“Hey, ladies,” he said to Coco and Marie.
Marie and Coco both said hello in unison, their hands folded neatly in their laps.
Lana gave him her license. “There was no room for us at my friend’s house. We were all sleeping on the patio with the cockroaches and mosquitos, and we were told we would be much safer up here.”
The soldier raised a brow, his eyes lingering on Marie. “These your girls?”
As it turned out, Coco was eight but looked five, and Marie was thirteen but could have passed for seventeen, and was a real stunner.
Lana felt like she was swallowing a huge wad of gum. “Yes.”
“You look young enough to be their sister, and funny, they didn’t get that dark skin of yours...at all,” he said.
His boots crunched on the cinder as he stepped back to assess them. He seemed half nervous teenager, half authority figure, and Lana couldn’t figure which one to appeal to.
Lana faked a laugh. “My husband and I adopted them when they were wee little things. Long story. Look, Private Smith, the girls are cold and scared, our dog is shivering in the back and we would like to get to the house before dark. If you wouldn’t mind letting us be on our way?”
He paused for what felt like an hour. “Where is your husband?” he finally asked.
“He stayed on O‘ahu for business and now he’s stuck there.”
“Shame. Where’s the house?”
“Just up ahead at the edge of the village.”
By now the other guard had sauntered over to participate in the questioning. He was as compact as the other one was gangly. “Just the three of you ladies, all alone?” he said.
This one felt more dangerous.
“Just the three of us, and a dog and two geese. I am perfectly capable of taking care of us, if that’s what you mean?”
“You know there’s a lot of Japanese farmers in the village. You own a gun?” Private Smith said.
That was when she heard a muffled but distinct cough coming from the back of the truck. Not a whole string of coughs, thank heavens, but one was bad enough.
The second guard, Private Lowry, cocked his head and motioned toward the rear. “What was that?”
Lana’s cheeks heated up, and if the guilty looks on the girls were any indication, they had heard it, too. She waved it off. “Oh, those nene geese, they make all kinds of peculiar noises.”
She said a silent prayer to the goose god. Now would be a good time to start honking and hissing again. Please! Lowry walked around to the back, keeping a wide distance. Sailor had sat down earlier when she realized she wasn’t getting out and continued a low-pitched whine, but now she stood up and glared at the man.
“What’s under the tarp?” Lowry said.
“Supplies. Food, clothing, blankets and some gardening supplies. We’re going to work on planting more edibles.”
“Mind showing me?” he said.
He struck her as the kind of man who once he got on the scent of something, would follow it to the ends of the earth. It seemed at that very moment the sky around them condensed, turning four shades darker and making it hard to see one’s own feet. She was trying to figure out which side of the tarp to pull up when Coco climbed out and started wailing. As if on cue, the geese started up again and Sailor turned her snout to the sky and let out a gut-splitting howl.
“Auntie, if we don’t go now, I’m gonna wet my pants,” she sobbed. While she had hardly allowed herself to be touched by Lana earlier, she now wrapped her arms around Lana’s waist and pressed her face into the side of her chest.
Lana pulled her in and smoothed her hair. To Lowry, she said, “Forgive us, since the attack, she’s been having night terrors and a bad case of nerves.”
Amid all the commotion Lana thought she heard another cough. If they didn’t get out of there soon, the men would surely uncover the extra cargo, and who knew what would happen then. Lana felt the weight of the impossible promise she’d made to Mrs. Wagner, the girls’ mother. Of course she had said yes—what else could she have said? But with so many unknowns, the yes was as good as a lie.
She let annoyance creep into her voice. “Fellas, please just let us pass,” Lana said. “It should be obvious we are no danger, and once we get home, we’ll stay put. I can promise you that.”
Smith shrugged and glanced at Lowry. “What do you think, Skip?”
Coco was now tugging at Lana’s arm, trying to pull her toward the open door.
Lana gave it her last shot. “Our tarp is tied down to keep our belongings dry, and if I open it, everything will get wet.”
Lowry threw his cigarette stub down and stepped on it. She thought he was going to demand to inspect what they had in the truck bed, but instead he said, “You ladies need an escort?”
She slipped onto the wet seat behind Coco before he could change his mind. “I would never impose on you like that. We’ll be just fine.”
The engine roaring to life was about the sweetest sound she had ever heard. They rode in silence for a full minute before Lana said to Coco, “You were brilliant back there—you even had me fooled.”
Coco gave her an inch of a smile, which was more than she had seen in all the time she’d known her. “It was Marie’s idea.”
“I like how you girls think. Watching each other’s backs is exactly how we’re going to get through this.”
Maybe there was hope for them after all.
THE KNOWING
December 5, 1941 Honolulu
For the past several days there had been the kind of faint buzzing in the air that preceded a tragedy. Lana could explain it no more than she could say why the sky was a deeper blue in December than it was in May. But the feeling was there, like static on a radio coming from someplace down the street. Though it had happened only a few times in her life, she recognized the signs. Hair standing on end, metallic taste, a humming along her skin and the feeling that life was about to spin off into a whole new direction.
In an effort to ignore it, she busied herself in the yard, pruning the gardenia and cutting back the liliko‘i vine that was threatening to overtake her roses. Plants in Nu‘uanu could be counted on to run amok at this time of year. At night Lana lay awake listening to the bufo toads croaking and the wash of water over stones in the stream. She often wondered how many stars were out there and if perhaps she had just not found the right one to wish upon.
Most people thought she had an idyllic life. So had she, at one time. And then she and Buck had tried to have a baby. Tried, tried and tried some more. Once, long ago, someone had told her she would have difficulty conceiving again, but she had promptly filed those words away. Nope, not Lana Spalding. Lana was going to have a house full of children and be the mother that she never had. Now it looked as if the doctor had been right. She might have been able to live with it, had Buck not done the unthinkable.
And there she was, sitting on the patio contemplating how to escape her life, when the phone rang. Two short bursts, which meant the call was for her house. A feeling of knowing settled over her. Here it came.
“Lana, is that you?” said a voice through the line.
“Daddy?”
Even after all these years, through broken hearts and across oceans and even despite their so-called estrangement, she couldn’t call him anything else. In the long pause between words, she heard ragged breathing coming through the line.
“Wouldn’t you know it, I might be dying.”
Picturing her father anything other than fit and strong was impossible. He had always had triple the energy of most people she knew and always looked ten years younger than his age. Granted, she hadn’t seen him in six months, but she was having a hard time reconciling the Jack Spalding she knew with the voice on the phone.
“What’s happened?” she asked, unsure what to say or how to feel.
�
�Some kind of infection—meningitis, Dr. Woodell thinks. I’m trying to fight it.” He coughed and struggled to continue with a throat full of phlegm. “Could you come to Hilo, dear?”
The quiver in his voice made him sound like an old, broken man. And maybe he was. Thanks to the full moon, Lana could see her hands resting on the table next to her glass of red wine. Her fingers trembled. She took a sip. Oak and cinnamon mixed with notes of blackberry. So much hurt.
“Are you at home or in the hospital?” she asked, needing time to gather her wits.
“Hospital.”
That meant it was bad. Her father hated hospitals.
“How long have you been there?”
“We can talk when you get here. Please. I want to make this right...” His voice trailed off and the line grew staticky.
The strange thing was that in recent weeks she had been dreaming of her father almost every other night. He had been surrounded by honeybees in flight, as if he had a buzzing full-body halo, and he was showing her various new inventions—a car that doubled as a boat, a new kind of beehive, glass-and-rubber goggles to see with underwater. She didn’t like the dreams of him, because they made her think about him, and she didn’t want to think about him.
Despite it all, Lana had begun to wonder if the time had come to return to Hilo. But was forgiveness even possible? The way she saw it, everything was his fault. That iron will of his, the calamity that could have been avoided and the fact that she had a stubborn streak just as formidable as his. A big seed of anger was still planted deep inside her. Ignoring him kept the seed from sprouting.
With a flurry of thoughts racing through her mind, Lana surprised herself by saying, “I’ll make arrangements first thing tomorrow morning.” She had been asking God for some kind of reason to get out of town. Here it was, fallen neatly and tragically into her lap.
A sniffle came through from her father. “I love you, Lana. Always have and always will.”
“I’ll see you soon, Daddy” was all she could muster in reply.
* * *
These days the fastest way to Hilo was by plane. Lana would have preferred to go by steamer, but she’d been hearing about the fancy new DC-3 airplanes that Hawaiian Airlines had recently brought in from the mainland. Now was her chance to take a flight on one, even though airplanes gave her the jitters. She climbed out of the car holding a small suitcase in one hand and box of sugary malasadas in the other.
After a night of fitful sleep in the guest room—where she had taken up residence the past month—and a cool argument with Buck before the roosters were even up, she felt like hell. He hadn’t wanted her to go, and though neither of them said it, her leaving felt final and lonely and as necessary as the air in her lungs.
The final unspooling between them had begun three months prior, on a storm-drenched August afternoon. One of those moments that would be forever branded into her mind. In fact it was the third-worst day of her life.
Lana had been rained out on a drawing trip to Waimānalo where she had planned to sketch the Makapu‘u Lighthouse, and she had arrived home half a day early. Buck’s blue Ford coupe was parked in the turnaround, and it seemed strange that he was not at work as he always was on a Thursday at noon. She figured he must have forgotten something, so she tiptoed into the kitchen to surprise him, when she heard muffled sounds coming from the bedroom. Fearing he was ill, she hurried in and came upon a blonde woman sitting on the couch with her husband, drink in hand. One look at the bed, as rumpled as the woman’s hair, and Lana knew.
For a full week afterward she had refused to speak to Buck or even look at him, but slowly he’d begun working his way back in. Writing her sappy love notes, bringing home roses and new pens for her to draw with, and pleading for forgiveness. Like a fool, she felt her resolve cracking. Most men made mistakes; it was in their nature. And then he did something that turned her insides to ice.
He blamed her.
“You lied to me. You knew you were sterile and you never told me. What did you expect me to do?” he had said.
That was when she understood that Buck was her past, not her future. He might see it otherwise, but he was a man used to getting whatever he wanted.
Not today, Lana had thought as she slid into her car.
Poha, their live-in maid, had insisted on stopping for malasadas on the way to the airport. “They won’t turn you away with these in your hand,” she said, since who knew if the flights had any open seats.
Lana’s suitcase contained enough clothing and supplies for a few days away, and that was all. Anyway, she could buy more if she needed to.
The John Rodgers Airport was dry and dusty, with a few twisted kiawe trees scattered here and there, and a lazy black cat stretched out across the entry door to the building. Lana had to step over it to pass. The place smelled of fuel and salt water with a hint of kiawe pods. A group of men in suits, plantation managers by the looks of it, stood off to the side of the counter smoking cigarettes and looking serious.
A big sign announced the brand-new planes and that Inter-Island Airways had just changed its name to Hawaiian Airlines. Lana set her suitcase on the ground and said to the man at the counter, “I need to get on the first flight to Hilo, please.”
He eyed her suitcase. “Do you have a reservation?”
“I don’t.”
“Flights are full today. Sorry, ma’am,” he said with a shrug of his shoulders.
“I’ll pay extra, but I need to get to Hilo before the end of the day. My father is very ill.”
A feeling of urgency swirled in her chest. All these years of hardly seeing her father, by her own choice, and now there was the sense that she absolutely had to be there.
“There’s no room for you, even if you had all the money in the world,” he said, voice rising in annoyance.
One of the suited men came over. “Excuse me for butting in, but I couldn’t help but overhear you need a flight.”
“Badly,” Lana said, on the verge of tears.
“In the next hangar over, there’s a chap named Baron that runs a small charter. I’ve used him a few times in a pinch. Wave a few greenbacks in his face and I reckon he’ll fly you to the north pole if you asked,” he said with a friendly smile.
Whatever it took.
“Baron?”
The man laughed. “Honest to God, that’s his name.”
“And he’s trustworthy?” she asked.
“He can fly blindfolded, if that’s what you mean.”
She wasn’t exactly sure why she’d asked but suspected it had to do with her distrust of hurtling through the skies in a heavy metal object.
Over in the other hangar there were three planes. Two larger and one small enough to be an automobile with wings. A radio on the back was blaring the Andrews Sisters.
She stopped in the open doorway. “Hello?”
A young man with a clipboard appeared from behind one of the planes. He wasn’t wearing a shirt and couldn’t have been a year over seventeen. For such a young fellow he was broad shouldered and chiseled and probably too handsome for his own good.
“Can I help you?” he said.
“I was told I might be able to get a flight to Hilo here.”
“You were told right. The plane leaves in ten minutes,” he said matter-of-factly.
“How much is the fare?” she asked, looking around for any signs of other passengers or a pilot.
“How much you got?”
What kind of business was this? “If it’s not too much trouble, may I speak to your boss, or even the pilot?”
Without answering, he walked over to a chair, grabbed a shirt and slowly slipped it on. Lana wasn’t quite sure where to look, so she riffled through her purse, pretending to search for her wallet. When his shirt was buttoned up, she saw the name Baron embroidered in red across the front.
He laughed. “Today’s your lucky day, then, since I’m the boss and the pilot.”
This plan was sounding worse by the minute. She debated marching back to Hawaiian and begging one of the plantation men to switch places with her. Getting to Hilo alive with Baron seemed like a remote possibility, at best.
She nodded to the small plane. “Is this the plane we’d go in?”
“Nah, we’re taking the Sikorsky. Got a drop at Kalaupapa along the way.”
While she stood there trying to tame her overactive imagination, he must have sensed her fear. “I’ve been around planes since I could walk, so you’re in good hands, Mrs....”
“Hitchcock. Lana Hitchcock. Oh, and here, these are for you,” she said, handing him the malasadas.
Anywhere in Hawaii when you said your last name was Hitchcock, people paid attention. But Baron seemed unfazed. Buck’s father was actually the face behind the name of J. Hitchcock & Co., though Buck was likely to follow in his footsteps. Except that he was half as smart and twice as lazy. Lana had learned that the hard way. Sometimes money did that to a child.
“Well, Mrs. Hitchcock, I’ll take your suitcase, and let’s get going. I like to leave at 8:00 a.m. sharp.” When he tried to lift her suitcase, his arm sagged. “Whoa, you dragging gold bullion to Hilo with you?”
Lana offered her first smile of the day. “Books, which to me are better than gold. Oh, and speaking of gold, don’t I need to pay you?”
He winked. “You can pay me once we get there.”
What on earth was that supposed to mean? When she stepped into the plane, she immediately thought, How will this thing even get off the ground? The entire back section of the eight-seater was full of boxes and crates. Everything from giant bags of rice, pickle jars, and Wesson oil to decks of playing cards and toilet paper. There were also rolls and rolls of army blankets. If Baron hadn’t been right behind her, she might have turned around and called the whole thing off.
“They have a barge come in once a year at Kalaupapa, so we supplement when they need stuff. Those poor folks out there...breaks my heart every time I go,” he said.
Red Sky Over Hawaii Page 2