wool socks, and trudge to the church in the middle of town. “Acceptance, deliverance, repentance,” the minister had drilled into them. But understanding those words was another matter altogether. As a girl, Violet had thought acceptance meant standing on the stage and getting your award for having the biggest goat or the fattest pig, not making the best of a situation gone wrong. Later she learned it was not an easy thing to master.
Despite the new routine of Japanese school, which seemed to be going well, and the night with the soldiers, Ella still ate less than a squirrel and picked her freckles until they formed angry red mounds. Sometimes Violet wanted to tear her own hair out, unable to protect her daughter from invisible grief, but that pesky word acceptance kept rearing up in her head. Maybe now was the time to revisit what acceptance really meant.
Maybe acceptance meant moving forward with what you had.
Violet first met Herman in a church. He was sitting in the front row, shoulders tight with shudders, trying to hold it together, which was hard to do when your sixteen-year-old brother was lying dead from pneumonia, a by-product of the dust storms, people said. Herman was the older one who had come back from Hawaii for the funeral. She wasn’t even sure where Hawaii was, but she liked the sound of the word. It sounded sweet and warm and green.
Her mother insisted she come, knowing there would be men there. The sooner Violet found a man, the sooner she could get out of the house. Violet ended up in the kitchen helping clean up, when Herman walked in. Without a word, he rolled up his sleeves and picked up a towel. They stood side by side at the sink, she washing, he drying. After the tenth plate, she broke the silence.
“Is that where the pineapples come from?”
For the first time, she saw the hint of a smile. “Hawaii is a lot more than pineapples. But don’t tell anyone.”
“Like what?”
“Well, for one thing, it only snows on the very top of the mountains, which are tall. You could wear a dress all year there.”
She thought she had misheard. “Be serious.”
“Scout’s honor. The place is paradise. They weren’t lying.”
“Who’s they?”
“The education corps that brought me out there. I’m a teacher, but soon to be principal.”
Herman didn’t say it in a boastful way, but she was impressed nonetheless. He could be only four or five years older than she was, at the most. His manner was sparse, and she wasn’t sure if it was his nature, or because he was sad about his brother. If she wasn’t mistaken, his arm had gotten so close to hers that soon they would be touching. They talked until her mother came in to tell her their time was up.
It was the first funeral that Violet hadn’t wanted to leave.
Herman took her to dinner the following night, and the night after. But he was returning to Hawaii the next week. What was the point? Still, Violet enjoyed his company, and the distraction he provided from going home in the evenings to her mother and Mr. Smudge and her stepbrothers, who fought constantly. Herman got her considering that there might be life outside Minnesota. They spent the week together, walking in the fields behind town, holding hands and stealing kisses. He told her stories of natives riding canoes down the face of waves and of the white-sand beaches with palm trees and fresh coconuts. It sounded magical.
Two weeks after his departure, an envelope arrived in the mail holding something stiff and colorful. Violet’s heart tap-danced on her ribs. A ticket on the SS Lurline. To Honolulu.
Herman had written a note:
Dearest Violet,
Should you wish to see for yourself, I would be most honored.
Yours, Herman.
PS: Remember that winter is on its way and what I said about wearing dresses all year round.
She smiled at his reference. There were so many reasons not to go. Another two years of college. The town newspaper job, even if it only involved sitting in meetings, taking shorthand and not getting paid. Of greater concern would be leaving Lady, her faithful collie-dog, and her lovely hens.
Her mother was another matter. Every so often, Violet would see glimpses of the way she used to be. Bright-eyed and full of song. She sang to the cows, to the family of sparrows that flew in and out of the barn, to the wheat crops when harvest time arrived. That was before Violet’s dad up and left them under the guise of finding work, before they moved in with Mr. Smudge, the town butcher, who had lost his own wife and had two sons of his own. For the first time, Violet had siblings—ones she didn’t much like. Mr. Smudge smelled like blood and sweat, drank enough vodka to turn his face purple, and had a case of the shakes. But he provided for Violet and her mother and he taught her how to shoot a gun well enough to pop a can from across the field. He put food on the table. On one level, she knew her mother had chosen survival, but all joy had squeezed out of her and she’d never found it again.
Violet had been fourteen the day her father hopped on the train and headed for the city.
They stood at the station, her face in his hands and his ice-blue eyes searching into her. Sometimes at night, she could still feel the sandpaper of his skin and the sunken pit that came from saying goodbye. “Darling, I promise I will be back before you know it. Or else I’ll send for you when I have enough money.”
“Take me with you!” she cried.
“Your mama needs you.”
Violet’s lip quivered and she willed herself not to cry. But her face was wet for weeks after. Letters came, but no money. “I have hope,” her father would say.
I have another interview tomorrow to sell vacuum cleaners. The city is full of men looking for work. They say I need to have experience.
The letters came less often. The letters stopped coming.
She hadn’t blamed him like her mother had, at least not at first. Between drought, grasshoppers, insufferable heat and orifice-filling dust storms, their farm had been doomed from the start. What happened to the land happened to him, turning him into a hard, cracked and hopeless man. Several years later, a letter came saying he was still out of work and to move on with their lives and he was sorry. So sorry.
Herman seemed like a far cry from her own father. Dependable, employed, ambitious. Anyway, there was no law that required her to stay in Hawaii if she didn’t like it. She held the ticket up to her nose, and swore she smelled flowers and sea salt.
She went by boat train to San Francisco. At he
r first sight of the ship, she nearly fainted. It was massive, with smokestacks like small buildings and decks layered up to the sky. How could such an enormous object stay afloat? Flags were flying, and once they cast off the python-sized ropes, Violet joined the passengers in confetti-tossing and cheering. She was alone with nearly seven hundred people on a voyage to Honolulu. What in God’s name was she doing?
For Violet, the ocean was a new and wondrous body of water, and its blue was unfathomable. Salt layered everything, and she was constantly tasting the breeze. On the first two days of the voyage, she gained her sea legs, for despite the size of the ship, the seas were rolling. Plates and glasses slid back and forth during dinner, and many people took to their bunks, ill from the motion. When she saw all the green faces, she felt lucky not to be seasick herself.
All Violet wanted to do was be on deck, where she caught sight of whales and watched the albatrosses glide overhead. Much of her time was spent wondering and guessing. She had seen pictures of Hawaii, people riding waves, pineapple fields with migrant workers and women dancing in colorful dresses or grass skirts. Herman had also made it sound larger than life. But a part of her thought that there must be more to the story, more than coconuts and rainbows. In her short nineteen years of life, Violet had seen enough to know that not everything was as it seemed. People were starving and dying of cold, half the country was out of work, and her own father had abandoned them on account of losing his farm.
Many of the passengers were stopping in Hawaii, but many were also headed to Pago Pago, Suva and onward to Australia. After the second day, the ocean smoothed out and people began emerging from the depths. The deck chairs filled up and drinks began to flow. There were hula dancers and steel-guitar players, card games and even wooden horse races. Rumor also had it that there were movie stars in first class, and even Amelia Earhart. For a time, Violet imagined herself working on the ship, traveling the South Seas and seeing another side of the world.
When the SS Lurline pulled into Honolulu Harbor, the docks teemed with people. But Violet was more interested in the green of the mountains, which to her seemed impossible. There was also something strange going on with her sweat glands, which wouldn’t seem to turn off. Herman was right where he said he would be. Standing in the front row off to the left, wearing a white suit. As she got closer, she could tell that she wasn’t the only one sweating in the melting Hawaiian heat.
Island of Sweet Pies and Soldiers Page 6