by Bill Baynes
Joe couldn’t tell Cookie where Aiko’s room is. He doesn’t even know her last name. His plan couldn’t work if no one could find Sam and Aiko.
“Jesus, Binky, ya totally lost it with this lady, haven’t ya?” Wade observed when Joe unloaded to the “fellas.” “Ya look like hell.”
Prints hanging in the darkroom showed Christmas decorations in the windows of buildings in Little America. Wade was onshore most days, taking shots of various Tokyo neighborhoods.
“They live over by the train station, don’t they?” Wade asked. “I’ve been in that neighborhood. Gimme a description of the hotel and I’ll get the address for ya.”
Joe was surprised. He’d expected to take some told-you-sos from the photographer.
“What?” Wade says. “I’m not always a jerk, ya know.”
For good measure, he added: “Stupid Nips. They shoulda told ya where ya were.”
He also found a good map and detailed driving directions to Mount Fuji. He traded watches so Joe could disappear overnight and loaned him the jeep assigned for “official photography.”
A wide turn reveals Fuji across a broad lake, its reflection splintered by drifting ice.
You. Me. Away.
Driving down twisting curves, he can see shanties at the side of the highway again, people in thin pajamas, their breaths visible. Fat white flakes begin to fall from the sky.
What has he gotten himself into? What about his wife? A stab of guilt, quickly suppressed. What began as a casual friendship with the boy has become something complex and compelling, a vessel he does not captain bound for an unknown destination. Too late to turn back now.
He waits at the depot, surrounded by signs of destruction. A burned-out boxcar sits on a siding. Two sheds, now charred shells, slowly fill with snow. Next to a fifteen-foot pile of debris are several lean-tos, blankets across the open sides.
He doesn’t know if she will come. His gut clenches as the train heaves into view. He feels like the steam puffing out of the smokestack.
He watches the passengers unload, pouring down the rickety stairs, dropping out of windows, leaping off the couplings between cars. So many people.
Joe doubts she will be among them. There are many reasons for her not to be aboard: Sam, the baby, the weather, the war. Maybe she doesn’t want to meet him. Even if she does, she probably resisted the temptation.
The throng on the platform thins. She isn’t there. He’s about to turn away.
Then he sees a small figure, standing by the last car. She’s dressed entirely in black and she has no luggage. So tiny. Could it be …
It is! There she is!
He waves. She wiggles her fingers at him.
They walk toward each other. He wants to break into a run and sweep her into his arms, but he restrains himself. He’s the only American at the station. He doesn’t want to make her uncomfortable in public.
They converge and press their palms together. They hold each other’s eyes for a few moments, as the train, the smoke, and the other people swirl around them,
It is so cold and yet they are flushed.
When they step back, she smiles and gestures at the snowcapped peak, Fuji-san, shy as a maiden behind veils of clouds. He doesn’t even look. He can only see her.
She checks directions at the ticket window. They drive to the inn and she waits in the jeep, while Joe passes under the distinctive triangular roof and checks in.
It is a traditional ryokan, very different from hotels back in the States. The floor of their room is covered with tatami mats like Aiko’s apartment. There are no dressers, no chairs, no bed. Several cushions surround a low wooden table.
Aiko removes her shoes and signals for Joe to do the same. She goes to a cupboard and removes paper slippers. They’re too small for Joe.
The room is so cold they can see their breaths, but there is a squat brazier loaded with coals. While Joe kneels and lights it, Aiko opens another cupboard and pulls out a futon and some linens, which she arranges in the center of the space.
She goes behind a rice paper screen. Her clothing appears over the light wooden frame. She emerges in a patterned robe. She hands a second robe to Joe … “yukata“… and gestures at the screen.
He strips behind the screen and tries on the robe. The sleeves come to his elbows. The fabric reaches to his knees and barely closes around him.
Aiko tries to hide her smile with a hand in front of her mouth.
For the next too-few hours, they’re together. They are not Japanese and American. Just man and woman.
Just Joe. Just Aiko.
They don’t speak much. Words aren’t important to them. They communicate with their hands.
At first they’re tentative, eager and scared at once. She sits on the futon, facing away, head down, as if ashamed. Then she arches her neck, wriggles her toes.
He lowers himself next to her. He feels like an awkward, oversized child in undersized clothing, crawling on his hands and knees.
He puts one arm around her and holds her. Gently, she lays her head on his shoulder. She is tense.
Joe releases her and stretches full-length on the mat behind her. He pushes gently on her back and then lets up. As she leans back, he takes her shoulder and guides her down next to him. She pulls up her legs and turns away.
He snugs behind her and puts his arm around her. She is so small, doll-like. She smells so good. Slowly, she relaxes.
If this is all that happens, he thinks, it’s worth it. This will be enough.
But it isn’t. His body insists. He moves back a little. He doesn’t want to pressure her with his erection. But she moves back, too.
She turns to him, puts her hands in his hair, on his face. She stares at him with a serious look. They barely know each other.
They learn quickly. She opens his robe. Hers falls open as she moves atop him. He can feel her ribs, taste the trace of Tokyo on her skin, the faint scent of ash.
A patient man, given to slowness in sexual matters, Joe understands that her pleasure is his. She isn’t used to that. He seems to surprise her.
“Joe-san!”
She surprises him, as well. They have much to teach each other. It is a mutual surrender and occupation of the heart. It seems endless, yet it is over in an instant.
He never finds a way to tell her he’s going home.
13
Isamu
He doesn’t want to stay with his baby sister, but Mama gave him no choice. He spends the night behind the new door with the strong locks, safe and private. He promised he’d stay until Mama returns.
When Hana-chan gets hungry, he dips a rag in the jar of breast milk that Mama left behind and lets her suck it dry, patiently repeating the process until she’s full.
From master of the house to babysitter, it feels like a demotion and it hurts his pride. How can he provide for the family if he’s stuck inside with Hana-chan? Maybe he doesn’t have as much power in their little kingdom as he thought.
Yet Mama is trusting him to care for the baby for the first time, so it’s also a promotion. Confusing.
He takes his assignment seriously. He stares at the child. He’s never had her to himself for so long. Mama has him hold her sometimes, but she always takes her back in a few minutes.
He notices the way she watches the cold draft shifting the flimsy curtain Mama put over the window, her eyes following the foldings and openings, the light and shadow from the flickering oil lamp.
How helpless she is. How much she depends on others. Her mother. Her father … she never knew him. Can a brother be a father?
Can Joe?
Mama has been different the last few days. She sings to Hana-chan. She hasn’t done that since the firebombing.
Is Joe the reason?
His head swimming, Isamu nods off. The baby is already asleep.
He wakes before dawn to her hungry screams. Crossing the room in the darkness, he stumbles and shatters the milk jar.
He tries to get
the baby to take some rice gruel, but she refuses. He manages to drip some water into her mouth, but she won’t stop crying. No amount of rocking her does any good. He’ll have to replace the milk.
Not easy. Milk is difficult to find, even on the black market. Isamu knows of one place near the train station that carries it.
He wraps Hana-chan in rags to keep her warm, puts her in the burlap sack and ties her to his back. He stuffs the steel bar down his trouser leg. At the last second, he grabs a cup.
The sun is just coming up as he steps outdoors, a slight boy with a baby on his back, small puffs of breath visible before and behind. Hana-chan is still wailing.
Shivering in the cold, Isamu scuttles across the square. Merchants are rolling up their awnings by the time he gets to the stall. The milk is in a five-gallon jug behind the counter.
“Please,” he holds out his cup to the vendor. “For my sister.”
The man names an impossible price.
“Just a little ‘til my mother comes back.”
“Get away.”
He removes the steel bar from his pants and waves it in the air.
“I don’t want to hurt you.”
The merchant laughs. He reaches under the counter and removes a club twice the size of Isamu’s.
Isamu puts the bar back in his pants. He unhooks his sack and sets the squalling infant on the counter.
“You’ve got to help me,” he pleads.
“If I give my goods away,” the man answers, “who will help me?”
“I’ll give you the sack,” Isamu says over the baby’s cries.
The vendor stares at him for a moment, then looks at the baby and nods.
“Let me have your cup.”
Isamu takes Hana-chan out of the burlap and offers it to the merchant. He waves it off.
“Thank you,” the boy says. “I’ll find a way to repay you.”
He sits by the side of the booth and dips a rag in the cup to feed the baby. When she’s finished, he settles her in one arm and carries the partially filled cup in the other hand.
He’s on his way home when Kiro startles him, talking in his ear before Isamu even knows he’s there.
“Come with me,” the chunky boy says.
“I’ve got to get my sister home.”
“Come now.”
A few minutes later at the warehouse, Isamu says the same thing to Ato.
“I’ve got to get my sister home.”
“No wonder you haven’t delivered the American,” the scar-faced boy sneers.
“What are you talking about?” Isamu asks.
“She took the train to Fuji,” Ato says. “She met him there.”
“I trailed her,” Takeo boasts. “The slut.”
“You shut up!” Isamu shouts.
Hana-chan begins to cry again. He hugs his sister to him.
“You’re playing games with us, Navy Boy,” Ato says.
“And after we were so nice to you,” says Kiro, bubbling laughter.
“It’s not true,” Isamu says. “I’ll do what I promised. I’ll bring him to you. I just haven’t had the chance.”
Ato snaps his fingers and a girl steps forward.
“Keiko, take the child,” Ato says. “Shut it up.”
Isamu tries to hold on, but Kiro grabs his arms and the girl gets the baby.
“I won’t hurt her,” Keiko says. “We have milk.”
“I can’t leave her here,” Isamu pleads.
“You’ve got no choice,” Takeo chuckles.
“Find the American and bring him here,” Ato says. “This is your last chance.”
Isamu doesn’t go back to the room. He doesn’t want to face Mama, not without Hana-chan. He crosses the barren blocks as rapidly as he can, his thoughts roiling as he runs.
Things are spinning out of control. He never meant to put Mama in an awkward position, to get her involved with Ato and his gang. He certainly doesn’t mean to hurt her. But he will, if he turns over Joe.
He doesn’t have a good feeling about that. The American tried to help, even though it led to trouble. The boy doesn’t want to harm him. What will Ato do to him?
What choice does he have? What else can he do to get his sister back?
Then he has an idea. Maybe there is a way nobody has to get hurt …
He arrives at the docks winded, perspiring despite the frigid temperature. There are no sailors in the vicinity. Isamu stands at water’s edge, waving his arms.
The wind whips off Tokyo Bay. It’s bitter cold.
A small craft with four sailors in it pushes off from the Chourre. Joe is not among them. The men are all wearing round white caps. Isamu accosts them as soon as they land, jabbering at them in a strained voice.
The men shake their heads and one holds his hands open in question.
Isamu cradles an imaginary baby in his arms and then points back across the tracts.
“Somethin’ about a baby? I don’t know what he wants,” says a paunchy sailor.
“Joe? Joe? Joe?” the boy asks urgently.
The paunchy sailor scowls.
Isamu holds his hand to his mouth and pretends to take a bite.
“The guy with the sandwiches?” the sailor asks. “Joe? Joe Bienkunski?”
Isamu goes nuts.
14
Joe
Everything is acutely clear, but oddly disconnected.
He didn’t get any sleep last night and, when he drags back in midmorning, Joe finds dozens of important communications demanding his attention. He keeps a coffee cup within reach.
He can’t get Aiko out of his mind. He’s full of her, the scent of her hair, the feel of her skin, the sound of her soft sighs. When can he see her again? How?
New orders are in. There’s a carrier stranded in the Pacific that needs help. Chourre ships out late tomorrow. Tomorrow.
He’s got to tell her. Without delay.
When can he get away? He needs to decode all the cables and to get the information to the proper people. He tries to concentrate, but a sense of unreality overtakes him. He imagines Aiko naked in this room. What could they do in this cramped space? They’d find something.
He makes mistakes and has to start over. He takes another swig of mud. His caffeine hum makes him jittery, but it keeps him awake.
Aiko. Fuji.
The door opens and a sailor hands him another batch of dispatches. He forces himself to focus. It’s up to him to make sense of those meaningless sequences of numbers and letters. No one else can do it.
Cookie barges in.
“Sorry, Lieutenant, but there’s a Jap kid out there looking for you. He’s pretty upset.”
Joe rubs his puffy eyes and stifles a yawn.
“Any idea what he wants?”
“Something about a baby, I think,” Cookie says. “It’s hard to tell what his hand motions mean.”
“Oh, God. Give me five to grab some things.”
He grabs his coat and stuffs a few other items in a canvas sack. He gives a sailor a sheaf of decrypted messages to deliver to the old man.
“I won’t be gone long,” he hears himself saying. “Too much to do to get ready for tomorrow.”
They meet in the galley, where Cookie is packing some sandwiches, and pile into the launch. Joe sits in the bow, his tiredness blowing away in the chill spray, and watches the boy on shore getting nearer.
It’s midday as they arrive at the docks, where Sam has been waiting with the other three enlisted men.
As soon as Joe steps ashore, the boy starts to sign, moving his hands frantically, pointing, weeping. He’s shivering with cold and fear.
Joe gets the general idea. Bigger boys have taken Hana-chan.
“Where’s your mother?” he asks.
Sam looks puzzled.
“Aiko? Where’s Aiko?”
The boy points back toward home, then at himself and then at Joe. She told me to get you.
Joe shakes his head, worried. He translates for the other
sailors.
Sam isn’t finished. He continues to pantomime. Big boys. Blankets. Money. Cradled baby. Handed to Joe.
“What?” Cookie asks.
The boy repeats his gestures.
“I think he’s saying they want blankets and money for the baby,” Joe says. “A ransom demand.”
“How much money?” Cookie asks. “How many blankets.”
Joe rubs his fingers together. Sam holds up ten fingers five times.
“Fifty dollars,” Joe says.
He mimes a blanket and a question, then counts as the boy raises ten fingers three times. Thirty.
The boy points at the sun and signs to go, to go, to go. He pulls on Joe’s sleeve. The officer holds up his hand. Wait. Calm down.
“Everybody wants to help,” Cookie says.
“That’s not going to happen,” Joe replies. “I appreciate the offer, but I don’t want you men getting into any trouble.”
“In all due respect, Lieutenant. We’re not letting you handle this by yourself.”
Joe thinks for a few moments.
“All right. You men go back to the ship and gather the blankets. Do you think we can find that many on board?”
Cookie nods. “Oh, sure. Totally doable. Ship’s stores have plenty.”
“Okay. Then talk to Doc Stephens about the money. Tell him I need a loan. And ask Lieutenant Wade if he can bring the stuff over in the jeep. We’ll go ahead and wait at the hotel. He knows where it is.”
He removes an extra jacket from the canvas bag and gives it to the boy. He takes out a pistol, which he straps to his waist.
“And tell Lieutenant Wade to throw the field phone in the back,” Joe adds, handing the empty canvas to the cook. “It’s in the crypto room.”
It starts to snow as he and the boy set off on foot across the wasteland. The landscape strikes Joe as fantastic, the beautiful falling flakes in cruel contrast to the destruction they conceal. The surroundings are as surreal as the situation he finds himself in.
He’s come all the way across the Pacific without seeing battle. Chourre had never come closer than a few hours away from naval combat. Now here he is advancing into harm’s way in aid of … the enemy? It’s difficult to think about the boy next to him that way.