“My God.”
“One rare South Seas pearl,” Run Run whispered. “Dis from your tūtū. She been given dis from her mot’er, her mot’er’s mot’er, and back and back. One time plenty moah, dis da last one left. Pono gave me, say when I die, I give it one of you. But, I no wait to die. Got too many t’ings to do. I choose you, keiki. I give dis to you.”
Vanya shook her head, “I can’t. It looks too valuable!”
“Is valuable. I took to one jeweler.” Run Run’s eyes grew wide. “He almost cry. Say dis pearl worth over, you believe it? T’ree hundred t’ousand dollahs. Foah dis kine perfection, dis kine size. No moah dis kine pearl, he say. He try buy from me.” She paused. “Vanya. I make one deal wit’ you. Dis pearl yours ... if you gimme back my boy.”
Vanya looked at her without comprehension, as if she were speaking another language.
“I want Toru to live, dig soil wit’ his hands. Have family, be a man. He already die. In da war. And in da years wit’ heroin. NO DIE NO MOAH! You understan’?”
Vanya shook her head. “Run Run, I can’t change his mind. He’s too involved in this thing now.”
“You dig his coffin, girl, I goin’ hate you, wish you dead. Don’t take dis boy from me! He what I live for. Pono gone, you girls grown, not’ing left foah me. Mot’er God take him from me twice, den twice give him back. I no can pray no more askin’ for anot’er favor. Now, I askin’ you, Vanya, give him back to me. Here!” She threw the pearl in Vanya’s lap. “Buy all da bombs and soldiers dat you need. Leave my boy foah me.”
Vanya pleaded with her. “How could I explain this to him? How could I convince him ...”
Run Run grabbed her by the arm, dragged her to the window. Down below, fireflies swarmed in winking clouds, lighting up the orchards. The moon sickled through a stand of guavas, its light falling on pale tapestries of frangipani whose haunting scent seemed to stun the land.
“Look dere. Look hard!” She shook her. “Dat’s land you see, precious land. Some of it now Toru’s. What he worked for, dreamed all his life. Pono love him, she give him his dream. Dat land waitin’ foah him run his fingahs t’rough da soil. Seedlings waitin’ him to plant dem so dey grow. Lumber singin’ to him, you no hear it singin’? ‘Come build a house and live.’”
Her eyes spilled, her wrinkled cheeks were wet. “. . . And coffee cherries squeezin’ ripe foah him, and pick, and pulp, and weigh. Dis what Hawaiians live for, die for. Land! He pay foah it wit’ twenty years. Vanya, ain’t dat what you fightin’ foah, so we can have da land. Oh, give my boy a chance. You got to let him live!”
Vanya sighed, slid her arms round her, held her tight, a way of asking to be held. She looked out across the fields humming with a universe of insects, minerals and soil, a universe that gave Hawaiians breath. She thought of Pono then, what she had taught them, drilled into them. Land, pride of ownership, earth enriching blood.
She slumped, feeling very tired. “Keep the pearl. Just tell me what you want. And how you want to do it.”
Run Run pressed the pearl into her hand, then sat Vanya down, and talked, and planned.
Finally she covered her face with sloppy kisses. “Take time, take time. Be clevah, so he no get suspicious. Now, I gonna’ pray foah you. Ask Mot’er God watch over you.”
She was cool, almost formal as Toru eased his truck down the drive.
“Why didn’t you tell me about your boyfriend?”
“I didn’t invite him, Toru.”
“Then, why is he in Honolulu?”
“Our thing was over. He flew in to try to change my mind. He was sitting in my living room when I walked in with that first delivery, the box of cordite.”
“Jesus Christ.”
“He worked out most of it himself. There wasn’t much I had to tell him. It’s happening in Australia, too. Aborigines fed up, demonstrating, strikes.”
“And now he wants to join up with us,” Toru said softly. “Get down with the kānaka and the ‘coolies.’”
“He asked to, yes.”
“Why? He could give a shit about Hawaiians.”
“He gives a shit about me.”
His fist hit the steering wheel. “Don’t you get it? He’s the enemy.”
“He’s not. He’s just . . . haole.”
“Don’t bring that sucker here. Understand?”
“I didn’t say I would.”
“But you didn’t tell him to get lost, go back to Australia.”
“He’s an expert, Toru. There are only three of you who know what they’re doing with firearms and explosives. One of you could get hurt, change your mind, drop out.”
“I mean it, Vanya.”
His headlights picked out a small group of men fixing a tire at an intersection.
Toru pulled up, yelled out the window. “Eh! Howzit?”
Someone leaned into his window. “Cool, brah. Delivery right on time. Thirty rifles in the trunk.”
“Well, get it the hell off the highway,” Toru yelled. “A cop could pull up anytime.”
“Hey, brah, relax. That’s a real flat tire.”
Vanya watched him saunter away, a little too loose, too nonchalant. “Is he high, or something?”
“Maybe.”
“Great. He’s one of your explosives guys.”
Toru shifted gears, and slowly pulled away. “He’s fine. I saw him level a hamlet in ’Nam with damp gunpowder and a stick of Juicy Fruit.”
“That was twenty years ago. Twenty years of smoking dope.”
He looked over at Vanya. “Your haole doesn’t dope?”
“Of course not.”
“Right. He just fucks our wāhine.”
Keaumiki
* * *
Quick Hands
THE MEETING HAD GONE on until after midnight. Exhausted, Vanya pulled into the driveway. It was nearing the Christmas season, America had a new, young president-elect, and locals were distracted, wanting to postpone nationalist activities until after the holidays and the presidential inauguration ceremonies. Vanya had found this unconscionable.
“Why should we care what happens on the mainland? Mainland America has never helped us. January seventeen is a crucial date. A hundred years ago our queen was deposed, our lands stolen from us while the U.S. president looked the other way. After Christmas will be too late to begin to organize and execute our plans.”
A hapa-Japanese had challenged her. “But we like have Christmas, too. Kamali ’i no remember Lili‘uokalani. Dey only care ’bout Santa Claus. Why we have deprive dem?”
It went on and on. Vanya saw that old Hawaiian sense of pa ‘ani creeping in, love of play, of good times.
“This is why we’re fading into history,” she argued. “I’m discussing revolution, and you’re worried about Santa Claus.”
A big Hawaiian jumped up, pointed his finger at her. “Who dese islands for, if not for our children? If I gonna blow myself up, I gonna give my keeds good Christmas first!”
People were still applauding him when Vanya left.
Now she killed the engine, slid from the car. A hand gripped her arm, and she spun around.
“Simon. What are you doing here.”
He looked different in moonlight, features harder to define. “I’m tired of waiting, Vanya.”
“How dare you come to this house! I didn’t send for you.”
He pulled her into the shadows. “Listen. I’ve been playing tourist long enough. Sitting on the beach in Waikīkī for weeks. Except when you check in on the phone to pick my brain ...”
“They don’t want you here.”
“I’m here.”
“You must leave. Please.”
He drew her deep into the orchard, moonlight flickering on tall grasses where he sat her down. “Talk to me. Tell me what’s going on.”
In that moment, the weight of everything defeated her. Her voice began to crack. “My grandparents . . . dead . . . they paddled out to sea ...”
“I know, sweetheart. You told m
e.”
She wept and Simon drew her to him. “We had so little time, it isn’t fair. Everything’s disintegrating. Rachel’s leaving home, I think she’s lost her mind. I promised Run Run . . . Toru’s out of this. My God, he started this whole thing, now I’ve got to drop him. People backing down. They want to postpone everything. Suddenly, I’m out there all alone.”
“No. You’re not.” He kissed her hair, kissed her forehead. It was the first time he had really touched her since Darwin, months ago. He could feel his muscles tense like little parachutes. “I’m here. I’m not going anywhere.”
She felt his teeth nipping at her face, her neck, like little tusks. She felt her blood hum, heartbeat quickening, felt her pores expand.
“Don’t ...”
“Don’t tell me don’t. Use me, sweetheart.”
He seemed to enfold her, then unfold her, wanting everything—her plasma, spleen, the lining of her mouth—every living part of her. He went slowly, as if plotting each one of the millions of cells that made up this woman. She moaned, stretched back on the grass, still fighting the tricks and feats of her body, how nerve ends gaped like little mouths, how skin felt chilled then heated, how tiny vessels flowed and ebbed in arteries and veins, making way for him.
He opened her shirt, cried out softly at her breasts in moonlight. Full, golden, nipples hard, casting their own small shadows. He cupped each breast, fingers twirling the nipples so she whined softly. He buried his head between those breasts, wanting to weep, to hide.
“I don’t want this,” she lied, turning her body away from him, arms over face, cheek against soil. He studied the outline of her shoulders, her thighs, the full voluptuous length of her.
“Yes. You do.” He wrapped his arms round her from the back, gathered her to him.
She felt his long, ginger-colored lashes on her neck, felt his breath in little puffs, his hands stroking her ever so lightly like a large cat he was beginning to calm.
She turned back to him, staring at his face. “It won’t mean anything.”
He took her nipple in his mouth, moon behind him aureoling his reddish hair. She felt the charge, electric, lift her in the groin, and pulled his head down closer, wanting her whole breast in his mouth, him sucking like a greedy child. His hands moved then, as if brushing water from her stomach and her thighs. Vanya sighed, turned one leg slightly outward.
He ran his hand along her thigh, feeling muscles tighten. Then he stopped, lifted her head, and kissed her eyes, her cheeks, put his lips on hers, long, tender greeting, hello, then lips pressing harder, teeth clicking against teeth. Her mouth yawned wide sucking in his tongue so forcefully he felt the corrugated roof. Deft movements, her underthings flung white against the night.
Simon reared back, pulled off his shirt, the pelted chest came slowly down. His hand between her legs, fingers winding in her hair, probing with slow, curious dexterity. The wet, the waiting wet. Fingers gently spreading her sex, he arched down and kissed her there. Vanya moaned, flung back her head. His tongue shot out, thrust into her, and then—surprise—he took her clitoris between his teeth, gently, O, so gently, and nibbled on that nest of nerves, shocking, electrifying, her.
She cried out as his tongue drove in again, and out and in, establishing a rhythm. He felt her engagement, watched her buck and kick, legs cycling the air. Her hands gripped his head; his tongue pushed deeper, an implement, a primer. Rhythms riding rhythms, snorting like a mare, she rose and reached for him.
“In me . . . you in me.”
Zipper rattling, pants jamming round his ankles, kicking everything off, he watched her take his hardness in her hand, guiding him, guiding Simon in.
“Like this?” he cried. “Like this?”
She barked aloud, his slow and stuttering entry. She bit the shoulder of this pale beast working up a rhythm, assassin assassin assassin. He would break her down cell by cell and she would help him, she would wring him dry.
And they were running yes she ran him so his eyes bled sweat back sprung wet like sequins everything was concentrated in his spine small bullets of brain matter blasting through each cushioned vertebrae down into his cock down down he would run her they would run and they were running turning O the length of her and his saliva furrowing her back and O the way she loved it he loved watching how she loved it lifting up her rump to him and humping no not in the butt dark delicate alley too-tight winking place but the vagina the somehow better angle him piling falling driving into as far as he could go and loving her loving it and going like two homeless dogs yelping throats parched chins straining upward giving it all up everything and mouths slack eyes screwed shut then staring blind defenseless spasms of the terribly insane her losing sight losing everything lost in specific concentration of this moist socketing hard force of him locked and bolted in the intuition and the proof her boiling muscle quickening impoundment of her senses glimpsing for a second some pure definition quickly swamped in winey fruit smell cherries soil orchards both of them diminishing vanishing remnants of a frail ferocious dream.
The moon lit up their bodies, splotched red and yellow from squashed ripe and rotting coffee cherries. It stuck all over them like glue. The fragrance singed their nostrils, sticky and cloying, clots of earth on cheeks and breasts. Earth-smell like semen. He was still in her, and she was semen-full.
In front of Jade Valley Monastery, men in jungle fatigues stood up with rifles, suddenly alert.
Toru approached the car, looked in the window. “I said no way, Vanya.” He looked over at Simon. “This place kapu, haole. You savvy?”
Simon smiled. “You sound like a bloody Apache, mate.”
“I’m getting out of the car,” Vanya said. “Unless you’re planning to shoot us.”
Toru slammed his body against the door. “No way! Now get the fuck out of here.”
She sighed, looked through the windshield, looked back at him. “Do you think I’d risk it if I weren’t sure of him? Listen to me. You’re supposed to have guards posted three miles down the road. They should have stopped me, asked what I’m doing with this haole.”
Toru frowned. “What happen?”
“Know what I found? Half-empty case of Primo, one guy snoring, the other two slobbering over Playboy magazine.” She pushed her way out of the car. “We’re putting our lives in the hands of lōlōs, and you fight me for bringing in an expert.”
“Expert at panipani maybe.”
The others laughed and shifted their rifles.
Vanya spun round pointing a handgun at him. “Don’t ever ... belittle me like that again.” She threw the gun and two rifles on the ground before him. “We took them from your ‘security’ boys. They don’t deserve guns.”
“What do you mean you took?”
Simon stepped easily from the car. “Let’s say we . . . liberated them. You boys should brush up on karate, you’re in drastic shape.”
A huge, husky Hawaiian-Portuguese approached, and tried to take him from behind, arm slamming like a club. Simon dodged instinctively, twisted, and did something with his fist against the man’s windpipe. He went down like a baby.
Simon shook his head. “Close, but no cigar.” He looked round at the others, big locals, innately strong, but stomachs soft and paunchy. “Anyone?”
They saw he was physically superior, muscular and wiry, not an ounce of extra fat. No one moved. Then Simon turned to Toru. It was a good physical match, and Toru was so obviously full of hate, Simon suspected this one might be able to take him, maybe take him all the way.
Vanya stepped between them. “Give him a chance, Toru. We’ve got half a dozen qualified men. The rest, what are they? farmers, construction crews, gas attendants. We’ve got whole villages organizing, yelling Huli! But they’re people with families. They don’t want to throw bombs. They just want parades.”
Toru looked at the others, they shrugged. He kicked the dirt, motioned Vanya and Simon inside. Sleeping bags, empty take-out cartons, maps, diagrams on walls. Toru led t
hem to a blanket spread out on the floor.
“So, a haole wants to join up with kānaka?”
Simon sat forward, looking earnest. “Something like that.”
“You want to help blow hotels?”
“I think I can be of service.”
“You believe in our cause, right? Hah!”
“Let me make it easy for you, mate.” He leaned so close, Toru felt his breath. “Your cause is hopeless. No, I don’t believe in it. I don’t believe in much of anything. I’m here because of her. And if I have to blow something up to prove myself to her, I’ll do it.”
“Tell him what you know, Simon.”
“I know nothing for sure. I don’t trust anyone, nor should you. If any of you lads are shopping for fatigues, I’d say avoid that Army surplus shop in Kailua. Same goes for anyone over Hilo way. This operation is so sloppy, anyone could infiltrate. What’s in the corner?”
Toru hesitated. “Ammo, explosives. The works.”
Simon walked to the back of the monastary, and lifted sheets of waterproofed tarpaulin.
“Jesus wept. You’ve got a bloody arsenal here. I thought you only planned to blow a few hotels, maybe a plant.”
“Ain’t gonna stop with just hotels,” Toru said. “We got a large agenda.”
Simon turned to him, disgusted. “I’ve never seen anything so . . .” He took Toru aside, trying to control himself. “Someone drops a cigarette, you’ll blow this part of the island off the map. Break it up, man. Cache it, miles apart. You saw combat. Forget the drill?”
Toru clenched his fists, looking at dozens of crates. “There’s a problem. Movement, transportation. The only men I trust are in this room.”
“You have whole villages behind you.”
“Not with this. Besides, tell him, Vanya.”
She looked down, embarrassed. “Locals are asking us to wait.”
“Until ... ?
“After the holidays.”
Simon threw his hands up, and walked out to the car.
Driving him to his motel near Captain Cook, she felt his deep disdain, a professional soldier confronted with amateurs.
Shark Dialogues Page 48