The Curse of Lono - By Hunter S. Thompson Page 0,11

really care. It was enough, at this point, to be away from the snow drifts on my porch in Colorado. We called for another brace of margaritas and relaxed to talk for a while. I kept one eye on the bartender while Skinner told me about Hawaii.

People get edgy when the Kona weather hits. After nine or ten straight days of high surf and no sun you can get your spleen kicked completely out of your body on any street in Honolulu, just for honking at a Samoan. There is a large and increasingly obvious Samoan population in Hawaii. They are big, dangerous people with uncontrollable tempers and their hearts are filled with hate by the sound of an automobile horn, regardless of who's getting honked at.

Caucasians are called "haole people" by the native Hawaiians and racial violence is a standard item in the daily newspapers and on the evening TV news.

The stories are grisly, and a few are probably true. A current favorite in Waikiki is the one about "A whole family from San Francisco" -- a lawyer, his wife and three children -- who got raped by a gang of Koreans while strolling on the beach at sunset, so close to the Hilton that people sipping pineapple daiquiris on the hotel veranda heard their screams until long after dark, but they shrugged off the noise as nothing more than the shrieking of sea gulls in a feeding frenzy.

"Don't go near the beach after dark," Skinner warned, "unless you feel seriously bored."

The Korean community in Honolulu is not ready, yet, for the melting pot. They are feared by the haoles, despised by the Japs and Chinese, scorned by Hawaiians and occasionally hunted for sport by gangs of drunken Samoans, who consider them vermin, like wharf rats and stray dogs. . .

"And stay away from Korean bars," Skinner added. "They're degenerate scum -- cruel, bloodthirsty little bastards. They're meaner than rats and a hell of a lot bigger than most dogs, and they can kick the shit out of anything that walks on two legs, except maybe a Samoan."

I shot a quick look at our bartender, shifting my weight on the stool and planting both feet on the floor. But he was working the adding machine, apparently deaf to Skinner's raving. What the hell? I thought. He can only catch one of us. I picked my Zippo off the bar and casually buttoned my wallet-pocket.

"My grandfather was Korean," I said. "Where can we meet these people?"

"What?" he said. " Meet them?"

"Don't worry," I said. "They'll know me."

"Fuck 'em," he said. "They're not people. It'll be another hundred years before we can even think about letting Koreans mate with anything human."

I felt vaguely sick, but said nothing. The bartender was still engrossed in his money-work.

"Forget it," Skinner said. "Let me tell you a negro story. It'll get your mind off Koreans."

"I've heard it," I said. "The girl who got pushed off the cliff?"

"Right," he said. "It scared the shit out of everybody. " He lowered his voice and leaned closer to me. "I knew her well," he said. "She was beautiful, a senior stewardess for Pan Am."

I nodded.

"For no reason at all," he went on. "She was just standing there on the edge, with her boyfriend -- up there on that peak where they take all the tourists -- when all of a sudden this crazy nigger just runs up behind her and gives a big shove. Whacko! Right off the edge and a thousand feet down to the beach." He nodded grimly. "She bounced two or three times off a waterfall about halfway down, then she went out of sight. They never saw her again, never found the first trace of her body."

"Why?" I wondered.

"Who knows?" he replied. "They never even put him on trial. He was declared 'hopelessly insane.' "

"Yeah," I said. "I remember it -- the black fiend who wore earphones, right? The same guy who got busted a few weeks earlier for trying to run naked in the Marathon?"

"Yeah, the fastest crazy nigger in the world. He ran about half the race stark naked, before they finally caught him. The bastard was fast," he said, smiling slightly. "It took ten cops on motorcycles to run him down and put the net on him. He was some kind of world-class runner before he flipped out."

"Balls," I said. "That's no excuse. These brainless murdering freaks should be castrated."

"Absolutely," he said. "It's already happened."

"What?"

"The Samoans," he said. "The traffic jam