Hawaii - James Michener [486]
No one reacted more violently than Hoxworth Hale, a sedate man, for by the time he had finished reading the fourth line of the manifesto he was apoplectic and felt, with reason, that a scandal had occurred which required action, a conclusion which the officials at Punahou had acted upon an hour earlier. Later, when he reviewed the matter, Hoxworth realized that he should have anticipated trouble, for he recalled that for some time his son Bromley had been behaving mysteriously.
With the aid of a professional carpenter, whom he paid out of his own funds, young Brom had erected a curious structure on the back lot, and when asked what it was, he repeatedly insisted: "A play pen for adults." It stood unrelated to anything else, a half-room, with no ceiling and only two wooden walls, into which were cut four small openings, in back of which were built little boxes. The ridiculous structure did have a wooden floor, five feet ten inches long by five feet one inch wide. Two-by-fours propped up the walls, and Hoxworth noted that several of his son's friends were working on the project. One day, for example, crew-cut young Whipple Janders, with a new Leica picked up on his family s last trip to Germany, had called, "Hey, Mr. Hale. Would you help us a minute?"
"What can I do, Whip?"
"I want you to model this contraption."
"Only if you tell me what it is."
"Brom calls it a play pen for adults," Whipple had explained. "Some crazy idea of his."
"How do you want me to model it?" Hoxworth had asked.
"I want to see if a grown man could fit into one of our little boxes."
"You mean in there?"
"Yes. It's well braced."
"You want me to climb in?"
"Sure. Use the ladder."
Hoxworth was perpetually unprepared for the blase' manner in which modern children ordered their parents around, and with some misgivings he climbed into the bizarre box, stretched his legs out as far as they would reach, and laughed pleasantly at young Whipple Janders.
"I should have an Arrow collar on," he said.
"You're in sharp focus just as you are, sir," Whip replied, snapping several shots with his Leica. "Thank you very much, Mr. Hale."
Hoxworth, reading the inflammatory publication, thought back on those scenes and acknowledged that he had been tipped off. Whatever happened now was in part his fault. "But how can you anticipate children?" he groaned. The publication bore this title:
SEX ABOARD THE BRIGANTINE
or
They Couldn't Have Been Seasick All the Time
or
THERE WAS FRIGGIN' IN THE RIGGIN'
A speculative essay on missionaries by Bromley Whipple Hale
"It is acknowledged by my many and devoted friends at Punahou that I yield to no man in my respect for the missionary stock from which I, and many of my most intimate friends, derive. I count among my dearest possessions the time-worn memorials that have come down in my family, those treasured reminders of the hardships which my forebears suffered in rounding the Horn in their thirst for salvation through good deeds. But more precious I count the blood of those stalwart souls as it courses through my veins and makes me the young man I am today. Therefore, when I speak of certain inquiries of a scientific nature which I have been conducting as an outgrowth of my studies in a revered school which itself has certain mission overtones, and where I have imbibed only the purest instruction, I speak as a Hale, a Whipple, a Bromley and a Hewlett. In fact, I may ask in all modesty, a trait for which I have been noted by my friends: Who of my generation, the sixth, could speak with greater propriety of mission matters? In equal modesty I would have to reply: No one.
"Bred as I was on missionary mythologies, I have always been profoundly impressed by several aspects of the long journey from Boston to Hawaii as undertaken by my ancestors. There was dreadful seasickness, from which almost all suffered constantly. There was binding biliousness which yellowed the eye and slowed the step, much as constipation does in our less euphemistic age. There were