He looked over at his own supporters, then at the Lillooet fans.
Of all people, his father deserved to see this.
He threw a bad first pitch and the batter smacked the ball over the shortstop’s head for a single. The next man hit a pop fly, but Yujiro dropped it, leaving runners at first and third.
Dupont stepped up to the plate. He missed the first pitch, but the second dipped right into his swing. Ken spun around just in time to watch the ball fly over the fence.
Home run. Tie game.
And then Ken saw his father sitting behind the fence.
Somehow, he struck the next three batters out.
“Last inning,” said Tom as they sat down again.
“You see father?” asked Ken.
“I’m trying not to think about it.”
The first two batters went down swinging.
Ken stood up and walked toward the plate. He locked eyes with his father, who stared right back at him.
The first pitch was a strike, and so was the second.
Ken closed his eyes and imagined his mother sitting there beside his father, clapping her hands and shouting for him to hit one out of the park. He clenched his teeth and swung hard at the next pitch.
The ball hit the ground hard near first base and skipped into right field. Ken raced down the line, legs pumping.
“He’s missed it—go, go, go!” someone yelled in Japanese as he rounded first base. Second base thumped under his foot but Ken didn’t stop. He slid into third base hard. Above his head, the ball whacked into a glove.
“Safe,” called the umpire.
Ken watched, muscles tensed, as his brother stepped up to the plate. He stared down the third base line at home base. So close. But Tom hadn’t hit a ball all day and Ken could see his brother’s arms shaking as he faced the first pitch.
Strike.
Ball.
Ball.
Strike.
Ball.
Full count.
And then Ken remembered what he’d taught Tom earlier that summer. It was probably their only hope.
“Tom!” he shouted. He used his finger to write three Japanese kana in the air.
Tom squinted. Ken wrote the kana again.
The pitcher hurled a fastball.
Tom held out his hands and let the ball hit the bat.
“Bunt!” shouted the third baseman as Ken sprinted away.
He closed his eyes and dove for home, expecting to feel the thump of the catcher’s glove. But the tag never came and when he opened his eyes, he was lying facedown in the dirt with his arms wrapped around home plate.
There were wild cheers all around and Ken was slapped on the back and pushed and pulled in all directions.
“That,” said a voice behind him in English, “was a great ball game.”
Ken knew from the accent that it was Dupont.
He turned around. There stood the young Mountie, the whole Lillooet team behind him.
“You little fellas sure are good ball players,” he said.
Ken saw Tom extend his hand. Dupont hesitated, then shook it.
“Let’s do this again,” said the Mountie.
It was then that Ken realized who the heroes of that day had been. He walked over and shook Dupont’s hand too. Then he put an arm around his brother’s shoulders and they walked together to the fence behind home plate where their father was standing with a huge smile on his face.
The war was still on. No baseball game would change that. And nothing could bring back their father’s boat or their house on Powell Street or their mother’s warm embrace.
But they had crossed the bridge to Lillooet. It was a start, if nothing more.
Blue Shells
by Naoko Awa
translated by Toshiya Kamei
I’m going to tell you the story of a mysterious flared skirt I used to own. Sadly, I no longer have it. When I became obsessed with the skirt, my family hid it from me. Shortly later, it was burned in the war.
But I have never forgotten the dazzling blue of the skirt. Even now, when I close my eyes, I can see the color.
The skirt was made of silk, with an amply wide hem, which was rare in those days. During the war, most women wore monpe pants. So you can imagine how I attracted attention, how people spoke ill of me.
I was never a stylish girl. As a child, I wore only my sister’s hand-me-downs. My looks were homely, and my intelligence was average. I was a quiet, ordinary girl, and there was nothing special about me. This is my story of how I became smitten with the blue skirt.
When I was twelve or thirteen, I was friends with a very beautiful girl named Michiru. The daughter of a foreign father and a Japanese mother, she had eyes as blue as iris flowers. She lived with her mother in an old Western-style residence near my house. No one had seen her father. Rumor had it he was an Italian trader, an American sailor, or a German officer.
“My father is on a ship. He’s in the middle of the Pacific Ocean,” said Michiru. “He came home late last night and gave me a present.” When she opened her palm, a necklace of shells spilled over.
I wanted to meet Michiru’s father, just once. But she never invited me to her house. No one had ever been inside the house surrounded by thick shrubs.
Even so, Michiru and I often played together. We went out and bought beautifully patterned chiyogami paper, showed each other boxes full of ribbons, and talked about books we read.
I was very fond of Michiru. When we walked together, she made passersby turn their heads. I was secretly proud of having such a beautiful friend.
One day—it was spring or early summer—Michiru came to my house. It was early afternoon, and the scent of thick green leaves wafted from the hedge.
“Michiru-san is in the backyard,” Mother said. I ran out the back door and found Michiru, whom I had last seen a few hours earlier. Wearing a new linen dress, she stood still.
The instant she saw me she said, “Yae-chan, can you keep a secret?” Then she whispered, “I’ve come to say good-bye.”
I remained silent, stunned.
“We’re going away tonight,” she said.
“What? Where are you going?”
“A town by the sea. My mother’s home. But don’t tell anyone,” Michiru said and handed me a small package. “I give you this as a keepsake.”
“A keepsake? Is she going away for good?” I thought. Before I could say a word, Michiru fled. I still remember her white feet and her geta sandals echoing behind her. I unwrapped the package and found a blue flared skirt inside.
The next day I went to Michiru’s house. A crowd of people had gathered around it. They looked at each other, whispered, and nodded: “Come to think of it, I’ve heard low clattering sounds at night.”
“I see. He must have been using a typewriter.”
“That foreigner came out only at night, always hiding. No one had seen him by daylight.”
“I never imagined there was a spy in our neighborhood!”
A spy? My heart froze. Fear crept up my legs and spread through my body. “It’s a lie! It’s not true!” I screamed inside my head, straining my ears to listen to the people in the crowd.
“The foreigner seems to have left early.”
“The wife and child followed him.”
It was the middle of the war. The neighbors gossiped excitedly about the whereabouts of the foreigner and his family.
“I hope they’ll get caught soon!” said the greengrocer’s wife, raising her fist into the air.
“Run, Michiru! Run!” Silently, I prayed she and her parents would escape safely.
My knees buckling, I staggered away. I held a secret—Michiru’s destination. She had told me not to tell anyone.
As I walked, I kept telling myself not to reveal this secret. Even if the whole world turned against Michiru, I was still her friend.
The neighbors knew she and I were close friends. When they saw me in the street, they asked me all kinds of questions—whether I had met her fa
ther, or how her family lived. Every time they asked me a question, I told them I didn’t know. After a few days, I no longer felt like going out.
I shut myself up in my room and thought about Michiru all day. Every night I had a nightmare that someone was chasing me.
A town by the sea—these words weighed heavily on my mind, and my heart began to ache as if someone had died. For a twelve-year-old girl, keeping a secret was a daunting task.
One night I was jolted awake by the recurring nightmare. I slid a drawer of the chest open and took out the blue skirt Michiru had given me.
I put on the skirt. Since she was tall, it was too long for me. “I’ll have to raise the hem,” I whispered. I opened my workbox, found a blue thread, and passed it through the eye of a needle. I don’t know why I started needlework in the middle of night.
At any rate, I decided to raise the hem about five centimeters. But sewing the hem of the flared skirt was a lot of work. The hem was incredibly wide. Besides, the skirt was made of thin silk, and no matter how many times I stitched, I made little progress. The needle seemed to be motionless or moving backward.
As I kept moving the needle slowly, I thought about Michiru. I wondered where she was, how she was doing. After a while, the hem of the skirt began to look like the edge of the sea, like the long, arching shore.
Then I thought I heard Michiru’s footsteps from inside the cloth. She was running alone.
For some reason, she had no shoes on and was running barefoot on the beach. I stood on the shore while the waves foamed, making white lace-like patterns on the sand.
“Michiru!” I cried in spite of myself, and began to run. The sand felt soft and wet under my feet. I, too, was shoeless. “Michiru, wait!” I kept calling her, but she didn’t look back. She ran faster and faster.
“Why, Michiru? I’m doing everything to keep your secret,” I thought. I watched her figure grow smaller and smaller in the distance.
On the verge of tears, I sat down. Then I saw her crouch down in the distance. She seemed to be picking up something. Or had she fallen down and wasn’t able to get up? Feeling sad, I stood up and plodded toward her.
I went up to her and called her from behind: “Michiru!”
She finally looked back. “Yae-chan, it’s you,” she said, flashing a friendly smile. “I’m gathering shells. Look, blue ones,” she said. She opened her palm, revealing a shell. It was small and thin as a cherry-blossom shell, but it was blue.
“Beautiful,” I mumbled. “I’ve never seen such a beautiful shell.”
Michiru gave a cheerful smile and said, “I’m gathering shells. I want to make a necklace.”
“A necklace?” I asked.
“Yes. We once made a necklace with camellias in the temple. Remember?” she said. “I want to make a long one with these shells. But I can’t focus on gathering shells. Every time I find one, someone comes after me.” She looked up and strained her ears. “Do you hear footsteps?” she said with an edge of fear in her voice. “It’s not just one person. There are three or five.”
“I don’t hear anything. That’s the sound of waves,” I said, laughing.
Then we went back to picking up shells. After gathering a few, however, Michiru looked up again and said, “I hear footsteps. Not just one person. It’s ten or twenty people.”
“I don’t hear anything except the sound of the wind,” I said and laughed again.
Still worried, Michiru nodded and began searching for shells again. But soon she cried, “I hear footsteps. They’re after me!”
She got up to run. The shells fell from her skirt, scattering over her feet. They were the same color as the sea. When I held a shell against the sun, it became tinted with purple, filtering the sunlight. Captivated by the beautiful shells, I didn’t go after Michiru. I stayed there for a long time.
Before I knew it, she was only a dot in the distance.
“Michiru! Michiru!” I called as a burst of wind scattered my voice. I kept calling her. “Michiru! Michiru!”
A voice called me from beyond the sea: “Yae-chan, Yae-chan.” Over the sound of the wind, a familiar voice kept calling me.
But when I glanced back toward the voice, I saw a naked light bulb flicker over my head. The shoji door slid open, and my older sister peeked in. “Yae-chan, what’s the matter? You were screaming,” she said.
Later, she told me I had been pale and shaking; with vacant eyes, I looked as if I’d had a fit.
A few days later, I heard a rumor about Michiru. In her mother’s hometown, she and her mother had thrown themselves into the sea. I wondered if she, a blue-eyed girl, had met with a cold reception over there. Or if the rumors about her father had already reached the town.
Then I became captivated by Michiru’s blue skirt. I wanted to see her again. As my longing to see her grew, I started acting boldly.
After school, I slipped into the skirt, went out shopping, and visited a friend’s house. “You shouldn’t wear a foreigner’s skirt,” my friends said. “She looks like one of them,” they said behind my back.
But it didn’t bother me. As I walked, the hem of the skirt swirled, making me feel cheerful. When I ran through the wind, I felt as if I were floating in the air. When I played jump rope with my friends, I was able to jump higher than before. When I jumped really high, I thought I caught a glimpse of the sea beyond the roofs of houses. Yes, beyond the sea, I saw an island carpeted with evening primroses.
“Yae-chan, you’re like a bird,” my friends said.
Oh, how I wished I were a bird! I wished I could fly to the beach where Michiru and I had gathered shells. Maybe it was a faraway island. Those beautiful shells weren’t found anywhere in Japan.
When I thought about the blue shells, my heart grew tight with yearning, and tears welled up. My family kept an eye on me from a distance. One day when I came home from an errand, I discovered the blue skirt was gone. Maybe my mother had locked it up in a drawer. But no one ever mentioned it again. No matter how many times I asked, I received no answer.
A few years later, the skirt was lost in a fire.
Borne by the Wind
by Charles De Wolf
It was only a modest house, but it stood on a hill, with a fine view of the sea. Sitting in the cramped upstairs study, Toshio let his eye wander to the window, but he was listening nonetheless, as his Uncle Muneo read from a musty volume he had taken off a shelf. Sometimes his uncle would pause, look up at him and continue the story, quite ignoring the text. He spoke in what for Toshio were the familiar and consoling patterns of Tokyo speech.
Toshio had been abruptly taken out of school and sent away from the capital during the last months of the war. His mother had anxiously seen him off, admonishing him to be both brave and obedient, as she looked up at him from the station platform on that late wintry afternoon. He had stood there stiffly, fearing above all that he might weep like a child. “Don’t worry. I’ll be home soon,” he had said, imitating the departing words of his father as he embarked for Manchuria as a soldier.
Wishing to be a man but feeling like a boy, the fourteen-year-old told himself that if he were brave and obedient at least on the outside, all would somehow be well. And so for all his anxiety and loneliness as the train doors closed, it did not cross his mind that this might be the last he would ever see of his mother.
Just before the beginning of spring came the great air raid, and though their remains were never found, it was presumed that she and Toshio’s grandparents were among the tens of thousands who perished in the firestorm. Shortly after the war ended in mid-August of that year, his father was captured by invading Russian troops and sent to Siberia, his fate unknown. And so it was that Toshio, perhaps already an orphan, found himself in the care of his uncle and aunt.
For a boy who had known only the urban life of the capital, the small fishing village on the coast of Ishikawa was strange but enchanting. Accompanied by his uncle, he would walk along the shore in the late summer, gazing at the bo
ats bobbing on the waves. The couple had no children of their own, and Toshio could sense that, as kindhearted as his uncle was, it was not easy for a man in his early fifties to relate to an adolescent. His mother had told him that her elder brother had once been a rising scholar, but it was only recently that he had heard his aunt whispering that it had been the dark clouds of militarism that had driven her husband-to-be into exile here on the Sea of Japan.
On their walks, his uncle would sometimes point out landmarks or mention a fact or two from local history, but otherwise he said little. Once Toshio ventured out on a jaunt alone, only to be scolded by his aunt when he returned for supper.
“Don’t ya know what happens to boys who wander off by themselves?” she exclaimed. “The Americans’ll come and take ya ’way, and that’ll be the last anyone’ll ever see of ya!”
His uncle in turn had chided her: “No need to frighten the lad with nonsense!” But the words of warning had rung in Toshio’s ears. He instantly pictured towering, long-nosed monsters, all in uniform, grimly combing the beach and the rocky inlets.
Toshio’s troubles began in earnest when he was sent off to school in the nearby city. In the morning, he had been introduced by the teacher, but then at the noon break, he was approached by a tall boy and four companions.
“So yer the orphan, are ya?” the boy began. He spoke in a thicker form of Ishikawa dialect than Toshio had heard even his aunt speak.
“I am in the care of my relatives here,” Toshio replied. “I am grateful for the kindness and consideration of you all.”
His words were stiff and formal, as though addressed to adults. Lowering his eyes he added in a half murmur: “I do not know as yet whether I am indeed an orphan.”
The boy turned to his companions and in a mockingly mincing tone repeated what Toshio had said. His comrades jeered as he turned again to Toshio, grabbed him by his school uniform, and pushed him against the wall.
“Listen, ya little Tokyo sissy. I am Hiroyuki Maeda, descended from the Maeda clan. You’ll do whate’er I or my men tell ya to do. And don’t think ya can be runnin’ fer help to the teacher or yer uncle and auntie. Understood?”
Tomo Page 9
