Hawaii - James Michener [556]
"Da kine wahine turn out like dat?" Johnny Pupali mused. "Well, da's why I tell you boys, 'Screw 'em but doan' marry 'em.'"
Florsheim reflected: "Seem like dey good wahine ova' heah, but anudder kine back home."
"You gonna keep da kine Chewy?" Kelly asked. "Yeah," Florsheim said, adding, "I not halp so sorry for dem wahine like I was b'fore."
The sweet days rolled on and Kelly discovered what the older beachboys already knew: that the best wahines of all were those from the Deep South. They were gentler, kinder, and in memorable ways much more loving. They seemed fascinated by Kelly's dark-brown body, and on three different occasions Kelly stayed for days at a time in one suite or another with some adorable girl from the South, without ever leaving the room and often without dressing from one day to the next. At mealtime he would throw a small towel about his waist, tucking in the ends as if it were a sarong, and the wahine from Montgomery or Atlanta or Birmingham would admire him as he lolled about the davenport. Once such a girl said, "You're awfully close to a nigra, Kelly, and yet you aren't. It's fascinating."
"Hawaiians hate niggers," Kelly assured her, and she felt better. "How do you make your living?" she asked softly, coming to lie beside him after the food had been pushed away. "S'pose I learn you surfin', I get paid." "You get paid for what you did on that surfboard?" she gasped. "Whassamatta, you no look you bill? Clerk put 'im on dere." "Do you get paid ... for days like this?" 'Clerk put 'im on. Rules say I'm s'pose teachin' you somethin'." "That you are," she said softly as they lapsed off into another nap. In time the girls he slept with became fused in his memory, for one sent another who sent another, but they always seemed to be the same girl, someone he had first met during the war. But there were a few whom he remembered forever. Once a young widow from Baton Rouge flew into the islands, and when he met her he calculated: "Dis wahine free nights da kine, maybe four." He had underestimated, for in her sorrow the young woman would accept no man, yet when they stood in her cabin aboard the departing Moana Loa she said in a soft southern drawl, "The world is such a goddamned lonely place, Kelly."
"S'pose you lose da kine man you love, I t'ink maybe so," he said.
"I never loved Charley," she confessed, blowing her nose. "But he was a decent man, a good human being, and the world is worse off now that he's gone."
"What you gonna do bimeby?" he asked her, lolling with one arm about the end of the bed.
"I don't know," she said. "How old are you, Kelly?"
"I twenty-two, las' week."
"You have your life ahead of you, Kelly. It should be so exciting. But never kid yourself, Kelly. The world is a very lonely place."
"People come, dey go," he said philosophically.
"But when a good one comes, hold onto the memory. It's almost time for the whistle, and I wonder if I might do one thing before you go?"
"Wha' dat?" Kelly asked suspiciously.
"Could I kiss you good-bye? You've been so kind and understanding." She started to say something more, but broke into tears and pressed her beautiful white face to his. "You are such a goddamned decent human being," she whispered. "More than anything in the world I needed to meet someone like you."
Biting her lip and sniffling away her tears, she pushed him back toward the door and said, "Kelly, do you understand even remotely how deeply a woman like me prays for the success of a strong young man like you? I wish the heavens could open and give you their glory. Kelly, make a good life for yourself. Don't be a bum. For you are one of the men whom Jesus loves." And she sent him away.
Often when the surf was breaking he contemplated her words and wondered how a man went about building a good life for himself. He suspected that it consisted neither in being an old stud horse