Chapter 4: The Auction

At five the next morning, Seiji Higa's car was parked outside my mother's broken window.

My mother was sweeping glass off the sidewalk in her apron, and she did not look at him.

"Dear," Seiji called gently, through the rolled-down window.

"Come see the auction with me. Your mother will want to hear what I have to say."

I went because the alternative was letting him say it to her.

The Hilo fish auction starts before the sun.

Tuna lay in rows on the concrete floor under the lights.

Each fish was silver and cold, with a numbered tag and a notch cut in the tail.

Two hundred buyers and boat crews stood around them in rubber boots.

Along the loading dock a row of white vans with no names on the doors were being packed with ice and boxes.

Seiji walked me through the middle of all of it, nodding to men who took off their caps.

"My boy tells me nothing," he said.

"But I hear you had a night."

"I locked two armed men in a closet so nobody got shot," I said.

"So brave," Seiji said.

He patted my hand where it rested on his arm.

"I will rebuild the shop, dear," he said.

"A new window, a new oven, whatever she needs."

"Seventy thousand," he said, "and I will put my own name to it."

"What's the price?"

"You say, in front of the families on Sunday, that the Rapoza boy took you against your will."

He smiled, kind and tired.

"That's all. Then the Higas can answer, and the Rapozas will pay for the truck, and your mother never has to sweep again."

Forty crewmen at the nearest row had stopped working to listen.

I stopped walking.

"Mr. Higa," I said, in the voice I use for managers.

"Nobody took me anywhere. I locked that door myself, and I took what I wanted from both of them."

The wharf went silent.

A boy dropped a bucket.

Seiji's smile did not move, but his hand tightened on mine for a second.

"Dear," he said, "think about your mother."

"I am."

I took my hand back.

"Don't send anyone to her shop again."

Then I turned my back on him, in front of every man who owed him money.

I walked toward the stairs on the far side of the floor.

I did not know where I was going.

I only knew Dean's office was at the top, because everybody on the island knew it.

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