Heart Mountain

by Ehrlich, Gretel;

  “I don’t know, but I think soon.”

  “Then you’ll get one, and we’ll have a day together.”

  “Yes.”

  McKay felt himself get hard again. She put her hand on him as if catching a bird. He bunched up his coat and put it behind her head for a pillow, and she lay back on it.

  “Come here, my beauty,” she said, laughing, because he had knocked his cowboy hat off on the ceiling of the truck, rearing up and coming down, and entering her.

  When they woke the moon was straight up in the sky.

  “Oh my God,” Mariko yelped, buttoning her shirt.

  McKay sat up with a start. He couldn’t remember where he was, but being awakened suddenly made him think he must be in the calving barn. “What’s wrong?”

  “It’s late,” she said. “Hurry.”

  McKay started the truck and pulled onto the highway. They drove through the long tunnel in silence. On the other side, the town was quiet. Mariko saw the NO JAPS sign in the barbershop window, and the unilluminated theater marquis whose coming attractions were Random Harvest and City Without Men. The Mayflower Café was dark. McKay turned the corner, and saw the Camp car with a jack under it and Kai sitting on the spare tire.

  Mariko jumped out of the truck. “Thank God, you had a flat.…”

  “I didn’t,” Kai said, “but I sure as hell wanted it to look that way.”

  McKay helped Kai fasten the spare tire to the back of the car. The other staff workers were in the backseat, laughing.

  Mariko turned to McKay. “I have to go.”

  “I can see that,” McKay said, and Kai laughed.

  “Come on, girl … we’ve got to make haste,” Kai said.

  “I’ll …”

  “When?” McKay interrupted.

  “Soon …”

  Mariko climbed into the car. As Kai started the engine, McKay stepped off the curb and grabbed his arm. “Kai, goddamn it, thanks …,” he said.

  Kai laughed and the car pulled away.

  Bobby couldn’t sleep that night and he didn’t know why. He closed down the cook stove in the kitchen and walked to his cabin on the hill. Below, the Camp lights blazed in the dark. He looked away because they reminded him of Henry. McKay had asked him what the Japanese would do to their prisoners of war, and Bobby had not been able to answer because he did not know, and even if he had he would have been too ashamed to say.

  The rain had started again. This time it came softly, slowly. On the little bridge that crossed the ditch, he stood and listened. He could hear water running and was glad he had waited to put his garden in because one year the seeds had molded in the ground. At the house he had left needles and syringes to boil because he knew the long rains would bring on pneumonia in the calves.

  Inside he took off his clothes and put his hands on his sagging buttocks. The heat from the fire warmed the small of his back and his short legs. He knew he wouldn’t be able to sleep even before he tried, but sat on his bed anyway and slowly turned the potted flowers he always kept there—whose fragrance was supposed to help him sleep—around and around.

  Long after McKay had delivered Mariko into Kai’s hands and had driven home, the rain brought the pine scent onto the screened porch, and he did not know whether he liked the smell. The wind had turned bitter, like something bad you have to eat, a bitter root that’s been in the ground too long. He wondered about wind. It unwound from the sky continuously, like cloth. Did the wind in Wyoming blow all the way around the world onto the beaches where Ted dragged wounded soldiers into hospital ships, or did their wind, stinking with decay and victory and defeat, blow this way?

  The errant bomb had not gone away, but the carapace had broken. Now he felt as if he were carrying shrapnel. The sharp pieces had come down slowly into his body from the air. The edges were thick and sharp and rust-colored. He carried them the way a chunk of ice carries rock and sticks and bits of dirt. He did not feel anything when he walked around or when he held her but he knew the iron was in there, cutting its way through the center of his body, outward toward skin.

  The moon rose over the ridge. One moon. Why not two? He took off his clothes and crawled under the heavy covers—seven wool blankets and a sleeping bag. Inside, the memory of Mariko’s warmth enveloped him. He could feel the points on his body where it touched him—tiny fires. Did the moon spin or was he spinning? He wondered at the many disparate things strung on the same string. What had made him think life would be otherwise? The sand in Mariko’s heat scratched him. Nothing was more redundant than desire, nothing more fragile than thought. For a moment he could smell her hair.

  It had rained and continued to rain. He watched as the perimeter of the floor just inside the screens became wet. Then the rain turned white as if, coming down, it had aged.

  23

  The mud in April is the worst I’ve ever seen. I sink to my shins going from the latrine to the mess hall. The night I picked up Mariko—straight out of the arms of McKay—I realized I was tired of being the big brother, tired of being her chauffeur and covering up for her in front of Will. Spring is a cruel season. I try to understand what Abe-san has told me but some days it’s one riddle on top of another and I find I don’t much care. But I do, or at least I’ve begun to. Last night I dreamed of escape. Someone tapped me on the shoulder and said, “Come now,” and I went with him. There was a plane waiting for me on the baseball diamond. The propellers were still turning. A rope ladder was let down but my feet were caked with mud and they kept getting tangled. Finally someone yanked me into the plane by my arm because we were taking off. I stood in the open doorway and watched the Camp recede.

  Later, when I woke up, I remembered that when I first arrived here I couldn’t stop the sensation of movement after so many hours on the train, as if the physical fact of exile had made me sick. Waking up from the dream, I realized I’m still sick today.

  Even though it’s only April we built a campfire out away from the barracks facing Heart Mountain. Drifts of snow were still hugging the north sides of buildings and the moon looked cold when it set. I can’t remember who ran over to us with the news. Was it Ben or Shig? But when he told us about the old man at another Camp—Topaz—who had wandered over to the wire fence and was shot down dead by an MP, nobody could talk for what seemed like a long time. Then Will kicked dirt into the fire. I noticed the moon disappeared behind the tip of the mountain just at that moment, and if the floodlights had been turned out, it would have been a dark night.

  We went back to Ben’s place: There’s always something to eat or drink there. But we didn’t feel like drinking. Someone came in and said that the name of the old man killed was James Hatsuki Wakasa and that two thousand people went to his funeral. If we can’t have a “happy camp,” at least we could have a peaceful one. “But we’re at war,” Shig reminded us, meaning even though we’re not at the front, war is everywhere.

  Emi came by and I threw my arms around her. We sat curled up together on the floor against Ben’s bed. I think we all felt a little lonely after the news. We tried to figure out when this new tide of hatred had turned against us and I said I thought it was when the announcement about the Doolittle Fliers was made: eight American fliers had been shot down over Japan, captured, held prisoner, then brought to trial, after which three of them were executed. That piece of information had been withheld for almost a year, and when it was announced, the outrage was redoubled, and somehow the press, who still refer to us as “enemy aliens,” took out their anger on us. Illogical? But I think it’s true. Ben agreed. If logic prevailed—or at least, the logic of the heart—there would be no wars.

  The editor of the Sentinel called us to a meeting early on May 5. The councils of two nearby towns have adopted a joint resolution demanding that “The visiting of the Japanese be held to an absolute minimum; that no visitor passes be issued except when absolutely necessary and that they be accompanied by proper or authorized escorts; that no permanent or so-called indefinite leaves be exte
nded to the Japanese for visiting or working in the communities of Powell or Cody; that this request is in no way to interfere with or discourage Japanese on temporary leave who are engaged in gainful employment essential to the war effort and particularly labor on ranches and farms.”

  After he read this statement to us, the editor let us have our say. As if we needed encouragement.

  It didn’t take us long to decide on a stand. Clearly they wanted to “keep us in our place” and at the same time use us for farm labor when it suited them. Very quickly we drew up a response which we would also hand over to the camp director. The editor wrote it out as we fed it to him. We decided to reciprocate by going a step further, that is, suspending all passes, thus immobilizing the work force which they wanted to keep open while denying us the few social privileges granted us. “It will be a labor strike, but we won’t call it that,” Ben said, and we all cheered in agreement. Tom read the first line of his editorial: “It’s evident that not all of Wyoming’s sheep are on the hillsides.”

  We set type all night and went to press the next day, only this time with an MP escort. I thought of how this “edict” would affect Mariko. We didn’t go to the Mayflower Café this time.

  Sitting in the press room, I listened to the machines. The sound they made was almost like breathing. I wondered where McKay had taken Mariko that rainy night and if a woman like that could ever love me.

  I remember it was July seventh, because Mom made a big deal of the date. I had awakened early and saw her sitting at the rickety table Pop and I made, writing something on a strip of white paper. Pop was still asleep, lying on his back with his hands folded over his chest as if he were dead. “What are you doing, Mom?” I whispered. She looked flustered and covered up the piece of paper with her hand. “It’s Tanabata, tonight.” I asked what Tanabata was and she told me. “It’s old feast celebrated on the seventh day of seventh month—some Issei say it’s August, but here we celebrate in July. Tanabata comes from Chinese legend. It’s about daughter of the master of heaven who lived east of Ama no kawa—that’s the Milky Way. She was weaver—that’s why we Japanese give her the name Shojuko. Her father chose husband for her, a herdsman who live on other side of Milky Way. They marry and love each other very much. Go on very long honeymoon. That made father angry because no work get done. So, he condemn them to be separate—one on each side of the Milky Way—see each other only once a year, on night of seventh day of the seventh month, when a raven extend wing, make bridge for them to cross to each other.

  “For many years, we celebrate this feast, especially young girls who want to have husbands, wait for them, no matter how long they are apart. We write our wish on piece of paper, like this,” she said, holding up the strip of rice paper she had been hiding. “Then tonight, you will see two stars come together across the Milky Way … like two lovers.…”

  “What’s your wish?” I asked her. She looked away when I got out of bed even though I had underwear on. “Can’t tell you,” she said. “Wish won’t come true.”

  “Can’t I wish for something?” I asked, teasing her. She cut a strip of paper for me and laid it on the table with a pen. “Too bad you don’t know calligraphy,” she said as I began to write. I folded the paper and handed it to her. “Don’t look,” I told her, but I could tell she was dying to know. “Is it Emi?” she finally asked and I told her I couldn’t say or the wish wouldn’t come true. She fingered the paper, then Pop groaned and she put her finger to her lips—“Shhh …” Pop opened his eyes. I didn’t feel like talking to him and watching him get dressed and watering his little plant—a cactus someone had dug up for him, now with a beautiful bloom. As I stood to leave I thought of Mariko. It was her name, of course, that I had written on the paper. I had a vision of her lying on her side on the bed, the top of her kimono loosened and one breast showing.

  “What’s wrong?” Mom asked. I shook my head. Then, as I left, I saw her open the screen door after me, attach the paper strips to a piece of bamboo and tie it under the barracks’ eave.

  “It’s Mariko … not Emi,” I yelled out to her, and she looked at me, dismayed.

  Went for a walk with Will. The Heart Mountain Congress is all but dead and he knows he’s going to be picked up soon and sent somewhere—probably Tule Lake, where all the dissidents go. “What about Mariko?” I asked, feeling guilty because I’d let my own fantasies about her go too far. “She’ll be happier here,” he said. “Without me.” Will’s own family—the half that wasn’t living in Japan—had been relocated from Seattle to the camp in Minidoka, Idaho, but he had not written to them. “In Paris, I helped a little in the Resistance, but someone gave the Germans my name. Otherwise, I would have stayed,” he said, looking out across the desolate Camp, and swatting a mosquito.

  24

  McKay read the telegram he had received from his brother Champ.

  I WAS GUTSHOT. LIKE A DRY DOE. OPERATED ON 3 WEEKS AGO. WILL BE RELEASED TO REST CAMP, SAN DIEGO, CALIFORNIA. PLEASE COME. GIRLS GALORE. HOT AND COLD RUNNING TEQUILA. CHEERS. CHAMP.

  He could have read those words anywhere and known they were his brother’s. He and Champ were so markedly different. Their father once accused their mother of having stepped out on him, and she had replied curtly, “How could that be? Champ’s just like you.”

  McKay slept on the train all through the night as they crossed the desert, and when he woke he saw the turquoise and indigo sea, wrinkled in the sun like skin. Far out toward the channel islands, the sea churned into whitecaps, and the woman sitting behind him leaned forward to tell him that the Indians used to paddle canoes back and forth between those islands and the mainland.

  San Diego Bay was camouflaged. The roofs of all the buildings looked like a jungle canopy. On the water, destroyers, cruisers, aircraft carriers, and the big battleships were coming and going, gray against brackish water.

  “Hey, cowboy!”

  McKay looked up from the station platform and saw his brother dressed in a wildly colored, short-sleeved shirt.

  “You look a little hot, kid,” Champ said. He leaned on a cane.

  McKay stood back, staring. “That’s a hell of a getup you have on for a war hero.” They embraced awkwardly.

  Champ was so tanned the skin looked black where it wrinkled together on his neck and in the crook of his arm. His hair had turned gold in the tropics, and there were wet spots and blood spots on his trousers where the bandages needed to be changed. He had caught shrapnel in the leg and groin while climbing a tree. “I was trying to kill the bastards with coconuts,” he claimed, though, in fact, he had been shot down running across a beach with his platoon on an island too small to have a name.

  McKay thought his brother looked tired but steeled against fatigue, and the excessive tan looked like part of the armor. His eyes glittered. He showed McKay how one of his fingernails had grown long. “Christ almighty, everything grows in them damned tropics,” he said. “It’s like living in a big outhouse. You shit a seed one night and it’s a tree the next.”

  They crossed the border at Tijuana and drove to their rented bungalow at Rosarito Beach. Out in front, McKay saw three vultures land on the beach and pick at a dead fish. Champ had turned sullen and silent during the rest of the drive. Sitting in the front room on a rattan chair, McKay found himself rubbing the scars on his knuckles where his hand had gone through the window of the car that day. It was a problem of beginnings. Where to start a conversation and how. After an awkward silence Champ leaned forward, uncorked the tequila bottle on the glass table between them, and said, “Let’s drink ourselves into this. I never was any good at just sitting around making small talk.”

  McKay laughed. “Why did I think war would change you?”

  Champ took a long swig and passed the bottle to his younger brother. The room was dark and because of the straw mats, it smelled of dry weeds. The front window overlooked the beach. Beyond, the sand was bright and the waves that rolled in toward the tiny house seemed to start somewhere fa
r out in the ocean.

  “How’s that feel?” McKay asked, indicating his brother’s wound.

  “Like an old tom turkey with his stuffing sewed in,” Champ said. “And I think they stapled my legs back together.”

  They talked about the ranch first: what the calves had brought in Omaha; how many replacement heifers McKay had kept; how things were going with Madeleine; the condition of the grazing land.

  “We’re getting rich,” McKay said, shaking his head. “We’re getting rich and everyone is dying. I suppose that’s what wars are really for, but it doesn’t go down very easy.”

  Champ stared at him with a blank, passive look. “No comment,” he said.

  McKay changed the subject. He dug into his suitcase and brought out the food Bobby had sent: all Champ’s favorite foods—homemade peanut butter, rose hip jam, rum cakes, venison sausage, and oatmeal bread. So they ate in the bungalow that night, then went to bed.

  In the morning they sat on the sand and drank beer laced with tequila. Children roamed up and down the beach selling chicklets gum, newspapers, and shoeshines. McKay inspected his brother’s stitches.

  “Not bad for a damned sawbones,” McKay said.

  “But you could have done better,” Champ added, laughing at his brother’s vanity.

  McKay looked up. “Hell, yes. You should see that number 252 cow we cesareaned. She doesn’t even have a scar.”

  When Champ grew restless, they decided to go to town. McKay watched him shuffle to the car.

  “You look like you’re in labor,” he quipped.

  Champ straightened up and pivoted on his cane. His eyes narrowed. “Hey, watch your mouth, gimp,” he said and poked McKay in the ribs with his walking stick.

  They followed the beach through Ensenada, past the harbor, up onto the bluff overlooking the Pacific Ocean, stopping once at a beer stand with a thatched roof to buy two bottles of beer. The old woman in the back, squatting on the ground and shaping tortillas with her hands, smiled at the two handsome, crippled men and McKay touched the brim of his cowboy hat to her.