No-No Boy

by John Okada

  Slowing down a little, Kenji pointed through the windshield. “That road goes to Emi’s place. Go see her when you get a chance.”

  Ichiro didn’t answer, but he seemed to be studying the landmarks. “It won’t ever happen to me,” he said.

  “What won’t happen?”

  “The thing that happened to the Italian.”

  “You never can tell.”

  “She’s really crazy now. You saw her with those milk cans. Ever since eight o’clock tonight. Puts them on the shelf, knocks them down, and puts them back up again. What’s she trying to prove?”

  “Aren’t you worried?”

  “No. I’ve been more worried about you.”

  * * *

  —

  After that, they didn’t talk very much. Some eighty miles out of Seattle, they stopped for coffee and sandwiches at the roadside café and then Ichiro took over the wheel. There were few cars on the road and he drove swiftly, not bothering to slow down from sixty-five or seventy to twenty-five or thirty as specified on the signs leading into small towns where nothing was open or no one was up at about five o’clock in the morning. As the needle of the speedometer hovered just under seventy for almost an hour without any letdown except for forced caution at curves, monotony slowly set in and it began to feel as if all that separated them from Portland was an interminable stretch of asphalt and concrete cutting through the darkness. Occasionally, Ichiro would feel his foot easing down even harder on the accelerator pedal, but he restrained himself from tempting danger. Rounding a curve and shooting down a long hill, he saw a bunch of houses sitting darkly and quietly at the bottom in the filmy haze of earliest morning. The trees and foliage along the highway thinned out visibly as the car sped closer to the village and, as always, the signs began to appear. “Approaching Midvale, Lower Speed to 40. Speed Laws Strictly Enforced.” “You Are Now Entering Midvale. Population 367.” “20 MPH. Street Patrolled.” He had almost traversed the eight or ten blocks which comprised the village and was looking for the sign which would tell him that he was leaving Midvale and thank you for observing the law and come back again, when he became aware of the siren building up to an awful scream in the night.

  “Damn,” he uttered, “lousy bastards.”

  “Slow down,” said Kenji, suddenly coming alive. He moved to the middle of the seat. “When he pulls up ahead, switch places.”

  The plain, black Ford sedan with the blinking red light on its roof passed and cut in ahead of them. Just before they came to a halt, Ichiro rose and let Kenji slide in behind him.

  They saw the big, uniformed cop get out of the Ford and lumber toward them. Pointing a long flashlight into the car, he played it mercilessly on their faces. “Going pretty fast,” he said.

  They didn’t answer, knowing that whatever they said would be wrongly construed.

  “What were you doing?” the cop demanded.

  “Forty-five, maybe fifty,” said Kenji, blinking into the light.

  “Seventy,” said the cop. “You were doing seventy.” He walked around the car and got in beside Ichiro. “Drive back through town.”

  Kenji made a U-turn and drove slowly to the sign which said “20 MPH. Street Patrolled.”

  “You Japs can read, can’t you?”

  “Sure,” said Kenji.

  “Read what it says there,” he ordered as he shined his light on the sign.

  “Twenty M-P-H. Street Patrolled,” read Kenji in a flat, low voice.

  Then they drove back to where the Ford was parked.

  Even sitting down, the cop towered over them, his broad, heavy features set into an uncompromising grimace. “Well?” he said.

  “We’re guilty. Put us in jail,” answered Kenji. “We’re in no hurry.”

  The cop laughed. “Funny. You got a sense of humor.” He reared back and, when he settled down, his manner was obviously more friendly. “Tell you what. Next court won’t be until the day after tomorrow. Now, you don’t want to come all the way back here and get fined fifty bucks. That’s what it’s going to be, you know. You haven’t got a chance.”

  “No, I guess we haven’t.” Kenji was not going to accept the cordiality of the cop.

  “You might just happen to go over to my car and accidentally drop ten bucks on the seat. Simple?”

  “We haven’t got ten bucks between us.”

  “Five? I’m not hard to please.” He was grinning openly now.

  “Give me the ticket. I’ll show up for court.” There was no mistaking the enmity in his voice.

  “All right, smart guy, let’s have your license.” The cop pulled out his pad furiously and began scribbling out a ticket.

  Hurtling over the road again, with Kenji driving intently as if trying to flee as quickly as possible from the infuriating incident, Ichiro picked up the ticket and studied it under the illumination from the dash. “Son of a bitch,” he groaned, “he’s got us down for eighty, drunk driving, and attempting to bribe.”

  Before he could say more of what was seething through his mind, Kenji grabbed the piece of paper out of his hand and, crumpling it hatefully, flung it out of the window.

  Not until they got into Portland two hours later and were having breakfast did they feel the necessity to talk. Ichiro was watching an individual in overalls, with a lunch box under one arm, pounding determinedly on a pinball machine.

  “What will you do?” he asked Ichiro.

  Waiting until the waitress had set their plates down, Ichiro replied: “I’m not sure. I’ll be all right.”

  “When you get ready to go, take the car.”

  Sensing something in the way Kenji had spoken, Ichiro looked up uncomfortably. “I’ll wait for you. I might even look for a job down here.”

  “Fine. You ought to do something.”

  “When will you know about the leg?”

  “A day or two.”

  “What do you think?”

  “I’m worried. I get a feeling that this is it.”

  Shocked for a moment by the implication of his friend’s words, Ichiro fiddled uneasily with his fork. When he spoke it was with too much eagerness. “That’s no way to talk,” he said confidently, but feeling inside his own terror. “They’ll fix you up. I know they will. Hell, in a few days, we’ll go back to Seattle together.”

  “Just before I left last night, I told my pop about it. I told him it was different this time. I told him I was scared. I’ve never lied to him.”

  “But you can be wrong. You’ve got to be wrong. A fellow just doesn’t say this is it, I’m going to die. Things never turn out the way you think. You’re going to be okay.”

  “Sure, maybe I will. Maybe I am wrong,” he said, but, in the way he said it, he might just as well have said this is one time when I know that, no matter how much I wish I were wrong, I don’t think I am.

  The waitress came back with a silex pot and poured coffee into their cups. The overalled man at the pinball machine sighted his bus coming down the street and, shooting three balls in quick succession, dashed out of the café.

  Ichiro buttered a half-slice of toast and chewed off a piece almost reluctantly. When they had finished he picked up the bill for a dollar-eighty and noticed that Kenji left a half dollar on the table.

  Driving through town to the hospital, they ran into the morning traffic and it was nearly nine o’clock or almost an hour after leaving the café when they reached their destination. It was a big, new hospital with plenty of glass and neat, green lawns on all sides.

  They walked up the steps together and halted in front of the doorway. Kenji was smiling.

  Ichiro gazed at him wonderingly. “You seem to be all right.”

  “I was thinking about that cop. I bet he can’t wait to see me in court and get the book thrown at me. He’ll have to come a long ways to catch up with this Jap.” He stuck o
ut his hand stiffly.

  Grabbing it but not shaking, Ichiro managed with some distinctness: “I’ll be in to see you.”

  “Don’t wait too long.” Avoiding the revolving door, he stepped to the side and entered the hospital through a swinging glass door.

  7

  Alone and feeling very much his aloneness, Ichiro drove the Oldsmobile back into the city proper and found a room in a small, clean hotel where the rates seemed reasonable. Having picked up a newspaper in the lobby, he turned to the classified section and studied the job ads. Most of them were for skilled or technical help, and only after considerable searching was he finally able to encircle with pencil three jobs which he felt he might be able to investigate with some degree of hope. Putting the paper aside, he washed, shaved, and put on a clean shirt.

  I mustn’t hesitate, he told himself. If I don’t start right now and make myself look for work, I’ll lose my nerve. There’s no one to help me or give me courage now. All I know is that I’ve just got to find work.

  With the folded paper under his arm, he walked the six blocks to the hotel which was advertising for porters. It was a big hotel with a fancy marquee that extended out to the street and, as he walked past it, he noticed a doorman stationed at the entrance. He went down to the end of the block and approached the hotel once more. He paused to light a cigarette. Then, when he saw the doorman watching, he started toward him.

  “If it’s a job you want, son, take the employee’s entrance in the alley,” said the doorman before he could speak.

  He muttered his thanks a bit unsteadily and proceeded around and through the alley. There was a sign over the door for which he was looking, and he went through it and followed other signs down the corridor to the employment office. Inside, two men and a woman, obviously other job seekers, sat at a long table filling out forms. A white-haired man in a dark suit, sitting behind a desk, looked at him and pointed to the wall. On it was another sign, a large one, instructing applicants to fill out one of the forms stacked on the long table, with pen and ink. He sat opposite the woman and studied the questions on the form. With some relief, he noted that there was nothing on the front that he couldn’t adequately answer. As he turned it over, he saw the questions he couldn’t answer. How was he to account for the past two years of the five for which they wanted such information as name of employer and work experience? What was he to put down as an alternative for military duty? There was no lie big enough to cover the enormity of his mistake. He put the form back on the stack and left without satisfying the questioning look on the face of the white-haired, dark-suited employment manager, because there really was nothing to be said.

  Over a cup of coffee at a lunch counter, he examined the other two ads which he had selected for investigation. One was for a draftsman in a small, growing engineering office and the other for a helper in a bakery, the name of which he recognized as being among the larger ones. He figured that the bakery would give him a form to fill out just as the hotel had. As for the engineering office, if it wasn’t a form, there would be questions. No matter how much or how long he thought about it, it seemed hopeless. Still, he could not stop. He had to keep searching until he found work. Somewhere, there was someone who would hire him without probing too deeply into his past. Wherever that someone was, it was essential that he find him.

  Before further thought could reduce his determination to bitterness or despair or cowardice or utter discouragement, he boarded a trolley for fear that, if he took the time to walk back to the car, he would find a reason to postpone his efforts. The trolley, a trackless affair which drew its motive power from overhead wires, surged smoothly through the late morning traffic with its handful of riders.

  It was a short ride to the new, brick structure which had recently been constructed in an area, once residential, but now giving way to the demands of a growing city. Low, flat, modern clinics and store buildings intermingled with rambling, ugly apartment houses of wood and dirt-ridden brick.

  Striding up a path which curved between newly installed landscaping, Ichiro entered the offices of Carrick and Sons. A middle-aged woman was beating furiously upon a typewriter.

  He waited until she finished the page and flipped it out expertly. “Mam, I . . .”

  “Yes?” She looked up, meanwhile working a new sheet into the machine.

  “I’m looking for a job. The one in the paper. I came about the ad.”

  “Oh, of course.” Making final adjustments, she typed a couple of lines before she rose and peeked into an inner office. “Mr. Carrick seems to be out just now. He’ll be back shortly. Sit down.” That said, she resumed her typing.

  He spotted some magazines on a table and started to leaf through a not-too-old issue of Look. He saw the pictures and read the words and turned the pages methodically without digesting any of it.

  A muffled pounding resounded distantly through the building and he glanced at the woman, who met his gaze and smiled sheepishly. He returned to the flipping of the pages, wondering why she had smiled in that funny way, and she bent her head over the typewriter as soon as the pounding stopped and went back to work.

  When the pounding noise came again, she muttered impatiently under her breath and went out of the room.

  She was gone several minutes, long enough for him to get through the magazine. He was hunting through the pile of magazines in search of another when she stuck her head into the room and beckoned him to follow.

  There was a big office beyond the door with a pile of rolled-up blueprints on a corner table and big photographs of buildings on the walls. They went through that and farther into the back, past a small kitchen and a utility room and, finally, came to stop by a stairway leading down into the basement.

  “I told Mr. Carrick you were here. He’s down there,” the woman said, slightly exasperated.

  As he started down, the same pounding began, only it was clearer now and he thought it sounded like a hammer being struck against a metal object of some kind. The object turned out to be what looked like a small hand-tractor with a dozer blade in front, and a small man with unkempt gray hair was whacking away at it with a claw hammer.

  “Mr. Carrick?” It was no use. There was too much noise, so he waited until the man threw the hammer down in disgust and straightened up with a groan.

  “Cockeyed,” the man said, rubbing both his hands vigorously over the top of his buttocks. “I guess I’ll have to take her apart and do it over right.” He smiled graciously. “Doesn’t pay to be impatient, but seems I’ll never learn. That there blade isn’t quite level and I thought I could force her. I learned. Yup, I sure did. How does she look to you?”

  “What is it?”

  Mr. Carrick laughed, naturally and loudly, his small, round stomach shaking convulsively. “I’m Carrick and you’re . . . ?” He extended a soiled hand.

  “Yamada, sir. Ichiro Yamada.”

  “Know anything about snowplows?”

  “No, sir.”

  “Name’s Yamada, is it?” The man pronounced the name easily.

  “Yes, sir.”

  “Nihongo wakarimasu ka?”

  “Not too well.”

  “How did I say that?”

  “You’re pretty good. You speak Japanese?”

  “No. I used to have some very good Japanese friends. They taught me a little. You know the Tanakas?”

  He shook his head. “Probably not the ones you mean. It’s a pretty common name.”

  “They used to rent from me. Fine people. Best tenants I ever had. Shame about the evacuation. You too, I suppose.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “The Tanakas didn’t come back. Settled out East someplace. Well, can’t say as I blame them. What brought you back?”

  “Folks came back.”

  “Of course. Portland’s changed, hasn’t it?”

  “I’m from Seattle.”r />
  “That so?” He leaned over the snowplow and tinkered with the bolts holding the blade in place.

  Thinking that spring was not far away, Ichiro ventured to ask: “Does it snow that much down here?”

  “How much is that?”

  “Enough for a plow.”

  “No, it doesn’t. I just felt I wanted to make one.”

  “Oh.”

  Adjusting a crescent wrench to fit the bolts, he grunted them loose and kicked the blade off. “Let’s have some coffee.” He rinsed off his hands at the sink and led the way up the stairs to the kitchen, where he added water to an old pot of coffee and turned on the burner.

  “The Tanakas were fine people,” he said, sitting down on a stool. In spite of his protruding belly and gray hair, he seemed a strong and energetic man. As he talked, his face had a way of displaying great feeling and exuberance. “The government made a big mistake when they shoved you people around. There was no reason for it. A big black mark in the annals of American history. I mean that. I’ve always been a big-mouthed, loud-talking, back-slapping American but, when that happened, I lost a little of my wind. I don’t feel as proud as I used to, but, if the mistake has been made, maybe we’ve learned something from it. Let’s hope so. We can still be the best damn nation in the world. I’m sorry things worked out the way they did.”

  It was an apology, a sincere apology from a man who had money and position and respectability, made to the Japanese who had been wronged. But it was not an apology to Ichiro and he did not know how to answer this man who might have been a friend and employer, a man who made a snowplow in a place where one had no need for a snowplow because he simply wanted one.