“From Papa’s boat,” I said.
It took a moment for Ojii-chan to form his question. “How come this stay here?” he finally said, breaking his unspoken rule of never asking me anything.
“Keet Wilson and some guys … they stole it from down by the boat and brought it up in a truck.”
Grampa frowned deeper, still confused.
I squatted down next to him and told him what I was doing, step by step. “I know I can bring it up, Ojii-chan. I’m not sure how, but somehow I’m going to do it.”
Grampa squinted, his eyes slits.
Said nothing.
“Grampa?”
For the first time in all of my life, Grampa Joji, looking straight into my eyes, into my brain, even—for the first time, he grinned at me.
His old stubby gray head bobbed.
“Unnh,” he grunted. “Good, good … maybe you not so dumb as you look, nah?”
I had never received such a compliment from him in my life. A warm swelling in my chest rolled up into my throat.
Grampa tapped the tiller with a hand. “We take this, hide um.”
“That’s what I was thinking,” I said. “Me and my friends are kind of worried, though.” I lifted my chin back toward Keet’s house. “He threatened to have me arrested. If we’re not careful he could make big trouble for us, Ojii-chan.”
“Unnh.”
We were silent a moment, both of us thinking.
“Maybe I should just forget it,” I whispered.
Grampa popped my knee with the back of his hand and glared at me.
“Ow!” I said. “What’d you do that for?”
“Kessite akirameruna!” he spat. “You can say that one time, but no more.”
I studied him, rubbing my knee. “Okay, Ojii-chan. I won’t give up.”
“No worry.”
Uh-oh. Now he had that rascal dancing in his eyes. “Don’t worry? If we get caught, we could—”
Grampa Joji held up a hand. “You got me now, boy,” he said. “I going help you.”
Around noon the next day, Sunday, I sat in Billy’s yard with his dog and the key to Sanji’s truck, waiting for the Davises to get home from church.
I rubbed the key between my thumb and finger. Wa s this for Sanji’s truck? Or was it was for something else? Maybe the pants weren’t even Sanji’s. But who cared about the pants? It was the truck I couldn’t get out of my mind. In all this time, how could I not have thought about it?
“I’m losing it, Red,” I mumbled, and Red thumped his tail on the grass. I stuck the key into my pocket and scratched his upturned belly.
Minutes later the Davises drove up and parked outside the garage. The black Ford Jake had been working on was still jacked up in there. Mr. and Mrs. Davis waved at me and headed into the house.
I lifted my chin, hello.
Jake went straight into the garage, still in his clean white church shirt. He squatted down to look at the underbelly of the black car.
Billy strolled over, undoing his tie. “What’s up?” he said, stretching his neck to unbutton his collar. He folded his tie and stuck it in his back pocket.
I held up the key.
“Ahh,” he said.
“Want to go take a look and see if it’s still there?”
“Darn right. Hang on. I gotta change.”
A half hour later we were sitting in the back of a half-empty Sunday bus heading for Kewalo Basin. I sat by the window, looking out at the people and cars and buildings that made Honolulu what it was, a busy mixture of everything you could think of—rich, not so rich, clean, dirty, nice, junky, loud, peaceful, generous. I loved this place. Even after it had been beaten up and scarred by war.
The bus headed down Queen Emma Street and passed the Pacific Club, just after a row of run-down shacks that some people had to call home. I gazed at the club as we drove by. Monkeypod trees spread out over a parking lot full of expensive cars in front of the low stucco building where Honolulu’s rich went to eat, play tennis, swim, and do business.
“What you looking at?” Billy said.
“Nothing. Just remembering when Keet was a decent guy.”
“You mean in his last life?”
“His dad belongs to that place,” I said, nodding toward the club. “He took me there once.”
“You’re joking.”
“No, really. It was before you moved here. We were just small kids then, and he invited me to go swimming. It’s something else, that place, how rich people live.” I shook my head, remembering how nice it was. “You can even get food by the pool.”
“Did you know only men can be members?”
“Really?”
“True,” Billy said. “That’s how come my parents never joined. My mom won’t step foot in that place until they change that rule.”
“Huh.”
We rode on in silence, me still thinking about how Keet and I had a good time swimming there. Funny to think how he was once an okay guy. What happened to him? That was the mystery. What changed him, really? Was it really just that I was Japanese, and only that? Somehow I didn’t think so. There had to be more to it than that.
The harbor at Kewalo Basin was hot and quiet.
The sun, now heading out to sea, poured silver onto the light green water. Two old men sat out on the rocks at the mouth of the harbor with fishing poles, looking as sleepy as the boats lounging motionless at their moorings. One tuna boat leaned against the pier’s black tire bumpers. The air smelled like dead fish. “Man, I miss going out on the boat with my dad,” I said, breathing deep.
We headed over to the grove of coconut trees where Sanji had always parked.
And there it was.
It was covered with the dirt, dust, and grime of having sat for too long in one spot. Its tires were pancaked out on the bottoms, but some air was left in them. The truck itself was kind of boxy looking, with wood sides around the bed, like a fence. Seeing it hit me like a slap in the face: one sunny day a year and a half ago Sanji had jumped out, thumped the door shut, and dropped that key into his pocket. That last day.
We stood staring at the abandoned truck.
Instantly, the memory of the stinky fish smell in the cab rushed back, the smell I hated but now would give anything to have back, just to sit in that cab with Sanji and Papa like in the before time.
“When Sanji parked it here he had no idea what was coming,” Billy said.
“No.”
I shook my head and looked across the harbor toward the pier. I didn’t want to picture Sanji and Papa getting shot one more time.
“I wonder why nobody came and got it,” Billy said.
“Good question.”
“Got that key?”
I pulled it out and gave it to him. We went over and sat in the truck, Billy in the driver’s seat. He stuck the key in the ignition and turned it. Nothing happened. “Dead as a rock,” he said. “But this is the key, all right. Fits perfect.”
We sat.
I started to sweat in the stuffy cab, flies buzzing in and out of the windows. I tried to open the glove box. It was rusted shut. Sanji was proud of his truck, and so lucky to have it. “You think we should go tell his wife about this?”
“Don’t you think she already knows?”
“Well, maybe she doesn’t know what to do with it.”
“That could be.”
“Let’s stop by her place,” I said. “It’s only a little bit out of the way.”
“She knows,” Billy said.
“Yeah, but just to be sure.”
“Fine.”
We walked downtown, three or four miles away. Found the alley where Sanji’s wife and daughter lived with Reiko’s mother. Mama knew Reiko but hadn’t visited in a long time. Maybe she should, I thought. Mama was stuck up in Nu’uanu with no Japanese friends to talk to.
The street was still as grimy as I remembered it, and clothes hung out of every window just like the last time me and Billy had gone there, right after Sanji was killed. We cli
mbed the rickety wooden stairs.
“You knock,” Billy said. “I’ll stand behind you.”
“Good idea.”
Haoles made some people nervous, especially those who rarely talked to them, like Reiko and her mother. But they’d met Billy before.
I knocked and Mari opened the door, now a good two inches taller than the last time I’d seen her. She was about as tall as Kimi, up to my chest. Black hair cut short, and dimples in her cheeks.
She recognized Billy and brightened. Forget about me, she beamed straight in on Billy. On our one visit he’d given her the brand-new binoculars he’d just gotten for Christmas.
“Mama!” she shouted over her shoulder.
Reiko appeared behind her in shorts and an old shirt of Sanji’s that I recognized. Her hand flew to her hair, patting it down like Mama always did when somebody showed up unexpected. She was barefoot. “Oh, Tomikazu, how are you? And Billy, right? Long time no see, long time.”
“Yeah, that’s me,” Billy said.
Reiko opened the door wider. “Come inside. Please.”
The place was just as before, dark and crammed with odd pieces of furniture. I sat on one end of the couch. Reiko sat on the other. Mari stood next to Billy, who didn’t know what to do, so he just stood with his hands clasped in front of him like you would at a funeral.
“How is your family?” Reiko asked.
“We’re doing all right,” I said. “My grampa came home.”
Reiko cocked her head. “Came home? How can that be? I thought they arrested him.”
“They did, but he’s home now. He was at a camp on Kauai, and he had a stroke, so they brought him to Queen’s Hospital. Billy’s parents …”
I stopped, feeling the emotion rise in my chest.
Billy studied the floor.
“This is amazing,” Reiko whispered.
“Yes.”
Silence.
“There’s more,” I said. “I mean more that’s amazing.” I pulled the key out of my pocket and polished it with my thumb. Stared at it. Then handed it to her. “This is the key to Sanji’s truck. I mean … well, I guess it’s your truck now.”
The key lay flat in Reiko’s open palm. She looked up at me, her eyes beginning to swell with tears.
“I … the truck,” she said, wiping tears with the back of her wrist. “I tried to sell it, but who can afford such a luxury these days? You can’t even get the gas to put in it? I didn’t know what to do with it, so …”
She fell silent, staring at the silver key in her hand.
Billy glanced at Mari, who smiled at him. He smiled back, then looked at his feet.
I rubbed my chin. “Maybe we can—”
I stopped to let the thought form.
Yeah, we could do it. “Listen, maybe me and Billy can fix it up and try to sell it for you,” I said. “You could prob’ly use the money, right?”
Billy looked up.
“Maybe we could,” I said.
Billy snapped his fingers. “Jake!” He looked at Reiko. “My brother could get it going again, absolutely. Then we could put an ad in the paper and—”
“What did you want for it when you tried to sell it?” I said, the idea now leaping in my mind.
“I don’t know, fifty dollars? Whatever I could get.”
Billy scrunched up his face, thinking. “Sounds low,” he said. “But Jake would know.”
We waited a moment longer; then I got up. “We need to get back home soon. So if it’s okay with you, can we work on trying to sell it for you? Better than letting it rust and fall apart.”
“You boys sell it,” she said, grabbing my hand and pressing the key into my palm. “Keep the money. Sanji loved your father, Tomi. He would want you to have it.”
We looked at each other, her eyes smiling with the memory of her good husband. She squeezed my hand shut, then let go.
“Thank you, really … but I think what he’d want was for you to have it. You and Mari.”
Reiko pulled Mari to her side and hugged her. “Yes. Mari.”
We left; Billy had already figured out the whole thing. “The hardest part will be getting Jake to fix it,” he said. “He’s pretty busy.”
“Maybe we can pay him.”
“Naw, it’s never about money for him. But it should be if he’s serious about saving up for a car. He’ll do it if I have to drag him down there.”
“Right. Like you even could?”
“I got ways.”
“How?”
“Wait and see, bud. Like I said, I got ways.”
“You so full of it.”
Billy grinned and slapped my back.
Friday afternoon six days later, right after I got home from school, Mama came home early from the Wilsons’. She was wearing her white work apron and light blue dress, which Mrs. Wilson bought for her to wear when she cleaned their house. She smelled like bleach. “Come with me,” she said. She grabbed my arm and pulled me toward the back door.
“Where’s Kimi?” I asked. I was supposed to watch her after school.
“Charlie’s place, planting seeds. Come.”
“Where we going?”
“Wilson house.”
I jerked my arm away. “No, Mama. I’m not going there.”
She studied me. “I need you, Tomi-kun. I not strong enough.”
“For what?”
“Move a big table and the rug underneath it. I need to clean the floor and you need to beat the rug outside.”
“Get Keet to help you, or his dad.”
Mama grabbed my arm again. “They gone Lanikai. Gone till Sunday. Come. I need you.”
I let her pull me out the door. If she needed my help I would give it to her. But only because the Wilsons weren’t home.
Keet’s old dog, Rufus, came nosing up, then hobbled over to plop down in the shade. We went in the back door, like always.
In the kitchen Mama dropped her key into the pocket on her cleaning apron. Bright copper pots hung from a rectangular bar above the stove. The icebox was five times bigger than the one we had. A newspaper lay on the shiny red counter. “Mama, can we have this?” I said.
“That’s where they leave it if I want it. Come with me.”
I’d take the paper when we were done.
The wood floor felt smooth and solid under my bare feet, not like our floor, which was rough and often dusty. And also saggy, because our whole house was up off the ground. The Wilsons’ house was sitting on concrete, with no space under it. I wondered why, because a house was raised up so the bugs and rats couldn’t get in. But I didn’t see any bugs or rats here.
“This the one,” Mama said, showing me into the dining room. The long table was made of some dark wood, with ten chairs around it. That was strange, because only three people lived in that house, Keet and his parents. The rug under it was bigger than our whole kitchen.
“You want me to drag this rug out and beat it?”
“Use the broom. Hang it over the railing on the porch and hit it until no more dust. Then wipe the dust off the railing after you bring it back.”
“You’re serious?”
“Lift up that end. We move the table over by the window.”
I rolled up the rug and dragged it out to the porch, sweating. Mama filled a metal bucket with soapy water and got down on her hands and knees to wipe the wood floor spotless.
It was easier to bring a fifty-pound tuna up from the bottom of the sea than it was to get that rug up over the railing. Sweat poured into my eyes, the heat sucking water out of me like a bilge pump. I went back into the house to find a broom.
I looked at the long, sleek wood railing and dark wood stairs leading up to the second floor.
And the doors above them.
Keet’s door.
I shouldn’t.
I could hear Mama rubbing out the dirt that probably wasn’t even there. I looked back up the stairs. She’d never know.
The steps were solid. A carpet ran up the middle.
Soundless.
I knew which room was Keet’s, because a long time ago I came over to his house a few times. I never got farther than the front room, but I saw him run up to his bedroom to get things we could play with. His mother never let me go upstairs.
His was the second door. Closed.
The white porcelain doorknob turned without squeaking. I peeked back over the railing, listening for Mama. I probably had three minutes before she started wondering where I was. She knew I didn’t have that broom.
I eased open Keet’s door.
A path of sunlight fell through the window onto twisted sheets crunched down at the foot of the bed. The closet door gaped open. What surprised me the most was what I didn’t see—things. Like in Billy’s room, where he had models and baseball stuff and pictures on the wall. Keet’s room was almost empty. A triangular pennant was tacked to the wall above his bed that read NAVY—yellow letters on a dark blue background.
I crept over to his dresser—a ship in a bottle and two small metal airplanes on top, two drawers half open with clothes bulging out. Above, a mirror glared back at me, one I couldn’t look into, the guilt of being there heavy on my shoulders. A photograph stood just behind the bottled ship. It was of Keet around ten years old, standing between two men. One was his father and the other a navy guy, looked like an officer. Behind them was a battleship at berth. Keet was smiling at the camera. Happy.
I peeked in his closet and found two rifles, one a BB gun, the other a .22, the one he’d shot our family katana with in the jungle. Remembering that made my eyes squint down. There was something else in that closet too, coiled up and hanging on a peg. A woven leather bullwhip. I touched it, took it off the peg, felt its weight, smelled its sweet new-leather smell.
I put it back.
I wiped my sweaty hands on my pants. Even though Mama had said the Wilsons were away for the weekend, my mind screamed: Get out! You shouldn’t be here. I headed toward the door.
Then froze.
There was something under Keet’s bed.
My heart seemed to stop.
Burlap!
I knew what it was the second I saw it.
I crept over, squatted down, and pulled it out.
Unfolded the furoshiki scarf inside the burlap.
Tiny needles prickled all over my scalp, because there on the floor shining in the sunlight was our family katana, the samurai sword that I had hidden in the jungle.
House of the Red Fish Page 7