Shimura Trouble Page 11

  Around one o’clock the winds shifted and the fire was no longer spreading along Farrington Highway. The Honolulu fire chief came onscreen and declared that the danger had passed, and all evacuated neighborhoods were clear. However, the fire had burned over ninety thousand acres of Pierce lands. Ten firefighters had gone to the hospital because of smoke inhalation, and an unknown amount of cattle and horses had been lost.

  “Thank God,” Margaret said. “I’m truly grateful. And sorry we were here so long—you all must be very tired. Michael, you go to your hotel now. There’s no more need for anyone to watch the news.”

  To my dismay, Michael canceled his hotel reservation and ordered a taxi back to Waikiki. I walked outside with him to wait, while the Hawaiian Shimuras loaded up in Edwin’s Nissan to head back to Honokai Hale.

  “Why go back now when you really should go straight to bed?” I put my arm around Michael, after they’d driven off. “You heard how expensive a taxi to Waikiki is. You should sleep in the hotel here, and I’ll drive you home tomorrow.”

  “A night at the resort hotel costs about three times what a cab would,” Michael said dryly. “Besides, the guys are expecting me. We have early-morning surfing plans, and then I want to find a car rental place.”

  Calvin walked past us, calling a loud goodbye just as Michael’s taxi arrived. I waved off both of them and went right into the kitchen to wash the wineglasses; Michael had loaded everything else in the dishwasher hours ago.

  Tom followed me into the kitchen and picked up a dishtowel.

  “Thank you!” I said, realizing that perhaps Michael had set a good example.

  “I noticed your friend Michael is quite happy in the kitchen. Maybe that was his duty on the ship?” Tom asked.

  “Oh, he doesn’t talk much about his past.”

  “So, did you meet him at a bar—or was it on the street?”

  “Actually, it was at a museum,” I said, as if I didn’t understand Tom’s insinuation.

  “A museum! That’s good, he’s broadening his horizons. But as for Washington, is he attached to a ship there? I wasn’t aware Washington DC was a seaport.”

  Now he was insinuating that Michael was lying. Swiftly I said, “He’s not working on ships anymore, and I don’t care for all these nosy questions. Please, Tom!”

  “This Michael seems to be pleasant and friendly, but when I think about his way of life, I worry for you. He probably earns even less money than Edwin. Calvin Morita, on the other hand, has a very good situation and seems so interested in you—yet you unkindly ignore him.”

  “Calvin’s a nanny with muscles,” I shot back. “You know the kind of men I’ve gone out with. Calvin’s nowhere in the ball park.”

  “I disagree. He is a good-looking fellow, and he’s also in the same specialty as your father. In Japan, we think it’s a good thing to marry someone like your own family—not the Hawaiian Shimuras, of course, but your own family.”

  I paused to digest this. “Have you ever thought, Tom, what would have happened if Harue Shimura hadn’t been the one sent off to Hawaii?”

  “No. What do you mean by that?”

  “Since we’ve been here, I’ve been thinking a lot about how we’re stamped by who our ancestors were. Here in Hawaii, most Japanese, Chinese and Filipinos descend from ancestors who worked terrible, back-breaking jobs on the plantation.”

  “Ah, there you exaggerate. I doubt many backs were broken, though I’m sure there were some strained muscles and herniated discs!”

  “Just think, after all these sugar workers did to survive in Hawaii, they would never return to their homelands, although some would live long enough to be looked down on by wealthy tourists from Japan who’d never shucked anything tougher than an ear of corn.”

  “How can you say that about me and my father?” Tom interrupted. “You’re forgetting all that we suffered. The war! Starvation! Bombing!”

  “Tom, your father was born in MacArthur Japan, and you didn’t come along till the seventies. All you know is life in the richest country on earth.”

  Tom gaped at me. “What is happening to you? Since you arrived here, you’re not the same.”

  I nodded, because he was right. I couldn’t put myself on one side or the other anymore; maybe I never would. I was mixed up somewhere in the middle of the Pacific, like the islands of Hawaii itself.

  I PRIED MY eyes open, then shut them fast. The sun told me I’d slept past my usual five-thirty wake-up time. It was almost eight, I discovered when I could finally adjust my eyes to the light and read my watch.

  When I trailed out of my room, I found that I was the last to rise. Dirty dishes in the sink told me that everyone had eaten, and the quiet told me they’d left the house. I saw the minivan was gone; perhaps it was a pre-emptive strike to keep me from seeing Michael. Perhaps they were out shopping, or on a fire-damage sightseeing tour.

  I drank a glass of mixed passion and orange juices while I unloaded the dishwasher, then refilled it with what was left in the sink and finally stepped outside. The flames were gone, leaving behind a blackened mountain range. The sky was as bright and beautiful as that in the beach scene posters sold at Kainoa’s coffee shop.

  The fate of the coffee shop and old plantation village had been in my mind ever since I’d woken up. I stretched on the lanai, drank some water, and set out on my usual route through the resort, and into the fields. The dry, slightly scorched fields near Kainani gave way to a flat landscape as black as the mountains, punctuated only by small, smoldering piles of brush. Ironically, without any vegetation I ran faster, though the dust I kicked up made the experience more like running in a city than the countryside.

  As I’d feared, the plantation village had been burned to the ground. Only some tin mailboxes had survived, and when I saw a name I remembered, I knew the orientation for the coffee shop.

  Here, the devastation was just as bad. The asphalt parking lot had survived, but the building was like the plantation cottages—charred wreckage of fallen beams. Here and there some metal things had survived, such as the espresso machine and a sink.

  A well-built brown man in a tank top and shorts was leaning over one such pile. He turned round when he heard me approaching. As I’d expected, the man was Kainoa. His face and clothes were smeared with ash, and his eyes were red.

  “You shouldn’t be here.” Kainoa’s voice broke, and his shoulders sagged.

  “I’m sorry…” I began, but he cut me off.

  “This is a fire scene. It’s dangerous and none of your business.”

  “When I heard where the fire was headed last night, I started to worry. I didn’t know for sure, so I came over. I had to know what happened.”

  “Shit happens,” Kainoa said, pronouncing each word precisely in a Mainland accent. “Everyone knew, it seemed, that the local yokel couldn’t run and save his own business any more than he could save his own ass.”

  “It isn’t necessarily over,” I said. “Fight for it. You can rebuild.”

  “No, I can’t. I wasn’t insured.”

  “But that’s impossible.”

  “I bought insurance for construction, which costs me an arm and a leg, and thought it would cover everything I owned. It turned out I was wrong.” Kainoa sighed heavily. “I was here for a while yesterday, trying to hold it off, build a firebreak. But then the village started to burn and I got the hell out.”

  Kainoa sank down on a pile of scorched wood, his head bowed. Without taking time to think anything through, I went over and put my arms around him. I couldn’t smell pleasant after my run, but Kainoa was in about the same state. He held on for a minute and then released me. He shook his head. “The whole thing, it was the worst mistake of my life.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “Let me give you a ride back to your place,” Kainoa said. “You shouldn’t run across that field again without having water.”

  KAINOA’S DIRTY WHITE Toyota Tacoma trunk was packed to overflowing with files and
boxes of things he’d saved from the shop. I caught a glimpse of the espresso maker on its side, deflated beach toys, and lots of balled-up clothes—bikinis like the one I’d bought, and board shorts in the same pattern that Braden wore.

  Kainoa dug around and found a lone Fiji water for me and a Budweiser for himself. It was pretty early to be drinking, not to mention drinking while driving. But I didn’t say anything until we were heading toward the border of the old sugar cane field and were about to turn on to Farrington Highway.

  “Do you want to get rid of the bottle?” I said, shifting uneasily on the seat’s bright floral cotton cover.

  Kainoa looked at me as if I were insane. “I can’t throw a bottle out of this car.”

  “I’m not suggesting littering, but you don’t want to have to explain what you’re doing if you get pulled over by a cop.”

  “Well, if he sees the bottle and connects it to me, it’s arson, baby.”

  We heard the sound of a vehicle at that time; fortunately, it wasn’t a police car, but a black truck turning off Farrington Highway and heading in our direction, kicking up ash as it traveled. Kainoa seemed to stiffen, and threw the empty bottle into the backseat and told me to throw something over it. I did, and my nervousness accelerated.

  “Who could that be, driving across Pierce lands?” I asked.

  “The obvious. Albert Rivera, the guy I told you about.”

  The dreaded land manager. My stomach dropped when the black truck began honking, then cut squarely across our path and stopped. A tall middle-aged man in jeans jumped out of the truck. Kainoa rolled down his window, hung out his head and beckoned for the man to come toward him.

  “Aloha, Albert,” he called out in the boisterous, happy-go-lucky tone I’d heard him use often in the coffee shop. But Kainoa’s right hand remained in a death grip on the steering wheel, as if he was ready to take off at any second. “You cleaning up after the fire, too?”

  The luna wore a baseball cap, so I couldn’t see his hair, but his flinty eyes had an Asian crease, which could make him anything. But Rivera probably had some Portuguese blood, because of his name. In pidgin as thick as Great-Uncle Yoshitsune’s, he roared, ‘Kainoa Stevens, what you think you doing? And who’s in there with you this time?”

  “My name is Rei Shimura. I’m staying at Kainani,” I added, because I was on the verge of concocting an excuse about being a lost tourist who Kainoa was helping home.

  He snapped his fingers. “The running chick. You went across the field the last couple mornings. So, Kainoa, you got an explanation for this trespass or what?”

  “Just trying to get a lost runner out. You got a problem with me helping this girl?”

  “I went out to the coffee shop, and he’s bringing me home,” I said, my heart starting to thud. I’d noticed an ominous bulge under the thin woven shirt that Albert Rivera wore.

  “Pierce Holdings don’t like vehicles carving up their land. You know that, Kainoa.”

  “This land’s in pretty bad shape to even think about my truck making an impact,” Kainoa said. “Anyway, the Pierces got no trouble carving it up for Kikuchi.”

  “You watch what you say,” Albert said. “Mr. Kikuchi’s in the truck. I’m giving him a tour of the damage.”

  I’d been nervously focused on Alberto Rivera, so I hadn’t noticed a passenger in the truck. But now I saw a silhouetted figure in the passenger seat.

  “Just a minute,” Kainoa said to me, putting the truck in park and swinging down. He strode over to the red truck’s passenger side window and stood there until the man inside rolled it down.

  Albert stared at the two of them, and then stomped over to join the gathering. Feeling left out, I slid out of my seat and followed, figuring that I might employ my Japanese to smooth things over.

  The passenger door opened now, and Mitsuo Kikuchi stepped down, with a hand from Alberto Rivera. He needed it; he was a very small man, about five feet tall, with thin white hair and wrinkles. Despite his age, Mr. Kikuchi wore surprisingly childlike clothes—a pink golf shirt, and pink and orange checked Madras cotton shorts. He wore his glasses on a red string around his neck, and soft white loafers were turning gray around the edges from the ashy field.

  “Welcome to Hawaii,” I said in Japanese. When Mitsuo Kikuchi remained stern, I made a deep bow and began my personal introduction, which quickly segued into thanking him for building such a beautiful resort, where I was staying with my family. It was all polite nonsense, the kind of thing that was de rigueur when you met somebody in Japan.

  “Do you live there all year?” Mr. Kikuchi’s voice was polite, and he spoke English without much of an accent. It was a clear signal to switch languages.

  “Just a month this time, although I’m sure I’ll be back. It’s such a nice community. I already met your son and his physician.”

  “My son is the resort CEO.” Mr. Kikuchi had noticeably stiffened.

  “Yes, I’ve heard that. I saw him at the pool on my first morning.”

  “He rarely leaves his office; you must be mistaken,” Kikuchi said, turning his attention to Kainoa. “Have we met?”

  “Yeah. My name is Kainoa Stevens. You visited my coffee shop to talk last February.”

  “Oh, yes. The place made out of an old general store. I hope it’s all right after the fire?” Mr. Kikuchi’s voice lowered to a suitable, pitying level.

  “The whole plantation village burned and that coffee shop with it,” Albert Rivera put in. “All the old tings gone.”

  “I guess it looks more likely that I’ll consider selling.” Kainoa spoke in a firm voice, but his eyes were on the ashes, not any of us.

  “Is it true, then? Your building is destroyed?” Kikuchi pressed.

  “Everything except the espresso machine.”

  “I’m afraid I must make a new price. Now that there is damage, it means more work for my company. When you count in the plantation village, it’s really a tragedy, all those important historic buildings gone.”

  “But you were planning to tear down the village! Everyone knows that.” Kainoa sounded testy.

  “You are almost correct. I wasn’t going to use those buildings for my project, but I had been told by the government that the buildings are important, so I planned to transport them. These days, you can make a small hotel village from old cottages.” Mr. Kikuchi shook his head. “Your coffee place was a very nice, authentic plantation general store. That could have been a centerpiece building for a historic resort somewhere else, like Molokai.”

  “I can’t see where a rickety old plantation store from Leeward Oahu would fit on a neighbor island with its own buildings,” Kainoa retorted.

  “I’m quite sorry about your loss.” Kikuchi’s slight smile belied his words. “If you are honestly ready to cooperate, Stevens, call my office tomorrow. It will be your last chance, so think carefully. Right now, I must resume my tour of the Pierce property.”

  I COULDN’T BRING myself to look at Kainoa after the red truck had disappeared in a cloud of choking black smoke. It was just too depressing. Kainoa hadn’t said much to me, just fished another couple of bottles of Budweiser out of the back of his truck. I’d shaken my head at the beer that he offered me, so he drank one bottle after the next as he drove off the Pierce lands and on to Farrington Highway.

  At Kainani’s Aloha station, he didn’t stop but drove straight through, leaving a trio of anxious-looking teenage security guards in his wake. As we passed the hotel, I started to tell him where to turn for the Pineapple Plantation, but he interrupted.

  “I know where it is. You gonna open the gate for me?”

  “It’s OK, you can just drop me now. You’ve done so much already—”

  “You don’t want the family to see you with a moke like me, yah?”

  “Of course not.” I handed him the fob with the gate entrance chip and told him how to swipe it. Slowly, the gates parted and I directed Kainoa how to drive on. Looking around at the emerald lawns still being sprinkled
, I felt embarrassed. “I’m staying in the third house on the left—oops, did I miss it?” I was confused, because although I recognized the breadfruit tree by the walkway, a different vehicle was in the driveway—a white Chrysler Sebring convertible with the top down. But then I saw the shoe rack by the door, with my relatives’ sandals. It was definitely our house.

  “OK, I’ll just get out here,” I said, waving my hand toward a tree just past the driveway. If I craned my head, I could see beyond the trees into the fenced pool area. There were a lot of children, nannies and parents, but the only Japanese man I could see was Jiro Yoshioka, lying on a chair like a flabby beached whale, with Calvin Morita at his side, both of them directly in the line of vision of two teenage girls splashing in the pool. So much for another hard day in the office.

  Kainoa turned off the ignition. “I got a lot of trouble to take care of. Don’t think I’ll see you again.”

  “You know, I’m here another three and a half weeks. I’d like to stay in touch as things progress. Where can I find you?” I was more worried about his situation with Mitsuo Kikuchi than I was about the Shimura land.

  “I stay in Makaha. You already got my card, but just in case…” Kainoa fished a takeout restaurant menu out of the glove compartment and scrawled a number on it. “It’s OK if you don’t call. I got a lot of shit going down, as you saw.”

  “I understand.” I broke off because I caught a flash of movement in the passenger side mirror. Michael Hendricks, wearing khaki shorts, a rusty-red polo shirt and his Topsiders, was heading straight for us.

  “I WAS BEGINNING to wonder where everyone had gone.” Michael’s gaze slid from me to Kainoa.

  “Michael, this is Kainoa Stevens. He owns the coffee shop I told you about.”

  Kainoa looked at Michael, perplexed. “I thought your cousin was Japanese.”