No-No Boy

by John Okada

  He heard the bus but wasn’t quick enough to leap back as the wheels sloshed against the curb. The blackened spray clung to the front of his raincoat and he made it worse by rubbing his hand over it.

  Getting on, he deposited his token and settled down in a seat next to a dozing man.

  It wasn’t his fault. Neither was it the fault of his mother, who was now dead because of a conviction which was only a dream that blew up in her face. It wasn’t the fault of the half a billion Chinamen who hated the ninety million Japanese and got only hatred in return. One only had to look about to see all the hatred in the world. Where was all the goodness that people talked about, the goodness of which there was never quite enough to offset the hatred? He recalled how he’d gone to a church in Idaho with Tommy, who was always reading a Bible. Tommy would say grace before he ate a lousy peanut-butter sandwich out in the choking dust of the sugar-beet field when all the other guys were cussing and bitching and stuffing the bread into their dirty faces. They gave Tommy a bad time. Freddie had been with them too. He was the one who claimed he heard Tommy thanking God for the Sears Roebuck catalogue one day while squatting over the hole in the outhouse. Tommy didn’t seem to mind. He just smiled as if he understood it all. That’s why he’d gone along with Tommy that day instead of playing poker in the bunkhouse. If Tommy had the answers, he wanted to know about them. They had slipped into the church, where Tommy had already gone for several Sundays. The service being in progress, they sat in the back. He sensed immediately that they weren’t welcome. Tommy seemed not to notice at all the furtive glances and the unguarded whispering. He had been glad to get out of there and, as they walked to the bus depot, the car had pulled alongside of them.

  The man leaned out of the car: “One Jap is one too many. I told them: Two Japs today, maybe ten next Sunday. Don’t come back.”

  He’d gone back to his poker games and Tommy didn’t go to town until they moved on to another farm. After several weeks Tommy, short and squat and studious looking, approached him in the showers. “There’s an excellent church in this town,” he said, “a true, Christian church where they are glad to have us. Why don’t you come with me this Sunday?”

  “Shove it,” he had said and immediately wished he hadn’t when he saw the hurt look in Tommy’s eyes.

  “Just this once, please,” he pleaded, taking a step forward. “I’m quite sorry about the other time. I’d like to make it up to you for having given you such a poor start.”

  In the end he had agreed and it seemed that Tommy was right. It was a small church, but filled to capacity and, after the service, the congregation had displayed their friendliness to the extent of keeping them standing outside for an hour asking questions and conversing endlessly, as though they were old friends. By the third Sunday they were having dinner with Mr. Roberts, who had six children but still insisted on their coming. Ichiro was delighted and Tommy was beaming.

  It was the sixth or seventh Sunday, he couldn’t remember exactly. What with the heat and the crowded benches, he started to squirm out of his jacket, twisting as he did so, and he saw the white-haired Negro standing in the back. He wondered then why the usher hadn’t gotten out one of the folding chairs which were often used when bench space ran out. He was comforted when, a few minutes later, he heard chairs being rattled in the back. He took another look after the minister had finished his sermon and the Negro was still standing. The chairs had been for the Kennedys, who had arrived late, and they were sitting only a few feet away from the Negro.

  There was no whispering, no craning as there had been in the other church. Yet, everyone seemed to know of the colored man’s presence. The service concluded, the minister stood silent and motionless on the stage. The congregation remained seated instead of disintegrating impatiently as usual into a dozen separate chattering groups. Very distinctly through the hollowness of the small church echoed the slow, lonely footsteps of the intruder across the back, down the stairs, and out into the hot sun. As suddenly, the people came to life like actors on a screen who had momentarily been rendered inanimate by some mechanical failure of the projector.

  He had gone straight back to the bunkhouse by himself. He was mad and it hadn’t helped any when he couldn’t get into the poker game right away. It was almost an hour before someone dropped out and, when they quit late that night, he had dropped his earnings plus a week and a half’s wages still to be earned.

  A few days later Tommy, reluctant to lose one who had appeared such a promising recruit, tried to justify the incident. “The ways of the Lord are often mysterious,” he had said. “There are some things which we cannot hope to understand. You will feel better by next Sunday.”

  “Save the holy crap for yourself,” he had replied. “Seems to me like you goddamned good Christians have the supply spread out pretty thin right now.”

  And then Tommy had revealed himself for the poor, frightened, mistreated Japanese that he was. “Holy cow!” he had exclaimed in a frantic cry, “they like us. They treat us fine. We’re in no position to stick out our necks when we’ve got enough troubles of our own.”

  “Good deal. You hang on to it, will you? Son of a bitch like you needs a good thing like that.”

  When he left him to join the others whom Freddie was entertaining with his inexhaustible stock of filthy jokes, he thought he heard a whimper.

  That happened before I had to make the choice, he thought. That was when we were in the relocation camp out in the God-awful desert and it seemed like living to be able to be free of the camp for brief periods working for peanuts on a sugar-beet farm. That was all before I made a mess of everything by saying no and I see now that my miserable little life is still only a part of the miserable big world. It’s the same world, the same big, shiny apple with streaks of rotten brown in it. Not rotten in the center where it counts, but rotten in spots underneath the skin and a good, sharp knife can still do a lot of good. I have been guilty of a serious error. I have paid for my crime as prescribed by law. I have been forgiven and it is only right for me to feel this way or else I would not be riding unnoticed and unmolested on a bus along a street in Seattle on a gloomy, rain-soaked day.

  Through the front of the bus, he saw the clock tower of the depot. He could have ridden a couple of stops further, but he rose and pulled the cord. He stepped out into the rain, turning the short collar of the raincoat snugly up around his neck. Here was the bus station, the same stretch of concrete walk on which he had stood with his suitcase that morning he had first come back to Seattle and home and, yes, friends too. He was young still, but a little wiser. Perhaps he was a bit more settled in heart and mind. And the rain, it was appropriate. “After the rain, the sunshine,” he murmured. It wouldn’t be quite as easy as all that. It could rain forever for all he knew. Still, there had been a lot of goodness that he had not expected. There was room for all kinds of people. Possibly, even for one like him.

  I’ve got to keep thinking that. I will keep thinking that. It’s only a thread, but how much it seems in a life where there might have been nothing.

  He walked up to the depot and turned up Jackson Street, and, while he waited for the light to change, the cluster of people at the bus stop hardly gave him a glance.

  11

  He lay on the bed listening to the occasional night noises which drifted through the walls of the old frame building which was both business and home. There was, now and then, the gentle whir of rubber tires speeding over concrete, the foggy blast of a semi’s air-horn far off in the distance, the muffled rumble and jar of trains being switched not too far away. It was a time of quiet, but, for Ichiro, the uneasiness prevailed.

  The telephone rang out in the store. He listened to its ringing. Once, twice, three times—ah, he got it.

  “Ichiro.”

  “Yes?”

  “It is for you. The telephone.”

  Throwing his legs over the side, he fumbled hi
s feet into shoes.

  “Ichiro,” called the father with a bit more insistence.

  “Yes, yes, I’m coming.” Trailing laces which clicked along the floor, he hurried out. Behind the counter, the old man was holding the receiver out to him. “Who is it?”

  “I do not know. Somebody who wishes to speak with you,” said the father with a shrug.

  “Hello,” he said into the phone.

  “Itchy?” It was Freddie.

  “Yes.”

  “This is Freddie.” He sounded like a little kid.

  “Hello, Freddie.”

  “Hi. Let’s do somethin’.”

  “What?”

  “Whatcha mean what? Somethin’. I got the car. You doin’ anythin’?”

  “Taking it easy.”

  “What the hell. You gotta get out and do somethin’. I’ll pick you up, huh?”

  “Well . . .”

  “I’ll tell you what. I’m gettin’ me a shine and maybe fixed up. You remember where that place what used to be a cigar store is? On Jackson up from where the movie was. You know, that place where all the guys used to buy the dirty comics.”

  “Yes, I remember.”

  “Great. It’s a shine parlor now. I’ll see you there in fifteen, twenty minutes. Check?”

  “Well, I . . .”

  “Goddammit, you gotta get out and live, I told you. If you ain’t shown when I get there, I’m comin’ to your place.”

  “Okay, okay,” he said with more irritation than willingness.

  “Great. Fifteen, twenty minutes like I said.”

  He put the phone down and reached for a package of cigarettes.

  The old man was thumbing through a catalogue of store equipment with a satisfied look on his face. “Who was it?” he inquired without looking up.

  “Freddie.”

  “Akimoto-san’s boy?”

  “Wants me to go out with him.”

  “Ya. That is fine. You go and have a good time.” He punched open the register and handed his son a couple of bills.

  “Christ, Pa,” he blurted out, “I can’t keep taking money from you.”

  “Pretty soon you get a job,” his father said softly. “It will take time, I know. It is all right. I want you to have the money. I want you to have a good time.”

  “I don’t know. I’m not a kid any more.”

  “Take,” he urged, “it will make me happy. Mama gone, Taro someplace else, only you and me now. We will find a way.” His face puffed up as if he were going to cry.

  “Okay, Pa, if that’s how you want it.” He slipped the money into his shirt pocket.

  “Ya,” said the father as he walked to the front and locked the door and began to turn off the lights, “I’m going to fix up a little bit. Buy a few things for the store. You can go to school and help me sometime maybe. That would be good.”

  “Sure.” He sensed that his father was, perhaps, beginning to feel a bit lonesome. In the semidarkness he appeared very much like a frightened, lonely man and not at all the free and expansive soul he had seemed so short a time before. “Sure, if a job doesn’t turn up, I might go to school and help you out here, Pa.”

  “That would be nice, Ichiro. Mama would like that.”

  “Great,” he said curtly, and was immediately sorry. She’s gone now, he thought. I don’t have to fight her or hate her any more. It will take Pa a little while to get used to being without her. “I can give you a hand around here until something comes up or I decide to go back to school,” he said soothingly.

  The old man nodded agreeably as he walked to the kitchen with the catalogue.

  * * *

  —

  Freddie was up on the chair getting his shoes shined by a white-haired, scrawny Negro who whipped the polish rag expertly over the now gleaming shoes.

  “Itchy boy,” shouted Freddie, “pull up a chair.”

  Ichiro climbed up next to his friend, surveying the dingy narrowness of the place, which was garishly dominated by a multicolored, giant juke box standing in the back.

  “How ’bout it, Rabbit?”

  The Negro looked up without breaking the whipping rhythm of the rag and, in marked contrast to the celerity of his arms, uttered lazily: “Not tonight, boy. Tomorrow maybe. All my gals are booked, I tell you.”

  “What the hell! My buddy here’s been stirrin’ for two goddamned years and he can’t wait till tomorrow.”

  “Yeah?” He craned his neck to appraise Ichiro. Then he looked at Freddie: “Same deal?”

  “Yeah, yeah. Same as me.”

  “Good boy. If they had come for me, I would of told them where to shove their stinking uniform too.” He finished off the shoes with several long, slow swipes. “Shine?” he asked Ichiro.

  “No thanks.”

  Rabbit ran the rag lightly over Ichiro’s shoes and straightened up.

  Freddie hopped down and put a hand on Rabbit’s shoulder. “C’mon, Rabbit. Fix us up.”

  “Sorry. It’s like I told you. I want to help, but that’s how it is.”

  “Shit!” said Freddie, stepping back angrily. “Always tellin’ me you can get a guy anythin’ he wants. Big talk, that’s what.”

  Rabbit smiled calmly, “I got you that nice Elgin real cheap.”

  “So whattaya want me to do? Go to bed with it?”

  “You’re small enough all right.”

  “All right. All right, wise guy. I got your number now. Ain’t nothin’ but a bag of wind. C’mon, Itchy. Let’s blow.”

  Quickly, Rabbit stuck out his hand. “Two bits for the shine, mister.”

  Freddie dug up a quarter and slapped it into the outstretched palm.

  “How’s about a nice radio cheap?” said Rabbit.

  Without bothering to answer, Freddie stalked out with Ichiro close behind. They walked down the block to the car and got in. Lighting cigarettes, they sat and smoked in silence.

  “Well, that screws that,” finally said Freddie.

  “What’s that?”

  “That damn Rabbit. Always talkin’ big. ‘Any time you want a gal,’ he’s always sayin’ to me, ‘Rabbit’s the boy to see.’ The guy’s full of crap. From here on in, this boy’s shinin’ his own goddamned shoes.” He rolled down the window and flipped the cigarette at a passing car. “How ’bout some pool?”

  “Well . . .”

  “You shoot pool?”

  “Yes, but . . .”

  “But what? Do you or don’t you?”

  “Yes, I do.”

  “Well?”

  “Sure.”

  Freddie got out of the car and Itchy followed. They walked back up the block past the shine parlor and around the corner to a pool hall. There were three tables, all empty. Freddie said “Hi” to the sleepy-looking Japanese man behind the cigar counter.

  “Hello, young boy,” said the man in unschooled English. “Take table way in back and don’t make trouble.” He was a heavy man of around fifty with rumpled slacks and shirt.

  “Like hell I will. We’re usin’ the good table.” He went to the first table and, slipping the rack over the neatly set-up balls, proceeded to jiggle them back into position.

  The man, his face hardening perceptibly, grabbed Freddie’s arm and pulled him firmly away from the table. “I say back table. I see you play before. That one good enough for you. If you no like, get out.”

  Freddie glared back at the man, his hand reaching out to curl menacingly over the cue ball.

  Ichiro moved quickly between them. “Come on. It isn’t worth blowing your stack about.” He jostled him lightly. “I thought you were going to show me a good time.”

  “Aghh, friggin’ Jap. Always out to give me a bad time.” He threw the rack on the table and said flippantly: “Okay, let’s have a ball.” Still glaring at the ma
n, he sauntered toward the last table.

  The man restrained Ichiro momentarily with a tug on his sleeve. “That one, he no good. I know. Always trouble.”

  “Sure, sure,” said Ichiro, “he’ll be all right.”

  Shaking his head, the man went back to his stool behind the counter.

  Freddie was pulling cues off the wall rack, holding them up against his eye for alignment, brandishing them like swords for weight, and testing them for balance on a finger. “Hell, gimme a broomstick,” he said exasperatedly. He tried a few more and finally selected one. “Flip for break, Itchy boy.” He tossed a coin high into the air.

  “Heads,” said Ichiro, his back toward his companion as he examined the cues against the wall.

  Freddie snatched the failing coin and, without a glance, put it back in his pocket. “You lose. My break.”

  Cue ball in hand, he spent many deliberate moments spotting it for the initial shot. He settled on a location close to the bank of the table and crouched to make the break. Jiggling the cue, sighting, jiggling the stick some more, shifting his feet, moving his buttocks, he finally pulled back and plunged the stick forward. There was a faint click as the cue flailed up and away from the felt. The white ball, rolling askew, banked against the side and rolled easily into the neat pyramid, merely distorting it a bit. “Son-of-a-bitchin’ cue.”

  It all happened too quickly for Ichiro to intercede. The stick flashed up and down with a resounding whack against the table. A piece flew up and against the wall.

  “All right, boy. All right, boy. You ask for it.” The crimson-faced man was hurrying toward them.

  “Rotten Jap.” Freddie plucked a ball and threw it at the furious proprietor, who sought cover behind one of the tables. The ball crashed into a case of empty pop bottles. “Beat it!”