Hawaii - James Michener [455]
When Kamejiro approached, holding his cap in his hands, as was the custom when speaking to a white man, Whip rushed up to him and yelled, "I hear you smashed up my luna?"
Kamejiro did not understand what was happening, and thought: "I'm going to be fired. And with a baby girl to feed, what shall I do?"
"Well?" Whip growled. "Were you the one who did it?"
The little Japanese fumbled with his cap and said weakly, "I not hit the luna like you say ... hontoni. . . Hoxuwortu. You b'lee me. I speak truth."
Suddenly Wild Whip grabbed Kamejiro by the shoulders and stuck his face close to his workman's. "Little man," he asked, "are you as tough as they say?"
"What is tough?" Kamejiro countered suspiciously.
"That day when we argued about the iron for your hot bath? Would you really have fought with me?"
Now Kamejiro understood, and since he was about to be fired anyway, he felt no caution. "Yes," he said, jabbing Whip in the stomach with his finger. "I going to smash you here . . . with my head."
"I figured that was your plan," Whip laughed evenly. "Do you know what my plan was? When you ducked your head, I was going to . . ." With a brutal uppercut of his right fist he swung at Kamejiro's head, stopping his knuckles an inch from the workman's nose. "I'd have killed you!"
Kamejiro glared back at his boss and replied, "Maybe I too quick for you. Maybe your fist never hit." He brought his own around with dreadful force, arresting it just short of Wild Whip's belly.
To his surprise, the boss exploded in gales of nervous laughter, embracing his gardener as if he had found a great treasure. "That settles it!" he shouted. "Kamejiro, you're a man I can respect." Jamming his strong hands under the little man's armpits, he danced the astonished Japanese up and down, crying, "Start to pack, you tough little bastard, because you and I 'have a date with a mountain."
Kamejiro broke free and studied Whip suspiciously. He had seen his boss before in these wild, fantastic moods and he assumed that Whip was either drunk or morbid over some pineapple problem. "Bimeby you be mo bettah," he assured him.
Whip laughed, grabbed his workman again, and dragged him onto the lawn, where he could point to the sweet green mountains of Kauai. Gently he explained, "You and I are going over to Oahu, Kamejiro. And we're going to blast a puka right through the mountains. We'll get more water . . ."
"What you speak, Hoxuwortu?" the little Japanese asked.
"We're going to dynamite a tunnel right through the mountains, and you're going to do the dynamiting."
Kamejiro looked at his boss suspiciously. "Boom-boom?" he asked.
"Takusan boom-boom!" Whip replied.
"Sometime boom-boom kill," Sakagawa countered.
"That's why I wanted a man with guts," Whip shouted. "Good pay. One day one dollar."
"Mo bettah one dollar half," Kamejiro proposed.
Whip studied the tough little workman and laughed. "For you, Kamejiro, one dollar half."
He extended his hand to the stocky workman, but Kamejiro held back. "And one piece iron for hot bath?"
"All the iron you want. I hear you have a baby."
"One wahine," Kamejiro confessed with shame.
"Bring her along . . . and your wife," Whip cried, and the contract was confirmed.
The camp to which Kamejiro moved his family was high on the rainy side of the Koolau Range on Oahu, and to operate his hot bath for the Japanese workmen Kamejiro required a waterproof shed which he and Yoriko built at night. Yoriko also managed the commissary and by dint of literally endless work the two thrifty Japanese managed to acquire a considerable nest egg, but its size was due not primarily to their hard work but rather to the fact that in these inaccessible mountains the representatives of the consulate could not reach them, and so Kamejiro passed two full years without discovering how badly his homeland needed money.
He was occupied in the thrilling business of hauling great loads of dynamite deep into the tunnel, boring holes into which it was tamped, and then exploding it with dramatic effect.