Summer of the Big Bachi

by Naomi Hirahara

  “That’s what you think.” Wishbone picked his teeth with the fold of a matchbook cover, while Luis had his own stories about being kidnapped in Peru by the U.S. government, to be used as a pawn in a possible prisoner-of-war exchange. Yuki was scribbling even more furiously in his notebook. Soon he’d have enough for a full-out book.

  Mas traced his front dental plate with his tongue and then noticed Riki staring right at him. He hadn’t said much during the past few minutes, and Mas took that as a bad sign. When Riki wasn’t talking, it meant that he was thinking. And Mas knew that that didn’t lead to anywhere good.

  From the very beginning, Riki didn’t have anything nice to say to Mas. “You’re a chibi, and nobody notices you,” Riki said after school. Mas didn’t let anyone call him runt, and got ready to box the new boy’s ears. But then Riki held up his hands. “No, no, I’m saying that’s good.” Halfway good-looking people, according to Riki, blended into the crowd. They never left any kind of strong impression. They were bland and anonymous. Ugly people, on the other hand, with fleshy noses or thin lips, always attracted attention.

  Mas, who was smack in the middle of seven brothers and sisters, never really accepted Riki’s theory. But there was something intriguing about this new boy. So when Riki invited him to his house in the city one day, Mas went along with it. Even though it was in the middle of downtown, Riki’s house was still large, almost as big as Mas’s in the countryside. They left their shoes in the genkan and entered the two-story building. An old man, his face squeezed with wrinkles, nodded from his seat on the floor. He sat underneath a kotatsu, even though the room was already oppressively hot. A piano coated with dust sat on the left side of the room, while a Buddhist altar was placed on the right. A framed photo of a man wearing round-framed glasses was displayed next to a stick of lighted incense masking the scent of rotting tangerine.

  “Who’s the man in there?” Mas asked as they sat outside on a wooden deck. Next to Riki were a newspaper, matches, and something wrapped in a purple furoshiki, the kind that women knotted over a box of fresh rice balls.

  “My grandfather.” Riki creased the corner of the newspaper. “He doesn’t even know when it’s morning or night. He even does unchi in bed. It’s disgusting. Mother has to drag him in the neighborhood bomb shelter every time she hears a siren. Two blocks away. I tell her just leave him. It would be better if he were blown away.

  “She slapped me when I said that,” he continued, and grinned. “Pretty hard. Right here on the hoppeta.” Riki tapped the side of his cheek—smooth, aside from a few stray hairs. “Felt good.”

  “No,” said Mas. “I mean the man in the picture, by the Butsudan.”

  “My father.” Riki carefully tore out a square from the newspaper.

  “Is he dead?”

  “No. At least I don’t think so. Mother thought it would be easier on us if he were.” Riki took a package from his shirt pocket and sprinkled some dried-out grass into the newspaper square. He rolled it, twisting the sides. “Here,” he said.

  Mas was going to refuse. Smoking these makeshift cigarettes sometimes made his head spin. But he thanked Riki and struck a wooden match against the wooden deck. “So, what did you want to tell me?”

  “I didn’t say I was going to tell you anything.” Riki had folded himself a cigarette and tipped a flame against the end.

  “Yes you did. On our way home.” Mas coughed.

  “No good?” Riki blew out some gray smoke. “Here, take mine.”

  “No, I’m fine.” Mas’s head pounded, and his stomach was starting to feel queasy.

  “I just said I was going to share something with you.” Riki untied the furoshiki. “Look what I have.” It was a bottle of sake, manufactured by a local distillery before it closed due to lack of rice. The label was still intact, with cursive Chinese characters glimmering in silver.

  Mas licked his lips. “Where did you get that?”

  “Connection.” Riki twisted the top of the bottle and poured the clear liquid into a chipped rice bowl. “Here,” he said, handing Mas the sake. “You first.”

  Mas balanced the cigarette on the side of the deck and received the bowl with both hands. “Why me?” he asked. “Why do you want to share this with me?”

  “Why not? We’re friends, right?”

  Mas nodded, gazing greedily at the rice wine. He raised the bowl in thanks and slurped it down, feeling it warm the back of his throat and bite into his nasal passages.

  Riki poured himself a bowlful of the sake and tipped it into his mouth. He then traced the lip of the bowl with his finger and licked it, not to waste a single drop.

  “How about a game of hanafuda?” Riki returned to the deck with a stack of small cards.

  Mas grunted and folded his arms around his bent knee. The sun was at the same level as the low mountains, but there was still plenty of light. The cicadas droned, and Mas and Riki played, taking swigs of the sake and puffs of their cigarettes in between hands. As they flipped over cards of maple leaves, cherry blossoms, banners of purple, an orange warthog with raised hairs, Mas could almost forget that while his two brothers were in the navy, he was hungry, fifteen, and worthless.

  “So, you close to the Hanedas, huh?”

  Mas was surprised that Riki would even notice. “Neighbors,” he merely stated.

  “Heard the MPs were at their house yesterday.”

  Mas shrugged. His parents had told him to stay away from Joji, but Mas hadn’t listened.

  As they kept playing, Riki kept pushing. Where was Mas from? Didn’t he want to fight in the navy, too? Mas began to feel weak. The sake didn’t even seem to have the same bite, the cigarettes tasted even worse, and a grayness covered the yard. Mas laid out his last hand, the set of maple leaves. His favorite card was the one with the deer, its rear, plump legs tapered, and short tail taut. The deer was looking back, waiting to see what was beyond the autumn leaves of the maple trees.

  After Tug returned to his seat, the table grew quiet. The only sound was the flipping and shuffling of cards. Even Yuki had stopped asking his questions. Mas watched the motion of tiny red diamonds in Riki’s hands, which were arched in the shape of two Cs. Finally he folded his hands over the cards and produced a flat, neat deck.

  “Cut.” Riki stretched out his palm toward Haruo.

  “Wait a minute,” Mas interrupted. “He not playin’.”

  “Cut,” Riki repeated louder.

  Haruo lifted half of the stack and then bent toward the table. The cards were being edged onto the green felt when they began to tip and then fell onto the spotted linoleum like blown dead leaves.

  “Baka.” Riki spat into the trash can again. Haruo and Tug knelt down to pick up the scattered spades, hearts, diamonds, and clubs, but Riki stood over them, the metal tips of his boots shiny and pointed. “Leave it. You’d probably end up bendin’ some card anyhows.”

  Riki gathered the cards and placed all except one on the table. He turned over that one card, a king of spades, and held it toward the window. The scar on Riki’s neck bulged like a row of deadly crabs. “Wishbone, come here.”

  “What?” Wishbone stumbled out of his chair, his face bright red.

  “What do you see here?”

  Wishbone struggled with a pair of reading glasses extracted from his shirt pocket. “Well, yeah—”

  “Sometin’ wrong?” Mas felt his stomach churn.

  The scarred neck twisted around, and then, in one swoop, the card was slapped onto the green felt. “This card’s marked.” Riki traced his chipped fingernail alongside a thin pen mark. Faint, but distinct. Looked blue, dark blue.

  Luis, his elbow on the cash box, propped himself up. “Yes, that’s a marked card.” He blinked, his heavy eyelashes batting together. “Who—”

  “King of spades. Part of the winning hand.” The chipped fingernail tapped against the fine line. “Mas’s hand.”

  Mas almost started laughing. So that’s how Riki was going to play it. But Mas wasn’t
interested in silly games anymore. “No sense cheatin’. Not with shiroto like you.”

  “Shiroto?” The linoleum squeaked under Riki’s boots. Calling Riki an amateur had apparently hurt. “You fools are the ones ova your heads. Cheatin’ is your way of life, Mas—you knowsu that.”

  Tug extended his right hand, the one with the shortened finger. “Look, I’m sure there’s a perfectly logical explanation for all of this. Maybe there was some ink on the floor; maybe it was marked from before.”

  Riki grinned, his sagging cheeks tightening into creases. “You trust this man,” he said to Tug. “You know him?”

  “Known him since our daughters were in preschool. At least thirty years.”

  “Knowsu how he thinks?” Riki now tapped the side of his head. “Just thinks about his own self, I tellsu you.”

  And you don’t? Mas said to himself.

  “You all think heezu your friend. But watch out. He’ll cut your throat. I know. I saved his life, and look what he did to me. Sold me out. Escape to America with my money.”

  Everyone was looking down at the green felt poker table, scared to look at Mas eye to eye. Mas remembered sitting in that makeshift police station, a former tofu factory. He was only eighteen. You better not hang around that chinpira, they said. Tell us his name and where we can find him, and we’ll let you go.

  Haruo picked up a stray card and laid it on the table. “Sad things happen to all of us.” His long hair was again behind his ears, and his Ron-Pari eyes seemed to be focused on Riki and Mas simultaneously. “Can’t change the past. Just can look ahead.”

  “You shut up, you old fool.” Riki twisted a card in his hands. “You have no sense. I know; I’ve heard. Stealin’ other people’s money. There’s only one thing worse than a dorobo—an inu.”

  “Now, there’s no need to call names—” The linoleum creaked underneath Tug.

  Riki gripped a half-empty beer bottle. “Stay away.” Tug seemed unafraid. Mas had seen Tug in action a few times before. In one incident, when Mari was still small, their families had been waiting in a restaurant in San Diego after going to a wild animal park. For five minutes, nobody seated them. Ten minutes later, still no one came around. Mas told himself that it wasn’t any big deal; he was used to it, anyhow. But Tug made a fuss—demanding to see the manager, and kicking the door open when they left without eating. Mas had turned to Chizuko, expecting her face to be like his, withdrawn and tight with embarrassment. Instead, her eyes behind her glasses practically gleamed, so genuinely was she in awe of Tug’s power and righteous anger.

  It was as if that passion were being transferred from Tug to Mas. “Youzu betta go now,” he told Riki. “I not gonna keep quiet. I warnin’ you. And I knowsu you behind my truck gettin’ stolen.”

  “What? Your stinkin’ Ford? You still have that old relic? Why wouldsu anyone want that piece of trash?”

  By this time, all the pai gow and blackjack tables were silent and everyone in the room seemed to focus on Mas and Riki. Even Yuki, his notebook limp in his right hand, wasn’t able to write anything down.

  “I not scared of youzu.” As the words left his mouth, Mas was surprised that they were indeed true.

  Riki edged closer to Mas. “But you should be, Mas. This your summer of the big bachi.”

  “Anytin’ youzu do won’t hurt me.”

  “Yah, maybe not youzu, but how about people around you?”

  Before Mas could fully understand the weight of his nemesis’s threat, Riki swung his beer bottle, aiming for Tug’s white head as if it were a piñata. The glass broke, and the beer sloshed onto the green felt and then the linoleum. Tug dropped to the ground.

  “You—” Mas lunged at Riki, his hands pulling at his knit shirt and then wrapping around his neck. The scar felt rubbery, the worn tread of a tire. Riki wheezed and then laughed. The whole room seemed to shake and moan. In a matter of seconds, the table was overturned, poker chips of red, blue, and yellow cascading onto the linoleum. Fists pounded faces; chairs burst against walls. Mas lost his grip on Riki and was shoved to and fro, and then, from the edge of his eye, saw a shadow descending. As he turned to face it, he saw a line of stained teeth before he was finally thrown to the floor.

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  A few seconds later, Mas was shaking himself off the floor. His whole body smarted bad, but he was able to make out a familiar voice yelling, “Police, police.” It was Haruo at his finest.

  The room magically cleared. The door flung open, and men were streaming down the stairs. Mas looked across the linoleum floor, past poker chips and flattened cigarette butts, to see Tug’s sprawled body. He was out cold.

  Later, in the hospital waiting room, Mas got the rest of the story from Wishbone, who seemed especially despondent. Mas didn’t know if it was because the police were now investigating the card game or because Wishbone had lost a small fortune in the scuffle. “I didn’t see much blood,” Wishbone said. “Actually, I think if it weren’t for some quick thinking from that Japanese kid, Tug would really be in trouble.”

  “Japanese kid?”

  “You know, that reporter. Right after Tug went down, the kid dumped the poker table on its side. Shielded Tug from those SOBs. They were drunk out of their mind, anyhows. Got tired of pounding the table.” Wishbone pulled at a whisker on his pockmarked face and then took a look at Mas’s head. “You okay?”

  “Yah,” Mas lied. He didn’t mention Riki, but Wishbone must have read his mind.

  “And Haneda—” Wishbone shook his head. “Well, nobody can find him. He disappeared, along with a big chunk of change. Never should have gotten involved with him. Never should have.”

  Mas felt like he was stuck in that emergency waiting room for hours. It smelled bad and sour, like shikko, but something else, too. It was familiar, almost like burnt rubber. Within the next couple of hours, he pieced together that there had been a fire over in a factory near the garment district. A bunch of women had been rolled in on stretchers from a string of ambulances. As they were wheeled through the emergency room, Mas could see only their dark hair matted together like scouring pads Chizuko used on dirty dishes.

  Tug was still behind the metal doors, and so was Haruo. Wishbone told Mas that he should get checked out, too, but what for? Getting pushed around was no big deal for a gardener like Mas. One time, when he was trimming an overgrown oak tree, he accidentally disturbed a wasp nest. He was off of that ladder in five seconds flat, traveling headfirst. Chizuko said that it was good that he was ganko, that his head was as hard as a bowling ball.

  This time Mas felt a little woozy, he had to admit. The various languages spoken around him seemed to merge into one endless prattle. He sank deeper into the black padded chair. He ached for a cigarette but remembered that he had left his last carton of Marlboros in the truck, now gone.

  What was taking so long? Haruo had a simple cut on the cheek that could be remedied with a couple of Band-Aids. But Tug. That beer bottle had hit him hard. Mas should have known better and kept him safe at home with Lil and his red tool kit.

  “Can’t stand dis no more.” Mas finally got up, leaving the melted ice bag on the chair. He couldn’t wait for Wishbone, who had gone to ask the nurse for an update. Mas needed to find out for himself what was going on.

  Mas went through the double doors, which swished open when he stepped onto the rubber mat. There were cloth curtains dividing the wide room like horse stalls. Nurses and doctors in green, white, and pink gowns walked back and forth with IV bottles and charts. On one side, two police officers in black passed by, their leather holsters and belts squeaking with each step.

  The smell coated the entire room. Mas felt sick to his stomach, but continued to look through the curtains for either Tug or Haruo. He tried to breathe out of his mouth, but the stink was still there, soaking into his pores.

  Then there were the moans. They were at first soft, like dry whispers, and then began to grow louder and deeper. They were coming from a curtain on the left
side. Mas tried to look away, but wasn’t fast enough. The woman was one of the factory fire victims. Her whole body was raw and blistered like boiled shrimp, while her eyes were sucked into her swollen face.

  Mas took a few steps back, banging into a metal tray of syringes and bandages. The policemen with the squeaky holsters turned around and stared.

  “Mas.” It was a familiar voice. Haruo was sitting on one of the beds, a piece of blue string hanging from his cheek. Stand-ing next to him was the boy, the red badger.

  “Mas,” Haruo repeated. “You orai?”

  Mas tried to say something, but his mouth was raw.

  “Crazy, huh, Mas? I’m glad you orai. Tug’s still gettin’ checked out. Dis young guy saved his life.”

  Mas grunted. Against the white curtain, Yuki seemed taller and thinner than at the poker game. He was in his black T-shirt, with only a white swatch, a hospital guest sticker, over his heart.

  Leaving Haruo in the emergency room, Mas and Yuki went outside for a smoke. In the hospital, Mas had lost track of time. It was four in the morning, and a reassuring hush lay over the small bungalows and palm trees in the distance. Yuki took a package of cigarettes from his backpack and offered one to Mas.

  Mas was ready to refuse, especially anything coming from a package named Mild Seven. But a Japanese cigarette was still a cigarette. “You turn up everywhere,” Mas said, accepting the offer.

  Yuki lit his cigarette with a silver lighter, while Mas had his Bic.

  “You follow me,” Mas stated more than asked.

  “Actually, it was luck,” Yuki said after inhaling.

  “Whatsu that?”

  “Luck,” Yuki repeated. “I did follow you and Yamada-san, but I had already heard about the card game from people at the Empress Hotel.”

  “Empress?” It was a fleabag hotel on the second floor of the chop suey house that had since closed down. “Whatchu doin’ at Empress?”