by Bill Baynes
The baby coughs. Aiko turns away to tend to her. She dips a towel into a bucket and squeezes water into Hana-chan‘s mouth. She blows very softly on the infant’s face.
“I can bring a bottle for her,” Joe says and, when she peers over her shoulder, he signs. He points to himself, makes a giving gesture with one hand, mimes drinking from a bottle, and points to the baby.
A troubled expression on her face, Aiko turns back to the child.
Joe waits, watches. He wants to take her far from her hard life, to make her happy. At least for a few hours. He signs again and speaks at the same time.
“You. Me. Away.”
His hands open, his eyes hoping.
She rocks the child. A weary smile and she nods at him.
Joe widens his eyes and raises his brows. She nods again.
A loud Ha! and, when she hushes him, a wide grin.
They bow to each other and Joe backs out the door, excited and awkward as a teen.
“I’ll set something up,” he says, knowing she doesn’t comprehend. “I’ll do it right away. I’ll get back to you. Or I’ll find a way to do that. Or … or … I don’t know.”
He laughs and she does too.
He doesn’t see the people with sly grins watching him out of the corners of their eyes, as he leaves the hotel. He doesn’t hear the lip smacks. He doesn’t notice Sam behind the charcoal stall.
Joe is lost in his own considerations. How can he spend more time with this woman?
What does the end of the war mean to her? Bitterness? Grief? Release?
What is her life like without a husband? What will it be without him?
Where can the two of them find some privacy?
He’s bouncing on an emotional pogo stick, going even higher than he did at dawn, even lower when he thinks of leaving her.
“You okay, Joe?” Doc inquires at dinner.
“Just tired … or wired. I’m not sure which.”
Doc gives him a curious look.
The following day on the forenoon watch, Joe routinely glasses the harbor, the shoreline, the piers and there’s Sam slouching against a piling with his arms wrapped around himself. He seems small, even for him, but maybe it’s the distance.
As soon as he’s relieved at noon, Joe grabs a couple sandwiches and takes the launch ashore. As he gets closer, he can see that the boy has been beaten again.
Sam coughs and it’s obvious that his ribs are sore. His wrist is bandaged. It seems to hurt him to stand, but he pushes himself erect as Joe lands.
Slowly, stiffly, he signs and Joe decodes the message.
Door. Kick.
The boy shudders and stops. He needs a few moments to compose himself.
“Is that what happened to you?” Joe asks.
Sam glares at him and nods. He mimes putting on a coat.
“Coat?” Joe says.
Sam nods again, then makes a two-handed taking motion.
“That’s what they took?”
The boy nods a third time and bends over in pain. He straightens and faces Joe, brings his hands together and bows. Then he points at Joe and pushes his hands outward.
You. Stay away.
Joe opens his arms, shakes his head.
It’s clear it hurts to repeat the gestures, but the boy does it anyway.
You. Away.
He turns and hobbles toward home.
11
Isamu
It takes nearly an hour to get home and every muscle and joint in his body screams at every step. He keeps his eyes down. He doesn’t check around for danger. He doesn’t care.
Back at the room, he eases onto his torn tatami, facing the wall, and tries to make his mind go blank. Pain zen.
The door to the room hangs by one hinge. Mama has nothing to drape over the opening, so people can look in. He doesn’t care about their cruel comments.
“Look at these poor people.”
“They weren’t always that way.”
“Why don’t they fix up their place?”
Mama swept up the shattered dishes and scrubbed the stained mats, but the walls have holes kicked in them and the floor is bare where the straw was destroyed. Despair seeps like soot through the room.
And Mama? She’s moving in the background, barely audible above his clamoring headache. He hears her and then he doesn’t.
Later, he notices her soft step coming up the stairs and into the room. His sister is crying, big gulping sobs. So is his mother.
He doesn’t care.
He sleeps and the assault recurs in his dreams. The crowd coming through the door. He couldn’t stop anybody. He couldn’t even delay them. They kept coming. Crawling on all fours, trying to dodge the kicks.
Ato, watching from the top of the stairs …
When he regains full consciousness, he is famished. Mama and Hana-chan are both asleep, huddled in the corner away from the door, shivering under Mama’s scarf. He finds a raw sweet potato under his torn blanket.
He bites into it and crawls over to cover his mother and sister.
Mama rouses. He permits her to wash his face with a wet cloth, a process of sharp twinges over several minutes, despite her gentleness. She tears her scarf and wraps a clean strip around his wrist. He can see scratches on her arms.
“I was very proud of you,” she tells him. “You were very brave.”
He doesn’t care.
When he wakes the next time, Mama is waiting for him. He manages to sit up.
“Walk with me, Isamu,” she says. “I’m afraid to go alone.”
“What about …” he motions toward the door.
“There’s nothing left for them to take.”
He struggles to the stairs, clutching the steel rod stuffed down his trousers, one of his few remaining possessions. It didn’t do him any good during the attack. He was down before he could reach it.
Isamu can barely walk at first, but it gets a little easier as they descend. Physically. It gets worse in every other way.
“There they go. They think they’re Americans.”
“Where’s your boyfriend?”
“White man’s whore!”
Mama trembles with rage. She turns her back as if she could shield Hana-chan from the taunts.
Isamu holds the baby, while she goes to the loo. When she returns, she walks toward the vendors.
“I’m worried about you,” she tells her son. “Your body is growing and healing. You need to eat.”
“If you don’t eat, the baby doesn’t either,” he replies.
“Surely someone will take pity. Someone will give us some credit.”
But no one will.
She is not the only soldier’s wife who has survived by entertaining the Americans, far from it, but Mama bears the brunt of the shame for all of them. Even though she hasn’t done what people assume.
“You know us,” she pleads. “You know we’ll pay you as soon as we can.”
“For you, the price is twice as high,” says a vendor wearing the pea jacket Joe gave Mama.
Isamu erupts. “Who are you to judge us? Give me that jacket!”
When the merchant scoots to the side, the boy tries to overturn the counter full of puny vegetables and tins of beans.
“Stop!” Mama cries. “Isamu, stop!” She is practically in tears.
Still sore, the boy winces as the table slams down. It hurts to care.
How will they find food? Who will feed them?
The Americans attracted too much attention. And his plan to be the new, outfront Isamu … clearly that isn’t working. To survive, he and Mama need to recover their anonymity. Good citizens are seldom seen.
By the time Isamu escorts his mother and sister back to their room, he knows what he has to do.
He’s getting so he can walk fairly well, so it doesn’t take long before he spots one of the bigger boys by a blackened cement building that used to be a warehouse. Kiro glances around furtively before he cracks open a side door concealed by fallen ti
mbers and slips inside.
Isamu lingers outside the door, building up courage, breathing deeply. These are the boys who hurt him. He feels those punches again, those kicks. He’s afraid. He can’t let them know it.
He eases the door open, slowly, as silently as he can, and steps inside.
Pitch black.
One step, his hand in front of him.
Two.
His eyes adjust. He can make out clumps of heavy-looking equipment and stacks of boxes.
Step three.
He sees someone coming toward him out of the dimness.
“Didn’t you get enough last week, Navy Boy?”
Ato is tall and slender with an air of menace. His ravaged face wears a toxic sneer.
Someone pushes back a curtain and dirty light filters into the vast room. Isamu can see several other youths lounging against the heavy masses, watching him. One sharpens a knife. Another slaps a club across his open palm.
Isamu is grateful the murk hides his trembling.
“I want in,” he says as boldly as he can.
“So you can tell your monster friends all about us?” Ato mocks.
“I … I … I want to get rid of the Americans as much as you do.”
“You went to the port,” Takeo accuses. “You served them. You helped the monsters.”
“No. I was just … taking their money. I … I was starving.”
“Everybody is starving,” Ato says. “That’s what they’ve done to us.”
Chunky Kiro snickers. “They brought you all that crap.”
“I didn’t ask them to bring it. They came when I wasn’t there.”
“And you kept it all for yourself,” Kiro says.
“No, I …”
“What a selfish thing to do when your brothers here could use some warm things,” Ato says.
The other boys chuckle and mutter assent.
“Somebody needed to be taught a lesson,” Takeo says.
Isamu looks up at Ato.
“Is that why you just stood there and let it happen?”
“Why did you fight?” The slender youth’s smile creases his scar.
Isamu looks down again.
“What do I have to do to join?”
“Bring us the American.”
“I can’t. I told him to stay away. He caused this.”
He waves his bandaged wrist, touches a nick on his face.
“Change your mind,” Ato insists.
“I can’t.”
“Sure you can. He obviously has some attraction to your room. I don’t think it’s you.”
Ugly laughter.
Ato nods and Takeo reaches into a bin and hands Isamu some orange peels and a couple soft potatoes with sprouts growing on them. Isamu wrinkles his nose in distaste.
“What do you say?” Takeo asks.
“Thank you,” Isamu mutters.
He hurries home with his paltry meal. As he nears the hotel, two military men emerge, one American and one Japanese, carrying the damaged door to his room. They load it into the back of a jeep parked around the corner.
At the top of the stairs behind a new door, Isamu discovers his mother, sitting on the floor bent over Hana-chan.
“Mama?”
She looks up, smiling and wiping her eyes. Was she crying?
“Did those soldiers come here?”
She nods. “Joe-san sent them.”
She seems a little off-balance. The men in uniforms, their big boots and noisy tools, perhaps they agitated her.
“It’s a fine door,” she says. “They patched the walls too.” She begins to cry.
“Is something wrong, Mama?”
“No. Everything is fine. I’m pleased.” She stands and wipes her eyes. “I don’t know why I’m tearing up.”
The floor is muddy, which she normally can’t stand, but she ignores it. She busies herself by pulling out food and wipes for Hana-chan, making little piles.
He watches her for a few moments and then gives her the orange peels and soft potatoes.
“Oh, how nice. Where did you get this?”
She places them in one of their few unbroken containers. She can’t seem to settle down.
“Mama, the Americans …” the boy begins.
She walks over and folds him into a hug.
“We are so lucky,” she says. “He doesn’t have to help us. He chooses to do it. What would we do without him?”
He’s never seen her like this before, so flighty, floaty. She returns to her fussing, arranging some clothing, and brushes some papers onto the floor. He bends to help her.
“Mama, what are these? Are these tickets?”
“Yes, they are. Let me have them. I’m going on a short trip. I need you to help me.”
“You’re going to see him.”
“Yes. Yes, I am.”
“You’re packing, aren’t you? That’s what you’re doing.”
She cocks her head and turns back to the clothing.
“I know where you’re going,” Isamu says. “I know what you’re going to do.”
“I’m going to Fuji. That’s where the American wants to go.”
“The people on the street, they already call you names, Mama.”
“All the more reason to get away from here.”
“Mama, I … I can’t allow it.”
“Isamu,” she says softly. “I’m not asking permission. I’m asking you to watch your sister for a few hours. Overnight.”
“This isn’t necessary,” Isamu says. “There are things I can do. There are things I’m doing.” How can he tell her what Ato wants?
“Look at you. Look at your face,” Mama insists. “I know you want to take care of us, but you can’t do it all by yourself.”
“You don’t have to do this.”
“It’s important … for our family.”
“I’ve seen the way you look at him,” Isamu says.
Mama is changing the baby’s rags. She stops and glances up at him sharply.
“I am your mother and you will never speak to me that way,” she says.
Isamu drops his eyes.
“I hate leaving Hana-chan,“ Mama says. “I don’t like putting this burden on you.”
“I can take care of her. You know I can.”
“I still don’t like it. I’ve left some milk. It should be enough.”
She crosses to her son, takes his chin in her hand, and stares straight into his eyes.
“You must promise me that you’ll stay inside the room until I get back, that you will never leave her.”
He nods, looks down.
“He will take care of us, Isamu. You’ll see.”
12
Joe
It isn’t an easy drive. The roads are full of potholes. The encampments spill into the right-of-way all along the thrashed suburbs. In some sections, Joe has to slow to a crawl to avoid hitting someone.
There are children everywhere, more and more as he gets farther from the city. When they spot the jeep, some of them rush toward it. Joe shakes his head and waves them away. He didn’t bring any gum or candies.
It’s difficult to concentrate. His mind is a whirlpool with Aiko in the center, all his thoughts circling her.
He feels her hand close over his fingers, hears her near-whisper: “Joe-san.”
It draws him on. It keeps him from turning around in the face of the enormous suffering scattered on the waysides. He doesn’t want to see any more of it. He’d rather go back into his little metal cubbyhole and calculate batting averages.
There’s plenty to do, God knows. As the departure date nears, his duties aboard ship increase. There’s a spike in radio communications: instructions on how to navigate out of the crowded harbor, logistical information, orders about the long voyage back across the Pacific.
He’s got to make her understand that he’s leaving. He wants their relationship to be honest, not to be based on false expectations. At least they can have a few weeks to be together.
> The jeep jounces over a rock … not a kid, please not a kid … and almost stalls. Joe feathers the gas and the engine backfires, but keeps running. He glances behind him, relieved that there’s no one in the road.
A lot of backfires lately. He tried to help Aiko and Sam, but he got them in trouble. The food he brought made them a target. His gifts attracted thieves and thugs.
He hopes he’s not doing it again, setting them up for more problems.
You. Me. Away.
He was fearful that Aiko was injured, but the Navy carpenter’s mate told him she was all right. She’s got a better door and patched walls, but her room is still bare.
Sam told him to stay away. He’s honored the boy’s request, technically, although he arranged for the repairs and the ticket delivery. But now he’s stealing the boy’s mother, at least for a short while.
He’s been checking every day, but there’s been no sign of Sam on the pier. What’s going on with him? What can Joe do to regain his confidence? He doesn’t want to leave the country with bad feelings between them. He likes the boy, feels protective toward him. He’s impressed with his energy and intelligence.
This is his first trip without him as the guide, Joe reflects, as he begins a winding climb into colder country. He stops and zips the windows closed on the canvas top and consults Wade’s map.
Without the help of his friends he’d never be able to pull off an adventure like this.
Cookie asked his brother, the carpenter’s mate, who’s stationed aboard another ship in Tokyo Bay. He traded a generous serving of stew for the new door and its installation.
Doc knew somebody who knew somebody.
“I went to school with the exec aboard Alabama and he’s got a brother in GHQ,” he said. “Let me see what I can do.”
The result: a round-trip train ticket for Aiko, so she would be spared the embarrassment of traveling with an American, plus one luxury room at the base of Mount Fuji.
You. Me. Away.
Gaining elevation, the shoulders of the road fall away to evergreens and ravines, leaving no room for makeshift shacks. Joe catches his first glimpse of majestic Fuji, far in the distance.
It’s Wade’s contribution that makes him smile.
