“Only twenty-one,” Keaka corrected her. “Just enough to serve him.”
“Give me a break,” Lila said, “and pass the pumpernickel while you’re at it, Keaka the Great.”
Lassiter ordered stone crabs for the table. Boiled and served cold with a tangy mustard sauce, the hard colorful claws contain a meat sweeter than lobster. Keaka Kealia devoured his order and asked for a second portion. He ate quickly, going from one side dish to another, creamed spinach and hash browns and fried eggplant. Together, they put away several cold beers and the room became warmer. Around them was the clatter of plates and the cacophony of voices. At the table, everything was in softer focus now, the atmosphere changed. Keaka became more talkative, weaving tales of Hawaiian folklore, warriors from the jungle defeating great forces of invaders. Lila’s face radiated happiness, her eyes sparkling, and Lassiter thoughtfully concluded that the world’s most glorious sight was a dab of mustard sauce clinging impossibly to a cheekbone carved by Michelangelo.
On request, Keaka passed the second portion of stone crabs to Lassiter, but suddenly he winced, and Lassiter caught the platter before it crashed to the table.
“Good reflexes,” Keaka said.
“The pass-tip drill,” Lassiter replied. “You okay?”
Keaka was silent. Lila looked at him and asked, “Did you soak your elbows today?”
The Hawaiian shook his head. “Later, at the hotel. Don’t worry. I don’t bother you about your problems.”
Jake Lassiter waited, the outsider, figuring they would fill him in if they wanted to.
“Torn ligaments in both my ankles,” Lila explained, “from hard landings in wave jumping. But it’s really nothing compared to Keaka’s elbows. Chronic tendonitis from all that pressure on the arms.”
“Can’t it be treated?”
“Sure,” she said. “Anti-inflammatory pills, cortisone, tendon massage. Nothing works. Keaka soaks both elbows in ice after windsurfing every day.”
“Like Sandy Koufax,” Lassiter said.
“Who?” Keaka asked without taking his eyes from the claw he was dissecting.
“Pitcher,” Lassiter said, making a throwing motion with his left arm. “Struck out fifteen Yankees in the first game of the Series in ‘63. Had a bad elbow that cut his career short.”
“Yankees?” Keaka asked, clearly puzzled. “ Haoles?”
Lila erupted in laughter. “It’s a baseball team, Keaka.”
Now Lassiter was puzzled. “What’s a howley?” he asked.
“There’s a culture gap here,” Lila said. “ Haoles are Caucasians, foreigners as far as the native Hawaiians are concerned. So when you said ‘Yankees’…”
“I get it,” Lassiter said.
Keaka silently ate his stone crabs, ignoring the conversation, seeming not to listen until he looked straight at Lassiter and announced, “You haoles are ridiculous. You wear too many clothes, ties that choke the neck and hang down like an old man’s limp ole. Your women starve themselves and end up with chicken necks and hips sharp as bamboo sticks. You work in offices fifty weeks a year, then come to Maui and lie all day on a tiny piece of sand by your Hyatts and Marriotts where all you see are other haoles.”
The attack startled Lassiter. Why this resentment directed at him? Lila waited for Lassiter’s response, enjoying the verbal combat as if staged for her amusement.
Lassiter joined the battle. “Keaka, if you’re saying that modern America has a lot to learn, I agree. But we can’t all spend our days on the beach. Somebody’s got to grow the grain and make the widgets and even try the lawsuits.”
Lila’s full mouth parted into a small, enigmatic smile. “Jake, we all must find ourselves, decide what to do with our lives. I know that I would be out of place in a city. And maybe I have no right to say this, but when I look at you, I don’t see a lawyer in a three-piece suit and a fancy office. I see an outdoorsman, riding horses in the mountains, windsurfing on unspoiled waters.”
Lassiter looked at Keaka. No expression. Back to Lila. Was she teasing him, leading him on?
“I don’t know,” he said, “you might think I was just another haole.”
“No, Jake, you’d be different, I can tell.”
Keaka laughed without smiling. “Would he know the mountain or the jungle or the sea? There are spirits on Maui that sing, but the haoles are deaf. They, are forever strangers in my land.”
Jake Lassiter cleared his throat and bought some time. Had it been a courtroom, he would have thumbed through some papers, stood up, hitched his thumbs in his belt, and prepared to counterattack. Here he just took a sip of the cold beer and thought it through. First Lila flirts with him, then Keaka insults him. And does it well. I knew the bastard could out-windsurf me, but he’s outdebating me, too, Lassiter thought. A surprise witness catching him off guard. He had imagined they would talk about the latest in camber-induced sails and triple skegs, but Keaka was not just a jock and the sparring seemed to be for Lila’s approval. How to win? To tell them their lives were meaningless, just waiting for the wind, doing stunts in the waves, empty days of barefoot bliss. But was his life any more meaningful, renting himself out by the hour to balloon-heads like Thad Whitney at the bank?
Finally Lassiter said, “Keaka, you speak very eloquently. Your thoughts are profound and you deliver them poetically. But you overgeneralize. Every culture has its philistines, even old Hawaii, I’m sure. We have no monopoly on evil here.”
“It’s not poetry, it’s history,” Keaka shot back. “The English came two hundred years ago to build ports for their ships in the Pacific. Then the American missionaries, who thought nakedness was sinful, so they covered our bodies with heavy clothes and made us stink like them. The haoles stole our land and brought disease and killed the whales and swallowed the fish in huge nets. They planted that damn weed, sugarcane, for what, to make Coca- Cola? Then they burned the cane in the fields and blackened the sky.”
Any rebuttal, Counselor? a faraway judge whispered in Lassiter’s ear. He tried to remember what he knew of Hawaii. The college football team was called the Rainbows, or was it the Pineapples, and a long time ago he had read the Michener book, or did he just see the TV movie and think he read the book?
“Even before the Europeans, weren’t there constant wars on the islands?” Lassiter asked. “It wasn’t exactly Camelot.”
“Right,” Lila said, patting Lassiter’s arm. Her fingers lingered, and Lassiter’s pulse quickened. “Keaka’s ancestors used to get all painted up like Indians in a B Western and ride around in war canoes. The Big Island had five or six chiefs ruling different tribes, and they’d cut each other’s hearts out.”
Keaka narrowed his eyes and gestured toward both of them with a table knife. “It is an honor to be a great warrior, to die a warrior’s death.” Then he silently examined a claw that was not cracked, apparently overlooked by the kitchen crew which used mallets to break the hard shells that give the crabs their name.
Lassiter said, “Don’t worry, we’ll send it back and they’ll give it forty whacks.”
“No need.” Keaka scooped up the claw and it disappeared into a thick brown hand. The fingers closed and Lassiter watched ribbons of muscle pop from Keaka’s forearm.
“That’s not a walnut,” Lassiter warned. “The shell’s too thick…” A sharp crack interrupted him, the shell splitting into pieces. Blood spurted onto the tablecloth, a piece of jagged shell sticking from Keaka’s thumb. Expressionless, he sucked at the wound for a moment, then devoured the meat from the claw.
The show of strength seemed intended for him, Lassiter thought, a primitive warning, a staking out of territory. Had he telegraphed his thoughts about Lila, or did every man?
“I didn’t think that was possible,” Lassiter said.
Keaka grunted. “It’s easy. First you find the weak spot, then you apply pressure.” He jutted out his chin and smiled, the look of a barracuda. Then he rubbed his right elbow with his left hand.
“Keaka here is hard as a rock everywhere,” Lila said, squeezing Keaka’s thigh and simultaneously harpooning Lassiter’s morale. “But his elbow tendons are like spaghetti. He doesn’t complain, too Hawaiian macho for that, but I know how much it hurts. I wonder how much longer he can go on. We’re looking for easier ways to make money.”
Keaka shot her a murderous glance. “Listen, I’ve heard enough about my elbows. It takes more than a sore elbow to stop a Hawaiian. More even than three bullets.”
“Three bullets?” Lassiter asked.
Lila sighed. “A Hawaiian fable.”
“No. True story,” Keaka corrected her. “Haven’t you ever heard the saying ‘Never shoot a Hawaiian three
