Hawaii - James Michener [564]
"Immanuel Quigley and his wife Jeptha, brig Thetis, 1822," called the clerk, and with a heart bursting with passion and history and the confused love of God, Elinor Henderson rose, the first Quigley ever to have done so in that society. Her rising must have inflamed bitter memories in the hearts of the Hales and the Hewletts and the Whipples, for although intractable Immanuel Quigley had suppressed his secret memoirs, which Elinor had found so damning, he had allowed enough of his ideas to escape so that his name was not a happy one among the mission families. Defiantly, his great-great-great-granddaughter stared ahead, and then she heard from the assembly a hammering of palms and wild applause. Continuing to stare ahead, for she was no more forgiving than her difficult ancestor had been, she resumed her seat as the clerk cried mournfully, "Abraham and Urania Hewlett, brig Thetis, 1822." Again there was a loud scraping of chairs, with many Hawaiians standing, for Abraham's offspring by Malia, his second wife, were numerous. Many of the missionary descendants considered it inappropriate for such people to rise as if they were the true descendants of blessed Urania Hewlett, but the Hawaiians got up anyway and nothing could be done about it.
That night Elinor Henderson told Kelly, "A visitor touches Hawaii at great risk. He never knows when the passions of the islands will engulf him."
"You think you know enough now to write the biography?" Kelly asked idly.
"Yes."
"You determined to call it The Dispossessed?"
"More than ever."
"Who do you think the dispossessed are?" Kelly taunted.
"You. Who else?"
"I thought maybe at the mission society you discovered that they were the real dispossessed," he argued.
"How do you mean?"
"They came here to bring Congregationalism, but we despised their brand of Christianity. Now most of us are Catholics or Mormons. Today we have nearly as many Buddhists in the islands as Congregationalists. Likewise, they came with a God they believed in. How many of them still have that God? And they had big ideas. Now all they have is money."
"You sound very bitter, Kelly. And in a way I'm glad."
"Do you know why the Mormons had so much success in these islands? They admit frankly. 'In heaven there are only white people.' I suppose you know that a nigger can't get a place to sleep in Salt Lake. So they tell us that if we are real good on earth and we love God, when we die God's going to make us white, and then we'll go to heaven and all will be hunky-dory."
"I don't believe Mormons think that, Kelly," she protested.
"It squares with the facts," he said carefully, but his anger was rising furiously and he was afraid of what he might say next. He tried to halt his words, but in spite of himself they rushed out: "Of course, the other Christians tell us that God loves all men, but we know that's bullshit."
"Kelly!"
"We know it! We know it!" he stormed. "It's as clear as the mountains at dawn. God loves first white men, then Chinese, then Japanese, and after a long pause He accepts Hawaiians."
"Kelly, my darling boy, please!"
"But do you know the one consolation we got? Can you guess? We know for goddamn certain that He loves us better than He loves niggers. God, I'd hate to be a nigger."
Since Elinor Henderson had greater capacity for emotion than for logical control she was, of course, unable to write her book; in fact, she was prevented from even trying by one of those strange, wild occurrences that mark the tropics. At six-eighteen on the morning following her visit to the mission society she was still asleep, but in the deep waters of the Pacific, nearly three thousand miles to the north, an event of tremendous magnitude was taking place. The great shelf that lies off the Aleutian Chain was racked by a massive submarine earthquake, which in the space of a few minutes tumbled millions of tons of submerged ocean cliff down hidden mountainsides to a new resting place on the ocean floor. It was a titanic redisposal of the earth's crust, and the ocean in whose depths it occurred, was shaken