Hawaii

by James Michener

  He harnessed up two good horses and started westward to survey the lands he had been given. He drove some distance out of town, shaking the dust from his nose and staring at the bleak, grassless hills that rose to his right. Above them stood the barren mountains of the Koolau Range, and as far as he could see nothing grew. He drove past Pearl Harbor and out to where the land began to level off between the Koolau Mountains to the right and the Waianae Range to the left. Ahead lay his land. It was bleak, barren, profitless. Looking at it he recalled his Uncle Micah's description of the deserts of western America when that young minister traversed them in 1849: "They were lands where nothing grew, not even grass."

  Grimly amused, Wild Whip tied his horses to a rock, for there were no trees, and got out to study his inheritance at closer quarters. When he kicked away the surface growth of lichen and dried scrub grass, he found that the soil was a rich reddish color that his Grandfather Whipple had once explained as the result of the gradual breaking down of volcanic rocks. "It's rich in iron," Whip mused. "Probably grow things like mad if it could get water."

  He looked back at Pearl Harbor and saw the wide expanse of salt sea water, useless to a farmer. He looked up at the sky and saw no clouds, for few arrived here with rain, and then he happened to look toward the Koolau Range to his right, and above its peaks he saw many dark clouds, riding in upon the trade winds that bore down constantly from the northeast, and he could almost smell the water falling out of those clouds. It fell, of course, on the other side of the mountains and gushed furiously down steep valleys and back out to sea. His Grandfather Whipple had trapped a little in his ditches, but the bulk was as useless as the salt water of Pearl Harbor.

  It was then that his great design came to him. "Why not build a tunnel right through the mountains and bring the water over here?" He visualized a system of ditches and dikes, all serving to bring the rich waters of the other side down to his parched lands. "I'll build that tunnel!" he swore. "I'll make this land so rich that by comparison Uncle Micah's boats will be worth nothing." He pointed his long right forefinger at the Koolau Range and announced to those impassive giants: "Some day I'm going to walk right through your bowels. Be ready."

  Curiously, Whip's great fortune was built in quite a different manner. When he saw that he was not wanted in his family's business, and when he had finished inspecting his imperial and useless acres, he decided to leave Hawaii, and he did so in memorable fashion. He had never forgotten how relatively pleasant it had been sleeping surreptitiously with his responsive cousin, Nancy Janders, still banished to the mainland, and now as he was about to leave he began paying deadly court to her saucy younger sister Iliki. It was a whirlwind affair, interspersed with wild nights in Rat Alley with a little French girl, and it culminated in pretty Iliki's slipping into men's clothes as a passenger aboard a British freighter whose captain married her to Whip on the journey to San Francisco. When the joint families heard of the scandal, they prayed that young Iliki would find a happiness which they felt sure would escape her; but when, in America, Iliki's older sister Nancy heard of the marriage she cried, "Damn them, damn them! I hope they both live in hell."

  Wild Whip didn't, because he found considerable joy in his lively cousin, but Iliki did, for she discovered to her consternation and embarrassment that her husband had no intention of being loyal to her or of giving up his customary visits to local brothels. In San Francisco he had dashing affairs with several women of otherwise good repute, and a running relationship with two popular Spanish courtesans from a waterfront institution of ill fame. In other ways he was a good husband, and when his son was born in 1880, he insisted that the boy be named Janders Hoxworth after his wife's father. He proved himself to be a doting husband and was obviously pleased to parade on Sunday after church with his wife on his arm and his son surrounded by lace in the perambulator which he proudly pushed.

  But in late 1880 Iliki's sister visited them on her way back to Honolulu, and Nancy was now a striking New York beauty, and it was not long before Nancy's hatred of Wild Whip became once more the passionate love she had earlier known for this gallant gentleman. At first Whip sneaked away to Nancy's hotel, where they fell into wild, tormenting embraces. All the longing of three years rushed back upon poor Nancy Janders, and she abandoned restraint. She would lie in bed completely undressed, waiting for Whip to bound up the hotel stairs, and as soon as he burst into the room and locked the door, she would spring upon him and kiss him madly, throwing him onto the bed with laughter that welled up from her entire being. Sometimes she kept him imprisoned for a whole day, and it became obvious to her sister Iliki what was going on.

  At first the gay little wife could not imagine what she ought to do; she wondered whether she was supposed to break into the hotel room and confront the guilty pair or whether custom required her to weep silently, but her problems were resolved when on a day which took her shopping she returned unexpectedly to find that bold Nancy had trailed Whip to his own home, had undressed in Iliki's room, and had pulled Whip into bed with her. When Iliki arrived, they stared up at her from her own sheets. Nobody made a scene. Nancy pouted: "I had him first. He's decided to stay with me."

  "Put some clothes on," Iliki said, amazed at her restraint. When they were dressed Nancy announced defiantly, "Whip and I are going to live together."

  Iliki did not bother to argue with her husband, for she knew that no matter what he promised, it was of no consequence. He was not like other men, and with deep sorrow--for she loved him very much --she saw that he was destined to bounce from one woman to another without ever resting with one, and she thought: "He'll have a very lonely life."

  She left San Francisco with her son Janders and returned on an H & H liner to Honolulu, where she lived a long, full life as a divorcee, doing much good in the community. The natural history museum flourished largely because of her energies.

  Her husband Whip and her sister Nancy enjoyed a wild time in San Francisco. Whip got a formal divorce but did not bother to marry Nancy, because, as he pointed out, "I'll never make a good husband." Nancy, finding in sex a complete gratification, was content to tag along on whatever terms he proposed, nor was she distressed when she uncovered suspicious circumstances that seemed to prove that her companion was also the consort of several well-known waterfront girls. What she liked best, however, apart from the passionate moments when he came home after a long absence, were the intense days when he took her with him to talk with men who had built tunnels. They were an odd, dedicated group of experts, willing to tackle nature on any terms, and they convinced Whip that if he could scrape together enough money, they could penetrate the Koolau Mountains and bring water to his dusty lands. Surreptitiously, he sent one of the engineer geologists to Hawaii, and in the guise of bird-collecting this keen fellow tramped the Koolaus and satisfied himself that tunneling them would present no unusual problems. "As a matter of fact," he reported, "it looks to me as if the mountains were built in layers tilted on end. If that's true, when you drill your tunnel you'll not only collect all the water you trap in outside ditches to lead into your tunnel, but the porous rock above the tunnel will probably deliver an equal amount of its own. This could be a profitable undertaking, so far as water's concerned."

  "How long would the tunnel have to be?"

  "Eight, ten miles," the engineer replied.

  "Can you build a tunnel that long?" Whip asked.

  "Any tunnel is simply a function of money," the engineer replied. "If you've got the money, I can get the dynamite."

  "In this case, how much?"

  "Four million."

  "Don't forget my name," Whip said.

  This report seemed to be the final answer to Whip's land problem. He didn't have the four million dollars then, but there was always a chance he might one day have it. He therefore decided to return to Hawaii, but Nancy Janders said, "I wouldn't, Whip."

  "Why not?"

  "Well, Iliki's there. That'll be embarrassing for you. And I certain
ly can't go back with you."

  "I don't think you should," Whip said coldly, and a few days later he added, "You ought to be looking for a man for yourself, Nance."

  "You through with me?" Nancy asked.

  "No place for you in Hawaii," he said truthfully. "How you fixed for money?"

  "The family sends me my share," she assured him.

  "Nance," he said in his most friendly manner, "I sure hope you have a wonderful life from here on out. Now you better get some clothes on."

  She had been gone only a few hours when there was a knock at his hotel-room door, and a little man in an overcoat that reached down to his ankles entered. "My name's Overpeck, Milton Over-peck, and I hear you're interested in drilling a tunnel."

  "That's right," Whip said. "Sit down, Mr. Overpeck. You like whiskey?"

  "I like anything," Overpeck said.

  "You a tunnel man?"

  "Well, yes and no," the little man replied, gulping a huge draft of whiskey. Coughing slightly he asked, "I understand you're drilling your tunnel in order to get water."

  "You've followed me around pretty well, Mr. Overpeck. Another whiskey?"

  "Look, son, if you calculate on getting me drunk and outsmarting me, quit now, because you simply can't do it."

  "I'm offering it in hospitality," Whip assured him.

  "I never accept hospitality unless the host joins me. Now you gulp one down and catch up, and we can have a fine talk."

  The two men, Whip Hoxworth twenty-four years old and Milton Overpeck in his early fifties, guzzled straight whiskey for several hours, during which the little engineer fascinated the Hawaiian landowner with a completely new theory about water. The doughty drinker, whose eyes were bright and clear after three quarters of a bottle, apparently knew more about Hawaii than Whip did, at least about the island of Oahu.

  "My theory is this," he explained, using pillows, books and newspapers to build his island. "This volcano here and this one here built Oahu. That's perfectly obvious. Now, as they built, one surely must have overflowed the rightful terrain of the other. I judge all volcanic rock to be porous, so in Oahu it seems to me you have got to have a complex substructure, the bulk of it porous. All the fine water that falls on your island doesn't run immediately out to sea."

  "Well, the engineer I sent out there did say that he thought the mountains were probably porous," Whip remembered.

  "I'm not interested in the mountains you see above land," Overpeck snapped. "I'm interested in the subterranean ones. Because if, as I suspect, there was a rising and a falling of the entire mountain mass . . ." He stopped, studied his friend and said, "Sorry, you're drunk. I'll be back in the morning." But as he was about to leave he said, "Don't sleep on a pillow tonight. Leave everything just as it is."

  Whip, through bleary eyes, tried to focus on the turmoil in his room and asked, "What's all this got to do with tunnels?"

  "I wouldn't know," Overpeck replied. "I'm a well man meself."

  He appeared at seven next morning, chipper as a woodchuck, his long overcoat flapping about his ankles in the cold San Francisco weather. He surprised Whip by completely dismissing the intricate construction of pillows, books and newspapers. "Best thing is to show you," he said cheerily. "Wells'11 be the making of Hawaii." And he led Whip down to the foot of Market Street, where grimy ferries left for the other side of the bay, and when after a long walk through Oakland they stood before a well he had recently dug he pointed with unconcealed admiration at a pipe protruding from the ground, from which gushed a steady volume of water that rose fourteen feet into the air.

  "Does it run like this all the time?" Whip asked.

  "Day and night," Overpeck replied.

  "What does it?"

  "Artesian, that's what it is. Artesian."

  "How many gallons a day?"

  "A million four."

  "How long will it last?"

  "Forever."

  This was what Wild Whip had been dreaming of, a steady source of fresh water, but he had imagined that the only way to get it was to drive a tunnel through the mountains. If Overpeck were correct, where the water really lay was at his feet, but in business Whip was both daring and cautious. He was willing to take almost any gamble to obtain water, but he wanted assurance that he had at least a fair chance of winning. Carefully he asked, "Why did you have to bring me all the way over here to show me this well? Why didn't you show me one in San Francisco?"

  "Artesian water don't happen everywhere," Overpeck replied.

  "Suppose there isn't any on my land in Hawaii?"

  "My job is to guess where it is," Overpeck answered. "And I guess it's under your land."

  "Why?"

  "That's what I was explaining with the pillows and the newspapers," he said.

  "I think we better go back to the hotel," Whip said. "But wait a minute. How did you get the well down there?"

  "A special rig I invented."

  "How far down did you go?"

  "Hundred and eighty feet."

  "You want to sell the rig?"

  "Nope."

  "I didn't think so." The two men returned to the ferry, and as Whip studied the cold and windy hills of San Francisco, imagining them to be Hawaii, he became increasingly excited, but when little Mr. Overpeck assured him that a layer of cap rock must have imprisoned enormous stores of sweet water under the sloping flatlands of Oahu, Whip could feel actual perspiration break out on his

  forehead.

  "What kind of deal can we make, Overpeck?" he asked bluntly.

  "You're sweating, son. If I find water, I'm handing you millions of dollars, ain't I?"

  "You are."

  "I'm a gambler, Mr. Hoxworth. What I want is the land next to yours."

  "How much?"

  "You pay for getting the rig over there. You give me three dollars a day. And you buy, before we start, one thousand acres of land. If we get water, I buy it from you for what you paid. If we don't, you keep it."

  "Are the chances good?"

  "There's one way we can test my theory without spending a cent."

  "How?"

  "Think a minute. If there really is a pool of inexhaustible water hiding under your land, the overflow has got to be escaping somewhere. Logically, it's running away under the sea level, but some of it must be seeping out over the upmost edge of the cap rock. Go out to your land. Tell people you're going to raise cattle. Walk along the upper areas until you find a spring. Calculate how high above sea level you are, and then walk back and forth along that elevation. If you find half a dozen more springs, it's not even a gamble, Mr. Hoxworth. Because then you know the water's hiding down below you."

  "You come out and check," Whip suggested.

  "People might guess. Then land values go up."

  Whip reflected on this shrewd observation and made a quick decision. "Buy yourself a good bull. Bring him to the islands with you and we'll announce that you're going to help me raise cattle. Then everybody'll feel sorry for me, because lots of people have gone bust trying that on the barren lands. Takes twenty of our acres to support one cow, and nobody makes money."

  Three weeks later little Mr. Overpeck arrived in Honolulu with a bull and announced to the Honolulu Mail that he was going to advise Mr. Whipple Hoxworth in the raising of cattle on the latter's big ranch west of the city. He led his bull out to the vast, arid, useless acres, and as soon as he got there he told Whip, "Buy that land over there for me." And Whip did, for practically nothing, and the next day he concluded that he had been victimized by the shrewd little man, for they tramped both Whip's acres and Overpeck's, and there were no springs.

  "Why the hell did you bother me with your nonsense?" the young man railed.

  "I didn't expect any springs today," Overpeck said calmly. "But I know where they'll crop out after the next big storm up in the mountains," and sure enough, three days after the rain clouds left, along the line that Overpeck had predicted, he and Whip discovered sure evidences of seepage. They stood on the
hillside looking down over the bleak and barren acres, Whip's four thousand and Over-peck's one, and the little man said, "We're standing on a gold mine, Mr. Hoxworth. I'm mortally certain there's water below. Buy up all the land you can afford."

  Eight weeks later the little man reappeared in Hawaii without any cattle, but with nine large boxes of gear. This time he informed the Mail: "It looks as if Mr. Hoxworth's investment in cattle is going to be lost unless somehow we can find water on those acres."

  He set up a pyramidal wooden derrick about twelve feet high, at the bottom of which were dung two large iron wheels connected by an axle upon which rope could be Wound when the wheels were turned by hand. This rope went from the axle and up to the top of the derrick, where it crossed on a pulley and dropped down to be lashed to the end of a heavy iron drill. Laboriously Overpeck cranked the heavy wheels until the iron drill was hauled to the top of the derrick. Then he tripped a catch and jumped back as the drill plunged downward, biting its way through sand and rock. Laboriously he turned the wheels and lifted the drill back into position; then a swift whirrrrr, and the next bite was taken.

  "How long will this take?" Hoxworth asked, amazed at the effort required.

  "A long time."

  "Have you the strength?"

  "I'm boring for a million dollars," the wiry little man replied. "I got the strength."

  Days passed and weeks, and the determined engineer kept hoisting his drills, breaking their points on almost impenetrable hard pan, sharpening them by hand, and hoisting them once more. "You ought to have an engine," Whip growled as the work made slow progress.

  "When I get some money, I'll get an engine," Overpeck snapped.

  Now Whip saw the little fighter in a new light. "All your life you've been broke, haven't you?"

  "Yep. All my life I was waiting for a man like you."