Incommunicado

by Randall Platt

  But it scares me the way he looks at me and it’s a lot more than the booze in his eyes. Alls I think of is to change the subject. “Mom’s out fishing. Wisht she’d get home. Getting stormy out there.” I nod my head toward the ocean.

  He looks out at the ocean, his eyes as far away as Egypt, and he just nods his head.

  “Rex went to the harbormaster to see if they’ve called in.”

  I can tell he sees I’m a little scared now and he touches my hand. “Jewels, I’ve known your mother a good long time and she always finds her way back home.” I’m not feeling all that much better, but he’s right. She always gets herself back home, even if it’s me or Rex hauling her in a tourist handcart.

  Mr. Kaye finishes his coffee. “Say, aren’t you supposed to be in school?”

  “Canceled. No one’s coming in to work, either. It’s like the whole darn town is canceled. If you want, I can go start up the café. I’ve done it a few times. Remember last summer when Corliss was sick and Malice Alice was . . .”

  Mr. Kaye looks at me. His thick black hair is streaked with pure white and it all sticks out screwy. I’ve never seen him look so, what’s Mom call it, discombobulated? “Please don’t call her that. She’s your mother, for crissake. Show her some respect.”

  Well, I’ve heard him call her a lot worst over the years, but I don’t want to argue with someone who’s coming off a bender and whose cousins might just have bombed Pearl Harbor, wherever the heck that is.

  CHAPTER 6

  “What do you think you’re doing?” Rex asks, finding me in the café kitchen and up to my elbows in pancake batter. I’m not very good at fractions so instead of cutting the recipe by eighths, I’m making up the whole batch and figure we’ll be eating pancakes till the cows, or Mom, come home.

  “You said you wanted pancakes.”

  “Yeah, but to eat, not to shingle the roof with,” he says, pouring a cup of coffee.

  “What did you find out? Has the Tinker called in or anything?”

  “They said there’s an air wave blackout. No transmissions coming or going.”

  “Why? You mean because of . . .” I tick my head toward the west like I was having a hard time saying Japs or bombing or Pearl Harbor or even war.

  “I guess. Look, don’t worry. Captain Jenkins probably just followed a good run and they went out farther than planned. He knows what he’s doing. I crewed for him for the last two summers and he’s no dummy. Flip those things. They’re about to take off,” he says, pointing to the bubbling circles of batter on the grill.

  He sits down and inhales a stack of pancakes, heaped with real butter and oozing with maple syrup—all stuff you’ll never find around our meager kitchen. Then, like I’d done earlier, he sort of picks his head up, looks around, noticing the quiet everywhere. “It’s weird out there. Hardly anyone out. You’d think a bomb went off.”

  We look at each other. I crack a smile. So does he. I feel sort of bad about it, though. “Did you get the radio to work?” he asks, wiping the smirk off his face.

  “No, I’ve been here. Arley and Corliss never came to work. Hey, there’s a radio behind the counter. We should try it.” I pull it onto the counter and switch it on, then eat another pancake while it warms up. When the static gets louder, I start to hone in on the most reliable station. Good ol’ KOIN in Portland, 960 on the dial. Even on cloudy days we can usually pick up KOIN in Sea Park.

  Finally, the static starts to form words. Some man is talking. I turn the volume way up. Rex comes over to the radio and we’re head to head, leaning in toward the speaker.

  We must be on the tail end of the speech because alls I hear is a radio man saying, “To repeat, Governor Sprague has called on all Oregonians to remain calm. Following dictates from Washington, he has ordered all persons of Japanese descent to stay in their homes for their own safety. This ends this emergency broadcast. Further broadcasts will be intermittent as more details are released.” The static takes over again.

  “Look, a customer,” I say, pointing to a car careening into the parking lot.

  “That’s just Sadie Moran,” Rex says. “Newspapers.”

  “Wow. She’s early.”

  Normally Sadie takes her own sweet time delivering the newspapers from Portland and even a few times stops off for a drink or two along the route. And other days, she never even bothers delivering at all. But it’s like she is on a mission this morning. She barely slows down, tosses out a bundle of papers, then storms out of the parking lot, tailspinning and going like sixty.

  Rex brings in the bundle and we don’t even have to cut off the twine. The words WAR WITH JAPAN! are printed so big you can read them from clear acrost the Columbia River.

  Rex pulls out a copy and pages through. I’m hoping he’s going for the comics, but nope, not ol’ Rex. Straight to the editorials.

  “Uh oh,” he says as he reads.

  “What?”

  He points out the words, also in great big print: NEVAR TRUST A JAP.

  “So?”

  “In case you hadn’t noticed, Tommy Kaye is Japanese,” Rex says, pointing upstairs.

  “No, he’s an American. He only looks Japanese,” I say as though I’ve just solved that whole problem.

  “Have you seen him today?”

  “Yeah. He’s up in his apartment, sleeping it off.”

  “He knows?” Rex taps the paper.

  “He says his cousins did it. Funny, he’s never talked about having any family.”

  “You dope,” Rex says, giving me that look. “Not his relatives. His . . . you know, his . . . um . . .”

  “His what, Rex?”

  “His . . . cousins,” he says, pronouncing the word louder and with a different pitch, like that changes its meaning. “His race.”

  All of a sudden, I don’t like any of this. Between our mother being somewhere out on a stormy ocean, the whole town hiding itself, no radio, no phone, giant letters written in a newspaper, and Mr. Kaye being, well, of the Japanese race and all, I’m a little weak-kneed. I look at my brother and ask, “You going to tell me when to be scared?”

  “Look, I’m heading over to city hall. See what folks are saying.” He smiles at me and that makes me feel a little better. “You may as well clean up and close up. Nobody’s going anywhere today.”

  He puts on his pea coat and cap and heads back out into the rainy morning.

  Nope, no siree. I’m definitely not liking any of this.

  CHAPTER 7

  I use the newspaper to wrap a stack of pancakes and head back to our cabins. If Mom got home, she’d just head straight to bed. But no one’s here. I put the pancakes in the oven then go back to the café to clean up, and well, see if maybe Mr. Kaye might call down for something. And I wait. Finally, I turn the radio back on and listen to the broadcast of President Roosevelt asking Congress for a war and they say sure, you betcha. Probably don’t even ask for a show of hands.

  I don’t know what I think. I’ll bet if Rex was a senator or something, he’d stand up and turn the other cheek. And they’d probably kick him out of there on both cheeks.

  Arley and Corliss finally show up at the café together in the same car, which they hardly ever do because they clash like orange and red. She’s looking a little too gooey-eyed for my liking.

  “I already did the pancake batter,” I announce to Arley.

  “Too bad. Throw it out.”

  “Don’t you . . . ?” I follow him into the little office where he’s putting his belongings into a duffle bag.

  He holds up four or five old aprons and says, “These here are mine, Jewels. I ain’t taking anything that ain’t mine.”

  “But where you going, Arley? Get a better job?” I ask.

  “Yeah, the U-S-of-A army, if they’ll take me,” he says, now going through some utensils. “These here are mine, too.”

  “But Arley . . .” He’s into the cash box now and counting out money.

  He shows me a handful of bills and says, “And
this here is what’s owing to me. No more, no less. You write it down, Jewels. Fourteen dollars and sixty-three cents.”

  “But Arley, you just quitting?”

  Corliss is behind me and says, “Yesth, he’sth quitting. And me, too.”

  I turn to face her. Corliss is nice sometimes. Sometimes she’s a piss-ant, whatever that is. I just like the sound of saying it and not getting a dirty look for it because I guess there really are such things as piss-ants. Folks make fun of her lisp, but I don’t. Besides, she’s gotten pretty darn good at avoiding words with esses. You got to give her that.

  There’s a honk from a truck out front. I look out the window and there must be three heads in the cab and some other men hunkering down under a tarp in the bed. The horn honks again. Arley has his duffle and his cash and is putting on his slicker.

  “Well, babe, I guess this is it,” he says, pulling Corliss to him. He plants a great big smackeroo on her lips, right here in front of God, me, a truck full of soon-to-be soldiers, and Hero the dog. Anyway, she gives Arley a great big smackeroo right back on the lips and says, “Kill one for me!”

  The truck speeds off as fast as it had sped in, and I’m standing with my mouth wide open. Corliss says, “And what are you gawking at? My man’sth goin’ off to war!”

  “Your man? You hate Arley! You’re always screaming at him and calling him names!”

  Corliss is no looker, especially now with her chipped front tooth, so I guess I get it when she smiles sort of dreamy-like, waving at the truck, holding one of Arley’s dirty aprons to her chest and cooing, “Nah, I love a man in uniform.”

  “I get Arley quitting, Corliss. But why are you quitting? Think the army will take you?” I ask.

  “Don’t be thilly, Jewelsth. Tell Tommy I quit. And if you know what’sth good for you, you, Rex, and your mother will quit him, too.”

  “Quit? Why?”

  “Why? It’sth as plain as the chipped tooth in my mouth!” She pulls the skin back on her temples, giving her slanty eyes, and adds, “Here’sth a hint!”

  “You mean, just because . . .”

  “I can’t work for a Jap! Anyway, I have war work to do, now. We all do! Even your muuu-ther.”

  I’m used to the way folks in town refer to my mother as my “muuu-ther.” I don’t know why, but Rex says don’t let it get under my skin. Anyway, Corliss wraps her muffler around her like a flying ace and just walks away, off to find her some war work, I guess.

  • • •

  It’s late Tuesday, our second day of official war. I guess they’ll have to call it something other than the Great War because that name’s already taken. Anyway, there’s still no word from our mother or the Tinker II. Rex says they had to turn off the navigation lights up on the Columbia River because, get this, they thought the Japs were going to just row right up the river and take over Portland, then all of Oregon, then the entire country, and then the world and meet Hitler somewhere in the middle. Oh yeah, we declared war on Germany and Italy, too, and they all declared war on us and England and France and Canada and gosh, I figure just about everyone has tossed their hats into the war ring by now. Everyone except me and Rex and maybe Hero.

  Anyway, Rex says probably what’s happened is the Tinker II had to put in somewhere north, maybe even Gray’s Harbor. Also, there’s this big storm going on with high tides, so they could have even gone south and are safe and sitting it out down in Tillamook Bay. All sorts of things happen at sea. Rex says all we can do is wait. We can’t use a short wave, and the radio isn’t working anyway, and now we have to start putting blackout cloth or tar paper over all the windows. Cars can’t drive with headlights on either. I don’t get it. How can everything change so fast? No more streetlights, no more porch lights, and don’t even think about Christmas lights! I’m telling you, the whole world is turning black.

  Mr. Kaye stays in his apartment and alls I can do is put food out for him and take Hero out for a walk and a ball-toss a few times a day. When I come calling, I wait for Hero to come lumbering down the hallway from Mr. Kaye’s apartment. At least I know Mr. Kaye is up and about. But he’s keeping his own company and I’m getting worried all over again.

  I’ve been handed bolts of blackout cloth from a load that came in from Portland. Don’t ask me. Maybe they make the stuff and keep it around just waiting for a war. Sadie Moran told me to get to work on all the Stay and Play windows. Heck, let’s see, forty cabins, five windows, and two doors in each. Can’t even figure that out in my head. Bet the war is over by the time I finish, I think as I walk up to Mr. Kaye’s apartment.

  “Mr. Kaye?”

  The door opens but it has the chain on it.

  “What?”

  “We need to tack this cloth to all the windows. What about those big windows in the Look-Sea Lounge? Do you want Rex to get a ladder and blackout those windows?”

  “What for?”

  “Uh, well, you know. The no-lights-at-night rules.”

  “No business, no lights, no problem!” Mr. Kaye snaps. I figure he’s been drinking.

  The door closes, the chain comes undone, the door reopens, and he says, kinder, the way he usually speaks to me, “I’m sorry, Jewels. But the windows are so big. There won’t be enough cloth and . . . I might be closing soon anyway.”

  “What?” I ask. Okay, I admit it. My first thought is what about Rex and me and Mom? Where will we go and what will we do if Tommy Kaye closes up?

  He smiles down at me and says, “I’m thinking I need a change of scenery.”

  “You going to enlist? Arley did and so has half the town. Seven more men left yesterday. Just like that!” I snap my fingers. “Up and quit and going to go fight the dirty Jap . . .” I let the word just sort of slip away into that place where words you wisht you’d never said go. “You’re really not very . . . Japanese,” I add, not that I know much more about Japan than geisha girls, chopsticks, and bonsai trees, which Mr. Kaye is crazy in love with and has everywhere.

  The papers are filled with lots of reasons why the Japanese are the enemy and most of it is pretty darn angry. I mean, we all know Hitler and the Nazis are evil, but, well, Tommy Kaye’s our friend and our employer and our maybe-someday-to-be stepfather.

  “Can I get you anything?” I ask, feeling pretty helpless. “Coffee?” I let my eyes drift over to his liquor cabinet.

  “Yes, you can get Corliss in. I’m getting tired of your pancakes.”

  I hate to tell him what she said about quitting because he was a, you know, so I dress it up some and say, “Oh, she’s too busy since she’s doing ‘war work,’ as she calls it.”

  “War work? Are they rolling bandages already?” he mumbles. “Well, she won’t be too busy come payday. Same with Virg Johnson at the Feed and Seed.”

  “And Barry at the bowling alley,” I add. “Everyone’s doing the war. But when Malice Al—um—Mom gets back, she’ll take over the kitchen.”

  “Still no word?”

  “No. But other fishing boats aren’t back in yet, either. No one’s heard nothing.”

  He shoots me a look. So I re-say, “No one’s heard anything. Folks think all the boats probably took shelter someplace.”

  “Look,” he says, “I’ll fix myself something down in the kitchen. I used to be a pretty good cook.”

  “I already did the windows down in the café. You have to just make sure the lights don’t bleed out or the McAloon boys will shoot first and ask questions later. I thought they were going to call J. Edgar Hoover on me when I left the light on in the café. What do they think, I’m signaling to the . . .” and there it is again, that word. Japs.

  Tommy puts his arm on my shoulder. “The Japs. It’s okay, Jewels. The Japs are my enemy, too.”

  I don’t know what to say, so I just spurt out, “I’ll bring you the paper when it gets here. Sadie can’t drive during the dark, so everything’s late coming from Portland and Astoria. I figure that’s why no one’s delivering and why there’s no customers and who wants
to go to the beach now—and the cruddy weather, and it’s almost Christmas.”

  He smiles and says, “Yes, you’re right. That’s why.”

  I’m no dummy, and I think we both know what’s happening here. No one’s around because Tommy Kaye is the enemy.

  I take Hero’s collar and let him lead me down the hallway for his run on the beach.

  We both need it.

  CHAPTER 8

  Roosevelt just proclaimed Sunday, December 7, 1941, as a date that will live in infamy. When I ask where infamy is, Rex throws his dictionary at me and says, “Look it up, you dope! Jeez, Jewels, if you’d read something besides those stupid movie magazines and comic books, you might know a thing or two!”

  But as much as things changed that Sunday, everything for me ever since the attack is going ka-blooey. That’s comic-book-talk for upside down, inside out, and Wrong Way Corrigan thrown in as a bonus.

  It’s even stormier today—Wednesday. Still no word about the Tinker, her crew, Mom, or anything. We got word that a freighter ran aground up on Clatsop Spit— that’s about ten miles north and at the mouth of the Columbia River. Any ship running aground is big news so it spreads throughout town pretty fast through our local gossip network, the Sand Dune Telegraph. Word is that this freighter was on its way to Hawaii when it got orders to turn back, which it did, but without the navigation lights back up the river . . . whamooo!, which is comic-book-talk for they ran aground. Flotsam and jetsam started flowing out everywhere.

  So I’m thinking if a big freighter can run aground, what can happen to a cruddy, old, leaky forty-foot fishing boat named the Tinker II?