Vigilant Acts

Mia wasn’t there on the morning her father died. 

But even now, a month later, when she visited the rural intersection of Kamehameha and Kahekili to tie yellow carnations to the streetlight where his body landed after the crash, she could still see the tire marks from the moment he passed from life to death. In her mind, she could still see the corner of his truck, jagged and broken, could still smell his cologne, thicker than the exhaust that clung to the air around her that day. Below the flowers, she taped a sign. Her father’s name written in thick black pen.

It was her fourth appeal. Others were more pointed, accusatory, aimed at the driver of the bronze 4Runnerm that had turned left without looking, smashing into her father’s truck before speeding off toward town. The attendant from the service station caught only a glimpse of the license plate, LNV. Though, he confessed, he could be wrong.

Without any leads and a lack of witnesses, the police admitted there wasn’t much they could do. She was frustrated and angry. It was like she was nine again and her mother could no longer breathe on her own. All Mia could do was pound the walls of her bedroom, the drywall unyielding, before she crumpled to the carpet. When her father found her, he stroked her back until she was ready to listen. “This and this,” he touched his head and heart. “That’s all you can control, and sometimes not even.”

She didn’t like the idea of letting go, but what choice did she have? She could continue eyeing out passing cars and posting signs, or she could start to make peace with the myth of justice.

She stepped back from the streetlight and made the sign of the cross, and that’s when she saw it. Not the 4Runner. No, like the police said, the chances were slim now. The SUV probably stored in the garage until the news died down, then taken to a friend’s shop to be fixed. If anyone asked, they’d blame the damage on the storm the week before; no one in Hawai‘i knows how to drive in the rain. Rather, it was her father’s catamaran. A derelict vessel he kept anchored off the pier. No slip and no registration, but it had life left in it and a motor. She had made plans to deal with it but figured there was no rush. He had known the harbormaster and kept it for years out on the bay.

She couldn’t even remember the last time he had taken it out. Yet there it was, attached to a truck that was not her father’s. The truck’s turn signal taunting her. She rushed to the passenger side window, but the traffic had opened up. The truck turned. “What the hell,” she yelled, throwing the finger, watching it go.

~

“Das how things stay nowadays,” her neighbor Aunty Marie Dumadag remarked when Mia got home. After her father died, Mia broke her lease and moved back home to ‘Āhuimanu, taking leave from her work as a tax clerk so she could deal with the loss. “And what you expect? Cost of living going up, locals all moving away, the young ones no can afford. Plus, look all the people moving hea.” She waved a gloved hand at the houses around them, several newly sold to military who never stayed or foreign investors who didn’t care who rented them.

“Wea the community, I tell you.”

“Yeah, but I expected them to at least act like they care. The harbormaster said Dad should have dealt with it already, plenty boats like his getting stolen or ticketed, said there’s nothing he can do. Worse than the police.”

Aunty Marie wiped sweat from below the brim of her visor. “You know da Takanos? Someone broke into their house in broad daylight. They had video footage, everything. Nothing wen happen.” She squatted back down and started searching for weeds in the mondo grass. “Everything gone to shit, what you going do?”

Maybe Aunty Marie was right. What else could she do? What would her father have done? She didn’t have an answer, though she imagined her father would have offered a platitude to ease the tension on his neighbor’s face.

Then one morning while Mia was stuffing trash bags with her father’s old clothes to haul to Savers, she found an answer. A black case on the upper shelf in his closet, the key taped beside it. She put it on the floor and opened it up.

~

Although Mia had never liked the idea of owning a firearm, the weight of the weapon made her body light with adrenaline. Then there was the first time she fired it. She didn’t have a license and didn’t even know if the gun was registered, so instead of the gun range, she opted to hike up into the mountains to try it out. The only things she could find for target practice were a collection of chipped terracotta pots. She lined them up across the husk of a broken ironwood tree, then like she had seen in the movies, she held the gun with both hands and fired. Her whole body snapped back. Her ears rang with a pitch she could feel in her jaw. But it wasn’t pain in her cheeks, it was a smile. Fear yes, but there was also something like glee when she pulled the trigger. She missed every pot, but she didn’t care. She lined them up again and again until they were all in pieces. Every time the gun kicked back, she felt electric.

The current of that afternoon pulsed inside her. The anger she had felt before charged with something else, becoming what she would eventually call purpose. All over the news, headlines talked about the rise in crime rates. A woman robbed at knifepoint downtown. A boy came home from school in Pearl City to find two teenagers robbing his house. Car thefts and purse snatchings. Panic spreading. Everyone asking the same thing, what’s being done? But the police commissioner, the mayor, the governor, all of them parroting the same lines, this is not acceptable, and we are actively working to address your concerns.

But Mia wasn’t seeing it, and neither were her neighbors. She figured why wait for another break-in or worse, so she took it upon herself to start patrolling the neighborhood. She got the idea from the social media group that she visited in a failed search for her father’s boat, which she eventually gave up looking for, figuring it had probably saved her a trip to the dump anyway. In the group, people banded together online to share screen shots of the homeless, post blurry videos of possible crimes, and discuss government failings. It was great to see action being taken, but why not go one step further? When they saw what she was doing, some of her neighbors joined the effort, surveying the streets in shifts. Eventually, there wasn’t a single hour of the day when there wasn’t a member of the group stalking the corners.

“You don’t think this is a bit too far?” James, one of Mia’s neighbors, asked. He was a teacher who worked at the school down the road and had already expressed his concern about their group a number of times to her. Most recently, after one of them, Brandon, had accosted two high schoolers who had cut through the neighborhood on their way home. One of them had crouched down on the sidewalk to get a package of crack seed out of his bag. Brandon assumed they were trying to break into one of the cars and confronted them with a baseball bat.

“Mistakes happen,” Mia shrugged him off. “I think most of us feel safer.”

“It’s just not necessary.”

“Maybe, maybe not,” she replied. “It’s just a precaution.”

“And what about that?” he pointed to the bulge at her waist.

“My cell phone?” She moved her jacket to the side, knowing she had left the gun in her car. It was the middle of the afternoon. She wouldn’t need it.

He just shook his head. “What would your father say?”

“I think he’d join us.” She started walking, leaving him to swallow his reply.

~

It wasn’t long before they made the news. Mia wasn’t on patrol that night, but she heard the call come in over the walkie-talkies that the group shared. It was a habit that she had fallen into on nights that she couldn’t sleep. She’d sit in the living room, in her father’s chair, with the windows open and the walkie beside her, the streetlights and the occasional crackle of conversation keeping her company.

A double chirp from the radio woke her. “Takohunter, this is Brah-Eight-Oh-Eight. I’m down by the Silvas. Somebody in the garage. Get down here.” Another chirp. “Now.”

Mia waited for Tako’s reply but none came. She threw on a jacket and a pair of jeans she had slung over a dining room chair and headed out, tucking her pistol in her waistband as she crossed the lawn.

The Silvas lived a road over. Rather than go around the block, she pulled herself up onto Aunty Marie’s rock wall, crept around the back, and climbed over the plank fence into what was once Mr. Yonehiro’s yard. She felt like she was ten again, racing to get to her friend’s house after school. Aunty Marie never complained, but once Mr. Yonehiro dragged Mia by the arm all the way back to her front door, yelling at her father about the pīkake bushes Mia would trample through in her rush. Mia was sure things were set to explode, but her father disarmed the situation, assuring Mr. Yonehiro that the matter was serious and that it would never happen again. He was calm. Steady. She still couldn’t believe it was his gun. After Mr. Yonehiro left, her father turned to her and loosened his stare. Her mother had always been the disciplinarian. “Watch out for his bushes next time.” They both laughed.

Mr. Yonehiro had passed the place on to his son, but neither had done anything about the fence, so Mia had no trouble cutting through. However, out of respect for her father, she went around the bushes and kept to the grass.

~

Mr. Silva’s was several houses down. When she got close, Mia could hear swearing coupled with several hard thwacks like a machete through vines. No, rubber against flesh. She crept forward and listened. More swearing. Two voices. A third voice, stifled, begging. Then laughter. Another thwack. A body stepped out into the road.

Mia fell back and behind a corner of a rock wall. She peeked out. He turned toward her. At first, she thought she had been spotted, but she realized, no, he was just checking for cars. He hadn’t seen her, but she had seen him. Brandon, an orange slice of light falling over the canyons of his deep-set eyes and the sharp angle of his nose. The other one must have been Lawrence, Takohunter. A spear fisherman who sold homemade gaffs out of his grandmother’s house. His broad back was to her and his feet were bare. When the third figure, a man, crawled out, Mia saw why. Brandon walked past the man and came back, slippers in hand. He kicked him down then threw the slippers to Lawrence who didn’t hesitate to take one and smack the man across the face. The man took the hit, then raised himself up into a sitting position, wrapping one arm around his knees to protect his middle and using the other to cover his head. Lawrence and Brandon laughed.

“Now what?” Lawrence asked.

Brandon took out his cell phone. “The police will be here soon, let them deal with him.”

Lawrence shifted back. “What about—”

“Look at this crackhead,” Brandon spat at him. “What’s he doing here? Trespassing that’s what. And you seen what he had in the bag? We didn’t do anything wrong. We stopped him. He fought back.”

“I don’t know.”

Brandon shrugged. “We did what we had to do.”

“And you think they’re going to believe that?”

“That’s what happened, right?” He patted Lawrence on the shoulder and dialed, walking to the other side of the road.

Mia didn’t realize she was shaking until she tried to move. She thought about cutting back through Mr. Yonehiro’s, but there was no way that she wouldn’t be seen now. She could confront them both or join them, but then the police would show up, and they would be standing there, the tension between them making every word and movement suspicious. Then there was the gun pressed against the small of her back.

She saw the blue lights and ducked down. Two cars. Two officers. One of them pulled Brandon and Lawrence to the other side of the road. Mia couldn’t hear what was said, but it wasn’t long before they were laughing and looking in the direction of the man on the ground who was now cuffed and rocking in place. The other officer pressed a foot to the man’s back. “Sit still,” he commanded, holding him down. “Freaking tweakers,” he shouted across the street.

After everyone was gone, Mia walked over to the scene. The only evidence of the crime was a single broken slipper. The sole curled up like a salted slug. The strap broken. She left it there and headed home.

In bed, she stared up at the ceiling. The image of the man rocking back and forth coming back to her every time she shut her eyes. “Dad,” she whispered, wishing for an answer.

~

The next morning, still wondering what to do about what she had witnessed, Mia found Aunty Marie weeding her front yard. “You wen hear about Brandon dem? Was on da news dis morning.” That surprised Mia. “Dey heroes, yeah?” Another surprise.

Although Aunty Marie agreed that there wasn’t enough being done about the rise in crime, much like James, she didn’t really see a purpose for the watch. But as Aunty Marie recounted the exaggerated details that she had synthesized from the morning news and the coconut wireless, Mia could tell her position had shifted.

“Did they say how the guy is doing?” Mia asked.

Aunty Marie raised a tattooed eyebrow. “Da guy?”

“Did they take him to the hospital?”

“Hospital? Dey wen tackle da guy, wen rough him up, das all.” Mia sat down on the porch unsure of how to respond. “Dis one good thing you guys doing. I see dat now. Everybody going see now.”

“I don’t know, I think maybe we’re taking it too far.”

“You just trying fo keep dis place safe, right?”

Mia shook her head. “Is that what we’re doing?”

“Something wrong?” Aunty Marie stroked her shoulder.

Mia took out the gun and laid it on the ground. “Did you know Dad had this?”

Aunty Marie nodded. “Was my husband’s,” she said. “One of his anyway.”

Mia turned to face her. “Why?”

She leaned forward. “Fo keep you safe.”

“From what?”

“From everything,” she said, spreading her hands out toward the invisible threats waiting beyond the front yard. “After your mother wen ma-ke, das how he was. Always wen worry about you. Always fretting about, afraid of everything.”

“But this,” she thought about how he had acted with Mr. Yonehiro and what he had said when her mother had died. “I didn’t think this was him.” Then she noticed the houses around them and the walls and boundaries that had sprung up over the years. “I mean, he didn’t even bother to put up a fence.”

Aunty Marie rubbed Mia’s knee. “Trust me, Uncle Mel wen think da government was going become one dictatorship and ban all da guns. One was okay, but you know how many I wen find in da bedroom, da laundry room, da storage. Dis da same guy who never lock his truck when he wen go store.”

“Guess you don’t want it back then?”

“Dat manini thing? Nah, I wen keep something bigger in case I need it.” She held her arms out and squinted, fired an imaginary round at a papaya hanging from one of the trees in her yard. “No tell James though, dat guy worry about everything.”

Mia just shook her head. “I think he’s right though, especially about Brandon.”

“Try telling Mr. Silva dat.”

“You never saw the guy,” Mia confessed. “They’re not heroes.”

“We no think sometimes. We make mistakes.”

She thought about what Brandon had said to Lawrence. “That’s not what happened.”

“You probably right, but what can you do?”

“Better,” she admitted, picking up the gun and standing up.

~

Mia showered, changed, and headed out to the police station. She was nervous, so she wrote out her account of the night before just in case she couldn’t get out all the details. She wasn’t sure what would happen to the officers or if they’d even believe her, but she had to do what was right. She also brought the gun with her. She thought it safer to relinquish it to them than get rid of it herself. She figured it didn’t matter if it was registered. It was her father’s and that’s all she knew. Amnesty was still intact.

On her way there, she stopped to get gas at the service station. While she stood at the pump, she looked out at the flowers on the streetlight and the cardboard sign that she had put up. They were dry and pale, most of the petals gone. The sign was drooping and barely hanging on. The pump clicked. She returned it and then walked over to the streetlight. She took the flowers and the sign down. She stood there and realized the tire marks were faded and all she could smell was dust. Even the small fragments of plastic and glass had been washed away or pushed into the edges and cracks of the road.

She walked back to her car and sat there, watching the traffic. The first week after her father had died, she spent hours camped there, waiting, taking note of any bronze SUV that went by just in case the clerk had been mistaken. Now she realized just how pointless that was. What could she do? What could she have done? Nothing could bring him back. She started her car and drove out to the street.

While she waited for an opening in the traffic, a silver 4Runner passed. The sun hit the paint, washing it in yellow light. She read the license plate to herself, whispering it over and over again to be sure.

“LMV 596.”

“LMV 596.”

“LMV 596.”

She turned and tore off after it.

Kamehameha Highway was a two-lane road with several blind turns and narrow straightaways. A stretch that lacked stoplights and speed limit signs. She was three cars behind the 4Runner. After every turn, she hit the gas and jumped a place, narrowly missing an oncoming bus and the fender of a disgruntled driver. But even as she closed the distance, it escaped her, the silver specter disappearing in the passing glare. Each time it did, Mia’s grip grew tighter, every part of her surging, her foot never leaving the gas.

Then the opportunity came. The entrance to the pier was up ahead and everything slowed. A truck waiting to turn in. Mia took her foot off the pedal and let momentum carry her toward the bumper of the SUV. She hit the brakes just before contact, turning what could have been a collision into a nudge. She waited for a response, but none came, and that’s when she knew.

The 4Runner turned onto the shoulder and sped forward. Mia followed, thinking through her next move. They would be in Kāne‘ohe town soon. The driver could lose her in the shopping center or down one of the side streets. She could call the police, but what evidence did she really have? Unusual behavior? Instinct? Plus, she had been the one who hit them. The SUV’s taillights flashed and drifted to the left, preparing to hang the right. Mia knew the 4Runner would need to slow down quite a bit to make the turn, giving her a chance. She hit the gas and jumped the corner, forcing the SUV into the other lane just as it made the turn. The driver couldn’t correct the angle without risking a rollover. Instead, it came to a complete stop on the shoulder, Mia blocking it in.

When she walked around to the driver’s side, she prayed to find the bumper pocked and faded, the headlights oxidized and foggy, the wheel well straight, and the paint matching its age. She hoped for a reason to let it go and walk away. Instead, the bumper’s chrome was mirror smooth, the headlights were unusually clear, and the wheel well had been hammered out and painted. Everything about the front of the old car was new.

The driver, an older man with swollen cheeks and a heavy jaw, didn’t bother to get out. Instead, he just stared ahead, shaking, his eyes hidden behind a pair of tinted glasses.

Mia pressed the barrel of the gun to the window. Her vision tunneled. Everything around her was surging. Every part of her was anger and electricity. If he had continued to stare ahead, she would have done it. Her finger was twitching. She could feel the kickback. She could see the glass breaking. She could see his head blown into the passenger’s seat. She could imagine the blood sprinkling her cheeks and the rush of air that would leave her lungs. She knew the vacuum that would be left there. The sudden gasp of relief. The shock of it. Then the guilt keeping her empty. She would live with it. She thought she could.

But then he turned to her. She saw him, but she also saw herself and her father in her reflection. Then the driver that had stopped to check on the scene. The woman hiding in the garage behind her. She looked at the man again, the SUV, the silver paint flat even in the sunlight. She wanted to check the license plate again, but she was afraid of what she’d find.

---

Copyright © 2025 Donald Carreira Ching, from Bloodwork and Other Stories (Bamboo Ridge Press, 2025). Excerpt published by permission.

Image by Clark Van Der Beken.