James forgot about the pants rip. He knelt and heard ragged breathing. Passed out, not dead. James left him and walked toward the closed door. Was Mary inside? If so, how would he get both of them home?
James turned the knob, pushed the door open, and stepped into a cloud of smoke. Coals glowed at the end of the hookahs. He smelled unwashed bodies, sex, and urine under the opium and hashish. Patrons smoked or lay in berths that lined the walls. A woman raised her head and offered him her pipe. “You don’t have to pay me.” She giggled. “Paradise is free.”
He pawed through tangled clothing until he recognized long black hair fanning out on stained sheets. Mary? He rolled her over. His little sister’s head lolled to one side. Her ribs protruded below slack breasts. Her breath was foul, her lips caked with dry spittle, but she was alive. James pulled her away from her male companion, who flailed his arms at James. James put a boot to the man’s face. Something cracked.
He hoisted Mary over his shoulder and headed for the door. Where had she been? How long had she been back in Honolulu, in this opium parlor, on his beat, under his nose?
Bolo, in cowboy hat and boots, blocked the doorway. His deformed left hand was tucked into a pocket. “Put her down, Lopaka,” he said, his voice thick with phlegm.
“Move along, Bolo.”
“I pay you plenty.”
“You pay me nothing.”
Bolo spat mucus. “I pay your boss at Bethel Street to leave me alone.”
James was ashamed that Wong had taken money. “I owe you nothing.”
“Put her back. She’s working off a tab.”
James tightened his grip on Mary and prepared to hit Bolo, but as he stepped forward, Bolo sagged against the doorframe and slid to the ground. Behind him, James saw his little brother, Richard, pull the mango knife out of Bolo’s back, roll him over, and slit his throat. Blood sprayed everywhere.
Richard looked at James. “You found Mary? Good. I found Bolo.”
He ran. Carrying Mary, James stepped over Bolo’s body, unable to avoid the bloody spray. He followed Richard, who was oh, so light on his feet, the feet that were leaving prints in blood on each step. James looked down. Bolo’s blood covered his pants and boots, and his footprints covered Richard’s.
James ran after Richard. “You killed him.”
Richard reached the roan. “You gonna arrest me?”
“I made an oath.”
“He deserved to die.”
Richard lifted Mary from James’s shoulder. Together, they placed her facedown over Popolo’s saddle. James unpinned his badge again, put it in his pants pocket, took off his green-stained shirt and arranged it over Mary’s naked back and buttocks.
“Got a tie-down?” Richard said.
James opened the saddlebag and reached in for his belt, holster, and gun, now covered with mashed mango. He stuck the gun and holster in his waistband and wiped off the belt. Together they passed it around Mary’s waist and buckled her to the saddle horn.
When they were through, James took out his gun and pointed it at Richard. “I have to arrest you.”
“You’re not gonna shoot me.” Richard seemed amused.
James considered. Even if he could get Richard to take the gun seriously, there was the practical problem of taking Mary home and Richard to the station. Besides, he couldn’t get up in the saddle without help, with Mary lying there, while holding the gun and reins. On the other hand, his brother killed a white man, and James was involved. Ohana? Oath? Could he sort it out later? “Hold this, and help me up,” he said. He handed the gun to Richard, who pointed it at James.
“You won’t shoot me,” James said.
“We’re going different directions, big brother.”
On the porch, a woman screamed. Shouts came from the bar. Men ran up the stairs. James hauled himself up on the back of the saddle. Mary was wedged in under his ample belly. Popolo groaned.
James held out his hand to Richard. “Move along if you want, but give me the gun.”
Richard handed the gun to James, who jammed it into his waistband and kicked Popolo into a sullen canter across the yard. Hotel Street was empty except for the two Filipino soldiers sitting on a hitching rail. They stared at James as he rode past. What was the Hawaiian officer doing with a half-naked woman on his saddle, long black hair fanning over bloody boots?
Behind him, he heard shouting. Were the men from the bar following? Just then, he saw the mango knife in his mind’s eye, lying next to Bolo. For the love of God, no one had picked it up.
He heard more shouting and looked back. It was his little brother, Richard, on the roan.
THEY LED THE horses for the last little way before James’s bungalow. Here, houses were set far back from the road, partially hidden by banana patches and papaya trees. A dog barked. Here and there, a curtain opened and closed.
“They see us,” Richard said.
And no one would say anything about the Lopaka brothers bringing Mary home.
They carried her into the tiny room and laid her on the bed. James covered her with the breadfruit-pattern quilt that hung over the koa rocking chair. Emma, his natural mother, had made it when she was the housekeeper and common-law wife of his natural father. On James’s fourteenth birthday, his father asked Emma to leave the Waikiki house because his new bride was arriving from San Francisco. Emma took the quilt and her three children and went to stay with her auntie Leimomi. One afternoon, while the children ate laulaus in the pili-grass house, Emma sat under the mango tree, drank kerosene, and died. Auntie was childless, and in the Hawaiian tradition, James, Richard, and Mary became her hanai children.
Richard drew fresh water from the cistern and started a fire in the outdoor pit. They changed, and James carried the bloody clothes and boots out to the shed. He gave the horses timothy grass and water, and then, in the moonlight, rubbed gun oil into the boots and saddles, scrubbing in circles until the blood blended into the leather. Satisfied, he put on his boots and dropped the bloody clothes into the outhouse, using a stick to push them down into the muck.
He was carrying Richard’s boots to the house when he became aware of someone standing in the shadows. He smelled pikake and fresh-washed hair and lilac starch. He stood absolutely still.
She stepped into the moonlight. She had on a dark cloth cloak and a black lace scarf, draped over her head like those of Spanish women he had seen in books. Her voice had a faint pidgin lilt under a cultured British accent.
“James?”
Who was she? What did she want? How could he have been so engrossed that he had missed her arrival? And where was his gun? Inside the house, with his belt and holster. His badge? James groaned. It was inside the pocket of the bloody jeans he had just thrown into the outhouse. For the love of God, he thought, I will have to retrieve my badge.
It was at that moment he recognized her, remembering memories all at once, the four of them running through the parlor, which was against the rules, breaking the blue-and-white Chinese vase and dropping the pieces down the outhouse, where the man who brought the lime discovered them. No swimming or surfing for a week as punishment, but they still sneaked out to play with the peacocks on the lawn of Ainahau, the estate that really belonged to her, Princess Victoria Kaiulani, and not to her father, Archibald Cleghorn, who was James’s neighbor and best friend of his natural father.
She had grown tall and slim. A blue ribbon held her long black hair away from her face. Under her simple blue muumuu, her feet were bare and dusty.
“Vicky?” he said.
“Yes.”
They hugged each other, and twelve years melted away.
VICKY DID NOT flinch or ask questions when she saw Mary on the bed and the gun on the table. James needed to retrieve his badge before things got worse in the outhouse. He left Vicky washing Mary with water that Richard heated.