Moloka'i (11 page)

But Keo could still smile with his voice. “Ah, it must have been quite the night at the crazy pen,” he said, amused. “Did you dance the
hula?”

“Oh, yes. I was shameless. The men could not keep their eyes off me, I was so sinuous and beautiful.”

She laughed, but Keo did not. He said simply, “You are. You are beautiful,” and the love in his voice almost made her cry.

At breakfast she fed her husband with her hands, scooping
poi
with two fingers. The ruined borders of his mouth closed on them, his tongue licking off the paste.

But he was oddly silent between bites, and when he was finished he said, matter-of-factly, “Last night I heard the drums of the night marchers.”

Haleola laughed to dispel the fear that rose in her: “You heard the drums of the crazy place, silly old man.”

But Keo just shook his head.

“I saw their torches in the distance. I heard their drums,” he insisted. He added quietly, “I have heard them every night for the last week.”

He raised the stump of a hand to her cheek. “I love you, my wife. I’m sorry I was not strong enough to resist this disease. I’m sorry that it brought you here.”

She took his hand in hers. “Stop it. I’m the
kahuna,
and I say you’re fine.”

Keo laughed, but by evening he was feverish, alternately sweating and chilly. When tamarind seed failed to reduce the fever, Haleola tried the sap of a hibiscus tree; but Keo’s skin remained afire.

In desperation she sought out the settlement’s new physician, Dr. Emerson, who accompanied her back to the house but refused to enter it, standing in the doorway and examining Keo from a distance. He gave her something he called salicylic acid, but this too proved no help.

Keo was semiconscious and she was holding him, telling him she loved him, when another figure appeared in the doorway—knocking, in
haole
fashion, on the door frame.

She was surprised to see it was the priest, Kamiano.

“May I come in?” he asked in Hawaiian.

“My husband is very sick.”

“I know,” Damien acknowledged. “Would he . . . like to receive the sacraments?”

“We are not Christian.”

“It’s never too late to come to God. I can baptize him now, before . . .”

“No, thank you,” Haleola said coldly.

The priest took a step inside. His tone grew more emboldened. “For your husband’s sake, consider. Would you deprive him of the joys of heaven?”

Haleola ignored him. Damien’s tone became harsher. “Would you condemn him to everlasting perdition?” he asked. “A moment in hell contains a thousand tortures. Is that what you want for your husband—eternal torment? Because make no mistake,” and here his voice fairly boomed, “that is precisely what awaits him if he dies a sinner!”

Something cold and angry broke loose inside Haleola.

“My husband is a good man!” she cried, as vehemently as Damien. “An honest, loving, decent man! He gave me three beautiful sons—sheltered us with his tenderness—never let us go hungry or homeless! And now you tell me he’s a ‘sinner,’ that he’s going to burn in some fiery place forever, you dare to tell me that?

“If that is your God, Father Kamiano, your Jehovah, who would condemn a kind and tender man to hell for the sin of not believing in him—then I shall follow my Keo to hell, as I followed him to this one, and together we spit on your God and his heaven!”

She spat enthusiastically at his feet, and for once in his clerical life Damien was speechless.

“Leave our home! Leave my husband to die in peace!”

Damien looked at her evenly and honestly, nodded once, then did as he was asked.

Keo died within the hour.

Haleola prepared his body for burial in the traditional manner, wrapping it in layers of
kapa
cloth, and dug a grave behind their house. She placed into the grave a haunch of the roast pork that Keo enjoyed so much, as well as some items of clothing; then called out to his ancestors,
“Haku, Ano, 'eia mai kou mamo, Keohi.”
(Haku, Ano, here is your descendant, Keohi.) Tenderly she placed Keo’s bundled body in the grave, his head aligned toward the east, and said, “Keo, here you are departing. Go; but if you have a mind to return, here is food, here is clothing. Come back, and know you are always welcome in my heart.”

She closed the grave over him, burned a small piece of sandalwood, and spoke a last prayer:
“Aloha wale, e Keohi, k
ua, auw
.” (Boundless love, O Keohi, between us, alas.)

That night she couldn’t sleep, and went outside to take in air sweet with the fragrance of the pandanus fruit that grew near the
pali
. At the edge of a bluff she looked down at foaming surf breaking violently on jagged rocks, as it always did at Kalawao: never a gentle meeting of land and sea, always a noisy thrashing, as if in restless sleep.

She heard footsteps behind her, and a moment later she heard someone speaking utilitarian Hawaiian: “My condolences. For your husband.”

She turned. Damien’s voice was no longer a thundering bludgeon, but soft and subdued. “He must have been a fine man, to have been loved so much.”

The hellfire preacher was gone and in his stead was the builder of orphanages. “You must understand,” he said. “Christianity is an evangelical religion. It is our duty to share the glory of it. If I allowed someone to die without repentance, it would be as if I saw a man trapped in a burning house and made no effort to save him.”

Haleola shook her head. “Your religion is all about being miserable, and wretched. Ours had time for play, and joy. How is this an improvement?”

To her surprise, Damien laughed—a very warm, very human laugh. “Well, it’s not
all
wretchedness and sin,” he said, “but if all you know of it is my talk of fire and brimstone, I can see how you might think so.”

Not wanting to like this man, Haleola said sharply, “You come here to show us the error of our ways. You treat us like children.”

He laughed again.

“But you
are
my children!” he said cheerfully. “Had I stayed and served in my native Tremeloo, my congregation there would have been no less my children.” He smiled. “Why do you think they call us Father?”

Haleola sighed. She almost preferred the bombastic, righteous Kamiano—with him, at least, you could win an argument. She searched his face for some clue to this man. “I came here to
k
kua
my husband; I couldn’t have done anything else. But why did you come?”

“Like you. To
k
kua.”

“And to save our poor wayward souls?”

He shrugged. “I’m a practical man, Haleola. It’s true, I want to save souls. But it’s a poor church that cares only for what happens to a soul after it leaves this life. If I can provide some comfort, some ease of life for those about to lose theirs, how could I hesitate to try?”

“Aren’t you afraid,” she asked, “of becoming a leper yourself?”

Damien paused, then answered quietly, “Sometimes I think I already am.” He added, “But if God chooses for me to share the burden of leprosy with my children, then I will rejoice in it. Whatever God does is well done.”

After a moment Damien bowed his head respectfully and left. She watched him go, then turned back to the sea. Far down the coast she saw the flicker of torches, heard the distant sound of drums blown up on the wind. It was probably the bonfire at the crazy pen being lit, the
hula
drums being sounded; but Haleola chose to believe it was the marchers of the night, come to take Keo to the
p
, the world beyond. “Come back,” she told him, softly into the wind, “if you are of a mind to.” But he never did.

F

ourteen years later, a lanky man with a similarly impish smile had landed at Kalaupapa, his cane digging into the hard ground as he limped up the rocky embankment. As he reached the top, he straightened, looked around, stabbed the tip of his cane into the earth as if planting a flag and announced, “I claim this land in the name of me, and hereby declare myself a Provisional Government!”

Everyone at the landing—including Haleola and Ambrose Hutchison—laughed. The man gave his name to Ambrose as Kapono Kalama, “but you can call me President Pono.”

Ambrose smiled. “Do you have a place to stay, Mr. President?”

Pono said, “Why, I thought I’d just seize
your
property.”

Haleola smiled to recall it. She was still gazing at Pono, thinking of the ways he was like Keo and the ways he was not, when Ambrose’s wagon arrived at Bishop Home. St. Elizabeth’s Convent, a modest one-story white building with green shutters, was home to the Franciscan sisters. Behind it stood four pleasant, whitewashed cottages, two of which served as dormitories for leprous girls—many of whom, clad in identical wine-colored dresses, were out playing kickball on the lawn. They quickly encircled the wagon, eager to meet the new arrival. Sister Catherine suggested that perhaps Rachel would like to play with them while Pono and Haleola spoke to Mother Marianne. As Rachel kicked the ball back and forth with the other girls under Catherine’s watchful eye, another nun—older and considerably less friendly—took Pono and Haleola to the convent. They couldn’t enter, of course, but the sister showed them to lawn chairs and a table, where they were shortly joined by Mother Marianne Cope—a small, handsome woman with a serene smile. She turned to the nun who had brought them. “Sister Victor, would you mind bringing some tea and honey for our guests?”