by Kirby Larson
Debbie finished her breakfast. “I should take something to Mother,” she said. “Maybe some tea and toast.”
“Tell her I have some aspirin if she needs any.” Mom picked up her own tray. “Oh, there’s Mrs. Iseri. I wanted to ask her about helping with Sunday school.”
Pop finished his coffee, then headed out with Mr. Suda to scrounge up more scrap wood. Obaachan joined the dried-plum ladies for another cup of tea.
“Do you want to come with me?” Debbie asked.
Mitsi shrugged. Her family didn’t seem to care that they’d left her all by herself. “Okay,” she said. “Afterward, maybe we can walk over to Block 6. So I can check for mail.” There’d been no letters from Dash since they’d arrived at Minidoka. And no packages from Mrs. Bowker, either.
“Great idea!” Debbie poured some hot tea into a mug and set it on a tray. “Then we can see if they have any Creamsicles in the canteen. Mother said I could buy one today.” She patted her pocket. “I have enough for you, too.” She slathered margarine on a piece of toast and added it to the tray, covering everything with a napkin to try to keep the dust out. “Okay, let’s go.”
Mitsi waited outside while Debbie took the tray in to her mom. At Camp Harmony, most of the living areas were the same size. Here, bigger families — like the Sudas — got bigger apartments. Smaller families, like Debbie and her mom, had smaller ones. The Kashinos’ apartment here was big enough that Mitsi didn’t have to crawl over anyone’s cot to get in bed.
From the stoop, she could hear Mrs. Miyake’s soft voice, but not what she was saying. Debbie stepped back out, putting something in her pocket before gently closing the rough wooden door behind her. “She’s feeling a little better.” Debbie sailed off the stoop, kicking up a dust cloud. “Ready to go?”
Mitsi flapped her hand in front of her face, trying not to cough.
They walked slowly, seeking out every sliver of shade. The heat might have been bearable if there were a lake or a pool. A canal ran alongside the camp, but it wasn’t safe for swimming.
Up ahead, Mr. Hirai was dragging a huge piece of tumbleweed, his shirt soaked with sweat. “Need a hand?” Mitsi called. He waited for them to catch up. They carried the prickly dried shrub back to his barracks.
“May I ask another favor?” When they nodded, he handed them two short brooms made of straw.
“Sweep out a nice, flat spot,” he told them. While the girls swept — with gentle motions so as not to stir up too much dust — Mr. Hirai placed several large stones in a design. He’d already made a “river” of smaller ones, curving around more tumbleweed plants.
Mitsi had never thought of tumbleweed as anything but a dirty jumble of twigs. But Mr. Hirai had created something that reminded her of Obaachan’s bonsai — delicate forests growing in small dishes — only a hundred times bigger.
“It’s beautiful.” Mitsi tugged on the neck of her blouse to try to cool off.
“Oh, not as nice as my flower garden at home.” Mr. Hirai wiped his forehead with the back of his hand. “But if you look with your heart, you can find beauty anywhere.”
They finished their task and watched Mr. Hirai place the new piece of tumbleweed. “There?” he asked them.
“Maybe a little to the left,” Mitsi suggested.
He moved it, stepped back, and studied the new layout. “You have a good eye. That’s just where it should go,” he said.
“Do you need us to do anything else?” Mitsi asked.
“No, you’ve done enough. Thanks. Where are you headed?”
“To the canteen.” Mitsi held up an envelope. “To mail a letter.”
“And get a Creamsicle before they’re all gone,” added Debbie. Two days in a row, the canteen had run out of ice-cream bars. Popsicles, too.
“Canteen, eh?” Mr. Hirai pulled a quarter from his pocket. “Would you please bring me back a Nehi?” He wiped his forehead again. “Any flavor. Just nice and cold.”
Mitsi took the quarter. “Okay. See you in a bit.”
They passed Mrs. Tokuda’s apartment in the next block.
“I was hoping to see you two,” she called. She offered them ten cents apiece to watch little Davy the next day. “I’ve volunteered to type up the new camp newsletter, The Minidoka Irrigator. I can take Donna with me; she’ll nap. But Davy …” She didn’t need to say any more. Everybody in their block knew about Davy. Mom called him a pistol.
“Oh, that’s okay,” Mitsi said. “You don’t have to pay us.” That’s what Mom would want her to say.
Mrs. Tokuda shook her head. “Your family is already doing so much for me.” Pop and Mr. Suda had been meeting with the camp superintendent to try to get Mr. Tokuda out of Fort Missoula. Mr. Iseri, too. “Your father won’t let me do anything to thank him for all his help. You have to let me pay you.”
“Sure,” Debbie said. “No problem!” Under her breath to Mitsi she said, “More Creamsicles!” She blew at her bangs, which, like Mitsi’s, were glued to her forehead with sweat. “I am so tired of being hot. I’d like to be a Creamsicle!” She blew again.
Mitsi agreed. “Or a root beer float.” Trickles of sweat bumped down her backbone. “Or a —”
“Stop!” Debbie covered her ears. “This is making me hotter, not cooler.”
They played hink pink the rest of the way to the store, which was where the temporary post office was. Mitsi didn’t know where Mel ended up, but he wasn’t working behind the post office counter anymore.
The new man wore a frown and a name tag that said JOHNSON. He didn’t even look up when Mitsi stepped to the counter. She cleared her throat. “Do you have anything for Mitsue Kashino?” She gave him their Minidoka address.
Mr. Johnson looked annoyed, but he did shuffle through a big bin marked with Mitsi’s barracks number. “Here you go.” He flipped a letter to her.
“Thank you.” Mitsi went over to the freezer case to pick out her ice cream and Mr. Hirai’s Nehi. “Should I get him grape?” she asked Debbie. But there wasn’t an answer. She looked around and saw Debbie handing two envelopes to Mr. Johnson. Mitsi wondered who they were to.
“Grape for Mr. Hirai?” she asked again. Debbie was at her elbow now.
“That’s the best flavor.” Debbie opened the freezer case and pulled out her selection. On their way outside to eat their treats, the girls bumped into Ted and Lefty and Pudge coming in.
“Oh, look,” said Lefty. “It’s Mutt and Jeff.”
“Oh, that is so funny, I forgot to laugh,” Debbie said.
Mitsi stuck her tongue out. “I don’t get why Ted likes those guys.”
Debbie peeled the paper off her ice cream. “Me, either.” She tossed her garbage, then offered to hold the bottle of Nehi so Mitsi could peel the paper off her Popsicle.
“Oh, shoot!” Mitsi stamped her foot, causing a mini dust storm.
“Watch it!” Debbie spun away to protect her ice cream.
“Sorry.” Mitsi flapped at the dust. “But I forgot to mail my letter. I’ll be right back.” She ran inside, fumbled the letter out of her pocket, and handed it to Mr. Johnson. As she turned to leave, she thought she saw something. She blinked. She did see something. Something that made her heart drop into her stomach.
Ted put a candy bar in his pocket. Then he wandered over to the freezer case, studying the choices before strolling out of the store. Mitsi hurried after him, barely able to breathe. When he got outside, he took off at a trot. Lefty and Pudge were on his tail. They were running so hard, she’d never be able to catch up.
“You look like you’ve seen a ghost,” Debbie said. “Was that Mr. Johnson mean to you or something?”
Mitsi shook her head. She couldn’t tell Debbie what happened. Couldn’t tell anyone. Except Dash. And he was a thousand miles away. “I guess the heat is really getting to me,” she said. “I don’t feel like eating this anymore. Do you want it?”
Debbie did. She offered to deliver Mr. Hirai’s soda so Mitsi could go lie down. “I hope you feel be
tter soon,” Debbie said when they parted company.
Mitsi didn’t know how she could feel better. The apartment was empty when she got there, so she curled up on her cot, tears pooling in her eyes. She hated this stupid camp. Why did they have to be here? It was all General DeWitt’s fault! He had ruined their family. And Lefty had ruined Ted.
She was wrung out, like a washcloth. The heat and her worry and the tears left her exhausted. When she rolled over to face the wall, the letter in her pocket rustled. She couldn’t read it right now. Not even Dash could make her feel better.
Mitsi tucked her head into the crook of her arm and fell into a restless, sweaty sleep.
Being a spy was harder than it looked in the movies. Ted wasn’t that easy to follow. And he’d sprouted eyes in the back of his head. He always seemed to know when Mitsi was on the case.
And it didn’t help that he and his friends were Houdinis, disappearing right before her very eyes. She knew they had a secret hideout somewhere, but she hadn’t been able to find it. For all her watching, as the days went by, she only caught her brother doing all the Ted things he’d always done. A bit of magic. A bit of baseball. A bit of mischief. Nothing more. Maybe she hadn’t really seen him take anything at the canteen. A person was innocent until proven guilty. Wasn’t that the American way?
One night, Mom and Pop went to yet another meeting. This one was about getting the coal shipment before winter hit. So far, there wasn’t one bit of fuel for the hundreds of potbelly stoves in the camp. It was too hot to even think about a stove, but Pop said high deserts get plenty cold in winter. That there’d even be snow. Anything would be better than the mud.
Obaachan was knitting with the dried-plum ladies. Socks for the Red Cross. For the soldiers. Mitsi had the apartment to herself. For once, baby Louise wasn’t bawling and Mitsi could actually concentrate on Thimble Summer, the book she’d borrowed from Debbie. Garnet and her friend, Citronella, were so busy reading that they got themselves locked up in the public library. And on a Friday night! No one would come until Monday. And the story took place in the olden days, before telephones and electric lights. Scared and hungry, the girls searched the librarian’s desk. They shared a candy bar they found, reasoning that they could buy another one when they got out. If they got out.
Mitsi’s body was sitting cross-legged on her cot, but her mind was in that dark and creepy library with Garnet and Citronella. When someone began pounding on the library door, her own door slammed open. Mitsi screamed.
“I thought you’d be at the movie.” Ted plunked on his cot, untying his shoes. “With Debbie.”
“Her mom’s not feeling good again.” Mitsi sniffed. “You smell like cigarettes.” Worry gnawed at her stomach like a rat.
“Aw, it’s just the old guys smoking in the ten holer.” Ted waved his hand in front of his face. “To cover up the stink.”
The women’s bathroom smelled pretty bad. Mitsi could only imagine what the men’s smelled like.
Ted kicked his shoes under his cot and flopped back. “What’re you reading?”
Mitsi shrugged. “Something I borrowed from Debbie.” She glanced down at the page in her lap. An idea pushed its way into her brain. “It’s about a girl who takes something that doesn’t belong to her.” She floated the words out like fishing bait. “A candy bar.” Maybe she could get Ted to confess.
Ted lay very still on his cot. Finally, he said, “Does she get in trouble?”
“I don’t know yet. I haven’t read that far.” Mitsi flipped a page.
He rolled away, facing the wall. “Sounds like a dumb book.” He pulled the pillow over his head.
“Ted?” Mitsi leaned forward on her cot, toward her brother. “Ted?”
“Trying to sleep here!” He yanked the covers over his head, too.
Mitsi finished the chapter. Garnet and her friend were rescued and fed fried egg sandwiches since they missed supper by getting locked in. Mitsi closed the book, then she lay down, too. Ted was right. It was kind of a dumb book. Everything always turned out peachy for Garnet. That’s not the way it was in real life.
A scrabbling noise awakened her the next morning. There were enough snakes around that mice weren’t a problem, but she still tensed up a bit when she peered under her cot. It wasn’t a mouse but a note from Debbie.
Walk with me to the post office?
Usually, it was Mitsi who couldn’t wait to go to the post office. But she’d been so distracted about Ted that she hadn’t gone in days. Yawning, she grabbed a pencil and wrote her answer on the back.
Okay.
She bolted down some corn flakes in the dining hall, then ran back to their apartment. Pop was wrestling a desk inside. “What do you think about this?” he asked. “Mr. Suda and I are going to make one for Debbie, too.”
Mitsi ran her hands across the top. “It’s perfect.” Somehow, Pop had sanded the rough wood so smooth that her fingers couldn’t find the tiniest of splinters.
“Okay if I put it here?” He wedged the desk next to Mitsi’s cot.
She tested the pencil drawer. It wouldn’t open. “The drawer’s stuck.”
Pop jiggled it all the way out, then rubbed the bottom sliders with a bar of Ivory soap. “This should do the trick.” He replaced the drawer and it slid right in and out again.
“Smooth as silk,” Mitsi said.
“Now all you need is some homework.” Pop winked. “Only a couple more weeks.”
Mitsi opened the pencil drawer and put her writing materials inside. Everyone else in the family seemed to have found plenty to do to fill the hot, dusty days. Mom organized the Sunday school and was teaching craft classes. Last week, it had been felt animal pins. Mitsi had made a tan dog, like Dash, that was pinned to her blouse. Obaachan taught ikebana. Of course, there were no flowers in camp, but she could make tumbleweed arrangements look beautiful. If Pop wasn’t out hunting for scrap lumber, he was building furniture. He’d made two chests of drawers, five chairs, and now Mitsi’s desk. And, when he wasn’t hanging out with Lefty and Pudge, Ted delivered the camp newsletter.
Debbie popped through the door.
“Come see what Pop made!” Mitsi showed it off, sliding the pencil drawer in and out.
Pop smiled at Debbie. “We’re making one for you, too.” He bent over to examine some invisible flaw on the desktop. “You’ll have it before school starts.”
Debbie tapped the desktop with her fingers. “Thank you, Mr. Kashino.”
“We’re going to the post office,” Mitsi told him. “And then we’re babysitting for Davy.”
Pop nodded absently, already at work on Debbie’s desk.
Clouds of dust ballooned after each step she and Debbie took. Mitsi coughed. “I’ll be so glad when winter comes,” she said. Debbie only nodded. Mitsi was used to this. Anything to do with fathers turned her quiet. Sad. Mitsi wasn’t sure why, but she knew Debbie well enough now to let it be. It was like a freckle or a chipped tooth or a cowlick, a part of who she was.
When they got to the post office, Debbie pulled out an envelope. She kissed it for luck. “It’s got to work this time.” She pushed it through the brass slot.
“What do you mean?”
Debbie ran her fingers along the mail counter. Mean Mr. Johnson was nowhere in sight. “I guess it’s okay to tell you. ’Cause of what your dad’s doing.” She lowered her voice and pulled Mitsi behind a war bonds display. “You know where Mrs. Iseri’s husband is? And Mrs. Tokuda’s?”
Mitsi nodded. “Fort Missoula.”
“My dad’s there, too.”
Mitsi felt an odd rush of relief. “So he’s not dead.”
“He was president of the Japanese Chamber of Commerce. They took him away after Pearl Harbor. In his pajamas.”
“It was raining when they took Mr. Iseri and he didn’t even have a hat.” Mitsi remembered that sad day.
“I never got to see him after that.” Debbie pressed on her eyelids.
And Mitsi had thought it was hard
not seeing Dash. “I’m really sorry.”
“I have a photo that I keep under my pillow.” Debbie pulled her hands away from her face. “Sometimes I pretend he’s there, tucking me in.”
“So what’s got to work?” Mitsi asked.
Debbie looked confused. “I don’t get it.”
“That letter.” Mitsi pointed to the mail slot. “You said it had to work this time.”
Debbie sighed. “Mom hired a lawyer. He said to get references from people who would swear that Dad wasn’t a spy. So she did. Five of them, including one from Reverend Andrews and one from Father Tibesar.”
“Everybody loves them,” Mitsi said.
Debbie’s mouth curved into a small smile. “They have God on their side, right?”
“Right!”
“Plus, what your dad and Mr. Suda are doing. Mom says it might make all the difference.”
“Pop is really smart.” Mitsi thought about all the furniture he was making out of bits of scrap wood. How he had used a plain old bar of soap to fix a sticky drawer. “He can fix anything.”
Debbie took off her glasses and brushed her eyes. “You’re an awful good listener.”
“I had a good teacher.” Mitsi straightened a poster on the post office wall, trying not to think about Dash. The poster said FOOD IS A WEAPON. DON’T WASTE IT. She gave the corner a final tap. “We’re going to be late. Come on!”
Mrs. Tokuda had Donna all bundled up when they got there. “I shouldn’t be more than an hour.” She bent to kiss Davy good-bye. “Bye, sweetheart.” She hurried off, with the baby in her arms.
“I not sweetheart. I dog!” Davy romped around the apartment on all fours. “Woof, woof.”
“Should we teach this dog some tricks?” Mitsi asked Debbie.
“Woof!” Davy barked, wagging his rear as if he had a tail. “Tricks!”
Mitsi held out a raisin. “Roll over.” Davy rolled twice, then barked again. She petted him and fed him the raisin from the palm of her hand. Then he wanted them to take him for a walk, but Mitsi didn’t think it was a very good idea to tie the bathrobe belt “leash” around his neck. Debbie found a clothespin and pinned it to his collar. When they went outside, he lifted his leg on Mr. Hirai’s tumbleweed.
