Yuletide Stalker

Maddie nodded and her eyes gleamed with excitement when the man placed one of the birds on her shoulder.

“How about you, sir?” he said. “Get in the picture.” Linc held out his arm and the other bird perched on it. “Stand close to the young lady.”

The man snapped two pictures on his instant camera, and when they developed he handed them to Maddie for viewing.

“Do you like them?” Linc asked.

Maddie didn’t like the tense expression in her eyes—just as the man had snapped the picture, the bird had squeezed her ear with his beak. Surprise shone from her eyes, and her body was tense—as if she was ready to jump out of her skin. But Linc’s picture was perfect. “Yes,” she said. “They will make good souvenirs.” She would have that picture to add to the other one she’d had for years.

Linc handed the man a ten-dollar bill, and Maddie held the still-moist pictures carefully as they went on their way.

They bought colas and hot dogs and ate in a picnic shelter that faced the water. Maddie purchased postcards to send to Miss Caroline and her friends, Lucy Harrison and Janice Reid. Linc rented two beach chairs under an umbrella made of dried palm leaves, and while she wrote to her friends, he dozed in the shade. She’d never felt more at peace with the world.

“Tell me about your restaurants,” Maddie said when she finished her cards and put them in her tote bag.

“I have one on each of the four major islands,” he said. “Eight years ago, I started with a small restaurant here in Honolulu and expanded it over the next two years. When that business was paid for, I started a restaurant on Maui, which also became successful. Over the next two years I opened restaurants on Hawaii and Kauai. It’s been a slow process, but I didn’t have much money to start with.”

“Are you through expanding?”

“I’m in the process of opening another restaurant here in Honolulu.”

“What kind of restaurants?”

“They’re called Everyday Luau. Luaus are big tourist attractions in Hawaii, but expensive. My restaurants have all of the qualities of a luau, but on a smaller scale, and at much less cost.”

“I don’t understand.”

“We serve the same foods available at a luau. There’s a nightly entertainment of traditional Hawaiian music. Each restaurant has a gift shop stocking Hawaiian gift items usually found at luaus. You’ll see what I mean tonight. We’re eating dinner at the Everyday Luau a few blocks from here.”

Maddie looked down at her casual clothes. “Dressed like this?”

“Sure. We’ve created an outdoor atmosphere inside the restaurants. There will be more guests in shorts and jeans than dresses and sport coats.”

“It sounds like fun.”

“I think so,” Linc said.

But Linc’s explanation hadn’t prepared Maddie for the romantic atmosphere of Everyday Luau. The exterior of the metal building located several blocks from downtown Honolulu wasn’t impressive. As she stepped inside, however, Maddie felt as if she’d entered a beach resort. She stopped, awestruck, inside the front door and looked with wondering eyes.

Wall hangings of the ocean and beach, as well as several live palm trees, presented an outdoor atmosphere. The sound of a teeming ocean filtered through the speaker system. Chinese lanterns hung from the ceiling giving out a dim light. The waitresses were dressed in identical gaily flowered muumuus. The waiters’ shirts matched the dresses.

When she commented on the garments, Linc said, “They have different costumes for each night of the week.”

Linc always enjoyed bringing guests to experience the uniqueness of his restaurants, but he’d never been more interested in anyone’s reaction than he was in Maddie’s.

“We’ll have to take our seats,” he said, and she followed the waitress to a table for two beneath a palm tree on a raised platform. Their chairs faced the stage and commanded a sweeping view of the restaurant.

Buffet centers were located throughout the room.

The waitress brought water and took their orders for other beverages. Traditional music filtered quietly around them. The lights faded into semidarkness, and a hush fell over the restaurant. Suddenly two torchbearers ran through the room lighting the tall piers that blazed brightly, illuminating the interior.

“Actually, this is a symbolic ritual,” Linc whispered. “We can’t have open flames inside the building. The torches themselves are electric.”

“But it’s so beautiful. And you have four of these restaurants!”

“Yes, but this one is the largest.”

Kalua pork, the featured meat of early luaus, graced the buffet tables, along with chicken and long rice, salmon, all kinds of vegetables, salads and desserts. Several of the items Maddie took on her plate were unusual. She didn’t always know what she was eating, but the food was delicious. She especially liked coconut bread. She sipped slowly a glass of chilled coconut milk that Linc had added for the Christmas season as a special tribute to the Europeans who had first observed Christmas in the islands.

“I could soon get used to this kind of living,” she said to Linc when she took the last bite of rhubarb angel food cake. “Thanks again for inviting me to visit you. I’m learning a whole new way of life. We lived on the naval base in San Diego when I was a child. That’s the farthest I’ve been away from my birthplace.”

“Your father was stationed at San Diego when I enlisted, and I was really pleased when he was transferred to Hawaii. If he had stayed here, he intended to bring you and your mother.”

“Unfortunately, Mother wasn’t a good serviceman’s wife. She didn’t like the restrictions of a naval base, and I doubt if she would have left her parents to move to Hawaii.”

Suddenly, Maddie felt uneasy. She looked around and saw a husky Hawaiian staring at her with bold, malicious eyes. He dodged behind a palm tree and chills chased up Maddie’s spine. She wanted to think he’d been staring at someone else, but she knew there wasn’t another table behind them.

Linc noted Maddie’s change of expression, and he figured she was saddened by thoughts of her father’s death. He welcomed the flickering lights indicating the start of the evening’s entertainment.

The current program illustrated the crafts and culture of several islands making up the Polynesian group. Interspersed with the music was a demonstration of the making of tapa cloth from mulberry bark. Tonga Fire came alive as a Samoan rubbed sticks together. Natives from New Zealand acted out one of their ancestral legends. Hawaiian girls demonstrated the hula dance.

The hour-long show closed when one man and two women accompanied themselves on a guitar and two ukuleles to sing a medley of hymns. Their closing number, “God Be With You Till We Meet Again” brought tears to Maddie’s eyes.

The restaurant presented a different entertainment each night of the week, but Linc was familiar with them, and he watched Maddie rather than the show. He didn’t have to ask if she liked the program. Her expression changed from interest, to delight, to awe, to pleasure. She had seen so little of the world. What would it be like to guide her as she visited other cultures?

Clutching a cloth to his bleeding side, Kamu struggled up the steep incline and fell face forward on the stone step of the secluded cabin that had been his refuge for the past two weeks. His race was run, and his heart was heavy because he had failed to avenge the deaths of the other male members of his family. He faced eternity without hope because he hadn’t kept faith with his ancestors.

An hour later, Edena stumbled over the body of her twin brother as she started into the cabin. As hefty as her brother, Edena had no trouble lifting him. She carried the last remaining male member of her family carefully into the cabin and laid him on the narrow cot. When she peeled back Kamu’s shirt, blood spurted from the wound he’d received when he escaped from prison. She heated some water and although her hands probed gently when she removed the blood-soaked bandage, Kamu groaned and his eyes opened.

“Sister,” he whispered, and his eyes brightened. “I will not have to die alone.”

“You shall not die,” she said. “Aumakua will not permit it.”

Kamu shook his head wearily. “Our god, Aumakua, does not listen to me now. I’m the only one left, and I have failed to honor my forebears. Give me a knife. If I die by my own hand, it will suffice.”

Edena stretched herself to her full five-feet-five-inches height, pounded herself on the chest and said haughtily, “You forget me. I am willing to carry on the family honor.”

“But you’re a woman. That will shame me.”

“Then I will become a man—at least part of the time. Rest in peace, Kamu.”

Throughout the remainder of the night, Edena sat beside her brother, holding his hand as he slowly and painfully died. Her thoughts were not so much on her brother as on Stanley Horton, who had brought tragedy to her family. It had started when Horton had discovered their crime. One by one, she’d seen her family taken from her. Someone must pay.

When her brother died at last, Edena wept and mourned audibly for hours. As the day dawned, she stood before a small cracked mirror and with a small hammer, knocked out one of her front teeth—a custom of bereavement in her family.

With blood spilling from her mouth, she shouldered her brother’s body and walked up a rugged mountain to the secret family burial cave. She attached a rope to the joints of his legs, put the rope behind his neck and tightened the rope until his knees touched his chest. She wrapped the flexed body in a coarse cloth and placed the rounded package on a shelf in the cave. She laid her hand on the body of her twin and muttered, alternating from her native language to English, “He ola na he ola—a life for a life.”

She passed by the interment alcoves of the other members of the family. When she touched each bundle, she muttered, “A life for a life—I will avenge.”

Edena carefully parted the brushy covering before she stepped out of the cave. A bitter smile twisted her lips as she plodded down the mountain, never doubting that she would be victorious in her vengeance.

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