Summer of the Big Bachi

by Naomi Hirahara

  “You know my name.”

  “Your full name. Like a middle name.”

  Chizuko appeared from the kitchen. “Japanese don’t have middle names.”

  “Mom, I’m interviewing Dad.”

  “Masao Arai. Octoba eighteenth, 1929.”

  “Okay, so that means you were sixteen—no, fifteen—at the time of the bombing.”

  Mas nodded.

  “So, where were you on that day?”

  “Huh?”

  “When the pikadon fell,” Chizuko hissed from the dining room table, a thread and needle in her hands.

  “Mom!”

  “Okay, I’m just helping. Dad gets confused sometimes.”

  “At train station. In the basement.” Mas swallowed. It seemed as if something were stuck in his throat, but it wouldn’t budge.

  “Okay, so were you by yourself?”

  Mas looked at the lamp. Dim. He would have to check the lightbulbs, he noted.

  “Dad, was anyone else with you?”

  “I have no time for dis.” Mas got up from his easy chair.

  Chizuko stopped sewing. “What?”

  “But, Dad, I have to interview you. I told my teacher and everything.”

  “I have two sprinkler systems to work on.”

  “Masao-san, they say it’s going to rain this week.”

  “Talk to her.” Mas gestured toward Chizuko. “She likes talkin’.”

  “We were in the inaka. I didn’t see anything until afterward.” Chizuko stuck the needle straight into the pants she was mending. “She’s counting on you to get a good grade.”

  Mas stumbled in the hall, leaving his daughter on the couch. Her face was expressionless, aside from her small nostrils, which flared out ever so slightly.

  Later, Chizuko made arrangements for Mari to speak to Haruo. He came, sat in the easy chair, and put his stockinged feet up on a padded rest. He spoke of standing outside that morning with his older brother, cupping his hands, and staring at the plane and then white light. The next moment, he was covered in debris, surrounded by fire. He felt something roll from his face. It was his eye. He told Mari how his brother, less wounded, carefully took the bloody mass and placed it in shreds of cloth. Together they found their parents and other brothers and sisters. All alive. A miracle. Except for the eye, which medical workers eventually tossed into a bonfire.

  Late at night, Mas saw light coming from Mari’s room. He placed his face in the slim crack from the half-open door and watched Mari fold origami cranes, a pile of red, green, yellow, and purple growing on her desk. Chizuko pushed him from behind, her rolled-up hair covered in a pink cap. “Don’t bother her,” she said. “You could have helped, but she doesn’t need you anymore.”

  On Friday morning, before she left for school, Mari proudly displayed her poster board to Chizuko in the kitchen. “I’m the only one who interviewed someone firsthand. Well, aside from Leroy Johnson, who talked to his uncle who was in the horse calvary.”

  “I think you will get an A for sure.” Chizuko pulled some plastic bags from a drawer. “Just make sure it doesn’t get wet in the rain.”

  “Hi, Dad.”

  “Hullo.”

  Mari held up the poster, the top of it touching her chin. Multicolored cranes were pasted on the sides of the board, while the center was taken up with black-and-white photographs from newsmagazines. Mas had seen the images before. The woman with a thatched pattern burnt into her face. The boy with the melted ear. The shadow of a man permanently recorded in the stone steps of Sumitomo Bank.

  In a corner, Mari had written in stenciled letters, HARUO MUKAI. Underneath it were his birth date, birthplace—Fresno, California—and other information. Mari had even drawn a bloody eye with colored pencil.

  “What do you think, Dad?”

  “Um. You finished. Don’t have to worry about it no more.” Mas reached for his Sears nylon jacket from the closet.

  “Where you going?” Chizuko pointed to the raindrops hitting the window. “Can’t work; it’s raining.”

  “Just have yoji.”

  “Yoji? More like horse business, right?”

  “I saysu yoji, I mean yoji.” Mas turned the double lock on the door.

  “What time you coming home?” Chizuko asked from the doorway.

  “Don’t know.” Mas released the screen door and walked down the porch steps. He pushed his horse racing crib sheets further in his jeans pocket and felt the rain wet his head.

  As he backed out the Ford truck from the long driveway, he noticed that Mari was still standing behind the screen door, holding the poster board, smudges of red and yellow held captive with Elmer’s glue.

  Now, thinking back, Mas wished that he had agreed to the interview, or maybe at least told Mari what he thought of her poster. “Nice job, beautiful.” But he was jealous, mad that Haruo could do what he could not.

  It was past noon when the phone rang. It was Haruo again—this time panting like one of the those wild dogs on the run in Mas’s neighborhood.

  “Whatsamatta?” Mas said. Haruo was the last person he wanted to talk to.

  “Itsu bad.” Haruo wheezed. “Itsu badder than bad.”

  “What?” Mas’s heart began pumping hard. It couldn’t be about Tug. He had to be in good condition.

  “The boy. The Kimura boy. Mas, heezu in jail.”

  “Jail?” Probably driving, thought Mas. Those young kids were crazy these days.

  “Itsu so bad.”

  Mas pushed some air out of his lungs in disgust. Haruo was always the one to make a big thing out of nothing. “He a Japanese citizen. I sure the government back him up.”

  “Me heezu only phone call. You believe that? Before I left the hospital, I tell him, ‘You needsu help, just call me.’ And look whatsu happen.”

  “Haruo, stop actin’ like a fool and tell me.”

  Haruo’s breathing, which sounded wet and sticky, slowed. “That girl all beat up, Mas. Haneda’s mistress. Ova in Kaiser on Sunset. Hangin’ by a thread.”

  Mas’s heart sank. He pictured the woman with her eyes darkened like a raccoon’s. She was no prize, but why would anyone want to hurt her?

  “Yah, someone smash her head. You believe that?”

  “When?” Mas wound the excess telephone cord around his left hand.

  “Dis morning, I guess.” Wheeze, wheeze. “The police found him at her place and arrested him on the spot.”

  “Police.” Mas pulled at the cord.

  “Yah, somebody call it in. Left no name.” Haruo swallowed noisily. “Thatsu not all, Mas. The boy blames you.”

  “Me?”

  “He says you the one send him ova there. He say you set him up.”

  Mas felt his fingers turn cold and numb. He released the telephone cord and let it drop to the floor.

  “I tell him he wrong, but he don’t listen. I tole him to say nutin’, then he have to hang up. I tell him I help him, Mas, but what can I do?”

  A man who knew the rules, that’s what the boy needed. With Tug laid up, they needed the next best alternative. “Call Wishbone,” Mas said. “Tell him to get a lawyer. And then come ova here and pick me up.”

  “Whatsu we gonna do?”

  Mas wasn’t sure. But this time, he couldn’t just wait.

  CHAPTER EIGHT

  It turned out that Yuki hadn’t really been arrested, just held for questioning. Twenty-four hours. He had been found at the scene of the crime, the mistress’s apartment, around eight in the morning. The mistress was still alive, just barely. Wishbone was working on finding a lawyer, while Mas insisted that Haruo come over and pick him up.

  “What he say, exactly?” Mas asked after getting into the car.

  “Didn’t have much time to say nutin’. Just that he found a lady on the floor, her head bashed in and bloody. He got scared, and was going to run when the police found him.”

  Mas began to think hard.

  “So, whatcha gonna do, Mas?”

  “Letsu go
.”

  “Where?”

  “North Hollywood.”

  The cul-de-sac was quiet. The police must have done their work and left. A little boy was riding a tricycle on the sidewalk. A stray dog crossed the street. Mas and Haruo walked past the mailboxes and went up to the second floor. The door of the apartment was closed, but the drapes were open. Yellow plastic tape with the message DO NOT CROSS limply hung from the door frame.

  They looked as far as they could from the window. Blood, looking like dark paint, was on the wall and also splattered on the floor. The living room looked in disarray, not like the time Mas had visited a few days before.

  “Hey.” The Latino manager appeared from the end unit. “You better stay away from there—”

  Mas was ready to leave, but then the manager stopped him. “Hey, you Junko’s friend, huh?”

  Mas merely nodded. Well, she had once offered him yam wine. That was as friendly as he got.

  The man looked around like he was planning some kind of heist. “Come on,” he whispered. “You want to take a look?” He selected a key from a knot of keys on a chain and unlocked the apartment. “Just don’t touch nothing,” he warned.

  Haruo was plain afraid, so only Mas followed. Both he and the manager stepped over the police tape into the mistress’s apartment. Cushions and a broken lamp were on the living room floor. The row of bonsai trees had been overturned. It was obvious there had been a fight.

  “She has a lot of visitors. Men visitors. You know what I mean?” The manager obviously liked to spread stories. “That’s what I told the police.”

  “You see anybody?”

  “You mean this morning? Just that boy with the red hair. Younger than the other ones. And then there was the other one coming around. But I forgot to mention that one to the police.”

  “What he look like?”

  “Hair slicked back. Glasses. Looked kind of rich.”

  Shuji Nakane, thought Mas. He circled the apartment and noticed Nakane’s business card on the mistress’s table. The trash hadn’t been taken out, so it smelled bad, like rotting chicken. He glanced into the bedroom. The sheets were all in disarray. The black Casio watch that had been on the jewelry box was gone. Other than that, everything seemed in its former place. As Mas walked through the hallway, something didn’t seem the same. There were the photos of Junko with her girlfriends in exotic places, but then, on one side of the wall, just a piece of masking tape. What had been there? Then it hit Mas. That was the photo of the girl with the man who called himself Joji Haneda.

  So you see anytin’?” Haruo asked when they got back into the Honda.

  Mas remained quiet. His mind whirled. “What did Haneda want with you? The truth,” he said straight out.

  Haruo slumped in the driver’s seat. “He said we were gonna make some money at the poker game. That he had set sumptin’ up.”

  Fixing a game among friends was unforgivable. Even Riki wouldn’t stoop that low unless things hit rock bottom.

  “I tole him that I would have nutin’ to do with it.”

  “Whyzu then—” How come Haruo ended up at the card game?

  “I just went to play, fair and square.”

  “Then why you here when my truck getsu stolen?”

  “No, no. I come nowhere near dis place,” Haruo maintained.

  Mas ignored this. “How come he needsu money? Heezu doin’ good with the nursery, huh?”

  “I dunno. I guess times are tougher. All those big chain hardware stores selling plants. Hard to compete, I guess.”

  Mas sucked in his loose cheeks.

  “What, you think sumbody beat up Junko for money?”

  She had said Riki had owed her money, big money. Mas wasn’t sure, but he knew that someone close by would have some more information.

  The ramen house was crowded today. There were families with babies, teenagers dressed in black, and young Japanese men puffing on cigarettes, even though everyone knew smoking in restaurants was illegal in L.A. Keiko was sweating up a storm, her tray full of cold drinks with melted ice and a dirty dishrag. “Ara—” she said when she noticed Mas and Haruo at the door.

  She pulled them in a corner, beside the bookcase with the fat Japanese comic books. “You hear about Junko?”

  Mas nodded.

  “Hidoi, ne? I can’t believe it. Why would anyone do that to Junko?”

  “How you find out?” Mas didn’t think word would have gotten out so quickly in North Hollywood.

  “My girlfriend Rumi came by my house. Her whole body shaking and wet. They had been close, like sisters. She must have gone by Junko’s and seen the police. Poor thing. It’s so scary these days. How could someone do that to Junko?”

  “You got some ideas?”

  Keiko frowned. “Me? You think I would know those types of people?”

  “No, just wonder if Junko say sumptin’. Maybe about Haneda?”

  “Well, she had enough of that guy. That’s what she told me last time I saw her. Two nights ago, in fact. She was so kusai drunk. I made her stay for ramen and tea before she went home. She even mentioned that she was thinking of going back to Japan. That craziness again.”

  “Whyzu crazy?” asked Haruo. He spoke in a voice lower than usual, and Mas knew that he was already sweet on the ramen lady.

  “Listen, when a Japanese woman comes to America, you can never go back. You didn’t know that? It’s a curse.” With the way Keiko was talking to Haruo, Mas knew she was the type of woman who unwisely dumped her insides at a stranger’s front door. “I’ve been here twenty years. Can you believe it? Seems like yesterday.”

  Haruo deftly covered the edge of his scars with the back of his palm. “Where you from? Tokyo, I betsu.”

  Shut up, Haruo, Mas thought silently. We’re not here for this lady. But there was no turning back.

  “Yokohama.” Keiko’s face brightened for a few seconds. “My family owns a ramen house there. For champon ryori, Yokohama is the best.”

  Haruo nodded. “Oh, yah?”

  “Lot of Chinese restaurants, all crowded around. It’s really cleaned up now.”

  Haruo seemed mesmerized by Keiko’s sharp red lips. The fool, thought Mas.

  “Many Chinee in Yokohama, huh?” Haruo said. “Didn’t know.”

  Keiko looked at Haruo a bit oddly, and Mas held back a laugh. Silly Haruo. He really didn’t know much about the underbelly of Japan—the part filled with outsiders and rebels. He was instead one of those mama’s boys who had just hung around the house in Hiroshima. Mas, on the other hand, was like a stray dog, wandering from his seven brothers and sisters into all parts of the city. He ran for a while with two Korean boys, and visited their home by some factories. It was a shantytown, with makeshift stoves and lights hanging from bare wire. Japan was like America. There were plenty of people pushed down that the mama’s boys and girls never saw.

  Keiko continued, “We don’t fit in here; don’t fit in there. If you don’t go back by the time you’re thirty, it’s too late. America’s fully corrupted you. Like me and Junko. But this time around, she sounds like she’s serious. Like she has a sackful of money now. That she could finally retire in style in Tokyo, and show up all her family and friends.”

  Mas bit down on his dentures. Go back to Japan, huh? What kind of money had she stumbled across? “Was she gonna go back with Haneda?”

  “That old fool? Are you crazy?” Keiko’s voice came out like a slap on the face. Mas was surprised. This was a different picture than she had presented during his last visit. “She finally had enough of that man. Do you know that guy was dying? Gan in the lungs, I think. Said that he was going to divorce his wife and leave everything to Junko.”

  “Cancer,” Haruo muttered, echoing Mas’s thoughts. Riki had looked bad, and now it seemed for good reason.

  “Now she may never be able to see Tokyo again.” Keiko’s huge eyes watered, and Mas saw Haruo soften like a piece of cheese in the sun too long.

  “We all knew it w
as a dream,” Keiko said, sniffing loudly. “But then, we all need dreams, desho?”

  After they left the ramen restaurant, Haruo took all the change from his empty ashtray and headed for a pay phone next to a 7-Eleven. Mas stayed in the car, squeezing and rubbing his forehead in an effort to figure it all out. Shuji Nakane, the man with the clean white business card, must have offered the lady money, and big money, too. It must have been way over the measly thousand dollars in the envelope Mas had left on the mistress’s kitchen table. What had she told him—that this Joji Haneda was a fake, like a piece of cheap metal covered with gold paint? If Nakane was going to buy her silence with dollar bills, there was no reason for him to kill her. So it must have been Riki Kimura who had done away with his mistress. Mas could picture him, his terrible brown teeth bared, knocking the lady’s head against the wall until her head split open. Mas had seen it before, more than fifty years ago. “You’re an inu, just like them,” one of their classmates, a star shortshop, had taunted Riki.

  “Shut up, shut up,” Riki cried. Even back then, his fingers had been long and bony. Striking as quickly as a serpent, Riki wrapped his hands around the taunting boy’s throat, pressing down, closing the air passages.

  “Stop, Riki-kun.” It had been Joji who had thrown Riki off the boy. They both were tall and thin, but the similarities ended there. Riki ran off at the mouth, talked big, but usually changed his mind when things looked bad. Joji, on the other hand, was quiet, but when he took a stand, there was no moving him.”No sense in getting in more trouble,” Joji told Riki. “It’s bad as it is.”

  Haruo returned to the car with a sloppy grin on his face. “Heezu out,” he said. “Wishbone gotsu dis Sansei attorney. The one who helped him get redress.”

  Leave it to Wishbone to hire a lawyer—particularly a third-generation Japanese American—who specialized in getting money from the government for its past sins. But crimes like murder? “Sounds like the wrong type of lawyer.”

  “Well, heezu out, isn’t he?” Haruo shrugged. “I’m gonna go by Tanaka’s and get the whole story. You wanna come?”