It’s at that moment … he feels an odd sensation. A tingle at the base of his spine.
Onscreen a man is laying almost atop Maureen O’Hara, their lips scandalously close, an inch from touching. She whispers, Say again you love me.
“Don’t do it,” someone shouts to laughter.
I love you.
More than anything in the world?
I can’t do anything more than just love you.
“Oh please,” the same person says aloud before being shushed.
The tingle grows more insistent. Spreading up his spine, warming his cartilage. But there’s a prodding sensation to it. Like a beckoning. He stands, blocking the projector’s beams, the image of the beast rippling on his clothes.
“Are you okay, Alex?” asks Sandy, peering at him quizzically.
He barely hears her, stumbles past her and through the exit.
Outside, an orange tinge lines the horizon. The Sierra Mountains loom in the distance, their snowcapped peaks topped with dusk light, their lower halves already darkened in the shadows of night.
The odd sensation has only grown stronger. It’s now a heat coursing through him, radiating along his rib cage, directing him.
He lets it. He finds himself walking past the church in Block 15, past the elementary school in Block 16. He keeps walking, and now he is past the Guayule Lath House, where rubber is extracted to aid the war effort. He hears the faint trickle of Bairs Creek, which cuts, briefly and teasingly, across the southwest corner of the camp. In the winter it is as deserted and still as the loneliest crater on the moon.
He stops. Something is about to happen. Slowly, he turns around.
Someone is standing there. Blurred, a smear of light, right up against the fence. In a light blue dress, a large jacket thrown over it. The image quivers like the reflection on a rippling pond. It’s a woman; no, younger, a teenage girl.
“Hello?” he says.
She turns. Her face is blurry, as if underwater. A white girl, that much he can see. The daughter of a camp staffer? Probably. Perhaps going out for a walk at sunset.
The wind blows and her hair dances wildly in the wind.
She begins to fade. The edges to her form blurring first, becoming translucent. Her eyes rising up to meet his, and in that short moment they hold each other’s gaze. There is an intensity in her brown eyes, steely and lit up even in her wavering, vanishing form.
And suddenly his heart is breaking to pieces.
He steps toward her, a name caught in his throat.
Dust blows into his eyes. He blinks. Opens his eyes.
She is gone. If she was ever there in the first place. Nothing but the vast empty landscape, dusk’s light spilling gauzily across it.
It was merely an optical illusion, he thinks. A dusk-lit reverie of dancing dust playing tricks in the windswept plains. Nothing more than a figment of his overripe, yearning, lonely mind.
He stares at that empty space where she was and then was not. And whispers:
“Charlie.”
* * *
He runs home. Pulls out the suitcase from under his cot. Riffles through her letters, his fingers fluttering with excitement. He finds the envelope, pulls out the letter. Eyes swing to the sentence he’d glossed over.
… they are magic pieces of paper: if I write a person’s name on the slip, I will appear to that person. Like a ghost …
At the crack of dawn the next day, he goes back to that spot by the fence. He gets as close to the fence as he dares without drawing attention from the guard tower.
Nothing. No footprints in the dust, no sign that any had ever been there.
By evening, filled with doubt and feeling foolish, he’s already discounted it ever happened.
But the next morning, just before dawn, he steals out. Heads past the Guayule Lath House. Past Bairs Creek. He waits. An hour passes. The dawn sun rises into the sky, spilling its ochre light.
No one appears.
Still he waits. Casting his eyes left, right, near, far.
Charlie.
Charlie.
Charlie.
* * *
In the barrack, everyone is still sleeping. He stomps over to his cot, takes out his sketchbook, an expensive leather one Charlie sent him for his thirteenth birthday. Every page has since been filled with sketches of her, what he has imagined her to be, anyway. Except the very last page. That, he’s kept empty, saving it for when she’s finally sent over a photograph.
He’s still waiting for it.
He turns to that page now. Takes a deep breath, puts pencil to the cream wove paper. He draws from memory: her slight form by the fence, her chin tilted defiantly upward, her hair tossed in the wind, anger and despair in her eyes.
But he’s not even halfway done when he slams the pencil down. This is all wrong. It is accurate but it is clinical. There is nothing of her spirit. Her essence. He grabs his eraser, starts over.
But again it is not right. And it is never right, no matter how many times he erases and starts over. He stares down at the page covered in tiny eraser shavings. He’ll give it one more go, he decides, blowing the shavings away.
Twenty minutes later, hand aching, he holds the page up. This sketch, almost. But not quite. He reaches for the eraser. Pauses. This will be the closest he’ll ever get. He gazes critically at the sketch:
Then closes the sketchbook.
36
LATE JANUARY 1943
Every day he looks at the drawing. Every day he visits the same spot by the fence. Every day he stops by the post office, and every day he is waved off. Sometimes with a sympathetic shake of the head, more often with an irritated sigh.
“Nothing, Alex. Nothing but your returned letters.”
Everywhere he walks, he walks with searching eyes. Sometimes he catches in his periphery a blur of swirling color, and his heart leaps. But it’s only a colorful shirt or blanket on a clothesline blown by the wind, or the dulled reflection of the setting sun caught in a swinging window.
She is nowhere. She is everywhere.
There are moments of lucidity. When the absurdity of all this slams home. When he accepts that her appearance was merely a trick of light. A stupid, juvenile flight of fancy, a deceit of a lonesome mind. In those moments, he laughs at his own idiocy, turtle boy with his head in the clouds.
And yet. She is on his mind all the time. He rereads her old letters over and over. He finds himself wondering what she is doing at that very moment: Is she sleeping? Eating? Reading?
Is she even alive?
This last thought surfaces only in his nightmares, where every night he roams the empty Parisian streets, searching for her in café after café filled only with Nazis who bark out in haughty German demands for more beer, more Camembert, and he walks past them with head tucked down, walking all over Paris until his feet blister and the cobblestones rub his tender soles raw.
Sometimes he startles awake. He lies in the darkness, his only company the snores and strangled sounds of others. He wonders what is happening in Paris. In France. In Europe. He wishes there were some way to find out. Even a drop of information would connect him, however tenuously, to Charlie. But out here in the desert, cut off from the world at large, there is nowhere to get such news.
One morning, walking empty-handed out of the post office, he suddenly stops. He is realizing: that is not entirely true. He is suddenly thinking of the man he met here months ago. The editor of the Manzanar Free Press. Ray Tanaka. No, Takeda. Ray Takeda. The man who knew about the Vichy occupation. About the stoppage of international mail. Who had access to international news.
Fifteen minutes later, Alex is standing outside a barrack in Block 15. An awning hangs over the door:
OFFICE OF REPORTS, MANZANAR FREE PRESS
He knocks. No one answers.
He pounds again, harder, more insistent.
The door opens. A man stands silhouetted by light, a cigarette dangling out of one hand. Handsomely dressed with careful
ly coiffed hair and clothes that seem tailor-made.
“There’s no need to pound the door,” Ray Takeda says, clearly annoyed. He pauses, his intelligent, curious eyes studying Alex. “I remember you.”
“Tell me,” Alex says, panting hard, “what’s happening in Europe. In France.”
Takeda regards Alex with a hard stare. For a second it looks as if he’s about to shut the door on him. Then he swings the door wider. “Come in.”
The interior is like that of any other barrack. The same walls and wooden planks, the same tepid air inside. But there are a few differences. A metal file cabinet in the corner. An Underwood portable typewriter sitting on a desk. A blond veneer armchair, the cushions covered with a faded blue pinstripe flannel. A cheap bookshelf made of corrugated steel, its shelves stacked with newspapers. The Los Angeles Times. The New York Times. The Santa Ana Register. The San Francisco Chronicle. And stacks of magazines. The New Republic. The Atlantic.
“Would you like some tea?” Ray Takeda asks, observing Alex.
Alex swings his eyes from the bookshelf back to Ray Takeda. “Tell me what’s happening in France.”
“Well, there’s a lot, depends on what you—”
“I have a friend who lives in Paris. She’s Jewish. I think something may have happened to her.” He glances at the stack of newspapers. “Do you know anything?”
Ray Takeda looks at Alex for a very long time. “Are you sure you want to know?”
“Yes.”
He hesitates. Brushes off dust from his sleeve. “I’ve been reading things,” he says after a moment, his face grim. “Disturbing stuff. I need to warn you—”
“Tell me.”
“There’ve been rumors of roundups.”
“I know that already. But you know more, don’t you?”
Ray Takeda’s voice is soft now. “There are other stories. Of whole families, women and children, being sent by train to undisclosed locations. To camps. And then…” His voice falters.
“Then what?”
“This is just a rumor. But there are rumors of … executions.”
“Executions?” Alex feels his stomach turn. He points to the bookshelf. “Show me these articles.”
Ray Takeda shakes his head. “It’s just tidbits of information.”
“Still. Show me.”
“Like I said, it’s a sentence here, a few words there scattered among different news reports.” His voice turns grave. “But I suspect we’ll be hearing more in months to come.”
“Then I want to read everything you have. And every magazine and newspaper as they come in.”
Ray Takeda snorts. “This is not a public library. It’s a printing press. And the staff, we’re very busy.”
“So I’ll work.”
“We’re not hiring.”
“Then I’ll intern. As a volunteer reporter. Whatever. I just need to be here.”
Ray Takeda takes off his glasses, starts polishing them with a handkerchief. “Listen. I understand your situation, and I’m sympathetic. Truly, I am. But we don’t need writers currently. We’ve got college students on leave from Harvard and Princeton who write better than you.”
“Then I’ll draw.”
He shakes his head. “We’re strictly a printed-word publication. No illustrations.”
Alex quickly whips out the blank page from the typewriter. Grabs a nearby pencil.
“What are you doing?”
Alex ignores the question. Seconds later, he holds out the sheet. He’s drawn Ray Takeda, a quick caricature. “If I had another ten seconds,” he boasts, “it’d be twice as good.”
Ray Takeda puts on his glasses. “You have talent. Clearly.” He hands back the paper. “But like I said. We don’t print illustrations.”
Alex refuses to take the paper back. “Her name is Charlie Lévy,” he whispers. “I haven’t heard from her in months. I don’t know what’s happened to her. I don’t know if she’s even alive.” He looks at Ray Takeda. “This is my only way of … staying connected to her.”
Ray Takeda blows out his cheeks, walks over to the window. Stares outside. “Fine. You can work here. Strictly as a volunteer. Mostly you’ll sweep and mop the floor, you’ll wash out our coffee mugs, you’ll run errands to and from the post office. But you get in our way, you so much as sneeze too loud, and you’re gone, do you understand?”
Alex is already grabbing the broom.
37
FEBRUARY 3, 1943
At the crack of dawn most days, Alex rises from bed, puts on his boots, and slips out. The camp is eerily quiet and deserted and beautiful at this hour. Faint figures dot the dawn-rimmed horizon: mess-hall staff working the breakfast shift; or those carrying laundry, hoping to get an early jump; or the elderly heading to the bathroom for the illusory promise of privacy. A few, even in the cold, wear getas, traditional Japanese clogs made out of wood, to keep their feet clear of mud.
Some mornings he arrives to find the office in a flurry of action. Three, maybe four staff workers hunched over desks, glue and tape and scraps of paper scattered about, the Underwood typewriter clacking out its tune. Ray Takeda, always unflappable, always immaculately dressed even after working through the night, typing away in rolled-up sleeves, a lit cigarette dangling seemingly forgotten from his lips.
But most mornings he arrives to find the office unoccupied and dark. He turns on the lights, empties ashtrays, sweeps the floor, brews a pot of coffee. All to give evidence that he has been at work in case Ray Takeda should walk in.
And only then does he read. Starting with any magazines or newspapers that have come in, then working chronologically backward through the stacks, picking up from where he left off. He pores over any news about Europe. Time magazine prints a war map every week, and he sees the black spill of Nazi occupation across Europe, the dense black soaking up the nations, absorbing France. Paris. Charlie.
Ray Takeda wasn’t lying: news about the plight of Jews in France—or in Poland or the Netherlands or anywhere—is scant. A sentence here and there. A remark about some rumor overheard. Of prisoners in striped clothing, starving to death. Shaved heads, even numbers tattooed onto their arms. But nothing more than those throwaway pieces of information.
Charlie seems so far away.
He finds other articles. Not about the situation in Europe, but closer to home. About Japanese Americans. Like this “Survey of Opinion” published by the Los Angeles Times:
Do you favor a constitutional amendment after the war for deportation of all Japanese from this country, and forbidding further immigration? Yes: 10,598; No: 732.
Would you except American-born Japanese if such a plan as the above were adapted? Yes: 1,883; No: 9,018.
One morning he arrives to find Ray Takeda and three other staff standing over a stack of flyers. “Ah, good, you’re here,” he says on seeing Alex. “We need you to help post these up around the camp.”
Alex picks up the top flyer. This must be a cruel joke. An April Fools’ joke come two months early.
President Roosevelt announces establishment of the 442nd Combat Team, a military unit composed exclusively of Japanese-American soldiers.
“No loyal citizen of the United States should be denied the democratic right to exercise the responsibilities of citizenship, regardless of his ancestry. The principle on which this country was founded and by which it has always been governed is that Americanism is a matter of the mind and the heart; Americanism is not, and never was, a matter of race or ancestry. A good American is one who is loyal to this country and to our creed of liberty and democracy.”
“That’s fresh, coming from him,” Alex says. “He throws us into jail in the middle of the desert. And now he wants us to fight for him? In a segregated unit? Is he for real?”
“These flyers are for real, and that’s all that matters,” Ray Takeda says. “And we have our duties. Everyone to your assigned blocks and post these on the bulletin boards.”
At Block 9, Alex nails up the flyer
and turns around. A crowd has already gathered.
“You’ve got to be kidding me,” someone says.
“What does this mean?” a teenager asks.
“It means we can enlist,” another teen answers, peering closely at the page. “It means they finally want us. We can fight for America.” The teen bounces from foot to foot. “Hey, we get to wear uniforms. Shoot weapons. Fight Nazis. We get to leave this dump!”
“You’re an idiot,” someone tells him.
“How old do you have to be?” the teen asks.
“Probably eighteen.”
Alex steps away from the bulletin board. He’ll be eighteen in two months. Not that it matters. There’s no way he’ll enlist. Not after this country has taken away Father, taken away their freedom, and thrown them in this prison. Not after that “Survey of Opinion” showing this country would overwhelmingly choose to deport him—a fellow citizen—to Japan, a country he’s never even visited before.
Alex walks off. In the next block, he goes into the bathroom and drops the remaining flyers down into the cesspool.
38
FEBRUARY 10, 1943
A week later an army recruitment team pays a visit to Manzanar Internment Camp. The team is made up of a lieutenant and three sergeants. The top brass, not the low ranks, the grunts. They’re here to impress.
This surprises most people.
The mess hall is packed fifteen minutes before start time. Most in attendance have ulterior motives. Memories of the December riot are still raw and fresh, and these four military uniforms standing before them draw icy stares. Alex squeezes in and elbows his way to the third row.
The lieutenant speaks first, a silver-haired, stony-faced man. He’s followed by two of the sergeants. Nobody laughs at their canned jokes, their corny sense of humor meant to set the internees at ease. When they make cheesy calls to patriotism and duty and honor, a few in the audience, their arms folded, snort.
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