Heart of a Samurai

by Margi Preus

  After Terry had gone, Manjiro stayed up late into the night, thinking. Not just about Catherine and the rhyme he would have to write. What Terry had said had started him thinking about ships and whales and the sea.

  Light was showing at the edges of the horizon when Manjiro finally wrote his poem:

  ’Tis in the chilly night

  a basket you’ve got hung.

  Get up, strike a light!

  And see me run

  But no take chase me.

  He crept out of the house onto the dew-wet grass. Birds were just waking as his feet crunched along the gravel path. He would have to take a shortcut through the fields to reach Catherine’s house before she left for school.

  He arrived at her doorstep rumpled and muddy. His heart pounded nearly as hard as it had the day his whaleboat was taken on a Nantucket sleigh ride.

  He hesitated. He could neglect to knock and walk casually away. If he knocked, he would have to run, for what if Catherine came to the door? She would have to chase him, and if she caught him, she was supposed to kiss him.

  He felt himself flush. He wouldn’t mind that, but what if she didn’t want to kiss him? That would put her in an awkward spot. Perhaps he had better not knock.

  And yet … it was the custom to knock, then run away—“but not too fast!” Terry had told him. “Or otherwise Catherine can’t catch you.”

  To have a girl catch you and kiss you—right out in public—it made his palms sweat just to think of it.

  “Courage,” he told himself, and set the May basket on the step. First wiping his damp palms on his pants, he raised his hand again to knock. Just then, he heard voices in the house and he bolted, hopped a fence, and dashed over a hill out of sight.

  That day all the young people went “a-Maying” in the woods and meadows, where wildflowers bloomed in profusion. The girls gathered violets and daisies and wove them into crowns and necklaces. The boys mostly broke off small tree branches which they used to whack one another.

  Manjiro was walking through the woods on his own when he heard girls’ voices in the clearing ahead, and he stopped. One of the voices was Catherine’s. Of course it wasn’t anything like ship timbers groaning; it was a beautiful liquid sound, much more like—

  “I got a May basket from John.” Catherine’s voice stopped him from finishing his thought.

  “John Baker?” said a different voice.

  “No …”

  “John Freeman?” another voice offered.

  “No …”

  “Who then?”

  “John Mung!” she said and laughed. It was a beautiful laugh, Manjiro thought, like the song of birds.

  “What did you do? Did you chase him?” said a girl’s voice.

  Manjiro leaned forward. He wondered, too. He had been so nervous that he had not looked back.

  “No! I didn’t even see him!”

  “How did you know it was him, then?”

  “Don’t you always know when John Mung has been somewhere? There’s a little crackle in the air, like lightning is about to strike—like something is about to happen.”

  “Why didn’t you chase him?”

  “I should have,” she said. “I wish I had.”

  “Really?”

  “Well …,” Catherine said, “he’s such a nice boy.

  ” Manjiro’s heart melted like warm butter.

  “Maybe he wants to marry you!” said a young voice.

  They all laughed again.

  Well, what would be so funny about that? Manjiro wondered.

  “What if he really did? What would you do?” one of the girls asked Catherine.

  “Well, maybe I would!”

  “Catherine! You can’t mean it!”

  “Why wouldn’t I? Why shouldn’t I? He’s as fine a boy as any, and smarter, too,” she said.

  Manjiro wanted to rush out of the trees and kiss her, he loved her so.

  “How can you say such a thing?” one of the girls said. “Your parents would never allow it. Think what people would say!”

  Manjiro’s face flushed. His heart rose into his throat. How could he have been so foolish? How could he have thought he was one of these people? That he could be an American?

  Before anyone saw him, he rushed away and ran to his favorite place: a high rock overlooking the sea.

  He should have known he’d never really fit in. Goemon had been right when he said he’d never be accepted. When the Whitfields had had to change churches not once, but twice, he should have known. When Tom said he didn’t belong in their school, he should have known. Americans had their blind spots, and Manjiro had been blind himself not to see it.

  He sat for a time, staring out at that churning green sea, as tumultuous as his feelings. He began to see all the ways Americans were not so wonderful. They could be greedy; they thought a lot about amassing wealth. Some of them kept slaves! Not the people in New Bedford and Fairhaven, but lots of Americans had slaves. And even those who didn’t keep them seemed to think that black-skinned people were not as good as they were.

  Manjiro tossed little pebbles off the rock into the sea and laughed ruefully. Americans and the Japanese, when you boiled it down, were more alike than they would ever admit. They both thought they were better than other people—and each thought they were better than the other!

  It actually made him laugh out loud, the idea of explaining at home that barbarian girls thought they were too good for a Japanese boy. But he wouldn’t be able to explain it, because at home, nobody knew what a real Westerner was like—they could only picture goblins with horns and fangs and enormous noses like bulbous roots growing out of their faces.

  He wished he dared to run through the town of Fairhaven shaking people and saying, “Ha ha! You Americans think you are better than the Japanese! But the Japanese believe they are better than you!”

  As he stared out at the sea, he thought of all the times he had stood on the shore or at the stern rail of the John Howland wondering, What lies there, far across the oceans? Now he knew at least some of the answer. Did he regret it? No, of course not—he would never regret it. The door through which he had glimpsed such wondrous light, he had walked through. He had encountered both beauty and pain. Now he understood that was how it would always be—no matter where he went in the world.

  A wave crashed against the rock and flung cold spray into his face as if to wake him up. He had been in a long dream, but his enchantment had come to an end.

  25

  THE COOPER’S

  is enchantment may have been over, but his work had just begun. Manjiro moved to Mr. Hussey’s shop in New Bedford to begin his apprenticeship. He attended school and worked at the shop, and should have been too busy to feel homesick, but he wasn’t. He longed for Mrs. Whitfield’s warm, fresh-baked bread and thick jam. He yearned to hear William Henry’s happy babble and to be able to chat with Captain Whitfield again. At the same time, he began to be homesick for Japan: He missed the foods of his old country; he missed his mother; he even found himself missing things he didn’t think he liked! He felt torn about where, exactly, he wanted to be. He just knew it wasn’t Mr. Hussey’s!

  At first he liked the sweet-sharp smell of the freshly cut wood and the way the sawdust shimmered in the shafts of sunlight that filtered through the cracks in the shop walls. But fall came and then winter, and those same cracks let in the wind and the cold rains and the snow. The cooper didn’t—or couldn’t—feed Manjiro and the other apprentice enough, so they were always hungry. Soon, they both were ill more often than they were well. Manjiro began to feel he would never be warm again; he would always be hungry, and he would always be sick.

  In future years, Manjiro would remember little of the cooper’s shop except the dreams of fevered sleep. He dreamed once he was sitting outside his family’s hut in Japan, untangling a net. The ground beneath him was warm, the sun flickered through the pine boughs. His mother came to the door, but he couldn’t see her face—it was concealed
in shadow. With a gust of wind the branches blew about, casting slashing splotches of sun and shade. He strained to see his mother’s face—he moved his head this way and that, trying to get a better view, but she stayed always in the shadow.

  Then he was in a ship on the sea, the wind howling and the boat heeled to one side. The halyards clattered against the masts and the rig groaned against the strain of the wind.

  He blinked open his eyes. Was he aboard a ship? He turned to gaze out a frost-rimed window, which rattled and shook in the wind. The world outside was a sea of foaming white snowdrifts.

  “Too much sail …,” he murmured.

  “Perhaps you’d like to climb up the chimney and reef them?” said a voice.

  He looked up to see Mrs. Whitfield standing over him, her blue eyes like tranquil pools. Then she smiled and her face crinkled up so that her eyes almost disappeared.

  “Don’t you worry,” she said. “We’ve brought you home. You’re home now, John.”

  But he still felt a very long way from home.

  PART FOUR

  RETURNING

  It is good for young people to experience a good share of hardship or misfortune. A person whose spirit collapses in the face of misfortune is of no use.

  —from Hagakure: The Book of the Samurai

  Drawing of a whale

  26

  THE FRANKLIN

  Late summer 1846 (3rd Year of Koka, Year of the Horse)

  r. Davis!” Manjiro exclaimed when Ira Davis appeared one day at the Whitfield farm.

  “I’ll state my business straightaway,” Mr. Davis said after Manjiro invited him in and they were seated in the parlor.

  Davis had been made captain of the Franklin, and he wondered if Manjiro would be interested in signing on as a member of the crew. “You were solid and reliable on the John Howland,” he said, “and game to try anything. Remember when we went for the ambergris?”

  “I thought you were crazy!” Manjiro laughed.

  Davis didn’t laugh. His face flushed and he looked down at his hands.

  “I’m honored to be asked, of course,” Manjiro said quickly, “but Captain Whitfield is gone now, and the farm needs tending….”

  “Your friend Isachaar Aken—you called him Itchy, as I recall—he’ll be serving aboard the Franklin, too, as first mate,” Davis said.

  “That’s appropriate,” Manjiro mused. “Ichi means ‘one’ in my language. Now he’ll be ‘number one mate.’”

  “Just so,” Davis said. “Will you sign on?”

  “Are you offering me a position as cooper?”

  Davis twisted his cap in his hands. “A steward,” he said.

  “Steward!” Manjiro exclaimed. “But that’s … I’ve graduated from Bartlett. And although I haven’t finished my apprenticeship, I’m quite capable at cooperage.”

  “Aye,” Davis said. “That’s all well and good, but ye’re really very nearly a green hand.”

  “Green hand! I served nearly two years aboard the John Howland. You know it yourself.”

  Davis wagged his head noncommittally.

  “Well,” Manjiro said, “I don’t know how Captain Whitfield would feel about me leaving just Mrs. Whitfield to manage the farm. We have help now, but even so, it’s a lot of work.”

  “There are others who you knew on the John Howland who will be sailing with us …,” Davis continued.

  Baby William toddled into the room, and Manjiro swept him up and plunked him on his lap. “There’s also young William here.” He kissed the top of the baby’s head. “He needs looking after, so I’m afraid …”

  “We’ll be sailing in Japanese waters …,” Davis said.

  Manjiro looked up. “Oh?”

  Davis nodded. “There might be a chance for you to go home.”

  Manjiro waited a long minute before replying, keenly aware of the toddler’s soft grip on his forefingers. “Let me talk to Mrs. Whitfield and I’ll give you an answer tomorrow.”

  When Davis had gone, Manjiro carried William Henry to the window and stared out across the meadow toward the sea. He thought of Captain Whitfield’s question: What are your hopes and dreams? He remembered Mrs. Whitfield asking him, Are you going to help the world change?

  “Maybe, baby William,” he said, “you will come to visit me in Japan, after all.”

  Although she was saddened to see him go, Mrs. Whitfield agreed that he should go. It was an opportunity for him, she said, and she understood his longing to see his family again—how could she not understand that desire?

  Finally, on a brisk and breezy October day, with the sky as blue as baby William’s eyes, Manjiro had said good-bye to her, to young William, to Job, and to Terry.

  “Only a steward?” Terry had said, but Manjiro just laughed.

  “What do I care if I sign on as a lowly steward? I’ll never collect my lay, anyway. I am going home!”

  Now on board the Franklin, he waved to Job and Terry, Mrs. Whitfield and William Henry. He was sad, yes, but he was so excited! Everything—everything!—the roll of the ship under his feet, the fresh breeze off the ocean, even the shouts of the orders—everything seemed to speak of going home.

  “Home! Home! Home!” the sea gulls squawked overhead.

  Even the timbers groaned, “Going ho-o-o-me.”

  And, as the ship cast off, the whoosh of water under the hull said, “Ho-o-o-ome!”

  “Skip aloft and loose the main topgallant, Mung,” came the order. Manjiro grasped the lowest deadeye and swung himself up onto the ratlines.

  He had been swept away from Japan when he was fourteen years old. He had been gone for the years of the Ox, Tiger, Hare, Dragon, and Snake—five Western years. Now, in the 3rd Year of Koka, the Year of the Horse, at nineteen years old, he was at last headed toward home.

  He started up the ratlines, continued past the main yard, leaning out backward to climb the futtock shrouds, past the topsails, all the way to the topgallant yard. His feet danced along the footropes, one arm hooked over the yard to keep himself from falling a hundred feet onto the deck.

  Up here he was like a bird, high on a perch. He gazed out at the tidy houses climbing the hillside, the colorful shops, and the cobbled streets. Tucked in among them were the Stone House School, the Bartlett School, the cooper’s shop, and somewhere, up over that hill, was Catherine’s house and, beyond that, the Whitfields’ farm.

  He would never live so privileged a life again, he didn’t suppose. Not in Japan. He would never live in such a grand house, or have so much land to roam, or his own horse to ride. His life here had been a fairy tale—the story of a poor fisherboy being swept off to an enchanted world, a life he could not have imagined in his wildest dreams. But he would give it all up to touch the ground of his homeland with his feet, breathe its scent, and be in the presence of his family and his mother once again.

  “Laying on!” came a call from the mast, alerting him to a sailor about to step on the footropes. “Dreamin’ shan’t unfurl the sail,” growled the mate who’d joined him.

  Manjiro took one look at his shipmate and felt his limbs turn to pudding.

  The man’s back was not so broad, nor his shoulders so powerful as Manjiro remembered; his golden curls were flecked with silver. But still, Manjiro was sure, it was Jolly.

  Jolly didn’t look up but simply barked, “Spring to it, man!”

  Manjiro glanced down. First the deck was beneath him, then the mast swung over the sea. Then the deck. Then the sea. His insides sloshed from side to side. The men on the deck were like so many beetles; the harbor waves like doily lace.

  “What be the matter with ye, mister?” Jolly growled, turning toward Manjiro.

  Jolly’s face was ruined, his skin creased and scarred. His right eye was pulled off center so that it stared pathetically at the sea. His good eye flickered over Manjiro then back to the yard. Before that fateful night when Manjiro set him on fire, Jolly had not been a bad-looking man—except, of course, for his perpetual scowl. Now his
countenance could give children nightmares.

  “Ye look familiar,” Jolly said, “but I don’t see as well as I did. Who ye be?”

  Manjiro hesitated. He cleared his throat. “Have you tried spectacles?” he said, in his deepest voice and best English.

  “Ach,” Jolly growled, continuing to work on releasing the sail. “Specs wouldn’t help this crooked eye. It won’t see straight with or without glass in front of it.”

  “Ah.” Manjiro hoped Jolly would not ask his name again.

  “Mung!” somebody hollered from the main yard.

  “Mung?” Jolly said. “I used to know a Mung.” Jolly fixed his one good eye on Manjiro’s face.

  A long, tense moment passed as the two men regarded each other. Jolly’s steady eye made a slow sweep the length and breadth of Manjiro. It was obvious to both of them that they were more evenly matched than the last time they’d met.

  Manjiro had youthful strength and agility on his side. He could reach out and knock Jolly off the yard. Possibly.

  Jolly had years of experience on his side. He could reach out and knock Manjiro off the yard. Possibly.

  For one tense moment, the question was, who was going to try first?

  Shouts from below indicated that the captain wanted the sail loosed and smartly! Jolly and Manjiro pounced on the work.

  Once finished, Manjiro scrambled down the rigging to the deck. As fast as he scurried, Jolly scrambled just as fast, and Manjiro was out of breath when his feet finally touched the deck.

  Manjiro tensed to fight, but when Jolly stepped on the deck, he sniffed, hitched up his pants, and said, “We’re not too far out for ye to disembark. Fer yer own good, I’d recommend it.” Then he strode away.