Chapter Nineteen

The blackness carried me out to sea on gentle waves. Dreamless and without resistance, I floated peacefully while little eddies swirled around me in whispers. It was pleasant here in the darkness, far from the shrieks of war and petty terrors.

Someone was calling me. If only I could find my way back to shore, I would answer. I struck out swimming toward the light, careful not to get dragged under water until whispers turned into the one voice I longed to hear.

I must be dreaming. My eyes opened to Jamison sitting beside me, cooling my forehead with a damp tea towel. We were in the carriage house where I’d been propped on the lumpy sofa, Jamison claiming a small part of the cushion for himself.

“How are you feeling? No, don’t try to sit up just yet. I’m glad I never did anything to warrant a send-off with a loaded gun,” he said in a mocking tone that was so like him. “Kisses are much nicer.”

I didn’t think I’d been out for more than a few minutes. It was hard to tell with the windows covered, but sunshine swished back and forth against the screen door like a cat anxious to come in. I had a foggy recollection of being lifted, then nothing much until a few moments ago, when I opened my eyes to make sure that the voice beside me wasn’t a fantasy.

“Jumpin’ jiminy, you are one crack shot, Lei-lei,” Johnny cheered from across the room. “I was coming home from Rose’s when I saw you with the rifle, and then Bang!” He handed Jamison a freshly rinsed towel. “You blew out the tire of that roadster with one shot. It was the insurance guy, right? Jamison saw him changing a flat out where the pavement starts. Geez, what were you so mad about?”

“It’s a long story,” I mumbled. “I need to call Captain Maddox.”

“Oh, more hidden treasure business,” Johnny laughed. He took the towel Jamison handed him and said, “I’ll get you a glass of water.”

Where had Johnny learned such discretion? Rose must be having a good influence on him.

“I’m sorry I didn’t get here earlier. I went home to change clothes and pick-up my car after I was released from custody. When I saw you lying on the ground…I imagined the worst,” Jamison said, his voice tormented.

“No,” I shushed him. “I’m not hurt, just tired. Everything must have piled up on me. The hospital, the war. Oh, the horrible injuries I saw at Pearl Harbor, and then worrying about you.”

“Johnny told me. And you heard about the detention camp on Sand Island.”

“Auntie and I tried to get in to see you yesterday. Yes, Auntie came with me,” I deadpanned, at his quizzical smile. “She took the news pretty well.”

“All the news?”

“Um hmm. I couldn’t keep it to myself any longer.” Was his expression anxious? “That I love you. I do. I didn’t tell you that night on the veranda because I was too darned stubborn to give up my plans to strike out on my own and restore my family’s name. Yes, I admit it. Don’t laugh, I’m serious. And I promise to make it up to you—every day for…for as long as we’re together.”

He dropped his eyes, and when he looked at me again, they were pools of dark water. “You haven’t changed your mind, have you?” I asked. Had his arrest convinced him that the best way to care about me was to stay out of my life?

“I’ve loved you since before you were born, and I’ll love you until my ashes are scattered over the ocean,” he said with a catch in his throat. “That’s never going to change.”

I knew there was a ‘but’ coming next. My whole world was about to come crashing down, burying me in a single syllable that hadn’t been spoken.

“The army is sending me to the military intelligence school at the Presidio in San Francisco. I’ll be trained as an interpreter if I pass the exam.” Barely a trace of emotion rippled across his face, and his posture became straighter, suggesting an imperial strength. It reminded me of Mrs. Yamamoto, when she spoke of enduring her husband’s absence.

I wanted to throw a penny into Jamison’s wishing-well eyes, hoping to see a sparkle as the coin tumbled end over end on its way to the bottom. “I don’t understand any of this,” I said. The whole thing had me confused, and I told him so. “Why were you arrested in the first place? Now you’re being asked to serve in the army?”

“Nisei like myself who had ties to Japan were brought in for questioning. The captain in charge told us we weren’t criminals, we were enemy nationals.” Jamison’s stillness hinted at an acceptance of the injustices of war. “Remember how I spent a couple years in Tokyo on an architecture project? Well, that was enough to raise suspicions, but it also put me in the position of being someone who had recent familiarity with the capitol city. I speak the language, and one of the Japanese instructors at the Presidio has vouched for me.”

I didn’t want to ask him what this meant for us, but the question must have been painted all over my face. “It’ll only be for a couple months,” he said and cradled one of my hands between both of his.

“What’s only a couple months?” Johnny handed Jamison a large glass of water, and I tipped my head up to take a sip.

“I’ll be going to the Mainland for language training, to help in the war effort.”

“Don’t you speak Japanese already?”

“Well, you see, Johnny, the army doesn’t think that my knowledge of battle planning and bombing targets is quite up to scratch.” His mocking humor was returning, so I knew the hardest part was behind us.

“Oh yeah, I get it.” To me he asked, “Finished with that?”

“For now, thanks.”

He took the glass and set it on the telephone table. “I’m going out to the road to make sure that guy isn’t trying to double back.” He paused in front of the .22 standing by the door, giving me a considered look, then shrugged, “I guess I won’t need a gun.”

After he left, Jamison lifted my shoulders and settled me in a sitting position more decorous to tell my tale. “So,” he said. “Where will you begin?”

I motioned for the glass of water again to wet my lips and put it aside. His eyebrow rose a fraction, but he didn’t look impatient.

Nothing would make much sense without setting up a loom of the circumstances, then weaving the threads together. I started with the confession of Mr. Ching’s grandson, then had to unravel my suspicions, and add the mysterious Arty and his connection to Jerry Caine to complete my fabric.

Jamison let me talk without interruption, giving a nod now and then.

I continued, “The thing is, Jerry patched together the same clues I did—the King’s Crown, the necklace, my grandmother’s portrait, all of that—but jumped to the wrong conclusions because he didn’t take in the big picture. He saw what he wanted to see for his own selfish gains.”

I was thinking of how often it’s possible to make judgments on faulty premises. As Jamison and I sat closely on the sofa, I told him, “I never guessed someone was searching the house for the necklace. It’s funny the way things turn out.”

Jamison traced a pattern on my hand, then turned it over, following the contours of my palm. “There’s a Japanese saying that the most beautiful lotus grows out of the mud and blossoms above the muddy water.”

I searched my mind for a meaning closer to home. That perhaps like an artist—or an architect—a person can build on the past to expand a picture of the world. To expose a new way of looking at things, like flowers that are born in mud, then rise above it in surpassing beauty.

He put his arms around me, and, encircled by his understanding I wasn’t a girl longing for independence anymore. I wasn’t running away from love, either. I had always enjoyed putting together jigsaw puzzles, fitting the interlocking pieces into a pattern that gradually turned into a completed picture. Jamison and I were fitting together our own puzzle pieces—I couldn’t make out the final image yet, and instead of disappointment I felt our closeness.

“I’d like to walk over to Makani Kai for a minute, if you’ll come with me. I should see if anything else is missing before I phone Captain Maddox.”

For an answer, Jamison cupped my face in his hands to brush his lips against mine.

“How much time do we have before you leave for the Mainland?” I whispered.

“I haven’t been told. A few days, I think.” He assumed a conspiratorial tone. “Long enough for you to meet my mother.”

“This sounds serious.”

“It is. If you agree, she’ll prepare tea for a traditional Yuino ceremony.” He kissed me again before I could ask him to explain. Dark pools bubbled up in his eyes before he spoke again. “Yuino means connecting heart to heart, family to family. It’s a very ancient engagement custom for a man and a woman in Japan. That is, if you’ll take a chance on marrying me.”

Just like that.

I could only repeat, “Yes, and yes again.”

“We may have to wait.”

“I don’t care.”

“Some people won’t understand.”

“We’ve gone through a lot worse.”

He broke into a roguish smile. “Oh, my ganbare girl.” He raised his hand to touch my face. It was a touch of promise, warm and sure. “I’ll worry about you while I’m away.”

“I know that you have to go, Jamison. It’ll be a way to clear your name and show the kind of patriotism that we have in Hawai‘i. Think of all those men at Sand Island who are counting on you. It would be selfish of me to turn my back on all the good you can do. It’s a matter of honor. I’ll miss you, but I’ll be fine.” My tone was firm, and after studying my face for a moment, he smiled a slow spreading smile that was unconsciously amenable.

“We can walk over to the house, if you’re ready.” He stood and gallantly inclined his head.

I swiveled my feet awkwardly to the floor and let him raise me to my feet. At the doorway, he stroked my face again. “I don’t think that welt is going to turn your eye into a shiner.” He didn’t ask me how it happened, just as I wouldn’t ask about his time at Sand Island. That would come later, when we didn’t need to ask each other questions anymore. We would freely share everything, and for some things, no words were necessary.

“I wouldn’t be a very good advertisement for the nursing staff at Queen’s, would I? Showing up with a black eye. What would all the blood donors think?”

“Are you going to keep volunteering at the hospital?”

“We’ve built up a surplus at the Blood Bank, even though we’re supplying all the military hospitals. So, by the end of next week, I’ll start cutting back my hours. Auntie May’s been offered a permanent nursing job. I think she’s going to accept.”

I looked out toward the Yamamoto farm and remembered the straight rows of lettuce with the two girls stooping over them. “That grassy field over by the trees could be cleared for vegetables when I have more free time. Bell peppers would do well, and maybe tomatoes.” Johnny was standing at the turn-off with Rose and I gave him a wave. “He’s been learning about farming, and I think we could turn more of the property into garden plots. Victory gardens, they’re being called. There could be fruit trees planted behind the rose garden, too. Mangoes, of course, and avocadoes.” I took a much-needed breath. “Just listen to me go on. I’ll be out in the fields wearing pajamas and a sun hat before you know it.”

Jamison intertwined our fingers and folded his forearm over mine like we were taking a stroll along King Street on Easter morning, instead of the path to Makani Kai. “There were days growing up on the plantation when I spent time helping my mother in our family garden,” he reminisced. “We had the reddest dirt you’ve ever seen. It stained my hands almost as much as picking wild blackberries in August, but I liked watering the spindly little sprouts until they could make it on their own.”

He told me about sliding down the plantation’s irrigation flumes, and playing hide and seek in the cane fields. I reminded him about the craze for collecting bottle caps. And so we talked as we put the scattered books back on the library shelves and wandered through the empty rooms. I had learned that Jamison rarely spoke openly about his feelings or his upbringing. It seems that certain boundaries of privacy are seldom crossed in a culture where close proximity keeps each person an island to themselves. Something about Makani Kai made a difference.

As we were leaving the house, I took one last look at the grandfather clock. “I should wind it in case I don’t get back here over the weekend. I don’t want to risk it stopping.”

“It looks like there are a couple more days before you need to worry.” Jamison leaned one shoulder against the foyer doorframe and crossed his arms over his chest. “You’re not getting superstitious about the clock, are you?”

After all that had happened, I was no longer sure that coincidence had brought us together. I couldn’t see my mother’s mural from the hall, but I imagined that her longings and hopes had crossed a generation to pull me back to Makana Valley when I’d nearly forgotten its haunting beauty.

“Not really,” I said, half-truthfully. “I’m just not taking any chances.”

He knelt beside me to open the front glass, and after I’d lifted the weights, closed it for me.

At the front door, we looked out over the lawn. The crest of the valley cut a jagged ridgeline above the royal palms.

“The wind has shifted,” Jamison remarked. “It’s coming in from the sea.”

We were too far inland to get seabirds flying over Makana Valley, but the faintest call soared on the winter breeze. It brought to mind the beach my mother had painted at the end of plantation road, and my imagination gave it life. I turned my head toward the sound and watched as the shadowy semblance of a blonde teenager walked along the sand, wind in her hair; a boy dark and serious recited poetry at her side. They waved, I think. Aloha, the wind cried. Aloha ‘oe.

I didn’t know if I would tell Jamison everything that had taken place since the day the clock stopped. Maybe I didn’t need to. He accepted our bond, and that’s what mattered.

Beside me he turned toward the sea, as though he’d seen something too, and smoothed my hair. As if I was the girl tousled by the wind. Then he drew my cheek against his chest until I felt the steady comfort of his beating heart, and I knew, at last, that I was home.