Island Of Sweet Pies And Soldiers: A powerful story of loss and love

“Did you happen to see Daddy yesterday afternoon? Before he drove off.” Ella shook her head. “Did he say anything to you at all yesterday about going someplace in the afternoon?”

In the silence between them, her fear began to spread.

“Honey, I need you to talk to me.”

“My tummy hurts,” Ella whispered.

“Setsuko, would you mind fixing some poi?”

A voice inside was telling Violet that the two incidents were connected. Her tough little girl suddenly seemed so fragile. “Where were you when the other kids were looking for you?”

“I had a good hiding place. I told you that,” Ella said.

Violet watched the rise and fall of her ribs. Tenderness rushed through her.

“Sometimes, when you hold things inside, it can make you feel sick. Is that what’s happening?”

Ella shook her head again, limply.

Violet let out a big sigh. “We can keep it just between you and me, but I need you to tell me anything that seemed out of the ordinary. Even if you don’t think it matters.”

“There’s nothing to tell.”

She prodded Ella for more information, but Ella refused to answer. Frustration was building up inside, causing every cell in her body to hurt. She wanted to scream.

* * *

When Sheriff Souza returned, his face had bad news written all over it. He didn’t waver as he asked her to accompany him into the kitchen and swung the door shut. Her heart dropped.

He chewed on his lower lip for a moment before speaking. “Now, I can’t say that we found anything conclusive, and there was plenty of rain last night, but we combed the area around his car and there appear to be some broken bushes. And blood. Just a small amount, but it was near the edge of the overlook.”

The word blood was all she heard. “Did you look below? Could he have been hurt and fallen?”

She pictured the cliffs. Lofty, vertical slabs that plunged straight into the roiling blue. In some areas, small outcroppings of land jutted out.

“Anyone falls, they end up in the water. Or on the rocks. We didn’t see a body on the rocks.”

A body. She felt herself unraveling at the seams and had to check to make sure her upper half was still connected to her lower half. Strangely, she felt as though she were listening to a radio detective show. Herman dead was impossible. Husbands were not allowed to die. Especially young ones. Especially hers.

The words came out in a whisper. “Luther thinks Herman went into Waipio with someone for okolehao. That blood could have been from anything, couldn’t it? A pig, a goat.”

“Could have been. I sent Boy Rapozo down to check. No one coughs down there without him knowing about it. Gonna have the blood tested. Do you know his type?”

“O.”

The ringing in her ears ramped up and Violet focused on Souza’s bristly mustache and the way his lips jutted out underneath. How his gaze moved around the kitchen, trying to find an anchor.

“Thank you, Sheriff.”

“We’ll get to the bottom of this. People don’t just disappear in Honoka’a. Not on my watch.”

As it turned out, they did. The only lead that turned up was from a chicken farmer up the way who claimed he heard two gunshots that afternoon. But even he couldn’t be sure from which direction they had come. Speculation in town was rampant. Herman worked for the Japanese. A moonshine deal had soured. He was gambling on cockfights. Working for the FBI.

That people thought someone as upstanding and well liked as Herman could be a spy boiled her insides. But she had to admit most things Japanese did have a special place in his heart. His secretary was Japanese, he boasted that some of his best teachers were Japanese, and many of his friends were Japanese. He liked Japanese food, drank Japanese wine, and grew Japanese sweet potatoes in his garden. But did that make him a spy?

Violet swayed back and forth between her own two theories. One was that he might have been on watch for the Hawaii Rifles, and been ambushed by the Japanese while out patrolling along the cliffs. But no one else had seen anything suspicious and no one else had up and vanished. The other idea was that he had upset someone in the spirit business, because he had on several occasions voiced an interest in making his own. She had argued against it.

“How will it look if the school principal is also a moonshine distributor?” she had said.

“Honey, it would just be for a few of us around here. And we could use the extra money to buy more land.”

“Not a good idea,” she’d insisted.

If only she could find his calendar, which he also used as a sort of journal. It was not on his desk where it usually was and had yet to turn up. Either he had it with him, or someone took it. This was the one piece of information that didn’t fit. How could someone have taken it? Sheriff Souza had interrogated everyone in the school on this small fact, reasoning that if someone had taken the journal, someone had access to his office.

For an entire week, Ella wouldn’t eat solid food and Violet took to feeding her spoonfuls of chicken broth and rice. She refused to go back to school, and so Violet had to bring her to class once she returned to work the following week. There was no way for Violet to hide the swollen redness of her eyes, so she didn’t even bother. Sleep came sparingly. By mornings, her pillow was soaking and covered in clumps of hair. Herman, where are you? As best she could, Violet tried to stay in that slice of time just after waking, before she remembered. It never lasted more than three seconds.

Eventually, the blood results came back. Human. Type O.

Chapter Five (#ulink_58072ec1-ae09-578e-9f01-80bed41a02b2)

Violet

The next day at school passed without incident, and Violet met Ella at her class. They stopped at home for a quick snack of chocolate pudding, then continued across the worm-eaten bridge over the ravine and up the hill to the small building where Japanese school was held. They passed clumps of ginger, a thick stand of guava clouded with fruit flies and a dilapidated chicken coop with rusted wires, full of vines instead of chickens. Ella held her hand like she was trying to strangle it.

Before Pearl Harbor happened, students learned to speak the Japanese language, practiced calligraphy, and were schooled in common traditions like ikebana and yukata. Violet guarded her opinions, but she thought it a miracle the school had been allowed to keep on. The military had ordered Takeo to stick to arts and crafts. None of the kids minded.

Please, God, let this work out. Umi and Hiro already knew about Ella coming, but there was concern over how her presence would go over with the other students. Takeo had said, “Do not worry.” But worry was everywhere, as plentiful as the stalks of sugarcane in the fields. The elongated one-room building contained two sections, and Ella would be with the six-to twelve-year-olds.

When they approached the school, Ella stopped. “Do you think they will like me?”

“You already know most of the kids.”

“That’s what I’m worried about.”

The words tugged at Violet’s heart. “The sensei is like your uncle, so no one will dare bother you.”

Even before Herman’s disappearance, Ella had been shy and considered different by the kids. Partly because of her skin color, but more than that, she was the kid in the group who chose green when everyone else chose blue. She picked animals over people, and once punched Robbie Iwase in the nose when he tried to torture the class rabbit. From then on, kids steered clear.

They stood there, staring at the whitewashed wooden house. Two mynah birds chattered on the road in front of them. Ella looked around, and Violet followed her gaze.

In front of the schoolhouse, a row of garden boxes overflowed with lettuce, kale, plump tomatoes and eggplant. Off to the side a large square patch of sweet potato crawled through the grass. The students had painted VICTORY in red, white and blue on the boxes, which might have helped their cause. Several fat hens scratched about, reminding Violet of home. Leaving her hens had been one of the hardest parts about leaving Minnesota. On the sagging plank porch, two girls played jacks, too engrossed to notice them.

Ella tugged at her hand, and together they crossed the yard and entered the building. There were no desks, no tables and chairs, only tatami mats spread out across the floors. The walls were lined with shelves and everything had a place. The sills were painted a deep red and several bonsai plants caught sun through the mottled glass. Violet felt a stab of envy. Her classroom had never looked so tidy.

The chatter of young voices filled the room, and Takeo stood near the front. In the other half of the house, Setsuko taught the teenagers. After the war broke out, the school lost many students, parents fearing to seem overly Japanese. Though how could you be anything other than Japanese, if you were Japanese? She had yet to determine exactly what constituted one’s Japanese-ness, but being born in Japan was at the top of the list. Takeo and Setsuko had destroyed, or possibly hidden, all photos of their family back in Japan, some of whom had been members of the Imperial Navy. The predicament caused an ache in the middle of Violet’s chest.

Little by little, voices quieted. Heads turned. Ella’s fingers curled around her hand more tightly, and Violet squeezed back. Takeo spotted them and hurried over. “Violet and Ella, welcome.”