The Color of Air Read online

  Dedication

  For all the Hilo Aunties who have graced my life

  And in memory of Emily Lee

  Epigraph

  [T]he very color of the air in the place I was born was different, the smell of the earth was special, redolent with memories of my parents.

  —NATSUME SŌSEKI

  Contents

  Cover

  Title Page

  Dedication

  Epigraph

  Mauna Loa: November 21, 1935

  1. Mangoes

  2. Watching Over Him

  3. Rising Winds

  4. The Okawa Fish Market

  5. Beauty and the Beast

  6. Homecoming

  7. Waiting

  8. In the Quiet

  Ghost Voices

  Carrying On: November 23–25, 1935

  9. Sanctuary

  10. Fire and Ice

  11. The Sugar Train

  12. The Green Bungalow

  13. The House Call

  14. The House on the Hill

  Island Voices

  The Past, the Present: November 25–26, 1935

  15. Island Boys

  16. Hide-and-Seek

  17. The Bulletin Board

  Ghost Voices

  You Can’t Hide: November 27–December 4, 1935

  18. A New Direction

  19. One Step Forward

  20. Awakening

  21. Puli Plantation

  Island Voices

  Lost and Found: December 6–8, 1935

  22. Ashes

  23. The Surprise

  24. The Scenic Express

  Ghost Voices

  And Then . . .: December 11–16, 1935

  25. Restless

  26. Collecting

  27. Sugarcane

  28. A Visitor

  29. Run

  30. Nightmares

  31. Packing

  Ghost Voices

  Secrets: December 17–18, 1935

  32. Town Boy

  33. Nori

  34. Naupaka

  Ghost Voices

  Answers: December 18–20, 1935

  35. Lava

  36. Uncle Koji

  37. The Truth of It

  Ghost Voices

  Waiting: December 22–26, 1935

  38. Revelations

  39. Safe Places

  40. Mele Kalikimaka

  Ghost Voices

  Shooting the Moon: December 27–31, 1935

  41. Blackbirds

  42. Mosquitoes

  43. Faith

  44. The River

  Ghost Voices

  A New Year: January 1–2, 1936

  45. The Beating Heart

  46. January 2, 1936

  47. The Living

  Ghost Voices

  Hilo: July 28, 1936

  48. The Mango Tree

  Acknowledgments

  Copyright

  About the Publisher

  Mauna Loa

  November 21, 1935

  1

  Mangoes

  The sky threatened rain as Koji Sanada approached the green bungalow where the pungent scent of rotting mangoes mingled with a hint of smoke, the bitter remnants of the preharvest cane burning that drifted down from the surrounding plantations. He knew it all too well. Sugarcane had been his life since his family first arrived in Hilo, Hawai’i, by way of Osaka, Japan, in 1895, along with all the other immigrant workers who had flocked to jobs on the island’s sugar and pineapple plantations. Koji had been ten years old, the older of two children and the only son. He had immediately embraced the wildness of the island as his own, so different from his traditional Japanese upbringing. Along the way, the three years his parents had been contracted to stay before returning to Japan had turned into a lifetime.

  Koji walked up the dirt path to the house he knew so well. It was here on the Big Island near the growing community of Hilo that he found a new home at the Puli Plantation, along with years of backbreaking work, toiling under the hot sun, the wind and rain, the tremors and quakes, and it was here on this island of five volcanoes that he’d also found Mariko Abe.

  He paused to look around Mariko’s yard now and felt a dull ache at having let her down. The garden, always her pride, was wild and overgrown without her. He meant to come pick the mangoes and take them to Nori at the Okawa Fish Market, but once again time had gotten away from him. He continued up the path to see her beloved mango tree, planted by her grandfather but now empty of fruit. It had been wet and muggy all week, and the moist ground was heavily blanketed with leaves and rotted fruit, only the dark seeds of a few fist-size mangoes still recognizable. It always amazed Koji how quickly the earth could reclaim its own.

  Close your eyes. He thought he heard Mariko’s voice again. Now, what do you smell? When they were young, she’d taught him the mangoes were ready to pick when you could smell their fragrant melon pineapple aroma, while they were still firm to the touch. Her tree always yielded the sweetest mangoes in Hilo town. Koji smiled to think Mariko knew mangoes the way he knew sugarcane, and he felt a sudden sharp longing that was just another form of grief. She had died two years ago and it still felt like yesterday.

  Another tremor underfoot shook Koji from his thoughts. The island had been restless with waves of slight tremors for the past two months, and he worried that they foreshadowed something bigger and stronger. So far, nothing had come of them, but the island’s history said otherwise.

  “It’s just the island hiccuping,” his mother used to say, to coax the fear out of his younger sister. Koji hoped it was nothing more now that Mariko’s son Daniel was finally coming home from the mainland after more than ten years of study. The last time Koji had seen him was during his mother’s final months. Since her death, time had played tricks on him, moving both too fast and too slow without her. He couldn’t help but feel as if part of Mariko was returning to him with her son, reawakening long-buried memories. Koji walked to the woodshed where Mariko kept her gardening tools. He quickly cleaned around the tree before going up to the house, where he was certain to find Nori making sure everything was ready for Daniel’s return.

  The steps up to the front porch creaked underfoot. Koji was back at the house for the first time in two years, heat and moisture leaving slivers of cracked paint peeling from the trim and railing. Mariko’s chair, where she had often sat and sewed, looked weathered and forlorn. Koji slipped off his shoes, pulled open the screen door, and stood at the threshold looking in. The package he came to deliver was in his pocket. He swallowed and felt another tremor. Go on, he told himself. He heard movement coming from the kitchen and choked back the familiarity. It wasn’t her, he reminded himself; it was Nori. He took a deep breath and stepped into the house.

  2

  Watching Over Him

  Nori Okawa stood in the kitchen of Daniel’s childhood home—the faded, weather-beaten green bungalow that had been left to Mariko by her mother and now belonged to Daniel. The house had been one of Mariko’s most cherished possessions, built by her grandfather after he had emigrated from Japan. “It holds our family spirits,” she always said, “keeps them alive.” And it was within walking distance of downtown and the Okawa Fish Market. Nori’s ongoing care of the house was evident in the thriving orchids, in the spotless kitchen, in the clean bedsheets and dusted shelves of his room. For the past few weeks, word had spread through the community about the welcome home party for Daniel at the Okawa Fish Market. Everything was ready for his return.

  Nori and the Hilo Aunties had been excited all week. Daniel’s letter said he would arrive back in Hilo on the steamer Lanai that evening from Oahu. Nori knew how proud Mariko would have been. Her son had left the island at eighteen for a mainland educati
on, and was returning a full-fledged doctor. Daniel was one of the first Japanese in his medical school and the first Hilo boy to become a doctor. The entire community knew how hard he had studied to be accepted into a mainland university. Along the way, his triumph had also become theirs. There’d been so many obstacles—from cost to the distance—but Daniel did well on his exams, and his high school teachers had written him glowing letters of recommendation. Along with the scholarships he received, it felt destined to be.

  Nori smiled. Daniel was returning a big-shot doctor now, who hadn’t been seduced away by Chicago and all the big-city temptations. Even when Daniel was a boy, Nori knew he would succeed and make them all proud—he was driven in that way, a good student who cared for every stray dog or hurt animal, even before he realized he wanted to be a doctor. Along with her two boys, Wilson and Mano, who had followed their father into the Okawa family fishing business, she always considered Daniel to be her third son, more so after Mariko had passed away from cancer. She knew it would have to be his own decision, but Nori had selfishly hoped that he would return to Hilo town. So many other young people who left for Oahu, or the mainland, had forgotten their Hilo roots only to return as strangers, or not at all.

  Nori felt another tremor just as she leaned over to put the last plate into the icebox. She had filled it with a few dishes Daniel liked—chicken and taro, lomi-lomi salmon, and coconut haupia, the sweet gelatin he loved as a kid, just in case he was hungry during the night. She didn’t dare to make his favorite, Portuguese chicken, which no one in Hilo made as well as his mother. Nori straightened and suddenly felt Mariko’s presence right there in the kitchen with her. She was still everywhere—in her stained teacup in the cupboard; in the empty chair against the chipped Formica table; in her faded, flowered apron that still hung inside the pantry door. They had shared so many important moments right there in the small, warm room ever since they were young girls. Nori wiped her hands on a dish towel and once again heard the echo of their voices circle around her.

  The kitchen was always the heart of Mariko’s house. It was where she had first told Nori she was pregnant with Daniel. She appeared pale and tense that morning, so afraid her husband, Franklin, wouldn’t be ready, that he’d be angry with her. But he surprised them all, and was happy when he returned from a job on Maui and found out about the baby. “A boy,” he’d said, “I can feel it.” At about the same time Nori had discovered that she was pregnant with Mano. “We’re having twins,” Mariko was the first to say. Nori had never seen her so content, ever hopeful that Franklin would finally settle down.

  “I know you can hear me,” she said aloud, replacing the dish towel on its hook. “Don’t worry, Mari, we’re watching over him.”

  “Who are you talking to?”

  Nori’s heart jumped; she turned to see her old friend Koji Sanada, muddy shoes in one hand, standing in the doorway. She hadn’t heard him come into the house. She smiled now to see him, wearing a T-shirt and baggy work pants. He’d always been like a brother to her. Nori was an only child of pineapple-picking parents who barely noticed her and had eventually drank themselves to death. They’d all grown up together in the tightly knit community, watching the rise of the sugar plantations and the growth of Hilo.

  “To myself,” she said, and looked away flustered. “What are you doing here and not at the market?”

  Nori knew the locals were already gathering there.

  “I wanted to leave this here for Daniel,” Koji said. He placed a wrapped box on the kitchen table.

  Nori smiled. She knew it was most likely another railcar—an addition to Daniel’s favorite train set that Koji had started building with him when he was a seven-year-old boy. Every year since, he had added to it.

  “He’ll be happy to have it waiting for him,” she said.

  “Is there anything else that needs doing before he arrives?”

  Through the years, Hilo town had weathered many ups and downs, and Koji was someone on whom the locals could always depend. Now, just past fifty, he was still in better shape than many men a decade younger, solid and muscular. He’d grown up and worked on a sugar plantation since his father was hired by John Dillingham back in the late 1800s, when many of the big sugarcane plantations were started. “Sweetness runs through my blood,” he liked to tell her. Koji knew more about the cane work than most of the lunas, the mostly Portuguese foremen who oversaw the workers. He was a legend in the fields, his skill becoming mythical over the years. He was known as the fastest cane cutter on the Big Island, and still held the record of cutting twelve hundred pounds of sugarcane in an hour. After twenty years of cutting cane at the Puli Plantation, and even as age and later injuries slowed him down, the owners had asked him to stay on to run the sugar train.

  “Everything’s done here,” Nori said.

  “Mariko would be happy to have him home, yeah?”

  “Very happy,” she said.

  “I’ll take the sugar train back up to Puli once the cane is unloaded at the station. Come back down to the market in the truck afterward.” Koji ran his hand over his short, graying hair and looked around. He stood a moment lost in memory. “The place looks good.”

  Since Mariko’s death, Koji had stopped coming to the bungalow. Before then, he was there every Sunday helping Mariko to fix one thing or another, spending time with the two of them at harvest end, and later, when Daniel came home at Christmas every year. They were his family, but now he kept to himself. While they had all mourned her death, Koji’s loss felt all the louder in his silence.

  Nori smiled. “Don’t be late, yeah.”

  “Haven’t I always kept the train on schedule?” Koji said.

  “Always a first time.”

  “I’ll be there.”

  Koji lifted his hand in a wave and stepped out the back door. Nori watched as he pulled on his shoes before thumping down the stairs. She waited a few minutes in the quiet kitchen, but Mariko never returned.

  3

  Rising Winds

  The winds had risen by the time Koji brought the sugar train back to the Puli Plantation. Over the years Puli had become one of the largest sugar plantations south of Hilo, several thousand acres not twenty miles up the mountain from town. From the train barn, he walked past the sugar house and mill, up the road to his small tin-roofed wood cottage that overlooked the cane fields. Only after all his work was completed did Koji really feel the sharp tug of excitement at Daniel’s return. He wondered how long it would take for Daniel to slow to the island rhythms again. Daniel would have to readapt to living in a small island town with its sudden midafternoon rainstorms; the muggy heat and fierce winds; the dense, green blankets of foliage; and the hovering, dark volcanoes that loomed over everything. From the moment Koji set foot onto the black lava rocks as a boy, he knew that the island was a living organism and they were simply guests.

  The winds grew stronger now, pulling at Koji, ghosts urging him back to the cane. I still have to change and drive back down to Hilo, he thought, even as he turned around and began to walk back down toward the fields.

  * * *

  The air stilled for a moment followed by the rustling of cane leaves.

  “You’re going the wrong way, yeah,” Razor Takahashi said, meeting Koji at the edge of the field, a sweat-slick layer of cane dust on Razor’s face, a pint-size bottle of whiskey in his hand. The trade winds rose and had the tall cane swaying back and forth like hula dancers. The northern fields were the last of the fields being readied to be burned.

  “Just need to walk a bit,” Koji said.

  “Can’t get enough of the cane, eh?” Razor said and laughed.

  It was true. Koji often felt a pull toward the cane. It was in his blood, the only life he’d known, and the place where he felt most at home. It was something he knew Razor understood.

  Razor took a swig from the bottle. He reached out and offered Koji a drink. “What time is Daniel coming home?”

  Koji shook his head and smiled at hi
s old friend. “He’s arriving soon. I better go. I’ll see you soon, yeah. Save some for me,” he added, pointing to the bottle before he walked into the sugarcane field.

  When Koji turned back, Razor was already gone from sight.

  * * *

  Razor had been his first real friend at the plantation. Their lives before then had been uprooted when his father lost their small rice farm in Yamaguchi Prefecture in western Japan after a series of bad business deals. “Isn’t sugarcane just another type of farming?” his father had reasoned. “A three-year contract offering steady pay and free housing, and we’ll return to Japan standing firmly on our feet again.” All Koji remembered was how weak his legs felt after sailing across the ocean for more than three weeks aboard the City of Tokio, weaker than standing all day bent over in their wet rice paddy field. It was early morning when they’d arrived in Hilo, the town shrouded in mist, reminding him of the Japanese village in a folktale his mother had read to him and his sister. Koji imagined the spirits from those stories had followed them all the way across the ocean. Even the same dark and foreboding mountains stood tall in the distance.

  A dockworker unloading the ship followed his gaze. “That’s Mauna Loa, yeah, Hawai’i’s version of Mount Fuji,” he’d said. “There are four more volcanoes that make up the island,” he added. “No need to worry, eh. Only three of them are active.”

  Five volcanoes on one island.

  Koji was immediately captivated.

  His family’s papers were quickly signed and collected at the harbor by Japanese-speaking immigration officers. After, they were herded into a tent for a quick health clearance, poked and prodded by Japanese doctors hired by the plantations before they were packed onto horse-drawn wagons with the other new arrivals, squeezed so tightly together that Koji could hardly move in the breathless heat. From there they were bumped and jostled for two hours through dense forests of ohi’a trees, shrubs, and thick, overgrown foliage, and then up a winding, treacherous mountain road to their new home at Puli Plantation.

  By the time they arrived, Koji was hot and sweaty, his body sore and bruised from the rough plywood wagon. His legs no longer felt anything. He sat up when the wagon jerked to a stop at the front gate of the plantation and the driver yelled out in awkward, practiced Japanese, “Homu, suito homu!” Home, sweet home! Beyond the gate, not more than half a mile down a dirt road, the driver pointed to three separate wind-weary clapboard buildings that housed the plantation office, the school, and a store. Farther down the road stood a larger building, the sugar mill. And past the mill, as far as the eye could see, were acres and acres of tall, billowing sugarcane.