by Dean Hughes
“You need a wristwatch, Jay.”
He looked at the screen door and saw his grandpa standing there, sort of hidden by the dark screen. “Walk into my office and I’ll give you one I don’t use,” Grandpa said.
“That’s good,” said Mom. “And then you’ll have no more excuses. I’m not going to have this, Jay—you making promises and then running around all hours. This might be a little town, but there’s still bad kids you can fall in with. What have you been doing?”
“Playing ball.”
“Who with?”
“I don’t know. A bunch of boys.”
“What were their names?”
“Gordy and Lew and Eldred. I walked back into town with those three.”
“They’re okay, Louise,” Grandpa said. “Gordy’s the Linebaugh boy. You know his family. And it was probably Lewis Larsen, Jack’s son. And little ol’ Eldred Parsons; he’s as good a boy as you’ll ever find. His family just barely gets by, but they’re good people.”
“That’s all well and good. But you know how people talk down here, and you know the first thing they’ll say about Jay. When I tell him to come in by a certain time, I want him to do it.”
“What is it you think they’re going to say?” Grandpa was asking.
“You know very well. He looks like his dad, and you know what people think about that.”
That made Jay mad, but he only said, “I’ll come home at nine from now on.” Then he walked on into the house.
Grandpa had a room he called his office. It had been a bedroom once, when all the kids had been home—eight of them. His mom was the baby of the family, and Grandpa was over seventy.
Grandpa stepped to his desk and opened a drawer. “Everyone’s wearing these wristwatches now. A salesman gave me one to try out, but I never remember to look at the thing. I always reach for my chain to pull my pocket watch out. I finally just stuck this thing in here. Do you want it?”
Grandpa wound it and set the time, and then handed it to Jay. It was silver, with a leather band. He watched the second hand sweep past silver dots instead of numbers. It looked nice, but he didn’t want to wear it when he was playing ball. He took it, though, and he told Grandpa, “Thanks.”
“So did you have fun with those boys tonight?”
“Sure.”
He didn’t tell about the ball that had hit him, but his throat still hurt when he swallowed.
“Do you think you’re going to like living down here with us?”
“It should be all right.”
“You’ll get so you’ll like everything after a while. It’s just a little different from what you’re used to.”
He nodded.
“Well, if I were you, I’d go in and take a bath—so you won’t be so hot when you go to bed.”
“Okay.”
“I don’t mean you have to. I was just thinking that might be what you’d want to do.”
“Okay.”
After he walked out, he wished he’d said more. He liked Grandpa all right. He just didn’t know what to say to him. And he didn’t want him asking so many questions, the way he did sometimes. About Salt Lake and his dad and everything.
• • •
He played ball the next few nights, but he didn’t talk much with anyone. Even when the boys played in teams and he had to wait for his turn at bat, most of the boys didn’t say much to him. He never had been able to think of much to talk about. But Gordy never stopped talking.
He and Gordy were sitting next to each other on the grass one night when Gordy poked him with his elbow and said, “Hey, Chief, you ever seen a naked girl?”
Jay shook his head.
“We did. Me and Lew. We snuck up on some girls skinny-dipping down at the canal. We watched ’em for a while, and then we started hollering that we could see ’em, and they about drowned trying to stay under the water. But it didn’t matter. They didn’t have much of anything anyway.”
Jay didn’t know what to say.
“I seen my sister once too, just by accident. Now that I know what a girl’s supposed to look like, I know it ain’t like those flat-chested girls we seen down at the canal.”
“What about Elaine Gleed?” Lew asked. “She’s not so flat.”
“What are you looking at her for? She likes me.”
“You’re the only one who thinks so.”
“Yeah. Me and her. We’re the only two.” Gordy turned back to him. “Hey, you wanna go out to the desert with us in the morning? Me and Lew and some other guys are going out real early before it gets hot.”
“I can’t,” he said. “I’ve got to work for my grandpa, at his farm.”
“Is that what you’ve been doing every day?”
“No. Tomorrow’s my first day.”
“You must be starting up to cut hay.”
“It’s already cut.”
“Then you’ll be raking, and after that, hauling. Most of us do some of that. That’s why we’re going in the morning—before our dads get us busy doing the same thing.”
Actually, he had done next to nothing since he’d been in Delta—except wait to head over to the ballpark late in the day. His mom had taken a job already, at D. Stevens department store, and Grandma was the only one home all day. He talked to Grandma sometimes. She liked to gab a little too much, but she laughed a lot. And sometimes he could think of things to tell her. But mostly he had read old comic books that some of his uncles had left behind, and he had tried throwing pitches at a big cottonwood tree out back, just to see if he could get better at throwing a ball where he meant to throw it—and maybe get so he could be a pitcher.
That morning, at the breakfast table, Grandpa had said, “Jay, I’ve got a boy from out at Topaz working for me at the farm. I’ve tried to get out there and help him a little, but I can’t seem to find much time. I—”
“You shouldn’t be out there in that heat anyway,” Grandma had said. “You know what Doc Handley told you.”
“Well, now, I guess I know what I can do and what I can’t do.”
“No, you don’t. You never have known that.” But Grandma was laughing, the way she did all the time.
Grandpa made a little motion with his hand, like he was saying, I’m not going to talk about that, and then he set his hand on top of one of Jay’s. Grandpa had big hands, all covered with spots, and his fingers were twisted at the joints. “I’m just thinking you could go out and give that boy—Ken’s his name—a little help. I’ll pay you for it, half a dollar a day, if you’d be willing to do that.”
He could hardly believe it. That was a lot of money. He liked the idea of working, too, not sitting around. It was like being a man.
“You don’t mind working with a Jap, do you?”
That took him by surprise. Why would Grandpa want him to work with a Jap?
“He’s a nice boy, and he works like a demon. He’ll keep you laughing, too.”
He had known a Japanese boy in Salt Lake—a kid at one of the schools he’d gone to. But that was when he was little, way back before the war. Most Japs weren’t like that boy. Japs were about the worst people in the world—except for Nazis. They’d bombed Pearl Harbor, out in Hawaii, for no reason at all, and that was pretty much the same as bombing America. They were ugly little yellow guys with glasses. He had seen lots of pictures of them on posters all over Salt Lake, and down here in Delta, too. Japs weren’t as tough as the Marines, or anything like that, but they kept coming and coming, dying until they were stacked up like cordwood. They liked to torture people too. Gordy was right about that. What they wanted more than anything was to bomb California, and everywhere else in America after that. They wanted to take over the whole country, but Americans weren’t going to let that happen. That’s why they were fighting a war.
“Ken’s seventeen. He just graduated. He’s a good ballplayer—played for the high school out at the camp. You know about the camp, don’t you?”
“What camp?”
“Topaz. It’s
what they call an ‘internment camp.’ It’s out in the desert about twenty miles from here. After the war broke out, the government brought in over eight thousand Japs—a whole lot more people than live here in Delta—and set them up in barracks out there. They say that some of them are spies, and they want to blow up ships and airplanes, and do all sorts of things. But I don’t know. They come in from Topaz on buses and shop at my drugstore sometimes, and they’re all nice folks as far as I can tell.”
That didn’t sound right. Grandpa always liked everybody. Maybe he just liked to have Japs spend money at his drugstore. Jay didn’t want to work with one.
Sometimes, in Salt Lake, boys had called him “Injun,” and they’d made Indian noises, slapping their mouths and whooping. Gordy didn’t seem to care if he was part Indian, but what would he say if he found out he worked with a Jap? Then he’d probably be a dirty Indian, not a Chief.
His dad had said things about Indians sometimes. Maybe he was half Navajo, but he made fun of Jay anyway—when he was joking around. “Hey, red man,” he would yell, “don’t scalp me,” and then he would pretend he had a tomahawk and chop at Jay’s head. But that was just joking. He liked to remember things like that now—when Dad was funny and playing around.
Mom had been mad at Dad way too much back then. But he was fun sometimes. That was what she always forgot. Once his dad had taken Jay up by the mountains to a zoo, and they’d walked all over and seen all the animals and everything. He’d even told Jay about things he’d done when he was a boy and had gone out to the Navajo reservation in the summer. He said, serious, he didn’t mind being half Indian. His mother had taught him good things.
It seemed like Mom was still mad about everything. She remembered all the bad stuff too much. She hadn’t even gone to the zoo with them. She should have done things like that, and not always told Dad what was wrong with him. He was a hero now, and when he came back, everything would be different. He wouldn’t get mad when he got back.
CHAPTER 3
GRANDPA DROVE JAY TO THE farm early in the morning. It was about a mile out of town. He introduced him to Ken, who was a little guy, no taller than Jay, but he had on a white undershirt with the sleeves rolled up high, and Jay could see what big muscles he had. He had tied a red bandanna around his forehead, and over that, had on a floppy old straw hat that was worn out and falling apart.
Ken started laughing, for no reason Jay could understand, and then he said, “I’m going to put some mileage on you today, Jay. Are you ready for some hard work?”
He sounded like an American.
“I guess so,” he said, and he found out what Ken was talking about. The heat came on fast and got worse every hour. Ken had been cutting hay with a tractor for a few days, and it was bunched up in windrows. Now it needed to be raked and turned so it would dry all the way through before it was baled. Ken could turn the hay with the flick of a pitchfork, like turning pancakes, but Jay had trouble figuring out how to do it. After a couple of hours he was catching on better, but his back was breaking. The air was full of dried alfalfa, a million little pieces flying around. They were in his hair and ears, making him itch. The stuff was down his back, too, inside his shirt. It even felt like it had gotten into his lungs.
“What your grandpa needs is a rake a guy can pull with a tractor to turn this hay,” Ken told him. “Most people don’t do it by hand anymore.” He straightened up and then leaned backward to stretch his muscles.
Jay hadn’t said much to Ken all morning. He didn’t want to start. The guy didn’t seem like a Jap, but he was one anyway. He didn’t wear glasses, and he didn’t have big teeth, but he did look sort of like the guys on those posters—with the same kind of eyes.
“What he told me was, he doesn’t cut enough hay to pay for something like that. I guess that might be right.” And then Ken grinned. “It’s okay with me. I need the money, and slow work is better than no work.”
Jay didn’t say anything, but he thought about that. He didn’t like anything about this hay, but he wanted his mom to know, just by looking at him, that he’d worked hard. He’d buy his own school clothes this year, and that would be one thing she didn’t have to worry about. It might put her in a better mood.
“Let me show you something.” Ken jabbed his pitchfork into the ground and stepped over next to him. “You gotta raise the hay up higher, and then just flip your wrists, so you aren’t making such a big motion with your arms. You’re going to wear yourself out, fighting the stuff so hard.”
He nodded. “Okay,” he said.
“Go ahead and try it.”
He stabbed at some hay with the pitchfork, got a good load, but as he lifted, Ken caught his forearm and forced him to lift higher than usual. Then Ken twisted his arm, so the pitchfork flipped over fast. Ken was right. It was easier that way. For a moment he was glad to know how to do it right. Then he thought about Ken touching him. He didn’t like that. He didn’t want the guy to start acting like they were friends.
“That’s a lot better,” Ken said. “Are you going to make it through the whole day?”
“Sure.”
“I don’t know. It’s hot, and you’re not used to work like this. If you have to knock off before the day’s over—you know, just to rest up—I’ll do your share for a while, and mine. It doesn’t bother me to do that.” Ken gave him a little punch in the shoulder and laughed.
“I can hold up,” Jay said, and went back to work.
By noon the sun was straight above and burning Jay’s bent back. Ken finally said, “Let’s go sit behind the house and see what your grandma fixed us for lunch.”
So the two walked to the farmhouse and sat in the shade of the willow trees out back. There were a couple of old wooden kitchen chairs out there. Grandpa had left their lunches on the back porch, in the shade, but there was no icebox to keep anything cool. Grandma had made a bunch of sandwiches out of baloney and cheese and they were about half baked by the heat, but they tasted all right. Best, though, was pumping up cool water from the old well, filling up a Ball jar over and over, and drinking it in long gulps.
“I’m not saying that I love to work this hard,” Ken told him, “but one thing about it, right now a baloney sandwich tastes as good as a big old beefsteak.”
Jay was thinking the same thing.
They were sitting close to a fat tree trunk, to stay in the shade. “How old are you, Jay?”
“Thirteen in a couple of months.”
Ken laughed—deep in his throat, almost like a cough. “I guess you think that sounds better than ‘twelve.’” He slid down in his chair, with his legs stretched out in front of him. He had eaten three sandwiches by the time Jay had started on a second one, and now he was holding his jar of water, resting it on his leg and then lifting it for a sip now and then. “What do you wanna do when you grow up?”
“I don’t know.” He thought he might walk into the house, or maybe say he needed to go to the outhouse. He didn’t want to go back to work yet, but he didn’t want to talk, either.
“I want to work hard now, then go to college so I won’t have to work hard later. My dad ran a truck farm out in California. That’s hard work, weeding those rows over and over, and then getting up early to pick and deliver the vegetables when they’re nice and fresh. I never did like to get up early.” He laughed some more. “But that’s because I like to go out and cut a rug—you know, go out jitterbugging. My pop would roust me out anyway, and I’d be one tired customer—just barely in from bein’ out.”
He wasn’t sure what to think of this guy. He didn’t talk like the Japs in the movies—always saying “ah so,” and that kind of stuff. And he hadn’t known that Japs ever did the jitterbug.
“Do you like to dance, Jay?”
“I don’t know how.”
“What?” Ken raised his head. “At your age, I could already dance pretty good. Now me and Judy Okuba win every dance competition at the camp. The other kids just enter to see if they can come in second.” K
en had gradually lowered his head backward onto the chair back. His eyes shut. “You want me to teach you some dance steps?”
“No.”
“Why not?”
“I don’t know. I don’t want to dance.”
“You will.”
He didn’t think so. He didn’t like the way Ken bragged, either. That was one thing about Japs he hadn’t known.
“Do you play any sports?”
“Baseball. The boys in town play just about every day—after it cools off a little.” He wanted Ken to know that he had some friends.
“You any good?”
“Not real good.” The heat was gathering under the trees, like it was swelling up the air. Crows were sitting in the trees and on the barn, but they weren’t making a racket now. They were sitting still, like black, dried-up leaves on the branches.
“What position do you play?”
“I don’t know. All of ’em.”
“I’ll bet most of the time you’re out in right field, where they figure you can’t do too much damage.” Ken broke out laughing again, chugging like he had started a coughing fit. “No. I’m just giving you a hard time. But me, I play mostly shortstop. I made varsity in tenth grade back in California. Here at the camp, I lead my team in just about everything: batting average, runs batted in, runs scored. We beat everybody around here, easy—Delta High, Millard, all of ’em.”
None of this sounded true. He didn’t think a Jap team could beat a regular high school team. Ken was just talking big again.
“I wish I could have finished school back in California. I went to this great high school in Berkeley, across the bay from San Francisco. Have you ever been out there?”
“No.”
“I gotta tell you, it’s the best. The kids were cool—that’s what they say in California. We all went over to this one drugstore after school and we’d listen to the jukebox, maybe dance, or just talk to everybody.” He was smiling, like he wanted to remember all that. Jay liked how he looked—wished he had some memories like that. “It’s hard to believe I’m stuck in a place like this, so hot and everything. Out by our camp there’s nothing but greasewood as far as you can see. The dust blows off the desert and right on through those tar-paper shacks we live in. You can hardly breathe when all that dirt is blowing.”