According to Christopher’s testament about Malahia unknown by any Biblical scholars, she probably would take her playing-cards with her. Or maybe she would give them to someone else. Maybe she would give them to some boy at school who wasn’t Christopher; maybe to that wretched baseball-playing kid who Christopher had seen walking with Malahia. Twice. His name was Malcolm and he always had a dumb smirk on his face. Jerk.
Christopher knew his sanity had been restored during his next meeting with the Hawiian Empress, Malahia Kahale. But sanity’s restoration was replaced with the unexpected resurgence of severe pain that he once felt from the years-ago statements of Nancy Benford. Why did women give pain in one way or another? Nancy Benford was one way and Malahia Kahale was another. Or was it the same?
The setting for this meeting could have been drawn and painted by a Hollywood Art Director. Christopher and Malahia were sitting together side by side on the railing of the school’s playground with no one else around since all the classes for the day were done. There was an October breeze just beginning to sway the branches of trees behind them. The sky was glorious in its deepest blue and there were such white thick clouds that they looked as though they belonged above Florida or maybe somewhere over the African Continent but not Pennsylvania. And beyond the visual there was the marvelous aroma of autumn that was returning to Pennsylvania.
“When are you going home, Malahia? Do you know when?” He had to ask because the unknown was lurking continually and causing him pain. He had to know if their closeness would last weeks or months or years or forever.
She was looking down and kept looking down. “Friday.”
The hurt was sharper and more intense than he had feared. For a while there was no audible response.
Then there was a short “Oh” followed by a long silence before he asked, “For forever? I mean will you stay in Hawaii forever? All the time?”
She shook her head, still looking down. “I don’t know.”
“Are you happy? I mean about going?”
She took a while to answer. “I miss my mother and my father and my brothers and my sister and I miss my home. I mean where I live; Hawaii. I didn’t want to come here to the mainland. But then—I don’t know—I got to—I don’t know, Chris.” And she looked very briefly at him and then she looked away again. “But then I met you.”
There was a rush inside him. “Well,” he barely got it out. “Well, I mean—I’ll miss you, Malahia.”
Suddenly she looked at him directly, now not at all ignoring his eyes and she talked as though she was already a young woman and not a little girl. “Oh, Chris! I will miss you so much!”
Then knowing that any sign of jealousy would do him no good, he suppressed his instinct to ask her if she would miss other guys—like Malcolm. But the suppression was not total. “Will you miss other things, too?”
“No,” she said in a loud and certain voice. “I won’t miss anything else but you.”
Now it was Christopher who looked down. His eyes fastened on those brown and white saddle shoes that were so distinctive as being hers. Somehow the toes of her shoes faced each other. How could she do that? How could that be comfortable for her? When he sat there his shoes pointed outward. “What if I came to see you?”
“In Hawaii?”
“Yes.”
“Oh, Chris. Could you? Would you?”
Realism took over. “I don’t think so.”
Again there was silence. Then she added, “Do you think that after you get out of school maybe you could?”
“Will you wait for me?” He asked her as though he was either going to prison or to fight the enemy. But no one was threatening him with prison and the war was over.
“Oh, yes!”
“Then I’ll come to Hawaii.”
“Will you? Promise?”
Suddenly remembering who he was and who he wanted to be, he added, “Will you wait if first I have to go to the moon?”
As soon as he said those words something happened that seemed unbelievable to him. She put her hand on his arm. Her hand was so small. He quickly jarred his head toward her and just as quickly she started looking straight in his eyes. “That’s what I love about you, Chris. I want you to go to the moon first. Even if I have to wait.”
“You do?”
“When everyone finds out you’re on the moon I will tell all my friends that first you told me you will go to the moon and then you will come to Hawaii to be with me.”
“Yes,” he said and quickly thought to himself to make any statement to her to be brief. He thought, ‘Leave things good between us. I can’t do any better than what just happened including what she said to me. Don’t mess it up.’
But of course he did mess it up. He asked, “May I—I mean do you feel—it’s you know. Do you—would it be okay if—I mean what I mean.”
She somehow understood the totally incomprehensible. “Christopher, I have never kissed a boy before so I don’t know how.”
“Oh.”
She was unprepared for the brevity of his response of “oh” so there was an uneasy silence and then she asked what came naturally to her: “Have you kissed a girl before?”
“Yes.”
“How many?”
“About 200.” He didn’t know from where in his head that answer came but he quickly remembered he shouldn’t lie. “Maybe not exactly that many but—” and then he stopped talking because an end of sentence was not coming into his head. He just let it lay there without completion. They sat there on the railing for at least three minutes more lingering in silence. No kiss. Not right after that dialogue. But she knew how to talk without saying anything at all by leaving her hand on his arm and occasionally moving her hand very lightly above and below his elbow.
With that, like a breaker in the sea, something came over him that he had never felt before. Could her hand on his arm do this to him? It was something inside his entire being that was telling him he was not through with newness, and this was a newness of a never-felt-before internal paradise fighting and pushing to envelope him.
She stood up and they stared at each other and she took a piece of folded paper from under the cuff of her blouse and she handed it to him and she started to walk away. Now he could see the back of her shoes and those wonderful scuff marks were still there and he felt ‘they better not be cleaned when she gets home.’
He watched her walk from him. This time, no psychology. He called her back.
She came back—almost ran back.
They kissed. They had to. And it was beyond anything either of them hoped it would be.
She walked away again and he knew to leave her alone. He looked down at the piece of paper she gave him and he unfolded it. It was a letter to him written in ink in her slanted handwriting:
‘Dear Chris. I will think of you every time I look at my cards. They will be with me, a few always near my heart. In that way you will always be so close to my heart. Love, Mala.’
Near her heart? Yes. Love? Love, Mala she wrote. Love, Mala. That is what she wrote. Is that what she meant? It was what he meant and hadn’t said. It is what he felt.
God—is life ever wonderful!
So much of it anyway.
THEME SIX
THE NEW LOOK
CHRISTOPHER MISSED MALAHIAKAHALA so much that he felt that faithfulness was his new and permanent trait. As more years passed and letters continued between them, he continued to long for her.
Because of that he ignored a unique visual trend. With the war done, girls and women adopted the wearing of a new wardrobe: “The New Look” with full-length dresses that looked like they were ready to go to a formal event every day and night even though they were just going to school or to work or to a snack-counter for a chocolate malt.
But “The New Look” of the post-war years would soon have severe competition that would even receive the attention of Christopher Straw no matter that it had nothing to do with Malahia Kahala:
Cars. New cars th
at like their competition, also had a New Look.
There were automakers who were busy designing and then building what would be the 1949-model cars. During the war years most car manufacturers were making vehicles and other items for the War Effort and after the war ended it took the automobile-makers some time to retool. While they were retooling they temporality put out little for sale more than dull re-dos of pre-war cars with some incidentals to make them look a little different but they did not cause great interest with one exception: a car called the Tucker 48. It seemed as though everyone wanted to see this car with three headlights; the middle headlight turning with the movement of the steering wheel; a driver’s seat in the middle of the width of the car; no running boards; no traditional fenders, and magnificent innovations of creativity throughout both its exterior and interior. Christopher hoped for a day he would own one, or more realistically at least be able to see one other than in a newspaper photograph. But even if he had the $3,000 or so to own one, and he didn’t, few could own them and few could even see them because there were less than 100 Tuckers that had been manufactured.
During the last months of 1948 came the introduction of the 1949 models that had been completed by automakers other than Preston Tucker. Those ‘49 model cars each had one or more innovations distinct from one another. Along with all of their admitted Tucker-like rejection of running boards and no more traditional fenders, they were each making their mark in the post-World War II world when cars could not only be built again but would look better than cars looked before (or ever again in the 20th Century) and took center-stage in visually stating that the war was over.
Studebakers that were being driven, for instance, south or east looked like they could well be heading north or west because the front and back of Studebakers were of similar shape with observers not always knowing which way Studebakers were facing.
You didn’t have to raise your feet to get into every new car as the new Hudson was made in such a way that when getting into a Hudson you had to step down. No one seemed to understand how this could possibly be true, but it was.
Fords had big chrome-covered circles on the front of their grills somewhat looking like a non-lighting and non-moving Tucker middle headlight while the rest of the car was just as un-Ford, giving the illusion that it was driving right out of a Plastic Man comic book.
Depending on the model, Buicks had three or four small port-hole circles on their sides close to being above their front tires, and they had one large, heavy metal circular object standing upright on the front of the hood with that object being able (although not easy) to be removed by a boy and given to a girlfriend as a bracelet.
There were fins on the back of Cadillac Eldorado’s as though they were metal encasements hiding a giant shark.
Henry J. Kaiser and Joseph Frazer were two men who joined their talents to manufacture deluxe looking cars named the Kaiser and the Frazer and also the Henry J. (which was the first name and middle initial of Kaiser) and other models. After building war-ships for the government, now the two were making cars with their own New Look. But with the unexpected luxurious post-war models from more well-known automobile manufacturers enticing customers, the Kaisers and Frazers were not selling at the pace they wanted to stay in business.
The Crosley automobile (built by Powel Crosley Jr.’s company that had made pre-war automobiles as well as more well-known radios and refrigerators and other appliances) were so small and light that four high-school boys could lift a new Crosley from its parking place by a curb and put it on someone’s front lawn or anywhere so that some pre-spotted girl coming out of school, had to look all over the neighborhood to find it.
A pretty American-Indian girl who was a couple grades below Christopher had a Crosley and therefore had to look for her Crosley every late afternoon after the school-day was done. Christopher Straw was not considered by anyone to be a participant in such a car-moving-scheme. But he was. After all, she was pretty and now he noticed that she wore a New Look dress. Chris had spent most of his life thinking that Indians were like those he had seen in the movies; some with headdresses adorned with feathers; some giving chants while moving one of their hands back and forth in front of their lips while while making a strange noise from the back of their throats; and some Indians who were either fighting the white man or were assistants to comic book and movie-serial characters. But this girl was pretty. Not as pretty as Malahia, but not bad at all, so she was an ideal candidate to have her car moved on a daily basis. And it was mind-engrossing and an ideal time-passer for Christopher who had no Malahia and no car. At least he could help lift a new ’49 Crosley and see the reaction of a pretty American-Indian girl, with both the car and the girl each having a post-war New Look.
During the first few years following the war, the world was full of all kinds of New Looks beyond cars and girls. The major one was seeing the war from a vantage point unknown when the war was current. Christopher’s World History teacher in B-11 of McConnellsburg’s high school, Mr. Pratt, described the Post-War world as being “like a movie full of tragedies and triumphs that has ended with our victory and now the theater’s lights are on and it’s time to walk up the aisle and go home. In great relief, we won.
“But,” Mr. Pratt continued, “You were probably told from your parents and your teacher—very accurately—from the moment of Pearl Harbor—that we were going to win the war.”
There was a chorus of “yes’s” from the classroom.
“At the outset they probably knew we were losing,” Mr. Pratt continued, “and losing throughout most of 1942. I knew and yet I, too, told my students at the time that ‘we will win!’ I believed it when I said it and it was also meant to keep spirits high and not to worry about what could be—what could be losing. What could be no more United States. And no matter what we knew at the time, in the end we did win. And do you know how?”
There was absolute silence. “Because of you—and everyone in the country who would not accept—or even talk about this nation’s potential of facing our defeat.” And Mr. Pratt gave a back-of-right-hand signal of a “V” facing the students, using the visual pursuit of Victory as Winston Churchill initiated it. “There was no other cause but Victory. No other international pursuit of us and our allies other than victory. That’s how we won. That’s how you won. Thank you for what you did during those years, boys and girls.”
Christopher raised his hand and Mr. Pratt called on him. “Mr. Pratt, why were we asked by President Roosevelt to bring grease to school for the War Effort? Why did that help win the war?”
Mr. Pratt looked confused. “You know,” he said with a slight smile. “I don’t really know. I never gave that thought. I’m sure there was a good reason.”
Christopher went on. “What reason could that be?”
“I think I remember knowing at the time. I think so. But I don’t remember the reason. I don’t know.” Then he paused, “What do you think? What do you think was the reason?”
“Mr. Pratt, I think President Roosevelt wanted to make sure we never forgot the War Effort so he made things up for us to do, and then companies reminded us to work for the War Effort all the time.”
Mr. Pratt with his now continuing smile, added a nod to the smile. “Maybe you’re right! If so, do you think that was good or bad?”
Without even a pause Christopher answered, “It was necessary.”
Now Mr. Pratt said nothing. He stared at Christopher. One of the other students started to say something and Mr. Pratt stopped him by stretching out his two open hands. “No. Not yet. Absorb that. Absorb what Cristopher just said. You all just heard wisdom said by a classmate.”
And Mr. Pratt held to the silence as though it was a long paragraph of dialogue. Then he added in a much softer voice than before, “Starting from so far from behind, our winning was exceptional. Everyone thought of the War Effort every day and night. That’s how we won. In addition, boys and girls, I hope you noticed what just happened this year that wa
s beyond exceptional: most victors in war ignore or punish the people who have been governed by the losers. We could have charged those countries who fought us so that our citizens would not have to pay taxes far into the future as the losers in the war would pay our taxes. That was common for other victors at other times in other wars. Instead, just this April our nation revealed a plan not only to dismiss all that and, instead, have our own citizens give their funds—not our former enemies to give funds but ourselves to give our funds to both our friends and to our former enemies so they can rebuild their cities and particularly for our former enemies to construct democracies where they had previously built governments of horror.” Then his voice raised in tone. “Think of it! Ever hear of a victor like that? Exceptional. I have never seen anything like that human kindness extended from victors. To me—to your teacher—I believe it was a new height achieved by the human race after attaining victory. Do you think such policies would have come from our enemies had they won?”
Mr. Pratt had an unusual habit of changing the subject in a radical way, simply yelling the name of a new subject, therefore scaring any students of drifting minds to jump from their seats to accept whatever Mr. Pratt may want to now discuss:
“Mahatma Gandhi!” Mr. Pratt yelled in rejection of seeking any frame of continuity from his previous subject. His tone would have been just as appropriate of yelling the disconnected name of Perry Como or Joe Louis.
“Did you hear me?! Mahatma Gandhi! He wanted independence for his nation of India from Great Britain and he got it. Do you know when? Do you know when that simple man achieved independence for his nation of India? August the 15th of just last year! Do you know who Indians are? And I don’t mean Hiawatha and Geronimo and Sitting Bull and I certainly don’t mean Tonto and Little Beaver!”
There was no reason for him to suddenly become angry but he appeared angry. Then with a quick smile he looked at Christopher Straw, “Nor do I mean the American-Indian girl who is the owner of the new Crosley that seems to find its way to a different home’s lawn across the street from school to her surprise every afternoon!”
Raising the Baton Page 5