Under the Blood-Red Sun

by Graham Salisbury

  “Hey, Herbie,” the man said, waving to his brother. “No stop for us, we just like watch.”

  Herbie shrugged and punched his glove. Soon the Kaka’ako Boys forgot we were even there.

  Except for when they called in their new pitcher.

  He was way out in the outfield. He jogged in slowly, like one of those water buffaloes in Kailua. He wasn’t Japanese like the others. He was some kind of mixture—maybe Japanese-Hawaiian-Portagee-Filipino.

  He glanced over at us, looking mean, with his hair greased straight back and muscles bulging out like boulders. He even had a shadow of a mustache.

  “Holy smokes,” Mose whispered.

  “He looks like twelfth grade, already,” Rico said. “Must be stupit, spent a lot of time flunking.”

  Ichiro Fujita, the Kaka’ako first baseman, smiled over at Billy. “Hey, haole, meet the Butcher.” He laughed, and so did the rest of his team. “This guy not very patient,” Ichiro went on. “We call him the Butcher … pretty soon you going fine out why.”

  “The guy look dumb as a rock,” Rico whispered.

  “Shhh,” I said. “You want him to eat you for lunch, or what?”

  “No worry,” Rico said. “I think the guy eats dog food.”

  We all had to work hard to keep from laughing. The Butcher took a step toward us, and we shut up.

  The Kaka’ako Boys came in and got ready to practice batting. And the Butcher started pitching.

  He could throw the ball almost as fast as a bullet. What scared me the most was that he wasn’t always on target. When the Kaka’ako Boys came up to bat, they stood about ten feet away from the plate and didn’t take their eyes off the Butcher even for one second.

  “Criminy,” Mose said. “He could take your head off with one wild pitch.”

  “He could fix that,” Billy said. “Look at the way he closes his eyes just as he lets the ball go. I could show him how to get better aim.”

  “No, no,” Rico said. “No show him nothing. More better to take a chance on getting hit than to help that babooze strike us out.”

  The ballahead man got a kick out of that. “But if he crack your head, you might change your mind.”

  “He crack my head, I crack his.”

  “If you got a head left.”

  “Listen,” Rico said. “You come down this field January one, New Year’s Day.… We got a rematch with these guys, and we ain’t going to lose to no Frankenstein from the Big Island.”

  “Okay, okay, no get hot.… I’ll see if I can make it.… But do me a favor, yeah? Next time, come down South Street so those centipede boys don’t bother you. Coral Street—where you came down? They think they own it.” He shook hands with all of us. “Good luck, you kids. And don’t forget what I told you, yeah?”

  When we left Kaka’ako, Billy and I went down Pohukaina and headed up South, like the guy said. But Rico and Mose went strutting back up Coral with a pack of kids tailing them, like they were following a couple of lions in a circus parade.

  Sunrise at Diamond Grass

  On a Saturday, a few weeks after Billy, me, Mose, and Rico met the Butcher, I heard a gunshot. It was mid-afternoon, and I was helping Grampa with the chickens. He’d just handed me a can of eggs that he wanted me to take over to Mrs. Wilson.

  Grampa and I turned toward the trees where the sound had come from.

  Keet. Playing with his .22 again.

  Grampa shook his head. There was another shot, and Grampa winced. He nodded toward the eggs. “Take ’um,” he said.

  “Aw, come on, Grampa … I don’t want to go over there.…”

  “Just take ’um.” Grampa raised his hand like he was going to slap my head.

  “Okay, okay.”

  Lucky followed me through the trees, sniffing around stumps and patches of weeds. Spots of sunlight speckled the trail.

  When Lucky trotted out onto the Wilsons’ lawn, Keet’s dog went into a barking frenzy. He did that every single time I went over there.

  “Rufus,” I said, holding out my hand. He settled down and came over to sniff at Lucky, who kept turning around in circles.

  The Wilsons had a screened-in back porch almost as big as our whole house. I knocked, then waited. Mr. Wilson’s new Cadillac was parked in the driveway. I cringed when I saw what looked like a bullet hole in the back window. Keet and his stupid rifle. I prayed for anyone but Mr. Wilson to come to the door.

  But no one came.

  I put my hand up to the screen and peeked inside.

  The door squeaked as I inched it open and walked in, creeping past the white-cushioned lounging chairs. I knocked on the kitchen door. No one answered, but I could hear voices. I inched the door open and put the eggs inside.

  “You stupid idiot!” I heard Mr. Wilson shout.

  “I told you, it was an accident,” Keet said, his voice cracking.

  A door slammed.

  “Okay,” Keet said. “I’ll pay for the stupid window.”

  “Don’t get sassy with me, young man, or I’ll knock your block off.”

  “What do you—”

  “Shut up! Give me that rifle.”

  “No!”

  I heard a thud and something falling over. I imagined Keet struggling with his father, tugging the .22 back and forth. Keet started whining and sobbing, trying to talk. Crying like a baby.

  His sobs got louder, closer. I started to back away.

  “Get out of here,” Mr. Wilson screamed. “I don’t want to look at your stupid idiot face.”

  I left the eggs on the floor and ran out, sprinting across the grass toward the trees. Lucky and Rufus ran after me. I dove into the bushes, trying to hide.

  Seconds later, Keet came bursting out. The screen door slapped back against the house with a loud thwack! He headed across the yard, coming right at me, wiping his eyes with his arm. I crouched as low in the bushes as I could get, digging down into the dirt, holding Lucky next to me. Rufus started nosing into my hiding place, thinking it was a game. I pushed him away with my foot, but he kept coming back.

  The earth shook when Keet stomped by, slapping bushes from his path. He saw Rufus and kicked him. Rufus yelped and took off.

  I held my breath and listened to the clink of Keet’s dog tags fade away. I stayed hidden until I couldn’t hear them anymore. The only sound was Lucky panting, hot in my ear. I felt sick. The ugliness in Mr. Wilson’s voice was meaner by far than anything Keet had ever even tried to aim at me.

  • • •

  “Next time, you’re taking those eggs over there yourself,” I told Grampa.

  He waved me off.

  I gave Grampa a small shove on his arm. “I mean it, Grampa. That’s it, I tell you.”

  He grinned, just a little.

  “You think it’s funny I had to go over there?” I reached out to shove him again.

  Grampa grabbed my wrist, his grip as strong as an iron vise.

  I hit the dirt before I could even figure out what had happened. Grampa let go and walked away. I sat there rubbing my wrist. “I mean it. I’m never going up there again,” I said.

  But Grampa just walked over to his creaky old bicycle and rode off to the silent movies in Kaka’ako, leaving me and Lucky to watch Kimi.

  “That’s the last time!” I shouted.

  Kimi sat on the back steps watching me, looking lonely. It was hard on her, living so far away from any other girls her age. Her best friend lived downtown near the harbor. I took a deep breath, then let the air out slowly. “Hey,” I said. “You want to see the puppies?”

  She jumped up and hopped down the stairs with her feet together. Thunk … thunk … thunk … thunk.

  “Maybe we can make up some names for them,” I said.

  “Azuki Bean,” Kimi said. “What?”

  “Azuki Bean.”

  “Azuki bean?”

  Kimi pointed under the porch.

  With Lucky anxiously leading the way, we crawled under the house and went into the chicken-wire pen. T
he pups were almost a month old now. They got up and stumbled around. They poked at my hand with their wet noses and made tiny pinprick bites on my finger.

  “Azuki Bean,” Kimi said, stroking one of the pups—a runty-looking one, but not the one Billy wanted, thank goodness. How come everybody liked the small ones?

  “That’s what you want to name this one?”

  Kimi nodded.

  “Okay … Azuki Bean, then. What about the other ones?”

  Kimi looked at them but didn’t answer. She seemed to have no interest in the rest. Where did she get that name? Azuki beans were small, pebblelike beans.

  After playing around with the puppies awhile I began to forget about the Wilsons’ house. I also managed to forget to let the pigeons out, which I was supposed to do every afternoon. It was after dark when I finally remembered, but Papa said never to fly them at night, so I had to wait until morning, which broke their routine. All because of Keet Wilson. Or Grampa … yeah, Grampa.

  “I promise you I’m not going over there again,” I whispered to Grampa that night in the dark. He pretended to be sleeping, but I could tell he was awake because of how he breathed.

  A mosquito hummed in my ear and I slapped it away.

  • • •

  As usual on Sunday mornings, Billy met me at diamond grass just after the sun came up. The field was still wet with dew, and in the brilliant sun, the whole place was alive with sparkles.

  Billy brought his bat this time. “We can hit pop flies,” he said. “All day, if we want.… My parents spent last night at the Royal Hawaiian Hotel for their anniversary.”

  “You stayed home by yourself?”

  “No. Jake was there, and Keet. He came over yesterday.… Boy, was he in a bad mood. Come on, let’s hit some balls.”

  “I have to let the birds out first. I forgot yesterday.”

  Flight and food went together, always. The birds, Papa drilled into me, needed to fly, and they needed to come back. To make that happen, he said, “Feed ’um right when they come home.… So they know.… So they have a good reason to come back.”

  The racers had gone an extra twelve hours without food and were pretty antsy. But they flew out anyway, batting by me, leaving puffs of feathery dust behind. In less than a minute they were out of sight beyond the trees.

  I fed the other birds, put feed out for the racers, and told myself that one day without exercise wasn’t going to hurt any of them.

  “Okay, let’s go,” I said to Billy, then jogged out to the other side of the field and waited for him to hit me a ball. It was still early, not even eight o’clock.

  “Hey,” Billy called. “When are you going to pay up the fifteen cents?”

  “Oh, yeah … I forgot.”

  “I should charge interest.”

  “Yeah, yeah, I know.”

  Tock.

  Billy hit a high fly ball. I caught it and threw it back. Billy knocked it down with the end of the bat and picked it up. “I’ll tell you what. You can give me five cents now and—”

  Billy suddenly fell silent. Looked up.

  “What?” I said, following his gaze.

  “Listen.”

  Far away, you could hear explosions. It sounded like the time Mr. Davis drove us out to Schofield Barracks and we heard the army shooting in the hills.

  “What is it?” I said.

  Crummmp. Like thunder, far away. Then a droning of engines.

  Crummp … thoomp, thoomp … thoomp.

  An ear-shattering roar suddenly thundered down on us, a plane flying way too low. A dark fighter. It blasted over the trees. I ducked, and covered my head with my glove.

  “Jeeze!” I said.

  Billy just stood there gawking, his hand shading his eyes. The plane passed so close that its wake sent a shiver through the treetops. I covered my ears and watched it bank to the right. The cockpit windows flashed in the sun like mirrors. The fighter dropped lower and headed off toward the west end of the island.

  “The banyan tree!” Billy said.

  I tore off my glove and raced across the field after him. Another plane ripped over us. More planes droned and whined, farther away.

  Crummmp … thoomp, thoomp.

  Tat-tat-iat-tat-tat.

  My heart began pounding. I raced into the trees after Billy, nearly blinded by snapping branches. We clawed our way up the tree. When we reached the top, another plane flew past, barely higher than the trees. Billy and I waved, but the pilot didn’t notice us. What was going on? They never flew that low.

  Huge, awful black clouds of smoke rolled up into the sky from Pearl Harbor. You could barely see the ships, which were lined up in neat rows like chips of gray metal. The smoke was so thick you couldn’t even see the mountains. Hundreds of planes circled the sky like black gnats, peeling off and dropping down to vanish into the boiling smoke, then reappearing, shooting skyward with engines groaning, circling back, sunlight flashing when they turned.

  “My God,” Billy whispered. “That smoke … it’s … ack-ack! … This is for real!”

  Crummmp.

  Explosions of seawater burst skyward in the harbor. A plane crashed in the cane fields and started a fire. Another fell into the sea, spinning like a windmill with smoke trailing off it.

  Tat-tat-tat-tat-tat

  Thoomp … thoomp …

  Another dark plane charged down on us from behind, screaming out of the valley from the mountains. Billy and I turned just as it boomed over, heading down toward the sea. The noise stabbed into my ears. The fighter banked abruptly, then sped back toward the swarm of planes circling Pearl Harbor.

  Billy and I gaped at the pilot. He was so close you could see a white band around his head. Then it hit me. Dark plane. Not silver. Not a navy plane. It didn’t even have a star on it.

  It was amber. All the planes were amber.

  A rush of fear swept over me.

  Amber.

  Amber, with a blood-red sun on the fuselage and under the wings … blood-red sun … the symbol of Japan.

  The plane raced into a sky thick with black smoke.

  A huge explosion shook the earth. Close. Real close. Black smoke tumbled skyward from down by the grocery store, where the school bus let us off. An ugly cloud rose like a monster out of the trees.

  “Oh my God, oh my God,” Billy said.

  I couldn’t take my eyes off the rising cloud of smoke. Couldn’t think. Couldn’t breathe.

  “Come on!” Billy said, grabbing my arm.

  My hands shook as I dropped from branch to branch, slipping, scraping my chest, my stomach, retreating into the darkness of the jungle. We hit the ground and stumbled out into the field.

  Billy ran around in circles, jumping up and down, not knowing what to do.

  Grampa burst out of the bushes, running into the field with his Japanese flag. I’d never seen him move so fast. He stopped and squinted up at the sky.

  An amber fighter came up from the ocean and banked into a sweeping turn above the ridge. It headed back over us, back toward Pearl Harbor, dropping low as it approached. Grampa frantically flapped the flag. Up and down, up and down. The pilot wagged the wings of his plane, then sped past. The sound of the engine shattered the air.

  “Grampa!” I yelled. “What are you doing!”

  “He no bomb, he no bomb,” Grampa said, his eyes filled with terror. “He see flag, he no bomb.”

  “No, no, no, Grampa! Put that thing away! Hide it! Hide!” I put my arm around his shoulder. It felt funny to do that, but he looked so terrified. “Come, ojii-chan. Let’s go back. Quick, before another plane comes.”

  Grampa gave me a bewildered look. I urged him toward the trees, away from the open space. He dropped the flag. Billy picked it up, and crumpled it into a ball.

  I glanced around the ridge. Someone could have seen. There were houses up there. Someone could have watched Grampa waving the flag. Billy hurried behind us, trying to hide the white cloth, hide the red sun. In the distance, planes whined and
groaned.

  Papa! The thought slammed into me like a bullet. He could be right under those planes!

  Mama was on the porch holding Kimi, looking into the sky, with Kimi clinging to her neck.

  “Japanese planes, Mama … We’re being bombed! We’ve got to get rid of the flag.… Grampa took it out to the field and waved it. Someone might have seen.”

  Mama squinted up, raised a hand to her eyes. “That’s just army planes … like always.…”

  “No, Mama … They’re bombing … down by Pearl Harbor! We saw from the trees.”

  Two planes banked overhead, the red suns striking down like hot stones. Mama stared at them. It suddenly all made sense to her. “Bury it,” she said, her eyes wide with fear. “Bury that flag.” She ran inside the house and brought back Grampa’s photograph of the emperor. “Bury this too.… Go! Now!”

  Grampa ran to get a shovel. Billy and I dove under the house and managed to dig a hole with our hands. Lucky’s puppies surrounded us. Billy shoved them out of the way. They came back, and Billy put them in the pen.

  When we came out from under the house, Grampa was standing in the yard with the shovel. He gave us a sorrowful look, then walked away, slowly, out to the jungle.

  More planes circled overhead. They leveled out and sped away. The ships in the harbor had to be nothing but melting steel by now.

  Down by the grocery store you could still see a blur of smoke from the explosion, an ugly smudge in the sky.

  “I gotta get home,” Billy said, squinting up at it. “Quick! Maybe Charlie’s picking this up on his radio.”

  We started to run off, but Mama called to me. “Tomi, you find out, then you come home.…”

  Kimi peeked up at the sky and started clawing at Mama’s arms.

  “Tomi!” Mama yelled. “Run!” She covered Kimi’s head with her hand and ran back into the house. Another fighter thundered in from behind me and Billy, coming right at us.

  Kimi was screaming inside the house.

  I fell to the dirt and covered my head. So did Billy. Machine guns started spitting, the bop-bop-bop-bop-bop jabbing down. I cringed. Squeezed into a ball.

  But the plane flew past.

  I peeked up and saw it drop lower as it headed up the valley, shooting at something near the cemetery. Billy and I leaped up and ran after it, trying to catch a last glimpse. The fighter dropped even lower, then disappeared below the treetops, guns still wailing. Seconds later, it shot back up into the sky.