This Is Paradise (6 page)

My father looked down at Makana, who was on a leash at my feet scratching lazily at the ground. Next my father looked up at me, and then at the bird again. I gave the leash a gentle tug and Makana stopped scratching. He cocked his head up at me, and his eyes were clear and intelligent. He was waiting for a command. When I whistled low and soft, he walked in a wide circle beside me, his head pumping in and out, his talons kicking behind his tail. He was looking for an opponent.

My dad laughed. “Yeah, girl,” he said, resting a hand on my shoulder. “You make one fine pitta. Like da papa.”

In the front of the house a car backfired. My dad froze, watching the street. For a moment the air was still, but then the usual noises returned: a dog barked, the wind squealed up the mountain, the mynahs cawed in the monkeypod trees. My dad relaxed, and I released the breath I had been holding without realizing it. But Makana remained unsettled by the sharp noise, and he wouldn’t stop squawking. When my dad reached for the bird, I tugged the leash toward me.

“Can take care of it,” I said. I took Makana in my arms and hummed, pressing his head beneath my chin so he could feel the vibration of my vocal cords. He sank into my arms.

“Jus’ like da dad, you.” My father kissed me on the forehead. “Like make me proud. Make me know you always take care da papa. Always take care tings fo’ me.”

I didn’t know then what my father meant by things, but later, after he was killed, I began to understand.

That summer after my father died, the heat came early. The birds molted sooner in the season, and in the evenings, instead of training, I walked through the high grass behind my uncle’s house in Makawao. I stayed out until the sky was dark, and the huge boulders littering the pastureland appeared like the backs of ancient gods, curled up and sleeping. This is how I found the Indian—when
the sky was purple and the earth was still hot from the sun beating into it.

The Indian lived Upcountry because he liked the slower pace of life. He worked construction, but he took classes at Maui Community. “To keep my mind sharp,” he said, and I wondered why with a body like his he felt he needed a sharp mind. He confided that he wanted to take a poetry class. He practiced Buddhism. He was considering becoming a vegetarian. Sometimes I laughed when he told me things like these. I didn’t know anyone who was a vegetarian.

For all his funny notions, the Indian still knew how to be a man. He had a way of walking into a bar with his hand on my lower back that told everyone I belonged to him. If some haole kid gave me lip, the Indian would rise to his full height, his shoulder blades pressed back until they nearly touched, and his hands curled into fists that pulsed as he squeezed his fingers into his palms.

The Indian never fought anyone. He never needed to. I used to tell him, “If someone really push you, you gon swing.” The Indian always disagreed. He had grown up with a father who fought easily, and he’d left South Dakota to avoid that inheritance.

“What if someone like go at you first?” I once asked. “Or what if dey come afta me?”

“Come after.” The Indian emphasized the “r” sound. He had grown up on rez English, with its own cadences
and slang, but now that we were together he wanted both of us to use what he considered proper English. This was just another one of the Indian’s self-imposed limits. As with language, his gentlemanliness seemed to abide by a set of invisible expectations.

“Come after,” I repeated.

“In answer to your question, I would walk away.”

“What if I hit you? Like, right now, I jus’ hit you.”

The Indian laughed. “I would never hit back. Never.”

“What if I ignore you for one whole week? How you like get my attention?”

The Indian ran his finger along the side of my body, from just beneath my armpit to my hip, and then he reached around and squeezed my ʻōkole. “I have plenty of ways of getting your attention.”

I laughed when he said sweet words like those, and I understood that beneath them he meant what he said. He was not one to waste words or use them lightly, as I often did. In bed, clasping the Indian’s naked body to mine, I could see the map of his father’s attentions: a broken nose that now veered slightly to the right, deep cuts that had healed pale and thin, marks from a belt where the skin had furled into itself and thickened. “I’ll never be like him,” the Indian promised, and I believed him.

The way Uncle Lee told it, Mr. Oh had wanted to rise in the ranks, and security was the next logical job for him.
My dad, however, had a corner on that market, and the bosses trusted him. Mr. Oh wasn’t the one who killed my father, but he told stories to the bosses on Oʻahu, and as my dad used to say, talking is as good as pulling a trigger.

After my father’s death, I moved in with Uncle Lee. My grandmother wanted me to live with her. She knew Uncle Lee fought birds, and she didn’t want me getting mixed up in all that, but I was eighteen and did as I pleased.

Revenge would have been easy. I could have asked my dad’s friends to do what I couldn’t: send dogs to murder Mr. Oh’s birds. And, if I had really wanted to, I probably could have found someone to murder Mr. Oh. But these forms of retribution weren’t right by my standards. Mr. Oh wouldn’t know who had sent the dogs, and I wanted recognition for settling the score. I wanted that responsibility and that pleasure. What I didn’t want was blood on my hands. Maybe Mr. Oh could sleep at night without being haunted by the memory of my father, but I knew I couldn’t live with myself if I had caused the death of a man.

It took me six months to figure out how to take my revenge. The idea came to me at a derby in Haiku. Al Chen, one of my dad’s buddies, was hosting as he often did. Mr. Oh hovered behind Al throughout the weighing and banding. He watched that Al drew for order and then paired the birds by weight, and that the pairings were truly random. Mr. Oh also demanded that all the bands be tied in front of him to prevent switching. My father had never demanded that the pitters report to him in addition to Al.

The fights didn’t go well for my uncle or his buddy Zoo, who lost three hundred dollars and his favorite hatch to one of Mr. Oh’s birds. Back in the stands, Zoo’s doughy face drooped lower than usual. “I like see someone beat dat man.” In the yellow light of the tent I saw brown smears on his forearms where he had forgotten to wash off his bird’s blood. “I neva lost when yoa papa was living,” he told me.

“Ah well, none us did,” Uncle Lee said.

I nodded in agreement. When my father had been alive, he had owned the birds and trained them; Zoo and Uncle Lee just pitted. Now it was different. Now they owned and trained the birds, and the animals lost. I wondered if they followed my father’s training regimen, if they fed the birds carefully. They must have been doing something wrong to be losing like they were.

“I t’rough afta tonight.” Zoo scowled in the direction of Mr. Oh.

“You say dat now. Tomorrow, but, you like buy anotha bird and stat ova again.”

“Jus’ for see Mr. Oh lose.”

“Yeah, I like see dat man and his birds lose someting big, you know?” My uncle shook his head. “If my brudda stay alive …”

I felt my father’s absence hanging over all of us, and I wanted to give my uncles what my dad had given them: winning birds, winning bets. “If I wen train my birds right, if I train like my dad, I could beat Mr. Oh.”

Zoo looked up from his hands, and his bald spot shone in the lights. “Ah, babe. You good, but. Da dad had plenny help, you know.”

“I gon have help. Uncle help me train, and I talk story wit’ da gaffers …” I stopped talking. Uncle Lee and Zoo were looking at each other. I wondered if they were doubting my abilities as a pitter. “I can do it, you know. I can beat ’im.”

“We know, babe,” Uncle Lee said. “You gon make us proud. You make yoa papa proud, too.”

“We can help ’er plenny,” Zoo said, “Al, too.”

My uncle shook his head. “No, we let ’er do dis her way.” He gave Zoo another look, and Zoo bowed his head. What understanding had passed between them I didn’t know.

After that night, Uncle Lee distanced himself from me. He helped me train when we were at his house, but he wouldn’t assist me at the fights because he said I needed to be seen as independent. I spent more time observing the other pitters: how they prepped their birds, how they taught them to move, how they chose their gaffers, and what kind of gaffs they used. The gaffers wouldn’t out-and-out teach me how to tie, but they let me watch, and I started to learn which knives responded best to which style of tying.

That fall, I mostly watched my birds lose—maybe not lose the fight, but lose an eye, a toe, a swath of golden-red feathers. Those that won the fight might heal and two
weeks later be back in the ring, but the ones that lost I killed with a quick knife to their throats. Makana went this way. A lot of good birds did.

I wasn’t looking to win. I was looking to understand why certain birds lost. Often, the bird that lost was the one that appeared strongest at the start. It moved fast, lifted its wings in an attempt to intimidate, came at its opponent with its claws, even aimed a few well-placed pecks in the vicinity of the other bird’s face. By contrast, the winning cocks were usually less immediately aggressive. They hung back for a few seconds, appeared to assess the ring, and waited for their opponent to make the first move. Then, rather than threaten, the slow starter went for the kill. They didn’t bother with claws and pecking. They knew how to use the knife.

In December, when the derby season drew to a close, I returned to visiting the Indian more often. He had so much he wanted to teach me: how to drive stick shift, how to shoot a gun, how to circle my hips when I was on top in bed. For Christmas he built me a hen house, and I moved in with him.

The Indian started the poetry class he wanted to take. On Sunday mornings, lying in our bed, the sheets crumpled like paper around our knees and thighs, I watched him write. “There’s nothing complicated in poetry,” he told me. “Like this I just wrote: ‘Chickens scratch the
dirt/Looking for feed I pluck eggs/Dawn’s sun cracks open.’ ”

I thought of what I would write about my father or my mom leaving or the roosters, but I never knew what to say.

“Just write what it feels like to be alive,” the Indian instructed. He tore a sheet of paper from his spiral-bound notebook and handed it to me. “Like Bashō says: a poet must know the ordinary feelings of an ordinary life. Write about the quotidian.”

“I don’t know what that means.”

“Daily. Regularly.”

I looked down at the piece of paper in my lap.
I daily train my birds
, I wrote.
I regularly miss my dad
.

“That’s not really what I had in mind.” The Indian handed me a new piece of paper. “Try writing about something beautiful in your life instead.”

Lono’s tail feathers are red like lava
.

“Or write something that puts you at peace and in harmony with the world.”

I stared at the paper. “I don’t know what makes me feel peace. Feeding the birds, I guess. Or walking them. I feel at peace when I see them on their teepees.”

“What about me? Don’t I put you at peace?”

I studied him. His short, black hair was silvering slightly at the temples, and his jowls had taken on a little weight during the holidays. Still, looking at him made my heart leap. I wanted to tell him that he excited me. I felt the world spin hotter and faster when he touched me. I
felt the opposite of peace. But instead of explaining all this, I just said, “No. Not at peace.”

“You love those birds more than me, that’s why.” He snapped shut his notebook and tossed it on the floor.

“I mean, you do put me at peace sometimes.”

“You just said I don’t.”

“You do. Believe me.”

“I wish I could believe you, but I don’t think a life can be peaceful when it’s focused on fighting.”

“Jus’ ’cause I fight birds doesn’t mean I’m not at peace.”

“What about your dad?”

“I have peace with my dad.”

“That’s not what I mean. Ask yourself: was your dad at peace? From what you tell me, the fights ruled his life. And yours.”

“It never was like that. He had no fears, no regrets. He lived his life how he wanted to live it. I’m not angry ’bout it.”

“Then why do you want to fight Mr. Oh so badly?”

“I can be at peace with my dad and still want revenge for what Mr. Oh did.”

“That’s impossible.” He shook his head. His eyes looked tired and sad. “It’s like you want to do what your dad didn’t finish. Like you don’t even know who you are. Are you your father or yourself? You don’t know.”

I rested my forehead against his. His eyelashes were thick and long, and in the corner of his left eye a yellow crust of sleep clung to his skin. I kissed him long and hard,
and his tongue searched for mine. We kept our eyes open. I wanted him to see all of who I was. “I know who I am.”

“Do you?” he whispered. He climbed on me, and the weight of his body pressed all the air from my lungs. I tipped my hips up toward his. “Tell me then: Are you a fighter or a lover?”

“Lover.”

He kissed me hard on the mouth, and I felt myself grow wet. “Are you your father’s girl or my woman?”