Ella watched the two men carefully. Both were tired. This made the pilot ornery. He would doze off, she noticed, and then wake suddenly, whereupon he gripped his gun and looked around with a fierce expression, masking his confusion with anger. Mr. Harada, on the other hand, laid his shotgun across his lap and stared at it, as if he couldn’t quite believe that something this heavy, this shiny, was on his thighs. His square face sagged oblong with fatigue. His hair, cut short, was blurred with dust. Old sweat had left large circles under the armpits of his shirt, which was untucked.
It was getting hot, and Ella hoped that soon they would move away from the plane and into a house, or even under the nearby kiawe trees. Her mu‘umu‘u, reddened by dust, now began to darken with her own sweat. For now the plane provided some shade, but it was more like a spreading stain, and this Ella did not like. And if that wasn’t spooky enough, a grayish dust rose from it, as if the plane itself breathed. Ella soon realized that the cockpit was smoldering. They were, for some reason, destroying the plane.
Well, good, she thought. Perhaps that will put an end to its grasp on the island. She could name the vices that had shown up in the islanders with its appearance: greed, envy, wrath, pride, and even sloth. She couldn’t account for lust and gluttony, but she wouldn’t be surprised. Destroy it, she thought. I’ll help if you ask.
But they didn’t ask. Mr. Harada wouldn’t even look at her. Even the few times she spoke, he did not respond.
There was a call from the scrub, and Ben appeared. His hands were spread to his sides to show that he was not a threat, and there was no sign of Howard. The pilot began to speak rapidly. Yoshio scrambled to his feet, his shotgun at the ready.
-Where’s Howard? he called.
Ben did not answer but shook his head repeatedly as he approached. He stopped when he was abreast of Ella, and reached down to touch her head. She expected herself to be annoyed by this gesture (and he did too, so he was tentative and hesitant), but instead she thought she could hear her heart beating up into her skull and his own thundering in his fingertips. She remembered suddenly when he had been a young and earnest lover. It was absurd to think such a thing at this inopportune moment—and certainly unchristian—but there it was, the restirring of an old love, as if the plane itself offered this last thing as recompense.
-Howard is gone, Mr. Harada. He left the island to get help.
Ella recognized Ben’s tone. It was the one he used to calm an old chicken that had clambered haplessly onto the lava wall, just before he throttled it for dinner.
-What do you mean, left the island?
-He took a boat with a few other of the men. They’ve gone for help.
-Help? Yoshio laughed bitterly. The Japanese are on Kauai. You heard me, didn’t you, Pearl Harbor has been bombed, the Japanese destroyed everything.
-I’m telling you. He’s not here anymore.
Nishikaichi’s palms slapped the handle of his gun. Then he barked at Yoshio for a translation. Yoshio shook himself suddenly and pulled one hand across his face.
-Look harder, he hissed at Ben.
-Tell him what I said. Your pilot. Tell him.
-He’s going to kill the whole village for those papers, said Yoshio mournfully.
-There’s still time to help us, Mr. Harada. Together we can clean up this mess you’ve made. It’s not too late.
-He’ll kill me too, to show he means business. He’s at the end of his rope.
-Fat lot of good your whining will do now, snapped Ella.
-Mama, warned Ben.
Ella spat in the grass and turned away.
Nishikaichi looked up at the blue sky. He had never shot someone at close range, but if he kept his mind on the Son of Heaven, he could do it. But he must stay clear of any thoughts of the fishmonger’s daughter, push her entirely out of his mind, from his whole being. He would not think of the small native child either, and the way her hand had lodged in his and pulled him toward the sea.
-Give me the shotgun, he said. He stuck his pistol in his boot.
He imagined instead his parents, and how proud they were that he was a pilot in the Imperial Navy. Would they be proud of what he was about to do? He saw them at the table, eating. Ribbons of light fell from openings along the roof. His father would be bent over his noodles, so that the small bald spot one couldn’t see otherwise would show, the chopsticks clicking lightly. His mother would wait to eat until she knew his father had everything he needed, but she would be at the table too. She had a way of sitting with her head canted to one side. Her hands would form a perfect almond on her lap. A half smile would be frozen on her lips, as if in the middle of listening to a long, expansive tale, but his father would be silent. Were they happy? He did not know. It was not a question he had ever asked himself. They did their duty: kept house and a family, offered their son to their country. That had always been enough.
The pilot looked at the two villagers. It was time to start what he had wanted to avoid. He would shoot them quickly, it would be painless. It would be the most Japanese of deaths, he thought, a sacrifice they would make for their villagers, to stop more violence. Once the rest of this island knew he meant business, they would return his missing papers. They would return the ammunition, so he could fully destroy the Zero, and then himself. These two would not understand the importance of their deaths now, but once they met in the place beyond this world, he would explain. He would shoot the man first, because women were always less of a threat. The old wife would crumble easily, he thought, once her husband was gone.
-Give me the shotgun, he said to Yoshio quietly.
Yoshio glanced at Ben, and back at the pilot. He did not protest, but his face paled. He held the gun out awkwardly, and his hands shook. The man was not good with guns, thought Nishikaichi. But that was fine, very fine, because he would do the dirty work now.
The pilot stepped forward, his arms outstretched for the gun, his mind already racing ahead to the moment the trigger would be pulled, the deafening noise, the cry of the woman as her husband fell without a word.
Something was in motion, coming toward him.
He thought for a moment that one of his comrades rushed forward with open arms to greet him. Where have you all been? he wanted to ask. I’ve been waiting. But it was an unearthly sound, a roar like the surf, and he knew that this could not be, and he saw the old island man clearly now, rushing, rushing, a short, wide wave about to crash upon him.
Nishikaichi calculated instinctively; he dropped the shotgun, because it was not yet firmly in his grasp, and reached for the pistol in his boot. It slipped free instantly and he fired.
Three shots.
The old man faltered at each one. Stumbled. Kept coming.
Nishikaichi was hit with all the momentum Ben had. The two men fell to the ground and the pistol skittered away.
Nishikaichi knew he would overpower this old man. His hands could feel the blood where he’d been hit. But the Hawaiian surprised him with his strength. Nishikaichi grunted and swore, but the Hawaiian continued to grapple long after he should have passed out. Nishikaichi finally pinned the old man under him. He sat up on the man’s hips, and saw that his flight suit was patterned with Hawaiian blood. He stared at the old man’s black eyes, glazing over now. He would make this quick, and painless. He pressed his thumbs into the old man’s throat.
There was the screaming nearby, high and insistent. A bird, Nishikaichi thought, just as the metal pipe hit him across his temple. There was a great light, and a scream again.
The fishmonger’s daughter held out her hand. You’ve done your duty, she said. But I haven’t, Nishikaichi protested, and looked down at the Hawaiian man’s dark eyes. They were still open, and they had grown larger, so that he dove, graceful, unhurried, into them, and began to swim. Silly bird, he thought, as it called out again, this time low and deep and somewhere inside him.
Ella had struggled to her feet as Ben charged. Her mu‘umu‘u wrapped around her calves like seaweed, and she caught the hem under her hand and slipped once. But she was used to scrambling quickly. Hadn’t she pounced on chickens unwilling to have their necks wrung? Hadn’t she grabbed the errant child that scurried too close to the imu? She got to the pilot’s arm just as he fired his gun. Ben was hit; she saw it as if in slow motion. The first bullet entered his shoulder and spun him sideways slightly. Amazingly, he regained his balance and kept coming. The next bullet hit his groin, and then as he lunged onto the pilot a final bullet blew open his hip. The blood was vigorous and messy, not like the dainty drops on the church’s lovely Jesus. Then as Ben hit the pilot, Ella was thrown off balance, onto the ground. She hit hard, her arm landing on a short metal pipe she supposed belonged to the plane.
-Help him! she screamed at Mr. Harada, who had sunk to his knees and gaped at something on his shirt. Ella pushed herself to her feet and picked up the pipe. Yoshio did not move or look her way. There was blood like a dark scar on his sleeve. He may have been crying, she was not sure.
Ella raised the pipe above her head, letting out a piercing scream. From the corner of her eye she saw a small flame burst briefly from the nearby cockpit, then die. She thought of Pele, the goddess who had made her home here long ago and then, like many others, had left for other islands. There she spewed her emotions in great lava flows. Pele, goddess of fire. Now here she was, come back to destroy the plane that was desecrating her beloved Niihau.
The two men struggled on the ground, though whether these were simply Ben’s agonized death throes she could not be sure. How could someone survive bullets at such close range? Her scream had not ended yet, it seemed to jettison from her like kiulokuloku, those gale winds from the Pacific that push over everything in their path. The pilot sat up now, her Ben underneath him. That was all it took. She swung the pipe hard and the pilot fell forward without a cry. He fell right on Ben’s face, then rolled sideways. She began to pray out loud. To the rhythm of the Twenty-third Psalm, Ella pounded the pilot’s head until he was still.