Hawaii

by James A. Michener

  “That junk? Why?”

  “You’re paying a lot of money for iron sulfate, and that’s what it is. Rusty junk to which sulphuric acid has been applied.”

  So Whip bought the junk yard and launched an iron sulfate factory, and in later years, when automobiles had become numerous, he bought all the old wrecks on Kauai for four dollars each, piled them up, drenched them with gasoline and burned away the rubber and the horse hair. When what was left had rusted he treated the junk with sulphuric acid and remarked, “Everyone who eats pineapple is eating the handiwork of Henry Ford, God bless him.”

  But in the growing of pineapple, which brought hundreds of millions of dollars into the territory, when one problem was licked, the next arose, for apparently the Cayenne did not enjoy growing in Hawaii and fell prey to one disaster after another. When the iron problem was solved, the mealy-bug arose, and once more the industry seemed doomed.

  The ugly, louselike little bugs were moved from place to place by ants, who tended them like milch cows, living off their sweet, nutritious exudations. Particularly, the mealy-bugs loved pineapple, whose growth they destroyed, and it seemed an act of conscious malevolence when millions of ants hiked several miles to deposit their cows upon the precious pineapples. Dr. Schilling studied the problem for several months, while field after field of Wild Whip’s choicest Cavennes wilted and died from the infestation. Then he hit upon a dual solution which halted the mealy-bugs: around each field he planted decoy rows of pineapple, and these intercepted the mealy-bugs and kept them from invading the productive areas; and around the entire field he laid long boards soaked repeatedly in creosote, and these fended off the ants and their ugly cows. After this victory over the little lice he subsided into a year-long lethargy of drunkenness, awaiting the next disaster.

  I came when Whip’s canning manager reported: “Because the Cayennes are so big we can’t fit them into the cans, and waste forty per cent of the fruit trimming them down to can size.”

  “What in hell do you want me to do?” Whip snarled, wearied by the constant battle to keep his fields productive.

  “What we’ve got to have is smaller Cayennes,” the manager explained.

  So Wild Whip stormed back to Hanakai, shook his English expert into reasonable sobriety, and said, “Dr. Schilling, you’ve got to make the pineapples smaller.”

  Through a golden haze that had been accumulating for thirteen months the scraggly Englishman said, “The mind of man can accomplish anything. Draw me the pineapple you want.”

  Whip went back to the canning manager, and together they drew on paper the specifications of the perfect pineapple. It had to be sufficiently barrel-shaped to leave a good rim of fruit when the core was cut out. It had to be juicy, acid, sweet, small, without barbs on the leaves, solid and golden in color. With a ruler and French curves the two men constructed the desired fruit, and when Whip thrust the paper at Schilling he said, “That’s what we want.”

  Schilling, glad to have an alternative to drunkenness, replied, “That’s what you’ll get.” He inspected every pineapple field on Kauai, comparing the available fruit against the ideal image, and whenever he found something close to the printed specifications, he marked that plant with a flag, and after four years of this infinitely patient work he announced, “We have built the perfect pineapple.” When he delivered the first truckload to the cannery, the manager was ecstatic. “Our problems are over,” he said.

  “Until the next one,” Schilling replied.

  In 1911 a woman writer from New York, who had once stayed in Honolulu four weeks, wrote a rather scurrilous book about Hawaii in which she lamented three things: the influence of the missionaries who had maliciously killed off the Hawaiians by dressing them in Mother Hubbards; the criminality of companies like Janders & Whipple who had imported Orientals; and the avarice of missionary descendants like those in Hoxworth & Hale who had stolen the lush lands of Hawaii. After her book had created something of a sensation throughout America she returned to the islands and in triumph came to Kauai, where at a splendid polo tournament she was presented to Wild Whip Hoxworth. His team had just defeated Honolulu, and he was flushed with victory and should have been in a gracious mood, but as he was introduced to the lady author he thought he understood who she was and asked coldly, “Are you the good lady who wrote Hawaii’s Shame?”

  “Yes,” she replied proudly, “I am,” for she was accustomed to being fawned over. “What did you think of it?”

  “Ma’am,” Whip said, carefully placing his polo mallet on a rack lest he be tempted to use it in an unorthodox manner, “I thought your book was complete bullshit.”

  The polo players and their ladies recoiled from Whip’s savage comment, and some began to offer the startled lady their apologies, but Whip interrupted. “No, there will be no apologies. Stand where you are, ma’am, and look in every direction. Whatever you see was brought into these islands by men like me. The sugar upon which our economy rests? My Grandfather Whipple, a missionary, brought that in. The pineapples? I’m the grandson of missionaries and I brought them in. The pine trees, the royal palms, the tulip trees, the avocados, the wild plum, the crotons, the house and the horses. We brought them all in. The Hoxworth mango, best fruit in the world, is named after me. And as for the Orientals. Heh, Kamejiro, you come, eh? This bandy-legged little man has done more work in Hawaii … he’s built more and he will continue to build more than a dozen of the people you were wailing about. I brought him in here and I’m proud of it. I’m only sorry he doesn’t intend to stay. Now, ma’am, if you have any more questions about Hawaii, I’d be glad to answer ’em. Because I hope you’ll go home and write another book, and this time not be such a horse’s ass.”

  He bowed and left her gagging. In Honolulu, of course, his polo-field speech, as it was termed, was a momentary sensation, since, as one of the Hale women explained, “If one were picking a man to defend the missionaries, he would hardly pick Wild Whip.”

  He and his drunken English friend lived on at Hanakai, with fairly frequent visits to the brothels at Kapaa. At the cliffside mansion he entertained a good deal, and in his leisurely talks over brandy he began to expound the first coherent theory of Hawaii: “What I visualize is an island community that treasures above all else its agricultural lands. On them it grows bulk crops of sugar and pineapple and ships them to the mainland in H & H ships. With the money we get we buy the manufactured goods our people need, things like iceboxes, automobiles, finished lumber, hardware and food. Thus the ships go one way loaded and come back loaded. That’s the destiny of Hawaii, and anyone who disturbs that fine balance is an enemy of the islands.”

  He was willing to identify the enemies of Hawaii: “Anyone who tampers with our shipping ought to be shot. Anyone who tries to talk radical ideas to our field hands ought to be run off the islands. Anyone who interferes with our assured supply of cheap labor from Asia strikes a blow at sugar and pineapple.”

  Once he confided: “H & H have run the ships cheaply and faithfully. I see no reason why any radical changes are required. And I think you must admit that J & W have run the plantations well. Nobody can lodge a complaint against them. As long as these two firms continue to serve the islands justly, it seems to me the welfare of Hawaii is assured, and for outsiders like that goddamned woman author to go around raising a lot of questions is downright ingratitude.”

  In 1912 the campaign for President on the mainland grew rather warm, and for the first time in some years Democrats felt that they had a good chance of sending their man, Woodrow Wilson, to the White House. Of course, citizens of Hawaii could not vote for the national offices, but in the island elections a few pathetic Democrats began to parrot the optimism existing on the mainland, and one misguided liberal even went so far as to appear before a mass meeting of six in the nearby town of Kapaa. Out of sheer curiosity over a human being who dared to be a Democrat in Hawaii, Wild Whip insinuated himself as the seventh listener and stood appalled as the man actually sough
t votes for his party: “There is a new spirit abroad in America, a clean, sharp wind from the prairies, an insistent voice from the great cities. Therefore I propose to do something that has never before been done in these islands. I, a Democrat and proud of the fact, am going to visit each of the sugar and pineapple plantations to explain in my words what the ideas of Woodrow Wilson and his adherents mean. Tell your friends that I’ll be there.”

  In some agitation Wild Whip rode home and carefully took down all the firearms he kept at Hanakai. Inspecting each, he summoned his lunas and said, “I just heard a Democrat say he was coming here to address our workmen. If he steps six inches onto Hanakai, shoot him.”

  One of the lunas who had been through high school asked deferentially, “But doesn’t he have the right to speak?”

  “Right?” Whip thundered. “A Democrat have the right to step onto my plantation and spread his poison? My God! I say who shall come here and who shall not. This is my land and I’ll have no alien ideas parading across it.”

  Lunas in 1912 were not apt to be easily frightened, and this one stuck to his guns. “But if this man is a spokesman for one of the political parties …”

  “Von Schlemm!” Whip roared in profound amazement. “I’m astonished at such talk from you. Can’t you remember what that filthy Democrat, Grover Cleveland, did to Hawaii? Are you old enough to recall how those corrupted Democratic senators voted against us time and again? What surprises me is that somebody hasn’t already shot this dirty little bastard. No Democrat has a place in Hawaii, and if one tries to walk onto my plantation he’ll crawl home with broken legs.”

  The aspiring politician did try to invade Hanakai, and Wild Whip, backed up by four heavily armed lunas, met him at the edge of the red-dust road. “You can’t come in here, mister,” Whip warned.

  “I’m a citizen in pursuit of my political rights.”

  “You’re a Democrat, and there’s no place for you in these islands.”

  “Mr. Hoxworth, I’m coming to your plantation to speak to your men about the issues in the election.”

  “My men don’t want to hear the nonsense you talk.”

  “Mr. Hoxworth, there’s a new wind blowing across America. Woodrow Wilson is going to be elected President. And he promises a fair deal for all men. Even your workmen.”

  “I tell my workmen how to vote,” Whip explained. “And they vote for the welfare of these islands. Now you go back to Honolulu and don’t give me any more trouble.” The four lunas moved in upon the visitor.

  “How is it going to sound,” the politician asked, “if I report to the press that I was forcibly thrown off Hanakai Plantation?”

  Wild Whip, still lean and hard at fifty-five, reached forward, grabbed the offensive radical by the shoulders, and shook him as if he were a child. “No paper would publish such rubbish. Christ, if a rattlesnake tried to crawl onto my plantation and I shot it, I’d be a hero. I feel obligated to treat a Democrat the same way. Get out.”

  The visitor calmly smoothed his shirt, straightened his sleeves, and announced: “In pursuit of man’s inalienable rights, I am going to come into your plantation.”

  “If you try it,” Whip said, “you’ll be thrown out on your inalienable ass.”

  The politician walked boldly onto the red soil of Hanakai and started for the lane of royal palms and Norfolk pines. He had gone only a few steps when the four lunas grabbed him, lifted him in the air, and threw him roughly back onto the road, where he fell heavily upon the inalienable portion of his anatomy, as Whip had predicted. While the surprised visitor sat in the red dust Whip advised him: “Go back to Honolulu. No Democrat will ever be allowed on this plantation.”

  But when the man had gone, Whip began to appreciate the real danger involved, so he summoned his lunas. “You are to tell every man on this plantation entitled to a vote that he is not to bother voting for this man or that. He’s to vote the straight Republican ticket. One cross mark is all he needs.”

  “We can warn them,” one luna pointed out, “but can we enforce it?”

  “There’s a way,” Whip replied cryptically, and when the local elections came that year he stationed himself six feet from the Hanakai voting booth and as each of his qualified laborers approached he looked the man in the eye and said, “You know how to vote, don’t you, Jackson?”

  “Yes, sir, Mr. Hoxworth.”

  “See that you do it,” Whip replied ominously, but he left nothing to chance. When Jackson was in the booth, with the protecting canvas about him so that no one could spy upon his ballot or the way he marked it, he reached for the voting pencil. It was tied to the end of a piece of string which led aloft, passing through an eyelet screwed into the ceiling of the booth, so that if he was about to mark his ballot Democratic, the string was ready to form a clear angle to the far right and thus betray his perfidy. But to make doubly sure, Whip had previously ordered that all pencils used for voting be of maximum hardness, and that the paper on the shelf in the voting booth be soft, so that when Jackson voted he was forced to punch his pencil strongly onto the ballot, leaving on the back side an easily read indication of how he had voted. Jackson folded his ballot and handed it to the Portuguese clerk, but that official paused before placing it in the ballot box, and in that moment Wild Whip was free to inspect the back.

  “All right, Jackson,” Whip muttered as the man left.

  As soon as the voting was over, Whip assembled his lunas and reported: “Jackson, Allingham and Cates voted Democratic. Get them out of here before midnight.”

  “What shall we tell them?”

  “Nothing. They know the evil they’ve done.”

  And he stood in the shadows of the royal palms as the three traitors were thrown onto the public road, their bundles of goods under their arms.

  It was as a result of this election, and the dangers represented by it—Wilson ruling in Washington, men like Jackson beginning to vote Democratic on Kauai—that Wild Whip made his decision. “I’m going back to Honolulu,” he told Dr. Schilling. “You’re welcome to live here and take care of the pineapples.”

  “What are you intending to do?” Schilling asked.

  “There’s a spirit of rebellion in the world. Crazy liberal thinking. Probably infected my own company. I’m going back to take over control of H & H.”

  “I thought they threw you out? Exiled you?”

  “They did,” Wild Whip confessed. “But in those days I didn’t own the company.”

  “Do you now?”

  “Yes, but the Yale men running it don’t know it.”

  “You going to chop off a lot of heads?” Schilling asked with the fiendish joy of childhood.

  “Not if they’re good men,” Whip replied, disappointing his permanent guest. And by Christmas Eve, 1912, he was in sole, dictatorial control of the great H & H empire, and although heads did not roll in the Schilling sense of the word, every man who was suspected of having voted Democratic was fired. “In Hawaii and in H & H,” Whip explained without rancor, “there is simply no place for such men.”

  ANY GENERAL CONCLAVE of the great Kee hui was apt to be impressive. The older sons, like Asia, who ran the restaurant, retained their Chinese names—Kee Ah Chow—and wore pigtails and black sateen suits; but the younger sons cut their pigtails and wore contemporary American dress. They also preferred the English translations of their names, such as Australia Kee instead of Kee Oh Chow.

  When the hui converged upon the ugly house up Nuuanu, they formed colorful processions. Some brought their wives and by 1908 were able to bring grown grandsons along with their pretty Chinese and Hawaiian wives. On festive occasions great-grandchildren appeared in number, tumbling about the grounds on which the family still grew taro and pineapples. The Kees, counting their wives and husbands, now numbered ninety-seven, but of course they were never able to convene at one time, because a dozen or so were apt to be at school on the mainland. Neither Yale nor Harvard had yet known a Kee, but Michigan, Chicago, Columbia and Penns
ylvania did, and it was possible for a Chinese in Hawaii to be born, financed, protected at law, married, tended medically and buried—all at the hands of Kees. In addition, he could rent his land from them, and buy his vegetables, his meat and his clothes.

  The most conspicuous member was still Nyuk Tsin. In 1908 she was sixty-one years old, and although she no longer lugged pineapples through the streets in her famous twin baskets, she still grew them and supervised others in the peddling. Year by year she grew shorter, thinner, balder, and although her face showed the wrinkling of age, her mind retained the resilience of youth. Her life consisted of purposeful ritual. Each year, with solemn dignity, she accompanied her brilliant son Africa to the tax office to pay her taxes. Twice a year she took eight or ten members of her family to the Punti store where they sent money to her husband’s real wife in China. She had died in 1881, but the family in the Low Village continued to write letters of grateful acknowledgment on her behalf. Every two or three years Nyuk Tsin assembled as many of her family as possible for the trip to the leper colony at Kalawao, where they reported to their ancestor. And each fall, as if she were sending sacrifices to the gods, she took six or eight of her ablest grandsons down to the Hoxworth & Hale docks and bought them tickets for the mainland. The old woman conserved human resources just as carefully as she had the irrigated land of her first taro patch.

  Therefore, it was she who now called the great hui into formal meeting, for two matters of prime importance, and far beyond the capacity of lawyer Africa to solve, had been brought to her attention; and while her great-grandchildren played in the dusty yard she talked to the thirty-odd elders who met with her.

  The children of Africa Kee needed guidance, and Nyuk Tsin said, “Africa’s oldest daughter, Sheong Mun, whom you prefer to call Ellen, is in deep perplexity, and I am not wise enough to counsel her.”

  “What has she done?” Asia’s wife asked.