The Night Marchers and Other Strange Tales (21 page)

“Do not fret. It is not so bad,” the woman said to Max. “Your Kings will be safe with me. I will believe in them” 

A hint of cinnamon, lily, and something burnt and oily scented the air.  

“You will not take them,” Max said. 

“Have you looked at your Island? Really looked at it?” she said. “Your Kings have grown so weak. No one believes in them. I will believe in them for you.” 

“I will not let you rape them.”  

She laughed. “I will sing to them. Nourish them the way they desire.” 

She opened one the stone jars. Finding only the sticks, she laughed again; her breath reeked like a homeless wretch on the streets of Hilo. 

“Where are they?” she asked.  

Max didn’t answer. The woman stepped around Nicola laying in the sand and seemed to ponder Max’s silence. 

“Very well,” she said. “Yesterday, at the docks, I watched you take the tourists’ picture. I know you want to burn the hotels down. Return to the Hawaii that was lost when Captain Cook came. But you do not. Instead, you tell stories to children. Dig up tikis in the jungle. Your Kings still remember blood. But they will not taste it here. This battle is lost. You are part of America. Fat and mighty America sitting on you with her suntanned bottom, and you are too weak to ever shake her off. But there are places where your Kings will make a difference. I will take them there.” 

The waves went still as if the moon had decided to let go of its hold on the tide. The chorus of night sounds went silent.  

In the back of his mind Max thought that he should be bothered by her words, but he was captivated by the layer of white mist floating just above the surface of the water. It thickened and rolled along the beach.  

“You are haole,” Max said. “Truly without breath. The Kings do not care for whatever your petty plans may be; they care for the wind and water. Fire and stone. For the Island they fought for and its sons and daughters.” 

The woman grabbed a pistol from the nearest man and cocked it, the click unnaturally resonant in the silence. “I wonder, do you really know your Kings at all?” 

Max didn’t flinch from the gun and the woman seemed confused. Then she saw the cloud of white surrounding them and jerked her gun to the side. Her men spun around, pointing their guns in all directions.  

The mist coalesced into wispy bodies. Long lines of translucent ghosts were assembling along the shore. Grim, blank-eyed faces on the ones nearest. The procession of Kings appeared in the surf. Long robes trailed behind them. Max couldn’t tell where the robes ended and the dark-green water began.  

“Great Kings. Soon I will have all of your bones and—”  

Max lunged for her. Then someone fired and the night erupted into wet pops like dud firecrackers followed by the metallic click-clicks of dozens of futile trigger pulls. 

Max tackled the woman and they rolled in the sand, his hands finding their way around her neck. A pair of misty hands solidified around his. The mist formed an arm and then a body. Max thought he’d feel a sense of awe being so close to the Kings but all he felt was blood-lust, the need to wring the life from this intruder. 

As he choked her he watched the other Kings reach for the men. The King’s faces were stern, strong, and regal but blank, like an idealized picture and not the faces of real men. Bullets whizzed through their round, feathered hats.  

I’ve been calling myself a peaceful priest when all along I was always just a killer, Max thought. Maybe the boys will grow up to have the luxury of hands that do not know death. 

The men dropped their guns and fell to the sand, coughing and clutching their throats. Beneath Max, the woman gasped for breath. Her turban had slipped down. The bottom of her face was shriveled and wrinkled, like a shrunken head. Blackened teeth stuck out from turned out lips. Max could see how the scar almost formed a handprint, like a slap immortalized in ruined flesh. She muttered in a foreign tongue with the last of her air. 

Max squeezed the life out of her and a wave of nausea welled in his gut. It had been decades since he had killed, but this felt different and horribly right. She was wrong to think she could take the Kings but she was right that they lusted for blood. He knew it now. With his hands around her neck he was in tune with them, an instrument of their desire.  

The Kings turned to where Nicola lay on the sand among the dead.  

Max moved in front of the great King. Max saw the veins in his feathered hat, the pores and scars on his solemn face, the tattooed bars and triangles on his arm as his hand reached out.  

“No! This one defended you,” Max said. 

The surf bubbled and hissed as if lapping over molten lava. 

“Intruder,” said a voice, though neither the King’s mouth nor opaque eyes moved.  

“I am your priest. And I say spare her,” Max said. “Without me there is no one.” 

The ghost raised its other hand and Max flinched. When he opened his eyes, the Kings were gone and the mist had rolled down the beach.  

Nicola’s eyes fluttered under shut lids. She moaned as Max pulled her away from the rising surf. His relief only lasted a heartbeat. The procession had moved toward the mountains, towards where the boys were still watching. Max ran, hoping to intervene again but the ghosts disappeared and reappeared on the mountain in the blink of an eye. Heat lightning flashed, and the sulfuric smell of lava, tinged with burnt flowers wafted past him. Max watched the boys scatter. He watched Kenjo’s scrawny form in silhouette drop to his knees before the King.  

“Run,” Max said. He didn’t have the breath to shout.  

“He’s just a boy. One of us.”  

Maybe they didn’t hear. Maybe there was no place for mercy for one who should have known kapu. 

Max sprinted but it was too late. Kenjo’s body went slack. The procession of ghosts disappeared over the peak. 

On the beach, the last tendrils of mist receded from the fallen intruders. The surf’s murmur had returned and the chirp of geckos and peepers again filled the night. Up on the mountain, the boys were screaming. 

**** 

The wind hissed through the palms shading Nicola as she slept. Monstrous orange birds of paradise and white orchids sprouted among the overturned tiki and remnants of an old stone wall. 

Max stood in the shade, a lei of fresh flowers in his hands. He waited and watched as she opened her eyes. 

“Good. You are awake,” he said, his face rigid as one of the chiseled idols. 

“I brought you to this city of refuge. I now offer you a chance to repent.” 

Nicola rubbed her eyes and brought her hand to her neck. “You’re serious?” 

“The Kings yearn for your blood. I hear their whispers in the shadows and the waves. This is your chance.” 

Nicola rose, slowly, sleepily and paced the borders, careful not to walk outside the line of stones. 

“I’m leaving and will return later with your supper. Should you stay your first task is to begin to clean this place up. Clear the idols. Repair the wall. While you are working, think of your best stories for the boys. Only the true ones. They can be about me if you wish.”  

“I can just walk away?” 

“Whenever you wish,” he said. “The choice is yours. But leave without my absolution and I think they will find you.” 

Max knelt, carefully picked a white orchid, added it to the lei, and left her. 

**** 

Max held the lei over Kenjo’s grave. 

“Will I see you draped in these next procession?” he said. “Someday, I will join you. But not yet, not yet.”  

Back at Kealakekua Bay Iwana and Kekipi were giving a tour. The real Hawaii, they called it. After what they had witnessed, they had been studying diligently. And talking a lot to the old timers. 

Captain Cook’s ship rested somewhere at the bottom of the bay. Someday all trace of the metal and wood would be gone, but the cliffs and caves would still remain. 

Iwana and Kekipi didn’t think that far ahead. They mourned the loss of their brother and friend and struggled to make sense of kapu and why it was he and not they.  

He draped the flowers over the stone and walked away. 

“It is a start, my Kings,” Max said. “A start.” 

THE MOON AND THE MESA 

Jamie and I have claimed a little bit of elbowroom. I can’t hear her, or anyone very well, but that’s okay. The bartender has his eye on her, as do most of the showboats drinking twenty-dollar cocktails at the bar. She’s dressed down, for her, but even still, I’m very aware of her simple black top that doesn’t even come close to hiding her curves.  

We’re silent. People-watching. Together. The wordless space between us is comfortable and familiar. The extension of a frankness and trust born of being drunk as sin together more times than I can count. My hands remember how they want to touch her but as always they stay at my side, obediently under dominion of my mind, my higher self, despite the alcohol.  

Two guys at the bar are staring right at her. Both tall and blond. Their crisp shirts tightly tucked into well-tailored dark slacks. This bar is full of Euro-trash like them. It’s why she brought me here. Midtown on a Saturday is always good for hunting. 

Jamie’s noticed their stares and encourages them with her smile. They come over. I didn’t even have to say a word.  

“You from here?” tall and blue eyes asks her. 

“Why do you ask?” She tosses a ringlet of her long black hair. 

They laugh and mutter something quickly in German. 

“I’m Heinrich and this is Klaus. Klaus wants to know if this is your boyfriend?” 

“My boyfriend? Oh no, no, no.” She touches my arm. “Just my friend David. And he looks thirsty. Klaus, why don’t you go get us a round?” 

She plays with the silver chain disappearing beneath her shirt, like she always does when it begins. I used to think it was just a flirty habit, until the first time I saw the silver Star of David. Must be from her grandparents. Looks very old country. I never asked. I never needed to. 

“So, are you New Yorkers?” Heinrich asks. He
so
wants to tell us he is traveling. He’s dying to tell us all about what it’s like for him to be in New York. I’ve seen it a hundred times before. For a second I almost feel bad but a childhood image of my grandmother prevents me. 

A thin line of drool hangs from the corner of her mouth as she sits blankly on the couch in the house I grew up in. Often she’d spend the night during the High Holy days and when I’d get up in the night for water or to sneak a cookie I’d catch her unplugging appliances and asking the refrigerator questions about guard locations. Sometimes she’d just go on and on in Yiddish, her eyes all freakily far away. 

“Where do
you
think
we’re
from?” Jamie asks. 

“Uh, here. New York, of course,” he says. 

“Nope.” 

Jamie and I laugh. He doesn’t get it. He can’t. There’s nothing funny about it, except him and the way
she
said it. I’ve been worried about her lately and there’s something different about the way she laughs tonight. Like the start of a twisted belly laugh she won’t be able to stop.  

After a second he laughs too, pretending to get it. His eyes dart to the line of skin showing between her shirt and her jeans. 

“Where do you think I’m from?” 

Jamie starts to talk, but I interrupt. I’m more than worried about her taking it too far. Tonight I want to be the one.  

“Wait, wait, wait,” I say. “I know. I know, don’t tell me. I have it between two places—” 

“Just say,” he says.  

“Uh, I’m not sure. Say something. Say like, Florida Oranges. Say, the rain in Spain falls mainly on the plain.” 

He does. He’s enjoying it. We’re enjoying it more. Klaus is back with our drinks, trying to figure out what he missed. 

“Fuck. I’m so close,” I say. “It’s right on the tip of my tongue. Okay. Whatever. New Jersey?” 

His face is still smiling but the cheer has left. 

“Where?” he asks. 

“New Jersey. Around Hoboken. Right?” 

Jamie’s disappointed. I can tell she wanted to keep it going longer. As in all the way back to her apartment. 

“I was thinking Jersey City,” Jamie says, stirs her pink drink, tastes it, then licks her lips. 

“No,” he says, his smile now a forced grin. 

“Damn, I should have gone with my second guess, Nashville, right? I should have heard that Tennessee accent right away.” 

“No. I’m from Hamburg. Klaus is from Vienna.” 

“Really?” Jamie says. “You look like Jersey boys.” 

They stare, not sure what to say. 

I turn my back to them and make mindless small talk with Jamie. I make it a point to touch her shoulders, her arms, her back with every sentence. After a minute Klaus and Heinrich meld back into the crowd of showboaters. Jamie’s pleased. Our stupid trick slams their type every time. But I know this wasn’t why she came.  

“That was great,” she says and leans in for a kiss.  

Her mouth barely touches mine. Her lips don’t mean it. She doesn’t mean it. It’s just another song and dance, steps in a connect-the-dots that is supposed to form a picture of normalcy, but never does. Beneath I suspect she’s nothing. Nothing but something very broken with no idea how to even begin to reassemble. I don’t even want to think about what that makes me then. 

“Fucking Nazis,” she says in my ear. “But it was too fast. Didn’t you want to take them home?” 

Her new Glock is at home. She keeps it on her pillow, its angles and blackness obscene among the plush get up, like a sex toy among teddy bears. She tells me about it when we talk on the phone and I sense her staring at it when she’s supposed to be listening. Someday soon, she’s gonna use it. She’s right, it was over too fast. We’ve done much, much better, but I thought that someday soon might have been tonight. 

We push our way through the hot maze of cologned bodies and emerge into the relative quiet of the street. She fishes in her purse but instead of taking out a pack of cigarettes she pulls out the little black gun. She holds it up admiring it in the streetlight.