House of the Red Fish

by Graham Salisbury

  The girl glanced our way.

  “These boys are Tomi and Calvin,” Fumi said. “Friends of mine.”

  The girl smiled again, then pushed her way back through the crowd of guys. “See you at Rosie’s.”

  She vanished.

  Ho, I thought. Who was that?

  “Suzy,” Fumi said as if reading my mind. “My niece.”

  Calvin nudged me and wagged his eyebrows.

  I glanced away. “Kind of hot in here,” I said.

  Fumi ushered us into the dimly lit back room. She took the tarp off the compressor. “You brought something for move this machine?”

  “We got a wagon.”

  “Good, because heavy, this. That wagon can fit through the door?”

  “I don’t think so,” I said. “Too wide.”

  “Hmmm …”

  “No problem,” Calvin said. “I carry um out.”

  Both Fumi and I gaped as Calvin picked up the compressor like it was a bag of rice he was taking out of the grocery store for somebody’s grandma.

  He grinned. “You like open the door?”

  “Yeah-yeah,” I said, and jumped to whap it open. “Thank you, Fumi, thank you.”

  She waved me off. “Good luck with that.”

  By the time we’d hauled the compressor all the way back to the Ala Wai Canal, Billy and Ben had the two pontoons out on the dirt, unfolded and ready to be inflated. When they were blown up they would look like rubber lifeboats. Along with each pontoon came a long hot dog–shaped tube that you were supposed to inflate and put in the middle of the pontoon for support.

  It was late afternoon now, and Mose and Rico had finally showed up. “Glad you could make it,” I said. “You two sleep in today?”

  “We had chores,” Mose said.

  “You missed out on getting these beasts down here,” I said.

  “That’s why we had chores,” Rico said. “You got gas for that compressor?”

  Dang, I thought. I hadn’t even considered that. “I don’t know.” I found a small stick and went over and stuck it in the tank.

  “Almost empty,” I said.

  “Now what we going do?” Rico said.

  “I can get a gallon or two,” Billy said. “At home.”

  We stood saying nothing. Going all the way back home would use up all the time we had left in this day.

  Calvin checked the sky, thinking the same thing. “I guess we go home, come back tomorrow. We staying wit’ Uncle again.”

  “Yeah, good,” I said. “But …” I turned toward the compressor and pontoons.

  “Yeah,” Billy said. “We can’t just leave them here.”

  For a moment I felt crushed. This was a big problem. We couldn’t haul everything back up to Nu’uanu.

  “I’ll stay with them,” Rico said. “No problem. Mose will work it out with my moms. I can sleep on top of the pontoons.”

  “You’d do that?” I said. “You think it’s safe? What about curfew?”

  “Forget curfew. Who going come out here? I’ll be your guard dog, little man. It’s warm. No need nothing, except maybe Mose might bring me some food.”

  “Sure, how’s about I bring you a dog bone?”

  “I’m not so sure this is safe, Rico,” I said.

  “Who going mess with me, ah?” He flexed his muscles and wagged his eyebrows.

  We left with the sky turning dim and Rico lying back on one of the pontoons with his hands behind his head. Could not be comfortable, I thought. Like sleeping on a flattened out old shoe.

  “Your cousin kind of lolo,” Ben said to Mose as we headed home.

  Mose humphed. “True, but we need more crazies just like him.”

  “He’s the best,” I said.

  “Yeah.”

  “Yeah.”

  I shook my head. “Make that three yeahs! Rico’s got guts.”

  It felt strange, dangerous even, leaving Rico down at the canal by himself. First of all, when it got dark he would be breaking martial law and could get in big trouble. But worse was the idea that we had to leave him down there at all. If life was normal, like before Pearl Harbor got bombed, then we could just go home and come back the next day. Nobody would mess with our pontoons.

  But we figured nobody would be roaming around at night by the Ala Wai canal. Anyway, even if somebody did come around, Rico and those pontoons would look like a shadowy pile of rubbish.

  But maybe the compressor wouldn’t.

  I frowned.

  “Check it out,” Billy said, nodding toward the Wilsons’ place when we finally got back up on our street. The windows were blacked out, the sun down fifteen minutes by then. Nothing looked unusual.

  “What do you see?” I said.

  “Look on the side of the house, just past the tree.”

  I squinted into the dusky light, the Wilsons’ yard still as a graveyard. Just beyond the tree the back end of a black car aimed out toward the driveway, parked on the grass. The right-side taillight was busted.

  “It’s them,” Ben whispered. “Those punks who passed us when we were taking the pontoons to the canal.”

  Calvin studied the car and the Wilsons’ yard, the muscles in his jaw working. “Maybe I go broke the other tail-light.”

  “Pfff,” I said, moving on. “Forget it.”

  Reluctantly, he followed.

  Lucky, Azuki Bean, and the two homeless mutts came trotting down to greet us, Lucky walking sideways as always, her flagpole tail sticking up. “Hey, Ben,” I said. “You like a dog? I gotta find homes for these two. You can have one of them.”

  “Ho, yeah,” Ben said, scooping up the smallest one. “Dusty, this dog. Stinks, too. He needs a bath.”

  “He’s yours,” I said.

  “The old man ain’t going like it,” Calvin said. “You know him.”

  “Yeah, but if I tell him I going train it to be one pig dog, then he no mind. You watch. I tell, Daddy, this going be one pig hunter. He going say okay, keep um.”

  Calvin humphed. “Your funeral.”

  “I going name him Dusty … since he so dirty.”

  “You can bring it back if your dad says get rid of it,” I said.

  “He won’t.”

  Billy, Calvin, and Ben with his new dog hurried through the trees to Billy’s place, Little Bruiser hot on their trail. “Take that goat, too,” I called.

  “Hundret bucks, I take um.”

  “Hah!” I said, kneeling down by Lucky. “Well, that’s one less mouth to feed.”

  The screen door of our house squeaked open. I glanced up to see Ojii-chan gazing down on me. He stood stiff in the fading light, his long-sleeved khaki shirt buttoned to his neck. His head was freshly shaved and shiny.

  With slow, deliberate, boastful steps he came down off the porch.

  I stood and took a step back. Something was on his mind.

  “Come,” he said in Japanese. “Little more light, still yet.”

  Not much, I thought. “Where, Ojii-chan?”

  He didn’t answer.

  I followed him through the weeds into the trees, then into the jungle. He walked fast and steady for an old man who had supposedly suffered as many small strokes as he had. The faker was humming, too, softly singing “Kimigayo,” the Japanese national anthem, slow and mournful.

  “Where we going, Ojii-chan?”

  But he just kept on humming.

  We cut through a dense thicket of bamboo and broke out to a patch of yellow ginger. Grampa waved his hand: little bit more.

  We stopped in a place so well camouflaged no one could ever know it was there—a dome of bushes, with a tunnel leading into it. Inside was like being in a tent. What was this?

  Grampa crabbed his way in and sat cross-legged, nodding for me to do the same.

  For a long, uncomfortable moment we sat. He studied me, staring into my eyes, unblinking.

  “What, Ojii-chan?” I finally said.

  He leaned over and removed some sticks that were lashed together so int
ricately they blended into the rest of the brambly wall, completely hiding what lay in the small dark cave beyond. He reached in and brought out the black lacquered butsudan, the small Japanese altar he kept in memory of his wife, my grandmother, who died long ago in Japan.

  “So this is where you hid it,” I said.

  Grampa set the butsudan between us on the dry dirt. He opened the doors to a photograph of my grandmother and a small dish. He placed a pebble of incense in the dish and struck a match.

  We both sat silently, and the sweet-smelling smoke rose like a serpent in the still, secret cavern of sticks in the jungle.

  Grampa hummed, tunelessly, now thinking or dreaming. Remembering.

  I jumped when he suddenly spoke.

  “This is your grandson, Okiko-chan,” he said in Japanese. He spoke clearly and precisely so I could understand, knowing that my Japanese was as poor as his English.

  He let a moment go by.

  This is your grandson.

  “You can be proud of him.”

  I nearly stopped breathing. Never had I ever heard Ojii-chan utter even a hint of praise—for anyone.

  Ojii-chan closed his eyes and began humming “Kimi-gayo” again, rocking slowly, the incense taking him back to the land of our ancestors, where honor was everything and shame was worse than death.

  You can be proud of him.

  I got up early again the next morning.

  And so did Grampa. I thought he was getting ready to come along to boss us around and was about to complain. But after what he said about me last night what could I do? Anyway, it would be funny to see him crank out orders to Ben or Calvin, or Rico, even. They would probably jump at whatever he said, respecting their elders as they did.

  It would be a relief to have him making the decisions, not me.

  I went outside, holding the screen door open for Grampa. But he didn’t come out, so I eased the door shut and creaked down the steps and stood waiting in the dark. I looked back at the house and saw the silhouette of Ojii-chan watching me through the screen.

  Moments later, Billy, Ben, and Calvin showed up. A coil of rope hung over Ben’s shoulder, looking like enough to tie up five boats.

  “You got out of going to church?” I asked Billy.

  “Just this once, Mom said.”

  I nodded. “Go twice next week.”

  Billy chuckled, then added, “We have a problem.”

  “What?”

  “I can’t get any gas for the compressor.”

  I winced. “That’s not good.”

  We stood silent a moment, thinking.

  “Never mind,” I said. “We can figure that out later. We gotta go check on Rico.”

  “Yeah, I’ve been thinking about him,” Billy said.

  I turned back to see if Grampa would follow or say something or start giving orders or what. But he stood motionless behind the screen, like a statue. Spooky. He turned and faded back into the darkness of the house.

  “Let’s get out of here before he follows us,” I said.

  “He wouldn’t do that,” Billy said.

  “You remember when he used to wash his Japanese flag in the stream?”

  Billy snorted. “Yeah, I remember.”

  “Guy like that could do anything, and most of it will be weird.”

  “You’re right. And speaking of weird, listen to this—you know Sanji’s truck that my dad bought?”

  “What about it?”

  “He gave it to Jake.”

  “What?”

  “Jake was speechless for the first time in his life. Dad tossed him the keys and said, ‘Keep it, you earned it,’ and Jake said, ‘What’d I do?’ and Dad said, ‘You became a man in my eyes when you stood up to that ignorant fool who tried to bribe you, and a man like you needs wheels, so you just keep those keys, son.’ “

  “Wow,” I said.

  “Jake said he’d drive us down to give the two hundred dollars to Sanji’s wife.”

  “Amazing.”

  “Sure is.”

  “Funny how Jake used to be friends with Keet,” I said. “And now Keet’s a punk and Jake’s almost a hero.”

  “Hold on, son, because now you’ve gone too far.”

  “Whatchoo punks talking about?” Ben said.

  “Nothing much,” Billy said.

  “Strange ducks, you two.”

  “Prob’ly,” I said.

  When we got down to the quiet neighborhood by the canal, the sun was burning up everything in its path. It wasn’t even eight o’clock yet. Mose showed up at the same time we did, carrying a bag. “Breakfast for the guard dog,” he said.

  We headed for the trees.

  “Wait a minute,” Ben said, as if remembering something. He pulled a screwdriver and a long screw out of his pocket and held them up.

  “Hold this rope,” he said, jerking it off his shoulder. I staggered under its weight. “Jeese.”

  Ben grinned, then jogged across the street to the house where the nice lady had given us lemonade. He knelt down on one knee at the broken gate. Took about two minutes to fix the hinge, and the gate was as good as new. Ben tested its swing. Perfect.

  He ran back. “Okay, let’s go.”

  He took the rope off my aching shoulder.

  When we broke out onto the field of dirt we saw Rico sitting with his knees up, facing away from us, looking at the canal. The pontoons lay right where we’d left them, and the wagon and the compressor, which I knew was as big a relief to Billy as it was to me, because I sure wouldn’t want to tell Mr. Davis or Fumi that we’d lost any of it.

  Mose whistled at Rico, letting him know we were there.

  Rico didn’t turn around.

  “He got mud in his ears, or what?” Mose said.

  We headed toward him. “Hey, Rico!”

  Still no response.

  We surrounded him. Ben dropped the rope.

  Rico kept his steady gaze on the water in the canal. His eyes were puffed up and bloodshot.

  Mose set the bag down and squatted in front of Rico. “What happened?”

  Rico blinked, seeming to notice Mose for the first time. “Oh, you came back.”

  “Rico … you okay?”

  Something bad had happened. I felt sick.

  Rico gazed up at us, his eyes so puffy they were lost in his cheeks. Yellow bruises splotched his neck and arms.

  “Rico,” Mose said again, nudging his cousin’s knee gently.

  “They came nighttime,” Rico said. “I don’t know when. I was asleep. It was real dark.”

  “Who, Rico?” Mose said. “Those same punks?”

  “They didn’t expect to see me here. They were surprised. Two guys. One was the punk live by Tomi. I know because after they jumped on me and kick me and hit me with their sticks, that punk got up in my face real close and said, ‘You don’t give this up right now you going have one war on your hands.’ “

  “War?” Calvin said.

  “How’s my face, Mose? Look bad?”

  “Naah … you just as ugly as before.”

  “Rico, Rico,” I said. “I’m so sorry.”

  Rico tried to laugh but winced. “S’okay.”

  “Is anything broken?” Billy said.

  “Naah. But maybe something broke in the face I wen’ smash. I don’t know whose, but somebody not feeling good today.”

  Mose stood and helped Rico up. “Come. I take you home, get you cleaned up.”

  “No, I going stay. I’m fine. I seen worse.”

  “Yeah?” Mose said. “When?”

  Rico didn’t answer but turned and waved toward the pontoons. “They wen’ cut um,” he said. “They stab the pontoons. One stab each. No good, now.”

  “What!” Billy said.

  We dropped down on our hands and knees, me, Billy, and Calvin.

  “Here’s one,” Billy said.

  It wasn’t that big, couple of inches, the width of a pocketknife blade. And it didn’t go all the way through and puncture the other side
of the deflated pontoon. The canvas-rubber material was strong, made to resist puncture wounds. Still, it was a hole, and it would keep us from inflating the pontoon.

  Calvin found a similar hole in the other pontoon, then one each in the long cylindrical tubes that went with them.

  “ Tst,” Billy muttered.

  My whole body sank back into itself, as if I were shrinking up. I felt lost, finished, dead and gone. “It’s over,” I whispered. “That’s it.”

  The canal’s brown water moved steadily toward the sea. There was nothing more to do but drag the stabbed pontoons home and face what trouble was waiting for us.

  “It ain’t the end of the world, brah,” Mose said, squatting down and looping an arm over my shoulder.

  I couldn’t talk.

  “We can fix um,” Rico said, his voice drifting off.

  “With what?” I said. “Bubble gum?”

  Silence.

  I’m sorry, Papa.

  Calvin smacked his fist into his other hand. “I going hunting for white meat. This we should have done before.”

  “No, Calvin,” I said. “We can’t. Even now, we can’t.”

  Calvin pursed his lips. “Only for you, I going hold back. Only for you.” He punched his palm again. “Man, I like poke out that punk’s eyeballs.”

  Papa, I’m sorry.

  Mose tapped my arm with the back of his hand.

  I turned to look back and saw Grampa Joji wobbling across the dirt field on his creaky old bike. Hanging from the handlebars were two pairs of bamboo goggles and, I could hardly believe, a gas can.

  “Unnh,” he grunted, riding up and stepping off the bike. He handed me the can. “For the machine.”

  I took the gas can and stared at it. Two gallons of gasoline for the compressor! “Where’d you get this, Ojii-chan?”

  “Ne’mind,” he said. He slipped the goggles off the handlebars and tossed them to Mose. We’d forgotten to bring them.

  “Thank you, Ojii-chan,” I said. “You’ve … you’ve done all you can … but it’s too late. It’s over. Look.”

  I showed him the stab wounds in the pontoons.

  Grampa sat down on his heels and ran his rugged fingers over them, inspecting them closely.

  Just when I had all the pieces—pontoons, air compressor, fuel, rope, and muscle—just when we had it all …