Hawaii - James Michener [342]
When the judge had counted, he announced: "Even."
"It's our lucky year!” Mun Ki shouted joyfully, and then he stopped to explain how a Chinese has three bad years followed by six good ones. "The good ones started last night!" he chuckled, and on Palani's next scoop he scored six points, for he bet on even and two, and that's how the pebbles fell.
At the midway mark Mun Ki was leading by a score of fifty to thirty-nine, and it was indeed uncanny how he picked up points. "It's our lucky year!" he exulted, and as the sun grew hot it became apparent that Palani was bound to lose his roof. Nevertheless, he played his numbers stolidly to the end, and when the Chinese gambler had fairly won, one hundred to eighty-three, the big Hawaiian jumped up, stretched and said, "I myself will carry the timber to your house!" And the Hawaiians formed a procession, those who could walk, and when they got Palani's driftwood to the stone walls which Nyuk Tsin had built, they cut it into lengths for crossbeams, and men who were agile leaped onto the top of the walls, lashed the beams in place and began tying down the pili grass that others passed to them. By midafternoon the roof was done, and Mun Ki, appraising it proudly, explained to all: "This is really my lucky year."
But Nyuk Tsin saw the disappointment in big Palani's misshapen face, and without consulting her husband she went to the man and said, "In our new house there is room for another," and she took Palani by the hand end led him inside. The crowd cheered her generosity and then watched Mun Ki to see what he would do, but he cried, "This is the beginning of my six lucky years."
Taking the dying man Palani into their home was one of the best things Nyuk Tsin ever did, for he had been a sailor and he was a great liar; during a storm he would sit in the dark hut and tell the Pakes of distant lands, and it seemed wonderful to Nyuk Tsin that one man could have had so many experiences. "Asia, Africa, America!" he cried. "They're all fine lands to see." And as he talked, Mun Ki and his wife began to visualize the distant continents and to appreciate what a surpassing treasure their sons were going to inherit. One night Mun Ki said, "When you go back to the boys, Wu Chow's Auntie, make them learn to read. They should know about the things that Palani has been telling us." Once he actually said, "I am glad I came to the Fragrant Tree Country. A man should have great adventures."
Palani's fo'c's'l yarns also awakened Nyuk Tsin's imagination, and she saw how much better it was to live closely with her neighbors rather than apart as she had had to do as a Hakka wife, and sometimes at night, when rain fell over their roof, the three strange companions found a positive joy in sitting together, and this was the beginning of Nyuk Tsin's remarkable service to Kalawao. When big Palani died she helped bury him and then brought into her roofed house a man and wife, and when they died she buried them. She became known as the "Pake Kokua," and whenever a new ferryload of lepers was dumped ashore on the terrible and inhospitable beaches of Kalawao, she went among them and showed them how to obtain at least some comfort during the first weeks when they had to sleep in the open. She taught them to build houses, as ' she had done, and day after day she climbed the cliffs seeking out short timbers for others. Her most particular contribution was this: when the ferry threw ashore some young girl she would keep the girl in her house for a week or so, and there the girl was safe, as if she had come upon one of the ancient and holy sanctuaries maintained by the Hawaiians before the white man came, and during these days of grace Nyuk Tsin would bring to the girl a chain of possible husbands and would say sternly, "You have come here to. die, Liliha. Do so in dignity." And many marriages, if they could be called such, were both arranged and consummated in Nyuk Tsin's house, and word seeped back to Honolulu about the Pake Kokua.
For his part, Mun Ki reveled in his time of good