Michener, James

by Hawaii

  At this juncture Micah Hale saved Hawaii, and he was well prepared for his role. Years before in Lahaina his missionary father had kept him penned up in a walled garden where he had done nothing but study history, the Bible and his father's fierce sense of rectitude. Particularly, he had served two apprenticeships which now fortified him in the job of building a new government: he had watched his father translate the book of Ezekiel, so that the stern phrases of that obdurate prophet lived in his mind; and he had listened when his lame little father explained how John Calvin and Theodore Beza had governed Geneva in accordance with the will of God.

  The first thing Micah Hale did was to deprive Wild Whip Hox-worth of any connection with the government. Next he insisted upon moral laws and fiscal responsibility. But above all, like a true missionary, he wrote. For the newspapers he wrote justifications of his government. For magazines he explained why the Hawaii revolution, which he had not wanted, was similar to the uprisings that had brought William and Mary to 'the English throne. To Republican

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  senators he wrote voluminously, providing them with ammunition to be fired against the Democrats, and to long-forgotten friends across America he wrote inspired letters, begging them to accept Hawaii. He lived solely for the purpose of making his islands part of the United States, and his pen, as it pushed across paper in the quiet hours after midnight, was the only real weapon the islanders had left.

  It was not a liberal government that Micah founded. When the wealthy men who were to draw up a new constitution met, he lectured: "Your job is to build a Christian state in which only responsible men of good reputation and solid ownership of property are allowed to govern." Explicit property qualifications were set for all who served and all who voted to have them serve. No man could be a member of the senate who did not own $3,000 worth of property untouched by mortgages, or who did not possess a yearly income of $1,200. In order to vote for a senator, a man was required to own $3,000 worth of property or to have an income of $600. Explained Micah: "In otheT parts of the world the uneducated workingman raises his voice in anger against his superiors, but not in Hawaii." Wherever possible, advantages were given to plantation owners, for upon them rested the welfare of the islands.

  On one point Micah was adamant: no Oriental must be allowed to vote or to participate in the government in any way. "They were brought to these islands to labor in the cane fields, and when their work was done they were supposed to go back home. There was no intention that they stay here, and if they do so, there is no place in our public life for them." Therefore, at Micah's suggestion, cleverly worded literacy tests were required for suffrage, and no Chinese or Japanese, even if he were wealthy and a citizen, could possibly pass them.

  In many respects Micah's government was too liberal for the sugar men who had thrown it into power, and there were many Hales and Whipples and Hewletts among the missionary group who opposed his radical liberalism, while the Janderses and Hoxworths considered him insane with French republican principles; for once the electorate had been restricted to the welljto
  From this great basic principle he never wavered. A lesser man than Micah might have been tempted by his power, but this austere New Englander was not. He awarded himself no medals, erected no fanciful structures of power about his erect white-suited figure. In the five years following the revolution of 1893 this ordained minister never once let a day pass without getting down on his knees and praying, "Almighty God, bring our plan to fruition. Make us part of America."

  Micah's training as a Calvinist enabled him to face many crises

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  with an absolute conviction that he was right, and when ugly decisions had to be made, he was willing to make them. In 1895 an armed revolution broke out against his government, and with unequivocating force he put it down, then arrested Queen Liliuokalani for her supposed complicity in it. When weak-livered men counseled caution in dealing with the fiery queen, Micah said, "She will be tried on charges of treason against this republic." And he stood firm when a jury subservient to the sugar men brought in a verdict of guilty. Of course, any other jury would have had to do the same, for the queen, refusing to honor the usurpers from America who had stolen her throne, naturally worked against them and, although there were conflicting reports on the matter, probably also encouraged her followers to open rebellion; the new nation had no recourse but to try her for treason, and when the sugar men found her guilty, it was Micah's responsibility to imprison her.

  The powerful, headstrong woman was incarcerated in an upper room of the palace, and while her imprisonment was rigorously policed, it was never physically unpleasant, and before long her adherents were circulating the greatest state paper ever produced by a sovereign of the islands. It was a song transcribed by Liliuokalani while in prison, and although she had composed it some years before, it had gained little notice; now its lament swept the island and the world, "Aloha Oe": "Gently sweeps the rain cloud o'er the cliff, borne swiftly by the western gale." One of the missionary men said of this song: "While she was free Queen Liliuokalani never did a thing for her people, but when she was in jail she expressed their soul." Micah Hale, hearing the melody, said, "Let her go free," and she left for Washington, there to fight against him bitterly.

  When the revolution was put down and the new government stabilized, it seemed for a brief interval as if President Cleveland and the Democrats might accept Hawaii. Mainland newspapers were beginning to write: "The moral stature of Micah Hale has gone far to correct the evils perpetrated by younger Americans during the revolution." At last Micah reported to his cabinet: "I am beginning to see hope."

  And then Wild Whip Hoxworth exploded across the front pages of America, and editors wrote: "This violent young man has served to remind us of the viciousness whereby men like himself stole Hawaii from Queen Liliuokalani." And hope of annexation evaporated.

  The trouble started during a three-day orgy at a Chinese brothel on Rat Alley in Iwilei. Whip had driven down to see a Spanish girl picked off a ship just in from Valparaiso, and he was enjoying himself when one of the sailors from the ship appeared with a claim that the girl belonged to him by right of purchase. A dreadful brawl ensued in which the intruding sailor was well whipped and kicked about the face. When he recovered, he stormed back into the brothel with

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  two friends armed with knives, and they started to carve pieces out of Whip's face, but the Valparaiso girl sided with Whip and crashed a stool into the face of the leader, who, already weak from the beating Whip had earlier administered, collapsed, whereupon Whip kicked him about the head so furiously that the man nearly died.

  Wild Whip was not arrested, of course, not only because the affair had happened in Iwilei, which was more or less outside police jurisdiction, but also because there were many witnesses to the fact that three men had come at him with knives, and he had two scars to prove that they had cut him before he had manhandled them. This affair might have passed without more than local notice except that the wounded sailor was a man of obstinate character, and as soon as he was discharged from the hospital he bought himself a gun, waited for Whip in a Hotel Street bar, and shot him through the left shoulder as he1 walked by.

  It was news of this shooting that reached America, where it vitiated much that Micah Hale had been accomplishing, but insofar as Hawaii was concerned, the worst was yet to come, for at the height of the scandal, Wild Whip 'got married, and this was almost insupportable, for the girl he married�with his left arm in a sling� was Mae Forbes. She was a beautiful girl of twenty, with long bl
ack hair, sinewy charm and perfect complexion. She had a soft low voice and was known to be of impeccable reputation, for her father, recognizing her beauty, had brought her up with extra care. Normally, the marriage of a vigorous young man like Wild Whip to a beautiful girl like Mae Forbes would have been acclaimed, especially as it was a love match and there was some hope that Mae might tame the fiery Hoxworth.

  Instead, the marriage was so offensive to Hawaii that it overshadowed all of Wild Whip's former behavior, because Mae Forbes sprang from a rather curious parentage. Her grandmother was the daughter of one of the lesser alii families from Maui, and her grandfather, Josiah Forbes, was a strong-minded, able Englishman from Bristol, who had jumped ship on the Big Island to make a small fortune pressing sugar. Later he married his Maui sweetheart, a fine Hawaiian woman, and they had a pert daughter, but she was a headstrong girl who liked to do as she wished, and at the age of nineteen she married a Chinese farmer named Ching, so that her daughter who went by the name of Mae Forbes was really Ching Lan Tsin, Perfect Flower Ching, and her marriage to Whipple Hoxworth was the first example of an Oriental, or part-Oriental, in her case, marrying into a major island family. It was a terrifying foretaste of the future, and Wild Whip was ostracized.

  Even though his behavior had damaged Hawaii he would probably have been allowed to remain in the islands except for a public brawl he engaged in with the Hewlett boys. It arose when he found that some of the Committee of Nine had developed second thoughts about the revolution and were now preaching against union with

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  America: "Somebody pointed out that as soon as we come under American law, our contracts for forced labor will be declared void, and we won't be free to import any more Japanese."

  "Anything wrong with that?" Whip asked scornfully.

  "How can we grow sugar without contract labor?"

  "Frankly, and all sentiment aside, what good does contract labor do you?"

  "Well, they've got to work where we say, at a fixed wage, and if they don't we can depend on our judges to make them."

  "Well, I'll be goddamned!" Whip snorted. "Don't you men ever read the papers? Of course our labor laws will be rejected by America."

  "Then we don't want to join America," one of the Hewlett boys said.

  "What do you propose?" Whip asked politely.

  "Join England. She allows contract labor. Or go it alone."

  Whip was stunned. The revolution was slipping away from him. First Cleveland frustrated it and now the original conspirators were talking of union with England. "Look," he said carefully, "you don't need the old labor contracts. For the last eleven years I've not dragged one of my men into court. If they want to leave, okay. I give them good food, a fair deal, a little humor, and they make more sugar for me than they do for all of you put together. Believe me, that's the pattern of the future."

  One of the Hewlett boys was offended by this wisdom and added, unwisely, "There's one more thing you do for the men, Whip."

  "What?"

  "You also sleep with their wives."

  Like a volcano about to build a new island, Wild Whip erupted from his chair, lunged at the Hewletts and would have maimed the man who had insulted him had not other committee members pinioned him.

  That night Micah Hale summoned Whip to his study on King Street. "You must leave the islands, Whipple."

  "But the revolution's falling apart!" Whip protested.

  "Revolutions always do," Micah replied.

  "These poor bastards are talking of joining England, or going it alone. Just to make a few more dollars on their labor contracts."

  "That's all beside the point, Whipple. You're contaminating the new nation, and for the good of all, you've got to go."

  "But I'm determined to fight this insidious idea of surrender. I'll not let this revolution . . ."

  "Get out!" Micah thundered. "I'm trying to save Hawaii, and I can't do it if you're here. You're an evil, corrupt bully, and these islands have no place for you. Go!"

  The old man shoved Whipple from the door, so in the vital years that followed, Wild Whip traveled abroad with his Chinese-Hawaiian wife, his two facial scars offsetting her crystalline beauty; and from a distance he followed the affairs of home. He was in Rio

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  when word arrived of McKinley's election to the Presidency, and he paused in ^his work long enough to tell Ching-ching, as he called his wife, "In two years the islands'll join America. Thank God it's over."

  "Shall we return for the celebration?" Ching-ching asked.

  "No," Whip scowled. "It's Uncle Micah's show. All I did was get him started." He said no more about annexation, for he was on the trail of something that was to have almost as profound an effect upon Hawaii as her union with the United States. One morning he burst into his wife's room in their hotel in Rio de Janeiro, crying, "Ching-ching! I want you to taste something."

  "What are you doing?" she laughed, for she was not yet out of bed and he was wheeling in a small table bearing one dish, a knife and a fork.

  "I'm bringing you one of the most delicious things yet invented. Tuck a towel under your chin." He threw her one of his shirts and tied the sleeves about her pretty olive throat. Then from a paper sack he produced a large, golden, barrel-shaped pineapple. Holding it aloft by its spiny leaves, he asked, "You ever see a more perfect fruit than this?"

  "Very large for a pineapple," Ching-ching remarked. "Where'd you get it?"

  "More than six pounds. They tell me ships bring them down here regularly from French Guiana. They're called Cayennes, but wait till you taste one." With a large, sharp knife Wild Whip proceeded to slice away the hard outer skin and the series of eyes. Soon a most delicious aroma filled the room and a golden juice ran down off the tip of the knife, staining the tablecover.

  "Watch out, Whip!" his wife cautioned. "It's dripping."

  "That's what makes it smell so good," he explained. With a sturdy cut across the middle of the pineapple he laid it in half, then sliced off a perfect circle of heavy, golden, aromatic fruit. He slapped it onto the plate, handed Ching-ching a fork and invited her to taste her first Cayenne.

  "That's heavenly!" she cried as the slightly acid juice stained her chin. "Where did you say they grow?"

  "Up north."

  "We ought to plant these in Hawaii," she suggested.

  "I propose to," he replied.

  When Micah Hale was approaching seventy-six and was more tired than he dared admit, word reached Honolulu that in Washington the House of Representatives had finally approved annexation by a vote of 209 to 91. That night Micah's vigil began, for at dinner he said to his wife Malama, "We have two more weeks to wait, and then we'll know what the Senate is going to do."

  "Are you confident?" his gracious Hawaiian wife inquired.

  "If prayer to an understanding God is efficacious, then I am confident."

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  The Hales ate in candlelight and sat across from each other so that verbal communication was quick and direct. Malama, in her sixty-fifth year, was stately rather than vivacious. She had not gone to flesh as had so many of her Hawaiian sisters, and her silvery gray hair was complemented by the pale light. She retained her saucy manner of tilting her head quizzically when an idea amused her, and now she said softly, "It will be proper for Hawaii to submerge itself in America. We're a poor, weak group of islands, and anyone who had really wanted us in the last fifty years could have snatched us. It's better this way."

  Micah, momentarily relaxed by the good news from Congress, asked, "Do you know, Malama, how sorry I am that it had to be your husband who did the things of the last five years?"

  "It had to be somebody," she said to the erect, austere missionary. "Of all the Hawaiians, you understood most clearly," he said. "But I suppose that's to be expected. Noelami's daughter and Malama's granddaughter." At the mention of these distinguished names he unexpectedly
found tears in his eyes, and he wanted to hide his face in his hands, but Malama saw them, and if she had been sitting beside her husband, she would, Hawaiian-fashion, have comforted him, but on this important night they sat apart and only ideas sped between them, not love. Micah said, "It would have been so much better if you had been queen and not Liliuokalani. You would have under-Stood, but she never could."

  "No," Malama said slowly, "it was better that we had a headstrong, volatile Hawaiian. Let the world see us dying as we actually

  were."

  "Dying?" Micah repeated in surprise.

  "Yes, -dying," Malama said with subtle firmness. "Soon our islands will be Oriental and there will be no place for Hawaiians."

  His wife's comments were strange, and Micah pointed out: "But in the constitution we were careful to put up safeguards against the Japanese."

  "That's only a paper, Micah," she pointed out. "We Hawaiians know that we're being pushed over in the canoe." "You'll be protected!" Micah cried.

  "We had an earlier constitution that was supposed to protect us," Malama said, "but it didn't prevent the sugar robbers from stealing our lands . . . and then our country."

  "Malama!" Micah gasped. "Are you contending that only cupidity directed this revolution? Do you refuse to see the forces of American democracy at work here?"

  "All I can see is that when our fields were barren no one wanted us, but when they were rich with sugar, everyone wanted us. What else can I conclude?"

  Micah was disturbed by the turn this conversation was taking and he went far back into memory: "Do you recall the first time I ever saw you? In San Francisco? And I said then, before I ever saw a sugar field, 'Hawaii must become a part of the United States'? I