Summer of the Big Bachi

by Naomi Hirahara

  “Almost, old man, almost. Just got to make some adjustments.” The pungent scent of cherry tobacco filled the room. “By the way,” said Tug, adjusting his pipe. “I hear congratulations are in order. It’s certainly about time.”

  There was an awkward silence, and Mas glanced over to Lil—whose lips were uncharacteristically drawn in a line.

  “I thought he knew.” One of Tug’s large palms was outstretched toward his wife. His left forefinger was extended out like a Tootsie Roll. “Well, he does know, right?”

  Lil adjusted the hem on her dress so it covered the top of her knees.

  Tug pulled out his pipe from his lips. “Well, he should know. After all, it’s his only daughter.”

  It took two long minutes before Mas put it together. Mari must be getting married. Who? The tall, pale hakujin boy called Lloyd from New York? Mas remembered the time she brought him over one Thanksgiving when Chizuko was still alive. Mari said he was a poet; what Mas wanted to know was what this boy did for money.

  “Can’t eat words,” he had told Mari.

  Mari had broken the news a few weeks later. Turned out this boy was in Mas’s line of work. A gardener hired by the city of New York.

  Mas couldn’t speak, and Chizuko broke down and cried right then and there. Mas secretly thought that had led to Chizuko’s demise, and he resented Mari for having burst his wife’s one last hope—that the future generations would never have any signs of the Arai lawn-mowing legacy.

  He looked Lil square in the face. “Itsu?” he asked simply. “When?”

  Lil blinked hard, and Tug retreated to the porch with his screwdriver. “Last week,” she said. “They’re on their honeymoon in Mexico now.”

  Mexico? Mas’s throat felt dry.

  “I’m sure she was going to tell you, Mas. I just heard it through Joy, and she said she would kill me if I mentioned it to anyone. You know kids these days. It’s someone she knew from college. I think his name was Lloyd. A hakujin boy.”

  “Last week.” Mas sat still, thinking. No matter how bad their relationship had become, Mari would have told him before the wedding. There was only one reason that . . . “When?” he repeated.

  Lil cleared her throat. “They wanted it simple. You know, just at City Hall and then Chinese food later.” She stared at Mas through her pink-framed bifocals and blinked hard. Come on, Mas said silently. You’re not the kind of lady to twist the truth when you’re caught in a corner.

  It was as if Lil had heard Mas’s silent message. “All right, Mas. I guess you’ll find out soon enough. I haven’t even told Tug. The baby’s due in December.”

  Mas swallowed, and remained frozen in his chair. How could she do this and bring shame on the family? thought Mas. The family. What family? There really was no one here in the States. They were like masterless samurai, wandering nomads with no blood ties to anyone here. But precisely because they had no relatives, no prior reputation, the family name was so important. Here, Masao Arai was a blank white sheet of paper. Unknown. Pure. Anything was possible. But once something was written on the paper, it would be irreversible. It was up to just them to create their honor for their friends like Tug and Lil. Somehow, some way, the word would get out that Mas Arai’s daughter had had to get married. There would be disapproving nods of heads and smirks behind closed doors, while face-to-face there would be those sickening, false smiles. For once, Mas was happy that Chizuko was dead.

  He had some dreams for Mari. That he would walk her down the aisle in a proper wedding ceremony, followed by a reception of thick steaks and large glasses of liquor. That she would produce healthy children, their hair jet-black and their faces pale and formless like potatoes. They would visit the house, yelling in high-pitched voices, “Ji-chan, Ji-chan, Grandpa, Grandpa.” He would teach them how to safely drive nails into wood, how to place bait on a hook, and, when they got older, the best strategy for blackjack.

  Now he had to contend with an unplanned grandchild whose father was a poet and, even worse, a good-for-nothing gardener. And what if the baby came out— But Mas stopped himself before he went too far. He felt like popping out of his easy chair, yelling and screaming, but instead he quietly listened to Lil go on—speaking faster and faster—about children and their universal insensitivity, how things were different with young people today. But Mas knew this wasn’t about any kind of generation gap. It was about Mas and Mari plain and simple. Mas was tired of surprises and disappointment, and wanted instead to crawl back underneath his crumbled bedspread on his soft mattress.

  He was relieved when Tug finally called out from the wire mesh, “Mas, old man.”

  Mas rose slowly but eagerly, seeing a polite closure to his conversation with Lil, and limped over to the screen door, which was now firmly back on its hinges.

  The silver hair and beard of the tall man glowed underneath the hundred-watt bulb hanging from the porch. The moths circled his head, creating a haphazard halo. “I think I got it.” Tug grinned as his thick index finger pressed down on the smooth round doorbell.

  It was pitch dark by the time Lil and Tug finally left Mas at the door. Mas stumbled into the kitchen and opened the refrigerator for a Budweiser. After taking a gulp, he paused by the sink and looked out the window. For a moment, he imagined two pairs of dark eyes—ones he had seen before—peering at him. Son of a— Mas gasped, and he quickly pulled the curtains together. What, you losin’ your mind? he thought as he caught his breath. Just nerves, he told himself, but he went from room to room, clicking on the lights and checking every closet, until he finally returned to the bedroom and lay down on his side.

  From his position, he could still see the stack of old magazines by the bed. He knew that it was the third one down, under the February Triple A magazine and the Japanese go book. He knew practically every page by heart—the brunette in the royal blue panties, the blond with the swollen basketball chichi. Hell, he could even recall the design of every liquor ad in between the different centerfolds, and then felt an uneasiness in his jeans. He lowered his hand toward the magazines and then stopped. He licked his lips.

  It’s no good, he muttered. Damn you, old woman, where are you? His heart ached for those sagging, empty breasts and stomach lined with scars from surgery after surgery. He should have done it to her during her last days. Ignored the smell of sickness, and held her.

  He heard a crash outside—was it the local alley cat overturning the trash cans again? Mas stood up quickly, spilling his beer onto the green carpet.

  Once he reached the back door, there was only a strange and eerie silence. Mas felt the presence of at least another human being. “Hal-lo,” Mas called out, but no one replied. He then went to the front to check.

  Mas opened the screen door Tug had fixed. There was that smell again. Menthol. Salon Pas. The same as in the mistress’s apartment. His neighbors, mostly black and Mexicans, didn’t carry this smell. It could be only one person. Mas was sure of it. This visit was a practice for something bigger, like when Mas went to the stables to check out the horses for the next race. You looked for the ones with energy, kick, and bet against the ones who had no fight.

  Mas stepped out on the cement porch. The neighborhood was quiet for once. No police helicopters flying overhead, and the teenagers seemed to be away, probably causing havoc in a place with more life. The moon was almost full, and Mas caught a rectangular shape amid the glass and other trash in the old rock garden below. Mas knelt down and fished out the new addition to his garden. It was the black-and-white photograph of the three boys on the bridge. Nakane must have dropped it when the broken screen door had fallen down on him.

  “Whyzu you followin’ me?” Mas muttered out loud. He felt like destroying that photograph, but thought better of it. He had seen Joji Haneda burn once before. Mas couldn’t do it to his friend a second time.

  CHAPTER FIVE

  Mas didn’t like people changing their minds. Chizuko did it at times, first saying that she wanted to see the Grand Canyon, th
en requesting Yellowstone. Turned out they spent most vacations either on the dunes of Pismo Beach or at the Dunes of Las Vegas, where Mas stayed glued to the poker tables of the Four Queens. Closest thing Chizuko ever got to the Canyon was watching a large-screen presentation at Disneyland one year. “See, just like you go,” Mas said as Chizuko clutched her handbag tight at her elbow in front of the giant screen.

  So when Mas told Haruo that he would accompany him to the medical exams, Haruo almost fell off the kitchen chair. Now they stood on the sixth floor of a new building, tall and silver like a streamlined rocket.

  “Mas, I betcha glad you changed your mind,” said Haruo, his face looking especially oily, so that the fluorescent lights bounced colors of green and blue off his scar.

  “I just needed to get outta the house. Neva said that I’d see a docta.”

  The doors of the medical office were still closed. The rug, a gray rat color, smelled new and factory-made. The hallways were lined with a bunch of urusai folks like Haruo. Mas recognized a few of them; a pretty woman with all-white hair belonged to the same Japanese school group as Chizuko. A dark man, formerly from Terminal Island, who always seemed to reel in the biggest fishes at the Mammoth Lake derbies. They nodded to one another, not remembering names but knowing that at one time they had worked or played side by side.

  “When are they going to open?” a heavy woman in front of him huffed.

  “Yah, already ten-ten,” said a man next to her, probably the husband.

  Mas steadied himself against the slippery wall. His back was still sore but now hurt only when he sat down in a car. The gardeners’ association had sent over substitutes this week, so Mrs. Parsons, the Indian couple, and the doctor were taken care of, at least the bare necessities.

  He knew that it was unwise for him to be there for everybody to see. But Mas couldn’t hide now, not with the threat hanging over his head. One thing Mas was good at, that was reading people’s faces. If he came across the thief today, he would know immediately. Better for me to find him first, thought Mas, than for him to find me again.

  He studied the line of people again. Amid all the bald heads and gray hair, Mas spotted a patch of red, like the fur of a wild badger. The badger went from one person to another. It was a young man, dressed in army pants and a black T-shirt. His face was dark, as if he were a gardener himself. Bright eyes and a long nose. Girls like Mari would probably think this guy good-looking, Mas said to himself. That’s what was wrong with these young people nowadays, thought Mas. No pride.

  The badger had a notebook in his hands and scribbled something in there from time to time. When he came to speak to the heavy woman in front of them, Mas looked away and sank as far as he could against the hallway wall. It didn’t work. In a few minutes, the badger stood right in front of Haruo and Mas.

  “Sumimasen, my name is Yuki. I’m a reporter with Shine magazine back in Hiroshima.”

  “You such a young guy to be a reporter,” Haruo replied in Japanese.

  Shine? thought Mas. Never heard of it. Yomiuri, Asahi, Mainichi. Those were the three kings of Japanese newspapers. And, of course, Chugoku Shimbun in Hiroshima. But Shine? Kid stuff. Mas was sure of it. Only such a rag would hire a boy with a horrible dye job.

  “I’m doing a story on a hibakusha. I’ve been asking around if anyone may know him—Kimura Riki.”

  Mas felt his head go woozy. Had he heard right?

  “I dunno a Riki Kimura,” Haruo said. “You, Mas?”

  Mas’s mouth was paper dry. He merely shook his head. He hadn’t heard that name for fifty years.

  “He was working at the Hiroshima train station when the pikadon fell. Went to Hiroshima Koryo. Hung around Kibei, American-born.”

  “Well, Mas went to Koryo. What class?”

  “He was born in 1929.”

  “Well, thatsu about your age,” Haruo said to Mas, and, after meeting his dagger eyes, slightly lowered his head.

  “I have something here that might help.” The badger brought out a manila folder from his bag and handed the contents to Haruo and Mas. It was a crude illustration done in colored pencil. A body, something like worms crawling out of his guts. Missing a leg, burnt black except for a white square on the chest. Whoever had drawn the illustration also had included a circle by the right side of the body.

  “For the fiftieth anniversary of the bombing, our national TV station, NHK, asked people to submit paintings and illustrations from survivors. This was one that was turned in.”

  Mas felt his hands shake. He couldn’t help but take in the power of the simple drawing. How the man must have suffered there alone.

  “The woman who found the body was looking for her husband. She drew her discovery on her clothing with a piece of charcoal. She figured somehow his family would gain some peace to know how he died. When she returned home to the countryside, she even redrew the body on this piece of paper with colored pencil. She put it away and forgot about it for fifty years, until the NHK solicitation came up.”

  “Whatsu that?” Haruo pointed to a crooked circle beside the body.

  “We think it’s some message that the man had tried to leave before he died. I’ve tried to decipher it. But nothing.”

  “So what about this Riki Kimura?” asked Haruo. “Impor-tant guy?”

  The reporter shook his head. “No, no. He was my grandfather.”

  “Grandfather?” Mas couldn’t help blurting out. “Whatsu your name again?”

  “Yuki. Kimura Yuki.”

  How could that be? They had all been fifteen, sixteen years old. Just teenagers. Too busy with work at the train station to even think about girls.

  The boy continued his story. “They never found his body. . . . Eventually, my grandmother was called in and given a large bone, supposed to be my grandfather’s remains. It wasn’t, of course. Probably a horse bone.”

  Haruo nodded. “Somehow that made people feel betta.”

  “We were able to meet last year with the woman who drew this picture,” the reporter explained. “She also kept this all these years.” He took an envelope from his wallet and carefully lifted a square piece of cloth. Kimura, it read. Riki. And the letter A.

  Seeing the cloth name tag, Mas felt dizzy. A weight seemed to drop to the pit of his stomach. He could still hear Haruo and the boy talk, but he could barely make out the words.

  “I rememba these,” said Haruo. “We all had to wear them. IDs. His blood type, A, ne.”

  “She kept this for us. But look—flawless, not burnt at all. Strange, we thought. Why would Grandfather be so charred in this drawing, but this so perfect?”

  Mas leaned against the wall. His legs seemed almost to buckle under him.

  “Hey, you orai?” asked Haruo, taking hold of Mas’s elbow.

  “Back,” Mas said, pounding his spine with a closed fist. He hit himself so hard that even his chest seemed to rattle.

  “Can I help—” Yuki folded up the cloth square and placed it in his wallet.

  “No,” Mas said, a little too loudly and a little too quickly. But the boy ignored him and, together with Haruo, guided him to the front of the line.

  Yuki pounded on the locked door. “This ojisan needs to sit down. He needs some medical attention,” he called out.

  The crowd murmured, and within a few minutes the door opened.

  Mas refused to be seen by any doctor but did agree to rest in one of the hard folding chairs lined up against the wall near a coffee machine.

  Haruo was soon directed into one of the examination rooms. “You sure you don’t want to—”

  “I wait, Haruo.” Mas spoke so sternly that Haruo merely nodded and disappeared through a curtain divider. If Mas had his truck, he would have left, that minute, that second. How had that ID, so perfect, appeared on the dead man’s chest? Had it all been planned, calculated, from the very beginning?

  The red badger returned to Mas’s side, this time with a Styrofoam cup filled with water.

  Mas accepted t
he cup. His lips were parched as if he hadn’t had a drink in days. “Your grandmother,” he finally said. “Is your grandmother still alive?”

  Yuki nodded. “Oh, yes,” he said. “Her name is Akemi. Actually, we’re looking for her brother, who may be over here. Haneda is his name. Haneda Joji.”

  Akemi Haneda was a couple of years older than Mas. A strange girl with an awkward American accent, she had a round face, round eyes, and deep dimples like someone had poked her cheeks with a pointed stick. She and her younger brother, Joji, had moved into the neighborhood around 1939. Mas spoke to her for the first time when she was burning something in her backyard in the middle of the night during the war.

  “Do you have any coal you can spare?” Her long hair had been recently chopped to her earlobes, and she wore a thick, padded jacket and loose pantaloons. Mas at one time had thought she was pretty, but now she looked more like a boy.

  He grudgingly gave her some dead coals from their table heater and watched as she threw one book after another into the tiny fire. The books were all thick, and written in English. Mas sat with her all morning until the last book fell apart into flat pieces like dried seaweed. “Thank you,” she said, her fingers black with charcoal. “I wouldn’t want to do that alone.” She gathered Mas’s face into her hands and kissed him hard, her teeth sharp against his gums.

  When Mas went back into the house, his second-oldest brother was lacing up his boots on his way to the naval station. “Where have you been?” the brother asked. “And what’s that black stuff on your face?”

  All this time in America, Mas had thought Akemi was dead. He, in fact, had not seen or heard anything about her since August of 1945. But now everything was off balance. Akemi and Riki, together? Impossible. Riki had mercilessly teased Akemi—calling her white-radish legs, even though they couldn’t see her legs in monpe pants. He even followed her around with a dirty sweet potato, holding it below his waist and making obscene noises. Through all of this, Joji remained silent. Mas himself had four sisters who seemed only trouble, but even he would have put an end to such torment.