“Isn’t that something?” Lassiter continued. “Just like your ancestors paddling canoes from Club Med or wherever to Hawaii.”
“You will suffer pain such as you have never known.”
Lassiter tried to dry his palm on his trunks but they were still wet. His feet ached from the cuts and his legs were concrete pillars. And Keaka was talking again. “Lila, you have offended me and you should be punished. I could let you stay with Lee Hu and me, and both of you could service me. Or you can die. The choice is yours.”
Lassiter worked up a laugh. “Isn’t there a third choice. Like a week in Philadelphia?”
Out of the corner of his eye, Lassiter saw the machete blade. Visualized it now. Two huge steps, the dive, the roll, the grab.
Keaka glared at him. “I am talking to the wahine. In a moment, I will deal with you, haole.”
“Take your time,” Lassiter said. “I charge by the hour, and my next lunatic doesn’t come in till noon tomorrow.”
Wrap your hand around the wooden handle, then a tight, compact swing to the gut.
“I choose to live,” Lila said, taking a long step toward Keaka, as if enlisting in the Army. It was a signal, Lassiter thought, and he bolted to the right, took two steps, then leapt toward the tree stump and the machete. He’d never had any speed — 4.85 for the forty on a good day, and that before knee surgery — but he didn’t have far to go. He would have made it, too, if his legs hadn’t buckled as he tried to launch, just plain gave out, and he sprawled in the brush, his mouth full of dark brown sand, briars scratching his forehead. The machete was five feet — a million miles — away.
Keaka watched without excitement. He swung the Uzi to his left, hefted it to just below shoulder height, and waited until he had a clear shot at Lassiter’s back. He never saw Lila’s hand come up hard, an uppercut, her fist full of a blue fiberglass fin, sharp as a saber, slashing upward. It caught him right below the navel, and with one fluid motion she slid the blade through his belly, a clean incision, luxuriating in the feel of the smooth tear, placid as a housewife trimming a pie crust. As the point dug in, Lila twisted upward, tearing muscle and tissue and organs, and the fin came to rest stuck in the bottom of his sternum. Keaka dropped to his knees and the Uzi fell to the ground. He stared in disbelief at his wound, blood pouring from his abdomen, staining the sand. Lee Hu gasped, then turned and ran into the jungle.
Lila picked up the gun and tossed it to Lassiter, who was still on all fours. “Take care of this,” she said, turning her back to Keaka who lay on his side, nearly in the fire.
Slowly Keaka came to his knees, keeping his innards from coming through the tear by pressing his hand hard over the wound. From deep within himself, from a thousand years of warriors and chiefs and steel-backed men who paddled canoes across raging seas, he blinked through the pain.
Lila took two steps toward the jungle in the direction Lee Hu had run. Lassiter turned and saw Keaka, a grotesque figure, hunched over, approaching Lila from behind, one hand pressed to his abdomen, the other high over his head holding a heavy log. In the light of the fire, Lassiter could see flames spurting from the log and could hear Keaka’s flesh crackling. Lassiter raised the Uzi but Lila stood between him and Keaka and he could only yell, “Lila, behind you!”
The warning was a second too late, and the flaming club began its descent, but then Keaka cried out and the torch fell harmlessly to the ground. Now the hand that had clutched his stomach was holding the elbow, the swollen tendons that had lasted so many hours in so many oceans, thickened and brittle, snapping like old guitar strings.
Catlike, Lila sprang to the tree stump and dislodged the machete with one hand. She brought her arms back, and with a left-handed swing, a slight uppercut — Ted Williams in his prime — she brought it around, right foot stepping forward, and Lassiter heard the air rushing by the thirty-inch steel blade.
The machete neatly sliced Keaka’s ear in two, the top half falling to the ground like a banana slice. Then the jungle exploded with the sound of a coconut axed in two, the blade fracturing Keaka’s skull. The machete broke, the blade lodged in his temple, the wooden handle still in Lila’s hands, a broken Louisville Slugger. The two of them stood there for a moment, Keaka’s eyes glassy. Then he crumpled to the ground.
The king’s greatest wish had been granted. He had died a warrior’s death and would join his ancestors for eternity.
CHAPTER 30
Ho’oheno Li’a
To Cherish Li’a
“Auhea ‘oe e ka ipo pe’e poli,
Listen, lover with a hidden heart,
‘O ke anoano waili’ula.
Overpowering mirage.
A he lei mamo ‘oe no ke ahiahi
You are evening’s lei of saffron flowers
E ‘uhene ai me Li’a i ka uka
Exulting with Li’a, Goddess of desire, in the forest.
“Me ‘oe ka ‘ano ‘i pau ‘ole, v
“With you an unending desire,
A nei pu ‘uwai e ‘oni nei
Here in the beating heart
Mai ho ‘ohala i ka ‘ike lihi mai
Do not thrust away the glimpse
Pulupe ai maua i ka ua noe
Of our drenching in the misty rain.”
Jake Lassiter and Lila Summers spent the night — what was left of it — at Keaka’s campsite. Lila slipped out of her wet swimsuit, a one-piece yellow number, and dried off on a lauhala mat of woven leaves in the hale. Lassiter removed his trunks and put on one of Keaka’s loincloths.
Lila stifled a laugh. “You look good in that, Jake. It was Keaka’s favorite. He shot a wild goat for the skin.”
“If my partners could see me now, a deep-carpet lawyer in a goatskin jockstrap.”
They found some poi that Keaka had stored in gourds and mixed it with smoked fish. Lassiter started eating with his fingers. “Think you could make this stuff in Miami?” He knew what he was saying, sort of asking what she had planned for the rest of her life.
“Get me some taro, the Hawaiian staff of life,” she said, “and I’ll make poi till it’s coming out your ears.”
Jake Lassiter squatted on his haunches in the little hut and sliced several passion fruit, sucking at the tart jelly inside the skin. Lila studied him in the light of a kukui nut candle and said, “You’re starting to look like you belong here, Jake, like you fit in with the land and the sea.”
Now what did that mean, he wanted to ask but didn’t, that she was going to stay on Maui but that he could share her hale anytime? She had to know that now — after killing Keaka and with Mikala still around — she’d have to leave the island too. Lila slid back on the mat, making room for him, and then she patted a spot that must have had his name on it. She was sitting there in the flickering light, inviting him to partake of her after the poi but Jake Lassiter was strangely empty, devoid of desire. Lila cocked her head, studying him, her full mouth in its perpetual pout. She leaned back, bracing her arms on the ground, her breasts thrust forward. Her eyes glowed, and her cheeks were flushed.
“Maybe one of us should stay outside and keep watch,” he said, gesturing toward the door with the Uzi.
“Jake, we’re alone here, trust me.”
“What about Lee Hu?” he asked.
