Garden of Stones

by Sophie Littlefield

  Lucy was mystified and a little frightened. Lots of people used the victory gardens as a shortcut, especially now that the soil was turned under and frozen, but at the moment there was no one else about. The afternoon had turned cold and the air damp, and people were keeping inside. The oil heaters had been cranking around the clock for several weeks now, and tendrils of greasy smoke wound up out of the barracks roofs.

  “Hello there,” Reg said, in a friendly enough voice. Van Dorn said nothing, keeping his hands jammed in his pockets.

  Lucy wondered if something terrible had happened—an accident, someone in the block, her auntie Aiko, even her mother. But would they send these two to tell her? More likely it would be someone from the block.

  “We have a message for your mother,” Reg continued. “I’m hoping you’ll deliver it for us. Tell her George misses her.”

  Lucy’s heart was pounding so hard in her chest that she didn’t trust herself to speak. All around her were neat rows of turned earth, a few winter lettuces and the tops of radishes showing above the soil. The melons and beans and sunflowers had all been turned under after the first frost, and here and there a few dead stalks poked out of the earth.

  Night had blanketed the camp, and lights burned in the windows of the barracks all around them, but they seemed very far away. Too far to call out; too far to summon help. Lucy’s hands ached with cold because she’d left her mittens somewhere, and hadn’t got up the nerve to tell her mother yet. Van Dorn stared silently out across the broad avenues toward where the mountain’s shape was visible, the bright snow a beacon above the horizon. Reg put his hand lightly on her shoulder. For a moment it rested there and Lucy held her breath; then he squeezed.

  “This is very important,” he said, his fingers finding the tendon that ran along the base of her neck and digging in. “I’m going to ask you to repeat it. Tell your mother, ‘You have a lovely daughter. George looks forward to your next visit.’”

  “I don’t...” Lucy whispered, blinking tears. Her legs felt weak and a small amount of urine dampened her panties.

  “I would like you to repeat that back to me,” Reg said kindly, but his fingers continued their pressure. Lucy’s arm twitched.

  “You have a lovely daughter,” she whispered. “George looks forward to your next visit.”

  Immediately the pressure was released and Reg was patting her coat gently. Lucy felt a tear roll down her cheek, splashing to the ground, where she imagined it would freeze by morning. She wanted to rub her nose on her sleeve, but didn’t dare move.

  “You’ll tell her,” Reg said softly, and he and Van Dorn began backing away. “Go on home now.”

  Then they were gone. She heard their footfalls behind her but did not dare turn around to see which way they went. She waited until it was silent, the only sound the rushing of the wind, and then she walked home as fast as her trembling legs could carry her.

  * * *

  Miyako’s face, when Lucy repeated the message, went blank.

  Lucy could see the toll the past few months had taken on her mother, the fine lines and dark smudges around her mouth and eyes. It was as though she were no longer living, but a life-size porcelain figurine.

  She cupped Lucy’s face in her hand, just firmly enough to force her to meet her gaze. “Did they touch you?”

  “Yes,” Lucy said, remembering the astonishing force of Reg’s forefinger and thumb digging into her flesh through her coat and sweater. “I mean no.”

  Miyako stared at her for a long time but asked no further questions. When she finally let go of Lucy’s face, she touched her three times: on the bridge of her nose, on her lips and on her chin; and then she drew several strands of Lucy’s hair through her fine fingers. Lucy, unaccustomed to such tender gestures, stood frozen.

  “You’re cursed, just like me,” Miyako whispered. “But I will fix this.”

  After a final caress she went back to her side of the room and began to undress. Within moments she was in her bed, the covers pulled up over her head, while Lucy wondered where in her body the curse was hidden and when it would fight its way out.

  15

  December came. There was trouble in the camp between the older Issei—those born in Japan—and the next-generation Nisei. Many of the old people still wore the stunned expressions that they’d arrived with, unable to speak enough English to communicate with the Caucasian staff. Some of the younger men were anxious to join the service, to prove their loyalty—but others were driven by darker impulses: resentment over their incarceration, over the loss of their property and livelihood, over educations interrupted and voices ignored. There were clashes over loyalty and duty, fights and accusations and simmering tempers.

  Lucy, increasingly lonely, immersed herself in her schoolwork. It came easily to her, and it helped her to ignore the chaos around her, to temper the loss of Jessie and her worries about her increasingly distant and frail mother. Her marks were high; her teacher often singled her out for praise, holding her papers up for the other students to see, but Lucy’s pride was dampened by the distraction of the turmoil all around the camp.

  Nothing got resolved. Tempers flared and fights broke out and one night the military police surged inside the gates to quell a riot. Lucy stayed inside her room with her mother, while outside the shouting grew deafening and something—a stone, an ax—struck the side of the building. Their neighbors were out there, the men and boys from their block, while inside the women comforted the children and clutched broomsticks and paring knives and prayed the conflict would not reach inside. Lucy pressed her hands over her ears, shut her eyes and wondered what Jessie was doing, if he was outside in the melee, if he would have the sense to stay out of the worst of it or if he would welcome the chance to fight.

  By the next morning, one young man had been killed, and an eerie sense of calm descended on the camp. The wind kicked up and dust blew through the abandoned streets. Finally, it was time for breakfast, and people ventured from their barracks, heads down and hurrying. The staff were already out in force, patrolling the streets, posted at the auditorium and rec halls to prevent another round of fighting from breaking out. News traveled slowly at first, building to a crescendo inside the mess halls.

  Lucy ate by herself amid the din. When a sudden hush fell, she looked up from her cereal and saw that Reg Forrest had entered the room. He’d evidently been pressed into service to help keep the peace, and he wore one of the MP’s pressed uniform shirts. A baton hung from his belt. He walked around the perimeter of the room, hands behind his back, saying nothing, a strange smile fixed on his face. Lucy put down her spoon, her appetite lost. A few hundred feet away, in the guard towers that loomed over the camp, soldiers watched every inch of the fence, their fingers never far from the triggers of their guns—but somehow Reg’s presence was even more chilling.

  Lucy slid closer to the family whose table she was sharing, hoping that she could escape Reg’s notice by pretending to be one of their children. But Reg had already spotted her. He walked directly toward her table and Lucy felt the filament that connected them grow taut. She sat up as straight as she could and forced herself to meet his gaze.

  “Well, well, little Lucy Takeda,” Reg said, nodding to the family Lucy was sitting with. They blanched and slid away from her. “Good to see you up and about, looking fit as a fiddle this morning.”

  Lucy wondered what response he was looking for, what words would make him go away.

  “And
your mother? I trust she is well also?”

  “Yes,” Lucy said quickly, though in fact Miyako had resumed her late-night outings two or three times a week, and sometimes didn’t come home until Lucy was already asleep. On those nights Lucy occasionally woke to find her mother kneeling on the floor next to her bed, her head resting on the edge of the mattress. Miyako was losing weight again, and she sometimes clutched herself around the middle as though she was in pain. She wore long sleeves and high collars, but even so, Lucy had spotted bruises on her skin.

  “But—” he made a show of looking around the room, assuming an exaggerated expression of concern “—I don’t see her here. She isn’t forgetting to eat, is she?”

  “No...sir.” Lucy hated the papery tone of her voice, the tremor in her hands that betrayed her fear.

  “Because you gotta eat, keep your strength up, times like these.” Reg squared his shoulders, his broad chest and powerful arms filling out his uniform shirt and tapering to the trim waist and muscular legs. Reg was rumored to have a punching bag and weights in his apartment rather than living room furniture; this only added to his allure among the young women in camp.

  Lucy nodded faintly, unable to think of a response.

  “You know...it’s been awfully nice to see her around again. The boys sure missed her. Your mother’s a class act.” Reg made a gun from his thumb and forefinger and pretended to shoot Lucy with it, making a clicking sound in his throat. He winked and finally turned and walked away, completing his tour of the mess hall before leaving to haunt other corners of the camp.

  The couple she was sitting with exchanged a worried barrage of words in a mixture of Japanese and English, but Lucy didn’t listen. Her appetite was gone. She carefully wrapped two slices of bread in a handkerchief and headed back to her room, knowing she’d have to work hard not to let her face give her fears away.

  16

  The riots were followed by a relentless wave of cold. The new year came without incident, people cowering in their rooms under whatever warm clothes and blankets they were able to find. Donations from churches and deliveries of surplus clothing from the first war supplemented the meager belongings the internees had brought from home, and the oil heaters burned constantly, but it seemed as though no one was ever warm enough. There was only one heater per barrack, a barrel-shaped thing that could not produce enough heat for the entire building.

  The business of the camp continued unabated. Deputy Chief Griswold promoted one of the full-time couriers to clerical assistant and asked Lucy to help out again a few days a week after school. If Mrs. Kadonada was aware of the distance between Lucy and her son, she was too discreet to mention it, but it seemed that she was especially solicitous as she gave Lucy stacks of letters and mimeographs to deliver. She asked after Miyako with no apparent irony, and for that kindness, Lucy was grateful. She wondered if Mrs. Kadonada understood that her errands in the frozen camp were preferable to afternoons alone with her thoughts in a warm room.

  One Friday afternoon, Mrs. Kadonada gave Lucy an envelope stamped CONFIDENTIAL and addressed to Reginald Forrest, Property Manager, Warehouse One. Ordinarily such a delivery would only be handled by an adult courier; exceptions had to be approved by Deputy Chief Griswold. But the full-time courier was ill, and the deputy chief had left early to visit his fiancée in Sacramento for the weekend, so Mrs. Kadonada gave the envelope to Lucy and told her that, after she delivered it, she could consider herself finished for the day.

  Lucy tried to tamp down her apprehension as she walked through camp. Since the day after the riot, she’d had no direct contact with Reg or Van Dorn, and she’d glimpsed George Rickenbocker only once, at the wheel of a truck going too fast down Avenue C. Over the holidays, Reg had agreed to guest-direct one of the holiday programs. His photo was featured in the Manzanar Free Press, playing Santa for the orphans in the Children’s Village, handing out gifts sent by church groups.

  Lucy knew that it was impossible that Reg had changed, that a cruel and dangerous side of him hid underneath the glib public exterior. But this was only a simple delivery. She would find Reg, get his signature, thank him and leave; and that would be the end of it. This was what she told herself over and over as she walked, the cold wind reaching under her dress and through her woolen tights.

  But when she arrived at the warehouse, it was locked. Lucy’s heart sank. Many of the offices closed early on Fridays, especially when bad weather threatened. She couldn’t return to the office with the letter; Mrs. Kadonada had said it was imperative that it be delivered today. She had to find Reg.

  She would start with his apartment. Lucy walked past the garages, through the decorative gardens and benches at the edge of staff housing. Trying to ignore her skittering apprehension, she rounded the outside row of barracks. When she arrived at his door, marked with a metal plate stamped with his name, she knocked before she could lose her nerve.

  There was no response. As she tried to decide what to do next, a young man in an MP uniform came around the corner, his gait uneven. When he saw Lucy, he gave her a sloppy salute.

  “Well, hey there, girlie.”

  “I am looking for Mr. Reginald Forrest to deliver this letter,” Lucy blurted, holding up the envelope.

  “That’s a funny coincidence,” the man said, his words running into each other. “I was just with him. Check in the motor pool office.” He began fumbling at a door with a key, muttering under his breath. He was drunk, Lucy realized with growing unease. But she’d come this far; she had to try.

  The front door of the motor pool office was locked, but Lucy followed the sounds of laughter around the back of the building. A slant-roofed addition housed the desks where the mechanics processed WRA paperwork and requisitions. At this hour, it should have been empty, but light leaked from the slats in the window blinds.

  Lucy knocked on the door. Inside, voices rose in shouting and laughter, and no one answered. A tumbleweed rolled nearby, swept in by the winds, and Lucy felt the cold seep into her ears. As she stood there deliberating her next move, the wooden door pitched open and a man stumbled out.

  “Oh Jesus, girl, where’d you come from?” he said. He had one hand on his crotch, which made him look both vulnerable and menacing. Lucy didn’t recognize him; he was wearing civilian clothes, stocky, and ruddy-faced.

  “I have a letter for Mr. Forrest,” Lucy said in a high-pitched, formal voice, averting her eyes from his hand fumbling at his belt. “From Mr. Graves of the Minidoka Relocation Center.” This she knew only because she had read the typed return address, but saying it made her feel more official. The door was on a spring, but before it closed she glimpsed two Japanese girls inside. They wore bright lipstick and tight sweaters and leaned against each other on a sofa, clutching drinks and giggling. One looked vaguely familiar, a girl who played the ukulele in the variety shows and lived far on the other side of camp by the hospital, Block Twenty-eight or Twenty-nine.

  “Well, have you ever heard of knocking?” the man said. “Reg isn’t here, haven’t seen him in a while. Maybe you ought to just take that letter back where you got it. In or out, make up your mind, I’ve got to drain the pipes so I’m going to recommend you choose in.”

  He staggered along the side of the building, still fumbling with his pants, and Lucy realized that he meant to relieve himself against the wall. There was nowhere to go to escape watching him urinate, so she caught the door just before it clicked shut and slipped into the room, jamming the letter
into her coat pocket.

  “Well, lookee what the cat dragged in,” a man said from a chair tipped back against the wall. Lucy smelled burning wax and the unpleasant aroma she remembered from her father’s glass of whiskey, and the faint scent of vomit, and realized everyone here was drunk. Off to the side was a table laden with liquor bottles and a bowl of pistachios; broken shells littered the table and the floor. “All the way from across town.”

  Lucy took a second look at the man, too massive for the chair in which he sat, and belatedly recognized Deputy Assistant Director Van Dorn. For some reason the notion made her blush, even though her overwhelming emotion was fear—fear of being found out, fear of being trapped here with these older girls, fear of things she couldn’t name. She turned around, thinking she might retreat before anyone else noticed she was there, but one of the young men had stepped between her and the door.

  “Not so fast,” said a tall man standing at the table, pouring from a bottle into a short, squat glass held by a slight Japanese girl. The girl had her hand on his arm, her face tilted up to his. She stood with one foot, clad in a frayed silk pump that had seen better days, insinuated between his, her thighs rubbing against his legs.

  The man pushed the girl away as though she were a low-hanging branch, and Lucy saw that it was George Rickenbocker. She would have known it was the man she’d seen with her mother in the storage room from his expression alone: he had the handsome, broad face and slicked-back dark hair of the characters in superhero comics—Superman or The Flash—but his smile was both amused and hungry, his eyes narrowed and appraising. “You’re Miyako’s girl, aren’t you? Fellas, look here, we got another little apple didn’t fall far from her mama’s tree.”