The Blue Religion

Oaths, Ohana, and Everything by Diana Hansen-Young

James Lopaka let out his belt two notches. Discreetly. Quietly. But nothing slipped past Auntie’s eye.

She rose to her feet, whisked away his empty calabash, and replaced it with another helping of poi. “You too thin, James,” she said, adding more laulaus, ripe mangoes, and a square of coconut pudding. “You cannot do a good job when you so thin.” Her muumuu blossomed around her ample figure as she lowered herself gracefully onto the woven mat. She waggled a finger. “No one respect a skinny hapa police officer.”

James dipped two fingers into the poi. That was the last notch on his belt. If he kept eating, he would have to remove it altogether. How would it look to have slipping-down pants? Never mind that his belt held his holster, which held his gun, and what was a police officer of the Republic of Hawaii to do without a gun? He sighed and reached for the pudding. Maybe by tomorrow night, after the seven-mile ride back to Honolulu, he would be able to fit his belt. Meanwhile, he was home, and although the occasion was sad and did not call for a celebration, he was going to enjoy Auntie’s food.

James was slicing his third mango when the dogs set to barking in the yard. Chickens squawked. James set down the mango knife, unfolded his 241-pound body, and walked to the door of Auntie’s pili-grass shack. His little brother, Richard, slid off his lathered roan and staggered toward the house, kicking his way through panicked fowl.

Richard’s voice was slurred and angry. The smell of liquor rolled off him. “Mary’s at Bolo’s. Again, godfunnit.” He pushed past James.

“Watch your mouth.” Auntie’s face was grim.

“I kill him already,” Richard said.

“No pidgin English in this house.”

Richard kicked at the stack of empty calabashes waiting to be washed. Koa bowls rolled across the hard-packed red-dirt floor. “You hear me, Auntie? Bolo’s.”

“Take off your boots,” Auntie said, and started to cry.

“I kill him. Dead.” Richard grabbed the mango knife from the mat. “I swear.”

James grabbed Richard’s wrist and twisted, and his little brother dropped the knife onto the swept dirt floor. James planted his bare foot over the handle. “Who told you?”

“Silva got a phone call.” Silva was the Portuguese owner of the Homestead Store down the road, next to the Ewa stop on the Oahu Railway. Last year, when the train company ran the phone wire from Honolulu, Silva took the opportunity to hook up a line to his store. No one in Ewa said anything to the company about Silva’s free line. Everyone shared the phone. “I stopped for a drink. Silva told me.”

“Who was it from?”

“A woman,” he said. “A lady.”

Auntie rose from her cross-legged position. “One more time, James. Go and get her one more time. Please.”

“How many times is ‘one more time’?” James had retrieved Mary many times from Bolo’s. She promised to stay. They took turns sitting through her shaking and moaning, and when her head came clear, it would happen again. And again. James felt the familiar anger in his shoulders. “How many times is ‘one… more… time’?”

“No more ‘one more time.’” Richard scooped up the mango knife. “Pau already.”

“Give me the knife.”

“You gonna arrest me?”

“I made an oath.”

Richard kicked James in the shin and punched him in his stomach, one-two, right into the tight belt. James doubled over, and Richard lurched out the door.

“Boys, for the love of God, we’re ohana,” Auntie said, running after Richard, who was looking for his roan. He found the horse ripping into the grass by the outhouse. He was in the saddle when Auntie reached for the reins.

“Pray instead, Auntie,” he said. He kicked, and the startled roan skittered through the poultry.

James’s stomach hurt like hell. He sat on the bench by the door and picked up his boots from the neat row of slippers. He tried to pull them on quickly, but his belly was in the way. He stomped his feet into the boots. They stuck. He hobbled to the horse pen. Popolo was feasting on elephant grass. She would not take the bit. Richard put two fingers into the side of her mouth and rubbed her gums. She flattened her ears and opened her teeth. A gob of green slobber rolled out and onto James’s shirt and badge.

In the distance, James could see Richard on his roan, riding away faster than James could get Popolo saddled. Auntie brought out an armful of banana leaf-wrapped packets of food. “I’m sorry you have to go so soon.”

“I’m sorry too,” James said, unpinning his slobber-covered badge. He stuffed it in his pants pocket while Auntie stuffed food into his saddlebag.

“I thought you would be here two days.”

“I thought so too.” James had told his supervisor, Wong, that his mother was sick, and thus he must go to the country for two days. Wong knew the truth, of course, and so did his Chinese partner, Kam, and the Filipinos and Japanese: no officer with Hawaiian blood would report to work on August 14, 1898.

How could he get up in the saddle with his belt so tight? Enough already. He unbuckled his belt, wrapped it around his holster and gun, and tucked them next to Auntie’s packets. Auntie promptly put in three ripe mangoes and closed the latch.

“I’ll cook more food when you bring Mary home.”

James stroked her waist-length gray hair. “I have to hurry now to catch that brother of mine.”

“A hui hou,” she said. Until we meet again.

Popolo trotted sullenly down the road. The sun was low over the Waianae Mountains. Shadows of pandani and palm trees fractured the blinding light that covered the Ewa Plain. Richard had a head start. But Richard was drunk, and his roan was tired. With any luck, James would find his brother sleeping beside the road.

He turned in the saddle. Auntie stood in front of her pili-grass house and waved. James lifted his hand in response. He reined left, riding toward Honolulu, the setting sun at his back.

A FULL MOON was high over Diamond Head by the time James pushed his exhausted pony through Iwilei, where some of the rickety plantation houses had red lanterns on the porch. He scanned the roads for any sign of Richard. Nothing.

Worried, he urged Popolo into the familiar Hotel Street district. Three years ago, James and his partner, a short, chubby Chinese man named Bo Sau Kam, had been accepted into a police force that was rapidly expanding under the marshal’s office. Both twenty-three, both rookies, they were assigned to Hotel Street and south Chinatown, and had been there ever since.

They knew every business, bar, and back room. They were on a first-name basis with merchants and ladies of the night. They moved the troublemakers along rather than arresting them. Sometimes they sent for a relative to fetch their drunken kin. Young men who dabbled in petty theft were returned to the harsh justice of their parents. They sent sailors back to ships and men to their wives and tourists to their hotels. Rarely did they bring anyone into the station house on Bethel Street. They had established an easy balance of commerce and peace, and in return, every meal was free, and new clothes stayed on uncollected tabs.

James looked in the alley behind Tongg Dry Goods. No Richard. Maybe it is time for a new belt with more holes, he thought. Popolo stumbled. James dismounted and led her down Hotel Street, lit, as usual, with torches and gas and an occasional electric bulb. James thought it had a merry look, like Christmas scenes in books. He realized that the street was nearly empty. Here and there, a few sailors wandered in and out of seedy bars: the Shanghai, Black Pearl, Paradise. What was going on?

He stopped in front of the Hawaii Bank, where he had borrowed money to buy his one-room bungalow in Papako¯lea, the Hawaiian community on the slope of Punchbowl Crater. As a police officer, he had a salary, and with credit, he could make the monthly payments. Nonlandowners could not vote, which meant most Hawaiians. To buy the house, he had to use his whole name – James Huntington Lopaka. The bank manager wrote “white” for race and left off his last name. As James Huntington, his mortgage would not be a problem. The manager smiled, and James left, his cheeks red with shame that he had had to disavow his Hawaiian part. But the pride in owning land outweighed the shame. Give to get, he thought. How could a Hawaiian get ahead if he did not own a piece of his own land?

The bank had a new poster in the window. A Negro woman in a hula skirt (although James wasn’t sure of that, as he’d never met a real Negro woman) was in the arms of a white man in a business suit. The red, white, and blue caption read married at last!

Was that the haole view of the annexation of Hawaii? James wanted to drive his hand through the window, rip out the poster, and throw it into the dirt. Move along, James. You have bigger fish to fry. Besides, you made an oath when you got your badge.

Fifty feet away, two groups of sailors squared off. On one side, a half-dozen haole boys with sandy hair; on the other, two Filipinos, recruits from the Spanish-American War. They all wore the caps of the USS Philadelphia, anchored in the harbor. They were all drunk.

James sighed. He reached for his holster and then remembered it was on his belt, in the saddlebag. Where was his badge? Pocket, he thought, fumbling for the tin octagon embossed with the coat of arms of the Republic.

“Hey, Flips.” The haole boys had mainland accents.

The Filipinos stepped forward. “Who you calling Flips?”

The groups joined in combat. “Let’s move them along, Popolo,” James said. He pulled his pony directly into the melee. She doled out a few kicks, and the sailors fell back, swearing and cursing.

The two Filipinos had taken the worst pounding. Blood streamed from broken noses. The Filipinos picked up their hats and limped down the street, but the white boys weren’t through.

“You Hawaiians like Flips better than haoles. Is that right, kanaka?”

James held up his badge. The drum beat in his head, but his voice was soft. “Honolulu police, boys. Move along.”

“Honolulu police tonight, but tomorrow, you kanakas are gonna be American.” A freckle-faced sailor tossed a red, white, and blue carnation lei at James. It fell in front of Popolo. She put her head down and ate it. The sailors saw the look in James’s eye and moved down the street.

James pinned his badge back on his green-stained shirt. He wanted to kick the sailors as they walked away. Oath, James thought. When his anger boiled up, he reminded himself that he had made an oath on a Bible when he got his badge: Ua mau ke ea o ka ‘aina I ka pono. The life of the land is perpetuated in righteousness.

James imagined all the things he would have done to the sailors had he not made the oath. Deep in thought, he nearly missed the ramshackle bar at the end of the street: the Western. The roof sagged from termites. Timbers propped up the second-story porch. The building was rotten, like its owner.

He heard voices and glass-clinking. He looped Popolo’s reins around a timber and walked in. The glass-clinking stopped. “Where’s Bolo?”

“Not here, bruddah.” Kimo, the bartender, was Hawaiian. Kimo’s wife was sick, and Bolo paid well, but Kimo was ohana. He raised his eyes toward the second floor.

The yard behind the building was bright with moonlight. Popolo’s ears went forward. Richard had tied his roan under the banyan tree. James tied Popolo’s reins to the saddle and let her go. She trotted to the roan.

A wooden staircase led up to the back porch. The risers and railings were all hammajang, sticking out this way and that. James started up the stairway. He put his hand on his gun, but there was no gun-it was still in the saddlebag, holster and belt. Never mind the gun; he had to find Richard.

A broken spindle snagged his pants. Without his belt, his pants started to slip down over his okole. He yanked at them. He heard them rip. Cursing quietly, he walked up the last four steps and turned the corner, and there was Richard, sprawled on the landing.

James forgot about the pants rip. He knelt and heard ragged breathing. Passed out, not dead. James left him and walked toward the closed door. Was Mary inside? If so, how would he get both of them home?

James turned the knob, pushed the door open, and stepped into a cloud of smoke. Coals glowed at the end of the hookahs. He smelled unwashed bodies, sex, and urine under the opium and hashish. Patrons smoked or lay in berths that lined the walls. A woman raised her head and offered him her pipe. “You don’t have to pay me.” She giggled. “Paradise is free.”

He pawed through tangled clothing until he recognized long black hair fanning out on stained sheets. Mary? He rolled her over. His little sister’s head lolled to one side. Her ribs protruded below slack breasts. Her breath was foul, her lips caked with dry spittle, but she was alive. James pulled her away from her male companion, who flailed his arms at James. James put a boot to the man’s face. Something cracked.

He hoisted Mary over his shoulder and headed for the door. Where had she been? How long had she been back in Honolulu, in this opium parlor, on his beat, under his nose?

Bolo, in cowboy hat and boots, blocked the doorway. His deformed left hand was tucked into a pocket. “Put her down, Lopaka,” he said, his voice thick with phlegm.

“Move along, Bolo.”

“I pay you plenty.”

“You pay me nothing.”

Bolo spat mucus. “I pay your boss at Bethel Street to leave me alone.”

James was ashamed that Wong had taken money. “I owe you nothing.”

“Put her back. She’s working off a tab.”

James tightened his grip on Mary and prepared to hit Bolo, but as he stepped forward, Bolo sagged against the doorframe and slid to the ground. Behind him, James saw his little brother, Richard, pull the mango knife out of Bolo’s back, roll him over, and slit his throat. Blood sprayed everywhere.

Richard looked at James. “You found Mary? Good. I found Bolo.”

He ran. Carrying Mary, James stepped over Bolo’s body, unable to avoid the bloody spray. He followed Richard, who was oh, so light on his feet, the feet that were leaving prints in blood on each step. James looked down. Bolo’s blood covered his pants and boots, and his footprints covered Richard’s.

James ran after Richard. “You killed him.”

Richard reached the roan. “You gonna arrest me?”

“I made an oath.”

“He deserved to die.”

Richard lifted Mary from James’s shoulder. Together, they placed her facedown over Popolo’s saddle. James unpinned his badge again, put it in his pants pocket, took off his green-stained shirt and arranged it over Mary’s naked back and buttocks.

“Got a tie-down?” Richard said.

James opened the saddlebag and reached in for his belt, holster, and gun, now covered with mashed mango. He stuck the gun and holster in his waistband and wiped off the belt. Together they passed it around Mary’s waist and buckled her to the saddle horn.

When they were through, James took out his gun and pointed it at Richard. “I have to arrest you.”

“You’re not gonna shoot me.” Richard seemed amused.

James considered. Even if he could get Richard to take the gun seriously, there was the practical problem of taking Mary home and Richard to the station. Besides, he couldn’t get up in the saddle without help, with Mary lying there, while holding the gun and reins. On the other hand, his brother killed a white man, and James was involved. Ohana? Oath? Could he sort it out later? “Hold this, and help me up,” he said. He handed the gun to Richard, who pointed it at James.

“You won’t shoot me,” James said.

“We’re going different directions, big brother.”

On the porch, a woman screamed. Shouts came from the bar. Men ran up the stairs. James hauled himself up on the back of the saddle. Mary was wedged in under his ample belly. Popolo groaned.

James held out his hand to Richard. “Move along if you want, but give me the gun.”

Richard handed the gun to James, who jammed it into his waistband and kicked Popolo into a sullen canter across the yard. Hotel Street was empty except for the two Filipino soldiers sitting on a hitching rail. They stared at James as he rode past. What was the Hawaiian officer doing with a half-naked woman on his saddle, long black hair fanning over bloody boots?

Behind him, he heard shouting. Were the men from the bar following? Just then, he saw the mango knife in his mind’s eye, lying next to Bolo. For the love of God, no one had picked it up.

He heard more shouting and looked back. It was his little brother, Richard, on the roan.

THEY LED THE horses for the last little way before James’s bungalow. Here, houses were set far back from the road, partially hidden by banana patches and papaya trees. A dog barked. Here and there, a curtain opened and closed.

“They see us,” Richard said.

And no one would say anything about the Lopaka brothers bringing Mary home.

They carried her into the tiny room and laid her on the bed. James covered her with the breadfruit-pattern quilt that hung over the koa rocking chair. Emma, his natural mother, had made it when she was the housekeeper and common-law wife of his natural father. On James’s fourteenth birthday, his father asked Emma to leave the Waikiki house because his new bride was arriving from San Francisco. Emma took the quilt and her three children and went to stay with her auntie Leimomi. One afternoon, while the children ate laulaus in the pili-grass house, Emma sat under the mango tree, drank kerosene, and died. Auntie was childless, and in the Hawaiian tradition, James, Richard, and Mary became her hanai children.

Richard drew fresh water from the cistern and started a fire in the outdoor pit. They changed, and James carried the bloody clothes and boots out to the shed. He gave the horses timothy grass and water, and then, in the moonlight, rubbed gun oil into the boots and saddles, scrubbing in circles until the blood blended into the leather. Satisfied, he put on his boots and dropped the bloody clothes into the outhouse, using a stick to push them down into the muck.

He was carrying Richard’s boots to the house when he became aware of someone standing in the shadows. He smelled pikake and fresh-washed hair and lilac starch. He stood absolutely still.

She stepped into the moonlight. She had on a dark cloth cloak and a black lace scarf, draped over her head like those of Spanish women he had seen in books. Her voice had a faint pidgin lilt under a cultured British accent.

“James?”

Who was she? What did she want? How could he have been so engrossed that he had missed her arrival? And where was his gun? Inside the house, with his belt and holster. His badge? James groaned. It was inside the pocket of the bloody jeans he had just thrown into the outhouse. For the love of God, he thought, I will have to retrieve my badge.

It was at that moment he recognized her, remembering memories all at once, the four of them running through the parlor, which was against the rules, breaking the blue-and-white Chinese vase and dropping the pieces down the outhouse, where the man who brought the lime discovered them. No swimming or surfing for a week as punishment, but they still sneaked out to play with the peacocks on the lawn of Ainahau, the estate that really belonged to her, Princess Victoria Kaiulani, and not to her father, Archibald Cleghorn, who was James’s neighbor and best friend of his natural father.

She had grown tall and slim. A blue ribbon held her long black hair away from her face. Under her simple blue muumuu, her feet were bare and dusty.

“Vicky?” he said.

“Yes.”

They hugged each other, and twelve years melted away.

VICKY DID NOT flinch or ask questions when she saw Mary on the bed and the gun on the table. James needed to retrieve his badge before things got worse in the outhouse. He left Vicky washing Mary with water that Richard heated.

James stripped to his knickers, smiling. He moved the lime bucket and opened the trapdoor. He used the stick to fish out his pants. He smiled as he wrapped his hand in oilcloth, retrieved his badge, and returned the clothes. He could not remember being so happy as he dropped the badge into a tin pot to boil and washed his hands with Lava soap.

Inside, Mary was scrubbed clean, her hair braided and bound with Vicky’s blue ribbon and her body wrapped in Vicky’s cloak. The quilt was back on the rocking chair. It is like old times, James thought, with the four of them together. After his father sent them away, James kept track of Vicky in the newspapers: her education in England, her visit to the White House to plead against annexation, her unhappy return home. All that was in the past.

Inside, James set out his Hilo Saloon Pilot crackers and made strong Chinese tea. Vicky dipped dainty fingers into Auntie’s poi and ate four of her laulaus and two sweet potatoes. They talked of old times. Remember the day Vicky and Mary took the canoe without permission, and James and Richard had to paddle out past the reef on their longboards to bring them in? Remember riding the trolley to Tongg’s to spend James’s birthday dime on hard candy? Remember the book about Indians and blood oaths? And remember, behind the banyan tree, when they drew blood and pressed fingers together and swore a sacred oath of allegiance?

“One day, you were gone,” Vicky said. James told her about Emma. Vicky cried, and then they could no longer speak of the past.

James went out to get his badge. He dumped it onto the grass. It cooled, and he put it into his pocket. When he walked back into the house, he saw Vicky as if for the first time: her Scottish heritage in her cheekbones and her Hawaiian heritage in her dark eyes. She was an adult woman and a princess with sadness in her eyes. She was the last hope of the monarchy, and in a few hours there would be no Hawaiian throne for her to inherit.

Vicky patted James’s empty chair. James knew he would now hear what she had to say.

“Auntie Liliu asked me to come.”

James was surprised. It may be “Auntie Liliu” to Vicky, but “Auntie Liliu” was Queen Liliuokalani to her subjects. The queen was secluded in Iolani Palace tonight, sitting vigil for the death of her kingdom. How did she even know James existed?

“Are you going to the annexation ceremony?” asked Vicky.

“Of course not.”

Richard slammed the table. “No real Hawaiian would go.”

“Auntie Liliu and I will not attend,” Vicky said. “But she has asked that you be there.”

James did not hesitate. “No,” he said. Say no to the queen? “No.”

Sobering up had not diminished Richard’s anger. “Don’t ask him to go.”

“By our blood oath,” she said, “I’m asking you to go.”

How would it look for James to be the only Hawaiian at the ceremony? Consider the shame of standing at attention while their flag was lowered and presented to the new haole governor. It would hang over his desk, a symbol of subjugation for the world to see.

Auntie Liliu did not want the last flag of Hawaii to become a wall hanging. She wanted an officer of Hawaiian blood to accept the lowered flag and switch it for a new one. The real flag would rest in honor in the secret caves behind the Ewa Plain, next to the bones of Kamehameha the Great, until it could fly again over a free Hawaii. The governor would have the flag-without-a-meaning.

But no Hawaiian officer planned to be present. She sent for the roster of officers’ names, studied them, and asked: Who has knowledge of these men?

“I saw your name,” Vicky said. “I told Auntie that if I found you, you would honor your blood oath to me.”

James’s head was swimming in oaths. Too many oaths, he thought. They were pulling him into pieces.

“I went to the station. Your partner said you went to Ewa to your family, all except Mary, who had disappeared. I used the coconut wireless” – and here she smiled – “and found Mary. I called Silva and left a message. I knew you would return immediately.” She stared steadily at James. “I’m glad you found her.”

She knows about Bolo, he thought, and Bolo is irrelevant. Vicky had given Mary back. Even if there had been no blood oath, he owed Vicky.

“Where’s the new flag?”

“I left it with Kam.” Vicky looked at Mary. “Go ask your father to send Mary to San Francisco, to a clinic. It’s her only chance.”

Richard exploded. “Never. Never.” He punched the wall of James’s bungalow, one-two, until the windows rattled in their frames. “Rather Mary die than ask my father, the bastard, may he rot in Hell.”

“The Celtic sails in the morning,” she said. “It’s your father’s ship.” She pointed a slender finger at Richard. “Little brother goes with Mary.” Vicky walked to the window and pulled aside the rice-bag curtain. Outside, there was a small trap with a single horse and driver.

James’s head swam with questions. When had the carriage arrived? How had he not heard it? How had Vicky known to leave the new flag with Kam before she saw him? How had she found Mary so fast? How could he ask his father when he had sworn an oath to himself that he would never speak to him again? What would happen to Mary if she didn’t go to San Francisco? To Richard? And when they found the knife, what would happen to him?

His calves tingled, but it wasn’t out of anger or shame. It was the same feeling he had had once on his longboard, when he had paddled out beyond the reef and the biggest wave he had ever seen rolled toward him, and he had realized there was no way to outrun it. The only way to survive was to catch it and ride it in to shore, before it caught him and smashed him into the rocks.

Mary lay on the bed. Richard sat in the corner, knuckles bloody and raw.

“Don’t ask your father,” Vicky said. “Tell him.”

JAMES ACCEPTED VICKY’S offer of a ride to Bethel Street. Before he could go to his father, he needed to talk to Kam. How could he and Kam make sure James would stand in the honor guard by the flag? What happened with Bolo?

Squeezed into the small carriage beside Vicky, James was acutely aware of her as a woman. He tried to make himself small, but they were touching anyway. Wisps of her hair fluttered across his cheek, sending tingling to lips, and lower.

“Here,” James said, a block away from the station. The driver stopped. “What do I do with the real flag?”

“You’ll know.” Vicky kissed him on the cheek. “A hui hou, James.”

THE STATION HOUSE buzzed with activity. His partner, Kam, was writing down the names of the patrons at Bolo’s, who were now slouched against the wall or on the floor. Kam signaled James to leave, but it was too late. Wong, his superior, blocked his path. “Someone killed Bolo.”

James made his voice all innocent. “Who?”

Wong studied James. He looked down at his newly oiled boots, up at his combed hair, his fresh clothes, shined badge, belt, holster, and gun. “No good witnesses yet.” He pursed his lips. “I thought you were up in Ewa.”

“I was,” James said. He couldn’t think of any plausible reason why he had come back to Honolulu except the truth, which he certainly wasn’t going to tell Wong.

“Where’s your brother?”

“Still in Ewa.”

“Yeah? Where’s your sister?”

“Who knows?” James shrugged. “I’m not my family’s keeper.”

Kam’s voice was loud. “Can I get some help over here?”

“Stick around,” Wong said.

JAMES HELPED KAM write down names. Still doped up, no one recognized James except for the paradise-is-free woman, who mumbled something. Kam whispered in her ear, and she shut her mouth.

Wong came out of his office, carrying a lantern and a flask. “No one saw anything?”

“These guys saw something.” There was a commotion at the door. Saito and Beppu, Japanese officers, dragged in two handcuffed sailors, the Filipinos from Hotel Street. They had new cuts, and their eyes were puffed and bruised.

“You recognize anyone, boy?” Wong prodded one of them with his foot.

The sailor looked at James. “Was a guy on a yellow horse,” he said. “Small guy. Chinese, I think.”

Saito kicked him. “You said Hawaiian.”

“Not Hawaiian,” the other sailor said. “Maybe Japanese. Short, like you. Japanese.”

Beppu and Saito punched them until Wong told the officers to get the Filipinos out of there. Beppu pointed a gun at their heads and laughed when they ran. Saito and Beppu left for the bar across the street. The third shift arrived, and Wong took his lantern and flask and went to the outhouse.

James told Kam everything. Kam insisted that he go with James to see his natural father. James said no, but Kam said he was his partner, and what were partners for? Neither could think of a way to switch the flags.

Wong returned, smelling of outhouse. He carried an oil-paper package, which he unwrapped. It was Auntie’s mango knife, crusted in blood. “Ever seen this before?”

“No,” James said. In the name of God, how would he keep track of all the lies?

“I think you’ve seen it,” Wong said, “because I think you were there when your brother killed Bolo.”

James made his voice lower than Wong’s. “Bolo said he paid you plenty.”

Wong flushed. “The only one who can prove that is Bolo.”

“Good he’s dead then,” Kam said.

There was a long silence. Wong raised his voice and slapped James on the back. “Now that you’re here, boy, you may as well work tomorrow.” He grinned with spite. “Someone with Hawaiian blood should be there when your flag comes down.”

Kam winked at James and shouted at Wong, “You can’t ask him to do that!”

James took the cue. “I won’t,” he said.

“In fact, you take down the flag and give it to the governor. Kind of on behalf of all Hawaiians.”

“No,” James said.

Kam shook his head sadly. “You gotta do what he says, James. He’s the boss.”

“That’s right, boy,” Wong said. “You be here at noon. And when they raise the Stars and Stripes, maybe you should think about which side of the bread your butter is on. Now get out of here.”

KAM SADDLED HIS own pony, and James helped himself to Wong’s horse. They trotted toward Diamond Head. The moon was low in the sky; there was little time before the Celtic put out to sea, and now it was imperative that Mary and Richard be on that ship.

The ornate Victorian house of Jameson P. Huntington was smaller than James remembered. He knocked politely. Nothing happened.

Kam pounded and shouted, “Honolulu police! Open up.”

Huntington answered the door. He had thrown a silk jacket over striped pajamas. He looked at James and Kam, then motioned for them to follow.

James looked at the back of his father’s head – the thick white hair, the pink ears – and hatred welled up in him. He wished he could stick the mango knife into that silk-covered back. He tasted bile. Why him? Why did he have to ask his father for help? Why was it all on his shoulders? Oaths, ohana, and everything?

James looked around the study, with its rich rugs and polished table. Sailing timetables were spread on the table, along with a handwritten note. James could see the signature: Jefferson Blackwell. He and Huntington ran the Committee of Safety, a clandestine group of businessmen who had plotted for more than a decade to seize Hawaii and bring it under American law.

When the queen had drafted a new constitution that gave more rights to native Hawaiians, they saw their control slipping and intensified their drive for annexation. The queen went to Washington and convinced the president that annexation was wrong. But his successor, McKinley, believed in Manifest Destiny. Besides, he wanted the harbor for his ships, now fighting the Spanish-American War in Manila. There was fear that Japan would claim the harbor; military interests coincided with financial interests. In July, the ship that sailed into the harbor spelled out the bad news in black flags: annexation. The Committee of Safety had finally prevailed. The monarchy was gone. And James Huntington had been the driving force behind the committee.

“You look like your mother, James,” he said.

A pale, bleached woman in a pink dressing gown opened the door. “Jameson, is everything okay?”

“Go back to bed.” Huntington was curt. The woman closed the door.

James stared at his father. How could he ask anything of this man who had killed his mother as sure as if he had poured the kerosene down her throat? James could think of nothing to say.

Kam jumped in. “Mary and Richard are in trouble. Mary has… given of herself to support her addiction,” he said. “Your son just murdered the man who gave her opium.”

“Their weakness of character is not my concern.” Huntington’s face turned red. “Did you come here to tell me the sordid details of my bastard children?”

James grabbed the front of the silk gown and punched his father, one-two, straight into his soft belly. See how it feels? Huntington fell to his knees, and James slapped the sides of his head with open palms, one-two, until Kam pulled him away.

“I did plenty for my children,” Huntington said. He touched his ear and looked surprised to see that his hand came away bloody. “They lived well in this house.” He looked at James. “Your mother understood that I never intended to marry her.”

“Did she?” James’s voice was thick with anger.

“I did plenty for you. I got you a loan for your house. I got you your job on the Force.”

James heard drumming in his ears. “I got my job on my own,” he said.

Huntington laughed. “I would have done the same for your brother and sister, if they had even tried to better themselves.”

“How could they begin to better themselves, after what you did?”

“Because they’re half white,” Huntington said. “My haole blood runs in your veins.”

James turned away so his father would not see his tears. Oh, the shame of crying, James thought, crying in front of the man you hate.

Once again, his partner came to his rescue. “Mary needs a clinic, and Richard needs to leave Honolulu. They need to be on the Celtic, and they need your help in San Francisco.”

Huntington said nothing. What had Vicky said? Don’t ask him, tell him.

James faced his father. “I was there. I saw Richard kill Bolo,” he said. “I’ll tell what I saw. I don’t care to keep the job you got for me. I don’t care to keep the house you got for me. I don’t care if I’m arrested. But I think you care that today, everyone will be talking about your son, James Huntington Lopaka, accomplice to murder.”

HUNTINGTON USED HIS telephone to call his shipping office on the pier. He had his agent deliver a message to the Celtic’s captain. He had a sleepy stablehand harness up the trap. James and Kam tied their horses to the back and drove the trap at high speed to the bungalow, where Mary had not moved and where Richard was asleep on the floor.

They carried Mary outside and woke Richard. He refused to go. “I’d rather hang for murder than take help from him.”

“You keep your pride while our ohana goes down? So selfish.” James pushed Richard toward the door. “We’re going to move along, little brother.”

James squeezed into the trap next to Richard and Mary. Kam rode his horse and led Wong’s. They trotted, then cantered, toward the pier, aware of the sun rising behind them, over the Koolaus.

On the dock, the Celtic was ready to go. The captain and shipping agent stood next to one lowered gangplank. The captain looked at Mary and called for help. Two sailors carried her up the gangplank. Vicky’s blue ribbon fell from her braid, which started to unravel. The last James saw of Mary was her long black hair, fanning.

Kam handed the trap to Huntington’s agent. James picked up the ribbon from the dock and walked with Richard to the gangplank.

“Take care of the roan,” Richard said. His voice was unsteady.

“Take care of your little sister.” James put the ribbon in his pocket.

EXCITEMENT CHARGED THE air inside the station. James and Kam walked in together, and everyone fell silent.

“You have ten minutes to get dressed,” Wong said. He arranged his epaulets. “We’re marching to the palace together.” He lowered his voice. “Where the hell’s my horse?”

“In back,” James said.

They donned the dress uniforms reserved for ceremonies. The blue pants matched the jacket with the motto on the pocket: the life of the land is perpetuated in righteousness.

James picked up the folded flag. How was he going to carry it without being seen? The belt, he thought. The belt. He tucked the flag smooth against his belly and buckled his belt, still on the last notch but tighter with the flag inside.

ALONG KING STREET, clusters of haoles waved American flags. There were no Hawaiians. They were inside shuttered windows, hung with black crepe.

The stand on the grounds of Iolani Palace was decorated with red, white, and blue bunting. Spectators took their seats. How was he going to switch flags with everyone looking on? Wong pushed James to the front, next to the flagpole. His face burned with shame. The only other Hawaiians besides himself were in the Royal Hawaiian Band, which began to play “Hawaii Ponoi.”

Wong nudged him. James stepped forward and pulled the ropes. The Hawaiian flag began to lower. A squall of rain wet the flag. The band played. Kam stepped forward to help James fold the flag, and then it was in his hand.

The Royal Hawaiian Band stopped playing. The audience gasped as they threw their instruments on the ground and walked away.

An American soldier stepped forward, clipped the American flag to the pole, and ran it up. Guns from the USS Philadelphia boomed in the harbor as the Stars and Stripes flew high above Iolani Palace.

All eyes were on the American flag. Kam nudged him and yanked the new flag out from James’s belt. James shoved the real flag inside. The guns fell silent, and James walked slowly toward the new governor, carrying the new flag, feeling the dampness of the real one against his skin.

His natural father, Huntington, stood next to the governor. He smiled at James as if to mock James’s Hawaiian blood, having to take down the Hawaiian flag. It was a smirk, really. James met his father’s eyes coldly, without emotion, as he handed the new governor the new flag.

It was done.

THEY FOUGHT THEIR way through the drunken officers in the station. An elderly Hawaiian man, standing by the door, stepped in front of James.

“Take the flag to your auntie,” he said, and walked away.

“A hui hou,” Kam said, and also started to walk away.

“You might as well see it to the end,” James said.

James reborrowed Wong’s horse while Kam resaddled his own mare. They rode toward the great Ewa Plain and did not stop until they reached the foot of Auntie’s road.

Kam reined up his horse. He reached inside his own belt and pulled out the oil-paper packet. He handed it to James, who opened it. Inside was the bloody mango knife, which they buried under a pandanus tree.

CHICKENS CLUCKED AND scattered as they rode into the yard. Auntie came running and embraced them both, tears in her eyes.

“They’re on the Celtic,” James said.

“I know,” Auntie said. “We talk later.”

Three very old kupunas sat on the outside bench, next to the row of shoes. James handed the flag to the oldest. They nodded their farewell and set off walking toward the black caves above the Ewa Plain.

“They already ate,” Auntie said, herding James and Kam into the pili-grass house.

Inside, they ate laulaus and sweet potatoes. James unbuckled his belt (Oh, what a wonderful feeling) and then took it off altogether. He tried to be discreet, but nothing slipped past Auntie’s eye.

She rose to her feet, whisked away their empty calabashes, and refilled them with poi. “You’re too thin, boys,” she said. She waggled a finger. “A skinny Chinaman? A skinny hapa? Officers like that don’t get respect.”

She brought out four more squares of coconut pudding, then placed a new mango knife next to the plate of fruit. “Will you slice the mangoes, James?”

And he did.