Shark Dialogues

by Davenport, Kiana

  The complex had been evacuated while bomb crews combed the grounds.

  Toru cursed as hotel spokesmen aired their views on local “terrorists.” Then a well-known newscaster appeared on-screen. Jess and Run Run moved together, holding each other.

  “... an update of the evening news. Richard Flanner, an agent of the Federal Bureau of Investigation, based here in Hilo, was shot to death today by what police are describing as a female member of a probable terrorist group. The man’s partner, Fred Moriality, eyewitness to the shooting, said Flanner was shot in cold blood at a hunting cabin on Saddle Road early this morning. Unaccountably, the group set Moriarity free. He described the female suspect as dark-skinned, local-looking, accompanied by a local-looking male, and a tall Caucasian with a red mustache, sounding Australian. The man appeared wounded in his left arm ...”

  In disbelief, Toru turned. By their dead faces, he knew they had heard the news earlier.

  “... blood found on the grass where terrorists entered the Puna plant matched blood found on the door of the car abandoned by the fugitives on Saddle Road. When last seen, the female suspect was wearing khaki pants and jacket, black T-shirt, black running shoes. The men were wearing blue jeans, T-shirts and jackets. They are believed to have fled in the FBI agents’ car, a light blue Honda. They are armed and dangerous. Anyone with information regarding the whereabouts of this group, or of their affiliates, is asked to call this station. Your calls will be treated as confidential ...”

  Run Run’s head was bowed. “She a runnin’ dog now dat will haunt my ashes.” Her voice broke and she sobbed.

  He staggered out to the lānai, fell to his knees, stretched his arms across the filigree railing, and hung like a big, damaged spider. The days lost, the hours, the drug still licking at his nerve ends, the dreamlike nightmare of it all. It was another year, and everything was gone.

  “VANYAAAA!” His cry echoed out across the lawn, down through the fields, went brooding in the trees. Two running dogs stopped and listened. He folded, weeping like a woman. Jess came and knelt beside him.

  “I should have been there. It wouldn’t have happened!”

  “Toru. She didn’t want you there.”

  “Why?” He beat the floor of the lānai.

  “She wanted you to stay and help me with the land. She was afraid your life would pass unlived.” She wrapped her arms round him, rocking him, trying not to let him hear how she was broken down inside. “She was afraid if you started down that road with her, there would be no way back.”

  “But this was my plan. How could she double-cross me?”

  Jess shook him a little, and it hurt, the motion hurt, as if her bones were giving up. “Don’t you see, she was trying to point the way.”

  “Vanya. Oh, Vanya . . . what are we gonna do?”

  “I don’t know. How can we know.” She rocked him, rocked herself, dropped her head and prayed. For what, she didn’t know; all she knew was that she desperately needed a point of focus.

  He lay injured in her arms calling Vanya’s name, so it became like the beat of a metronome inside an empty skull. After a time, Jess cocked her head and listened. The crunch of gravel, slow silhouettes of bodies accumulating. Pinpoint lights flickered up the road, people carrying tiny candles inside small paper lanterns. Very quietly, they filled the drive, moved across the lawn, closer to the house. The night was cool, some wore headscarves, bulky vests, and boots, like Mongols slipping from their yurts at milking time, whistling up their mares. She saw the moon on faces. There was weeping.

  “Toru. They’ve come to be with us.”

  Little packets, discharges of soft artillery like small birds, flew up from their hands, landing softly on the lānai.

  Jess held one to her nose, inhaling. “‘Awa. For rinsing grief.”

  And then their words flew up in whispers.

  “Mālama ‘Āina!”

  “Kōkua Hawai‘i!”

  “Aloha ‘Ohana!”

  “Imua . . . Imua . . . Imua ...”

  Run Run crept outside, leaned over the railing, threw down her sobs like coins. “Pray! Pray for her! Vanya my granddaughta’ too!”

  Jess gathered Run Run’s old birdbones in her arms, and rocked her.

  Looking at the faces staring up at them, folks crying, praying, needing to be there, Jess called out. “Come, come inside. We are all ‘ohana.”

  They came and they came. They stood along the walls, and sat on floors and filled the kitchen and the living room, silently chewing, pounding the ’awa root, straining it through water. From huge bowls, Jess ladled it into cups. They held their cups in weather-beaten hands, and when their cups were empty they held each other, drawing strength from the old Hawaiian way of hugging, staining each other’s skin with tears. Some stretched out and slept, lining the floors, touching each other’s hand or foot, their blood, their pumehana, deep belief in E pupukahi the bridge over which they traversed these awful hours.

  Pre-dawn colors sliding in, workers quietly dispersed, heading for the fields. The warmth of bodies filling up the empty house had strengthened her. Jess stood feeling immensely worn but durable. She would endure. Whatever was coming, she would not break, and she knew they were coming. She woke Toru and Run Run, made strong coffee, sat them down and drilled.

  “Be civil, helpful. We must appear shocked, confused. But don’t.. . break . . . down. We’ve got to be kanaka-strong.”

  Toru leaned forward. “What if they ask . . .”

  “LIE. Lie through your teeth. No matter what. Even if they punch you up. We know nothing of her activities. They’ll question us separately. Threaten us. Threaten the workers. Maybe arrest us. LIE. We know nothing. Nothing.”

  They came up the drive. Squad cars, cars full of military types, and others. CIA. FBI. DEA. Jess was impervious as a wall. Toru watched her, amazed; her voice seemed changed, her body. He didn’t even know parts of her. They came and came, day after day. They sat for hours, interrogating, searching the house, the sheds, the fields.

  They showed videotapes of Vanya demonstrating at Pearl Harbor. “REMEMBER . . . REMEMBER . . . REMEMBER.”

  “That’s you beside her, right? Harassing the president of the United States.”

  “Yes,” Jess said. “Me, my cousins, and our friends. People from all the islands. We were not harassing, it was very orderly. No arrests.”

  “Wasn’t your purpose there to embarrass the president?”

  “No. It was to remind him of people round the world who’ve suffered, not just the victims of Pearl Harbor.”

  They showed her tapes of Vanya demonstrating in the streets, leading Hawaiians marching for sovereignty, demanding back lands stolen from the people. They showed newscasts of her cursing construction crews for desecrating ancient heiau. News clippings quoting her as saying “Terrorism is the new Mother Tongue.” If Hawaiians couldn’t have access to all beaches, she had recommended beaches be blown up, and so should most of the luxury hotels where locals were allowed only as maintenance crews. FBI agent Moriarity had identified her as the woman who shot and killed his partner.

  “There must be a mistake,” Jess lied. “She never touched a gun.”

  “The man she’s traveling with, the haole, you never saw or heard of him?”

  “No, never. I don’t believe the woman is my cousin.”

  “Then, where is your cousin?”

  “Traveling, possibly. We don’t always keep up with her.”

  They started in on Toru every day at dawn. His dropout years, the decade of heroin. They asked about his friends, who he spent his time with. He named old paniolo up in Kohala, men with no teeth. They asked of his whereabouts the day of the bombings and the shooting. A local physician lied, saying he had paid a house call, diagnosed it food poisoning, left Toru in Jess’s hands. A local pharmacist showed them his records, a prescription Jess had had filled. Toru showed them the bed where he lay ill for almost three days, the odor still strong, offensive. His ranch bosses vouched fo
r him, a good worker, no police record, now a small landowner, wanting to be left alone.

  They questioned Run Run, who answered them in sobs and shrugs, barely comprehending. A local cop talked to her in Pidgin, coaxing her. She clasped her coral rosary beads, pinned a picture of the Virgin to her dress, crossed herself repeatedly. Impatient, the cop threatened her, threatened to make it hard on Toru, jeopardize his job. She threw herself upon her knees muttering incomprehensibly.

  Mot’er God, get dis prick out my room befoah I slap him good. Imagine! One local boy, dis cop, workin’ for haole devils. He t’ink I one pupule ol’ wahine. Hah! I like put wela chili peppah in his food. He sheet, his ‘ōkole so hot, maybe he come blind! Now, please, get him out my room.

  Still they came, prowling, questioning, looking for a clue. And when investigators went away, they wrote notes to each other, read them, burned them instantly.

  “THE PHONE IS BUGGED, THE HOUSE. WE HAVE TO LEARN TO LIVE WITH THIS.”

  “WE’RE UNDER 24-HOUR SURVEILLANCE, DON’T DO ANYTHING STUPID.”

  “I KNOW WHERE SHE IS.”

  “IF YOU TRY TO REACH HER, YOU’LL THROW HER LIFE AWAY. ONE DAY SHE’LL SEND A MESSAGE, SOMETHING.”

  “THEY COULD GET A BOAT. HE COULD TAKE HER TO AUSTRALIA.”

  “SHE’LL DO WHAT SHE WILL DO.”

  “A LOT OF ARMS ARE CACHED IN WAIPI‘O. I THINK SHE’LL CARRY ON.”

  “TORU, NEVER, NEVER PUT SUCH THINGS IN WRITING. STORE UP WHAT YOU HAVE TO SAY. WE’LL WALK THE FIELDS EACH EVENING. HAVE YOU FORGIVEN ME AND RUN RUN?”

  “NEVER.”

  Jess was immensely relieved. Anger, bitterness was better than guilt. Guilt led to grief, passivity. She and Run Run worked to harass him, keep his blood up.

  He woke at dawn on weekdays, driving up to the ranch at Kohala, roping, branding, checking calves. Weekends he came home exhausted, tried to sleep and forget. Run Run banged around at five A.M., waking him, dragging him to church. For months, she had an eye on someone, a young, husky niece of Daisy and Pansy Freitas. Like them she was a choir showoff, voice awful but, by God, it carried. A student at the local university extension, she wanted to be a high school teacher.

  Run Run studied her. Smart. Good brain. And she got sturdy shoulders, hips. Body can handle one stubborn, wayward man. Knock him into shape. Look how she stroke her little brot’er’s head. Good girl, likes kamali’i. Maybe like have couple of her own.

  She pointed the young woman out to Toru. “See dat wahinel Not’ing but trouble. Showoff, wild, break her mot’er’s heart. She like tease men. Go swimmin’ in da nude! One day I seen her near de orchard. I say her, get off dis land! One da workers like go dancin’ wit’ her. I say him, you dance wit’ dat cheap, vain wahine, you finished here. I no can look at her. She got evil smile.”

  Her name was Lena. Golden brown Hawaiian-Filipino. She wore a flower in her hair, and walked right past him, proud. He turned his face away, watching without watching.

  One day an Army helicopter spotted a woman bathing in a stream in Waipi‘o Valley. Squads of soldiers went in. It leaked into the news, and Toru sat before the TV scribbling a note:

  “I HAVE TO GO AND HELP HER. I CAN’T JUST SIT HERE LIKE A GIRL.”

  Run Run burned the note, and dragged him to the fields.

  “Look out, boy! Hand dat feed you now slap you to yoah senses. You try go to her, I shoot you in da leg, I swear. Not foah you. Foah Vanya! You lead dem right to her. Dat’s what dey waitin’ foah.”

  “This is killing me,” he cried. “I’m so ashamed, I want to die.”

  “I know you shame.” Her voice turned gentle. “I shame, too. But, you no want to die. Else why you bot’er cryin’? You nevah cry foah twenty years. Now you cry. Foah Ming, Pono, Grandfat’er, everyt’ing. See, keiki, cryin’ like washin’ clothes, come clean. When finished cryin’ den a new beginnin’, not same old, tired end. Cry good! Cry hard! Den pau, stand up like a man.”

  She put her hands on his shoulders, crooning, “Toru, you want help Vanya? You got ten acres good, good land. Build somet’ing permanent. Foah her.”

  She thought up tasks for him, feigning illness so he stayed home, helped cook, feed the workers, helped Jess oversee the picking, bagging, weighing of coffee cherries. He sat with Lee Sugai discussing fertilizers, new roasting methods. At night Run Run and Jess huffed beneath the moon, smashing large rocks against the rotting, sagging porch steps leading to the kitchen. Then they complained to him how everything was falling down. For weeks they listened to him cursing while he rebuilt the steps, then rebuilt the porch, his face eased and softened because his body was busy.

  Sometimes when he and Jess were in the fields, he backslid, talked about Jade Valley Monastery, wanting to round up the boys who were lying low.

  “We started something, we have to keep up the momentum.”

  “You didn’t start it. It started years ago. It’s doing fine without you.”

  A large earth-moving crane at a golf resort development had been blown up that week.

  “What are you saying, Jess? You’re saying Vanya killed someone so I could retire?”

  “I’m saying you’ve given enough. Maybe your job now is to take care of what we’re fighting for.”

  “‘Āina. ‘Āina. That’s all you think about.”

  She turned on him, impatient. “I know you miss combat, the thrill of mano a mano. But look. They’re blowing things up, yet nothing’s changing for Hawaiians. Developers just bring in more cranes, rebuild the geothermal plants. Your strategy is wrong. No one’s thinking straight. That’s an individual process, not something you do in a mob. Toru, you can’t figure out who you are and what you believe, and what you personally want to do, if people around you are throwing bombs. Tell me, maybe I’m slow, how does blowing up hotels advance our people?”

  He looked at her dead on. “I thought you supported Vanya.”

  “Vanya lives by different rules. You’ve always known that.”

  “Then, what are you telling me to do?”

  “Build a house, have a family, educate your kids. You’re smart. You could have been a lawyer like Vanya. Maybe one of your kids will be that.”

  Very casually, she glanced across the orchard, and up a hill, across Napo‘opo‘o Road. Something glinted in the sun, reflection on binoculars maybe. They walked on silently, and Jess thought how in a way, Vanya had retired Toru. Knowing he was under surveillance kept his friends from trying to make contact, kept him exempt from anything subversive.

  One day Jess came running to her room, dragged Run Run from her quilting. They stood together at a kitchen window. In the distance two figures on horseback, Toru and the young woman, Lena. They were near the south end of the land, and seemed to ride in long, lazy ever-widening circles, as he showed her the size of his ten acres. Then they leapt a fence, cantering down the road.

  She spurred her horse into a sudden gallop, golden, husky she was, and golden the horse, and the golden dust they sent up in clouds, their yipping voices as she challenged him to catch up and keep up with her, and they ran hard together past fields of fermenting guava hanging in the trees and eucalyptus and ripe liliko‘i, and running fowl and frangipani milky in the air and roots throwing out lichen, mold, humus, smells like the ocean after rain, gold dust making the ocean golden, and the day was golden, and Run Run clapped her hands and pledged herself to Mother God.

  When he came home she was whacking chicken parts, kicking viciously at Ula.

  “What you doin’ wit’ dat cheap wahine? She ugly, first of all. Body got no front, no back. Secondly, she phony. Talk dem high-tone words. No can talk Hawaiian kine.”

  For weeks he sat at dinner, dreamy and distracted. One night he pushed back his plate decisively. “I’m thinking of cutting back my hours at the ranch. It’s hard to concentrate, spooks up there in unmarked cars, trying to look like cowboys. They sit there waiting for me to ... I don’t know what.”

  Silently he wrote the letter W in the air. They wer
e waiting for him to try to make contact with Vanya in Waipi‘o Valley. Army squads that went in had come out with nothing but scorpion stings, wounds from two wild boar attacks, and ringing in their ears, a ringing so incessant they were sent “stateside” for medical attention.

  “Anyway,” Toru continued, “It’s good for workers’ morale to see me here more often, taking an interest in things.”

  Run Run kept her eyes down, feigning apathy, hands clutching her knees under the table.

  He was at a crossroads, an end and a beginning. He would never make his peace with life—the war, theft of his innocence, Run Run’s betrayal, Vanya’s sacrifice for him, yes, he would always feel it was for him, a bullet entering another human, the shot that took her out of time, maybe that had been for him, his lost years—but now there were nights they saw him down on his ten acres, walking round, or just sitting, strumming softly on his ’uke. He began to wake before dawn, taking each day by surprise. He began to clear his land.

  One day they saw him sitting on a stool, stripped to the waist, bent over a water bucket. Lena, the golden, husky young woman, ceremoniously washed his hair, humming and singing as she scrubbed, as if she were currying a horse. His head was lathered into a white turban, her arms looked hung with frost. She poured water, on his head, filled the bucket from a hose, and slowly poured again. When Toru’s hair was rinsed, she towel-fluffed it dry until it shone black as wet tar. Solemnly, he closed his eyes and she combed his hair in place, trimmed a little at the neck, then stepped back, admiring his Oriental head, his beauty.

  Then almost stealthily, she picked up the hose, aimed it full force, and he was a man exploding—hair, face, everything blown to pieces. He shouted, chased her down the hill, both wet and gleaming, bodies turning violet, terra-cotta, as they ran in and out of shadows of un-barbered trees. He caught her round the waist and they stood still, silhouettes against the land, a frail nobility of aspect and address.