Mas’s legs, which had been numb, were starting to buckle underneath him. “Let’s rest for a while,” said Riki, lowering Joji onto the ground. Joji’s broken body was singed black, but his eyes were alert and wide open.
“He’s trying to tell you something,” said Riki.
“Aa—” Joji rasped.
Mas placed his ear by Joji’s blistered lips.
Joji tried again. “Aa-ke—”
Mas understood. “Akemi, right? Don’t worry, Joji. I’m sure she’s all right.” But Joji would not be comforted. “I promise you,” Mas finally said, “I promise to find her.” Rain then began to fall, softly, almost kindly. At least Joji would have some water to drink, thought Mas. Then he looked down at his bare hands and arms. Black streaks. Black rain.
Mas glanced at Riki. They did not say anything, but they both knew. This was no ordinary bomb.
“You go ahead,” Riki said. “Go home. Get your brothers to help.”
“No, I can’t leave you and Joji.”
“I can’t go any farther. I’ll watch him. We’ll make it.” Something in Riki’s voice sounded strange, but then, everything was off balance and unfamiliar. Mas nodded and continued on to the hills, to home. When he finally saw a patch of green, he began to run until he could touch the blades of the tall grasses. When he turned back toward Riki and Joji, he could barely see them—mere stick figures in the steaming, ravaged landscape. Was one of the figures walking away from the other? Mas tried to focus but could not. He knew that he should turn back and check on Joji. But instead he collapsed and immediately fell asleep in the bed of green grasses.
Masao-san, you okay?” Mas could smell Akemi’s sweet perfume behind him.
“I was supposed to find youzu.”
“I’m here,” she said softly, stepping beside him.
“No, no.” Mas shook his head. He explained his promise to Joji and how he had eventually abandoned the two Hanedas. “I sleep for days. When I wake up, Joji neva come home. You neither.”
“But I made it. I survived.”
“But Joji—”
“You were fifteen, sixteen, Masao-san. A child. We all were. You have to forgive yourself. Forgive yourself for living.” Akemi’s tears lay on her cheeks like fresh rain.
Akemi understood, as did Haruo and maybe Riki Kimura. But it was only a matter of time before all of them would be gone, and the past could be erased and completely forgotten, for better or for worse.
They waited until all of the mourners had left for a Chinese restaurant in Monterey Park. The remains in the crematorium had been removed by two men wearing breathing masks, gloves, and paper gowns. The lights around the cemetery grounds were dimmed, and a security guard was waiting by the gates.
“It’s time to go,” Akemi said.
“Chotto.” Mas asked for some more time. In total, he spent a good half hour by Chizuko’s grave site. He wished he had brought a couple of stalks of the cymbidium that Chizuko had nurtured in planters in their backyard. At least two of them still had the waxy flowers, their petals open like lips singing.
As he headed to the parking lot, he was drawn to one of the headstones. It was white, and glowed in the moonlight. HIROSHI YANO, it read. The Pasadena grocery man who had been shot to death in a fifty-dollar heist.
As he read the inscription, Mas’s toes tingled in his good shoes. Of course, he thought to himself. This is what Joji Haneda was trying to tell the world.
When Mas reached the edge of the parking lot, he called out to Akemi, who had been joined by G. I. Hasuike, Tug, and Haruo. “We need to contact police,” he said. “I knowsu how to prove dat man no Joji Haneda.” In his excitement, Mas tripped over a cement parking lot bumper, and the four rushed to help him up.
“You okay, Masao-san?” Akemi asked.
Mas said again, “Heezu not Joji Haneda.”
“Then whozu he?” Haruo asked.
Mas ignored Haruo’s question. “Itsu the blood. Rememba the blood type on us at all times during war?”
Haruo nodded. “Yah, on name tags, in case we get hurt or bombed.”
“Look on records back in Hiroshima. It should say Joji Haneda, type O. But that man today—he type A.”
G. I. looked dumbfounded but promised to check it out.
“That’ll helpsu you, Akemi-san, at least with the land. But I guess that has nutin’ to do with gettin’ Yuki outta jail.”
“Don’t worry, Masao-san.” Under the fluorescent parking lot light, Akemi’s face looked soft and unwrinkled, as if she had gone back in time at least thirty years. “That’s all worked out.” She turned back to the funeral chapel, where a slim woman dressed in a short-sleeved sweater and tight pants stood carrying a small bag. It was the witness, Rumi Kato.
Apparently Rumi Kato had been on her way to Vegas, traveling 85 miles an hour on Interstate 15. But then her tires lost their traction, and the whole car flipped over two times. Her Toyota Corolla was a total loss, but she was unhurt, not a mark on her.
“I went to the police. Told them about that morning, when Junko was beaten,” Rumi told Mas. “I could have died today—that’s what I deserved. My life was spared for a reason, I know. It was like you said at the bowling alley. That it wasn’t just about bachi.”
“Bachi?” G. I. looked amused. “You mean what goes around comes around?”
Rumi nodded and then attempted to speak in English for G. I.’s benefit. Pointing at Mas, she continued. “He said that I need to speak the truth. Or my insides not good.”
“You say dat, Mas?” Haruo seemed genuinely happy, and Mas could only shrug in response.
“So you knew that you needed to come back to clear Yuki,” Akemi said.
Rumi nodded. “No matter what happens.”
Mas bit down on his dentures. Back at the Gardena bowling alley, the girl had been intent on running. Yet here she was, returning to the scene of the crime, ready to make things right.
As soon as Mas got into the passenger’s seat of the Honda, Haruo began his grilling. And finally Mas relented. “I knowsu him, Joji Haneda. And that man today, heezu not him. Heezu name is Riki Kimura.”
“Riki Kimura . . . Kimura,” Haruo murmured. “Same name as the boyzu.”
Mas nodded. “Heezu same class as me. And Joji, too. After the war, dis Kimura became one of those no-good gangsters, chinpira.”
“Black market?”
“Yah, only he good at it. Real good.” Mas paused. “I made it ova here to America on his dirty money.”
Mas had been desperate. There was no future for him in Hiroshima. He wasn’t going to stay and become a mere field hand below his three brothers. He was destined for something more, and he knew that it lay in the country of his birth, America, the victor.
When he met Riki on the streets of Hiroshima months after the bombing, there was no talk about Joji Haneda. Mas figured that Joji had met a bad fate that had somehow been helped along by Mas himself. Riki’s old downtown home was gone. Both his mother and grandfather had been killed, and his father was still missing. Riki now hung out with the other street orphans who had turned to the black market, alcohol and drugs, and prostitution for money. Mas didn’t know which vice Riki was resorting to—perhaps all—but whatever his choice of illicit activity, it was making him rich. Riki even showed Mas a whole set of Australian army jackets he’d bought from a soldier, all stashed in a corner of an abandoned factory that somehow had survived the blast.
Mas stayed away from Riki as much as he could. He spent his days in the country, harvesting rice, trying to save as many yen notes as he could, but they were practically worthless, more valuable for firewood than anything else.
In his desperation, Mas starting thinking: What was wrong with stealing from a thief? I’m an American citizen, anyway. I have the right to leave this place. So one evening he returned to that abandoned factory, and sure enough, hidden in an Australian army jacket were two hundred American dollars and also some folded-up papers in an envelope. When Mas sa
w the name Joji Haneda on the papers, he could only imagine what had happened. He ran out of the dilapidated factory building with the army jacket and two hundred dollars, but not the papers. Those papers were cursed, he felt—and as it turned out, so was the jacket. When Mas was eventually caught selling the jacket on the black market, he told the military police what they wanted. Riki Kimura. Seventeen years old. Hooked nose. A scar on the back of his neck.
Mas explained to Haruo, “The MPs lookin’ out for these black market gangsters. They let me go, but I neva tell them about the two hundred dolla. I use that to go to Kobe and then get the hell out of Japan.”
“And dis Kimura?”
“Stuck in jail for a while, but I guess he finally make it out of Hiroshima on Joji Haneda’s papers. I neva say nutin’, even when he showed up in California. I kept Joji’s death a secret. Nobody needsu to know, I thought.” But that was before Akemi Haneda had returned to her birthplace, Los Angeles.
“Dis Kimura one bad guy,” Haruo assessed.
“Well, he lookin’ for a place for himself. Just neva found it.”
* * *
Before going home to McNally Street, Mas had Haruo stop by Tanaka’s. “Wait here,” he told Haruo in the car. “I be just few minutes.”
An old dome desk light was on by the cash register. There Wishbone stood, straightening out some nails in wooden compartments. He wore a baseball cap advertising a brand of lawn mower. From a distance, he could pass for any skinny Nisei guy, even Haruo.
Mas said, “You not at the funeral.”
Wishbone turned, the light drawing shadows on his pockmarked face. “Wasn’t in the mood.”
Mas waited, hearing the tired crickets outside. He couldn’t stand this feeling inside his gut. It was like making a bad bet you couldn’t face up to, like assuming a jockey was steady but finding out later he was a drug addict. Everything became clear in that darkened shack. So clear that it hurt.
“You the one who killsu him. Joji Haneda.”
“What? He died of cancer. Any fool could tell that he was only a few steps away from the grave.”
“No.” Mas shook his head. “He not wearin’ his mask. Nurse tole me everytin’.”
“You have no proof, Mas, and neither does that nurse.”
“No proof, but I knowsu. Afta that card game, youzu out to finish him off.”
“Why would I want to take his life when he owes me money? Can’t get cash from a dead man. Think, Mas, think.”
“Yah, Izu thinkin’, Wishbone. Thinkin’ that you mad enough to kill.”
Wishbone placed a nail on the counter. “What if I told you that he asked me to take his mask off? That he begged me to end it all. That with every breath came pain. Not only his body but things in his head.”
“Youzu no right,” Mas said weakly. But he knew that pain well. He was just surprised that Riki had succumbed to it.
“I tried to put the mask back on him. But he kept turning his head, fighting me off. Didn’t want to breathe anymore, I guess. Once the monitors started beeping loud, I got out of there. But nobody saw me. I made sure of that.”
Mas somehow believed Wishbone, but he wasn’t going to let him off scot-free. “You the one at the mistress’s house that day,” Mas said. “You the one runnin’ ’cross street. And then, later, you were there when she all beat up.”
Wishbone jiggled a box of nails.
“Youzu the one who set dis up. With Nakane in first place, ne.”
“I don’t know what you’re talkin’ about, Mas.”
“Nakane here in June, askin’ questions. Waitin’ for me. Youzu tole him about me.”
Wishbone said nothing.
“Not Haruo at the mistress’s house. Was you. She had a load of money to give to you.” That envelope had been meant for Wishbone, Mas knew now. Wishbone had been playing both sides, and Yuki was now the fall guy. “Youzu probably behind my truck gettin’ stolen, too.”
Wishbone came out from behind the counter. “How much do you think I’m gonna get for this place? Don’t own the land. Just the business. Fire sale. Chump change. How am I gonna live, Mas? Can’t depend on my kids; they have their own lives.” He placed the tip of one of the nails in his mouth and bit down. “You’d do the same. If the price was right.”
“You were gonna let innocent boy go to jail?”
“Hey, wait a minute,” Wishbone interrupted. “That was not my doin’. And the girl, too. Didn’t know they were going to do that. All I was paid for was to hook you up with Nakane. I even told them not to hurt you. Haneda wanted to see you, too, but on his own terms. I was a matchmaker of sorts. Nothin’ criminal about that.”
“And these people from Hiroshima?”
“I owe none of them,” said Wishbone. “They owe me; that’s what I think. We are the ones who were locked up, stripped of our manhood, because we looked like them. Now they can pay us for what we sacrificed.”
“Youzu crazy, Wishbone.”
Wishbone’s eyes seemed to burn like coals. “We the ones who opened the door for them. Even my uncle was a liaison for a Japanese bank here in L.A. Those guys used him, said he was some kind of bridge, and then threw him away when he got too old.”
Mas understood. It hadn’t been easy starting over in the 1940s and ’50s. For those Nisei, you could see the world divided by race: Japanese, hakujin, and the others.
But Wishbone didn’t know the whole story. He hadn’t seen the ravaged bodies, the burning flesh. One minute friends laughed, full of life; next minute, destroyed. Those things never escaped one’s mind. Once you witnessed that, you saw evil, and it didn’t live in just Americans or Japanese. It lived close by, in friends, in neighbors, and, most frighteningly, inside yourself.
Mas circled the lawn mower shop. Finally he stopped by a beat-up corkboard fastened to the wall near the door. “You gotsu grandchildren.” Mas gestured to some wallet-sized photos pinned to the board. “I see them, all fat, cute. Izu gonna be grandpa, too.” Wishbone looked up, curious. Even in the darkness of the shop, he was always ready to hear some fresh gossip.
“I knowsu that baby gonna be orai. Or I say I knowsu, but don’t really.” Mas remembered meeting Yukikazu Kimura for the first time at the medical exams. “My white count abnormally high,” the boy had said. And he was two generations removed from the Bomb.
There also had been those damaged babies born to the survivors immediately after the war. Their heads bloated, their limbs withered and useless. Mas didn’t know which was worse for them—to die or to live. The image of those babies had stayed in the back of Mas’s mind all throughout Chizuko’s pregnancy. Chizuko recalled it, too, Mas knew. They never spoke of their fears, because if they gave voice to them, their fears would somehow become true.
But Mari had been born perfectly normal. And her child, his grandchild, would be healthy, too, right?
Mas stayed quiet, listening for some kind of answer, a sign. The crickets stopped their chirping. It felt cold in the doorway.
“About your truck,” Wishbone finally said. “I didn’t know what they were going to do with it. They just asked me what was important to you. The only thing I could think of was the Ford.”
Mas merely nodded and stepped out of Tanaka’s Lawn-mower Shop. That was the last time he would go through its doors.
CHAPTER SEVENTEEN
It took G. I. Hasuike one day to free the boy. The only thing was, Rumi, the witness, had to stay in town for a while. Her parents were coming to America for a long visit, she explained. “Good,” Mas said. “Youzu needsu to talk.”
Nakane, meanwhile, was on the run. The authorities thought that he had escaped to Japan, or even to Mexico, under an alias. It was only a matter of time before he was caught, Mas figured. Lies like that rarely lasted beyond a lifetime.
Akemi and Yuki, on the other hand, got the green light to leave the country, as long as they checked in with the Japanese authorities when they arrived in Hiroshima. They didn’t waste any time, and booked a flight di
rectly to Kansai International Airport for the next day. Everybody was supposed to go to see them off at LAX—everybody, that is, except for Mas.
Mas didn’t like anything about airports. The crowds, the airport limousines, the constant hubbub. It was a place on the go; except Mas wasn’t going anywhere. And it wasn’t even so much the good-byes. What made Mas feel so empty was seeing the lovers, old friends, fathers, and daughters meet up again after being separated by time and distance.
He didn’t expect Akemi and Yuki to understand. They stood on his porch, their bags in hand.
“I’m forever indebted to you, Ojisan.” Yuki’s politeness embarrassed more than flattered Mas. He almost preferred dealing with the old Yuki.
“I did nutin’.”
“If you hadn’t figured out the blood-type connection, we wouldn’t have a chance to hold on to the land.”
G. I., through some backdoor shenanigans, had been able to verify the blood type of the Joji Haneda who had died at Oxnard City Hospital. Type A, it was, just as Mas had predicted.
“And I heard back from my buddy at the magazine, the one I had you call, Ojisan. I don’t know why we didn’t check sooner. But our land used to be next to this shantytown full of Koreans who had been forced to work in Hiroshima. Practically kidnapped and brought over.
“People were using it as a landfill, and some attorneys for the former laborers want to conduct an investigation. There’s something down there. Evidence. Something worth a lot more than even ten million dollars.”
Mas nodded. He’d read of the lawsuits filed on behalf of men and women who had been captured and forced to work in Japan during World War II a few years back. At the time, he’d thought the lawsuits were pure foolishness. Just a way for lawyers to make a another buck, he figured. But if someone was hiring fellows like Nakane to nose around and even kill, it was certainly worth looking into.
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