Reiko was still looking pale by then, but a little better. They were sitting some distance from the stall, and Hiroko had found large burlap feed sacks, which she and Sally were filling with straw to use as mattresses once the stalls were cleared out. But the best Ken and Tak had been able to find were two old coffee cans, and they were emptying the manure in agonizingly small quantities when Peter arrived, looking hot and disheveled. But he looked like a vision when Hiroko saw him. She ran to him and put her arms around him, unable to believe that he had really found them.
“I've been at the administration building since noon,” he said wearily. “I practically had to sell my soul to get in here. They can't seem to understand why anyone would want to visit. They did everything they could to stop me.” He kissed her gently, relieved beyond words to have found them at all. He had looked systematically along practically every row of stalls, and on every food line, and as he glanced over her shoulder he saw what Tak and Ken were doing. “That looks like fun,” he said wryly, and Tak looked up at him and grinned. He hadn't totally lost his sense of humor, and seeing Peter had done wonders for all of them. They didn't feel so totally deserted.
“Don't knock it till you try it.”
“That's a deal,” Peter said, dropping his jacket on a pile of straw that Hiroko was using to fill the feed sacks. He rolled up his sleeves, and sacrificing his favorite shoes, marched into the manure to work alongside Ken and Tak. They had found another coffee can, and within a few minutes he was as filthy as they were. It was an enormous job, and the stall looked as though it hadn't been cleaned in years, and it probably hadn't.
“No wonder the horse left,” Peter grumbled as he dumped another can of manure out. It was like emptying the ocean with a teacup. “This place is a mess.”
“Nice, huh?” Tak said, and Ken said nothing. He hated being here, hated what it meant, and what they had done to him. He would have given anything at that moment to get even with the people who had inflicted this horror on them.
“I wish I could say I'd seen worse,” Peter quipped, as they worked side by side, getting filthier by the minute and getting nowhere. “But actually I don't think I have.”
“Wait till you get to Europe with Uncle Sam. They'll probably have you doing jobs just like this.”
“At least I'm getting in a little early practice.”
Long after it had gotten dark, Reiko and the girls were lying on the straw mattresses Hiroko had made, and the three men were still working. Eventually Hiroko went to get them steaming cups of tea, and brought it to them, and offered to help the men, but they all declined. It was just too rotten a job for a woman.
“Do you have to leave at any particular time?” Tak asked Peter as they took a break, but he only shrugged as he smiled over at Hiroko.
“They didn't say anything. I'll just stay till they throw me out, I guess.” And a few minutes later, they went back to work. They finished cleaning the stall at two o'clock in the morning. Ken hosed it down, and Peter helped them scrub the walls. The manure was gone, and they had gotten down to some fairly clean-looking mud, which they also hosed down with water.
“You may need to let it dry for a couple of days,” Peter said thoughtfully. “Just hope it doesn't rain again.” But once it was dry, they would put straw down on it, and then put their mattresses on it. All they could do for now was sit outside on the straw bags Hiroko had made them. Ken sat down on one of them, exhausted, and Takeo joined him. And Peter let himself down slowly on the one where Hiroko was sitting. She had waited up for them, and she had wanted to be with Peter. Reiko and the two girls were already sleeping. “This doesn't look like it's going to be much of a place,” he said to her quietly. His whole body was aching. And the others had worked just as hard as he had.
“It looks awful,” Hiroko confirmed to him. She couldn't imagine staying there, or being there at all, let alone spending the day they just had, cleaning two feet of manure out of a horse stall. “Thank you for everything you did. Poor Uncle Tak,” she whispered. He looked exhausted.
“I'm just sorry you all have to be here.”
“Shikata ga nai,” she said softly to him, as he raised an eyebrow for the translation. “It means that this cannot be helped. It must simply be.” But he nodded, wishing that it weren't so.
“I hate to leave you here, little one.” He put an arm around her and held her close to him. He worried about causing trouble for her, but how much more trouble could there be now? They were already here, and no one was watching them closely. There were families milling about, and old people, and in the day-time, children. He stood out because he was not Japanese, but no one seemed particularly interested in his presence. “I wish I could take you away with me.” He smiled, kissing her carefully, not wanting to touch her with his filthy hands.
“So do I wish you could take me away,” she said sadly. She realized now what they had, and might have some day, and what they had lost that day. She had lost her freedom, and suddenly every moment with him was even more precious, and she wondered if she had been foolish when she had told him she hadn't wanted to get married without her father's approval. Perhaps she should have gone to another state with him, as he had asked, and gotten married. It was too late now, but it was heavy on her mind as he went to wash with Ken and Tak, and use the open latrines that looked so awful. She couldn't see them from where she sat, but she knew they were there. She and Aunt Rei and the girls had tackled them earlier, taking turns, holding up blankets.
Peter came back with the others a few minutes later, and told her she should try to get some sleep. He said he'd come back the next day, in the afternoon. He had to teach only in the morning. But he couldn't seem to tear himself away, and she didn't want him to. It was another half hour before he finally left her, and she watched him walk away, feeling as though her last friend on earth had disappeared, as her cousin watched her.
“Get some sleep,” Takeo said, handing her a blanket, wishing she had never come to America, for her sake. She was going to get hurt here. There was simply no other way. It was too late for them, and they were in love in a hostile world, which would do nothing to help them, only hurt them.
Hiroko lay curled up on her sack of straw, under a coat and a thin blanket they had brought, thinking of Peter, wondering where life would take them.
Chapter 11
THEY WOKE up with the sun the next day, as the bugles blared, and went to stand on line at one of the camp's eleven mess halls for breakfast. They had to use color-coded ID cards and eat in shifts, and the food looked anything but appealing. There was some kind of thin gruel, and fruit, and powdered eggs, and some stale rolls that tasted as though they'd been around since New Year's. The food was edible, but barely, and all they ate was cereal. And afterward, they all went for a walk, and watched people trying to settle in and do what they had done the night before, shovel manure, sit on their suitcases, fill sacks with straw, and walk around and try to find familiar faces. They found some. Some teachers Tak had known, and a friend of Reiko's. Ken discovered with relief that Peggy's stall was just around the corner. It meant a lot to all of them to see people they knew. And Sally discovered two friends from her old school, and was thrilled to see them. Little Tami talked to anyone, and made friends among the children.
There was an atmosphere of determination evident everywhere, of trying to make the best of things, and a woman in the next row of stalls was planting seeds and determined to start a garden.
“I hope we won't be here that long,” Reiko said nervously. They had still heard nothing about when they were going to move on, but Reiko couldn't imagine planting anything, or trying to put down roots here. This was just a matter of survival and existence.
She went to check out the infirmary that afternoon, and it was pretty grim. There were already a number of people there, mostly with stomachaches and dysentery. Two of the nurses told her to be careful of the food, a lot of things were spoiled, and to watch out for the water. And she passed it
on to the others when she got back to them. She had promised to go back to the infirmary in the morning and help them.
The mud in the stall was almost dry by that afternoon, and Ken and Hiroko spread straw on it, and then moved their mattresses and valises in. It was clean now, they knew, and yet everything still smelled of horses.
And just as they finished putting their few belongings into the stall, Peter came, and Hiroko's face lit up like a sunburst. He told Tak whatever news there was from the university, and he had brought some chocolate bars and some cookies and fruit for them. He hadn't been sure how much the guards would let him bring in, and he was anxious not to annoy them. Tami reached for the chocolates immediately, and Sally gratefully took an apple and thanked him.
He sat with them for quite a while, and Hiroko stayed at the stall with him, while the others went to line up for dinner. She insisted she wasn't hungry, and she made do with one of his chocolate bars, and some cookies. And as he sat there, chatting with her, it was still incredible to him that entire families were living cramped into one horse stall each. That was all they had been allotted. And all over the state Japanese families were being taken to assembly centers like this, while they waited for relocation.
‘Was everything all right today?” he asked with a look of concern, once the others left. Takeo was looking very down, but Reiko was a little livelier than she'd been the day before, and the children seemed to have adjusted. Tami wasn't crying as much, Sally was happy to have found a friend, and Ken didn't look quite as angry.
“We're all right,” she said, looking peaceful, and he reached out and took her hand, and held it. It was strange for him without them. He had driven past the house, and was shocked to see children he didn't know and a different dog there. They were already moving in, and to Peter they looked like interlopers as he drove away quickly.
“I don't know what to do without you,” he said, looking into the eyes where he found so much comfort. “I just keep coming here. I wish they'd let me stay with you. It's the only place I want to be now.” She was relieved to hear it, but it wasn't fair to him in some ways. This was their problem, he didn't belong here. And it would only prolong the agony for them. He was leaving in seven weeks. But she didn't have the courage to tell him to stop coming. She just couldn't.
“I'm glad,” she said honestly. She needed him. And she had waited all day anxiously for the moment he would come. She lived now for each of these precious moments. She told him about what she'd seen that day as they walked around, and even about the woman who was planting the tiny garden.
“It's not easy to defeat these people, thank God,” he said, watching them around him. They were cleaning stalls, organizing things, hosing walls down and whitewashing them. There were groups of men playing cards, or go, the Japanese checkers, and a few old women chatting and knitting, and everywhere around them there were children. Despite the circumstances they were in, there was an atmosphere of hope and camaraderie that even he had noticed in the short time he'd been there. There were very few complaints, and more often than not, there was a fair amount of good humor. There was laughter here and there, and only the older men looked grief stricken sometimes to have been unable to keep their families from this, while the young men looked really angry, like Kenji. But for the most part, people were just trying to get on with living.
Hiroko smiled as she looked up at Peter. He was her life now. He and her cousins had become even more important, since losing touch with her family. She missed hearing from them, and knowing that they were all right. All she knew of them was that Yuji was in the air force, but she knew nothing more than that. And she knew she would have to live with the silence until the war ended. She thought about them at times, and prayed for them, but there was no possibility at all of further contact. She wasn't even quite sure how much contact she would be able to have with Peter when he left. He said he would write, but she just hoped they would let her have his letters, and vice versa.
“You're an amazing woman,” he said quietly, watching her eat an apple, with wide, honest eyes filled with kindness. He loved watching her, always busy, always taking care of things, but saying very little. And he loved watching her with Tami.
“I'm only a foolish girl,” she said, smiling at him, well aware of her second-rate status among her own people, although her father had taught her differently. He had told her that she could do anything she wanted, and one day she might do something important.
“You're a lot more than a foolish girl,” Peter said. He leaned over and kissed her, as an old woman walked by with a little boy and turned the other way, disapproving. He was, after all, Caucasian.
“Do you want to go for a walk?” he asked, and she nodded, and put her apple core in the coffee can they were using for garbage. They had found three of them when they arrived and kept them.
There were open fields out back where the horses had boon exercised, and it was ringed with barbed wire and fences, and there was a guardpost at the gate, but for once there was no one to bother them, as they walked in the tall grass and talked about the past and the future. The present seemed to be hanging in space in front of them, going nowhere, but they could see far ahead of them, to the place where they wanted to be one day, together. And as they walked, her mind drifted back to the places where she had once been, in Kyoto with her family, and in the mountains visiting her father's parents. It was a beautiful place, and it gave her comfort now to think about it as she held Peter's hand and walked in silence. And then as they arrived at the farthest reaches of the camp, they came to a stop together. And without saying anything, he put his arms around her and held her. One day there would be no boundaries, no limits for them, no place where they would have to stop. He longed to share that day with her, and in the meantime, they had each other.
“I wish I could just lift you out of here, Hiroko,” he said sadly. “I never realized how lucky we were before. I wish …” He looked down at her, and she knew what he wished. She wished it too. “I wish I had taken you away and married you, when I could have.”
“I would still be here,” she said sensibly, “and they still wouldn't let you stay here. We would have had to go far, far away to have escaped all this.” He knew she was right. He would have had to give up his job at the university and go far away with her. And none of them had really understood then how high the price would be for not leaving. They had all waited for the problems to go away, for people's attitudes to improve. But nothing was going to get better for a long time now. And they had missed their chance to flee. All that was left to them was to get through it.
“This will all be behind us one day, Hiroko. We'll be married,” he smiled at her, feeling very young and a little foolish, “and we'll have lots of children.”
“How many?” She loved playing the game with him, although it still embarrassed her a little bit. It was odd speaking about their children.
“Six or seven.” He grinned, and then pulled her close to him and kissed her. He kissed her hard this time, and he wanted her desperately. They stood in the shadow of a small shed as the sun went down, and he felt the softness of her body against his as he leaned toward her. He wanted to feel her next to him, to touch every part of her, he wanted all of her as he kissed her lips and her eyes and her throat, and his hand drifted to her breasts and she didn't stop him, until finally she pulled away ever so gently. She could hardly breathe with the excitement of him, and he was even more excited than she was.
“Oh, God, Hiroko, I want you so much,” he said, aching for her, and for everything that had happened to them. He wanted to make it all better for her and he couldn't. They began walking slowly again, and before they reached the crowds, he stopped and held her once more, out in the open fields. He just stood there with her, and held her. He could feel her breathing ever so gently, and her narrow hips pressed against him. They were moving ever closer to the flame these days, but there was something so compelling about what was happening to them, that neither of
them tried to stop it.
“We should go back,” she said finally, feeling parts of him that she had never allowed herself to be aware of before, but the eyes that looked up at him were filled with love and trust and not regret or fear. She wanted him as badly as he wanted her. They had just missed the only chance they'd had to seize the moment.
They walked back to the others hand in hand without saying a word, and when they got back, both Reiko and Tak noticed something different about her. She seemed more grown-up these days, and very womanly and sure when she stood next to Peter. It was as though she already belonged to him, and wasn't afraid who knew it. She had committed something to him, silently, without saying a word, and the narrow silver ring with the two hearts he had given her over Christmas was always on her finger.
“How was dinner?” she asked, and they made an assortment of disparaging faces, but Tami seemed pleased. They had actually had dessert, it was green Jell-O, and Tami said she liked it. And at the mention of dessert, Hiroko laughed. She remembered the first time she had ever seen Jell-O at their house, and she had no idea what it was or how to attack it. She had pushed it around her plate while it jiggled ominously at her, and she had watched Tami to see how she ate it, with lots of whipped cream, which looked even worse to Hiroko.
They all laughed when she talked about it, and then Tak told some funny stories about when he'd first come to the States, and the experiences he'd had. And Reiko talked about how strange it had been for her in Japan when her parents sent her there to school. And as they talked, there was singing from a stall down the road. There were gentle sounds everywhere, and the sun set over them all like a blessing.
Peter sat with them until late that night, on wooden boxes outside the stall. Reiko and the girls went to bed, and Ken went to see his girlfriend for a while. And Tak and Peter talked. Hiroko came to check on them occasionally, to see if they needed anything. She brought Tak his cigarettes, and offered the last food from Anne's basket to both of them. Then she left them alone to talk, and went back to Reiko.
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