Coin Locker Babies (38 page)

The
Yuyo Maru
was following a southerly course along the Pacific coast of Honshu. On board were twenty-two men: fifteen trainees and a crew of seven that included the captain, the chief engineer, the first mate, a radio officer, someone from Supervision, and two guards. The nine prisoners in the deck crew section were taking turns at the helm, with six men at any one time crowded into the little wheelhouse: Captain Eda, the radio officer, the trainee at the helm, another watching the radar screen and the other instruments, and two more reading navigational charts. On the second day out, it was Kiku’s turn at the wheel, while Yamane watched the radar, and Nakakura and Hayashi studied the charts.

One of the exercises on their agenda was an open-sea rescue drill. Captain Eda had just asked Nakakura for their position—142°39’ east by 40°44’ north—when the loudspeaker announced:

“Man overboard on the starboard side.”

“Man overboard,” Kiku shouted, throwing the lever into neutral and turning the wheel hard right. The aim, he’d been taught, was to try to approach the man in the water without cutting him to ribbons in the propeller; thus the stern of the ship had to be kept at a distance. Once the turn was completed, the ship proceeded, slow ahead, until visual contact was made and a life preserver could be thrown in his direction. Then, keeping the person constantly in sight, they approached from the leeward side
within twenty to thirty meters, when the engines were stopped again and the boat was allowed to drift slowly in. For the purposes of the drill, a red beach ball was standing in for the fellow in the water, which was just as well since it didn’t quite go as planned. Kiku failed to take into account the roughness of the open sea, which changed the maneuver completely from the practice they’d had in calmer harbor waters. Out here, it was vital to position the ship so the port side took the brunt of the waves, but Kiku had come around so that the starboard was facing the weather, and he could only watch as they drifted away from what would soon have been a drowned sailor.

“What’s the matter, Kuwayama? Too tough for you?” laughed the captain.

“I didn’t realize how rough the sea was,” said Kiku defensively. Eda then asked Hayashi for a reading from the latest weather map.

“There’s a stable high pressure system in the direction of the Bonin Islands. Wind’s out of the south. Looks as though a cool high pressure system is developing over Southern Siberia and will spread south.” Captain Eda nodded as he listened to his summary.

“Under these conditions, what do we have to be on the lookout for?” he asked.

“Squalls,” Nakakura almost shouted as the radio officer started giving the local maritime weather forecast.

“A small typhoon has developed, but it’s expected to fizzle out somewhere south of Okinawa without making landfall.” Outside there was a hint of a breeze, with an occasional school of flying fish breaking the surface of the sea, but the wheelhouse was stifling. Sweat dripped in steady streams onto the charts, and Kiku’s arm rose at regular intervals to wipe his forehead with his sleeve as he stared at the gyrocompass.

The third night, they put in at Shichigahama in Miyagi Prefecture, anchoring against a seawall lined with drab-looking warehouses. Once the mooring lines had been secured, there was a buzz of excitement among the prisoners; this was the night they were allowed to have visitors. Those whose family and friends had applied in advance were given an hour with them after dinner. As the sun set, the visitors gathered on the road that ran along the breakwater while the guards checked names and numbers against their list. Finally, they began calling the prisoners’ names one by one until everybody except Kiku had gone ashore. Yamane was met by a woman holding a baby, presumably his wife; a young couple, a brother or sister and spouse, had come to see Hayashi; and Nakakura had his mother. When his name was called, Nakakura had hesitated, a less than happy look on his face. The streetlights behind had turned this scene of muffled reunions into a cluster of shadows, though Kiku could just make out Yamane holding his child overhead.

“Feeling a little lonely?” asked the captain, coming up beside him as he stared across at the laughing shapes. Kiku turned and for a long moment studied the captain’s sunburned profile.

“Seems like they’re enjoying themselves,” he said at last.

“They tell me you’re an orphan,” said the captain, the reflection of the town’s lights playing on his face. “Must be tough, in a lot of ways.” The lights formed a shimmering pattern that made it seem as if his expression was constantly changing too. “I’ve known two orphans in my life,” he continued. “Both of them had a rough time of it when they were young. It used to be, in the old days, guys like that couldn’t even get a job in a big company, just because they had no parents. So my two friends, both of them, ended up getting pretty messed up. I’ve heard it said there are two types of orphans: guys who spend their whole
lives fighting against everything with all they’ve got, and guys who are always trying to put one over on everybody. How about it, Kuwayama? Which kind are you?” The captain’s deep, rasping voice was somehow reassuring. The salt breeze had begun to cool Kiku’s overheated body and soothe the fatigue from the day’s sailing.

“You got me,” he said.

“Fair enough. No reason for you to know yourself. And anyway, I imagine both types get lonely just the same.” Kiku said nothing. “You see that?” the captain went on, pointing at the silhouettes lined up on the seawall. “That’s family. I’ve got two daughters myself, and a grandchild on the way. Now I know you may have come this far all on your own, but that’s no reason you can’t make yourself a family in the future. Kuwayama, my boy, that’s what you need to do: make yourself a family—a family that starts with you.”

Kiku was trying to make out Yamane, Nakakura, and Hayashi among the shadows. Eventually he noticed Hayashi sitting with his legs dangling over the wall, holding a scrap of paper that appeared to be a photograph up to the light. Yamane, his baby riding on his shoulders, was waving in Kiku’s direction.

“Hey, Kiku! Come here a minute!” he called.

“Go on,” said the captain, patting him on the shoulder. Yamane met him as he came ashore.

“This is my son,” he said, proudly holding out the baby for his inspection. “I’m going to make a
real
sailor out of him. Kid’s not even a year old yet and already he can swim.” There was an enormous grin on Yamane’s face. Kiku leaned down and pressed his ear against the little chest. Startled, the baby began to wail.

“Could you hear it?” asked Yamane. Kiku nodded, as his friend swung the boy about and broke into song:

The song drifted over those around them, bringing a smile to the captain’s face as he stood listening on the deck. After a few bars, he joined in loudly, and Kiku too began to sing, though more quietly. There was a round of applause when the song was over.

Kiku noticed two beams of bright light running along the road; the headlights swept over the warehouses, bringing the gray walls into focus for a moment and deepening the shadows on the seawall before disappearing again. He caught just a glimpse of a red Landrover as it sped past, sending a crimson ripple through the damp gray harbor night. Anemone! he told himself, thinking of her warm, slippery, and delicately tapering tongue somewhere nearby.

The trainees were assigned to simple bunks that had been rigged, for the purposes of the voyage, in the ship’s hold. The hold, barely four meters square, was crammed with five tiers of these bunks in three rows, leaving the occupants no room even to roll over in bed. The rest of the crew slept above deck, with the two guards standing alternate watches over the hatch to the hold. This night, however, almost no one was asleep below, thanks to the heat and the excitement of seeing their family for the first time in a while. The hatch had been left open, but what little breeze there was had no chance of reaching them. The prisoners lay as they were, underwear and bedding soaked through, with the breath from fifteen pairs of lungs adding to the humidity minute by minute. Somewhere in the hold, a muffled weeping could be heard. Kiku, third bunk, middle row, felt Yamane, who was next to him, tap him on the shoulder. He was pointing down
at Nakakura, bottom bunk, right side. Nakakura’s face was buried in his little plastic pillow, and he, apparently, was the one crying.

“His grandma died,” Yamane whispered. “He was real close to her; he had some kind of fight with his mother just now. Poor guy.” Kiku, however, cut him short, claiming that Nakakura’s troubles didn’t interest him and that he was sleepy.

“It may seem like it’s too hot to sleep, but if we don’t get some shut-eye, tomorrow’s going to be hell,” he said, eliciting a nod from Yamane. Nakakura went on crying for quite a while.

Shichigahama was the end of the line for the
Yuyo Maru
. From here they would turn back toward their home port, so if there was going to be an escape, this was his best chance. According to the plan, Anemone would have cars hidden in three separate spots between here and Tokyo. All he had to do now was wait until everyone was asleep. Soon he could hear deep, regular breathing all around him in the dark. Then, just when he was about to get up, he saw Nakakura dart furtively from his bunk. As he went by, Kiku reached out and clapped his hand on his shoulder.

“Where are you going?” he whispered.

“To take a piss,” Nakakura said, but when Kiku let him go he bypassed the head and shot up the stairs that led to the deck. Beginning to feel nervous, Kiku shook Yamane awake.

“Yamane! Nakakura’s making a break; we’ve got to stop him.” As quietly as he could, he hopped down from his bunk and made for the hatch. With only his head poking through, he could see Nakakura, crouching in the shadow of the bridge, watching the guard on the seawall chatting with the cop from the policebox in the street beyond. They were fishing as they talked to help pass the time. Now and then the guard would glance in the direction of the ship. As Kiku watched, Yamane stuck his head up beside him.

“Nakakura,
don’t do it
,” he hissed. Merely being discovered on deck would be treated as an attempted escape, meaning, at the very least, that he would automatically lose the right to sit for his seamanship test. Even at a distance, they could see his back was heaving. There was clearly no way to climb up the seawall without attracting the guard’s attention, and the only other option—slipping over the side into the water—would involve hanging from the rail on the port side, which the captain might notice if it made them roll a bit. Just then Kiku heard a car engine race. Shit! he thought. He knew Anemone had been watching from a building somewhere nearby, and as soon as she saw Kiku come up on deck she was supposed to create some sort of diversion. She must have mistaken Nakakura for him. The Landrover pulled up on the far side of the seawall, and he could hear her voice.

“Excuse me! There’s some kind of fight going on at the seaman’s club,” she said, and soon Kiku could hear two sets of feet hurry off. While he was debating what to do, Anemone came running back.

“The officer says he’d like you to give him a hand,” he heard her tell the guard, knowing that she would do her best to drag him off to the phony fight without giving him time to wake the other guard on board. So he should probably get a move on and just take Nakakura along with him, but then again…

Anemone’s footsteps, still running, were joined by the sound of the guard jumping down into the road. Kiku made up his mind: to hell with Nakakura, if he didn’t go now there might not be another chance. But just as he was about to sneak out on deck, Nakakura leapt up and—with an “Aaaaaaaaiiii!”—dived over the rail into the water. Kiku ducked his head back down as lights in the wheelhouse came on. A moment later, the captain and the supervisor burst through the door, and the guard reappeared on
the wall. Nakakura, making a hell of a racket, was frantically kicking the water.

“That’s fucked it,” Kiku muttered, coming up on deck. A searchlight had come on, and the supervisor was pointing it over the rail at Nakakura. By this time Yamane and Hayashi had also emerged from the hatch, but, seeing them standing around, the guard came running up, nightstick waving, and told them to get down below. As he was heading back to the hatch, Kiku saw Anemone’s pale face appear above the sea wall. Realizing that Kiku wasn’t the guy in the water, she checked the deck, just in time to see him wave her off before he disappeared down the ladder. She lowered herself back onto the road and started the engine, and as the guard clapped the hatch shut over Kiku’s head, he heard the Landrover roar away, with the captain’s voice bellowing in the background: “Nakakura! Grab the fucking hook!”

The ship was four hours late leaving port the next day due to the inquiry into Nakakura’s little adventure and the obligatory report for the detention center. In the end, they decided to postpone a ruling on his punishment until they were back in Hakodate, though in the meantime he was to be confined to the hold.

“You know, I wasn’t really planning to escape,” he told Kiku when he brought him his dinner. He had always loved his grandmother, he explained, and the whole thing had started yesterday when his mother, a former nurse with dyed hair and body odor whom he hated and who had always been mean to Granny, had told him, with a disgusting grin on her face, that the old woman had been killed in a traffic accident. With the insurance and a little out-of-court settlement, she and her boyfriend had been able to go to Hawaii, she’d said, laughing. He wasn’t going to escape last night; he was just going to kill his
mother and come straight back to the ship. Kiku had to restrain the urge to club him over the head as he told his story, staring at his plate. Thanks to you, asshole, there’s no way I can escape now, he thought. From here on in, they’ll watch us like hawks.

The
Yuyo Maru
was heading home under a full head of steam, partly to make up for lost time and partly because the typhoon that was supposed to die out south of Okinawa had changed course. The ship’s radio continuously monitored the weather forecast as they made for the next scheduled port, which Captain Eda seemed determined to reach despite their late start. Given the sort of crew they had on board, he knew it would be difficult to find anchorage and shelter anywhere else.