Ken's War

by B. K. Fowler

  A grin stretched the master’s face. “Not every minute.”

  Chapter Thirteen

  ~ Irregularities ~

  The setting orange sun was reflected in the fishpond next to the giant red gate. Red paint chips that had flaked off the wooden structure speckled the ground around the torii’s two stout legs. A lady led an elderly woman, hunched like a question mark, along the gravel path. Neither woman looked at him as they passed through the torii. He’d never seen anyone drink from one of the bamboo ladles resting on the mossy stone water trough, nor had he witnessed devotees tie prayers onto the hemlock branch, littered with the paper invocations like clothespins on a line. Many mysteries occurred when he wasn’t watching. What are you supposed to talk about on a first date? Should he kiss or shake hands when they say goodnight?

  She approached from the direction of the village. The sun, ready to plunge behind the mountain, painted her white dress a luminescent orange. He groaned with a mixture of joy and misery. Yasuko’s parents flanked her. She introduced them using her textbook English, and said that they were going to ride the train to the cinema in the next village and would he accompany them? Yeah, sure.

  Mr. and Mrs. Watanabe sat on the train’s bench seat facing Ken and Yasuko. Neither Mrs. nor Mr. Watanabe was particularly attractive. Mrs. Watanabe, with cheeks so full they suggested a ripe persimmon ready to burst, and Mr. Watanabe, with deep creases like supplemental eyelids under his crescent eyes, had produced a daughter whose resemblance to both of them was apparent, but mystifying in its singular beauty.

  He burrowed his hands in his pockets and was thankful he’d brought enough yen to pay for four movie tickets as a way to repay on to Yasuko’s parents, for the Watanabes had adamantly refused to let him buy his own train ticket. The discussion almost got physical there for a moment at the ticket window, so he’d caved in, and let them pay for his train ticket.

  “Isn’t that unusual?” Mrs. Watanabe commented, peering out the train window.

  “What do you see?” her husband asked.

  She pointed to a house near the station, barely visible in the dusk. The homeowner had added a second story over half of his house, and covered the new roof not with gray tiles or thatch, but with asphalt shingles, as incongruous as a deck of playing cards on a church altar. The train lurched and pulled away from the station. The Watanabes’ eyes followed the remodeled house as it slid by. Ken also watched the house, covered with U.S. Army shingles, as it receded from view.

  “Oh, the roof reminds me of Ellay,” Yasuko said to Ken in a bubbly, scripted manner.

  When he’d sold the shingles to Takuya, he’d figured the Japanese boy with the so-so curveball would put them on a doghouse or a tree house or something. He never dreamed that the boy was going to re-sell the shingles to a householder who would actually use them.

  “Is Ellay on Kyushu Island?” Ken asked, fighting pangs of guilt, and eager to redirect the focus off stolen shingles.

  “I’m sorry we do not pronounce clearly,” Mrs. Watanabe said.

  “Los Angeles, known as L.A., is a major city in California,” Mr. Watanabe told him. The three Watanabes exchanged courteous, pained smiles. Ken mimicked their smiles and felt his stomach wad up.

  The cinema was nothing like theaters back home with sloping aisles parting a sea of chairs that were dimly illuminated with chandeliers hanging from the center of cavernous ceilings.

  During the daytime, this Japanese theater was a general store where customers bought thread, tobacco, soap and other sundries. The audience sat on barrels. Ken and Yasuko were bookended by their chaperones. Instead of buttery popcorn, they ate shredded dried fish and sheets of dried seaweed.

  A rickety film projector with a metal chimney emitted smoke and a blue light that illuminated a constellation of dust motes in its flickering beam. A grainy, streaky gray and white square of light jittered on a blanket hanging for just this purpose on the general store’s back wall.

  He thought he was understanding the gist of the melodrama. A poor farm family was starving because of a rice famine. The village schoolteacher, a young man warranting close-up shots of his dancing eyes, collected money from the villagers to prevent something bad—Ken wasn’t sure what—from happening to the farmer’s daughter. Then the schoolteacher’s mother stole the money her son had collected. The schoolteacher knew his mother stole the money. It was at this juncture in the plot that Ken was “ferhoddled,” as grandma used to say.

  The schoolteacher didn’t blow the whistle on his mother. No. He covered for her and suffered irreparable loss of face among the villagers. In another plot twist, the schoolteacher’s wife committed suicide. The schoolteacher was shown packing a bag as if for travel, and bidding his mother a tearful, deep-bowing sayonara. The camera panned a desolate, muddy landscape. A celluloid tail-end whipped through the projector, and the blanket screen reflected bright white light onto the theatergoers’ faces.

  Ken waited for the projectionist to thread the film from the second reel of the movie, and roll the plot forward to the point where the schoolteacher turned his mother over to the police, reclaimed the money she’d stolen, and saved the poor farm girl from whatever horrible fate he’d been endeavoring to spare her. Ken looked over at Yasuko. Her eyes were glistening. A lock of hair was trapped in her quivering smile. The film was over.

  During the train ride back to their village, Mr. Watanabe said, “Life is full of heavy duties.”

  “Yes, Father,” Yasuko said.

  “The film explored the conflict of virtues, but in the end the son did the honorable thing,” Mrs. Watanabe said, her pace much like a speechmaker’s. “I don’t think our American friends in L.A. would understand the underlying concept.”

  “The son fulfilled his filial duty,” Mr. Watanabe said matter-of-factly.

  “What did you think of the story?” Yasuko asked Ken.

  “The ending was...” The ending was terrible, stupid, retarded! The schoolteacher was a chicken shit mama’s boy. And the mother, she shoulda been arrested and thrown in jail to rot! He didn’t want to befoul the courteous conversation with his true opinion, so he said, “The ending was unexpected.”

  Mrs. Watanabe apologized for the movie’s “unexpected” ending and Mr. Watanabe allowed that maybe the appropriateness of the ending was not comprehendible to individuals raised within a different value system. He explained that at the film’s conclusion, the virtuous hero was striking off alone to Hokkaido where he would build his character in order to strengthen himself for future trials and tests of filial duty.

  “The resolution was greatly satisfying. A wiser man,” Mr. Watanabe conceded, “could make a happy way to solve the problem without sacrificing his self-respect, but it was impossible for him to blame his mother.”

  “But he should blame her! She stole the money!” Ken hadn’t meant to argue with his hosts.

  “Filial piety is required, even if one’s parents are thieves, drunkards or scoundrels,” Mr. Watanabe said.

  “That’s stupid.” He sulked for the remainder of the train ride.

  At the torii the Watanabe family shook hands with him and bowed. Ken made them promise to let him pay for tickets and snacks the next time. They agreed next time, next time. Ken and Yasuko watched her parents stroll toward the moonlit village.

  “Personally, my favorite movie is That Darn Cat,” she whispered. “I laughed so hard my sides ached.”

  “Yeah! Me too!” Ken was overjoyed to talk about a topic he understood. “That Frank Gorshen, you know he’s the bad guy as soon as you see his big ears and light bulb-shaped head.”

  Yasuko laughed, the sound of chimes tinkling in a soft breeze. Her parents called to her. She replied in Japanese and then to Ken she said, “Goodbye.”

  His tongue clung to the roof of his mouth. He held her hand in his and laid the rose quartz Topker had given him in her small palm. The quartz shone brightly, the facets sharp. She lifted her eyes and regarded him. Silver moons that were refle
cted in her midnight eyes lit the doors to heaven. He’d do anything to make her look at him like that again.

  “Goodnight, Yasuko,” he said huskily.

  She skipped away to catch up with her parents.

  A comfortable rhythm set the tempo of his days, and this new day promised to be like the days before it. Sitting under the pounding waterfall, he neglected to concentrate on deep breathing exercises and, instead, imagined himself and Yasuko going to the movies again, but without her parents, or hiking in the mountains, or meeting at a teahouse like Wizard and his Japanese girlfriend did.

  After his stint under the waterfall, he practiced chi gung. Sikung Wu refrained from complimenting Ken, yet he didn’t call him a pipsqueak once during the lesson. This encouraged Ken.

  When the lesson was over, he bowed, thanked his teacher and tore off to go cook his dad’s breakfast.

  Ken flipped the fried eggs over lightly, poured a cup of coffee, and slid the eggs onto a plate for his dad. Aromas of brewed coffee, eggs fried in lard, and the smell of two males sleeping, living, changing, had impregnated the pores of the small house. The tang, so familiar as to go unnoticed, assured Ken at a primal level: This is home.

  He sat down at the table and ate cold rice.

  “That package is for you.” Paderson jabbed his toast in the direction of a bundle slumped in the corner by the door.

  Less than two months ago Ken had mailed his measurements to his mother so she could send him shoes and clothes that fit. Japanese store-bought clothes were the right length but too tight, or if they fit his girth, the sleeves and pant legs were too long. He stripped off his pajama bottoms, tore open the package, and hauled on slacks, a plaid shirt, and loafers.

  “She must think I’m five years old.” The slacks pinched his crotch. The shirt cuffs flapped above his wrists. The loafers, besides being doofuss shoes, pinched his feet.

  “You’ve been growing like a weed.”

  “I guess I’m having a growth spurt.” Earlier that morning, in the dappled light of the bamboo forest, while straining at hard-style chi gung, muscles had gathered where before his flesh had been soft and undefined. He secretly wondered if his dad’s improved mood was tied to a physical change in Ken. Paderson’s “growing like a weed” comment told Ken what he’d hungered to know: He was looking more like a man, less like a boy. Before his dad had to ask for another cuppa, Ken poured a second mug of coffee.

  “Not enough time today, soldier. Topker is coming at oh-eight-hundred hours for a briefing.”

  “About Operation Valiant?” The U.S. Army intelligence team’s code name for the investigation into stolen medical supplies conjured images of medieval knights jousting, and damsels wearing low-cut gowns.

  “Right. Run ahead and tell Abernathy to set up chairs and the flipchart.”

  “And green tea?”

  “And sodas.”

  Ken sat outside the Quonset hut door, and heard his dad explain in tones of apology mixed with pride that inventory exceeded the tiny warehouse’s capacity. The shelves sagged under their burdens. Boxes and crates were “double parked” in the aisles. This was all good news for Ken. Those boxes and crates contained treasures the Japanese boys would buy from Ken.

  Kohanski, a major from intelligence who prefaced comments with a hum, introduced himself to Captain Paderson and PFC Abernathy. Wizard poured cokes for Kohanski, Paderson and Bellamy, and tea for Topker and himself. Topker lowered himself into the padded chair behind the desk. The rest of the men sat in the metal chairs around the desk. Every now and then the metal desk boomed like a drum when someone’s knee hit it.

  “That’ll be all, Abernathy,” Paderson said, dismissing the private before the Operation Valiant briefing had been started.

  Wizard jackknifed out of the chair he’d just sat in. He didn’t acknowledge Ken as he sailed out of the warehouse. Ken scooted closer to the doorway to hear better.

  “Captain Paderson,” Lieutenant Colonel Topker said in his warm voice, “I’m pleased with your regular, detailed reports of your investigations, however, we don’t have the luxury of time, as if I have to remind you of that.”

  “The colonel is a gentleman,” Bellamy horned in, “but I’m not, so I’ll cut to the chase. We gotta make arrests and soon. Why you draggin’ this out so long?”

  “Kick ass and take names later. Is that what you want?” Paderson directed the question not to Bellamy, for whom his contempt was intended, but to Major Kohanski.

  Kohanski said, “Hmm, you said you’d brief us this morning. What say we let you tell us what you’ve found?”

  Paderson stood beside the easel with a diagram that looked like a spider’s web with red Xs and black rectangles trapped in its strands. Pointing to this red and black flowchart, he explained how thieves had used various techniques—backdating documents, duplicating invoice numbers, forging authorization signatures, creating false requests for supplies—to cover their trial.

  Ken’s methods weren’t quite as sophisticated as all that. When he needed to pilfer warehouse supplies to sell to the Japanese boys, he erased the numbers in the total column and wrote in new ones.

  As Paderson outlined the tactics he’d deduced the criminals were using, Bellamy bolted from his chair and swaggered outside. Ken heard the unmistakable riff of a zipper being yanked down. Bellamy arched his back, bent his knees and rocked on his toes to the beat of a secret tune.

  After pissing over the ledge, Bellamy sat on a rock and removed his shoes and socks. Holding his socks at arm’s length over the rice paddies below, he wrung sweat out of them. He sniffed, draped his socks over a branch, jammed his bare feet into his shoes, and returned to the hut.

  “No more of this pussyfooting around collecting evidence and creating paper trails,” Bellamy said. “Everybody and their aunt knows it’s the Chink mafia. No red-blooded American committed these crimes.”

  “Hmm,” Kohanski hummed. “That theory warrants checking into.”

  Paderson asked, “How could Chinks, uh, how could anyone infiltrate our system here and here and here and here?” Paderson slapped the flow chart with his pointer. “How could non-army personnel know how to alter the documents so skillfully that we don’t notice the discrepancies until they were discovered in the field?”

  “You do have answers to your questions, don’t you, Captain Paderson?” Topker asked.

  Paderson drained his coke.

  Ken winged a dirt clod at a tree. Dust exploded and rattled on the leaves. Why didn’t his dad roundup Chink gangsters like Bellamy said to and the whole rigmarole would be over and done with? At this rate, Ken was going to be a captain’s son for the rest of his life.

  Bellamy spat on the floor. “Saw an oddball thing, I did. Coulda sworn when I ate noodles in the village last week, the Jap behind the counter was cooking soup in a big pot exactly like the pot ol’ Spoon uses in the mess hall at Camp Zama.” He propped his feet on Wizard’s desk and wagged his dirty shoe soles at Paderson.

  “If you want to accuse my operation of irregularities,” Paderson said, “you can damn well check the records yourself. Spot checks are part of your normal duties.”

  “Tell it to the chaplain,” Bellamy said.

  Paderson pressed his lips until they were white. Bellamy tugged his earlobe. Ken tossed Bellamy’s sweaty socks over the ledge.

  “Bellamy, Kohanski, wait for me outside,” Topker said. He sounded tired. “I want to have a word with Paderson about another matter.”

  “Bellamy’s off the beam on this one,” Paderson said. “I purposely left sensitive information out of my briefing in Bellamy and Kohanski’s presence because, frankly, I think this scam goes deeper and wider than what we first suspected. A few days before I arrive on site to audit documents and conduct investigative interviews, the discrepancies for that particular site clear up.”

  The lieutenant colonel nodded sadly. “Somebody involved with the investigation is leaking information.” The wrinkles radiating from Topker’s eyes droo
ped. He held his empty teacup in both hands and spoke, almost dreamily. “I accepted a call from a receiving dock clerk who is aware of supplies being stolen. He thought he had information that would help with our investigation. At first he thought the discrepancy was a run-of-the-mill miscount, so he didn’t think anything of it. Then to cover his hide, he kept a record of the dates, quantities and point of origin of the short stock. It appears Bellamy is right. Your own house is not in order.”

  “But that’s impossible!” Paderson said. His arms and legs flailed as he dived for the phone, the files, his pocket, the phone again, and then he settled back into his chair. “Who would do it? Why? We don’t store goods of much value to the black market. Private Abernathy and I are the only personnel who process paperwork and stock here.”

  Ken’s gut ached as though he’d been punched. How could they have found out? He thought he’d covered his trail. No question about it, he had to stop stealing stuff to make extra cash. He was going to have to earn money for martial arts lessons honestly, or give up on the dream of chi gunging some poor sucker to kingdom come.

  Would his dad ever get around to suspecting he was the culprit who’d been spiriting U.S. Army supplies out of the Quonset hut? Ken’s breath hitched in his throat when Wizard walked up to him.

  “Man,” Wizard said, “you look like a ghost walked over your grave.” He stepped into the hut and saluted. “Is the tea holding out?” he asked.

  “Yes, thank you,” Topker said. He turned to Paderson. “I’m on your side on this one. The theft of medicines and medical supplies is widespread, and bears the markings of an inside job, but I can’t wait much longer. More lives will be lost. I’m giving you two months to wrap this up, and I’m confident in the meantime you’ll also rectify discrepancies originating from your area of command.”

  Abernathy blanched.

  Paderson waved off Abernathy’s questioning looks. “A task requires the time allotted to complete it,” Paderson told the lieutenant colonel. “Both cases can be wrapped up in half the time. If you want resolution in two months, I can prolong the investigation over two months. If I were, for some reason, to be assigned stateside in one month, I can expedite and conclude the investigations with positive results within a month.”