by Max Grant
She insisted, “No, Ray. Wait a minute. This isn’t right. Please go look and see if you’ve got a gas leak.”
“Sure, honey.”
She had a point. It did smell bad. I eased my hand away from the starter button, got out, and bent down next to the motor in a push-up position to keep my knees off the ground. I didn’t see any gasoline on the floor, but the odor was fairly pronounced down here at floor level. When I got up and lifted the hood I saw it right away. There was a gallon glass jug half full of gas jammed between the motor and the firewall on the driver’s side.
I walked over to the window, bent in, and said, “Hey, Yuki. Come take a look at this.”
She climbed out and walked around to the side of the open hood and said, “What?”
“Come around here.”
She came around front and saw it. “That’s not supposed to be there. What’s that sticking out of the bottle?”
I told her, “It’s one of the spark plugs. The plug farthest from the distributor has a nice long wire. Some wise guy set this up.”
“You push the starter and the spark ignites the bottle of gasoline.”
“You got it. It’s an old partisan’s trick. The Resistance used it quite a bit in Europe.”
I disassembled the apparatus, carried the jug around back of the car, and poured the gas in the tank. I fetched my tool box out of the boot and had the spark plug back in place in no time.
Clambering back in I gave Yuki a crooked grin, and said, “It should start now.”
She was sitting close to me in the middle of the seat, trembling, and looking straight out the window at nothing. I put my arm around her and pulled her close. She buried her face in my neck and then the dam burst. I let her get it all out of her and then held her away. She looked scared.
I told her, “Hey, honey. They were bound to try something good. You can lay low while I’m gone. You shouldn’t have any trouble.”
“I’m not afraid of them,” she wailed. “They would have killed you. You would have pushed that starter and that would have been the end of us. I couldn’t bear that Ray. If I hadn’t come with you I’d still be standing back there at the curb watching the fire trucks come by. I don’t want to leave you now, Ray. I’m part of this case too. I want to go with you. I want to be with you.”
“Well, honey, you’d be a lot safer back here holing up with your family for a while.”
“Ray, I can be of some help to you. Let me come. Please bring me along.”
“OK, sweetie. I wasn’t looking forward to being away from you anyway. There’s nothing I need you to do back here. Well, at least let me take you by your folk’s place for the night. I’ll pick you up tomorrow and then we’ll hit your place on the way out of town.”
“Oh, thank you, Ray. That’s a great idea. I feel a whole lot better knowing you’re not leaving me behind.”
“Let’s go get some of that yaki-soba on the way over.”
I fired up the old bomb and we rolled downtown. I hadn’t told her about the three sticks of dynamite I’d found taped to the chassis beneath the bottle. Now they were wrapped in a gym towel and stuffed in a corner of the concealed compartment beneath the trunk. Manny had installed the hidey-hole to cache the Thompson, extra magazines, and ammo. I thought I may as well leave the TNT there and see if I didn’t some day get a chance to repay the favor.
This time I got a parking spot on the street right in front of the Heya Midori. After the ancient proprietress Miyaki came out of the kitchen to greet us and had taken our orders, I slipped into the back to give Manny a call. I relayed the evening’s events and the change of plans as regarded Yuki. He told me he was working on a few ideas of his own and he’d fill me in on it after I got to Albuquerque.
Yuki and I enjoyed a long pleasant dinner. One of Miyaki’s daughters, Akiko, dropped by with her husband and newborn in tow. We jawboned with them for a time before calling it a night.
* * *
I made it over to Yuki’s parents’ place bright and early the next morning. Before I could talk myself out of it I got shanghaied into partaking of what passes for breakfast over there: clams and whatever in boiled rice gruel.
Yuki must have spilled some of the story because her dad was looking kind of agitated. “Raymond, would you take her away with you now? I don’t want her to stay here with the bad men around. Stay away plenty long time. Take care of my girl.”
I assured him I would do just that. But I was wondering if he was also thinking that it was just as likely to be the other way around. If he knew that she had saved my bacon last night, he wasn’t gloating about it.
We visited with her mom in the tatami room for a few minutes and took our leave. Over to the Carondelet Manor she took less than ten minutes to stuff a small suitcase. I’d shoved a few extra shirts and things in an overnight bag. My standard bag of tricks and bug-out bag I kept in the back of the trunk. I helped her stow her stuff, put down the cloth top, and we were off before mid-morning.
We caught Route 66 downtown and it was already hot by the time we crossed the county line at Pomona. The road through lower San Bernardino County was lined with an interminable succession of auto courts, petrol stands, greasy spoons, night traps, and sleazy dives. Most appeared dormant and sealed tight against the late morning sun.
Glass and tin surfaces blazed glints of piercing light while stucco weathered and colors faded under a layer of road dust. Shade was in short supply. Nonetheless Yuki remained fresh in her colorful summer dress and cat’s-eye shades over ruby lips, her headscarf and ponytail fluttering in the slipstream.
We made a brief stop in Upland at Dale’s Drive-In Liquor & Ammo. The young clerk was just opening the store and it took him a minute to get to the service window.
“Nice Merc, fella. What can I get you good folks today?”
“A fifth of Indian Hill and a box each of .38 and .357 semi-wad cutters. And a couple of cartons of .45 ball.” I turned to Yuki, “You want something?”
“A fifth of scotch, please. Do you have any Sandy Macdonald?”
“Coming right up.” He handed over the supplies with my change and we got back in the eastbound lane.
The air freshened and cooled somewhat as we motored on up into the pass. The old heap lagged on the Cajon grade and steam was escaping from the seams of the hood by the time we crested the rise and rolled onto the high desert. There the engine settled down nicely and we made good time all the way to Barstow.
A mile or so beyond the turn-off to Vegas we came up on the Old Wagon Wheel and stopped for lunch. I put away a mess of ribs and Yuki nibbled on a hamburger. We got out of there in good time and managed to make it between filling stations as we traveled the big empty desert to Needles.
Presently, we crossed the Colorado River and passed the large sign welcoming us to Arizona. The sign featured several neat groupings of bullet holes: a refreshing sign of civilization. The change of venue got me thinking about my old friend Johnny Eagle. I hadn’t spoken to Yuki about him before so I gave her the story as we cruised on toward the Colorado Plateau.
Johnny Eagle was a Navajo code talker I’d run into in Okinawa after the surrender. We were mustering out around the same time and had a little over a month to kill. We spent most of it drinking and carousing and chasing every kimono in Nara. We’d even made plans to hook up back in the States. Neither one of us had any idea what we would do in the peacetime economy so we figured we’d go on a tear for a while until settling on a plan.
But I ended up taking a hitch with the Navy on occupation duty in mainland Japan and, from what I’d heard, Johnny went back to the reservation. I hadn’t talked to him since, but remembered he once told me he used a mail drop in Tuba City on the reservation.
The air had chilled some as we rolled into Kingman in late afternoon. I stopped to put back the convertible top and we continued on. Johnny had told me so much about northern Arizona I felt that I had already lived there. I thought of Johnny again when we passed through th
e reservation at Peach Springs. Johnny had always been a big one for chasing kimono. And the local girls had gone for Johnny in a big way. He must have reminded them of some giant primeval Oriental beast with his red-tinged burnished skin, deeply chiseled features, and coal black eyes.
He wore his crew cut a little on the long side and it was as stiff as a brush. He was couple of inches taller than me, and ramrod straight. He treated the ladies well, which was something they weren’t necessarily used to. He was great to go out with because there were always plenty of leftovers to pick from. He’d told me about some lovely from the Supai reservation that he’d known back before the war. Said he’d spent many a time up there by the Colorado. I was looking forward to getting a letter off to him from Albuquerque and finding out whether we’d be riding together again.
The sun was coming down and Yuki fished around in the glove box for the flask. It was still half full of corn liquor from the trunk bottle so we passed it back and forth ‘til it was dry.
We made the tiny wayside of Seligman just as the sun dropped over the horizon. I passed up the Teepee Cabins and the Wild West Hotel in favor of the more stoutly constructed Hualapai House at the far end of town. We were favored with a pair of adjoining rooms off the main highway toward the back. Taking only a few minutes to unload our kit we strolled up the block to The Silver Dollar.
The change of scenery seemed to have done Yuki some good. She settled on the fried fish special. I warned her that fresh fish wasn’t the most likely item to be found this far inland, then pulled a small bottle of teriyaki sauce out of my pocket and set it on the table.
She looked at it and smiled. “The London broil looks like it has possibilities.”
I laughed and shoved the bottle back in my pocket. Fortunately, they offered a side of rice pilaf, so we ordered the London broils, hers well done and mine rare.
After the waitress had brought us the plates, the sauce came back out. Yuki cut her meat into little pieces, dabbed it in the sauce, and promptly cleaned off her plate. “That was great. I hope you brought some more of that sauce, Ray.”
“Oh yeah, there’s a half a case of that in the trunk along with some soy sauce and wasabe, although your opportunities for a decent sashimi are just about nil out here in the Southwest.”
She said, “That’s fine with me. I’ll take what I can get. I like it out here in the wide open spaces. I feel like we left all the creeps and the losers far behind. I’m full and I’m happy, and I want to dance.”
Night had closed in by the time we got out of there, and the main street of town was fairly dark. I’d noticed a saloon nearby on the way into town. We were strolling down the street back toward the motor court when Yuki tugged on my sleeve and stopped. She had her neck craned back and her eyes were moist. The night air had turned cold and her breath showed as she panted beside me.
“I haven’t seen stars like this since I was in Manzanar. Look how bright it is over that way. I forgot what the Milky Way looked like, living in town. From here, it’s like looking down Fifth Avenue in New York. It’s what I always imagined the gateway to Heaven would look like.”
I told her, “This is what the sky looks like on a frosty winter night where I grew up in Virginia. There always seemed to be more stars out when the snow was frozen on the ground. It’s too hazy in the summer to see anything like this.”
She squeezed up close to me and slid her arm underneath my jacket. I looked down into the starlight reflecting in her eyes and thought that this looked like my kind of Heaven. I shook the thought off and looked away. She was my loyal sidekick, not my new bride. I put it in gear and we walked arm in arm past the rooms and down the block to the saloon.
We found a table up against the far wall near the dance floor. A hillbilly orchestra was set up in the corner and going to town. Within a few minutes I had picked up on a couple of hostile looks cast our way. Yuki gave no appearance of having noticed. She’d seen worse no doubt. Her exuberant mood seemed to have subsided and we sat out the line dances, knocked back a few drinks, and yakked about some of the folks around us.
It wasn’t long before the band slowed the pace down. I elbowed us onto the crowded dance floor and we held onto each other until most everyone else had drifted off. All in all, it was a wonderful night and we were enjoying immensely the drinks, the fine food, and the cowboy hospitality.
I’d been trying to pace myself, but the atmosphere was festive and the immediate company was beyond wonderful. Yuki pulled a tiny sake cup out of her clutch and started tossing off shots from the double sitting in front of her. After taking her time over a couple of Sidecars, she ordered a Jack straight up. I’d noticed a few more patently hostile stares, but I’d looked them down and they hadn’t looked back.
Yuki pulled out another sake cup and passed it over, saying, “Try one of these. I double dog dare ya.”
I looked at her for a moment and said, “OK, honey. But I get to pick my own poison.” I filled it with some bourbon from my glass.
Yuki was shaping up to be a real man’s gal, quite possibly a great one at that. It was easy to tell she was her father’s daughter. She certainly wasn’t the demure young lady that Sachiko had been. Yuki had grown up in a far less polite culture. Nevertheless, she carried herself with the same air of feminine self-confidence and she had the same qualities of inner strength. Like Sachiko she was calmly rational, caring, thoughtful, and competent. Even with the load she’d put on tonight she’d managed to keep a quiet dignity underneath her bubbling exuberance. She looked like she’d mature into another of the women typical of her race, one with a heart big as Texas yet tough as nails, with both qualities kept well hidden only to be brought forth on the proper occasions.
Time spent with a woman of this caliber had definitely been missing from my recent past. She was going to make some lucky young fellow a wonderful bride.
* * *
Next morning I woke up to the sound of frantic knocking at the door. I had an idea who it might be. “Gimme a minute,” I croaked.
She let up on the door, and the pounding in my head resumed to a dull throb. I slipped on my clothes from the day before and padded on over to the door. As I turned the knob, the door burst open with a gust of frigid air and swirling snowflakes. Yuki was just outside, jumping up and down in her peddle pushers and cashmere sweater, wearing a look of consummate glee.
“What’s on your mind?” I growled.
“Looks like we’re snowed in, Boss. Are you decent?”
“Am I ever?”
“Well, I’m coming in anyway.”
She slid on past me and took a seat at the tiny table by the window and said, “Good morning, Boss. What are we going to do now?”
“Well, we’ll give it a few minutes, then pack up and get on out of here.”
She peeked out through the curtains at a solid sheet of white. “I don’t know, Ray. You haven’t got the tires for this kind of travel, do you?”
“No, but from what I’ve been told you can take your chances out here in Big Sky Country. It’ll either get much better or much worse. Now if you’ll go back and collect your things, we can kill some time over breakfast and think on it.”
We had the heap cleaned off and were out of there ten minutes later. Approaching the diner at the edge of town, the snow suddenly stopped and the sun popped out. I pulled in and crunched across the gravel lot. Alighting, we both looked back at the receding wall of snow.
We took our time over a hangover breakfast of eggs, pancakes, and bacon done right. There were still a few inches of snow in the parking lot when we paid up and got out of there, but the sun had melted most of the snow off the macadam on the main drag.
The highway out of town was reasonably clear as well. Yuki was staring off to the northwest at some meandering snow squalls as they moved on over a distant ridge. I was eyeballing another one coming up from the southeast, but it looked like we’d be long gone before it reached the highway. It was a desolate drive over to Flagstaff. The s
now got deeper as we moved into the pines, but the road stayed clear.
Yuki said, “I haven’t seen snow since that last church retreat we had up in the mountains at Fawnskin. It was right after Christmas the year the war started.”
She reminded me of a weekend I’d spent fishing up at Big Bear late last spring. The ride up the Rim of the World Highway had been breathtaking. On the last day I’d had an invite to lunch at the Scout camp chow hall. It had been evident from the rustic wall hangings from years gone by that the Japanese contingent from Los Angeles County had not attended since 1941. Like I’d heard how the yearbooks from high schools all over rural California were suddenly devoid of certain ethnics’ photographs starting in 1942.
Those were unfortunate times but, unlike many overseas, Yuki and I and most of the interned folks had survived them. I recalled that the patriotic sons of internees had populated some of the most valorous units of the European theatre.
A couple of hours later we descended toward the barren waste of the Painted Desert and left the snow behind. I wasn’t in the mood for pushing it that day so we dawdled a bit at the side of the road and took the obligatory tour of the Meteor Crater. We made Winslow a little before dinner time and turned into the first motor court off the highway.
I suggested an early dinner and a long snooze as we hadn’t made much distance that day. We were both dogging it a little bit, but it had been a few too many hours since our late breakfast. Yuki suggested we try the fare at the little cantina next to the auto court. We were both good and hungry, and ordered up a variety of enchiladas, tamales and rellenos. It was an ice-cold, full-bodied pale ale that came from the house tank so we lingered over a couple of extra cervezas before turning in.
* * *
The sunrise caught me full face the next morning and I awoke refreshed and ready to move. I knocked on Yuki’s door and she was up and packed, so we turned out into a blazing sun on the road out of Winslow. The morning air was brisk and she moved over on the seat and snuggled up against me for warmth.
Around LA I hadn’t noticed, but the car heater sure took a long time to kick in on these cold mornings in the high desert. I wasn’t complaining. I eased my arm around her shoulders and drew her in a little closer.
