Through the years, Hilo town had weathered many ups and downs, and Koji was someone on whom the locals could always depend. Now, just past fifty, he was still in better shape than many men a decade younger, solid and muscular. He’d grown up and worked on a sugar plantation since his father was hired by John Dillingham back in the late 1800s, when many of the big sugarcane plantations were started. “Sweetness runs through my blood,” he liked to tell her. Koji knew more about the cane work than most of the lunas, the mostly Portuguese foremen who oversaw the workers. He was a legend in the fields, his skill becoming mythical over the years. He was known as the fastest cane cutter on the Big Island, and still held the record of cutting twelve hundred pounds of sugarcane in an hour. After twenty years of cutting cane at the Puli Plantation, and even as age and later injuries slowed him down, the owners had asked him to stay on to run the sugar train.

“Everything’s done here,” Nori said.

“Mariko would be happy to have him home, yeah?”

“Very happy,” she said.

“I’ll take the sugar train back up to Puli once the cane is unloaded at the station. Come back down to the market in the truck afterward.” Koji ran his hand over his short, graying hair and looked around. He stood a moment lost in memory. “The place looks good.”

Since Mariko’s death, Koji had stopped coming to the bungalow. Before then, he was there every Sunday helping Mariko to fix one thing or another, spending time with the two of them at harvest end, and later, when Daniel came home at Christmas every year. They were his family, but now he kept to himself. While they had all mourned her death, Koji’s loss felt all the louder in his silence.

Nori smiled. “Don’t be late, yeah.”

“Haven’t I always kept the train on schedule?” Koji said.

“Always a first time.”

“I’ll be there.”

Koji lifted his hand in a wave and stepped out the back door. Nori watched as he pulled on his shoes before thumping down the stairs. She waited a few minutes in the quiet kitchen, but Mariko never returned.

3. Rising Winds

3

Rising Winds