Keet had found it!
I stood, quickly wrapping it back up, my jaw tight with a rage I’d never felt before, ever. Even Papa would feel that same anger.
Mama had to know.
She was still on her knees scrubbing the floor.
I ran down the stairs and stood in the dining room doorway. She felt me behind her and stopped scrubbing to look back. “What, Tomi-kun?”
I held up the burlap and unwrapped the katana. “I found this in Keet’s room, under his bed.”
Mama pushed herself to her feet, dropping the rag into the bucket of water. “You were in his room?”
“I just wanted to see it.”
She came over and held her hand over the blade but didn’t touch it.
“I hid it in the jungle, Mama, and he found it and took it.” I paused, thinking. “I’m taking it home.”
“No.”
I gaped at her. “No?”
“We will be accused of stealing, Tomi-kun. You must leave it.”
“Stealing? Mama, it’s ours!”
“We need this work, we need our home. If we are accused of stealing we will lose all of it.”
“But he stole it, not me.”
“He found it.”
I stared at her, clutching the katana to my chest. I had promised Grampa I would take care of it. Nothing we had was as important as the family katana, the symbol of generations of family strength, and honor.
“Mama—”
“Put it back. We will find another way.”
We stared at each other. Lines I hadn’t noticed before trailed across her forehead. But the look in her eyes told me the real story. Mama wasn’t getting older; she was getting stronger.
And she was right.
I mashed my lips together. Never in all my life was anything so hard as climbing the stairs back to Keet Wilson’s bedroom.
A week later Grampa Joji made me take him down to the boat. It was Saturday, and we could work all day. The katana was still on my mind, but I’d settled with it. I would get it back somehow, sometime. No question.
Billy went over to get Mose and Rico, and they met me and Grampa Joji at the canal. But none of them were sure of how to act with grumpy Grampa around. They glanced sideways at him and stood around saying nothing.
“He won’t bite you,” I whispered.
Mose and Rico put on goggles and grabbed a couple of wrenches, anxious to get in the water. There were a few more things we could remove from the boat. After today we would have only the impossible left.
Grampa squatted on his heels at the edge of the canal. “Go,” he said to me, nodding toward the boat. “I going think.”
I frowned: You think you can come up with something we didn’t?
Billy and I grabbed goggles and jumped off the rocks.
Grampa picked up a large rock and lifted it, like lifting weights in a gym. Exercising while he thought, the way Mrs. Davis had showed him.
When Grampa and I had found the boat parts in the jungle behind Keet’s house, we decided to leave them exactly where they were. They would be safer there than anywhere else, because Keet wouldn’t steal from his own hiding place. Later, when we were ready, I’d get as many guys as I could and go up there and get them.
But right now I had two huge problems.
One—get the boat up and float it down the canal and over to Kewalo Basin, where we could get it onto land, dry it out, and repair it.
And two—deal with Keet Wilson, and anyone else who believed we were bringing the Taiyo Maru up to get it back into action on the side of the enemy.
Grumpy or not, I was glad Grampa Joji had come along. He made me feel stronger, just by believing in what we were doing. With him and all my friends I was feeling pretty good.
“Hey,” I said to Billy after we’d both come up for air. “You ask Jake about fixing up that truck yet?”
“Done deal.”
“He’ll do it?”
“Piece of cake.”
I raised my eyebrows. “What’d you have to do for him?” There was always a catch.
Billy wiped the water from his face and shrugged.
“Come on, tell me.”
“Okay, fine, I said I’d take over his job of taking out the garbage.”
“For how long?”
“We got work to do, let’s go back down.”
“Come on,” I said. “How long?”
“A year.”
“What! That’s the best you could do? Some negotiator.”
Billy laughed. “Small price to pay, son.”
I smiled. “Yeah, you right.”
I looked back toward shore. “Where’s Grampa?”
“Huh,” Billy said. “Maybe he got bored.”
Mose and Rico popped up. “What’s going on?” Rico said. “You two not working today or what?”
“Grampa Joji’s gone.”
We climbed up out of the water. Billy stood dripping, hands on his hips. The small pile of things from inside the boat lay strewn at his feet—two coils of rope, some canned food, three empty buckets, and two soggy blankets. “Looks like we’ve finished the easy part.”
“Now what?” I mumbled.
We stood brooding. I looked around for Grampa, but he was nowhere in sight. Boy, sometimes he drove me crazy.
Rico snapped his fingers. “I know what we need now— muscle. How’s about we try go get that Kaka’ako Frankenstein, the guy Gayle the Whale, the Butcher? Remember him? He could help us pull up this boat.”
“We could get all those guys,” Mose added. His face lit up. “Yeah! They would help us, I know they would.”
Billy snickered, shaking his head. “Won’t work. Even with all those guys, and even more guys, if you could convince them to break their backs for us—the boat is completely full of water, and water is about the heaviest thing you can imagine. It would take about five hundred guys as big as the Butcher to drag this boat up.”
“Hey, ain’t no time to go sissy, haole boy,” Rico said. “You got to believe, ah? You want it, go get it. That’s what Uncle Ramos always saying … right?”
“Wait,” I said, a thought beginning to form. “Both of you are right. It would take five hundred guys, and thinking of the Kaka’ako guys was brilliant, Rico, because you know what? You remember the second-base guy, Herbie Okubo? Guess what his pops is … a boatbuilder.”
Rico puffed up his chest when he heard that he was brilliant. He flicked his eyebrows at Mose, who said, “One good thought that you don’t even know you had don’t make you brilliant, brah.”
“Herbie’s pop repairs boats too,” I said. “My dad had him work on ours a couple times, and he can probably help us drag it out of the water, too. All we have to do is get it up and float it down to Kewalo.”
“Good plan,” Billy said. “But …”
Another thought was coming. “Yeah,” I whispered, “yeah, yeah, yeah!”
“What you thinking, brah?” Mose said.
“We don’t have to bring this boat up all the way,” I said. “We only have to get it off the mud … just enough to drag it away.”
“Okay, fine,” Billy said. “But how?”
“I don’t know yet.”
“Ask Rico,” Mose said. “He look stupit, but he’s brilliant, right, Rico?”
Rico grinned. “That’s me.”
Jeese.
When I got home later that afternoon, the lowering sun was stabbing long tree shadows across the face of our small green house. Like always, Lucky came out to greet me. Little Bruiser was over in the weeds, his knobby head cocked my way.
Mama sat on the steps watching me come up the path.
“What are you doing?” I asked. It was strange to see her sitting there alone, doing nothing. It wasn’t like her.
“Look at this yard,” she said.
I glanced around. “What about it?”
“It looks sad.”
“Sad?”
Mama didn’t go on. She tried to smile, but it on
ly made her look lonely. It was hard for her, living up here with no other Japanese families around. “Where is Ojii-chan?” she said.
“He’s not here?”
Little Bruiser took a few steps toward me, then stopped. I kept him in the corner of my eye as I knelt down to pet Lucky.
“He went with you,” Mama said. “Where is he?”
That old man was complicating my life. “He disappeared on me about three hours ago. I thought he got tired and came home.”
“He’s not here, you need to find him. He comes, he goes, he disappears from right beside you, then he show up like a ghost.” Mama put her hands on her knees and pushed herself up. “Just find him, Tomi-kun.”
I sighed. “You know what I think, Mama? I think he keeps moving around because he’s so happy to be out of that prison camp.”
She tilted her head and studied me. “Maybe.” She looked up at the sky, now blue gray as night rolled down. “Big trouble if he gets caught after curfew.”
“I know, Mama, but where should I look?”
She turned to go back in the house. “Just find him.”
“Crazy old coot,” I mumbled. “Yeah, you too,” I added, glancing over at Little Bruiser, now one or two steps closer. “Come on, Lucky, let’s go see what we can see, huh?”
Mama was right to be worried. If Grampa was out at night anything could happen to him. He could get lost, shot, or arrested. Again.
I jogged back toward the street with Lucky loping out ahead.
We didn’t have to go very far, because Ojii-chan was right at the end of the path—with a BMTC guy’s rifle pointed at his chest.
“Don’t get smart with me, old man,” the BMTC guy said. “Because I’m the one with the gun and you’re the one who should be off the streets.”
Grampa glared at the BMTC, who was maybe thirty years old. Ojii-chan took a step forward. The guy took a step back, raising the rifle to Grampa’s face. “Halt!”
“Wait!” I shouted, running up. “He’s my grandfather. I’ll take him home.”
The BMTC’s eyes darted between mine and Grampa’s.
I grabbed Grampa’s arm and tugged. “Come home, Ojii-chan. It’s curfew.”
Grampa wouldn’t budge, his eyes slicing up the BMTC guy.
“I could take him in, kid. Quick as spit.”
“Yessir, you sure could, but he lives here, right up this path. He’s almost home. He was just a little late.”
“Yeah, well—”
“Come on, Ojii-chan. Let’s go home.”
Grampa finally eased off and turned to head home. “Confonnit,” he mumbled.
I nodded to the BMTC guy and followed Grampa Joji up the path.
“Where were you, Ojii-chan?” I whispered.
Grampa winked. “You see that mans’s eye? He scared of me.”
“Jeese, Grampa, you can’t go around challenging them, you know. They’re not fooling. They could shoot you and no one would even make a peep about it. We the enemy to them, you and me. And not only that, you could get the Davises in trouble, because they’re responsible for you. Remember? They got you released? You got to be good.”
“Bah,” he spat, waving me off.
“Anyway, I thought you came home before me,” I said.
Of course he ignored me, just kept on heading up to the house. “Watch out the goat,” he said, then cackled.
Jeese. Something about him was different. What?
Something was off. I scowled and followed him toward the steps, Little Bruiser trotting toward me.
Mama came out and held the screen door open. Grampa brushed by and went into the house. She gave me a look that said: You should have stayed with him.
“What?” I said, turning my palms out.
“Come inside. Eat.”
I started up the wooden steps.
“You lucky Ojii-chan didn’t get mad that you left him.”
“Left him? He left me.“
“Come inside.”
Lucky he didn’t get—
Hey! That’s what was off about him. He wasn’t scowling. He wasn’t grumpy. And what was with that winking? Was he … happy?
Naah, couldn’t be.
What did that old cockaroach have up his sleeve?
The next day, Sunday, me and Billy took the bus over to Mose and Rico’s neighborhood; then the four of us braved up and headed down into enemy territory—Kaka’ako.
The only guys who welcomed us there were the baseball guys we used to play against before the war, the Kaka’ako Boys. Everyone else eyed us with suspicion. The worst part about going down into that area on the Waikiki side of downtown Honolulu was a gang of punks we called the Centipede Boys. They didn’t like strangers coming into their territory, and they especially didn’t like haoles like Billy, who stuck out like the moon on a black night.
We got lucky. No Centipede Boys in sight.
“Remember when coming here used to be the spookiest thing we did?” Billy said. “Now, with this war, it’s nothing.”
“Spooky?” Rico said. “You was scared? Those punks don’t worry me.”
“Talk big, ah, you?” Mose said. “You face down the Butcher, you going wet your pants.”
“Pfff.”
Mose chuckled. “You ain’t been the same since you got shot in your face.”
Rico shoved Mose, and Mose staggered off, laughing like the rest of us.
“Hanabatas … all of you,” Rico said.
Okubo’s Boatyard was down by the ocean, near Kewalo Basin, where Papa’s boat used to harbor. And where Sanji’s truck still sat, rusting. I reached into my pocket and rubbed the key, which I carried around like a good-luck charm. I needed some luck. I hoped I’d find some at the boatyard.
I’d met Mr. Okubo a couple of times with Papa when we went to him with boat problems. He was stiff in the old way, like Grampa. He was also the father of one of the Kaka’ako Boys—Herbie, at second base, a good guy.
I hoped Herbie would be around the boatyard, because I didn’t know where his house was, and we sure didn’t want to be drifting around Kaka’ako looking for it.
The boatyard was a big shed on the water, with an open yard to the side, where two sampans sat in dry-dock cradles, in for repair or repainting. Inside the shed was where Mr. Okubo built the new ones.
A scraggly dog eyed us from the entrance.
“Man, that dog is ugly,” Rico said, wincing. “Looks like it got kicked around and ain’t too happy about it.”
He squatted down and stuck out his hand, making kissy sounds. “Here doggy, doggy, I not going kick you.”
The dog growled, scarily deep for such a small dog. Rico jumped up.
“He says you ugly too,” Mose said.
“What you going say to Mr. Okubo, Tomi?” Rico said.
“I have no idea.”
“Well, I hope he’s more nice than his dog.”
“Ask him where Herbie is,” Billy said. “Then we can ask Herbie to ask his dad if he has any ideas that could help us.”
“Good idea. Let’s go inside.” We squeaked past the growling dog, who crouched, ready to fly at us if we made a wrong move. That mutt would have a dog like mine for lunch.
We got lucky. Herbie was there. His jaw dropped when we slouched in.
“Heyyy,” I said. “Howzit?”
“Holy moly,” he said. “You folks lost or something?”
“Naah,” Rico said. “We came to see your dog.”
Herbie laughed. “You met Sharky, huh? My brother Eddy’s dog. He’s in the army.”
“Who?” Rico said. “The dog?”
“Shuddup, you fool,” Mose said.
“I remember your brother,” I said. “He came to see us play that one time, right?”
“He was home on leave.”
“Yeah-yeah.”
“He’s somewhere in Europe now.”
I nodded, then shook my head. Poor guy. I’d been reading about our war with the Germans in the paper. Spooky, what was going on
—all over the world.
We stood wondering what to do next. This was enemy territory, even if we did know Herbie.
“Uh … you … you got a minute to talk about something?” I said.
Herbie picked up a rag and wiped his hands. “Sure. I was just cleaning up. Let’s go out back. Pop and Bunichi—that’s a guy who works for him—they down at Pearl Harbor.”
“Doing what?” Billy said.
“Fixing boats. What a mess they got down there … even now. Come,” Herbie said.
We followed him around a brand-new sampan his dad was finishing up. Red Hibiscus was painted across the back of it. “Nice boat,” I said.
Herbie nodded. “Second time Pop built this one. The first one burned.”
“Ho, really?”
“The day it was finished we anchored it in the harbor for the night. Next morning it was underwater.”
“Why?” I said.
Herbie shrugged. “Nobody knows. Just burned up. I saw it go down.”
“Bad luck,” Mose said.
“Took Pop forever to make this new one, with Eddy gone and all that work in Pearl Harbor.”
Herbie led us out back into the sun. The ocean was right there, light blue and flat as a pond, with two tiny boat specks crawling along the horizon.
“Wow,” I said. “Nice.”
We sat on the rocks at the edge of the sea.
“What’s up?” Herbie said.
“A sunken boat.”
“I guess I should have said what’s down, then.” He grinned.
“Way down. My father’s boat sank in the Ala Wai Canal with a bunch of boats.”
Herbie bobbed his head. “I heard about those. Ten of them, right? Sampans?”
“That’s them.”
“And your pop’s is one of them?”
“We’ve been trying to bring it back up,” I said.
“We? Who’s we?”
“Us,” I said motioning to Billy, Mose, and Rico.
“Just you?”
I nodded.
Herbie gazed at me a moment. “Huh … you four guys and what? A crane?”
“No. Only us.”
“But how can you bring up a sunken boat without a crane?”
“I don’t know yet,” I said, “but if we do, can we bring it here for your father to fix?”
House of the Red Fish Page 8