Short frowned and smiled simultaneously. "I thought you were in the cavalry-the 'Bloody Seventh,' who fought at Little Bighorn and Wounded Knee."
"That's true, but the press agents would have you believe I fought side by side with Custer."
"Maybe that's what happened to your scalp," Hully kidded.
His father laughed at that, continuing, "The only Indians I came in contact with, at Fort Grant, were Indian scouts. No, my cavalry career was undistinguished, General. A flop like everything else I ever tried."
"Edgar Rice Burroughs," Kimmel said, putting some pomp into the name, "a flop? That seems unlikely."
"Admiral, I have sold electric lightbulbs to janitors, candy to drugstores and peddled Stoddard's lectures door-to-door. The only interesting job I ever had was as a policeman."
This was news to Hully, sitting next to his father. "You were a cop, Pop?"
Burroughs smiled at the admiral and general, pointing a thumb at his son. "You see, my boy has inherited my literary skill." Then he turned to Hully. "Yes, my poetic offspring, I was a police officer in Salt Lake City, my principal duty rousting drunks and hoboes. Even flashed my gun a few times."
Hully was impressed. "When was this?"
"Maybe ought three, ought four… don't really remember, exactly. But mostly I was a salesman-a bad one. I was peddling pencil sharpeners when I first took up writing."
"Had you always had an interest in literature?" Kim-mel asked.
"I liked Mark Twain, and The Prisoner of Zenda, if you call that literature. I was supervising other salesmen, had a lot of free time, and spent it reading cheap magazines. The fiction I read struck me as lousy, and I figured if other people could get paid for writing such rotten stuff, make room for Burroughs."
"I like your books, Ed," Short said, grinning, "and I won't have you downgrading yourself… and my good taste."
"Don't think I'm not grateful, General. No writer alive has taken more potshots than me-there are li-brarians and literary types who consider my stuff a bad influence, particularly on young minds like yours."
The general laughed, and said, "How on earth could Tarzan be considered harmful?"
"Well, a good number of kids have fallen out of trees, emulating him… otherwise, I think it's good for their imaginations."
Mrs. Short said, rather primly, "Don't you think some children have rather overactive imaginations, Mr. Burroughs?"
"With all due respect, Mrs. Short, the power of imagination is all that differentiates the human from the brute. Without imagination, there's no power to visualize what we have never experienced… and without that, there can be no progress, no invention."
Hully smiled to himself, thinking of his father's self-characterization of being a "lousy conversationalist." Of course, giving in to a little wine had lubricated his dad's tongue, no question….
Kimmel was frowning in thought. "How on earth did you come up with something as imaginative as Tarzan?"
The half smirk disappeared from O. B.'s face and his response was surprisingly serious-in fact, Hully would never forget what his father quietly, humbly said next.
"Frankly, Admiral, I suppose it came out of my daily life consisting of such drab, dull business matters. I think I just wanted to get as far away from commerce as possible-so my mind roamed in scenes and situations I never knew." He gestured to the tropical trees around them. "I've never been to Africa, you know-but I find I can write better about places I've never seen than those I have."
"Excuse me, Mr. Burroughs," said the young Japanese man seated on O. B.'s other side, "but I wonder if you are aware of how very popular you are in my country?"
This was Tadashi Morimura, who had introduced himself earlier-a diplomat in his late twenties, vice consul of the Japanese Consulate in Honolulu. Like Kimmel, Morimura wore a white suit and a tie; he was a boyish, slender man, his longish black hair brushed back on a smooth, high forehead.
"Well, I've had good foreign sales for years, though this European war is playing havoc with 'em."
"My cousin is named Edgar," Morimura said, with a shy smile. "Sir, I know many boys who have been named for you."
O. B. seemed genuinely touched. "That's the first I've heard of that. But I don't see why a boy in your country wouldn't respond to what kids here do-kids including General Short, of course."
"You mean the constant urge for escape," Kimmel said thoughtfully, even a little pompously. 'To trade the confines of city streets for the freedom of the wilderness …"
"I think it's more," O. B. said. "I think on some primal level, we all would like to throw off the restrictions of man-made laws, the inhibitions that society has placed on us. Every boy, of any age, would like to be Tarzan… I know I would."
"As would I," Morimura said, raising his cup of wine.
Despite the pleasantness of the evening, the great food, the wonderful conversation, Hully couldn't help but be struck by the surreal incongruity of this social gathering: the commanders of the Army and Navy sharing poi with a Japanese diplomat, when everyone seemed to agree war between their two countries was both inevitable and imminent.
But Morimura seemed a pleasant sort, harmless, well-spoken, typically polite.
As the dining wound down, the entertainment increased, the evening alive with flaming torches and swinging swords, and various renditions of the hula from seductive, lyrical swaying to the frenetic hip-twitching version tourists craved. Wandering troubadours with ukuleles and steel guitars sang traditional Hawaiian standards, but also Tin Pan Alley island fare like "Sweet Leilani" and "Blue Hawaii."
By around ten, the luau proper was over and the guests were milling around the grounds, lounging throughout the lodge, in the rock-garden courtyard, and in the enclosed rear lanai, with its wicker furnishings and soothing view onto a tropical garden. The music, however, had shifted to the big-band music of Pearl and the Harbor Lights on the dance floor adjacent to the dining room.
Hully and his father split up-he noticed O. B. talking to Colonel Fielder at one point, out on the lawn, and to that German playboy Otto Kuhn, in the rock garden-and the younger Burroughs sat at a table with Ensign Bill Fielder and Seaman Dan Pressman, smoking cigarettes, drinking oke (except for Hully, who had switched from wine to coffee), listening to Pearl and the band do "Oh, Look at Me Now."
The only concession to Hawaiian-style music made by Pearl and the Harbor Lights was the inclusion of two guitars, one of them steel, and of course the boys in the band did wear blue aloha shirts with a yellow-and-red floral pattern. Bathed in pale pink stage lighting, Pearl-standing at her center-stage microphone, which she occasionally touched, in a sensually caressing fashion-wore a clinging blue gown, with a daring dEcolletage that showed off her medium-size but firm, high breasts to fine advantage.
"I'm going to tell the old man tonight," Bill was saying. He was a handsome Naval officer in his early twenties with dark hair and a cleft chin-despite his crisply military haircut, he looked more like a kid than a sailor, in his green aloha shirt and white slacks.
"I can see what you see in Pearl," Hully said, and he certainly could, his eyes returning to the ethereal, erotic vision she made on stage under the pink lighting in the low-cut blue gown. "But you've only been going with her for a month…. Can't you wait-"
"What, till war breaks out, and I'm at sea, fighting her relatives?" Bill's dark eyes were sharp, but his speech was slightly slurred-too much oke. "There's not going to be a better time to break this to Dad-certainly after we're at war with Japan, it's not gonna be any easier."
"Bill," his friend Dan said, a blue-eyed blond sailor