Chapter 35

Monday started off fairly well. I was still a little sore, but PT wasn’t too stressful. We spent the morning doing general maintenance on the platoon’s equipment, then after returning from lunch, we were gathered together for a platoon meeting.

This was probably only the second or the third time that I’d seen Lieutenant Wallace since I’d arrived on KBay. He began to lay out how the platoon would operate during the holidays. I’d completely blanked that this week was Thanksgiving.

It appeared we would have a four-day weekend as our platoon didn’t have the duty this week, though we had it Christmas week. We’d be off starting the end of the Duty Day Wednesday and not be due back until Monday morning. Bonus for me was I’d only have to deal with Gunny Ortega once this week.

I called Ronnie to see if we could get in an extra session on Friday. He thought it was a good idea, so we’d meet Friday at noon for two hours. Then I’d go take a swim after Saturday’s session to see if I couldn’t pay off some of what I needed to pay Henare in order to get my tattoo work started again. I called him and he said he’d be on Saturday evening. That was perfect.

Tuesday and Wednesday were pretty normal days. I still attended my evening classes and contacted Master Chutimant, who said no kickboxing seeing as it was Thanksgiving.

On Wednesday afternoon, everyone was cleaning like their lives depended on it. No one wanted to be on Duty a second longer than necessary.

Sameulu was in the shop when I got to the house. I finished the final touches on the paddle as we conversed. When the topic of Thanksgiving came up, things took a weird turn.

“So what time are we having turkey tomorrow?”

“Who says we’re having turkey? Only the wealthy eat turkey in Hawaii. It’s three to four times more expensive here than on the mainland. Though we’ll be having a bird tomorrow.”

“So, you’re not going to tell me what it is?”

“And ruin the surprise? Nope.”

“Great.”

We spent the rest of the afternoon cleaning and shutting up the shop for the next two days. I went back to the house and called it a night.

Upon awakening, I decided to go for a quick five-mile run. Getting back to the house, I made a few calls and talked to Kiku. We were both talking about Christmas break and how much we were looking forward to it. She then made an admission that had her really worried.

It turned out that she and a couple of people from one of her study groups went out to the bar the night before. While not drunk, she was pretty buzzed, which led her to making out and feeling up a chick at the bar. This had her all kinds of worried as to how I would react.

I really wasn’t pissed and told her that this particular incident wasn’t really an issue. Had it been a guy that would have been a whole different story. Then she brought up a sore spot for me though it was kind of veiled in the way it was broached. She said that she wouldn’t be upset if I made out with a girl. This was a roundabout way to push me onto Kiese. I just told her we’d talk about that when she was here.

I made the walk up the hill to the big house. You could tell that though the house was almost a hundred years old it was very well maintained. There was one feature that was no longer built into most homes. There was a screened-in dog run separating the kitchen area from the rest of the house. This was done a lot before the advent of air conditioning to keep the living quarters cool.

I could smell food cooking as I walked into the dog run. The smells were familiar, though not quite the same as I remembered from Thanksgivings of the past.

As I walked to go in the door, people started coming in and out of the house. Luiz greeted me as he came out.

“How’s the great hunter?”

“Doing fine. Though you’d be pig shit at this point if it weren’t for me. Sometimes it’s better to be lucky than good.”

“Very funny. Let’s go, I need some help.”

We set up the two tables in the dog run and placed chairs for everyone. Going into the house I looked at the TV. It was Detroit vs. Minnesota, which meant I couldn’t care less. I just started saying hi to everybody and met a couple of extended family members. Sameulu came out and handed me a beer.

“Food will be ready in a little bit.”

“So, what are we eating?”

“You’ll find out.”

Everyone was helping out to set up the table, talking the whole time. I realized that I’d probably not see a lot of these people again. It was about a half hour before food started being brought out.

Once everyone was seated, Felip sitting at the head of the table said grace. Then he gave Sameulu time to give thanks to the land. It was as I looked at the plates that I noticed that there were three birds on the platter. They sure as hell didn’t look like chickens. Nothing was mentioned as to the exact nature of what they were.

All the meat was on the darker side, almost like duck. It wasn’t bad, though it had a slightly fishy taste to it. Dinner overall was really good. While I was part of the family, it didn’t really feel that way. Other than Sameulu and Jacinta, I wasn’t a part of a lot of conversations.

Sameulu caught me as I was coming out of the kitchen from cleaning up my dishes.

“So, how was the Thanksgiving bird?”

“I’m guessing you told everyone not to say anything about it to me.”

“Yeah. So, what did you think about it?”

“It wasn’t bad. Though I don’t think it’ll ever be a favorite of mine. So, what was it?”

“Well, it was an albatross.”

“Are you kidding me?”

“Nope.”

“Is that even legal?”

“Do you really want to know. I’ll say this. It’s something that Hawaiians have been eating for generations.”

“Well this conversation is now ending.”

After helping clean up, I stuck around for a while longer before heading to the house. I called a couple more people to wish them a happy Thanksgiving. I sat on the couch thinking of the albatross dinner.

I could see Sameulu’s reasoning for not saying anything. He wanted me to give it a fair shake with no preconceived notions. Though knowing myself, I would have had some serious reservations about it. I couldn’t blame him; he made sure that I had the best experience possible. The other thing that popped into my head was how many laws were possibly broken. Well, I didn’t do anything but eat the bird, so I was probably in the clear.

I did get to talk to Kiku again. She had a small Thanksgiving dinner with a couple of people that were in her pre-law study group as most of them couldn’t afford to go home for the holidays.

That was one of the few ways that being in the military and college was similar. People far away from home because they or their family couldn’t afford airline tickets. Hell, Norbert and Mutellip were probably sitting in the barracks right now.

I figured that the barracks were between about half to two thirds occupied right now. Christmas would probably be somewhere around that as well. I’d invite them to the beach when I got back after my boxing session on Saturday.

By checking the newspaper weather section, it was supposed to be in the mid-eighties and sunset was at 1750 this weekend. I knew by asking questions of Sameulu on our previous outings that water temp was normally within five to ten degrees of air temp.

Using the morning to get prepared for my training session, I realized there was something that needed to change. After my morning run, I went over to the gym on base. I noticed that everyone was out feeding the capitalist beast; the masses were engaged in the Black Friday shopping scrum.

I’d gotten away from including weight lifting in the training regime. That changed today, this wasn’t a heavy weight session, just a light workout that I didn’t need a spotter for. Afterwards I had a light lunch, I didn’t need Ronnie working me to the point of puking.

My training session changed a little bit, as we spent about an hour or so on my technique, where I would go through the movements, and Ronnie would stop me to make adjustments. They weren’t drastic changes, but I felt off when I did the changed movements. My motions were very stiff. He kept pushing me to repeat the movements.

I needed to get to the point where I wasn’t thinking about it, and they became natural which would only come with time and repetition. With the just under a month, we had left wasn’t enough time for the changes to become natural, though he figured it would be enough to be a boost for me. I wasn’t fighting professionals, so it should be good enough.

After a five-minute break, it was a repeat of last week’s training. With a shortened time frame, Ronnie increased the intensity. I was sore at the end, but nowhere near where I was last week. Before leaving I got him to agree to push up tomorrow’s training by two hours, though it cost me fifteen bucks.

Walking out, I did my part to add to Black Friday and stumbled into Kālā & Gula Pawn. For two hundred and twenty-five dollars I walked out with both an M1 Garand and a 1903 Springfield rifle. With these prices I could buy one rifle a month, wait ten or fifteen years and probably triple or quadruple my money. I took a stab in the dark and stopped at a Sears store. I was able to find two hard-sided rifle cases for fairly cheap.