Spoils of Eden (25 page)

She could alert the Board of Health to Kip’s disappearance at once, as soon as she went to Honolulu tonight to see Dr. Bolton about Rat Alley. She could storm down to Ambrose and Noelani’s bungalow and demand to know where they were hiding Kip. She could even find Rafe Easton and tell him what she thought of his “bargain.”

She stood there in the silence. Yes, she could do all of that, but in the end she did none of it. There were footsteps coming up the stairs, and voices. She snatched the blanket from the floor, stuffed it into a drawer, and closed the other drawers as well. She moved quickly to the middle of the room and turned, satchel in hand, when the door opened from the hall.

Candace stood with Dr. Jerome. Tension lines were etched on his brow.

Eden hurried toward them, ushered them out of the nursery, and closed the door behind them. “Father, have you spoken with Ling?”

“Yes, he gave me a description of his sons symptoms. Since he spoke with you this morning, his son has deteriorated. He has abdominal pain, vomiting, bloody diarrhea, and red swellings on his neck and underarms. Eden, this suggests much trouble to come.”

She was struck by how rapidly these new symptoms had appeared.

“Dr. Bolton must be informed,” he insisted. “We must go to Kalihi Hospital at once. Do you have everything you need? We should depart immediately.”

“Yes, I’m ready.” She turned. “Candace, let’s not worry Celestine or Great-aunt Nora tonight over any of this. They’ve retired, and both need a good night’s rest.”

T
hough it was late when Eden and Dr. Jerome arrived at Kalihi Hospital, Dr. Bolton was still on site, and they were able to meet with him about Ling’s son before returning to Kea Lani for the night.

Early the next morning, Eden located a Chinese messenger boy and sent him with written notes for Rafe and Keno at Hawaiiana. She urged either of them to contact her at once with information about Kip.

By midmorning she was preparing for the incursion into Rat Alley when the boy returned. She took him aside and asked in a low voice, “Did you find Makua Easton?”

“I look under every palm, knock on every door. The
luna
in pineapple field tell me to go, or he put me to work plenny fast.”

Rafe’s silence is deliberate
, she thought, frustrated. Not that she worried about Kip’s safety. Kip must have been taken from the plantation house under Rafe’s orders. What else could it be? As for Noelani and Ambrose, Eden felt she should avoid contacting them about Kip in order to not implicate them once the Board took up
the matter of Kip’s whereabouts, as they were bound to do.

Eden’s hours were filled with turmoil and indecision. While half of her heart was concerned with the dilemma of Kip, the other half was burdened by the possibility of a new epidemic simmering at Rat Alley and spreading throughout Honolulu.

The information she’d delivered to Dr. Bolton about Ling’s son was received with alarm among the physicians on the Board. There did seem to be at least one blessing in disguise for Eden, for with all the concern over Rat Alley, no one seemed to notice she’d returned without Kip. The reprieve wouldn’t last long, but she was grateful for every extra hour granted her. In two days she would hear from Rafe. If she didn’t, she had no other choice except to notify the Board that Kip was missing.

“What if it’s cholera spreading in Rat Alley?” one of the staff cautioned.

“If it is, we’ll soon have a horrendous crisis on our hands,” said another.

“Are we ready for that?”

“Who is ever ready for a crisis when it happens?”

Dr. Bolton and Lana Stanhope were two of the most knowledgeable on staff in the identification and treatment of tropical diseases. Dr. Bolton requested that Jerome accompany them to crowded Chinatown, and Eden, serving as Lanas student-assistant, completed the sober foursome that set out to find Ling’s son.

The Chinese had first signed labor contracts with the haole sugar planters in 1851, and just a few decades later there were as many as twenty-five thousand workers on the Islands. Many of the Hawaiian residents complained that an Oriental majority would soon populate the Islands and displace them. The planters, however, insisted they needed cheap labor to produce sugar, and as usual, economic considerations prevailed.

The Chinese were industrious workers who lived in tiny bungalows on the plantations, using exceedingly sharp knives to cut the cane. Sometimes those blades were used in murderous fights among
themselves. When they fulfilled their labor contracts with the planters, some signed up again, while others returned to their homeland. A majority stayed on the Islands, however, moving into the outlying areas, particularly in Honolulu, forming what was called Chinatown. The municipal administration there was weak and permissive, and the Chinese workers endured what Eden thought to be abysmally distressing conditions. It didn’t take long before opium, gambling, prostitution, and physical violence were unrestrained. Due to the language barrier and the absence of a Chinese consul in the Islands, trouble intensified in what became known as Rat Alley.

Not all was dark and dangerous, however. Many industrious Chinese opened little shops and businesses, and still others became farmers and street peddlers, offering valuable goods for sale.

Ling Li led the four of them from the Board of Health down one alley and then up another. The hovels were piled like ramshackle boxes on top of one another. Narrow, winding pathways meandered this way and that, like a serpentine maze. Chickens wandered about, skinny dogs yapped incessantly, and rivulets of raw sewage ran along the edges of the alleys. There were tiny businesses selling everything from fish to firecrackers. A merchant man with a long, black pigtail balanced a pole across his shoulders with baskets at each end filled to overflowing with lotus roots and eggplant. He moved at a light trot through the narrow streets, calling out his wares in a singsong voice, his conical woven reed hat pointing skyward.

Ling led them to a number of huts that formed a crowded building. Eden followed Dr. Bolton, her father, and Lana through a low doorway and into an open room. The floor was covered in palm mats, and a young Chinese lad of perhaps seventeen was sprawled under a blanket, his head on a rolled rug. A male relative with a long, white beard and black gown stood beside him.

Eden watched Dr. Bolton approach cautiously. She had great pity for Ling as he stood with shoulders stooped, watching the haoles. Ling’s wife and six other sons were working in the fields at Kea Lani. Dr. Bolton stooped for a closer look. When he rolled the
lids back from the boy’s eyes, Eden suspected the worse.

“This lad is already dead.”

“So quickly?” Jerome asked, also stooping to look.

Eden drew closer. “He must be unconscious. Ling left him alive less than an hour ago.” She looked over at Ling. He and the old Chinese gentleman were in urgent discourse.

“The fever was very high—look at those puddles of perspiration.” Dr. Bolton drew the blanket back to examine him. “Poor boy. It looks like—” he stopped abruptly, pulling his hand back from the boy’s chest. Looking at Dr. Jerome, he said, “Do you see that?”

“Yes. God have mercy.”

Eden stepped closer to look down over her father’s shoulder. There were swollen, dark-purple nodules on his neck and under his armpits. His death had come quickly and horribly. Her heart wrenched with pity and alarm, and she glanced meaningfully at Lana. Lanas mouth had tightened, and she drew back toward the doorway. Eden followed, and they stepped outside.

“Show no alarm,” Lana murmured as individuals began gathering. “We mustn’t spread panic. I fear four haoles coming here carrying black satchels has already sounded an alarm.”

“What could he have died of so quickly?” Eden asked, though she feared she knew. “Ling said he was alive just an hour ago.”

“I’d rather not venture a guess. Whatever it is, it’s out of my jurisdiction. It isn’t like any disease I’ve ever seen on these Islands.”

Eden believed Lana did know, but refused to make a professional comment until Dr. Bolton made his decision.

With solemnity they boarded a Honolulu horse buggy that carried them along the narrow causeway away from Oahu prison in Iwilei. When the buggy reached Kalihi Hospital, Dr. Bolton immediately called for the Board physicians to assemble for “an urgent confidential report.” Behind closed doors, they heard the grim details.

Eden waited with Lana in her small office next to Dr. Bolton’s. Through an open window she could see the waters of Kalihi Bay, which fronted the leprosy hospital on two sides, to the west and
south. The natural anchorage that was then called the Pearl Lochs looked a deep green-blue.

Oh, Lord, what am I going to do? Strengthen me to make the right decisions where Rafe and Kip are concerned. And please stay the devastating hand of disease in Honolulu. Grant that the death of Ling’s youngest boy will be used to bring him and his family to Christ
.

“What happened with Kip?” Lana asked in a low voice.

Eden closed her eyes.
Oh, no, here it comes, and I cannot lie. What to do?
She turned and faced her grimly. “Oh, Lana—everything went wrong, at least for me. I should have stayed out of it, as you suggested. I thought I could make Rafe see what needed to be done, but it didn’t work that way.”

Lana looked as if shed expected news of this sort. She rested her mussed blond head in her hand, elbow on the desk, and groaned.

“Lana, please, I need a little more time, just two days more. Only two. I assure you Kip is clean, and there’s no danger to anyone.”

“I’ve always believed Kip was clean. He’s as free of leprosy as you or I. But that isn’t the issue, Eden. The issue at hand, that we must deal with, is the law. We’ve been through all this before.”

“Painfully so, yes. Please, Lana, give me two days. Surely in your high position you’ll arrange it?”

Lana sighed. “I don’t know. I can’t promise you. You’ll need to tell me what happened. I won’t say until I judge the situation. This could affect your position, you know. And mine.”

Eden paced, hands at her temples. “I know, I know.”
This is all Rafe’s fault
, she wanted to say in self-defense, but bit her tongue. Looking over at her aunt, she said, “I’ll tell you everything. I know I can trust you.”
And so can Rafe and Kip
, she thought.

When she’d finished the details, explaining how after dinner she’d gone up to the nursery and found Kip and his clothes gone, Lana moaned, shaking her head. “I knew it,” she said, “I knew Rafe would resist with every fiber of his being.” She stood from the chair behind her desk. “You’ve got to find out where Kip is, Eden.”

The mission church
, she wanted to say, but couldn’t bring herself
to incriminate Ambrose and Noelani. “I’ll find Kip. Give me just two days more.”

Lana drummed her fingers on the desk, staring out the window. The palms rustled, and a breath of fresh air blew in over the papers on her desk.

Eden prayed earnestly.

Lana finally looked at her. “The Board will be fully occupied with this crisis in Rat Alley. It’s likely they’ll not even think about Kip for a while. If Clifford—Dr. Bolton asks me about Kip, though, I’ll need to explain. I’ll do what I can to influence him.”

Eden sank into a chair. “Thank you.”

“Two more days,” Lana said. “After that, I must report his absence. And that means Rafe Easton will be in more legal trouble than he may realize.”

Eden waited for Dr. Jerome to come out of the Board of Health meeting and join her. When he did, she read the forbidding news written in his severe countenance.

“We have all agreed,” he said. “Some of us have seen the results of this sickness before. I saw it in China and India. The grotesque purple nodules on the neck, armpits, and loins … the loathsome odor from the nodules when they burst … the high fever, the hallucinations—” He shook his head as though the memory haunted him. “The boy died of bubonic plague.”

Eden’s mouth went dry. Tight fingers of horror gripped her. She’d feared it was the plague when Dr. Bolton drew her father’s attention to the evidence on the body. The idea was staggering. There were thousands of people in Chinatown, all of them crammed together in tiny huts built on top of each other.

“How many others might there be who’ve been exposed?” she said in a low voice, for as yet the finding was not permitted for general discussion.

He gave a brief nod and, taking her arm, walked her down the hall toward the front door. “Is there anything to be done?” she whispered.

He said nothing. His tired face was gray in the late afternoon light. “The measures to be taken will be decided upon based on how many sick and dying the search teams discover in the next day or so.”

Eden’s heart was heavy.

“Where this will end, we cannot say. The Board will handle things here for the day and evening. We must return to Kea Lani to inspect the huts of our own workers. Remember, Ling is one of our own, and his wife and children are on Kea Lani at this moment. If the youngest boy became sick yesterday, there could be more by now. This is an emergency, Eden. We’ll need to call a meeting with the other planters so they can search their own workers’ huts. We don’t know where this will end, but it looks as if Kea Lani is the place to begin.”