I knew about that, of course, but at the time it seemed to be one of his lesser sins. It certainly wasn’t a topic I wanted him to elaborate on at that moment. “Arlen, what about Mr. Henry?”
Arlen indicated his empty glass and waited until I poured him another. I held on to the glass until he shrugged and picked up his bundle. Finishing off this third drink, Arlen opened the bundle and laid four pieces of fabric out neatly across the floor. “Maybe you didn’t have time to notice the fine jacket and the fine pair of trousers Mr. Henry was laid out in. And this other set here, equally fine, came from the corpse of Mr. Esau Bandler. I mean, what undertaker in his right mind could cover clothes as fine as these with ashes and dust and corn-poor Kansas sod?”
“I guess not you, Arlen.”
“I guess not me, but I certainly will next time.” Arlen indicated his glass again.
After no more than a second’s thought, I set a container for myself next to his. “I’m losing patience, Arlen. Pretty soon you’re going to kill another half-gallon of whiskey. Tell me what you know about Mr. Henry and Esau Bandler.”
“I know I should have planted those two, side by side and fully dressed, just the way Mr. Henry’s women and the good Lord intended it.”
“Why, Arlen?” At the sight of Arlen’s puckered face, I poured myself another round.
“Because then tonight I wouldn’t have to go to sleep knowing that Mr. Henry, without his clothes on, was Esau Bandler’s wife.”
I just sat there as Arlen picked up my bottle and put it under his left arm. “You mean…”
“I mean that when Mr. Bandler’s children died, Mr. Bandler’s wife decided that she had had enough of what mankind and nature had thrown her way, and she set out to become someone else.”
I had nothing to say.
“You know what I’ve learned from this?” Arlen reached across his chest and unhooked that deputy-marshal star from the side of his vest. “I’ve learned that a person’s secrets – a person’s past – ought to be respected whether living or dead.”
I remember feeling the effects of the liquor – similar to those I’d known when tapering off from the laudanum. I don’t know if I told him I agreed. I don’t even know if it took me a few moments to realize my agreement. The next thing I became aware of was watching Arlen Dexter walk out the door, across the boardwalk, and out into the street, where he unhitched the horse from his burying wagon, cinched up a saddle, and then rode slowly out into the world to become somebody else.
I don’t know why Arlen and I were shocked. It was no secret that a man could ride throughout the open plains and become anything he had the mind and the courage to be. Many of us had passed out of the nightmare of the War Between the States covering our wounds in whatever fashion might ensure survival. Who was I to cast that first stone? After all, would those kindly soldiers dressed in abolitionist blue have dropped me off behind Union lines if I’d been dressed in the Confederate brown of my own affiliation?
I don’t know how long it took me. Days, maybe. No more than a week or two. But I was always thinking. Finally, after I considered all the possibilities, it seemed to me that if the men could do it, why not the women? I do know that I got up one morning shortly thereafter, saddled up my own horse, and rode out to Mr. Henry’s place to see how I might help them begin anew. It turned out to be a good decision for me.
Oaths, Ohana, and Everything by Diana Hansen-Young
James Lopaka let out his belt two notches. Discreetly. Quietly. But nothing slipped past Auntie’s eye.
She rose to her feet, whisked away his empty calabash, and replaced it with another helping of poi. “You too thin, James,” she said, adding more laulaus, ripe mangoes, and a square of coconut pudding. “You cannot do a good job when you so thin.” Her muumuu blossomed around her ample figure as she lowered herself gracefully onto the woven mat. She waggled a finger. “No one respect a skinny hapa police officer.”
James dipped two fingers into the poi. That was the last notch on his belt. If he kept eating, he would have to remove it altogether. How would it look to have slipping-down pants? Never mind that his belt held his holster, which held his gun, and what was a police officer of the Republic of Hawaii to do without a gun? He sighed and reached for the pudding. Maybe by tomorrow night, after the seven-mile ride back to Honolulu, he would be able to fit his belt. Meanwhile, he was home, and although the occasion was sad and did not call for a celebration, he was going to enjoy Auntie’s food.
James was slicing his third mango when the dogs set to barking in the yard. Chickens squawked. James set down the mango knife, unfolded his 241-pound body, and walked to the door of Auntie’s pili-grass shack. His little brother, Richard, slid off his lathered roan and staggered toward the house, kicking his way through panicked fowl.
Richard’s voice was slurred and angry. The smell of liquor rolled off him. “Mary’s at Bolo’s. Again, godfunnit.” He pushed past James.
“Watch your mouth.” Auntie’s face was grim.
“I kill him already,” Richard said.
“No pidgin English in this house.”
Richard kicked at the stack of empty calabashes waiting to be washed. Koa bowls rolled across the hard-packed red-dirt floor. “You hear me, Auntie? Bolo’s.”
“Take off your boots,” Auntie said, and started to cry.
“I kill him. Dead.” Richard grabbed the mango knife from the mat. “I swear.”
James grabbed Richard’s wrist and twisted, and his little brother dropped the knife onto the swept dirt floor. James planted his bare foot over the handle. “Who told you?”
“Silva got a phone call.” Silva was the Portuguese owner of the Homestead Store down the road, next to the Ewa stop on the Oahu Railway. Last year, when the train company ran the phone wire from Honolulu, Silva took the opportunity to hook up a line to his store. No one in Ewa said anything to the company about Silva’s free line. Everyone shared the phone. “I stopped for a drink. Silva told me.”
“Who was it from?”
“A woman,” he said. “A lady.”
Auntie rose from her cross-legged position. “One more time, James. Go and get her one more time. Please.”
“How many times is ‘one more time’?” James had retrieved Mary many times from Bolo’s. She promised to stay. They took turns sitting through her shaking and moaning, and when her head came clear, it would happen again. And again. James felt the familiar anger in his shoulders. “How many times is ‘one… more… time’?”
“No more ‘one more time.’” Richard scooped up the mango knife. “Pau already.”
“Give me the knife.”
“You gonna arrest me?”
“I made an oath.”
Richard kicked James in the shin and punched him in his stomach, one-two, right into the tight belt. James doubled over, and Richard lurched out the door.
“Boys, for the love of God, we’re ohana,” Auntie said, running after Richard, who was looking for his roan. He found the horse ripping into the grass by the outhouse. He was in the saddle when Auntie reached for the reins.
“Pray instead, Auntie,” he said. He kicked, and the startled roan skittered through the poultry.
James’s stomach hurt like hell. He sat on the bench by the door and picked up his boots from the neat row of slippers. He tried to pull them on quickly, but his belly was in the way. He stomped his feet into the boots. They stuck. He hobbled to the horse pen. Popolo was feasting on elephant grass. She would not take the bit. Richard put two fingers into the side of her mouth and rubbed her gums. She flattened her ears and opened her teeth. A gob of green slobber rolled out and onto James’s shirt and badge.