Hawaii - James Michener [560]
"Florsheim's not me."
"That isn't what Rennie Blackwell told me."
"What did she tell you?" Kelly asked.
"She said it was the one good week of her life."
"Which one was she?" he asked directly.
"I knew you didn't remember. She was the one who told her roommate on the Moana Loa . . ."
"Of course! Look, I don't have to be ashamed of loving a girl like that," Kelly insisted.
"Do you suppose Florsheim's going to marry the Kansas City girl?" Elinor asked.
"She's doing her damnedest to make him," Kelly laughed. "He'll stay with her four or five months and come home with a Buick."
"Why haven't you ever tried it?" Elinor probed.
"I don't need the money. I sing a little, play a little slack-key, get a little money teaching girls like you. And if I need a convertible, somebody always has one."
"Is it a life?" Elinor asked.
Kelly thought a long time, then asked, "What makes you think you can write a book?"
"I can do anything I set my mind on," Elinor replied.
"How come you're divorced?"
"I'm not."
"Your husband dead?"
"One of the best, Kelly. One of the men God puts his special finger on."
"He die in the war?"
"Covered with medals. Jack would have liked you, Kelly. You'd have understood each other. He had a thing about happiness. God, if the world knew what that man knew about being happy."
They sat in silence for some time, and Kelly asked, "Why would you call your book The Dispossessed? I got everything I want."
"You don't have your islands. The Japanese have them. You don't have the money. The Chinese have that. You don't have the land. The Fort has that. And you don't have your gods. My ancestors took care of that. What do you have?"
Kelly laughed nervously and began to say something but fought back the impulse, for he knew it would lead to peril. Instead he wagged his finger in Elinor's face and said, "You'd be surprised at what we Hawaiians have. Truly, you'd be astounded."
"All right. Take the four pretty girls who do the hula at the Lagoon ... in those fake cellophane skirts. What are their names? Tell me the truth."
"Well, the one with the beautiful legs is Gloria Ching."
"Chinese?"
"Plus maybe a little Hawaiian. The girl with the real big bosom, that's Rachel Fernandez. And the real beauty there ... I sort of like her, except she's Japanese . . . that's Helen Fukuda, and the one on the end is Norma Swenson."
"Swedish?"
"Plus maybe a little Hawaiian."
"So what we call Hawaiian culture is really a girl from the Philippines, wearing a cellophane skirt from Tahiti, playing a ukulele from Portugal, backed up by a loud-speaker guitar from New York, singing a phony ballad from Hollywood."
"I'm not a phony Hawaiian," he said carefully. "In the library there's a book about me. More than a hundred generations, and when I sing a Hawaiian song it comes right up from my toes. There's lots you don't know, Elinor."
"Tell me," she persisted.
"No," he refused. Then abruptly he made the surrender which only a few minutes earlier he had recognized as perilous. "I'll do better . . . something I've never done before."
"What?" she asked.
"You'll see. Wear something cool and I'll pick you up about three tomorrow."
"Will it be exciting?"
"Something you'll never forget."
At three next day he drove a borrowed car up to the Lagoon and waited idly in the driveway till she appeared. When she got into the Pontiac, crisp and cool in a white dress, he turned toward the mountains and drove inland from the reef until he came to a high board fence, behind which coconut palms rose in awkward majesty. He continued around the fence until he came to a battered gate which he opened by nosing the car against it. When he had entered the grounds, he adroitly backed the car into the gate and closed it. Then he raced the engine, spun the tires in gravel, and brought the car up to a shadowy, palm-protected, weather-stained old wooden house built in three stories, with gables, wide verandas, fretwork and stained-glass windows.
"This is my home," he said simply. "No girl's ever been here before." He banged