Hawaii - James Michener [239]
"I have none," Abner confessed.
Thorn, already satisfied that he had identified Abner's character, did not raise his voice. "I'm not sure I understand, Brother Abner. When young Keoki betrayed the church, didn't you immediately recruit eight or ten better prospects?"
"What I thought was," Abner began, but his head felt out of balance, and he jogged himself from the right hip. With compassion Reverend Thorn waited, and Abner continued: "I felt that since the church had suffered such a terrible disgrace, it would be better if . . ." Then he caught a vision of Keoki standing before the altar of Kane, with the maile leaves about his shoulders and the whale's tooth. "Well," he concluded, "I thought the most important thing was to protect the church from another such debacle."
"So you conscripted no potential ministers?" Thorn asked quietly.
"Oh, no! You see, Reverend Thorn, unless you live with the Hawaiians you can't really understand . . ."
"Brother Abner," the visitor interrupted. "I have brought with me two fine young men from Honolulu."
"Missionaries?" Abner cried excitedly. "From Boston?"
"No," Thorn explained patiently, "they're Hawaiians. I'm going to ordain them in your church, and I would be particularly happy if you could nominate some young man of Lahaina who seems destined for the church . . ."
"The Hawaiians in Lahaina, Reverend Thorn . . . Well, I don't even allow my children to associate with the Hawaiians in Lahaina. There's this man Pupali, and he had four daughters, and his youngest, Iliki . . ." He stopped and his mind became brutally clear and he thought: "He would not understand about Iliki."
The ordination ceremonies impressed Lahaina more deeply than any previous church activity, for when the congregation saw two of their own people promoted to full responsibility for Christianizing the islands, they felt at last that Hawaiians had become part of the church, and when Reverend Thorn promised that within a year some young man from Lahaina itself would be ordained, there was little discussed in the next days except one question: "Do you suppose they might choose our son?" But on the next Sunday came even more welcome news, for Thorn announced that the missionary board in Honolulu had decided that one of the two ordained Hawaiians, Reverend Jonah Keeaumoku Piimalo, should remain in Lahaina to preach in the big church and assist Reverend Hale.
When Thorn sensed the joy that this announcement occasioned, he happened to be looking at John Whipple, who turned sideways to his little wife, Amanda, and shook her hand warmly as if the family had long discussed this move, and Thorn thought: "Isn't it perverse? I like Whipple, who left the church, much better than Hale, who stayed. With his doctoring the poor and building a good business, Whipple is much closer to my idea of God than the poor little fellow sitting here beside me."
On the next morning Reverend Thorn sailed back to Honolulu, en route to Boston, taking with him the four Hale children, and when they left their father at the pier Abner said solemnly to each, "When you have learned the civilized manners of New England be sure to come back, for Lahaina is your home," but to his brilliant son Micah he added, "I shall be waiting for you, and when you return a minister I shall turn my church over to you." Thorn, overhearing these words, winced and thought: "He will forever regard it as his church . . . not God's . . . and surely not the Hawaiians'."
It now came time for Thorn to bid good-bye to the missionary whom he had inducted into the service nineteen years before, and he looked compassionately at