by Kirby Larson
I’ll write as soon as I get there so you have our new address.
Love, Mitsi
PS Tell Mrs. Bowker I hope she hasn’t mailed the locket yet. I won’t be here to get it.
Two days later, Mitsi and her family finished packing up all of their belongings. Again.
Some rusty, musty train cars had been put back into service for the ride to Minidoka. One of the churches in Seattle sent decks of cards and coloring books for the children. “To help pass the time,” said the lady who gave Mitsi a coloring book. Mitsi thanked her but gave it away to the first little kid she saw.
Mitsi woke up, not to Mom’s voice but to a pounding on the door. She practically levitated out of bed. Pop fumbled his way to answer it, tripping over Ted’s cot. The clock on his nightstand said four.
“Collecting the bedding.” A worker ducked his head as he stood on the stoop, as if embarrassed to be there so early in the morning. “Breakfast is in an hour.” He waited while Mom turned into a tornado, whirling around the room, stripping sheets and blankets from the five cots.
They dressed quickly, pulling on clothes laid out the night before. It was so early, Mitsi felt a bit queasy.
“You’ll feel better after you eat something,” Pop told her.
Mitsi couldn’t imagine eating, but the good smells — good smells! — that danced around her as she waited in the mess hall line set her stomach to growling. When her turn came, she took a plate loaded with ham and eggs, toast, fried potatoes, and an orange. They’d never been served such a breakfast. She ate every bite, pocketing the orange for later.
A little before seven, sleepy and full, Mitsi leaned against Pop as they waited at the loading point. She counted eleven passenger cars, two dining cars, two baggage cars, and a pair of Pullman sleepers hooked on behind the engine. Each car looked shabbier and sadder than the one in front of it.
Soon, soldiers started calling out orders, and by seven thirty, Mitsi and her family were on the train. MPs patrolled the aisles, asking people to sit down. Mom took out her handkerchief, cleaning a seat for Obaachan. When she finished, her hanky was gray with dirt.
Though it was sweltering when they boarded, the MPs closed all the windows and drew down all the shades. Ted said it was because some people had thrown rocks and eggs at the first train to leave the week before. Mitsi felt like she was suffocating. Obaachan, her face chalky from the heat, fanned herself with a religious pamphlet someone had handed out. Mom found the toilet and washed out her hanky. She brought it back, damp. “It’s just a closet,” she reported, with a shake of her head. She draped the hanky on Obaachan’s neck to help cool her off. Pop and Ted went out to stand on the platform between the train cars until the MPs shooed them back inside.
“This stinks.” Ted flopped onto the seat opposite Mitsi.
“It really does.” Mitsi held the orange to her nose. The passenger compartment smelled like a big pail of dirty baby diapers left out in the sun. When the engine jerked into motion and began pulling the seventeen cars down the track, a tiny bit of fresh air snaked its way into their compartment. After several hours, when they were out in the middle of nowhere, the MPs gave the okay to open the shades.
Mitsi pressed her nose to the grimy window to look at the passing scenery. Everything was brown. Different shades of brown, like the rust in the train bathroom, or the murky cup of coffee Pop tried to drink, or the deep chocolate of the Hershey bar that one MP was munching on. But brown all the same. It made her feel even hotter.
She turned away from the window and rummaged in her book bag, pulling out paper and pencil.
Wednesday, August 19
Dear Dash,
If my handwriting looks bumpy, it’s because I’m writing on a train. The movies make train travel seem so luxurious. But it’s hot and smelly and we’re going to have to sleep sitting up in our seats. There are only two Pullman cars, but they’re for the moms with little kids.
We do get to eat our meals in the dining car. Ted said he heard there are ice-cream sundaes for dessert. I hope that’s true. I haven’t had ice cream since forever.
I wonder what’s blooming in Mrs. Bowker’s garden. Write and tell me! And it’s okay by me if you take her to our special patch of blackberries. I don’t think I’ll be back in time to pick any.
Mitsi leaned back against the seat, remembering last August, picking blackberries with Dash. Somehow, he could wriggle around the sharp thorns, like a rabbit. He would vacuum ripe berries off the vines while Mitsi picked, filling coffee cans that she’d fitted out with wire handles. She closed her eyes and could almost taste blackberry pie.
Mitsi felt a tap on her shoulder. She opened her eyes and saw Debbie.
“Hey.”
Mitsi wiggled her fingers in a wave. “Hey, back at you.” She hadn’t seen much of Debbie since her birthday. Right afterward, Debbie’s mom got sick and they’d been taking most of their meals in their room. Mitsi had seen Debbie carrying a tray once or twice. They’d visit for just a minute before Debbie would say, “Well, I better get back to my mom.” She hadn’t even come out when the Seattle library sent a bunch of books for the camp.
“We’re in the next car up.” Debbie fingered the torn upholstery on the back of Mitsi’s seat. “I thought the scenery might be better back here.”
“Really?” Mitsi wondered how the scenery could improve between cars.
“No, you goof.” Debbie nudged onto the seat with Mitsi. “That was a joke.”
Ted hopped up. “You can sit here. I’m going to go look for Lefty.”
“Behave yourself,” Mom said without looking up from the Ladies’ Home Journal article she was reading: “How Should Children Be Trained for a War Situation?” Obaachan was snoring softly in the seat next to her.
Debbie didn’t take Ted’s spot. “Do you want to go exploring?”
“Can I?” Mitsi addressed the top of her mother’s head, which was still bent over the magazine. “I mean, may I?”
“Be back in half an hour,” said Mom.
“And we’ll behave ourselves.” Debbie giggled.
Debbie was like a kitten, poking here, sniffing there, and pouncing on anything new and different.
“Look!” She dragged Mitsi to the window. A heron stood on one leg in a rocky riverbed, calmly eying the rushing water for his fish dinner. Farther on, they spied a pair of long-eared jackrabbits scampering in the sagebrush, kicking up dust devils with their powerful back legs. “I hope no fox gets them,” Mitsi said.
“Or bobcat,” added Debbie.
“Are there bobcats out here?” Mitsi had only ever seen one, at the Woodland Park Zoo.
Debbie shrugged. “It sure looks like there could be.”
Mitsi watched the passing scenery more carefully after that. When it was suppertime, Debbie had to go rejoin her mother. Mitsi ate with her own family in the dining car. The roast beef was tasty, but she kept waiting for that ice-cream sundae that never appeared. Back in their car, Mitsi watched the setting sun paint the hills purple and burnish the river to a glowing gold. But as fiercely as she watched, she didn’t see as much as one tuft of a bobcat’s ear.
When the sky was inky dark, Debbie returned to their car, carrying a blanket.
“Mom says I can spend the night here,” she said. “If it’s okay with you, Mrs. Kashino.”
Mom rearranged things so the girls could sleep next to one another.
Obaachan tucked the blanket around them and they snuggled up on the train seats.
“This is our first sleepover,” Mitsi said. The seat was lumpy. And musty. “I don’t think there’s going to be much sleeping.”
“There never is at a sleepover!” Debbie smoothed the blanket over her lap. “Let’s play I spy. I’ll go first. I spy with my little eye something that is round.”
“Is it Ted’s head?” Mitsi guessed.
“Hey!” Ted stretched his leg out to give her a kick.
Debbie giggled. “No.”
Mitsi made some mor
e guesses. “No, no, no,” said Debbie.
“Are you sure this is something in this train car?” Mitsi asked.
Debbie crossed her heart. “Scout’s honor.”
Mitsi looked around for something else to guess. “The bolt on the window?”
“Bingo!” Debbie slapped her hands together. “Your turn.”
Around them, people began to fall asleep. Mom put her finger to her lips to signal to the girls that they needed to be quieter. Mitsi leaned closer to Debbie and whispered, “I spy with my little eye something that is blue.”
Debbie touched her nose. “My glasses!”
Mom had dozed off. She gave out a long snore. Both girls giggled.
“I made it too easy,” Mitsi said.
Pop snored, too, and the girls had to duck under their blankets to stifle their giggles. Mitsi couldn’t see Debbie, but she could still hear her.
“He sounds like a bear!” Debbie said.
Pop snorted and Mitsi giggled harder.
Debbie’s giggles stopped. “My dad snores, too. Just as loud.”
Being under the blanket made Mitsi braver. “Where is he?”
Debbie didn’t change the subject this time, as she had before. Her voice grew quiet. “Someplace else.”
“Is he —” Mitsi wasn’t sure how to ask the question that popped into her mind. “I mean, what’s his name?”
“James. James Miyake.” Debbie shifted on the seat. “I’m pretty tired.” She curled up, away from Mitsi. “See you in the morning.”
Mitsi couldn’t sleep. She wanted to know about Debbie’s dad. Was he even alive? Is that why just saying his name seemed to make her so sad? She had a million questions, but instead of asking even one of them, all she said was, “Sleep tight.”
Thursday, August 20
Dear Dash,
I dreamt last night that you were sleeping next to me. When I woke up, and you weren’t there, I started to cry. I told Debbie about it. She said she’d had a bad dream, too, and that we were in the “doldrums” and needed to find an antidote. We made a scavenger hunt on the train, looking for one. Nobody seemed to know what we were talking about. But one lady thought some raisins might help. We took them even though we both think they’re disgusting. Someone’s big sister sprayed us with her Shalimar perfume. And one of the soldiers even gave us a pack of Clove gum — my favorite. We shared with Ted and Lefty. It was funny. We never found the antidote, but I ended up feeling better. Debbie did, too.
I still miss you. But it helps having a friend like Debbie.
Over the next day and a half, Mitsi added to the letter to Dash. She wrote about getting that promised ice-cream sundae after supper the second night. She wrote about banging her elbows while trying to wash up in the teeny-tiny train sink. And about playing hide-and-seek with Debbie in the baggage car until that grouchy MP kicked them out. She kept writing because there was no way to mail anything along the way. It turned into a very, very long letter.
Near the end of the third day, the train chugged to a stop in the middle of a desert. “Everybody off,” called the MPs. Mitsi grabbed her things and climbed down the steps, groaning and stretching and gasping at the heat. She hadn’t even worked out the kinks in her legs before the MPs were shouting orders again. “This way, folks.”
Mitsi followed her family as they were loaded onto yellow buses with SUN VALLEY painted on the side. The buses were as hot as the train, but the seats weren’t so lumpy. Mitsi looked around. Debbie and her mom must’ve gotten on a different bus.
Though there was nothing but sand and sagebrush outside, Mitsi stared out the window the entire ride. When the parade of buses stopped, she looked around. “Are we here?”
Her parents stood to gather their belongings. “It appears so,” said Pop.
Mitsi leaned toward the window for a last peek. She couldn’t see the camp. She couldn’t see anything through the dirty haze.
She wobbled off the bus, battling a rocking sensation, as if she was still on the train. The small group of people that had come out to greet the buses looked like they’d been rolled in talcum powder.
It didn’t take long before Mitsi and her family looked the same way. Each step sent a puff of dust billowing up from the ground. The white feather on Pop’s fedora turned brown. Obaachan couldn’t stop coughing. It was Camp Harmony all over again: Lines to get checked in. Lines to get their apartment assignment. Lines to use the latrines. Finally, they got through all the lines and found their apartment. Just like at Camp Harmony, the only furnishings were five cots — this time with real mattresses — and a potbelly stove. All the furniture Pop had made had been left behind. They were starting over from scratch.
The floor was so thick with fine dust that Mitsi left footprints as she brought her things inside. She plunked down on the closest of the grimy cots to finish her letter to Dash. In wobbly letters, she wrote:
We are in block three and Debbie is right next door. That is the only good thing about this place.
The only good thing.
Mitsi’s throat was raw from the dust, and the ringing in her ears was driving her crazy. Mom heard from Mrs. Suda who heard from Mrs. Kusakabe that the ringing was because of the altitude.
“Seattle is only about five hundred feet above sea level,” Pop explained. “Here, we’re about four thousand feet above. That’s a big difference.”
“As soon as you get used to the altitude, the ringing will stop,” Mom promised.
Mitsi rolled over on her cot, blanketed in misery. She was never going to get used to anything about this place, not the dust or the miles of sagebrush or the pancake-flat landscape without one tree to provide shade from the bullying sun.
Through the thin wall, she could hear the Sudas — all nine of them — waking up. The baby, Louise, was howling and Mrs. Suda started singing the Mockingbird song to quiet her. Mitsi pulled her pillow over her head. Yes, please hush, little baby. Don’t you cry — some people are trying to sleep!
The pillow did not help. With twenty people crammed into six small apartments in one long, narrow building, quiet was too much to hope for. Adults snored or argued. Kids cried out from bad dreams, or just cried. Even though they were whispered, Mitsi could hear the Suda family’s nightly bedtime prayers. Debbie and her mom were on the other side of the Kashinos; they were quiet as mice.
Mitsi propped herself up on her elbow, peering under the blanket that served as the “wall” for the bedroom she shared with Ted and Obaachan. It looked like she was the last one out of bed.
She peeked under her cot. When no one else was around, she and Debbie had knocked out the knothole in the wall between them, and then scraped at the hole with spoons until it was large enough to pass notes through. Mitsi felt around on the floor. No note this morning.
She sat up, bumping her head on the orange crate Pop had nailed above her bed. Until he could gather enough scrap wood to build something, this crate was her dresser.
Mitsi slipped out of her nightie and into some shorts and a top. As she dressed, she whacked her elbow on the potbelly stove, the only other object that had been in the room when they arrived. There wasn’t any coal to burn in it, but with temperatures in the hundreds, just looking at it made her hot.
Mitsi rubbed her sore elbow, inspecting for a bruise. Her sneakers scritch-scratched across the floor. All the buildings had been set up on little stilts to keep them out of the dust, a plan that failed dismally. The gritty stuff got sucked up through the floors no matter how many rags and newspapers Mom stuffed in the cracks.
Debbie was coming out of her apartment, too. “Can I sit with you?” she asked. “Mom’s got another headache.”
At least it wasn’t as far to the mess hall as it had been at Camp Harmony; they only had to walk across a wide path for meals. There were twelve barracks in each of the forty-two blocks, six on a side, all in a row. Each block felt like its own little neighborhood. In between and running perpendicular to the two rows of barracks sat a pair of b
uildings. One was the combined laundry and bathroom. The other was the mess hall. “Bathroom” was a joke; there was no running water yet in camp. Everyone was using latrines. Ten holers, five holes on a side and absolutely no privacy. Mitsi had been keeping her eye out for boxes.
After she got her breakfast, Mitsi scanned the room. She saw Mom, Pop, and Obaachan. They waved the girls over.
“Where’s Ted?” Mitsi asked. Since they’d come to this camp, it was almost as if she didn’t have a brother. Mom and Pop let him do whatever he wanted.
“He finished already,” Mom said.
“Yum, corn flakes.” Debbie took a big spoonful. “I was getting sick of oatmeal.”
Mitsi studied her own cereal bowl. Instead of being sprinkled with sugar, it was sprinkled with fine sand. She carefully scooped out a bite, hoping to avoid spooning up any dust. But the minute she started chewing, she could feel the grit on her teeth. She dropped her spoon.
“Eat your breakfast, honey,” Mom said. “You already need a belt to hold your shorts up.”
Mitsi took another bite, to make Mom happy, even though it was like chewing a mouthful of sandpaper. She wouldn’t have any teeth by the time they left camp; they’d all be ground away to nubbins. Pop said it would get better soon, when the seasons changed. Mitsi sure hoped he was right.
Mrs. Suda stopped by their table, balancing Louise on her hip. “The latest word is that school’s going to open on October first.”
“Not till then?” Mom played peek-a-boo with her napkin. Louise laughed and held her pudgy hands up in front of her own face.
“I hear you.” Mrs. Suda clicked her tongue. “Some of those boys have far too much time on their hands. Including my own.”
Mitsi glanced at Mom. Was she thinking about Ted? Those looked like new worry wrinkles on her forehead.
“Well, we’d better be going. It’s somebody’s nap time.” Mrs. Suda kissed Louise’s plump cheek, then pulled up the bandanna that was tied around the baby’s neck. Lots of little kids were walking around the camp looking like outlaws in a Western movie. It was the only way their mothers could protect them from the ever-blowing dust.
