Ken's War

by B. K. Fowler

  Ken didn’t give a hoot about that historical stuff. He wanted to put that mask on.

  Wizard removed the mask from its nest of paper, winked and gingerly lowered it over his head. The hollow mask, shaped somewhat like a temple bell, covered Wizard’s entire head, not only his face.

  “Amazing transformation, wouldn’t you say?”

  The mask threw Wizard’s voice from an otherworldly place. Shishiko frolicked around, happy with the way of the world. The curved brows conveyed delight, the wide smile a near delirious state, the cheeks a plump naiveté. He pantomimed picking flowers and smelling them. His stance changed. Shishiko planted his legs far apart and chopped the air with his arms. The fat cheeks pushed the eyes up at evil angles. The arched brows and hungry mouth belonged on the face of a warrior the instant before eviscerating his enemy. He advanced upon Ken who had involuntarily stepped back against the file cabinet. Wizard lifted the mask off his head. His wiry hair was dark and flattened with perspiration.

  “How’d you do that?” Ken asked, breathing again.

  “Do what?”

  “It was friendly and then scary. A little.”

  “So much emotion from a piece of old wood. The mask carver captured a halfway expression that, combined with the actor’s gestures, conveys many personality traits of the character. Gigaku masters can communicate complicated plots with pantomime because the masks are versatile. The actors pump life into the masks.”

  The mask, resting on its bedding of paper, was sizing up Ken.

  Wizard shirt-sleeved sweat off his forehead. “The audience members also project their own states of mind on the mask. As with every great art, Gigaku is participatory in the sense that we respond in unique ways. Try it on.”

  The inside of the mask smelled of attic and tree sap. He could see pretty well straight ahead, but had no peripheral vision. When he high-stepped spiritedly, the mask swiveled and threw him into darkness. Ken adjusted the mask so he could see again.

  The phone on the desk rang. Wizard trapped the receiver between his ear and shoulder, and pawed through file folders, searching for a document the caller, a soldier of higher rank judging by the erect back of the private first class, was asking about. Ken moved steadily and slowly. He swiped the fish knife off Wizard’s desk and stepped outside to disembowel enemy warriors.

  “Kitty, kitty, kitty. Don’t be scared. It’s me.” Ken knelt, keeping his spine straight so the mask wouldn’t wobble, and he diddled Neko’s chin where she liked it. He raised his arm up in front of him until the eyeholes framed his left wrist. He slid the blade over the W of blue veins. A crimson trail rose. He held his wrist low to the ground. He couldn’t see her, but he felt Neko’s rough tongue lap his blood the way the ghost-cat did in Maeda’s story.

  “What the hell!” His dad’s voice.

  The mask slipped, throwing Ken into blackness. He heard feet pattering and childish tittering. Village kids had been watching him. His father gripped him under the armpits and dragged him up to his feet. He wrapped a bandage—his handkerchief maybe—tightly around Ken’s wrist.

  “I didn’t realize he was that depressed!” Wizard’s voice. “Bring him in here. I have a first aid kit.”

  Ken was carried back into the Quonset hut and laid on the desk. The handkerchief was unwound. Wetness stung his wrist. Mercurochrome. The bottom edge of the back of the mask dug into his neck. The eyeholes circumscribed his field of vision down to a view of a large spider waiting in its web on the ceiling. The web trembled.

  “Why?” His father’s voice was more puzzled than angry.

  “It’s a displacement reaction, sir,” Wizard said. “Too much has changed for a boy whose young mind has yet to develop the tools to cope, and whose mother—”

  “That’s all, Abernathy.”

  “It’s not too deep. He won’t need stitches,” Wizard said. Ken heard Wizard’s retreating footsteps.

  “Ken!” Paderson gripped Ken’s right shoulder. “Are you trying to get even with me?”

  “Nuh-uh.”

  “I know I don’t look after you as much as I should. Maybe a kid your age should still be with his mother. If you want to go home again, you can go, even if my request for transfer isn’t approved. It’s your only other option.”

  “No, Dad, no!” His voice bounced around inside the mask.

  “When there’s a war on...” His dad made funny noises, as though he was trying to blow his nose. “Maybe Abernathy is partially right. When people are frightened they do things they’d never do in normal times, but that’s no excuse for resorting to drastic measures.”

  “Dad, it’s not what you think. I was only—”

  “Your grandparents are gone. Your mom’s remarried. You and me... We are it. We are it.”

  He was right about that. After Ken had told his dad about family life back in the States, sparing no gory details, his dad had drunk a bottle of sake, even though he hated rice wine. West Point was never mentioned again.

  “OK, Dad.”

  “OK, then.”

  The mask was lifted off. His father’s jaw was unusually soft and at ease. Letting go of Ken’s shoulder, he rubbed his face back into its normal constitution and said, “I’ll be back at eighteen hundred hours.” Paderson saluted first and spun on his heel. Ken returned the salute to his father’s back. The hollow mask rocked on the desk. There were some emotions even a master carver could not sculpt into Shishiko’s wooden features.

  He hung upside down by his knees from a gnarled branch reaching out over the brilliant green rice paddies. Dogwood blossoms foamed the hillsides, on this the warmest day of spring so far. His head filled with blood pulled by gravity as he ripped open the letter with the handwritten Aberdeen, Maryland return address in the upper left corner. After weeks and weeks of waiting, his mom’s answer to his request for money to pay for chi gung lessons had arrived. The first part of the letter was junk about the Holm clan, and her hoping his trip back to Japan was “uneventful.” The last paragraph said:

  “The money in your bank account is your nest egg for your future, not for hobbies. One of these days you’ll be getting married and buying a house and having kids. You’ll have a head start with that money plus the interest. You won’t have to scrimp and save like most young couples do.”

  Jeeze, she had him signing mortgage papers and burping babies when he didn’t even own a car yet. He scrabbled down the tree and loped into the Quonset hut.

  His father and Wizard were opening the rest of the mail that had arrived.

  “Dad?”

  “Hm?”

  “Can I have some money?”

  “What for?”

  Ken sighed. He would try the truth and see where it got him. “Chi gung lessons.”

  Paderson squinched up his face as if a rotten odor had socked his nostrils. “What’s that?” he asked.

  With assistance from Wizard, Ken introduced his father to the ancient martial art.

  Paderson, eyes squinting drolly, waved his hands at Ken and said, “Charge at me like you want to kill me.”

  Ken planted his feet wide and crouched in a position he thought was a martial arts stance, but before he had a chance to shift his weight to drive home a nut crusher, his dad whipped his index finger out of an imaginary holster and said, “Bang, bang. You be dead.”

  “That’s not fair,” Ken protested.

  Wizard and Paderson weren’t listening, though. Wizard slammed a file drawer shut. With a grin squirming on his lips, Paderson blew on his index finger and used it to guide his eyes along lines of fine print on a form that had arrived in the mail.

  After lunch, Captain Paderson said, “We’ll be back early this evening.” He and Private First Class Abernathy hopped into the jeep parked beside the hut. The vehicle coughed and rolled away, twirling dust clouds behind it.

  After some time, Ken moseyed to the back of the Quonset hut...just to see, just to see. Neko twined her feline body between his ankles. “Git!” Ken hissed. Neko sat on h
er haunches and licked her paw, cocked ears betraying her displeasure.

  These dusty boxes had been stacked against the walls for years and years according to the dates on the sides. He brushed cobwebs and bug carcasses off one box, opened it, and found four rectangular pieces of metal mesh stacked inside. A diagram showed how to install the metal vents on portable latrines. First he checked that Bellamy wasn’t lurking around and then he rummaged through the rest of the boxes and crates at the back of the hut. Dirty and sweaty, he was satisfied none of the other boxes contained the remainder of the latrine kits. The vents were orphans, useless, and would never be instrumental in winning the war in Southeast Asia. After finger-raking dirt out of his hair, he tied his sweaty mane into a ponytail at the base of his neck.

  He lugged one box to the bamboo grove. Perspiration slicked his fingers gripping the corners of the cardboard box. Insects sucked salty moisture from his face. He set the box down and assumed a waiting stance as Sikung Wu performed a graceful dance of life in the dappled light.

  Every day since his return from the States, he had sneaked over to the bamboo grove and watched Sikung Wu. He’d mimicked the Chinese man’s actions until he’d memorized a half-hour’s worth of movements by heart. So what? You couldn’t kick the shit out of anyone using this slowpoke stuff. He had noticed, though, that he didn’t lose his balance anymore when he raised his legs and walked like an egret in slow motion. He could high-step like the aquatic bird with his eyes closed.

  So now, mirroring the man’s movements, Ken extended his arms in front of his chest and held an imaginary porcelain vase between his gently cupped palms and rotated it from end to end.

  “You know the movements but not the way,” Sikung said. “You are a shell with no meat inside.”

  The repetitive linear tree trunks of the bamboo grove weren’t having their normal calming effect on Ken. Slender green spears of bamboo leaves pricked his patience. Clanking, hollow stems annoyed him. A caterwauling bird, no, two birds hiding in a dark pocket goaded him. He exhaled dramatically and slapped his arms against his thighs. “Teach me how to fight, Sikung.”

  “It will invite trouble.”

  “But what if an enemy attacks me?”

  “No one will attack you.”

  “How do you know? I saw some kids beat up a boy in the village. In front of his house.”

  There was a thrumming of wings nearby. Sikung said nothing.

  “That boy was dead...for a while.” Ken’s ears felt hot and fat.

  For the first time in Ken’s presence, the master was baffled for a second. Then he let loose a belly laugh. He slipped back into his impassive demeanor. “The boy you speak of quit the dojo. He broke the unity of the group. You are an outside person. You can never join. Therefore you won’t have the opportunity to quit and be killed.”

  “I don’t want to join them. I want to take lessons from you. I can trade stuff for the lessons.” Ken placed the box of latrine vents at Sikung’s feet. He lifted one metal vent from the box and wiggled his hot fingers under the mesh. “Hibachi grill!”

  “You dishonor your father. You dishonor American warriors with this purloined gift.” Sikung Wu’s quietly spoken words caused Ken to step back. A brown worm humped its way up the box.

  Sikung said, “Your desire to be strong makes you weak. Have less desire.”

  Without forethought, Ken’s hand plunged into his pocket and produced the quartz he’d found in his grandfather’s garden nearly two summers ago. Sikung’s hand blurred. The stone disappeared from Ken’s hand to reappear in Sikung’s callused palm. He threw it. The quartz landed out of earshot. Ken opened his mouth to shout, “You jerk!” but didn’t.

  “Even things of rock are not everlasting and will decay.” Sikung spoke softly. “Your grandfather is not in that stone. He’s in the wind and the trees and every stone.”

  A roar of confusion mixed up with anger deafened Ken to whatever Sikung Wu was saying next. He saw the Chinese man’s lips and mole hairs move, but he heard only the din in his head. He’d never mentioned his grandpap to Sikung. How did the old troll know that the stone crystallized Ken’s memory and love for Grandpap Paderson?

  “If you want to learn practical and healthful skills,” Sikung Wu was saying, “you learn from water. Water subjugates fire, of which you have too much. Your body is out of balance. When you understand the water principle, you will be a wise individual and then you can teach me.” His mouth twisted up in a grin, and he jabbed Ken in the shoulder with a rigid index finger. “I won’t give you hibachi for tuition.”

  The jab, intended to be comical, knocked Ken back two steps. Unconsciously trying to erase the ghost-print of the master’s power he massaged his shoulder. A livid bruise would bloom soon.

  “What do you mean?” Ken asked. “What should I do?”

  “Each morning before dawn, sit under the waterfall and pay your attention.”

  What a gyp, Ken thought.

  For eight consecutive mornings, he’d crept out of the house, hunkered down naked under the waterfall and tried to figure out what Sikung had meant by “water principle.” Ken knew the facts: Water, two molecules of hydrogen combined with one molecule of oxygen, froze at 32 degrees Fahrenheit and boiled at 212. In school the teachers had shown filmstrips of sketches explaining condensation and cloud formation. None of this had anything to do with disabling your enemy by ramming the heel of your hand into his nose.

  While he sat beneath the rushing, roaring waters that pounded his head and shoulders, a black bird—a crow or a raven—settled on a pine branch overhead. Soon more birds joined the one. The flock jockeyed for space, and perched equidistant from each other in a row on the branch. A thought, not the kind one thinks of purposely, but the kind that flies in of its own accord entered his mind.

  The Pennsylvania State Parks Commission might have sold or even given surplus and outdated supplies to its employees. He had no proof that his grandfather was a thief and had stolen the picnic table, the bathroom mirror, the toilet paper dispenser and toilet paper. He only had what TV detectives called circumstantial evidence. And, for that matter, since he was giving kinfolk the benefit of the doubt, he’d only heard gossip and innuendoes about his dad from doofusses and dirtbags. I’d be a dope to believe them, Ken reflected dismally.

  Who were these men? His people. His family. His blood. They ushered him into the domain of males, showed him how to build campfires in the woods, and then disperse the cold ashes afterward, showed him how to burn a homer past the outfielder’s reach, taught him to stand up for himself. Yet, still he accused them of thievery, oh, not to their faces like a man, but silently, so the accusation festered within him. Finally, finally he understood how Japanese people could feel shame in spite of no other soul being aware of the dishonorable thoughts they harbored.

  From this day on, he was going to try to be a good son. He wouldn’t make his dad ask for a second cup of coffee. Oh, no siree, he’d pour it before his father had time to plunk the empty mug down on the kitchen table. And that was just the beginning of the ways he’d become a good son, a good soldier.

  The water pounding on his skull had given him a headache. This was stupid sitting in butt-numbing water. He jumped out of the waterfall and hurried home before his dad woke up and growled for fried eggs.

  Chapter Eleven

  ~ The Water Principle ~

  Wizard’s smile was infectious. Ken grinned back goofily, but he didn’t know what was so dang amusing. He accepted a box from Wizard’s outstretched hands.

  The box, decorated with embossed chrysanthemums and flecked with gold was too beautiful to rip open greedily. Cautiously, he lifted the lid off the box. Fibrous paper with ferns embedded in the weave lined the inside of the box. Ken pulled out a blue and white yukata bearing the same oriental medallion designs as Wizard’s yukata. He slipped on the stiff, boxy garment. The Japanese robe fit as well as a yukata could fit.

  “I’ll have room to grow.” His mother’s words.


  “Let’s take it out for a test drive,” Wizard said.

  Ken felt a mite ridiculous yet proud striding behind the wild-haired private, the two of them wearing identical yukata, the two of them with long hair flowing with every step. I’m an American with freckles on my arms, walking to an ofuro in Kyushu, Japan. Who would be awed by this? Who would exclaim, ‘You don’t say! Tell me, what’s it like?’

  Ken didn’t need coaching in bathhouse procedure. He soaped, scrubbed, rinsed and soaped, scrubbed and rinsed again before dipping into the warm silky water beside Wizard. He rested his arms on the rock ledge behind them. He didn’t look people in the eyes, but he did wonder why the men didn’t get boners. A flash of whiteness in the maple trees caught his notice.

  “Hey!” He clapped both hands over his mouth. Shouting at a public hot springs was cruder than burping during the Lord’s Prayer.

  “It’s two weeks old,” Wizard said.

  The suckling monkey clung to its mother’s breast. Pink skin showed through the baby’s fine white fur. Sated, the monkey let the nipple flop out of its mouth, and turned its pink eyes to observe movements in the pool below.

  “How can gray parents have a white baby?” Ken whispered.

  “It’s an albino. Albinism is a color deficiency.”

  “I know, but how’s the deficiency happen?”

  “I don’t recollect reading an explanation. If I were to venture a guess, I’d say the genetic code for pigmentation is lacking in the monkey’s DNA.”

  “Looks like he came out of the oven too soon.”

  Wizard chuckled and said the critter did look underdone. The mother macaque clasped her baby to her chest, and bounded into the forest. Wizard and Ken rested their heads on the rim of the pool. Through a curtain of red eyelashes, Ken observed a girl lowering herself into the bath. Her parents slipped in on either side of her. The way the young girl tucked a lock of black hair behind her ear evoked a mishmash of flashbacks of chalk dust in blackboard trays back home, and of Maeda when she thought no one was watching her.