Aloha Love (4 page)
October 1889, Hawaii
“Focus on the horizon,” Jane and the other passengers were told by the captain. “That will get you accustomed to solid ground again. Just like you had to get your sea legs, you’ll now have to get your land legs back.”
Jane didn’t worry about that. She was ready for land. During those first few days of travel, she had taken care of the others, putting cold cloths on Matilda’s and Pilar’s heads when they had come down with bad cases of seasickness.
Now, she stood at the railing, focused on the horizon for that first glimpse of land. Once it first appeared like a pencil line across the ocean, it always reappeared, no matter how high the waves.
“Like oil,” Jane said, glancing at the faces of Matilda and Pilar, who looked as excited as she felt. “No matter how much water, the oil keeps rising to the top.”
“And often looks like a rainbow of color,” Matilda said.
“Speaking of rainbows, look.” A rainbow of colors more vivid than she had ever imagined made a halo over the ocean and that speck of land.
So this was her first glimpse of Hawaii. Swept away like an ocean wave was any concern or fatigue of that long, wearisome, boring, sometimes perilous voyage.
A sparkling deep blue sea splashed up against high jagged rocks. As they drew nearer, mountainsides of brilliant green appeared, then palm trees. Their tall, slender trunks rose into the clearest blue sky she’d ever seen. The tops of the trees were crowned by fan-shaped leaves, reminding her of peacocks proudly spreading their tail feathers.
“Oh, that aroma,” Jane said.
Matilda laughed. “It’s certainly not of cattle droppings and horses.”
Jane and Pilar laughed, too. As much as Jane enjoyed the smell of horses, she was delighted with this mixture of heady yet delicate flower scents. She’d never thought about smelling an island. She supposed travelers to Texas might think it had the odor of cattle and oil.
“Oh, look.” Pilar said, pressing her hand against her heart. “They’re getting into canoes and coming out here. Are they—” Her face screwed up like a tight fist. “Are they going to attack us?”
“Of course not.” Matilda scoffed.
Pilar wasn’t convinced. “Mr. Buckley said they’re uncivilized. And Miss Matilda, in our history lessons on the way over here, you said they killed Captain Cook.”
Matilda scoffed again. “You would have failed if I had given you a test on it, Pilar. That was more than a hundred years ago. And the people thought he was a god and couldn’t die. I doubt they’re going to think we are gods.” She laughed.
Jane smiled and looked out at the big brown men, their muscles bulging as they rowed, moving through the water faster than the ship. “Aunt Matilda,” she said timidly. “Those men are wearing skirts and necklaces.”
Matilda patted Jane’s hand that was clinging to the ship’s railing. “Those are costumes, dear. Pansy wrote about them. These men are greeters. They don’t always dress like that. I didn’t tell you because I didn’t want to spoil the surprise. And those things around their necks are not called necklaces. Pansy wrote me all about it. Those are. . .” She stood thoughtful for a moment, holding her hat against the sudden swift breeze. “Pansy spelled it l-e-i-s. I suppose they’re called lee-eyes.”
“
Aloha, Aloha, Komo mai
,” the rowers called. The passengers waved and yelled, “Hello and thank you.”
“Don’t they speak English?” Jane asked.
“Pansy said English is the official language,” Matilda said. “But they like to give a Hawaiian greeting.”
The rowers escorted the boat to the wharf, where passengers disembarked down the gangway. They pulled the canoes up onto the white sand and formed a border, making a path for the passengers to walk through, each one bowing, greeting. Jane saw then that the lee-eyes the greeters wore seemed to be made of shells and what looked like long teeth and pieces of bone.
At first, Jane thought there must be some personage of high acclaim aboard ship, even though she thought she’d met all the passengers. The welcomes and greetings, however, seemed to be for each of them. At the end of the row of men stood many women and groups of children. The women came forward and greeted each of them as if they were long-lost friends.
“Matilda. Is that you?” A man in a suit came up to them.
Matilda screeched, “Russ!”
Jane feared her aunt would break his body with her exuberant hug. However, he wasn’t a small man and seemed quite strong. He looked slightly older than Matilda, and his thin brown hair had a lot of gray in it. They broke apart, and she kissed his cheeks and he kissed hers. Both had tears in their eyes.
Matilda stood shaking her head like it was all unbelievable. Finally, her brother wiped at his eyes and looked away from her. “Is this little Janie?”
Jane nodded and went into his open arms. Then he held her away by the shoulders. “You’re not little anymore.”
What could she say? “Ten years does that to a girl.”
He laughed. “And it did it well. Ah, this is Pilar?”
She said, “Yes, sir,” and he opened his arms to her.
Uncle Russ motioned to a group of people. A woman and a little girl hurried up to them. Jane was surprised they wore clothing much like one would wear in Texas. But that healthy-looking woman couldn’t be Pansy.
“Matilda,” her uncle Russell said, “meet a dear friend, Rose MacCauley.”
“Oh, I’m so anxious to get to know you,” the woman said. She held up a long loop of flowers and managed, in spite of the big hat, to slip it over Matilda’s head and made sure it draped equally down her back and chest.
“Jane, this is Leia MacCauley,” Uncle Russ said with a big smile. The child reached up for Jane, who bent down and for some strange reason felt like she might topple to the ground. However, as the child was arranging the loop as Rose had done for Matilda, Jane said, “Thank you, Leia, for the lee-eye.”
The girl wrinkled her nose. “What’s a lee-eye?”
Uh-oh. Jane felt like an excessive amount of saliva had formed under her tongue. Something wasn’t right. The people around her began to sway. “This. . .this necklace is called. . .what?”
“It’s a lei,” Leia said and snickered. She pronounced it
lay
. To make matters worse, the child turned to a man, several feet away standing with a group of children. “Miss Jane called the lei a lee-eye, Daddy.” She put her hand over her mouth.
Children snickered.
Rose MacCauley motioned to the man called Daddy. “Mak, come and meet Russell’s relatives.”
Jane looked at the ruggedly handsome man, who lowered his gaze to the ground. She resented what she felt was an unsuccessful attempt to keep a grin off his face. But, what could she expect from a man holding in front of him a hat with flowers around the band?
The man came closer. But why was he swaying?
She heard the name. “Mak MacCauley,” and somewhere in her swirling mind, it registered that he had been mentioned in Pansy’s letter as a teacher. But the hat? Was that another lei for her?
Just in case, she said, “I could use a hat like that.”
He said abruptly, without a smile, “Sorry I can’t say the same about yours.”
Should she laugh? Be insulted?
No, he must be drunk. He couldn’t stand still. In fact, he often seemed to be twins. Looking around at the others, she saw that they too became like waves on an ocean.
She had that excessive saliva feeling again, and her ocean waves were not gently rolling but sloshing against her insides. She had to swallow it, but something wouldn’t go down. Instead, that something was coming up.
Aboard ship, they’d been warned it might take a while to get their land legs back and if they felt dizzy, they should hold onto something. She extended her hand. Mak did the same. But before they could touch, she withdrew hers and covered her mouth with her gloved hand.
She heard some exclamations and Matilda’s voice. “Oh, my dear. We were told that green is even greener in Hawaii, but I didn’t know they meant faces. You look perfectly ghastly.”
Jane could only focus on what was in front of her, and she stared in horror at the man who stared back, making her feel like the most disgusting creature in the world. She should have kept her focus on the horizon. “I feel. . .I feel. . .I. . .uh. . .”
She turned and ran.
Jane made it a few feet behind a bench to a grassy spot and felt like a cow heaving in labor. She colored the grass even greener with whatever had been inside her stomach. She wiped her mouth with a. . .silk bandana?
Bent over, the lei swinging in front of her, she managed to look around and up to the side and saw the man with the flowered hat now on his head and minus a bandana around his neck.
“Thank you,” she managed to squeak out after wiping her mouth. Looking down, she didn’t see anything unseemly on the lei or on her clothes. Straightening, she accepted the arm he offered and allowed herself to be led to a bench. She took a deep breath but only exhaled through her nose, lest he guess what had soured in her stomach.
Leia came over and pulled a little purse from her pocket. “Don’t feel bad.” She wrinkled her nose distastefully. “People do it all the time.”
Jane noticed that several other passengers were doing exactly that. Some had been fortunate enough to find a reasonably private place to empty their stomachs. Matilda and Pilar gave her sympathetic grins.
“This will help,” the little girl said, holding out a piece of hard candy.
Although she feared having anything in her stomach, Jane accepted the candy. Maybe it would at least freshen her breath enough that she could again join the others.
“Thank you,” she whispered to the girl, who smiled and said, “Are you the new teacher?”
Jane didn’t know what Pastor Russell’s needs might be, but there was no way in the world she was going to be a teacher confined to a school building. Her hesitation was filled by Matilda coming over. “Can you walk, dear? We need to get you someplace where you can lie down.”
“Oh, no,” Jane said, rising from the bench. She held the soiled bandana in one gloved hand and placed the other hand on Matilda’s arm. “I think standing still is what did it.” As they walked up to Uncle Russell and Rose, she apologized. Matilda had said her face had been green. She felt sure it had turned deathly white from the way she had felt. Now feeling warm, her face was probably red.
She laughed. “Oh, I must be a sight.”
“Oh, you’re fine.” Rose MacCauley echoed Leia’s words. “It’s not unusual. A voyage like that is hard on a person. Believe me, I know.”
Jane tried to smile, but even that effort felt weak. She was trying to figure out the relationships here. The man, woman, and child were MacCauleys. The woman looked older than the man, but she was quite lovely.
She didn’t feel it proper to ask. Anyway, Matilda was still discussing her. “Jane was never seasick a moment aboard ship. She had her sea legs the whole time. We decided that must have been due to her being such an avid horseback rider.”
“Avid?” Rose MacCauley said as if that were shocking. The woman’s eyes widened as she looked from Matilda to Jane and back again.
Jane saw the questioning flicker in Matilda’s eyes. Like she, Matilda must be wondering if the woman was asking the meaning of the word.
After a moment of hesitation, Matilda simply said, “Yes. Our Jane is an expert equestrienne.”
Mak’s mother put her hand to her heart. “Another example that God brings good from the worst of things.”
Jane didn’t exactly follow her line of reasoning. Perhaps the woman hadn’t understood the words
avid
or
equestrienne
.
Rose MacCauley turned to the man who had stepped aside. “Mak,” she said. “It might help if Jane rode your horse. She’s not ready for land yet.”
Jane thought he looked dumbfounded. He snorted, not like a horse, but it was definitely a snort. “You know the horse is spirited. And. . .” He gestured toward her. “Miz. . .”
Jane knew he didn’t remember her name. He changed his wording. “She wouldn’t know where to go.”
“Then perhaps you could give her a ride,” the woman said in a low but meaningful tone.
Pushing the candy aside with her tongue, Jane took several gulps of air. “I’ll be all right. I don’t think there’s anything left in me.” Looking around at the men in skirts she saw pants legs exposed beneath the flowered material wrapped around their thighs. “Maybe I could go for a canoe ride or something.”
Matilda seemed to like the idea. “Oh, wouldn’t that be fun.”
“No, no,” Uncle Russell said, shaking his head vigorously. “I don’t recommend that. But, Mak,” he said to the man, who had stepped farther away from them. “A ride might be a good idea. The schoolchildren are too excited for lessons. You could take Janie to my house, and she could get some ginger tea. You’d be there before our carriages or the children in the wagons.”
“It’s all right,” she said, seeing his frown and knowing the man didn’t want her on his horse. Or did he just not want her near him?
As if confirming that, he turned and walked away, past the children, toward where a couple of wagons tied to horses were in the shade. Uncle Russell offered an arm and Jane began to move toward a carriage. “Oh,” she said, “this is like walking on marshmallows.”
Next thing she knew, a huge brown stallion was right beside her. The man with the flowered hat reached down for her.
“You don’t have to do this.”
“I know,” he said. Uncle Russell put his hands on her waist and helped hoist her up. Oh, what she’d do for riding pants right now. However, she squished her billowing skirts around her to keep them away from the horse’s head and from being able to fly up and blind this. . .person. . .who wore flowers.
The man had his arms around her, holding onto the reins, looking over her head, and she was breathing the most wonderful sweet air and feeling the cool breeze on her face. They were only trotting, but the movement was similar to being aboard ship. Her shoulder was pressed into his flowered shirt.
She ventured a glance at him. He saw it and said, “Try not to throw up on my horse.”
A deep breath of air filled her chest, and she felt her shoulders rise with it. She was well enough to remember someone had called him Mak. That was the name of the person Matilda had said was teaching for Pansy.
That little girl had asked if Jane would be her teacher. Well, she figured she would be as qualified as this aloof man. She would not just sit there and let him make fun of her, even if she did feel much more comfortable and hardly aware of any surroundings other than the strong arms around her, and the musky smell of him combined with that of flowers. . .on his hat.
“I wouldn’t insult a horse by throwing up on him,” she said. Noticing the pocket on his shirt, she reached up and pulled at it gently with her gloved finger. “I could just deposit it right here.”
