from the homeland to slit our throats in the night.'
The junior Burroughs was referring to their efficient, kindly, obviously loyal maid, who happened to be the mother of a friend of Hully's; it was his close friendship with a
Despite the absurdity of it, O. B. said, 'How do you know she isn't? How do you know your friend Sam won't stab you in the back?' 'Because he's my friend, Dad.' This was an old argument, and father and son fell into an awkward silence, punctuated by the whistle of wind and the flaglike flapping of white linen.
Along this stretch of the Ala Moana, a fantastic, breathtaking view presented itself, including Punch Bowl and Round Top and Tantalus and Kaimuki and Diamond Head, the tower of the Royal Hawaiian Hotel peeking over the tops of coconut and date palms like a kid over a fence.
Finally Hully said, 'Jeez, Pop, I never saw so many women in one place in my Me, as on that dock today.' His father nodded. 'Wives of servicemen, mostly, I suppose,' Hullysaid.
'Some of 'em. Most of them were prostitutes.'
Hully, not sure his father was serious, looked at him, saying, 'What? Really?'
But O. B.'s expression was matter-of-fact; so was his tone. 'Sure. And that's the only thing that makes me think Frank Teske might not be entirely nuts.'
'Why is that?'
'Well, when the prostitutes around a military base panic, and start headin' for the mainland, you gotta wonder-who is more sensitive to the military mind than a hooker?'
They were rambling across a long wooden bridge over the Ala Moana Canal, which emptied the city's waste water into the ocean. Their lodgings would be coming up soon, and when the wind blew from the south, no one went down to the hotel's beach to swim-at such times O. B. tended to refer to the otherwise comfortable Niumalu Hotel as 'Hovel-on-Sewer.'
Soon they were passing what appeared to be an old Southern mansion set stylishly among the lush shrubbery; but it was actually a Japanese teahouse called Ikesu Villa.
“Take that place,' O. B. said with a nod. 'It looks American, but it's Japanese through and through.'
Shortly after, at a fork in the road, Hully's father turned right, into that part of Waikiki which still most nearly remained in its native state.
'You know,' O. B. said reflectively, the antagonism suddenly gone from his voice, 'the funny thing is… this is as close as I've ever been to war. I've always been the kind of guy who's late for the thrill-I always seem to get to the fire after it's out.'
Hully took a long sideways look at his rugged, bronzed fattier-a man's man who had been a cowboy and a gold miner, who had served the United States Cavalry in Arizona, who had sailed the Panama Canal. But who-as the creator of Tarzan-had never been to Africa, and not so long ago, when MGM announced its next Weissmuller epic would be shot on the Dark Continent, Hully's pop had been invited to accompany the expedition… only the war in Europe and Africa had changed all that. Africa was off.
'And now I'm too old,' his father was saying, wheeling into and up the Niumalu's crashed coral drive. 'One last war, and I'm too damn old.'
For the first time in several weeks, Hully heard the familiar despondency in his father's voice, reminding him why he'd come here for mis 'vacation'-a fear in his family that his father might be contemplating suicide.
And wasn't mat ironic, Hully thought: what a Japanese thing for O. B. to be considering.
TWO
The mile of romance, the Tourist Bureau called it: that white stretch of sand known as Waikiki, extending from the Halekulani Hotel and the adjacent inns and cottages to the concrete War Memorial Natatorium in whose saltwater pool that former screen Tarzan, Buster Crabbe, had set records, warming up for the Olympics.
Only one major beachfront hotel rested outside those limits, sequestered from the rest of Waikiki by Fort de Russy: the Niumalu, literally Spreading Coconut, loosely Sheltering Palms, of which the lavishly landscaped grounds, six acres' worth, certainly had their share… and the hotel's hand-lettered sign was rather informally nailed to one leaning palm, establishing a casual tone that permeated the place.
Thirty clapboard guest cottages were scattered about the Niumalu's pleasant jungle, with all crushed-coral roads leading to an impressive if squatty-looking white stucco main building typical of the Hawaiian style of architecture prevalent since the late twenties, with its lampshadelike double-pitched roof, and a porte cochere supported by columns of lava stone evocative of leopard spots.
The lodge, as the guests referred to the central building, had an open interior with a central rock-garden courtyard just off a nightclublike dining room with a large dance floor and bandstand. The lobby's large, missionlike arched portals also looked out onto the courtyard, and the effect was open and airy, the wicker furnishings adding to a porchlike effect.
Edgar Rice Burroughs had been Very happy here, with his wife Florence-his second wife-and he had thought she felt the same.
Burroughs had well known the risks of marrying a younger woman. He had been sixty and Florence thirty- one-as his daughter Joan had cruelly pointed out, Florence was younger than the duration of her parents' marriage. Everyone seemed to be making the assumption that he was discarding his fifty-nine-year-old, overweight wife for the slender shapely former actress, out of the usual crassly selfish, male, sex-driven reasons.
The truth was more complex. Emma had always been plump, pleasantly so in her young, vivacious days, a 'dumpling,' as the old parlance went. In the early years of the marriage, even as her tendency toward stoutness increased, her intelligence and charm had made up for her excess weight After all, they had faced hardship, poverty and adversity together, theirs had been a marriage of closeness, of sharing. Emma would read his work and intelligently comment; his triumphs, his failures, had been hers-theirs, Jane to his Tarzan.
But their interests had diverged, drastically, over the past twenty years. Emma seemed to resent his youthful ways, shared not at all his interest in sports and the great out-of-doors-horseback riding, golf, tennis, certainly not flying. She would chastise him for his preference for the company of younger people, calling him 'immature,' accusing him of trying to 'prove his masculinity.'
The latter, in a marriage that had been sexless for some time, was a particularly cutting blow. But-despite the quarrels, and the recriminations-he had held on, out of concern for how his children might react to separation or divorce. With his business flourishing, he spent less and less time at home, doing his writing at the office, supervising the magazine serialization of his work, keeping an eye on the ticensing of Tarzan and other characters of his to the movies, radio, and comics.
And all of this was rewarding-he thought of himself as a businessman first, a writer second, an 'author' not at all. He had been the first writer he knew of to incorporate-ERB, Inc.-and even started a publishing company, printing his own books, to better maintain control of the product, and to maximize profits.
And he had made it a family business, hiring Hully as his vice president, using his older son, Jack, a successful commercial artist, as the illustrator of his book jackets and the new 'John Carter of Mars' comic strip, based on his science-fiction novels, set to debut this Sunday. He'd even hired his daughter's no-good husband Jim Pierce to play Tarzan on the radio.
No one could say Ed Burroughs was not a family man, even if he did spend most of his time away from home, at the office. But few on this earth knew-besides his children, if they would admit it-how he had dreaded to come home, at the end of a long day. And even the kids could only guess that behind the happy moments of the marriage-and there had been some, even in the later years-hovered a specter of fear of what he knew would inevitably come the next day or the next….
He blamed himself. He'd always been proud of the way he could hold his liquor, and had urged Emma-who had no tolerance for alcohol at all, and whose personality changed radically under the influence-to moderate her drinking. They had been party goers for years, but as Emma's problem worsened, he had cut back on the invitations they accepted, and didn't stay long at the parties they did attend.
