Hawaii - James Michener [325]
"Could you please let us have some food?" Nyuk Tsin begged.
"Of course!" the big woman cried. "We don't have much. Kimo!" she called unexpectedly, and from the lowly grass house a big, fat, lazy Hawaiian man appeared, with no shirt and a pair of almost disintegrating sailor's pants held up by a length of rope. He was not shaved or washed and apparently he had slept in his pants for several months, but he had a huge, amiable, grinning face.
"What is it, Apikela?" he asked, using her Biblical name Abigail.
"The mai Pake is hiding in the ravine," Apikela explained. "He hasn't eaten for four days."
"We better get him some food!" Kimo, the Biblical James, replied. And he hurried back into the grass house and soon reappeared with a ti leaf full of poi, some baked breadfruit and a few chunks of coconut. "No rice," he joked.
"I'll take it to the sick man," Nyuk Tsin replied.
"I'll go with you," Kimo volunteered.
"It isn't necessary," Nyuk Tsin protested, for she did not want to involve these kind people with the police.
"How are you going to carry him back here?" Kimo demanded.
Nyuk Tsin could scarcely believe the words she was hearing. Without looking at Kimo she asked softly, "Then I can hide him here ... for a few days?"
"Of course!" Apikela laughed, rocking back and forth. "Those damned police!"
"It's a terrible thing to catch sick men and send them to a lonely island," Kimo agreed. "If a man's going to die, let him die with his friends. He's soon gone, and nobody is poorer." He wrapped up the food and said, "Show me where the poor fellow is."
But now Apikela rose and said, "No, Kimo, I'll go. If police are on the road it will be better if I am the one they question. Because I can claim I'm on my way to work, and if they come here it will look less suspicious if you are asleep in the house as usual."
Kimo considered this logic for a moment and agreed with his shrewd wife that things would give a better appearance if the day's routine were not broken, so he went back to bed; fat Apikela marched slowly down the path; and Nyuk Tsin kept up with her by creeping through the rain forest, and the two women had progressed only a little way when Apikela stopped, motioned to the Chinese and said, "It would seem more reasonable if I had two chains of maile about my neck. Go back and ask Kimo for them." And when the huge woman had placed the spicy maile leaves about her shoulders, the procession resumed.
Her strategy was a good one, for when she reached the highway, with Nyuk Tsin cowering behind in the forest, police came by on horses and asked, "Have you seen the mai Pake Chinese?"
"No," she replied blandly.
"What are you doing abroad so early, Apikela?"
"Gathering maile vines, as usual," she said.
They saw the vines and believed. "If you see the Chinese in your clearing, come out to the road and report them."
"I will," the gigantic woman agreed, and slowly she moved on down the road.
Now Nyuk Tsin ran ahead, and it was fortunate that she did so, for when she reached the spot where she had left her husband, she saw that Mun Ki had disappeared, and she experienced a moment of despair, but she was soon able to pick up his tracks through the muddy leaves and she guessed that he was headed toward the highway, to give himself up. In panic Nyuk Tsin followed his trail and saw him just as he was about to climb an embankment and cry to passing strangers. Leaping ahead, she dashed up behind him and caught his legs, grappling with him and dragging him back down into the forest. "I have brought you food," she gasped.
"Where?" he asked, sure that his wife's empty hands proved the hoax.
"There!" Nyuk Tsin replied, and through the trees that edged the highway she pointed to the figure of a huge woman, rolling and wheezing along in a tentlike brown dress made of Boston fabric. She wore maile chains about her neck and an unconcerned, happy smile upon her enormous brown face.
"Who's that?" Mun Ki whispered.