Hawaii

by James A. Michener

  “As can be clearly seen,” Bromley Hale’s essay continued, “life aboard the brigantines must have been exactly as bad as our forebears have reported. But it has always seemed to me that our good ancestors were strangely silent on one important matter. Life on the brigantines was unadulterated hell, granted. But life went on. Oh, yes indeed, it went on. In fact, aided by the superb libraries resident in Honolulu, I have assembled certain statistics about just how fast life did go on. Take, for example, the brig Thetis, on which some of my ancestors, both on my father’s side and on my mother’s, reached these hospitable shores. The Thetis departed Boston on September 1, 1821 and reached Lahaina on March 26, 1822, after a passage of 207 storm-ridden days.

  “Applying to these data certain facts which have been established beyond chance of successful contradiction in Botany 2, any child born to the eleven mission couples prior to May 27, 1822, must have been conceived—in holy wedlock to be sure—on land in New England, and any infant born after December 21, 1822 must by the same reasoning have been conceived on land in Hawaii. But surely, any child born to these particular mission families between May 27 and December 21, 1822, could have been conceived nowhere else but aboard the bouncing brig Thetis. Let us look at what happened to the occupants of one stateroom:

  Parents Offspring Born

  Abner and Jerusha Hale son Micah October 1, 1822

  John and Amanda Whipple son James June 2, 1822

  Abraham and Urania Hewlett son Abner August 13, 1822

  Immanuel and Jeptha Quigley daughter Lucy July 9, 1822.”

  Relying upon old records, Bromley Hale proved that of the eleven mission couples aboard the Thetis, nine had produced offspring within the critical period. In turn, he moved to each of the other revered missionary companies, establishing departure and arrival dates, against which he compared the birth records until at last he was able to present a fairly staggering array of statistical evidence. “Good God,” Hoxworth groaned, “if a boy spent half as much ingenuity on something important …” But like the rest of Honolulu, he read eagerly on.

  “Does not this amazing fecundity aboard the brigantines suggest rather directly that in the crowded staterooms there must have been one additional occupation whereby the idle time was whiled away, an occupation which our forefathers, through considerations of modesty, did not report to us? I think so.

  “In what I am now about to discuss, I consider myself far from an expert, but from having hung around poolrooms and from arguments with my betters during football rallies, I think it fairly well established that for a human male to impregnate a human female—and God forbid that he try his tricks on any other—requires on the average not one act of intercourse but at least four. As I understand it, that is the normal experience of the human race, popular novels and sentimental movies that rely upon lucky coincidence notwithstanding. Therefore, it can be seen that for the nine pregnancies achieved aboard the Thetis …”

  Hoxworth slumped in his chair. “This boy has a diseased mind,” he groaned. “Now he’s getting clinical!” Hoxworth was right: young Bromley had produced all sorts of hilarious statistical tables and at one point had fortified them with resounding rhetoric: “I think I may be allowed the privilege of at least taking into consideration the theories lately advanced by His Holiness in the Vatican, which theories establish beyond much doubt the fact that for the human female there is a period which the ecclesiastics designate as ‘safe.’ and although it is naturally repugnant for me, a Congregationalist, to rely upon the word of a Catholic dignitary in discussing the secret lives of a gang of Calvinists, and although the nicety of the situation is not lost upon me, nevertheless …”

  The phone rang, the first of many calls that were to be made that night. It was Hewlett Janders and he was screaming, “Did you see that goddamned photograph that your goddamned son had of my daughter …”

  “Don’t roar, Hewlett! I just got the wretched thing.”

  “Have you finished it yet, Hoxworth?”

  “No, I’m only on page five.”

  “Then you haven’t got to the part yet where he says, and listen, Hoxworth, I’m quoting your son. He adds up the total number of acts of sexual intercourse … Goddamn it, Hoxworth, what kind of monster have you reared?”

  Later, after a dozen similar interruptions, Hoxworth reached his son’s first conclusion: “So if we consider all these facts, which I hold to be statistically incontrovertible, we find that the brig Thetis, for sure, and all the other missionary ships probably, were not the angelic torture barges we have been taught, but—and I use the phrase literally—floating hells of concupiscence.”

  “No wonder they’ve been phoning,” Hoxworth moaned. But his cup was far from running over, it had, in fact, reached not much over the sugar line in the bottom, for in succeeding pages Bromley discussed the heart of his investigations and shared his findings.

  “What has always intrigued the scientific mind regarding the mission ships is the cramped nature of the staterooms. Again and again we have evidence that four men and four women, most of them married less than a week before entering the ship, and all of them total strangers, lived together in what could best be termed a rabbit warren. We know from incontrovertible testimony that months went by without either husband or wife ever removing his long red-flannel underwear, and we know that the heads of one couple had to be less than two feet from the heads of three other couples, with only a flimsy cloth barrier separating one family from another. Furthermore, as the following picture amply proves, an average-sized man could not stretch out full length …”

  In anguish Hoxworth Hale turned to the picture, and his suspicion was correct. The average man whose knees were plainly doubled up was he, caught with a silly look on his face by young Whip Janders and his Leica.

  Mercifully, the phone rang before he could digest the full ridiculousness of his situation. It was the headmaster at Punahou: “I suppose you’ve seen it, Hoxworth.”

  “How could such a thing have happened, Larry?” Hale groaned.

  “We can never probe the minds of adolescents,” the headmaster confessed.

  “Does it seem as bad to you as it does to me?” Hoxworth asked.

  “I haven’t the time to judge degrees, Hoxworth. You realize, I’m sure, that this means …”

  “He’s got to go, Larry. I realize that.”

  “Thank you, Hoxworth. The important thing is, he’s got to get into Yale. I’ve taken the liberty of dispatching a cable to my old friend Callinson at The Hill. There’s a chance they’ll take him. I’ve helped Callinson in the past.”

  “You think he can still make Yale?”

  “We won’t condemn the boy in our report, Hoxworth. Of that you can be sure.”

  “I appreciate this, Larry. But tell me, does this essay indicate a diseased mind?”

  There was a pause, and the headmaster said reflectively, “I think we’d better leave it the way I said first. About adolescents, we can never know.”

  “Do you know where Bromley is?”

  “No, Hoxworth, I don’t.”

  The call ended and Hale sat in the lowering darkness. The phone immediately resumed jangling but Hoxworth let it ring. It would be some parent raising hell about what Bromley had said regarding their ancestors. “Damn them all!” Hoxworth cried in real confusion as he watched the lights of Honolulu come on, that nightly miracle that pleased him so much. His family had brought electricity to the city, just as they had brought so much more, but now that a Hale was in trouble, the vultures would want to rip him apart. Therefore, when the front doorbell rang insistently, Hoxworth was inclined to let it ring; he would not parade his hurt to the vultures. Let them pick the bones to their own ghoulish cackling.

  The door opened and a cheery male voice cried, “Hey! Anybody in?” Hoxworth could hear footsteps crossing the first big room and he had a panicky thought: “It’s some cheeky reporter!” And he started to run for it, when the voice called, “Hey, Mr. Hale. You’re the on
e …”

  “Who are you?” Hoxworth asked stiffly, turning unwillingly to see a brash-looking young man in flannel trousers and white linen coat. He carried three books under his arm, and looked disarmingly at ease.

  “I’m Red Kenderdine. Brom’s English teacher.” He looked at a chair, and when Hale failed to respond, asked, “Mind if I sit down?”

  “I don’t want to talk about this thing, Mr. Kenderdine.”

  “Have you seen Brom yet?”

  “No!” Hale snapped. “Where is he?”

  “Good. I wanted very much to be the first to talk with you, Mr. Hale.”

  “Why?”

  “I don’t want you to make a serious mistake, Mr. Hale.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “First, will you agree to honor what I’m about to say as coming from a personal friend … and not from a Punahou master?”

  “I don’t even know you,” Hale replied stuffily. He had never liked educators. To him they were a mealy lot.

  “But Bromley does.”

  Hale looked at the young man suspiciously. “Are you in any way involved …”

  “Mr. Hale, I come here as a friend, not as a conspirator.”

  “Excuse me, Kenderdine. Bromley has spoken well of you.”

  “I’m glad,” the young instructor said coldly. “I’m here to speak well of him.”

  “You’re about the only one in Honolulu …”

  “Exactly. Mr. Hale, have you read Brom’s essay?”

  “All I could stomach.”

  “Apart from the photograph of you, which is unforgivable, did you recognize your son’s essay as a marvelous piece of irony?”

  “Irony! It was plain unadulterated filth. Sewer stuff.”

  “No, Mr. Hale, it was first-rate compassionate irony. I wish I had the talent your son has.”

  “You wish …” Hoxworth sputtered and stared incredulously at his visitor. “You sound like one of the elements we’re trying to control in this community.”

  Kenderdine blew air from his lower lip into his nose and took a patient respite before daring to answer. Then he handed Mr. Hale three books. “These are for you, sir.”

  “What do I want with them?” Hoxworth growled.

  “They will help you understand the extraordinarily gifted young man who happens to be your son,” Kenderdine explained.

  “Never heard of them,” Hale snorted, at which the young master lost his temper slightly and said something he immediately wished he could recall.

  “I suppose you haven’t, sir. They happen to be three of the greatest novels of our time.”

  “Oh,” Hale grunted, missing the sarcasm. “Well, I still never heard of them. What’re they about?”

  “Family histories, Mr. Hale. A Lost Lady is a great masterpiece. I wish everyone in Hawaii could read The Grandmothers by Glenway Wescott. It would explain so much about Honolulu and Punahou. And this last one should be read by everyone who comes from a large family with many mixed-up ramifications. Kate O’Brien’s Without My Cloak. It’s laid in Ireland, but it’s about you and Bromley, Mr. Hale.”

  “You know, Kenderdine, I don’t like you. I don’t like your manner, and I think if the truth were known, Bromley probably got off on the wrong foot largely because of your bad influence. I don’t know what Punahou’s …”

  “Mr. Hale, I don’t like you either,” the young instructor said evenly. “I don’t like a man who can read one of the wittiest, most promising bits of writing I’ve ever known a schoolboy to write and not even recognize what his son has accomplished. Mr. Hale, do you know why Hawaii is so dreadfully dull, why it’s such a wasteland of the human intellect? Because nobody speculates about these islands. Nobody ever writes about them. Aren’t you ever perplexed over the fact Nebraskans write fine novels about Nebraska, and people in Mississippi write wonderful things about Mississippi? Why doesn’t anybody ever write about Hawaii?”

  “There was Stevenson,” Hale protested, adding brightly, “and Jack London!”

  “Complete junk,” Kenderdine snapped disdainfully.

  “Do you mean to sit there and tell me that you teach our children that Jack London …”

  “What he wrote about Hawaii? Complete junk. What anybody else has written about Hawaii? Complete junk, Mr. Hale.”

  “Who are you to judge your betters?”

  “I’m stating facts. And the biggest fact is that nobody writes about Hawaii because the great families, like yours, don’t encourage their sons and daughters to think … to feel … and certainly not to report. You’ve got a good thing here, and you don’t want any questions asked.”

  “Young man, I’ve heard enough from you,” Hoxworth said stiffly. “I recognize you as a type too dangerous to work with young people. So, as a member of the board at Punahou …”

  “You’re going to fire me?”

  “I would be derelict to my duty if I did otherwise, Mr. Kenderdine.”

  The young man relaxed insolently in the chair and stared at the lights of Pearl Harbor. “And I would be derelict to my duty as a human being who loves these islands, Mr. Hale, if I failed to tell you that I for one don’t give a good goddamn what you do or when you do it.

  I’ve watched you try to hold education back. I’ve watched you try to hold labor back. I’ve watched you try to hold the legislature back. There was nothing I could do about those crimes against the larger community. But when you try to hold back a proven talent, your own son, who if he were encouraged could write the book that would illuminate these islands, then I object. I didn’t know anything about your son’s rare and wonderful essay until I saw it. I got my copy late, but I will always treasure it. When he becomes a great man, I’ll treasure it doubly. I detect in it certain of my phrases, and I’m glad he learned at least something from me.”

  “You’re through, Kenderdine! You’re out!” Hale paced back and forth before the big windows, waiting for the insolent young man to leave, but the English teacher lit a cigarette, puffed twice, and slowly rose.

  “I am through, Mr. Hale. But not because of your action. I was through when I came here. Because I won’t tolerate your kind of crap a day longer. I’ve joined the navy.”

  “God help America if the navy takes men like you,” Hale snorted.

  “And when this war comes to Hawaii, Mr. Hale, as it inevitably must, not only will I be gone, but you will be, too. Everything you stand for. The labor you hate is going to organize. The Japanese you despise will begin to vote. And who knows, perhaps even your cozy little deal with the military, whereby you and they run the islands, will be blasted. I’m through for the time being, Mr. Hale. You’re through forever.”

  He bowed gravely, jabbed his forefinger three times at the books and winked. But as he left the room he said gently, “I’ve allowed you to fire me, Mr. Hale. Now you do one thing for me. Read the essay again and discover the love your son holds for the missionaries. Only a mind steeped in true love can write irony. The others write satire.” And he was gone.

  Alone, Hoxworth decided to call the police to find where his son was, but he reconsidered. Then Hewlett Janders stormed over, big, robust, full of action and profanity. Hoxworth found the interview rather confusing because Hewlett on reconsideration didn’t want to horsewhip Bromley at all. He thought the essay a damned good bit of skylarking and said it would probably do the mission families as much good as anything that had happened in years.

  “Whole town’s laughing their belly off,” he roared. “I thought that picture of you in the bunk was downright killing, Hoxworth. And what about that paragraph where he sums up: ‘So by projection we can assume …’ Where’s your copy, Hoxworth?” He glimpsed the mimeographed publication under a davenport pillow, picked it up and thumbed through it. “By God, Hoxworth, that picture of you in the bunk is worth ten thousand votes if you ever decide to run for office. Only thing you’ve ever done proves you’re human. Here’s the part I wanted. ‘So by projection we can estimate that within an area l
ess than six feet by five, during a voyage of 207 days, no less than 197 separate acts of sexual intercourse must have taken place under conditions which prevented any of the female participants from taking off their long flannel underwear or any of the men from stretching out full length in the bunks.’ Now here’s the part I like,” Janders laughed robustly. “ ‘Against its will the mind is driven to haunting suspicions: What actually went on in those crowded staterooms? What orgies must have transpired? Out of delicate regard for the proprieties I shall not pursue the probabilities, for they are too harrowing to discuss in public, but I recommend that each reader develop this matter logically to its inevitable conclusions: What did go on?’ ” Big Hewlett Janders slammed the essay against his leg and shouted, “Y’know, Hoxworth, I often used to ask myself that very question. How the hell do you think the old folks did it?”

  “How should I know?” Hoxworth pleaded.

  “Damn it all, man, it was you they photographed hunched up in one of the bunks!” Janders roared.

  “Does anyone know where Bromley is?” Hale asked stiffly.

  “Sure,” Janders laughed. “But don’t change the subject. Don’t you agree that the bit I just read is hilarious? By God, I can see prim Lucinda Whipple turning cartwheels when she reads that. One fellow at the club said your boy Brom must be a genius.”

  “Where is he?” Hale insisted.

  “Whole gang of them are having chop suey at Asia Kee’s. Every fifteen minutes somebody yells, ‘Author! Author!’ and Brom takes a bow. Then they all sing a dirge somebody made up, ‘Farewell, Punahou!’ I suppose you heard that my boy Whip also got expelled. For taking the pictures. Damned glad Mandy didn’t, too. Posing like that with your boy.” But his raucous laughter proved that he wasn’t too concerned.

  “Did you see them … at the chop suey place?” Hoxworth asked.

  “Yeah, I stopped by … Well, hell, I figured, it’s their big night, so I dropped off a couple bottles of Scotch.”