House of the Red Fish

by Graham Salisbury

  “Well, sure, of course.”

  We sat watching the ocean.

  “If you can get it here,” Herbie said, “then Pop could get some guys and …” He glanced at me again. “Man … you need a crane.”

  Rico tossed a stone into the ocean.

  Mose leaned back on his hands, closed his eyes, and raised his face to the sun.

  “Well,” I said. “At least I know I got somewhere to bring it if I can float it.”

  “Pop would fix it for free, I know he would.”

  “Really? I was thinking maybe I could work it off.”

  I gazed down the coast, trying to hide my discouragement, because even Herbie thought it was impossible, and he should know.

  “I’m telling you,” Herbie said. “You need a crane.”

  After a moment, I looked sideways at him and winked. “Or a good idea.”

  “Pfff.”

  A couple of weeks later that good idea hit me like a slap in the face. It was the first week in May. I’d just gotten home from school.

  Kimi had the job of washing clothes. She did that out back in a steel washtub filled with water warmed on our kerosene stove. She was out there scrubbing away on the washboard when Mama asked me to go out and check on her. It was a big job for a seven-year-old. But Kimi only wanted my help if she absolutely couldn’t do something by herself.

  Her dog, Azuki Bean, was lounging in the shade nearby, chewing on somebody’s tennis ball. I squatted down and pulled the gooey thing from her mouth. “Where’d you get this? The Wilsons’ court?”

  I looked up and glanced around. For once that dumb goat was nowhere in sight. “Where’s Grampa?”

  “With the chickens,” Kimi said, still scrubbing. She looked happy.

  I stood and bounced the tennis ball off the hard dirt.

  “Where did you get that?” Kimi said.

  “Your dog got it somewhere.”

  Kimi stopped scrubbing and dried her hands on her shirt. “Can I see it?”

  “Sure.”

  I bounced it to her. It went over her head and landed in the washtub. Kimi pushed it under, then let it pop back up. She did it again, giggling and trying to make it pop up higher.

  It must be nice to have no problems, I thought. “Hey,” I said. “I gotta go.”

  “Bye,” she said, handing me the ball.

  “Keep it.”

  Kimi smiled and dropped it back in the water.

  Grampa had nineteen egg-laying chickens that he kept in five wooden chicken coops up in the bushes, just out of view behind the house.

  I found him with his bucket, poking around for eggs. So far he had eight. Grampa handed me the bucket. “Take,” he said, jerking his head toward the Wilsons’ house. Because we lived on their land, and they employed Mama, we gave them eggs whenever we had them.

  I shook my head. “I told you before, Ojii-chan. I’m done taking eggs over to that house. You do it.”

  Grampa scowled at me. We’d been through this, and he knew I was serious. But even though he knew Keet stole our boat parts, and even though it was the Wilsons who probably got him arrested after Pearl Harbor got bombed—even after all that, Grampa still felt an obligation to include the Wilsons in whatever we produced on their property—chickens for meat, eggs, tomatoes, lettuce, and string beans from what Charlie brought over to us, and even fish, whenever we got some.

  “Confonnit,” Grampa mumbled, and headed up to the Wilsons’ himself.

  “Watch out for Rufus,” I called. “He don’t like grumpy old men!”

  My mind suddenly locked back on the washtub.

  The tennis ball!

  I pounded back down the muddy path to Kimi, tripping and stumbling like a drunken sailor, because now I knew how I was going to raise that boat.

  The next morning, just after we got dropped off at school, I told Billy about my flash-bang idea. It wasn’t something I wanted to talk about in front of Mr. and Mrs. Davis, because maybe us being down by the boat wasn’t something we were supposed to be doing. I still needed to look into that. The last thing I wanted was to be on the wrong side of the military.

  “Hmmm,” Billy said, thinking. “Inner tubes.”

  “From old car tires.”

  The tennis ball had given me the idea of using trapped air to lift the boat off the bottom of the canal—holding the ball underwater, letting it pop back up. Bingo, I thought—inner tubes from old car tires! How many would it take?

  “I don’t think it will work,” Billy said. “You’d need too many of them. And now you can’t get them because the army needs the rubber.”

  “Yeah, but maybe we can find some.”

  He shook his head. “Where?”

  “How about your dad? He could get some.”

  “Some, maybe, but not enough.”

  Billy frowned, thinking as we headed up the grassy slope toward another day of school, where I could hardly sit still. I needed to be working down at the Taiyo Maru, not wasting my days at a beat-up desk thinking about it.

  I knew I was wrong to think that I didn’t need to be at school; it was good; it was important. Still, that boat was sitting underwater getting ruined, and I was running out of time. Summer was only a few weeks away, but I’d have less time then, because I’d have to get a job. I winced. I had to start asking around, starting at the cannery.

  We sat on the grass outside the school, waiting for Mose and Rico. Soon they came strolling across the busy street, making cars slow down for them as if they owned the place.

  They plopped down next to us. “Too nice for go inside today,” Rico said.

  “Just what I was thinking,” I said.

  Billy nudged Mose with his elbow. “You got to hear Tomi’s bright idea.”

  “Yeah?”

  I clapped my hands together. “Okay, listen.” I told them about the inner tubes. “All I need is enough clearance to float the hull down the canal to Kewalo Basin, like Herbie said.”

  Rico thought it was a great idea. “But what I don’t get,” he added, “is how you going inflate all those tubes underwater? You can’t push those things down like a tennis ball, you know.”

  “I have an idea for that.”

  But I didn’t. Not yet.

  “Okay,” Mose said. “Say you could do that. Say the tubes could lift up the hull. Fine. But you still got a problem way more worse than that—the army, ah? They need rubber, right? Everybody collecting it now. No way they going let you use it when they need it so badly. And what about this— you ever wondered if the army going let you bring up that boat at all? They put those boats there for a reason. You might be out of luck, brah.”

  “Yeah,” Rico said, “but that was before, when the war was on top of us. What about now? Maybe they forgot about them.”

  I shrugged. “Who knows?”

  But if the army had forgotten about those boats …

  “Anyway, say the army didn’t care, and say we managed to collect fifty or sixty inner tubes,” Billy said. “And we brought them all down to the boat—then we got caught. We could say we were just collecting them for the army, which wouldn’t be a lie because right after we use them to float the boat, we could give them to a collection center.”

  “Ho!” Rico said. “With that much rubber we’d be heroes!”

  “Yeah.”

  “Yeah.”

  But then we fell silent.

  Because I don’t think one of us believed we could ever collect enough tubes to make the boat go up even one half inch.

  Four colorful fish streamers swam in the breeze on a bamboo pole above my house when I got home. Koi-nobori. Carp made of paper, looking like kites, but hollow inside. The air went in the mouth and blew them up fat.

  “Wow,” Billy said. “It’s already Boys’ Day again?”

  “Yeah. Today is May fifth.”

  “I thought you hid all your Japanese stuff.”

  “Me too.” Mama was taking a chance—for me. She shouldn’t have put them up. They could
get us in trouble. Probably not with the military, but for sure with Mr. Wilson.

  The fish looked almost liquid, the way they waggled, so smooth and easy. “You think I should take them down?”

  “Why?”

  “Well … it’s a Japanese thing, and you know Mr. Wilson.”

  Billy grinned. “Leave it up. Nobody can see this place from the road.”

  I shrugged. “Yeah. One or two days won’t hurt. Besides, he hardly ever comes over here.”

  But still …

  Mama or Grampa had planted the bamboo pole near the side of the house so that the fish could fly above the roof. To most haoles it was probably a strange tradition. But Billy didn’t think so, and it made me feel good every year when Japanese celebrated all the boys in the house. If there were three boys, say, then there would be one fish for each of them—first, the two at the top were for the mom and pop, then the boys below—red, blue, and white koi.

  The koi was a symbol of masculinity and strength because it was a fish that could swim upstream against strong currents. It persevered and lived a long life. Old-time stories even said koi used to swim all the way to heaven to become dragons.

  Tango-no-Sekku, it was called—Boys’ Day.

  Just below Papa’s and Mama’s blue and white ones was me—the red fish, a dragon in the making.

  “Later,” Billy said, hurrying over to his house before Little Bruiser came bouncing out with his head down. “By the way,” he said, stopping to look back. “Jake said we can go take a look at that truck this week or next, sometime after school.”

  “Great!”

  “Keep that key handy.”

  I tapped my pocket. “I carry it everywhere.” I started up the steps and stopped. “Hey,” I called. “Ask your dad about the inner tubes.”

  “Don’t get your hopes up. It’s hard to get hold of just about everything these days.”

  “Yeah, but ask anyway, all right?”

  Billy turned and waved over his head without looking back.

  Only Mama was home, the house silent. She was sitting at the kitchen table drinking tea after a long day at the Wilsons’.

  “Mama, you shouldn’t have put up those fish.”

  “Why?”

  “Well … Mr. Wilson, he—”

  She waved my words away. “Sometimes you have to do what you have to do.”

  “Mama?”

  “This is your day, Tomi-kun.”

  I nodded. She could be stubborn when she wanted to.

  “Where’s Grampa?” I said.

  “He took Kimi down to see his friend.”

  “You mean Fumi?”

  Mama rolled her eyes and smiled. “Ojii-chan is Ojii-chan.”

  “You got that right.” I sat down across from her and slapped my schoolbooks on the table. “Homework.”

  She reached across and patted my hand. “You good boy, Tomi-kun. Work hard.”

  I smiled but felt guilty because I wasn’t working all that hard on what she thought I was.

  Mama rinsed her cup and headed into the front room to clean up our house after spending the day cleaning the Wilsons’. But she stopped and looked back. I thought she would smile or say something. But she turned and left the kitchen, keeping her thought to herself.

  I sat gazing out the window, thinking of Mama and Mrs. Wilson. How uneven this world was. Some people worked and struggled. Some people didn’t.

  Little Bruiser came into view in the bushes outside the window. His head was perked, looking at something in the trees that I couldn’t see.

  I sighed and opened my math book, my hardest subject, especially long, confusing word problems that tangled up my brain. Sometimes I’d almost rather take eggs up to the Wilsons’ house than do them.

  A few minutes later I was lost, trying to work one of them out, when something in the trees moved in the corner of my eye. I looked up, waiting for it to move again.

  There!

  Little Bruiser streaked into the trees. I heard a muffled yelp.

  Keet Wilson! He was slinking around our house, using the trees for cover.

  I put my pencil down.

  “Mama?” I called.

  She didn’t answer.

  “Mama, you in the house?”

  Still no answer.

  I got up and went into the front room. I saw her outside through the screen door, standing in the yard with her back to the house.

  I eased open the squeaky door. “Mama?”

  She turned to look back over her shoulder and in her hands I could see the fish kites torn to shreds. She held the pieces up.

  “Tst,” I spat, and jumped down off the porch without using the steps. The screen door slapped shut behind me.

  The bamboo pole the fish had been tied to had been ripped out and broken, two sad pieces at her feet. “Keet did this?”

  Mama nodded. “I was standing right here.”

  “He did it in front of you?”

  Mama was silent for a moment, as if wanting to say more, and wanting not to as well. “When … when he tore them up, he looked at me, right in my eye. I was too shocked to speak.”

  “Did he say anything?”

  Mama nodded but offered nothing.

  “What, Mama? What did he say?”

  She wouldn’t look at me.

  “He said, ‘No Japanese symbols on our land—understand? Next time I going call police.’ “

  “What!”

  “He’s angry boy, Tomi-kun. You stay away from him.”

  “I want to, Mama, believe me … but I don’t think that’s going to be possible.”

  “What you mean?”

  I looked off into the trees, over toward the Wilsons’ house, big, white glimpses of it peeking through the branches.

  “Mama … he’s not getting away with this, no.” I took the torn-up koi-nobori from her.

  “Tomi—”

  “Don’t worry, Mama. I’m not going to do anything stupid.”

  I took the torn fish streamers into the house and put the pieces under my mattress. I would tape them back together and get a new bamboo pole, because for sure, when Papa came home after the war, those fish would fly again.

  Especially the red one.

  Over this house.

  On the Wilsons’ property.

  And Keet Wilson would have to go through me if he wanted to tear them up again.

  On Friday at school just after lunch, me, Billy, Mose, and Rico were sitting in our usual sunny place, leaning up against the side of the building. Mr. Ramos wandered by and waved. We waved back, and he walked on.

  Then he stopped and came back.

  He eased down and sat in the dirt between me and Rico.

  We sat silent. He’d never done this before, and who ever saw a teacher sitting in the dirt with students?

  Mr. Ramos put his knees up and rested his arms on them. “So,” he said, then waited a moment, thinking.

  Rico glanced at him. We all did.

  “I heard your grandfather came home, Tomi.”

  “Yeah,” I whispered, turning away. I didn’t want to spread that around, thinking if too many people heard about it, the army might think we were bragging and take Grampa away again.

  He chuckled. “Good news gets around.”

  “Billy’s parents did it. They got him released because … he had a stroke, and—”

  “And he shouldn’t have been arrested in the first place,” Mr. Ramos said.

  I nodded. “So Billy’s parents took responsibility for him.”

  Mr. Ramos reached over and tapped Billy’s knee.

  “You know how rare it is that he got released?” he said, turning back to me.

  I looked at him.

  “He’s the only one I’ve heard of,” he said.

  I shook my head, considering our good fortune.

  “We’re lucky here in the islands,” Mr. Ramos went on. “On the mainland they took all the Japanese from the coast and put them in camps, everyone. Here they didn’t do
that. You boys know why?”

  We shook our heads.

  “Labor,” he said. “If they put all our Japanese in camps our economy would fall apart.”

  I nodded, wondering if I knew what that meant.

  “I heard something else, too,” Mr. Ramos said. “About a boat.”

  “Uh …”

  Mr. Ramos chuckled. “You didn’t know I knew that, right?”

  Stupid Rico. It was him that told, like always.

  “Don’t worry,” Mr. Ramos said. “I’m not going to try to stop you and I’m not going to spread that knowledge around, either. I know what you’re thinking, because I was your age once too, believe it or not. Right now you’re thinking about how you’re going to get whoever told me that, right? And you’re thinking it was Rico or Mose, right?”

  I nodded again.

  He shook his head, smiling.

  I glared past Mr. Ramos at Rico.

  Rico shrugged and looked away.

  “Listen, Tomi,” Mr. Ramos went on. “It was Rico who told me, but don’t blame him. He came to me because he is your good friend and he was worried about you.”

  “Worried?”

  Mr. Ramos turned to Rico. “Tell him.”

  “Well,” Rico said. “The way I been thinking, if the army catch you fooling around that boat … that they put up in the canal for some reason … they might think you’re a traitor for messing with it, and arrest you … and maybe even your grampa … put you both in jail, you know?”

  I frowned. Stared at a scabby scratch on the back of my thumb. I’d had that same thought myself, but I’d been shoving it out of my head every time it came to me.

  I nodded. “Yeah.”

  “So I looked into it,” Mr. Ramos said. “I made some calls, trying to find out what the military had in mind for those sampans. And guess what?”

  “They’re going to toss me in jail?”

  “Hah! No. They didn’t even remember those boats. So I asked about salvaging one of them, and the guy said he didn’t think the army would care, so long as the boats were never used … at least, while the war is on.”

  “So I won’t get in trouble?”

  “Not from them. But if you do, you call me, all right?”