by Dean Hughes
“Can’t you build better houses if you want to?”
Ken sat up. “Where have you been, Jay? Don’t you know what’s going on?”
“I just moved down here.”
“I know. But there’s a war on, man. And I’m Japanese American. People think we’re on the other side. They rounded us up and made us come out here. The government calls it a ‘relocation center,’ but it’s a prison. Guys with rifles watch us from towers. We’re Americans, the same as you, and we’re locked up for no reason except that our families came here from Japan.”
Jay nodded. He figured there must be more to it than that, but he wasn’t going to say so to Ken. The guy was already sounding mad.
But Ken had started to laugh again. “I don’t care, though. I’m making the best of everything. I’m going to join the army just as soon as I turn eighteen in August. We’ve got an all-Japanese-American combat team now, and it’s going to get into the battle before long. I’m going to get into it if I can. Then I’m going to win me some medals and come home a hero. I’ll have it made in the shade once I do that. I just figure if someone hands you a lemon, you make lemonade out of it. You know what I’m talking about? There’s always a sunny side if you just look for it.”
“I guess so.”
“Life’s what you make of it. That’s my philosophy.” Ken leaned back again, rested his head. His eyes shut.
Jay thought about telling Ken that his dad was a hero, just like Ken wanted to be. He wanted to say, “Japs took him prisoner. And I don’t like Japs.” Then he wouldn’t talk to him anymore. He was almost sure that Ken was a liar. The guy wanted to act like he was an American and everything, but he wouldn’t be in prison if there weren’t some reason for it.
“You’re not all white yourself, are you, Jay?” Ken asked.
He shrugged his shoulders, but he didn’t answer.
“You’re part Indian or Mexican or something, aren’t you?”
“My grandma’s Navajo.”
“Okay. There’s an example. Look at all the Indians stuck out in the desert on reservations. It’s a lot the same. My name’s Tanaka—Kenji Tanaka—so that’s supposed to make me Japanese. But what about a guy named Gunther, or something like that? The guy who runs our camp is Mr. Ernst. That’s a German name. Why don’t they put him in prison for being German? You better be careful that someone doesn’t say you’ve gotta live on a reservation because your grandma does.”
“They don’t do that.”
“I know. I’m just saying. We were living in California, doing fine, and then Japan attacks Pearl Harbor and all of a sudden we’re supposed to be the enemy. It doesn’t make sense.” He stared into Jay’s face, like he wanted him to say that was right. Jay looked away. “But I’m not getting mad. I’m getting even. I’ll fight for my country and show what I can do—and then I’ll look any guy in the face and tell him, ‘I’m just as much a man as you are. And I’m an American, right down to my little Japanese toes.’” Ken liked that. He laughed for a long time.
Jay had heard enough. He got out of his chair and lay on the grass. He shut his eyes and tried to pretend that he’d gone to sleep.
Not long after that Ken said it was time to go back to work, and before long everything was worse than in the morning. The heat was almost more than he could take—over a hundred, he was sure—and all the bits of hay floating around made him sick to his stomach. Ken got twice as much work done, and he never stopped joking, but every time he told Jay to go rest for a little while, Jay tried to work harder. He didn’t know when quitting time was, but he knew he had to stick it out until then. His arms and shoulders and back ached so bad that he would slow down sometimes without knowing he was doing it. Then he’d see Ken watching him, and he’d speed up.
Finally Ken said, “Let’s call it a day. We’ve got more done than I ever expected we could do.” He took off his straw hat, pulled the bandanna off his head, and wiped it across his face. “Next time somebody tells me that Indians are lazy, I’m going to say, ‘You don’t know Jay Thacker. That boy can work like a man.’”
“I’m not an Indian,” he said, but he liked what Ken had said about him. He walked the mile or so back into town, his legs shaking the whole way, and then got himself a bath. He was glad he’d made it through the day, but he was already wishing that he didn’t have to go back again early the next morning.
After he washed up, he walked out to the kitchen and sat down at the table. Grandma didn’t have dinner ready, but she was working on it. “Oh, Jay, you must be tired enough to go to bed right now.”
“Just about,” he said.
“I’ve got some of my grape juice in the cellar. Do you want to go down and get some? It’s nice and cool.”
“I don’t think I can. My legs wouldn’t make it.”
Grandma laughed and so did he. Mom was grouchy about half the time, but Grandma never was. She was tall and skinny, like she was made of only bones and skin, and she had gray hair, but it was cut in her “summer cut”—almost as short as a boy’s.
“I’ll hike down and get you some in just a minute.”
“No, I was just joking. I just want water.”
“Well, get some, then.”
“I already had so much it sloshes in my legs every time I take a step.”
Grandma laughed hard at that. “Oh, Jay, you’re such a funny boy.”
No one else thought so, but he was sort of funny when he was around Grandma.
“I’m going to tell your grandpa, you should start early but not work so long into the afternoon.”
“It’s okay.” He didn’t want Grandpa, or especially his mom, to think that he’d been complaining.
“How’d you like Ken?”
“He tells lies.”
“Lies? What lies?”
“He brags. He keeps saying how he’s about the greatest thing there ever was. Dancing and playing baseball and everything.”
“I know. He talks a little that way to me sometimes, but I think that boy’s just trying to believe in himself. Things are hard for the Japanese people right now.”
“Why are they out there at that camp?”
“I’m not so sure. I like those people. I go out there and meet with their book club. I take books out from the library and tell them which ones they might like to read. They treat me so nice, Jay, and every one of those women is just as ladylike as anyone in this town. More refined, if you want to know the truth.”
“Ken doesn’t think the government should’ve put them out there.”
“Well, I can imagine he would feel that way. I guess it’s partly for their own protection. Some people hate them so bad, they don’t want them on the streets. They say they’ll beat them up—or worse.” Grandma was slicing potatoes, dropping the slices into grease in a frying pan, each slice making a sizzling noise as it fell. To him, it seemed way too hot to be cooking something like that.
He was still thinking about the camp. Something didn’t sound right about it. “If one guy beats up another guy, it seems like the one doing the beating ought to go to jail—not the other way around.”
Grandma stopped and turned around. “Now that’s interesting you say that, Jay. I told your grandpa the same thing, and he said that in time of war things like that happen. It can’t be helped. Maybe that’s right. What do I know? But it doesn’t seem fair to me either. Ken’s a nice young man, and I don’t see one reason to stick him out there in the desert in barracks so crowded that his family can hardly move without bumping into one another.”
“Grandpa’s probably right, though,” he said. “Japs probably want to blow up airplanes and ships and everything. We can’t take any chances with ’em.”
“Well, maybe. That’s what everyone says. They say there’s some spies out there, but the ones I’ve met aren’t troublemakers. They’re just normal people, like anyone else. Grandpa says the same thing, but then he turns around and says it’s probably what the government has to do.”
Jay t
hought about that. Ken did seem like he wasn’t too bad of a guy. But maybe he was just acting like that. A spy wasn’t going to let on that he was a spy. He’d pretend like he was just some regular guy. Grandma probably didn’t think of things like that.
“Gordy and the other boys said Grandpa’s about the best man in this whole town.”
“They said that?” She smiled.
“Yes.”
“Well, he probably is. But he’s wrong sometimes. And I oughta know. Because I’m the only one around here who’s always right.” She laughed at herself, sounding like a man, she was so loud.
Jay laughed too. He liked Grandma when she didn’t get started talking about his dad.
CHAPTER 4
ON FRIDAY NIGHT JAY PLAYED baseball again, but the game was still going strong when he told Gordy that he had to leave.
“Hey, come on, you can’t leave now. I’m not going to choose you anymore if you quit on us every night.”
“I can’t help it. I gotta go. It’s almost nine o’clock.”
“What are you, a baby? How come you have to go to bed at nine every night?”
“I don’t have to go to bed. I just have to be home.”
“Who says so? Your grandpa?”
“No. My mom.”
It was a hot night, but a thunderstorm had blown through earlier, so the game had started late. The rain had left the field muddy and the air damp. He didn’t mind leaving tonight. And he didn’t mind leaving before he came up to bat next time. He’d been up four times so far and he’d only gotten one hit.
Gordy was standing behind the backstop with his fingers stuck through the chicken wire. Renny was up to bat. “Come on, knock one out of here,” Gordy yelled. Without looking back at Jay, he said, “What’s your mom’s problem? How come she rides herd on you so hard?”
“I don’t know.” But he did know some things. His mom was trying to change. In Salt Lake she hadn’t gone to church, and she and Dad had gone dancing sometimes and had come home smelling of smoke and beer. But now, she’d told him, she wasn’t going to be like that. She wanted him to go to church, and she wanted him to be a missionary some day. She wanted him to do everything right, the way Grandpa and Grandma did. So he had to come in on time and be careful about the kind of kids he ran around with.
“It’s not going to be dark for at least an hour, and you already gotta go home. That don’t make sense to me.”
“I know. But I better—”
“You wanna go out to the desert in the morning?”
“Yeah. Maybe. I don’t have to work tomorrow.” He hadn’t ever said anything about working with Ken.
“So go with us. But you gotta get up early. We’re leaving at six.”
“I’ll see if I can.”
“What’s that supposed to mean?”
Renny slapped a ball to the left side of the infield. George should have fielded it, but he let it bounce off his glove, and then he tried to throw to second for a force-out, but he tossed the ball into right field. Before the mess was over, Renny had rounded the bases and Lew had scored in front of him. Gordy cheered them on, all the way around the bases, and then he said, “Stick around, Chief. You could get up again this inning.”
But he didn’t want to do that. “You guys’ll be all right without me. See ya later.”
“Okay. Six o’clock. We’ll come by your house, so be ready. We’re going to ride our bikes.”
“All right,” Jay said, but he wondered what kind of mood his mom would be in. Grandma said that it was making her upset, just waiting to find out about Dad. It was sort of the same for him. Every day he wondered if some kind of news would come, maybe that his dad was a prisoner of war. Sometimes the Japs let prisoners send a letter, his mom had told him, and maybe that would happen.
Mom had even said one time that Dad’s body might be found, and then at least they would know. But it was wrong to think that way. Grandpa said they had to trust God and have faith, and pray to God that his dad would come home. So every time Jay thought maybe his dad was dead, he told himself not to think it, to have faith instead. And he prayed every night. He never had done that in Salt Lake, but he had started in Delta.
As Jay walked home, he decided he’d tell his grandma that he was going with his friends in the morning. She never worried about things like that, and his mom liked to sleep in late on Saturday mornings. She wouldn’t know anything about it.
So that worked out all right, and Grandma even said she was getting up early to work in the garden before the heat came on. She’d get him up at five thirty and fix him breakfast. She even promised to pack him some sandwiches to take with him, the same as she did when he worked at the farm.
Gordy and Lew and Eldred came by in the morning. Another guy, Buddy, who played ball with them sometimes, came along too. Jay was standing out front, waiting. He had an old bike that one of his uncles had left at the house when he’d moved away. It was rusty and the chain came off easy, but it was the only bike he had. He saw the guys coming from a distance, all carrying their BB guns across their handlebars. The sound of their voices carried down the street. He didn’t have a BB gun, and now he almost wished he hadn’t said he would go. He didn’t know what he’d do if they were all shooting their guns.
“Hey, Chief,” Gordy called from a long way off. “I didn’t think you’d show up.”
Jay shrugged.
The boys all braked to a stop and put one foot down. “You got a gun?” Gordy asked.
“No.”
“You can shoot mine.”
“I thought we were going to look for arrowheads.”
“Yeah. We’ll do that, too.”
They set out on their bikes, headed west out of town. There were farms all around, and he knew they’d have to go a few miles to get out to the desert. He just followed along, riding last and pumping hard to keep up on his beat-up old bicycle. After a while they turned off the paved road and headed down a dirt trail, full of ruts. It was still slick from the rain the day before, but that was better than a lot of dust blowing. The dirt was mostly gray out here, almost white. Grandpa said that that was from the alkaline in the soil, but Jay didn’t know what that was.
The trail finally stopped at a barbed-wire fence. The boys all dropped their bikes. Gordy held the wires apart while everyone stepped through, and then they headed out into the desert. It was covered with sagebrush and greasewood. The land was flat, and to Jay, it was ugly. There wasn’t much green out there, no grass except for some tufts here and there, and the greasewood was dry, twisted-up brush, like something starving for a little water. He watched the ground, wondering about arrowheads—and thinking a little about snakes. The boys worked their way through the brush, but no one seemed to be looking very hard. They were talking, or at least Gordy was, telling about what he’d heard on the radio the night before.
“Our air corps guys shot down fifty Jap planes yesterday. Something like that. I think they said more than fifty. If it keeps going like that, we’ll wipe out every plane the Japs have. Their pilots don’t have a chance. Our guys know how to fly a lot better.”
“That’s not what I heard,” said Lew.
Gordy stopped and turned toward Lew. “What are you talking about?”
“The Japs have Zeros—that’s what they call their fighters—and they’re faster than our planes. They’ve got good pilots, too.”
“Who told you that, Lew? That’s a bunch of bunk. Japs can’t even see good. Just about all of ’em have to wear eyeglasses.”
“That’s just how people draw them. Japs aren’t all like that. I got an uncle who came home from basic training last week. He said they told him that Japs are good fighters.”
“No, they’re not. Your uncle’s a chicken, that’s all.”
“No, he’s not. He’s already in the army, so he knows what’s what.”
Gordy stepped up close to Lew, so he had to look up to stare into Lew’s eyes. “He don’t know spit. He ain’t been there yet.”
<
br /> “So? You haven’t either.”
Gordy turned away. He looked at Jay. “You wanna learn to shoot?” he asked.
“Me?”
“No. Your brother.”
“Sure. I guess.”
Lew was saying, “It’s what he learned in training.”
“Shut up, Lew. The guy’s a chicken. I told you that already. See that rusty ol’ tin can down there?” Now he was talking to Jay.
“Yeah.”
Gordy took aim at it, breathed in, held still for a moment, then pulled the trigger. Jay heard a plunk and saw the can shake, and then Gordy said, “They don’t call me ‘deadeye’ for nothing. I could kill more Japs and Krauts than anybody if they’d let me in the army.”
He held out his BB gun to Jay. “Do you know how to aim?”
“Pretty much.” He knew how to line up the sights. His dad had shown him how to do that with his cap gun—but only when he was just pretending to shoot. He took aim and pulled the trigger, but the BB kicked up dust about a foot in front of the can.
“You jerked when you pulled the trigger. That’s the mistake most guys make. You gotta squeeze, not pull hard. Try again.”
He concentrated this time, didn’t hurry himself. He squeezed nice and easy and he heard a plunk.
“See. That’s all there is to it.”
“Yeah, but that can wasn’t very far off,” Buddy said. “Anybody could hit that.”
“I know,” Gordy said. “But a guy’s got to learn.”
“Not me. I was a natural, right from the beginning. Dad told me that.”
“Hey, your face is what’s natural. It looks just like my butt.”
Jay couldn’t help but laugh a little. Buddy’s face was kind of ugly. It looked sort of puffy.
“Do you look at your butt a lot?” Eldred asked Gordy, and laughed. He twisted around to show how hard it was to look back there.
That made Jay laugh too.
Gordy was aiming again. And then he squeezed the trigger. Jay hadn’t known what Gordy was aiming at until he saw a little splash of red on the top of a rock. Something flipped over into the dirt and then started wiggling around. The boys all ran over to it, and Jay followed.
