Hawaii - James Michener [357]
"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