Hawaii

by James A. Michener

  So she lived spiritually apart from her sons and her community. Each night after the others were in bed, she stripped herself naked and with a small lamp inspected each area of her body, and when she had finally cleared even her big feet of suspicion she sighed and said to herself, “Still no leprosy.” And if she avoided this, nothing else mattered.

  WHEN WHIPPLE HOXWORTH RETURNED to Hawaii in 1877 he had brought with him only a hundred pineapple plants and a bag of miscellaneous seeds to show for his seven years abroad, but he had already become the man who was destined to rebuild the structure of the islands. He was tall, wiry-thin, quick both in muscle and wit and unusually well trained in the use of his fists. He had the insolent assurance of his paternal grandfather, Captain Rafer Hoxworth, plus the distinguished bearing that had characterized his maternal grandfather, Dr. John Whipple. He also exhibited certain other behavior patterns of those two men.

  Like Captain Rafer, young Whip had an insatiable desire for women, and following quickly upon the Chinese girl who had taught him lessons at the age of thirteen, he had enjoyed the wild companionship of strange women in most of the world’s major ports. His entire earnings for seven years had been spent freely on these women, and he regretted not a penny of his loss, for he had made an essential discovery: he had it within his power to make women happy. Sometimes at a formal party, when as a budding second mate he was invited to a home of distinction in Perth or Colombo or Bangkok, he would enter the room and physically feel the lines of communication establishing themselves between him and certain women, and as the night wore on he would stare quietly, yet with insolent power, at the most likely of these companions, and he would seek her out for a dance and say certain modest yet fire-filled things to her, and the atmosphere often became so charged with passion that when he had maneuvered to find himself alone with the woman, she would thrust herself into his arms and encourage him to do with her as he wished, even though a few hours before they had not known of each other’s existence. Whenever he entered a party he hesitated a moment at the doorway and thought: “Who will be in there tonight?” For he had found that there was always someone.

  In his reflections during long days at sea young Whip never thought in polished terms of “milady’s glove” or “my dear Miss Henderson.” He thought of girls as strong young animals, naked and stretched out on a bed. That’s how he liked women and that’s how they liked to be when they were with him. They were utterly enjoyable playmates, and to think of them otherwise was a waste of energy. He made no distinctions as between married or unmarried women; he derived no special pleasure from cuckolding a married man; nor did he find women of any particular nationality or color especially desirable. If he could not gain entrance in Suez to the soiree of a French nobleman, he was quite content to pay down his livres at an established house and take his pick of the professional companions, but even though he often preferred this simple and direct method of acquiring a partner, he had also learned to be a professional gallant, and if he came upon some shy young lady who seemed worth the effort, he stood willing to humble himself before her as a traditional suitor out of a book, sending her flowers and candy, writing her short notes in his vigorous style, and dancing a rather impressive attendance upon her; for he always remembered his grandfather’s advice: “When your great-grandmother Malama lay dying, she weighed over four hundred pounds, and her husband crawled in to see her every morning on his hands and knees, bringing her maile. That’s not a bad thing for a man to do.” Young Whip loved women passionately. He knew that they complemented his life and he was willing to do almost anything to make them happy.

  As might be expected, his behavior when he returned from his seven years’ cruise took Honolulu rather by surprise. He completely terrified the Hale and Hewlett girls by professing to each in turn his Persian-Egyptian type of love, acquired, as he intimated, by long travels in a camel caravan toward ruined cities of antiquity. The poor girls never really understood what the dashing young man was talking about, but they did discover that he had a great determination to get their underwear off as quickly as possible, so that pretty soon it was agreed among the missionary daughters that they would prefer not to be escorted by their Cousin Whip. He discovered early that one of his full cousins, Nancy Janders, was amenable to his attentions, and they entered into a disgraceful series of performances that ended with Whip being caught in her bedroom completely stripped at five o’clock one morning. Nancy was not to be bullied by her parents and cried that a girl had a right to get to know young men, but that very night young Whip’s gig was left stranded at the entrance to Rat Lane down at the Iwilei brothels because a violent fight had broken out over an Arabian girl, and Whip had got cut across his left cheek with a sailor’s knife. The next day Nancy Janders’ father packed her off to the mainland and young Whip started fooling around with a Portuguese-Hawaiian girl, a great beauty whose grandfather had reached the islands via the Azores. She and Whip engaged in a brilliant courtship, marked by her riding openly with him through the gayer streets of the city and then hustling secretly off to California to have a baby.

  By this time some of the younger men of town had given the young seafarer his permanent name. It was bestowed following a brawl in which Whip fought three English sailors outside the impressive H & H building on Fort Street. His austere father rushed down from his offices above the street in time to see his lithe son stretched out cold from a combination of a British blow to the side of the head and a stiff British kick to the groin. While the handsome boy lay in the dusty street, a nearby bartender doused him with a bucket of cold water, but as the fallen fighter gradually began to feel the throbbing pain in his crotch, he bellowed, “Somebody hit me again!” He looked up to see his father’s beard staring down at him and he wanted to faint from humiliation and pain, but he scrambled to his feet and hobbled off.

  From then on they called him “Wild Whip,” and he seemed dedicated to the principle that every man must prove his right to whatever nickname has been bestowed upon him. He did not drink much, nor did he engage in fist fights willingly. In many respects he was a clean, handsome young man. But if he did not seek trouble, neither did he avoid it, and he developed a characteristic gesture, when a fight loomed, of shrugging his shoulders and ambling a few lazy steps forward before exploding into furious action. Normally he would have lost his nickname as he grew older, for he became content to by-pass general brawls, and that aspect of his wildness diminished; but as it regressed, his passion for women increased, and it was his adventures in this field that contantly lured him back into trouble. He often recalled his grandfather’s apt simile: “Girls are like lovely little stars. You could reach up and pinch each one on the points.” Wild Whip’s capacity for reaching and pinching was insatiable, and in this he was a true grandson of Rafer Hoxworth.

  But he also resembled in many ways his maternal grandfather, Dr. John Whipple, for in addition to that gallant man’s physical handsomeness young Whip had inherited his abiding interest in science. Wherever he had gone during his seven years at sea, Whip had studied plants, grown to love local flowers, and collected specimens of trees and fruits that looked as if they might do well in Hawaii. But three particular discoveries had given him almost as much pleasure as leaping stalwartly into bed with a new girl. He had found the jungle orchids of Malaya positively enchanting, and he had gathered several dozen prime specimens of purple and crimson and burnt-gold beauties which he had shipped home by way of an H & H freighter out of Singapore. They now flourished in a lath house which he had constructed in back of the Hoxworth home on Beretania Street, and it was a major characteristic of their owner that as soon as they established themselves in Hawaii, they were given freely to others who might fancy them. Young Whip made his money running ships and working plantations; the rare plants he brought into the islands were free to anyone who would care for them as diligently as he, so that in later years when Hawaii became famous for its orchids, that fame was but an extension of Whip Hoxworth’
s personal concern with beauty. He also brought in ginger flowers, and two varieties of bird-of-paradise, that strange, almost unbelievable exotic which produced a burnished blue and red canoe out of which sprang a fantastic flower construction in purple and gold. All these Whip gave away.

  He was also responsible for both the Formosa and the New Guinea pineapple, establishing the former through the help of the Chinese vegetable huckster, Mrs. Kee. The latter, which was more acid and therefore much tastier, he failed to perpetuate. Twice in later years he endeavored to make this contrary pineapple grow, but with no success. He had his agents looking for a new strain which would combine the virtues of the Formosa and New Guinea types, but he did not find any.

  But his major contribution at this period was a tree which later came to bear his name. He found it growing near Bombay, and when he first tasted its fruit he cried, “This tree we’ve got to have in Hawaii.” Accordingly, he shipped four saplings home, but they died. He ordered four more and directed them to be planted in Kona on the big island, but they also died. He got four more, each in its own washtub of Bombay soil, and it was these that grew. When they produced their first fruit—a handsome hard rind that turned gold and red and speckled green, inside of which rested a big flat seed surrounded by delicious yellow meat—his neighbors asked what strange thing he had this time.

  “Watch!” he said crisply. “You’re about to taste the king of fruits.” He gripped one, took out his knife and gashed a complete circle around the long axis. Then he spun the knife, point-over-end, into the tree and with two hands gripped the halves of the fruit, twisting them in opposite directions. The fruit tore apart and for the first time the people of Hawaii tasted Whip’s luscious discovery.

  “Like baked nuts with a touch of apple,” one man judged.

  “Something like a peach with a trace of turpentine,” another said.

  “What is it, Whip?”

  “A Bombay mango,” Hoxworth replied.

  “We used to have mangoes around here years ago,” the man replied. “But as I recall they were stringy. Couldn’t hardly eat ’em.”

  “There are mangoes and mangoes,” Whip agreed. “Trick is, to find the good ones. Then take care of them.”

  In later years many people grew to despise Wild Whip Hoxworth, for he developed into the ruthless operator his grandfather had been. The extension of H & H from merely a strong shipping line into the dictator-company of the islands was not accomplished easily, and if men hated Wild Whip they had a right to, but no one ever failed to remember with keen appreciation his first major gift to Hawaii. Whenever a hungry man reached up, knocked down a Hoxworth mango, circled it with his knife and sucked in the aromatic fruit, he instinctively paid tribute to Wild Whip. Other varieties came later, but the Hoxworth remained what its discoverer had once claimed it to be: “the king of fruits.”

  When Whip saw his mangoes established and had given several hundred saplings away to his friends, he turned his attention to the affairs of H & H, whereupon he ran headfirst into his bearded uncle, stern Micah Hale, a symbol of rectitude and a man determined not to have the H & H empire sullied by the escapades of his wild young nephew. Consequently, there was no opening for Whip. When he applied for a job, his grim-faced uncle stared at him over his copious beard and said, “You’ve outraged all the girls in our family, young man, and we have no place for you.”

  “I’m not applying for a wife,” Whip snapped. “I’m applying for a job.”

  “A man who isn’t appropriate for a husband, isn’t appropriate for a job … not with H & H,” Uncle Micah replied, enunciating one of the firmest rocks of his company’s policies, for like most of the great emperors of history, the Hales and Whipples and Janderses realized that an institution had to go forward on two levels: it produced intelligent sons to carry on when the old men died, and it produced beautiful daughters to lure able young husbands into the enterprise. It was an open question as to whether the great families of Hawaii prospered most from selling sugar at a good price or their daughters to good husbands. “There’s no place for you in H & H,” Uncle Micah said with finality.

  When Whip appealed to his father, he found that sensitive and confused weakling quite unwilling to fight with Micah, who now controlled the family ventures. “Your behavior has been such …” Whip’s father began plaintively, whereupon his son said, “Stow it.”

  There was a good deal of argument within the family, but Uncle Micah said firmly, “Our success in Hawaii depends upon our presenting to the public an attitude of the most strict rectitude. There has never been a scandal in the big firms, and there won’t be as long as I control them. I think that Whipple ought to go back to sea. We’ll reward him justly for his part ownership of the business, but he must stay out of Hawaii.”

  And then clever Micah thought of a happy solution. Recalling his nephew’s interest in growing things, he suggested a compromise: Wild Whip would divorce himself completely from all H & H enterprises, and an announcement of this fact would be made public so as to absolve men like Micah Hale and Bromley Hoxworth from responsibility for his future actions, and in return Whip would be given four thousand acres of the family’s land to do with as he wished. When the assembled Hoxworths and Hales delivered this ultimatum to their errant son, Wild Whip smiled graciously, accepted the four thousand acres, and said evenly, “Jesus, are you goddamned missionaries going to regret this day!”

  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 that 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 lone 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, Nanc
y 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 married 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.