Free This Is Paradise by Kristiana Kahakauwila Page B

about my uncles and those birds. I wanted to commit them to paper and then leave them there.
    That I have finally succeeded in speaking of those men—the most important in my life and the most disappointing—is, oddly enough, thanks to Mr. Oh. Not long ago, after closing up the kitchen at the bistro, I walked to the Blue Conch for a pau hana before returning home. I took a corner stool in the back where I wasn’t likely to be interrupted and ordered a beer. Diagonally across from me sat a man I almost didn’t recognize. He looked old and tired. His polo shirt was speckled with food stains, smudges browned his collar. A long scar ran from beneath his left ear to just under his chin. From the way he held himself, stiff and regal, though wary now, too, I knew it was Mr. Oh.
    When I gave him the same curt nod he had afforded me at that derby so long ago, his eyes grew, and he scooted from the bar. I guessed that he, too, had heard the rumor I was seeking out his bosses, and he must have thought I had also come for him.
    I followed him outside. “Wait,” I called from the bar entrance.
    He was across the street and several storefronts down, but he paused. He looked over his shoulder and in that same careful English said, “It is over for me now. You know that, do you not?”
    I wanted to assure him I meant no harm and the islands’ gossips were not to be trusted, but he didn’t wait to hear me. He hurried down the street and disappeared into an alley. For a moment I was frustrated by his departure, by his refusal to listen to me, but then I felt a great release. I can only describe it as the relief of loss. I now haunted him as once he had haunted me. This was my revenge: I had liberated myself from those men, but they could not be free of me.
    As I looked down the empty street, the shadows hid nothing. I didn’t hope to see the silhouette of the Indian. I didn’t hope to return to the life I once had.
Wanle
, I said to myself.
It is done. They are all gone
.

THE ROAD TO HĀNA
    He’d be happy with Becky forever, Cameron thought on their flight to Maui, and again when they rented the little Chevy Aveo, and even when they’d stopped for a late breakfast in Pāʻia and she poured shoyu on her fried eggs and the liquid left black streaks through the yolks. She had told him that she wanted to buy a condo in Honolulu, but now he wondered aloud if eventually she’d wish to return to Vegas because her parents and aunts and uncles were there.
    “Never,” she said, reaching for his hand across the glass tabletop. They were sitting on the restaurant’s patio, close to the kitchen, and through the screen door he could hear the cooks’ laughter and the sizzle of the grill. “I came back here to stay.”
    Cameron squeezed her hand in his. “But you should feel free to change your mind. Go where the jobs are or where the adventure lies.”
    “You can be so silly sometimes!” she laughed. She stood and walked around the café table, then sat herself in his lap. Her fingers were cool against his temple. A stray dog wandered onto the open patio and sniffed along the bottom of the kitchen door. Cameron tossed it a slice of toast. “If you leave, I’ll go with you,” he promised.
    Becky didn’t answer him right away, but later, in the car, she said, “It’s just you and your parents here, but for me there’s an entire ancestry. I’m not going anywhere, Cam. This is my real home.”
    Cameron appreciated her reassurance. He loved her for it. And yet, he wondered what Honolulu was if not
his
real home. He had been born there, raised there. His parents and friends were there. He taught history at McKinley High, and his students respected him. Just because his parents were born in Minnesota didn’t mean Hawaiʻi wasn’t his.
    She held out a bottle of sparkling water. “Because you’re always dehydrated after a big breakfast,” she said, and kissed his cheek. He smiled then because she was right and she knew him so well.