don’t run away,” said Hiialo. “Eduardo won’t hurt you. He only eats shave ice.”
Danny’s voice drew Kal’s eyes toward the floor where he sat. “Spark dis.” Pidgin for “Check this out.”
Running a negligent hand through his short-cropped hair, Kal moved to stand over the muscular brown shoulders of his Hawaiian brother-in-law. On the floor in front of Danny lay a photo of a bottled blonde whose curves belonged on a beer poster. She stood beside a sailboard, smiling brightly at the camera.
Well, sort of brightly. Kal was choosy about smiles. A smile wasn’t a matter of orthodontic work or a pretty mouth. A smile came from the soul and shone through the whole being. A good smile was contagious.
There was a sound from Kal’s bedroom, the amplifier going on. Jakka, Danny’s cousin, six foot four and 240 pounds, emerged from the hallway, carrying Kal’s Fender Stratocaster guitar. He played a riff, and Kal’s own fingers itched for the strings. They’d planned to practice today.
Besides being part of his ohana, Danny and Jakka were members of his old band, the three-man band they’d called Kal Nui—high tide. And his former band mates haunted Kal’s house as though waiting for something to change, for that tide to come back in. But today’s jam session had never gotten off the ground. Danny, the percussionist, had seen Kal’s mail and wanted to read the replies to his ad. Now he was perusing the letter from the blonde with the sailboard. He grimaced. “She’s from the mainland.”
Jakka, whose fingers were master of the bass, slowly attempted the lead-guitar melody to “Pau Hana,” the song that had helped make Kal Nui the favorite band on the Garden Island. Long time ago…
Playing the right chords at the right tempo in his mind; Kal tried to lose the nervousness that had been with him ever since he’d visited his post-office box that day. Seeing the letters filling the box—and the larger stack he’d had to stand in line at the counter to collect—had made it real. He hadn’t been serious when he sent the ad to Island Voice. He wasn’t that desperate. It had been Danny’s idea. Nonetheless, Kal had written the ad. It had seemed barely possible to him that somehow it would all work out. He might find someone he could get along with, someone who would love Hiialo. Hiialo would have two parents again, instead of just a never-there father—him.
And he…well, maybe things would be better for him, as well.
He hadn’t expected many answers. At most, two or three. But now he was getting replies from not just Hawaii but the mainland. There were dozens of envelopes on the floor.
Danny pored over another letter. “Did you really say a celibate marriage?”
“Yes.”
Jakka stopped playing and frowned at the letters on the floor. “Nobody wants that.” A line divided his brow from top to bottom.
Kal said nothing. His stomach hurt. Work tomorrow. On your left is Kauai’s stunning Na Pali Coast. “Pali” means cliff, and…He reached into his shirt pocket and surreptitiously popped an antacid.
“You know,” remarked Jakka, “if you marry some rich woman, you could quit baby-sitting tourists and play with us again.”
Danny said, “That’s the whole idea.”
“No, it’s not,” said Kal, with a fighting-dog state no one challenged.
Maybe someday he’d play professionally again, but that hadn’t been the point of the ad. Hiialo was.
Smiling, bemused, Jakka toyed with the guitar strings again.
Kal wandered to the front door. Hiialo had filled two cups with rainwater and was busily filling a third. Her hair, a sun-lightened shade of brown that seemed the consummate mingling of his own genes with her mother’s, swung lank around her face and bare shoulders as she moved about the porch, wearing only a pair of boy’s surfing trunks.
She was just four, so Kal didn’t mind her playing at being a boy, going without a shirt as he often did. Still, it nagged at him. He shouldn’t be her role model. He wouldn’t be, if only…
Scarcely aware of the leaden pall on his heart, the dead feeling, he turned back to the room. To the letters on the floor. It wasn’t going to work. No way could he invite a stranger into his life or his home—or within a thousand miles of his daughter.
Danny tossed his wavy shoulder-length hair back from his face and sat up straight as he read the message inside one note card. “Hey, Kal. This one’s not so bad.”
Kal stepped over the stack of opened letters and crouched beside Danny, who handed him the card.
Danny glanced at his watch and began to stand. “Gotta work, brah. Good luck finding your picture bride.”
Picture bride. At the turn of the century, most immigrant plantation workers in Hawaii were poor single men. A man who wished to find a mate from his own culture had one option—to choose a woman from a photograph sent by family members or a marriage broker in his homeland. Then the picture bride came to Hawaii…
Kal groaned as Danny used his shoulder for support to push himself to his feet, feigning aching bones. Danny was on his way to meet his hula group. Besides playing drums, he was a dancer, like—
“Hey, wait for me!” Jakka unplugged the Stratocaster, then hurried back to Kal’s room.
Danny swept up his car keys. Nabbing Hiialo as she came inside, he swooped her up in his arms. “Gotcha. And Eduardo’s not stopping me.” Danny was always willing to enter Hiialo’s make-believe world, to accept the existence of her imaginary giant lizard friend.
As Hiialo squealed in delight, presaging her uncle’s turning her upside down, Kal examined the card Danny had handed him. On the front was a watercolor of a woman with long curly gold hair swimming underwater with a dolphin. Ordinarily Kal didn’t care for sentimental artwork—and he’d been around enough art to form an opinion. But something about this image struck him as realistic, natural, as though the woman and dolphin were actually swimming together. He studied the watercolor for a moment before he opened the card and read the writing inside.
The script was small and lightly etched, the letters running almost straight up and down.
Dear Mr. Ohana,
As Kurt Vonnegut says, “There’s only one rule that I know of—” It applies to child rearing as to anything.
“Damn it, you’ve got to be kind.”
Sincerely,
Ms. Aloha
“So what do you think?”
Kal hadn’t known Danny was paying attention. Even now, he was swinging Hiialo back to an upright position, his eyes on his niece.
Kal stuffed the card back into its envelope—another mainland address—tossed it on the stack with the rest and stood up. Taking Hiialo from Danny and feeling the comfort of her small slender arms circling his neck, Kal told his brother-in-law, “I think this was a stupid idea.”
“What was stupid?” asked Hiialo. Then, seeing Jakka
