Hawaii - James Michener [466]
"Second, never allow labor to rear its head an inch. Study what's happened on the mainland. If a labor leader tries to get onto these islands, throw him back into the ocean and tell him to swim, but don't even show him which way California is. Be careful of the Japanese. They're making sounds like they wanted a union. Trust only the Filipinos, because nobody else can be trusted. But if the bole-boys attempt any foolishness, bat them down.
"Third, you've got to keep mainland firms from forcing their way into our economy. Don't let the chain stores in. Don't let outfits like Gregory's and California Fruit onto these shores. We have a good system here, one that we've worked damned hard to perfect, and we don't want a lot of radical new ideas polluting it. If such gangsters try to invade, sell them no land, refuse to handle their shipping, tie them up on credit, strangle the bastards."
He had spoken rather forcefully and now fell back on his pillow, aching in the cancered prostate, in his failing kidneys and in each of his four broken bones. The nurses dragooned a passing doctor, who cried, "Good God, gentlemen, you're most inconsiderate! Now you get out of here!"
Whip fell into a little sleep, and when in the late afternoon he woke, it was with considerable elation of spirit, for he was reviewing in imagination a series of pictures he had first invented with his wonderful old grandmother, Noelani, the Alii Nui from Lahaina. On her last trip to the Orient, Noelani had acquired a set of Japanese color prints snowing what were called the eight loveliest scenes on earth. It contained a mountain in snow, boats returning to shore, wild geese descending, and sunset. "It is things like these," gracious old Noelani had told her grandchildren, "that are the real beauty of life." They had played a game: "Let's decide what the eight loveliest scenes of Hawaii are." And now Wild Whip, himself older than Noelani when she had umpired the contest, reviewed the permanent grandeurs of his islands.
For the mountain in the snow, they had chosen the great volcanoes of the big island, mysteriously clothed in white, yet standing within the tropics. Geologists considered them the highest single mountains in the world--19,000 feet below the ocean, almost 14,000 above. Nowhere in the world could boats returning to shore be lovelier than at Lahaina, where the roads were caught between islands. The wild geese descending were, of course, the single most glorious sight in Hawaii: the myriad waterfalls at the leper settlement of Kalawao. "How beautiful they were," Whip thought. "How beautiful."
The evening glow, which the men who designated the eight supreme views liked especially, could be seen nowhere with finer effect than at the deep red canyon of Kauai, an incredible gash through fifty million years of scintillating rock; at dusk it seemed filled with demonic force. And as for night rain, much loved by the Japanese, where could it be seen to more poetic effect than on the gloomy lava beds of the big island, those convoluted and tormented beds which had overrun the first settlers from Bora Bora?
The next two scenes were from Oahu, queen of the islands. Once Wild Whip had seen an autumn moon, gray and silver in radiance, shining on the plains that lay at the foot of the Pali, and he had been captivated by the subtle interplay of dark forms and moonlit shadows. The evening bell, which Chinese loved for its memories of home, Whip and his grandmother had assigned to Honolulu, for it was indeed memorable to sit on some broad lanai on a Honolulu hillside, listening to the evening bells of the churches and watching the lights of the city come on.
There was an eighth view, the sunset sky, the end of the day, the last glimpse of earth, and Whip could never recall where Noelani had