Ipo poured three cups of coffee and handed Leia and Malia each a cup. “Let’s go outside and sit in the garden. Koma is coming to join us for pineapple boats, and he should be along shortly.”
“Good. I wanted to talk to him.” Leia followed her grandmother out to the garden. Malia flung herself onto the soft grass and picked a hibiscus blossom to tuck behind her ear. A loud honk came from the side yard, then Pua, her grandmother’s Hawaiian nene, came running to meet them. The goose honked again and rushed to Leia. She plucked a flower to feed Pua, and the nene gobbled it up. Nenes were the only native geese left on Hawaii, and they had only recently been brought back from the edge of extinction. Leia loved to watch Pua waddle through the tall grasses and paddle in the pond. The goose had been a part of the family for ages. At twenty-five now, Pua wasn’t as spry as she used to be. Leia sat on the grass by her sister and let Pua sit beside her. The nene put her head on Leia’s lap.
Her grandmother went to the picnic table and cut pineapples in two, then scooped out the fruit and began to chop it for the dessert. In spite of her deformed fingers, she managed the knife efficiently. Leia knew better than to try to help her grandmother.
“What do you want to talk to Koma about?” her grandmother asked.
“He’s lived here a long time, hasn’t he?”
“All his life. His parents lived here before him, and Koma contracted the disease by the time he was five.” She nodded toward the jungle. “Here he comes now.”
Leia turned to see Koma moving slowly through the tangled vines that drooped from the ‘ohi’a trees. He’d broken his hip several months ago, right after her father lost his job, and he still wasn’t fully recovered. Watching his limp, she wished she could do something to fix it, but he surely must be ninety by now. He carried the characteristic marks of Hansen’s disease—missing eyebrows, deformed nose that almost made him look like a lion, lumpy ear lobes, and clublike fingers. He sang a tuneless song as he walked, leaning on his hand-carved cane. His leathery face brightened when he saw the girls. “Ah, my keikis, I hoped you’d be here. I wanted to tell you about seeing Ku.” He steadied himself on his cane, then lowered his bulk into the chair.
Leia sighed inwardly at the vacant look in his eyes. At least he was talkative. Sometimes he stared into space and said nothing. “I wonder if you might tell me some stories of the old days.”
He dropped his hand and smiled. “Many people ask me about the old days. No one wants to hear what an old man is doing now.” Pua tried to nibble on his toes, and he bent to rub the goose’s head.
“Who else has asked you about the old days?”
“The diving man wanted to know all about my childhood.” Koma straightened and stroked Eva’s hair with his deformed fingers as she leaned her head against his knee.
Tony said he’d talked to Koma. Leia leaned forward. “I’d like to hear too. Did your parents tell you a story about buried treasure?”
Koma noticed Hina. “That nasty cat,” he said. “Why did you bring her? She doesn’t like me, and she scares the birds.”
“She likes you fine,” Leia soothed. “What can you tell me about the treasure?” She doubted she was going to get anything out of Koma today. He seemed almost secretive rather than vacant.
“Your t?t? is the real treasure,” he said. “She always invites an old man like me to come eat. I would starve if it weren’t for Ipo.”
“You said you saw Ku,” Eva pressed. “Did he have big teeth and claws?” She made a pretend roar and swiped in the air like a cat.
Koma patted her head. “Nothing like that. He carried the shovel he used to dig the fishpond.”
“Shovel?” Leia stifled a giggle. “Where did you see him?”
“In the mangroves by the fishpond. He lives in the cabin nearby.”
The one Leia had seen. Moloka’i had once boasted nearly seventy-five fishponds, dug out by the ancient Hawaiians to raise fish. Most of them had fallen into disrepair and only three had been restored. As far as Leia knew, there were no fishponds in this area; most were on the south shore, and Koma wasn’t strong enough to have climbed out of the valley. He refused to ride in cars or boats, and to go to another area, he could only have walked. She hadn’t looked around outside the cabin much that day. Maybe she should go back.
She grabbed her purse and pulled out a page she’d torn from a scuba magazine. “Did Ku look like this?” She showed him the picture of the deep-sea diver in high-tech equipment.
Koma put up his hand to hide his eyes. “It’s kapu to look on one of the gods.”
Leia suppressed a sigh. “Please, just look at it, Koma. I think Ku might just have been a special kind of diver.”
“Get it away from me.” His voice was high with stress.
Leia received a warning glance from her grandmother. She couldn’t push him. He was too old and frail. “That’s fine, Koma. We won’t talk about it anymore,” she soothed.