Garden of Stones

by Sophie Littlefield

  But most of all, Lucy loved walking along the avenues, admiring the gardens created by the internees. Seed was provided for victory gardens, but even before the first shoots grew above the soil, the outline of traditional rock gardens began to appear between barracks. Children were put into service to find smooth, round stones down in the creek, and boys carried boulders for the older men whose designs mimicked the gardens they remembered from childhoods spent in Japan. Former gardeners joined forces with stonemasons and landscape designers to create large pond gardens and landscapes reminiscent of towering mountains, but there were also tiny patches of leaning stones set carefully on raked sand, sources of serenity in the midst of the chaos of camp. Young men, impatient and bored and desperate for something to do, learned the principles of the Sakuteiki as their elders selected and set stones and borders; it was not uncommon to see men walking with their eyes cast down, searching for the perfect stone.

  Lucy waved to the gardeners as she made her deliveries. She loved how the gardens grew and changed with every passing day, how bridges, paths, arches, even “waterfalls” of pebbles slowly emerged from the dusty earth. The gardens were evidence that beauty could exist even here, that meaning could be found in the humblest objects.

  * * *

  She didn’t meet Mrs. Kadonada’s son until her second week on the job, because they had opposite shifts: he worked in the mornings, and played baseball in the afternoon when Lucy worked. Baseball fever had seized the camp, since there were so few recreational opportunities, and already there were half a dozen leagues. Jessie, according to Mrs. Kadonada, was a crack first baseman, and his coach, Mr. Hayashi, couldn’t spare him from the thrice-weekly practices.

  But on Thursday, when his team ceded the practice field to other boys’ teams, he showed up late in the afternoon as Lucy was returning from her final run of the day. Lucy’s first glimpse of him was a figure disappearing at a run around the side of the administration building; a moment later he was back, a squirming, laughing toddler slung over his shoulder. Lucy knew this had to be Mrs. Kadonada’s son; not only was he about her age, but he was wearing a Padres baseball cap. He was tall, with a wide grin and a little gap between his front teeth.

  When he saw Lucy he stopped abruptly, his grin disappearing, and the little boy tumbled to the ground, coughed with surprise and then started to wail.

  “You’re fine,” Jessie said without looking, and the boy wailed more loudly. A moment later, Mrs. Kadonada hurried out of the building, looking worried.

  “Jessie, what on earth have you done to him?”

  “He’s fine, Mom, he just tripped.”

  Lucy kept her face impassive; she wasn’t about to challenge his story. Besides, there was something intriguing about a boy who would lie before being properly introduced. She shifted subtly, putting a hand on her hip the way she’d seen the high school girls do when there were boys around.

  “Is that right.” Mrs. Kadonada’s skepticism faded when the little boy’s tears trailed away and he dusted himself off. “Come here, Bunki, let me see your hands. Oh, no, you’re filthy! Jessie, where did you take him?”

  Jessie shrugged. “The creek.”

  Mrs. Kadonada sighed and shook her head. “Lucy, this is my son, Jessie. And this is Bunki Sugimoto, our neighbor. Jessie was supposed to be watching Bunki while his mother does the wash.”

  “I did watch him!” Jessie protested, but he looked directly at Lucy and winked. She felt her face flush with something other than embarrassment.

  After that, Jessie occasionally lingered after his shift long enough to run into Lucy—especially if she got there early. If Mrs. Kadonada noticed, she didn’t say anything. Mostly, Jessie would toss his baseball in the air and grin and Lucy would pretend to be interested in the newspapers, which were delivered in a twine-bound bundle. When he left, he always said the same thing—“See ya, Luce”—and Lucy would give a half wave. No one else had ever called her Luce, and she thought she might like it.

  Those first few minutes of her shift were the best. But as five o’clock neared, her spirits began to sink, and once the vest was hung in the closet next to Mrs. Kadonada’s wool coat and she was on her way back to Block Fourteen, Lucy’s feet dragged. She dreaded finding her mother in bed late in the afternoon, purple circles under her eyes. Sometimes her mother refused to come to the dining hall and Lucy would have to bring her portion back to the room and coax her to eat. Their barrack neighbors were bewildered by Miyako; since they had stopped trying to include her in their outings and socializing, they seemed to have grown suspicious of her.

  One afternoon when the temperature had passed one hundred degrees, Lucy came out of the admin building after her shift to find Jessie sitting in the shade of the porch. When he saw her, he got to his feet and jammed his hands in his pockets. “Hey, Luce. Want to walk down to the creek? It’s cooler there.”

  “But it’s almost—” Lucy stopped herself. She was about to point out that it was nearly dinnertime, but that only meant that they’d have the creek to themselves. And being alone with Jessie was an appealing idea, even if it meant she missed dinner. “Never mind. Sure, I’ll go.”

  On the walk through camp, cutting between the warehouses and garages and the security fence on a path that was becoming well-worn, they passed a few kids, stragglers racing to make it home before the dinner bell. By the time the tree-lined bank came into view, they were alone. Jessie was in the middle of a rambling recounting of a series of grueling drills his coach had recently instituted when he suddenly reached for Lucy’s hand. He didn’t miss a beat, but his fingers twined with Lucy’s and she felt her face flame with something that was both less and more than embarrassment, as she lost track of the conversation.

  “Wait,” Jessie said, suddenly coming to a stop when they were halfway across the weedy clearing that fronted the creek. “Hear that?”

  At first Lucy didn’t know what he was talking about, and then the faint sound of laughter reached her ears, coming from down in the creek bank. Deep voices—men, not other kids.

  “I’ve seen them down here before,” Jessie said. He didn’t let go of her hand, but his face took on a calculating look.

  “Are they from your block?”

  “They aren’t from anyone’s block, Luce. They’re staff. WRA guys.”

  “We should go, then,” Lucy said, unease prickling her skin. She kept as far away from the staff men as possible, other than Deputy Chief Griswold, who was unfailingly polite to her. The soldiers were larger and louder than Lucy’s father or most of the men from her old neighborhood, and the military police all looked alike—unsmiling and angry—in their caps and uniforms. Even the warehouse supervisors and the deliverymen seemed threatening, if only because they were constantly barking orders at the internees and yelling at any kids who got underfoot.

  “No, wait.” Jessie’s sly expression bloomed into a grin. “Come watch this.”

  And before Lucy could protest, he’d grasped her hand more tightly and pulled her along at a sprint toward a bank of trees with branches arching down toward the brackish creek. Lucy knew that she could wriggle out of his grip and escape if she wanted to, but it wasn’t only exertion that made her short of breath. Being with Jessie was exciting, never more than when he defied the rules.

  When they reached the trees, he pulled her against him behind a leaning cypress, the tree blocking the view down to the creek bed.

  “Take a look,” he whispered against her ear, his
breath hot and tingly. “Don’t let them see you.”

  Lucy leaned cautiously around the trunk, her face pressed against the rough bark and Jessie’s hand resting lightly at her waist. Her heart pounded in her chest so hard she was sure he could feel it.

  Five men sat leaning against rocks or cross-legged in the silt, smoking. While she watched, one threw a spent cigarette into the brown water that eddied lazily around a downed, dead tree. This late in the summer, the flow was reduced to a trickle, and the men had taken advantage of the tame current to cool a tub of beers that was anchored in place with a pile of flat rocks. The men were barefoot, the sleeves of their undershirts rolled up in the heat. Their uniform shirts and hats, along with caps and shoes and socks, were strewn along the dry bed. A small pile of personal effects included watches, wallets and cigarettes.

  “—I told her the blonde was her sister!” one of the men exclaimed loudly, prompting a round of guffaws, the punch line of some drunken joke. The men slapped their knees and drank from their bottles and wiped their mouths with their arms, the conversation taken up by several of them at once.

  Lucy ducked back around the tree and found Jessie watching her expectantly. He didn’t take his hand away from her waist.

  “Who are they?”

  “Staff. Fat cats.” Jessie grimaced. “The guys in charge. See that big guy? That’s Mr. Van Dorn. He’s a section supervisor, but all he does is take smoke breaks and order everyone around. And those other guys are almost as bad.”

  Jessie’s contempt felt dangerous and strangely thrilling, but before Lucy could respond, he leaned close and said softly, “When you see me turn around, run like hell. I’ll catch up.”

  “Jessie!” Lucy whispered fiercely, grabbing the tails of his shirt tightly in her fist. “What are you going to do?”

  “Nothing. Just a prank.”

  “Don’t—”

  But then something so unexpected happened that Lucy stopped protesting.

  Jessie kissed her.

  It was brief—only a fraction of a second. His lips, brushing against hers, were warm and silky and slightly damp, and his eyelashes fluttered against her cheek, and Lucy was so startled that she lost her grip on his shirt, and before she could react, he bolted down the creek bank, whooping like an Indian. His sneakers skidded over the loose gravel and the men’s heads whipped around in surprise.

  Lucy put her hand to her mouth, touching the place he’d kissed her, a strange heat keeping her immobilized in a kind of liquid trance until she saw Jessie leap over the men’s beer stash and land on a rock a few feet from the men’s abandoned clothes. The rock slipped under his feet and for a moment he teetered, and Lucy was sure he was going to fall. Two of the men scrambled to their feet and one of them swiped Jessie’s arm as he danced out of the way, regaining his balance just in time.

  “Run!” he yelled, and Lucy obeyed, spinning around just after she saw him grab something off the ground and take off, the two men in hot pursuit behind him while their companions hollered encouragement.

  Lucy ran as hard as she ever had, straight for the edge of Block Five. In seconds, Jessie had caught up with her. He grabbed her hand and they rounded the corner of the women’s latrine, nearly knocking over a mother and her little girl, and then they ran straight through a kitchen garden, Lucy trying to avoid stepping on the squash vines that wound between the rows.

  She was laughing along with Jessie when they finally slowed.

  “They won’t follow,” Jessie said. “They’re too drunk and slow.”

  “How do you know?”

  He shrugged, never taking his eyes off her. “I’ve done it before.”

  “Jessie!” Lucy was genuinely shocked. “What if they come after you?”

  He snorted. “They’ll never know it was me. We all look alike to them.”

  Lucy considered for a moment. “Well, what did you take?”

  Jessie beamed as he dug in his pocket and pulled out a nearly full pack of cigarettes. Lucy gaped.

  “All that—for cigarettes?”

  Jessie flipped the pack and caught it before he shoved it back in his pocket.

  “It’s all about getting away with it,” he said, grinning his splendid grin, and when he took her hand again, it felt like the most natural thing in the world.

  11

  The opening of the junior and high schools had been rumored for weeks, but delays in the arrival of civilian teachers, as well as the completion of the buildings, had slowed things down. Lucy had mixed feelings. Mrs. Kadonada had already told her that she could continue several afternoons a week, as long as she kept up with her studies. But Jessie was quitting the courier job, since he’d have time only for school and baseball—and he was a grade ahead of her. Lucy would see him only at lunch and recess, if then.

  Jessie came to the office near the end of his shift a few days later and announced that practice had been called off because one of the younger boys had fainted in the heat.

  “I’m glad you stopped by, actually,” Mrs. Kadonada said. “There’s someone I’d like the two of you to meet.”

  The door to the back offices opened and several people emerged with the director of education, himself a relative newcomer.

  “Lucy, Jessie, meet our new first-grade teacher, Mrs. Purcell. And her daughter Irene—she’s in the same grade as you, Lucy.”

  “How do you do,” Mrs. Purcell said tightly. She was a plain woman, short and squat in a brown shirtwaist dress, but her daughter was lovely, with hair as pale as milkweed silk and two rows of ruched grosgrain ribbon around the neckline of her dress.

  “They’ve come all the way from Kansas City,” Deputy Chief Griswold said, rubbing his hands together, a gesture that Lucy had come to understand signaled his impatience; he was anxious to get back to work.

  “We’ve been in Reno this week. We stayed in the Golden Annex and I got to go in the Bank Club,” the girl said proudly. “I had a Shirley Temple and they have these little cakes—”

  “That’s quite enough, Irene,” Mrs. Purcell interrupted.

  The girl merely shrugged, snapping the gum she was chewing. Lucy blinked in surprise—she was not allowed to chew gum, because Miyako considered it an appalling habit.

  “Lucy, I was thinking, why don’t you show Irene around this afternoon?” Mrs. Kadonada said. “There’s really not much to deliver, and Jessie can take care of it in the morning.”

  “Oh,” Mrs. Purcell said dismissively. “That’s very nice. Very much appreciated. Only, there is another member of the staff with a daughter Irene’s age—”

  “Mrs. Swift.” Mr. Griswold supplied the name, avoiding meeting Mrs. Kadonada’s gaze.

  “And her daughter. I just thought, the two of them, they might have...more in common.”

  “Betty Swift is only eleven,” Mrs. Kadonada said. “Surely—”

  “She and Irene will be going to school in Lone Pine together,” Mrs. Purcell said pointedly. “With all the other staff children. There’s to be a bus. Really, I think that maintaining some degree of...separation is for the best.”

  She exchanged a cool glance with Deputy Chief Griswold, who cleared his throat uncomfortably.

  Lucy felt sorry for Mrs. Kadonada, who looked as though she had been slapped. But it was Jessie who spoke.

  “Nice meeting you, Mrs. Purcell, Irene. Come on, Lucy, we’re going to be late. Bye, Mom.”

  He turned around and headed for the door without e
ven saying goodbye to Griswold, and after a split second’s deliberation, Lucy followed him. Behind them the screen door slammed, and then they were out in the full force of the sun.

  “Just what we need in this place,” Jessie said. “Another stuck-up white girl.”

  Lucy had seen a few kids playing near the staff apartments, riding tricycles and playing in a sandbox that had been constructed for them inside the borders of the staff gardens. But she hadn’t noticed anyone near her age. “Why, are there others?”

  “Yeah, Mom keeps trying to make me meet them when they come in to do their paperwork. Even though they don’t want anything to do with us—or at least their parents don’t.”

  Lucy was silent for a minute, remembering the way Yvonne had treated her in the days leading up to evacuation. “You think it’ll be better when the war’s over?”

  Jessie shrugged, his hands jammed in his pockets. “Guess it depends on whether people ever figure out we’re not the enemy. I wish they’d let us fight—I’d enlist.”

  “You’re not old enough!”

  “I will be,” Jessie said fiercely.

  “Well, I wouldn’t. Why would I volunteer after they locked us up in here?”

  “You better not let anyone hear you say that. They’ll send you to Japan and you’ll have to swear the emperor is a god.”

  Lucy made a face. “I don’t speak any Japanese, so it doesn’t matter—I won’t know what they’re saying.”

  They were walking down the wide firebreak road between blocks, the sun beating down on them. It was still half an hour before lunchtime, and already Lucy’s forehead was slick with perspiration and her cotton blouse clung to her skin. Being with Jessie always made her feel even warmer than she already was. Ever since he kissed her, she had replayed the moment over and over in her memory, but there hadn’t been another private walk, another chance for him to hold her hand. Maybe he wasn’t interested anymore. Maybe he’d found some other girl.