"Oh, you have some?"
"Yok, Gilbert." Mo appeared. "See?"
"See what?" she asked.
"Sorry, I was talking to Gilbert. You are my friend, aren't you?"
"How long have you been here?"
"Two minutes."
"Very pretty friend," Gilbert said. "Too good for you. May I get you a
drink?"
"Lillet on the rocks, please." Mo was wearing linen slacks and an open
weave cotton sweater. She rarely used make up; touches of eye shadow
made her seem especially dressed up. Morgan and Edie walked down the
wide back steps of the hotel and across the courtyard beneath the
banyan tree. Joe waved.
"More friends," he said. They moved to a table. "Did your window open?"
"Oh, yes," Edie said, nodding. "It was very satisfying." Her face was
open and cheerful; her eyebrows curved; her cheeks curved; her mouth
curved widely around and up at the corners. Beneath the curves she had
a strong head.
"So, Morgan . . . Waikiki, Diamond Head . . . " Joe stretched out his
arm.
"Yes," Morgan said in his most approving manner.
"What do you do here?" Edie asked Mo.
"I have a small photography business."
"How wonderful," Edie said. "I am talent-less." One corner of Morgan's
mouth twitched. Mo sipped her Lillet.
"Me too," Joe said. "I paid twenty-five cents for biology drawings in
high school. My worms looked like accordions."
"I understand you are a builder and a writer," Mo said, turning to
Morgan.
"I suppose so," he said.
"Damned good one," Joe said.
"What is your book about?"
"Houses of the Hudson Valley." Mo smiled broadly. That's Morgan, Joe
thought. He states the title of his book, a simple fact, and manages to
imply that the universe is a lunatic misunderstanding, that we are all
waiting at the wrong bus stop.
"Have you been working on it long?" Mo asked.
"Nine years."
"I could eat a mahi-mahi," Edie said.
They ended up at the restaurant, John Dominis, at a table with too many
glasses, sea bass, snapper, and mahi-mahi, salads, desserts . . . No
one wanted to stop. Morgan told a long story that began with a knock on
his door one winter afternoon. A Jehovah's Witness had wandered up the
mountain to proselytize. Morgan was so glad to see someone that he
invited him in and had a conversation about the Bible.
"Given their assumptions," Morgan said, "I thought I might discuss
their conclusions." The following week the witness returned with help.
Pots of tea, hours later, the witness and his help left, baffled,
promising to return with an elder. By spring, much of the church's
energy was directed at rebutting the doctrinal challenge from the
mountains. Morgan was invited to headquarters where an informal truce
was reached. "They are an efficient organization in many ways," Morgan
said grandly.
"Poor bastards," Joe said. "Morgan is difficult in debate, Mo. He got
out of the draft by writing so many complicated letters questioning
selective service procedures that they finally figured it would be
easier to classify him, 1Y."
"A successful campaign," Morgan said.
"Better than mine," Joe said.
"Could have been worse," Morgan reminded him.
"True." Joe explained to Edie and Mo that he'd enlisted in the Air
Force and decided, midway through his hitch, that war was wrong, that
people shouldn't kill each other. "Vietnam was heating up. The colonel
at my courts-martial listened to my speech, smiled at two lieutenants
who were doing on-the-job legal training, and said, 'Airman Burke, you
may persist in your attitude and I will sentence you to one year at
Fort Leavenworth Federal Penitentiary and a bad conduct discharge, or,
you can keep your mouth shut, serve the rest of your enlistment, and I
will sentence you to thirty days in the stockade, a five hundred dollar
fine, and reduction in rank to Airman Basic. What will it be?'
"He raised the gavel, the son of a bitch. I was twenty; I was stubborn;
I had no idea what a federal pen was like. I opened my mouth for
another statement of principle, and a voice sounded in my head--that's
only happened to me twice. It said: 'you asshole, people kill each
other. They have always killed each other. What do you think you're
doing?' The voice saved me. 'Thirty days,' I said. The colonel smacked
his gavel and read the sentence for the record.
"'Yes, sir.' I said. 'My car is at the BX; I'll just park it behind the
barracks.' Two AP's took me by the elbows and marched me to the
stockade."
"A near thing," Edie said. "It was a senseless war."
"It sure was," Joe said. "And it was the poor boys from Kentucky who
died in it."
"And the Vietnamese," Mo added. They were silent.
"It wasn't so bad in the stockade," Joe said. "We got to watch TV for
an hour each afternoon--Perry Mason. The guys were always yelling for
longer sentences at the end of the show. One of the guys was doing
ninety days for swearing at an officer's wife. Stockwell, his name was.
He was a bag boy, and she used to give him a hard time at the
commissary. He called her a bitch one afternoon and she complained to
her husband. Ninety days! They add it to the end of your hitch, too."
"So you had to serve thirty extra days?" Mo asked.
"Twenty-five. I got five days off for good behavior. It cooled me down.
I got through the rest of my hitch without any problems."
They settled the bill. Joe put half on his credit card, and Morgan
asked what he was doing for money. "Nothing," Joe said.
"You can't spend more than you earn, forever, you know."
"Good point. I'm not quite broke; I'll figure something out."
"Morgan says you're a computer expert," Edie said helpfully.
"Was, Edie. The technology changes every couple of years and I'm sick
of learning languages. It was something I did just to get by. I've
given it up."
"Oh, good!" she said.
He drew them a map of Lihue showing the way to Hamura's Saimin. "Don't
miss it!" They made their way back to the Moana and said goodbye. Mo
dropped Joe off at Liholiho Street. Just before they parted, he thought
he saw her hesitate. He went to bed and dreamed that she was naked,
turning away from him in bed to another man. He touched the base of her
back where it curved toward him and rubbed a few small farewell circles.
10
Morgan was right, of course. Sooner or later he was going to run out of
money. Things weren't going well. He wasn't satisfied with the cat
burglar story, and he was lonely. He decided to write a story about
Alphonse and the cannery.
Alphonse was a slim, dark, middle aged Filipino with a thin straight
mustache. He had watched Joe stack empty pallets with a yellow Hyster
and then he'd motioned Joe out of the seat. The forklift engine roared;
his hands blurred; pallets leaped into perfect piles, ten feet high.
Alphonse cut the engine and climbed down, eyes bright. He was somewhere
between ten and a hundred times faster than Joe. The cannery whistle
blew. Coffee break. Alphonse smiled, nodded, and turned for the
cafeteria. Joe followed.
Alphonse was Joe's trainer. Wherever they went in the cannery, people
called to him. He lifted a hand, smiled, and kept going. He was
universally popular, but he rarely spoke to anyone; he focused on the
work--how to do it better, how to do it faster. Joe was in a welfare
job training program. He hated the whistle that told them when they
could stop and when they must start. He hated the gray industrial paint
and the numbing future--less work for someone else's profit.
Alphonse had no future. Not only that, he was twenty years older than
Joe. He worked Joe into the ground every day, and when he waved with a
small smile and walked away at the end of the shift, his head was high
and he seemed untouched. Alphonse had his own standards, his own
integrity, and somehow he was stronger than the whole gray clanking
cannery. Stronger than profit, stronger than loss, Joe wrote.
But the story wasn't any good. It was true, as far as it went, but it
wasn't--a story. What is a story, anyway?
Joe realized that he didn't know.