Sinking Suspicions

by Sara Sue Hoklotubbe

  “I spent that morning making lei for us. I gathered flowers from the plumeria trees in our front yard and picked ti leaves from down the street. The plumeria flowers were beautiful—huge, white, perfect blossoms with yellow centers. I put the flowers and the ti leaves in a sack and carried them to the place where I planned to watch for the ship. When I got there I found a shady place under a monkeypod tree where I sat on the grass and began to thread the blossoms together on strings. Then I tore the ti leaves into strips and began to weave them together. I thought the plumeria was too girlish for a man without weaving in some ti leaves. I made a regular lei for him and a haku lei for me.” She gently touched the top of her head with both hands and looked at Sadie. “A haku lei is a head lei,” she explained, and then continued.

  “The intoxicating fragrance of the plumeria blooms matched my spirits. I was so happy. I could hardly wait to tell him the news. He didn't know that I was expecting our child. I was scared to tell him, but I hoped he would be just as excited as I was.

  “Just as I finished tying the last lei, I could see the boats approaching the harbor. My heart pounded in my chest. I put on the haku lei and then found a place so I could watch every man get off of each boat. There were so many men it was impossible to see him. Some of them took off walking and others climbed onto trucks that would carry them back to camp.

  “I raced to the road and stood there watching as the trucks flew by. I knew if he was on one of them, he would make the driver slow down when he saw me so he could jump off. I waited for all the trucks to pass, but not one slowed down.

  “When the last truck rumbled by, my heart sank. The only thing I could think of to do was to walk to Giggle Hill.”

  “Giggle Hill?” Sadie asked.

  Tutu smiled. “That's what the local folks called the camp. It was located at the bottom of a large hill that the men used for jungle training. But at night, a lot of girls would meet their boyfriends at the bottom of the hill and, as the story goes, you could hear the girls giggling for miles.”

  Tutu laughed and Sadie smiled.

  “So, I gathered my things and started walking toward Giggle Hill. Before long, a truck full of cane-field workers came by and offered me a ride. I just had to see him, no matter how long it took. I had to tell him the good news about the baby.

  “By the time I reached the camp, the trucks had unloaded and the men had disappeared. I waited at the gate until I saw someone who looked familiar and then called out to him. I asked him if he could help me find him.

  “The man was a tall and sturdy fellow. I don't know what he thought about me. My plumeria blossoms were wilted by then. I must have looked like a mess. He said, ‘What can I do for you, little lady?’ Then he winked at me and said his name was Roy something or other and wanted to know mine.

  “I pleaded with him to help me find my man. I told him he had been away at war and would have been on the ship that just came in, but I didn't see him get off the boat. He mocked my speech and laughed. Then he told me if my ‘man’ didn't get off the boat, then that meant he wasn't there at the camp either. And furthermore, he wasn't ever going to be there. He spoke with anger, telling me how many men had died at Saipan. He called it a godforsaken island in the middle of nowhere. Then he said if he didn't make the boat, then it was his guess that he was still on that island. Dead.”

  Tutu raised her left hand to her forehead. Tears fell off Pua's cheek.

  “Suddenly, I felt weak all over and I thought I was going to faint,” she continued. “I sat on the ground. My heart was pounding and my head was spinning.”

  She moved her hands together and rested them on her chest.

  “The man offered to get a Jeep and drive me home, but my world was such a blur, I just ran. I dropped my things and ran as hard and far as I could before I stopped and vomited in the pineapple field. Then I guess I just walked.”

  She dropped her hands to her sides.

  “I was in a daze when I reached Ho‘okipa. That's where the waves sometimes reach fifteen or twenty feet high. It was as if I was under a spell, or in a trance.”

  Tutu stared at the ground and her voice sounded as if she had returned to that same trance.

  “I climbed down from above to where the huge black boulders were wet from the high surf. I stood on the edge of the rocks and turned my back to the water.” She looked directly at Sadie. “I broke the number one rule of the ocean. My father taught me when I was a small child that one should never turn their back on the ocean, for to do so would show disrespect for the power of the surf, and the ocean would knock you down and gobble you up.”

  Tutu's voice regained its strength.

  “The ocean has a rhythm all its own,” she explained. “If you count the waves, you will discover that the waves come in sets. There will be several small waves and then there will be a big wave. Since the rocks where I stood were wet, I knew that the big waves had been hitting there. I didn't care. I stood there anyway with my back to the water, arms outstretched, and waited for the next big wave to take me, to wash me away.

  “Then, as if sensing danger, the life inside me cried out. I rubbed my belly and wept. Suddenly, the numbness turned into a hot, aching pain in my chest. If I let the ocean take me to its depths, I would be killing the only thing I had left of him—his child. I stepped quickly and climbed out of the ocean's reach only seconds before the waves crashed against the rocks. I fell to my knees and wept. I was exhausted. I didn't wake up until the next morning.”

  Tutu stopped speaking and slumped in her chair, as if the story she'd just related had drained her of her spirit. Then the silence began to fill with the sounds of the island. A skylark landed and picked at the ground. A car traveled down the street. Children's playful laughter floated in the air from a nearby yard. Pua wiped tears from her face and took another sip of tea. She appeared to be gathering courage to speak, but remained quiet.

  After a few moments, Sadie spoke. “Tutu, you said Pua's father was Cherokee. What did you say his name was?”

  She looked down at her hands. “He was my Ohia, my Peniamina. He—”

  Suddenly, the sound of a vehicle's blaring horn pierced the air. Pua looked at her watch and gasped. “Oh, no! It's Makani. We've got to go or we'll miss the last ferry.” She quickly kissed her mother on the cheek. “I love you,” she said. “I'll call you.” Then she grabbed her purse and ran to the street. “Hurry, Sadie. I'll hold the van for you.”

  Realizing she had learned more about life during the war in the islands than any book at the library could possibly tell her, Sadie took Tutu's hands and looked into her eyes.

  “Thank you,” she said. “I can't tell you how much meeting you and hearing your story has meant to me.”

  “No. I am the one who is thankful to you,” she said. “I've needed to tell that story for a very long time. It's just that no one ever asked me to tell it until now. Mahalo.” She rose and kissed Sadie on the cheek, then pushed her away. “Go. You'll miss your boat.”

  Chapter 21

  Sadie found her seat on the airplane, pushed her carry-on into the compartment above her head, and settled in next to the window. She was exhausted. She looked out the window at the nearby palm trees and the distant mountains as she thought about the day's events.

  On the ferry ride back to Maui from Lāna‘i, Pua had made nonstop calls until she had rescheduled Sadie's flight back to Oklahoma. That left Sadie with only a few hours to pack and say her good-byes to the people she had met before rushing to catch the red-eye flight back to the mainland.

  Pua saved precious minutes by helping Sadie return her rental car and then navigate the crowded airport. Using Pua's cell phone, Sadie called Lance and, just as she had been forced to do for the last three days, left him a message. This would be her last chance to call before arriving in Tulsa, she told him. She repeated her flight number and arrival time to him three times.

  As her place in line approached the security checkpoint, Sadie turned and hugged Pua.
“Thank you for everything,” she said.

  Pua pulled a lei out of her straw bag and placed it around Sadie's neck. “Come back soon,” Pua said, “and next time, bring your fellow with you. There's so much you didn't have time to see. We will go back and visit Tutu Lehua. I think she liked you a lot.”

  “Thank you,” she said. “I'll call you when I get to the office. Give me a day or so.”

  Sadie turned and placed her items on the conveyor belt and walked through the metal detector toward the escalator that would take her to her gate. Turning back, she saw Pua blow her a kiss. Sadie waved, blinking back tears. How could she become so attached to a place and people in such a short period of time? Then she remembered her grandfather's words. They call it the aloha spirit, he had said. She finally understood.

  Once the plane was in the air, Sadie settled in and began to replay in her mind the events of the last few days. Losing touch with Lance unnerved her. She missed hearing his voice and longed to feel his arms around her. She continued to worry about Buck. Managing a smile, she thought surely he was home by now. He'd probably been out visiting friends or looking for horses. There were endless possibilities to explain his absence. At any rate, she felt better knowing she would be home by noon tomorrow in case she needed to help with the search.

  Her thoughts turned to Pua and her mother. Visiting Lāna‘i had turned out to be the best part of the trip. Learning about Tutu's life during the war and the loss of her lover, Pua's father, tugged at Sadie's heart. She couldn't begin to imagine how painful it would be to lose Lance like that.

  She wished she could have learned more about Pua's father. Ohia seemed to be a nickname, and she thought it sounded Hawaiian. She tried to remember what Tutu had said his real name was, but she couldn't. She knew it didn't sound like a Cherokee name, even though Tutu had insisted he had been a Cherokee man. “Why does everyone want to be a Cherokee?” she muttered.

  Everywhere she went, people, upon learning she was Cherokee, would launch into some story about a long-lost relative being Cherokee. When she would ask about tribal citizenship, they would always have some reason why none of their ancestors were on the rolls. In the end, none of them had proof of Cherokee blood, just something their great-great-whatever had told them. Everyone wants to belong to a tribe, even though they aren't Indian, she thought. At that rate, practically everyone alive would be Cherokee. The nonsense annoyed her.

  Before long, the flight attendant dimmed the lights in the cabin for the movie. Sadie gave in to exhaustion and fell into a deep sleep. She dreamed first of hula dancers and soldiers at war, then she dreamed of her home, her horse, her wolf-dog, and then she dreamed about falling into the arms of the man she so dearly loved.

  Lance decided to drive by the baseball park to see if he could find any players who might be missing a glove. Finding the owner of the glove found near the wrecked runaway truck was a long shot, he thought, but then again, maybe he'd get lucky.

  As he turned off the highway, he could see several cars parked near one of the baseball diamonds. He would start there.

  Zeroing in on a man unloading baseball gear from the back of his SUV, Lance parked behind the man's vehicle, got out, and introduced himself. The man identified himself as Chet Turner, the coach for the Sycamore Slammers, a coed Legion League team.

  “You mean you have girls playing on a boys' baseball team?” Lance sounded surprised.

  “You take what you can get around here,” Chet said. “It's hard to get kids interested in baseball these days. Most of them are off doing other things in the summer—going to summer school or working, or drinking and getting into trouble.” Chet shook his head. “You'd be surprised. Some of the girls can play better than the boys.”

  “Really?”

  Chet returned his attention to unloading his vehicle. “I've got a dandy pitcher and she's all female.”

  Lance grabbed a couple of bats and a catcher's mask and followed the coach into the enclosed bench area.

  “Just stack them over there,” said Chet, as he dropped three baseball gloves next to the bats.

  “Do you supply gloves for the players?” Lance asked.

  “Sometimes,” he said. “Most of the kids have their own, but there's a few who can't afford a decent glove, and there's some who can never find their own.”

  “Anyone lose a glove lately?”

  “Not that I know of. Why?”

  “We found one today about five miles north of here, near the scene of an accident.”

  “Accident? Anyone get hurt?”

  “No, they left the scene. Just doing a little follow-up.”

  Chet rubbed his chin. “Could be anybody's, I guess. I'll be glad to ask around when the kids get here.”

  Lance retrieved a business card from his billfold and handed it to the coach. “If you come up with any information, could you give me a call? Then I can get the glove to the rightful owner, provided they can describe an identifying mark on it.”

  Chet took the card and shook Lance's hand. “Will do,” he said as a car full of teenagers parked nearby and the occupants swarmed onto the baseball diamond.

  Lance climbed back into his car and frowned. “Girls are not supposed to play baseball with boys,” he grumbled.

  He knew girls could be just as tough as boys, but he hated the thought that they might get hurt playing ball with boys who weren't smart enough to know their own strength. The thought of Sadie being elbowed by some catcher as she tried to score caused him to cringe. He'd met plenty of strong women throughout his life; Sadie was one of the strongest. But at the same time, she was the classiest lady he'd ever known. The rare combination of beauty and strength was what he loved about her.

  As he drove into the city limits of Sycamore Springs, his cell phone beeped, signaling that he had a voice mail he'd missed while out of the service area. He pulled it out of his pocket and flipped it open. The name and number were both unfamiliar. He'd wait and return the call as soon as he made it back to Sadie's house. He wanted to check on Sadie's dog one more time before heading home to Liberty. He needed a good night's rest.

  The landscape disappeared from Lance's mind as he drove toward Sadie's house. In a few more days she would be home and he could rest easier, but not before she answered some questions. Who did the keys he'd found belong to? Who was this mysterious man who'd sent an e-mail saying she was all right? Did she meet someone there? Why couldn't she keep calling until they made contact instead of only leaving messages? As Lance drove past Buck Skinner's house, he noticed the black Cadillac parked in the front yard and curiosity overrode his better judgment. He pulled in and parked behind the car, then walked to the front door and knocked on the edge of the screen door. Dee Dee appeared a few seconds later in short shorts and a skimpy tank top, drying her hands on a dish towel.

  “Mr. Smith,” she said, “what a nice surprise. Won't you come in?”

  “No, thanks. I was just driving by and wondered if you'd heard anything from your uncle.”

  She pushed the screen door open and walked onto the front porch. “No, and quite frankly I don't expect to.”

  Lance frowned. “Oh, really? Why is that?”

  “He always said when it was his time to go he planned to just walk off into the woods and die, and I think that's exactly what he did.” She pushed her hair behind her shoulders. “And, just to irritate me, he never wrote his will like I asked him to, or if he did I can't find it. Now the IRS is breathing down my neck. Another letter came in the mail today…well, no need to go into details. I'll get it all straightened out in the next few days. I'm due back in San Diego by the end of the week.” She stepped closer to him. “Are you sure you wouldn't like to come in? I just made a pitcher of iced tea.”

  Lance stepped backward and almost fell off the edge of the porch. “Better not,” he said. “Got to check on a lost dog and…well, I'd better get going. Thanks for the information.”

  He walked quickly to his truck and drove to Sadie's house, fe
eling like a fly that had barely escaped the sticky web of a lethal spider.

  Buck's memory began to return, but only in disjointed pieces, like a puzzle that refused to make a complete picture. Nothing made any sense. He remembered splashing cold springwater in his face and walking through the woods, but that was about all. It was as if he'd been plucked from one dimension and dropped into another.

  How long had he been in this sinkhole? Two days, maybe three, he thought. His supply of venison jerky was about gone, and even though his string and handkerchief still held together well enough to dampen his face, he knew he was extremely dehydrated. Lack of water, he thought, would be his demise. He could hear the stream just out of reach below, so near yet too far away to access the life-sustaining water he so desperately needed.

  His present-day memories began to mingle with dreams of his past. He closed his eyes, and the red flower returned. He climbed, stretched as far as he could, but it remained out of reach.

  Suddenly, the pumping of adrenaline in the heat of battle, men maimed and dying, screaming for their mothers, the deafening sounds of bombs exploding and bullets ripping through the air, good guys and bad guys—after a while it all became a blur. He began to get angry. Why couldn't he get that blasted war out of his head? Pain shot throughout his leg.

  He relaxed and gave in to the ache until a feeling of peacefulness surrounded him with comfort. This is it, he thought. He prayed the Creator would be merciful and take him soon, and then he began to sing “One Drop of Blood,” a Cherokee song his mother had taught him as a youngster, a song his ancestors had sung over a hundred years before on the Trail of Tears.

  Ga do da jv ya dv hne li ji sa

  O ga je li ja gv wi yu hi

  O ga li ga li na hna gwu ye hno

  Jo gi lv hwi sda ne di yi

  Ga do da jv wa dv hne li ji sa

  O ga je li ja gv wi yu hi

  O ga li ga li na hna gwu ye hno