Sonny Boy

Also by Lisa Maraventano

The Remarkable Adventures of Adam de Mattos
Life Left
Whiter Than Snow
Living Memory—Poems from Rome
Shifting Sands—Poems from the Delta
Entropy, Volumes One and Two
Cards
The Pawn Shop of Cosmic Redemption

As Veronica Goddard
CLAIM
Walk
See
Light
Slide

SONNY BOY

Lisa Maraventano

To Mom

© 2020 Lisa Maraventano All rights reserved. This is a work of fiction. Any similarity to actual persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental and not intended by the author.

Ua Mau ke Ea o ka ʻĀina i ka Pono.
The life of the land is perpetuated in righteousness.

Chapter One

In the middle of the Pacific Ocean, there is an island made from volcanic rock and covered in lush, tropical foliage. It takes an hour to drive across the island from north to south, and another hour to drive across it from east to west. The sun and moon rise and set over this island of mountains, valleys, shorelines and cities. Although not in any continent, the island is part of an archipelago and home to a million people. This island is O‘ahu.
O‘ahu is known as “The Gathering Place” and so it is. People from all over the globe have been to O‘ahu. But this is a story of a boy who was born here. His name is John David Andersen, Jr. But he was always known as Sonny Boy. Which was somewhat ironic as Sonny Boy never knew his father.
His father had served in the United States Navy. John Senior had a month in Pearl Harbor before being shipped out to Vietnam in 1970. During those thirty days, John met, fell in love with, and married Akemi Izumi Higashi, the youngest daughter of the Higashis of Oihana Street, Honolulu. Akemi fell in love with the young sailor for the simple reason that he was the most beautiful person that she had ever seen in her short and sheltered life of eighteen years.
John was a Norwegian farmer’s son from Minnesota, well over six feet tall, built like an ox and as fair and golden as a summer morning. He had taken one look at her with his clear sky blue eyes at the Rainbow Drive-In where she had just ordered a strawberry slush and she fell head over heels in love. John had certainly never dated a Japanese girl before, and she was as exquisitely beautiful to him as he was to her. At eighteen years old, that is quite enough to begin a relationship. But John had been raised by a good family and he had no intention of dishonoring Akemi. The ramifications of marrying a Japanese girl who lived in Hawaii didn’t have time to disturb John. Unfortunately, before any of the inevitable issues arose, John was killed.
John left bereaved his parents, three brothers, three sisters and unbeknownst to them for some time, a pregnant widow. Akemi never remarried and continued to live with her parents who, for reasons of their own, were delighted to have her and the baby stay with them. And five months to the day after his father’s death, Sonny Boy entered the world.
John David Andersen, Senior had grown up on a farm in southwestern Minnesota homesteaded by his great-grandparents in the third quarter of the nineteenth century. Descended from Vikings, family lore claimed the men of his family were incredibly strong and the women were wondrously beautiful. But longevity eluded them. For generations, many of the family had died not long after reproducing. As the twentieth century progressed, penicillin and vaccination, education and refrigeration contributed to better health on the home front. But wars overseas claimed the lives of several Andersen men during this bloodiest century. During World War II, John’s father was spared but his two uncles were not. Both had died in Europe, one shot down in a plane over northern France and one killed on the ground in Italy. John’s father had lost an eye in a boyhood hunting accident and was ineligible for service.
John did not particularly like growing up on the vast prairie. He was lonely, even in the bosom of his family. He was born smack in the middle of his siblings, the fourth of seven. While he was plagued by his brothers’ and sisters’ squabbling and nagging, he rarely felt he had anyone to talk to. His dad spent fifteen hours a day working the farm and his mother spent seventeen hours a day working to keep the family’s bodies and souls together. Much of her time was spent procuring and preparing food via several methods. In addition to cooking, baking, canning, gardening and caring for chickens, there was cleaning, washing, sewing, mending, mothering and marketing. She barely had time to form a coherent thought much less explain the mysteries of the universe to him. She had been a beautiful girl twenty-five years ago, tall, strong, with long blond hair and high cheekbones. She had worked in St. Paul during the war as a streetcar driver for two years while her sweetheart was in North Africa. He had never come home and her heart had broken. She had met Jim Andersen during a V-E celebration and married him that fall.
On the farm, the chores were delegated equitably to the children. Each of them spent about five or six hours a day working on the farm in addition to going to school. Extra things like music lessons were unheard of in their family. The one exception was football. The whole community shut down for the sport. Although football season coincided with the busiest time on the farm, there was always just enough time and energy left to beat hell out of the neighboring kids on the gridiron.
But John longed to see more than the endless tops of grasses stretched to the horizon. Television was new when John grew up. It provided a window into the world and, as its name suggested, people—John included—could see across cultures, classes, cities, and countries. He wanted to be part of the churning chaos he saw flickering on the nightly news. The quiet solace of the prairie, the vast unchanging emptiness his mother had craved when she had accepted his father’s marriage proposal, was not for him. He felt born to resume the life she’d vacated, when she had once been so vivacious and stunning. John had thought enlisting in the Navy would be patriotic and get him out of Minnesota. So once he had graduated in the spring, he went off to boot camp in Illinois and then on to Pearl Harbor.
Akemi had gone to Kaimuki High School and was very good at typing and bookkeeping. She had graduated in June of 1970 and in August was standing at the drive-in where two or three times a month since it had opened she’d gone for a strawberry slush float. She stood in line behind a tall sailor who smelled like soap. The tropical sunshine lit up his flaxen hair. The line crawled, slow like always. Finally, the guy in front of her and his buddy ordered.
As he turned, she caught a glimpse of his face as he passed her. Giggling with her friend Kioko, because they always giggled at everything, Akemi ordered her slush float and waited at the pick up window. Bobby was in the back. They had all gone to high school together so they talked story as he made their floats. The cook slapped down two hamburgers with fries on the counter with the ticket number and Bobby called out number thirty-one.
The big blond man came over to pick up the orders. Akemi stood to the side and looked up at his face as he leaned toward the counter. He turned and looked at her, holding the red plastic baskets of food, and smiled slightly. Akemi didn’t breathe.
John saw Akemi as he turned. He had only been in O‘ahu for a few days and he and his buddies went off base every chance they had. John had seen many girls of the island and their exotic beauty had captivated him from the first. But here was a girl so beyond compare he couldn’t stop himself smiling. Her long silken dark hair and lovely eyes were common features in the women here but the way she looked up at him was not.
Later he would joke with her that the song “Just One Look” started playing in his head. But in that moment when the natural barriers between girl and boy stood as enormous, awkward obstacles between them, John could think of no other recourse than to grin stupidly and head off to eat his hamburger.
Akemi turned to Kioko who giggled as they backed away from the counter and went to sit under the awning on the other side of the lanai from the young men. Sipping through her straw and glancing up under her eyelashes, trying not to stare at him, Akemi mentally went through the myriad, innumerable warnings about boys, sailors, haoles and her reputation in the five minutes before she saw John and the other sailor approach their table. Kioko was already giggling riotously as John’s friend, a young, slim kid from Washington, tried to talk to her.
“Hi,” was John’s amazing opening.
Akemi felt herself blushing. “Hi.”
And that was the beginning. Within a week, they knew they were madly in love with each other. On the tenth day, John proposed. And five days later, they were married at the courthouse with her family in attendance. Her parents, Samuel and Helen, would normally have attempted to forbid such a marriage, citing the cultural differences between the two. Not only were times and perceptions changing, but when John had walked into their living room two weeks before he had charmed them as easily as he had Akemi. His exceptionally striking good looks and sheer physical size were enough to dominate the space. But John was also polite, well-mannered, kind, attentive and genuinely cared for Akemi—and she adored him. Her parents knew they didn’t stand a chance. Instead of risking the loss of their daughter, they welcomed John into their family at a simple, civil ceremony.
For the wedding night, John used up quite a bit of his savings to rent a room at the Hilton Hawaiian Village. They checked in, nervous and excited. Married. What that meant. After the bellboy was tipped and had left, Akemi and John turned to each other with wide eyes in the impressively large and well-appointed room. It was, by far, more extravagant than anything either of them had experienced before. But that wasn’t troubling. They were both looking forward to new experiences shared only together.
However, John wanted to do something beforehand. He wanted something that felt a little more personal and binding than the courthouse ceremony, something that would last forever. He led Akemi in her shell pink traveling suit to the balcony. Overlooking the sea, he knelt in front of her and tugged on her hand. She knelt and sat back on her heels as she was accustomed to do but he pulled her gently to her knees. He took a piece of rope from his right pocket. Holding her right hand with his left, he wound the rope around their twined hands.
“Akemi, I take you to be my partner in life and my one true love. I will love you today, I will love you tomorrow and I will love you forever. I will trust you and I will honor you. As I have given you my hand to hold, so I give you my life to keep.” Gently, he squeezed her hand to prompt her to reply.
Akemi looked into his clear blue eyes, the color of the sky over the Pacific. “To John, my love, I give my heart to you. Whatever happens, I am your partner in life and death. I will trust and honor you. As I give you my hand, I give you my life.” She didn’t remember exactly what he had said, so she simply did her best to say what was true.
“This is handfasting, Akemi. We are bound and pledged to each other now and forever.”
“Now and forever,” she repeated.
He leaned forward and kissed her then. They rose from their knees and walked to the bed, still kissing, hands tied. Akemi had given her whole heart to this man. He embodied beauty and light and fire and strength. She burned beneath him like a torch lit with flame.
They had twelve nights together before he shipped out. A dozen evenings to last her a life time. As future years went by, she would take an evening out of her memory and review each moment, each detail. She felt the warmth of his skin, the softness of the sheets, the pleasure of her wedding night. She remembered the setting sun, the stolen moments on a deserted beach west of Pearl Harbor the other nights. She lived at home and he lived on his ship. They couldn’t afford to stay at a hotel every night. So she waited until six every evening when he was finally free to come to her. She would pack supper into bentos and be ready with the beach blanket. They talked about their families and their days and their dreams and their future while they swam and ate. They were together in the quiet moments of twilight, she seated in front of him as the wind rose. Once it was dark, he would kiss her shoulder, her neck, until she turned to him. She loved remembering those evenings after long days of waiting. The remaining years of her life were a long, long day until the final evening came.
Akemi received the news of Seaman Andersen’s death on December 15, 1970. He had been killed in a shipboard fire in the Gulf of Thailand. Akemi went to her room and wept. For five days she sat on her bed, refusing to eat or drink.
Her parents were distraught. Akemi was dying too. They could see it.
Akemi cried in silence until her tears and she herself were nearly gone. She had so little left. She wished she had nothing, was nothing. A tear fell onto her shirt. The surface tension kept the droplet whole. The morning sunlight infused the shape so it sparkled like a miniature crystal ball. She looked down, chin touching her neck, and focused on the drop shining between her breasts, over her broken heart, as if it contained her life—past, present and future—in the little encircled world. Just then, she felt the baby kick. And with clarity, she knew that last teardrop was the prism in which she found truth.
She was vessel now, like the ships that carried goods to Hawaii, like the destroyer that had carried away her love. She contained life within her, his child, what was left of him in the world. Bound and pledged to carry on, Akemi lifted her chin from her chest and pressed her palms tightly against her eyes. No more tears. Then she rose from her bed and walked into the kitchen, put the kettle on, and began to prepare the tea.

During the Christmas holidays, Akemi saw pictures of Mary and her baby and instantly felt a rapport. She found hope in her new faith and became a member of the First Presbyterian Church of Honolulu. Trusting in God’s goodness in a world that is often tragic, violent, and evil should be difficult. But for Akemi, it was simple. She had a perfect and pure belief that she would one day see her love again. And in the meantime she would be guardian of this child, bear and nurse and raise and teach it to the best of her ability. Akemi read the song of Mary and committed it to her heart.
Samuel and Helen, her parents, didn’t really understand Akemi’s newfound faith but were happy to see their daughter coming back to life. And they were not upset about a baby coming into their home—rather the opposite. All of their children had grown up and moved out except Akemi. Of the other generations, only Akemi and Samuel’s ancient parents were there. An infant would bring wonderful new energy into the house.
Akemi carried the baby through Christmas and New Year and Valentine’s, through sakura season until Mother’s Day. Akemi was admitted into the Queen’s Hospital after dinner on Mother’s Day. Her contractions were five minutes apart and her water had broken. She labored through the night but her baby was awfully big for her tiny frame. The doctor realized he should have ordered a Caesarean some time ago. Through a haze, Akemi realized her baby was in danger. For John, she gathered up all the strength left in her delicate body and worked to deliver his baby. The obstetrician had never seen such a change in a woman. Akemi actively, determinedly, forced her baby from her body. As the infant emerged, she was torn terribly. But the baby arrived, nine pounds and two ounces. A boy.
Akemi knew if she had a boy she would name him for his father. But she couldn’t say the name without pain. So she decided to call him Sonny Boy. She liked Sonny Bono and she liked the play on words “sunny boy” since her own name meant beautiful sunrise or dawn. She hoped he would prove to have a sunny disposition and the radiance of his father.
From the beginning, Akemi found Sonny endearing and perfect. Her heart sprang back to life with new purpose and she devoted it to him. He was the sweetest baby, all smiles and gurgling cuteness. Akemi thought his father’s heroic beauty and love of life shone through in the son. He slept through the night and played in the daytime, charming his mother and grandparents and great-grandparents and even the neighbors who came by to offer good wishes. They thought Sonny was good for poor Akemi, even if he was hapa—mixed blood.
For the first year of her little son’s life, Akemi’s world was circumscribed by the walls of her home and the little garden. She rarely went beyond the borders of the Higashi house except to church on Sunday. She loved to be with Sonny every minute. Her mother brought home diapers and new clothes and booties. She brought home a satin-edged green blanket they laid Sonny on in the middle of the living room every evening after dinner. The whole family—Akemi, Samuel and Helen, Samuel’s parents—would sit in their accustomed spots and watch Sonny struggle to hold his head up. And by three months, he was doing just that. He propped himself on his elbows and looked clear-eyed and curious at the world around him. The family was delighted. Before long, he was up on hands and knees, rocking back and forth. Where was he going? they asked each other. He looked like he was ready to head somewhere, his earnest efforts building thigh muscle and biceps as he supported his weight on his limbs. His little knees turned red as he chafed them against the blanket, learning to go.
And then he was off, crawling across the floor faster than any of them could believe. His perfectly round appealing face and bright eyes, his small lips—Akemi adored him, as did the rest of them. Soon she was blending rice into baby food but that didn’t satisfy him. He lunged at the fish on her plate. How he loved it! At eleven months, Sonny stood and took his first hesitant steps. But soon, on his sturdy legs, he was able to toddle confidently about the different rooms of the house.
Akemi became extremely worried about Sonny getting burned in the kitchen when he nearly pulled down on himself a pot of boiling water whose handle was overhanging the edge of the stove. She forbade his entering the kitchen and installed a strong wooden baby gate with a latch to keep him out. He was angry. He loved the kitchen—that’s where the food was! Before meals, he often stood howling at the gate until given a rice cake or cracker to gnaw on. Appeased but still mad, he would glare at his mother and grandmother as they finished cooking while the treat was still in his mouth.
His appetite continued to grow along with his body. His dark eyes shone with resentment as he waited impatiently for chow. The ladies shook their heads and wondered about a boy like him while they cooked. Akemi thought of her current favorite Bible verse. “And the child grew and became strong in spirit.”
However, Sonny’s spirit was always restless. Between meals, his great-grandfather delighted in showing Sonny Boy the garden. Blades of grass, geckos, plumeria blossoms, smooth gray rocks, red mud and spotted butterflies were opportunities to teach and to learn the simplest and most profound first lessons of creation.
Sonny loved spending time with Ojiichan. He was the one who calmed his restless spirit. Sonny would grab onto the gnarled hand of his great-grandfather and trace his chubby little finger over the age-spotted knuckles with fascination. His bright eyes would look up into the dim ones of Ojiichan as if to ask What happened?
Shaking his head and shrugging, his great-grandfather would answer. “Time, my little son. Just time.”
Honolulu was growing at the same time Sonny Boy was. Tourism was on the rise and condos and hotels were going up left and right. The Higashi house was on a hillside in the Kaimuki neighborhood of Honolulu. There was a clear view of Waikiki from their house on the hill. Samuel and Helen tried not to be concerned with the exponential growth, instead seeing the development as opportunity for their children and grandchildren. Their three sons and eldest daughter were settled near and far, prospering after college educations paid for with the sweat of Samuel’s brow and the workings of Helen’s sharp mind. The Higashis ran an appliance store after Samuel left the service when the war was over. Samuel had sold thousands of appliances all over O‘ahu during the last four decades, everything from washing machines to refrigerators. There was a lot of heavy lifting with deliveries and installation. Helen did the purchasing, accounting, and taxes. Between the two of them, they had built an extremely successful business. Their company had grown from a little dry goods shop into a Hawaii household name. Two of their sons had settled on the mainland. One was an aeronautical engineer for Lockheed and the other one was a chemist. Their daughter was a professor of mathematics at UH-Manoa. Only Akemi was home and she had always been an easy child.
Samuel and Helen were still busy at the store but were in the process of handing over the daily running of it to their eldest son. He thought electronics was the future and preferred to shift their focus from large appliances. Samuel and Helen thought this was a good idea as televisions had been a staple sales item for twenty years. There was talk in the industry that computers could soon be the new televisions. A personal computer had recently been invented.
With her son taking over the books, Helen had more time than she had ever had. Her kids were busy with work and raising their own families. Helen decided to do some redecorating in avocado and orange, in brown and gold. She loved shopping, visiting with friends, and spending time with Sonny. Sonny loved his grandmother whom he called Baba. Samuel was Sofu. Baba often took him to Ala Moana Beach Park where he learned to swim with the other keiki.
The only shadow in Sonny’s life sat in the corner of the living room in a wooden rocking chair. She was named Sobo and she terrified him. He had to be very good by Sobo. He would stand stock still and look at his toes when he was near her, much to her hidden amusement. She had raised nine children and had twenty-three grandchildren and nineteen great-grandchildren so far. She did not put up with nonsense. Sobo loved to play old records like Bing Crosby, Ella Fitzgerald, Frank Sinatra, or Count Basie. She sat in the corner with a stack on the turntable and let hours go by.
Samuel and Helen had bought the house at the end of the war nearly thirty years ago. They had added a few rooms here and there as needed. Now it had five bedrooms and three baths with a small but elegant garden maintained by Samuel’s father. Most of the neighbors had lived on the street as long as the Higashis had. The neighbors had been tight knit together as they raised kids and buried parents and sometimes spouses.
During these early years of the seventies, there were few kids left on Oihana Street. One exception was the house uphill next door. The owners were in their fifties, like Samuel and Helen. But their son and his wife continued to live with them and had three children, one girl older and one younger than Sonny, but a boy just his age.
Akemi had never been friends with the son and found his wife very patronizing. They both drank and smoked a lot and were eight years older than she was. They acted as if they knew everything and she was dirt—but their son Hideo was a good boy and a great playmate for Sonny.
Sonny Boy’s restless spirit tortured him. He always wanted more from life than what he had. When he was in third grade, he began to be able to name what he wanted. He craved recognition and respect. Mainly, though, he wanted to be rich and powerful. He hated his little eight by ten room in the back of the house shared by four generations and six people. The house was crammed into its lot like all of the other houses on the street, in the neighborhood, in Honolulu. There was nowhere to breathe, except the water. The only space and freedom were out there. On land, in town, Sonny was only a boy in the hive of people, a hapa boy without a father to boot. Unimportant, irrelevant.
One autumn afternoon when he was eight years old, Sonny Boy despondently watched his great-grandfather pare an apple. The old man could keep the skin in one long, ongoing strip from beginning to end. “Ojiichan, how do you do that?”
“Constant pressure, little son.” He handed the boy a slice of the apple. Sonny popped it into his mouth and bit into the crunchy sweetness. Ojiichan loved asking Sonny questions. Sometimes they were riddles. Other times, Ojiichan simply wanted to hear Sonny’s answers or teach him something. Now, the old man asked, “Do you know what you are eating?”
Sonny’s eyes grew wide. He thought it was an apple. His mouth was full so he couldn’t say anything.
“A flower,” his great-grandfather revealed. He sliced off a piece of apple for himself. “In the spring, this was an apple blossom.” He ate the slice.
Sonny sat there chewing and thinking, taking slices when Ojiichan offered them. It was a very good apple, crisp and juicy. “Ojiichan, if this was a flower,” Sonny said after a while. “How did it become an apple?”
“Oh, little son, you ask a very good question. How does one thing transform into another? Water. Light. Air. Time. With these, all things can change.”
“I want to change,” Sonny muttered.
“What do you want to be?”
“I want to be a king or a movie star or a businessman. I am tired of being nothing.”
“Mm,” his great-grandfather nodded thoughtfully. “I was nothing once.”
“You were?”
“Yes. I was an orphan in a vast, ancient city.”
“What happened to your parents?”
“They were killed in an accident. But in my case, both of my parents were gone. You are lucky to have your mother.”
Sonny rolled his eyes.
“I am almost nothing again, little son. But for a while, I was a king and a movie star and a businessman.”
“You were?”
“Yes. In my own little world, with the help of my perfect flower.”
“Sonny!” his mother called from the back door. “Come wash up. It is almost time for dinner.”
Sonny ran inside without hearing the rest of the story. Food was ready.

So Sonny Boy ate, growing up on fried rice, ahi, teriyaki chicken, saimin, mochi, paniolo beef, Kahuku corn, haupia pies, peanut butter sandwiches, spam musubi, Loco Mocos and hamburgers when he went to the drive-in. He loved to eat. His family marveled at his capacity to ingest food. “Where did it go?” they wondered as Sonny Boy was never fat and not really that much bigger than his playmates until he was ten years old. Then he began a growth spurt that answered their question. By the time Sonny entered sixth grade, he was six feet tall and wore a size eleven shoe.
Oh, they marveled at him. No one in the Higashi family had topped five-seven. His mother, grandmother and great-grandmother exaggerated when they claimed five feet. It was like living with a giant. There was another big boy in his class who hated Sonny. His father was Samoan and his mother was Hawaiian, but he teased Sonny for his haole, hapa blood. Sonny Boy had to survive a couple of scuffles before Kimo’s family moved to Waianae on the west side of O‘ahu.
The girls all loved Sonny Boy. Every last one of the dark-eyed beauties of Ms. Nakagawa’s sixth grade liked Sonny. He was oblivious to their longing, preferring to master Atari and flag football and surfing and smoking stolen cigarettes and drinking stolen beer behind his best friend’s garage. They had only done that a few times when Hideo’s little sister caught them. She had just turned nine and was a know-it-all and tattle-tale, and the boys were both twelve. Sonny thought they were dead for sure.
Instead, Maemi looked Sonny straight in the eye, turned on her heel and left the way she had come. Hideo and Sonny, two beers each in them, looked at each other and shrugged. But they figured they better get the heck out of there. They ditched the bottles in the trash and stubbed out their cigarettes, grabbed their boards and hopped on their bikes to head to Waikiki. Seven or eight of their friends were already there, as far down the beach from the hotels as possible, locals only. Sonny and Hideo washed off the scent of smoke in the saltwater, swallowing plenty as they perfected flips into the oncoming waves. The light shining silver on their skin, all of the boys wrestled and fought in the surf for hours. It was a daily and unappreciated miracle that none of them went home with more than a few scrapes to their mothers in time for dinner.
Maemi had always lived next door to Sonny Boy, uphill. She could see down into his house and backyard and had watched him for as long as she could remember. Every day, he played with her brother Hideo. She was fascinated by Sonny. He was so big and strong and wild, all things she was not. Maemi didn’t like her parents very much. She couldn’t really explain why and didn’t try. Her mother was very beautiful, tall for her family, but very moody. Her father was away a lot. He liked to hang out in the bars and pool halls. Sometimes her mother would go out with him, sometimes she would wait until he was gone and then go out on her own. It was all grown up business and too complicated for Maemi. She wondered when grown ups became nice again, like her grandparents. Her grandparents were truly the ones who gave her guidance and support.
By the time the eighties began, Maemi, Hideo and their older sister Miki had learned to avoid and passively ignore their parents who spent more and more time elsewhere. Whatever stability, food, clothes, love and parenting they needed was provided by their grandparents. Miki was determined to get off the island. She was also very smart and a good student. She wanted to go to Stanford and become a doctor. Then she wanted to live in San Francisco in a beautiful Victorian house with expensive furniture and learn to ski in the Sierras. Fog and redwoods, snow and sequoias, a never-ending parade of new and interesting people, road trips for hours across the desert or in the mountains or to Disneyland sounded like heaven to her. She was fourteen and in her freshman year of high school. In three more years, she could begin to make her dreams come true.
Hideo had been best friends with Sonny for as long as he could remember. If it weren’t for Sonny and his sweet mom who always made him feel loved, Hideo would probably have been a very bitter, angry boy. But Sonny was always good for a wrestling match, bike race, beach adventure, video game or whatever Hideo was in the mood for. And Auntie Akemi was usually good for a snack. Hideo realized his parents were caught up in a bad world. The drinking and smoking were merely basic emblems of their lifestyle. Adultery, gambling, drugs and racketeering were their true enterprises. Hideo was embarrassed and ashamed and had no idea what to do about it. Sometimes he wished both of them were dead. Then he felt guilty. He admired Miki and her ambition. But he when he was honest with himself, he admitted he wasn’t as smart or motivated as she was. He wanted to protect Maemi but she was so annoying. He felt trapped in the middle, trapped in the family and house and island and situation. He hated feeling trapped. But Sonny was even more restless than he was. So between the two of them, they managed to have a lot of fun.
Maemi appeared cute but ordinary. She was slim, with long, dark hair and almond-shaped, deep brown eyes. She did all right at school but didn’t try very hard. She obeyed her grandparents, and parents if they were around. She did her chores and homework and took baths and brushed her hair. While shy and polite to adults, Maemi was very controlling as well as deeply lonely. She played with dolls and liked to draw. She was in charge of the world with her dolls or a blank page. Anything that happened was from her imagination, by her will and all in her control. Few would have realized that was why she chose those occupations. Superficially, she was a dutiful, docile child with the habit of telling on her brother and sister when they did something they weren’t supposed to. She wished she could tell on her parents but there was no one to listen. Maemi was a solitary little girl, too particular to make many friends. She found fault with almost everyone who tried to befriend her and then was too bossy with any girls who passed her first qualifying round. So she started to have a crush.
She found obsessing over her crush to be much more fulfilling than actual human interaction. In her mind, her crush was perfect. She found one-sided, unrequited love satisfying because then she didn’t have to deal with any of the person’s faults. In second grade, she was in love with Mark Hamilton but he moved away. In third grade, she had a crush on Aaron Tanaka but he also moved away. So then she fell in love with Sonny. He wasn’t going anywhere. Maemi’s crush on Sonny Boy began in the summer between third and fourth grade. She had swept her doll’s feet over the coffee table and accidentally knocked her mother’s favorite ashtray onto the floor where it shattered. While her brother stood there laughing, Sonny bent over and helped her pick up the pieces. The simple act penetrated her heart like an arrow. Although Sonny was wild and reckless, that day he gave her courage and made her feel strong. From that moment in her living room and in the years to come as they grew up next door to each other, she compared all other boys to him and found them lacking. On the day she caught Hideo and Sonny drinking beer from their parents’ back fridge, Maemi decided her fate. Her loyalty fully transferred from her folks to Sonny. She wouldn’t tell. Some say kids can’t fall in love, but that is not true. Kids know love better than anyone. And Maemi loved Sonny.

Sonny hit puberty, or possibly puberty hit him. He thought about girls a lot. He began to notice that they seemed to like him. He turned into a huge flirt and the girls seemed to enjoy that. It didn’t hurt that around his hazel eyes he had enviably thick eyelashes. He also had a wide, engaging smile and sharp jawline.
Sonny thought Miki was cute. She had developed a nice figure. He started flirting with her when he saw her. At first, she didn’t notice his attempts to get her attention. But Sonny was very handsome and large for his age so eventually she did. Her pride wouldn’t allow her to seriously consider a boy in seventh grade when she was in ninth but she let herself flirt with him a little. Why not? Sonny was fun to flirt with. He was charming and ridiculous and a little bit stupid. Incrediblygood-looking and strong, he was easy to tease and made the girls laugh. He wasn’t considered good boyfriend material, by Miki or any of the other girls. Their parents would never accept him, hapa and fatherless. Akemi was tolerated as a widow but there was suspicion about Sonny, especially as he grew. His father hadn’t been around long enough for people to make up their minds about his character. They only saw the results of his actions: quickly seduce and marry one of their girls, get her pregnant, die, break her heart. Leave child and widow behind with little money. These were not attributes in a good man. Of course, he hadn’t wanted to die but that was not the point. The point was he did die and had left them to fend for themselves. So the society thought and judged. And what character did he bequeath on this restless, reckless son of his? And how would they control him? He was huge. And their daughters were not safe.
Seventh grade was beginning. Sonny came home from the first day, wolfed down a thousand calories and then hung his head in his hands.
“What is the matter?” Akemi asked.
“Have you ever met middle schoolers? They are like vicious dogs,” Sonny complained.
“What vicious dogs have you ever met?” Akemi countered.
Sonny Boy looked up to scowl at his smiling mother. She offered some lychee in return. Glaring at her as he had over the sturdy baby gate, he put one into his mouth and chewed. She reached forward to ruffle his silky, thick hair. His hair had lightened over the years in the sunshine and was now brown with golden highlights.
“You have any classes with Hideo?”
“Yeah, English and Math. I hate school. Why do I have to go?”
“Education is the key to a good life, Sonny. You know that. I have told you so many times.”
“I still don’t know if I believe it. If it wasn’t for football, I would run away.”
“And where would you go, my beloved boy?”
“To the mountains. To live off cockroaches and coconuts.”
“Yes, my dear. But you might miss this,” she said with a wistful, vaguely worried smile. She reached her willowy arm into the refrigerator, brought out a green tea cake and cut him a large slice. It was delicious and perfect. Sonny sank into a sugary, caffeinated bliss and asked if he could go watch TV. Akemi agreed and sat by him as a rerun of Happy Days aired.

In the parking lot of Safeway, Sonny watched his mother gather up three carts and return them to the rack.
“What are you doing?” he asked her when she got into the car. He was hot, tired, and sweaty as he sat in the passenger seat of their Civic. It had been a long Monday.
“Helping out.” She buckled up in the driver’s seat and turned the key. She pulled forward and headed to the parking lot exit. Looking both ways, she turned onto Kapahulu Avenue.
“Why?” he wondered.
“Because I can. It doesn’t hurt to be generous and kind to one another.”
“It doesn’t?” Sonny sounded skeptical. That wasn’t what seventh grade was like.
“No. In fact, it feels nice. It makes me feel good when I can give to someone else.”
“Well, that’s just nuts.”
Akemi looked over at her son who was glaring out the window. He never used to talk to her like that. What should she do? She was in uncharted water. Sonny had been such an easy baby and boy, as long as he was fed. As he grew into a young man, Akemi felt like any influence she’d once had over him was evaporating. In fact, she felt like the reverse was true: whatever she said, he automatically opposed. So she often kept her thoughts to herself.
However, in this case, he’d asked her a direct question and she’d answered honestly. She wanted to keep her mouth shut again, but losing respect for herself in addition to losing his respect seemed like the worse option. “Sonny, you shouldn’t speak to your mother like that,” she said quietly.
He exhaled loudly. He knew he’d been disrespectful, the crime of crimes in their family and culture, but he didn’t care. He didn’t care about anything lately. He wanted to smash his fist through the window. He wanted to jump out of this compact car and run. Run and run and run as fast and far as his legs would carry him. He had no idea how far that would be. He’d never had the chance to test out his new legs, to see what this unfamiliar, enormous body could do. He did like football. It was the only opportunity he had, within the rules, to pound the shit out of people. Grind and push, power and grit in every practice. He was roasting and smelly from practice but Mom had wanted to stop by the supermarket on their way home. He hadn’t complained because that’s where the food was and obviously they needed food. But couldn’t she have done it earlier?
“Sonny?” Akemi prompted.
Mom was waiting for an apology. “Sorry,” he mumbled.
She knew he wasn’t sorry at all, but didn’t know what to do about it. They drove the rest of the short way home in silence. Sonny grabbed his gym bag and headed inside without helping with the groceries. He went to take a shower.
Akemi unloaded the car and put the groceries away. Then she picked up the phone. She and Kioko had been friends since preschool hula, Merrie Monarch days. Kioko had married at twenty-one and had twin seven-year-old girls. She was a teacher at their elementary school.
Akemi and Kioko took ikebana classes every Tuesday night at Kapiolani Community College so they had a chance to see each other regularly. They both loved ikebana. The practice made them appreciate transient moments of beauty. Arrangements were made, presented, and then usually disassembled. They often lasted only a few minutes. The sensei called this ukiyo-ha-yume, a phrase which meant “Life is but a dream. This too shall pass. Everything changes.”
Kioko answered on the third ring. “Hello?”
“Hi. It’s me.”
“What is it?” Akemi rarely called.
“Nothing.”
“Sonny?”
“Yes.”
There was a pause on the other end of the line. Akemi had loved that boy like crazy. It was breaking Akemi’s heart all over again to see him changing as he headed into his teens. It hurt Kioko to know her friend hurt. To be steadfast through the passing of time was the best she could offer her. She did not know what else to do. “Ukiyo-ha-yume.”
“Yes. Thanks, Ki.”
“See you tomorrow?”
“See you tomorrow.”

Chapter Two

“She’s a Beauty” by The Tubes was on the radio. Sonny lay on his bed in his room. He had survived seventh grade. It was over. Summer was here. There was a wave of sweltering heat this week. Movement became unbearable, even for a thirteen year old boy. Sonny spent the days in his darkened room with the fan on, staring at the ceiling and listening to the radio. Of course he found things to think about and do in the dark, on his own. He lay there listening to the words of warning in the song—She’ll give you every penny’s worth/But it will cost you a dollar first. Sonny thought a lot about both girls and money. What he would do, how he would manage to get both. He dreamed of his future. He wanted out of this little room. He wanted to be important, known, respected, rich.
Their family wasn’t poor. His grandparents, Samuel and Helen, had built up the family business into a household name for appliances and televisions in Hawaii. But his uncle was taking over the business. His mom had no part in it. She was working part-time for her uncle in his insurance office. Sonny didn’t want to work for his uncle. Sonny would start with nothing and make it on his own. But how? And were women really so mercenary? Some movies and music and books and stories were about true love, the faithful heart of one pledged to another. So many—more?—were about deception, betrayal, and avarice. Which was real? True love or heartbreak?
He liked this girl named Melanie. She was new, a haole chick whose dad was a contractor. She had moved here three months ago, at the end of the third quarter. She had long curly golden hair and blue eyes. She was much smarter than he was. But he had the advantage of being from here and having tons of friends. They had hung out this summer. And in a couple of hours, he was meeting her at the movies. Both had lied to their parents and said they were going to be with different friends. Dating was out of the question for both of them at this age. But what the folks didn’t know wouldn’t hurt them. He got up to take a shower.
Melanie was waiting for him in front of the cinema. She had on pink shorts and a white T-shirt. She looked like a piece of delicious bubble gum. To choose from, they had The Gremlins, Ghostbusters or Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom.
“Let’s see all of them,” she suggested.
Sonny was worried. He only had fourteen bucks on him.
“We’ll only pay for Ghostbusters which starts first. Then we can sneak into the other two,” she explained.
“How late will we be?”
“You told your mom you’re at the beach, right? She won’t even care. Come on,” she took his hand.
He paid seven dollars for the two of them and spent five more on popcorn and Cokes. She had snuck candy in her purse.
It was one of the best days of his life. Melanie held Sonny’s hand during Ghostbusters and he never did see The Gremlins because they were too busy kissing. He had no idea how to kiss a girl. She said it was also her first kiss. They sat in the back of the theater and practiced getting better. For the rest of that summer, they met as often as they could, almost every day. They were both thirteen so they never went beyond kissing. When Sonny looked back on it later in his life, he realized this innocent kissing of a beautiful girl was one of his favorite memories. There were no complications. He never even tried to feel her breast. He was savvy enough to realize she would break it off if he tried to go too far. For now, they were both happy.
He met her in the heart of Waikiki where she blended in with the tourists and his friends would not be around. He didn’t bring a board with him so his friends didn’t think he was going to the beach. Sonny and Melanie would just swim. Melanie was a great swimmer. They would swim out away from everyone and make out in the water. She would bring a radio and a blanket. He would bring food his mother packed like she had every summer since he was nine and started going to the beach alone. He put the lunch in his backpack with whatever money he could scrape together and rode his bike down the hill to meet her. Melanie turned from fair to a deep, golden tan, her hair capturing the light of the Hawaii sun until it shone. They listened to The Cars, The Go-Gos, David Bowie, Hall and Oates, Duran Duran, Bruce Springsteen, Prince, Madonna and a hundred one hit wonders of that summer.
He found out things about her, about girls. She loved when he lightly touched the back of her hand or her neck. She played with her hair because it soothed her when she was tired or nervous. Sometimes he would reach over and play with a curl and she would smile and relax. They would eat the bento and the fruit and then buy a shaved ice or an ice cream or a Coke to share. They found a spot behind and between two buildings where a small flowerbed with a large shrub hid them from view. Before parting, they would stand in their secret spot and kiss for ten or fifteen minutes.
That summer of 1984, the music was electric and the movies were alive. The future was like the Temple of Doom, with dangers looming one after another. A never-ending series of traps, obstacles, or threats needed to be evaded or outwitted. Like a dark cave, the unknown of the days ahead waited to swallow them up and obliterate this golden summer.
“I want to see the stars, Sonny. Where I live, the streetlights block them out. Do you know anywhere we can see the stars?” Melanie asked him on one of their phone calls.
Sonny had to think about where they could go. Somewhere with no houses but also no trees. He decided on Punchbowl. They snuck out one night and climbed the hill.
Since making the plan to meet him here, something horrible had happened. Her dad had broken the news that afternoon. Melanie had to move back to the mainland before school started. Her dad had only had a six month contract. But he hadn’t told her that and she had just found out. She was devastated.
“He’s such an asshole! Why didn’t he tell us? I know why—because we would have refused to come! We spend time making friends and then—bam—move again! It sucks!”
“Are you sorry you came here then?”
“No, no! Don’t get me wrong—I didn’t mean that! I am so happy I met you. I just can’t stand the thought of leaving.”
They sat in silence for a few minutes, holding hands and staring at the vast expanse of blue that would soon separate them from each other. She continued, “I’m so pissed off! I hate this powerless feeling. I want to run away but where would I go? It’s pointless. I don’t have anyone here I can ask to take me in. I am literally powerless. I have to go.”
“I know.”
“Will it be like this forever? Will we ever have power over our own lives? When?”
“When we’re grown?”
She shrugged dismissively. “My mother doesn’t. My father doesn’t—even though I hate him and don’t want to say anything nice about him. He has to go because his job says he does. He could get another job but not one that would pay enough to keep my mother happy. My grandmother doesn’t have any control. My grandfather is an alcoholic so by definition he isn’t controlling his life, alcohol is. And so my grandma is entirely dependent on his moods, his drunks. My other grandfather is dead and that grandma is dependent on my dad helping her out and the little bit she has left. She is also diabetic and depends on her insulin. She has no power. Then there is the government…don’t get me started on that.”
Sonny didn’t know what to do or say. He had always known she was smarter than he was, that she thought on a whole other level, in whole other dimensions, than he did. In fact, he had learned to think a little bit this summer. She liked getting him to think and talk to her, discussing the ways of the world and pop culture and philosophy. Mainly he had listened to her. He hadn’t really or always listened to her. But sometimes her interesting way of thinking and viewing the world caught his full attention and he would wander with her down her rabbit holes of thought. He would miss her. In fact, for the rest of his life, he would miss the realm of innocent romance they had made this summer but he didn’t know that yet.
Sonny put his arm around her. She didn’t mean to, she was too mad, but she started crying. For just a moment. Then she pulled all the sadness back inside her and shoved it down, down into the pit. Packed it over with earth and stamped on it.
True love. Heartbreak.

Sonny moped in the garden one Sunday afternoon in September. It was still hot, but there was the faintest change in the air, a breath of coolness. Melanie was gone.
Ojiichan sat in his usual place, the bench under the canopy of the rose-flowered jatropha tree. Water bubbled up from the pond fountain in a peaceful trickle while the fish searched for food in the clear water.
Ojiichan called Sonny over to him. “The more you take, the more you leave behind. What am I?” he asked. Asking riddles was a familiar game. Sonny tried to think for a minute and then gave up. “Sorry, Ojiichan.” He lay on the grass at his great-grandfather’s feet and watched the fish in the pond.
“You are restless, son.”
Sonny shrugged. He was always restless.
“What has happened?”
“A girl I liked moved back to the mainland.”
“Ah.”
“It’s not fair.”
“No, it is not, Sonny.”
“I know, ‘life’s not fair.’ Heard it a million times.”
“I know. That is why I am not saying it again.”
Sonny sat up and found a stick nearby. He held it out over the water. The koi with their funny lips lunged for the stick.
“When I was just a year younger than you are now, Sonny Boy, my life changed when I was left behind.”
“It did, Ojiichan?” Sonny threw the stick away and turned to look up into Ojiichan’s eyes. For all of their conversations over the years, Sonny knew very little about his great-grandfather’s life.
Ojiichan hadn’t been terribly forthcoming with facts or details about himself, and other times Sonny hadn’t been in the mood to listen. But now Ojiichan chose to tell his story and Sonny Boy learned things he would never forget.
Sonny’s great-grandfather was named Higashi Musafumi. Born in Kyoto in 1899, Musafumi was the only child of loving parents. He was sent to school while they worked in the fields surrounding the city in order to pay his tuition and keep a very modest roof over their heads.
In the fall of 1911, Musafumi was twelve years old. His parents celebrated the day of his birth by serving him a special breakfast of sweet rice and squid. Then Musafumi went to school. He didn’t know that would be the last time he saw his parents.
When word came to him that afternoon of the terrible accident on Shijo-dori, Musafumi had a hard time understanding what people were saying to him. Why would his parents be on Shijo-dori instead of in the field where they worked?
The administrator from his school walked him home where many people had gathered. “Be a good boy,” Mr. Yamamoto said, his hand heavy on Musafumi’s shoulder. “I know this is very hard. But now you must honor your parents’ memory by remembering all they taught you in the time you had together. If you do that, they will be happy.”
Musafumi thought that was a stupid thing to say, but he nodded his head as if he agreed. He hoped Mr. Yamamoto and all of these other people would leave his home now. The administrator did leave after a discussion with Musafumi’s great aunt and uncle but the rest of the people stayed, on and on.
Musafumi listened to abstract phrases dripping from mouths—“killed immediately,” “English drivers,”“Capital Hotel,” “orphan boy,” “such a shame,”—like the tears he couldn’t stop running down his face. He sat weeping in silence and remembered the morning, smiling over the ika-meshi, Musafumi’s favorite. How had this happened?
At the same moment, Lord Henry Burdett sat on the loggia of the Miyako Hotel when the drivers arrived, shaken and distraught. How had this happened?
They had been whizzing along in their new Rolls-Royce that had only arrived by steamer last week. And then this Japanese couple was crossing the street as they took a corner too fast and now—
Death.
The English drivers sat in the hotel tea room and tried to compose themselves. How did one go on?
The tea was served and Elizabeth and Jasper sat up straighter. One just did, one supposed.
Lord Henry listened to their cold-hearted, typical murmuring through the open window. Eavesdropping wasn’t a habit of his, but he was once again ashamed of his compatriots as he listened to these two distance themselves from responsibility or feeling.
Lord Henry was the fourth son of a duke and his wealthy American wife. Her father, Henry’s American industrialist grandfather, was currently providing Henry’s living. Ostensibly, Henry was in Japan researching investment opportunities and recruiting labor for his older brother, the third son of the family who now ran a sugar plantation on the Ewa plain of O‘ahu. But he did not, in reality, do that.
Instead, he spent his time learning Japanese, drawing, and mooning over Makiko. During the daytime, he sat outside the Miyako Hotel and sketched the distant mountainsides, the city, and the face of the woman he loved. Henry had fallen in love with Makiko the first moment he saw her. Since then, he waited for her every night in the Gion. He stood on the corner with a perfect camellia to watch her leave. This was strange behavior for a man brought up as he was, but Henry was trapped by his own heart.
In the first week of his arrival in Kyoto three years ago, a fellow Englishman had taken Henry to see the Miyako Odori, the spring dances. After centuries, the capital of Japan had been moved from Kyoto and the geiko had instituted these dances in 1872 to enhance local morale. The tradition had continued for decades in Gion Kobu.
Once entering the theater, Henry found his misconception of these women quickly annihilated. Westerners commonly equated the evening employment at tea houses of geiko and maiko with ladies of the night. This could not be further from the truth. These women were artists of the highest order, revered for their immaculate beauty and expert musicianship and dancing.
First, the audience was brought in by the dozens to watch a geiko make the matcha tea. Two apprentice geiko called maiko were to her right to serve the guests. Henry sat with his friend, taking in the scene with fascination. The middle woman, a maiko, was absolutely ravishing. Henry stared at her. She was perfection. She looked back at him. Her dark eyes sparkled with knowing and mischief, with power and laughter. Henry’s heart was lost. Henry continued staring, long past politeness. He wanted to look away but could not.
The girl shifted her eyes to others in the ceremony but returned to meet his gaze periodically. Not a muscle moved in her face to change her expression. There was no outward indication she had noticed him especially. But perhaps he was even more curious to her than she was beautiful to him. The connection was made, and he was captivated by her for all time.
Sometimes the burden of being English overwhelmed Henry. He wished he could exist without race or nationality, belonging only to the moment and place in which he lived. He wished to be free completely of his body and even his mind, envying the butterflies as they floated along. Envying the flowers. The things done to one another in the name of progress, profit, and princes corroded his heart. Henry longed for purity, perfection, and peace. He was a strangely unreligious man in spite of this spiritual longing. The Church of England had been institutionalized over centuries. Faith became quaint. The possible and personal connection to the creator was obstructed by walls designed and fortified by generations of men. So Henry existed in his own deconstructed space, detached from tradition and far from his origin.
When Musafumi showed up at the door of the hotel the day after the accident seeking justice and answers, Henry’s heart burst with sympathy. The culprits had checked out and driven off to Osaka. Henry found, after months of impotent restraint, he could finally take action and show love and compassion to this person, an orphan of Kyoto who had been made so by his countrymen.
Henry took Musafumi under his wing and provided financially for him. Henry paid the tuition so Musafumi could continue his education. After school, Musafumi would run up the hill to the Miyako Hotel. They formed a happy partnership. During their afternoons together, Musafumi taught Lord Henry Japanese and Lord Henry taught him to speak, read, and write English. They spent time with black ink and brushes. They used them to draw and paint and do calligraphy and print in English. Lord Henry would ramble while they worked, teaching Musafumi science and geography and poetry and riddles. Then Lord Henry would walk with Musafumi toward the Gion where Musafumi had moved into a small room with his great aunt and uncle. On their way, Lord Henry searched for the perfect camellia for the evening.
While they still sat on the hotel loggia one afternoon, Musafumi asked why as he printed the alphabet. Lord Henry told him about Makiko. He told the boy about being “stabbed with a white wench’s black eye,” stalking her with the flower for the last three years. About trying to get into an evening with her and failing. How she stops once a week in front of him while people surround her. How she pauses and then moves on. How he lays the flower by her door.
“What do you do when the camellias stop blooming?” Musafumi asked.
Henry looked at him with deep irritation. “Smart aleck. You’re missing the point entirely.”
Musafumi shrugged and continued his letters.
“Or maybe you’re not,” Henry reflected. “Maybe through your prosaic, literal, obtuse, and innocent view of things, you’ve poetically and somewhat cynically hit the nail on the head.”
“What do you mean?”
“Never mind. Continue with your work.”
That night, Henry waited for Makiko’s appearance with intense impatience. The young whippersnapper had gotten under his skin. Of course, Henry had found other flowers to present her with in the summer months. It wasn’t that. It was about futility and purpose. Henry knew he was wasting his life on an impractical, impossible love. And he thought he had accepted that.
The sakura were in full bloom now. Double pink cherry blossoms cascaded on arched branches over his head on the corner where he waited. He held his perfect pink camellia and stood in his best brown suit, hat in hand. He’d been barbered that morning, his mustache trimmed and hair cut. Henry thought about the young ladies he’d known in England, in particular the granddaughter of his grandmother’s school friend she’d wanted him to marry.
Instead, he’d hopped ship and come to Asia. Now, rather than resting in a comfortable armchair in a town house in Mayfair with pipe and slippers and a stomach full of roast meat, he was standing on a corner in Gion, alone and hungry—feeling precisely the fool he was.
And then she appeared.
As the sun rising over the mountains, the light Makiko brought with her changed the entire landscape. Like all the maiko, her skin was painted white and she had red on her eyes. Her hair was piled fantastically atop her head. She wore a beautiful kimono with trailing obi and impossibly high wooden clogs. She was exquisitely, perfectly decked out, made up, and accessorized.
What was different about Makiko were her bright eyes that seemed to contain the elusive quality which fascinates people. Like Mona Lisa, Makiko looked as if she knew the secret of life and found it most amusing.
It was true, she did. She knew that everything is meaningless under the sun—a big, fat joke of the Divine and none of it mattered in the least. She was one the few who understood the joke and it enlightened all her moments.
Without looking at him, Makiko paused in front of Henry while a crowd gathered to acknowledge her. In a ritual which nourished their spirits, the bowing, respectful throng longed to absorb some of her radiance to make it through long, ugly days.
Henry’s breath caught in his throat. Now, now was the moment. If nothing happened, if he felt no recognition from her, he would give up and go home.
Then she turned her head.
She did not smile. But she looked straight into his eyes as she had that first day years ago, a look as penetrating and knowing as La Gioconda’s. She looked at the camellia in his hand and then back into his eyes.
Cherry blossom petals rained down on him. One caught on his mustache and her lips twitched.
She then turned her face forward and continued on her way to the tea house.
She was the perfect flower.
Musafumi spent three more years in Kyoto before he became restless and set off in search of his destiny. He wanted to find the perfect flower for himself. Lord Henry had given Musafumi a letter of recommendation to bring to his brother in Ewa. But Musafumi landed in Honolulu and didn’t want to leave.
So he decided to put his ability to read and write English to use. He stepped into a prosperous-looking dry goods store owned by a middle-aged Japanese man. The proprietor desperately needed help communicating with the influx of white people moving to Hawaii, help he wouldn’t have to pay too much. The man gave Musafumi the attic and food and pretended not to notice his teenage daughter and Musafumi falling in love.
In fact, the father was pleased and treated Musafumi like a son. Musafumi was fifteen and the girl was seventeen. In two years, they married.
“So that is Sobo?” Sonny asked with disbelief.
“Yes, she is my perfect flower.”
Sonny scoffed visibly.
“Sobo wanted to shield me from the grind of life. She worked the counter so I could write poetry and paint once I finished the store’s accounting. This is the same place your grandfather owns now. Before it sold appliances and televisions, we sold imported goods like cloth, rice, dishes, candy—all kinds of things from Japan.”
“So you moved here when you were fifteen? All alone?” Sonny wanted to know.
“Yes.”
Sonny thought about that in silence for a few minutes, returning his attention to the fish swimming around in the pond. Trapped. Going nowhere. Swimming in circles until they went belly up. Sonny wanted to be free so badly, to hop ship and head off…anywhere, really. “Why did you fall in love with Sobo?”
“Sobo wasn’t always Sobo. She was a girl called Fumiko. But after a woman has nine children and runs a business, she loses her capacity to tolerate nonsense. She becomes a sharp blade to cut through to the essential. This is a good thing. It is about the best use of time.
“Her father died not long after we married and we took over the store. She was there all day, everyday. She refused to let me help with much. When I first arrived, she was fascinated by my ability to read and write, draw and paint. She loved the beauty of the poems I wrote her in flowing ink. She didn’t want to see that beauty defeated by the mundane of making a living. So she left me in my study with my ink and brushes, my paper and my books and took on the responsibility. She made all the meals, took care of the children and the store. All I did was the correspondence and accounting. She hired others for the lifting.
“I never deserved for her to love me like that. But somehow it made her happy to dote on me and take care of me.” Ojiichan smiled at his memories.
“Sobo doesn’t seem to like me much. Or anybody,” Sonny grumbled.
“Sobo has spent many days in this world and worked many years. She enjoys solitude and music now. She did a good job raising our children. They have all become fine people in the world. But it was not easy for her.
“I tried to always be patient and gentle. Her father drank a lot and was temperamental. I like my green tea. I think Fumiko appreciated that. But somehow—even more than with her children which she raised with much strictness—she found in me a focus for all the love and kindness in her soul which she lavished on me unstintingly, unfailingly, unconditionally. So no matter how you see her, to me she will always be the softness of sleep in the quiet night, silken dreams on my own pillow, home. That is why she is my perfect flower.”
“But why is she so crabby now?” Sonny wanted to know.
Ojiichan sighed. “Do you understand, Sonny?”
“No.”
Ojiichan gathered his patience for this wayward boy. Sonny had always been headstrong and rebellious but Musafumi hoped he would eventually find peace in his destiny. He took a deep breath before he spoke again. “I hope one day your answer is different. Not about me and Sobo. But for yourself. I hope you find the perfect flower. This is the sustaining love that is more nourishing than food, more use than money or power. Your soul comes clean in the presence of this flower. You feel the connection to the celestial mind that brought you about in the first place.”
Sonny looked around the garden. There were a million flowers around him everyday. They all looked perfect, and he didn’t care anyway. They were just flowers. Hawaii was full of them. Sonny shrugged. His great-grandfather was getting very old. But he never yelled at him or scolded him or made him feel bad about his dead father, his mixed blood, or huge appetite. He asked him riddles and told him strange stories of the old land and flowers. That wasn’t so bad in the scheme of things.
Sonny was hungry. It was time to go in and see what Mom was cooking for dinner.

PART TWO

Chapter Three

In the summer of 1986, Sonny was ordering his lunch at the drive-in when he felt a hand on his ass. He jerked and turned around.
“Hey.” A beautiful girl stood behind him.
He didn’t know what to say.
She smiled. “I’m Amy.”
Sonny didn’t say anything and moved away from the counter. She stepped forward to place her order.
Then she walked over to where he was, with all of his friends, bold as you please. “How’s it going?” she asked Sonny, looking him directly in the eye. She seemed older than he was but still a teenager.
“Fine,” Sonny replied, looking at his feet. His friends as a group moved off like a school of fish.
“What are you up to?” She moved to sit beside him on the table.
He looked at her feet. She was wearing old black Converse. Sonny shrugged.
She reached her hand over and put it on his knee. “Want to hang out?” she asked. She had hair like a lion’s mane and she was on the prowl.
“I guess.” Sonny was still in shock. But she was incredibly pretty with an amazing body. He could see the outline of her breasts through her thin cutup T-shirt. Her eyes were outlined in thick black eyeliner and coated in frosty eyeshadow. Her lips were glossed, her ears had three earrings each and she had on a black choker and a bunch of plastic bracelets which pressed against his thigh as she rested her hand on his knee. He couldn’t even see her shorts when she was sitting down because they were so small. He only saw long, sleek, tawny thighs. She had a canvas tote bag sitting on the table next to her.
They called his number for his order and hers right afterward. The two of them walked to the pickup window together. Sonny looked around for his friends but they had settled en masse at a table on the other side of the drive in. Sonny and Amy walked back to the other table and sat down. She had ordered a hamburger and Coke. “What is that?” she asked him.
“It’s called a Loco Moco. Hamburger, rice, gravy and egg. Comes with mac salad. Try it.” He offered her a bite.
She wrinkled her nose but her eyes said I’ll try anything you want as she took a bite. “It’s good.”
“Where are you from?” Sonny asked.
“LA. Here in Hawaii as a graduation trip.”
“With your folks?”
“No, with my friends. But the other two have found guys to hook up with. So I’m on my own.”
“You’re eighteen?”
“No, seventeen. I turn eighteen in August.”
“I’m fifteen.”
“Does that bother you?”
“Does it bother you?”
“Nope. You look old enough.”
Sonny tried not to blush and shoveled food into his mouth.
“You okay?” Amy asked, head tilted to the side as if she were trying to puzzle him out.
Sonny nodded with his mouth full and wouldn’t meet her eyes.
“Let’s just hang out and see what happens,” Amy said reassuringly, reaching over to touch the top of his hand. “We won’t do anything you’re not okay with.”
Sonny swallowed and looked up into her big gray-blue eyes. He nodded, trusting her.
“Come on,” she said. “Show me your favorite place to be alone.”
He was buzzing like she had brought electricity with her, like she was the reverb of a Fender from some gritty downtown LA club. It switched him on and he had a hard time keeping focused on other things beside his dick. Adjusting his pants, he threw away his trash and tried to to think of the best place to take her. Home was out. Someone was always home. Beach was out. Too many people he knew and his friends were heading down there right after they ate. Sonny suddenly realized how small his circumscribed world was. The only other place he went nine months of the year was school.
But school was out for the summer.
He took her over to the deserted school and to a small quad in between some buildings. There were two foot high brick flowerbeds around the perimeter planted with hibiscus and plumeria which made the space private and were good to sit on.
“Nice spot,” Amy said, taking Sonny’s hand. “So many flowers.” She massaged the muscle at the base of the thumb for a minute. Then she shifted her position so her shirt hung open at the neckline and he saw right down it as she ran her hand up his thigh. She had on a bikini top under the shirt. Her hand went really high up his leg. “You ever been with a girl?” Amy asked.
Sonny shook his head.
“Come on. You’re so hot. I thought you’d done this many times.”
“Thanks,” Sonny said, unsure.
“How about kissing? Surely you’ve kissed a girl before.”
Sonny nodded.
Amy leaned her head in and he felt her soft lips against his. “How is that?” she murmured against his mouth. “Do you like that?
“I can tell you do,” she answered herself after kissing him another moment. Her hand was poised by his groin and she had felt the shift in him. She gently parted his lips with her tongue. He kissed her back and his hands came around her. She climbed onto his lap, one leg straddling each of his thighs. She took her shirt off. Her breasts were barely covered by the swimsuit. An expression of lust infused his features as his hand came forward to cup one breast through the fabric and the other hand instinctively reached to unfasten the back. She made a noise of pleasure and adjusted her position on his lap. The top came off. For all her black eyeliner and piercings, her breasts were perfect rose-tipped creamy fantasies realized. She looked extremely sexy sitting there on his lap with her pale lovely skin and dark choker. His boner was killing him, straining to be free like it had a life of its own. Amy gasped, aroused, as she felt the hardness against her. She unbuttoned his fly and out it sprang, fully ready for whatever was next. She ground her pelvis against him as she kissed him. His hands stayed glued to her breasts as if he planned to never let go. Eventually she stood and slowly, so slowly he thought, unzipped her shorts and slid them over her small, smooth rear. She hooked one thumb and then the other into each side of her bikini bottoms and shimmied out of them. She had the narrowest strip of dark hair. She climbed back onto his lap and guided him inside the silky, soft folds of paradise.
He did not last long. But she had known he wouldn’t, couldn’t. However, he was young and didn’t even know he wasn’t supposed to be able to get it up again for a while. She squeezed with her muscles and continued riding him, slowly, methodically. Her shins were getting scraped against the rough brick and the edges of it were pressing sharply into her ankles. But the pain was part of the pleasure.
He began to harden again and she was so close to coming. She rested her forearms on his shoulders and grabbed his thick hair. As he grew, she became rougher, pulling his head back and attaching her mouth to his neck at the shoulder, biting.
Something was happening inside her, Sonny knew. Her whole body tightened, up from her feet through her legs and buttocks, all up her sides into her arms which wrenched him back. The tightness was exquisite. She let go of him, lifted her mouth from his neck, clamped her hands against her breasts and threw her head back. He simply became the tool she was using to achieve this moment. He let go of humanity and became machine.
She moved on top of him, fluid and rhythmic like a dancer. He watched her every motion, in love with fucking and women and himself for being able to do this with his body. He was passing through a gateway and a new world opened before him. Her orgasm brought his own and he hardened again to an infinite point before an explosion occurred within him and the blast rocketed and ricocheted in her.
She sighed in release, all the air escaping her as she fell against him. Moments went by until she raised her head. “Not bad,” she smiled and pecked him on the mouth before unwinding herself from him. Her legs were scraped and red. She pulled a green and white striped beach towel out of her bag and spread it out on the bricks.
She lay back and let the sun bathe her in light and warmth. He could see up between her legs, see the place he had just been. It was bright pink and wet. And inviting.
He reached his hand toward her.
She guided it to the small knob of flesh at the apex. “This is very important. If you can operate this, you can have any girl you ever want,” Amy told him.
He listened, and learned, letting her hand guide his until she was again tensing. She sat up slightly and looked down her body to him, meeting his eyes. He moved and climbed on top of her. He filled her and now she was exploding, rocking against him, making the new world he lived in sway and tremble. He kept moving though, matching some unheard beat, the heartbeat of the world. Waves unfolded over him, waves of energy submerging him and taking his breath.

This was the beginning of his new life. This is what he’d been waiting for. Sonny partied and fucked his way through the rest of high school, playing football, basketball, and baseball throughout. He switched pee for the drug tests, bullied whoever he felt like, nearly failed all of his classes and screwed the English teacher until she transferred back to the mainland. College was a joke. There was no way he was going to college. If he graduated high school, that would be a miracle.
His family worried about his future, but Sonny couldn’t care less. The next buzz, rush, hit, orgasm were his only concerns. At this point, all of his friends felt the same, Hideo included. Each had lost their innocence and virginity somewhere, with someone, in the last few months. It was time to party.
Hawaii boys, hitting the waves, jumping off cliffs, picking fights, getting drunk, smoking pot, screwing girls. It was fun.
Sonny missed nothing.

He did graduate, covered in leis at the stadium. His family expected him to find a job. Sonny spent the first few weeks after graduation the same as he had spent every summer—heading down to the beach, surfing, eating. But the disapproval in the eyes of everyone at the dinner table finally penetrated his thick skull.
Sonny knew he was expected to bring in money. The family didn’t need the money. But he couldn’t just take. So Sonny decided to find a way to bring in money having a good time. That’s what Waikiki was for, right? Thousands of haole fuckers came in every day looking for local fun they could take back to their boring, shitty lives on the mainland. Surf or hula teachers, torch dancers, singers, tour guides, cooks, wait staff, hotel workers, maids and maintenance, gardeners, drivers, concierges, boat captains, musicians, hookers, drug dealers, bartenders, beer delivery guys, street sweepers, shop clerks, massage therapists, hair dressers—so many ways to make a buck.
Sonny sat on the corner and watched Waikiki one Thursday afternoon. What a fucking mess.
He saw Hideo’s mom go into Parrots in Paradise with some dude. Shaking his head, Sonny decided to walk over to the water to clear his mind. He liked going to Ala Moana where his grandmother used to take him when he was little. He bumped into a harried boat captain.
“You from here?” the captain asked.
“Yeah.”
“You know how to sail?”
“Not really.”
“Well, you look strong and not too stupid. Want to learn? One of my crew quit on me and I need someone for tonight. We sail in an hour.”
“For what?”
“I run this party boat for drunk tourists. It’s good money.”
“How much?”
“It’s a hundred from me and you get a share of the tips. But it’s usually at least a couple hundred a night.”
“Sounds good.”
“Normally, you’ll spend a couple of hours rounding up marks. But tonight I’m going to teach you what I need you to do on the boat. They will start to get here about 4:30 and we leave at 5. We dock at 7:00. So your usual shift is from 2:30 to 7:30. Got it?”
“Every day?”
“Not Sundays or Mondays. Tuesday through Saturday though.”
Captain Lou brought Sonny on board the Delilah. She was an eighty foot ferry boat. This was not a classy sunset sail or even a catamaran booze cruise. This was a floating barge full of trashy people wanting to get trashed. They were honest about that, and pretty much only about that. The alcohol was the cheapest Lou could get his hands on, the music was loud, and the boat was crowded. “It’s twenty bucks per person for an open bar and two hours on the water. There are four of us on the boat. Toby pours drinks and plays music, Erika and you keep order, haul rope, and do whatever else I tell you. The three of you round up the passengers before the cruise. We get the cash as soon as they say yes, not when they get here or a lot of times they don’t show up. If they don’t have it on them, you can give them the time and place of departure, but you can’t count it as a sale. Any questions?”
Sonny shook his head and followed Captain Lou around the Delilah, learning her ropes. He had a job.

One day when Sonny was nineteen, he found himself in the middle of another argument with his mother. He was getting extremely tired of her nagging. He brought in money, he didn’t make a mess, and he left her alone most of the time. What in the hell else could she want? But today she was lecturing him on his reputation which seemed like the most backward, old-fashioned word he’d ever heard.
“No one cares, Mom.”
“What you do matters.”
“No it doesn’t. No one cares. And it doesn’t matter.”
Akemi wondered where she had gone wrong. Her boy was wild. If his dad were here…
What would he do? The thought of John nearly undid her. His broad shoulders and easy smile, the way the sun haloed him from love, his kindness and joy. Where was any of that in this sullen and angry young man?
Sonny was older now than his dad had ever been. Her father and grandfather and brothers and uncles had all served as male role models for Sonny. But he had outgrown them all. Once he had, he disregarded them.
She wished she were big like John, or Sonny. Big enough to stand up to him physically and maybe just knock the hell out of him. But she barely weighed a hundred pounds and had to find some other way to reach him. “Sonny, I know life can be hard and confusing and disappointing. That’s why you have to find joy in the little things.”
“Really, Ma? Is that what you’ve been doing? How’s that working out?”
“It was working out fine until recently. But it is hard for me to watch you become more and more of a hooligan.”
“Glad to know what you really think of me, Mom.”
“Sonny, that’s not how I meant it.”
“No, it’s fine. I really don’t care.” He slammed out of the front door and knocked Maemi over.
She’d been coming up the pathway to return a book she’d borrowed. Also she’d been hoping to see Sonny. She wore a white sundress with thick shoulder straps and yellow trim. She lay sprawled fetchingly. Even though he was angry, Sonny noticed. He paused and offered her his hand.
“What do you want?” He helped her to her feet.
“Returning this.”
He looked at the book and as was his habit ignored the words on the cover. He was barely literate. He guessed from the picture, “Gardening?”
Maemi shrugged. “I like it.”
“Boring.”
“Yep.”
Normally he would have shoved past her and gone on his way. But she looked awfully pretty today and he found himself continuing to stare at her.
“What?” she asked when he made no move to leave and didn’t say anything.
“Let’s go to the beach,” he said impulsively.
“Okay,” Maemi agreed. She hadn’t been to the beach with him since she was eight years old. Sonny and Hideo hadn’t let her tag along after that. She was sixteen now.
Sonny took the book from her hand and set it on the table outside the door. He had no intention of dealing with his mother anymore. Then, still following impulse, he grabbed Maemi’s hand and dragged her to his truck. He drove too fast and obnoxiously, like he normally did, to Kapiolani Park and found a spot near the aquarium.
They walked over to the snack bar. He bought them Cokes and they walked out on the jetty. “You heard from Hideo?” Sonny asked. Hideo had gotten a job with the state as an office equipment field service technician and been assigned to Big Island.
“Not lately.”
It was a beautiful day in Waikiki, the sun glinting off the bright blue water under a blue umbrella sky. Diamond Head was green to their left and the Royal Hawaiian was pink to their right. Maemi stared into the water and pointed out the fish flashing silver beneath the surface. Enjoy the little things, his mother had said. He should be enjoying this now. A Coke, a sunny day, a pretty girl. Why was he so full of rage and disappointment and despair? What the fuck was wrong with him?
Maemi was quite pretty. He admired her sleek, dark brown hair, smooth skin and little bow mouth, innocent and pure. Her delicate, symmetrical features, body, reminded him of a gardenia, crushable, delicious. He wondered what it would be like. He reached over and touched the top of her hand. The move. It had been getting him laid for years. She followed the pattern. A turn, a look, an awareness. A soul-searching and an acquiescence. Consent. Desire. Lust. Passion. It was all in that first moment, standing there on the jetty in the sunshine. Maemi would.
He took her hand and led her back to the grassy area. Under a sprawling monkey pod tree, they sat on a wooden picnic table and he turned her palm to his, interlacing his fingers with hers. Enjoy the little things. He did enjoy the sensation of their hands touching. Her innocent perfection. Taking the virginity of your best friend’s little sister wasn’t exactly a little thing but Sonny didn’t care. He leaned over and kissed her small lips. She leaned into him. Tentatively, she kissed him back, bringing her hands up around his neck, her fingers touching his hair at the nape of his neck. She’d thought about this a thousand million times—every night for the last seven years. She wanted Sonny to notice her, to kiss her, to love her. It had been the one constant dream and desire in an unstable family and world. Sonny.
He kissed her for a long time. When he thought it had been long enough, he led her over to his truck. He would take her somewhere out of the way to fuck her. He wished it was dark but it was the middle of the day. They’d have to drive a while before finding somewhere to do it. He headed to Manoa Valley. There was a place by the stream. Not too hard to walk to but out of the way. He had a blanket behind the truck seat for times like this. She was wearing a white dress. He was glad for the blanket.
Maemi stared out the window and wondered where they were heading. He had kissed her! She was melting inside. She dared to look over at him, his hard, handsome profile, biceps as big as tree trunks. God, she loved him. He drove up into the valley while she daydreamed of possibility.
Flashing lights brought her back to earth. What was going on?
“Fuck.” Sonny pulled the car over to the side of the road.
The Honolulu police officer came up to Sonny’s window. “License and registration.”
Sonny handed them over. For all of his exploits, he’d stayed away from the law. “What’s the trouble, officer?”
“You were going forty-five in a twenty-five. Who’s that you got there?”
“My neighbor.”
“How old are you?” The officer asked Maemi.
Maemi panicked. Sonny didn’t. “She’s sixteen. She’s my best friend’s kid sister and she wanted a ride up to the Japanese candy store.”
The officer squinted appraisingly into the cab of the truck. It smelled of stale pot and old sex but it was the middle of a Thursday and this kid seemed sober now. The girl didn’t look like a slut or in any trouble. He wrote the speeding ticket and let them go.
Sonny turned the truck around to head back home. Jailbait. He hadn’t been thinking. Forget that.
Maemi knew it was over. Would she ever get another chance with him? “Sonny…”
“What?” He sounded like normal, annoyed and frustrated.
“It was nice. There for a little while.”
He shrugged. His face was stony. She reached over and turned on the radio. Classic rock was playing.
“Thanks for the Coke,” she said softly.
He took his hand off the wheel and reached over. She placed her slim palm in his and let the music and air wash over them as they drove back to reality. He parked the car on the street between their houses and she prepared to get out and go home. She looked over at him.
He turned to look at her. She was very pretty.
“I love you, Sonny,” she blurted out and then was gone, running up the hill in her white dress, dark hair flying out behind her as she fled.
Sonny shook his head and watched her disappear into her house. What a funny kid. He was glad they hadn’t done it. It was for the best, after all. Enjoy the little things. A good make out session should count. Sonny lit up a joint—he was glad that cop hadn’t searched the truck—and deeply inhaled the green smoke. It was time to go to work. And to get his own place. He didn’t need any more trouble with his mother—or Maemi.

“Not today, Satan,” Akemi repeated to herself in time to her movements. Today was trying to kick her ass but she wouldn’t let it. Sonny had moved out last week and she had heard he had already gotten arrested for picking a fight in a bar. He wasn’t even old enough to go to a bar. What was the matter with him? He hadn’t asked her to post bail, hadn’t told her anything about it. He was out now, somehow, and she had heard the story from Kioko who had heard it from her auntie.
Akemi had been on her hands and knees scrubbing the kitchen floor for forty-five minutes. She always cleaned when upset. If people knew that, they would be very sad to realize why the house was perpetually immaculate. Nevertheless, Akemi scrubbed the baseboards and tile and worked her way backward to the threshold of the door to the garden.
Her grandfather sat outside under the jatropha tree. He was getting old. He had been old when she was born and now she was getting old.
Old. How long does old last? Forever. Youth is squandered. Haphazard, wasteful, shortsighted decisions and suddenly youth is spent. And then what’s left? Being old. Old in spirit, heart, joints, senses.
Shake it off, Akemi. Dump the bucket and rinse it and your brush and let them dry in the sun. Go sit in the shade by Grandfather while the floor dries. Then you can clean the bathroom.
“How are you today, little flower?” Grandfather asked. She had brought him tea before cleaning the floor. It sad cold in the pot now. He scarcely noticed time passing at this point.
“All right, Ojiichan.”
“I can see that you are not. You are worried about the boy.”
“Yes, Grandfather.”
“You should not worry, little daughter. He will come through.”
“He does things he should not, and does not do the things he should.”
“Yes.”
“He has been this way for many years now.”
“Yes.”
“He shows no sign of changing or even wanting to change.”
“That is true.”
“Then, excuse me, Grandfather, why do you think he will ever be different?”
“I told him the right way.”
Akemi knew better than to question her grandfather any farther. She did not think she understood him but then the proverb popped into her mind: Train up a child in the way he should go and when he is old he will not depart from it.
If that was what her grandfather meant, between his faith and the Lord’s promise, that should be enough for her. “Would you like more tea, Grandfather?”
“Yes, please, Akemi.”

Bethany was a prostitute Sonny knew who worked Waikiki. Her mother had committed suicide when she was thirteen, she’d been raped at a party when she was fourteen, and by fifteen she had fallen in with a man, a pimp, who soon had her working Hollywood Boulevard for a couple of years. Then he’d shipped her out to Honolulu and she had been here ever since, over a decade now. The thing was Bethany was fun and warm and personable and made him feel special when he talked to her. Sonny liked to go sit on the wall by the Duke statue and hang out with her for a few minutes every afternoon. Then he went on to do his hustling and she went on to do hers.
Sonny hunted people for the party boat. It was usually easy to get two hundred folks on there a night. They left the marina about five o’clock and no one checked ID’s for drinks on the water. People got wasted fast and their wallets opened into the tip jar. When the passengers disembarked, there were other people waiting who sold pot or crank and another crew who did some pickpocketing. Lou was strict and didn’t allow selling drugs or theft on the boat because it was too easy to get caught and that could shut down the whole operation. He turned a blind eye to what happened on land. Sonny averaged around three hundred a night for five hours of work and got laid whenever he wanted. There was always a drunk girl or two who wanted to take him back to their hotel room.
He became friends with the other members of the crew and partied with them almost every night. Toby rented a small, dumpy house with a backyard on Kaimalie Street where they all knew to show up around nine or later. Erika’s friend Gypsy and her boyfriend Petey were drug dealers for a local kingpin named Zybub and always had good pot and crank. Sonny tried whatever was around. He didn’t like acid too much and didn’t fuck around with needles, but he enjoyed crank, pot, mushrooms, coke, E, hash, pills. And lots of beer and booze.
One afternoon when Sonny Boy was twenty-five, he walked into Zybub’s den to pick up for Petey who had broken his leg jumping off a roof last night. In a windowless room in the center of an apartment building, Zybub sat stoned out of his gourd listening to Joy Division and cutting crank.
“You gotta listen to this, man,” Zybub said, lifting the needle from the vinyl record with careful precision and setting it at the beginning of a song. “Listen, man, feel the trip.”
Zybub passed him over a mirror with a fat line on it and Sonny inhaled. He could feel the effect instantly as his senses expanded, vision, hearing enhanced like Spiderman. The guitar, drums, bass, and keyboard were intricate ecstasy and then that creepy, dark voice like bad dreams slithered across the speakers.
Sonny lit a cigarette and listened with Zybub and Gypsy and Erika for a few minutes.
Then Janice knocked, Zybub handed over a package of fifty dime bags and clasped Sonny’s hand. “Love won’t tear us apart, brother,” Zybub promised. “Only lies can.”
Sonny looked into the strange, dark eyes of the bearded crank king of Kalakaua Avenue. “Truth, brother.”
Sonny dropped the bags with Petey and headed over to Waikiki. Bethany sat in their usual spot, wearing oversized sunglasses to cover her black eye.
Sonny knew what had happened, same as usual, but Bethany forbade him from getting involved. This was her life. “Do you think God will forgive us?” Bethany asked Sonny as a huge rainbow shone over Diamond Head.
“What God?” Sonny snorted derisively.
“The God. That one—” Bethany pointed at the sky.
“What are you talking about, Bethany?” Sonny was having a hard time following. He was choking on his impotence and rage.
“I want to keep this one. I already got rid of four. I’m keeping it. But do you think I should? Can God forgive me? Or will I be punished? Will the baby be punished—or my punishment?”
“Bethany, are you sure I can’t go after him?”
“I’m not worth starting a war over, Sonny. Let it be.”
Sonny punched his fist into his palm and wanted to contradict her. But he knew she was right about starting a war, and Bethany would be the first casualty. He hated being reminded that he was powerless in this world.
“Walk me to work?” Bethany asked. If all he could do was offer her his arm to lean on, then he would. Bethany met her customer in the hotel lobby and Sonny headed into the bar. He ordered a beer and tried to forget about Bethany. Like she always told him, it was her life. He would lose her friendship—and possibly her life—if he interfered. It still sucked. He finished the beer and decided he had better get to work himself. Sonny paid his tab and turned.
In that instant, his life changed forever.
There was Jessica. He first saw her standing in the lobby of the Outrigger Reef Hotel. She was laughing with the man she was talking to, flirting with her eyes, her lashes, her shoulders. She toyed with a strand of her hair.
Sonny watched, entranced, fascinated by this creature. He could see her lies from here. He knew she was bad. And he wanted her more than he’d wanted anything in his life. She was the answer to the questions bottled up inside him like carbon dioxide. He continued staring intensely at her, unabashed, unashamed, waiting.
She turned after a few moments, the weight of his stare pressing her, and the heat and light in his eyes compelled her to look into them for a brief second. She then turned and continued her conversation with the man as if nothing had happened.
She was a cool customer, he thought. He had such power and magnetism toward women he’d never actually had to try. A smoldering look was about all that had ever been required before. Shit. What else to do? Should he go over and talk to her?
She had thick, dark red hair that was lighter at the ends, angular features, large breasts, and knowing, dark brown eyes. He heard her laugh, infectious and deep. His body responded to her as if she were a witch, immediately under her spell. As he struggled with what to do next, she took the man’s arm and began leading him away. She glanced back over her shoulder at Sonny stopped in his tracks, dumbfounded. She paused and detached herself from the arm of the man. She walked over to Sonny. “What’s your name?”
What was his name? He had been called Sonny his whole life. He finally remembered. “John.”
“Well, hello, John. I’m Jessica. May I ask you a question?”
He nodded.
“What are you? Your heritage, I mean.”
“Half Japanese, half Norwegian.”
“Oh, great. I’m doing a study here in Hawaii. I wonder if you might want to participate?”
She looked up at him with her dark brown eyes and it took all of his self-control not to throw her over his shoulder and head up into the mountains. Rules. Society. “Sure. I would be happy to.”
She took a card from her purse with the University of Hawaii logo on it and handed it to him. “Please call me. We can set up an appointment for next week.” The man she had left was looking impatient behind her.
Sonny couldn’t care less. “Do we have to wait? We should go out tonight.”
“I can’t tonight. But if you call me, we can set up a date too, if you want.” Jessica laid a hand on Sonny’s forearm. She had her own moves.
Sonny quivered inside. He was reminded of that time with that chick from LA all those years ago. He felt like jell-o, out of his depth, ready for whatever happened.
He was in love.

Chapter Four

There was no excuse for it tonight. No excuse not to believe in the greatness and magic of life. The tiki torches were lit and the water shimmered in the light. The trunk of the tree next to the patio bar where Sonny sat with Jessica was twisted from a long, windblown life. A singer came on stage.
Most music in Waikiki tended to be a version of local. But tonight the Royal had Sarah Smith, a smooth vocalist from Louisiana who transformed any room she was in to the private realm where she ruled. Her three-piece band sat back keeping time, calmly, quietly, allowing Sarah to soar and glide with her voice that was like whiskey and candlelight. The combination of cocktails and music created the universal elixir of possibility. The twisted tree caught the setting sun and danced to the jazz in the trade winds, golden.
Sonny had never been out of Hawaii. He had gone to the other islands for sports but that was it. Tonight he felt like he was in a movie set in New York or Paris, somewhere sophisticated and glamorous. He watched the tree dancing to the music and Jessica playing with her fiery hair. For the first time, he wished he had the chance to do it all over again. He would pay attention to his mother and his grandparents and his teachers. He would do better in school, not beat up nerds or party so hard. He might read a book. And try to understand math, and history, and science. He would try to learn to spell and write. He wouldn’t worry so much about boning and might try to learn an instrument or paint or draw or act. He’d had so many chances and he hadn’t cared.
Day after day, year after year, he’d thrown away like garbage all the opportunities that might have made him into something besides a small time hustler who hoped his STD’s wouldn’t flare up any time soon.
Sonny had this glimpse into another world, one in which he’d tried to be more than a libertine and grifter. He’d always blamed the way he was on the world, on his blood, on his dad, on the island. He’d never tried to be any different, feeding his stomach and soothing his dick.
“You ready to go?” Jessica asked when the set was over.
Sonny had been staring off into space for some time.
“Sure,” Sonny snapped back to reality.
Those days were gone, the days when he could have become a different man. He was trapped now in this body, six four, two thirty, muscle and bone, cash in his mattress and barely literate at twenty-five years old.
How would he be able to keep a woman like Jessica interested? There was no one like Jessica. If he couldn’t keep her…he must keep her. She was so much smarter than he was. He felt like the village idiot around her. She had signed him up for her study and let him take her on this date.
He drove her back to her apartment on South King. She invited him up. Once inside with the door closed, she turned and touched his forearm. He stood rooted to the spot in the entryway, ready to take whatever she was willing to give. She lunged at him and attached her lips to his in a fierce kiss. Sonny’s solidity planted him like a tree. He stood, immobile. His arms came slowly around her slender form, hands spread against her back. Like branches, he supported her bird-like, delicate frame. She tasted like wine and her clove cigarettes.
She broke off the kiss and looked directly into his eyes. He felt himself hard against her, staying still. He wondered if she knew how beautiful she was. If she knew, was she using her beauty to manipulate him? If he allowed her to, how would he know when to slip free of the cords she was trying to bind him with before the knots were tightened?
He reached his hand out and wound it in her fiery dark hair, allowing himself to be trapped. He’d never been trapped by a woman before. He was confident he could find a way out. In the meantime, she would be trapped with him.
He pulled her toward him, bent his head and locked his mouth on hers. Immediately she clapped against him, arms around his neck, two hands coming together before the dive. The exact same sensation as jumping off a cliff into the water subsumed his consciousness. Delicious, free, dangerous, daring, fearful and above all the inciting of reckless, riotous fucking unlocked in both of them mutually, equally.
She reached a hand toward his crotch and outlined his penis through the fabric of his shorts. Proportional to him, arousing her even more. He moved his head from her mouth to the soft, delicate skin above her collarbone and rested his lips as he was overwhelmed by the feeling of her fingers against him. Then he began gathering the skirt of her dress in his fingers, raising it by inches until he could reach under the hemline and place his hands on the bared flesh of her rear. She freed his cock from his shorts as he shoved her thin panties to the side.
Suddenly, he was inside her. Her legs wrapped around him as he turned them and held her up against the door. They stared into each other’s eyes as he pumped into her and she clamped around him. Neither broke eye contact until at last she couldn’t take it anymore, her orgasm rising around her like mountains and crushing her in an avalanche.
He watched her eyes close and the expressions of exquisite pleasure mimicked the spasms he felt coming from inside her. His own release was as violent as if he’d never really come before in his life. A huge growl tore from his chest as he erupted. The molten volcanic heat he contained was released into her body.
“Fuck.” He opened his eyes to find her staring at him. Her one word summed it up.
He felt exposed, vulnerable. Her legs were still clenched around his hips. He lifted her from him and gently set her down on her feet.
“Yeah.”
“Like an earthquake.”
He smiled. “Yeah.”
“Whew,” she wiped her brow and reached for her cigarettes. She moved to the window, opening it so she could blow the smoke outside. He stood beside her with his own cigarette and watched the traffic coming and going below.
Nothing out there had changed a bit.

The next day, she brought him to the lab. The study was part of a UH project but the lab was located off campus in a strip mall on University Avenue. She seated him in the chair and wrapped some rubber around his arm. His biceps tensed. She smiled into his eyes. “Don’t worry, this won’t hurt.”
“Are you sure?”
“I’m very good. Relax.” She tapped his inner elbow, feeling the skin with her gloved index finger.
He smelled her hair. Luxuriously thick, it smelled like honeysuckle, rosemary and lavender. He wanted to bury his face in it and inhale. She pressed the needle tip into his skin and the blood began to fill the vial. He watched the dark red leak from him into the glass tube.
She looked at him then, her eyes meeting his and a faint smile on her closed lips. The winged tips of her black eyeliner always gave her a fey air of otherworldliness. She painlessly removed the needle from his arm. “There. All done.” She placed cotton on the puncture and wrapped bandage around it. “Press here a few minutes.”
Following her orders, Sonny put pressure on his vein and watched while she labeled the sample and added it to a collection of similar vials. “How many participants do you have in this study?”
“There is a consortium of universities participating. We are looking for five thousand all over the world. But in Hawaii, one hundred.”
“How many do you have so far?”
Jessica’s lips twitched. “Do you want to be the only one?”
“Well, I’m hoping for something sorta like that.”
“You can be the only one I fuck for a while. Is that good enough?”
Sonny didn’t think he was romantic. But Jessica was definitely from another world. “Good enough.”

Sonny took Jessica to the fall festival on the leeward side of the island. There were pumpkins, hay rides, a corn maze, music, and a field of sunflowers. They walked through different varieties of sunflowers under a bright blue sky. They avoided the leaves prickling the bare skin of their arms and legs. Deep in the middle of the field, the tallest, most beautiful flowers soaked in the sunshine, their petals and faces straining toward heaven. “This is all I’m doing, you know. Trying to figure out why some are taller and stronger.”
“Didn’t Hitler want to make a superior race?”
“He wanted purity. I think he was wrong.”
“You think Hitler was wrong, do you? That’s good.”
“Ha ha, yes, of course, on many levels. But our research is showing that strength is related to diversification in the genes, not purity. We are mapping DNA. What if we can find out how to cure disease and slow debilitation by analyzing the features of the best and strongest among us?”
“What’s wrong with letting nature take its course? Leaving things the way they are?”
“That is not how science works,” she smiled at his naïveté. The freckles across the bridge of her upturned nose and dotting her high, prominent cheekbones were a constellation of points that underscored her unfathomable, dark eyes. Her slanted brows, dark lashes, and eyeliner tip framed the eyes from above.
He was lost in those eyes. He felt foolish, fraudulent, and spineless around her. Her scent intoxicated him, a heady, homemade perfume of mainland flowers and herbs he’d never smelled before that interacted with her skin and hair to form an irresistible fragrance. The way she spoke and moved and looked was an exotic blend of confidence, intelligence, allure, and ambition.
Jessica was more than beautiful or his first real love. Not only was he wrapped around her finger, he couldn’t even remember who or what he was before he met her. He hadn’t existed. She was where he began, the origin of himself. He was fascinated by every facet of her face, the light in her radiant, red hair, her luminous skin, her very pleasurable body and the sound of her voice. He couldn’t think around her—unused as he was to trying to think—so he followed her instructions and suggestions like an obedient dog. Rewarded at her whim with the flowing pleasure of release inside her, Sonny was captivated by her from the moment he saw her. He had never met anyone remotely like her. In the hundreds of women he’d slept with and the thousands he’d met, no one had ever possessed such perfect and pervasive control over him.
He couldn’t do without her for a day. He stopped working and lived off his savings. He didn’t see his family. He waited around for her until she was done for the day at five-thirty. She worked on her research for the university in the lab eight hours a day. Dr. Whitlock, professor of microbiology, oversaw her work. He was the man Sonny had seen Jessica with the first day he had met her. Jealously, Sonny never forgot the way she’d been flirting with him in the lobby. Jessica was here on a fellowship for six months to acquire samples of mixed race individuals with superior levels of physical strength. The samples would be analyzed and the genes mapped to compare with other samples worldwide.
Sonny waited for her every day after work, watching her in the window from a bench across the street. He felt like a creep. But it couldn’t be helped.
One day after she got off work, Sonny took Jessica to the Rainbow Drive-In to show her where his parents had met. “My mother said he was the most beautiful person she’d ever seen. She just belonged to him from the moment she saw him.” Sonny finally understood that now that he’d met Jessica. “He was in Hawaii waiting to be shipped out to Vietnam. They fell in love right here.” He sat at the wooden table his mother had shown him a hundred times. “He died before I was born.”
“So you never knew him. But he is half of your genetic makeup.”
“Hapa.”
“What’s that?”
“Mixed blood. Blood that is mixed. Different races. Like I said, my father was Norwegian. My mother is Japanese.”
“How has that affected you?”
Sonny was quiet. How hadn’t it affected him? Every moment since his birth—even before that, even in the womb—every moment had been defined by this intertwining of bloods, of races.
There was no place for him. Forever an outsider in the community into which had been born and raised, there was never approval or acceptance no matter who he was or what he did.
He was hapa, half haole and hated for what that meant. The island had been colonized and stolen by outsiders. The Japanese formed their own independent community of outsiders on the island that had nothing to do with Hawaiians or haoles. Who was Sonny Boy? How did he fit in?
He didn’t. He was a lost cause, an embarrassment, a mistake on the part of one of their own who had been led astray. Blond hair and blue eyes, white skin and large muscles, even beauty, kindness, and love should not have had the ability to mislead their girl into creating this halfbreed. But she had rejected tradition in the age of free love and changing mores, ripping a hole in the fabric of society and foisting Sonny Boy through the tear. Now Sonny sat on the wooden table where his folks had met, sipped his strawberry slush, and captured the complex and convoluted truth in simple words.
“Being hapa ain’t no joke.”

The weather finally changed after many months of heat. The mornings held the faintest chill and mid-afternoons were pleasant now. Thanksgiving was coming up. Usually, Sonny gathered with his family, for better or worse, and made it through the day. Some of his cousins were cool. But many of them were uptight assholes. He would drink a lot of beer, gorge himself, try to pick up a girl at a bar somewhere after dinner and bone till he passed out. It was a pretty good routine.
This year, there was Jessica. He wondered if he should or could bring her home to meet the family. Would she come to dinner if he asked her? If he didn’t take her home, would she spend the day with him? Or did she have an alternative?
He sat across the street and watched her work. She knew he waited for her there. She saw him every day, looking like a handsome bum, obsessed with her. It had happened to her a few times before. There was always one easy way to cure it.
Sonny sat and waited. Looking down at his boat shoes, he had an idea for the evening’s activity. Once five-thirty arrived, Sonny stood and crossed the street. He waited outside the door of the lab although she’d told him many times he could come in. The lab creeped him out. The blood in the vials, microscopes, slides, lights, computers. It was not his scene.
They drove back to her apartment which was less than a mile away. Once upstairs, Sonny blurted out, “What are you doing for Thanksgiving?”
“I hadn’t thought about it,” Jessica answered. “Why?” She stood in front of the window, backlit and smoking, her hair a glorious halo. He got hard looking at her.
“I was just thinking about it. I usually have dinner with my family. But I hope I can have dinner with you this year.”
“Sure, why not?” Jessica shrugged. “At your family’s?”
“Why don’t we go out? I haven’t been getting along with my family too well this year.”
“Fine. Sounds good.”
Sonny was inordinately pleased. This was a good sign. Jessica would spend a holiday with him. This wasn’t just fucking. However, the idea of fucking sounded great right now. He walked across the room to her as she stubbed out her cigarette in an ashtray.
“Did you know I’m good at riddles?” Sonny asked after kissing her.
“I didn’t know you were good at anything besides sex.”
“Funny. I have hidden talents. And today I’m going to combine a couple of them.” He turned and walked down the hallway.
“What on earth does that mean?” Jessica followed him into the bedroom. He was naked and on the bed by the time she got there. She unbuttoned her blouse.
“What belongs to you, but other people use it more than you?” Sonny queried. His enormous boner distracted her.
She finished undressing and climbed into bed. “I don’t know. Your face?”
“Close, I guess. But how would other people use your face?”
“Well, they look at it,” she explained. Then she had a flash of inspiration as she reached out. “No, it’s your dick.”
“Very good guess. But I use mine a lot, so no,” Sonny laughed. “I’m sorry, ma’am, but you have failed this test. You must face the consequences.” He pulled a thin leather tie out from under her pillow.
“Where the hell did that come from?” she asked.
“I told, you I have hidden talents.”
“Being a magician?”
“Being resourceful. The answer is ‘your name.’ Next question. I have cities, but no houses. I have mountains, but no trees. I have water, but no fish. What am I?”
While she thought about that, he tied her wrist to the bedpost with the leather shoelace in a knot he’d learned from Captain Lou.
“I don’t know. Just tell me,” she demanded.
“I can’t.”
“Won’t.”
“Won’t then. Call it whatever you want. Not happening. You gotta guess.”
“Fine.” She ran her tongue over her bottom lip quickly and then brought the lip between her teeth. She glared at him through narrowed eyes. Her hair cascaded over the pillow. “A game board.”
“That’s a pretty good guess. You’re on the right track.” He dangled the end of another leather lace over her breast. He watched as her nipple tightened. He bent his head to flick his tongue against it. Then Sonny started fashioning the slip knot in the leather. He slid it over her wrist.
“A map!” she exclaimed.
“Good job,” Sonny smiled at her. He began to tie her other wrist to the bed anyway.
“That’s not fair!”
“Who cares?” Sonny asked.
She realized he had a point.
“Final question. What is at the end of a rainbow?” His head descended to the juncture of her thighs. His silken hair brushed against her. She strained against the leather as he teased her.
“A pot of gold,” she exhaled.
He lifted his head and looked up her body into her eyes. “That’s just a legend.”
“Well, what is it then?” she said breathlessly. His tongue was doing some amazing things.
“You know. A double-u.”
She groaned, the sound mixed with rue, frustration, and pleasure. Sonny got serious about revealing the full extent of another talent which was much more impressive to her than knots and riddles.
“Now what?” she turned to look at him from her prone position. He had untied her so she could ride him once she had recovered from the magic his mouth had performed. It had been a pretty good Tuesday evening so far. Sonny wound one of her curls in a perfect spiral around his finger. He loved her hair. Her eyes. Her brains. Her beauty. Every inch of her. Every part that couldn’t be measured.
“Whatever you want.”
She slipped the leather from one wrist and dangled it over his chest. “You want a turn?”
“Being tied up?”
“And taken advantage of?”
“I live for your pleasure, my love.”
“That’s a very nice thing to say,” Jessica admitted. She had a flicker of remorse that she was simply using him. But it was a brief flicker that soon became its usual shadow.

Akemi had been shopping at Ala Moana Center one afternoon, enjoying the early Christmas displays and generally looking forward to the holidays. She descended the escalator to head back to her car. On the stage between the escalators, a Korean children’s choir was singing “It’s a Small World” and waving flags from countries all over the globe. Akemi watched their sweet, innocent faces for a few enchanted moments while she listened to their angelic voices. They were adorable.
With sudden, unexpected force, something fractured inside her, a fragile tower of hope she’d built day by day, year by year.
She raced to her car, sat inside, and let the tears roll down her face in the gloomy shade of the parking garage. “What do you want?” she asked out loud, broken. She had turned herself inside out for her child for a quarter of a century and couldn’t stop the world from taking him. Through it all, she had clung to the vows she had made to the man she loved, his father, the reason she kept trying and believing and going. John had given her his life to keep and he lived on in their son.
But she had a hard time finding evidence of that, evidence of John or even of herself in Sonny. The time and place had shaped him so strongly that all of the memory and love stored in Sonny was expropriated by sex, drugs, and rock n roll.
“What do you want?” she asked God again. “What can I do? Give? Sacrifice? I’ve trusted you this whole time…and I am tired of being sad. I want to be happy again. I want joy, and love, and peace. I am tired.”
Akemi sat still, head down, hair hanging over her face, and wept. She didn’t know how to go on. She’d run out of things to clean.
Wiping her eyes, Akemi sniffled and turned the key in the ignition. The old Honda started right up and she drove mauka to the H1. She exited at Fort Weaver and drove toward the water. She walked onto the beach where she and John had spent their evenings.
Town and Diamond Head were on one side, the ocean and sunset on the other. The direction he had sailed in, and never come back to her.
“He’s yours now,” Akemi said into the wind. She didn’t know if she meant John or Sonny Boy or both. All she knew was that it was over. It was time to move on. It was time to let go and be free.

Sonny spent his days loitering, surfing, and swimming. He still had some savings. He had been working for years, making money hand over fist. He didn’t miss seeing his friends. He hadn’t visited his family in months and he didn’t miss his mom’s carping. But he did miss Bethany.
He waited for her at their usual time and place. “Hey, Son! How are you?” Bethany embraced him in a heartwarming hug. Sometimes he felt like she was the only person in the world who loved him without judgment.
“Good! How are you?” Sonny pulled away to look into her face. She looked well.
“Fantastic! Did you hear?” Sonny shook his head. He’d been out of the loop for a few weeks now. “I’m free! He crossed Zybub over something and had to get the hell out of Hawaii before he ended up with the sharks.”
“That’s great! What now? You going to quit?”
“Nah. I can work a few more months. I’m recruiting a couple of girls. Then I can take some time off.”
“Won’t that make you a pimp?” Sonny asked.
“Pimp, prostitute, john—the love triangle from hell,” Bethany smiled. “We aren’t going to change the world, Sonny Boy. Let’s just make the best of it and live here.”
“You sound like my mom.”
“Jesus!” Bethany laughed. “That’s the first time I’ve ever heard that!”
“Well, you do. She always wants me to find joy in the little things, notice the details, be kind to others and as generous as possible.”
“I’m surprised you remember all that.”
“She nags a lot.”
“Well, hon, this is Hawaii. You know how it is. We are all pimp, prostitute and john. Just find out how to get paid.”
“Now you don’t sound like my mother. At all!”
They both laughed. Bethany patted Sonny on the leg and wished him well as she went off to work. Sonny hung out at the beach for a couple of hours. When it was almost time to pick up Jessica, he went back and sat on the wall by the Duke. He watched as the sun began to set. It set early this time of year. Pink and gold streaked the sky.
Tourists hauled themselves off the beach to get ready for dinner and the evening’s quest for entertainment. People from all over the world used Hawaii for pleasure or profit. He’d seen it all his life. It was the opposite of aloha. People used the kindness and generosity of others to satisfy themselves. The pursuit of pleasure in a grown-up playground was the hallmark of the last few decades, measured by the height of the buildings in Waikiki. Exploiting the land for gain was a long tradition of the colonizers.
But Hawaii wasn’t innocent. Now, Hawaii set the price for this pleasure. Its own greed and desire to live a modern lifestyle accounted for that. The cost to the land and the people was part of the price. People had come—colonizers, businessmen, pleasure seekers—and taken and taken and taken and taken until the kama‘aina couldn’t take it anymore. There was a resurgence in native culture and rights. Nascent ideas of resistance, protection, and preservation were being born in classrooms and at cookouts all over the island. The time was coming.
Sonny hopped in his truck and drove up Kapahulu Avenue. He navigated his way through town to University and Dole. As he looked for a place to park, he was surprised to see Kimo coming out of Jessica’s lab. What the fuck was his old nemesis doing here? Kimo had been in elementary school with him and they’d pounded the shit out of each other a couple of times before Kimo moved to Waianae. Sonny had run into him occasionally through the years. They’d played football and baseball against each other during high school. Kimo had been the one in the bar that night Sonny got arrested when he was nineteen. Sonny hadn’t seen him since. Sonny had managed to stay out of legal trouble for the last few years. The twelve hours he’d spent in jail that night had been more than enough for him. He never wanted to go back. He had figured getting pulled over with Maemi and then arrested a few days afterward were signs it was time for him to put a little more effort into avoiding the law. The cops were generally pretty laid back. You had to be a pretty obnoxious asshole to get into trouble. But once you got into trouble, it was easy to stay there. So Sonny had tried to make a living on the down low and keep away from Kimo, trouble, cops, courtrooms, and, most importantly, jail.
Sonny parked the truck and headed over to the lab. Jessica was coming out, locking the door from the outside. “Hey,” she smiled at him. “You’re late today.” She had gotten used to his bad habits.
“Why was that guy here?”
“Who?”
“The big, fat dildo. Kimo.”
“He’s a subject.”
Sonny grabbed his face with his hands and struggled to control his temper.
“What?” she asked.
“I fucking hate that guy,” he ground out.
“Well, I didn’t know that. He answered the ad.”
They started walking toward the truck. “Well, now you do. You don’t have to see him again, do you?”
“Probably not. I might have him come answer a few more questions.” Her carefree tone irritated him further.
“Just make up the answers. Or I can.” Sonny held open the door for her.
Jessica turned to face him before getting into the cab. “It doesn’t work like that,” she answered with a soft but still patronizing smile.
He shut the door and came around to the driver’s side. He didn’t want to talk about it anymore. “Where to?”
“Actually, do you mind driving me over to the Burns building? I told Dr. Whitlock I’d meet him for a minute.”
“No problem,” Sonny muttered. Just what his jealousy needed, another cut. Sonny lit up while she went into the building to talk to the professor. He was stoned when she came out. But he was pretty sure her chest was mottled pink.
He had a feeling they were on the downhill slope. He remembered Zybub’s warning. Love won’t tear us apart. Only lies will. He didn’t bother to ask what she’d been doing with the professor. All over her, lies were mixed with truth.
He caught her a week later. She wanted to be caught. It was her surefire way to get rid of a guy she didn’t find useful anymore. She was standing in the window in broad daylight the day before Thanksgiving. Getting screwed from behind. He couldn’t see who was fucking her. The cords binding him to her snapped and whiplashed against him, flaying him.
Sonny crashed through the door as Kimo turned to face the assault. Like wild animals attacking, they collided in brute force. Equipment smashed to the ground. Jessica stood, screaming. She hadn’t anticipated the violence and destruction as the opponents rebounded from table to sample fridge to desk. Her painstaking, microscopic work was subject to the physics of momentum and gravity, crashing and shattering into innumerable pieces.
Kimo and Sonny grappled, deadlocked, until Kimo picked up a microscope and bashed it into the side of Sonny’s head.
He went down, out cold.
Kimo charged out of the building. Jessica felt Sonny’s pulse and went to find the police.
Sonny lay in a pool of his own blood. He came to in a few minutes and found the lab wrecked and empty.
Kimo. Jessica.
The rage surged anew and Sonny got to his feet. He smelled smoke. Something was on fire. He looked around and saw where live wires had been pulled from the wall. The sparks were setting her files on fire. He looked around for a fire extinguisher.
But then he realized he didn’t want to extinguish it.
He wanted to burn this whole fucking place down.
So instead Sonny grabbed some cleaning product and squirted it onto the flames. And the fire took off, racing around the room seeking more fuel.
He decided it was time to get the hell out of there.
Sonny ran. He ran from fire, heartbreak, blood. He ran from betrayal, bullshit, law and order. He fled from the chaos in his wake. He ran away from all of it. His rage and despair carried him toward the mountains. Along the Manoa Stream, following its muddy bottom, he ran deep into the heart of the island where no one used to tread. He was only able to go that far into its core propelled by fury and fear.
He climbed up and up and up, struggling against rocks and roots and jungle. With every step, he shed the past in Ojiichan’s unanswered riddle, “The more you take, the more you leave behind.”
Sonny Boy’s footsteps carried him deeper and deeper into the mountains, up and away from the torment of his life below. The jungle took him in and swallowed him up.
The first night he slept where he fell. He tripped and lay on the ground and didn’t bother to get up until the early dawn light made its way into the mountains. Sitting up groggily in the mud, Sonny looked around. He still couldn’t see much, but he could see the ocean in the distance and the horizon growing lighter. It was a pale lilac color against the water. Sonny didn’t move as he had nowhere to go. He sat still and watched the sunrise. He had never watched the sunrise before. As the ball of the sun crested the horizon, Sonny stood. He peed against a tree and began walking, up.
He started singing “Like a Rolling Stone.” He messed up most of the words and his voice was out of tune. But he was alive and free and on top of the world. He figured he was somewhere in the Ko‘olau Mountains, looking out over Kaneohe Bay. There were plenty of streams up here. Water wasn’t going to be a problem.
However, he was hungry. Were there fish in these mountaintop streams? If so, how? There was, however, right there in front of him, a banana passionfruit tree. He picked a fruit and pried it open with his thumbs. He tasted the pulp. Pretty good. Some of the seeds were bitter. He picked a softer fruit than the first and tried again. It was enough to keep going.
He climbed along the ridge for another two or three hours in the manmade world but up here it was until the sun was about there in the sky. The place where it was starting to feel hot. Sonny found a shady spot to rest.
He had seen the waterfalls once. In twenty-five years, just once. It was called the Land of a Thousand Waterfalls. But it only happened after the rain, for a brief time. Growing up in town, he’d rarely visited the windward side of the island. And the falls were spectacular, but elusive. He saw the tracks where they ran dry against the panoramic green mountains.
Sonny looked over the valley and felt no hurry, no impetus to return. He might stay up here for a while. An outlaw. Island outlaw.
But, really, why not? He had nothing down there he wanted anymore. Being away from everyone, all the bullshit, sounded fantastic. No one was up here. No one ever came up here. Even intrepid hikers, of which there were few, stayed on the trail.
Stretching, yawning, Sonny curled up in the shade and slept peacefully until the afternoon. He had not experienced such a dreamless, deeply-relaxed sleep since childhood as the struggle to survive in a complex society had produced endless anxiety. Now that was gone.
Here he was, strong and fit, living wild. He had no fear, no worry for his safety or survival. This would be a piece of cake compared to navigating the sea of crap down below.
Cake. No more cake.
Sonny was hungry again when he awoke. He realized that would be his biggest challenge. Food. He was always hungry. Taking a deep breath, Sonny stood and looked around. He grabbed another fruit from a tree—breadfruit this time—and ate. Fruit would hold him for a while.
He walked north and came to a stream. Climbing on a flat rock, Sonny sat and watched the afternoon sunlight slant into the water. Soon, the sun would dip behind the mountains as twilight came even earlier on this side of the island. He saw light flash against the silver scales of a fish. Yes, there were fish up here. Awesome.
He took inventory of the few items he possessed, thinking of each piece’s possible uses. He had on rather thick material khaki cargo shorts with two side pockets, two back pockets, two front pockets. A zipper. Buttons. Belt loops. And one metal loop attached to a two inch tab of fabric possibly meant for hooking keys on. He had a leather belt with a simple metal buckle. He had gray boxer shorts in thin cotton. A long sleeve navy cotton t-shirt. Leather boat shoes with leather laces that were not necessary to hold the shoes on his feet. Not much, but it would have to be enough. He hadn’t even found one piece of trash up here. So, he concluded, the metal he had was the belt buckle, the zipper, and the loop which could be bent into a hook and attached to the leather lace. That might work to catch a fish. Or he could try making a net with some of the dried vines that were everywhere.
Survival proved to be not that difficult. In a land as lush and fruitful as Hawaii, the enemies were insects and damp. Sonny hadn’t encountered any feral pigs yet, which he knew could be dangerous. But he was a big dude.
When the sun shone, Sonny found a large flat rock and lay naked on it, drying out everything. He kept clean in the stream and when he could sunbathe and air dry, his skin felt supple and thick. He was probably getting more vitamins from all the fruit than he used to get from Loco Mocos and hamburgers.
For reasons unknown to him, there were trout and bass in the streams in addition to o’opu. Aholehole and mullet went upstream and were around as well. Sonny made a net and caught fish. He didn’t bother to cook or clean them. He simply picked the flesh off the bones and ate.
Sonny had never felt at home in town. Here he felt like he was doing what he was made to do. Over the weeks connecting with his body, nature, and God, Sonny was finally able to be himself. To learn who he was. He had spent his whole life reacting to situations in which other people ran the show. It had started with his mother and family and progressed to his neighbors, friends, classmates, teachers, coaches, girlfriends, boss, Jessica. Out here he could be himself. Sonny thought of the many and myriad ways in which he’d lied to himself over the years. He could finally be free from bullshit.
His bulk diminished as he lived off fruit and fish and sometimes an egg. But he became stronger and leaner. He was pretty much wet all of the time. It rained nearly every day for some period—ten minutes, two hours. He lived among the clouds that loved to rest on the summit. He kept moving at first, walking from the south to north, east to west. There were many trails and few hikers. If he did hear someone, he went off trail into the jungle. But if he ever happened to encounter someone, he planned to pass himself off as a fellow hiker. He had a beard now. His hair was shaggy after a month in the mountains. He doubted even his own family would recognize him and he could guarantee not one of them would be out here for any reason.
He thought it was probably assumed he had gotten off O‘ahu by now. He doubted there would be a statewide manhunt over a building fire. But he certainly wasn’t ready to be arrested and jailed for his crime. He didn’t know what he was going to do in the long run, but as each day went by and he stayed alive and felt quite happy, he stopped worrying about it.
Sonny found a place to shelter from the rain. It was not a cave precisely, but an outcropping of the rock overgrown with a curtain of vine on an ancient tree in the “doorway.” This place was about the size of his bedroom back home, maybe a little bigger. He was in the north part of the range and couldn’t see town or Kaneohe from the summit vantage points. He figured he was somewhere between the Ewa Forest Reserve and the inland boundary of Kualoa Ranch. But he decided to stop here, and live. He was within ten minute’s walk of a fast moving stream filled with fish and an hour’s walk of twenty different fruit trees. Chickens wandered through the area, foraging like he did.
He wove palm fronds together, placing several of the mats he created on top of each other to make a bed. He stripped large sections of bark from a dead tree he found and fashioned a chair from it. He collected kukui nuts and dried out coconut husks.
He was going to try to make a fire soon. But he had never made one before so he wasn’t sure. He had never even made a fire with charcoal and a lighter. His grandfather or Hideo had always done it the times they grilled. He just hadn’t thought about it.
It was embarrassing. He knew the general idea from TV. A stick and a board. Rub the stick between your hands as fast as you can, up and down. Have tinder ready for that split second of smoke and spark. Blow but not too much.
Sonny didn’t really need a fire. He gotten through several weeks without one. His whole life, really. But since he had nothing better to do, he got to work.
Every day he practiced until his muscles ached. But every day he got a little stronger and could spin a little faster and longer until on the tenth day, poof! The fine dried material of his tinder nest caught flame. He added twigs to the small fire and eventually one of the logs he’d been saving for this special occasion. Now what? he asked himself.
He roasted a breadfruit. He had been eating it raw and to taste it cooked was like opening a bag of Wonder Bread and gorging himself on it. He didn’t want to leave his small fire unattended and he was concerned the smoke would alert someone to his existence and location.
But he wondered about cooking an egg. His hen he’d befriended and named Geraldine was usually good for an egg. She laid them in the same spot every day and didn’t seem to mind Sonny’s taking them. She ate the fruit he gave her and the bugs he caught and left for her.
There were random things he missed like nail clippers. Keeping his feet happy was a high priority. He missed music. He sang to himself sometimes, fragments of songs he remembered. He again thought about opportunities missed. He didn’t know the lyrics to one whole song. He was surprised that he missed seeing words. Having been surrounded by signs his whole life—and barely reading them, or anything else—he had not thought he cared about the printed word. But up on the mountain, he read the tags on his T-shirt and shorts and boxers and even the little lettering on the insides of his shoes. He found himself taking a stick and scratching words in the dirt just to write something. But things like toilet paper and toothpaste, sex and cigarettes, he didn’t miss as much as he first thought he would.
In the beginning, he spent a lot of time mad. He had always been mad, restless and rebellious. He was mad at the world and God and the universe. He was mad at Hawaii and America and his parents and grandparents and his friends. And, of course, Jessica. Mostly he was mad at himself for being such a fuck-up.
But his anger wore away, used up. All of the petty problems and disappointments drifted into the past.
A strange thing began to happen. Sonny felt less lonely than he’d ever felt in his life. Up here in the mountains, quite capable of surviving, he began to feel an affinity for the place around him. His mother had repeatedly told him to enjoy the little things but he’d thought she was crazy and stupid. She’d lived a sheltered and boring life, not venturing much beyond her mother’s kitchen. But maybe he’d been a little bit hard on her.
Sonny began to notice the little things because there wasn’t that much going on. No TV, traffic, drama to deal with. So he watched some ants. And the chickens. And the light on the leaves. The unfolding of a flower. He watched the fish in the stream. The light on the water. He spent an hour looking at moss on a rock. Rain. Rain provided much entertainment. Rainbows in the distance. The mountains.
Once he had looked at the little things enough, he started to see the big things for what they were. The miracle of creation. He could see the connection between the spider and the ant and the bird and the plant and the fish and the rock and the root and flower. He was part of all of it. If he was part of this creation, he had a creator.
What did that mean? As with everything else, Sonny admitted he had limited knowledge of world religions. He tried to think of the names of as many as he could. Islam, Judaism and Christianity. Buddhism, Hinduism and Shintoism. Taoism, Confucianism. It was the same chaos as the world below. Too much.
Sonny Boy sat in his cave on the mountain and tried to piece out what he thought was true. To Sonny, the most obvious and first truth was that all made things were interconnected. Therefore, he thought there was one designer, not many gods. And this designer must be pretty cool and smart in order to think up the world. From atoms and cells to stars and oceans, the intricacy and brilliance was astounding. Sonny realized he could spend a whole lifetime tripping out on that. The circulatory system, the human body itself—but then the currents in the ocean, rivers, waves in general. Light waves, sound waves, radio waves. Weather. Water. Wind. The more Sonny thought, the more he felt like an idiot. How had he lived for more than twenty-five years without ever thinking about this or noticing? It was quite literally his foundation and yet he had never considered who he was. He was bones and muscles, skin and blood, fat and cartilage, brains and guts. He had apertures to sense the material world, systems to ingest and digest, to be fueled by food, glorious food, to metabolize that into energy to be productive.
He had squandered so much. He was an idiot. Experiencing humility and being honest with himself were the hardest tasks he had ever accomplished.
If there was a creator who was smart enough to make all this, why would he oppose it? Why wouldn’t he try to do what the creator wanted him to do? He’d willingly followed Jessica around and done whatever she told him to. He had loved her, and she had used his love and then hurt him to free herself from it. But she was bad and full of deceit. He’d known that from the moment he saw her.
Was the creator bad? Or good? Or both?
Sonny knew the creator was good. He knew it with each piece of fruit he ate. Each bird he watched. From each plant. From every beam of light. Sonny watched the wind blow through the trees. Each swayed to its own music, telling a story in space and movement. The whole world was trying to tell him something, to tell him the truth. The only reason Sonny could think of to try to fight or flee from this creator would be to stubbornly hold onto something wrong he liked to do. That was why people lied to themselves, pretending not to know the truth, so they could continue on their way that let them be lazy, hurtful, nasty, or self-centered. Sonny had done that his whole life.
There was no lying to himself up here. Sonny had to be real. He could blame everybody else—the circumstances of his birth, his mother, his father for knocking her up and then dying, his grandparents, his neighborhood and town and island and colonizers and governments and teachers and bosses—when he was down there in the thick of them. But up here, alone, how were they to blame for anything?
After weeks of recognizing his own skill in survival, Sonny felt free, strong and capable. It was easy for him up here, as if he were made to walk in these mountains and find food and shelter. And it was the first time he didn’t feel alone. He felt, heard, and saw the presence of God.
And for the first time in his life, he wasn’t hungry.
The changing colors of the light entranced him. The sky at dawn turned a tree’s leaves pink then gold through the green. Sonny couldn’t ignore God when he was constantly getting his attention with the colorful daily light shows. Sonny noticed light on a raindrop on a blade of grass. Within every one of the millions of nearby drops was the rainbow, prisms reflecting color and glory. Why would Sonny want to ignore that?
Sonny thought a lot about God. Why wouldn’t he? Wouldn’t this be the most important thing to figure out in life, free from all else? So Sonny spent time thinking, and thinking. If God made everything, was real and alive and present even now, what was Sonny waiting for? What was the mystery holding him back from believing? Was Jesus the son of God? Sure. Who else was he?
Sonny didn’t pretend to understand anything about the Old Testament or Israel. He didn’t know a whole lot about Jesus. His mother had been going to church his whole life and had taken him until he wouldn’t go anymore. She had told him stuff but he hadn’t listened. He did know Jesus was supposed to have been born in a stable to the Virgin Mary and that Joseph was his stepdad. Camels and wise men. The star. Shepherds and angels. All of that was in the Christmas lights at the hale every year. He knew that Jesus had gone around teaching for a while. Performing miracles. He didn’t know what the miracles were. Something to do with healing people and bread. Oh, he did do something with bread. The Last Supper. He’d remembered that from his mom dragging him to church as a kid. Body and blood, bread and wine. He knew that Jesus had died on a cross and then came back to life on Easter.
“Well, God,” Sonny said. “I don’t know much about it, but I guess Jesus was your son. Don’t know what else he’d be.” But that was enough faith to begin the inward transformation.
Slowly, the light took over the darkness inside of him as the dawn gradually but inevitably came over the horizon each day. Because of the internal structures—buildings and walls, tunnels and bunkers—constructed within himself, there were always shadows inside him, places that didn’t get much light. Shade. But he could reflect light even off those solid spaces within him. Sonny felt peace. For the first time. His soul could finally rest.
From then on, life in the mountains was even better. He had this newfound constant communion with the creator of all things. Sonny thought it was pretty cool. He would tell God, “Wow—look at that!” as he studied the pattern of veins on a leaf. He had been such a poor student in school, stuff he should have learned in fifth grade, like how plants feed off light and send the energy through their veins, was news to him.
Sonny began to cook, or at least to take a little trouble with his food preparation and presentation. For months he’d eaten to survive, whatever he could. But then he started noticing things ripening and flavors. He roasted breadfruit and topped it with guava. Fish, avocado, and roasted egg tasted good together. Sometimes, when he felt turned on, everything tasted of sex, as if all creation were a wild orgasm. He wondered if he were losing it those times.
But he thought, “We are such assholes. We have this free will and all we do is squirm around in our own shit like a kid in a dirty diaper. God made us and this beautiful world for fun and freedom and sex and eating and love but we are so fucking stupid, we destroy it and ourselves for our own amusement.”
Sonny stopped thinking then for a while and climbed to the highest point he could. He wanted to use his body to pull against rock, feel his muscles contracting and working, his feet and legs pushing him higher and higher. It was a clear day. He observed the circumference of the island, to the sea in many places.
This little rock in the middle of the ocean had brought together hundreds of thousands of people over the years. The Gathering Place. O‘ahu. But for the moment, he was one man. Here. Now. Sonny Boy.

A thousand days went by, but Sonny wasn’t counting. His hair and beard were a tangled, sun-drenched mess down his back and chin. He had lost fifteen pounds but his muscles were shredded. He had a flock of chicken friends he didn’t eat but the fish feared him. He’d run into half of a dozen people in his years away but hadn’t spent more than five minutes in conversation. Occasionally, he wondered if he could still talk or read or ride a bicycle. His little home on the mountains changed little through the months. Different flowers bloomed. There were some big purple ones Sonny didn’t know the name of that grew on his vine doorway. He called them morning glories because that was the closest name he knew. They opened in the morning and closed at night, like hibiscus. Native and invasive species mingled on the hillsides, transplanted by birds over the last hundred and sixty years since the first outsiders had arrived. Things that wouldn’t have grown here a thousand years ago now thrived.
Sonny wasn’t sure which category the gardenia was. He thought they were originally from Japan. But he was delighted when he found a gardenia plant. Singing all he could remember of “Not Fade Away,” he followed the fragrance of the flowers through the trees and leaves until he located it. Pure white blossoms against shiny dark green leaves perfumed the air. Maemi came to mind in her white sundress from that day many years back. Another world, another life. Sonny picked a few of the gardenia branches and carried them home.
As he stepped into the clearing, he heard the snort and steps.
Throwing down the flowers, he turned to brace himself before it was too late. The hog charged. Sonny had run into a few feral pigs before but they had always fled at his approach. He didn’t have his doctorate in zoology to know why this hog had decided to charge him. He had his bare hands.
Adrenaline rushed through his veins in a surge he hadn’t experienced since leaving town. He’d had a few near misses slipping on rocks or branches not holding his weight as he scaled a cliffside. But this was the first time in three years he’d had to fight for his survival. Empowered by this surge, Sonny tore into the boar. It did not have long tusks, but the short ones were sharp enough to rip skin from Sonny’s chest and legs. Weighing as much as a man, the boar fought fiercely for this territory and then for his life.
Sonny did the same, until finally he was able to prize apart the animal’s jaws and rip his throat out. Blood was everywhere, spattered all over Sonny’s face and chest and arms.
The gardenias lay sodden with mud and blood. Sonny sat by the dead carcass as the rain began. The skies opened and poured down in torrents, sending the blood in rivulets down the mountainside. Sonny lay back on the ground in the mud and watched the rain.
It was time to go home.

Akemi thought about her husband John. When his parents had passed away, his sister had thoughtfully sent Akemi the albums of his childhood photos. She loved looking through them. She still missed John every day. But she didn’t really miss Sonny. She missed her dreams of Sonny, Sonny as a baby, a toddler, a boy. But somewhere along the way her dream Sonny had disappeared and become someone she didn’t really like very much. She had faced the fact. He was a jerk.
It was a different kind of heartbreak to admit that to herself. It wasn’t the heartbreak of death or despair. It was the heartbreak of disappointment. She realized she wasn’t the first mother in the world to be disappointed by her son. But it still hurt. And she was tired of feeling hurt.
Akemi was forty-seven years old. Although mature-looking, she was still very beautiful. She had lived widowed for twenty-nine years. She went to church every Sunday, took ikebana classes with Kioko Tuesday evenings, volunteered at the Japanese Cultural Center gift shop on Thursdays, and did the marketing after work on Mondays, Wednesdays and Fridays. She cooked and cleaned, paid the bills, was a loyal fan of the Rainbow Wahine volleyball team and climbed Koko Head once a month to make sure she still could. She’d saved and invested for decades, all of her widow’s benefit and half her income. She invested in local companies’ stocks, companies that were fundamental to Hawaii’s economy.
Samuel and Helen were in their early seventies now and traveled a lot. As well as seeing new places, they went to visit family. Their grandchildren, Akemi’s nieces and nephews, were scattered across the mainland. One had moved to Japan. Samuel and Helen discovered they loved taking long trips in Japan instead of a hurried week twice a year. They started spending three or four months a year there. So Akemi was alone a lot these days. And, after a few months, she realized she enjoyed being alone. She believed in the adage, “Wherever you go, there you are.” She thought she had better work on becoming happy with herself. In time, she discovered that she was. It was the first time she had been happy since Sonny was a little boy.
It felt good to be herself again, or perhaps this was the first time. It was the first time she’d been so independent, she was sure of that. Akemi loved to pickle a cucumber for her lunch and dine on fruit and a small piece of fresh fish in the evening. Her tastes were so simple. It was a relief to not constantly being pouring food down Sonny anymore. She walked nearly everywhere she went. She loved the pace. She had friends and acquaintances throughout the neighborhood since she’d lived here her whole life. Her family was all over the island as well as far and wide in the world. But Akemi enjoyed solitude, the quietness of her own thoughts, the peace of her memories, and the stillness of her body. She remembered Sobo sitting in this same spot in the living room, listening to her old records. She was beginning to understand. Several years ago, Ojiichan and Sobo had passed away within twenty-four hours of each other. At the time, Akemi wondered if that’s what she should have done when John died. She remembered sitting on her bed, not wanting to live anymore in a world without him. Feeling the baby kick. Pulling herself out of her fugue state and re-entering the world. Maybe that had been a mistake. It was hard to face disappointment—with life, her son, God.
Being disappointed with the world and how her life had turned out had broken something down within her that day at Ala Moana. But she was grateful for it now. She had learned how to let go and rebuild from that moment. She’d rebuilt her strength, her happiness, and her faith. It had taken her a while to recognize the lesson God was teaching her. But she’d finally learned. She’d learned her purpose. God wanted her to be happy. In order to do that, she had to let go of her son and learn who she was without him, without anyone. It had taken some time. But she had plenty of that. She’d been given an indescribable gift. She’d given herself away at every opportunity and now she felt stronger, happier, and more wholly herself than ever. She’d learned that all the little pieces of her heart she’d given away had been the seed she’d needed to plant in the world to reap happiness now.Filled with thanks, she settled into her chair next to the old turntable and listened to the Bay City Rollers, Aretha Franklin, Ray Charles, and Queen.

One evening after dinner, Maemi sat on the front porch of her grandparents’ house potting succulents. Her interest in gardening had become her career. She worked for the City and County of Honolulu Division of Urban Forestry—Horticultural Services. She was a certified arborist. Which was great, but she didn’t get to play in the soil too often at work these days. She spent a lot of time in meetings. Tonight, she was making small planters of succulents to give to her friends in the office. She wanted to give something to Paul who had taken her on a few dates recently. But she decided to make something for everyone, not to arouse suspicions—or give him the wrong idea.
She didn’t know what the right idea was yet. But she had her own suspicions. He might be the one.
She hadn’t thought of Sonny for a few months now. He’d disappeared into thin air a few years ago. But, even before that, he’d been gone. He was caught up in the same world as her folks had been, a world that eventually had killed her dad with an overdose five years ago and her mother from lung cancer last year. Her grandparents were still alive. Maemi cared for them in the evenings after work. She was the only one left. Miki had not been accepted to Stanford but UCLA. She’d been in California for years now. Hideo still worked on the Big Island for the state. He had married a girl from Hilo and settled down. They had three kids already, two girls and a boy, just like they’d been growing up.
Maemi’s memory drifted around to different things as she planted her little succulents in clay pots she’d painted teal blue. It was her favorite color and had associations with many little things through the years. She remembered Miki’s teal prom dress. Hideo’s bicycle. Her grandmother’s mochi. Her mother’s eyeshadow.
She liked that Paul. He had taken her to a concert at St. Andrew’s last week and a comedy show at the Hawaii Theatre the week before that. He was smart, kind, and friendly. Although he was slightly built and wore glasses, she still thought he was good-looking in a bookish way. And, really, she wasn’t glamorous or anything. She was an average girl and she was tired of being alone.
She looked up as she heard footsteps approaching. A shirtless giant beast of a man in tattered cargo shorts was walking down the hill. The torn soles of his leather shoes slapped noisily against the asphalt. His hair was a curling mass of brown and blond down his back and his beard went long past his chin. The sculpted muscles of his arms and torso were clearly defined. His skin was dark golden brown. She’d never seen anyone like him before.
“Hey, Maemi,” the man called out to her and she dropped her trowel. Her hands were shaking. Her gut curled up around her dinner and she ran in the house, afraid she was going to throw up.
Sonny shrugged and continued on his way. He walked up the front steps of the old house on Oihana Street and thought about what to do next. He decided to knock.
Akemi stood and looked through the front window at the bearded man on her porch. Then she flung open the door. “Is it?”
“Hi, Mom.”
“Oh! Sonny,” she stepped into his embrace. “You’re back.”

Epilogue

Maemi hadn’t made it easy for him. It had taken two and a half years, a hundred dates, hours of conversation, thousands of kisses and one large diamond ring to get to this point. During that time, Sonny had completed his certificate at the culinary institute. His mother had offered him a loan to open his restaurant. The last six months operation had been very successful. The creative cuisine at Sonny’s was gaining a reputation for innovation and subtlety with local, whole foods. Sonny’s grandparents had purchased the strip mall where the fire was. No charges were ever filed. They’d torn down the old building and his uncle had built a new company headquarters there. Jessica had long ago left the island. Kimo had been in a dozen fights since and couldn’t care less about Sonny Boy. In fact, Sonny became a bit of a local hero for surviving in the Ko‘olau three years alone. That was impressive. The community loved having a new story to tell about one of their own.
As time passed, the land itself became hapa, part wild, part cultured. Town or mountain, which was which, was open to debate. The blood of the people might mix over time but the kama‘aina were all still children of that which fed them. They knew their responsibility. Aloha ‘aina—loving the land—was more than bloodlines and birthplace. It was the way to live in peace with the land, and with each other.
The people must care for the ‘aina, the land, that which nourished them. They must care for the kama‘aina, the children of the land—themselves—by choosing the way of pono. Written in every hale was Ua Mau ke Ea o ka ʻĀina i ka Pono. The life of the land is perpetuated in righteousness. Pono, righteousness, meant living in balance, goodness, harmony, order. Their sovereignty over self, their very lives were dependent on that. The contrapositive was also true. If we do not live pono, the land will die.
To be delivered from evil started within each person. No outside force or oppression was responsible. Sonny finally found acceptance and union within himself, aligning his internal and external worlds. The way back to pono. He discovered his own weakness and found that strength did not come from himself, no matter how strong he appeared to others. It came from connection. Once he learned his own identity on the mountain, he saw his purpose. Being hapa ain’t no joke, but it could be fun. He was the land now, and could model the way. He even realized his lifelong nemesis should be his ally. They really were both the same, although Kimo had more right to the ‘aina. Sonny drove over to Waianae one day and brought Kimo and his family a ton of food from his restaurant and offered an apology. Although there would never be a great friendship, there was peace and respect.

Maemi still hadn’t been certain. When Sonny had seen her sitting there on the porch as he walked back into town, he had been sure right away. There she was. His perfect flower.
But she didn’t want him to think she’d been sitting around waiting for him all this time. She continued to date Paul for a while. She really tried hard not to look into Sonny’s yard when he was sunbathing au naturel. She did try.
He left flowers on her doorstep, remembering Ojiichan’s old story of his mentor. Camellias were in short supply but Sonny enjoyed finding a perfect gardenia to lie on the doormat that said “Mahalo for removing shoes.”
Eventually, he stayed on the doorstep and rang the bell. Flower in hand, barefoot, dressed in his finest, Sonny waited.
Now he was dressed in his finest, waiting again. Sonny glanced at the cross in the stained glass above the doorway. Maemi entered, flowers in hand, white and pure as the gardenias. From then on, he never took his eyes off of her.
He was home.