Hawaii - James Michener [492]
"He's no longer Punahou."
"You fire him?"
"I certainly did. But you know, Hewlett, he said about the same thing you did. Said Bromley's essay would do us all a lot of good. Get people laughing. He said it was crystal-clear that Brom wrote the essay with love and affection . . . that he wasn't lampooning the missionaries."
"That's what one of the judges at the club thought," Janders recalled. "But I'll tell you what, Hoxworth. Seems it was my son who took the photo of you in the bunk, proving that sex was impossible. Well, if you can handle him, you're welcome to thrash hell out of him. I won't try because he can lick me."
The door banged and Hoxworth Hale was left alone in the big room overlooking Honolulu. For a while he studied the never tedious pattern of lights, as they came and went along the foreshores of the bay, and the bustling activity at Pearl Harbor, and the starry sky to the south: his city, the city of his people, the fruit of his family's energy. He leafed his son's startling essay and saw again the provocative last sentence: "We can therefore conclude, I think, that whereas our fathers often paced the deck of the Thetis, wrestling with their consciences, they usually wound up by hustling below to the cramped bunks, where they wrestled with their wives."
Idly he picked up the three books Kenderdine had left. Hefting the Irish novel, he found it too heavy and put it aside. He looked at Willa Cather's slim book, A Lost Lady, but its title seemed much too close to his own case, and he did not want to read about lovely ladies who become lost, for it seemed to be happening throughout his group. That left The Grandmothers, which was neither too heavy in bulk nor too close to home, although had he known when he started reading, it was really the most dangerous of the three, for it was a barbed shaft directed right at the heart of Honolulu and its wonderful matriarchies.
To his surprise, he was still reading the story of Wisconsin's rare old women, when the lights of Honolulu sadly surrendered their battle against the rising dawn. The door creaked open gingerly, and Bromley Whipple Hale, flushed with pride of authorship and Uncle Hewlett's good whiskey, stumbled into the room.
"Hi, Dad."
"Hello, Bromley."
The handsome young fellow, with indelible Whipple charm stamped on his bright features, slumped into a chair and groaned. "It's been quite a day, Dad."
Grudgingly, Hoxworth observed: "You seem to have cut quite a niche for yourself in the local mausoleum."
"Dad, I got thrown out of school."
"I know. Uncle Hewlett's already made plans for you and Whipple to get into one of the good cram schools. The one thing you have to safeguard is your Yale entrance."
"Dad, I was going to speak about this later, but I guess now’s ... I don't believe I want to go to Yale. Now wait a minute! I'd like to try either Alabama or Cornell."
"Alabama! Cornell!" Hoxworth exploded. "Those jerkwater . . . Good heavens, you might just as well go to the University of Hawaii."
"That's what I wanted to do ... seeing as how I want to write about Hawaii. But Mr. Kenderdine says that Alabama and Cornell have fine classes in creative writing."
"Bromley, where did you ever get the idea that you want to be a writer? This isn't a job for a man. I've been relying on you to . . ."
"You'll have to rely upon somebody else, Dad. There's lots of good bright young men from Harvard and Penn business schools who'd be glad . . ."
"What do you know about Harvard and Penn?"
"Mr. Kenderdine told us they were the best in the country . .. in business."
Hoxworth stiffened and growled, "I suppose your Mr. Kenderdine said that anyone who bothered to go into business . . ."
"Oh, no! He thinks business is the modern ocean for contemporary Francis Drakes and Jean Lafittes."
"Weren't they pirates?" Hoxworth asked suspiciously.
"They were adventurers. Mr. Kenderdine told Whip Janders he ought to try like the devil to get into Harvard Business School."
"But he didn't tell you