Everyone, even Wishbone, stayed quiet. All that they could hear was the hum of the old refrigerator and the ticking of the cheap clock mounted within the stove.
“That I wasn’t his father, I’m his uncle. That his father was dead. He wouldn’t believe me at first, but I told him the year that he had died. The same year that his mother had taken him and his brother to Hawaii.”
“Youzu the one at coroner-san’s.”
Anmen nodded. “I was worried. I went to see Isokichi after he was arrested, and the INS office told me that Isokichi was no longer in the building. The agent who had arrested him was also gone. I knew something had happened. If they had released him, he would have gone straight home. But we had heard nothing. So I went to the Japanese hospital, every place I could think of. When he didn’t turn up there, I knew that he might be dead.
“I heard about the Japanese man working at the coroner’s office. It had been big news. Just like first Japanese teacher, first Japanese department store worker. It was in the Rafu, first Japanese working in the coroner’s office.
“So I went there at night. Saw his body. Who could have done this to Isokichi? That INS agent, Metcalf?” Anmen spat on Haruo’s floor. “He was a terrible man, coarse, with a bad mouth. I was at the house when Metcalf and another agent came to arrest Isokichi. Actually, we were in the middle of a fight.”
“Kenka?”
Anmen grunted. “It was baka. It was about the sanshin. Isokichi found out the sanshin was special. That there was a special hiding place inside for the kunkunshi. He told Kinjo that it belonged to the Okinawan government. And then he stole it.”
“Kinjo’s sanshin.”
Anmen nodded.
“Kinjo was always bragging that the sanshin had belonged to a court musician who’d performed for an Okinawan king. That his sanshin was better than anybody else’s. I was sick of it. I was glad that Isokichi took it. Kinjo was so angry; he said that he’d get us. Then, two days later, the immigration officers came to our door.”
After a few minutes of listening to Haruo’s translation, G. I. spoke up. “You told this to Randy?”
Anmen said in English, “Yes.” He let out a deep breath and then resumed speaking in Japanese. “Through the Okinawa Club, I was able to contact those hakujin lawyers who were trying to help the Japanese.”
“Edwin Parker?”
“He and an older attorney, Delman-san. Delman was famous, a good man. But he was involved in too many cases, so he had to pull out. Too bad, because I didn’t trust Parker.”
“Why?” Mas asked.
“Too young. Too green. Barely graduated from law school. He was one of these types who was just figuring what kind of man he was. He wanted to be an Isaac Delman, but without going through any suffering that made your insides strong. He wanted the title and fame without the work. So I asked him to stop being Isokichi’s lawyer.”
So, Mas thought. That was the real reason Parker had been released.
“After I saw Isokichi’s body, I went back to his wife. Told her that she needed to get out of L.A.—fast. Change her name, go back to her folks in Hawaii. For the good of her boys.
“I left town, too, for a while. But not until I saw Metcalf. I needed to see him, face-to-face. Or maybe I needed him to see me. I packed a baseball bat in my cloth sanshin case. What was I going to do with that bat once I saw Metcalf? Self-defense, that’s what I called it. My brother couldn’t do it, so I would do it for him. I waited for him at the INS office, but he never showed up. The police declared him officially missing. I figured that he was on the run, and the INS and police were covering it all up.”
Mas remembered how the police told Hajime Kaku, the coroner’s clerk, to keep silent about the G-man he’d encountered.
“So I changed my name too. Didn’t need the government keeping tabs on me. But I kept track of my sister-in-law and nephews. Whenever I came into L.A., I would try to look up Agent Metcalf. But nothing. I’m sure the government placed him in another town with another identity.”
Anmen’s hunch was proven wrong, with the recent discovery of Metcalf’s bones. Like Isokichi, he had met an untimely fate. But the question remained, were the deaths related?
G. I. got up from the floor and asked more questions, but Anmen was less coherent, was obviously getting tired.
“I want my money,” Wishbone broke in.
“Ah, yes, the money. Where is it?” G. I. asked.
Anmen glanced at G. I. and removed an envelope from his shirt pocket. “I don’t have anywhere to go. Okane nai.” No money.
“You’re staying with me,” said G. I., pulling the envelope from Anmen’s hands. “And you, too, Mas. I’ll need your translation services.”
“I want my money,” Wishbone repeated.
“I think that we need to find out who’s owed what. And as the cofounder of this ‘deal,’ Wishbone, you will be compensated last. You need to pay back your other investors first. We’ll see what’s left.”
Wishbone was looking mighty defeated now. “I want my money,” he whimpered.
After the hour of going back and forth in Japanese, English, and a mishmash of both, everyone was ready to collapse. None of them, except G. I., was the type who could sit through such focused talking. Gossip was one thing. At Wishbone’s former lawn mower shop, rumors had flown hard and fast. But it wasn’t like you really had to pay attention; you could just reach out for the bits that caught your fancy, like canned goods on a grocery store shelf.
G. I. suggested that they get ready to leave, and Mas thought that suggestion had come an hour too late. Haruo, of course, handed Mas another bag of persimmons; it was no use refusing it. What about my boundary? Mas thought, but with Haruo, boundaries were actually crossed all the time.
Outside they heard the slam of cars doors and voices of women and teenage boys. “Spoon’s here.” Haruo smiled, sliding a comb down his hair.
It was an army of people. Spoon with three women, most likely her daughters. Two of them resembled Spoon, skinny on top, with a wide behind. The third one was thin, with a sprinkle of freckles, not as intense as Jiro’s, but more like chocolate dust on top of a hot drink. Two gangly teenagers stood behind by the van.
“You have guests,” said Spoon.
“We’re just leaving,” G. I. explained. They had decided that Mas would move his truck to Haruo’s and then drive Sanjo’s rental car to G. I.’s. G. I. offered to drop Mas back at his truck, but Mas opted to walk.
Mas was introduced to the three daughters and watched as the two boys, probably fourteen and sixteen, awkwardly greeted Haruo.
“Hey, Uncle Haruo,” they said. Mas was surprised at how Spoon’s grandchildren addressed a non–blood relative. Mas wondered what kind of relationship he could cultivate with his own grandson, living so far away.
“I gotsu get goin’ to G. I.’s,” Mas said, excusing himself.
“Orai, Mas, I be seein’ you, soon. Just park the truck in the driveway,” Haruo called out, but by the time Mas looked back, his friend’s attention had been captured by the two teenagers.
Mas walked down the street. The sun was setting, and a grayness was spreading over the sky. Boys kicked a soccer ball in the street, calling out in Spanish and English. Mothers sat on stoops, taking breathers before dinner, the last peace of mind before sunset.
As it turned out, Mas was the first to arrive back at G. I.’s place. The rental car was a disaster, and he couldn’t wait to be rid of it. Mas parked the car outside on the curb. A few minutes later, G. I. and Anmen pulled into the driveway toward G. I.’s one-car garage in the back. G. I. opened the door, a large bag smelling of garlic in his hands. “Cuban chicken,” he said.
Once he was inside, Anmen’s eyes didn’t seem to register the mess in G. I.’s living room. Like a dog sniffing out a buried bone, he immediately found the shamisen hiding in the corner by the bookshelf in the living room.
“Ah, sanshin. You play?” G. I. apparently went up several notches in Anmen’s estimation.
>
“No, that’s Juanita’s grandfather’s. She wanted to show me what an intact shamisen—I mean sanshin—looked like.”
G. I. pulled out three Styrofoam containers from his paper bag. Mas opened his container, revealing a chicken leg, roasted brown and simmering in garlic juice, yellow rice, and fried bananas, which G. I. called plantains. And a small container of crushed garlic, more ninniku. G. I. turned on the television, which was a relief. No talking; instead, they ate silently while watching car crashes and gang shootings mixed with segments on pig beauty contests and football games.
G. I. then excused himself to take a shower and make phone calls. Anmen circled the living room a couple of times—searching for what, Mas didn’t know.
Finally, he stopped at G. I.’s bookcase and picked up a framed photograph. “This man, who is he?” he asked Mas, who was dozing off.
Mas wiped his eyes. There were three men on a fishing trip, and Anmen was pointing to the one on the right. “Thatsu Jiro.”
“Jiro?”
“G. I. and Randy’s tomodachi. From Vietnam. They callsu him Kermit.”
“Kermit,” Anmen repeated.
“Why, youzu see him at party?”
Anmen didn’t answer at first. “Tired,” he said. “Very tired.” He stretched out on the couch; he didn’t have to know that it had been the last resting place of his nephew.
G. I. was supposed to give Mas a lift back to Haruo’s, but when Mas peeked into his bedroom, G. I. was fast asleep on his futon, Mu curled up in the crook of his arm. Mas didn’t want to wake him, so he figured he might as well stay the night. Mas unrolled Juanita’s sleeping bag; he didn’t mind sleeping on the floor. It reminded him of camping trips he had taken in Ventura County with Chizuko and Mari; Juanita’s bag even had the same smell of charcoal from past campfires, and a pinch of sea salt from the ocean.
After Mas turned out the lights, Anmen began to talk. “You think I’m rotten, ne. A dorobo who doesn’t deserve to live.”
Mas wouldn’t have gone that far, although folks like Wishbone and Stinky might have other opinions. But he was a dorobo, there was no doubt. A thief was a thief was a thief.
“I heard that you are a hibakusha,” Anmen said. “That you were there in Hiroshima, two kilometers from the epicenter.”
“Who say dat?”
“The man with the kizu.” Scarface Haruo. Mas sneered in the darkness. Why did Haruo have to open his trap to complete strangers—to, in fact, a bona fide criminal?
“I know what it’s like, yo.”
Mas listened.
“During the war, I hid in a cave in Okinawa. I was afraid that the Americans were going to kill me. But they pulled me out and set me free. My legs had been bent in that crowded cave for so many weeks.”
Mas had heard of these stories. Of men, women, and children hiding in caves to escape American flamethrowers, gunfire, and grenades during World War II. One of the bloodiest battles ever fought in Japan. Rivaled the Bomb in terms of Japanese casualties, although the Battle of Okinawa occurred over the course of numerous weeks instead of a single minute. Mas had heard of the caves. Described as honeycombs of land next to the shore, they were the final refuge for both soldiers and civilians with nowhere to go. The same Japanese military that had conscripted twenty thousand Okinawans, including boys and girls, was at the last minute only more than willing to kick these same people out of the caves to make room for the “real soldiers.” Everyone had heard of the tragic fate of the Himeyuri Corps of schoolgirls, who were forced to be nurses to the Japanese soldiers, only to be forcibly released into gunfire and explosions. One out of eight Okinawan civilians had been killed.
“All during the war, Isokichi was in America. He left Okinawa when he was only fourteen. Was a Christian, yo.”
A-ra, Mas thought. Christians in Japan were few and far between at that time. Radicals, soapbox preachers, men and women who didn’t mind swimming against the tide.
“He had dream about America. Wanted to see democracy in action. Was tired of seeing Okinawa being pushed around by Japan. He went to Hawaii and then worked on a sugar plantation. Couldn’t find democracy there. And then sailed off to California, joined Christian farming communities in the San Joaquin Valley. Made just pennies—where was the Great Democracy? I could tell that his heart was getting hard. His letters seemed bitter at that time; he must have started to go to those political meetings. And then, during the war, nothing, of course. He was worried sick about us, even though he was stuck in a detention center in the middle of nowhere.
“After the war, we were able to find each other. He helped me to come over. I thought this was my chance to make it big. I started a sanshin school and was going to send my money to them. I have no children of my own; this was one way I could live on.”
Anmen’s voice became softer as he went back in time. “Our father was a sanshin instructor. That’s how we both learned how to play. He even brought a sanshin into the cave my mother and he were hiding in. They were the next cave over. I could hear the tinkle of the sanshin all night. It’s what allowed me to sleep. But one day the mountains shook and the music stopped. My parents were never found.”
Mas stayed still and quiet.
Anmen obviously wanted to change the subject, because he started humming and singing an Okinawan song. Mas tried to smother his ears in the sleeping bag, but it was no use. Actually the song wasn’t so bad. In the end, Mas even clapped two times. Maybe if he clapped one more time, Anmen would be silenced, like those sound-activated lights.
But before he knew it, Anmen was talking again. “You know, Isokichi was always writing songs. He even sang a song for me at the immigration office when I visited him. He called it ‘Sayonara Udui.’ ”
“Udui?” Mas loosened the sleeping bag from his ears.
“Okinawan for ‘dance.’ I never forgot it.” Anmen stirred from the couch and turned on the lamp. He picked up the shamisen and brought it over to the couch. Tightening the pegs, he tuned the three strings, took a deep breath, and began playing the familiar singsong melody. And then he began singing. First a low murmur, and then, with each lyric, Anmen’s voice began to rumble like the start of the earthquake. Then, in a flash, the song was over.
Mas only understood half of the words. The song ended with “sayonara”; that much Mas could pick up.
G. I. came stumbling out of the bedroom, in a torn green UC Davis T-shirt, shorts, and black-framed glasses. His hair was in a single braid like the queues of Chinese pioneers during the Gold Rush. Mu slithered in between his legs. He lifted his glasses and wiped some sleep from his eyes. “What’s going on?”
“Sanjo’s song,” Mas said.
“Huh?”
“Isokichi write song before he die.”
“No kiddin’.” G. I. fell into his purple chair. “Well, play it again. Please.”
Anmen did an encore—this time he closed his eyes as if he were trying to better capture his brother’s voice.
The melodic song made Mas’s ribs hurt and his ears ring. There was something haunting about the words, even though he couldn’t quite follow them.
“What’s it mean?”
Mas shrugged his shoulders. “Too much Okinawan. Can’t understand.”
Anmen repeated the lyrics, and Mas tried to throw out the words in English. G. I. then chose prettier words and wrote them down on the back of an envelope.
“Okay, this is what I have,” G. I. said finally after five tries.
Tears, the stars I see out the window
Years of struggle, pennies for blood
What hope for my boys?
The door is closed; I cannot breathe
My sons, wife, someday must dance again.
Sayonara, sayonara, sayonara.
G. I. and Mas let the words rest in the room before they spoke.
“Jisatsu,” Mas whispered.
“This is a suicide song,” said G. I.
Anmen looked up, nodded, and Mas noticed the edges of
his eyes were wet. “I told Agent Metcalf that my brother was not himself. That he could not be left alone. But he kicked me out of there. He told me to come back the next day. But both of them were gone by then.”
Mas remembered what Hajime, the clerk at the coroner’s office, had said. Isokichi had been missing his shoelaces. He must have removed them to commit suicide, perhaps hang himself? Mas didn’t know how it was possible, but if you were hardheaded and ganko enough, you could do most anything.
“What do you think, Mas? Was Isokichi planning to kill himself?”
Mas nodded. But the coroner’s assistant said the cause of death was blunt force trauma, not death by hanging. So whether or not Isokichi planned to do himself in, someone else beat him to it.
chapter thirteen
Sleeping on G. I.’s floor, Mas had another nightmare. He and another boy he grew up with, Kenji, were in a rainstorm. The water came down hard and fast, stinging his skin. Then he noticed that the raindrops had turned into small pebbles, and then larger rocks, the smooth kind that Mas used for dry gardens. He felt his head being knocked about, the stones pelting his shoulders, his neck. He fell to his knees—where was Kenji?—and the rocks were beating his thighs and knees. He could not cry out, speak. All he heard was the thunder of rocks cascading around him and then on top of him.
When Mas woke up, he saw that Anmen was gone. The black couch was squished down in the middle, evidence that a human body had been there at one time, but Mas figured that it had not been for long. Anmen had had to cut open his memories. And once he did that, he left.
Mas walked barefoot to the living room window and pulled at the curtain. The sky remained gray, still trying to make up its mind whether to squeeze out rain or clear to blue. A single bundle of the L.A. Times had been left on G. I.’s lawn. There were no cars Mas recognized parked outside.
“Mornin’, Mas.” G. I. came out of his bedroom, wearing the same pair of glasses. He had loosened his braid, and his long hair went past his shoulders. He had a faint smudge of stubble underneath his nose. G. I. was one of those Japanese who couldn’t grow much on his face, other than a long mustache and a paintbrush of a beard, just like those Asian villains in black-and-white movies. Those same villains always had strange Scotch-taped, squinty eyes and long, curved fingernails; Mas had never seen any human being, much less an Asian, with that kind of appearance. Mu ran out behind him, his paws swiftly padding on the hardwood floor. At least one living creature had energy this morning.
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