Sujata Massey - Shimura Trouble

“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?”