Cannonball (9 page)

After practice at East Hill one night (the phone from the Principal's office at my former high school ringing off the hook because my father coached the team there too, supposedly, and blew them off now and then), after optional weigh-in on the old physician's scales with the height rod he had sat us all down on the hard tiles to talk hygiene, diet, bananas and fluids sustaining the electrolytes in the system and preventing cramp; sex as primarily only a matter of releasing tension; and the coming war he spoke about also (standing). Sometimes a nation feels its mission greater than other daily struggles like beating your time for the two hundred, and to submit to that fate now could sharpen the competitive edge for these lesser struggles—let's take inventory and just tend to business, he said. World Series of swimming was an idea of his. The Olympics but more than nations. Silence and some inner, partnering echo of tiles and water stilled the settling echoes of his voice. A war? I thought. A war to end weapons, he had said. Well, we could do that.

It was this I spoke to Umo about when I happened to see him. For he went away and came back you sometimes thought just to start these rumors that few checked on, like news in the newspaper or things you did in place of others. He had been cooped up in a juvenile home in Broadview for a few days, it was said; or he ran errands for a bail bondsman in Chula Vista for three dollars an hour on a good day and then for a sound studio in La Jolla—a Russian who worked there (no, Ukrainian) putting together a music tape for a superintendent of schools' campaign for Assemblyman nomination but Umo said there was a big plan for international recording—even though they found out he didn't have working papers yet rather than fire him as an illegal the Russian saw they could make this kid do pretty well anything. Umo was a supplier in ugly sporting activities in Baja on the Gulf Coast side, my brother heard, some said with his strength an actual participant even at his age; but the rumors like reassuring gossip had a dimension along which they seemed to gather toward a good decision you will make. Though my mother seemed unforgiving when she volunteered that I had “helped” my father even if he was too shy to say so with “all this new business”—that is, that I might thank him for his unexpressed acknowledgment of my help with…what?—his trips, his Sacramento speechwriter contact—news to me. You go your way, however involved you might be with these others—and through things you might have done?—or said?—like the miracle of everyday dealing, as if you knew things in advance like the Man from Nazareth unforgettably profiled in the words of these rumored first-century eyewitness “memos,” spreader of new ideas and of himself, plus one prophecy coming home to roost right now as the Administration had hinted.

I kept putting off visiting my old teacher Wick, for there would be time.

Umo caught up with me at the smoothie stand in Old Town, I had my little Olympus Epic around my neck, getting back into it. And I found myself up in the truck cab which smelled of cigarette and paint thinner, chlorine and the car deodorant 2-D Christmas tree hanging from the mirror. I was suddenly going to Baja. (Could I get out?) He pointed at me, my chest; ah, he meant my camera? “Good. Your father taught you.
My
father, he told me how my grandfather wanted to get to Mexico.” I already knew his grandfather, he said—well, I nodded, yeah, I felt I did. “You break things down,” Umo said, and laughed that laugh. Good old Route 5 looked like we were going straight south. “What are you trucking back and forth?” I asked. “Whatever is needed.” “People?” “Not the last time we looked.”

“Come on”—Umo a fourteen-year-old immigrant commuter of some maturity or a repeater of phrases he'd heard, his eye on the road. I talked to him, I said my father would ask me a question out of the middle of silent thoughts he's been in all day, you know (?) or they'd been in him, but you didn't have a clue, and out comes this question. Umo said, “Like?” “Like
Why would you go to
any
war?
When
he
was the one in the beginning.” “‘Or they'd been in
him
'!” Umo said—it was funny—my words—“I like that,” he said; “you break things down. It could be OK to go to war,” he said. (I'd been phoned by the Army again.) Maybe if it was close by, I said, what about him? “Look at a map sometime, they got a map at your school? They got a big map at that store you go to: find Mongolia.”

We passed a police car, restaurants, hardware, where were we going, it was like a plan coming to meet us. Real old jerky Blues on the radio band. Umo pointed to it and smiled. Well, grandfather had gone to Mexico to find the maker of a silver cup, dark and very small, that had fallen out of the bag of a man his grandfather had killed as it happened in a fight that began as a joke. “I got it right here,” Umo took his hand off the wheel and clapped his hand to his pocket. “It's the real reasons we look for.” His grandfather came first (whom he'd never known—only in his father's stories, the silver cup, those particular letters on the bottom (which maybe were not his name but words, Umo had realized). He had come to Mexico on his grandfather's business that he had made his own. (A twelve-year-old?) Searching for the maker of the cup. Was that him on the bottom? “You sound like my father. ‘What the hell do you see in that picture?'” “You mean in the school paper?” Umo said, as if he remembered—“three and a half girls and your father shoved you—once in the school paper, or—” “Umo I never showed you that picture, I never told you!” “You're going to be going to war sooner not later if you don't look out,” said Umo, as if he knew. “Well, my father would suddenly say,
Isn't it against the Ten Commandments?
and laugh like a retard, and my sister—”

“Isn't it?”

“Maybe one of them.” “Is your father your brother?” “Sure, if he could be.” “You talking American?” “Like my sister.” “Your sister's your brother sometimes, you said.” “A lot.”

“I will marry her,” Umo said.

“That'll be the day.”

“Right. She will wait, but the day will come.”

“Why would she marry you?”

“The sister of my brother.”

“She's got other plans.” “You go to war for her?” “Sometimes.” “You gotta defend yourself,” Umo said.

“That's my mother; she's for the war.” “Your mother,” said Umo, “she's preparing fresh shrimp and getting sore fingers”—such a sharp rememberer, Umo!—“and cooking and taking care of the house, a good Christian—” “You don't know a thing about it,” I said wondering at Umo's memory.

“
My
mother was a sheepherder—” “So she left her home?” “—out where desert invading grasslands, Mongol…but wild camels let her come up to them, she was the only one, but that had a bad ending because she learned the medicine herbs they eat and she got arrested.”

“Not the only thing, Umo.” “No not the only thing,” he laughed that harsh laugh, really amused at me. His lost grandfather had had in his possession some tortoiseshells with fine lettering on them he had taught himself to do, but what happened to the tortoiseshells…? Umo, that awful laugh again.

Was I saving him for some loss—even his own—that I didn't ask about his travels or the truck much? He was in Shaanxi. Then he was in Yichang and he mopped deck on a river boat and must have been extremely noticeable. He was in a village helping animals to haul a loaded wagon, but he did not show me his journey out of China or even across the ocean, though it seemed clandestine, a powerful motion, except in certain geographical points, fixed on a map: even the hard seats of a railway train car, tunnels, then jumping off where there was no platform. He had to be just thirteen then. There was a mountain, some foggy mountain at top when you get up there, people like it. (Did he have a bag?) Oh yes, and English book—catalogue, magazine (?)—laughed differently and looked away.

I wondered how Umo had left…where he had grown up. You didn't just leave China. A poor village on a mountain, a wooden pulley over a well creaking, a ranger watching people dynamite fish out of a lake, ermine hunters, the rumored size of a boy slipping through trees, a borrowed bicycle, drumbeats. I felt a miracle next to me: he had taken over his own life at
his
age. And for some reason I said, “But the
women
don't herd the sheep.” Umo nodded amazingly but it was not in agreement, his eyes on the road, a state trooper across the intersection waving us over. I couldn't believe what I'd said from the height of my ignorance in the cab of this truck. I wondered what had happened to Umo's mother, or really to Umo. “Listen, your city is far from the coast. How did you get away?” Our truck ran a red light to remind us of itself. “Listen, my grandfather was—” Umo braked and pulled over and leaning across me greeted the state trooper: “Zoose, what's happening?”—the little cop gave us a look, “Your friend has a license,” he said, he was joking. “You don't even have the permit—” “No, wait, we're talking,” Umo said to Zoose, and to me, “No my grandfather was a policeman for a while—” “A policeman! I thought he was a miner,” said Zoose. He had a hand on my window ledge. “That's where his heart was,” Umo said; and to me, “He was a magnesium miner.” Umo had some bills in his fist. “He admired Plutarco Calles, the revolutionary; my grandfather would come to Mexico and be a miner in Mexico and work with Calles.”

“I know you don't have your learner's permit today.” Zoose waved us on. “
Arrastras el chasis
,” Umo called across to him—
you draggin' your ass
.

Umo was sort of known. “Zoose,” he said. “When you need him, you know? He's got a sister. He's a wild man. We tape. She married a guitar player just got his citizen papers, he's a wild man too, lead guitar,” said Umo. Zoose had a part interest in a Chevron station.

How it worked, you could ask.

The cop was into music, into the war. “Never know what he'll do 'cept let you past.”

The grandfather had never lived with them out west in China. (Umo was bummed out thinking.) “How could he? He was dead.” Umo took his hands off the wheel and looked at his palms. “He ran into Japanese, they ran into him, find it on the map 1931,” Umo seemed to growl. “They got a map for 1931? He died, he liked the Japs,
some
things—I told you—he liked their island, they were smart, you agree?—he was a fighter, he could stand on his hands. Find it on the map. Mukden. But he didn't believe the war. You like this one?”

“We take this guy out,” I said. “It's a no-brainer.” I might be joking. “Out?” “Throw him out.” “You think?” The great Olympic training facility not far from the Mexican border flashed past on our left in the noise of our moaning, downshifted vehicle in need of a ring job. “Olympics,” I pointed. I guess I changed the subject but to what? Umo laughed. “‘No-brainer,'” he said. “You smart. You know photography. You listen, you break things down. But you are…” “I changed the subject?” I said. “That's what your father said to me,” said Umo now. “He did?” “Smart son of a gun.” “About me?” “I said me and him, and he turned away, he was gonna shout at somebody—that kid—” Umo meant Milt—“and I asked if you enlist. Not changing subject, Zach.”

Beyond friendship, that.

What had Umo said to Dad? I might never know. “First day. He say, ‘Where you learn that?' Not front dive but butterfly first day.”

“Yeah, butterfly's tough guy stroke,” I said, speaking like Umo, who'd changed the subject.

“Yeah, he slapped me here—” Umo took his hand off the wheel to touch his right side like a tender spot, “you saw.” “Yeah, the two of you the other side of the pool. He said I—?” “Yeah, how you talk. I tell him you said Jesus, he's our CEO, he meant business, he was a Marine.” “Look what they did to him. He was a tough guy they were up against; that's why they crucified him, but he was…proactive,” I said—“what did he say?”

“Gonna give me a book to read, for my English.” “Your English is killer English, Umo.” “But he didn't.” “Maybe he will. About an American pilot flying over mountains to help China beat Japanese, I know.”

“
God Is My Co-Pilot
. I told him that's a band.” Umo shot a burst of laughter at the windshield. Umo and my father met in me maybe. This kid, easily illegal, at home in this vehicle with a sometime shadow coworker, moving what goods who could tell—he had never talked like this… “Hey, he might believe in this war he might not, but…” Umo said something in Chinese, I guess, and I kind of agreed. Umo said, “He has to…” and then, “He say butterfly blind will power. Blind.”

A couple of miles ahead a small, bulky gray plane banked around and around at an altitude of maybe three hundred feet, we were close, a repainted Cessna from the Seventies, they had enlarged the cabin of that model I seemed to recall, it would have sat Umo snugly. “Maybe he hates you,” Umo laughed that staccato laugh.

“My mom says he tells people things I say, his asshole son.”

“You give up diving. You give up photography. ‘Killuh English.'” Umo brayed his laugh.

“He didn't like my dumb pictures. My sister figured out a better safelight for the darkroom.” “How can picture be dumb?” “Well, my dad said I'm a lousy competitor.” “No, your dad likes the war. You do what he says.” Came the evil laugh, he was my friend being silly. We had an agreement. What was it? “You be C.O. some day.”

Mexico was coming up on us in more than geography. And I thought that during this period I had discovered in my father a new strength (from my point of view). He didn't object to the war policy or controlling the oil, yet what would happen to their country
and
ours? He would call them both idiots, also those close to home he disagreed with. They were not worth talking to. It was the man I had known as swimming coach and father, who seemed to have acquired a different
kind
of reserve, if I only knew what I meant.