“Near the end of the war we had thirty-five soldiers living in our house. My mother and one of the soldiers cooked for all of them plus seven of us. That’s how we got food—the soldiers had rice and some fish. But before that we had nothing to eat. A cup of rice for all of us lasted four days. One guy in town went to the beach and gathered seaweed, dried and curled it, and sold it as noodles. We tried it but it was full of sand. Then we had an uncle who owned a silkworm farm and he brought some of those worms over here and we ate them. They were awful.
“One day an American plane was shot down right on the beach. This was last year, 1944, and there wasn’t anything to sell in the stores then so the owners of the big store here went down and took souvenirs—the prop, the window, the pilot’s dark glasses—and they made a window display out of these things. I liked the big prop best.
“In July about a hundred B-29’s flew over us so low we could see the bomb bay doors. I did drawings of them. They flew right over and about five minutes later it was like an earthquake. They had dropped the bombs on a town about a hundred miles away. We had an anti-aircraft gun. We followed the soldier who rolled the gun up the hill to the temple and set it up. Then he said, don’t worry; we won’t get hurt because we don’t have any bullets. By this time we had nothing. No food, no ammunition. Their bayonets had blades made of bamboo.
“After the bomb was dropped the planes dropped leaflets that looked like ten-yen notes but on the other side they said Surrender (in Japanese). When the American prisoners got out they looked like dead fish. Eyes staring out of heads. They were hungry and so were we. Then the planes came back and dropped food for them and the next time I saw them they looked alive. They made shirts out of the parachutes. Our soldiers ran and hid in the mountains, but American-ji brought all kinds of things for us—food and cigarettes and gum and candy. They wanted something for it. They showed me with their finger. They wanted women so we told them where to go and they gave us food. Everything’s happier now. They even have a band. I followed it down the street and they let me play their drum.”
August 16
Dear Kai,
I asked to be driven to Hiroshima today. By now, maybe you’ve seen the pictures. Where there was once a huge city, there is now only wreckage and carnage, a terrible smell, dead horses in the river, and bodies everywhere. People are building little shanties with the debris because the rains are coming soon. For once I’m glad I have a Japanese face, because I could walk around without people staring at me. Talked to one woman. She must have been very beautiful, but half her face was burned and she was wearing rags and holding her child. When I asked her how she felt about the bomb, she gave me a blank stare.
Later. Just before leaving, walked by the place where there was supposed to be an American prisoner of war camp. We looked through the wreckage for any trace of who had been there and how many, but there was nothing to see, and so we walked on.
August 20, 1945
Dear Kai,
The last day I saw the Shibota boy, he showed me his drawings of the town and people during the war: the department store with the propeller in the display window; the temple on the hill above his house with a gun in the garden, the bomb bay doors of a B-29; his uncle with only half a face.
He asked me why I looked Japanese but wasn’t. I told him about all the Issei immigrants who had come to America on ships. “Maybe I come to America someday too and paint,” he said beaming, as if there had been no war at all.
On August 14 Emperor Hirohito told the Japanese people to “bear the unbearable.” They had been defeated in war. The next day was VJ Day where you are; here it was solemn and quiet. I saw old men crying in the streets, heard of suicides.
My orders were to gather and deliver these American soldiers to Tokyo Bay by September 1. It took some doing to track some of them down. The ones that are here are shaping up their marching band and fresh uniforms are being airlifted to them for the signing of the surrender on September 2.
It’s taken me a while, but I’m getting my “ground legs” back. Fighting an enemy is easy; victory is bittersweet. I’m shipping out to San Francisco on nothing less than the Luraline September 3.
Your brother,
Kenny
The morning after the surrender was announced, McKay took Bobby to the grocery store as promised.
“Wish I was in here yesterday,” Bobby said, soaking up the passing scenery.
“Why?” McKay asked.
“Velma—she tell me over phone about it.”
“You still listen to that old gossip?” McKay said, teasing.
Bobby shot him a defiant glance. “Big doings, that’s what,” Bobby said, pushing his chin out a little. Then he wiped his forehead because the sun beating through the pickup window was hot. “Fire chief turn on siren—let blast for long time,” Bobby continued. “Then close street. No car. Big dance everywhere.”
“Well, hell …,” McKay said. “That would have been fun.”
Bobby got out at the grocery store and stood under the blue hand-painted signs, reading each one carefully. Then he went in. Larry walked out from behind the butcher case. His hands were red from the blood of a beef he had just gotten in but he shook Bobby’s hand enthusiastically. “It’s good to see you in here,” he said. Willard had taken back his old job of sweeping and spreading sawdust after his rooster had died, and he stood, resting his big head on the end of a broom, and stared. Bobby lingered in front of the meat counter. They didn’t buy meat because he and McKay butchered their own, but he liked to look anyway.
“Go look around, Bobby, and take your time.”
Bobby walked the aisles slowly, up one, down another. They seemed wider to him, but weren’t. He lingered over decisions, carrying his willow basket over his arm—the one he and McKay had made when McKay was ten. Rationing had stopped and the shelves were beginning to fill again. Even coffee and sugar could be bought and the news around town was that the café where Carol Lyman had worked would reopen when the ranchers began shipping calves in September.
Bobby strolled to the front of the store to say hello to Rose. He noticed her hair was a different color. She had been a blonde—or was it a brunette? He couldn’t remember. “Hair very pretty now,” he said to her.
“The old hotel’s got a new color to it, too,” she said, pointing to the clapboard building across the street.
“Ahhh,” Bobby crooned appreciatively. The horse trader walked in to buy snoose as Bobby placed his groceries by the cash register. He looked at the old man. “I thought you’d up and died, it’s been so long since I’ve seen you,” he said to Bobby.
“Willard …,” Rose called.
Bobby watched the string unwind from three spindles over Rose’s head as she and Willard filled two cardboard cartons, tying the flaps to make them stand up.
“Thank you, Rose,” Bobby said as he signed the receipt.
“Are you going to be coming in regular, now?” she asked.
“Yes,” Bobby replied cheerfully.
Willard carried the boxes to the truck.
“I guess your boys will be coming back soon, huh?” Larry said, moving to the front of the store.
“Ted and Champ coming soon.”
“You must be proud of them,” she said gaily.
“Very good, they come home. All over now … sooo …” His eyes were watery.
“Yes, it is, isn’t it?”
At the truck, Bobby slipped Willard a dime.
Carol Lyman stood behind the bar all afternoon without a single customer. She had given her nails a second coat of red polish and the baby slept peacefully, lying in a basket the Mormon Relief Society women had brought along with all the diapers and clothes a baby would need. Carol looked out the porthole window. The geranium had bloomed. When she touched the flower, hanging heavily from a thin stem, she noticed it was the same color as her nails. A feeling of contentment had come with the baby. Maybe that was the point of the gift, she thought. “The Wild Man know
s what it’s like not to be able to keep still.” She had expected him to come back on a day like this, a quiet day. He would appear unannounced … sneak in through the back door and lift the baby out of the basket and carry it around. But he didn’t, and no one coming or going from Billings, Big Timber, Bozeman, Livingston, or Butte had seen him. Carol thought about the scientist who had helped make the bomb, who, after the bomb dropped, had said, “I am the maker of death …” and wondered if that was the Wild Man’s brother.
Snuff had fixed up the back rooms. The two rooms—Venus’s and his—were now one with a double bed, a crib, and two purple overstuffed chairs. A coffee table stood where Venus’s bed used to be.
Now Carol smoothed her dress the way she had smoothed the green wool blanket on Venus’s bed a year before as Snuff had watched her.
“Come over here,” he said and they lay down with the baby between them. The next day she told him she thought she was getting milk in her breasts. “That happens sometimes when you adopt a child,” she explained. He unbuttoned her blouse and held her breasts gently as if weighing them … so gently, her knees buckled and she felt herself go unconscious for a moment, and when she woke up, she was lying in Snuff’s arms and her crumpled blouse was wet.
44
September. It’s been two months since we were told we could get passes to go on hikes and picnics nearby. For the first time, many of the Issei have been able to enjoy the wildflowers and cottonwoods and aspen when their leaves have turned. Abe-san takes walks too. I’d go to his room and find him gone and Mariko would ask me to look for him because she was worried. We celebrated his eighty-fourth birthday in April and now he seems more frail than ever. I could have picked him up with one hand.
The next thing I knew, he wanted to climb Heart Mountain. We’ve spent three and a half years looking at its twisted form, seen how storms swallowed the top and gave it back, mist-shrouded and white, but we had only that one view from the east, which makes it look like the tipped smokestack of an ocean liner.
We arranged for a ride to the base. On the way, we passed a ranch set back against the hills with a creek winding through and huge mountains behind. Abe-san poked his head out the window and swallowed up the sights. We were all hungry to be out, away from the barbed wire. I had learned that the legend of Heart Mountain came from the Crow Indians because it stuck up sharply like an animal or human heart. They called it awaxaum dasa, meaning “mountain heart.” A Crow medicine man once fasted there and received revelations from the Great Spirit, who said that if any part of the mountain broke off and fell, he would die. Soon after, a rent in the top of the mountain appeared and slid down and the old medicine man passed away.
After climbing a ridge and topping out on a steep hill, we stopped the car. Nearby were the remnants of a hermit’s shack. It was said he’d run a still up there during Prohibition and after, stayed on until he died. Abe-san pivoted on his heels, surveying the mountains hemming us, then dropped and drank from the creek with his hands.
We crossed the creek on stepping-stones. Walking ahead of me, Abe-san began singing. He wasn’t wearing a kimono, but a Japanese workman’s short jacket, pantaloons, and the tennis shoes McKay had given him, a gift he treasured. It was a steep climb to treeline. I had to stop every few minutes to breathe. How soft I’ve become, still in my twenties, and that old man outwalked me. We ascended the north slope. A huge rock face, shaped like a heart, towered over us. “Mountain heart,” I said aloud, but Abe-san was so far ahead, he didn’t hear me.
At treeline, we could see down the other side. Far below, the Camp was laid out in all its bleak monotony. Only the smokestack stuck out—the barracks and mess halls sprawled. Abe-san sat cross-legged under a bent seedling pine. The wind that had beleaguered us all these years wrapped itself softly around us now. I heard birds and looked. They flew from tree to tree, and I felt as if they were the one link pulling me away from barbed wire, toward life.
Abe-san laughed when a big gray bird landed in the palm of his hand and ate the scrap of bread offered. Then he proceeded on. The trail was easy to find and followed the ridge up toward the tusk, the nipple. I cut a walking stick for Abe-san and one for me. Wind touched the tops of the pines, setting off a hushed music. The trail rose steeply and often we had to clamber over dead trees. Abe-san walked ahead effortlessly, as if climbing stairs. Once, when I stopped to catch my breath, I heard a crashing sound, then saw cattle below the face, running through trees. When I looked back, Abe-san was out of sight. I kept climbing. It wasn’t hot, but my face was wet with sweat and my glasses clouded up. A wide root growing across the trail provided a bench on which to sit. Just ahead, a skiff of snow covered the ground and I could see where Abe-san’s foot had slipped: His was the only human track—there were others, but I’m no mountain man. What animals inhabited this mountain, I didn’t know. I stood and climbed, falling several times. What an ass I am out of water! Abe-san’s tracks were smaller than mine and with each footstep, I annihilated his delicate ones.
Around a bend I entered a stand of dead trees. The needles were brown and every trunk was bent toward the Camp below. Above, the rock face of the mountain was streaked red. It was like looking at a movie screen from the side of a stage, across which a raven and two eagles flew. I heard a few notes of a song—it was Abe-san—then the wind came again. After a steep pitch, the trail leveled off where the rock merged with the trees. Perhaps there had been a landslide.… A sound startled me and I jumped. I heard laughter, then saw Abe-san, crouched in a tiny hole in the rock wall—probably an eagle’s nest.
“How did you get up there?” I asked, shading my eyes, for there was no obvious route.
“I flew,” he said. “What’s wrong; did something scare you back there?”
I made a face.
“Look.”
I turned. A huge valley opened out below, bordered by high mountains that seemed so close I thought I could leap to them. Between were swaths of brown grass. It looked so smooth … brown valleys folding into ones that the distance had turned blue.…
“I sure hope there isn’t a landslide today,” Abe-san called out, laughing.
I sidled along the rock face, touching it with my hands. It was smooth and cold. I came on a place where snow had lodged itself in a crevice and a tiny pine grew there. Halfway across I figured I was next to the center of the mountain and put my ear to the rock. Abe-san’s laughter spilled out of the cave above. I continued on. Then I did hear something. Looking down, I saw water oozing out of broken rock.
“What do you see?” a voice said in back of my head. Abe-san had climbed down and was behind me.
“Look.” I pointed to the water. “I wonder where it comes from.”
Abe-san laughed. I couldn’t tell if he was laughing at my naiveté or laughing with delight. I counted the lines that radiated from his eyes—crow’s feet—there were four on each side.
“Everything comes from emptiness,” he said.
I groaned. “Then why doesn’t this mountain fall over if it’s empty inside?”
“Oh … it will …,” he said, smiling.
45
The Chevy convertible Mariko bought in Luster was gunmetal gray. “Très beau,” she had said to the salesman. “It looks just like a destroyer.” Even before she reached the Camp the back wheel fell off and the horse trader, who happened to be passing by, stopped to help her.
Abe-san liked to sit in the backseat with the top down and be driven. Mariko gave him a tour of the whole Camp that way. So many evacuees had left, whole sections of barracks were closed down. By the time the windows and doors were boarded up, the little gardens were already covered with weeds.
McKay had invited Mariko and Abe-san to visit the ranch. Abe-san settled himself in the back of the car, his white hair tucked into his dark kimono, while Mariko drove. As a going-away present, Kai had made a walking stick for him. It was a long twisted limb from a cedar tree, more like a staff than a stick. When Kai presented it to him, Abe
-san smiled. “My friend,” he said, “I have started to cast a very thin shadow.”
It was early autumn and up on the flank of Heart Mountain Abe-san saw hot spots of aspen, their leaves reddened in among the pines. His hair floated behind him in long wisps.
“I want to see everything,” he told Mariko, though what he meant was that he wanted to see anything.
When she drove through the sentry gate Abe-san threw his arms in the air as if batting at insects. He howled with laughter. She took the long way to the ranch, going south toward Cody, then west and north again on the back side of Heart Mountain. When they crossed the river he could smell sulfur from the hot springs and peered over the car door at the baths far below. Then she turned off on a narrow dirt road and drove to the “bonsai field.” There, in the wind, he saw how the trees were stunted and why. After, Mariko followed a track north.
“That’s where the falls are,” she said, stopping the car and pointing to a cleft in the rock. How many times she had painted those falls in the style of Hiroshige: filling the entire page with emptiness, a white band of water. Abe-san half rose in his seat and looked. He nodded his head when he saw how the tumbled rock lifted straight up. The falling water made a steady sound, like someone silencing a room: shhhhhhh. When he sat back, Mariko drove on.
Heart Mountain Page 38
