The Tattoo

by Chris Mckinney

  I felt something bump me and my eyes shot open.The light fell out of my mouth, but I caught it with my hand. I shined the light away from me while I spun in circles. I squinted my eyes, trying to see beyond the dirty water. I felt the strong current drag me closer and closer to Chinaman’s Hat. Just as I turned toward the island, I saw the tiger shark gliding out of the darkness. It was the biggest I had ever seen. As it neared, I frantically kicked away from it without turning my back. I saw the bubbles rise from my kicking fins. Through the bubbles, I saw the head of the shark grow bigger and bigger. Suddenly, I felt like giving up. I almost hoped for the shark to reach me and bite me in half. I reached down to the leg of my wetsuit to make it stop kicking. Instead of feeling my leg, I felt the bang stick strapped on my thigh.

  I banged the shit out of it. I slammed the stick on its gills and watched as pieces of the shark exploded on the other side of it. It looked like twenty pounds of its flesh had disintegrated from its body. The clouds of blood spread and dirtied the water even more. Like a smoking airplane crashing with wings not big enough to glide, the shark began its decent into the darkness. Its body shook uncontrollably as it disappeared from the shining of my light. With the bang stick in my hand, I kicked my way back to shore.

  When I reached Kualoa Beach Park, I ripped off my mask and threw the bang stick and light on the sand. My lungs felt like they were about to explode. I dropped down in the sand. It had stopped raining. I listened to my heavy breathing. I heard the wind blow against the palm trees behind me. I looked toward the ocean and saw the white wash creep upon the sand. I listened and wept as the water hit the sand, making each grain smaller and smaller.

  I didn’t get back home until about four in the morning. Through the entire walk, I had wondered whether Claudia was still at the house. I didn’t think so. I didn’t think I would be. If she were home, I knew I’d give everything for her. I knew we’d fly to the mainland that morning if that was what she wanted. I had had enough of the Windward side. While walking along the side of Kam Highway, I knew I should’ve been running, but after the swim, after the entire night, I could no longer run. My legs wobbled with each step I took. I hoped she was home because if she was not, it meant she’d gone back to Mama-san, and if she went back, I didn’t know whether I would chase her. I didn’t feel like I could kill or run any longer. When I reached the house, I was surprised to see the living room light was still on. When I heard the screaming, I rushed toward the light.

  The place was trashed. The television was turned over, its face of glass shattered. Shards of glass were spread over the carpet. A lamp was also on the floor. The shade was off and the bright bulb momentarily blinded me. I looked at the sofa and saw two suitcases full of clothes open as pieces of Claudia’s clothes hung from the edges. My fatigue instantly faded as I saw Claudia, lying in front of the glass case, with my father standing above her with both fists clenched.

  “What da fuck is goin’ on?”

  My father looked toward me. His face was the angriest I had ever seen.“She tried fo’ fuckin’ leave when you wasn’t home. I told her fo’ wait, but she neva like listen. I fuckin’ told her wait. Den she went tell me ‘fuck you’ and called me one fuckin’ Jap. I no give a fuck who you are, you call me one Jap, I goin’ fuckin’ whack you.”

  I ran toward them and shoved my father away from Claude. I bent down and turned her on her back. Tears streaked out of her eyes. She was holding her stomach. Her eyes closed tightly, like she suddenly felt intense pain. I looked up at my father and said, “Call one fuckin’ ambulance!”

  I looked back down at Claude. She yelled, “Get the fuck away from me!”

  “It’s me Claude, it’s Ken. Don’t worry.”

  “Get the fuck away from me!”

  I looked to see where my father was. He put down the phone. “She shouldn’t have called me one fuckin’ Jap.”

  After Claude screamed, “Get the fuck away from me!” one more time, I stood up and stepped toward my father. I looked down at his face and said, “You are a fuckin’ Jap.”

  “You dumb fuckin’ kid,” he said. “I was killing fuckas befo’ you was even born.” Then he hit me. My legs were still wobbly from all the running, swimming and walking I had done the entire night. I couldn’t hold myself up. I felt my legs take three frantic steps back until I felt my heel hit Claudia’s body. I tripped and fell through the glass case. After I had landed, I glanced at my hands and arms. Both were streaked with blood. I looked down at Claudia on the floor holding her stomach. Pieces of glass surrounded her. She looked like a swordtail whose fish bowl had been dropped on the ground. My father stepped toward me with that crazy, angry look on his face. He looked magnificent. The hatred pumped through my body, but instead of transforming to rage, my hate turned into something cold. I felt behind me and touched the hilt of the fallen katana. I looked up at my father and smiled. His expression didn’t change. I felt my arm pull the blade of the katana from its sheath. My father’s face flinched as I jumped at him with the naked blade. For a moment I saw a brilliant light. A light so intense that it should have blinded me. But it didn’t. I stared right into it. When the light vanished, nothing was left but darkness.

  It was the longest session yet. Ken seemed to speak slower during this session, not wanting the story to end. Cal had spent the overtime touching up. The signs of sunlight somehow crept through the cement walls and steel door. Darkness slowly evaporated as a dull light bloomed slowly in the cell. Soon the guards would buzz the doors and notify the prisoners that it was time for breakfast. Cal was neither hungry nor tired. He sat in back of the now silent Ken, looking at the finished tattoo.

  Ken got up and stretched. He turned around and shook Cal’s hand. “Thanks.”

  Cal knew the blinding hatred which had brought Ken here. For years he had recognized the cutting of his throat as a kind of penance, a punishment for what he had done to his wife and kids, but now he missed his voice. He wanted to ask Ken questions, he wanted to tell Ken his story, but most of all he wanted to say, “Hey, even though I’m white, I know your story because it’s so much like mine.”

  Cal felt the scar on his throat. Ken put his hand on Cal’s shoulder. “Must be tough not being able to talk.”

  Cal nodded. “Did you like the story?” Ken asked.

  Cal nodded again. “Why?” Ken asked.

  Cal put his index finger on Ken’s chest. Then he put his other index on his own. Cal moved both fingers away then put them together. He kept both fingers side by side for a few seconds, then extended his arms while the fingers stayed parallel to each other.

  Ken smiled. “Either you’re proposing marriage or you’re trying to tell me that you lived a similar life.”

  Cal put up two fingers. Ken laughed.“Number two, thank God.”

  Cal smiled. Ken sat down against the wall. “Well, let me get a little philosophical with you, then. I guess when I think of me, Koa, my father — hell all of the boys, and think about how we grew up, it occurs to me that people are like things being built. I mean, I don’t know what they build in places like Beverly Hills, lawyers, doctors, who knows, but I do know what’s being built on the Windward side. Bombs are being built. We’re like old-time artisans down there, passing down our bomb-making skills from generation to generation. Only, it’s not that simple because as we make these bombs we are almost arbitrarily rationed a certain amount of each ingredient. Like take Koa. Uncle James and Aunty Kanani wanted to make a weak bomb out of him but they were given a ton of gunpowder and a short fuse. Me, I think I came with less powder and more fuse, but unfortunately my father was a master bomb builder. The army taught him, I guess. Hell, Claudia, she was like one of those crazy bomb squad people trying to defuse the booby trap. Luckily, when I exploded, she took a step back. My father took it, though. It’s the tragic life of a bomb-maker or bomb-defuser, you’ve got a good chance of blowing yourself away.”

  Ken walked to his box of books. He picked up his copy of Native Son and Invisi
ble Man. “You see,” he said, “books like this, they show problems and try to explain why. I don’t know why. I can say race, but it’s not that simple, especially in Hawai‘i. It’s not just black and white, it’s Hawaiian, haole, Japanese, Chinese, Korean, Filipino, Samoan, Vietnamese. I could go on and on. Hell, look at you, you’re white, but you went through the same kind of shit. I think of Koa, he’s Hawaiian, and even though his people got the total fuck-over, that’s not the only reason why he blew up. Me, the Japanee? Fuck, I don’t know. All I know is that I’m part-son, part-lover, part-killer, part-Japanese, and part of some DNA strand named Kenji Hideyoshi. It’s funny, I think about race and sometimes feel that it would be a lot easier if we were actually that different from each other. I ain’t here because of race, I’m here because I’m human. But I’m an individual, too. And as Ken Hideyoshi, all I can do is get the fuck out of here, accept what I am, and make sure I never come back. No matter what happens, though, I live with the comfort that Claude and the kid will be o.k. It keeps me going.”

  Ken tossed the books back in the box. Cal thought about Ken’s story and his own and wondered whether either could have turned out differently. It was a tough question to ask. Nobody in here wanted to think that they always had the power to prevent their fates. But for an instant Cal wanted the truth. He scratched his head. Maybe he could’ve stopped himself, but he didn’t know for sure. Just then the doors buzzed. It was time for breakfast.

  Ken was looking at himself in the stainless steel mirror. “Fuckin’ shitty mirror. I can’t even see myself. Did I tell you Claudia’s coming to visit with the kid?”

  Cal walked out of the cell silent, with only the promise of the story of what would happen between Ken and Claudia soothing him. He wanted to speak, but he didn’t know what he’d say.

  As Ken walked out to start on another long tick of the clock, Cal silently wished him the best. He was the last ronin, presently in a world that may have suited him, soon to be released in a world that would not embrace him. But like the ronins before him, he would search for work that fit him, try to live honorably and maybe even die bloody. It was to live by the sword. Cal was glad for Ken that his son would not have to live the same way.

  epilogue

  “Going, like an ebb tide flowing,”

  like a tradewind blowing,

  soon you will be far across the sea.

  Flying, soon you will be flying,

  like a teardrop drying,

  leaving just a memory.”

  Flying

  The Peter Moon Band

  THE LAST RONIN

  Claudia Choy sat in her mother’s Mercedes. She got up on her knees and turned toward the back seat.

  “Craudia,” her mother said, “you sit down now.”

  Claudia felt her mother’s arm push against her lower back. She ignored it and reached her hand out to her baby. Christian, Claudia’s two-year-old son, slapped his mother’s hand away and said, “No.”

  Claudia sighed and turned back around to sit down.“Mom,” she said, “I told you not to give him apple juice anymore. His teeth are getting rotten.”

  Her mother laughed. “When you on da plane wit’ him, you glad I give him apple juice. If not, he cry and cry.”

  “Yeah, but you’re not going to be the one who has to get him off that stuff when we get to San Francisco. Look at him, it’s like his crack. He’s so spoiled.”

  Claudia adjusted the rearview mirror to look at her son. He seemed to be ignoring them. He just looked out the window and sucked on his bottle of apple juice. Claudia pushed the mirror up slightly and looked at the open trunk, which was stuffed with her suitcases. She sighed and tried to put the mirror back where she thought her mother would want it. As soon as she took her hand off the mirror, Claudia heard her mother sigh. Her mother re-adjusted the mirror. “Pabo,” she said.

  “Mom, don’t call me stupid.”

  “You no touch mirror, and you no complain I spoil my grandson. I’m grandma. I spoil. And you know...”

  “Mom, don’t start.”

  “Well, where we go now? We go visit my grandson’s father. In jail. In jail.”

  Claudia’s mind flashed to the night her son was prematurely born. She remembered the blood and the pain. She had been blinded by the pain, blinded so much she could only hear the yelling between Ken and his father. She felt Ken trip over her body, she heard Ken fall through the glass case. But she remembered the pain the most, up until the pain became silent. When the pain became silent, she no longer heard son and father yelling, instead it seemed quiet for hours. Then she heard the sound of the blade sliding from its sheath. Her pain returned and she almost lost consciousness. She managed to stay awake, though, not through her own strength, but instead because she felt the hot, gushing liquid as it dumped on her face. It was more shocking than a bucket of cold water to the face, because despite her blinding pain, she knew what the steaming liquid was. This realization sent her eyes shooting open, and when she looked up she saw Ken standing above her, standing there with blood all over his naked torso, with the sword hanging from his clenched fingers, her eyes froze open.

  Then her eyes moved up to his face. Behind his head hung the wrinkled Musashi print. It was a disturbing image. His head blocked out Musashi’s torso so that it looked like Musashi’s arms came out of Ken’s head. Both arms held wooden sticks and for a moment Claudia wondered what kind of wood the sticks were made of. She looked at Ken’s face and saw it was speckled with blood. She would not have been so scared, it occurred to her, if he didn’t look so calm, so serene. But his calmness had shaken her up badly. When he looked down at her with that look, that look that seemed to try to tell her everything was fine, and bent down and extended his bloody hands toward her, she screamed and lost consciousness.

  Claudia watched as her mother took the Halawa cutoff. “One hour,” her mother said, “one hour, den you go airport.”

  Claudia had already told Ken she had gotten accepted into a graduate Art History program at Berkeley, and that of course she planned to take their son Christian up with her. She had written him often, not wanting to visit, not knowing if she was ready to see his face. She knew if she saw it too soon, she’d still see the speckled blood on it and probably pass out at the sight. She laughed to herself. It had taken thousands of dollars of psychiatric help for her finally to be able to suppress the image, to get a solid night of sleep.

  The Mercedes pulled up to the gate of the Halawa High Security Facility. Claudia looked up at the high fence and saw the razor wire coiled above it. She wondered how many sleepless nights Ken spent thinking of a way to get past it, but then she remembered Ken never had the tendency to challenge what he saw as insurmountable obstacles. She doubted that he had been serious about moving to the mainland. In fact, during the later part of her stay in Ka‘a‘awa, she had seen Ken as her own prison-high fence, coiled razor wire and all. After they passed the gate, Claudia felt her palms begin to sweat.

  Claudia took Christian out of the car. She grabbed a bag full of bottles and diapers. She closed the door and stuck her head through the window. “One hour, Mom. He really should get to see his son in person before I leave for the mainland.”

  Kilcha just sighed and waved her daughter on. Claudia turned toward the building and walked in that direction with her son in her arms. She wondered if this was where Ken had always been meant to be. She wondered if there was any way he could have avoided this. She felt that in killing his father, Ken had not committed a huge crime. She had hated Ken’s father so much that his death didn’t bother her too much. But as she walked toward the entrance of the building, she remembered the other crime he had committed, the one that had ended the lives of the three Koreans her mother had sent, one of them her cousin Dong Jin.

  He had thought she never knew. But she had heard it that first night at Koa’s. She’d heard the story told straight from Ken’s mouth.

  When Koa had called Ken into the bushes to show him the cess-pool that fi
rst day in Waiahole, Claudia leaned over to Kahala. “Hey, why don’t you take your kids and go out to dinner? My treat.”

  Kahala frowned at Claudia. “Listen, don’t give me some charity trip and don’t try to get rid of me, too. You have your nerve, coming to my house and saying something like ‘my treat.’ Who the fuck do you think you are?”

  Claudia was shocked that Kahala took it so badly. “I’m so sorry, I didn’t mean anything by it. I’m so sorry. No, what I want to do is act like we all went to dinner. I’ll write a note saying that we went, but I’ll stay back here and try to listen to what they talk about. I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to offend you. It’s just that I know they’ll hold back if they know I’m around and I really want to understand this relationship between Koa and Ken. I’m trying to understand Ken better and this might really help.”

  Kahala frowned.“What have you been smoking? Listen, as a woman who has lived with Koa now for years and has listened to him and his friends talk, I’ll tell you, you probably don’t want to hear any of it. It’s all pretty standard macho stuff. And if it’s not standard, it’s stuff that’ll scare the shit out of you. Listen, you’re better off coming with us to dinner.”

  But Claude refused. So Kahala shrugged, called her kids, and jumped in the Pathfinder. Before Kahala left, she told Claudia that she’d pull the Pathfinder behind the house when she returned. Claudia thought it was a stupid plan until Kahala told her she always drove over the California grass around the house. She told Claude it was the only thing which kept the house from being buried beneath the long, thick weeds. She assured Claude that Koa would think nothing of it, and therefore neither would Ken. They agreed to meet at the back of the house. Kahala rolled her eyes and drove off. Claudia sneaked into the house and listened as Ken and Koa sat down at the picnic table.

  As Claudia walked through the doors of Halawa, she remembered listening to Ken and Koa. It was the one great thing about a skeleton house, she thought, sounds travelled easily. Ken called the men he’d killed “Nameless Koreans.” But she knew one of their names. Dong Jin. She knew it was him by the way Ken described the Korean holding the gun on him, the way he described Dong Jin’s long hair and small yellow teeth. Dong Jin was a name which her great-grandfather had once worn. It was a name which meant a great deal to her family. Dong Jin was not just one man, but he was also a product of survival, a being who lived because others had survived before him, survived Japanese occupation and civil war. He was cherished.