“Yeah, yeah. Let’s go, Kimi.”
We crept over toward the Wilsons’ house. The jungle tumbled in on us as we picked our way through the thick tangle of vines.
A five-foot tree fern, dark and leafy, edged the Wilsons’ backyard.
We crouched behind it.
Mama stepped out the back door of the Wilsons’ house with a floor mat to shake out. Kimi started to call to her, but I clamped my hand over her mouth. “No, Kimi. Mama can’t know we’re here. Okay?”
She nodded, and I took my hand away.
“Good. All you have to do is watch the house. If you see Mr. Wilson drive up, or if you see Keet or his friends, or anyone who’s not Mama or Mrs. Wilson, then you come tell us quick, all right? Quick!”
Kimi’s eyes grew wide and alert. “What was that stuff back there where Charlie is?” she whispered.
I hesitated, looking down at the mud oozing between my toes and around the edges of my feet. How much should I tell her? Would it scare her to know about Papa’s sunken boat? As far as I knew, no one had told her about it. But she’d seen our island bombed. And worse, she’d been there when Grampa and I had to kill Papa’s pigeons.
“Boat parts, Kimi … from Papa’s boat.”
She scrunched her face up. “His boat?”
“It … it sank.”
“You mean, it’s underwater?”
“Not for long,” I said. “Watch the house. You know the way back to find us?”
She nodded.
I faded back into the jungle, sweating bullets about getting caught by Mr. Wilson. But also recharged by something stronger than that fear—anger.
Back on the truck path I ran into Ben, Calvin, Mose, and Rico, already heading back to Charlie’s toolshed with one of the 500-pound pontoons. “Ho, you could lift it.”
Calvin wagged his eyebrows.
“Better you than me,” I said.
Jake and Charlie had managed to drag the other pontoon away and hide it somewhere else, just in case we got caught. If we saved anything, it had to be the borrowed pontoons, because Mr. Davis had taken a chance for us, and we all knew it.
An hour later everything but the last pontoon was stored in Charlie’s toolshed. “Jeese!” I said. “We forgot about Kimi.”
I sprinted back into the jungle, low branches whipping at my face.
“Wait up,” Billy called.
Kimi was still behind the tree fern, right where I left her.
Sound asleep.
“I guess guard duty can get boring,” Billy said.
I picked her up and carried her home.
At 5:50 the next morning I eased open our squeaky screen door and closed it gently. The police hadn’t shown up the night before, so I guessed Keet hadn’t gone out to check his stash. Billy, Calvin, and Ben squatted in the shadows at the edge of the jungle, waiting just out of goat range. Little Bruiser was stretched out on his rope as close to them as he could get, quivering. The two pontoon cases sat on top of Charlie’s four-wheeled gardening wagon—a thousand pounds of rubberized canvas.
Ho, I thought. That’s what I call friends.
They stood when they saw me.
“Call off your weapon,” Calvin said.
“I think he likes you,” I said.
“Let’s go. We been waiting since the before time.”
“Handsome guys need sleep.”
“Pssh.”
“Jake wanted to come too,” Billy said. “But he had to help out one of Dad’s friends. Busted car, as usual.”
“Jake’s a good guy,” I said.
“Someday we can debate that,” Billy said.
We headed down toward the canal, the wagon creaking behind Ben and Calvin, the two of them taking turns at pulling it. Its wheels were wooden, with hard rubber around the rim. No air inside, so every time they hit a bump the wagon thumped and rattled.
“Why are you two doing this?” I said. “I mean, you got work to do at your own place, right?”
“Sure we got work,” Calvin said. “But we like yours better.”
“But why?”
Calvin put a hand on my shoulder. “Because you just one small, ugly cockaroach and we feel sorry for you.”
I humphed and shook my head.
“Anyway,” Calvin added, “we got the bug now. We couldn’t quit if we wanted to, right, Ben?”
Ben frowned. “You going too far, brah. I ain’t got no bugs.”
“Pfff.”
The streets were about what you’d expect for a Saturday morning. It was nice to be out at that time of day. It reminded me of the times I went fishing with Papa and Sanji before the war, so long ago. A lifetime. I’d give anything to be fishing with them right now, I thought. Anything.
“We sold the truck last night,” Billy said.
“Hey! That’s great! You get full price?”
“Better. Two hundred dollars.”
“Ho, how’d you do that?”
“A crazy man bought it.”
“Who?”
“My dad.”
“Your dad?”
Billy shook his head. “Strange but true. We get to take the money to Sanji’s place. His wife will be very pleased, I think.”
“That’s for sure…. Your dad bought it … chee. What’s he going to use it for?”
Billy shrugged. “Haul stuff around, I guess.”
“We should have asked him to haul these pontoons for us,” I said.
“I already thought of that. Dad said sure, but we would have to wait until late this afternoon. I didn’t think we had the time.”
“You’re right.”
Cars passed, going slow, taking their time. Nobody seemed to notice us, except for one car with two haoles in it, high school guys who gave us and that wagon long looks. The car had a busted taillight, like the guy had backed into a telephone pole. They drove on.
But those two worried me, because they went around the block and passed by us again, slowly, still glaring.
“Whatchoo looking at?” Calvin shouted, picking up his pace, walking alongside the car. The car sped up, turned right at the next intersection. “You come back again, I going jump on top the hood!” Calvin waved a fist. “Stupit haoles.”
“Hey,” Ben said. “Just blame those two fools, we got one okay haole right here,” he added, tossing an arm across Billy’s shoulders.
“Oh,” Calvin said. “Forgot. Sorry, ah?”
“No problem,” Billy said. “Those stupits worried me, too.”
Calvin grinned. “Uncle said your family was good people. Now I see why. You just like us, ah? No, maybe not, because you rich. But s’okay. You helping Tomi. What other haole you know cares about somebody’s Japanese sampan?”
“My dad cares.”
“Yeah! Okay.”
The good news was that the two haoles disappeared. The bad news was that the wagon was getting heavy, even for Ben and Calvin.
Almost two hours later we were down to the bushes that separated the last street from the dirt field and the canal. By then the sun was boiling over.
“Man, I’m thirsty,” Calvin said. “Where got water around here?”
I shrugged. “In the canal?”
He slapped my head lightly.
We sat and rested in a patch of shade. But not Ben, who headed over to the worn-out houses that lined the other side of the street.
He knocked on the door of a small, rickety house with a low, rusty-colored wood fence and a gate that hung loose on one hinge.
“What’s that fool doing?” Calvin said.
An old lady in a blue mu’umu’u came to the door. She and Ben talked a minute, the lady peeking over Ben’s shoulder at us.
“Prob’ly asking if we can drink from the hose,” Calvin said. “But I never seen him wake up somebody this early.”
The lady went back inside the house. Calvin turned to us and gave us a thumbs-up. A couple of minutes later the lady came back with a jug of something and a stack of cups.
“He asked a total stranger for something to drink?” Billy said.
“Looks like it,” Calvin said. “Out by where we live, in Kahuku, we do that all the time. Like one big family, Kahuku. Don’t matter you never seen them before. They give you something to drink, or whatever … they give.”
Just like Charlie, I thought.
“That’s great,” Billy said. “Should be like that everywhere.”
Ben huffed back over with the jug and the cups. “Lemonade,” he said. “I told her about how we going work on one of those sunken boats today, and she said, Oh my goodness.“ Ben shook his head. “Oh my goodness … sound nice, ah?”
I grimaced. “You can’t tell people what we’re doing, Ben. This isn’t just any boat, it’s a Japanese boat, and a lot of people worry about Japanese boats, even now.”
Ben nodded and poured lemonade. “Yeah, yeah, okay, no problem.”
We drank.
“Man, that’s good,” Billy said.
“She had it in her icebox for her gran-kids for when they come her house today.”
“And you took it?” I said.
“She got a lemon tree behind her house. She make this stuff couple times a day, she said.”
After we drained the lemonade we walked across the street to take the cups and jug back. We stood around in her yard while Ben knocked. “You boys come back anytime,” the lady said. “I make more for you.”
“Thank you, Mama-san,” Ben said.
“Yeah, thanks.”
“Thank you.”
“Scoot,” she said. “You go play.”
We left. “Go play?” Billy whispered.
“You come back when you pau what you doing,” the lady called. “I give you more.”
“Yeah-yeah, we will,” Ben said. “Thank you, Mrs….”
“Aurelio,” she said.
“Thanks, Mrs. Aurelio.”
I eased by the gate, careful not to knock it off its one hinge.
We felt renewed now, and we needed every ounce of that new energy, because pulling a thousand pounds of pontoon over dirt in that wagon was a killer.
Sweat was stinging my eyes when I finally sank to my knees at the edge of the canal, the wagon on its side and the pontoons dumped onto the dirt. Calvin leaned back against them with his knees up and his arms crossed over them. Ben lay flat on his back in the dirt with his eyes closed. Billy was hunched next to the wagon looking for a sliver of shade.
For at least ten minutes nobody said a word.
Then I woke everybody up. “We still gotta take this wagon down to Fumi’s place and pick up the compressor.”
Billy groaned.
“At least it’s not a thousand pounds,” I said. “The compressor will be easy after what we just did. Anyway, only one or two of us need to go.”
“I’ll go,” Billy said.
“No, I’ll go,” I said. “I was hoping you’d unpack these pontoons and figure out how to inflate them.”
Billy nodded. “That’s what you were hoping, huh?”
I wagged my eyebrows. “You the smart haole, right?”
“I’ll go get that compressor with you,” Calvin said. He dragged himself up and turned the wagon upright. Billy knelt by the pontoon cases and started unstrapping them. Ben had fallen asleep. Mose and Rico had yet to show up.
Calvin raised a finger to his lips and winked. “Wait,” he whispered, then jogged over to the weeds and bushes.
“Now what?” Billy said.
“Who knows?”
Calvin squatted in the weeds, looking for something.
Billy went back to the straps.
Seconds later Calvin hurried back, a three-hundred-pound Kahuku High School star football player tiptoeing toward us and grinning like a six-year-old.
Billy looked up.
I cringed when I saw the black and yellow garden spider crawling up Calvin’s arm. The bushes were covered with those things. They ruled the islands right alongside ugly brown big-toe-sized cockaroaches.
Calvin eased up to snoring Ben and squatted next to him. He captured the spider in his fist and let it crawl out of his hand onto Ben’s cheek, then sat back on his heels, straining to keep from laughing.
I rubbed my cheek. I’d hate to have that spider crawling on my face.
The spider stood still a moment, half on Ben’s cheek, half on his lips. It crept slowly over his mouth, all legs working. Ben’s eyelids twitched. The spider crawled up toward his eyes. Ben’s snoring stopped. The spider crawled over his eyes to his forehead.
Ben’s eyes popped open, crossed like a Siamese cat, and looked up at a leg dangling down over his eyebrow.
Boom!
Ben sprang to his feet, slapping at his face and hair, hopping around like he was standing on a blazing hot road.
“Ahhh!” he said. “Get it off! Get it off!”
Calvin rolled around in the dirt, laughing his head off. Ben pounced on him, shouting, “You going die for that! Your mama only going have one son after I get done wit’ you, you stink-breath dog!”
Calvin couldn’t fight back, he was laughing so hard. “Okay, okay. I sorry, nuff already.”
“You animal!”
When they got done wrestling in the dirt, they both stood and brushed themselves off. Calvin thought that was the funniest thing he’d ever seen, and Ben, too, was okay with it, even though, he said, the only thing he hated more than spiders was centipedes.
“All right, you bazooks,” I said. “Me and Calvin gotta go downtown.”
“Yeah, yeah,” Calvin said, wiping the tears from his eyes with the heel of his hand. These were the strangest times, I thought. There were creeps like Keet Wilson, funny guys like Ben and Calvin, friends like Billy, and generous people like Mrs. Aurelio and Fumi … and scary people, the block wardens, the BMTC, and Mr. Wilson. And also there were quiet times like with Kimi and the chickens … and a huge war raging in Europe and the Pacific, bombs still threatening to come thundering down on our heads.
All you could do was keep on trying.
Calvin followed me into the alley behind Tattoos by Fumi. “Ho, man, this place is wild! Where all theses military guys came from?”
“Pearl Harbor, Schofield, Hickam, all over.”
“Hoo, mama.”
“My friend Mose doesn’t like them, but they aren’t so bad.”
“How come he don’t like them?”
“Some army guys messed around with his girl cousin. There was a fight.”
“Ahh.”
Trash spilled from bins behind every back door in the alley, the road black with grime. A sailor was sleeping, leaning up against the wall, his white uniform all roughed up. Calvin studied him, frowning.
Fumi’s back door was unlocked.
We eased it open and went in. I could see her through the bamboo curtain, working on a sailor.
The compressor sat covered by a canvas tarp. I lifted the edge to show Calvin. “This is what we came for.”
He whistled, low. “You know how to work it?”
“Not yet,” I said. “Me and Billy can figure it out.”
Through the bamboo curtain and out the hazy front window, you could see the long line of patient men in white and tan waiting for Fumi. By the samples she’d tacked to the walls it was easy to see that she had great artistic ability and could probably tattoo anything you wanted on your arm, or your chest, or wherever you wanted it. I prayed Ojii-chan would never go for one of them. He would look like a fool.
Out in the shop Fumi chatted with the guy she was working on, tattooing REMEMBER PEARL HARBOR on his shoulder.
Yeah. Remember.
Lot of guys wanted that one.
The sailor, a haole not much older than Calvin, saw us watching. “Looks like it hurts, but it don’t.”
Fumi stopped and looked behind her. “Ah,” she said to us. “Come watch. I only be a minute.”
Me and Calvin crept out into the shop but stayed back. It was amazing, the ink being shot by needle into the guy
’s white skin to the low hum of the tattoo machinery. I winced. No way I could ever do that.
“Look his other tattoo,” Calvin whispered.
On the sailor’s forearm was a heart with a scrolling banner running across it with the name ELIZABETH inside it.
“He must really like Elizabeth to put it on his arm where he can never take it off,” I whispered.
“Crazy,” Calvin whispered back. “What if he gets in a fight wit’ her and they break up?”
“Every new girl going be angry every time they see it.”
Calvin humphed. “He going spen’ his whole life looking around for girls name Elizabet’. That’s all he can do now— go out wit’ Elizabet’s.”
“He wasn’t thinking straight.”
“None of these guys thinking straight, nowadays. Gotta weigh you down, ah?” He shook his head. “This war.”
“My friend Herbie Okubo’s brother is in the army,” I said.
“Yeah?”
“Somewhere in Europe, Herbie said.”
“Poor buggah. I hope he come back alive.”
“Yeah, me too.”
Where was Ojii-chan? He’d already left the house when I got up. I thought he’d come here.
“Okay, solja boy,” Fumi said, wiping the sailor’s arm with a clean cloth dampened with alcohol. “Whatchoo t’ink?”
The sailor got up and aimed his shoulder at Fumi’s brightly lit mirror. “Now, there’s a work of art for you.” He paid Fumi and tipped her an extra two dollars, then showed off his new tattoo to the guys in line behind him on his way out into the sunlight.
The next guy, army, sat in the chair.
“Hold on, solja boy,” Fumi said. “I’ll be right back.
“Who’s this?” she said, eyeing Calvin.
“Friend of mine, Calvin. He’s from Kahuku.”
“Ah, good, nice to meet you, Calvin.”
Calvin ducked his head.
Just then a girl squeezed through the line of guys crowding into the shop. A silver clip held her long hair back on one side. She looked to be about my age and seemed way out of place in Fumi’s tattoo shop.
She smiled when she saw me.
I blinked and looked away.
“Aunty,” she said to Fumi. “Mama said to meet her at Rosie’s for lunch.”
“Good, good,” Fumi said. “Save me a seat.”
House of the Red Fish Page 15