East Wind, Rain Read online

  -It’s President Roosevelt, said Irene.

  -What?

  -I said it’s—Irene hesitated. Never mind. There’s no need to know. Everything we need is here, on Niihau.

  -I feel that way too, Ella said. Now hurry, the sun is almost up. Pack the shells you have, we’ll walk home.

  -Thank you, but I think I’ll stay and walk the beach. But thank you, thank you. You’ve been—kind.

  -Protect the shells, then, Ella said, waving her hand at her. Remember to come when it’s time to start stringing. Make a lei with us old girls.

  Irene turned away without saying anything, and Ella thought she saw her shoulders roll forward while her head dropped. She’s a funny woman, she thought, and then picked up her basket and headed for the path.

  22

  On Thursday morning, December 11, Old Shintani shuffled to the large apiary at the edge of the village. The hives sat side by side, tall, hand-built casements over which a sturdy roof had been erected for shade. To the uninitiated there was no hint that each of the casements was home to sixty thousand bees that produced eighty tons of honey annually, a few tons of beeswax, and a little bit of royal jelly reserved for Mr. Robinson alone. They looked like upright armoires, perhaps from a bedroom on Oahu. But a sweet floral smell pervaded the air around them. Nearby were shallow water stands. If a newcomer, still puzzled about where he was, decided to peer into one of these stands he would finally see, perhaps jumping backward with a small cry, stout-bodied yellow-and-black-striped Apis melliferas, perched on carefully placed rocks, drinking.

  Ishimatsu Shintani had been born in Japan and had come to Hawaii in 1900 in search of a better life. He was just one of his many countrymen encouraged by haoles to immigrate during that time. Cheap labor! Cheap labor! Cheap labor!—that was the urgent cry, essential to the Hawaiian economy of sugarcane and pineapple. Plantation owners realized early on that, at the rate the native Hawaiians were dying from haole disease, workers would have to be found elsewhere. Initially, men arrived from China in great numbers. But by 1886 their immigration was limited, for fear they would soon unite and demand better working conditions. Plantation owners turned to Japan to dilute the Chinese and bolster the workforce.

  Eventually, this meant new problems and questions. Queen Liliuokalani, the native monarch, had been overthrown, and the businessmen who now ran the Republic of Hawaii wanted closer ties with the United States, their main trading partner. The most powerful of these businessmen wanted Hawaii to become a territory of the United States; it would mean reduced tariffs and expanded business opportunities. But the United States was wary of a country overrun with Orientals. Pointed discussions of what constituted a proper “American” ensued, with many haoles from both countries agreeing that they qualified, but that Asians most certainly did not.

  Meanwhile Japan had begun to assert itself in the Pacific, and some saw the Hawaiian Islands as at a crossroads. With eerie pre-science some pointed out that Hawaii, with its proximity to the East and its fine naval harbor, was an important bulwark against an increasingly aggressive Japan; detractors cried that Hawaii was a noncontiguous landmass, too hard to defend in time of war, and that annexation meant the start of unwieldy, unnecessary imperialism for the United States.

  Ultimately, in 1898, Hawaii became a territory of the United States. Every person born on its soil would become an American citizen.

  Shintani immigrated to the newly Americanized island of Oahu, but he soon went to Niihau, hired to tend Mr. Aubrey Robinson’s burgeoning honey business there. Granted permission to stay, Shintani married Malia Lelela, who then had to give up her American citizenship because she had married a Japanese national. But the Shintanis were unfazed; Niihau was their country, and the confiscated American citizenship only a vague concept. In fact, Shintani had never minded the feudal system on Niihau, though when he had first come to Hawaii even he had been taken aback by the disparity between the plantation owner and the worker, which rivaled that of the local lord and the peasant in Japan. Once on Niihau, though, Mr. Aubrey Robinson had been a fair, straightforward man. His son Aylmer was just as fair and straightforward, if not as charismatic. Shintani was given the responsibility of running the honeybees on the island; there were 1,615 hives under his guidance. Now, nearing the end of his life, Shintani counted himself contented, almost happy. At least, he had before last Sunday. Now he woke every morning with a pounding heart. He’d lost his appetite. The bright lights of bombs being dropped on schoolhouses shimmered in his mind’s eye. Dying men screamed and pointed accusing fingers at him. He was Japanese, and the terrible prejudice he’d encountered on his first days in Hawaii rushed back in a fury; he would be implicated in this catastrophe one way or another. He had understood immediately what the pilot had told him about Pearl Harbor, but had continued to tell no one, for fear he would be blamed. Not even his wife knew. This past week Shintani had gone to church every day at noon and kneeled in the dark. On shaking knees, he’d prayed to the Christian God he had embraced when he’d first arrived and the older Robinson had said that everybody, everybody, goes to church daily. So far He had been a good enough God, who turned what Shintani thought was a slightly deaf ear to his supplicants, and who had at first seemed a little abrasive, with his scourges of locusts and plagues, but whose heaven was much easier to attain than satori; this last point was, to a hardworking man like Shintani, at once soothing and suspect. But for the past few days, not even He had offered solace, or a sign that he had heard Shintani’s reverberating plea: Lord, keep me out of this. Yesterday, his nerves frayed, Shintani had erected a small shrine to Lord Buddha. He had offered small slices of fruit and a few flowers. His wife, shocked, curious, had badgered him about the queer arrangement of items on the table and the tattered picture of a strange fat man that he had withdrawn from a pouch. But this morning, when he’d heard Howard calling him, Shintani knew, with a cold shiver in his heart, that both Gods had forsaken him.

  Howard stuck out one hand, which Mr. Shintani shook, his expression lost behind the netting on his head.

  -Mr. Harada needs some help with the pilot. Howard patted his shirtfront and waited expectantly. Shintani shimmied his head vigorously. He had successfully steered clear of the military man for the past four days and he wanted to keep it that way.

  -What for?

  -He didn’t say. I guess the pilot is being annoying. He keeps pestering for his papers and all that. What do you say? Give Mr. Harada a break from hosting our guest.

  -My Japanese, Shintani said. It’s very rusty.

  Then he whacked his hands against his thighs a few times as if for emphasis, but in truth he was trying to dispel some of the anxiety that had suddenly tightened his throat and begun to whisper in his right, deaf ear, Run, run. Dust rose from the denim.

  -Besides, I’m needed here. Mites get in the hives, the bees get sick. No bees, no honey, and Mr. Robinson is very mad.

  -It’s only for a little while.

  -Why’s Mr. Robinson not here yet?

  -Wind. Boat problems. Howard shrugged.

  Howard had heard from Ben about the kiu-peapea wind on Mount Paniau last night. With that in mind he’d pulled the papers he’d taken from the pilot that first day from under the bed and taken a closer look. There was no question that they were maps of some sort, and though he couldn’t read the Japanese writing, he saw suddenly what looked like airfields, possibly even the military base on Kauai. It was a strange feeling for him, that downward whoosh in his stomach when he realized that things might not go as smoothly as he had expected. He should have looked earlier, but the truth was, he wanted Mr. Robinson to handle this. He had willingly ignored the situation in the hope his boss would arrive and take over.

  -Well, grumbled Shintani, I’m tending hives near the ranch house tomorrow morning.

  -You’ll see Mr. Harada then, said Howard. I’ll let him know. He repositioned his cowboy hat and turned to go.

  -I raised my keikis here, Shintani said suddenly. This
is my home.

  Howard squinted at the old man, puzzled.

  -This is my home, Shintani repeated. We belong to Niihau.

  He waggled his finger and shuffled back to the apiary.

  The sands began their long, deep moan. Howard stopped his ride, thinking it was the call of a cow in pain, possibly lodged in a hole somewhere. When he understood what it really was—the singing sands of Kaluakua Beach—he fought an urge to kick his horse to a canter and turn back; the horse, sensing his sudden fear, threw her head from side to side nervously. Shha, shha, he hissed through his teeth to steady her under him.

  The Old Lord said that the sound was simply the cumulative tumbling of grains down the steep dunes. On most days Howard liked to hear the schoolbook reasons, those explanations that only men of a certain stature or reasoning power could understand. But Howard was heading for a heiau, an ancient holy place, and his intellectual side had made room for something deeper within him; the uhane, spirits, were speaking. He had heard the legend from his neighbors, how the spirits keened their despair, how it was important to soothe them before something worse happened, and though at the time it had seemed blasphemous against the one and true God, something drew him toward it today. He listened for a few minutes more. Then he pressed his hat more firmly on his head, clicked his tongue, and urged his horse forward.

  He’d picked this heiau for its proximity and the relative ease it took to skulk there. He’d used a tepid excuse: that he’d thought some of the turkeys had made their way in this direction and, not to worry, he’d round them up. The other ranch hands had nodded and plucked at their chins, more interested in the shade and giving no indication they found it odd that Howard would leave on his horse at such a hot time of day.

  The heiau of the goddess Kihawahine was a large circular structure of towering stone twice the height of a man. At each end was an enclosed area where the altar had once stood; Howard imagined the large scaffolding of kapa-covered wood with a plank about nose high on which to place offerings, but which was now gone, having given way to the wind and the sand. The totems had also disappeared long ago, slab-tongued, wide-eyed faces of gods, and kapua, demigods, that had once ringed each heiau and could still be felt if not seen, so that Howard moved carefully and quietly in case they could be roused and angered.

  Idolatrous statues, he reminded himself.

  Horse and rider had approached the stone edifice from the east, knowing that this was where the entrance was, unlike most others, which faced west, toward Tahiti, from whence the kupunas had come on boats, navigating by stars, birds, winds, and currents. Also puzzling and unusual was the long, slab bench on the heiau’s exterior. This particular temple had been a Place of Refuge, where those who broke the old taboos went for sanctuary and divine forgiveness, and Howard felt a stillness in the air he took to be the weight of their sins, listing and tilting in the heat like a becalmed ship. The bench was the place where he supposed the ancients would sit, listening for their loved ones inside, or clamber upon, throwing food and words of encouragement over the wall. He wondered who of his neighbors’ ancestors had broken the kapus, the religious laws, and had had to flee here. As was common with a Place of Refuge, the journey would have been torturous; on the run from the alii, desperate for water and fatigued by Niihau’s heat, on foot across the dry, burning plains. If the sinner made it inside these walls, he was considered guarded by the gods, untouchable. If he (or she) didn’t make it, well, it was death by strangulation or by clubbing.

  Howard snugged the reins over one of the jutting stones, wondered briefly whether this was blasphemous, and then considered that he often left horses under the eaves of the church, for its small line of shade. He walked carefully inside. He realized he knew little about the goddess who lived here, and racked his brain for an old story that he might ponder. But when his mind came up blank, he walked the inner perimeter and instead studied the stacks of stone, admiring the way they fit tightly on each other, flat and reddish black. He dragged one hand along the walls’ crusty, sharp surface, and when he finally made one complete circuit, pulled his hand away. He couldn’t remember why he had come. Most of the old ways were forgotten, and for good reason: there was only one God now. Yet there was evidence that someone had been here in recent weeks, even days: three lopsided and dust-covered pits in the middle of the altar space, the last remains of offered mangos. Howard frowned, bent down, and flicked a finger at each one.

  He fished into his denims and finally tugged out a short, bent steel cylinder studded with shiny, just polished grommets. He had found this yesterday near a wing of the plane, half buried, and it had nested like a small, dead animal in his pocket for the past twelve hours. Now it would do as a special offering. He vowed to go to church afterward and ask Him for both forgiveness and help; forgiveness for going back to the Old Ways and help in getting Robinson here safely to decide about the pilot and his strangely beckoning plane. The fight with his wife, Mabel, that morning had undone him; she had demanded the right to visit the plane as she pleased, he had told her angrily that a woman must stay home and far away from the matters of men. Ben had said that Ella had become defiant as well, as if the good Christian teachings were leaking away from the women of the island and being replaced by something else, something wicked. Howard had told Little Preacher to return to the plane for the night, though logic said that there was nothing that the silent hump of shattered machinery could really do except tempt his neighbors with its metal trimmings.

  Nearly two centuries ago Captain Cook could get many days’ worth of pork and yams for his whole crew in return for what his log stated was “a moderate sized nail,” so eager were the Hawaiians for iron. Over the years the odd piece had washed ashore embedded in the jagged timber of some unlucky ship; otherwise, Hawaiians had never seen it. On this first trip Captain Cook was mistaken for the god Lono, who, ancient legends predicted, would arrive just as he did, on “floating islands” with “white tapas” (sails) during the religious Makahiki festival. His gifts of iron only solidified this reputation. It was only after Cook and his crew departed that the Hawaiians realized that their faith had been misplaced and that, among other things, a god would not have brought the horrible sickness that swept through their people. “We left a disorder among their women,” lamented Captain Clerke when he returned to the islands with Cook a year later and was confronted with the natives’ reserve and anger.

  Howard carefully placed the hollow metal cylinder to his lips. He blew, puffing his cheeks hard and suddenly, but there was no sound except the clap of his lips and the whir of his spit. Disappointed, he tried again, but still could get nothing resembling a musical note. He examined the cylinder’s curvature, the way the steel bent with no seam or wrinkle, the way the end gaped like a shell. Shrugging—there should be music with an offering—he wiped the edge and propped the curious tube carefully on the ground near the mango pits. Then he kneeled and bent his head. If only he had his ukulele, he thought.

  There were many legends about the gods—and shark gods in particular—but the one that kept popping unceremoniously into his mind was one Howard had heard when he lived on Kauai. Years before, the local Hawaiians on the neighboring island of Oahu had warned builders at the military base of Pearl Harbor that a shark god lived there and would be disturbed if they continued construction on a certain lock in the far corner of the bay. The builders ignored the warnings even as their work was hampered by delays and one or two unusual tragedies, men hurt or killed during the lock’s construction. And on the final day of work, it suddenly imploded. The devastation looked as if a bomb had been set off, but there was no evidence of sabotage. Timbers were split like matchsticks, the wreckage strewn about like a ship sunk by a gale. Engineers and builders alike gasped at the extent of the destruction. At a loss for an explanation, and after more urging by the local Hawaiians, who insisted that the angry shark spirit had caused the mayhem, the haole foremen brought a kahuna in to appease whatever deities were cursing th
e project; the lock was finished without further tragedy.

  And then years later—and here Howard shivered involuntarily at the idea of it—divers found the intact skeleton of a large hammerhead buried deep in the ocean floor. The creature had been dead for thousands of years, scientists confirmed. And it was in the exact spot over which the unlucky lock had been built.

  Howard had never seen Pearl Harbor, and he wasn’t sure why this story came to mind. He could not even remember who had told it to him. But somehow there seemed an appropriate message in there, if he only knew how to get at it. Shark gods were buried everywhere, he thought as he knelt for a while longer.

  Howard heard the sudden caterwauling of the wind, as if it had risen in response to his trepidation. Spooked, he jerked his head up. It was time to get back. His horse let out a stuttered breath beyond the wall, and he realized that he was drenched in his own midday sweat. He rose from his knees slowly, and walked to the heiau opening. He looked back once at his offering, which he had stuck up in the dirt so that it looked like the long neck of some under-sand creature or, unbeknownst to someone who knew little of modern war, like a submarine’s periscope quietly pushed skyward from brown, filmy waters.

  It was taller than any man Nishikaichi knew, and even upright in the sand, nose to the sky, it reminded him of a wing. He stood close and stared, badly wanting to lay his hand flat on the hard ebony surface, with its febrile glitter, and then pinch his fingers onto one tapered edge and let his hand drop lightly down the length. This was the way he checked his plane: squeezing, bending, pulling, patting. He felt a surge of homesickness as he blinked at the large, beautiful pillar in front of him; for a moment he thought that if he leveled it into the wind correctly, it would fly him away. He barely heard Yoshio explain that surfboards were cut from the viri-viri tree and many, like this one, stained black and rubbed with coconut oil. Even now, as he balanced it in front of him, Howard let one hand drop along its flank, as if buffing its shine. In its simplicity it was a thing of beauty.