Mahu Blood (34 page)

BOOK: Mahu Blood

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Parents Alfred and Leilani Lopika.”

“Ezekiel Lopika,” Peggy said. “That’s the guy whose hospitalization records we found.”

“So it looks like those records do belong to Ezekiel Kapuāiwa,”

I said. “He must have dropped his last name after he got out of the mental hospital.”

“King Kamehameha’s birth name was Lot Kapuāiwa,” Peggy said. “We learned what Kapuāiwa meant in Hawaiian school, didn’t we, Kimo?”

I struggled to recall anything I’d learned in those open-air classrooms, washed in memories of Peggy and me as little kids learning the Hawaiian language and the legends of the gods.

We usually think of
kapu
as something forbidden—but really it means something sacred, restricted only to royalty. Tossing that idea in my head, I tried to put
kapu
together with
āiwa
, which means mysterious or strange. Then it came back to me in a flash.

“Yeah. Something like a sacred one protected by supernatural powers.”

298 Neil S. Plakcy

“Something sure protected Ezekiel at the bank,” Ray said.

“The way he was able to pull Dex out of that truck without getting himself killed.”

“So maybe Ezekiel really is a descendant of Kamehameha,”

Peggy said excitedly. “And Tanaka convinced Ezekiel to drop Lopika in order to focus on the connection. Didn’t you say you found some big koa bowls somewhere?”

“That’s right. My mother said bowls that big were reserved for royalty. Edith was Ezekiel’s hanai tūtū, so she may have been holding them for him.”

“Let’s not get ahead of ourselves,” Ray said. “We have the records right here. Let’s see what we can find.”

We hunted backward until we found Alfred’s birth record, in 1925. No father’s name was given, but his mother was Victoria Lopika. In 1906, we found the birth of a baby girl by that name.

I struggled to remember the details Maile Kanuha had given us.

“Victoria’s father is supposed to be Moses Kapuāiwa, who was the grandson of Kamehameha V.”

“Kamehameha?” Sampson said. “I’m no expert on Hawaiian history, but I thought he never had any children. Isn’t that when Hawai’i started electing kings, after he died?”

“The story that Kingdom of Hawai’i tells is that Kamehameha had an illegitimate son named Ulumaheihei, maybe with one of the girls who was at the Royal School with him, who dropped out and got married quickly. That his advisors would never let him recognize the boy, and that’s why he refused to name a successor.

Ulumaheihei died when Moses was young, and the family never came forward until now.”

“Let’s look for Moses, then,” Peggy said.

But there was no Moses, no one designated to lead his people out of slavery. Victoria’s parents were John and Apikela Lopika. The records didn’t go back far enough to track John Lopika’s birth, but I was willing to bet he wasn’t related to Moses Kapuāiwa, if such a person existed.

“If it’s true, then Ezekiel isn’t descended from Kamehameha, MAhu BLood
299

and he has no more right to a restored throne than you or me,”

I said.

“Speak for yourself,” Peggy said. “My great-grandmother insisted she was a distant cousin of Queen Lili’uokalani.”

“It would destroy the foundation of KOH, though,” I said.

“If Jun Tanaka was betting on Ezekiel and then he discovered his horse was out of the running, he might do whatever he could to keep the information from getting out.”

“So what do we do with this material?” Peggy asked. “It shuts down KOH.”

“I think KOH is going down anyway,” I said. “Without Tanaka’s money, without him pulling the strings, you’ve got Ezekiel. And everyone who knows him admits he’s a little squirrely. He did act like a hero at the bank, though.”

I sat back in my chair. “Ezekiel said something to me. That he believed it was in his blood to protect the people of Hawai’i.

That they were his ohana. And who knows, maybe those big bowls Aunty Edith had really did come down through his family and that means he has royal connections somewhere.”

“He may be nuts, but he’s a good guy,” Ray said. “If he hadn’t pulled Dex out of the truck, Dex could have killed more people.”

We were agreed. The secrets of Ezekiel’s parentage and hospitalization would stay between us, at least until there was some reason to make them public. The Bishop Museum had contacted Leelee about buying the bowls from her, and Peggy had agreed to look after Leelee’s interests in the deal. Some of the money would go to get her settled off homestead land, and some would be put away in trust for the baby.

The CDs had all ended by then, and no one had gotten up to put new ones on. “I think we need a little live music,” Peggy said. “To cap off a great luau. Sarah, you want to sing something for us?”

“Oh, no, I couldn’t,” Sarah said. “Not without a band behind me.”

300 Neil S. Plakcy

“You have a great voice,” Ray said. “You know Frishberg’s song
I’m Home
? The one Al Jarreau sings? It’s a great song for a housewarming.”

After a little more persuading, Sarah stood up, and we shushed the crowd. When she sang, “I knew that I’d found what’s at the end of the rainbow... There’s no place on earth I’d rather be than stayin’ right here with you,” I looked around for Mike.

He was standing at the back door, where two steps led up into the house. He looked so handsome, in his Honolulu Fire Department T-shirt and geometric-print board shorts. A smile curled out from beneath his mustache. I had this powerful desire to be with him—the kind of magnetic attraction I’d seen between Haoa and Tatiana, where neither of them looked complete without the other. I’d always envied that about them, and now I knew what it felt like from the inside.

I climbed up there with him, and we listened the music and looked at everyone enjoying themselves, celebrating a union that neither of us had ever dreamed we could enjoy.

Sarah finished the song, and everyone applauded. Then, holding hands, Mike and I stepped down to take our places in our
ohana
.

ABout the AuthoR

NEIL PLAKCY is the author of
Mahu
,
Mahu Surfer, Mahu Fire,
Mahu Vice,
and
Mahu Men
, about openly gay Honolulu homicide detective Kimo Kanapa’aka. His other books are
Three Wrong
Turns in the Desert, Dancing with the Tide, The Outhouse Gang, In Dog
We Trust, Invasion of the Blatnicks
, and
GayLife.com
.
He edited
Paws