House of the Red Fish

by Graham Salisbury

  “ To who?”

  “I don’t know, but Mr. Wilson could find out.”

  Billy frowned. “You know Dad better than that, Tomi.”

  “Yeah, but it could slip out.”

  “Not a chance. He’s on your side, remember? Always has been.”

  “I know, I know. That’s not what I meant, it’s just—”

  “So quit looking depressed. The forces are moving.”

  “What about a compressor?”

  Billy opened his hands. “Just another challenge, son.”

  “I got too many challenges already.”

  “Make a man out of you.”

  “Better me than you, I guess.”

  Billy snickered. “Hey, guess what—Jake got a call on that truck.”

  “He did? He sold it?”

  “No, but the guy wants to come over and take a look.”

  “But it’s still down at the harbor.”

  “There you go, another challenge, son. You can do it.”

  “Me?”

  Billy gave me an easy shove. “Naah, not you. Jake said he’d tow it home. He’s got to get it running first, huh?”

  “Right.”

  “Of course I’m right.”

  “Pfff.”

  I liked going down to Hotel Street a lot better when I wasn’t trying to find Grampa Joji. It always popped my eyes and put a spring in my step, because the place was as alive as centipede legs, antsy and crawling with people. It was right in downtown Honolulu near the harbor and the big boats, and though it was called Hotel Street, it had little to do with hotels, at least not the kind of hotels I’d ever go into. Mostly there were tattoo parlors, laundries, bars, and restaurants, and girls looking good as color calendars. It was where all the military and civilian defense workers went to take a break, have a good time. Men in uniform or loud flowery shirts, some fighting and getting dragged away by MPs and SPs.

  I loved that place!

  And even though Mose and Rico didn’t like army guys, they never passed up an opportunity to go to Hotel Street, either. Billy, too.

  That Wednesday afternoon, instead of taking the school bus home, the four of us hopped on a city bus and headed downtown. Last night Grampa Joji had asked me to meet him at Fumi’s place. “No can miss um,” he said. “You see plenny soljas line up on the street, you follow um. Take you right there.”

  “Ho!” Rico said. “That’s your grampa’s girlfriend’s place?”

  TATTOOS BY FUMI, WORLD’S GREATEST BODY ARTIST.

  Fumi was a tattoo artist? “Ojii-chan, you’ve lost your mind,” I mumbled.

  “No,” Rico said, brightening. “He’s finding it.”

  “Fumi’s Japanese, right?” Billy said. “I thought all the tattoo guys were Filipino.”

  “She’s Japanese. She’s just … unique.”

  Billy shook his head. “Like your grampa, huh?”

  “ Two of a kind.”

  The line into Tattoos by Fumi went around the block. In the window a sign said TATTOOS $15. Sample designs were taped to the glass: REMEMBER PEARL HARBOR, an anchor, eagles in different poses, hearts, and hula girls. We squeezed through the line of guys and put our hands around our eyes to look in the window.

  Fumi was working on a navy guy in his white uniform, just finishing up an anchor on his forearm. Above the anchor was REMEMBER PEARL HARBOR. The sailor saw us looking and nodded with a grin.

  Fumi wiped his arm with a small towel. She was dwarfed by the big sailor. The guy checked out his tattoo, then stood up and paid her. He came up to the window and showed us his new piece of art, grinning like a donkey.

  “Looks stupit,” Rico whispered.

  “What?” Mose said. “The guy or the tattoo?”

  “Both.”

  Before the guy even got out the door another guy took off his shirt and jumped into the chair.

  Somebody was breathing down my neck. I could smell garlic and chicken stink. I turned to look.

  Grampa Joji jerked his chin toward the window. “Good, nah? Anohito wa okane motterukara.“

  Rico scrunched up his face. “What he said?”

  “He said Fumi is getting rich.”

  “Ho, yeah, no kidding.”

  She probably made in a day what Mama made in a month. But then we also got a house out of Mama’s job.

  I grabbed Ojii-chan’s arms and checked them for tattoos, wondering if he’d added to her riches. Luckily, his papery flesh was art free. “What’s this all about, Ojii-chan?” I said. “How come you hanging around this kind of place? Not like you, Grampa.”

  Mose, Rico, and Billy crowded closer to hear about how a cranky old goat became a Hotel Street playboy.

  Grampa scowled. “You like I help you, or what?”

  “Help me? You want me to get a tattoo?”

  He slapped the side of my head. “Meueno hitoni mukatte nanda sonotaidowa!” he said. “No talk sassy!”

  “Ow, what’d you do that for?” I rubbed the sting, just above my left ear.

  Mose and Rico stepped back. Billy’s eyes opened wider. They knew Grampa often made snappy remarks to us, but they’d never seen him strike out like that.

  “Fumi wa kimae ga iihito nandakara,” he said. “You no talk bad about her.”

  “Okay, Grampa, no problem, I know she’s a kind person, just calm down.”

  He glared, then pulled me into Tattoos by Fumi, his steel fingers pinching my elbow.

  Billy, Mose, and Rico followed. The sailors made way.

  Fumi glanced up and smiled. We pushed by to the back of the tattoo shop, back through a bamboo curtain to a small room, where we crowded around Grampa Joji. I was still in shock over getting slapped, and even more by seeing my grandfather in such a place. That stockade must have changed him. Or maybe that last stroke opened something up in his brain, like memories of another life, a secret past when he was a gambler, or a criminal.

  When he had our full attention, Grampa smiled— something he must have picked up way back in Japan, because he sure never practiced smiling here.

  He stepped aside and swept his hand toward an oily piece of machinery on a wooden pallet.

  A compressor!

  “Oya oya,” I whispered in Grampa’s beloved Japanese. “Wow.”

  “How did you get this, Ojii-chan?”

  Grampa shrugged: No big deal.

  “I come right back,” Fumi said to the guy in the chair as she walked through the parted bamboo curtain. “I make um extra nice for you, okay?”

  Fumi smiled at us. “You like it?”

  “Yeah!” I said. “Really like it. Is it yours?”

  “No, no, not mines. Your grandfather worked very hard to get that here, you know.”

  I turned to Ojii-chan, who grunted.

  “That’s where you were when I was searching for you?”

  “Hnnn.”

  “He had to bring it in a wheelbarrow,” Fumi said. “It took him two days. Slow, you know, him. First day he was halfway here. He left it at my cousin’s house. Next day he brought um the res’ of the way. I got him one ice cream after that.”

  “He ate ice cream?”

  Fumi nodded. “Sure. He likes it.”

  I looked at Grampa, who never stopped complaining about American food. “Ice cream?”

  He turned to look out toward the front of the shop, ignoring me.

  “Who does this compressor belong to?” Billy asked.

  Fumi pointed to the guys lined up on the street checking out the tattoo designs taped to the window. “What you think those boys want more than anything else? Even more than one of my beautiful tattoos?”

  We all leaned to look out through the bamboo curtain.

  “Money,” Rico said.

  “No, not money,” Mose said, “what they want is some fun, take away all their problems.”

  “Girls,” Billy said.

  Fumi snapped her fingers. “That’s right, haole boy. Girls. Dates. Someone to dance with, someone to talk sweet to them.”<
br />
  “Sounds good to me,” Rico said.

  Mose shoved Rico.

  Rico made a kissy face.

  “Ca-ripes.”

  “So what does this have to do with the compressor?” I said.

  Grampa tapped the oily machinery. “Onna hitorito kikai ichidai ka.”

  “What?” Rico said.

  Fumi put her hand on his shoulder. “I have this one customer—Bobby’s his name. Oh, he’s so cute and so nice, that boy. Come from Chicago. But he was lonely, too, and homesick.”

  “A sailor?” Mose asked.

  “No-no … defense worker. Shipyard, Pearl Harbor. He isn’t like most of those wild construction guys. No, Bobby is a gentleman—like your grandfather, Tomi—a good man.”

  I turned toward Grampa Joji, who smiled his crooked teeth at me.

  “So I said to Bobby,” Fumi went on, “I said listen, you know what’s an air compressor? For put air inside car tires, like that? And Bobby go, are you serious? I use those things every day at my job. And I say, how’s about you and me make a deal?”

  Fumi wagged her eyebrows, waiting for us to figure it out.

  “And?” Rico said.

  “And Fumi told the guy you lend me a compressor, I get you a date,” I said. “Right, Fumi?”

  Fumi scruffed my hair. “Smart as your granddaddy, you.”

  I stretched a little taller.

  “Bobby took a big chance letting us use that machine,” Fumi said. “He could get fired if they found out what he did.”

  “Must have been some girl,” Billy said.

  “She is,” Fumi said. “A good dancer, and pretty, and hoo, was that Bobby happy, because for those poor military boys, must be about hundred fifty of them to every one girl in town.”

  “What’d the girl get out of the deal?” Mose asked.

  “Bobby.”

  “Not,” Mose said. “The girl could just walk out on that street and she could have her pick of any one of those guys and all she got was one Bobby guy, who she didn’t even choose herself?”

  “Sure … but Bobby’s special.”

  “How?”

  “Like I said, he’s a gentleman like—”

  “My grandfather,” I said.

  Ojii-chan raised an eyebrow. Fumi put a hand on his shoulder. “That’s right, Tomi-boy. Hard to find mens like this.”

  I would have laughed, but I knew she was right.

  I thanked Fumi a thousand times, grabbing her hand and shaking it. “You really helped us out, and I won’t forget this, ever. I’ll make it up to you someday, just ask. Anything.”

  Fumi winked. “Thank him,” she said, dipping her head toward Grampa Joji, who was sitting on a box with his hands on his knees. “He did all the work.”

  I studied Ojii-chan. He was a rock to me. “Thanks, Grampa.”

  He nodded, quick. Anxious to get the attention off of him.

  Fumi chuckled. “That old buzzard still got some moves lef’ in him.”

  “Right,” I mumbled.

  “No, for real.” She looked at Grampa Joji. “He prob’ly save one sailor boy’s life, you know. Right outside of here, on the street. I saw it … that’s how I met your grandfather … I was impressed.”

  All of us turned to look at Grampa, who tried to make himself be somewhere else.

  “He fool you when you look at that grumpy face,” Fumi said, smiling at Grampa Joji. “But inside he’s a puppy dog.”

  “Yah!” I yelped. I couldn’t help it. Puppy dog?

  Grampa scowled, probably trying to translate puppy dog into Japanese.

  “How did he save the sailor?” Billy asked.

  “Five, six drunk army guys was beating up one sailor, right out there.” She pointed to the street. “I was making a heart on this one boy, and I looked out when I saw everybody running over to watch in the street. The sailor tried to run, but they caught him and held him. What they were arguing about, I don’t know. But boom, they knock that boy to the ground and start kicking him. That’s when your grandfather jumped in.”

  I glanced again at Grampa Joji, his eyes at half-staff. Looked like he was falling asleep.

  “He shout at the army guys to stop, but they no stop, ah? So Joji-san went to work. Boom, boom, he strong-arm two guys down. The army guys were amazed at the crazy old man, so they back off. The sailor got up and ran away. The army guys look at your grandfather and put up their hands, laughing.”

  Now Grampa’s eyes were closed.

  Sleeping.

  “He’s a real firecracker, all right,” I said.

  The next day I was getting ready to black out the windows in the front room when I looked out and saw a Japanese woman and two small kids standing at the edge of the yard, just out of Little Bruiser’s range. Like statues, they waited to be noticed, not calling out.

  “Mama,” I called. “Come here.”

  Mama came out from the kitchen, wiping her hands on a dishtowel. Grampa stayed at the table with Kimi.

  “Who are they?” Mama said.

  “I don’t know.”

  We went out and into the yard. “Go move that goat, Tomi-kun,” Mama said.

  “Aw, really?”

  “Go.”

  Little Bruiser eyed me as I edged around behind him and picked up his rope. He seemed torn between guarding his yard and going after his favorite target. I took his rope and tied him up short to a tree. He glared at me, then leaped. I stumbled out of range just in time. “You miserable little rat. I thought we were becoming friends.”

  Mama went on down to the lady and her kids.

  By the time I got there Mama had a hand on each kid’s shoulder and was ushering them toward the house. “Come inside,” she said. “He’s home.”

  As I followed them, the goat stared me down, waiting for the next time. “I’m changing your name to Little Rat.”

  Inside, Mama said, “Please, irasshaimase.“ She motioned them toward our old brown couch. “I go get him. Shooshoo omachi kudasai.“

  But the woman didn’t sit. I gave her a slight bow. She bowed back but said nothing. The kids were empty-eyed and silent.

  Ojii-chan followed Mama out from the kitchen. He seemed strangely younger. Must be Fumi, giving him a new life.

  “Uhnn,” he said, greeting the lady.

  She bowed deeply.

  “You were in a camp,” she said in Japanese.

  Ojii-chan dipped his head, yes.

  “My husband, did you see him? His name is Giyozo Uyeda. He is Japanese-language-school teacher.”

  Ojii-chan frowned, trying to remember. In Japanese, he said, “I don’t know that name. What did he look like?”

  The lady glanced at the boy sitting on the couch. “He looks just like his son. His hair is very gray, though—a man of forty with gray hair.”

  “Uhnn,” Grampa said again, one of his favorite non-words. Then he shook his head sorrowfully. “I apologize,” he said. “I have not seen this man.”

  The lady bowed again, clearly thankful to Ojii-chan, even though he had no news to tell her. “I had hoped you might, but thought the answer would be as it was. Thank you … thank you. Ojima shimashita.“

  “Mon dai nai,” Ojii-chan said. “I hope he is well. And … if it helps … they did not mistreat us at our camp. And I was among good men, like your husband. We helped each other. There is little to worry about. He will be fine, I’m sure.”

  Tears welled in her eyes.

  “Come,” Mama said, ushering the kids into the kitchen. She gave a ripe orange mango to each of them, then brought them back out and wished the lady well. “Please come back anytime,” she said. “My husband is in a camp too. I wish I knew how he was.”

  “Yes,” the lady said.

  “We will wait for our husbands together,” Mama said.

  The lady smiled, a sad smile that shared Mama’s hope.

  I led the small family back to the street, and as they walked away I thought of hato poppo. Pigeons. How they raced back from wherever t
hey were, the island calling them home. Our fathers were pigeons. Papa and the gray-haired father would return in the same way. Their bodies would not fly like the pigeons, but their spirits would.

  And we would all cry in our happiness.

  The Saturday after our strange visit to Fumi’s tattoo shop, Charlie clomped up our steps and rapped on the door. I answered it and held the screen door open. “Come in, come in.”

  He didn’t. “I came to see how Joji-san is doing. He home?”

  “Are you kidding? He’s got a girlfriend now.”

  “Yeah, I heard that,” Charlie said, chuckling.

  “He’s probably down at Hotel Street getting in trouble.”

  Charlie laughed. “I also heard you gotta dig a bomb shelter for the Wilsons. Billy told me.”

  “Yeah, but why? I don’t think we’re going to get bombed again.”

  “You never know.”

  “I guess.”

  “You like some help?”

  “You don’t have to do that,” I said.

  “Naah, no problem. Billy would come too, but he had to go pick something up with his daddy.”

  “Come inside,” I said again.

  “Naah, we go dig. We could prob’ly do um two days. Get it done fast. You ready?”

  “No,” I said, and he grinned. Charlie was the best.

  “Yeah, I know. Just don’t think how you doing the Wilson boy’s work,” he said, reading my mind. “Think about the big muscles you going get out of it.”

  “Pfff.” I closed the screen door and went out back with Charlie to find a shovel. It was as good a time as any to start in on that pit. I couldn’t believe Charlie would do this for me. Some people were just made to be good.

  Mr. Wilson had staked out where he wanted the shelter to be, away from the house. Why did he want to build one now? The war was going well. We were winning in the Pacific.

  But maybe that wasn’t why he wanted me to dig it.

  Maybe he was trying to keep an eye on me, or something.

  Or maybe he knew something we didn’t.

  I thought, if we did get bombed again, I guess me, Grampa, Mama, and Kimi would just crawl under our house with Lucky and the pups and hope we didn’t take a direct hit. I’d take that chance any day over being in a mud hole with Keet Wilson. They would never let us in, anyway, for sure. Mrs. Wilson might, but she had little to say in that family.