“Jesus Christ …” McKay turned. His shoulders lifted up and down as if he were sobbing, but when he turned back his blue eyes were dry. “What have I done to make you think these things?” he asked.
Mariko sat up and touched the top of McKay’s head as he knelt by her bed and looked out the door where her grandfather was hunched over his bonsai. “Oh, McKay … I want to be wrong.…”
He looked at her, deadly earnest. “Or can’t you understand? Was it expecting too much?”
“Don’t insult me,” she snapped.
He moved closer to the bed.
“Please don’t.”
“I’m sorry about your eye,” he said, because that’s all he could think of to say.
“We had a fight.”
“Who? You and Will?”
“Yes. It’s been very bad around here. He thinks I’m inu … a dog, a stool pigeon for the JACL.”
“Why?”
“I’m not, of course. I just want to paint. That’s all I’m capable of doing. I’m not political.”
McKay rubbed his forehead.
“He sees that as betrayal,” she said. She pulled a Gauloise from a blue package and did not light it, but held it in her hand and walked around the tiny room.
“What does it mean to sign one of these papers the army passes around? What does it matter whether I say yes or no on their lousy questionnaire?” She thumped her heart. “They don’t know what’s in here and they never will.” She stopped pacing in front of McKay and he lit her cigarette. She took a long draw. “I will not be segregated from the others and go to Tule Lake. Did you know? That’s where they are sending the troublemakers. Yes. Will is on the list.” She strode around the room again. “I will not go.” She sat on the edge of the bed and her knee touched his shoulder. “He likes causes. My causes are inside. I paint from them, not about them,” she said bitterly.
McKay nodded.
“I count the days until he leaves. That’s sad, isn’t it?”
McKay turned on his knees to her and she lay back on the bed. Her eyes were closed and he could see how the bruised eyelid had swelled to twice the size of the other one. She looked out the window. The bright sun had gone.
“Do you think it’s going to snow?” she asked after a while. Her face grew softer when she looked at him.
Someone knocked. “Hey, McKay …” It was Kai. “Those MPs are on the prowl.”
“Thanks … I’m coming,” McKay said.
When Kai left, Mariko grabbed McKay around the knees where the cloth of his pants went loose, and slid up until she was standing in his arms.
He brushed his lips against her hair.
“I don’t really hate you at all,” she said softly.
He rested his chin on top of her head. “Please, you must try to get a pass to come to the ranch. I’ll come for you,” he said, looking down at her face.
She gave him a strong questioning look. “Yes?”
“Yes.” She put her nose against his collarbone and nodded.
“It’s like being dead,” McKay said to himself, as he went home, thinking about Mariko. “Everything else is seared away.” Where the road cut through an enormous rock cliff, he looked up and saw a hawk snatch a swallow right out of the air.
A week later McKay read in the papers about the restriction of passes to and from the Camp, because the town councils of Cody and Powell had made it clear that there were “too many Japs floating around town.” The article incensed him and he burned it before Bobby read the mail. He decided to drive to the Camp. When he pulled up to the sentry gate, Harry stepped out.
“Hello, Romeo, want a Coke?” Harry leaned on the car door and thrust an open bottle through the window.
“What the hell is going on around here with this pass deal?”
Harry drew back and grinned. “You just can’t stay away, can you?” he said.
“I put in for a pass for …”
“No deal. They’ve shut her down.”
“Christ, the goddamned bigots in town again.”
“I heard that,” Harry said, jeering. “I heard that.”
McKay got out of his truck and leaned against a fender. He scratched at the dirt with the toe of his boot and looked in the direction of Mariko’s block. “No special deals today, huh?” he said and looked Harry in the eye.
“Sorry, asshole … I’m fresh out of deals today. Orders.”
McKay rubbed the scarred knuckles of his right hand. “You’ve got yourself one hell of a job, Harry.…”
“I guess I don’t carry a torch around in me for these Japs like you do, that’s all,” he said, lifting the bottle cap with a jerk. Then he picked the cap off the ground and rotated it between his thumb and forefinger.
“You’re ignorant, Harry,” McKay said, glaring.
“That’s what my ma always said.”
“Yea,” McKay said and climbed into his truck. Harry appeared at the passenger window and leaned in. “Hey, I was just fooling around.… Stop fightin’ your head, McKay … I mean it.”
Pinkey sat on the front step of Snuff’s bar and listened to the roar the wind made somewhere far above him. Dust from the mill covered the road. A car sped by, leaving black tracks in the white mineral, and after a while the dust healed over again. The bar door opened. It had been painted black and the paint was peeling, and every time someone opened it another flake fell off.
“Here.” Snuff handed Pinkey a shot glass. “Anything else while I’m out on the veranda? Hors d’oeuvres?”
Pinkey tipped his head back and swallowed the whiskey in three gulps. “Just right,” he said, handing the glass back. Snuff snorted and disappeared inside.
Pinkey took a deep breath. He loved the smell of the earth when it first came in spring—part sage, part clay, part skunk, part stinkbug. He vowed not to go inside again until winter. He had one spur stuffed into his shirt pocket and no horse. “I was going to ride over here, but then I just got to walkin’ and everything smelled so good, I forgot to stop,” he had told Snuff. Now he wished he had his horse.
He decided to flag down the next car that went by, but that might be quite a wait because it was getting on past dinnertime. He’d been waiting for McKay to show up at the headgate north of the ranch, then at the calving barn, then for the noontime meal.
“Snuff … hey in there …,” he yelled in the direction of the battered door, but there was no response. “Well shit, I suppose I have to wait on myself now,” he mumbled, getting to his feet. He heard a horse and turned. His face brightened. “Hello, you lovesick sonofabitch … where the hell have you been?”
McKay rode up to Pinkey and peered into his eyes. “You sober?” he asked.
“Hell, yes. I’ve been doing your damned work all day. Anyway, I’m on the wagon. One shot a week, that’s all.”
“Yea, I know what your weeks are like—about an hour long,” McKay said, stepping off his horse.
“I was just settin’ out for home.…”
A car pulled up and a tall man unfolded himself from behind the steering wheel. McKay strode toward him with his hand outstretched.
“Jesus, I thought I was seeing a ghost …,” he began.
“How are you?” Rocky asked. “I seen your brother about two months ago. We shared a can of C rations under a palm tree. It was Christmas,” he said with a laugh.
He was dark and lanky and when he talked, his head wobbled as if he had rested his chin on a marble, and when there was a silence in the conversation, he always looked up at the sky and squinted.
McKay offered his chew around and each man took a pinch. Rocky spit on the ground before he spoke, pulled one foot up under him against the running board. He and McKay had ridden colts together and rodeoed some, taking turns helping each other in the chutes, and once McKay saved his life when a bucking horse flipped over on him.
“It’s pretty good to be home,” Rocky began, spitting again. “I’ll tell you, fighting those Japs—no offense to Bobby—isn’t like fi
ghting normal human beings. They just don’t want to live very bad, is how I see it. They move around the country like a damned band of sheep. God almighty, I saw one officer line his men up and cut their heads off … didn’t want to surrender. Hell, we’re surrenderin’ sonsofbitches compared to them. They take it serious in a little different way.…”
“Let me buy you a drink,” McKay offered.
“Yea, get three go-cups,” Pinkey chimed in. “I ain’t going in there. I’m celebrating spring right out here.”
McKay ducked in and Carol Lyman came out with three shot glasses of whiskey, which the men emptied quickly. When McKay passed the chew around again, Rocky’s hand began shaking violently, then his shoulders lifted up and his head wagged from side to side.
“You need another shot, Rock?” McKay asked.
“It’s not what you think … I’ve got me a tich of malaria is all. Seems like everyone got it if they ran out of them goddamned quinine pills. That stuff makes you ringy.”
McKay looked at the ground and smirked. “I guess I’ll have to find Champ a hard-mouthed colt so he won’t go jerking on him, then …,” he said.
Rocky laughed.
“So, it’s pretty tough over there, huh?” McKay said.
Rocky looked at him. “Real tough … I don’t know, it’s got so everyone’s fighting to the death. I mean both sides. Where we was, we weren’t taking any prisoners. Hell, we shot ’em out of the sky like a bunch of damned ducks if they parachuted into one of the forward areas.… Some of the guys, you know, took themselves some souvenirs. I couldn’t believe it: one guy—and I’m not shittin’ you—sent a Jap’s ear back home to his girlfriend.… I’m sure as hell glad to have it over with. Got a couple of colts has growed up since I left—one’s coming two; the other’s a long yearling. God, they’re nice.”
McKay smiled at his friend. “Let’s put some miles on these colts when this thing is over,” he said. “I’m tired of getting bucked with by these waspy sonsofbitches all by myself.…”
“You’ve got yourself a deal,” Rocky said, holding out his hand. “I best be going now. They’re waiting on me up home,” he said and pushed away from the car. When he smiled the gold caps on his front teeth glinted, and McKay noticed that his eyes had that wide expression of astonishment people get just before they die.
McKay turned to Pinkey. “How are you travelin’?”
“I’m afoot,” he said.
“I suppose we have to ride double.” McKay handed Pinkey the reins.
Pinkey put his foot in the stirrup.
“Heave ho,” McKay yelled and pushed Pinkey so hard he almost went over the other side. Once he was on top, his feet did not reach the stirrups. “I’ll take the backseat,” McKay said, swinging on gracefully.
“Watch how you hold on to me … I don’t want no one to start talkin’.…”
McKay jabbed the horse in the flank. He humped up and kicked out.
“Hey,” Pinkey yelled. He turned the horse toward home, after which McKay felt the pockets of Pinkey’s coat.
“Don’t you have something hid out on you?” he asked.
“What the hell do you take me for, some kind of wino?” Pinkey said indignantly.
“Jesus, I could use a drink.”
“Why didn’t you think of that at the bar?”
McKay shoved his hand into the pocket of Pinkey’s coat. “Are you sure?”
Pinkey reached into the breast pocket of his vest and pulled a slender flask out and handed it over his shoulder to McKay. McKay pulled the cork with his teeth, then took a long draw.
“Let’s go on a tear,” he said, wiping his mouth and handing the bottle forward.
“Hell no, never touch the stuff,” Pinkey said.
“You bugger,” McKay said and took another swallow. “Come on,” he coaxed.
Pinkey fended off the bottle with his free hand.
“You’re hard to please,” McKay said.
“Hey, first you kick me off the outfit for being inebriated, then you get the red ass because I won’t go on a tear with you. Didn’t they teach you anything at that college?” Pinkey asked, swiping the flask from McKay and taking a gulp. “Anchors away …,” he sang, drinking.
“I suppose you’re going to tell me you were in the navy,” McKay said.
“Merchant Marines,” Pinkey quipped. “Goddamn, all those ports, all those women …”
“The hell … you’ve never even seen the water.”
Pinkey laughed.
“And you can’t swim.”
“Who needs to swim? That’s what a boat is for, isn’t it?”
“Give me that bottle again,” McKay said.
“What’s eatin’ at you?” Pinkey asked.
“Everything.”
“Girl problems?”
McKay put the bottle to his mouth and let the whiskey flood out on his lips before swallowing.
Pinkey sat against the edge of McKay’s bed on the screened porch. The moon rose behind a veil of clouds. Pinkey called it “a virgin moon” or “a moon that took vows.”
“Or a Hindu moon, a moon in purdah,” McKay added, staring with glazed eyes. For the first time in a week the wind had stopped. The silence was overbearing.
Bobby had left dinner out for them, but they went on through the kitchen to the liquor cabinet, and when they couldn’t find the key to the lock, McKay broke it open and took three bottles to what he called his cell, his screened room. The cell felt crowded with Pinkey in it, but McKay welcomed the company because thoughts of Mariko were too easily conjured up and worked their way around the room until McKay deadened them with another drink.
“Isn’t there anything to laugh about?” he asked.
Pinkey scratched his head, then told the story about the time he opened the barn door and four buck deer ran out over the top of him. “Them hooves was so sharp, they liked to scalp me,” Pinkey said. McKay knew the story by heart. “They liked to cut me to ribbons,” Pinkey continued. “Had to get my hair sewed back on.” He paused and waited for laughter. McKay grimaced.
“You kids used to think that was funny,” Pinkey said.
“It is funny. It just doesn’t make me laugh anymore.”
McKay uncorked a new bottle of whiskey. It wasn’t Pinkey’s brand and it went down more smoothly. He sat on the floor beside the old cowboy and filled two glasses.
“Here’s to the Merchant Marines,” McKay said, laughing.
Pinkey touched the glass with his and drank. “Here’s to the goddamned war,” he said.
“To the end of the goddamned war,” McKay added.
“Yea, you bet. To the end of the stinkin’ thing.”
“Here’s to you, Pink.… You’re a hell of a drunk,” McKay said, lifting his glass.
“To the boys,” Pinkey said, swallowing. “Champ and Ted … and Henry.”
“Here, here.”
The dog shoved the door open and stood on McKay’s lap, and McKay let him lick his face. “Buster, you old fart, here’s to you.”
“Shall we get him drunk?” Pinkey asked, with a gleam in his eye.
“Hell no, someone’s got to do the work tomorrow.”
“You’re right,” Pinkey agreed. “You’re a hell of a manager.”
“Yea, I’m sharp as hell,” McKay said, sneering.
Pinkey looked at the young rancher. His eyes were bleary. “So they closed up the Camp, huh?” he said tentatively.
“Idiots.”
“Who?”
“The assholes in town. They want them to sign something saying they won’t stay here after the war is over. Well, who would want to live in this godforsaken place anyway?”
“Can’t you write her or something?” Pinkey asked.
“Well, ain’t you getting practical. You sound like my mother.”
“Excuse me all to hell,” Pinkey said and uncorked the bottle again. “Round two,” he announced, tipping his head back.
McKay took the bottle from him when he had
finished.
“You’ll survive, kid,” Pinkey said.
McKay wiped his mouth. “Thanks, that’s swell news.”
“Hell, I’ve been waitin’ for one damn thing or another all my life, but it don’t do no good. It’s just something to make time pass. Now I can’t remember long enough to know what I was waitin’ for.”
McKay smiled at the old cowboy. “You’re right … to hell with it,” he said.
Pinkey slept a while, sitting up against the edge of the bed, and when he woke, McKay was standing by the screen watching the sky get light.
“What are you all hot and bothered about?” Pinkey asked groggily.
McKay turned. “Will you come with me?”
“Where to?”
“Town. I’m going in to sign up.”
“For what? Bowling?”
“The army, you asshole,” he said and hiccuped.
“I thought you’d already been culled out.”
“I was, but they’re more desperate now.”
“You said it, desperado.…”
“I said desperate.”
“What the hell’s the difference?” Pinkey asked.
McKay’s hiccups came more quickly. “Shit,” he said and began to laugh.
Pinkey struggled to his feet. His head only came to McKay’s shoulder. “I’m ready, sport.”
McKay filled his car with gas at the tanks and the two men drove into town. Even a town as small as Luster looked big and bright to him because he hadn’t been off the ranch for so long. He pulled up in front of the hotel, and when he stepped from the car, the empty flask dropped out of his coat pocket. He hiccuped.
“Shhh,” Pinkey said.
The two men strode inside and the recruiter looked up warily.
“Good morning, young men. What can I do for you?”
The poster tacked to the wall behind him showed Uncle Sam reaching down from a cloud.
“I want to join up,” McKay announced. He showed the man his classification card.
The recruiter put the card squarely on the desk in front of him, then thumbed through his files until he reached McKay’s.
“I see you’ve been here before. How’s that leg?”
“Good as new,” McKay said, then clapped his hand over his mouth as the next hiccup came.
Heart Mountain Page 18
