Summer of the Big Bachi

by Naomi Hirahara

  “Whatsu they tellin’ you, Mas, that I was a daddy back in Japan?”

  “Whysu not? You always sweet on the girls.”

  “Mas, get serious. No time for anytin’ like that. Besides, you around all the time. You knowsu where I’m sleepin’, eatin’.”

  “Everytin’ you didsu, a secret,” Mas maintained. “Like Joji.”

  The morphine machine buzzed again. “You know what I did. He was practically dead. Like all of them.”

  Most of them were dead. Charred black like burnt food. Skin peeling away, ripe fruit bursting open, leaving only a pool of stickiness. Arms webbed together like a kangaroo’s.

  Mas stared at Riki, now the one close to death. “What didsu you do with Joji?”

  Riki’s chest heaved.

  “Whatcha do to him afterward?”

  “You had your family, Mas. I had nutin’. They all gone.”

  “But Joji—”

  Riki pressed the button for the morphine machine again. “He was like you left him, barely alive. His papers were in his boot, I knowsu. I tore it off, and his whole foot came off with it. I just took that boot, foot and everytin’, and ran.”

  Mas recalled the illustration that Yuki had shown him at the medical exams. The man without a foot.

  “America won. I knew it. Those other people, those bakayaros, crying about hearing the emperor surrender. But I knew before I heard. I knew when I saw miles and miles of nutin’ after the Bomb. I knew when I see the black rain. I knew that Japan had no chance.” Riki swallowed slowly and continued. “Youzu and some of the others, you had a way out. You American citizens. You could just forget about us and go away.

  “So I stole Joji’s foot. I found a piece of metal and tore open the boot. The papers were right there. His birth certificate, everytin’.”

  “And then youzu put your name on his.” Cold-blooded murder, that’s what it was, thought Mas.

  “He gonna die anyhowsu. You saw him, Mas.” Riki swallowed. “I buried the foot, Mas. I’m not without kokoro. In the mountains, by the bamboo grove we played by. I even said a prayer.”

  Mas felt wetness at the edges of his eyes. He imagined Joji there alone, still breathing, with one foot. Did he think that Mas had abandoned him there, too? Was his last thought on the betrayal of his friends?

  “Lies. Thatsu all you tole me.” Mas felt the words wretching out of his throat like vomit. “You tell me that you take care of Joji.”

  “You just believe what you want to believe, Mas.”

  “You sonafubitchi,” Mas finally muttered.

  “Mas, you no betta,” Riki said. “You take my money to go to America. You leave me, just like I leave Joji.”

  “I nutin’ like you,” Mas was only able to gasp as he walked out of the hospital room, past the open doors to the elevator, back to the car, and back to the purple hills of Altadena.

  CHAPTER TEN

  When Mas was upset, he usually retreated to his garage. It was musty with the smells of grease, oil, and rusty metal. While surgeons had their operating tables, Mas had his own version, crowded with glass jars of nails, screws, and even fishhooks. A greasy clamp was fastened to one end of the table. Beside it were small metal parts, a pair of pliers, wrenches, and a can of WD-40. Here Mas performed miracles on his Trimmer and Ford engine (rebuilt two times). The problem today was that there was no lawn mower, and there was no truck.

  It was in this same garage that Mas had prayed for the first and last time, when Chizuko had had another relapse of stomach cancer. There, in between his broken-down lawn mower and his oily pliers, he had prayed: “God, Kamisama, I know that I’m a good-for-nutin’. But save my wife. Not for me. She needsu to enjoy. Enjoy life. Neva gotsu the chance.” But God didn’t answer his prayers. And from that point on, Mas swore that he would never make a fool of himself again. His heart would be closed to both religion and doctors.

  Mas pulled the chain to the bald lightbulb above his workbench. No broken gears, just a bunch of one-and-a-quarter-inch wire nails scattered like dried-out pine needles. Dropping them into a Gerber’s baby food jar, Mas felt like smashing something good and hard with his hammer. But there was nothing to build and nobody to build for. Mas felt anger move from his gut into his throat. Why had Riki had to come and disturb him? Why had Riki told him about the foot that he had stolen from Joji Haneda? Why couldn’t those secrets have just died, been buried or burnt away?

  Mas knew that he couldn’t lose those images of the ravaged bodies as easily as before. Before, there were card games and horses and mouths to feed. Now his mind was like a good-for-nothing videotape player, the same thing showing over and over.

  Mas never regretted marrying Chizuko, but he often suffered for it. Mostly because she was smarter than Mas—at least with language and books—and reminded him of it every day of her life.

  “You fill out the form. It’s your contractor’s license, not mine,” Chizuko said, her lips pursed over her slight overbite.

  Mas struggled with the terms, the exceptions, which seemed to rise and float from the white sheets of the renewal form for his landscape contractor’s license. He then silently and secretively went to the side of his junior high school daughter, who was reading at her desk.

  Mari sucked on the end of a pen. “Have you taken California Pesticide Test 105 in the past five years? You know—pests, bugs, mushi?”

  “Yah, yah, I knowsu. Took it last year.”

  “Then we’ll check yes.” Mari drew a crooked X in a box.

  So they went down all twenty questions on the form, and then Mari turned the bottom toward Mas. “Here, sign here, Dad.” Her fingernail, old pink polish chipped away and now shaped like fish food flakes, tapped a long line.

  Mas took the pen from Mari, held tight, and signed his name carefully, with a magnificently large M and A. He felt another presence and noticed Chizuko’s dagger eyes staring at them from the doorway. “Pitiful,” she said. “Pitiful man.”

  It was hard to explain why he couldn’t write English, or even Japanese, well. He’d never taken to school—spent more time teasing classmates and terrorizing teachers, like the rest of the boys. Asobi, play, took up all of their creative energy—that is, before the war.

  There was shogi, in which they advanced white Japanese chess pieces, uniformly shaped and pointed, on a square board. They waxed cards of their favorite sumo wrestlers and devised various games. Throw it down; faceup was the winner. Throw it down; the one touching the most cards was the winner.

  They went into the countryside, tore off vines, and braided rope, which they used to whip bamboo tops into cyclonic circles. They dug small holes in dirt to simulate a baseball diamond, and took turns trying to launch marbles into the holes and get to home plate. In the wintertime, they helped the village men assemble a large bamboo frame in the shape of a triangular cone, covered it with hay, and set it on fire. While some people sang, Mas and his friends poked mochi speared atop long sticks into the flames. Once the rice cake puffed up, they dipped it in soy sauce and sugar and stuffed the stickiness into their mouths.

  Joji moved next door in 1939, and the first time he saw him, Mas could tell he was different. First of all, Joji combed his hair back with some kind of grease and always seemed to have a smile on his lips. He usually chewed on a sliver of bamboo, and Mas always wondered if it was the same piece day after day. Joji liked football, not baseball or judo, and his Japanese sounded strange, as if he cut the words in pieces that didn’t fit together so well. Before the war, all the boys in their class respected Joji, much like they would an exotic lizard. They kept their distance, but then, they didn’t try to anger him, either. But when the war with America began, the boys became bolder, chanting “inu, inu,” as he approached, throwing dirt and blows whenever convenient.

  Mas, on the other hand, feared Joji, thinking that he was like a magnet, bringing trouble to all who were close. There were plenty of other Kibei, American-born, at Koryo High School, and many of them blended in. But
Mas didn’t want to take any chances. As soon as he turned fifteen, he went by the family registry office to see if he could join the navy like his two older brothers.

  The office was a simple shack with a metal roof. The clerk, his neck as droopy as old chicken skin, wet his fingers in a dish of water and leafed quickly through the registry. “Arai—yes, eight children.”

  “Masao; I am the middle one.”

  “So . . . Arai Masao.” The clerk held a straightedge to the pages of the registry. “Fifteen years of age. Too young. October.”

  “But I want to go. They take old men. I’m just four months away.”

  The man paused and then moved the straightedge up and down several times. He glared at Mas and pulled on the loose skin under his chin. “It says here that you only have American citizenship.”

  “What? That can’t be.”

  “No,” said the clerk. “It is very strange. The record shows that you are the only one in your family to have solely U.S. citizenship.”

  “But my two older brothers have dual. There must be some kind of mistake. I was just born over there, but all I really know is Japan.” Mas didn’t remember much about California, other than the rows of lettuce that he had grasped like a giant ball. The leaves were crisp, with white veins; he could even tear the first layer off, then—smack—a slap on his dimpled hands, and then back on a scratchy blanket, alone in an empty field.

  “There might be a foul-up, but it’s not our office.” The clerk slammed the registry shut. “Check with your parents, and find out why they didn’t change your status. As far as we are concerned, you are legally a full-blooded American.”

  Mas felt sick to his stomach. To be one of the enemy—a hundred percent. How could his parents have forgotten to make sure he was properly registered? The family registry was everything. It didn’t take much to make sure an American-born child also had Japanese citizenship status. But it did require the parents to care enough to follow through with it.

  Mas’s stomach churned, like when he was lost on the train when he was a child. He was desperate for the familiar, the indigo butterflies of his mother’s kimono, the pokes and teasing of his older brothers and sisters. But the train was only full of strangers, grim faces, and musty clothing. Finally the stationmaster pulled him out of the car at the last stop.

  His mother came two hours later. She usually walked like a man, steady and wide, but the butterfly cloth constricted her large gait. “You have to be alert, Masao-chan,” she said on their way home. Her hands were callused and dry. “You can’t expect me to always be looking for you.”

  Those words haunted Mas as he left the registry office. His vision was so blurred he couldn’t see straight. When he arrived at his front gate, he began throwing rocks at his house, first pebbles, and then round stones near their fish pond. With the impact of each rock, the wood frame shook and rattled. In spite of the noise, no one came out. Everyone was probably in the rice fields without him.

  Joji Haneda had come out of his house. “Arai-kun, what are you doing?” he said.

  Mas threw more stones toward his parents’ bedroom.

  “What are you doing?” Joji repeated. He was still wearing his work uniform with his name tag sewn on the left-hand side.

  “It’s none of your business. Stay out of it.” The last thing Mas wanted was to be associated with Joji Haneda.

  He raised another rock, and Joji held back Mas’s arm. Mas then swung the other side of his body into Joji’s chest, easily flipping him over.

  Joji seemed stunned for several minutes as he lay beside the koi pond. “For a little guy, you sure are tough,” he finally said.

  After that point, the two began walking together to work at the train station in the middle of Hiroshima. Joji would tell him about life in Los Angeles, the tall buildings, the steaks as thick as concrete slabs, and the women—their legs as long as gazelles’.

  “I’m going back,” he told Mas. “My papa’s there.”

  “You can’t go to America.”

  “When America wins.”

  Mas was thankful that no one was around. “But Japan is going to win.”

  Joji laughed. “You don’t know, Masao-kun. You don’t know all they have over there. Land, manpower. The streets are full of cars. How is Japan going to beat that?”

  Mas pondered the image of a large boulevard crowded with shiny American automobiles.

  “You can come with me.”

  “No,” Mas said. Hiroshima was his home.

  “You will,” Joji said. “We can even live together. Eat steaks and play football all day. You can get a job designing cars, and we can get married to some beautiful girls. Even the Japanese ones look different over there.”

  Mas stopped putting up a fight. Joji’s imagination was the only thing that was making him happy, and Mas wasn’t going to rob him of that.

  * * *

  Mas sat in the garage for what seemed like hours, until a car pulled into the driveway.

  This was first time Mas had seen Tug since the poker game. Tug looked a bit haggard, puffy bags underneath his eyes. He hadn’t trimmed his beard; the white hair seemed scraggly, rough. Some hair had started to grow over his wound, like white fuzz on an Elberta peach.

  “You lookin’ good,” Mas lied.

  Avoiding a large oil spot on the floor, Mas pulled out an old metal Coleman cooler. “Sit down,” he said, offering Tug an Orange Crush from the old refrigerator in the corner.

  Tug tipped his head back and took two large gulps of the soda before wiping his beard with the edge of his sleeve. “You got anything stronger, Mas?”

  Mas frowned. There hadn’t been a time when he’d seen Tug drink liquor. Even at Tug and Lil’s son’s wedding, waiters in black tuxedos poured fizzy apple juice into plastic champagne glasses, much to Mas’s disappointment. “No wine, even,” Mas had mumbled, and received a sharp jab from Chizuko’s elbow. And now here was Tug, begging for alcohol.

  The timing was fitting, so Mas reopened the Frigidaire without so much as one word. He tore off two cans of Budweiser from the plastic six-pack holder, and together they drank in silence in front of the oil stain.

  Tug got up from the Coleman cooler, placed his drink on the top, and went over to the workbench. He spun the end of the clamp. “Thought about picking up woodworking since my retirement. There’s a class at Pasadena City College.”

  “Class? You got to pay money?”

  “Yeah, I think fifty, sixty dollars, something like that.”

  “Forget it. You come here; I teach you all you need to know. I even teach Mari, honto yo. She pretty good. Made a little car.” The wheels had been nailed in somewhat unevenly, but it still was able to roll forward.

  “Didn’t do much with Joy, although I did take her to work a couple of times,” said Tug.

  “You kiddin’? You mean to those dirty restaurants?”

  Tug smiled and brushed down his beard. “It wasn’t company policy, but when Lil was sick, I snuck her in one of my jobs. Actually, she seemed to enjoy it a lot more than her brother. Checking out grime, looking for rodent infestation. Who would have thought a little girl would take to it?”

  “Maybe that’s why she’s a docta.”

  “Not yet.”

  “But soon.” Mas dropped a small bolt into a jar that had once held creamed corn.

  “You ever take Mari on your route?” Tug asked.

  “Yah, one time. In the summertime.” It had been Mari’s idea, actually. Chizuko and Mas both tried to dissuade her, for different reasons, but finally Mas relented.

  “How did she like it?”

  “She liked lunch; I can tell you that much. She eat sandwiches Chizuko packed, then wanted to get some fast-food hamburgers. I gave her easy work—raking leaves, that kinda stuff. Oh, she make a mess. I tole Chizuko when I getsu home. No more. Dis work, not play. Now she killsu every plant. No joke.”

  “Black thumb, huh. That’s kind of funny.” Tug returned to the Coleman cooler and
gulped down his second beer.

  Mas returned to his workbench. He jiggled one of the baby food jars and watched the nails settle.

  “Do you think he did it?” asked Tug.

  A cool breeze tickled Mas’s neck. “Huh?”

  “Did that boy hurt that woman?”

  Mas waited a moment until he understood. “Oh, that Kimura boy,” he said finally. “Could’ve. I dunno. Dunno either way.”

  “But why? What would he have to do with that woman?”

  “Well, women, you knowsu how that goes,” Mas said, who then quickly realized that Tug had little idea. “Money. Maybe money.”

  “Money?”

  “Tug, itsu always about money,” said Mas, before reopening the Frigidaire to make sure he had a second six-pack.

  “But this isn’t a rich woman. She lives by herself in a one-bedroom apartment. They even aren’t too sure what she does for a living.”

  “But maybe she knowsu sumptin’ thatsu worth a lot of money.”

  “Like?”

  “What did that boy tell you? Whyzu he here, anyhowsu, and don’t tell me itsu because of a stupid magazine article.”

  Tug sat quietly on the Coleman cooler.

  “Heezu gotsu an angle, Tug. We all gotsu one.”

  “I know all about angles. I worked for the government for fifty years. I know more than you think.” Tug frowned. While most Japanese would be flushed red from the alcohol, Tug’s face was stone white. “I’ve had people offer me kickbacks. Lakers tickets, even cash.”

  Mas’s hand grew slippery around his beer can.

  “Every time, I told them ‘No, no.’ ”

  Well, of course, thought Mas. You’re that kind of sonafugun.

  “Except once.” Tug sighed. “Once, I didn’t say no. They were Dodgers tickets. The pennant race in seventy-eight. Seats right behind home plate.”

  “Oh—” Mas pushed out a breath. He knew how much Tug loved the Dodgers.

  “I tried to fool myself, Mas. Told myself they weren’t a bribe. That it was a gift, between friends. But I had known that restaurant owner for only six months, and he wasn’t a friend. I didn’t even like him.” Tug took another sip of his beer. “So I went. Even took Joe. The thing was, the seats were so good that we landed up on TV. Every time someone went up to bat, you could see me and Joe there, eating peanuts and drinking Coke. The next day at work, people told me that they saw me and my son. Didn’t say much of anything else. But I know what they were thinking. That I was just like them.