“Please sign, sir.” The oily-faced boy had left the engine running and now held out a final piece of paper on a clipboard.
Mas carefully guided his signature with skinny loops beside the X on the bottom.
“It’s all yours,” the boy said, glancing at the hood, which was bent in the middle as if the thieves had tried to pry it open with a crowbar. “Well, at least it still runs. Most of them don’t, you know.”
Mas remembered how Mari and her friend had accidentally smashed the hood when they had jumped from their neighbor’s fence. The hood had never been the same; Mas was the only one who had mastered the trick of opening it.
Mas hit the left side of the hood three times and lifted it open. There, in the center, was the magnificent, greasy engine like a black pearl in the middle of an oyster shell. It whirled and purred, the valve cases and air cleaner all intact. Mas had to laugh. Those sonafugun vultures had stripped the Ford, but left behind the most valuable part. The heart of the machine.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Naomi Hirahara is a writer and editor of nonfiction books. She previously worked as an editor of The Rafu Shimpo, a bilingual Japanese American daily newspaper in Los Angeles. Summer of the Big Bachi is her first novel. She and her husband reside in Southern California, where she is at work on her second Mas Arai book. Visit her Web site at www.naomihirahara.com.
SUMMER OF THE BIG BACHI
A Delta Trade Paperback / April 2004
Published by Bantam Dell
A Division of Random House, Inc.
New York, New York
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents
either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used
fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.
All rights reserved
Copyright © 2004 by Naomi Hirahara
Visit our website at www.bantamdell.com
No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without the written permission of the publisher, except where permitted by law.
Delta is a registered trademark of Random House, Inc., and the colophon is a trademark of Random House, Inc.
Library of Congress Cataloging in Publication Data
Hirahara, Naomi, 1962–
Summer of the big bachi / Naomi Hirahara.
p. cm.
“Delta trade paperbacks.”
1. Japanese Americans—Fiction. 2. Los Angeles (Calif.)—Fiction. 3. Gardeners—Fiction. 4. Aged men—Fiction. 5. Revenge—Fiction. I. Title.
PS3608.I76S86 2003 2003055538
eISBN: 978-0-440-33489-7
v3.0
Summer of the Big Bachi Page 24
