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black eyebrows lowered over his slate blue eyes as Jeff and Chaul Roong walked in the door. He stroked his jutting, lantern jaw. One look at Jeff’s panicked face told Patrick everything he needed to know. “You be knowing why you’re here, I’m sure.”
    Jeff shifted from foot to foot and his eyes darted around the room before landing on Patrick’s desktop where the bloodied scarf found on Tomiko lay in a crumpled heap. Jeff’s hand flew to his throat. But just as quickly, he moved his hand to his ear, as if to scratch it.
    “I don’t know why I’m here.” Jeff’s mouth twitched and his hands shook.
    Patrick held up the bloodied scarf. “The little girl was holding onto this.”
    Jeff stepped back. “She’s just a stinking Jap, no better than a nigger!”
    Patrick narrowed his eyes. “Sure and it’s the likes of you who make me sick. But because I pity your poor little wife, I’ll be giving you until dawn to pack up and leave. If not for her, I’d be kicking you out now myself.”
    “You can’t do that!” Jeff protested. “You didn’t hire me, you can’t fire me. The Ritchies are my wife’s cousins.”
    “And what of them?” Patrick roared. “They be living lives more bound by rules than the likes of you and me. They won’t be taking kindly to what happened here. Especially since what you did could affect performance and production. We could have open rebellion on our hands.”
    Jeff’s fingers fumbled with the back of the chair as he leaned heavily against it. “What am I to do?”
    “Go away. Leave my island. Better yet, leave the islands and go back to where you came from. We don’t need your kind.”
    Jeff’s face turned red. “You can’t drive me away.”
    Patrick leaned over the desk, his knuckles down. “And if it’s not leaving you are, it’s for sure they will kill you. Mark my words.”
    Sweat beaded Jeff’s upper lip and brow.
    “If you think the men here will be forgetting, you be wrong. They’ll wait. When the time seems good, they’ll kill you just as surely as the sun goes down every evening.” The look of fear he got brought a dark smile to the Irishman’s face. “To my way of thinking, it wouldn’t be any great loss.”
    “Then why tell me?”
    “Don’t flatter yourself. If it were just you, I would say, do what you will with him. I’m helping you because of your sweet wife and unborn babe. But maybe they would be better off without the likes of you. Make your decision fast, before I change my mind. I be thinking I’m crazy to show you any mercy at all. If you be stubborn, I’ll go to your cousins and the sheriff with this.” Patrick pointed to the bloodied scarf. “Make up your mind now.”
    Jeff was silent.
    Patrick knew he was trying to figure out what to do. “If you be thinking of leaving and telling tales of Kohala,” He paused to lean over and grab the bloodied scarf. “I’ll be holding on to this filthy keepsake. All of Kohala will testify who owns this.” Patrick shook the scarf. “So you best leave now while I be the only one knowing the truth among the haoles . It’s a dirty matter; I want none of it. But if you force my hand…”
    Jeff shuddered. “So, you’ve won.”
    “I haven’t won anything. But you have surely lost.”
     
    Patrick rode the fields on his chestnut gelding, idly flicking the flies from his horse while he watched great black clouds of smoke swirl into the crisp sky. The men were burning cane and the smell made his horse skittish.
    He needed a new head luna . The applicants were discouraging. There was a German whose grim visage matched his reputation as a hard taskmaster. Then there was a Scotsman who looked down his nose at him. The last applicant, an American, had a reputation with the ladies that made Patrick uneasy. Frankly, he was tired of head luna s whose main qualification was their color.
    His mind began picking out individuals in the field. Maruyama. Takahashi. Dela Cruz. Han. He knew only a few of them