Hawaii - James Michener [597]
It wasn't easy, and some of the first batches, introduced by a florid advertising hullabaloo featuring the slogan "Kee Beer, Your Key to Happiness," was dreadful stuff which the local population christened "Chinese arsenic." But soon, with the aid of a Swiss-German whom the hui flew in from St. Louis, the beer began to taste reasonably palatable, and since it sold for a nickel a can less than others, workingmen began acquiring a taste for it. So without even considering the $1,800,000 worth of real estate on, which the old Janders Brewery had sat, the Kee hui made a very strong profit out of that particular tax purchase.
But the big money-maker, to everyone's surprise, turned out to be the bakeries. Each store brought with it enough real estate so that of itself the deal was favorable, but Sam Kee, at the age of sixty-four, discovered a real affinity for selling cakes, and he showed substantial profits on each unit in the chain.
Not all the projects turned out so well. For example, the taxicab company resisted every attempt to make it pay, and finally Hong Kong reported to his grandmother: "This one is no good."
"Give it away," Nyuk Tsin replied.
"I hate to surrender so easily," Hong Kong protested. "There ought to be some way to make money out of taxicabs."
"Somebody else probably can," Nyuk Tsin agreed. "But not the Kees. Anyway, I don't like taxis. They seem to aim at me whenever I go out. By the way, I saw what Tom is doing to the old Bromley Block, and he's making it into quite a handsome building. If we had traded even, giving away the taro patch for the Bromley Block, we'd still have been ahead. I like to see the family working," she said.
And as the year ended, her hundred and fourth, she sat in her little house at midnight, and with a flickering oil lamp she undressed, until she stood completely naked, a tremendously frail old woman made up mostly of bones, and with the lamp moving cautiously near her body she inspected herself for leprosy. There were no spots on her hands, none on her torso, none on her legs. Now she sat down and lifted in turn each of her ungainly big feet. There were no spots on the toes, none on the heel, none at the ankles. At peace for another night, she slipped into a flannel nightgown, blew out the lamp, and went to sleep.
The coup which Nyuk Tsin had engineered had one unexpected result. The Fort, after it had an opportunity to study exactly what Hong Kong Kee had accomplished by his revolutionary manipulations, concluded, in the words of Hoxworth Hale: "We could use a man like that on some of our boards," and everyone agreed that the man had a master intellect.
After one of the meetings of Whipple Oil Imports, Incorporated, Hoxworth asked his fellow board member, jokingly, "Hong Kong, now that the Gregory's deal is over, and nobody got too badly hurt, are you happy that you sneaked the outfit into Hawaii?"
"What do you mean?" Hong Kong asked.
"Well," Hoxworth pointed out amiably, for he was growing to like the clever Chinese whose business judgments usually proved sound, "Gregory's has been here for nearly five years. They've taken enormous sums out of the Territory, but what have they done for Hawaii?"
"Like what?" Hong Kong asked.
"Like museums, schools, libraries, medical foundations."
Hong Kong thought a while and said in apparent seriousness, "Every year the manager of Gregory's has his picture in the paper handing the community drive a check for three hundred dollars." Hale looked at his new friend in astonishment, and saw that Hong Kong was laughing. "They don't do very much for Hawaii," the Chinese admitted.
"And as the years go by, Hong Kong, you'll see that they do even less. You have a lot of Kees in Hawaii, Hong Kong. How many?"
"We figure that the old grandmother has over two hundred great-great-grandchildren, but not all of them are in Hawaii."
"Have you ever thought that each one of them will be cheated just a little bit if there are