"I heard that Johnny Lingo is looking for a bargain. I heard he is going to ask for Mahana's hand in marriage."
"MAHANA?" Shopkeeper says, laughing. "Why, you'd be lucky to get two horns and a tail for that girl!"
Mahana is Ugly. That's ugly with a capital U. She hides out in the tree in front of her father's hut. When we first see her, in fact, this is where she is hiding behind the shadows of the huge, tropical leaves, high in the tree.
"I'll be lucky to get a cow that gives sour milk in trade for her," her father laments to a wise village elder, who is also trying to convince Mahana to come down from the tree.
The next morning at the bridal auction Mahana is still sitting in the tree. But it doesn't matter Johnny Lingo buys her anyway. And he didn't pay with a cow that gives sour milk.
"I will pay eight cows for your Mahana," Johnny tells her dad.
"Eight ... cows?" he asks, flabbergasted. The village gossip can't run through the village fast enough spreading the news. "Eight cows?" Mr. Shopkeeper gasps. "No one has EVER paid eight cows for a bride. It must be some kind of mistake."
But it's not a mistake. What's more, Johnny Lingo has now come to the shop to buy Mahana a wedding present a fancy hand-held mirror. Everyone is completely befuddled, including the hapless audience.
The marriage ceremony is terrible for Mahana. All her neighbors show up to eat free roast pig, but Mahana mopes, completely humiliated, with a crown of wilting flowers on her head.
The last we see of the couple, they're paddling off in a canoe for another island. Time passes. We don't see them again until Mr. Shopkeeper goes looking for Johnny Lingo, who never returned to pick up the costly mirror he ordered.
Arriving at the hut, Mr. Shopkeeper is greeted at the door by Johnny and Mahana. But Mahana has changed. No longer a fretful, manic-depressive harpy with greasy hair, she is now a perky, well-groomed wife in a tight red dress, a large hibiscus tucked behind her ear.
Shopkeeper's jaw drops.
"What did you do? How? What ..."
"I have loved Mahana since we were children," Johnny tells him, once Mahana is out of earshot. "I have known I wanted her to be my bride for a long time. I did not want Mahana to have to compare herself to the other women in the village. I wanted Mahana to always be able to say, 'My husband paid eight cows for me.' And I wanted Mahana to be an eight-cow woman," Johnny says proudly, watching her fill a beaded gourd with sea water at the shore of the ocean.
"She is, Johnny," Shopkeeper says. "She is."
.
:foot:
