Moloka'i (39 page)

“For your sister, maybe,” Rachel said. “But what about your brother?”

“You see how much work there is to do around here. How can I possibly leave?”

Rachel shook her head, bemused. “Catherine, don’t you think you deserve a vacation every thirty years or so?”

But the sister didn’t take the question in good humor. “We’re wasting time,” she said shortly. She slipped the letter into the pocket of her robe. “Let’s get back to work, shall we?”

Rachel let the subject drop. She’d learned by now that when Catherine got her nose out of joint about something, there was no getting it back in place easily.

At the end of the day she headed for Kenji’s store. It was nearly closing time, and as usual several customers dawdled near the cash register, shooting the breeze. Kenji listened patiently from behind the counter as the men held forth today on the subject of aviation, specifically the first nonstop flight from the mainland to Hawai'i—successfully undertaken by Army pilots last year, but overshadowed by the deaths two months later of ten fliers racing in an air derby from Oakland to Honolulu.

Garrulous old Abelardo was of the opinion that commercial air flight between Hawai'i and the mainland would never be feasible. “The Army can afford it, but who else gonna pay dat kine money to sit in a little tin can when Matson Line give ’em a stateroom for half da price?”

“Abe, you fulla shit.” Gus’s reedy voice was somewhat at odds with his thickset frame. “Them big dirigibles gonna be goin’ back ’n forth to San Francisco by ’35,’36.”

“You’re both full of it,” said Walter, twenty-two and bespectacled, “I got a copy of
Modern Mechanix
that shows the underwater tunnel they’re gonna build between New York and France. They’ll do the same here, lay it down right next to the telephone cable.” This was met with hoots of derision from pretty much everyone in the room.

“I think it’s gonna be blimps,” Rachel said. “We got so much hot air right here they’ll never run out of fuel.” This sparked much laughter but did not, as she’d hoped, end the discussion; they just started debating which of them was the bigger blowhard. Rachel would have kicked them all out long ago, but Kenji, far more patient and accommodating, let the conversation sputter to a natural halt before announcing, “Okay, boys, that’s all for today.”

“Kenji, I forget, I gotta buy butter.”

“Abe, you’ve been here five hours and you only just remembered what you came for?”

“Eh, dese jackasses make anybody lose track of time.”

“You don’t need us for that!” Gus taunted.

“Eh, go to hell!”

“Yeah, and he’s gonna go in a dirigible!”

The friends left in a fading burst of laughter, Abelardo staying long enough to use part of a ration ticket to pay for a pound of butter, and at last Kenji was able to post the CLOSED sign on the front door. Rachel asked, “They been here all day, or does it just feel that way?”

“Only a few hours. Evelyn Yamada was in before that, showing off pictures of her new granddaughter in Hilo. And Mack and Ehu, of course, arguing politics.” He opened the till and counted the day’s receipts, consisting primarily of ration tickets. “Father Peter dropped by, buying cigarettes and trying to pretend they were for someone else; he was quite chatty, but with that fractured English of his I’d be hard-pressed to tell you what we discussed.”

“Don’t they all drive you
pupule
—crazy?”

He shrugged as he closed out the cash register. “What can I do? Back in Honolulu they’d go to a saloon, have a few beers: but here, where else can they go?”

“
I’d
tell them where to go.” Rachel switched off the electric lights granted the store but not their home. “But you, you’re a good man.”

Kenji locked the door behind them. “No, I’m just
pupule
.” He slipped an arm around her waist and they began the short walk to their cottage on Kaiulani Street.

T

he SS
Hawaii
landed the next morning and Kenji was up early to pick up the weekly consignment for the store. Rachel had been a salaried employee for as many years as Kenji had been manager, and took her duties seriously. Even with her crabbed hand and neuritis she insisted on helping stack crates of canned goods and ten-pound bags of rice, flour, and cereal onto a rickety old hand truck, which Kenji then pushed the short distance to the store.

While Kenji was gone, Rachel took inventory of the remainder of the consignment. Nearby, a clerk from the superintendent’s office—a bookish, middle-aged bureaucrat named Diedrichson—supervised the unloading of other provisions for the settlement. As always Diedrichson seemed to relish the opportunity to throw his weight around, waspishly snapping orders to workers who then transferred the supplies to either the storehouse or the Provision Issues Room.

After counting all the crates of canned vegetables, Dinty Moore beef stew, and other nonperishables, Rachel glanced at Diedrichson’s manifest and couldn’t resist a little dig. “Why bother taking inventory? You already know what’s there. Same as last week. Same as every week.”

Diedrichson seemed a bit ruffled by the question. “And what’s wrong with that?” he said. “There are places in this world where people would be damned grateful to know that come hell or high water there’ll be food on the table next week.”

“What’s wrong,” Rachel said, not for the first time, “is that the food allowance for patients hasn’t changed in
twenty years
. Seven pounds of beef, twenty-one pounds of
poi,
per week, per person. God forbid they send us a few vegetables. I like beef and
poi
as well as anyone, but every week? Fifty-two weeks a year, for twenty years?”

“That’s what ration tickets are for. So if somebody doesn’t want beef or
poi,
they can get rice or canned fish or whatever they want from your store.”

“If
we have it in stock. My point is, shouldn’t somebody at the Board of Health maybe think about what residents here need in 1928, and not what they needed in 1908? I bet you
k
kuas
aren’t eating what you ate twenty years ago!”

Diedrichson looked at her a moment as if processing a foreign and generally unwanted thought—then, to her surprise, his frown up-ended itself into a smile.

“No. I suppose we’re not.” In a oddly confidential tone he added, “Look. If you want a little variety . . . maybe we can do something about that.”

Startled by this sudden flexibility, Rachel said, “What do you mean?”

“Maybe if we got to be better friends,” Diedrichson suggested, “I could get you some of the
k
kua
rations.”

Rachel was too taken aback to respond. And just then Kenji returned from the store and Diedrichson hastily went back to his inventory. “Something wrong?” Kenji asked.

“No,” Rachel said, red with embarrassment, “nothing.” She loaded more supplies onto the hand truck and studiously avoided making any further eye contact with Diedrichson.

At the store, after she and Kenji finished shelving the new supplies, Rachel sat down to open a package—specifically addressed to her—that had come in on the same steamer. Inside a cardboard box, buried in a nest of newspaper like her long-ago
matryoshka,
lay a smaller box containing a set of combs and hair brushes made of “Pyralin,” a new kind of opalescent plastic that gleamed like mother of pearl.

“They’re very pretty, aren’t they?” Kenji said.

Rachel smiled. “Yes.”

“A good choice,” he said.

Rachel nodded.

That night she placed the combs and brushes on a bed of tissue paper inside a gift box. She touched the smooth pearly surface of the combs, ran a finger over the brushes’ stiff bristles, then carefully swaddled tissue paper around them and closed the lid. She wrapped the box in white gift paper, tied it with pink ribbon and a big pink bow, and admired her handiwork a long moment. Then she opened the bottom drawer of her dresser, placed the gift box inside, shut the drawer and went to bed.

In the middle of the night she woke, looked at the clock, and saw it was past midnight. Thinking of that night now thirteen years ago, Rachel found herself weeping. She tried to stop, tried at least to mute her sobs so Kenji wouldn’t hear, but in moments he was awake and she was being enfolded in his arms, and her pain was his as well.

“I just wonder, sometimes,” she said after a while, “what she looks like now. How tall is she? How long is her hair? Does she braid it, or does she wear it long and loose? I’d give anything I own for a picture. Just one picture.”

Kenji held her as he had on so many other nights like this, thought a moment, then said, “She’s exactly five feet tall but still growing. Her hair is shoulder-length, but sometimes she wears it pulled back with a hair clasp. She’ll love those combs you got her. She lives in a small house near Punchbowl with brothers and sisters and parents who love her very much. And she’s happy.”

Rachel nestled her body against his and chose to believe him.

A

week later, Kenji was home sick with a cold and Rachel was minding the store, doing her best to ignore an ongoing debate between Mack and Ehu over the relative merits of Herbert Hoover and Alf Landon. In the midst of their heated discussion the front door opened to admit Diedrichson, who noticed the two men and apparently, wisely, sought to avoid them by roaming the aisles.

Rachel shook off a shudder of anxiety at the clerk’s presence, and was actually disappointed when Ehu suddenly lost his temper, called Mack a Fascist bastard, and stalked out, bringing their colloquy to an abrupt end.

As Mack paid for a carton of Chesterfields, Rachel attempted to draw him out. “So you’re a Hoover man?” she said, but Mack just snapped, “I’m a Fascist, to hear some tell!” and hurried out with his purchases, leaving Rachel alone in the store with Diedrichson—who, she now noticed, was carrying a small paper bag.

The
k
kua
came up to Rachel and smiled. “Saw your husband at the infirmary,” he mentioned off-handedly. “Guess you’re holding down the fort today, eh?”

“Yes. Can I help you?”

“Actually, maybe I can help you.” He reached into the bag, pulled out a box of imported Belgian chocolates, a tin of crabmeat that boasted of coming all the way from Maine, and a wedge of something called Edam cheese. “You were looking for a little variety in your diet, weren’t you?”

Rachel didn’t know which repulsed her more, the smug little smile on his face or the inference that she could be had so cheaply.

“I’m afraid you misunderstood me,” she replied evenly. “I was speaking about the diet of the community as a whole.” She started to turn away. “But thank you anyway.”

Unexpectedly, Diedrichson came round the counter to face her. As he did he pulled from his bag an odd, square-sided bottle, labeled GLENLIVET. “Maybe you’re on a . . . liquid diet?” He opened the bottle and Rachel caught a strong whiff of alcohol from its contents. “Single-malt scotch whisky. Best in the world. Costs an arm and a leg to smuggle into this dry, enlightened country of ours.”

“Please leave,” Rachel said flatly.