Where There's a Will

WILLIEAkau stood motionless, one arm raised straight above his head, his dusty, garlanded hat in his hand, as the last of the trailer trucks was backed up, inch by inch, to the long, narrow, high-walled loading ramp that fed into the hold of the Philomena Purcell, the old Corral Line cargo ship that had been taking Hoaloha Ranch cattle—and more recently, Little Hoaloha cattle—to Vancouver for the last fifteen years. In air- conditioned comfort, no less.

At just the right moment, the hand holding the hat flashed down and the truck stopped instantly. “Okay, So- moa, open ’er up,” Willie yelled to the young paniolo standing at the ready.

Somoa hopped up onto the truck bed and tugged on the pull-chain, hand over hand. The perforated metal door clattered up, Somoa jumped out of the way, and the cattle, bawling uncertainly, but docile and cooperative, headed onto the ramp, their hooves drumming satisfyingly on the wooden

floor.

“Eh-hoo! Ehhhhh-hoo! Hoo!”

Willie had been hearing that call as man and boy for going on sixty years now. Today it came from the two additional paniolos he’d stationed on either side of the ramp with pole prods to urge the cows along in case any of them needed coaxing.

But they didn’t need the poles this time, and in fact, they rarely did. They didn’t really need the eh-hoos either. When it came down to it, they didn’t much need Willie Akau.

In the old days, it was different. The trip to the Kawaihae docks had been a wild and woolly affair then, a full- fledged, old-fashioned cattle drive from the mountains to the sea. They had to start at one in the morning to get the cows there on time. And then when you got to the docks, you had to ride horseback right into the water and swim every damn cow out to an anchored ship, one at a time, then struggle to get a belly band around the frightened animal (he’d gotten his hand broken once and his nose twice doing it) so the deckhands could haul it up in a sling. You had to know what you were doing every step of the way.

Now they just walked them onto the trucks before ever leaving the ranch, and walked them off when they got to the dock. And they started at nine, not at one.

Willie had gotten $1.50 a day on his first cattle drive— which was exactly what Somoa had plunked into the nearby vending machine to get the super-sized chocolate milk he was working on. Now Willie made damn near a hundred times that for doing about a hundred times less work.

It was getting to be retirement time, he thought with a sigh. He’d done a good job training the hands, and Somoa was more than ready to take over. It was time, all right. The Torkelssons had done right by him when it came to a pension, but he wasn’t going to live forever, and if he kept this up he’d wind up dropping dead in the saddle—or more likely at the wheel of an ATV. Not that that’d be so bad, but it’d be kind of nice to get to spend some of that pension, to kick back, do some fishing, do some traveling, do some hanging around the docks, schmoozing and drinking beer in the afternoon, like so many of the old ranch hands turned beach bums.

He watched one of them now, coming down the dock toward him with a rolling, limping gait. Sunburnt and bearded, shaggy gray hair caught in a pony tail, shapeless old captain’s hat on his head, black patch tied over one eye. Interesting-looking guy. Not a ranch hand, though. An old salt, a tough, gristly old pirate, really; nobody he remembered seeing around before.

“How you doin’, buddy?” Willie said. “Can I help you with something?”

“Oh, I expect you can, Willie,” the old man said, and his lean, leathery face split in a grin.

Willie did a double-take, then peered hard at him for a good five seconds. The Philomena Purcell did a short test-burst of its powerful foghorn, startling the cattle into a round of jostling and stamping, and bringing a chorus of eh-hoos from the hands.

Willie heard none ofit. “Oh...my...gawd...,” he said.

“YOU know, I bet my Uncle Jake would like that,” Julie said.

“Absolutely,” John said. “How could anybody not like a topless dashboard hula dancer that plays the Hawaiian War Chant while she jiggles?”

“I don’t know, it’s pretty hard to beat this coconut piggy bank carved into a monkey head,” Gideon said, fingering it. “I think it’s meant to be a guenon, or maybe a mangabey. One of the Cercopithecinae, at any rate.”

“Well, obviously,” John said, yawning. “Cercopithecinae, for sure.”

They were in Hilo Hattie’s in Kona. The two-day getaway to Hilo and Volcanoes National Park had done its work. They had put the Torkelsson affair behind them. The subject of Dagmar’s murder had naturally come up a few times, but only in a desultory way. Talking and surmising had led nowhere and had been depressing, and, in any case, they now understood and accepted—even John did—that it was Fukida’s baby, not theirs.

Besides that, their thoughts had naturally enough begun to turn toward home. They had seats on a Hawaiian Airlines flight the following afternoon and they had stopped in the giant store on their way back to the Outrigger, where they planned to spend their last night, to pick up presents for friends and family. The “serious” purchases had already been made—a handsome coral belt for John’s wife Marti, and a Tommy Bahama Aloha blouse for Julie’s sister. Now they were meandering down the souvenir aisles, searching for a few less formal gifts. John, done with his shopping and getting bored, called the Outrigger to see if there were any messages.

“Call from Inge,” he told them when he’d hung up and they were in the checkout line. “We’re invited to a memorial reception for Dagmar. Casual dress. Just family and close friends.”

“I doubt if Julie and I qualify as close friends,” Gideon said.

“No, she made a point of saying they’d like to have you. She sounded like she meant it. I guess they really don’t want there to be any hard feelings.”

“I don’t think so,” Gideon said doubtfully. “I’ve stirred up a lot of trouble for those people.” He swiped his credit card through the machine on the counter.

“I think we ought to go,” John said.

“When is it?” Julie asked.