No-No Boy

by John Okada

  “Move. Come on,” urged Ichiro.

  “Sure.” He shot the car down the street and sped away from the church and the people and the funeral.

  I shouldn’t do this, he thought to himself. I ought to go and see the thing through properly. I owe her that much. In a way, she did a lot for me, a lot more than most mothers. Looking at it from her side, it was a helluva lot. She meant well. She was all wrong, all crazy and unfeeling and stubborn, but she thought she was doing right. It wasn’t her fault that things didn’t go right. It wasn’t she who wished the war on all of us and got the Japs thrown off the Coast and stirred up such a mixed-up kind of hatred that no one could think or feel straight. No, in her way, she was right and I’m still wrong, but I mustn’t admit it. I want to stay here and find a place where I can work and eat and laugh a little sometimes. Is that asking for too much? I am right. She made me do wrong, but I am right in knowing what must be done. I will find work somehow, somewhere, and I will eventually learn to laugh a little because I shall want to laugh for feeling good all over. Time, how slowly it passes. I will hope and wait and hope and wait and there will come a time. It must be so. She is dead. Time has swept her away and time will bury my mistake. She is dead and I am not sorry. I feel a little bit freer, a bit more hopeful.

  The car swerved hard, squealing around the corner and jarring him away from his thoughts.

  “Goddamn,” swore Freddie, “didn’t see that red light. He gripped the steering wheel with both hands and drove recklessly with an almost frightened determination.

  “What’s the hurry?” he said alarmed.

  “You askin’?” He kept his eyes straight ahead.

  “Yes.”

  “For crissake. He’s askin’.”

  “Well?”

  “You told me. ‘Take off,’ you said.”

  “You can slow down now. I didn’t mean it that way.”

  Braking the car hard and suddenly, he threw it to a stop against the curb. “Make up your mind, for crissake. You can do better, you drive.” He fumbled for a cigarette underneath his coat and, poking it into his mouth, jabbed at the lighter. He waited nervously, pulling out the lighter too soon and sucking uselessly on the cigarette. He tried to get it back into the hole but his hand was trembling too much.

  Ichiro took the lighter from Freddie and, after replacing it, struck a match for him. “What’s eating you?” He remembered how quickly the wrench had been in Freddie’s hand.

  “Nothin’. You got me nervous, that’s all.”

  “Why?”

  “Why? ‘Take off,’ you said. I took off didn’t I?”

  “I thought you were going to slug me with that wrench.”

  “It was a mistake.”

  “What’s got you so scared?”

  “Nothin’, dammit. I ain’t scared of nothin’.” As he gestured with his hand, he knocked the head off the cigarette. For a minute, he pawed furiously at the glowing embers on his coat. Then he was sucking busily on the stub, which wouldn’t rekindle. He crushed it between his fingers and threw it against the dash. “Jeezuz,” he moaned, “don’t ever do it again.”

  “What’s that?”

  “Scare me like that. Goddammit, don’t ever do it again or I’ll shove a knife right between your balls.” Heaving a long, drawn-out sigh, he slumped down and let his head rest on the steering wheel.

  “Thanks for coming to the funeral,” Ichiro said.

  “Sure.”

  “Want me to drive you home?”

  “No. I’m okay.”

  “Who did you think I was?”

  “One of them guys.”

  “What guys?”

  “I’m sorry about your mom. It’s tough.”

  “Better this way.”

  “Sure. Still tough anyway.”

  Lighting a cigarette, he tapped Freddie on the shoulder and put it in his mouth. Freddie sat up, no longer trembling.

  “Who’s after you?”

  “Some guys.”

  “What for?”

  “I cut him.”

  “Who?”

  “Eto.”

  “Oh.”

  Freddie started to laugh, then said defiantly: “He asked for it. He come up to the bar and started diggin’ at me. I told him to beat it. He wouldn’t go. He kept needlin’ me. The guys were laughin’.”

  “Everybody?” He had to know.

  “No. Some of them were tellin’ him to lay off. He wouldn’t. Then he said shit like me wasn’t good ’nough to spit on. I told him to try it. He did, but he was drunk. The stuff just dribbled down his chin. God, I hate the bastard.”

  “So you used your knife.”

  “I said I would. I was mad.”

  “Bad?”

  Freddie laughed. “In the ass. When I went for him, some guy behind him pulled him off the stool. It swung him around and I got him in the ass.”

  “And then?”

  “The Chinaman stopped it, the one who runs the place. He wasn’t fixin’ to lose his license because a couple of hotheads wanted to mix it up. He made us shake hands. What could I do?”

  “Then it’s all right.”

  “Sure, fine. Just fine. On the way home, they tried to run me down.”

  “Coincidence, that’s all.”

  “I was on the sidewalk, way inside against the buildings, and the car didn’t miss me by more than an inch.”

  “Oh.”

  Starting the car, Freddie eased it out into the street. He was smiling, fully recovered from his recent flight.

  “Bastards,” he muttered. “Think they own the country. They better keep outa my way.”

  They drove for a little while in silence until they came to a drive-in restaurant. Freddie ordered hamburgers and coffee for the two and tried to make time with the carhop.

  “What have you been doing?” asked Ichiro.

  Freddie frowned. “You’re in a rut. You asked last time.”

  “I guess I did.”

  “Well, I’m still havin’ fun, boy. Livin’ it up.”

  “Still have your poker sessions?”

  “Interested?”

  “A little. A guy’s gotta do something.”

  “That’s tough,” said Freddie, not unhappily. “I knew you’d come around, but you’ll have to fix it up yourself. I don’t play no more.”

  “Games getting too rough?”

  “It’s never too rough for me. I like ’em rough. I can’t stand them guys.” He spit through the window. “They’re all chicken.”

  The carhop came back and hooked the tray to the door. Freddie ogled her shamelessly. The bill came to eighty cents. He tossed a dollar twenty-five on the tray and told her to keep it. She smiled.

  “I’ll make it yet,” he said, handing over a hamburger and coffee to Ichiro.

  “Nothing like trying.”

  “Boy,” said Freddie, “she’d be a nice change from the fat pig.”

  “2-A?”

  “Yeah,” he replied defiantly, “you got one good memory. You should be a professor.”

  “Your luck’s holding.”

  “Itchy-boy, you don’t know the half of it. I got a silver spoon up my ass. Her old man likes me. Can you beat that?” He indicated the car with a sweep of his arm, throwing bits of relish on the dash. “This is his. ‘Use it,’ he says, ‘any time you want.’”

  “Doesn’t he know?”

  Freddie bit his lip, suppressing a chuckle. “Sure, I’m doin’ him a favor. ‘I go bowling on Wednesday nights,’ he says to me. ‘Saturdays I get together with the boys for a little game. Don’t get home till real late. I like movies too,’ he says. ‘I go a lot to movies. I let you know when I go to the movie,’ he tells me. ‘You can run me down and use the car. No use lettin’ the car sit outside while I’m in a movie.’
He don’t say he knows, but he knows all right. She was killin’ him before I moved in. He’s a nice guy. Timid, you know. Don’t say much, but he’s one good Joe.”

  “Screwy.”

  “Huh?”

  “Sounds to me like he’s screwy.”

  “He’s not screwy enough. That’s his trouble.” He laughed loudly, enjoying his own joke immensely.

  The conversation made him feel a little sick. He stuffed the rest of his hamburger into the coffee cup and reached past Freddie to set it on the tray.

  “Don’t like it? I think it’s good.”

  “It is. I’m just not very hungry.”

  “Yeah,” said Freddie with an obvious effort at sympathy, “it’s tough. Guys like you take it hard.”

  “Wouldn’t you?”

  “Nah.”

  “How’s that?”

  The question seemed to embarrass him for a moment. He twisted uneasily in the seat. “Ah, they’re old country,” he said. “They shoulda never come here. They had no right to come here and born me and try to make me old country too. All that crap about Japan. Japan this, Japan that, hell, after what they done to me, you’d think they’d learn, but, no, the stuff they dish out is still the same. Like an albatross ’round a guy’s neck. That’s what they are. They sure screwed me up right.”

  “Why don’t you move out?”

  “What? I told you I’m livin’. No rent to pay, plenty to eat, money to spend, a car, a woman—I ain’t givin’ all that up. Besides, their line of crap don’t faze me no more. Let ’em talk. They got nothin’ else to live for.”

  “You make a lot of sense, Freddie. I never quite thought of it that way.”

  “That way about what?”

  “About their having nothing to live for except making enough so that they could go back to the old country and be among their own kind and know a little peace and happiness.”

  “No kiddin’, I said all that?”

  “I thought so.”

  “Maybe I’ll go to school,” said Freddie. “I’m not so dumb.”

  He looked at Freddie grinning broadly, and felt sadly cheated. On the surface, there was wit and understanding and even a rough sort of charm, but one made a mistake in probing underneath. He understood now why Freddie was so constantly concerned with living, as he called it. It was like being on a pair of water skis, skimming over the top as long as one traveled at a reasonable speed, but, the moment he slowed down or stopped, it was to sink into the nothingness that offered no real support.

  “I’d like to go home, if you don’t mind,” he said to Freddie.

  “Sure, sure. Don’t blame you. It’s tough.” He leaned on the horn, ignoring the prominently displayed signs requesting patrons to blink lights for service. A different carhop scurried over and, eyeing him hatefully, quickly removed the tray. “Any time, honey,” he hollered at her back.

  Backing out of the slot, he gunned the car into the street and jarred it over the strip of raised concrete in the middle to avoid having to drive a block to make a U-turn. He drove like a man possessed with a desperate urgency to move fast, covering ground in a frantic pursuit which was being conducted for the sole purpose of running from reality. To stop and sit still would mean to think. Ichiro looked at Freddie and felt these things and was glad for himself that he was bearing the problem inside of him and making an effort to seek even a partial release from it. He could only imagine what Freddie’s nights must be like.

  “Take it easy,” he said.

  Freddie neither turned his head nor slowed down. “Sure,” he said.

  “Have you thought any about working?”

  “Nah. Ain’t got time.”

  “You will eventually.”

  “I’ll think about it then.”

  He waited for a moment before he asked the next question: “Any of the fellows working?”

  “You want a job?”

  “I don’t have much choice.”

  “Go down that place by the lake. You know the one I mean. Christian Reclamation Center or something. They know about us guys. I went down there.”

  “You?”

  “Yeah, just to see. Me and Gary. They put him on right away. Real nice them church guys.”

  “What about you?”

  “I told ’em I’d think about it.” He took one hand off the wheel to light a cigarette.

  “Gary the only one?”

  “Nah, there’s a couple others I don’t know.”

  “They working anyplace else?”

  “Mike’s old man’s got a hotel and Pat’s driving truck for some cleaning outfit. Some of the guys are going to school. Just like old times, I tell you.”

  “Doesn’t sound too bad.”

  “Sure. Same crummy jobs, same rotten pay. Before the war the Japs got what the white guys didn’t want. Now, if we want work, we take the jobs the good Japs don’t want. Gary had a good deal in a foundry. He lasted ten days.”

  “What happened?”

  “He’ll tell you.”

  “I don’t expect to see him.”

  “You wanta work?”

  “Sure.”

  “I said go to that Christian Center place. Tell ’em I sent you. You’ll see Gary. He likes it there. It’s nothin’ but a big junkyard and the place is fulla drunks and dead beats and homos, but they don’t bother you. They got problems of their own. Gary’ll tell you. He likes it.”

  He didn’t mean to sound disappointed, but he couldn’t help himself. “Sure” was all he could manage, in a tone full of uncertainty.

  Freddie seemed aggravated as he said: “You asked me, didn’t you? You’re not doin’ me a favor. All I said was you wanna job, you got one there.”

  “I guess I’ll give it a try tomorrow,” he replied, and remained silent until Freddie let him off at the store.

  * * *

  —

  There were no lights on and he felt his way to the kitchen, swinging his arm around until he found the pull chain above the table. His mother was dead and his father was probably now at the Japanese restaurant hosting the post-funeral supper and making the most of being the center of attention.

  Enjoy yourself, Pa, he said to himself. If this is what makes you happy, I guess you’ve had it coming for a long time. And, then, you might be lonesome for her. What with all the people coming and going ever since she died, you haven’t had much chance to think about things. Maybe, the grief is waiting. Or is it that the grief has finally come to an end for you? It has for me in a way, her being gone. We’ll have to talk about it.

  He set a pot of tea to boil and, while looking for a spoon, came across the old deck of cards with which Taro had been playing solitaire on the afternoon that he had gone from house and family. It was an old deck, limp and greasy, and he had to peel the cards off carefully one at a time. It was better than nothing. For the first time it occurred to him that there wasn’t even a radio in the house. He recalled that he used to listen to the radio a lot when he had been going to school. His mother hadn’t liked it. Quite frequently she would slip into his room where he was studying and listening to Glenn Miller or Tommy Dorsey and firmly switch off the set.

  Then, when the fellows started to learn how to dance, he got a bit of the fever himself and started to buy an occasional record or two until he had a fair-sized stack. The phonograph player he would borrow and keep a few days or a week at a time. She hadn’t approved at all and that was what had led to the big trouble. At least, it was big then when he couldn’t afford the price of a player. He had spent a couple of evenings at home listening to records and she’d said a few things about wasting time on foolish pursuits. He hadn’t paid any attention, of course. He enjoyed listening to the records and saw no harm in them. It was on a Saturday night that he had gone to a dance at the church gym. When he got home, the phonograph was methodically an
d thoroughly smashed to bits. Nothing had survived. She had even gone to the trouble of snipping each of the innumerable lengths of wire into short pieces no more than an inch or two long. She paid for the player and had the satisfaction of seeing that he borrowed no others.

  He justly felt after all these years that she had been very unfair. A radio, a record player, even a stack of comic books were small enough concessions. Had she made those concessions, she might have kept her sons a part of the family. Everything, it seemed, stemmed back to her. All she had wanted from America for her sons was an education, learning and knowledge which would make them better men in Japan. To believe that she expected that such a thing was possible for her sons without their acquiring other American tastes and habits and feelings was hardly possible and, yet, that is how it was.

  Tragic, he said silently, so tragic to have struggled so against such insurmountable obstacles. For her, of course, the obstacles hadn’t existed and it was like denying the existence of America. If only she had tried to understand, had attempted to reason out the futility of her ways. Surely she must have had an inkling during the years. He couldn’t be sure and, much as he wished to know where and how the whole business had gone wrong, he could not, for he had never been close enough to his own mother.

  Thinking that he heard a knocking on the front door, he remained still and listened. It came again, faintly, hesitantly. He went through the store, wondering who it could be.

  She had stepped back away from the door and with the street lamp behind her, shadowing her face, he didn’t recognize her immediately. When he finally realized that it was Emi, he could only awkwardly motion her inside.

  “I heard only tonight,” she said. “Mr. Maeno read about it in the paper. I am very sorry.”

  “Sure,” he said.

  They stood in the dark and tried to see each other’s faces.

  “You know about Ken?”

  “Yes. I’m sorry I didn’t know about your mother in time to get to the funeral.”

  “It’s just as well. You didn’t know her.” The bitterness wouldn’t be kept out of his voice.

  She turned and he caught her face in the half-light coming from the street through the window. What he saw made him intensely sad. It wasn’t sorrow or despair or anxiety, but the lack of these or any other readable emotions. Her lovely face was empty, even immobile.